format: text

text:
# Decoherence due to three-body loss and its effect on the state of a Bose-Einstein condensate

Jack

## Abstract

A Born-Markov master equation is used to investigate the decoherence of the state of a macroscopically occupied mode of a cold atom trap due to three-body loss. In the large number limit only coherent states remain pure for times longer than the decoherence time: the time it takes for just three atoms to be lost from the trap. For large numbers of atoms ($`N>10^4`$) the decoherence time is found to be much faster than the phase collapse time caused by intra-trap atomic collisions.

Decoherence,Bose-Einstein Condensation,Three-Body Decay,Three-Body Recombination,Master Equations

Decoherence due to environmental coupling Zurek (1991); Caldeira (1983); Walls and Milburn (1985) can be very rapid and has the effect of making certain pure quantum states unobtainable for all practical purposes. This means that the environment largely determines the state of the system as only so called “robust states” survive for long periods of time. This is also true for cold trapped atoms and in particular when a Bose-Einstein condensate is present in the trap Anderson et al. (1995). Even at zero temperature the condensate atoms are coupled to the free modes outside the trap by atomic loss processes and so these free modes act as an environment for the condensate. It has been argued barnett96 ; Shimizu and Miyadera (2000) that environmental coupling will leave the condensate in a coherent state with a well-defined phase due to the robustness of the coherent states.

The form of the environmental coupling is crucial in determining the robust states of an open system Zurek (1991). It is well known that the coherent states are robust under linear coupling Walls and Milburn (1985); Zurek et al. (1993), or single-body loss, in the sense that an initial coherent state decays in amplitude but otherwise remains unchanged. More important for large Bose-Einstein condensates is loss due to three-body recombination Kagan et al. (1985); Burt et al. (1997); Söding et al. (1999); Esry et al. (1999), which limits the lifetime and size of the present condensates. Three-body loss can be considered to be a fundamental loss process for trapped atoms as it cannot be reduced (except by changing the scattering length Inouye et al. (1998)), unlike loss due to spin-relaxation which does not occur in an optical trap and unlike loss due to collisions with untrapped atoms which can be reduced by improving the vacuum. In this letter I aim to show that three-body loss, gives rise to a very rapid decoherence of certain states in spite of the fact that it leads to only a slow decay in the number of trapped atoms. In the large number limit the robust states are similar to coherent states with a well-defined phase.

In opposition to the above argument, elastic atom-atom collisions within the condensate will give rise to a dephasing between states of different number and in the absence of environmental coupling lead to a phase-collapse Wright et al. (1996); lewenstein96 ; villain97 . However, I will show that the timescale at which the three-body loss decoheres an initial state to the robust states is much more rapid than the phase collapse for large condensates. The collisions are then more likely to lead to a slow diffusion of a well-defined phase rather than a collapse.

To investigate the quantum properties of three-body loss I derive a Born-Markov master equation for the density matrix of the trapped atoms. Born-Markov master equations have been an important tool for describing radiative decay in quantum optics (see for example Walls and Milburn (1994)).

For cold atoms in a trap the three-body recombination process produces a molecule and a single atom, (e.g. Rb $`+`$ Rb $`+`$ Rb $``$ Rb $`+`$ Rb2), where the molecule is an atom-atom bound state. The weakest binding energy, $`E_b`$, is related to the $`s`$-wave scattering length, $`a`$, by $`E_b=\mathrm{}\omega _b=\mathrm{}^2/ma^2`$ Sakurai (1994). In this work I consider only the repulsive interaction case, $`a>0`$. Due to the large binding energy and momentum conservation the molecule and atom are both created with a large kinetic energy and escape from the trap. We are then interested in the influence of this loss process on the behavior of the remaining trapped atoms.

For low-temperature atoms the three-body process becomes a point interaction characterized by a single parameter $`\kappa `$ such that the Hamiltonian can be written

$$H_I=\mathrm{}\kappa d𝐱[\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}^3(𝐱)\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{F}^{}(𝐱)\widehat{\varphi }_\mathrm{F}^{}(𝐱)+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.],$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}(𝐱)`$, $`\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{F}(𝐱)`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }_\mathrm{F}(𝐱)`$ are the field operators for the trapped atoms, the free (untrapped) atoms and free molecules, respectively. The field operators commute with each other but have the usual Bose commutation relations with their Hermitian conjugate.

The Hamiltonian for the cold trapped atoms, $`H_\mathrm{T}`$, is the usual many-body Hamiltonian describing two-body $`s`$-wave scattering (see, for example, the review article Dalfovo et al. (1999)). In most circumstances three-body elastic collisions will be negligible in comparison to two-body elastic collisions so I do not include them here.

The density matrix of the total system satisfies the interaction-picture equation of motion $`d\rho _{\mathrm{tot}}(t)/dt=i[H_I(t),\rho _{\mathrm{tot}}(t)]/\mathrm{}`$, where $`H_I(t)=e^{i(H_\mathrm{T}+H_\mathrm{F})t/\mathrm{}}H_Ie^{i(H_\mathrm{T}+H_\mathrm{F})t/\mathrm{}}`$ and $`H_\mathrm{F}`$ is the Hamiltonian of the free particles. The free particles and the trapped atoms are assumed to be initially uncoupled with the states outside the trap unpopulated; $`\rho _{\mathrm{tot}}(0)=\nu _1\nu _2\rho (0)`$, where $`\rho (0)`$, $`\nu _2=|\{0\}\{0\}|_{\varphi _\mathrm{F}}`$ and $`\nu _1=|\{0\}\{0\}|_{\psi _\mathrm{F}}`$ are the density matrices of the trapped atoms, free molecules and free atoms, respectively.

Assuming a low loss rate we can expand to second order in $`\kappa `$ (see, for example, Walls and Milburn (1994)) and the equation of motion for the reduced density matrix $`\rho =\mathrm{tr}_\mathrm{F}\left\{\rho _{\mathrm{tot}}\right\}`$, becomes

$$\frac{d\rho }{dt}=_0^t𝑑s𝑑𝐱𝑑𝐲f(𝐱,𝐲;t,s)[\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}^3(𝐱t),\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}^3(𝐲s)\rho ]+\text{h.c}.$$
(2)
where

$$f(𝐱,𝐲;t,s)=\kappa ^2\{0\}|\widehat{\varphi }_\mathrm{F}(𝐱t)\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{F}(𝐱t)\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{F}^{}(𝐲s)\widehat{\varphi }_\mathrm{F}^{}(𝐲s)|\{0\}.$$
(3)
Note that the first term in the perturbation, $`\mathrm{tr}_\mathrm{F}\left\{[H_I(s),\rho _{\mathrm{tot}}(t)]\right\}=0`$. Following Kagan et al.Kagan et al. (1985), we can expand the field operators for the free particles as plane waves modes with the energies $`\mathrm{}^2k_1^2/2m`$ and $`\mathrm{}^2k_2^2/4mE_b`$ for the atom and the molecule, respectively (due to the high velocity of the free particles we can neglect the effects of gravity). Since the shortest length scale of the trapped atoms is given by the de Broglie wavelength, on the length scale of the emitted particles ($`a`$), there is no variation of the field of the trapped atoms and we can make the replacement $`\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}(𝐲)\widehat{\psi }_\mathrm{T}(𝐱)`$ in Eq.(2). We can then integrate the memory function over $`𝐲`$ which gives rise to the delta function $`\delta (𝐤_1+𝐤_2)`$, expressing the equal an opposite momentum of the molecule and atom. We then perform the integration over $`𝐤_2`$ to give,

$$F(ts)=\frac{2\kappa ^2}{(2\pi )^2}k_1^2𝑑k_1e^{i\left(\frac{3\mathrm{}k_1^2}{4m}\omega _b\right)(ts)},$$
(4)
where $`F(ts)=𝑑𝐲f(𝐱,𝐲;t,s)`$. Note that the $`𝐱`$ dependence has disappeared. Replacing the variable of integration by $`K=3\mathrm{}k_1^2/4m`$ in Eq.(4) and noting that we are only interested in frequencies in the range $`\omega _b\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to $`\omega _b+\mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`E_b/\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega }\kappa `$, the integral can be approximated by

$$F(ts)\frac{\gamma }{6\pi }_{\omega _b\mathrm{\Omega }}^{\omega _b+\mathrm{\Omega }}𝑑Ke^{i\left(K\omega _b\right)(ts)},$$
(5)
where $`\gamma =3(\kappa ^2/2\pi )(4m/3\mathrm{})^{3/2}\sqrt{\omega _b}`$. As $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is much larger than any system frequencies we can write $`F(ts)\gamma \delta (ts)/3`$ and the final Born-Markov master equation for the reduced density matrix of the trapped atoms is given by

$$\frac{d\rho }{dt}=\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}[H_\mathrm{T},\rho (t)]+\frac{\gamma }{6}𝑑𝐱\left[2\widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\rho \widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\rho \rho \widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\widehat{\psi }^3(𝐱)\right],$$
(6)
where I have dropped the subscript on the field operator and returned to the Schrödinger picture. This equation is a course-grained equation, valid for time scales of the trapped atoms $`2\pi /\omega _b`$ and length scales $`a`$. By calculating the number decay via Eq.(6) we can determine that $`\gamma `$ is related to the recombination event rate $`K_3`$ of Ref.Esry et al. (1999) by $`K_3=12\gamma `$.

This master equation can be used to derive the result of Kagan et al. Kagan et al. (1985) but it is much more general as it can be used to calculate the behavior of any expectation value of the trap operators. In this work, however, I am interested in the effect of the three-body decay on the quantum state of the condensate.

For a weakly-interacting gas at zero temperature, the atoms may be assumed to be mostly in the condensate. A condensate of $`n`$ atoms has a wave function that satisfies the time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. In the Thomas-Fermi approximation (see Dalfovo et al. (1999) and references within) the solution is: $`gn|\psi _n(𝐱)|^2\mu _nV_{\mathrm{trap}}(𝐱)`$, for all $`𝐱`$ where $`V_{\mathrm{trap}}(𝐱)<\mu _n`$ and zero elsewhere. The chemical potential $`\mu _n`$ is determined from the normalization of the wavefunction $`\psi _n`$. At higher temperatures the noncondensate particles occupying higher energy modes are expected to also act as an environment for the condensate mode. The lack of a suitable theory to describe the quantum effects of this interaction (see Ref.gardiner97  for an attempt) is particularly acute in this case as this interaction is expected to compete with the loss from the trap in decohering the state of the condensate.

Let us assume that the initial condensate states of interest are sharply peaked about the mean number $`N`$ such that $`|Nn|/N1`$ and during the short time period of interest (the time it takes to lose $`3`$ atoms) the system stays within this linear region. Due to the fact that the wavefunction is stable under small changes in number for $`a>0`$ we can make the approximations $`\psi _n(𝐱)\psi _N(𝐱)`$ and $`\mu _n\mu _N`$, see Ref.Wright et al. (1996). The $`n`$ dependence of $`\mu _n`$ will be discussed latter. Under these approximations we can make the replacement $`\widehat{\psi }(𝐱)\psi _N(𝐱)\widehat{A}`$ in Eq.(6), where $`\widehat{A}`$ is the annihilation operator for the condensate mode. In order to describe longer times where a significant portion of atoms are lost from the condensate a more careful approach to defining the condensate mode may be necessary, (see Ref.Shimizu and Miyadera (2000)). In general, the changing number will give rise to excitations but we can neglect these effects for slow decaying numbers over short times.

With the above assumptions, the master equation for the condensate mode becomes

$$\frac{d\rho }{dt}=\frac{\stackrel{~}{\gamma }}{6}\left[2\widehat{A}^3\rho \widehat{A}^3\widehat{A}^3\widehat{A}^3\rho \rho \widehat{A}^3\widehat{A}^3\right],$$
(7)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }=\gamma 𝑑𝐱|\psi _N(𝐱)|^6`$. In Eq.(7) I have assumed that the free Hamiltonian has the form $`H_\mathrm{T}=\mathrm{}\mu _N\widehat{A}^{}\widehat{A}`$ and that we are working in the a frame rotating at the frequency defined by $`\mu _N`$. This equation represents a nonlinear damping of the condensate mode and in the large number limit it has an analytical solution.

Due to the fact that the operator $`\widehat{A}^3`$ couples only every third number state, there are $`3\times 3`$ independent sub-manifolds of the density matrix corresponding to the number states $`|m;j|3m+j`$, where $`m`$ is an integer and $`j=0,1`$ or $`2`$ are the labels for the sub-manifolds. The master equation yields an equation for each of the $`3\times 3`$ the density matrices $`\rho _{jk}`$ $`(j,k=0,1`$ or $`2)`$ of the sub-manifolds of the form

$$\frac{d\rho _{jk}}{dt}\mathrm{\Gamma }\left[2\widehat{a}_j\rho _{jk}\widehat{a}_k^{}\widehat{a}_j^{}\widehat{a}_j\rho _{jk}\rho _{jk}\widehat{a}_k^{}\widehat{a}_k\right]$$
(8)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=3N^2\stackrel{~}{\gamma }/2`$. Assuming that the number distribution is sharply peaked at a large number the mode operators for each of the three manifolds can be written as

$$\widehat{a}_j=\underset{\mathrm{lin}.}{}\sqrt{C_N^j+m+1}|m;jm+1;j|+O(N^0),$$
(9)
where $`C_N^j=(2N+3j3)/9`$, and the sum is over states in the linear region about $`N`$. The mode operators satisfy $`[\widehat{a}_j,\widehat{a}_j^{}^{}]=\delta _{j,j^{}}`$, where I have assumed that only number states in the linear region about $`N`$ are occupied and so it is possible to shift the number states up by one. The equations (8) are linear master equations for which their exists a well known solution in terms of the coherent states Walls and Milburn (1985).

We can define coherent states for the mode operators $`\widehat{a}_j`$ in the linear region about $`N`$ as

$$|\alpha _j;j=𝒩\underset{\mathrm{lin}.}{}\frac{\alpha _j^{C_N^j+m}}{\sqrt{(C_N^j+m)!}}|m;j,$$
(10)
where $`\alpha _j`$ are complex numbers. These states satisfy $`\widehat{a}_j|\alpha _j;j\alpha _j|\alpha _j;j`$. They are a superposition of every third number state and the number distribution is given by $`P(n)=|n|\alpha _j;j|^2=\delta _{n,3m+j}Q(m)`$, where, in the large number limit, we can show that

$`Q(m)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝒩^2e^{N/9}}{\sqrt{2\pi (N/9)}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{9|\alpha _j|^2}{N}}\right]^{C_N^j+m}e^{\frac{(3m+jN)^2}{2N}},`$ (11)
using the relation $`x!x_0^x\sqrt{2\pi x_0}e^{\frac{(xx_0)^2}{2x_0}x_0}`$ for $`x_01`$ and $`|xx_0|/x_01`$ Gradshteyn and Ryzhik (1994). The states that we are interested in are peaked at $`n=N`$ so $`|\alpha _j|^2=N/9`$ and from Eq.(11) we can see that the normalization factor in the large number limit is $`𝒩e^{|\alpha _j|^2/2}`$.

The evolution of an arbitrary element of the density matrix in this coherent state representation, $`|\alpha ;j\beta ;k|`$, is Walls and Milburn (1985):

$$(|\alpha ;j\beta ;k|)_t\alpha ;j|\beta ;j^{1e^{2\mathrm{\Gamma }t}}|\alpha e^{\mathrm{\Gamma }t};j\beta e^{\mathrm{\Gamma }t};k|,$$
(12)
where $`\alpha ;j|\beta ;j\mathrm{exp}\left[(|\alpha |^2+|\beta |^22\alpha \beta ^{})/2\right]`$. For $`j=k`$ this equation shows that any off-diagonal elements in the coherent-state basis, $`|\alpha ;j`$, rapidly dephase. This means that an initial pure state which is a superposition of the states $`|\alpha ;j`$ will rapidly become a mixed state. For example, the superposition of two states with different phases:

$$(|\alpha +|\alpha e^{i\varphi })(\alpha |+\alpha e^{i\varphi }|)|\alpha \alpha |+|\alpha e^{i\varphi }\alpha e^{i\varphi }|$$
(13)
at the rate $`|\alpha |^2\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This can be seen by noting that $`\alpha |\alpha e^{i\varphi }=\mathrm{exp}\{2i|\alpha |^2e^{i\varphi /2}\mathrm{sin}(\varphi /2)\}`$ and therefore the rate at which the off-diagonal terms dephase is $`|\alpha |^2\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. A number state, which is also a superposition of coherent states of different phase, will quickly evolve into a mixed state with a binomial number distribution over the number states. For $`kj`$, Eq.(12) shows that any state where the coherent amplitude $`\alpha `$ is not the same in all the sub-manifolds will also rapidly dephase.

The robust states then have the general form $`|R(\alpha )=_jc_j|\alpha ;j`$, where $`_j|c_j|^2=1`$. As the preparation of the initial condensate is via processes that are not likely to preserve the independence of the submanifolds, i.e. evaporative cooling, the most relevant states are those where $`c_j=1/\sqrt{3}`$. In this case, the robust states have the form

$`|R(\alpha )`$ $`=`$ $`𝒩{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{lin}.}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^{C_N^0+n/3}}{\sqrt{3\mathrm{\Gamma }(C_N^0+n/3+1)}}}|n,`$ (14)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(x)`$ is the gamma function. These states have the property $`\widehat{A}^3|R(\alpha )=3N\alpha |R(\alpha )`$ in the linear regime. In general, $`|R(\alpha )`$ is not an eigenstate of $`\widehat{A}`$ but in the large-number limit, it is possible to show that $`\beta |R(\alpha )e^{iC_N^0\theta }\beta |(3N^2\alpha )^{1/3}`$, where $`\alpha =|\alpha |e^{i\theta }`$ and $`|\beta `$ is an ordinary coherent state. And so, in the large-number limit, the robust states become equivalent to coherent states (except for a phase factor) with the amplitude $`(3N^2\alpha )^{1/3}`$.

From Eq.(12) and $`|\alpha |^2N/9`$, the time scale of the decoherence is

$$\tau _{\mathrm{decoh}}^1\stackrel{~}{\gamma }N^3/3,$$
(15)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }=[(15\lambda )^{4/5}/14^3\pi ^2]K_3(a_{}^4aN)^{6/5}`$. In determining $`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }`$ I have used the Thomas-Fermi solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the cylindrically-symmetric harmonic trap: $`V_\mathrm{T}(𝐱)=\frac{1}{2}m\omega _{}^2(r^2+\lambda ^2z)`$, where $`m`$ is the atomic mass and $`\omega _{}=\mathrm{}/ma_{}^2`$ is the radial trap frequency. The decoherence rate is of the order of $`N`$ times the decay rate for the atom number, or, the time it takes to lose $`3`$ atoms from the trap. For example, a 87Rb condensate of $`3\times 10^5`$ atoms with $`K_3=2.2\times 10^{28}`$ cm6/s and the trap parameters $`\omega _{}=2\pi \times 157`$ Hz and $`\lambda =0.075`$ corresponding to the experiment described in Söding et al. (1999), yields $`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }3.3\times 10^{12}`$s-1 and $`\tau _{\mathrm{decoh}}4\times 10^5`$ s.

This decoherence process could be measured directly by observing the rate of decay of visibility of the interference of a superposition of states of different phases as a function of the lifetime of the superposition. Assuming the condensate is initially in a coherent state, a process similar to that described in Ref.hall98  could be used to create a superposition: coherently transfer half the atoms to another spin state by a $`\frac{\pi }{2}`$ laser pulse; let the phases of the two spin states evolve independently and then transfer the atoms back to the original spin state with another $`\frac{\pi }{2}`$ pulse.

To make any conclusions as to the state of the condensate, the above decoherence time scale must be compared with that of the collapse of the phase due to condensate-atom collisions calculated in Ref.Wright et al. (1996). Due to atom-atom collisions the chemical potential, $`\mu _n`$, is number dependent (this has been neglected in the present work so far) and leads to a dephasing of any superposition of number states. Assuming the same trap symmetry and the Thomas-Fermi limit of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation as above, the collapse time for a number variance of $`\sqrt{N}`$ is given by Wright et al. (1996) $`\tau _{\mathrm{coll}}(5/\omega _{})\left(a_{}/\lambda a\right)^{2/5}N^{1/10}`$. The same experimental parameters considered above give a collapse time of $`\tau _{\mathrm{coll}}0.4`$s, or $`4`$ orders of magnitude longer than the decoherence time. In general, $`\tau _{\mathrm{coll}}/\tau _{\mathrm{decoh}}O(N^{21/10})`$ and a rough calculation shows that the decoherence process will dominate for $`>10^4`$ atoms. A more detailed analysis is necessary but this suggests that collisions will lead a slow phase diffusion of a well-defined phase rather than a phase collapse.

In this work I have presented a realistic mechanism for decoherence at low temperatures which supports the assumption that the state of the condensate is a coherent state with a well-defined phase. One can also understand the experimental finding that the condensate phase is rather robusthall98 ; the environment, rather than diffusing the phase helps to keep the phase well-defined. However, this work also suggests directions for investigation that go beyond the assumption of a well-defined phase. In particular, the observation of macroscopic-superpositions of different phase and their decay. In contrast to condensed matter systems where there is often a proliferation of possible decoherence mechanisms that cannot be isolated from each other, atomic Bose-Einstein condensates are relatively clean systems with few possible decoherence mechanisms and are thus a promising test bed for understanding decoherence and quantum superpositions in general. Atom loss (single body loss) has been shown to have an adverse effect on quantum entanglement between atomssorensen . Therefore trap loss (in particular, three-body loss) has important consequences for the possible role of Bose-Einstein condensates in quantum information technology.

I would like to thank Makoto Yamashita for many useful discussions.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It is generally expected that new physics beyond the Standard Model(SM) will manifest itself at future colliders that probe the TeV scale such as the LHC and the Linear Collider. This new physics(NP) may appear either directly, as in the case of new particle production, e.g., SUSY, or indirectly through deviations from the predictions of the SM. In the case of direct production, the discovery and identification of the NP would be relatively straightforward once masses and various couplings were determined through precision measurements. In the case of indirect discovery the effects may be subtle and many different NP scenarios may lead to the same or similar experimental signatures. Clearly, identifying the origin of the NP in these circumstances will prove more difficult and new tools must be available to deal with this potentiality.

Perhaps the most well known example of this indirect scenario in a collider context would be the observation of deviations in, e.g., various $`e^+e^{}`$ cross sections due to apparent contact interactions. There are many very different NP scenarios that predict new particle exchanges which can lead to contact interactions below direct production threshold; a partial list of known candidates is: a $`Z^{}`$ from an extended gauge model, scalar or vector leptoquarks, $`R`$-parity violating sneutrino($`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$) exchange, scalar or vector bileptons, graviton Kaluza-Klein(KK) towers in extra dimensional models, gauge boson KK towers, and even string excitations. Of course, there may be many other sources of contact interactions from NP models as yet undiscovered, as was low-scale gravity only a few years ago.

If contact interaction effects are observed one can always try to fit the shifts in the observables to each one of the set of known theories and see which gives the best fit–an intensive approach followed by Pasztor and Perelstein. Identifying the model that fits best, it may then be possible to select a starting point for further exploration and model building. Alternatively, it may be useful to devise a test or set of tests which will rather quickly divide the full set of all possible models into subclasses which can then be studied further by other techniques. In particular, it would be useful to have a method that rapidly identifies basic features about certain model classes. In this paper we propose such a technique that makes use of the specific modifications in angular distributions induced by $`s`$ and $`t`$channel exchanges of particles of various spins. As we will see below this method offers a way to uniquely identify graviton KK tower exchange (or, indeed, $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ or any other possible spin-0 exchange) provided it is dominant the source of the new contact interaction.

## 2 Technique

In order to introduce our technique, let us consider the normalized cross section for the process $`e^+e^{}f\overline{f}`$ in the SM assuming $`m_f=0`$ and $`fe`$ for simplicity. This can be written as

$$\frac{1}{\sigma }\frac{d\sigma }{dz}=\frac{3}{8}(1+z^2)+A_{FB}(s)z,$$
(1)
where $`z=\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ and $`A_{FB}(s)`$ is the Forward-Backward Asymmetry which depends upon the electroweak quantum numbers of the fermion, $`f`$, as well as the center of mass energy of the collision, $`\sqrt{s}`$. This structure is particularly interesting in that it is equally valid for a wide variety of New Physics models: composite-like contact interactions, $`Z^{}`$ models, TeV-scale KK gauge bosons, as well as for $`t`$ or $`u`$ channel leptoquark and bilepton exchanges at leading order in $`s/M^2`$, where $`M`$ is the leptoquark or bilepton mass. In fact, for this observable the only deviation from the SM for any of these models will be through the variations in the value of $`A_{FB}(s)`$ since we have chosen to normalize the cross section.

Now let us consider taking moments of the normalized cross section above with respect to the Legendre Polynomials, $`P_n(z)`$. This can be done easily by re-writing Eq.(1) as

$$\frac{1}{\sigma }\frac{d\sigma }{dz}=\frac{1}{2}P_0+\frac{1}{4}P_2+A_{FB}(s)P_1,$$
(2)
and recalling that the $`P_n(z)`$ are normalized as

$$_1^1𝑑zP_n(z)P_m(z)=\frac{2}{2n+1}\delta _{nm}.$$
(3)
Denoting such moments as $`<P_n>`$, one finds that $`<P_1>=2A_{FB}/3`$, $`<P_2>=1/10`$ and $`<P_{n>2}>=0`$. In addition we also trivially obtain that $`<P_0>=1`$ since we have normalized the distribution so that this moment carries no new information. Thus, very naively, if we find that the $`<P_{n>1}>`$ are given by their SM values while $`<P_1>`$ differs from its corresponding SM value we could conclude that the NP is most likely one of those listed immediately above. If both $`<P_{1,2}>`$ differ from their SM expectations while the $`<P_{n>2}>`$ remain zero the source can only be $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$, or more generally, a spin-0 exchange in the $`s`$channel. As we will see below only $`s`$channel KK graviton exchange, since it is spin-2, leads to non-zero values of $`<P_{3,4}>`$ while the $`<P_{n>4}>`$ still remain zero. Of course the values of $`<P_{1,2}>`$ will also be different from their SM values in this case but as we have just observed this signal is not unique to gravity. This observation seems to yield a rather simple test for the exchange of graviton KK towers. It is important to note that we could not have performed this simple analysis for the case of Bhabha scattering, i.e., $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}`$, as it involves both $`s`$ and $`t`$channel exchanges in the SM and thus all of the $`<P_n>`$ would be non-zero.

Of course, the real world is not so simple as the idealized case we have just discussed for several reasons. First, we have assumed that we know the cross section precisely at all values of $`z`$, i.e., we have infinite statistics with no angular binning. Secondly, to use the orthonormality conditions above we need to have complete angular coverage, i.e., no holes for the beam pipe, etc. To get a feeling for how important these effects can be let us first consider dividing the distribution into a finite number of angular bins, $`N_{bins}`$, of common size $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=2/N_{bins}`$. Instead of doing a simple integral we must perform a sum, i.e., we make the replacement

$$_1^1𝑑zP_n(z)\frac{1}{\sigma }\frac{d\sigma }{dz}\underset{bins}{}P_n(z_i)\sigma _i/\sigma ,$$
(4)
where $`i`$ labels the bin number, $`\sigma _i`$ is the cross section in each bin obtained by direct integration and $`z_i`$ is the bin center at which the $`P_n`$ are to be evaluated. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 1 for the case of large statistics; here we see that as the number of bins grows large we rapidly recover the continuum results discussed above. Of course in any realistic experimental situation, $`N_{bins}`$ remains finite but we see that a value of order 20 is reasonable as it strikes a respectable balance between the realistic demands of statistics, angular resolution and taking $`N_{bins}`$ sufficiently large. The fact that we do not recover the trivial SM results above in this case can be considered as a ‘background’ in a loose sense. We will return to this point below.

Now let us assume that $`N_{bins}=20`$ and examine the effects of the necessary cut at small angles due to the beam pipe, etc. (Of course this cut is made symmetrically near both $`0^o`$ and $`180^o`$ so as to not induce additional backgrounds into the moments.) This is straightforward to implement from the above and leads to the results shown in Table 2 for various values of the small angle cut. We note that by including this cut the value of $`z_i`$ at which the $`P_n`$ are evaluated changes for the two bins nearest the beam pipe at either end of the detector as we always assume they are to be evaluated at the center of the relevant range in $`z`$. Here we observe that the ‘background contamination’ of the naive SM result increases quite rapidly as we make the angular cut stronger.

What this brief study indicates is that for a realistic detector at a linear collider the simple and naive expectations for the various moments will receive ‘backgrounds’ that will need to be dealt with and subtracted from the real data to obtain information on the $`<P_n>`$. In the real world these backgrounds can be found for a given detector through a detailed Monte Carlo(MC) study whose results will be influenced the detector geometry and by how well the properties of the detector are known. For our numerical analysis below we will follow a simpler approach by calculating the moments in the SM (after binning and cuts are applied) and then subtracting them from those obtained when the NP is present. In a more realistic analysis this means that we will assume that the detailed detector MC study can determine these backgrounds with reasonably high precision so that they can be subtracted once the actual data is available for analysis.

## 3 Analysis

Given the discussion above it is clear that we should begin by examining the process $`e^+e^{}f\overline{f}`$; we will return to other potentially interesting processes below. To be specific we will concentrate on the model of Arkani-Hamed et al., ADD, though our results are easily extended to the case of the the Randall-Sundrum model below the graviton resonance production threshold. The differential cross section for $`e^+e^{}f\overline{f}`$, now including graviton tower exchange, for massless fermions can be written as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dz}}`$ $`=`$ $`N_c{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \alpha ^2}{s}}\{\stackrel{~}{P}_{ij}[A_{ij}^eA_{ij}^f(2P_0+P_2)/3+2B_{ij}^eB_{ij}^fP_1]`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda s^2}{2\pi \alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_H^4}}\stackrel{~}{P}_i\left[v_i^ev_i^f(2P_3+3P_1)/5+a_i^ea_i^fP_2\right]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda ^2s^4}{16\pi ^2\alpha ^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_H^8}}[(16P_4+5P_2+14P_0)/35]\},`$
where the indices $`i,j`$ are summed over the $`\gamma `$ and $`Z`$ exchanges, $`z=\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ as above, $`\stackrel{~}{P}_{ij}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{P}_i`$ are the usual dimensionless propagator factors (defined in e.g., ), $`A_{ij}^f=(v_i^fv_j^f+a_i^fa_j^f),B_{ij}^f=(v_i^fa_j^f+v_j^fa_i^f),P_n=P_n(z)`$ and $`N_c`$ represents the number of colors of the final state. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$ is the cutoff scale employed by Hewett in evaluating the summation over the tower of KK graviton propagators and $`\lambda =1`$ will be assumed in what follows. Our results will not depend upon this particular choice of sign. In this expression we explicitly see the dependence on the $`P_{n>2}`$ associated with the exchange of the tower of KK gravitons. Note that term proportional to $`P_3`$ occurs in the interference between the SM and gravitational contributions whereas the term proportional to $`P_4`$ occurs only in the pure gravity piece. This implies that for $`\sqrt{s}<<\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$ it will be $`<P_3>`$ which will show the largest shifts from the expectations of the SM. With the polarized beams that we expect to have available at a linear collider, a z-dependent Left-Right Asymmetry, $`A_{LR}`$, can also be formed and provides an additional observable; this is proportional to the difference $`d\sigma _Ld\sigma _R`$ with $`\sigma _{L,R}`$ being the cross section obtained with left- or right-handed polarized electrons. Using the notation above this asymmetry can be written as

$`A_{LR}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{P}_{ij}\left[B_{ij}^eA_{ij}^f(P_2+2P_0)/3+A_{ij}^eB_{ij}^fP_1\right]/D`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda s^2}{2\pi \alpha \mathrm{\Lambda }_H^4}}\stackrel{~}{P}_i\left[a_i^ev_i^f(2P_3+3P_1)/5+v_i^ea_i^fP_2\right]/D,`$
where $`D`$ is given by the curly bracket in the cross section expression above. Note that in the presence of graviton exchange this quantity also explicitly depends upon the $`P_{n>2}`$ with the leading corrections again expected in $`<P_3>`$.

Our approach will be as follows: we consider two observables ($`i`$) the normalized unpolarized cross section and ($`ii`$) the normalized difference of the polarized cross sections $`(d\sigma _Ld\sigma _R)/dz`$, which is essentially given by the numerator terms in the expression for $`A_{LR}`$. We then calculate the first four non-trivial moments of these two observables for the $`\mu ,\tau ,b,c`$ and $`t`$ final states within the SM including the effects of Initial State Radiation(ISR). (Note that for the $`t\overline{t}`$ final state we need to generalize the expressions above to include finite mass effects. This means that for $`t\overline{t}`$ all of the moments will become $`\sqrt{s}`$ dependent asymptoting to the values given above as $`\sqrt{s}\mathrm{}`$.) Here we will assume tagging efficiencies of $`100\%`$, $`100\%`$, $`80\%`$, $`60\%`$ and $`60\%`$, respectively, for the various final states and that $`N_{bins}=20`$ with $`\theta _{cut}=`$50mr for purposes of demonstration. The resulting values for the $`<P_n>`$ as calculated in the SM will be called ‘background’ values consistent with our discussion above. Next, we calculate the same moments in the ADD model by choosing a value for the parameter $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$. Combining both observables and summing over the various flavor final states we can form a $`\chi ^2`$ from the deviation of the $`<P_{3,4}>`$ moments from their SM ‘background’ values. For a fixed integrated luminosity this can be done using the statistical errors as well as the systematic errors associated with the precision expected on the luminosity and polarization measurements. (Here we will assume the values $`\delta L/L=0.25\%`$ and $`\delta P/P=0.3\%`$ in order to incorporate these systematic effects.) Next we vary the value of the scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$ until we obtain a $`5\sigma `$ deviation from the SM; we call this value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$ the Identification Reach as it is the maximum value for the scale at which we observe a $`5\sigma `$ deviation from the SM values of $`<P_{3,4}>`$ which we now know can only arise due to the effects of graviton exchange. Note that this value of the scale should not be confused with the Discovery Reach at which one observes an overall deviation from the SM. Here we are specifically looking only at deviations in these special moments since they alone are graviton sensitive. Although both the $`<P_{1,2}>`$ also deviate from their SM values these shifts cannot be directly attributed to a spin-2 exchange. (As noted previously, the shift in $`<P_1>`$ results in any of the NP models listed above whereas a shift in $`<P_2>`$ occurs whenever the new $`s`$-channel exchange is not spin-1, e.g., $`\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ exchange.)

To first get an idea of the influence of the graviton KK exchange consider the results shown in Tables 3 and 4. The first of these Tables shows the moment values in the SM for several final state flavors at a $`\sqrt{s}=500`$ GeV collider. Note that the background value of $`<P_3>`$ is proportional to $`<P_1>`$ for each flavor due to ‘leakage’ and that the moments for the top quark differ significantly from the others due to the large finite mass effects. The proportionality of $`<P_3>`$ and $`<P_1>`$ for all flavors signals that $`<P_3>0`$ is arising from the background and not from NP sources. In the second Table we see that when the graviton KK contributions are turned on there are respectable shifts in $`<P_{1,2}>`$ for all flavors of order $`1030\%`$ while the corresponding shifts in $`<P_4>`$ are somewhat smaller. On the otherhand the deviations in $`<P_3>`$ are at the $`100400\%`$ level and even changes in sign are observed. As expected, $`<P_3>`$ shows the greatest sensitivity to graviton exchange. Note that the values of $`<P_3>`$ and $`<P_1>`$ are no longer correlated for the different flavors as is the case for the SM background. Clearly the large shifts in $`<P_3>`$ and the fact that the values of $`<P_3>/<P_1>`$ are now flavor dependent and differ significantly from their SM values is a unique signature for KK graviton exchange.

Returning to our calculation outlined above we can straightforwardly determine the ID reach; this is shown in Fig.1 for several values of $`\sqrt{s}`$ as a function of the integrated luminosity. Specifically, for a $`\sqrt{s}=500`$ GeV machine with an integrated luminosity of $`1ab^1`$ the ID reach with single(double) beam polarization is found to be 2.6(3.0) TeV, i.e., $`(56)\sqrt{s}`$. We remind the reader that the corresponding search reach for these luminosities is in range of $`(910)\sqrt{s}`$. Note that the ID reach obtained by this approach is a rather respectable fraction, more than half, of the search reach.

Before turning to other possible processes, it is instructive to examine what influence other NP scenarios might have on the $`<P_n>`$. An artificial scenario that would most closely mimic gravity would be the $`s`$channel exchange of a universally coupled scalar field. Like gravity, since the scalar exchange does not interfere with the $`\gamma `$ and $`Z`$ SM contributions, the leading effects are effectively from dimension-8 operators. To be specific, we assume $`\sqrt{s}=500`$ GeV, a Yukawa coupling of electromagnetic strength and a scalar mass of 1.1 TeV, a value chosen so as to produce sizeable shifts in $`<P_2>`$. This toy model yields the results shown in Table 5 where reasonable shifts in all the $`<P_n>`$ are apparent. In comparison to graviton KK graviton exchange, several differences with the scalar exchange case are immediately obvious: ($`i`$) the shifts in both $`<P_1>`$ and $`<P_4>`$ are larger in the scalar case whereas those for $`<P_3>`$ are significantly smaller by almost an order of magnitude. ($`ii`$) While both $`<P_{1,3}>`$ are shifted, their ratio remains at its SM value for all flavors unlike in the case of gravity. It is clear that even this ad hoc toy model will not be confused with graviton KK tower exchange.

## 4 $`e^+e^{}W^+W^{}`$

Can we use other processes to uniquely isolate the effects of graviton KK tower exchange? The other SM processes with large tree-level cross sections in which gravitons can be exchanged are $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{},\gamma \gamma ,ZZ`$, and $`W^+W^{}`$ all of which involve $`t`$ and/or $`u`$channel exchanges. This would apparently disqualify them from further consideration. The $`W^+W^{}`$ case is, however, special because ideally the offending $`t`$channel $`\nu `$ exchange can be removed through the use of right-handed beam polarization leaving only the $`s`$channel $`\gamma ,Z`$ exchanges. The remaining purely right-handed SM cross section is only quadratic in $`z`$ and this will not change if, e.g., $`Z^{}`$ or new $`s`$channel scalar contributions are also present. As we will discuss in detail below the difficulty in this case is that the left-handed cross section is much larger than the right-handed one so that the possibility of ‘contamination’ from the wrong polarization state is difficult to eradicate unless very good control over the beam polarization is maintained. Apart from the problem of isolating the purely right-handed part of the cross section we might again conclude that the non-zero $`<P_{3,4}>`$ moments will be be a unique signature of graviton exchange for this process. Futhermore, since the pure gauge sector of the SM individually conserves $`C`$ and $`P`$, there are no terms in the cross section linear in $`z`$ and thus $`<P_1>`$ is expected to be zero in the SM and in many other NP extensions. Such terms are, however, generated by KK graviton exchange so that a non-zero value of $`<P_1>`$ is also a potential gravity probe.

Apart from new particle exchanges there is another source of NP that can modify the right-handed $`W`$-pair cross-section in a manner similar to gravity and would most likely be observed in lowest order as a dimension-8 operator (as is graviton KK tower exchange): anomalous gauge couplings(AGC). As is well known AGC can be $`C`$ and/or $`P`$ violating; one that violates both $`C`$ and $`P`$ but is $`CP`$ conserving can (and does) produce non-zero $`<P_{1,3,4}>`$ moments. Decomposing the $`WWV`$ ($`V=\gamma ,Z`$) vertex in the most general way allowed by electromagnetic gauge invariance yields 7 different anomalous couplings for each $`V`$ with the corresponding form factors denoted by $`f_i^V`$. (When weighted by the sum over the $`\gamma `$ and $`Z`$ propagators in $`e^+e^{}W^+W^{}`$ these form factors are sometimes written as $`F_i`$, only two of which, $`F_{1,3}`$, are non-zero at the tree-level in the SM.) There is a single term in this general vertex expression with the correct $`C`$ and $`P`$ properties: that proportional to $`f_5^Vϵ^{\mu \alpha \beta \rho }(q^{}q^+)_\rho ϵ_\alpha (W^{})ϵ_\beta (W^+)`$ with $`q^\pm `$ the outgoing $`W^\pm `$ boson momenta, the $`ϵ`$’s are their corresponding polarization vectors and $`f_5^V`$ being the relevant form factor. We note that even in the SM, though absent at the tree-level, this term is generated at one-loop from the usual fermion triangle anomaly graph. As we will see such a term will generate non-zero values for all of $`<P_{1,3,4}>`$.

It appears that the possibility of non-zero AGC would contaminate our search for unique graviton exchange signatures. There is a way out of this dilemma; while gravity induces non-zero values for all of the $`<P_{1,3,4}>`$ from the angular distributions for $`e^+e_R^{}W^+W^{}`$ independently of the final state $`W`$ polarizations, the $`f_5^V0`$ (i.e., $`F_5`$) couplings only contribute to the final state with mixed polarizations, i.e., transverse plus longitudinal, $`TL+LT`$. We recall that by measuring the angular distribution of the decaying $`W`$ relative to its direction of motion we can determine its state of polarization; here we do not differentiate the two possible states of transverse polarization. Writing

$$\frac{d\sigma _R}{dz}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{TT}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{LL}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{TL+LT},$$
(7)
in the absence of $`CP`$ violation there are only 4 relevant $`F_i`$ and one finds

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{TT}`$ $``$ $`F_1^2(1z^2)`$
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{LL}`$ $``$ $`\left[F_3(1{\displaystyle \frac{2m_W^2}{s}})F_1+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^2s}{2m_W^2}}F_2\right]^2(1z^2)`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{TL+LT}`$ $``$ $`(F_3+\beta zF_5)^2(1+z^2)+2F_5(F_3+\beta zF_5)z(1z^2)+F_5^2(1z^2)^2,`$
where $`\beta `$ is the speed of the outgoing $`W`$’s. Here we see that in the SM both the $`TT`$ and $`LL`$ terms are proportional to $`1z^2`$ while the $`TL+LT`$ term is proportional to $`1+z^2`$; no terms linear in $`z`$ are present. A non-zero $`F_5`$ induces additional terms in the case of the $`TL+LT`$ final state which now contains linear, cubic and quartic powers of $`z`$ similar to that generated by gravity. However, the $`TT`$ and $`LL`$ final states receive no such contributions. Thus observing non-zero values of $`<P_{1,3,4}>`$ (again, above backgrounds) for $`W`$ pairs in the $`TT+LL`$ final states produced by right-handed electrons is a signal for KK graviton tower exchange. Numerically the $`TT`$ fraction will dominate in the energy region of interest to us below.

To get an idea of the size of the graviton contributions to the $`TT+LL`$ part of the right-handed cross section, we show in Table 6 a comparison of the $`<P_n>`$ obtained in the SM and in the case with graviton KK tower exchange assuming $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H=2`$ TeV and $`\sqrt{s}`$=500 GeV. For later purposes, a cut of $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta |0.9`$ has been applied and an efficiency of $`40\%`$ has been assumed to both reconstruct the two $`W`$’s and to isolate the $`TT+LL`$ final state through their decay angular distribution. ISR has been ignored in these results. Here we see that the shifts for $`<P_{1,3}>`$ are quite large while those for $`<P_2>`$ are somewhat smaller as would be expected from the interference of the SM and KK gravity contributions. Provided purely right-handed electron beams were available, we can easily determine the graviton KK tower ID limit in this case. (Recall that we can now make use of all three of the moments $`<P_{1,3,4}>`$ in the $`\chi ^2`$.) The results can be found in Fig.2. Note that the identification reach found in this extremely idealized situation of $`100\%`$ right-handed beam polarization is somewhat inferior to that found in the case of the $`f\overline{f}`$ final state, i.e., $`(45)\sqrt{s}`$ at best. In any more realistic situation, especially when systematic effects are included, we expect this ID reach to significantly degrade.

Perhaps, the closest we may be able to come to this idealized case experimentally it to assume double beam polarization taking the initial $`e^{}(e^+)`$ as right(left)-handed as possible. Assuming polarizations of $`80\%`$ and $`60\%`$ for the $`e^{}`$ and $`e^+`$ beams, respectively, increases the right-handed part of the cross section by a factor of 2.88 while reducing the left-handed part by a factor of 0.08. Unfortunately, the left-handed piece containing the $`t`$-channel $`\nu `$ exchange diagram is very large even after the cut of $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta |0.9`$ has been applied; recall that the left-handed part of the cross section has a large forward peak due to the $`t`$channel exchange. Table 6 shows that with this degree of polarization (and even if both polarizations are unrealistically greater) the amount of contamination from the left-handed cross section is so large that making any claim to a unique identification of graviton exchange would be quite tenuous. We can still ask the same question as above: at what value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_H`$ do the shifts in the $`<P_n>`$ correspond to a $`5\sigma `$ deviation from the SM? The answer shown in Fig.2, however, is no longer a unique identification of gravity but only a signal for the clear discovery of NP. Once contaminated by the left-handed cross section, other sources of NP, such as a $`Z^{}`$, can also lead to identical changes in the values of the moments.

The last possibility for salvaging this situation is to measure the $`W^+W^{}`$ cross section with two or more sets of different beam polarizations and then attempting to extract the purely right-handed piece from these measurements, again keeping only the $`TT+LL`$ contributions. In the case of two polarized beams this is perhaps best demonstrated by examining what happens when we combine two sets of data: one with $`P(e^{})=80\%`$ and $`P(e^+)=60\%`$ and the other with both polarizations flipped. (This is not necessarily the optimized choice of polarizations.) In comparison to the idealized purely right-handed case discussed above, here we suffer from having to be able to very precisely subtract the additional large backgrounds arising from the left-handed parts of the cross section. In addition, both reduced statistics (since the luminosity is divided between both measurements) and the systematic errors associated with the polarization uncertainties will lead to further reductions in the anticipated identification reach. In fact, assuming polarization uncertainties of $`\delta P/P=0.3\%`$ as above, we might expect these systematic effects to play an important role in the measurement error budget.

Fig.3 shows the results of this analysis. Here we see that, as expected, the identification reach at large luminosities saturates due to the size of the systematic errors in extracting the right-handed piece of the cross section. The $`5\sigma `$ identification reach is found to be roughly $`2.5\sqrt{s}`$ for integrated luminosities of order $`1ab^1`$ which is far below that found for fermion pairs and the naive estimate we obtained in the case of purely right-handed $`e^{}`$ polarization. It is unlikely that a more judicious choice of beam polarizations could drastically increase this reach and make it competitive with that found for the $`f\overline{f}`$ final state.

## 5 Summary and Conclusion

Many new physics scenarios predict the existence of contact interaction-like deviations from SM cross sections at high energy $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders. If such effects are observed our next task would be to identify their origin. In this paper we have suggested a technique by which the deviations induced by the exchange of KK gravitons can be uniquely isolated from all other possible sources by an examination of the angular moments of the polarization dependent cross sections employing Legendre polynomials. The technique is applicable when the ‘background’ SM process proceeds only through $`s`$channel exchanges or when it can be made to do so by a special choice of beam polarization(s). The canonical process to study is $`e^+e^{}f\overline{f}`$ for $`fe`$. In this case it was found that by combining several final states the graviton exchange contributions can be uniquely identified at the $`5\sigma `$ level for ADD mass scales as large as $`(56)\sqrt{s}`$ in the Hewett scheme. This compares rather favorably to the search reach of $`(910)\sqrt{s}`$ using this same process. The reaction $`e_R^{}e^+W^+W^{}`$ for the $`TT`$ and $`LL`$ final states also proceeds only via $`s`$channel exchange in the SM and can also be used to obtain a unique signature for graviton exchange. The $`LT+TL`$ modes, which we do not include, were shown to be capable of receiving graviton-like contributions from the $`C`$ and $`P`$ odd, $`CP`$ even anomalous trilinear couplings $`f_5^V`$. The difficulty in the case of the $`W^+W^{}`$ final state is that $`100\%`$ polarized beams do not exist so that measurements made with different beam polarizations must be combined to extract the values of $`d\sigma _R`$ and as such, will suffer from sizeable systematic uncertainties. Though no attempt was made to optimize the choices of beam polarization, it was shown that even with both beams polarized the identification reach in this channel is somewhat below $`2.5\sqrt{s}`$ which is less than half that found for the $`f\overline{f}`$ final state. It is unlikely that optimization can lead to any sizeable improvement of this identification reach.

Hopefully the effect of new contact interactions will be observed at the Linear Collider so that these new techniques can be employed.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank J.L. Hewett for discussion related to this work.