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# A Consistent Resolution of Possible Anomalies in 𝐵⁰→ϕ𝐾_𝑆 and 𝐵⁺→𝜂'𝐾⁺ Decays

## Abstract

In the framework of $`R`$-parity violating ($`R_p/`$) supersymmetry, we try to find a *consistent* explanation for *both* recently measured CP asymmetry in $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ decay *and* the large branching ratio of $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$ decay, which are inconsistent with the Standard Model (SM) prediction. We also investigate other charmless hadronic $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ decay modes whose experimental data favor the SM: for instance, recently measured CP asymmetries in $`B^0\eta ^{}K_S`$ and $`B^0J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S`$. We find that all the observed data can be accommodated for certain values of $`R_p/`$ couplings.

preprint:

The main mission of $`B`$ factories, such as KEK$``$B and SLAC$``$B, is to test the Standard Model (SM) and further to find possible new physics effects in $`B`$ meson systems. For this goal, a variety of useful observables can be measured to be compared with theoretical expectations. One of the important observables is CP asymmetries in various $`B`$ meson decays, and another is branching ratios (BRs) for rare $`B`$ decay processes.

CP violation in $`B`$ system has been confirmed in measurements of time-dependent CP asymmetries in $`BJ/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S`$ decay. The world average of the asymmetry in $`BJ/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S`$  is given by

$$\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S}=0.734\pm 0.054,$$
(1)
which is consistent with the SM expectation. However, recent measurements of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ in $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ decay disagree with the above value. The measurements of time-dependent CP asymmetries in $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ have been recently reported by BaBar  and Belle , respectively:

$`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}^{BaBar}`$ $`=`$ $`0.19_{0.50}^{+0.52}\pm 0.09,`$ (2)
$`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}^{Belle}`$ $`=`$ $`0.73\pm 0.64\pm 0.18.`$ (3)
Both experimental results show (a tendency of) negative values of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$.

Because within the SM the difference between the asymmetries in $`BJ/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S`$ and $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ is expected to be

$$|\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S}\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}|O(\lambda ^2)$$
(4)
with $`\lambda 0.2`$, these results indicate 2.7 $`\sigma `$ deviation from the SM prediction and may reveal new physics effects.

The decay process $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ is a pure penguin process $`bs\overline{s}s`$, and in the SM the time-dependent CP asymmetry of this mode is expected to measure the same $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ as in $`BJ/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S`$, as shown in Eq. (4). If there are any new physics effects in the measurements of time-dependent CP asymmetries, the effects can arise from new contributions to the $`B^0\overline{B}^0`$ mixing amplitude and/or the decay amplitude of each mode. Because the new physics effects to the $`B^0\overline{B}^0`$ mixing would be universal to all the neutral $`B_d^0`$ meson decays, the discrepancy between the measured values of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}`$ may indicate the possibility of new physics effects in the decay amplitude of $`B^0\varphi K_S`$. Supposing that the mode $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ reveals new physics effects , one might expect that other modes having the same internal quark level process $`bs\overline{s}s`$ (e.g., $`B^0\eta ^{}K_S`$) would reveal the similar effects. Interestingly, the recent measurements of CP asymmetries in $`B^0\eta ^{}K_S`$ by Belle  agree well with the results of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S}`$ given in Eq. (1) (see Table I). Therefore, any successful explanation invoking new physics should accommodate the data disfavoring the SM, such as $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}`$, and simultaneously all the data favoring the SM, such as $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\eta ^{}K_S}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K_S}`$. Motivated by the recent measurements of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}`$, a few first analyses  have been done. But, all of them explain only the deviation of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\varphi K_S}`$ from the SM prediction, or in addition, make (at most) qualitative statements on $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{\eta ^{}K_S}`$ .

There also exist plenty of experimental data observed for charmless hadronic $`BPP`$ ($`P`$ denotes a pseudoscalar meson) and $`BVP`$ ($`V`$ denotes a vector meson) decay modes, which are well understood within the SM. However, among the $`BPP`$ decay modes, the BR of the decay mode $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$ is found to be still larger than that expected within the SM§§§Attempts to explain the large $`(B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm )`$ within the SM have been made: e.g., by using the anomalous $`gg\eta ^{}`$ coupling . : the experimental world average is $`(B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm )=(75\pm 7)\times 10^6`$. The SM contribution is about $`3\sigma `$ smaller than the experimental world average . Among the $`BVP`$ decay modes, the experimentally observed BR for the decay $`B^0\eta K^0`$ has been also found to be $`2\sigma `$ larger than the SM expectation .

In this letter we try to find a *consistent* explanation for *all the observed data* in charmless hadronic $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ decays in the framework of $`R`$-parity violating ($`R_p/`$) supersymmetry (SUSY). In $`R_p/`$ SUSY, the effects of $`R_p/`$ couplings on $`B`$ decays can appear at tree level and can be in some cases comparable to the SM contribution. Our main focus is on the recent measurement of CP asymmetry in $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ and the large BR for $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$: both data appear to be inconsistent with the SM prediction. In order to achieve this goal, we investigate all the observed $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ decay modes and *explicitly* show that indeed all the observed data can be accommodated in a consistent way for certain values of $`R_p/`$ couplings.

The $`R_p/`$ part of the superpotential of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) can contain terms of the form

$$𝒲_{R_p/}=\kappa _iL_iH_2+\lambda _{ijk}L_iL_jE_k^c+\lambda _{ijk}^{}L_iQ_jD_k^c+\lambda _{ijk}^{\prime \prime }U_i^cD_j^cD_k^c$$
(5)
where $`E_i`$, $`U_i`$ and $`D_i`$ are respectively the $`i`$-th type of lepton, up-quark and down-quark singlet superfields, $`L_i`$ and $`Q_i`$ are the SU$`(2)_L`$ doublet lepton and quark superfields, and $`H_2`$ is the Higgs doublet with the appropriate hypercharge. From the symmetry reason, we need $`\lambda _{ijk}=\lambda _{jik}`$ and $`\lambda _{ijk}^{\prime \prime }=\lambda _{ikj}^{\prime \prime }`$. The bilinear terms can be rotated away with redefinition of lepton and Higgs superfields, but the effect reappears as $`\lambda `$s, $`\lambda ^{}`$s and lepton-number violating soft terms . The first three terms of Eq. (5) violate the lepton number, whereas the fourth term violates the baryon number. We do not want all these terms to be present simultaneously due to catastrophic rates for proton decay. In order to prevent proton decay, one set needs to be forbidden.

For our purpose, we will assume only $`\lambda ^{}`$type couplings to be present. Then, the effective Hamiltonian for charmless hadronic $`B`$ decay can be written as

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill H_{eff}^\lambda ^{}(b\overline{d}_jd_kd_n)& =& d_{jkn}^R[\overline{d}_{n\alpha }\gamma _L^\mu d_{j\beta }\overline{d}_{k\beta }\gamma _{\mu R}b_\alpha ]+d_{jkn}^L[\overline{d}_{n\alpha }\gamma _L^\mu b_\beta \overline{d}_{k\beta }\gamma _{\mu R}d_{j\alpha }],\hfill \\ \hfill H_{eff}^\lambda ^{}(b\overline{u}_ju_kd_n)& =& u_{jkn}^R[\overline{u}_{k\alpha }\gamma _L^\mu u_{j\beta }\overline{d}_{n\beta }\gamma _{\mu R}b_\alpha ],\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
with

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}\hfill d_{jkn}^R& =& \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\frac{\lambda _{ijk}^{}\lambda _{in3}^{}}{8m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_{iL}}^2},\hfill & & \hfill d_{jkn}^L& =& \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\frac{\lambda _{i3k}^{}\lambda _{inj}^{}}{8m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }_{iL}}^2},\hfill & & (j,k,n=1,2)\hfill \\ \hfill u_{jkn}^R& =& \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\frac{\lambda _{ijn}^{}\lambda _{ik3}^{}}{8m_{\stackrel{~}{e}_{iL}}^2},\hfill & & & & & & (j,k=1,n=2),\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are color indices and $`\gamma _{R,L}^\mu \gamma ^\mu (1\pm \gamma _5)`$. The leading order QCD correction to this operator is given by a scaling factor $`f2`$ for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}=200`$ GeV.

The available data on low energy processes can be used to impose rather strict constraints on many of these couplings . Most such bounds have been calculated under the assumption of there being only one non-zero $`R_p/`$ coupling. There is no strong argument to have only one $`R_p/`$ coupling being nonzero. In fact, a hierarchy of couplings may be naturally obtained  on account of the mixings in either of the quark and squark sectors. In this work, we try to find out the values of such $`R_p/`$ couplings for which all available data are simultaneously satisfied. An important role will be played by the $`\lambda _{32i}^{}`$ -type couplings, the constraints on which are relatively weak. The BR of $`BX_s\nu \nu `$ can put bound on $`\lambda _{322}^{}\lambda _{323}^{}`$ in certain limits. Using Ref.  and the experimental limit (BR$`<6.4\times 10^4`$) on the BR of $`BX_s\nu \nu `$ , we find that $`\lambda ^{}0.07`$ (for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{q}}=200`$ GeV). However, if we go to any realistic scenario, for example grand unified models (with $`R`$-parity violation), we find a natural hierarchy among the sneutrino and squark masses. The squark masses are much heavier than the sneutrino masses and the bound does not apply any more for $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}=200`$ GeV.

In our calculation, we use the effective Hamiltonian and the effective Wilson coefficients (WCs) for the processes $`bs\overline{q}q^{}`$ and $`bd\overline{q}q^{}`$ given in Ref. . The decay amplitude of $`B^{}\varphi K^{}`$ decay mode is given by

$$\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}=\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{SM}+\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{R_p/},$$
(8)
where the SM part of the amplitude is

$$\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{SM}=\frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}V_{tb}V_{ts}^{}(a_3+a_4+a_5\frac{1}{2}a_7\frac{1}{2}a_9\frac{1}{2}a_{10})A_\varphi ,$$
(9)
and the $`R_p/`$ part of the amplitude involves only $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{R_p/}& =& \left(d_{222}^L+d_{222}^R\right)\left[\xi A_\varphi \right],\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
with $`A_\varphi =K|\overline{s}\gamma ^\mu (1\gamma _5)b|B\varphi |\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s|0`$. This particular structure of $`A_\varphi `$ is obtained from the operators $`\overline{d}_{n\alpha }\gamma _{L(R)}^\mu d_{j\beta }\overline{d}_{k\beta }\gamma _{\mu R(L)}b_\alpha `$ given in Eq. (6), which are derived from the operators $`\overline{s}_{L(R)}s_{R(L)}\overline{s}_{R(L)}b_{L(R)}`$ by Fierz transformation . Here the effective coefficients $`a_i`$ are defined as $`a_i=c_i^{eff}+\xi c_{i+1}^{eff}`$ ($`i=`$ odd) and $`a_i=c_i^{eff}+\xi c_{i1}^{eff}`$ ($`i=`$ even) with the effective WCs $`c_i^{eff}`$ at the scale $`m_b`$ , and by treating $`\xi 1/N_c`$ ($`N_c`$ denotes the effective number of color) as an adjustable parameter.

The CP asymmetry parameter $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{XY}`$ for $`BXY`$ can be written as

$$\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{XY}=\frac{2\mathrm{Im}\lambda _{XY}}{(1+|\lambda _{XY}|^2)},$$
(11)
where $`\lambda _{XY}=e^{2i\beta }(\overline{𝒜}_{XY}/𝒜_{XY})=e^{i(2\beta +\theta )}|\overline{𝒜}_{XY}/𝒜_{XY}|`$ with $`\overline{𝒜}_{XY}/𝒜_{XY}=e^{i\theta }|\overline{𝒜}_{XY}/𝒜_{XY}|`$. Here $`\beta `$ denotes the CP angle in the SM and $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }`$ denotes the effective CP angle given by $`2\stackrel{~}{\beta }=2\beta +\theta `$ with a new weak phase $`\theta `$ arising from new physics. $`𝒜_{XY}=𝒜_{XY}^{SM}+𝒜_{XY}^{R_p/}`$ and $`\overline{𝒜}_{XY}`$ is its CP-conjugate amplitude. For $`B^0\varphi K_S`$, in the SM, $`\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K_S}/𝒜_{\varphi K_S}=1`$, so $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }=\beta `$. But, in $`R_p/`$ SUSY, generally $`|\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K_S}/𝒜_{\varphi K_S}|1`$ and $`\theta 0`$.

The $`R_p/`$ part of the amplitude of $`B^{}\eta ^{}K^{}`$ decay is

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \overline{𝒜}_{\eta ^{}K}^{R_p/}& =& \left(d_{121}^Rd_{112}^L\right)\xi A_\eta ^{}^u+\left(d_{222}^Ld_{222}^R\right)\left[\frac{\overline{m}}{m_s}\left(A_\eta ^{}^sA_\eta ^{}^u\right)\xi A_\eta ^{}^s\right]\hfill \\ & +& \left(d_{121}^Ld_{112}^R\right)\frac{\overline{m}}{m_d}A_\eta ^{}^u+u_{112}^R\left[\xi A_\eta ^{}^u\frac{2m_K^2A_K}{(m_s+m_u)(m_bm_u)}\right],\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
where $`\overline{m}m_\eta ^{}^2/(m_bm_s)`$ and

$`\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill A_\eta ^{}^{u(s)}& =& f_\eta ^{}^{u(s)}F^{BK}(m_B^2m_K^2),\hfill \\ \hfill A_K& =& f_KF^{B\eta ^{}}(m_B^2m_\eta ^{}^2).\hfill \end{array}`$

$`F^{BK(\eta ^{})}`$ denotes the hadronic form factor for $`BK(\eta ^{})`$ and $`f_{K(\eta ^{})}`$ is the decay constant of $`K(\eta ^{})`$ mesonThe definition of $`f_\eta ^{}^{u(s)}`$ is given in Ref. , considering the $`\eta \eta ^{}`$ mixing. The mixing angle $`\theta =22^0`$ is used. . Analogous expressions hold for $`B^\pm \eta K^\pm `$ where we have to replace $`A_\eta ^{}^u`$ by $`A_\eta ^u`$, $`A_\eta ^{}^s`$ by $`A_\eta ^s`$ and $`m_\eta ^{}`$ by $`m_\eta `$. Replacing a pseudoscalar meson by a vector meson, we also get similar expressions for the amplitudes of $`B^{\pm (0)}\eta ^{}K^{\pm (0)}`$ modes.

In Eqs. (10) and (12), we note that $`\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{R_p/}`$ includes the $`(d_{222}^L+d_{222}^R)`$ term only, while $`\overline{𝒜}_{\eta ^{}K}^{R_p/}`$ includes the $`(d_{222}^Ld_{222}^R)`$ term. Furthermore, in the $`R_p/`$ SUSY framework, we find that the positive values of $`d_{222}^R`$ and negative values of $`d_{222}^L`$ can increase the BR for the process $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$, keeping most of the other $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ modes unaffected. The other $`R_p/`$ combinations are either not enough to increase in the BR for $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$ or affect too many other modes. From now on, we will concentrate on contributions of $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$ which are relevant to the process $`bs\overline{s}s`$. We divide our results into the following two cases.

Case 1: We use the following input parameters: the CP angle $`\gamma =110^0`$, the $`s`$ quark mass $`m_s(\mathrm{at}m_b\mathrm{scale})=85`$ MeV, and the decay constants and the hadronic form factors used in Ref. . We take $`\beta =26^0`$ as our input, which corresponds to $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }K}=0.78`$ given in Eq. (1). We set $`d_{222}^L=ke^{i\theta ^{}}`$ and $`d_{222}^R=ke^{i\theta ^{}}`$, where $`k=|d_{222}^L|=|d_{222}^R|`$ and $`\theta ^{}`$ is a new weak phase arising from $`d_{222}^L\lambda _{i32}^{}\lambda _{i22}^{}`$, or $`(d_{222}^R)^{}\lambda _{i22}^{}\lambda _{i23}^{}`$. In this case, $`\overline{𝒜}_{\varphi K}^{R_p/}`$ is purely imaginary and introduces a new weak phase to the decay amplitude of $`B\varphi K`$ modes, which can cause non-zero direct CP asymmetries, different from the SM prediction. In contrast, $`\overline{𝒜}_{\eta ^{}K}^{R_p/}`$ introduces no new phase in this choice of $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$. We find a constructive contribution to the SM part of the amplitude for $`B^+\eta ^{}K^+`$ which helps to satisfy the experimental data.

For $`|\lambda _{322}^{}|=|\lambda _{332}^{}|=|\lambda _{323}^{}|=0.055`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\theta ^{}=0.52`$, and $`m_{\mathrm{susy}}=200`$ GeV, we find $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\varphi K_S}=0`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\eta ^{}K_S}=0.73`$ for $`\xi =0.45`$, as shown in Table I. This result agrees well with the recently reported experimental data. Figures 1 and 2 show the BR versus $`\xi `$ for $`B^+\varphi K^+`$ and $`B^+\eta ^{}K^+`$, respectively. In both figures, the shaded region represents the allowed region by the experimental results and the solid line corresponds the SM prediction. The SM BR of $`B^+\eta ^{}K^+`$ is far below the experimental lower bound. Our result in this case is denoted by the dotted line, which is clearly consistent with the experimental data: $`(B^+\eta ^{}K^+)=69.3\times 10^6`$ for $`\xi =0.45`$. In Table II, we estimate the BRs and CP (rate) asymmetries $`𝒜_{CP}`$ for $`B\eta ^{()}K^{()}`$ and $`B^+\varphi K^+`$, where $`𝒜_{CP}`$ is defined by $`𝒜_{CP}=\frac{(\overline{b}\overline{f})(bf)}{(\overline{b}\overline{f})+(bf)}`$ with $`b`$ and $`f`$ denoting $`b`$ quark and a generic final state, respectively. The estimated BRs are well within the experimental limits. The BR of $`B^0\varphi K^0`$ has also been measured, $`(B^0\varphi K^0)=(8.1_{2.5}^{+3.1}\pm 0.8)\times 10^6`$. The theoretical value for the BR of this mode is same as that of $`B^+\varphi K^+`$ and is allowed by the experimental data. Further, We note that $`𝒜_{CP}`$’s for $`B^+\varphi K^+`$ and $`B^0\eta K^0`$ are large and have positive signs. This can be taken as a prediction of this model. It is hopeful that the CDF at Fermilab could measure the CP asymmetry of $`B^+\varphi K^+`$ mode using their two track trigger in the ongoing RUN II experiment.

So far we have assumed that the magnitudes and phases are same for $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$. We can assume them to be different and still obtain good fits. For example, if we set $`d_{222}^L=k_Le^{i\theta _L^{}}`$ and $`d_{222}^R=k_Re^{i\theta _R^{}}`$ and choose: $`k_L=1.0\times 10^8`$, $`k_R=8.0\times 10^9`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\theta _L^{}=0.4`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\theta _R^{}=0.52`$, we find $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\varphi K_S}=0.017`$ and $`(B^\pm \varphi K^\pm )=7\times 10^6`$. The BRs of $`B\eta {}_{}{}^{}K`$ modes remain unchanged.

The other observed $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ decay modes without $`\eta ^{(^{})}`$ or $`\varphi `$ in the final state, such as $`B\pi \pi `$, $`B\pi K`$, $`B\rho \pi `$, $`B\omega \pi `$, and so on, are not affected in this scenario, because $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$ are relevant to the process $`bs\overline{s}s`$ only. The estimated BRs for those modes by using the above input values are consistent with the experimental data for $`\xi =0.45`$ .

Case 2: In Case 1, we have generated the very small value for $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\varphi K_S}`$. Let us now try to generate a large negative $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\varphi K_S}`$, since one experiment is preferring a small negative value and the other experiment is preferring large. We use the smaller value of $`\gamma `$ and $`m_s`$: $`\gamma =80^0`$ and $`m_s(\mathrm{at}m_b\mathrm{scale})=75`$ MeV, keeping the other inputs unchanged. We also use the same form of $`d_{222}^L`$ and $`d_{222}^R`$ as in Case 1: the $`R_p/`$ part of the decay amplitude introduces a new weak phase in the mode $`B\varphi K`$, but no phase in the process $`B^+\eta ^{}K^+`$.

In this case, we find that a consistent explanation of all the observed data for $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ is possible for $`|\lambda _{322}^{}|=|\lambda _{332}^{}|=|\lambda _{323}^{}|=0.069`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\theta ^{}=2.8`$, and $`m_{\mathrm{susy}}=200`$ GeV. In this scenario, a large value of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })`$ with the negative sign is possible for $`B^0\varphi K_S`$: $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\varphi K_S}=0.82`$ for $`\xi =0.25`$, as shown in Table I. The value of $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })`$ for $`B^0\eta ^{}K_S`$ is similar to that of Case 1: $`\mathrm{sin}(2\stackrel{~}{\beta })_{\eta ^{}K_S}=0.72`$ for $`\xi =0.25`$. The estimated BRs for $`B^+\varphi K^+`$ and $`B^+\eta ^{}K^+`$ are denoted by the dot-dashed lines in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively: $`(B^+\varphi K^+)=8.52\times 10^6`$ and $`(B^+\eta ^{}K^+)=76.1\times 10^6`$ for $`\xi =0.25`$. The BRs of other $`BPP,VP`$ modes satisfy the experimental data for $`\xi =0.25`$.

In conclusion, we have shown that in $`R_p`$ violating SUSY it is possible to understand consistently both recently measured CP asymmetry $`\mathrm{sin}(2\beta )`$ in $`B^0\varphi K_S`$ decay and the large branching ratio of $`B^\pm \eta ^{}K^\pm `$ decay, which appear to be inconsistent with the SM prediction. Experimental results imply that CP asymmetry for $`B\varphi K_s`$ is different from the SM value, but for $`B\eta ^{}K_s`$ it is same as in the SM. We have found that this tendency can be consistently understood in the framework of this model. We have searched for possible parameter space and found that all the observed data for $`BPP`$ and $`BVP`$ decays can be accommodated for certain values of $`R_p/`$ couplings. Experimentally, these couplings can be observed through the direct production of SUSY particles at Tevatron (e.g., $`\chi _1^\pm \chi _2^0`$ production and their subsequent decays to final states with multiple b quarks) and other rare decays like $`B_s\mu ^\pm \mu ^{}`$.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work of C.S.K. was supported in part by CHEP-SRC Program, in part by Grant No. 20015-111-02-2 from DFG-KOSEF of the KOSEF, in part by Grant No. R02-2002-000-00168-0 from BRP of the KOSEF, in part by BK21 Program and Grant No. 2001-042-D00022 of the KRF. The work of S.O. was supported in part by Grant No. 2001-042-D00022 of the KRF, and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).


text:
# Small-area molecular structures without shielding

## 1 Introduction

H2 is the most abundant molecule in the universe. Due to its missing dipole moment and its high rotational constant it can only be observed directly in regions with high temperatures. The amount of molecular gas is however reasonably well estimated from observations of the second most abundant molecule, CO, if the metallicity of the gas is about solar (e.g. Dame et al. dame:etal2001 (2001)).

There has been much debate on how much molecular gas can be hidden from the observer in form of small, cold molecular clouds (Pfenniger & Combes pfenniger:combes1994 (1994); Gerhard & Silk gerhard:silk1996 (1996); Walker & Wardle walker:wardle1998 (1998)). Pfenniger & Combes argue that the molecular mass can be underestimated in the outer galaxy by as much as a factor 10, if this gas has a fractal structure. Thus, in this form molecular gas could account for all of the missing baryonic dark matter in our galaxy. These so-called “clumpuscules” (Pfenniger & Combes pfenniger:combes1994 (1994)) i) must be small to escape detection, ii) must have high-column densities to survive destruction and iii) must be dense to allow formation of H2 within a reasonable amount of time. Thus the question on baryonic dark matter in form of small molecular clouds is directly linked to the question on the formation and destruction of H2 and CO.

In this paper the detection of a previously unobserved component in the interstellar medium is described: molecular structures covering a very small area on the sky located in an environment with very low hydrogen column densities. These objects are ideal targets to study under which conditions CO and H2 can survive in the interstellar medium. The detection was made serendipitously during a search for molecular gas in the tidal arms around the M 81 group of interacting galaxies; the results of this search will be described elsewhere.

## 2 Observations

The observations were conducted in June 2001 and May 2002 with the IRAM 30 m telescope on Pico Veleta, Spain. In total, four receivers were used, two tuned to the 12CO (1$``$0) line at 115 GHz and two tuned to the 12CO (2$``$1) line at 230 GHz. The observations were done with a wobbling secondary mirror with the off-position separated by 200′′ in azimuth from the on-position. The beam size of the telescope is 22′′ at 115 GHz and 11′′ at 230 GHz. At the beginning of the observing run the setup was optimized for extra-galactic observations; i.e. for each of the 115 GHz receivers a filterbank and an autocorrelator spectrometer with a wide bandwidth and a low spectral resolution were used. At 115 GHz the filterbank had a velocity resolution of 2.6km/s and 512 channels, the autocorrelator had 0.8km/s resolution and 450 channels.

In total deep integrations on 25 individual positions were made in the tidal arms of the M 81 group of galaxies. During the observations I noticed at four positions some spurious emission- and absorption-like features around $`v_{\mathrm{lsr}}=5`$ km s-1 which were only one channel wide with the setup chosen. To test for a bad channel in the spectrometer or real spectral line the velocity resolution was increased to 0.2 km s-1. Because the features turned out to originate from two real interstellar clouds I started to map the two clouds with a spacing of 20′′ between two positions.

## 3 Results

The incomplete maps are displayed in Figure 1 together with an IRAS 100$`\mu `$m map of the surrounding of clouds. Cloud averaged spectra reobserved with a higher spectral resolution are presented in Fig. 2, parameters are listed in Table 1. The structures cover only very small areas on the sky. In analogy to the tiny-scale atomic structures (TSAS) discussed in detail by Heiles (heiles1997 (1997)) I will refer to them as small-area molecular structures (SAMS) from here on.

SAMS1 appears as single elongated structure whereas SAMS2 can clearly be separated into at least two structures, SAMS2a and SAMS2b. SAMS1, SAMS2a and SAMS2b cover areas of $`9500`$arcsec2, 4800 arcsec2, and 1800 arcsec2, respectively. Due to the incomplete maps this is a lower limit to the total area. Therefore I list the full widths at half maximum, $`FWHM`$, of the SAMS, which are better determined. These are between 25′′ and 60′′. The average CO line temperatures of the SAMS are weak. Their linewidths ($`\mathrm{\Delta }v0.8`$ km s-1) are lower than for galactic cirrus clouds, for which the mean value is at 2.1 km s-1 (Magnani et al. magnani:etal1996 (1996)). If the clouds follow the same size-linewidth relation found for many types of molecular clouds, $`\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }v}{\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1}\right)^2\frac{FWHM}{\mathrm{pc}}`$ (e.g Larson larson1981 (1981); Heithausen heithausen1996 (1996)), the clouds must be closer than 2200 pc, i.e. they are galactic objects.

Assuming $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=0.6\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2(K km s-1)-1 (de Vries et al. devries:etal1987 (1987)) the average H2 column densities and the masses of the SAMS correspond to $`N`$(H$`{}_{2}{}^{})=(0.73.7)\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2 and $`M(`$H$`{}_{2}{}^{})=(16)\times 10^4(\frac{d}{100\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}})^2`$ M, where $`d`$ is the distance to the structures. With such low masses the structures are not gravitationally virialized; even at the upper distance limit the virial mass, $`M_{\mathrm{vir}}=210\mathrm{M}_{}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }v^2}{\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1}\frac{FWHM}{\mathrm{pc}}4(\frac{d}{100\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}})`$ M, is orders of magnitude too large. Note, however, that these parameters are only valid if galactic conversion factors are applicable, which has to be tested by further observations.

The SAMS are also detected in the CO (2$``$1) line at various positions. Figure 2 shows the cloud averaged spectra. The corresponding values are listed in Table 1. Due to the undersampling at 230 GHz and the inhomogeneous rms caused by variable summer conditions during the observations, the (2$``$1) data provide only limited structural information on the clouds.

The two newly detected structures are located in a low column density environment. Fig. 1 gives an overview over the region. The positions are more than two degrees away from the nearest molecular high-latitude clouds studied by de Vries et al. (devries:etal1987 (1987)). The level of 100$`\mu `$m emission observed by IRAS is 2 MJy sr-1. Using the dust emissivity found for galactic cirrus clouds $`I(100\mu \mathrm{m})/N(\mathrm{H})=1.0\times 10^{20}`$ MJy sr-1 cm2 (Heithausen & Mebold heithausen:mebold1989 (1989)) a total column density of the local gas of $`N`$(H)=$`2\times 10^{20}`$cm-2 is derived on a 4 scale.

To derive the column density of atomic gas in the direction of SAMS1, published H I 21cm line observations obtained with the VLA (Walter & Heithausen walter:heithausen1999 (1999); Walter et al. walter:etal2002 (2002)) were corrected for missing zero-spacings using data obtained with the Effelsberg 100 m telescope. The resulting angular resolution was $`19^{\prime \prime }\times 16^{\prime \prime }`$, the velocity resolution 2.6 km s-1. No evidence for an H I cloud associated with SAMS1 is apparent in the combined VLA/Effelsberg data. The spectrum towards the maximum of SAMS1 shows two velocity components: one broad line coming from the extragalactic tidal arms of the M 81 system and one narrow component coming from local galactic material (s. Fig. 3). The local gas component at $`v_{\mathrm{lsr}}=4.0`$ km s-1 has a H I column density of only $`N`$(HI)=$`(1.3\pm 0.1)\times 10^{20}`$cm-2.

For SAMS2 only information on the local atomic hydrogen on a $`9^{}`$ scale exist from observations with the Effelsberg 100 m telescope (de Vries et al. devries:etal1987 (1987)). The column density is found to be $`N`$(HI)=2.1$`\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2, consistent with the value derived above from the IRAS data.

In summary, the column densities along the line of sights towards the SAMS are very low, corresponding to only low visual extinction of $`A_\mathrm{V}0.2`$ mag, assuming a standard gas-to-dust ratio. One should however keep in mind that with the information presently available, the existence of very cold dust associated with the SAMS cannot be excluded.

## 4 Discussion

Are we faced with an unknown feature of the interstellar medium or are we just observing the very low mass end of ordinary cirrus clouds? In this section I argue that the structures are different from galactic molecular cirrus clouds in several ways.

The clouds described in this paper are so small and weak that they are missed by any galactic survey conducted so far (e.g. Heithausen et al. heithausen:etal1993 (1993); Hartmann et al. hartmann:etal1998 (1998)). E.g. in the beam of the CfA 1.2m telescope, the telescope which did most of the inventory of molecular clouds in the Milky Way (Dame et al. dame:etal2001 (2001)), SAMS1 would appear as a 1.6 mK feature, orders of magnitude below the sensitivity of any galactic survey conducted with this telescope.

Besides their compactness SAMS differ from molecular cirrus clouds because they reside in a low column density environment which provides little shielding against the interstellar radiation field. For cirrus clouds the good correlation between CO, H I and IRAS 100$`\mu `$m data has been used to determine the total hydrogen column density and calibrate the $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ factor (e.g. de Vries et al. devries:etal1987 (1987)). In fact, all molecular cirrus clouds from a large-scale CO survey at high galactic latitudes were seen in the IRAS 100$`\mu `$m maps, although no one-to-one correlation between CO and the 100$`\mu `$m intensity exists (Heithausen et al. heithausen:etal1993 (1993)). For the SAMS described here there is no counterpart in either the IRAS data (though the angular resolution of IRAS might be possibly too coarse to detect them) or in high angular resolution H I data.

Unless SAMS are asocciated with very cold dust which is unseen by IRAS, the extinction of the structures is too low to provide efficient shielding for CO to survive. Modelling of the photodissociation of CO requires visual extinction of $`1`$ mag or total hydrogen column densities of $`10\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 for the existence of CO (e.g. Viala et al. viala:etal1988 (1988); van Dishoeck & Black vandishoeck:black1988 (1988); van Dishoeck & Blake vandishoeck:blake1998 (1998)). Below that limit CO might exist but with a very limited lifetime.

On the other hand, the formation time for H2 in a diffuse atomic environment is rather long. Pironelli et al. (pironelli:etal2000 (2000)) calculate that for a shielding of $`A_\mathrm{V}=1`$ mag and $`n`$(H2)=100 cm-3 it takes almost 108 years for H2 to built up from atomic hydrogen in large amounts. This time is much longer than the dynamical timescale of the observed structures which is $`FWHM/\mathrm{\Delta }v2\times 10^4\times (\frac{d}{100\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}})`$ years.

## 5 Conclusions

In this Letter I have described the detection of a previously unobserved component of the interstellar medium: small-area molecular structures embedded in a very low column density environment. Aiming at the detection of molecular clouds in extragalactic tidal arms, the observations were not set up to detect local clouds, thus they are unbiased. Based on their location in a low column density environment with insufficient shielding against the interstellar radiation field, the clouds should not exist for very long. Whether sufficient shielding is provided by very cold dust remains to be tested by bolometer observations.

Whether these two structures were picked up just by chance before they are dissolved or whether their detection indicates that H2 and CO can survive with less shielding than previously adopted is an open question. Because two structures were discovered in a rather limited sample of observations, one could speculate that such structures might be frequent in the interstellar medium. This explanation is also supported by the detection of H2 in many lines of sight through diffuse galactic clouds in the spectra of distant quasars (e.g. Richter et al. richter:etal2001 (2001)). Due to their weakness and compactness these structures will however be missed by most observations.

Whether or not SAMS are related to the tiny-scale atomic structures (TSAS, Heiles heiles1997 (1997)) is unclear. TSAS have been found in H I 21cm line observations. They are thought to be predominantly made of atomic gas and have sizes of about 25 AU (Diamond et al. diamond:etal1989 (1989)). SAMS described here are molecular and have unknown sizes, due to the unknown distance. If we adopt for the moment that they have the same sizes as the TSAS, they would be as close as 0.5 pc. At that distance they would only live for a few hundred years. Whether SAMS could be related to the sodium absorption line clouds which were found to be non-coincident with H I clouds (Lilienthal & Wennmacher lilienthal:wennmacher1990 (1990)) remains to be tested by sensitive CO observations. If so, these observations will provide the crucial distance information for SAMS.

To estimate the frequency of SAMS, it will be worthwhile to check existing CO observations made towards extragalactic objects for the presence of similar absorption- or emission-like features. Clearly, more information on SAMS are needed before one could draw more firm conclusions on their nature.

###### Acknowledgements.

I thank Jürgen Ott for providing Effelsberg HI data, Fabian Walter for providing the VLA data, and Axel Weiß for doing the zero-spacing correction. I thank Ulrich Mebold, Fabian Walter and Peter Kalberla for critically reading the manuscript.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Due to technical difficulties, physicists have been reluctant to consider higher derivative interactions. Yet they are unavoidable in many important physical problems. For a partial list, see . In string theory, for example, we do not fully understand how to deal with higher derivative terms in the worldsheet action as they are nonrenormalizable, even though such background interactions should exist. String field theory is another outstanding example of nonlocal theory. For some recent interests in nonlocal theories in the context of string theory, see .

In fact, even for particles, higher derivative interactions are not well understood. In this paper we study a very basic property of particle worldline theory – the reparametrization symmetry, for worldline Largrangians with higher derivatives. We find that, remarkably, while the phase space of higher derivative theories are of higher dimensions, the reparametrization group acting on the phase space is also of higher dimension. Furthermore, for generic nonlocal theories, the reparametrization group is locally equivalent to the conformal group of two dimensions. It will be very interesting to see whether a new class of well-defined conformal field theories can originate from nonlocal worldline theories.

The plan of this paper is as follows. We first review the worldline theory of a charged particle and define its higher derivative generalization (sec.2). Then we show that both the phase space and the reparametrization group are of higher dimensions for higher derivative theories (sec.3). In the nonlocal limit, the reparametrization group becomes the conformal group (sec.4). Finally we comment on the connection to the string theory and the generalization of general covariance, as well as on the issue of stability (sec.5).

## 2 Worldline Lagrangian

Let us start by reviewing the worldline theory of a charged particle moving in curved spacetime with metric $`g_{\mu \nu }`$

$$S_0=\frac{1}{2}𝑑\tau (e^1g_{\mu \nu }\dot{x}^\mu \dot{x}^\nu +A_\mu (x)\dot{x}^\mu e\varphi (x)),$$
(1)
where $`e=e(\tau )`$ is the tetrad of the worldline and $`\varphi `$ is the potential term. For particles of mass $`m`$ without external potential, $`\varphi =m^2`$. The action is invariant under the reparametrization of the worldline parameter $`\tau `$

$$\tau \tau ^{}=\tau ϵ(\tau ).$$
(2)
It induces a transformation of the worldline fields $`e`$ and $`x`$

$$\delta e=\frac{d}{d\tau }(ϵe),\text{and}\delta x=ϵ\dot{x}.$$
(3)
The symmetry of general coordinate transformation in the gravitational theory is reflected in the particle theory as the invariance of the action under a field redefinition $`x^\mu x^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu }(x)`$ and a simultaneous transformation of the coefficients $`g_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`A_\mu `$. The $`U(1)`$ symmetry of the gauge potential $`A_\mu `$, on the other hand, appears as changing the Lagrangian by a total derivative.

The only generator of the reparametrization symmetry is the Hamiltonian $`H`$. In the usual covariant quantization scheme, we fix the gauge by setting $`e=1`$ and impose the constraint $`H=0`$.

Let us now consider the worldline Lagrangian in its full generality. The most general particle Lagrangian $`L(x,\dot{x},\ddot{x},\mathrm{};e)`$ is an arbitrary function of $`x^\mu `$ and all of their time derivatives. We can expand $`L`$ by the number of time derivatives as

$`L`$ $`=`$ $`e[A^{(0)}(x)+A_\mu ^{(1)}(x)Dx^\mu +(A_\mu ^{(01)}(x)D^2x^\mu +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}A_{\mu \nu }^{(20)}(x)Dx^\mu Dx^\nu )`$ (4)
$`+(A_\mu ^{(001)}D^3x^\mu +A_{\mu \nu }^{(110)}D^2x^\mu Dx^\nu +A_{\mu \nu \lambda }^{(300)}Dx^\mu Dx^\nu Dx^\lambda )+\mathrm{}],`$
where

$$De^1\frac{d}{d\tau }$$
(5)
is the covariant derivative of $`\tau `$. For a given order $`n`$ of $`D`$ and a set of integers $`P(n)=\{P_k0;k=1,\mathrm{},n\}`$ satisfying $`_{k=1}^nkP_k=n`$, there is a spacetime field $`A^{(P_1,\mathrm{},P_n)}(x)`$ coupled to the particle by the interaction

$$L_{P(n)}eA^{P(n)}=e\left(A_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _m}^{P(n)}\mathrm{\Pi }_{i=1}^{P_1}Dx^{\mu _i}\mathrm{\Pi }_{j=1}^{P_2}D^2x^{\mu _{P_1+j}}\mathrm{\Pi }_{k=1}^{P_3}D^3x^{\mu _{P_1+P_2+k}}\mathrm{}\right)$$
(6)
invariant under (3), where $`m=_{k=1}^nP_k`$.

## 3 Reparametrization Symmetry

We start with Lagrangians (4) involving only finite order time derivatives. Assume that the Lagrangian (4) is a function of $`\{x^{(n)};n=0,1,,N\}`$, where we used the notation $`f^{(n)}\left(\frac{d}{d\tau }\right)^nf(\tau )`$, and that it is nondegenerate. To apply canonical quantization, we can introduce new variables $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_{N1}`$ and add

$$L^{}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\lambda _i(x_i\dot{x}_{i1})$$
(7)
to the Lagrangian, where $`\lambda _i`$’s are the Lagrange multipliers. This trick allows us to replace $`x^{(n)}`$ by $`x_n`$ for $`n=1,2,\mathrm{},N1`$ in the Lagrangian, which then becomes a function of $`x_0,x_1,\mathrm{},x_{N1}`$ and $`\dot{x}_{N1}`$, with only first time derivatives. Dirac’s constrained quantization can be applied straightforwardly.

The equations of motion of the $`x`$’s are differential equations of order $`2N`$, which require $`2N`$ initial data to determine a solution. One can think of the phase space as the space of initial conditions given at $`\tau =0`$. Hence the phase space for each $`x`$ is $`2N`$ dimensional.

The fact that we have a larger phase space for higher derivative theories has significant implications. Consider the worldline reparametrization symmetry (3). Taking its $`k`$-th derivative and evaluating it at $`\tau =0`$, we get

$$\delta x^{\mu (k)}(0)=\underset{m=0}{\overset{k}{}}C_m^kϵ^{(m)}(0)x^{\mu (km+1)}(0),\text{where}C_m^n=\frac{n!}{m!(nm)!}.$$
(8)
Although these expressions follow directly from (3), they are independent transformations on the phase space for $`k=0,1,2,\mathrm{},N1`$, since $`x`$, $`\dot{x}`$, etc. are independent variables. Eq.(8) defines $`N`$ independent transformations with parameters $`ϵ(0),\dot{ϵ}(0),\mathrm{},ϵ^{(N1)}(0)`$.

Naively, even for $`kN`$, eq.(8) still looks like a transformation on the phase space. But it is inconsistent to treat them as independent transformations because they do not preserve the Poisson structure. In other words, it is impossible to find operators to generate these transformations.

The above can be derived more rigorously as follows. We add (7) to the Lagrangian and replace $`x^{(n)}`$’s by $`x_n`$’s. The Lagrangian now has only first derivatives of $`x`$. In order for $`L^{}`$ to be invariant under the reparametrization, we need

$$\delta \lambda _k=\frac{d}{d\tau }\left[\underset{m=0}{\overset{Nk1}{}}C_{m+1}^{k+m}ϵ^{(m)}\lambda _{k+m}\right],\delta x_k=\underset{m=0}{\overset{k}{}}C_m^kϵ^{(m)}\dot{x}_{km}.$$
(9)
The 2nd transformation law in (9) agrees with (8) and can be conveniently summarized as

$$\delta x(t+\sigma )=ϵ(t+\sigma )\dot{x}(t+\sigma ),$$
(10)
where we only need the first $`N`$ terms in the Taylor expansion

$$x(\tau +\sigma )=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\sigma ^n}{n!}x_n(\tau ),ϵ(\tau +\sigma )=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\sigma ^n}{n!}ϵ^{(n)}(\tau ).$$
(11)
Note that $`\lambda _n`$ is identified with $`p_{n1}`$, the conjugate momentum of $`x^{(n1)}`$, in the constrained quantization. So (9) also tells us how the momenta transforms.

The $`N`$ symmetry generators corresponding to $`ϵ^{(k)}`$ are

$$H_k\underset{m=k}{\overset{N1}{}}C_k^mx^{\mu (mk+1)}p_{\mu (m)}\text{for}k=0,\mathrm{},N1.$$
(12)
We see that the reparametrization symmetry is $`N`$ dimensional for a particle theory with $`N`$-th time derivatives.

A redefinition of the $`H_k`$’s (12) to $`L_ki(k+1)!H_{k+1}`$ ($`k=1,0,1,\mathrm{},N2`$) leads to

$$[L_m,L_n]=(mn)L_{m+n},m,n=1,0,1,\mathrm{},N2.$$
(13)
Note that this is a consistent truncation of the classical Virasoro algebra. This is one of the main results of this paper.

Roughly speaking, in the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit, we expect to obtain only “half” of the Virasoro algebra. In order to have the full algebra, one has to consider nonlocal theories which are not defined as the large $`N`$ limit of finite derivative theories.

## 4 Conformal Symmetry for Nonlocal Particle

In this section we consider generic nonlocal particle theories. As various kinds of nonlocal theories may differ significantly in nature, in order for a generic discussion without specifying details of the theory, this section will be more heuristic and less rigorous than before. We do not expect everything in this section to hold for all nonlocal theories, but we believe that our results will apply to a wide class of examples. In fact, it will be very interesting to have any nonlocal particle theory for which the reparametrization symmetry coincides with the conformal symmetry.

To deal with Lagrangians with infinite derivatives, an interesting proposal  is to introduce an auxiliary coordinate $`\sigma `$ as follows. For $`x(\tau )`$ we introduce $`X(\tau ,\sigma )`$ and impose the constraint

$$\dot{X}(\tau ,\sigma )=X^{}(\tau ,\sigma ),$$
(14)
where $`X^{}\frac{d}{d\sigma }X`$. This guarantees that $`X`$ can be identified with the original variable as $`X(\tau ,\sigma )=x(\tau +\sigma )`$. Since the generic action (4) also involves higher derivatives of the tetrad $`e(\tau )`$, it should also be promoted to $`E(\tau ,\sigma )`$, satisfying a constraint like (14). The covariant derivative $`D`$ (5) will be replaced by $`D_\sigma =E^1(\tau ,\sigma )_\sigma `$. when acting on $`X`$. By replacing all $`D`$ by $`D_\sigma `$ and $`x(\tau )`$ by $`X(\tau ,\sigma )`$ in $`L_0`$, we obtain a new Lagrangian $`L_1`$ which has the same equation of motion if the constraint (14) is satisfied.

The constraint (14) can be imposed by adding

$$L^{}=𝑑\sigma \lambda (\sigma )(X^{}(\sigma )\dot{X}(\sigma ))$$
(15)
to $`L_1`$. This can also be obtained as an $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit of (7). The new Lagrangian $`LL_1+L^{}`$ does not have any higher time derivatives, but only higher derivatives of the auxiliary coordinate $`\sigma `$.

The worldline reparametrization (2) of the original Lagrangian $`L_0`$ induces the reparametrization of $`\sigma `$

$$\delta \sigma =ϵ(\tau +\sigma ),$$
(16)
leaving $`\tau `$ invariant. The derivative $`D_\sigma `$ and the scalar field $`X`$ should be invariant under (16), that is, $`f(\tau ,\sigma )=(f+\delta f)(\tau ,\sigma +\delta \sigma )`$ for $`f=D_\sigma `$ and $`X`$. It follows that the transformation of $`E(\tau ,\sigma )`$ and $`X(\tau ,\sigma )`$ are given by

$`\delta E(\tau ,\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`_\sigma \left(ϵ(\tau +\sigma )E(\tau ,\sigma )\right),`$ (17)
$`\delta X(\tau ,\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ(\tau +\sigma )_\sigma X(\tau ,\sigma ).`$ (18)
To have $`L_1`$ invariant under (16), we also need the measure of integration $`E(\tau ,\sigma )d\tau d\sigma `$ to be invariant, which can be easily verified.

For $`L^{}`$ to be invariant, we need

$$\delta \lambda (\tau ,\sigma )=_\sigma \left(ϵ(\tau +\sigma )\lambda (\tau ,\sigma )\right).$$
(19)
In addition, we need to impose certain boundary conditions at the boundary values of $`\sigma `$ (denoted $`\sigma _0`$, $`\sigma _1`$) such that

$$\lambda (\tau ,\sigma )(X^{}\dot{X})|_{\sigma _0}^{\sigma _1}=0.$$
(20)
The boundary condition can be chosen to be

$$\lambda (\tau ,\sigma )=0,\text{for}\sigma =\sigma _0,\sigma _1,\tau .$$
(21)
This is also an appropriate condition to guarantee that the equation of motion for the new Lagrangian $`L`$ is equivalent to the original equation of motion. By varying $`X`$ and $`\lambda `$ in the new Lagrangian $`L`$, we get (14) and

$$\dot{\lambda }\lambda ^{}=(\text{EOM}),$$
(22)
where $`(\text{EOM})`$ is the expression for the equation of motion for the original Lagrangian $`L_0`$, but with $`x`$ replaced by $`X`$, etc. Using (14) we can replace $`X(\tau ,\sigma )`$ by $`x(\tau +\sigma )`$, but (22) does not guarantee that $`(\text{EOM})=0`$. Instead, because $`(\text{EOM})`$ is a function of $`(\tau +\sigma )`$ only, (22) implies that

$$\lambda (\tau ,\sigma )=(\tau \sigma )(\text{EOM})+f(\tau +\sigma )$$
(23)
for an arbitrary function $`f`$. Applying the boundary condition (21) to it, we find two identities valid for all $`\tau `$. They imply $`\lambda =0`$ and $`(\text{EOM})=0`$ as we hoped.

As the reparametrization symmetry (16) is labelled by a one-variable function $`ϵ`$ at $`\tau =0`$, it is locally the same as the conformal symmetry in two dimensions.

So far we have restricted ourselves to the classical theory. In principle the quantum anomaly (the central charge of the Virasoro algebra) can appear in the large $`N`$ limit, but we need further details of the theory in order to treat it with some rigor.

## 5 Remarks

Connection to String Theory:

Naively, higher derivative particle Lagrangians can be related to the boundary string field theory  as the open string worldsheet Lagrangian in the zero metric limit. If this interpretation is acceptable, the boundary string field theory can be interpreted as the theory over “the space of all particle theories” instead of “the space of all open string boundary theories”. One can also view strings as a convenient technique to summarize the infinite degrees of freedom of particles with nonlocal interactions. However, it is hard to make this story rigorous due to the technical problem that higher derivative terms in the string worldsheet action are nonrenormalizable.

Another possible connection with string theory is to generalize the Seiberg-Witten (SW) limit  for open strings ending on D-branes in a constant $`B`$ field background. Since the open string vertex operator for the $`U(1)`$ field interaction involves only the first time derivative, only the zero mode of the string survives in the SW limit. If other open string vertex operators with higher derivatives are considered, more degrees of freedom of the string will survive the analogous SW limit, if it exists.

Symmetry of Spacetime Fields

In the infinite derivative limit, we can generalize the story of general covariance and $`U(1)`$ symmetry mentioned in the paragraph below eq.(3) in sec.2. The particle Lagrangian (4) is invariant under a simultaneous worldline field redefinition

$$xx^{}=x^{}(x,\dot{x},\ddot{x},\mathrm{})$$
(24)
and a complicated, mixed transformation of the fields $`A^{(P)}`$. This defines a generalized notion of general covariance. Similar tranformations for the string coordinates has been used to construct string field theory , and it would be interesting to see if they have any connection with the higher spin gauge theories .

Generalization of the $`U(1)`$ symmetry is straightforward. The Lagrangian is always defined only up to a total derivative $`\frac{d}{d\tau }\mathrm{\Lambda }(x,\dot{x},\ddot{x},\mathrm{})`$, which induces a gauge transformation of the $`A^{P(n)}`$’s.

Stability Problem

Higher derivative theories are known to have various problems such as stability and causality. Since the notion of causality may be changed at the Planck scale where spacetime is fuzzy, we will only comment on the problem of stability. Theories with higher derivatives of finite order suffer the Ostrogradskian instability because the canonical Hamiltonian is always unbounded from below . For low energy effective theories, the perturbative formulation  might be a convenient way to avoid these problems. On the other hand, stable nonlocal theories are known to exist. At least those theories obtained from integrating out certain physical fields of a stable field theory should still be stable.

In this paper we studied worldline theories with higher derivatives. Although the Hamiltonian is constrained to vanish, and thus is not unbounded from below, an attempt to couple it to other physical systems may still lead to instability. Ideally, this work should have been focused on nonlocal theories without instability. We hope this paper may serve as part of the motivation for the task of understanding how to construct sensible nonlocal theories.

Note Added in Revision

After the first version of this paper appeared, two earlier works  were brought to my attention. These works considered nonlocal particle Lagrangians closely related to the explicit example of this paper. The work in Ref. did not mention reparametrization symmetry, and their model is not exactly the same as the string. In the other work , a quantization different from the canonical quantization of the original variables was chosen such that it is equivalent to the open string. It was also argued there that the reparametrization symmetry is equivalent to the conformal symmetry for quadratic Lagrangians. In this paper, we have provided a comparatively more general and more explicit discussion on the reparemetrization symmetry.

I was also informed that, in a series of papers , generic particle Lagrangians with only first derivatives are considered as the starting point of formulating the “generalized equivalence principle”. Our proposal for “generalized general covariance” described above is simply a generalization of that to include higher derivatives. This is a crucial difference when comparing the corresponding higher spin gauge theory with string theory. Only totally symmetrized tensor fields appear in the first deriviative theory of , but we know that in string theory there are many more tensor fields. Our model contains all the tensor field degrees of freedom in open string theory.

## Acknowledgment

The author thanks K. Bardakci, T.-C. Cheng, O. Ganor, J. Gomis, K. Kamimura, H.-C. Kao, M. Kato, J.-C. Lee, H. Ooguri, S. Ramgoolam, K. Skenderis, W. Taylor and M.-C. Yeh for helpful discussions, and thanks the Aspen Center for Physics, where part of this work was done. This work is supported in part by the National Science Council, the Young Researcher Award of Academia Sinica, the Center for Theoretical Physics at National Taiwan University, and the CosPA project of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, R.O.C.


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# Experimental demonstration of quantum state tomography and qubit-qubit interactions for rare-earth-ion based solid state qubits

## I Introduction

Rare earth ions doped into inorganic crystals are promising candidates for demonstrating quantum computing operations Pryde et al. (2000); Ichimura (2001); Ohlsson et al. (2002). In such a computer it is envisioned that the quantum information would be stored in the nuclear states of the ions. These can have life times of many hours Yano et al. (1991) and coherence times have been observed as long as 80 ms ell . However, the single and multi-qubit operations would be carried out optically. The single qubit operations are possible because of long coherence times for the optical transitions Equall et al. (1997). These long coherence times result in homogeneous linewidths which are much smaller than both the hyperfine splitting and the available Rabi frequencies at which the transitions can be driven. Further to this the large ratio of inhomogeneous (typically GHz) to homogeneous (sub kHz) linewidths allow many different qubits to be addressed. The multi-qubit operations would be carried out using the strong electric dipole-dipole interaction between the ions’ optical transitions. This interaction is due to the fact that the ions have a permanent electric dipole moment which is different for the ground and excited states Huang et al. (1989); Graf et al. (1998). This interaction has the advantage that quantum information transferred to the nuclear transitions is insensitive to such interactions Alexander

The nuclear state of the ions can be initialised to very high fidelity using optical pumping.

Here we demonstrate the ability to address a spectrally narrow subset of the ions. We place their states at any given point on the Bloch sphere and then read out their states using a sequence of optical pulses, thus demonstrating their utility as qubits. The interaction between these qubits due to the electric dipole-dipole interactions Huang et al. (1989); Graf et al. (1998) between the ions is measured. From measurements of these interactions we determine the conditions required to demonstrate two qubit operations.

## II Experimental

The setup used was similar to that used in Pryde et al. (2000). A highly stabilized dye laser was used with an established stability of better than 200 Hz over timescales of 0.2 s. The light incident on the sample was gated with two acousto-optic modulators (AOMs) in series. These allowed pulses with an arbitrary amplitude and phase envelope to be applied to the sample. The overall frequency shift introduced by the AOMs was 10 MHz. The transmitted light was combined with a laser beam unshifted in frequency in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The beat signal detected with a photo-diode was combined in phase and quadrature with a 10 MHz reference to allow phase sensitive detection. In addition to the setup of Pryde et al. (2000) an auxiliary optical beam and radio frequency (RF) fields were used to repump the ground state hyperfine levels. The measurements were carried out with the crystal in the temperature range 3-5 K.

The Y2SiO5 sample had 0.5 at.% europium, which occupies the yttrium sites in the lattice. There are two stable isotopes of europium of near equal abundance and there are two different crystallographic sites for yttrium in the lattice. The experiment was performed on the 151Eu ions that substituted for yttrium at “site 1” Yano et al. (1991).

Applying optical pulses of definite area requires that all the ions experience the same generalized Rabi frequency. This requirement is problematic for a number of reasons. It requires the spread in resonance frequencies of the ions (c. 10 GHz for the whole sample) to be much smaller than the on-resonance Rabi frequency (c. 500 kHz available with 200 mW of laser power). It also requires that all ions have the same oscillator strength, which means that the resonant transition must be from the same ground state hyperfine level to the same excited state hyperfine level for all the ions. Further to these it also requires illuminating all the ions with the same intensity of light rather than the normal Gaussian laser beam profile.

Optical holeburning techniques similar to those introduced by Pryde et. al.Pryde et al. (2000) were used to isolate a subset of ions to which accurate area pulses could be applied. All the ions that were not wanted in the subset of ions and that had a resonance close to the laser were optically pumped to another hyperfine level and thus far from resonance with the laser. The procedure was as follows: First all ions with a resonance close to the laser frequency were optically pumped to another hyperfine level. Then one RF field and the auxiliary optical beam was applied to the sample. The RF field was swept in frequency $`34.5\pm 1.0`$ MHz and the auxiliary optical beam was shifted from the laser frequency by 95.9 MHz. The effect was to repump the 151Eu ions with the $`\pm 5/2\pm 5/2`$ transition frequency close to that of the laser into the $`\pm 5/2`$ ground state. These transitions are shown on the energy level diagram, FIG. 1, the hyperfine splittings given are those measured by Yano et al. Yano et al. (1991) and from such splittings one would calculate a offset for the auxiliary beam of 96.3 MHz rather than 95.9 MHz. The reason for this discrepancy is the $`\pm 1`$ MHz uncertainty in the excited state hyperfine splittings. The value of 95.9 MHz was obtained by adjusting the offset until the absorbative feature that it created was centered on the laser frequency.

This resulted in a 300 kHz wide feature with a Lorentzian-like lineshape. This was then narrowed to a 50 kHz feature with a rectangular lineshape by applying ‘zero area pulses’ to the ions. The laser beam is modulated with an envelope given by the difference of two sinc ($`\mathrm{sin}(\pi x)/(\pi x)`$) functions. The lengths and amplitudes of the two sinc functions were chosen to so that the resulting pulse excited all the ions with a transition frequency within 500 kHz of the laser except those within 25 kHz of the laser.

The spread in the optical frequencies of the resulting subset was then narrow compared to the available resonant Rabi frequencies, however because of the spatial distribution of intensity across the laser beam we do not yet have an ensemble to which we can apply precise area pulses.

To select out ions in a particular region of the laser beam, a series of 4 $`\mu `$s long pulses were applied to the sample. Some of the ions experienced a $`2\pi `$ pulse and were left in the ground state while ions that saw a different intensity were pumped to a different hyperfine level. Ten $`2\pi `$ pulses were applied with an 8 ms delay between them to allow the excited ions to decay. Afterwards it could be concluded from the free induction decays for various pulse lengths that the Rabi frequency spread of the ensemble was of the order of 10%.

For pedagogical reasons it is helpful to define an explicit phase reference. The phase reference for the experiment was given by the light that would hit the sample if there was no phase shift applied in the RF drives. The pulse sequence used for the tomography consisted of three pulses each separated by 70 $`\mu `$s. First a pulse of an arbitrary length and with arbitrary phase relative to the phase reference. This was followed by a 2 $`\mu `$s long $`\pi `$ pulse in phase with the phase reference, to rephase the inhomogeneous broadening in the sample. At $`t=140\mu `$s a 1 $`\mu `$s long $`\pi /2`$ pulse was applied that was also in phase with the phase reference. The axes for the Bloch vectors were chosen such that the ground state ($`|0`$) was along the negative $`z`$ axis and laser pulses that were in phase with the phase reference caused rotations about the $`y`$ axis.

The first pulse was used to create an arbitrary state, and the coherent emission resulting from this and the rest of the sequence constituted a measurement of this state. The first pulse was therefore viewed as causing a rotation of the state vector on the Bloch sphere and the following two pulses viewed as a rotation of both the state vector and the Bloch sphere itself. At each point the coherent emission measures the projection of the state onto the horizontal plane. Thus the amplitude of the component of the emission after the first pulse that was in phase (in quadrature) with the phase reference was proportional to $`X`$ ($`Y`$) for the initial state. This coherent emission decayed over $`20\mu \text{s}`$ (1/(50 kHz)) due to the inhomogeneous linewidth of the ensemble. The ensemble rephased at 140 $`\mu `$s and at that time a 1 $`\mu `$s long $`\pi /2`$ pulse was applied. As the ensemble was rephasing before the $`\pi /2`$ pulse the amplitude of the emission in phase (in quadrature) with the phase reference was proportional to $`X`$ ($`Y`$) for the initial state. After the $`\pi /2`$ pulse the amplitude of the emission in phase (in quadrature) with the phase reference was proportional to $`Z`$ ($`Y`$) for the initial state. These measurements over-determine the initial Bloch vector, and linear least squares was used to extract the measured Bloch vector. The length of the Bloch vector was calibrated using two particular input states: $`(|0+|1)/\sqrt{2}`$ prepared using a $`\pi /2`$ pulse with zero phase shift and the state $`|0`$ which required no preparation.

The fidelity is given by $`=\varphi \left|\rho \right|\varphi `$, where $`|\varphi `$ is the input state and $`\rho `$ is the measured density matrix. A significant contribution to the error in the tomography process was the shot to shot variation in the number of ions to which the process was applied. The requirement of phase coherence for the 200 $`\mu `$s of the tomography sequence was easily satisfied by the laser. However the preparation of the spike took approximately 10 s, leading to the possibility that the laser drifts a significant fraction of the 50 kHz width of the spike in this time. This caused a shot to shot variation in the number of ions to which the tomography was applied which in turn had the effect of scaling the length of the measured Bloch vector. If a state that is being measured can be assumed to be pure, the measured Bloch should be normalized. This normalization makes the tomography process insensitive to drifts in the number of ions to which the process is applied. This leaves the inhomogeneity in the Rabi frequencies as the main source of error in the process.

The fidelity of the combined state preparation and tomography are shown in table 1.

The results of one particular experimental shot are shown in FIG. 3. Here the state to be measured is created at $`t=0\mu `$s with a $`\pi /2`$ pulse unshifted in phase. This puts the Bloch vector along the $`x`$ axis. This gave coherent emission out of phase with the laser, which decayed as the inhomogeneous broadening dephased the ensemble. At $`t=70\mu `$s the $`\pi `$ pulse was applied to rephase the inhomogeneous broadening. This should have caused no polarisation of the ions and thus produced no coherent emission. As $`t=140\mu `$s approaches the ensemble rephased on the opposite side of the Bloch sphere producing coherent emission in phase with the laser. At $`t=140\mu `$s a $`\pi /2`$ pulse was applied which takes the ions down to the ground state, stopping the coherent emission. The high frequency ringing superimposed on the emission following the application of the pulses is due to the pulses exciting the edges of the trenches in which the spikes lie.

## III The coherent interaction between two ensembles

Interactions between the europium ions were also measured. Each europium ion in Eu:Y2SiO5 has a permanent electric dipole moment which changes by a few percent when the ion is excited optically. A europium ion will see a change in electric field and hence its resonant frequency changes when a nearby ion is excited Huang et al. (1989); Graf et al. (1998).

This interaction is large for ions that are close, however when working with two ensembles each of which constitute a small fraction of the inhomogeneous line, the distance from a particular member of one ensemble to any member of the other is much larger than the crystal’s mean inter-dopant separation. Because of the random nature of the relative positions of a given pair of ions, the excitation of one ensemble causes a random shift in the resonance frequencies of each of the members of the other.

In order to measure the frequency shifts in one ensemble due to the excitation of another the approach of Huang et al. is used Huang et al. (1989). A photon echo sequence is applied to a spike. During the sequence a perturbing pulse is applied to another spike prepared 5 MHz away. When the perturbing pulse was applied just after the $`\pi `$ pulse the amplitude of the echo was reduced significantly. When the perturbing pulse was applied just after the $`\pi /2`$ pulse the reduction in the amplitude of the echo was much smaller. This confirms that the perturbing pulse induces a frequency shift which, if applied at the start of the sequence, is rephased. This result shows that the frequency shift caused by exciting the second qubit is constant over a time which is approximately that of the excited state lifetime.

From FIG. 4 we can see that the excitation of the perturbing ensemble causes a spread of $`1`$ kHz ($`1/(2\pi \times 200\mu `$ s$`)`$) in the resonant frequencies. The ensemble to which the perturbing pulses were applied was prepared by burning a trench and then burning back an antihole. This $`300`$ kHz wide feature has approximately $`10^6`$ of the ions. This corresponds to a mean inter-dopant separation 100 times greater than for the full ensemble or $`100\times 2.5=250`$ nm. As we can expect the interaction to scale as $`r^3`$, ions separated by the mean inter-europium distance in this sample can be expected to see shifts of $`1`$ GHz.

In order to do multi-qubit quantum computation, in addition to the other forms of inhomogeneity that were overcome in this work, one would have to overcome the problem of inhomogeneity in ion-ion interaction strength. When working with two spikes in the inhomogeneous line the mean shift of frequencies in one ensemble is a small percentage of the other’s inhomogeneous linewidth. This makes the method of Ohlsson et. al. Ohlsson et al. (2002) for overcoming interaction strength inhomogeneity very difficult to implement as it relies on selecting ions pairs with frequency shifts greater than the inhomogeneous linewidth of the ensembles.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion we have demonstrated quantum state tomography on Eu3+ dopant ions in Y2SiO5, with fidelities of typically $`>90`$% achieved. We also measured the frequency shifts of one ensemble of dopant ions caused by the excitation of another group of dopant ions. The results of these measurements suggest that if we can achieve high fidelity single qubit operations on ensembles $``$300 kHz wide then multi-qubit operations will be possible.

We were restricted to working with Rabi frequencies of 250 kHz by the bandwidth of the modulation system used to apply the pulses and by the available laser power. Intensities of 200 W/cm2 are needed for 250 kHz Rabi frequencies. It is envisioned that the use of moderately higher laser powers, smaller spot sizes, improvements to the modulation system and perhaps the use of composite pulse sequences will allow the use of ensembles with this larger spectral width. The larger average interaction strengths associated with this should allow the demonstration of two qubit operations for ensembles of ions.

The authors would like to thank Geoff Pryde and Neil Manson for their helpful comments on the manuscript.