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# Galaxy Voids in Cold Dark Matter Universes

## 1 Introduction

One of the most striking features of galaxy redshift surveys is the presence of large regions of space that are nearly devoid of galaxies. These “voids” are thought to form from the most underdense regions of the initial density field, although other suggestions exist such as cosmic explosions (?) or first order phase transitions (?). While voids have been seen in redshift surveys since the late 1970’s (???), due to their large size and low number density it is only with the advent of the Two-degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) that the statistical properties of voids will be quantified in a meaningful way.

It is well known that the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony produces voids in the distribution of dark matter (i.e. highly underdense regions which are not, however, completely empty of dark matter), and the properties of these voids are well studied (??????????). The properties of voids, and the galaxies which live within them have been proposed as a strong test of the CDM scenario (?). However, there have been very few theoretical studies of voids in the *galaxy* distribution expected in CDM (with the notable exception of ?), primarily due to the lack of a detailed, physical model for galaxy formation in the past. It is known both theoretically and observationally that at least some galaxies are biased tracers of the dark matter (Davis & Geller 1976; for recent results see Hoyle et al. 1999, Benson et al. 2000a), even though $`L_{}`$ galaxies may be close to unbiased, as shown in the 2dFGRS by ?. Recent studies of the dependence of clustering amplitude on galaxy luminosity and morphology in the SDSS (??) and the 2dFGRS (??) show a substantial increase with luminosity of the correlation function amplitude which is only partly induced by the variations in the morphological mix of galaxies. Consequently, we cannot expect voids in the distributions of galaxies and dark matter to have the same statistical properties. In fact we will show that they can be quite different.

In this work we aim to remedy this deficiency by presenting predictions for the simplest and most useful statistical quantifiers of galaxy voids in a CDM universe using a combination of N-body simulations of dark matter and semi-analytical modelling of galaxy formation. This technique has been demonstrated to naturally explain several aspects of galaxy clustering — such as the near power-law shape of the galaxy correlation function and the dependence of galaxy clustering on luminosity (???). Such an approach is currently the only means to make physically realistic predictions for galaxy voids (the only competitive method for modelling galaxy formation — direct hydrodynamical simulation — cannot currently be applied to sufficiently large volumes of the Universe with the desired resolution). We will make predictions specifically aimed at the 2dFGRS and SDSS surveys, and will contrast our results with previous analytical and numerical studies.

The remainder of this paper is arranged as follows. In §2 we describe the construction of galaxy catalogues and the details of the analysis which we apply to them. In §3, §4 and §5 we present results for a variety of statistical properties of voids and the galaxies within them. Finally, in §6 we present our conclusions.

## 2 Analysis

Catalogues of mock galaxies are constructed using the techniques of ?, to which the reader is referred for full details. Briefly, we use the semi-analytic model of ? with extensions due to ? to populate dark matter halos located in N-body simulations with galaxies. In this particular approach, dark matter halos are located in the simulation using the friends-of-friends technique together with an energy criterion to ensure the halos represent physical, bound objects. We retain halos containing ten or more particles. The semi-analytic model is used to predict the properties of galaxies occupying each halo by accounting for the rate at which gas can cool and turn into stars, galaxy-galaxy mergers and feedback from supernovae. Galaxies are then assigned a position (both in real and redshift-space) within the halo, resulting in a three dimensional distribution of galaxies.

We use the same two N-body simulations as ?, which we refer to as the “GIF” and “$`512^3`$”, which have cosmological parameters $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\mathrm{\Lambda }_0,h,\sigma _8,\mathrm{\Gamma })=(0.3,0.7,0.7,0.9,0.21)`$111We define Hubble’s constant as $`H_0=100h`$km/s/Mpc. and particle masses of $`1.4\times 10^{10}`$ and $`6.8\times 10^{10}h^1M_{}`$ respectively. We also make use of a third simulation, which we refer to as “GIF-II”, which has the exact same parameters as the GIF simulation, but with a different realization of the initial conditions. This GIF-II simulation will therefore provide a means to quantify uncertainties in the results from the GIF simulation due to its limited volume. The two simulations differ in mass resolution and volume as detailed in Table 1, where we also list the faintest absolute magnitudes in $`\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}`$ and r-bands (appropriate to the 2dFGRS and SDSS respectively) to which our mock galaxy catalogues are complete in each simulation, along with the characteristic magnitude $`M_{}`$ measured in these two surveys. (For the $`512^3`$ simulation these limits are comparable to $`M_{}`$, while for the GIF simulation they are almost two magnitudes fainter than $`M_{}`$.) At fainter magnitudes the limited resolution of the simulation means that some galaxies are missed. These magnitudes are relatively bright, perhaps significantly brighter than we might expect to be typical of “void galaxies”. Higher resolution simulations, allowing us to probe to fainter magnitudes, would clearly provide stronger tests of the void phenomenon in CDM models. Note that with our scheme for constructing mock galaxy catalogues, morphological evolution is correctly tracked for all galaxies brighter than this luminosity limit. The GIF simulation allows us to examine somewhat fainter galaxies than the $`512^3`$ but is of limited usefulness for studying voids because of its relatively small volume (voids have very low number densities). The $`512^3`$ simulation on the other hand is of sufficiently large volume to provide a statistically useful sample of voids. We will construct galaxy catalogues for a variety of absolute magnitude limits. For each galaxy catalogue we construct we create a “dark matter” catalogue with the same number density of points by randomly selecting dark matter particles from the N-body simulations. These dark matter catalogues will allow us to examine differences between the properties of voids in the dark matter and galaxy distributions (i.e. the “bias” of the galaxy distribution). Voids in an unbiased population of galaxies would have statistical properties identical to those in our dark matter catalogues. All catalogues use distributions of galaxies or dark matter in redshift space (i.e. we shift each galaxy in the catalogue a distance $`v_\mathrm{x}/\mathrm{H}_0`$, where $`v_\mathrm{x}`$ is the peculiar velocity of the galaxy, along the x-direction to account for redshift space distortions).

It is important to note that the model of ? does not produce a galaxy luminosity function which agrees precisely with that observed (see their Fig. 9). As described in ? we modify the model of ? to use the ? dark matter halo mass function (since this is a better match to the mass function found in the N-body simulations that we use here than the Press-Schechter mass function) and, to preserve reasonable agreement with the observed luminosity functions, we adjust the star formation timescale and mass-to-light ratios in the model. The resulting model luminosity function is not a perfect match to that observed. Many of the void statistics employed in this work are sensitive to the number density of points (i.e. galaxies). To most fairly compare theory and observation, we construct predicted samples of galaxies that match the number density of the observed samples. Because of the difficulty in exactly matching the shape of the luminosity function, matching the number density leads to small offsets in the absolute magnitude limits of the theoretical and observed samples, typically $`|\mathrm{\Delta }M|<0.4`$. Therefore, we provide in Fig. 1 a mapping between observed and model absolute magnitudes which produce the same total number density of brighter galaxies. (This corresponds to the results which would be obtained if we were able to produce a good model luminosity function by changing the luminosities of model galaxies without changing the ranking of their luminosities.) Furthermore, Table 2 lists the number density of galaxies brighter than a given absolute magnitude cut, for all cuts used in this work. Throughout the remainder of this paper we will refer exclusively to model magnitudes.

We now describe the analyses which we will apply to our mock galaxy catalogues.

### 2.1 Void and Underdense Probability Functions

The void probability function (VPF) for a distribution of points (e.g. galaxies), as defined by ?, is simply the probability that a randomly placed sphere of radius $`R`$ will contain no points within it. This statistic is sensitive to the presence of voids in the distribution, and also has a particularly simple relation to the halo occupation distributions considered by ?. (In the notation of ?, the VPF is just $`S(0)`$ when the halo distribution function $`Q`$ is computed for spheres of radius $`R`$.) We compute the VPF by placing a large number of such spheres in the simulation volumes and computing the fraction which contain no galaxies. This process is repeated for a range of sphere radii. We compute this statistic for samples of galaxies, dark matter particles and randomly distributed particles at the same number density as the galaxy sample in question. For a random set of points the VPF has a particularly simple form:

$$P_0(R)=\mathrm{exp}(4\pi R^3n/3),$$
(1)
where $`n`$ is the mean number density of the points. We will also consider briefly the underdense probability function (UPF) as defined by ?. This statistic is defined as the probability that the mean density of a randomly placed sphere of radius $`R`$ will be below 20% of the global mean density. Unlike the VPF, the UPF does not vary with the mean density of the sample, with the exception of the small effect of galaxy discreteness on the threshold density.

### 2.2 Nearest Neighbour Distance Distributions

? has proposed the distribution of nearest neighbour distances as a useful statistic to quantify to what degree one type of galaxy respects the voids defined by another type. In this analysis we define one sample of “ordinary galaxies” and use these to define the locations of voids (we choose the name “ordinary” to distinguish these from the “wall galaxies” categorized by the void finder algorithm of §2.3). We then select a second set of galaxies, which we refer to as “test galaxies”. These two samples can be chosen in any way we see fit, the idea being to choose test galaxies which we suspect may populate the voids defined by the ordinary galaxies. In this work we will use very simple criteria, choosing ordinary galaxies to be those brighter than some particular luminosity, and test galaxies to be a sample of fainter galaxies. We compute the distance from each test galaxy to its nearest ordinary galaxy, $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$, and construct the distribution function of these distances. Since $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$ will depend on the number density of ordinary galaxies we also compute the distribution function of $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$, the distance from each ordinary galaxy to its nearest ordinary galaxy.

By comparing the two distributions we can assess to what extent test galaxies populate the voids defined by ordinary galaxies. For example, if the distribution of $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$ exceeds that of $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$ at large distances we can infer that the test galaxies are populating the voids.

### 2.3 The Void Finder Algorithm

To study voids more directly we will apply the void finder algorithm of Hoyle & Vogeley (2002; see also El-Ad & Piran 1997) to locate individual voids in our simulations and then proceed to describe in detail below their properties and the properties of the galaxies residing within them. The void finder algorithm, as used in this work, operates on a sample of galaxies and consists of three steps, which we list below and then proceed to describe in outline:

1. Categorise each galaxy in the sample as a wall galaxy or a void galaxy.
2. Bin the wall galaxies into cells of a cubic grid.
3. Beginning from the centre of each empty grid cell, grow the largest possible sphere containing no wall galaxies.
4. Find overlaps between maximal spheres and determine the set of unique voids by computing the overlap of these spheres.

The void finder algorithm allows for some galaxies — known as “void galaxies” — to lie within voids. These galaxies are those which have three or fewer neighbours in a sphere of radius equal to $`d+\frac{3}{2}\sigma _\mathrm{d}`$ centred on it (where $`d`$ is the mean distance to the third nearest neighbour and $`\sigma _\mathrm{d}`$ is the standard deviation of this distance). Using this criteria, approximately 10% of the galaxies are void galaxies (consistent with the fraction found in observational samples by ?). Note that not all of these galaxies will in fact lie within voids.

Wall galaxies (i.e. all non-void galaxies) are then assigned to cells of a cubic grid. From each empty grid cell, a maximal sphere (i.e. the largest possible sphere which contains no wall galaxies) is grown. These are referred to as “holes”. As a single void will typically contain more than one empty cell, there is some redundancy, i.e. a single void will typically contain many holes. To determine which of the holes are voids, we order the list of holes by size. The largest hole is a void. Subsequent holes are only voids if they do not overlap in volume with a previously detected void by more than 10%. This choice of overlap fraction is somewhat arbitrary but is discussed in greater detail in ?. In ? the volumes of voids were enhanced by merging with smaller holes with which they overlapped. In the present work we choose to consider only the maximal sphere of each void, and so this volume enhancement process is not carried out.

The result of this procedure is a list of voids in the simulation volume, each of which is given a position (the centre of the sphere), and the sphere radius. We use these lists to determine the distribution of void sizes and the run of density with radius in voids. By cross-referencing with our various galaxy catalogues we also construct lists of galaxies residing within each void, which we use to explore differences between the properties of void galaxies and wall galaxies.

The catalogue of voids will become incomplete below some particular radius due to the finite resolution of the computational grid. The finite grid may also introduce some systematic bias in the sizes of voids. We discuss incompleteness and bias separately below. For a grid with cells of length $`L`$, the void finder algorithm is guaranteed to find all voids with radii larger than $`\sqrt{3}L`$. We choose to use a grid of $`64^3`$ cells, which results in void catalogues complete for radii in excess of $`6.5`$ and $`15.7h^1`$Mpc for GIF and $`512^3`$ simulations respectively. For smaller radii we expect the catalogue to become gradually incomplete. Due to the nature of the void finder algorithm it is impossible to characterize the incompleteness analytically and so we will make no use of the results for voids of smaller radii. However, to approximately characterize the incompleteness we applied the void finder algorithm to one galaxy sample using a $`96^3`$ element grid. We find that the results using the $`64^3`$ grid are more than 90% complete down to radii of approximately 70% of the nominal completeness radius. Below this the completeness drops very rapidly. Using the higher resolution grid also demonstrates a small systematic bias in the recovered void sizes. We find that, even for voids well above the completeness limit, the higher resolution grid results in typical void sizes increasing by around 4%. This is due to the larger number of starting points for the growth of holes resulting in a better chance of finding the true maximal hole which can fit within a region of the sample (the effect is clearly small so has little consequence for the results presented in this work, but for the most accurate comparison of theory and observations the two should be analysed using a grid of the same resolution).

## 3 Statistics of Voids

In this section we present results for the statistics of voids using the analysis described in §2.

### 3.1 Void Probability Function

In Fig. 2 we show VPFs for galaxies selected by their bJ and r-band magnitudes (upper and lower panels respectively), with individual panels showing results for galaxies of different luminosities. For fainter samples we use the GIF simulation (shown by thin lines), while for the brighter samples we use the $`512^3`$ simulation (shown by heavy lines) to obtain better statistics. Where there is overlap between the two samples the agreement is very good (the small horizontal offsets in the results are due to slight differences in galaxy number density at fixed absolute magnitude in the two simulations which arise due to noise in the number of massive halos found in the GIF simulation). We indicate in the relevant panels the regions for which the VPF is expected to be determined accurately in each simulation. Furthermore, comparing results from the GIF and GIF-II confirms that the VPF is determined to high accuracy on these scales.

We compare the VPFs of our galaxies (solid lines) to those of dark matter catalogues (dashed lines) and a random distribution of points having the same number density (dotted lines). Several interesting features are immediately obvious. Firstly, both dark matter and galaxies contain many more large voids than a random sample of points. This is not surprising of course given that both dark matter and galaxies are clustered. Secondly, the VPF for large $`R`$ (e.g. $`r>5`$Mpc/h) is much higher for galaxy catalogues than for dark matter catalogues. This indicates that galaxy catalogues contain more large voids than the dark matter catalogues. This is a consequence of galaxy bias — few dark matter halos form in voids, and those that do are typically of low mass and so almost never form a galaxy bright enough to meet our selection criteria. Thus, although low density regions always contain some dark matter they frequently contain no galaxies.

We can address this point in more detail by examining the bias relation between galaxies, dark matter and halos as shown in Fig. 3. We caution that we are using the term “bias” in its most general sense — namely as any difference between the spatial distributions of galaxies and dark matter. It is possible that a sample of galaxies that are biased in this sense may be unbiased in terms of some particular statistic (e.g. the two-point correlation function). For the purposes of this example we examine our $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h19.5`$ galaxy sample, and a sample of dark matter halos more massive than $`10^{12}h^1M_{}`$ (galaxies in this sample are almost never found in lower mass halos, and most halos in this mass range host at least one galaxy of this luminosity). The distributions of galaxies, halos and dark matter in the GIF simulation are smoothed with a Gaussian filter with scale $`10h^1`$Mpc in order to examine the bias on scales comparable to those of voids. The filled circles in Fig. 3 show the median galaxy density contrast222The density normalized to the mean density of the sample in question, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\rho /\overline{\rho }`$ where $`\rho `$ is the local density and $`\overline{\rho }`$ is the mean density. as a function of dark matter density contrast, with the errorbars giving an indication of the scatter in the relation. The diagonal solid line indicates the result for an unbiased population. We caution that due to the small number of the highest density regions these results become unreliable at large density contrasts. In regions of average dark matter density the galaxy distribution is approximately unbiased. In low density regions (i.e. voids) we see that galaxies are biased, that is, their density contrast is typically lower than that of the dark matter333Here we define ‘bias’ as the ratio of galaxy and dark matter overdensities, $`b=\delta _\mathrm{g}/\delta _{\mathrm{DM}}`$, where $`\delta =\rho /\overline{\rho }1=\mathrm{\Delta }1`$. In underdense regions, a ’biased’ galaxy distribution therefore results in a lower density contrast for galaxies than for dark matter.. This effect is responsible for the differences seen in galaxy and dark matter VPFs. The filled squares show the bias relation for dark matter halos (note that the points are offset for clarity). Clearly, the halos show a similar biasing relation to the galaxies, specifically becoming more underdense than the dark matter in low density regions. This result is predicted by the extended Press-Schechter theory. This halo bias explains most of the galaxy bias, but is not the whole effect. The stars in Fig. 3 show the biasing relation between galaxies and halos. Clearly these two populations are almost unbiased relative to each other, particularly in high density regions. However, in low density regions the galaxies are slightly more underdense than halos. This relative bias is a consequence of galaxy formation, which means that the lower mass halos in our sample (preferentially located in the lower density regions) have a lower probability to host a sufficiently bright galaxy. The combination of halo/dark matter and galaxy/halo biases act constructively to produce the net galaxy/dark matter bias, resulting in larger voids in the galaxy distribution than in that of the dark matter. Note that this may not be the whole story. We have probed the bias on one particular scale only. In fact, as we will show in §4.2, galaxies are relatively more underdense in the centres of voids than near the edges, which will enhance the number of large galaxy voids relative to the number of dark matter voids.

This bias is clearly visible in the galaxy and dark matter distributions shown by Benson et al. (2001, their Fig. 1). Finally, it is evident in Fig. 2 that the difference between galaxies, dark matter and random points is lessened for the brighter (and so sparser) samples. This is, of course, just a reflection of the lower number density of the brighter samples, which results in the Poisson sampling of the underlying density field becoming the dominant means of producing voids. These qualitative trends are seen for both bJ and r-selected samples, and agree with those found by ? using a similar technique.

? measured the VPF for volume limited samples in the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) surveys. In Fig. 4 we show their results for the combined CfA-1 and CfA-2 surveys for four absolute magnitude limits. To compare our model to this data we construct galaxy and dark matter catalogues with the same number density as the samples analysed by ?. The resulting model VPFs for galaxies and dark matter are shown in Fig. 4 as solid and dashed lines respectively. Note that the magnitudes shown in this plot are the observational magnitudes (i.e. not model magnitudes as referred to in the rest of this paper).

This comparison of theory and observations shows an intriguing dichotomy. For $`R<8h^1`$Mpc our galaxy samples provide a good match to the observed VPFs, while the dark matter samples produce systematically low VPFs on these scales. On larger scales the situation is reversed, with our model galaxy samples overpredicting the observed VPFs, while dark matter samples agree rather well with the data. The brightest sample is an exception, with the dark matter sample agreeing best with the data on all scales. We must be cautious however not to over-interpret the significance of these results. The uncertainties in the observational determinations are shown in the $`M_\mathrm{B}5\mathrm{log}h19.5`$ sample. These include contributions from both the finite number of independent volumes in the survey and the uncertainty in the mean density due to the fluctuations on scales larger than the survey. It should be kept in mind that the data points in the VPF (both observational and theoretical versions) are correlated. Given the current rather large observational uncertainties, both the model galaxy and dark matter samples are consistent with the data. Nevertheless, future observations could in principle distinguish between the predictions for dark matter and for galaxies.

In Fig. 5 we show the UPF for the same observational and model samples (again using model magnitudes). As the UPF is independent of the number density we expect the results for dark matter (dashed lines) to be identical in regions where shot noise is unimportant. “Shot noise” here refers to the fluctuations in local density caused by sparse sampling the underlying density field with a finite number of galaxies. A secondary effect, due to the discreteness in the number of galaxies which satisfy the density threshold, is responsible for the sharp discontinuities in the UPF. As expected, the three densest samples converge beyond about $`6h^1`$Mpc (the sparsest sample is still significantly affected by shot noise beyond this radius). The galaxies show a bias relative to the dark matter, producing a larger number of large radius underdense regions (the effect is less visible for the sparsest sample where shot noise is still a significant contribution on the scales probed here). On small scales the model galaxies produce a UPF lower than that observed. On large ($`R>10h^1`$Mpc) scales the two brightest samples are in good agreement with the observations, but the fainter samples seriously overpredict the observed UPF. ? compared the UPF for galaxies in a hydrodynamic simulation of a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM universe with the observations of ?. Galaxies in their simulation are also consistent with the observational data on scales larger than $`10h^1`$Mpc.

### 3.2 Nearest Neighbour Distribution

In Fig. 6 we show distributions of nearest neighbour distances for bJ and r-band selected galaxy samples (upper and lower panels respectively). In each panel we use a sample of bright “ordinary” galaxies (brighter than magnitude $`M_{\mathrm{ord}}`$ as listed in each panel) to define the voids. We then use a fainter sample (with magnitudes $`M_{\mathrm{test}}`$ in the range specified in each panel) as test galaxies. The solid histograms show the distribution of distances from each test galaxy to the nearest ordinary galaxy, $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$, while the dotted histogram shows the distribution of distances from each ordinary galaxy to the nearest ordinary galaxy, $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$, as a reference.

The peak of the $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$ distribution clearly shifts to larger distances for the brighter samples of ordinary galaxies, as a consequence of their lower number density (this is partially offset by the stronger clustering of these galaxies, but this is a rather weak effect) — the vertical arrows in each panel show the mean separation for each distribution. The $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$ distribution for the fainter ordinary samples is shifted to larger distances relative to that of $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$. This indicates that the fainter test samples here do begin to fill in the voids defined by the ordinary galaxies, with the typical $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$ being up to 50% larger than the typical $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$. For the brightest samples of ordinary galaxies we see an opposite effect — the $`D_{\mathrm{to}}`$ distribution peaks at smaller distances than that of $`D_{\mathrm{oo}}`$. These bright ordinary galaxies nearly always dwell at the centres of quite massive dark matter halos. As such, two such ordinary galaxies are almost never found within the same halo. Such an effect might not occur if we were able to use significantly fainter samples of ordinary galaxies. A large number of the faint test galaxies on the other hand are satellite galaxies in the halos of the bright ordinary galaxies. As such, the test galaxies typically live much closer to a bright ordinary galaxy than do other bright ordinary galaxies. This is a crucial point in the modelling of the nearest neighbour distribution which is missed in calculations using halo centres as proxies for galaxies, and must be considered when comparing observations with theory.

? performed a similar analysis, measuring the distances from several samples of galaxies to their nearest bright spiral galaxy. They found that very blue galaxies were the best candidate for a population filling the voids, but none of their samples showed evidence for a homogeneously distributed component. ? also noted that their results were in broad agreement with those of ?. Here, we have chosen to simply present comprehensive predictions from our model which can be compared with well-defined and large observational samples within the next few years.

## 4 Properties of Voids

We apply the void finder algorithm to several samples of galaxies and dark matter. The resulting void catalogues from the GIF simulation are complete for voids with radii larger than $`6.5h^1`$Mpc, and for those larger than $`15.6h^1`$Mpc in the $`512^3`$ simulation. Figure 7 shows an example of the distribution of these voids. It can be easily seen that voids frequently contain some galaxies (note that the “wall” galaxies — shown as black dots in the figure — are never really inside of voids, they only appear to be due to projection effects), and that small voids vastly outnumber larger voids. In the remainder of this subsection we will quantify these points.

### 4.1 Void Radius Distribution and Scaling Relations

The simplest property of voids which we can compute is the distribution of their radii. Figure 8 shows void radii distributions for an $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h20.5`$ galaxy sample and the corresponding dark matter sample in both the GIF and $`512^3`$ simulations (see figure key for symbol types). Results from the $`512^3`$ simulation are incomplete for radii smaller than that indicated by the vertical dotted line, while those from the GIF simulation are complete over the whole range of radii shown. For larger voids the results from the GIF and $`512^3`$ simulations are in reasonable agreement.

Figure 8 shows, as expected from the VPF (Fig. 2), that there are more of the largest radii voids in the galaxy distribution than in the dark matter distribution. This is indicative that physical processes related to galaxy formation as well as gravity help produce voids in the galaxy distribution. At smaller radii however, the two distributions are very similar. We predict a very rapid decline in the number density of voids as their radii increase, with $`\mathrm{d}n/\mathrm{d}\mathrm{ln}R`$ falling by almost three orders of magnitude over less than half an order of magnitude in $`R`$. ? has derived an analytical formulae for the distribution of void sizes in the dark matter using arguments similar to those employed by ?. The distribution predicted by ? is shown in Fig. 8 by the solid line. It should be noted that in Sheth’s model a void is defined as being a region in which the interior dark matter density contrast is approximately $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\rho /\overline{\rho }=0.2`$.

In contrast, our definition of voids (using the void finder) yields voids that have even lower density contrast, typically $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.1`$ or lower (especially for galaxy samples) as we will show in §4.2. As such, we should not make a direct comparison between our results and those of ?. (In particular, the analytic model of ? predicts a unique distribution, whereas our predicted distributions must necessarily depend on the density of points in our galaxy samples.) For this particular sample, the voids predicted by ? are of comparable size to those found by the void finder algorithm (typically being only 40% and 50% smaller than voids in our dark matter and galaxy catalogues respectively). More interestingly, the rapid decline in void abundance with radius seen in our model agrees well with that predicted by ?, who demonstrates that this is due to the fact that the underdense regions of the Universe from which these voids form are exponentially rare (assuming a Gaussian distribution of initial density contrasts).

In Fig. 9 we show void radii distributions for galaxy samples with different magnitude limits and selected in both bJ and r-bands. As expected, for brighter (and so sparser) samples the distribution shifts to larger sizes. The void radii distributions show evidence of a peak (especially visible in the $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h20`$ and $`22`$ panels), indicating a characteristic size for voids. Finding voids using a higher resolution grid does not change the position of this peak, indicating that it is a real feature and not an artifact due to the limited resolution of the computational grid. The limited dynamic range of the current simulations allows us to say that the position of the peak moves to larger radii as the sample of galaxies becomes brighter/sparser, but prevents us from making any more quantitative conclusions (although we can quantify the scaling of median void size with galaxy luminosity as we will show below). The presence and changing position of this peak is caused by the percolation of small voids into larger ones, a process which depends on the mean density of the sample.

Note that while the GIF simulation appears to contain systematically more large voids per unit volume than the $`512^3`$ simulation (e.g. see the third row in Fig. 9) the difference is only marginally significant. Assuming Poisson counting statistics the GIF simulation exceeds the void abundance in the $`512^3`$ simulation by $`<2\sigma `$ for these samples. We have also computed void radii distributions using the GIF-II simulation (described in §2). We find that the Poisson errors are a reasonable representation of the differences between the results from the GIF and GIF-II simulations, while the GIF-II results are somewhat closer to those of the $`512^3`$ simulation.

? also predicts the clustering properties of voids (specifically their bias on large scales and defined in terms of the two-point correlation function). Even with the large volume of our simulations measuring void clustering is quite difficult. On scales comparable to the void radii we find a strong anti-correlation since the void finder algorithm allows voids to overlap by at most 10% in volume. On larger scales we typically find that voids have a close to uniform distribution. However, given the small amplitude of both void and dark matter correlation functions on these scales it is impossible to make strong statements about the void bias, or how it scales with void radius, from our current simulations.

? show that voids in redshift surveys and in mock galaxy catalogues built from CDM simulations obey a simple scaling relation, such that the median void radius, $`R`$, obeys $`R=R_0+\nu \lambda `$, where $`\lambda `$ is the mean galaxy separation of the sample in question and $`R_0`$ and $`\nu `$ are parameters. In Fig. 10 we show the $`R`$$`\lambda `$ relation for voids in our simulations. We compute $`R`$ for all the galaxy samples using both the GIF and $`512^3`$ simulations. Note that there is little difference seen in the median void size between galaxy and dark matter samples. The differences in the void size distribution seen in Fig. 8 occur only for the largest voids, which have very low number density and so have little impact on the median void size. The parameters $`R_0`$ and $`\nu `$ are determined using a least squares fit, including only those points for which 75% of the voids in the sample have radii in excess of the completeness limit for the simulation in question. For the 2dFGRS sample we find $`R_0=0.11\pm 0.6`$ and $`\nu =1.42\pm 0.04`$, while for the SDSS sample we find $`R_0=0.06\pm 0.2`$ and $`\nu =1.40\pm 0.02`$. Thus, the scaling relations for our two samples are consistent within the errorbars. Our results differ somewhat from those of ?, who find higher values of $`\nu `$, and larger values of $`R_0`$ for CDM mock galaxy catalogues constructed using a simple biassing scheme and for the Las Campanas Redshift Survey. This is not surprising given that we employ a different void finding algorithm, but does serve to highlight the importance of analyzing model and observations using the same algorithm. Nevertheless, such a linear scaling relation with slope $`\nu >1`$ is found in both void detection schemes, suggesting that it may be a generic feature of the void distribution.

### 4.2 Void Density Profiles

In the void finder algorithm voids need not be entirely devoid of galaxies. Galaxies with few nearby neighbours are classified as “void galaxies” and *may* be located within the subsequently detected voids. To assess the prevalence of such galaxies, and the larger scale structure surrounding voids, we have determined void density contrast profiles from our simulations. To do this we determine the number density of galaxies in concentric shells centred on each void centre, scaling all length scales by the void radius to allow us to compare voids of different sizes. We sum the resulting number density profiles over all voids in a particular range of radii and convert this into a density contrast profile. The results of this procedure are shown in Fig. 11.

We show results for both galaxy and dark matter catalogues (filled and open points respectively), for a range of minimum void sizes and for two different magnitude selections (as indicated in the panels). Voids are highly underdense, galaxy voids more so than dark matter voids (typically density contrasts are $`0.1`$ and $`0.2`$ respectively for the $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h20.5`$ sample), again demonstrating the biasing of galaxies relative to dark matter (this can be seen most clearly in the upper left-hand panel of Fig. 11). There is little variation in density contrast within much of the void, but there is evidence for a decline in density contrast in the very central regions of the voids. There is a clear threshold corresponding to the edge of each void which occurs close to $`r/R_{\mathrm{void}}=1`$, especially for the $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h20.5`$ sample, indicating that the void finder algorithm is working successfully. Beyond the void radius we find the density contrast increases rapidly (more rapidly for galaxies than dark matter), but can remain below unity for a significant distance. Thus, for our $`M_{\mathrm{b}_\mathrm{J}}5\mathrm{log}h20.5`$ sample the regions around voids are, on average, still underdense even at twice the void radius. These findings are in qualitative agreement with the void density profiles reported by ?, with the exception that our voids are less dense (for both galaxies and dark matter), and their boundaries are sharper (i.e. density contrast increases more rapidly beyond the void radius). This is again a consequence of the differing algorithms for defining voids in the two approaches, highlighting the importance of analysing observations and theoretical models in identical ways.

## 5 Properties of Void Galaxies

In Fig. 12 we show, for the GIF simulation, the distributions of galaxy luminosities, colours, morphologies and star formation rates for both the general population (dotted histograms) and for galaxies living within voids (i.e. those galaxies lying within the spherical voids found using the void finder; solid histograms). Note that the fraction of galaxies which are actually located within voids (shown at the bottom of Fig. 12) is much lower than the fraction of galaxies classified as “void galaxies” by the void finder algorithm. A similar result is found for the observational samples employed by ?. It is clear that void galaxies have systematically different properties to the general population—although the differences are typically rather small (similar results are found in the $`512^3`$ simulation). Nevertheless, a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test indicates that the void and field galaxy samples are inconsistent with being drawn from a single underlying distribution (the probability being less than 6% in all cases). Void galaxies are typically fainter and bluer, are more disk-dominated and show higher star formation rates. All of these differences can be traced to the difference in dark matter halo mass functions in voids (indeed, in our model, this is the only possible means of creating a difference between voids and the general field). For example, in the field some fraction of galaxies fall into clusters where their supply of fresh gas is “strangled” (i.e. their diffuse halos of hot gas is removed by the ram pressure and tidal forces due to the cluster), resulting in a cessation of star formation. Since there are no clusters in voids this process is far less important for void galaxies.

For the samples shown in Fig. 12 the halo mass function (for halos occupied by one of the galaxies) is shown in Fig. 13. Clearly the halo mass function of void galaxies (solid line) is shifted to much lower masses relative to that of the field sample (dotted line). The median occupied halo mass is over 6 times lower for void galaxies than for field galaxies. The majority of these void galaxies live at the centre of their halo, whereas in the general population we find a large fraction of the galaxies existing as satellites in more massive halos.

We are also able to explore how the star formation rate of galaxies varies with radius inside voids. In Fig. 14 we show the mean specific star formation rate (i.e. the star formation rate per unit mass of stars) in model galaxies as a function of their normalized distance from the nearest void centre, where we include only voids larger than a particular radius (as indicated in the figure). Results are shown for two bJ-band selected samples as indicated in the figure (the fainter one drawn from the GIF simulation, the brighter one from the $`512^3`$ simulation). Results for the full samples of galaxies are shown by the filled points. There is a clear trend for higher specific star formation rates as we move towards the centres of voids (for the fainter sample in particular, the trend is seen out to twice the void radius). There are two contributions to this effect. Firstly, outside of voids we find very massive halos which contain large populations of satellite galaxies. In our model these galaxies have lost their supply of fresh gas, and so star formation is strongly suppressed in these systems. Since such massive halos are very rare in voids the majority of void galaxies are the dominant galaxy of their halo, so retain a gas supply allowing higher rates of star formation. We can see the contribution of this effect by repeating this calculation using only central galaxies (i.e. those with a continued gas supply), as shown by the open symbols in Fig. 14. For the fainter sample in particular this can be seen to be the dominant contributor to the trend. A secondary contributor to the trend is that, even for galaxies with a continued gas supply, specific star formation rates tend to be higher for lower mass galaxies in our model. This weaker trend is visible in the open symbols in Fig. 14.

Larger differences *may* occur for fainter samples of galaxies, below the resolution limit of our simulations. If faint field galaxies exist mostly as satellites in massive groups and clusters (which are not located in voids) then significant differences between field and void samples could occur. If, on the other hand, faint field galaxies exist mostly in lower mass halos (where the differences between field and void halo mass functions are much smaller) we would expect the differences to be smaller also. Benson et al. (in preparation) examine the relative contributions of satellite and non-satellite galaxies to the galaxy luminosity function, finding that satellites become the dominant contribution faintwards of $`M_\mathrm{B}5\mathrm{log}h16.5`$, suggesting that we would need to probe over two magnitudes fainter than currently possible to see significant differences between void and field galaxies.

## 6 Discussion

We have presented detailed theoretical predictions for a wide range of statistics related to voids in the distribution of galaxies, and for properties of galaxies living within those voids. These predictions have been specifically aimed at the 2dFGRS and SDSS, which, due to their large size, should provide accurate measures of these statistics. We have focussed on simple selection criteria, namely simple cuts in luminosity, which we believe will permit the most robust comparison between theory and observations.

The properties of voids and void galaxies are potentially a strong constraint on models of structure and galaxy formation. However, we have shown that many of the properties of galaxy and dark matter voids differ significantly, indicating (as we have shown) that galaxy bias as well as gravitational instability is important for the formation of galaxy voids. Although our understanding of galaxy bias has progressed greatly in recent years we cannot be certain that our understanding is complete. Where suitable data already exist (specifically the void and underdense probability functions analysis applied to the CfA surveys by ?) we find that the model is consistent with the data, but that the current observational sample is too small to probe the signal of bias expected from our model. This situation should be rectified when this analysis is repeated on larger redshift surveys.

As has been shown in previous works on galaxy clustering using semi-analytic and N-body techniques, the results are rather robust to changes in model parameters (?). If we compute void statistics such as the VPF, nearest neighbour distributions or void size distributions at a fixed number density then our predictions are unaffected by changes in most model parameters (e.g. the strength of supernovae feedback, the star formation timescales in galaxies etc.). This results from the fact that the main effect of changing these parameters is to change galaxy luminosities without significantly changing the ranking of galaxy luminosity. Predictions are changed by parameters in the model which do change the ranking of luminosities. For example, significantly increasing or decreasing the rates of galaxy mergers can make strong differences in some of the statistics considered here. (Note however, that with the improved merging model of ? we no longer have the freedom to adjust merger rates in our model.) The properties of void galaxies (e.g. Fig. 12) *are* affected by changes in model parameters. As the differences between void and wall galaxies seen in Fig. 12 are so small we choose not to explore the dependencies of these properties on model parameters in this work.

The models employed in our analysis include the effects of “photoionization suppression” as described by ?. This feedback mechanism has the potential to strongly alter the properties of voids in the galaxy distribution. Halos in voids are of lower mass on average than in higher density regions. Since photoionization suppression acts most effectively on low-mass halos it will cause greatest suppression of galaxy formation in voids. (Furthermore, although not included in our present modelling, reionization of the Universe may begin in voids, enhancing the suppression in these regions further.) For the lowest mass galaxies resolved in our current N-body simulations the effects of photoionization suppression are negligible (e.g. the VPF and nearest neighbour distributions for galaxy samples of fixed number density are indistinguishable between models with and without photoionization suppression). We may expect however strong differences to show up in higher resolution simulations.

## Acknowledgements

We acknowledge valuable conversations with Ravi Sheth and Tommaso Treu. We thank Carlton Baugh, Shaun Cole, Carlos Frenk and Cedric Lacey for permitting us to use the galform semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. The N-body simulations used in this work were kindly made available by the Virgo Consortium. FH and MSV acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-0071201 and the John Templeton Foundation. FT was supported by the Caltech SURF program.


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# Narrow Spectral Response of a Brillouin Amplifier

\[

## Abstract

> We investigate the spectral response of a Brillouin amplifier in the frequency regime within the SBS bandwidth. This is done by amplitude modulating the pump with a low frequency, and therefore, unlike previous studies, the spectrum of the modulated pump is, in all cases, smaller than the SBS bandwidth. We show both theoretically and experimentally that unlike phase modulation, which was reported in the literature, the amplitude modulation increases the Brillouin amplifier gain, and that this effect has a very narrow bandwidth. Only modulation frequencies that are lower than a certain cut-off frequency increase the gain. This cut-off frequency is inversely proportional to the fiber’s length, and can therefore be arbitrarily small.

\]

In long-distance optical communications in fibers the first nonlinear effect to appear is stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). Many investigations over the past decade have studied the influence of SBS on data transmission, either to evaluate the induced degradation of the optical signal or to utilize it for optical processing . Clearly, the optical signal quality may be severely deteriorated due to SBS, since the signal experiences significant depletion over long distances. However, only a portion of the signal’s spectrum is depleted. It is well known, that the Brillouin process is characterized by a finite spectral width, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_B`$, which is related to the phonon lifetime in the material (in glass fibers, for example, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_B/2\pi 20GHz)`$. Hence, every spectral component beyond the Brillouin spectral width will not take part in the Brillouin process, and will not be depleted.

Due to the practical importance of Brillouin scattering in long distance fiber communications, and its negative effect on the transmitted optical signal, most of the studies investigated the possibility of suppressing SBS. It was determined that SBS could be almost entirely suppressed by modulating the incident optical signal with a frequency that exceeds tens of MHz . Due to the spectral width of the SBS, this is not a surprising finding.

Other works , which investigated the temporal response to lower frequencies, usually employed square-wave modulation (having a fast rise time), so that the lower portion of the spectrum did not received enough attention. There were however, some indications  that the Brillouin amplifier can react in a non-trivial manner to modulation frequencies, which are considerably lower than the SBS’s spectral width. Eskildsen and co workers  showed that SBS can be substantially suppressed by directly modulating a DFB laser with a frequency as low as 5kHz. However, in their experiment, the external low frequency modulation caused an extremely large (much larger than the SBS spectral width) wavelength dithering, i.e., a much larger broadening.

In this paper we investigate the spectral response of the Brillouin amplifier to modulation frequencies lower than the SBS bandwidth. This is done by amplitude modulating the pump with a low frequency, and therefore, unlike previous work , the spectrum of the modulated pump is, in all cases, smaller than the SBS bandwidth. We show both theoretically and experimentally that unlike phase modulation, which was reported in the literature, the amplitude modulation increases the Brillouin amplifier gain, and that this effect has a very narrow bandwidth. Only modulation frequencies, which are lower than a certain cut-off frequency increases the gain. This cut-off frequency value $`f_c=c/2nL`$ , which depends only on the fiber’s length ($`L)`$ and can be much smaller than the Brillouin spectral width.

In the slowly varying amplitude approximation

$$\frac{A_2}{z}+\frac{1}{c/n}\frac{A_2}{t}=\frac{i\omega \gamma _e}{2nc\rho _0}\rho ^{}A_1$$
(1)
where

$`A_1`$and $`A_2`$ are the Stokes and pump amplitudes respectively, $`n`$ is the refractive index, and

$$\rho (z,t)=i\frac{\gamma _eq^2}{4\pi }\frac{A_1A_2^{}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_B\mathrm{\Gamma }_B}$$
(2)
is the material density distribution,

where $`\gamma _e`$ is the electrostrictive constant, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_B`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_B`$ are the Brillouin linewidth and frequency respectively, $`q`$ is the acoustic wave number, and $`\omega `$ is the optical angular frequency .

Eq.(1) can be rewritten in terms of the intensities

$$\frac{I_2}{z}+\frac{1}{c/n}\frac{I_2}{t}=g_0I_1(z,t)I_2$$
(3)
where the line center gain factor is

$$g_0\frac{\omega ^2\gamma _e^2}{2nc^3v\rho _0\mathrm{\Gamma }_B},$$
(4)
$`v`$ is the acoustic velocity and $`\rho _0`$ is the mean density of the medium.

In the non-depleted pump approximation we can describe the modulated pump as

$$I_1(z,t)=I_1(L)\left\{1+\mathrm{cos}\left[2\pi f\left(zn/c+t\right)\right]\right\}$$
(5)
and then the solution to eq.3 for the amplified Stokes will satisfy

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{ln}\left[I_2(z,t)\right]\hfill \\ C_1\mathrm{sin}\left[2\pi f\left(zn/c+t\right)\right]+C_2\mathrm{sin}\left[2\pi f\left(zn/ct\right)\right]+\hfill \\ C_3\mathrm{cos}\left[2\pi f\left(zn/ct\right)\right]+\hfill \\ C_4\left(zn/c+t\right)+C_5\left(zn/ct\right)\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
(the first and the fourth terms correspond to the specific solution while the other terms correspond to the homogenous ones), where due to the boundary condition \[$`I_2\left(z=0\right)=I_2\left(0\right)`$\], $`C_2=C_1`$ ,$`C_3=0`$ and $`C_4=C_5`$, and the final solution at $`z=L`$ is

$$I_2(L)=I_2(0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{G\left[1+\mathrm{cos}\left(2\pi ft\right)\frac{\mathrm{sin}\left(2\pi fnL/c\right)}{2\pi fnL/c}\right]\right\}$$
(7)
where $`Gg_0I_1(0)L`$ (in our experiment $`G1)`$.

This solution oscillates in time. The difference between the maximum and minimum intensities corresponding to the oscillatory portion of the signal is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I_2=2I_2(0)\mathrm{exp}\left(G\right)\mathrm{sinh}\left[G\left|\frac{\mathrm{sin}\left(\pi f/f_c\right)}{\pi f/f_c}\right|\right]$$
(8)
where

$$f_cc/2nL$$
(9)
is the cut-off frequency (the first frequency where $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_2=0)`$

This solution suggests that the Brillouin effect in the fiber reacts to frequencies, which depend solely on the fiber’s length. For long fibers, these frequencies can be considerably smaller than the Brillouin spectral width.

It should be noted, that this effect is not necessarily specific to the Brillouin process. Other nonlinear, distributed optical amplifiers, when pumped by an amplitude-modulated beam, will present a similar spectral response. The reasoning behind this is as follows. Since the amplification is a nonlinear function of the pump intensity, the impact of the temporal maxima and minima of the modulated pump do not cancel each other; the maxima have an excess gain (their gain increase is larger than the gain decrease at the minima), and therefore the Stokes beam experiences a net increase in gain. However, when the fiber length is larger than the modulation wavelength the effective gain averaged over the spatial maxima and minima converges to the unmodulated gain value.

The experimental set-up is shown in Fig. 1. Light from a narrow-band ($``$200kHz) laser (NetTest Tunics Plus) at 1550nm is split by a coupler. A portion is amplified by an EDFA and sent into Fiber 1, to generate a Brillouin Stokes beam with a bandwidth of about 30Mhz, which is then guided into Fiber 2 as the seed for the Brillouin amplifier. The other portion is also amplified and then modulated by a LiNbO3 electro-optic modulator, before being sent into the other side of Fiber 2, to act as the pump for the Brillouin amplifier. The amplified Stokes exits through the circulator.

We investigated two different lengths of single-mode fiber for the Brillouin amplifier: $``$1km and $``$2km. In both cases, the pump power entering Fiber 2 was approximately 10mW, and the Stokes power was about three orders of magnitude lower. The amplified Stokes consisted of an amplified dc component as well as an ac component due to the presence of the modulated pump. We measured the peak-to-peak amplitude of the amplified Stokes as a function of the modulation frequency. The experimental results and theoretical prediction are shown in Figs. 2 and 3.

For the 1km amplifier, the cut-off frequency is 100 kHz, and for the 2km amplifier it is 50kHz, in perfect agreement with theory.

In general, where the pump in eq.5 has a general form $`I_1(z,t)`$ it can always be separated into its Fourier components $`I_1(z,t)=I_1\left(L\right)𝑑fa_f\mathrm{cos}\left[2\pi f\left(zn/c+t\right)\right]`$. Clearly, a generalization of 6 will still be valid, and, as a consequence, only the low frequencies components will contribute to the amplification. We therefore conclude that the Brillouin amplifier can behave like a narrow band amplifier, whose cut-off frequency is inversely proportional to its length, and can be considerably narrower than the Brillouin spectral width.


text:
# Nonperturbative Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

## 1 Introduction

One of the most astonishing results of quantum field theory is spontaneous symmetry breaking. One can say that it is the situation when something arises from the quantization. This means that on the quantum level one has something that was not present on the classical level. Coleman and Weinberg  write : “…higher-order effects may qualitatively change the character of a physical theory …”. The main goal of the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism is to derive a Higgs potential from more fundamental principles, with as few arbitrary parameters as possible. In this mechanism the Higgs potential is induced by radiative corrections, rather than being inserted by hand. In this approach one can summarize over higher-loop graphs to induce an effective potential, which may then produce spontaneous symmetry breaking. Of coarse, it can be only in the theories with interactions (where we have these higher-loop graphs) : i.e. a nonlinearity (in Lagrangian) can lead to the interesting consequences for quantized theory. It is not very surprisingly because on the classical level we have the same : very simple behavior of a classical linear theory can be changed on the very complicated and surprising behavior of a classical nonlinear theory. For example, in nonlinear theories we have monopoles, instantons, black holes, strange attractors and so on. On the quantum level we can expect once more amazing stuffs if we add some nonlinear terms in Lagrangian. Probably one of such manifestations of a nonlinearity is confinement in the QCD.

The problem here is that we do not have detailed techniques for the nonperturbative calculations. Even on the perturbative level we do not sure that the result after the sum over all Feynman diagrams will the same as after the sum over a finite number of Feynman diagrams. Nevertheless, according to perturbative calculations we know that they change an initial Lagrangian so that an extra potential term arises in the Lagrangian (Coleman-Weinberg mechanism).

In this paper we work out a nonpertutbative method which can be applied for strongly interacting fields and to show that extra terms (or nonperturbative spontaneous symmetry breaking) appear in an initial Lagrangian if the product of field operators have some properties concerning to the rearrangement of the brackets in a nonlinear potential term.

## 2 Nonlinear term in non-Abelian gauge theories

Our basic attention here is devoted to the non-Abelian gauge field SU(2) (for the simplicity we will consider only this gauge group). The Lagrangian is

$$=\frac{1}{4g^2}F_{\mu \nu }^aF^{a\mu \nu }$$
(1)
where $`F_{\mu \nu }^a=_\mu A_\nu ^a_\nu A_\mu ^a+gϵ^{abc}A_\mu ^bA_\nu ^c`$ is the field strength and $`A_\mu ^a`$ is the gauge potential; $`g`$ is the coupling constant; $`ϵ^{abc}`$ are the structural constants of the gauge group SU(2); $`a=1,2,3`$. In the quantum case we have the operators $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^a`$ and $`\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }^a=_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu ^a_\nu \widehat{A}_\mu ^a+gϵ^{abc}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c`$. Let us underline that all operators considered here are the operators of interacting fields in contrast with the perturbative techniques where these operators describe non-interacting fields.

Let us consider the nonlinear part of the field strength operator $`\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }^a`$ : $`(\widehat{F}_{nl})_{\mu \nu }^a=ϵ^{abc}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c`$. At first we assume that this product do not have any singularity as it is the product of interacting fields. Physically it means that there are situations in interacting field theories where these singularities do not occur (e.g. for flux tubes in Abelian or non-Abelian theory quantities like the “electric” field inside the tube, $`E_z^a<\mathrm{}`$, and energy density $`\epsilon (x)=(E_z^a)^2<\mathrm{}`$ are nonsingular). Here we take as an assumption that such singularities do not occur.

Thus we have such nonlinear term

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \left(\left(\widehat{F}_{nl}\right)_{\mu \nu }^a\right)\left(\left(\widehat{F}_{nl}\right)^{a\mu \nu }\right)=ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{ade}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{d\mu }\widehat{A}^{e\nu }\right)=& \\ \hfill \left(\delta ^{bd}\delta ^{ce}\delta ^{be}\delta ^{cd}\right)\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{d\mu }\widehat{A}^{e\nu }\right)=& \\ \hfill \left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{c\nu }\right)\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}_\nu ^c\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{c\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right).\end{array}$$
(2)
Our main assumption is that this nonlinear expression has some properties that allows us to say that

$`\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{b\nu }0`$ (3)
and
$`\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }0`$ (4)
and these differences are not connected with the commutator $`[\widehat{A}_\mu ^a,\widehat{A}_\nu ^b]`$. The second term in Eq. (3) after some manipulations with brackets and permutations of $`A_\mu ^a`$ can be led to $`(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu })(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu })`$. In this case this equation tell us that the square of nonlinear part $`(F_{nl})_{\mu \nu }^a`$ of the field strength is not equal to the square of the vector square $`\widehat{A}^4=(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu })^2`$, i.e. the r.h.s. of Eq. (3) is nonzero. In some sense it is like to Cooper pairing in the superconductivity. The initial potential term for electrons is $`\left(\widehat{\psi }_\beta ^+\left(\widehat{\psi }_\alpha ^+\widehat{\psi }_\alpha \right)\widehat{\psi }_\beta \right)`$ and after some manipulations we have $`\left(\widehat{\psi }_\alpha \widehat{\psi }_\beta \right)\left(\widehat{\psi }_\gamma ^+\widehat{\psi }_\delta ^+\right)`$ where every pair of brackets $`(\mathrm{})(\mathrm{})`$ has an independent physical meaning : each pair describes annihilation and creation of Cooper pair. We note that these pairs were not present in the initial Lagrangian. Another words, at first we had electrons and then Cooper pairs.

The differences (3) (4) are connected only with the nonlinearity of the term $`(\widehat{F}_{nl})^2`$. In order to calculate this difference we will consider at first a very simple example.

## 3 Simple example

Let $`\widehat{a}`$ and $`\widehat{b}`$ are operators which have a nonassociative property

$$\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\left(\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\widehat{a}\right)\widehat{b}0.$$
(5)
In order to calculate this commutations relationship we compare its with the ordinary commutators in a linear field theory

$$\widehat{\varphi }(x)\widehat{\varphi }(y)\widehat{\varphi }(y)\widehat{\varphi }(x)=i\mathrm{}D(xy)$$
(6)
where $`\widehat{\varphi }(x)`$ is some field operator and $`D(xy)`$ is some function. We see that at the l.h.s. we have the production of two operators and at the r.h.s. the number of operators is $`(22)=0`$.

This procedure we would like to apply for the expression (5). At the l.h.s. we have the production of four operators, consequently at the r.h.s. we should have the production of $`(42)=2`$ operators. Thus, we have two possibilities

$$\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\left(\left(\widehat{a}\widehat{b}\right)\widehat{a}\right)\widehat{b}=\lambda \{\begin{array}{cc}0,\text{if}\widehat{b}=\widehat{a};\hfill & \\ \lambda _1\widehat{a}^2+\lambda _2\widehat{b}^2,\text{if}\widehat{b}\widehat{a}.\hfill & \end{array}$$
(7)
The next simple example is for the vectors $`A_\mu `$. Let us determine the following relation

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\left(\widehat{A}^\mu \widehat{A}^\nu \right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\widehat{A}^\mu \right)\widehat{A}^\nu =\lambda \{\begin{array}{cc}0,\text{if}\mu =\nu \hfill & \\ \widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}^\nu ,\text{if}\mu \nu .\hfill & \end{array}$$
(8)
Here and up to end we will write $``$ if there is the sum, consequently in this equation (8) we have not any sum over repeating indices. Now we summarize over $`\nu `$

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \underset{\nu =0}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\left(\widehat{A}^\mu \widehat{A}^\nu \right)\underset{\nu =0}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\widehat{A}^\mu \right)\widehat{A}^\nu =\lambda \underset{\nu \mu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}^\nu =\\ \hfill \lambda \left(\underset{\nu =0}{\overset{3}{}}\widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}^\nu \widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}^\mu \right).\end{array}$$
(9)
After the sum over $`\mu `$ we have

$$\underset{\mu ,\nu =0}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\left(\widehat{A}^\mu \widehat{A}^\nu \right)\underset{\nu =0}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \right)\widehat{A}^\mu \right)\widehat{A}^\nu =3\lambda \underset{\nu =0}{}\widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}^\nu $$
(10)
We would like to underline again that the differences (7) (10) are not connected with the commutator $`[\widehat{a},\widehat{b}]`$ which can be zero. This is only a manifestation of the nonlinearity of the corresponding expression $`(\widehat{a}\widehat{b})(\widehat{a}\widehat{b})`$.

## 4 Non-Abelian case

Let us come back to more realistic case : non-Abelian gauge theories. We suppose that for the first term of the r.h.s. of Eq. (2) we have such equation

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{b\nu }=\\ \hfill \lambda \{\begin{array}{cc}0,\text{if}b=a,\nu =\mu ;\hfill & \\ \widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\nu },\text{if}b=a,\nu \mu ;\hfill & \\ \widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\mu },\text{if}ba,\nu =\mu ;\hfill & \\ \widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu },\text{if}ba,\nu \mu .\hfill & \end{array}\end{array}$$
(11)
Let us remind that here we have not the sum over repeating indices. Using the same calculations as in the previous section we have after summarizing over $`b,\nu `$

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{b\nu }=& \\ \hfill \lambda \left(\underset{\nu \mu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\nu }+\underset{ba}{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\mu }+\underset{ba,\nu \mu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)=& \\ \hfill \lambda \left(\underset{b,\nu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\widehat{A_\mu ^a}\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)& .\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
Finally, after summarizing over $`a,\mu `$ we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)=& \\ \hfill \underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{b\nu }+11\lambda \underset{b,\nu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu }.\end{array}$$
(13)
For the next term $`(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b)(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu })`$ in Eq. (2) we have some modifications. We have to calculate the following difference

$$\underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }=\mathrm{?}$$
(14)
At first we will consider the next cases with different relations between $`b,a`$ and $`\nu ,\mu `$.

If $`b=a`$ and $`\nu =\mu `$

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }=0.$$
(15)
If $`b=a`$ and $`\nu \mu `$

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }=\lambda \widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A^{a\nu }}.$$
(16)
If $`ba`$ and $`\nu =\mu `$

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }=\lambda \widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A^{b\mu }}.$$
(17)
If $`ba`$ and $`\nu \mu `$

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }=0.$$
(18)
The relation (18) demands more careful discussion. In fact we assume here that the difference (14) is nonzero only if there is at least two identical factors (as in Eq’s (15)-(17)). Let us consider the situation with two identical pairs $`(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b)(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu })`$. After some permutations of brackets and factors we can derive $`(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu })(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu })`$. If we average some quantum state $`|Q`$ we will have

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill Q|\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)|QQ|\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\left(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)|Q=\\ \hfill \lambda Q|\left(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)|Q+\left(something\right)\end{array}$$
(19)
here $`(something)`$ is connected with commutators and permutations of brackets for three factors (for example, $`(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}_\mu ^a(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\widehat{A}^{a\mu })`$ and so on). It means that the difference (19) can be nonzero only if a few factors are identical but if all factors are different then the first term on the r.h.s. of Eq. (19) is absent. Physically, one can say that the quantum correlation between four different components of the vector potential is the same for any combination of brackets (with an accuracy of the second term in Eq. (19)).

In view of Eq’s (15)-(17) the sum over $`b,\nu `$ in Eq. (14) give us

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }=& \\ \hfill \lambda \left(\underset{\nu \mu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\nu }+\underset{ba}{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)=\lambda \left(\underset{\nu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\nu }+\underset{b}{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\mu }2\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right).\end{array}$$
(20)
Now we can summarize over $`a,\mu `$ and Eq. (14) has the following form

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)\underset{a,\mu }{}\underset{b,\nu }{}\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }=& \\ \hfill \lambda \left(4\underset{a,\nu }{}\widehat{A}_\nu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\nu }+3\underset{b,\mu }{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^b\widehat{A}^{b\mu }2\underset{a,\mu }{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)=5\lambda \underset{a,\mu }{}\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu }.\end{array}$$
(21)
Consequently

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \left(\left(\widehat{F}_{nl}\right)_{\mu \nu }^a\right)\left(\left(\widehat{F}_{nl}\right)^{a\mu \nu }\right)=\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\widehat{A}^{a\nu }\right)=& \\ \hfill \left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{b\mu }\right)\widehat{A}^{a\nu }+6\lambda \widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\end{array}$$
(22)
here we again restore the ordinary rule for the sum over repeating indices. It is evidently that our extra term $`(6\lambda A_\mu ^aA^{a\mu })`$ breaks the initial gauge symmetry of given Lagrangian (1) and consequently it is similar to Coleman-Weinberg symmetry breaking but on the nonperturbative level.

It is necessary to note that all these calculations (11)-(22) was done for the fields in one point $`(x)`$.

## 5 Some explanations

Now we would like to explain why we need with equation (22). Let us assume that we have a quantum state $`|Q`$ and the action of the field operator $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^a`$ on this state is $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_1=\widehat{A}_\mu ^a|Q`$. For the nonlinear term the problem is that we do not know the action of this term by the direct way

$$\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)|Q=\mathrm{?}$$
(23)
because we do not know the action of the operator $`(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu })`$ on the quantum state $`|Q`$. In order to determine the action (23) we need for the following transformations

$`\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\widehat{A}^{b\nu }\right)|Q\left(\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\widehat{A}^{a\mu }\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{b\nu }|Q\right)=`$
$`\left(\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\widehat{A}_\nu ^b\right)\left(\widehat{A}^{a\mu }|\mathrm{\Phi }_1\right)=\widehat{A}_\mu ^a\left(\widehat{A}_\nu ^b|\mathrm{\Phi }_2\right)=\widehat{A}_\mu ^a|\mathrm{\Phi }_3=|\mathrm{\Phi }_4`$ (24)
where $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_1=\widehat{A}_\mu ^a|Q`$ and so on for every $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_i`$, $`i=2,3,4`$.

## 6 Discussions and conclusions

In this paper we have shown that a nonlinear potential in quantum non-Abelian gauge theory can lead to the appearance of some extra terms in Lagrangian. In Ref.  it is shown that Ginzburg - Landau equation can be derived from a pure non-Abelian gauge theory. There was assumed that the quantization of such theory leads to the appearance of $`m^2A^2`$-like term in the initial Lagrangian. In this paper we suggested a nonperturbative mechanism for this phenomenon.

A possibility that the operators of quantum fields with a nonlinear potential can have nonassociative properties was investigated in Ref.  . In this paper we continue this approach but there is one very essential disctinction : we assume that the remainders in Eq’s (3) (4) are not a numerical function but is an operator which is the product of fields operators.

In Ref’s  it is shown that a Meissner-like effect in non-Abelian gauge theories arises. There was applied a nonperturbative quantization techniques based on the Heisenberg’s approach to a nonlinear spinor field. Heisenberg’s idea is to use field operator equations for receiving an infinite equations set for all Green’s functions. In this paper (remaining in the frame of Heisenberg’s approach) we show that this nonperturbative mechanism leads to spontaneously symmetry breaking.

Finally, we would like to say that probably nonperturbative quantum field theory with a strong interaction will have very unusual and unexpected properties in contrast with quantum field theory with a small coupling constant. This difference is similar with the difference between analytical and differentiable (but nonanalytical) functions. The first case is similar to a quantum field theory with a small coupling constant, where we can expand a function in Taylor-series which for the quantum theory is Feynman diagrams. In the second case a function can not be expanded in any Taylor-series and respectively Feynman techniques can not be applied for such kind of quantum field theories. Probably, the QCD belong to the last case that leads to the fact that confinement can not be explained on the language of Feynman diagrams. In this case one can say  that ”fields are primary to particles”.

Our opinion is that in this case we can use the Heisenberg’s nonperturbative quantization method . Something like this takes place in the classical case : the nonlinear classical theories have such nonperturbative phenomena as : self-ogranisation, monopoles, instantons, black holes, strange attractors and so on which are absent in linear theories and they can not be derived by the perturbative way.

## 7 Acknowledgments

I am very grateful for the DAAD for the financial support and Prof. Hagen Kleinert for the hospitality in his research group. Partially this work was supported by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.