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# The EUVE point of view of AD Leo

## 1 Introduction

AD Leo (GL 388) is a dM3 star located at a distance of 4.9 pc (Henry et al., 1994). It is a well known frequent source of flares. Its high activity is probably due to its high rotation rate (P$`{}_{\mathrm{phot}}{}^{}`$2.7 d, Spiesman & Hawley, 1986), and a large number of studies on this star has been carried out because of its nature as a very active single star. M stars are supposed to have a large convective layer, resulting in a high level of photospheric spot coverage and frequent flaring activity. With a mass of $`M=0.40M_{}`$, AD Leo would still be close to the limit where the radiative core of the star is still present (Favata et al., 2000). Studies in X-rays reflect that M stars are the stellar class with highest LX/Lbol values, binary systems or very young stars apart.

AD Leo is one of the paradigms of flaring stars, and has been subject of frequent studies in the EUV and X-rays. X-rays low resolution spectra have been used by several authors (see Favata et al., 2000, and references therein) to obtain fits to 2 or 3 temperatures that could explain such spectra. With the advent of the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) it was possible to obtain the first high resolution spectra, and an analysis based on 85 ks of observation permitted Cully et al. (1997) to get an Emission Measure Distribution (EMD) during different activity levels. However, the low statistics of the observation did not allow an accurate analysis of the EMD to be performed, and in the best case only 3 lines had signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) higher than 4, making only indicative the analysis on the variations between quiescent and flaring stages. Some studies relative to the EUVE light curves have been carried out by Hawley et al. (1995), Güdel et al. (2001), and Hawley (2001), but no deep analysis in has been conducted from high quality EUVE spectra to date.

More recently, the analysis of Chandra/Low-Energy Transmission Grating (LETG) spectrum (Maggio et al., 2001) has been used to get values of the abundances, and an EMD peaking at log T(K)$``$6.8. The EUVE satellite ($`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$$``$70–750 Å) has the advantage in respect of Chandra ($`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$$``$1–175) and the X-ray Multi Mirror telescope (XMM-Newton) ($`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$$``$5–35) of a good coverage of lines of just one element. Iron lines observed with EUVE permit calculating the structure of the EMD in the range log T(K)$``$5.8–7.4 without any ambiguity produced by the use of different values of abundances of the elements observed. In contrast, Chandra or XMM-Newton can observe a larger number of lines, also with higher spectral resolution, from different elements, covering a larger temperature region \[up to log T(K)$``$8\]. But in order to get a good temperature coverage, the spectral lines corresponding to different elements must be used. Hence if no proper calculation of the abundances is performed in the analysis of such spectra, this can result in a wrong EMD. While the combination of the observations with EUVE and Chandra or XMM-Newton is desirable, the frequent variability of a star like AD Leo makes such analysis difficult. Finally, the observations made with EUVE tend to span long periods of time (several days) in order to achieve good statistics in the spectra, permitting to get a good analysis on coronal variability, and even a separate analysis of flaring and quiescent stages, as it has been done, for example, for several RS CVn stars (Sanz-Forcada et al., 2001, 2002a).

A total of 1 Ms of observations converts AD Leo in the active star most observed with EUVE, yielding a combined spectrum with high statistics, and it permits to study the variability properties observed during an elapsed time of 46 d. In this paper we are presenting the most accurate analysis to date on the EMD of an M star without the ambiguity derived from the use of different elements. The long duration of the observations of AD Leo allows us to perform an analysis of the flaring behavior from high quality spectra, and from the light curves as compared to the Sun. Given the spectral range response of the EUVE/DS ($`\lambda \lambda `$70–175 Å), such light curve will be dominated by emitting material with log T(K)$``$6.7–7.2.

A description of the technical information of the observations is given in Sect. 2. The analysis of data (light curves, spectra, and Emission Measure Distribution) is described in Sect. 3. Results are discussed in Sect. 4 in the context of coronal activity in this and other late type stars, followed by a summary of the conclusions of the work (Sect. 5).

## 2 Observations

A total of 1 Ms of EUVE observations of AD Leo taken between 1993 and 2000 (Table 1) were made available through the EUVE Data Archive. The EUVE spectrographs cover the spectral range 70–180 Å, 170–370 Å and 300–750 Å for the short-wavelength (SW), medium-wavelength (MW) and long-wavelength (LW) spectrometers respectively, with corresponding spectral dispersion of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 0.067, 0.135, and 0.270 Å/pixel, and an effective spectral resolution of $`\lambda /\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$$``$200–400. The Deep Survey (DS) Imager has a bandpass of 80–180 Å and is used for EUV photometry.

EUVE light curves for the target (Fig. 1), were made from the DS image, by taking a circle centered on the source, and subtracting the equivalent sky background within an annulus measured around the center. Standard procedures were used in the IRAF package EUV v1.9, with a time binning of 600 s. Points affected by the “dead spot” are marked as open circles in the light curves, while filled circles mark the unaffected points. The “dead spot” is a low gain area of the DS detector that affects some of the EUVE observations taken in 1993 and 1994, resulting in variable levels of contamination of the signal (see Miller-Bagwell & Abbott, 1995). However, part of the observations of AD Leo taken in 1999 seem to be partially affected by the “dead spot”. Although the flux seems to be at the same level as the rest of the 1999 campaign, the affected points (both in 1993 and in 1999) were discarded for the statistical analysis on variability of the star.

The variations observed in the light curves show different activity levels, including some flaring episodes. Quiescent and flaring states were identified in the light curves; vertical lines separate the different states in the light curves. Spectra binned over these selected intervals were extracted from the SW and MW spectrographs (Fig. 2), but since the LW spectra did not show enough statistics for its extraction in all intervals, they were discarded. Line fluxes of strong lines identified in the summed, flaring and quiescent EUVE spectra, are given in Table 2. S/N of the lines is defined as $`S/[S+B(1+1/n)]^{1/2}`$, where S is net signal, B is the estimated average background, and n is the oversampling ratio (i.e., the number of background pixels to the number of source pixels in the image), having a typical value of n$``$10–15 in our extraction. S and B are calculated for the total integrated line signal (minus continuum for SW lines) and background.

## 3 Data Analysis

### 3.1 Light Curves

The EUVE light curves of AD Leo show the presence of frequent flaring events, usually of “short” duration (less than 1 day) but quite intense (Fig. 1). Although in the case of the 1993 campaign a flaring event starting at JD 2,449,049 was interpreted as only one flare by Hawley et al. (1995), the complex structure observed might actually correspond to the overlap of two or even three flares happening close in time. The observed behaviour in this flaring event does not seem to have repeated in the rest of the AD Leo observations. The presence of short and intense flares in the EUV and X-rays light curves is usually found in other dM stars, such as FK Aqr or YY Gem (Sanz-Forcada et al., 2002b), and it contrasts with the long duration flares found for some active binary systems with an evolved component (Sanz-Forcada et al., 2002a), like UX Ari (K0IV/G5V), $`\sigma `$ Gem (K1III/?) or V711 Tau (K1IV/G5IV). Moreover, the short duration flares seem to be common among dwarf stars of earlier types too, like LQ Hya (K2V) or $`\sigma ^2`$ CrB (G0V/F6V), either in EUVE or in X-rays (see, for instance, Covino et al., 2001; Osten et al., 2000; Sanz-Forcada et al., 2002b).

The long duration of the observations of AD Leo with EUVE, spanning $``$45 d, allows us to make some statistical studies on the distribution of variability of this dM star. All the observations unaffected by the dead spot were used for such statistics, although the results are essentially the same when the rest of the data are included in the analysis. Different time binning of the light curves (300, 600, 1200, 3000, 6000 s) was tried with the aim to explore different time scales. In order to charachterize the variability of the star we plot a distribution of the number of bins corresponding to the observed count rate (Fig. 3). The quiescent count rate was found to be Lqsc=0.20 cts s-1, with some points having lower flux corresponding to the expected statistical deviations predicted by fluctuations (a gaussian distribution with a width of $`\sigma `$=$`\sqrt{bin\times max}`$ $`bin^1`$, where bin is the binning time and max is the maximum value). The quiescent count rate was then used to evaluate the cumulative variability amplitude (number of points with count rate above a given value, defined as W=L/Lqsc). An increase in the bin size used in the light curves sampling (from 300 to 6000 s) results in a slightly faster decrease of the distribution for larger amplitudes. This is the consequence of smoothing the flaring behaviour in a larger bin size. The distribution of the amplitude variability using a 600 s binning, shows a $``$W-2.391±0.006 distribution. A similar distribution has been obtained for a 600 s binning of the light curves of YY Gem (dM1/dM1) and FK Aqr (dM2/dM3), as reported in Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002b), spanning a total of $``$10 d and 19 d respectively, as shown in Fig. 3. The time spanned for these two objects is smaller than for AD Leo, and this could hide effects occuring at longer time scales, apart from being less representative of the average behaviour of the mentioned stars. Despite this caveat, FK Aqr shows a behaviour very similar to that of AD Leo (with a dependency of $``$W-2.50±0.01). On the other hand, YY Gem had a lower number of flares, resulting in a faster decrease for W$``$3 ($``$W-3.57±0.05), but for large flares it shows the same level of amplitude as AD Leo. For comparison we have reported also the distribution of variability of a sample of dM stars observed with ROSAT/PSPC (6–100 Å) by Marino et al. (2000), and of the 15 ks ROSAT/PSPC observations of AD Leo (Marino, 1997). The flux detected at shorter wavelengths is expected to reflect the behaviour of material emitting at higher temperature, that is more subject to flaring activity, producing a the lower slope ($``$W-1.69±0.02) in the distribution of the X-rays observations of M stars. Although the 15 ks of ROSAT observations available (against 1.1 Ms of EUVE) are a short interval of time, the distribution of amplitude of AD Leo in the ROSAT band (partially overlaping EUVE/DS) is remarkably similar to that of EUVE.

### 3.2 Spectra

The spectrum of AD Leo (Fig. 2) is dominated by lines formed at high temperatures, like Fe xvxxiv. The good statistics achieved also permitted observing lines from lower ionization states of Fe (Fe ixxiv) and even three Ne viii lines, as listed in Table 2. Finally, the frequent flaring behaviour of AD Leo has allowed a good quality separated analysis of flaring and quiescent spectra to be performed. Such analysis has shown an enhancement of most of the spectral lines (see Fig. 2), and in particular the hottest lines observable with EUVE, like Fe xxiii/xx $`\lambda `$133 and Fe xxiv $`\lambda `$192, with a factor of $``$4 and $``$15 (estimated from the blend with nearby lines, see Table 2) increase between quiescent and flaring stages. These enhancements affecting the hot lines are larger than those found in the large flares observed by Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002a) in RS CVn stars (binary systems usually including at least an evolved late type star, and with high activity levels due to their high rotation) like UX Ari or $`\sigma `$ Gem, probably due to the more impulsive behaviour of the AD Leo flares. Note that the whole flaring process is averaged in these spectra, and hence a longer decay, like those typically observed in the mentioned active binaries, will decrease the intensity of the spectral lines with respect to the peak of the flare. An alternative explanation for these enhancements could be the hotter temperature of the flares in AD Leo as compared to those in the RS CVn stars. However, the analysis of the temperature structure by means of the EMD (see below) does not show any substantial difference during AD Leo flares in comparison with the flaring EMDs reported in Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002a), and hence we can reject this possibility.

The observed ratio of Fe xvi $`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 335.41/360.80 from the summed spectra has been used to calculate the interstellar hydrogen absorption. Its comparison with the theoretical branch ratio yields a value $`N_H`$=3.4$`{}_{1.5}{}^{+1.2}\times `$1018 cm-2, used in combination with a ratio He i/H i=0.09 (Kimble et al., 1993) to correct the observed fluxes for interstellar hydrogen and helium continuum absorption. This value is consistent with the amount $`N_H`$=3$`\times `$1018 cm-2 reported by Cully et al. (1997) from the EUVE 1993 observations. Procyon, a nearby star to AD Leo, provides a value that can be checked for consistency. Linsky et al. (1995) obtained a close result ($`N_H`$=1.2$`\times `$1018 cm-2) in Procyon by fitting the Lyman $`\alpha `$ profile.

Some electron density diagnostics are available from the observed EUVE spectra. Line ratios from Fe xixxxii have been employed to calculate the electron density of the plasma emitting at log T(K)$``$7.0, resulting in an average value of log $`N_e`$(cm-3) $``$12.9, 12.9 and 12.7 for the summed, quiescent and flaring spectra respectively (see Fig. 7). Although the data show some dispersion in the values, and in most cases the error bars make the values of quiescent and flaring stages compatible. There seems to be present a tendency towards a decrease in the electron density during the flares. This behavior contrasts with the increase observed in some RS CVn stars analyzed by Sanz-Forcada et al. (2001, 2002a). Further comments on this issue will follow in Sect. 4.

### 3.3 Emission Measure Distribution

A line-based analysis of the emission spectra is employed in order to calculate the EMD ($`N_eN_H𝑑V`$ cm-3, where $`N_e`$ and $`N_H`$ are electron and hydrogen densities, in cm-3) of the observed fluxes (Fig. 4). The EUVE spectral coverage permits using lines of all stages of iron ionization from Fe ix through Fe xxiv except for Fe xvii, which has no transitions in the EUV spectral range. The analysis uses the line emissivities calculated by Brickhouse et al. (1995) for the EUVE iron lines, based on a solar iron abundance111The solar iron abundance is defined as (12. $`+`$ log $`\frac{Fe}{H}`$), where $`\frac{Fe}{H}`$ represents the ratio of iron to hydrogen by number. of 7.6 (Allen, 1973), and corrected to match an iron abundance of 7.67 (Anders & Grevesse, 1989). Theoretical fluxes were calculated using assumed EMDs (see Dupree et al., 1993; Brickhouse & Dupree, 1998; Sanz-Forcada, 2001, and references therein) which were then compared with the observed fluxes, in order to obtain the EMD that best fits the fluxes within a factor of two. Non iron lines, including some involved in complex blends, have been evaluated by using the Astrophysical Plasma Emission Code (APEC) v1.10 (Smith et al., 2001). The quiescent and flaring spectra have been used to perform a separated analysis of their EMD (see Table 3). The flaring fluxes resulted in an increase of the EMD, progressively higher for higher temperatures, as displayed in Fig. 5. A similar analysis was made by Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002a) for a sample of active binary systems, resulting in a relatively uniform increase of the EMD in the range log T(K)$``$5.8–7.3. This contrasts with the behavior observed in AD Leo, where the EMD is more enhanced at hot temperatures (by a factor of $``$9 at log T(K)=7.2).

The EMD of AD Leo has been compared with the EMD calculated in the same manner by Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002b) for the active binary systems YY Gem (dM1e/dM1e) and FK Aqr (dM2e/dM3e) weighted by the stellar radii as shown in Fig. 6. The fast rotator YY Gem (Pphot=0.8 d) seems to have a slightly larger EMD than AD Leo (Pphot=2.7 d) and FK Aqr (Pphot=4.4 d), although an accurate knowledge of the elements abundances (specially Fe) would be required to know the general level of each star. However, the shape remains very similar in the temperature range where the EMD is well defined for the 3 stars, and it is almost coincident for FK Aqr and AD Leo, for which there are data in the whole temperature range.

Once the EMD was calculated using only iron lines, three Ne viii lines (see Table 2 and Fig. 8) were added to the analysis in order to estimate the abundance of Ne based on Anders & Grevesse (1989) solar photospheric abundances. The lines of Fe ix and Fe x observed in the EUVE spectra permit us to have a reference of the EMD at log T(K)$``$5.9, the same temperature range at which the Ne viii lines are formed (see Fig. 4), with error bars that can be estimated directly from the observational uncertainties in the 3 Ne and 2 Fe lines involved in the analysis. Once this abundance is set to \[Ne/Fe\]=1.05$`\pm `$0.08, the predicted lines have shown a fit within 0.1 dex with the EMD predicted from EUVE. The abundance found in the quiescent and flaring phases was \[Ne/Fe\]=1.00$`\pm `$0.09 and \[Ne/Fe\]=1.15$`\pm `$0.18 respectively. Although there could be some increment in the value of the abundance of Ne during flares with respect to quiescence, the uncertainties in the calculation prevent any conclusion. The value of abundance of Ne found is inconsistent with the value of 0.4 calculated by Maggio et al. (2001) from Chandra/LETG data. Some factors could be responsible for the discrepancy: although based on a smaller number of lines, the EUVE spectra allow us to cover the whole temperature range log T(K)$``$5.8–7.3 using only Fe lines; as a consequence, the two lines of Fe ix and Fe x can be used in combination with the Ne viii lines formed at the same temperature. Chandra spectra instead, permit using more lines, though combined from different elements in the whole temperature range; the uncertainties in the knowledge of abundances of the elements may influence the result, as well as a worse temperature coverage for Fe lines alone, used as reference for the rest of the analysis in Maggio et al. (2001). The exact shape of the EMD may strongly influence the analysis of the abundance found from Chandra spectra, where some lines of Ne x showed some discrepancy with the EMD and the abundances proposed by Maggio et al. (2001), while the presence of Fe lines in the same temperature range makes the EUVE analysis independent of the shape of the EMD.

The large value of the Ne abundance found with EUVE data in AD Leo is remarkably similar to the value of \[Ne/Fe\]=0.99$`\pm `$0.11, found in the active binary system V711 Tau from Chandra High-Energy Transmission Grating data by Drake et al. (2001). The EMD of this system is also similar to that of AD Leo, up to log T(K)$``$7.0, and this Ne enhancements could be somehow related to the structures formed in the range log T(K)$``$6.4–6.9, not commonly observed in the Sun.

## 4 Discussion

The light curves and EMD of the flaring stages of AD Leo show a different behavior with respect to that observed in the RS CVn stars analyzed in Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002a): (i) flares in AD Leo and other M dwarfs (may be even G or K dwarfs) tend to be short and intense, in contrast with the long-lasting flares observed in giant and subgiant G or K stars; (ii) the EMD is largely enhanced at the hottest temperatures during flares, differently from the uniform increase of the EMD observed in the active binaries with an evolved component; (iii) finally, the electron density at log T(K)$``$6.9 on the evolved stars increases during flares, while in AD Leo the electron density, at most, remains constant.

Previous work by Cully et al. (1997) calculated the EMD of AD Leo for different activity levels of the 1993 observations. Although poorly constrained due to low statistics, the authors found a quiescent EMD dominated by material at log T(K)$``$6.8–7.2 that they interpreted as a distribution of coronal loops with peak temperatures in that range. The application of loop models developed by Hawley et al. (1995) led Cully et al. (1997) to estimate long loop lengths and densities in the range log $`N_e`$(cm-3)$``$9–11 at flare peak.

The EMD calculated in the present paper could be, in principle, interpreted as the combination of different families of loops peaking at temperatures of log T(K)$``$6.3, log T(K)$``$6.9 and log T(K)$``$7.3, as proposed in Sanz-Forcada et al. (2002a). According to that explanation, the material emitting at log T(K)$``$6.9 would actually correspond to the loops of the second and third families of loops. Hence, the electron density measured at that temperature is weighting the number of loops of both families, families that could actually be characterized by different densities. Some of these loops could actually be related with unresolved solar-like flares, as proposed by Reale et al. (2001), and this would explain the high electron densities measured in these stars even in the absence of large flares. The observed tendency towards a decrease in electron density in AD Leo, rather than being real might be related to the mentioned balance of loops. When the observed flares occurred, the number of the third group of loops would increase, while the number of loops of the first and second groups would not grow so much, or they could be transforming into hotter loops. If the third group was made of flaring loops with lower density, the increase in the number of these loops would result in a decrease in the measured density at log T(K)$``$6.9, unless there was sufficient increment in density in the second group of loops. In the case of the active binary systems this effect is not present because the number of loops of the third group is already high even in the “quiescent” stage, and the addition of such loops would be unable to compensate the possible increment of density produced in the second family of loops. It must be noticed that the observed quiescent flux level could actually be reflecting some flaring activity not resolved by the time scale of the EUVE light curves.

It is possible to have a first approximation, for the case of AD Leo, on the scale size of the third family of loops as compared to those of the second group, by applying the scaling laws proposed by Rosner et al. (1978): $`T^2=cnL`$, where $`T`$ is the maximum temperature of the loop, $`c`$ is a constant independent of the loop characteristics, $`n`$ is the density in the loop, and $`L`$ is the loop length scale. Hence, if we assume to have the same density in the second and third group of loops (it could even be lower in the third group), an increment in temperature would automatically imply a larger loop length, and hence we can expect that the loops peaking at log T(K)$``$7.1 will have a larger scale size than those peaking at log T(K)$``$6.9.

The differences observed between the flares in AD Leo (and other dM stars, may be even G and K dwarfs) and those in some RS CVn systems, seem to point to a different flaring mechanism in M dwarf stars with respect to that of evolved earlier type stars. While the latter can sustain a long-lasting flare, with duration of several days in the EUV and X-rays bands, the dM stars seem to have short duration flares, with faster decays after the peak has been reached, and affecting especially the region at log T(K)$``$7.1. A continued heating or a different loop length could be directly responsible for these differences. The different stellar structure of dwarf and giant (and subgiant) stars may be the physical reason behind these different flaring behaviors.

## 5 Conclusions

We have analyzed 1.1 Ms of EUVE observations of AD Leo. The star shows a relevant flaring activity allowing us to study the variability frequency in the EUV band and the spectral properties during both the quiescent and the flaring states. Results imply the next conclusions:

* Statistics carried out on flaring frequency show similar behavior to other active dM stars like FK Aqr, with a well defined quiescent stage and a distribution of amplitude variability following a power law with an index of $`2.4`$.
* The Emission Measure Distribution (EMD) of AD Leo has been calculated from EUVE spectra. The EMD is dominated by a well defined enhancement peaking around log T(K)$``$6.9, and shows the presence of a second peak at log T(K)$``$6.3. The enhancements remained constant in temperature regardless of flaring activity.
* A large increase in the amount of material at log T(K)$``$7.1 has been found during flaring stages, with an EMD increment higher than at lower temperatures. The electron density at log T(K)$``$7 \[log $`N_e`$(cm-3)$``$12.9\] did not show any enhancement during flares, contrary to the tendency observed in some RS CVn stars.
* The combination of three families of loops, with maximum temperatures at log T(K)$``$6.3, log T(K)$``$6.9 and somewhere at log T(K)$``$7.1 respectively, has been proposed to explain the observed EMD. Electron density in the loops peaking at log T(K)$``$7.1 must be lower than the density of loops at log T(K)$``$6.9. Differences in the stellar structure of dwarf and evolved stars are the most probable cause for the differences found in their flaring behavior.
* A large value of the abundance of Ne (\[Ne/Fe\]$``$1.05$`\pm `$0.08) at log T(K)$``$5.9 was found with respect to solar photospheric value. No significative increment in the abundance was detected during flares.

###### Acknowledgements.

We acknowledge support by the Marie Curie Fellowships Contract No. HPMD-CT-2000-00013. We have made use of data obtained through the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center Online Service, provided by the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. This research has also made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service.


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# On the gauge invariant and topological nature of the localization determining the Quantum Hall Effect plateaus

## Abstract

It is shown how the electromagnetic response of 2DEG under Quantum Hall Effect regime, characterized by the Chern-Simons topological action, transforms the sample impurities and defects in charge-reservoirs that stabilize the Hall conductivity plateaus. The results, determine the basic dynamical origin of the singular properties of localization under the occurrence of the Quantum Hall Effect obtained in the pioneering works of Laughlin and of Joynt and Prange, by means of a gauge invariance argument and a purely electronic analysis, respectively. The common intuitive picture of electrons moving along the equipotential lines gets an analytical realization through the Chern-Simons current and charge densities.

Quantum Hall Effect, high magnetic fields

Since its discovery in 1980, the integer Quantum Hall Effect (QHE) has been the subject of a vast active research klitzing ; prange . It is widely accepted that the explanation of this rather remarkable effect, particularly the existence of Hall conductivity plateaus, is intimately connected with localization of electrons by sample impurities prange ; joynt ; baraff .

In the case of a perfect non-interacting two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at sufficiently low temperature and with an exactly integral number of Landau levels filled, the Hall conductivity $`\sigma _{yx}=n_eec/B=ne^2/h`$, where $`n`$ is the integral number of filled Landau levels, and this is a consequence of the well known fact that each Landau level has a degeneracy $`eB/hc`$ per unit area janssen . For the Hall conductivity to show these quantized values for wide ranges of the quantity $`n_e/B`$, which is indeed the essential feature of the QHE, there must be some sort of charge-reservoir in order to adjust the number of electrons in extended current-carrying states to that required by a quantized conductivity toyoda . The charge-reservoir, it has been argued, is provided by sample impurities or imperfections, and the mechanism that of localization of electrons by the associated random potential. It has been shown that as long as the Fermi energy varies within a region of localized states the electrons in extended states carry the right current for the Hall conductivity to be quantized joynt .

However, it is also recognized that a complete microscopic theory from which the properties of the effect could be deductively obtained, is still missing janssen ; yoshioka . The present work is intended to show how the electromagnetic response of the system, predicted by the field theory considered in caboliva ; randjbar , can sustain a microscopic description from which some basic properties of the role of impurities for QHE could be derived. Here, it is evidenced that the electromagnetic response of the system, described by the Chern-Simons topological action, effectively transforms the sample impurities in charge-reservoirs. Moreover, for some ranges of variation of applied magnetic field, the system is capable of adjusting the electron density in most of the sample points to those values required for satisfying the integral filling of Landau levels locally. This picture gives, thus, a fundamental explanation of the results of references laughlin ; joynt , highlighting the gauge invariance and topological character of the effect. The results also lead ground to the applicability of the field description of integer QHE presented in cabochaichian , where the mechanism of chemical potential stabilization in a gap remained unclear.

To simplify the discussion the analysis has been carried on a multi quantum well structure (superlattice) haavasoja ; stormer , where the field distribution of interest can be obtained analytically. First, the field distribution associated to a model impurity in the superlattice is presented and its connection to the Chern-Simons topological action is shown. Next, it is discussed the stability of the QHE and the emergence of the Hall conductivity plateaus is seen.

The electromagnetic response $`a_\mu (x)`$ represents a linear disturbance of the electromagnetic potential associated to the presence of the constant magnetic field $`B_n=n_ehc/ne`$ at which the filling factor $`\nu `$ has precisely the value $`n`$. In caboliva  it was found the equation satisfied by the electromagnetic response of a superlattice in QHE regime

$`^2a_\mu (x)+i{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi \sigma _H}{ca}}ϵ^{\alpha \mu \sigma \nu }n_\alpha _\sigma a_\nu (x)`$
$`+4\pi {\displaystyle \frac{\chi _e}{a}}[P_{\mu \nu }u_\alpha u_\beta +u_\mu u_\nu P_{\alpha \beta }`$
$`(u_\mu P_{\nu \alpha }+u_\nu P_{\mu \alpha })u_\beta ]_\alpha _\beta a_\nu (x)=0,`$ (1)
which, in order to evidence the topological Chern-Simons terms in it, has been written in Lorentz-covariant form. Also, $`a`$ is the distance between the 2DEG planes in the superlattice, $`u_\mu =(1,0,0,0)`$ is the superlattice 4-velocity, $`n_\mu =(0,0,0,1)`$ is a unitary 4-vector normal to the 2DEG planes, $`P_{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{diag}(0,1,1,0)`$ is the projection tensor on the 2DEG planes, and $`\sigma _H=ne^2/h`$ and $`\chi _e=n\frac{e^2}{h}\frac{mc}{eB_n}`$ are the Hall conductivity and the dielectric susceptibility of a single plane of electrons at filling factor $`\nu =n`$, respectively. The 4-potential $`a_\mu (x)`$ is taken in Coulomb gauge and will be supposed independent of $`x_3`$ coordinate. It will also be assumed that $`a_3=0`$.

The effective Maxwell equations (1) were obtained in caboliva  within the long wavelength approximation $`\lambda r_0=\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}c}{eB_n}}`$ from a calculation of the first quantum correction to the effective action of a 2DEG in the presence of a magnetic field. The equations appropriate to a layered multi quantum well structure are obtained by simply adding the equations for each plane. The above equations (1) also can be alternatively derived by extremizing with respect to $`a_\mu (x)`$ the effective action

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}}[a_\mu ]={\displaystyle d^2x𝑑t\left[\frac{1}{8\pi }ϵE^2\frac{1}{8\pi }B^2+\frac{i\sigma _H}{4ca}ϵ^{\alpha \mu \nu }a_\alpha F_{\mu \nu }\right]},`$ (2)
where $`ϵ=1+4\pi \frac{\chi _e}{a}`$, $`F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu a_\nu _\nu a_\mu `$, $`E_j=iF_{0j}`$ and $`B=\frac{1}{2}ϵ^{jk}F_{jk}`$ $`(j,k=1,2)`$. The third term in the integrand of (2) is recognized as the Chern-Simons topological action, since is independent of the metric tensor.

In the present work, the impurity in superlattice sample will be modelled as a cylindrical hole of radius $`\eta `$ having the axis normal to the 2DEG. Then, we search for stationary axially-symmetric solutions to (1), which in this case reduces to consider the following equations for the scalar potential $`\varphi (r)`$ and the azimuthal component of the vector potential $`a_\theta (r)`$

$$\frac{d}{dr}\left(r\frac{d\varphi }{dr}\right)=\frac{4\pi \sigma _H}{ca}\frac{1}{ϵ}\frac{d}{dr}(ra_\theta ),$$

$$\frac{1}{r}\frac{d}{dr}\left(r\frac{da_\theta }{dr}\right)\frac{a_\theta }{r^2}=\frac{4\pi \sigma _H}{ca}\frac{d\varphi }{dr}.$$

These equations were investigated in guevara . A solution, finite for $`r\mathrm{},`$ is given by

$`\varphi (r)={\displaystyle \frac{C}{\sqrt{ϵ}}}K_0(kr),`$
$`a_\theta (r)=C\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{kr}}+K_1(kr)\right),`$ (3)
where $`C`$ is an overall constant factor to be determined, $`K_0(x)`$ and $`K_1(x)`$ are MacDonald functions of $`0\mathrm{t}\mathrm{h}`$ and $`1\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}`$ order respectively, and $`k=\frac{4\pi \sigma _H}{ca\sqrt{ϵ}}`$. From these expressions, the response electromagnetic field of the superlattice is readily obtained as

$`E(r)={\displaystyle \frac{kC}{\sqrt{ϵ}}}K_1(kr),B(r)=kCK_0(kr).`$ (4)
Note that the magnetic field is proportional to the electric potential. These fields decay exponentially for $`r\mathrm{}`$, being $`k^1`$ a measure of its effective extension, and will be adopted as valid for the region external to the cylinder $`r\eta .`$ Within the interior, for completely defining the impurity model, the electric potential will be assumed constant and the magnetic intensity will also be assumed to be a constant vector along the axis orthogonal to the superlattice planes.

Using the expression (4) for $`B(r)`$, the magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ associated to the impurity can be calculated to be

$`\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \stackrel{}{B}\stackrel{}{n}𝑑S}={\displaystyle _\eta ^{\mathrm{}}}B(r)2\pi r𝑑r=2\pi C\eta K_1(k\eta ),`$ (5)
which in the limit $`\eta 0`$

$$\underset{\eta 0}{lim}\mathrm{\Phi }=2\pi \frac{C}{k}.$$
(6)
Then, the edge current which flows through the boundary of the cylinder should be such that in conjunction with the continuous distributed Hall currents will produce the just determined total magnetic flux. The explicit determination of this current is not necessary for the further steps of constructing the model.

Let us now consider the edge electric charge. Applying Gauss law to the cylinder, the free edge charge $`q`$ per unit length in $`x_3`$ direction in the impurity can be obtained as

$$q=\frac{1}{2}\eta ϵE(\eta ^+)=\frac{1}{2}C\sqrt{ϵ}k\eta K_1(k\eta ),$$
(7)
and

$$\underset{\eta 0}{lim}q=\frac{1}{2}C\sqrt{ϵ}.$$
(8)
After substituting the solution (3) in the expression (2) for the effective action we get

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}}=\frac{C^2}{4}K_0(k\eta )𝑑t.$$
(9)
Using the fact that, for stationary equilibrium fields, the effective action is minus the space-time integral of the energy density, considering the contribution to the energy of the free edge charge, and using (3), (8) and (9), we obtain, for the mean energy density $`𝒰`$ associated to an impurity, the expression

$$𝒰=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}}}{A𝑑t}+\frac{q\varphi (\eta ^+)}{A}=\frac{C^2}{4A}K_0(k\eta ),$$
(10)
where $`A`$ is the sectional area of the sample. This is the energy required to produce a static deformation (3) of the integral filling homogeneous field $`B_n`$.

As the next step in the definition of the model, we will consider $`N`$ impurities like that described above, spread over the sample area to a mean separation $`\xi \sqrt{A/N}`$. The holes will also be assumed to be small for having a total area very much smaller than the sample surface. Hence, the electromagnetic mean field associated to the inspected many electron state, should be approximately given by superposing the fields of all the impurities. An illustrative picture of the spacial dependence on the 2DEG planes of the electric potential is shown in Fig.1. At this point, it should be noticed that the field solving the Maxwell equations (1), exactly satisfy the following properties: a) The Hall current always flows along the equipotential level curves. b) The normal magnetic field to the planes and the charge densities at any point out of the cores of the impurities also exactly satisfies the integral filling condition, as it was discussed in guevara . Therefore, it can be concluded, that the electric potential and the Hall currents of the considered many electron state, analytically realize the usual intuitive picture for the conduction in QHE and moreover, also gives ground for early proposed percolation models prange ; yoshioka .

Let us resume the picture we intend to support in the argue to be done below. Whenever the external magnetic field $`B_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ slightly deviates from one of the values required by integral filling of Landau levels, each impurity accumulates a free edge charge $`q`$ such that the electron density at any internal point in the sample volume, adjusts to that required to satisfy the integral filling condition at the precise local magnetic field value. For the sample type we have been considering, the response electromagnetic field is exponentially damped away from the impurities. Therefore, the excess of magnetic flux over that corresponding to integral filling flux density $`B_n`$ will tend to concentrate more around the impurities. If the distance between them turns to be greater than the penetration length, then as mentioned before, a sort of Meissner effect occurs. Then,the difference between the external flux and the one associated to a complete filling of some number of Landau levels will be expelled from the large volumes and concentrated around the defects caboliva . The defect properties will resemble in such regimes the vortices in type II superconductors. This should not be necessarily the case. It also should be stressed that, although in the realistic samples, the defects can be expected to be distributed in uncorrelated positions on each plane of the superlattice, it is natural to suppose that the magnetic flux lines of the real defects will follow trajectories that traverse the sample in $`x_3`$ direction with some distortion respect (like the real Abrikosov vortices in non-ideal samples) to the perfect line configuration we are considering.

In order to justify the above picture, it should be shown that the system energy is lower than the value corresponding to the purely homogeneous field configuration. Let us consider this problem in what follows.

To start, let us define the connections between the main parameters characterizing the model. From the condition of equality of total magnetic flux in and out of the sample,

$$B_{\mathrm{ext}}A=B_nA+N\mathrm{\Phi },$$

and from the expression (6), the constant $`C`$ is determined to be

$$C=\frac{B_{\mathrm{ext}}B_n}{2\pi }k\xi ^2.$$

Substituting this result in expression (10) and considering there are $`N`$ impurities, it is obtained the energy density in QHE regime

$$𝒰_{\mathrm{QHE}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}})=\frac{(B_{\mathrm{ext}}B_n)^2}{16\pi ^2}k^2\xi ^2K_0(k\eta )$$
(11)
It must be remarked, that here, in order to simplify the discussion, for evaluating this energy, it was assumed that the field distributions of different impurities do not overlap very much. This supposition was employed in order to approximately calculate the energy as the simple sum of the contributions associated to each defect. A more precise procedure is however, possible for the search of more quantitative results.

On another hand, when the homogeneous field $`B_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ completely penetrates the sample, the total energy density required for such deformation over the integral filling field $`B_n`$ is calculated to be

$$𝒰_{\mathrm{homog}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}})=\frac{(B_{\mathrm{ext}}B_n)^2}{8\pi }+𝒰_{\mathrm{Peierls}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}}),$$
(12)
where $`𝒰_{\mathrm{Peierls}}`$ is a contribution to the energy due to Peierls and described in randjbar ; it is given by

$$𝒰_{\mathrm{Peierls}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}})=\frac{n_{e}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}h^2}{4\pi ma}\left\{\left[\frac{B_1}{B_{\mathrm{ext}}}\right]\left(\left[\frac{B_1}{B_{\mathrm{ext}}}\right]+1\right)\left(\frac{B_{\mathrm{ext}}}{B_1}\right)^2+\left(2\left[\frac{B_1}{B_{\mathrm{ext}}}\right]+1\right)\frac{B_{\mathrm{ext}}}{B_1}1\right\},$$
(13)
where $`[x]`$ denotes the integer part of $`x`$.

For the QHE regime to be energetically favorable it is clear we must have

$$𝒰_{\mathrm{QHE}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}})<𝒰_{\mathrm{homog}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}})$$

and this is equivalent to

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{k^2\xi ^2K_0(k\eta )}{2\pi }}1\right){\displaystyle \frac{(B_{\mathrm{ext}}B_n)^2}{8\pi }}<𝒰_{\mathrm{Peierls}}(B_{\mathrm{ext}}).`$ (14)
As is easily seen, the QHE regime is always preferred whenever $`\xi <\frac{1}{k}\sqrt{2\pi /K_0(k\eta )}`$, which means that the Hall conductivity shows a perfect step-like dependence. However, in the limit of a very small $`\xi `$ the impurities will strongly interact and the picture would no longer be applicable. In any case, this dirty limit should eventually destroy the QHE regime. When $`\xi >\frac{1}{k}\sqrt{2\pi /K_0(k\eta )}`$ the inequality (14) predicts a plateau width

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }B)_n=B_n\left\{\frac{2n(n^2+\alpha )}{(n^2+\alpha )^2n^2}\right\}$$

where we have denoted $`\alpha =\frac{mac^2}{2e^2}\left(\frac{k^2\xi ^2K_0(k\eta )}{2\pi }1\right)`$. This result would clearly express the QHE stability if there are no alternative states of the system showing less energy.

The plateaus predicted by the above expressions, have been shown in Fig. 2 for four values of the quantity $`\alpha `$. We have used the same values for the physical parameters as those of the experiments described in haavasoja .

Summarizing, it has been illustrated that the electromagnetic response of a superlattice of 2DEG free of impurities is able to transform an added distribution of impurities or defects in a set of charge reservoirs. The excess charge over that required by an integral filling of Landau levels is then accumulated in the impurities. It can be understood from the present analysis, that it is the dynamically acquired capacity of accumulating charge of the impurities the main element to account for this effect. A next important step of the present study would be to investigate a similar model but in the case of planar samples. Analogous results can be expected in this case. The main additional complication seems to be the determination of the fields associated to a single defect, since that for that situation these fields spray out in the 3D space. An additional task for this planar case, would be the inclusion of the temperature. We expect this study to provide a foundation of the successful phenomenological model of Ingraham and Wilkes ingraham . In addition, the present discussion can also be viewed as giving a microscopic explanation of the model of T. Toyoda et al toyoda . These authors assumed the existence of a kind of particle reservoir being in equilibrium with the 2DEG and with a limited capacity to account for the plateau widths found in experiments. The fact that the total energy (11) becomes greater than the energy of the homogeneous magnetic field distribution can be expected to play the role of the limiting capacity stopping the particle accumulation and accounting for the plateau widths.

We acknowledge, the AS ICTP Associate and Federation Schemes for the helpful support in the developing of this work.Our recognition is also expressed to R. Guevara for his participation in conceiving the idea of article and to Profs. N.H. March and G. Thomson for their very valuable comments at ASICTP .


text:
# Inelastic X-ray scattering in correlated (Mott) insulators.

## Abstract

We calculate the inelastic light scattering from X-rays, which allows the photon to transfer both energy and momentum to the strongly correlated charge excitations. We find that the charge transfer peak and the low energy peak both broaden and disperse through the Brillouin zone similar to what is seen in experiments in materials like Ca2CuO2Cl2.

The dynamics of electrons in strongly correlated systems is far from well-understood. In a Mott insulator, correlations split a single band into a lower and an upper Hubbard band separated by a Mott gap. Many experimental probes have focused attention on exploring the detailed nature of the lower Hubbard band from which electrons may be excited using angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) for example, but the structure and symmetry of the upper Hubbard band and the relaxational dynamics of electrons populated into it remains largely unexplored.

Inelastic X-ray scatteringreview-xray  has attempted to address this issue on a number of correlated insulators such as La2CuO4 and Sr2CuO2Cl2 abbamonte , Ca2CuO2Cl2Hasan2000 , NaV2O5Na , Nd2CuO4Nd , and 1-D insulators Sr2CuO3 and Sr2CuO2Hasan2002 . The measured signal is resonantly enhanced by tuning the incident photon energy to lie near the Cu $`K`$ or V $`L_3`$ edge. The measurements have revealed remarkably similar characteristics as a function of photon energy loss: (1) the presence of a large, sharp and relatively dispersionless peak centered around a few eVs, and (2) the development of a low energy peak dispersive towards higher frequencies for photon momentum transfers from the Brillouin zone (BZ) center along either the BZ edge or diagonal. Example of the data taken on Ca2CuO2Cl2Hasan2000  is shown in Figure 1. The high energy peak has been associated with photon-induced charge transfer between orbitals of different atomsNa  or different orbitals of the same atomHasan2000 ; Hasan2002 , while the low frequency peak has been associated with a transition from the lower to upper Hubbard band across an effective Mott gapHasan2000 ; Hasan2002 ; Na  and a $`q`$-dependence of the Mott gap has been inferredabbamonte . However it does not seem obvious why an excitation across a Mott gap would show dispersion given that the physics of the Mott transition is highly local in character.

Theoretical calculations on inelastic X-ray scattering have to our knowledge been limited to energy-band model calculations and exact diagonalization studies of small clustersreview-xray . While energy-band calculations might be appropriate for ground state properties of weakly correlated systems they do not adequately address the role of intra-atomic electron correlations which crucially affect properties of the excitation spectra of strongly correlated systems. Exact diagonalization studies of small clustersHasan2000 ; 1D  largely focuses on the energy separation between the states excitable by the X-rays such as excitons, and suffers the limitation that the lineshape of the calculated spectra depend sensitively on cluster size due to finite size effects on electron dynamics. Thus it is clearly of interest for formulate a theory for inelastic X-ray scattering which does not suffer from cluster-size effects and is able to properly account for intra-atomic electron correlations.

Two important features of the experimental data have yet to be clarified. First, the selection rules coming from the different orientations of the polarization directions of the incoming and outgoing photons as well as the direction of their scattered momenta have not been used to determine the symmetry of the upper Hubbard band, for example. These selection rules have led to intense investigation of the dynamics of electrons in strongly correlated systems like the high temperature superconductors to determine information about charge dynamics on regions of the BZ or the symmetry of the order parameter in the superconducting statereview . Secondly, the mechanisms and/or pathways of electronic relaxation revealed by inelastic X-ray scattering have yet to be exploited. More precisely, besides the magnitude of the matrix elements coupling the conduction band to the excited states via the photon vector potential, the way in which the X-ray induced charge imbalance relaxes has remain largely unexplored. Inelastic X-ray scattering affords an open window to investigate the symmetry and pathway of charge dynamics in strongly correlated systems. This is the topic of this paper.

We choose to focus attention on non-resonant X-ray scattering, or scattering in which the frequency dependence of the incoming or outgoing photons can be individually neglected and only the frequency shift $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\omega _i\omega _s`$ enters, where $`\omega _{i,s}`$ denotes incident, scattered X-ray energies, respectively. This certainly means that we have lost the ability to make quantitative predictions concerning the overall intensity of the scattering and we cannot comment on lineshape changes induced by varying the incident photon frequency. However our goal is to evaluate inelastic X-ray scattering in a model in which the correlations can be handled exactly - the Falicov-Kimball model in infinite dimensions - to determine which features emerge from the strong correlations.

The Falicov-Kimball model, which has been used to describe a variety of phenomenon in binary alloysFK , contains itinerant band electrons and localized electrons, in which the band electrons can hop with amplitude $`t^{}`$ between nearest neighbors and interact via a screened Coulomb interaction $`U`$ with the localized electrons:

$$H=\frac{t^{}}{2\sqrt{d}}\underset{i,j}{}c_i^{}c_j+E_f\underset{i}{}w_i\mu \underset{i}{}c_i^{}c_i+U\underset{i}{}c_i^{}c_iw_i,$$
(1)
where $`c_i^{},c_i`$ is the spinless conduction electron creation (annihilation) operator at site $`i`$ and $`w_i=0`$ or 1 is a classical variable of the localized electron number at site $`i`$. $`E_F`$ and $`\mu `$ control the filling of the localized and conduction electrons, respectively. This is solved by dynamical mean field theory as described in detail in Ref. brandt\_mielsch , where the reader is referred to for details.

In this single band model with energy $`ϵ(𝐤)`$, the inelastic X-ray response is given formally by an effective density-density correlation function $`S(𝐪,\omega )=\frac{1}{\pi }[1+n(\omega )]\chi ^{\prime \prime }(𝐪,\omega )`$ with

$$\chi (𝐪,\omega )=[\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐪),\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐪)]_{(\omega )}$$
(2)
formed with an “effective” density operator given by

$$\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐪)=\underset{𝐤,\sigma }{}\gamma _a(𝐤)c_\sigma ^{}(𝐤+𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐})c_\sigma (𝐤𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐}).$$
(3)
The strength of the scattering $`\gamma _a`$ is determined by the curvature of the band as

$$\gamma _a(𝐤)=\underset{\alpha ,\beta }{}e_\alpha ^s\frac{^2ϵ(𝐤)}{k_\alpha k_\beta }e_\beta ^i.$$
(4)
Here $`𝐞^{𝐢,𝐬}`$ denote the incident, scattered X-ray polarization vectors, respectively, and we have chosen units $`k_B=c=\mathrm{}=1`$ and have set the hypercubic lattice constant equal to 1. We can classify the scattering amplitudes by point group symmetry operations. If we choose $`e^i=(1,1,1,\mathrm{})`$ and $`e^s=(1,1,1,1,\mathrm{})`$, then we have the $`B_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ sector, while $`e^i=e^s=(1,1,1,\mathrm{})`$ projects out the $`A_{1g}`$ sector since the $`B_{2g}`$ component is identically zero in our model due to the inclusion of only nearest-neighbor hopping. We thus can cast the scattering amplitudes in a simple form: $`\gamma _{A_{1\mathrm{g}}}(\text{k})=ϵ(\text{k})`$ and $`\gamma _{B_{1\mathrm{g}}}(\text{k})=t^{}_{j=1}^{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{cos}\text{k}_j(1)^j/\sqrt{d}`$.

The Dyson equation for the density-density correlation function takes the form given in Fig. 2. Note that there are two coupled equations illustrated in Figs. 2 (a) and (b); these equations differ by the number of $`\gamma _a`$ factors in them. The irreducible vertex function $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the dynamical charge vertex charge\_vertex  which takes the form

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(i\omega _m,i\omega _n;i\nu _{l0})=\delta _{mn}\frac{1}{T}\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_m\mathrm{\Sigma }_{m+l}}{G_mG_{m+l}}.$$
(5)
on the imaginary axis \[$`i\omega _m=i\pi T(2m+1)`$ is the Fermionic Matsubara frequency and $`i\nu _l=2i\pi Tl`$ is the Bosonic Matsubara frequency\]. Here $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_m=\mathrm{\Sigma }(i\omega _m)`$ is the local self energy on the imaginary axis and $`G_m=G(i\omega _m)`$ is the local Green’s function on the imaginary axis. If the scattering amplitude $`\gamma `$ does not have a projection onto the full symmetry of the lattice, then there are no vertex corrections from the local dynamical charge vertex khurana .

A straightforward calculation, shows that the $`B_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ response has no vertex corrections on the zone diagonal $`\text{q}=(q,q,q,q,\mathrm{})`$. Hence, the $`B_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ response is the bare bubble:

$`\chi _{B_{1\mathrm{g}}}(\text{q},\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}d\omega \{f(\omega )\chi _0(\omega ;X,\nu )f(\omega +\nu )`$
$`\times `$ $`\chi _0^{}(\omega ;X,\nu )[f(\omega )f(\omega +\nu )]\stackrel{~}{\chi }_0(\omega ;X,\nu )\}`$
with

$`\chi _0(\omega ;X,\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ϵ\rho (ϵ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\omega +\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1X^2}}}`$ (7)
$`\times `$ $`F_{\mathrm{}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\omega +\nu +\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega +\nu )Xϵ}{\sqrt{1X^2}}}\right),`$ (8)
and

$`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_0(\omega ;X,\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ϵ\rho (ϵ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\omega +\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }^{}(\omega )ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1X^2}}}`$ (9)
$`\times `$ $`F_{\mathrm{}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\omega +\nu +\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega +\nu )Xϵ}{\sqrt{1X^2}}}\right).`$ (10)
Here we have used the following notation: $`f(\omega )=1/[1+\mathrm{exp}(\omega )]`$ is the Fermi-Dirac distribution, $`\rho (ϵ)=\mathrm{exp}(ϵ^2)/\sqrt{\pi }`$ is the noninteracting density of states; $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )`$ is the local self energy on the real axis; $`X=lim_d\mathrm{}_i\mathrm{cos}q_i/d=\mathrm{cos}(q)`$ for the zone-diagonal wavevector $`\text{q}=(q,q,q,\mathrm{},q)`$; and $`F_{\mathrm{}}(z)=𝑑ϵ\rho (ϵ)/(zϵ)`$ is the Hilbert transform of the noninteracting density of states. Techniques for finding the self energy brandt\_mielsch  have appeared elsewhere.

The $`A_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ response everywhere and the $`B_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ response off of the zone diagonal, do have vertex corrections. The calculation of each response function is straightforward, but tedious. One needs to first solve the coupled equations depicted in Fig. 2 on the imaginary axis and then perform the analytic continuation as in the Raman scattering case raman\_long . The end result is cumbersome and will be presented in a longer paper.

The results for a correlated insulator $`U=4t^{}`$ at different temperatures are shown in Figs. 3 and 4 for $`B_{1g}`$ and $`A_{1g}`$ inelastic X-ray scattering, respectively, as a function of transfered energy for different momentum transfers throughout the BZ measured by the factor $`X`$. Panel (a) for Figs. 3 and 4 refer to scattering along the zone diagonal $`X=\mathrm{cos}q`$ for the zone-diagonal wavevector $`\text{q}=(q,q,q,\mathrm{},q)`$, and panel (b) refer to scattering along the zone edge \[here we have $`\text{q}=(q,0,q,0,\mathrm{},q,0)`$ for $`1X=(1+\mathrm{cos}q)/20`$ and $`\text{q}=(\pi ,q,\pi ,q,\mathrm{},\pi ,q)`$ for $`0X=(1+\mathrm{cos}q)/21`$ The curves have been shifted vertically for clarity. The lowest set of curves $`X=1`$ correspond to Raman scattering with optical photons raman\_long . The main qualitative feature in both Figures are the presence of a small, dispersive low-energy peak for frequencies $`t^{}`$ and a large, dispersionless charge-transfer peak $`U`$. While the charge-transfer peak remains relatively robust with increasing temperature, the low energy peak gains intensity from zero as temperature is increased. In particular all momenta show the development of low-energy spectral weight as $`T`$ increases and there is a non-dispersive isosbestic point - a frequency at which the spectra are temperature independent - around $`U/2`$. The high energy peak reflects the energy scale for excitations across the Mott gap and is relatively dispersionless due to the local nature of the correlations. In contrast the low energy feature is a consequence thermally generated double occupancies which open up a low energy band up to energies $`t^{}`$ able to scatter X-rays. For decreasing temperature the low energy intensity disappears and only scattering across the Mott gap remains.

The charge-transfer peak is sharp near the BZ center ($`X=1`$), but broadens for momentum transfers approaching the BZ corner $`X=1`$, more so for the $`B_{1g}`$ channel than for $`A_{1g}`$. In fact $`A_{1g}`$ and $`B_{1g}`$ are identical at the $`(\pi ,\pi ,\mathrm{},\pi )`$ point $`X=1`$ due to the local approximation. Any variation in the signal at the zone corner in different symmetry channels must be due to nonlocal many-body correlations.

An important difference is that the $`A_{1\mathrm{g}}`$ results have no low-energy spectral weight for $`\text{q}=0`$, corresponding to inelastic Raman scatteringraman\_long . The vertex corrections remove all remnants of the low-energy response here, but it enters for any finite value of q. For an unpolarized measurement, the X-ray response is a superposition of the $`B_{1g}`$ and $`A_{1g}`$ spectra.

We plot the behavior of the peak position and peak width (full-width at half maximum) for both the low-energy peak and the charge-transfer peak for both channels in Fig. 5. One can see more clearly that the low-energy peak has a width larger than its energy for both channels and for the $`A_{1g}`$ channel follows the behavior of the corresponding $`B_{1g}`$ feature away from the zone center. The charge transfer peak on the other hand is well defined for both channels. The only dispersive feature of the charge-transfer peak is the width of the $`B_{1g}`$ peak.

Referring back to the experimental data shown in Fig. 1, it is tempting to associate the relatively dispersionless high energy peak with an excitation across a charge-transfer gap and the broad low energy peak with the dispersive feature generated from double occupancies. However the experimental data is not yet complete as the polarization and temperature dependence have not been measured. Our theory would predict, if this interpretation were correct, that the low energy feature would decrease in intensity as temperature is lowered. Moreover a polarization-dependent measurement could perhaps deconvolve the high-energy peak into two separate peaks of $`A_{1g}`$ and $`B_{1g}`$ symmetry, and would also be able to separate different behavior of the low energy peak near the zone center. Thus we believe it would be quite interesting to examine inelastic X-ray scattering at well-controlled temperatures and with polarizers for the incident and scattered light. We believe that a number of new and interesting features of charge excitations in correlated systems are likely to emerge if this can be accomplished.

We would like to thank M. Z. Hasan and Z.-X. Shen for sharing their experimental data with us and thank them for valuable discussions. J.K.F. acknowledges support from the NSF under grant number DMR-9973225. T.P.D. acknowledges support by NSERC.