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# Ferromagnetic Polarons in Manganites

## I Introduction

The discovery of “colossal” magnetoresistance (CMR)  together with its many unusual properties has received considerable attention lately. The materials that exhibit this phenomenon are under much experimental investigation due to their technological applications. These perovskites are ferromagnetic oxides of the form A1-xBxMnO3 (where A=La,Pr,Nd; B=Sr,Ca,Ba,Pb) . Experiments have revealed very rich phase diagrams interpreted in terms of ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, canted, polaronic, and inhomogeneous phases. Charge ordered phases have also been found in these compounds.

The phase diagram, as a function of concentration $`x`$, temperature, magnetic field, or magnitude of the relation between super-exchange and hopping interactions is not yet completely understood for the different compounds. A clear asymmetry is observed between hole ($`x<0.5`$) and electron doped ($`x>0.5`$) regimes. A metallic ferromagnetic phase can be reached by hole doping of the parent compound LaMnO3, by substituting La for divalent alkalis, Pb, or by stoichiometry changes. On the other side, electron doped systems exhibit charge ordering or quasi-ordering and antiferromagnetism.

In the hole doped perovskites, the strong correlation between itinerant carriers and localized spins gives rise to competing magnetic interactions. This competing interactions plus the effects of disorder and lattice degrees of freedom, could give rise to inhomogeneities of varying scale: microscopic polarons, mesoscopic droplets or macroscopic phase separation. A number of experimental data indicating the different scales in the hole doped regime can be found in Refs. for polarons,  for droplets and  for phase separation.

Much less is known about the electron doped compounds. This lack of initial interest can be explained by the fact that manganites such as Bi0.25Ca0.75MnO3 or A0.25Ca0.75MnO3 are characterized by charge ordering phenomena and do not exhibit magnetoresistive effects. However the recent discovery of new ferromagnetic electron doped manganites, Ca1-xBxMnO3 and Ca1-xBixMnO3 for $`x=0.10`$ , has increased the interest for those compounds since it opens the possibility of magnetoresistance effects also in this concentration limit. Ca0.9Bi0.1MnO3 and Ca0.9Eu0.1MnO3 exhibit indeed negative magnetoresistance but with a much smaller magnitude than hole doped manganites. Long range charge ordering has recently been observed with electron diffraction in La1-xCaxMnO3 ($`x>0.5`$) . The magnetic susceptibility has a pronounced inflection at the charge ordering temperature, resembling that associated with a conventional long range antiferromagnetic transition. Neutron scattering measurements in Bi1-xCaxMnO3 ($`0.74<x<0.82`$)  indicate that charge ordering is accompanied by a structural transition and antiferromagnetic long range order indeed develops at lower temperature. The nature of spin fluctuations changes from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic at the charge ordering transition . Optical reflectivity studies of the same compound for $`T_{co}>T>T_N`$ have revealed the coexistence of a polaron response and a charge-gap-like structure in the optical response . This two phases behavior is characterized by domains of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spin correlations. Magnetization and resistivity measurements in Ca1-xSmxMnO3 for $`0<x<0.12`$ are interpreted in terms of the existence of a cluster glass metallic state below some critical temperature and demonstrate the lack of true ferromagnetism in these electron doped manganites .

From the theoretical point of view, the pioneering work of de Gennes  proposed a canted phase to resolve the competition between the ferromagnetic double-exchange (DE) interaction introduced by the presence of itinerant holes and the super-exchange (SE) interaction. Recently, several contributions to this problem have been reported. Arovas and Guinea , studied this problem using a Schwinger boson formalism to obtain a phase diagram showing several homogeneous phases and pointing out that phase separation replaces the canted phase in a large region. Indeed phase separation appears in several numerical treatments of the problem . In other analytical treatments, more adequate to treat local instabilities, non-saturated local magnetization states have appeared at zero temperature . M. Yu. Kagan et. al. have studied the stability of the canted phases against the formation of large ferromagnetic ’droplets’ containing several particles and they conclude that the formation of droplets is favored in the ground state. The variety of results obtained from the different approaches points to the need of clarifying the picture and testing the results.

The diversity of results in the phase diagram is connected to the two dominant magnetic interactions acting in these systems: double exchange arising from the eg orbitals and antiferromagnetic superexchange due mainly to half-filled tg orbitals. These competing interactions could give rise to textures of different scales according to the relation between them.

Here we study a model for diluted compounds that characterizes them in terms of a single parameter: the relation between superexchange and hopping energies. In fact the ionic radii of the intervening dopants varies substantially the hopping matrix element through the variation of the Mn-0-Mn angle as discussed in Ref..

In this work, we find the low energy quasiparticles and characterize their structure and dispersion relation in the low concentration limit. These quasiparticles correspond to the electron followed by a ferromagnetic local distortion (ferromagnetic polaron) in the antiferromagnetic (AF) background. The dispersion relation is dominated by $`kk+\pi `$ scattering due to the presence of AF order. In order to make a connection with transport properties, we study the tendency to localization of these polarons in the presence of impurities and magnetic field.

We also study the interaction between the quasiparticles. For two particles, the profile of each quasiparticle is practically the same as the one obtained for only one particle. The effective magnetic interaction between these quasiparticles is antiferromagnetic for large values of $`K`$ and becomes ferromagnetic when the size of the polarons increase over some critical value. This change in the spin-spin correlation is followed by a change in the charge-charge interaction. If the size of the ferromagnetic distortion induced by one particle is larger than some critical value the other particle could share the same distortion giving rise to a bipolaronic bounded state.

We include diagonal disorder in the two particles problem in order to determine how this affects the effective interactions between the polarons. We find that randomness in diagonal energies induce a distribution of effective interactions between localized polarons which can be ferro or antiferromagnetic.

## II The model

To render evident the nature of the ground state, we resort to the Lanczos method, which is free from approximations. The Hamiltonian is simplified to a single orbital per site, no lattice effects are considered, and we have to reduce to one dimensional chains. However our results provide a simple picture that, we presume, can put to test the dilute limit of electron doped systems. In these systems, the limitations of the model Hamiltonian may not be as stringent as in the hole doped systems for the following reasons: a) the lattice structure is more symmetric so Jahn Teller distortions should play a less important role (this observation is consistent with the fact that hole doped manganites La1-xCaxMnO3 are insulating for low concentrations of dopant while electron doped ones Ca1-xSmxMnO3 are semi-metallic for similar values of $`x`$ ); b) the large in-site Coulomb repulsion inhibits double occupation so that it may be possible to describe the physics by the use of a single effective orbital; c) the antiferromagnetic structure of two inter-penetrating lattices can be properly described in one dimension.

In order to describe the manganites we consider two degrees of freedom: localized spins that represent the $`t_{2g}`$ electrons at the Mn sites, and itinerant electrons that hop from $`e_{2g}`$ Mn orbitals to nearest neighbor $`e_{2g}`$ orbitals. The model Hamiltonian includes Hund coupling $`(J_h)`$ between localized and itinerant electrons, an antiferromagnetic superexchange interaction between localized spins $`(K)`$, a hopping term of strength $`t`$ which we will use as energy unit hereafter and an on site ($`U`$) and nearest neighbor ($`V`$) Coulomb repulsions:

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`J_h{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}𝐒_i\sigma _i+K{\displaystyle \underset{<i,j>}{}}𝐒_i𝐒_j`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{<i,j>,\sigma }{}}t_{ij}(c_{i\sigma }^+c_{j\sigma }+h.c.)`$
$`+V{\displaystyle \underset{<i,j>}{}}n_in_j+U{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}n_in_i`$
where $`n_{i,\sigma }=`$ $`c_{i\sigma }^+`$ $`c_{i\sigma }`$ ($`n_i=n_i+n_i`$), and $`c_{i\sigma }^+,`$ $`c_{i\sigma }`$ creates and destroys an itinerant electron with spin $`\sigma `$ at site $`i`$, respectively.  $`𝐒_i`$ and $`\sigma _i`$ are the localized and itinerant spin 1/2 operators at site $`i`$, respectively. In order to reduce the Hilbert space we take S =1/2 for the localized spins instead of S =3/2. It has been shown numerically that, in the absence of antiferromagnetic coupling, the results for S =3/2 and 1/2 are qualitatively similar. In the absence of AF coupling the Hamiltonian reduces to the model called Ferromagnetic Kondo Lattice (FKL) studied with different numerical methods . The reported phase diagram is very similar for dimensions D=1, 2, 3 and even in infinite dimension showing a ferromagnetic phase for large $`J_h/t`$ . In the low electron concentration limit ($`x1`$) this ferromagnetic phase is obtained for any value of $`J_h`$. In this limit the AF super-exchange coupling between localized spins ($`K`$) is needed to get the observed AF phase. This model has been studied with Monte Carlo method for classical spins and finite concentration . Recently some results have also been obtained for a very small value of $`K/t`$ ($`K/t=0.05`$). In this paper we focus on the dilute limit considering the cases of one and two added electrons. Preliminary results have been reported in reference .

In the following we will concentrate on the case $`U=V=0`$, unless stated otherwise. For the manganites, it is believed that the coupling $`J_h`$ is large. However there are some observations in LaMnO3 and CaMnO3 which indicate that $`J_h`$ could be not so large. Quoted values refer to $`J_h=1eV`$ from optical conductivity data  and bandwidth $`W=1eV`$ . In our one dimensional counterpart model this would mean $`J_h=4t`$. Band structure calculations  also indicate $`J_h=1eV`$. A larger value of $`J_h`$ is inferred from scanning tunneling spectroscopy . Recent optical conductivity for CaMnO3 gives $`1.7eV`$ , and $`2eV`$ . However $`W`$ is also larger in the ferromagnetic. Sarma et. al.  indicate $`W=4eV`$ $`(t=0.3eV)`$, giving $`Jh/W=1/2`$. In one dimension this would correspond to $`J_h=2t`$. In all cases $`U=810eV>>J_h`$. For that reasons we will keep the model general considering both the strong coupling $`(J_h10eV)`$ and weak coupling $`(J_h1eV)`$regimes.

## III One particle

In this section we investigate the homogeneity of the solutions for different values of $`K/t`$. To this end we calculate the ground state with one itinerant $`e_{2g}`$ electron added, for chains of different sizes up to $`N=20`$. For large values of $`J_h`$, the particle modifies substantially the spin structure in its surroundings forming magnetic polarons. The distortions of the magnetic structure around the particle can be determined from correlation functions which mix charge and spin variables. In this way it is possible to distinguish between polaronic and non-polaronic regimes.

The quasiparticle character of this polaronic distortion becomes evident from the dispersion relation. The effective mass of the quasiparticle is inversely proportional to the bandwidth. In this way it is possible to study the variation of the effective mass as a function of the parameters.

By lowering the diagonal energy in one site it is possible to localize the polaron. We study the dependence of the localization length and the spin distortion on the effective mass and on an external magnetic field.

The correlations functions of this section have been calculated using periodic boundary conditions (PBC).

### A Polaron profile

In order to determine the polaron profile we calculate $`<n_iS_jS_{j+1}>`$ for the ground state. Because of translation symmetry this correlation function depends only on $`\left|ij\right|`$. The results for different values of $`K/t`$ and $`J_h=10t`$ are shown in Fig.1$`(a)`$ where we plot $`N<n_0S_jS_{j+1}>`$ vs $`j`$, where $`N`$ is the number of sites. As it can be seen in Fig.1, for large $`j`$ this correlation function takes a value very close to the one obtained from the Bethe ansatz solution of the Heisenberg chain, $`<S_jS_{j+1}>0.443`$. The extension and the magnitude of the spin distortion around the particle increases as $`K/t`$ decreases. For large values of $`K/t`$, the background of localized spins remains in a $`S=0`$ total spin state although it presents distortion in the spin-spin correlation function due to the itinerant particle. By decreasing $`K/t`$ the total spin increases to $`S=1`$ (this occurs for $`K/t`$ $`0.3`$ in the case of 1(a) for $`J_h/t=10`$) and higher values indicating a net polarization of the localized spins. In this case, we can refer to a polaronic regime.

In Fig.1(b), we show the same correlation function for $`J_h=t`$. For this value of $`J_h`$ we are already in the weak coupling limit where the spin distortion is almost null for any value of $`K/t`$ (notice the change in the vertical axis scale). The profile of the distortion in this case is, in fact, very similar to the one obtained in the strong coupling limit ($`J_h10t`$) for large values of $`K/t.`$ The polaronic regime appears, in this case, for much lower values of $`K/t`$.

The oscillations observed in the curve corresponding to $`K=0.3`$ are also observed for larger values of $`K`$. They are a consequence of the weakening of the antiferromagnetic links around the charge position which produce a sort of local spin dimerization. Because of the competence between double-exchange and super-exchange, the effective antiferromagnetic interaction between the site where the particle is and the nearest neighbor one is weakened ($`n_0S_0S_1>0.443`$). The next spin correlation ($`n_0S_1S_2`$) may be even stronger than in the undoped case ($`n_0S_1S_2<0.443`$) due to this weakening. This forces the next link ($`n_0S_2S_3>0.443`$) to be weaker, and the same kind of reasoning can be applied to the rest. This effect explains the oscillations of $`n_0S_jS_{j+1}`$ as a function of $`j`$ for large values of $`K/t`$. To prove this point we show in the inset the nearest neighbors spin-spin correlation functions for a Heisenberg chain of the same size where the link between site zero and one is a factor of two smaller than the rest.

In Fig.2$`(b)`$ we show the variation of the polaron profile as a function of $`J_h`$, for $`K/t=0.1`$. In this way it is possible to see the transition from non-polaronic (weak coupling) to polaronic (strong coupling ) regime.

### B Dispersion relation

As K decreases, it is difficult to find an adequate approximation to describe the large polaronic distortion. In order to obtain the effective mass of these polarons, we investigate the dispersion relation for charge excitations. To this end we calculate the lowest energy state for different values of the momentum $`k=2\pi n/N`$ within the subspace where the total spin is that of the ground state. In Fig.2 from Ref. we show the dispersion relation scaled to the thermodynamic limit for $`K=3`$, $`J_h=100`$; $`K=1`$, $`J_h=10`$; and $`K=0.3`$, $`J_h=10`$.

We start analyzing the dynamics in the regime where $`(J_h>>K>>t).`$ In this case, the charge moves as a spin one $`(𝚺)`$. The effective hopping resulting from the projection of the hopping term onto the reduced $`S=1`$ Hilbert space is: $`tP_{ij}(𝚺_i𝐒_j+1/2)`$, where $`P_{ij}`$ is the permutation operator between sites $`i`$ and $`j`$. We can picture the movement of the particle, in this limit, as going from a state $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ to an intermediate state $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $`0`$ $``$ $``$, and finally to $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $``$ $`,`$where $``$ $`(0)`$ represents the $`S_z=+1(0)`$ components of the spin $`S=1`$. Thus, in order to move, the charge has to hop to the nearest neighbor, via a spin flip process, through states that differ in energy by $`\mathrm{\Delta }K/2.`$ It can be easily verified that the effective hopping of this process is equal to $`t_{ef}=t/\sqrt{2}.`$ The dispersion relation given by this dynamics is: $`\mathrm{\Delta }/2\pm \sqrt{(\mathrm{\Delta }/2)^2+4t_{ef}^2\mathrm{cos}^2(k)\text{ }}`$. The expression corresponding to the lower band fits well the numerical results for $`K=3`$ and $`J_h=100`$ as shown in Fig.2 from Ref. . This expression is valid in general for a particle moving in an antiferromagnetic background where scattering between $`k`$ and $`k+\pi `$ states dominates the dynamics of the particle.

In Fig.3 we show the scaling of the energy difference between $`k`$ and $`k+\pi `$ states. This difference must tend to zero as $`N`$ tends to infinity due to the reasons explained above. In this way we can check the quality of the scaling used to calculate the points in Fig.2 from Ref.. The linear extrapolation goes to zero with an error lower than $`5\times 10^3`$ for the three values of $`K/t`$ considered.

In the case $`K>>J_h>>t`$ the spin distortion can be neglected and the particle propagates in an antiferromagnetic lattice. The Hund interaction alternates the site energy of the propagating particle so that the difference between the two sublattices is given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }=J_h(<\sigma _jS_{j+1}><\sigma _jS_j>)J_h(<S_jS_{j+1}><\sigma _jS_j>)`$ where we approximate $`<\sigma _jS_j>1/4`$ its value at the triplet state, and $`<\sigma _jS_{j+1}>`$ $`<S_jS_{j+1}>=\mathrm{ln}21/4`$, the Bethe ansatz value. Using these values we find $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.19J_h.`$ In this case $`t_{ef}`$ is equal to $`t.`$

When $`J_h>>tK,`$ the magnetic distortion around the charge is large and the effective hopping is dominated by the overlap between the magnetic distortions about the nearest neighbors sites. This last effect dominates the polaron effective mass. Therefore, the mass of polarons increases when $`K`$ decreases, as in Fig.2 from , where $`t_{ef}`$ decreases from 0.75 for $`K=1`$ to 0.23 for $`K=0.3`$, showing that the spin distortion around the charge increases in magnitude and extension when $`K`$ decreases.

The bandwidth calculated for several values of $`K`$ (Fig. 3 of Ref.) clearly shows two regimes: $`K<<t`$ and $`K>>t`$. The first corresponds to a large magnetic distortion and the second corresponds to a smaller one according to Fig.1. The bandwidth goes to zero with $`K`$ indicating that the effective mass of the polaron increases continuously by decreasing $`K`$. When $`K`$ is equal to zero the size of the ferromagnetic distortion becomes infinite and we can not consider any more this distortion as part of the quasiparticle structure. The quasiparticle scenario is no longer valid (it is not possible to associate a magnetic distortion to the electron since the magnetic distortion is infinite). In this limit, the electron moves in a ferromagnetic background freely and thus generates a bandwidth equal to the tight-binding $`4t`$. In our case, since we have considered finite systems, this happens for a small, but not zero, value of $`K`$. This regime was not shown in Fig. 3 of Ref. .

### C Localization

To test how robust the polaronic description is, we pin the polaron by changing in $`ϵ_0`$ the diagonal energy at site zero. This may be relevant to the real materials since the doping process necessarily introduces some disorder. This always localizes the particle in a linear chain, but the localization length should be very different for different effective masses. A small $`ϵ_0`$ localizes much more the polaron for low values of $`K`$ than for larger ones. This is shown in Fig.4$`(a)`$ where we plot $`<n_i>`$ around site zero for different values of $`K`$, while fixing $`J_h=10t`$ and $`ϵ_0=0.05`$. We also show in Fig.4(b) the correlation function $`<n_0S_jS_{j+1}>`$ in order to determine the magnetic distortion associated with each localized state. While charge localization does not change very much for $`K`$ between 0.02 and 0.1, the magnetic distortion increases monotonically by decreasing $`K`$. To understand this point is useful to take the limit $`K/t=0`$ and then slowly increment $`K/t`$. For $`K/t=0`$, the system is a fully polarized ferromagnet and thus the ferromagnetic distortion is infinite. In this case, however, the localization length is finite, although the largest possible. As $`K/t`$ increases the magnetic distortion will shrink, without affecting the localization length, at least until they are comparable. In this regime the magnetic distortion is decreasing while the localization length is not changing. The difference between the localization and the magnetic distortion lengths depends on the value of $`K`$ and $`ϵ_0`$, and determines the limit of validity of the quasiparticle concept.

For large values of $`K`$ the polaronic distortion is very small and the localization length does not change substantially because the effective mass of the quasiparticle is similar to the free mass. When $`K`$ becomes smaller the localization length starts to decrease as a consequence of the increase of the effective mass. This behavior remains up to some value of $`K`$ where the size of the magnetic distortion is similar to the localization length. If we further decrease the value of $`K`$ then the localization length starts to increase up to the value corresponding to the free case for $`K<<`$ $`ϵ_0`$, and we loose the quasiparticle picture.

In Figs.5$`(a)`$ and $`(b)`$ we show the same as in Fig.4 but for the weak coupling regime ($`J_h=t`$). In this case the localization length is always larger than in the strong coupling regime as expected. The size of the magnetic distortion is also smaller.

It is interesting to note the differences in the profile of the magnetic distortion between the localized case (Fig.4(a)) and the homogeneous case (Fig.1(a)). In the localized case the magnetic distortion is abrupt defining the polaron limits quite sharply (one could think of a step shape). In the non-localized case the polaron profile decays more continuously defocusing the polaron limits (one could think of an exponential-like shape).

In Fig 8$`(a)`$, we show the change in the values of $`<n_i>`$ for different magnetic fields in the strong coupling regime ($`J_h=10t`$ and $`K=0.1t`$). $`S_z`$ increases by one between two successive values of $`H`$ starting from $`S_z=2.5`$ for $`H=0`$. It can be seen that the localization of the polaron decreases with magnetic field as a consequence of increased effective hopping between nearest neighbors. A fact that may be important for the transport properties of these systems since it implies a negative magnetoresistive behavior for conductivity due to hopping between localized states. The size of the magnetic distortion relative to the background increases with the magnetic field (see Fig.6(b)). This could be due to the stronger effect of the magnetic field on the spins which are close to the boundary of the polaron. Those spins are forming weak links due to the competition between super and double exchange so they must have a larger susceptibility.

In Fig.7$`(a)`$ we show the effect of magnetic field on the localization for the weak coupling limit ($`J_h=1,K=0.1`$). It is clear from this figure that the magnetoresistive effect is very weak compared with the strong coupling limit. In addition, the size of the magnetic distortion is very small (Fig.7$`(b)`$) as expected for the weak coupling regime.

## IV Two particles

In this section we study the interaction between the quasiparticles. To this end we calculate the magnetic distortion induced by two itinerant electrons, as well as the binding energy and the charge-charge correlation function. In this way it is possible to discriminate if the effective interaction is attractive or repulsive.

To obtain closed shell conditions in the spinless limit ($`K/t=0`$ and $`J_h\mathrm{}`$) we have taken antiperiodic boundary conditions (APB). We have only used PBC for the calculation of binding energies because this quantity also involves the energy of one particle added, which has been calculated with PBC.

The charge-charge correlation function, $`n_0n_j`$ gives information about the character of the interaction between the polarons. This correlation function is shown in Fig.8 for a chain of 14 sites. The maximum always occurs for the largest possible distance between the particles, what could indicate a tendency towards repulsion. However in some cases this could just indicate that the size of the chain is similar or smaller than the mean separation between the two particles in a bound state. To discriminate between these two possibilities it is necessary to calculate the binding energy for different sizes of chains.

Fig.9$`(a)`$ shows the binding energy ($`E(2)+E(0)2E(1)`$) as a function of the inverse of the chain length, in the strong coupling limit. We find that, although up to the sizes we can compute the interaction is always repulsive for $`K0.1`$, the extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit seems to give a negative value, suggesting the possible existence of a bound state. When $`K`$ is low enough ($`K=0.05t`$) the binding energy is already negative for $`N12`$. The fact that the interaction is repulsive for chains smaller than 12 sites indicates that the mean separation of the bound pair is around six lattice parameters. In Fig.9(b) we show the weak coupling limit. Now for every value of $`K`$ we get a vanishing binding energy extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit. This reflects the importance of the double exchange in the dynamics of the electrons. By increasing the coupling the system seems to cross between a non-bounding regime into an attractive one.

In Fig.10 we show the profile of the magnetic distortion for different values of $`K`$ and for the maximum separation between the particles. As for the one particle case, the size and amplitude of the magnetic distortion increases as $`K`$ decrease giving rise to a strong polaronic regime for $`K0.1t0.2t`$. The two polarons are practically independent of each other, since their shape is essentially the same as in the single polaron regime described in the previous section (see Fig.1). If the size of each polaron becomes larger than some critical length, one would expect that the second particle added could gain some magnetic energy by sharing the distortion created by the first one. This mechanism is similar to the spin-bag idea proposed by Schrieffer to explain the attractive interaction giving rise to pairing in the high temperature superconductors. From this consideration, the existence of a bound state under some critical value of $`K`$ can be understood.

If the spin-bag picture is correct, the polarons must interact ferromagnetically when they form a bound state. This can be checked by calculating the total spin of the ground state and the spin-spin correlation between the charges. In Fig.11 we show spin-spin correlation as a function of distance when one particle is at site zero and the other one is at the longest distance in the chain (site 7 in a 14 sites chain). It is clear that, as $`K`$ decreases, the interaction between the two charges becomes more ferromagnetic. To confirm this result, in Fig.12, we show the spin-spin correlation function between the two particles from where the effective magnetic interaction between the two quasiparticles can be extracted. It is clear that this interaction evolves from a very small value for $`K=0.4`$ to the largest ferromagnetic value for $`K=0.1`$.

This change in the behavior of the interaction is also obtained in the charge-charge correlation function (Fig.8) where, for some critical value of $`K`$ between 0.1 and 0.05t, we observe a change in the variation of the intensity of the maximum with $`K`$. It increases with decreasing $`K`$ from 0.3 to 0.1 and then it decreases practically the same magnitude between $`K=0.1`$ and $`K=0.05`$.

We also studied the interaction between polarons in presence of disorder. As it is seen in Fig.4, lowering of the diagonal energy of one site not only pins the quasiparticle, but also changes its size. This change should induce a modification of the effective magnetic interaction between two pinned quasiparticles. This can be seen in Fig.13 where we show the spin-spin correlation between the two particles a function of distance and for different values of $`ϵ_0`$. The diagonal energy has been changed by $`ϵ_0`$ in both sites 0 and 7. The effective magnetic interaction evolves from ferromagnetic values for $`ϵ_0<0.1`$ to antiferromagnetic for $`ϵ_0>0.1`$. This can be easily understood from the reduction in the size of the polaron distortion which is induced by the increment of the pinning energy $`ϵ_0`$. As each particle is more localized, the overlap between polaronic distortions decrease. Each particle cannot see the magnetic distortion generated by the other and the effective magnetic interaction is dominated by the superexchange through the localized spins between the two polarons.

In Fig.14, we show the variation of the effective magnetic interaction between two pinned quasiparticles as a function of $`K`$. In this case we get a non-monotonic behavior. By decreasing $`K`$ from 0.5 to 0.2 the effective interaction becomes more ferromagnetic. But for $`K=0.1`$ this behavior changes drastically becoming antiferromagnetic when the particles are close to each other and ferromagnetic when each one is close to its pinning center. This indicates the formation of two well defined ferromagnetic distortions surrounding each center of pining with an antiferromagnetic effective interaction. For $`K=0.05`$ this effective interaction becomes ferromagnetic and we get a uniform ferromagnetic state (the size of the induced distortion is equal to the size of the system).

Localizing the particle reduces the overlap between polarons, the system becomes more inhomogeneous and the effective interaction between the polarons evolves from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic. For example, for $`K=0.1`$, $`S_0S_7n_0n_7`$ is positive with $`ϵ_0=0`$ (Fig.11) and becomes negative for $`ϵ_0=0.05`$ (Fig.14).

Finally we have studied how sensitive are the results to the inclusion of $`U`$ and $`V`$ in the strong coupling regime. We do not find any significative change in the physics due to the presence of these interactions. As we are studying the dilute limit, this interactions should not be so important as for higher concentrations. Even though, if both particles are at the same site, they must be in a singlet state due to the Pauli principle. This state has a very large energy ($`J_h`$) in the strong coupling limit ($`J_h=10`$) giving rise to a very small double occupation in the ground state. This explains the poor role of $`U`$. To explain the weak effect of $`V`$ it is useful to take a look at Fig.8 where it can be seen that the occupation of adjacent sites for the two particles is very small.

## V Conclusions

In summary, we have investigated the possibility of strong magnetic distortions induced by carriers in the ground state of the DE-SE model Hamiltonian. The model describes chains of localized spins coupled antiferromagnetically and interacting ferromagnetically with itinerant electrons. We have studied in detail the case with one and two electrons. Assuming the model adequately describes the physics of electron doped manganites, the results presented here point to a picture of these systems where heavy polarons dominate the magnetic and transport properties. Their masses depend strongly on the relation between the hopping energy and the antiferromagnetic superexchange interaction. Clearly, the doping itself will localize the polarons so that transport will result from hopping between pinned sites. Negative magnetoresistance should appear as a consequence of the decrease of the pinning energy with magnetic field.

We have done scaling on the binding energy of two polarons. Two regimes can be identified depending on the coupling ($`J_h`$). In the strong coupling case, although only for small values of $`K`$ we find a negative binding energy ($`K0.05`$ and $`N12`$), the scaling to the thermodynamic limit is negative for every $`K`$ we have studied, indicating the possible existence of a bound state. In the weak coupling case, for most values of $`K`$, the scaling to the thermodynamic limit is zero, and all values are positive. However, as the charge-charge correlation function (see Fig.8) is always peaked at the largest possible distance between the particles, it is necessary to confirm our scaling results in larger systems.

The existence of a bound state can be understood from the ferromagnetic distortion of the polarons. Below some critical value of $`K`$ this ferromagnetic distortions of two neighbor polarons overlap and the charge-charge interaction becomes attractive. This scheme resembles the spin-bag picture proposed by Schrieffer to explain the pairing mechanism in the High $`T_c`$ compounds. The effective magnetic interaction between polarons also changes from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic by decreasing the value of $`K`$.

We have also studied the effect of localization on the effective interaction between the quasiparticles. The effect of localization is not only to pin the quasiparticles but also to change the shape of the ferromagnetic distortion. As the shape and size of this distortion is clearly connected with the spin-spin and charge-charge effective interaction we get that the amount of disorder play a very relevant role in the low energy physics of these quasiparticles. Depending on the pining energies, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions could be generated. In real systems frustration induced by such competing interactions could give rise to spin glass behavior. In this way, the interplay between diagonal disorder and effective magnetic interactions between polarons could explain the cluster glass character of the metallic phase found by Maignan et. al.  in Ca1-xSmxMnO3 for $`0<x<0.12`$ .

Finally, we would like to point out that the order of oxygen vacancies in CaMnO3-δ makes real the possibility of one dimensional electron paths in these materials . We hope that our results will stimulate more experimental and theoretical investigations on the electron doped manganites.

Acknowledgments

Two of us (C.D.B. and J.E.) are supported by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). B. A. is partially supported by CONICET. M.A. gratefully acknowledges support by Universidad Nacional de Cuyo during his stay at Instituto Balseiro. We would also like to acknowledge support from the ’Fundacion Antorchas’ and the Program for scientific cooperation between France and Argentina ECOS-SECyT A97E05. This research is also supported by the Department of Energy under contract W-7405-ENG-36.


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# Vortex solitons — Mass, Energy and Angular momentum bunching in relativistic electron-positron plasmas

## I Introduction

It is widely believed that the currently observed large-scale structure of the universe (the clusters and superclusters of galaxies) grew gravitationally out of small density fluctuations ref-1 . The imprint of this density variation in early universe was left on the cosmic microwave background radiation in the form of spatial temperature fluctuations. The gravitational origin, however, can be only a part of the story; the gravity can enhance, but it can not produce these fluctuations. The quest for the physical process(es) which produced the initial matter-density fluctuations, has led to the emergence of the following two leading mechanisms: inflation, and topological defects defects ; DBM-93 . Of these the former is, perhaps, the most thoroughly investigated. According to this mechanism there exists, in the evolution of the universe, an early inflationary period in which the universe expands so rapidly (exponentially) that quantum fluctuations get trapped in the expansion. By the end of the inflation, therefore, small irregularities covering a wide range of length-scales permeate the entire universe. Gravitational instability then acts on these small initial irregularities and enhances the concentration of matter from which galaxies and clusters of galaxies eventually emerge PP-93 . Theory of such processes is, by no means, complete and much needs to be done to determine whether tiny quantum fluctuations can provide a strong enough template for gravitational condensation to finally create the structures that we observe today. Cosmologist, usually, rely on the speculated existence of non-baryonic dark matter to augment the gravitational force to aid and accelerate the structure formation. The question is far from settled!

It is natural, then, to look elsewhere for the source of the seed density “fluctuations.” An obvious possibility is to explore if electromagnetic interactions taking place in a plasma (known to be the source of a whole variety of linear as well as nonlinear waves) can cause the required density perturbations. In the standard cosmological model of the hot Universe (the Big Bang model), it is estimated that temperatures as high as $`T10^{10}\mathrm{K}1\mathrm{MeV}`$ prevail up to times $``$ 1 second ($`t1\mathrm{sec}`$) after the Big Bang. In this epoch, the main constituents of the Universe are photons, neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, and e-p pairs ref-1 ; PP-93 . As the plasma cools down the annihilation process $`e^++e^{}\gamma +\gamma `$ dominates and the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair concentration goes down. Since the equilibration rates are fast in comparison with the changes in plasma parameters, an equilibrium e-p plasma should be present in the MeV epoch of the early Universe. It is this plasma-dominated era in which we will seek the seeds for future structure formation.

Relativistic e-p plasmas have been investigated quite extensively refs-4 . Tajima and Taniuti TT-90  suggested that collective processes in these plasmas could lead to interesting consequences for structure formation. In the e-p plasma of the early Universe, localized low frequency electromagnetic (EM) waves ($`\mathrm{}\omega T`$) could propagate as an envelope soliton due to the interaction with sound waves. Plasma density variations related to these solitons could potentially be useful towards structure formation in the Universe. However the analysis TT-90  is based on a one dimensional formulation, and the corresponding soliton solutions are likely to be unstable in higher dimensions. Berezhiani and Mahajan BM-95  argued that in the MeV epoch of the Universe, although the e-p pairs form the dominant constituent of the plasma, a minority population of heavy ions is also present due to the baryon asymmetry. They were able to show that, under appropriate conditions (when the plasma is transparent, i.e., $`\omega \omega _e`$, where $`\omega `$ ($`\omega _e`$) is the pulse (plasma) frequency), the resulting e-p-ion plasma supports the propagation of stable, nondiffracting and nondispersing EM pulses (light bullets) with large density bunching. It was further shown in Ref. MBM-98  that these bullets are exceptionally robust: they can emerge from a large variety of initial field distributions, and are remarkably stable. Note that the characteristic dimensions of such matter-filled light pulses are proportional to the electron to ion density ratio, and tend to be considerably larger than the skin depth ($`\lambda =c/\omega _e`$). The implication is that when one deals with the EM structures whose characteristic dimensions (of the spatio-temporal inhomogeneities) are of the order of the skin depth, the baryon asymmetry affects can be safely neglected, and the dynamical system can be assumed as a pure electron-positron plasma.

In the present paper we examine the propagation of strong EM radiation in a hot pure e-p plasma with the explicit aim of finding soliton-type solutions. The plasma is assumed to be transparent. We demonstrate that the dynamics of the EM field envelope is governed by a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NSE) with a defocusing nonlinearity. In 1D, this equation admits dark soliton solutions, while in 2D, the so called vortex soliton solutions are also possible.

Dark solitons exist as dips on a continuous-wave background field. Being stable in one dimensional, they appear as dark-stripe solitary waves in bulk medium. However, such stripes are unstable to transverse modulations that results in the induced generation of vortices with alternating polarities.

Vortex solitons, which are the most fundamental 2D soliton solutions of NSE with an angular $`2\pi `$ phase ramp, appear as local dark minima in an otherwise bright background. Vortex solitons have been recently observed in materials with a defocusing optical nonlinearity — the dynamics of laser beams in these materials is generally described by the NSE KL-98 . Since the electromagnetic vortices (EMV) carry angular momentum that is conserved during propagation, the generation of Vortex solitons in an e-p plasma is a potent mechanism for creating domains with definite angular momenta even out of an initial field distribution devoid of angular momentum. To keep the total angular momentum zero, domains of equal and opposite angular momentum must be created in pairs.

## II Formulation

We use the following set of relativistic hydrodynamic equations in dimensionless form BM-95 :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}_\pm }{\mathrm{d}t}}(G^\pm \gamma ^\pm ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{n^\pm }}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}P^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`𝒗^\pm {\displaystyle \frac{𝑨}{t}}(𝒗^\pm \varphi ),`$ (1)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}_\pm }{\mathrm{d}t}}(G^\pm 𝒑^\pm )+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n^\pm }}P^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝑨}{t}}\pm [𝒗^\pm \times (\times 𝑨)]\varphi ,`$ (2)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{n^\pm }{t}}+(n^\pm 𝒗^\pm )`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (3)
along with the field equation (in the Coulomb gauge $`𝑨=0`$)

$$\frac{^2}{t^2}𝑨^2𝑨+\frac{}{t}\varphi +(n^{}𝒗^{}n^+𝒗^+)=0,$$
(4)
where $`𝒑^\pm =\gamma ^\pm 𝒗^\pm `$ with factor $`\gamma ^\pm =[1+(𝒑^\pm )^2]^{1/2}`$, $`\mathrm{d}_\pm /\mathrm{d}t=/t+𝒗_\pm `$ is the comoving derivative, and $`G^\pm =K_3(1/T^\pm )/K_2(1/T^\pm )`$ with $`K_n`$ the $`n`$-th order modified Bessel functions of the second kind. The superscript labels the particles, electrons ($``$) and positrons ($`+`$) respectively. In these equations the time and space variables are in units of the electron plasma frequency $`\omega _e=(4\pi e^2n_0/m_e)^{1/2}`$ and the collisionless skin depth $`c/\omega _e`$ respectively, the field potentials ($`\varphi `$, $`𝑨`$) are in the units of $`m_ec^2/e`$, and the relativistic momentum vector $`𝒑^\pm `$ is in units of $`m_ec`$. The particle number density $`n^\pm `$ is normalized by the equilibrium density $`n_0=n_0^\pm `$ and plasma temperature ($`T^\pm `$) is measured in units of $`m_ec^2`$. The pressure $`P^\pm =n_\mathrm{r}^\pm T^\pm `$, where $`n_\mathrm{r}^\pm `$ is the density in the rest frame of the fluid element ($`n_\mathrm{r}^\pm =n^\pm /\gamma ^\pm `$). The function $`G(z)`$ defines the “effective” temperature dependent mass of the particles and has the following limiting expressions: $`G1+5/2z`$ for $`z1`$, and $`G4/z`$ if $`z1`$.

From Eqs. (1)-(3) it is straightforward to derive the adiabatic equation of state refs-6 :

$$\frac{n^\pm /T^\pm }{\gamma ^\pm K_2(1/T^\pm )}\mathrm{exp}(G^\pm /T^\pm )=\text{const.},$$
(5)
which, at nonrelativistic temperature ($`T^\pm 1`$), reduces to the standard adiabatic relation ($`n_\mathrm{r}^\pm /(T^\pm )^{3/2}=\mathrm{const}`$) for an ordinary gas. In the ultrarelativistic limit ($`T^\pm 1`$), as expected, Eq. (5) describes the photon gas ($`n_\mathrm{r}^\pm /(T^\pm )^3=\mathrm{const}`$). In the ultrarelativistic case, one should take into account the radiative pressure $`P_R=\sigma T^4`$ ($`\sigma =\pi /45\mathrm{}^3c^3`$). For simplicity we neglect this less important effect for the current considerations. Notice that in the MeV epoch, the plasma temperature $`T^\pm m_ec^2`$ (i.e. $`z1`$), and $`G4`$ leading to an effective mass of e-p pairs to be $`m_{\mathrm{eff}}4m_e`$. Since the particle masses are just a few times larger than their rest mass at these temperatures, the e-p plasma can be considered as a two component fluid rather than a photon gas.

We consider the propagation of circularly polarized EM wave with a mean frequency $`\omega `$, and a mean wave number $`k`$ along the $`z`$ axis. The choice of circular polarization is not restrictive, it simplifies the analysis by preventing harmonic generation. The vector potential can be represented as:

$$𝑨_{}=\frac{1}{2}(𝒙+\mathrm{i}𝒚)A_{}(𝒓_{},z,t)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}kz\mathrm{i}\omega t)+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.,$$
(6)
where $`A_{}`$ is a slowly varying function of $`𝒓`$ and $`t`$ ($`k`$, $`\omega _t`$). The unit vectors $`𝒙`$ and $`𝒚`$ define two mutually perpendicular axes in the plane normal to the direction of wave propagation. The Coulomb gauge condition leads to the relation $`A_z=(i/k)(_{}𝑨_{})A_{}`$. Consequently the effects related to $`A_z`$ will turn out to be negligibly small. We shall now follow standard methods to analyze the system. In the slowly varying amplitude approximation, the transverse, high-frequency component of the equation of motion yields the simple relation between the particle momentum and the vector potential BM-95 ,

$$𝒑_{}^\pm G^\pm =𝑨_{}.$$
(7)
The low frequency motion of the plasma is driven by the ponderomotive pressure ($`(𝒑^\pm )^2`$) of the high-frequency EM field, and it does not depend on the sign of the particles’ charge. If we assume that in equilibrium the electron and the positron fluids have equal temperature ($`T_0^\pm =T_0`$), their effective masses will also be equal ($`G^\pm =G`$), and the radiation pressure will impart equal low-frequency momenta to both fluids allowing the possibility of overall density changes without producing charge separation. The charge neutrality conditions $`n^{}=n^+=N`$, $`\varphi =0`$ will be assumed in the rest of the paper. It is also evident that the symmetry between the two fluids keeps their temperatures always equal ($`T^\pm =T`$) if they were equal initially.

Considerable simplification results when we invoke the wide beam approximation refs-7 ; we assume that the longitudinal variation of the field envelope is much stronger than the transverse variation, i.e. $`L_z`$, the characteristic length along the propagation direction, is much shorter than $`L_{}`$, the characteristic length in the transverse plane. This approximation, coupled with charge neutrality, allows us to extract from Eqs. (1)-(2), the following, leading order description for the low frequency response: the equation of motion

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}Gp+\frac{1}{N}\frac{}{z}\frac{NT}{\gamma }=\frac{1}{2\gamma G}\frac{|A_{}|^2}{z},$$
(8)
and the “energy” conservation equation:

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}G\gamma \frac{1}{N}\frac{}{t}\frac{NT}{\gamma }=\frac{1}{2\gamma G}\frac{|A_{}|^2}{t}.$$
(9)
Here we have used the condition that the ponderomotive pressure gives equal longitudinal momenta to both electrons and positrons ($`p_z^\pm =p`$). Notice that the assumed circular polarization of the EM field insures that the relativistic factor $`\gamma `$ does not depend on the “fast” time ($`1/\omega `$) scale; it can be written as

$$\gamma =\left[1+\frac{|A_{}|^2}{G^2}+p^2\right]^{1/2}.$$
(10)
Substituting Eqs. (6) and (7) into Eq. (4), we find that the slowly varying amplitude $`A_{}`$ must satisfy

$`2\mathrm{i}\omega (_t+v_g_z)A_{}+_{}^2A_{}`$
$`+(_z^2_t^2)A_{}+(\omega ^2k^2)A_{}{\displaystyle \frac{2N}{\gamma G}}A_{}=0,`$ (11)
where $`v_g`$ denotes the group velocity of the carrier waves, $`v_g=k/\omega `$.

We are still not quite done with simplifying assumptions. We seek solutions which vary slowly with time in a frame comoving with the wave, that is, in the frame propagating with the group velocity $`v_g`$. The transformation $`\xi =zv_gt`$, $`\tau =t`$ with the condition $`v_g_\xi _\tau `$ helps implement this approximation. Equations (8) and (9) can now be combined to derive

$$\frac{}{\xi }[G(\gamma v_gp)]=0,$$
(12)
the implied constant of motion is to be determined from the boundary conditions. We demand $`p`$ and $`A_{}`$ to be zero at infinite $`\xi `$, but allow them to be finite as $`r_{}\mathrm{}`$. Integrating Eq. (12) leads to ($`T_0`$ is the particle temperature at infinity)

$$G(T)(\gamma v_gp)=G_0(T_0),$$
(13)
which is readily solved for an explicit expression for the longitudinal momentum in terms of the transverse vector potential

$$p=v_g\gamma _g^2\frac{G_0}{G}\left[1\frac{1}{G_0v_g\gamma _g}(\gamma _g^2G_0^2G^2|A_{}|^2)^{1/2}\right],$$
(14)
where $`\gamma _g=1/(1v_g^2)^{1/2}`$ is the “effective relativistic factor” associated with the group velocity of the wave; it is not to be confused with the particle $`\gamma `$. The continuity equation can be similarly integrated to determine the particle density (after using Eq. (14) for $`p`$):

$$\frac{N}{\gamma G}=\frac{v_g\gamma _g}{(\gamma _g^2G_0^2G^2|A_{}|^2)^{1/2}}.$$
(15)
Substituting Eq. (15) into Eq. (11), we obtain the following nonlinear Schrödinger equation for the complex amplitude $`A_{}`$,

$`2\mathrm{i}\omega _\tau A_{}+_{}^2A_{}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma _g^2}}_\xi ^2A_{}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{G_0}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{v_g\gamma _gG_0}{(\gamma _g^2G_0^2G^2|A_{}|^2)^{1/2}}}\right)A_{}=0,`$ (16)
where the wave frequency $`\omega `$ satisfies the dispersion relation $`\omega ^2=k^2+2/G_0`$, implying that the parameter $`\gamma _g=\omega \sqrt{G_0/2}`$ ($`\gamma _g=(\omega /\omega _e)\sqrt{G_0/2}`$ in physical quantities). The set of Eq. (16), and the equation of state (5) (in which the relation (15) could be easily incorporated) constitutes a complete description of the dynamics of strong EM waves in relativistic e-p plasma in the wide beam approximation.

We remind the reader that Eq. (16) was derived under the assumption $`_\xi _{}`$ (i.e. $`L_zL_{})`$. In spite of that, for a highly transparent plasma ($`\gamma _g1`$), the second, “diffractive” term can be the same order or even greater than the third, “dispersive” term. For this paper, we will not attempt the general solutions of this quite complicated set of equations; we will simply deal with waves for which the plasma is so highly transparent that the diffractive term dominates. Using $`\gamma _gG_0G`$, and neglecting the dispersive term, the NSE simplifies to

$$\mathrm{i}_\tau A_{}+\frac{1}{2}_{}^2A_{}2\left[\left(1\frac{|A_{}|^2}{\gamma _g^2G_0^2}\right)^{1/2}1\right]A_{}=0,$$
(17)
where the following renormalizations are used: $`\tau /2\omega G_0\tau `$, $`𝒓_{}/\sqrt{2G_0}𝒓_{}`$.

The vector potential $`|A_{}|`$ is restricted from above by the condition $`|A_{}|<\gamma _gG_0`$. This restriction is necessary for the validity of the hydrodynamic treatment for the particles. For larger amplitudes, the electromagnetic waves are overturned causing multistream motion of the plasma requiring a kinetic description. Notice that despite the upper bound on the amplitude of the vector potential, the EM field can be still relativistically strong, i.e., the normalized $`|A_{}|1`$, since $`\gamma _g1`$.

## III Stationary Solutions

In the NSE derived above the diffractive and nonlinear terms have opposite signs and as a consequence Eq. (17) does not admit transversely localized solutions (also called the bright solitons). Any localized initial EM field, therefore, will undergo transverse spreading during propagation. The NSE with a defocusing nonlinearity can, however, support stationary structures with asymptotically (at infinity) nonvanishing fields. Dark solitons in 1D, and vortex solitons in 2D, are the fundamental representatives of such solutions. In the extreme low amplitude limit, $`|A_{}|\gamma _gG_0`$, Eq. (17) reduces to the NSE with a cubic nonlinearity. In one-dimensional geometry we have:

$$\mathrm{i}\frac{A_{}}{\tau }+\frac{1}{2}\frac{^2A_{}}{x^2}\frac{1}{\gamma _g^2G_0^2}|A_{}|^2A_{}=0,$$
(18)
This equation is exactly integrable via the inverse scattering method ZS-73 , and its one-soliton solution can be written as KL-98

$$A_{}(x,\tau )=\gamma _gG_0A_0(\alpha \mathrm{tanh}\mathrm{\Theta }+\mathrm{i}\beta )e^{\mathrm{i}A_0^2\tau },$$
(19)
where

$$\mathrm{\Theta }=\alpha A_0(x\beta A_0\tau ).$$
(20)
Here $`A_0`$ is a measure of the asymptotic fields at the spatial infinity and $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are constants with $`\alpha ^2+\beta ^2=1`$. The solutions with a nonzero value at the center of the dip, is termed the ‘gray soliton’ to distinguish it from the ‘black soliton’ (zero amplitude at the dip) corresponding to $`\beta =0`$. The dark solitons of this class of NSE’s do not have any threshold values for their excitation unlike bright solitons (of the appropriate equations) which do. In other words, dark solitons can be created by an arbitrary small initial dip on a homogeneous background.

In two transverse dimensions (2D), a dark soliton represents a dark stripe imposed on a homogeneous bright background. It is well-known that such a stripe is unstable to transverse, long wave length modulations transverse . The instability causes the stripe to split into a sequence of Vortex solitons of alternative polarities. The vortices are dark holes on a bright background, with a nested phase dislocation of the order $`m=\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}`$ at their core.

The Vortex soliton solutions of NSE were first suggested by Pitaevskii LP-61  as topological excitations in an imperfect Bose gas in the superfluids. The ability of some electromagnetic systems (like the e-p plasma) to simulate fluid dynamical phenomena (like vortex formation) can be demonstrated by applying the Madelung transformation: $`A_{}=\sqrt{\rho }\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\psi )`$ to the defining equations refs-10 . The transformation converts the original set to one that is similar to the fluid hydrodynamic equations with a fluid “density” $`\rho `$, and fluid “velocity” $`𝒗=_{}\psi `$. Vortices can exist despite the potential nature of the “fluid” flow. Indeed, the Madelung transform is singular at the points where $`\rho =0`$; these are just branch points where the real and the imaginary parts of the field become zero, while the velocity circulation $`𝒗d𝒍=2\pi m`$, where the integration is done on a closed path enclosing the singular point, and the integer $`m`$ is known as the topological “charge” of vortex. Thus the vortex soliton is a topological structure; it can disappear only when annihilated by a vortex soliton of the opposite “charge.” The development of the transverse instability of a dark soliton has close parallels in hydrodynamics: for instance the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, which occurs when the boundary between two flows develops the so-called vortex streets refs-10 . Since a dark solitary stripe does not carry any topological “charge,” it is evident that vortices have to be born with equal and opposite topological “charges.”

It is straightforward to show that e-p plasmas can support large amplitude dark solitons as well. In the general case (amplitude large, but subject to the condition $`|A_{}|<\gamma _gG_0`$), we cannot construct analytic solutions even in 1D. It is possible, however, to extract the general properties of the solution by using reasonably simple techniques especially when $`A_{}`$ has the time dependence

$$A(x,\tau )=\widehat{A}(x)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\lambda \tau ),$$
(21)
where $`A=A_{}/\gamma _gG_0`$ is the normalized amplitude, and is always less than unity. Here $`\lambda `$ is so-called nonlinear frequency shift. This time-dependence implies that the amplitude square is stationary (what follows, therefore, are classed as stationary solutions), and the dip of the wave does not propagate in the comoving frame with quite the group velocity of the linear wave.

The 1D Eq. (18) now can be cast in the form

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}^2}{\mathrm{d}x^2}\widehat{A}+V^{}(\widehat{A})=0,$$
(22)
where the prime on $`V`$ denotes the derivative with respect to $`\widehat{A}`$, and

$$V(\widehat{A})=(\lambda +2)\widehat{A}^2+4\sqrt{1\widehat{A}^2}4,$$
(23)
denotes the potential. The resemblance of Eq. (22) to the one obeyed by a Newtonian particle in a nonlinear potential suggests an obvious method for analysis. One can easily prove that bounded solution exists provided nonlinear frequency shift is positive ($`\lambda >0`$). The profile of the potential, shown in Fig. 1 for $`\lambda =1`$, reveals that the dark soliton solution may reside in the potential well.

Equating $`\mathrm{d}^2\widehat{A}/\mathrm{d}x^2`$ to zero, we estimate the upper bound on $`\widehat{A}`$

$$\widehat{A}_{\mathrm{ub}}=\sqrt{1\left(\frac{2}{\lambda +2}\right)^2}.$$
(24)
The lowermost value of the amplitude $`|A|`$ is zero, that is, we recover the dark soliton. Note that for small values of $`\lambda `$ ($`1`$), $`\widehat{A}_{\mathrm{ub}}0`$, while $`\widehat{A}_{\mathrm{ub}}1`$ for $`\lambda 1`$.

Similarly one can show the existence of vortex soliton solutions in 2D. We shall again seek stationary solutions in 2D polar coordinates $`(r,\theta )`$. The ansatz

$$A=\widehat{A}(r)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}m\theta \mathrm{i}\lambda \tau ),$$
(25)
with $`\widehat{A}(r)`$ real, and with the perpendicular Laplacian operator given by

$$_{}^2=\frac{\mathrm{d}^2}{\mathrm{d}r^2}+\frac{1}{r}\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}r}\frac{m^2}{r^2},$$
(26)
converts Eq. (17) to the ordinary differential equation (similar to Eq. (22)),

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}^2}{\mathrm{d}r^2}\widehat{A}+V^{}(\widehat{A})=\frac{1}{r}\frac{\mathrm{d}\widehat{A}}{\mathrm{d}r}+\frac{m^2}{r^2}\widehat{A},$$
(27)
where the potential $`V(\widehat{A})`$ is the same as the one-dimensional expression given by Eq. (23). If we were to extend the “particle in a potential” analogy further, Eq. (27) could be viewed as the nonconservative motion of a particle. Since the rhs approaches zero in the limit $`r\mathrm{}`$, Eq. (27) gives precisely the 1D asymptotic value (Eq. (24) for the vector potential $`\widehat{A}`$). The behavior at the origin ($`r=0`$) is totally different; the regular singular point at the origin $`r=0`$ forces the acceptable $`\widehat{A}`$ to vanish for $`m1`$ as $`r^m`$. The numerical solutions of the two-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation for $`m=1`$, $`2`$, $`3`$ are shown in Fig. 2.

As expected, the soliton-like solutions evidently go to zero as $`r^m`$ for small $`r`$, and reach an $`m`$-independent asymptotic value predicted by Eq. (24).

More general aspects of the dynamics of the EM field can be studied mainly through numerical simulations of Eq. (17) — this is beyond the intended scope of this paper. We would content ourselves here by making a few qualitative remarks and pointing out directions for the future efforts. The nonlinearity in Eq. (17) is a faster growing function (faster than the cubic) of the field amplitude, and does not exhibit saturation. We would predict then, that the development of the vortex chain structures from the dark stripe soliton instability for the general system will be faster in comparison with the low amplitude (cubic nonlinearity) case. Stability of vortex soliton solution is another issue that has to be dealt with. It is usually believed, though, that vortices with $`m=\pm 1`$ are topologically stable whereas vortices with larger value of the “charge” $`m`$ may decay into “single-charge” vortices.

In three dimensions (3D) the vortices form the so-called vortex line (it looks like a pancake with a hole in the center hanging and moving along the wire-vortex line). Effects related to the finite group velocity dispersion may lead to a transverse instability of the vortex line. All these interesting effects are left for future studies.

We would like to emphasize that the electromagnetic fields associated with the dark and vortex solitons are asymptotically (at infinity) nonvanishing. Due to the generally accepted requirement that in physical system, the fields be localized in all directions, these objects have received much less attention than their localized cousins. However in recent experiments studying the laser field dynamics in different kinds of optical media, it has been demonstrated that dark and vortex solitons can be readily created as superimpositions upon a localized field background KL-98 . This background can be just a few times wider than the soliton width. During the propagation the background spreads out, reducing its own intensity. In the light of these experiments let us try to put in perspective the current study of the dark and vortex solitons in e-p plasmas in the early Universe. Because the typical scale length of these solitons is the collisionless skin depth, we would need a supporting background spanning several skin depths. This should pose no problem because the ambient uniform field background could easily foot the bill. The next scale length on which we encounter “bullet-like” electromagnetic structures (which owe their origin to the baryon asymmetry) is considerably larger than the skin depth. Thus the dark and vortex solitons can propagate in a slowly changing background (spreading and decreasing in intensity with the diffractive spreading rate of the soliton decreasing as the background expands), adiabatically maintaining their properties, till they hit the baryon-asymmetry scalelengths.

Topological considerations will insure the preservation of the singular points during propagation. In the propagating vortex chains, the vortices can move away from one another reducing the possibility of their mutual annihilation. The propagation introduces elements similar to Hubble expansion — the structures run away from one another. These highly speculative remarks need careful investigation. It is possible that the spreading of the background field may just affect the Vortex distribution and only the cosmological expansion will drive them apart.

What is extremely significant is that during the evolution of the fields, the integrals of motion should be preserved. It is easy to prove, by direct calculations, that Eq. (17) conserves the angular momentum $`𝑴`$

$$(𝑴)_z=\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\mathrm{d}𝒓_{}[𝒓_{}\times (A_{}^{}_{}A_{}\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.)]_z.$$
(28)
Equation (28) for the angular momentum is the paraxial approximation for the orbital angular momentum, $`𝑴_E=d𝒓[𝒓\times (𝑬\times 𝑩)]`$, of the EM field AB-92 . The angular momentum carried by the vortices is $`M_z=mN`$, where $`N`$ is another conserved quantity known as the “photon number” $`N=d𝒓_{}|A_{}|^2`$ conv .

It follows, then, that the relativistic e-p plasma are capable of sustaining electromagnetic vortex like structures, and that these structures have domains in which the EM fields carry non-zero angular momenta, although the total angular momentum of the entire system is zero. If this angular momentum could, somehow, be locally transferred to the surrounding medium, we would have a rather effective mechanism of imparting angular momentum to different domains of matter in the early universe. In our next publication we show that when the baryon asymmetry effects are incorporated, the medium can, indeed, acquire angular momentum from the EM field vortices.

## IV Conclusions

We have investigated the dynamics of the highly relativistic ($`\gamma _g1`$) nonlinear propagation of electromagnetic waves in unmagnetized hot electron-positron plasmas. The system is described by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation (17) with an inverse square root type (non-saturating) nonlinearity. We have shown the possibility of dark and vortex soliton type solutions for this equation. Transverse instability of dark soliton stripes leads to the formation of a vortex chain such that the EM fields in each vortex carry angular momentum. Such objects could play an important role in cosmology as sources for the structure formation in the MeV epoch of the evolution of the Universe. In the commonly adopted cosmological scenarios about the origin of the rotation of galaxies, structures grow in a hierarchy by the gravitational assembly of clumps out of subclumps. The origin of the angular momentum of galaxies if they were formed from initial fluctuations in a Friedman Universe was suggested (by Hoyle FH-49 ) to be due to the tidal interactions between the condensing system PP-93 . However, it is still not clear whether this mechanism gives an adequate solution HBN-00 . We hope that the suggested mechanism of angular momentum generation in the MeV epoch of the Universe is an interesting alternative to explore and examine. Electromagnetism, operating through the versatile substrate of the e-p plasma, seems to readily generate these highly interesting, long-lived objects — the carriers of large amounts of mass, energy and angular momentum. Since an initial localization of mass, energy and angular momentum is precisely the seed that gravity needs for eventual structure-formation, electromagnetism may have provided a key element in the construction of the large-scale map of the observable universe.

Results of this paper can be also applied to astrophysical objects like the pulsars, and active galactic nuclei — the e-p pairs are thought to be a major constituent of the plasma emanating both from the pulsars, and from the inner region of the accretion disks surrounding the central black holes.