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# Thermal fluctuations and anomalous elasticity of homogeneous nematic elastomers

## Abstract

We present a unified formulation of a rotationally invariant nonlinear elasticity for a variety of spontaneously anisotropic phases, and use it to study thermal fluctuations in nematic elastomers and spontaneously anisotropic gels. We find that in a thermodynamic limit homogeneous nematic elastomers are universally incompressible, are characterized by a universal ratio of shear moduli, and exhibit an anomalous elasticity controlled by a nontrivial low temperature fixed point perturbative in $`D=3ϵ`$ dimensions. In three dimensions, we make predictions that are asymptotically exact.

Qualitatively important effects of fluctuations are generically confined to the vicinity of isolated critical points, where a system is tuned to be “soft”, characterized by low energy excitations. As long as the ordered state is stable, fluctuations about it are typically described by a harmonic theory, controlled by a Gaussian fixed point. However, there exists a novel class of systems, that includes smecticGP ; RT\_smectic  and columnar liquid crystalsRT\_columnar , vortex lattices in putative magnetic superconductorsRT\_MSC , polymerized membranesmembranes , and nematic elastomersGL ; review\_elastomers ; LMRX ; XRdisorderPRL , whose ordered states are a striking exception to this rule. A unifying feature of these phases is their underlying, spontaneously broken rotational invariance, that strictly enforces a particular “softness” of the corresponding Goldstone mode Hamiltonian. As a consequence, the usually small nonlinear elastic terms are in fact comparable to harmonic ones, and therefore must be taken into account. Similarly to their effects near continuous phase transitions, but extending throughout an ordered phase, fluctuations drive nonlinearities to qualitatively modify such soft states. The resulting strongly interacting ordered states at long scales exhibit rich phenomenology such as a universal nonlocal elasticity, a strictly nonlinear response to an arbitrarily weak perturbation and a universal ratio of wavevector-dependent singular elastic moduli, all controlled by nontrivial infrared stable fixed points illustrated in Fig.1.

Nematic elastomers and gels are weakly crosslinked polymer-liquid crystal composite materials, which, when nematically ordered exhibit fascinating elastic and electro-optic properties, and are therefore of considerable technological importance. The most unusual of these is the divergent strain response to a stress applied transversely to the spontaneous nematic directionsoftmodes ; Olmsted , an elastic softness that is a consequence of the novel nemato-elastic Goldstone mode corresponding to a spontaneous orientational ordering and an accompanying elastic distortion of the networkGL ; LMRX ; semisoft . Despite of considerable progress in understanding the properties of these liquid crystalline rubbersreview\_elastomers , it was only recently appreciated, that (because of their harmonic softness) nematic elastomers and gels belong to the aforementioned class of anomalously elastic materials, and are the first example of three-dimensional solids with such novel fluctuation-driven properties.

In this Letter we present a unified formalism for a systematic derivation of the rotationally-invariant nonlinear elastic energy for variety of soft elastic media. This is a nontrivial ingredient that is a prerequisite to treating effects of fluctuations and external perturbations in such soft materials. We utilize this formalism to study long-scale elastic properties of homogeneous fluctuating nematic elastomers, and demonstrate that they indeed exhibit anomalous elasticity phenomenology discussed aboveStenull-Lubensky .

A configuration of an elastic media is described by a mapping $`𝐱\stackrel{}{R}(𝐱)`$ from the $`D`$-dimensional reference space $`𝐱`$, which labels mass points of the media, to the $`d`$-dimensional target space $`\stackrel{}{R}`$. Our goal is to construct a nonlinear elastic energy functional $``$, describing long-scale phonon deformations $`\stackrel{}{u}(𝐱)=\stackrel{}{R}(𝐱)\stackrel{}{R}^0(𝐱)`$ about the spontaneously ordered state $`\stackrel{}{R}^0(𝐱)`$, with $``$ exhibiting all rotational and translational symmetries of the reference and target spaces LMRX . This is nontrivial to implement at a nonlinear level as some of the symmetries are spontaneously broken by the ground state, and are therefore not manifest (hidden) in $``$.

A systematic way of constructing such $``$ is by expanding it in in terms of scalar nonlinear operators $`S_n`$

$`[\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}]`$ $`=`$ $`[\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}_0]+a_nS_n+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a_{nm}S_nS_m+\mathrm{}`$ (1)
$`S_n`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}(\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}^n\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}_0^n).n=1,2,\mathrm{},\text{Min(d,D)},`$ (2)
with $`g_{ij}=_i\stackrel{}{R}_j\stackrel{}{R}`$ and $`g_{ij}^0=_i\stackrel{}{R}^0_j\stackrel{}{R}^0`$ metric tensors corresponding to $`\stackrel{}{R}(𝐱)`$ and $`\stackrel{}{R}^0(𝐱)`$ configurations and summation convention over repeated indices is used throughout. Eliminating the metric tensor

$$g_{ij}=g_{ij}^0+2\frac{R_\alpha ^0}{x_i}u_{\alpha \beta }\frac{R_\beta ^0}{x_j}$$
(3)
in favor of the Lagrangian strain tensor

$`u_{\alpha \beta }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{R}}{R_\alpha ^0}}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{R}}{R_\beta ^0}}\delta _{\alpha \beta }\right),`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\alpha u_\beta +_\beta u_\alpha +_\alpha \stackrel{}{u}_\beta \stackrel{}{u})`$ (5)
measured in terms of the ground state coordinate system $`R_\alpha ^0`$ (rather than $`x_i`$) leads to the desired nonlinear elastic energy $`[u_{\alpha \beta }]`$. The necessity of this procedure is that it ensures that the expansion in $`u_{\alpha \beta }`$ about the spontaneously symmetry-broken ground state is rotationally invariant in both the target and reference spaces.

We have used this general formalism, with differences encoded in $`D`$, $`d`$ and the nature of the broken ground state, $`\stackrel{}{R}^0(𝐱)`$, to derive nonlinear elastic Hamiltonians for a variety of elastic mediaXRunpublished , some of which have previously appeared in the literature. In this Letter we apply it to study fluctuations in the most nontrivial and heretofore unexplored system, the spontaneously-uniaxial nematic elastomers with $`d=D`$review\_elastomers ; LMRX .

As discussed in detail in Refs. GL, ; LMRX, , most of the properties of nematic elastomers can be captured by a purely elastic description in terms an elastic strain tensor, with a nematic order parameter $`Q_{\alpha \beta }=S(\widehat{n}_\alpha \widehat{n}_\beta \delta _{\alpha \beta }/3)`$ ($`S`$ and $`\widehat{n}`$, respectively, the magnitude and the unit director for nematic order) integrated out. The isotropic-nematic transition is then characterized by a spontaneous uniaxial distortion $`u_{\alpha \beta }^0Q_{\alpha \beta }`$, corresponding to a ground-state conformation and a metric tensor given by

$`\stackrel{}{R}^0(𝐱)`$ $`=`$ $`\zeta _{}𝐱_{}+\zeta _zz\widehat{z},`$ (6)
$`g_{\alpha \beta }^0`$ $`=`$ $`\zeta _\alpha ^2\delta _{\alpha \beta },`$ (7)
with $`𝐱_{}`$ a $`D1`$-dimensional vector transverse to the nematic director $`\widehat{n}=\widehat{z}`$.

In the physical case of $`D=d=3`$ there are three nonlinear rotationally invariant operators $`S_n`$, which, using Eqs.2 and 3, can be readily shown to be given by

$`S_1`$ $`=`$ $`2\zeta _\alpha ^2u_{\alpha \alpha },`$ (8)
$`S_2`$ $`=`$ $`4\zeta _\alpha ^4u_{\alpha \alpha }+4\zeta _\alpha ^2\zeta _\beta ^2u_{\alpha \beta }u_{\beta \alpha },`$ (9)
$`S_3`$ $`=`$ $`6\zeta _\alpha ^6u_{\alpha \alpha }+12\zeta _\alpha ^4\zeta _\beta ^2u_{\alpha \beta }u_{\beta \alpha }+8\zeta _\alpha ^2\zeta _\beta ^2\zeta _\gamma ^2u_{\alpha \beta }u_{\beta \gamma }u_{\gamma \alpha },`$ (10)
Using these expressions inside the expansion for $``$, Eq.1, taken to quadratic order in $`S_n`$’s, we obtain

$``$ $`=`$ $`a_zu_{zz}+a_{}u_{ii}`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\mu _{zi}u_{zi}^2+B_zu_{zz}^2+\lambda _{zi}u_{zz}u_{ii}+\lambda u_{ii}u_{jj}+2\mu u_{ij}u_{ij}\right)`$
$`+`$ $`b_1u_{zz}u_{iz}^2+b_2u_{kk}u_{iz}^2+b_3u_{ij}u_{iz}u_{jz}+cu_{iz}^2u_{iz}^2,`$
where Roman indices ($`i,j,k,\mathrm{}`$) take values in the $``$-space only and

$`a_{z,}`$ $`=`$ $`2a_1\zeta _{z,}^2+4a_2\zeta _{z,}^4+6a_3\zeta _{z,}^6,`$ (12)
$`\mu _{zi}`$ $`=`$ $`16a_2\zeta _z^2\zeta _{}^2+24a_3(\zeta _{}^2+\zeta _z^2)\zeta _z^2\zeta _{}^2,`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\zeta _z^2\zeta _{}^2}}(\zeta _{}^2a_z\zeta _z^2a_{}),`$
with the detailed form of other elastic constants not important hereXRunpublished .

In the absence of fluctuations, our expansion about the ground state $`\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}^0`$, characterized by $`\zeta _{z,}`$ ensures that $`a_z=a_{}=0`$ in equilibrium. Given that in the nematic ground state, $`\zeta _z\zeta _{}`$, this then leads to a strict vanishing of the shear modulus $`\mu _{zi}=0`$, as anticipated by Golubovic and LubenskyGL ; LMRX  and is implicit in the neo-classical theory of nematic elastomersreview\_elastomers ; Olmsted . It corresponds to a vanishing energy cost of a shear distortion $`u_{zi}`$ displayed in Fig. 2$`a`$, that is one of many fascinating properties of nematic elastomers and is a manifestation of the “soft” Goldstone mode elasticity, discussed in the introduction. At finite temperature, fluctuations renormalize all elastic constants and in particular generate nonzero $`a_z`$, $`a_{}`$. However, Ward identities associated with the underlying rotational invariance of $``$ ensure that such linear in strain terms can always be eliminated by shifting to a true, thermally renormalized spontaneous deformation $`\underset{¯}{\underset{¯}{g}}_R^0`$XRunpublished .

Keeping only the most relevant terms in $``$, Eq.Thermal fluctuations and anomalous elasticity of homogeneous nematic elastomers, and using nontrivial relations between elastic coefficientsXRunpublished , enforced by the rotational invariance, we arrive at the effective nonlinear elastic Hamiltonian for a uniaxial nematic elastomer:

$`_{NE}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{B}{2}}(w_{zz}+w_{ii})^2+C(w_{zz}+w_{ii})(w_{zz}w_{ii})`$ (14)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _L}{2}}(w_{zz}w_{ii})^2+\mu \stackrel{~}{w}_{ij}\stackrel{~}{w}_{ij}+{\displaystyle \frac{K}{2}}(_{}^2u_z)^2,`$
where

$`w_{zz}`$ $`=`$ $`_zu_z+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_{}u_z)^2,`$
$`w_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_iu_j+_ju_i){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_iu_z_ju_z,`$
$`\stackrel{~}{w}_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`w_{ij}{\displaystyle \frac{w_{kk}}{D1}}\delta _{ij}`$ (15)
are rotationally-invariant smectic-like and columnar-like nonlinear strain tensors relative to the uniaxial state,

$`B`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(B_z+B_{}+\lambda _{zi}),`$ (16)
$`\mu _L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(B_z+B_{}\lambda _{zi}),`$ (17)
$`C`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(B_zB_{}),`$ (18)
and $`B_{}=\lambda +2\mu /(D1)`$ is the $``$-plane bulk modulus. It is easy to see that $`B`$ is the overall bulk modulus, $`\mu _L`$ and $`\mu `$ are the longitudinal and transverse shear moduli, respectively corresponding to deformations displayed in Fig. 2 b,c, and $`C`$ couples bulk mode with longitudinal shear. Symmetry requires that transverse shear mode remains decoupled from other modes. Because of the vanishing $`\mu _{zi}`$, we have also added a curvature $`K`$ elastic term for $`u_z`$ to ensure stability at long scales.

Using $`_{NE}`$, we now proceed to study effects of thermal fluctuations on nearly homogeneous nematic elastomers. Standard analysis leads to the Fourier transform of harmonic correlators $`G_{\alpha \beta }^0(𝐱)=u_\alpha (𝐱)u_\beta (0)_0`$:

$`G_{zz}^0(𝐪)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{B_z(1\rho )q_z^2+Kq_{}^4}},`$ (19)
$`G_{zi}^0(𝐪)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\rho B_z}{2\mu +\lambda }}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{q_zq_i}{q_{}^2(B_z(1\rho )q_z^2+Kq_{}^4)}},`$ (20)
$`G_{ij}^0(𝐪)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{B_zq_z^2+Kq_{}^4}{(B_z(1\rho )q_z^2+Kq_{}^4)}}{\displaystyle \frac{q_iq_j}{(2\mu +\lambda )q_{}^4}}`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu q_{}^4}}(\delta _{ij}q_{}^2q_iq_j),`$
where $`\rho =(B\mu _L)^2/(B_z(2\mu +\lambda ))`$.

To assess the role of nonlinear elastic terms in the presence of thermal fluctuations we compute perturbative corrections to elastic constants in $`_{NE}`$ and find that they are dominated by $`u_z`$ fluctuations. Given the structure of $`G_{zz}^0`$ correlator, as in smectic liquid crystals this perturbation theory diverges for $`D3`$ on length scales longer than $`\xi _{NL}^{}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^1g_{}^{1/(3D)}`$ ($`=\mathrm{\Lambda }^1e^{32/(59g_{})}`$, for $`D=3`$), with $`g_{}`$ defined in Eq.24, below, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ an ultra-violet cutoff associated with the elastomer mesh size.

To understand the elastomer properties beyond $`\xi _{NL}`$, we perform a momentum-shell renormalization group calculation, perturbatively in $`ϵ=3D`$. Integrating out short scale phonon fluctuations $`u_\alpha `$ and rescaling the spatial coordinates and fields, so as to keep $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ fixed, we arrive at the following flow equations for the elastic constants at scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^1e^{\mathrm{}}`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dB}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`(D+33\omega \eta _B)B,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dC}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`(D+33\omega \eta _C)C,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mu _L}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`(D+33\omega \eta _L)\mu _L,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mu }{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`(D+33\omega \eta _{})\mu ,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dK}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`(D1\omega +\eta _K)K,`$ (22)
where,

$`\eta _B`$ $`=`$ $`\rho _2^2g_L,\eta _C=\eta _L=g_L,\eta _{}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}g_{},`$ (23)
$`\eta _K`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_Lg_{}\left(9+17\rho _122\sqrt{\rho _1}\rho _2\right)4g_{L}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\left(1+\rho _{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\right)}{8\left(g_{}\rho _1+g_L\left(1+\rho _12\sqrt{\rho _1}\rho _2\right)\right)}}.`$
The physics is controlled by the flows of two dimensionless coupling, $`g_L(\mathrm{})`$ and $`g_{}(\mathrm{})`$, and two dimensionless ratios $`\rho _1(\mathrm{})`$ and $`\rho _2(\mathrm{})`$:

$`g_{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{4\pi K^{\frac{3}{2}}}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\left(B2C+\mu +\mu _L\right)}{B\mu +2C\left(2C+\mu \right)+\left(4B+\mu \right)\mu _L}}},`$
$`g_L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _L}{\mu }}g_{},\rho _1={\displaystyle \frac{\mu _L}{B}},\rho _2={\displaystyle \frac{C}{\sqrt{B\mu _L}}}.`$ (24)
Flow equations for $`\rho _1(\mathrm{})`$ and $`\rho _2(\mathrm{})`$ are given by:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\rho _1}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`g_L\rho _1(1\rho _2^2),`$ (25)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\rho _2}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g_L\rho _2(1\rho _2^2),`$ (26)
where mechanical stability requires $`|\rho _2|<1`$. With the exception of an unstable fixed point at $`g_L^{}=0`$ and an unstable fixed line at $`|\rho _2|=1`$ (parameterized by $`\rho _1`$)XRunpublished , we expect (and verify a posteriori) that the infrared stable fixed point is characterized by $`g_L^{}0`$. Equations 25,26 then imply that at such fixed point, $`\rho _1^{}=\rho _2^{}=0`$. The flow equations for $`g_L(\mathrm{})`$ and $`g_{}(\mathrm{})`$, the full form of which is too involved to be reproduced hereXRunpublished , then simplify considerably:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dg_L}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵg_L{\displaystyle \frac{g_L\left(40g_{L}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+68g_Lg_{}+13g_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\right)}{8\left(4g_L+g_{}\right)}},`$ (27)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dg_{}}{d\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵg_{}{\displaystyle \frac{g_{}\left(4g_{L}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+32g_Lg_{}+7g_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\right)}{4\left(4g_L+g_{}\right)}}.`$ (28)
In addition to reproducing the $`3ϵ`$-dimensional thermal smectic fixed pointGP , with $`g_{}^{}=0,g_L^{}=4ϵ/5`$, we find an infrared stable fixed point at $`g_{}^{}=32ϵ/59,g_L^{}=4ϵ/59`$, with

$`\eta _B`$ $`=`$ $`0,\eta _K=38ϵ/59,`$ (29)
$`\eta _C`$ $`=`$ $`\eta _L=\eta _L=\eta _{}=4ϵ/59,`$ (30)
characterizing long-scale anomalous elasticity of homogeneous nematic elastomersXRunpublished .

For the physically most interesting case of $`D=3`$, $`g_L(\mathrm{})`$ and $`g_{}(\mathrm{})`$ are marginally irrelevant, allowing an asymptotically exact computation of anomalous elasticity. Standard asymptotic analysis of Eqs.25-28 with $`ϵ=0`$, shows that for large $`\mathrm{}`$ coupling constants flow to zero algebraically:

$`\rho _1(\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}^{4/59},`$ (31)
$`\rho _2(\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}^{2/59},`$ (32)
$`g_L(\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}g_{}(\mathrm{}){\displaystyle \frac{4}{59\mathrm{}}}.`$ (33)
Matching calculations, together with Eqs.22 then predict that on long scales all effective elastic constants except $`B`$ are anomalous, depending logarithmically on wavevector $`𝐪`$ of the deformation

$`B(𝐪)`$ $``$ $`B_0,`$ (34)
$`\mu _L(𝐪)\mu (𝐪)C(𝐪)`$ $``$ $`(\mathrm{log}|𝐪_{}|)^{4/59},`$ (35)
$`K(𝐪)`$ $``$ $`(\mathrm{log}|𝐪_{}|)^{38/59}.`$ (36)
Hence at long scales, the bulk modulus is much larger than shear moduli, predicting that independent of microscopic details nematic elastomer is effectively incompressible in the thermodynamic limit. Logarithmically divergent strain-stress response immediately follows. Equations 24, 33 predict a universal ratio of the renormalized shear moduli

$$\frac{\mu ^R}{\mu _L^R}=8.$$
(37)
Although detecting logarithmic length scale dependence predicted here is likely to be difficult, the incompressibility of nematic elastomer and above universal ratio should be readily observable.

Based on our predictions in $`3ϵ`$ dimensions, we would expect a much stronger, power-law anomalous elasticity in two-dimensional (2D) nematic elastomers, with anomalous exponents given by Eq.29,30 with $`ϵ=1`$. However, a moment of reflection shows that because in 2D the subspace perpendicular to the nematic direction is one-dimensional, there is no transverse shear mode. We must therefore set $`\mu =0`$, or deduce the properties 2D elastomers from a $`D1`$-axial analytical continuation, as we have recently done for nematic elastomer membranesmembranePRE . A more serious difficulty is that in our analysis we have ignored the subdominant columnar-like elastic nonlinearities, that, although irrelevant near $`D=3`$, are relevant for $`D<5/2`$ and in two dimensions are in fact identical to the smectic-like nonlinearities that we have studied here. Simultaneously treating both nonlinearities remains an interesting and challenging problem.

Throughout this work, we have also ignored elastomer heterogeneities. However, real elastomers are only statistically homogeneous and isotropic, and therefore results presented here are only valid up to a long but finite disorder-dependent length scale $`\xi _{NL}^\mathrm{\Delta }`$. On longer scales network heterogeneity dominates over thermal fluctuations and results presented here crossover to a distinct phenomenology, controlled by a nontrivial zero-temperature fixed pointXRdisorderPRL ; RT\_smectic ; RT\_columnar ; RT\_MSC .

To summarize, we have presented a unified formulation of a rotationally invariant nonlinear elasticity for a variety of elastic media with spontaneously broken spatial symmetry. We applied this formalism to nematic elastomers and studied their thermal fluctuations. We found that they exhibit anomalous elasticity, which in three dimensions is characterized by a logarithmic wavevector dependence of elastic moduli, universal ratio of shear moduli, and a long-scale incompressibility.

We thank T. Lubensky, O. Stenull and J. Toner for discussion and acknowledge support by the NSF MRSEC DMR-0213918 (LR, XX), the Packard Foundation (LR), and the University of Colorado Faculty Fellowship (LR), as well as KITP Graduate Fellowship through the NSF PHY99-07949 (XX). We thank Harvard Department of Physics, where part of this work was done, for hospitality.


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# Pointwise Lower Bounds on the Heat Kernels of Higher Order Schrödinger Operators

## 1 Introduction

There has been extensive work on the theory for heat kernels of second order elliptic operators but the situation for higher order ellipitic operators is considerably different. Higher order heat kernels are not necessarily positive on the off-diagonal. Despite the limitations of the approaches often used in the case of second order operators, Davies provided a powerfull tool obtaining the necessary bounds and established a lower bound for the heat kernel of higher order elliptic operators with bounded measurable coefficients on $`L^2\left(𝐑^N\right)`$ where $`2m>N`$. Robinson and Ter Elst obtained bounds for operators on a Lie Group . Their method however required the conservation of probability.

In this exposition we show that Davies’ theory can also be exploited to obtain pointwise lower bounds for heat kernels of the Schrödinger operator with a polynomialy bounded potential.
We define

$$x:=\sqrt{\left(|x|^2+\rho \right)}\text{ where }\rho =\mathrm{max}\{1,\left(\frac{2m}{N}1\right)^{\frac{1}{m}}\}$$

We will assume that $`H_0`$ is an elliptic differential operator of order $`2m`$ on $`L^2\left(𝐑^N\right)`$ with constant of ellipticity $`c_1`$ and that for the potential $`V`$ there are positive constants $`c_2`$ and $`\gamma `$ such that

$$V\left(x\right)c_2x^\gamma $$

If $`Q_0`$ is the quadratic form of $`H_0`$ defined with domain equal to the Sobolev space $`W_0^{m,2}\left(𝐑\right)`$ where

$$c_1^1\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\right)^{\frac{m}{2}}f_2^2Q_0\left(f\right)c_1\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\right)^{\frac{m}{2}}f_2^2$$
(1.1)
Then we define $`Q`$, the quadratic form associated with $`H:=H_0+V`$

$$Q\left(f\right):=Q\left(f\right)+V^{\frac{1}{2}}f_2^2$$

Our main result is the following theorem:

###### Theorem 1.1.

If $`k(t,x,y)`$, the heat kernel generated by $`H`$ is continuous in all three variables and is in $`L^2\left(𝐑^N\right)`$ for all $`x`$ and $`t>0`$ and there are constants $`\sigma ,\mu >0`$ and $`\lambda <1`$ such that

$$k(t,x,x)<\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }$$
(1.2)
then we have the following estimates:
Whenever $`x^\gamma t>1`$ we have

$$\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }\mathrm{exp}\left(cx^{^{\frac{\left(1\frac{N}{2m}\right)\gamma \mu }{1\lambda }}}t\right)<k(t,x,x)$$
(1.3)
and when $`x^\gamma t<1`$ we have

$$\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }\mathrm{exp}\left(cx^{^{\frac{\mu }{1\lambda }}}t^{^{\frac{\frac{N}{2m}\lambda }{1\lambda }}}\right)<k(t,x,x)$$
(1.4)
where $`c`$ is some positive constant..

We define the following functions for convenience.

$$u(t,x):=\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }$$

$$\delta (t,x):=\frac{k(t,x,x)}{u(t,x)}$$

We summarise some of the key aspects of Davies’ theory .

###### Lemma 1.2 (Davies ).

Given $`0<\alpha ,s<1`$ and $`p`$ defined by

$$p+\left(1p\right)\alpha s=s$$
(1.5)
$$k(ts,x,x)<\left(u(\alpha ts,x)\right)^{1p}\left(u(t,x)\right)^p\left(\frac{k(t,x,x)}{u(t,x)}\right)^p$$

###### Proof.

The three line lemma is applied to the analytic function $`zk(z,x,y)`$

$`k(ts,x,x)`$ $`<`$ $`\left(k(\alpha ts,x,x)\right)^{1p}k(t,x,x)^p`$
$`<`$ $`\left(u(\alpha ts,x)\right)^{1p}k(t,x,x)^p`$
$`=`$ $`\left(u(\alpha ts,x)\right)^{1p}\left(u(t,x)\right)^p\left({\displaystyle \frac{k(t,x,x)}{u(t,x)}}\right)^p`$
and the proof is complete. ∎

###### Definition 1.3.

If $`\omega _x`$ is the distribution such that $`f,\omega _x=f\left(x\right)`$ then we define $`G_t(x,x)`$

$$G_t(x,x):=\left(tH+1\right)^1\omega _x,\omega _x=\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}e^{\left(tH+1\right)s}𝑑s\omega _x,\omega _x$$

###### Lemma 1.4 (Davies ).

$$\frac{G_t(x,x)}{u(t,x)}<\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}\frac{u(\alpha ts,x)}{u(t,x)}\delta (t,x)^p𝑑s+e^1\delta (t,x)$$
(1.6)
###### Proof.

By lemma 1.2 and using the fact that $`u(t,x)`$ is a decreasing function we have

$$k(ts,x,x)<u(\alpha ts,x)\left(\frac{k(t,x,x)}{u(t,x)}\right)^p$$
(1.7)
Hence

$$\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}e^{\left(tH+1\right)s}𝑑s\omega _x,\omega _x\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}u(\alpha ts,x)\left(\frac{k(t,x,x)}{u(t,x)}\right)^p𝑑s$$

Then the estimate

$$\underset{1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}e^{\left(tH+1\right)s}𝑑s\omega _x,\omega _xe^1k(t,x,x)$$

and dividing by $`u(t,x)`$ completes the proof. ∎

###### Lemma 1.5.

$$G_t(x,x)=\underset{gDomQ}{sup}\{\frac{|g\left(x\right)|^2}{tQ\left(g\right)+g_2^2}:g0\}$$

###### Proof.

$`G_t(x,x)`$ $`=`$ $`\left(tH+1\right)^1\omega _x,\omega _x`$
$`=`$ $`\left(tH+1\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\omega _x,\left(tH+1\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\omega _x`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{fL^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)}{sup}\{|(tH+1)^{\frac{1}{2}}\omega _x,f|^2:f_2=1\}`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{fL^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)}{sup}\{|(tH+1)^{\frac{1}{2}}f\left(x\right)|^2:f_2=1\}`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{gDomQ}{sup}\{{\displaystyle \frac{|g\left(x\right)|^2}{\left(tH+1\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}g^2}}:g0\}`$
$`=`$ $`\underset{gDomQ}{sup}\{{\displaystyle \frac{|g\left(x\right)|^2}{tQ\left(g\right)+g_2^2}}:g0\}`$
## 2 Some Inequalities

###### Lemma 2.1.

If $`\delta `$ and $`\lambda `$ are both positive and less than 1 then

$$\left(1\lambda \right)^{1\lambda }e^{\lambda 1}\left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{\lambda 1}>\delta $$

###### Proof.

Follows from maximising the function $`\delta \left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{1\lambda }`$ over lambda. ∎

###### Lemma 2.2.

For positive $`\alpha <\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`p`$ defined as in lemma 1.2

$$\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}\frac{u(\alpha ts,x)}{u(t,x)}\delta (t,x)^p𝑑s+e^1\delta <\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1\lambda \right)}{\alpha }+\left(1\lambda \right)^{1\lambda }e^{\lambda 2}\right)\left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{\lambda 1}$$

###### Proof.

$`{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{u(\alpha ts,x)}{u(t,x)}}\left(\delta (t,x)\right)^p𝑑s+e^1\delta `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}}\left(\alpha s\right)^\lambda \left(\delta (t,x)\right)^p𝑑s+e^1\delta `$
substitution of $`\tau =\alpha s`$ and with $`p>\alpha `$ we have

$$\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}\left(\alpha s\right)^\lambda \left(\delta (t,x)\right)^p𝑑s<\frac{1}{\alpha }\underset{0}{\overset{\alpha }{}}\tau ^\lambda \mathrm{exp}\left(|\mathrm{ln}\delta |\tau \right)𝑑\tau $$

a further change of variable $`y=\tau \mathrm{ln}\delta ^1`$ the RHS becomes

$$\frac{\left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{\lambda 1}}{\alpha }\underset{0}{\overset{\alpha }{}}y^\lambda e^y𝑑y$$

we use

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1\lambda \right)>\underset{0}{\overset{\alpha }{}}y^\lambda e^y𝑑y$$

along with lemma 2.1 to complete the proof. ∎

## 3 Estimation of the Greens function

If $`g_x\left(y\right)`$ is an appropriate test function then we can estimate the Greens function with the evaluation

$$\frac{|g\left(x\right)|^2}{tQ\left(g\right)+g_2^2}$$

We are primarily concerned with behaviour of the heat kernel away from the origin, and thus will consider test functions to reflect this. The choice of test functions is the only significant difference between the analysis to find lower bounds for elliptic operators in  and our analysis here for Schrödinger operators. We require test functions that are measurably sensitive to the potential as well as the differential operator.

###### Definition 3.1.

We let $`\psi C_c^{\mathrm{}}\left(𝐑\right)`$ such that $`\psi \left(s\right)=1`$ when $`|s|1`$ and $`\psi \left(s\right)=0`$ when $`|s|2`$

###### Definition 3.2.

We define $`g_x\left(y\right)C_c^{\mathrm{}}\left(𝐑^N\right)`$

$$g_x\left(y\right)=\psi \left(\frac{xy}{x^\beta }\right)$$
(3.8)
for some $`\beta \left(x\right)`$ such that $`\beta \left(x\right)<1`$ for all $`x𝐑^N`$

It is straight forward to show that

$$\left(\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\right)^mg_x\right)_{\mathrm{}}cx^{\beta 2m}$$

for some poistive $`c`$.

###### Lemma 3.3.

There is some positive constant $`c>0`$ such that

$$tQ\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2cx^{\beta N}\left(tx^{2m\beta }+tx^\gamma +1\right)$$
(3.9)
###### Proof.

There is some positive constant $`c`$ such that

$$Q_0\left(g_x\right)cx^{\beta \left(N2m\right)}$$

and moreover there is a positive constant $`c`$ such that

$$V^{\frac{1}{2}}g_x_2^2cx^{\gamma +\beta N}$$

## 4 Heat kernel for $`tx^\gamma >1`$

###### Lemma 4.1.

There is a positive constant $`c`$ such that

$$tQ\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2cx^{^{\left(1\frac{N}{2m}\right)\gamma t}}$$

becomes

###### Proof.

For $`tx^\gamma >1`$ inequality (3.9) reduces to

$$tQ\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2cx^{\beta N}t\left(x^{2m\beta }+x^\gamma \right)$$
(4.10)
and we optimise the RHS over $`\beta `$ with

$$\beta _M\left(x\right)=\frac{1}{2m}\left(\gamma \frac{\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{2m}{N}1\right)}{\mathrm{ln}\left(x\right)}\right)$$

and since the definition of $`x`$ implies that $`\frac{2m}{N}1<x^{2m+\gamma }`$ it follows that $`\beta _M\left(x\right)<1`$ for all $`x`$. The proof is completed by substituting $`\beta _M`$ into 4.10

###### Lemma 4.2.

There is a positive constant $`c`$

$$\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }\mathrm{exp}\left(cx^{{}_{}{}^{\frac{\left(1\frac{N}{2m}\right)\gamma \mu }{1\lambda }}t}\right)<k(t,x,x)$$

###### Proof.

From the definition of the test functions we recall that $`g_x\left(x\right)=1`$, hence

$$\frac{|g_x\left(x\right)|}{tQ\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2}>\frac{c}{t}x^{^{\left(\frac{N}{2m}1\right)\gamma }}$$
(4.11)
for some constant $`c`$. Application of lemma 2.2 yields the inequality

$$c\frac{x^{^{\left(\frac{N}{2m}1\right)\gamma +\mu }}}{t^{1\lambda }}<\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1\lambda \right)}{\alpha }+\left(1\lambda \right)^{1\lambda }e^{\lambda 2}\right)\left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{\lambda 1}$$

and simplyfying we have

$$cx^{{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{\left(1\frac{N}{2m}\right)\gamma \mu }{1\lambda }}}t<\mathrm{ln}\delta $$

and our inequality is obtained on inverting the logarithm and substitution of $`u(t,x)`$. ∎

## 5 Heat kernel for $`tx^\gamma <1`$

###### Lemma 5.1.

There is some constant $`c>0`$ such that

$$Q\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2<ct^{\frac{N}{2m}}$$

###### Proof.

When $`tx^\gamma >1`$ inequality (3.9) reduces to

$$Q\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2cx^{\beta N}\left(tx^{2m\beta }+1\right)$$
(5.12)
for some $`c>0`$. We find that the RHS is optimised over $`\beta `$ for

$$\beta _M=\frac{1}{2m\mathrm{ln}x}\left(\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{2m}{N}1\right)+\mathrm{ln}t\right)$$

###### Lemma 5.2.

There is a positive constant $`c`$ such that

$$\sigma \frac{x^\mu }{t^\lambda }\mathrm{exp}\left(cx^{^{\frac{\mu }{1\lambda }}}t^{^{\frac{\frac{N}{2m}\lambda }{1\lambda }}}\right)<k(t,x,x)$$

###### Proof.

Using $`g_x\left(x\right)=1`$ we have

$$\frac{|g_x\left(x\right)|}{tQ\left(g_x\right)+g_x_2^2}>ct^{\frac{N}{2m}}$$
(5.13)
for some constant $`c>0`$. Substituting for $`u(t,x)`$ and an application of lemma 2.2 we have

$$c\sigma ^1x^\mu t^{^{\lambda \frac{N}{2m}}}<\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1\lambda \right)}{\alpha }+\left(1\lambda \right)^{1\lambda }e^{\lambda 2}\right)\left(\mathrm{ln}\delta ^1\right)^{\lambda 1}$$

and we solve to complete the proof. ∎

###### Proof of theorem 1.1.

Follows from lemmas 5.2 and 4.2

## Acknowledgements

This research was funded by an EPSRC Ph.D grant. I would like to thank Brian Davies for giving me this problem and his encouragement since. I thank Owen Nicholas and Mark Owen for their invaluable discussions. I am indebted to Anita for all her support.


text:
# Inner structure of Gauss-Bonnet-Chern Theorem and the Morse theory

## I Introduction

The Gauss-Bonnet-Chern (GBC) theorem is one of the most significant results in topology, which relates the curvature tensor of a compact and oriented even-dimensional Riemannian manifold $`M`$ to an important topological invariant, the Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ of $`M`$. A great advance in this field is the discovery of the relationship between supersymmetry and the index theorem, which includes the derivation of the GBC theorem via supersymmetry and the path integral techniques as presented by Alvarez-Gaumé et al. Alvarez . On the physics side, the optical Berry phase is a direct result of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem Berry  and the black hole entropy emerges as the Euler class through dimensional continuation of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem entropy . Furthermore, it must be pointed out that the topological current of GBC theorem is important to study the topological defects in Ginzburg-Landau theory et al. Mazenko ; Ying

It is well-known that there were three theoretical ways to study the Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ of a compact oriented even-dimensional Riemannian manifold $`M`$. The first is the integral of $`GBC`$ density in terms of Chern form Chern1 ; the second is the Hopf-Poincaré theorem Hopf  which shown that the $`\chi (M)`$ is the sum of the indices of the zeroes of the vector field on $`M`$; and the third is the so called Morse theory Milnor2  which related to the Hessian Matrices. The main purpose in this paper is to present a new theoretical framework which directly gives the inner relationships between $`GBC`$ theorem, Hopf-Poincaré theorem and the Morse theory. For this purpose we introduce a new 1-form $`H^A`$ based on the second fundamental tensor $`H_{ab},`$ and give a decomposed expression of the curvature 2-form $`F^{AB}`$. Using this expression we find an important formula of the GBC form, which is simply determined by the edge production of the 1-form $`H^A`$. It gives a natural way to obtain the $`\delta `$-function form of the GBC density with the $`\varphi `$-mapping theory Slac ; Duan . By making use of the above formulation the GBC theorem is proved to be identify with the Hopf-Poincaré theorem. It is noted that the Chern’s form and the gauge potential decomposition of SO(n) MengLi  are unnecessary in the proof. Furthermore, according to the topological structure of the GBC density, a generalization of Morse theory can be obtained directly when the vector field on the manifold is considered as the gradient field of a Morse function $`f`$.

In Section II we give the definition of the 1-form $`H^A`$ and the expression of the curvature 2-form $`F^{AB}`$ in the Riemannian manifold. In Section III, in terms of the $`\varphi `$-mapping theory we get the $`\delta `$-function expression of the $`GBC`$ density and study the topological structure of the $`GBC`$ density, in which the Hopf index and Brouwer degree of $`\varphi `$-mapping at the zero points of $`\varphi (\stackrel{}{x})`$ play an important role. The topological current of $`GBC`$ theorem is given and the general velocity of the $`i`$-th zero of the vector field $`\varphi (\stackrel{}{x})`$ is studied in detail in Section IV. At last, we discuss the relationship between Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ and indices of the critical points of function $`f`$ and get the generalized formula of $`\chi (M)`$ in the Morse theory in Section V.

## II A new 1-form $`H^A`$ in Riemannian manifold

Let $`M`$ be a compact and oriented $`n`$(even)-dimensional Riemannian manifold, which can be immersed in a Euclidean space $`R^{m+n}(m+n=n(n+1)/2)`$ with local coordinate $`x^\mu `$ which satisfy the parametric equation Eisenhart

$$x^\mu =x^\mu (u^1,u^2,\mathrm{},u^n),\mu =1,2,\mathrm{},m+n$$

where $`u^a`$ is the local coordinate of $`M`$. In the $`(m+n)`$-dimensional Euclidean space, the tangent vector $`B_a^\mu `$ on the $`M`$ is defined as

$$B_a^\mu =\frac{x^\mu }{u^a},a=1,2,\mathrm{},n$$

and the metric tensor $`g_{ab}`$ in the $`M`$ is determined by

$$g_{ab}=B_a^\mu B_b^\mu .$$

The unit normal vector $`N_{\overline{A}}^\mu `$ satisfy

$$N_{\overline{A}}^\mu B_a^\mu =0,\overline{A}=n+1,n+2,\mathrm{},(m+n),$$
(1)
and the second fundamental tensor $`H_{ab\overline{A}}`$ is introduced as follow:

$$H_{ab\overline{A}}=N_{\overline{A}}^\mu _aB_b^\mu ,\mu =1,2,\mathrm{},(m+n),\text{ }a,b=1,2,\mathrm{},n.$$
(2)
Using the Gauss-Codazzi formula Eisenhart  the curvature tensor $`R_{ab,cd}`$ is expressed with the second fundamental tensor

$$R_{ab,cd}=H_{ac\overline{A}}H_{bd\overline{A}}H_{ad\overline{A}}H_{bc\overline{A}}.$$

Then the curvature tensor of the SO(n) principle bundle, i.e., the SO(n) gauge field tensor $`F_{ab}^{AB}=R_{ab,cd}e^{Ac}e^{Bd}`$ can be written as

$$F_{ab}^{AB}=(H_{ac\overline{A}}H_{bd\overline{A}}H_{ad\overline{A}}H_{bc\overline{A}})e^{Ac}e^{Bd},$$

where $`e^{Aa}`$ is the veilbein on $`M`$, which is defined by

$$g^{ab}=e^{Aa}e^{Ab},A=1,2,\mathrm{},n.$$

It is well known that the metric $`g^{ab}`$ is invariant under the SO(n) gauge transformation

$$e^{{}_{}{}^{}Aa}=L_B^A(u)e^{Ba},L_B^A(u)SO(n).$$

From the above formulation we see that if we define a 1-form $`H_{\overline{A}}^A`$

$$H_{\overline{A}}^A=e^{Aa}H_{ab\overline{A}}du^b,$$
(3)
the field strength 2-form $`F^{AB}`$ can be expressed as

$$\begin{array}{c}F^{AB}=\frac{1}{2}F_{ab}^{AB}du^adu^b\\ =H_{\overline{A}}^AH_{\overline{A}}^B.\end{array}$$
(4)
## III Gauss-Bonnet-Chern density

The GBC form $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a $`n`$-form over $`M,`$ i.e.

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{(1)^{n/2}}{2^n\pi ^{n/2}(n/2)!}\epsilon ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}F^{A_1A_2}F^{A_3A_4}\mathrm{}F^{A_{n1}A_n}.$$
(5)
The famous GBC theorem can thus be expressed as

$$\chi (M)=_M\mathrm{\Lambda }.$$
(6)
With the 1-form $`H_{\overline{A}}^A`$ we can obtain a new elegant expression of the GBC form

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{(1)^{n/2}}{2^n\pi ^{n/2}(n/2)!}\epsilon ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}H_{\overline{A}_1}^{A_1}H_{\overline{A}_1}^{A_2}\mathrm{}H_{\overline{A}_{n/2}}^{A_n}.$$
(7)
Let $`n^a(a=1,2,\mathrm{},n)`$ be a unit tangent vector on $`M`$

$$n^an^a=1,$$

by which two new unit tangent vectors $`n^\mu `$ and $`n^A`$ can be defined as

$$n^\mu =B_a^\mu n^a,n^A=e^{Aa}n_a,$$
(8)
and it is easy to verify that

$$n^\mu N_{\overline{A}}^\mu =0,n^An^A=1.$$
(9)
From Eqs. (2) and (3) one can find

$$H_{\overline{A}}^An^A=N_{\overline{A}}^\mu dn^\mu .$$
(10)
To study the topology of manifold $`M`$ by making use of the unit vector field $`n^\mu `$ in $`R^{(m+n)},`$ it must be required that both $`n^\mu `$ and $`dn^\mu `$ should be intrinsic on $`M`$, i.e.,

$$N_{\overline{A}}^\mu dn^\mu =0.$$
(11)
Thus one can find a relation

$$H_{\overline{A}}^An^A=0.$$
(12)
It can be seen from Eq. (3) that the 1-form $`H_{\overline{A}}^A`$ is invariant in general covariant coordinates transformation on $`M`$ and covariant in the SO(n) gauge transformation, i.e.,

$$n^{}_{}{}^{}A=L_B^A(u)n^B,H_{\overline{A}}^{}_{}{}^{}A=L_B^A(u)H_{\overline{A}}^B.$$

Since the covariant 1-form $`H_{\overline{A}}^A`$ is perpendicular to $`n^A`$, for each fixed index $`\overline{A},`$ the only covariant 1-form of $`H_{\overline{A}}^A`$ related to $`n^A`$ should be

$$H_{\overline{A}}^A=k_{\overline{A}}(u)Dn^A,$$
(13)
where $`k_{\overline{A}}(u)`$ is a scalar function for each fixed index on $`M`$ and

$$Dn^A=dn^A\omega ^{AB}n^B,$$

in which $`\omega ^{AB}`$ is the spin connection, i.e., the connection of the $`SO(n)`$ principle bundle. Then from Eq. (4) the field strength $`F^{AB}`$ can be given

$$F^{AB}=k^2(u)Dn^ADn^B,$$
(14)
where $`k^2(u)=k_{\overline{A}}(u)k_{\overline{A}}(u).`$

With the Eqs. (5) and (14) the GBC form can be expressed as

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{(1)^{n/2}k^n(u)}{2^n\pi ^{n/2}(n/2)!}ϵ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}Dn^{A_1}Dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}Dn^{A_n}.$$
(15)
Here following Chern’s work Chern1  and let $`P`$ be an arbitrary but fixed point of $`R^n`$. In the neighborhood of $`P`$ one can choose a family of veilbein {$`e^{Aa}`$} such that at $`P`$

$$\omega ^{AB}=0,$$
(16)
which gives

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{(1)^{n/2}k^n(u)}{2^n\pi ^{n/2}(n/2)!}ϵ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}dn^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}.$$
(17)
Since the integral region is the manifold $`M`$, at the same time the integral kernel is only function defined in this manifold $`M,`$ the last result should be independent of the choice of Euclidean space’s dimension. With the help of (n+1)-dimensional Euclidean space $`R^{n+1}`$, we can give

$$k=(\frac{n!!}{(n1)!!})^{1/n},$$
(18)
which is discussed in detail in the appendix. Then the above GBC form can be simply expressed as

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{1}{A(S^{n1})(n1)!}ϵ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}dn^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n},$$
(19)
which is just the result obtained verbosely by Chern in Ref. Chern1 . In the $`\varphi `$-mapping theory Slac ; Duan  the unit vector $`n^A`$ should be further determined by the smooth vectors $`\varphi ^A`$, i.e.

$$n^A=\frac{\varphi ^A}{\varphi },\varphi ^2=\sqrt{\varphi ^A\varphi ^A}.$$
(20)
In fact $`n`$ is identified as a section of the sphere bundle over $`M`$ (or a partial section of the vector bundle over $`M`$). We see that the zeroes of $`\varphi `$ are just the singular points of $`n`$. Since the global property of a manifold has close relation with zeroes of a smooth vector fields on it, the above expression of the unit vector $`n`$ is a very powerful tool in the discussion of the global topology.

Substituting Eq. (20) into Eq. (19), the GBC form can be given as Slac ; MengLi

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })D(\frac{\varphi }{u})d^nu$$
(21)
where the Jacobian $`D(\frac{\varphi }{u})`$ is defined as

$$\epsilon ^{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}D(\frac{\varphi }{u})=\epsilon ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}_{a_1}\varphi ^{A_1}_{a_2}\varphi ^{A_2}\mathrm{}_{a_n}\varphi ^{A_n}.$$

We define the GBC density $`\rho `$ on $`M`$ as

$$\rho :=\frac{\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}\epsilon ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}}{A(S^{n1})(n1)!}_{a_1}\varphi ^{A_1}_{a_2}\varphi ^{A_2}\mathrm{}_{a_n}\varphi ^{A_n}=\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })D(\frac{\varphi }{u}),$$
(22)
which shows that only at the zero points of the vector field $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }(u)`$, i.e.

$$\begin{array}{c}\varphi ^1(u^1,u^2,\mathrm{},u^n)=0,\\ \varphi ^2(u^1,u^2,\mathrm{},u^n)=0,\\ \mathrm{}\\ \varphi ^n(u^1,u^2,\mathrm{},u^n)=0,\end{array}$$
(23)
we can get the nontrial GBC density. The expressions (21) and (22) are of great importance: they yield, in our case, the evident result of the Hopf theorem.

Suppose that the vector field $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }(u)`$ possesses $`l`$ isolated zeroes, according to the implicit function theorem Imp1 ; Imp2 , when the Jacobian $`D(\varphi /u)0`$, the solutions of Eq. (23) are generally expressed as

$$u_i^A=z_i^A,A=1,2,\mathrm{},n,i=1,2,\mathrm{},l.$$

In terms of the $`\varphi `$-mapping theory Slac ; Duan  and the $`\delta `$-function theory delta , one can rigorously prove that the $`\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi }(u))`$ can be expanded as

$$\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\frac{W_i\delta (\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{z}_i)}{D(\varphi /u)|_{u=z_i}},W_i=\beta _i\eta _i,$$

where $`W_i`$ is the winding number of the vector field, $`\beta _i=|W_i|`$ is the Hopf index and $`\eta _i`$ is the Brouwer degree of map $`x\varphi `$ Hopf

$$\eta _i=sgnD(\frac{\varphi }{u})|_{u=z_i}=\pm 1.$$

This leads to the following topological structure

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }=\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })D(\frac{\varphi }{u})d^nu=\beta _i\eta _i\delta (\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{z}_i)d^nu,$$

which means that GBC form is labeled by the Brouwer degree and Hopf index. Therefore, the Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ can be represented as

$$\chi (M)=_M\mathrm{\Lambda }=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}W_i.$$
(24)
Here, Eq. (24) states that the sum of indices of the zeroes of vector $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }`$ is the Euler characteristic. Therefore, the topological structure of GBC form reveals the expected result of the Hopf-Poincaré theorem.

## IV The GBC topological current

Let us consider the ($`n+1`$)-dimensional manifold $`𝐌\times 𝐑`$ with coordinate $`u^0=t𝐑`$ denoted as a time variable. The line element of $`𝐌\times 𝐑`$ is

$$ds^2=\overline{g}_{\alpha \beta }du^\alpha du^\beta =(du^0)^2g_{ab}du^adu^b(\alpha ,\beta =0,1,\mathrm{},n;a,b=1,2,\mathrm{},n),$$

which implies

$$\overline{g}=det(\overline{g}_{\alpha \beta })=g,\sqrt{\overline{g}}=\sqrt{g}.$$

A generally covariant GBC topological current is defined as

$$j^\alpha :=\frac{(1)^{n/2}}{2^n\pi ^{n/2}(n/2)!}\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}\frac{\epsilon ^{\alpha \alpha _1\alpha _2\mathrm{}\alpha _n}}{\sqrt{g}}F_{\alpha _1\alpha _2}^{A_1A_2}F_{\alpha _3\alpha _4}^{A_3A_4}\mathrm{}F_{\alpha _{n1}\alpha _n}^{A_{n1}A_n}.$$

It follows that

$$j^\alpha :=\frac{1}{A(s^{n1})(n1)!}ϵ_{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}\frac{ϵ^{\alpha \alpha _1\alpha _2\mathrm{}\alpha _n}}{\sqrt{g}}_{\alpha _1}n^{A_1}_{\alpha _2}n^{A_2}\mathrm{}_{\alpha _n}n^{A_n},$$
(25)
where $`j^0`$ is just the GBC density $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\rho `$. Obviously the current (25) is identically conserved,

$$_\alpha j^\alpha =\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}_\alpha (\sqrt{g}j^\alpha )=0.$$

If we define $`n+1`$ Jacobians as

$$ϵ^{A_1\mathrm{}A_n}D^\alpha (\varphi /u)=ϵ^{\alpha \alpha _1\mathrm{}\alpha _n}_{\alpha _1}\varphi ^{A_1}\mathrm{}_{\alpha _n}\varphi ^{A_n},$$
(26)
in which $`D^0(\frac{\varphi }{u})=D(\frac{\varphi }{u})`$ is the usual $`n`$-dimensional Jacobian. Making use of the Laplacian relation, we obtain the $`\delta `$-function-like current

$$j^\alpha =\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })D^\alpha (\varphi /u).$$
(27)
Suppose $`\varphi ^A(u)`$ possesses $`l`$ isolated zeroes on $`𝐌`$ and let the $`i`$-th zero be $`\stackrel{}{u}=\stackrel{}{z}_i`$ i.e.

$$\varphi ^A(\stackrel{}{z}_i,t)=0,i=1,2,\mathrm{},l,A=1,2,\mathrm{},n,$$
(28)
according to the implicit function theorem whose solution can be expressed as MengLi

$$\stackrel{}{z}_i=\stackrel{}{z}_i(t),$$
(29)
which is the trajectory of the $`i`$-th zero. One can prove that the general velocity of the $`i`$-th zero Slac ; MengLi ,

$$V^\alpha :=\frac{dz_i^\alpha }{dt}=\frac{D^\alpha (\varphi /u)}{D(\varphi /u)}|_{\stackrel{}{u}=\stackrel{}{z}_i}.V^0=1.$$
(30)
Then the topological current $`j^\alpha `$ can be written as the current density form of a system including $`l`$ classical point particles with topological charge $`W_i=\beta _i\eta _i`$ moving in the ($`n+1`$)-dimensional space-time

$$j^\alpha =\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}W_i\delta (\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{z}_i(t))\frac{dz_i^\alpha }{dt},j^0=\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}W_i\delta (\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{z}_i(t))$$
(31)
The total charge of the system is

$$W:=_𝐌j^0\sqrt{g}d^nu=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\beta _i\eta _i=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}W_i,$$
(32)
which is none other than the topological invariant $`\chi (𝐌)`$, i.e. $`\chi (𝐌)=W`$. From (22) and (27), we get a concise expression for the topological current,

$$j^\alpha =\rho \frac{D^\alpha (\varphi /u)}{\sqrt{g}D(\varphi /u)}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}\rho V^\alpha ,$$
(33)
which takes the same form as the current density in hydrodynamics. From (32) the topological charge can be expressed as

$$W=_𝐌\rho d^nu=_𝐌\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })D(\frac{\varphi }{u})d^nu=degn_{n(𝐌)}\delta (\stackrel{}{\varphi })d^n\varphi ,$$
(34)
where $`degn`$ is the degree of the mapping $`n`$ Milnor . It indicates $`W=degn`$. Expressions (31)-(34) show that the topological structure of the $`GBC`$ topological current is characterized by the Brouwer degrees and Hopf indices. The structure of the $`GBC`$ topological current and its formulation is of great use in studying the topological defects in the Ginzburg-Landau theory Mazenko ; Ying  and topological field theories, especially in low-dimensional cases Duan .

In our theory the point-like particles with topological charges $`W_i=\beta _i\eta _i(i=1,2,\mathrm{},l)`$ are called $`GBC`$ topological particles. These particles are just located at the zeros of $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }(u)`$, i.e. the singularities of the unit vector $`\stackrel{}{n}(u)`$. The charges of them are topologically quantized.

## V From GBC theorem to Morse theory

In this section we will study the relation between Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ and indices of the critical points in Morse theory via the topological structure. We will show that the formula of $`\chi (M)`$ in Morse theory is only a corollary of the GBC theorem.

Let $`f`$ be an arbitrary function on $`M`$. A critical point of $`f`$ is a point $`pM`$ at which $`df`$ vanishes

$$df|_p=_afdu^a|_p=0,$$
(35)
and at such point the Hessian $`H_f(p)`$ is well defined quadratic form on $`T_pM,`$ the tangent space to $`M`$ at $`p.`$ In local coordinates $`\{u^a\}`$ centered at $`p,`$ the matrix of $`H_f(p)`$ relative to the base $`_a`$ at $`p`$ is then given by

$$\{H_f(p)\}_{ab}=\frac{^2f}{u^au^b},$$

which is called the Hessian matrix. If there exist $`l`$ critical points on $`f`$, we denote them by $`p_i(i=1,2,\mathrm{},l).`$ The index of $`p_i`$ is the number of negative eigenvalues of $`detH_f(p_i)`$ and it will be denoted by $`\lambda _i(f).`$

Now let the smooth vector field $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }`$ be a gradient fieldMilnor2  of the function $`f`$ on $`M`$ as

$$\varphi ^A=e^{Aa}_af,$$
(36)
which means that the critical points of $`f`$ are just the zero point of $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }.`$ From Eq. (36), we get

$$_b\varphi ^A|_p=e^{Aa}_a_bf|_p.$$
(37)
In terms of the above equation and the formula

$$\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}e^{A_1a_1}e^{A_2a_2}\mathrm{}e^{A_na_n}=\epsilon ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}},$$

one can find

$$D(\frac{\varphi }{u})|_p=\frac{1}{g}detH_f(p).$$

Therefore the GBC form and Euler characteristic $`\chi (M)`$ can be represented in terms of the Hopf indices $`\beta _i`$ and the Hessian $`H_f(p_i)`$

$$\stackrel{}{n}^{}d\mathrm{\Omega }=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\beta _i\delta (\stackrel{}{u}\stackrel{}{p}_i)\frac{detH_f(p_i)}{|detH_f(p_i)|}\sqrt{g}d^nu,$$

and

$$\chi (M)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\beta _i\frac{detH_f(p_i)}{|detH_f(p_i)|}.$$
(38)
In the Morse theory Milnor2 ; Nash  it is well-known that Morse function $`f`$ has only the non-degenerate critical points $`p`$ at which $`f`$ satisfies

$$detH_pf0.$$

At the neighborhood of any critical point $`p_i`$, Morse function $`f`$ can take following form

$$f=f(p_i)(u^1)^2\mathrm{}(u^{\lambda _i})^2+\mathrm{}+(u^n)^2,$$
(39)
where $`\lambda _i=0,1,\mathrm{},N.`$ Substituting (39) into (38), one can get the generalized expression of $`\chi (M)`$ in the Morse theory

$$\chi (M)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\beta _i(1)^{\lambda _i},$$
(40)
when $`f`$ is taken as a Morse function. In the case of $`\beta _i=1,`$ one can get the common Morse theory formula of $`\chi (M)`$

$$\chi (M)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(1)^{\lambda _i}.$$
(41)
Since the meaning of Hopf index $`\beta _i`$ is that when the point $`\stackrel{}{u}`$ covers the neighborhood of the zero $`z_i`$ on $`U_i`$ once, the vector field $`\stackrel{}{\varphi }`$ covers the corresponding region $`\beta _i`$ times, we can think that the Hopf index corresponding to some physical degeneracy. The formula (41) is only the special case of non-degeneracy.

## VI Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Doctoral Foundation of People’s Republic of China.

## VII Appendix: The coefficient in Eq. (18)

Here we give a proof of the Eq. (18). From Eqs. (13) and (16) one can obtain

$$H^A=k(u)dn^A.$$
(42)
In terms of the Eqs. (1), (8) and (10) one can get

$$dN^\mu =B_a^\mu e^{Aa}H^A.$$

From Eq. (50) we can find the relationship

$$dN^\mu =k(u)B_a^\mu e^{Aa}dn^A,$$
(43)
where $`n^A`$ are the unit tangent vectors which satisfy

$$n^An^A=1.$$
(44)
It is well-known that the area element of $`S^n`$ is

$$ds=\frac{1}{n!}\epsilon _{\lambda \mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n}N^\lambda dN^{\mu _1}dN^{\mu _2}\mathrm{}dN^{\mu _n}.$$

In order to discuss the coefficient we introduce the following $`n`$-form

$$I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)n!}\epsilon _{\lambda \mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n}N^\lambda dN^{\mu _1}dN^{\mu _2}\mathrm{}dN^{\mu _n},$$

in terms of Eq. (51) which can be expressed as

$$I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)n!}k^n(u)\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}dn^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}.$$
(45)
We split $`S^n`$ into hemispheres $`S^\pm ,`$ i.e. $`S^n=S^++S^{}`$, and $`S^+=S^{n1},`$ we have

$`{\displaystyle _{S^+}}I=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{A(S^n)}}{\displaystyle _{S^+}}𝑑s`$ (46)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{A(S^n)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}A(S^n)`$
$`=1.`$
For the unit vector $`n^A`$, from Eq. (44) we have

$$n^Adn^A=0,$$

which can be considered as the linear homogeneous system of equations about $`n^A.`$ In case that $`n^A`$ has the nontrivial solution, i.e. $`n^A`$ has no singularity in the Riemannian manifold $`M,`$ there is

$$det(_an^A)=0,$$

or

$$\epsilon ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}_{a_1}n^{A_1}_{a_2}n^{A_2}\mathrm{}_{a_n}n^{A_n}=0.$$

Thus we have $`I=0,`$ i.e. the coefficient $`k`$ in the Eq. (50) can be treated arbitrarily in the non-singularities, so we only need to consider the $`k`$ in the singularity. Suppose that there are $`l`$ isolated singularities in the $`M,`$ the $`i`$th singularity is

$$u=z_i,i=1,2,\mathrm{},l.$$

We know that there is at least a singularity when we enclose the sphere using a open face, and set this singularity is $`z_i`$. With Eq. (49) and Stokes’ theorem we have

$`{\displaystyle _{S^+}}I`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{A(S^n)}}{\displaystyle _{S^+}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n!}}k^n\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}𝑑n^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}`$ (47)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{A(S^n)}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^n(z_i)}{n!}}{\displaystyle _{S^{n1}}}\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}n^{A_1}𝑑n^{A_2}dn^{A_3}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{A(S^n)}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^n(z_i)}{n!}}(n1)!A(S^{n1}).`$
Considering the Eq. (52) one can find

$$k^n(z_i)=\frac{A(S^n)n!}{2A(S^{n1})(n1)!}=\frac{n!!}{(n1)!!},$$
(48)
which shows the relationship of the Gauss mappings between the $`n`$-dimension and the $`(n+1)`$-dimension. Obviously the Eq. (53) is valid in other singularities, in the other words, we have the result (54) for all singularities. Then we obtain the relation

$$H^A=(\frac{n!!}{(n1)!!})^{1/n}dn^A,$$

this is just the Eq. (18).

Here we give a proof of the Eq. (18). In order to discussing the coefficient we introduce the following n-form

$$I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)n!}k^n(u)\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}dn^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}.$$
(49)
For the unit vector $`n^A`$, from Eq. (9) we have

$$n^Adn^A=0,$$

which can be considered as the linear homogeneous system of equations about $`n^A.`$ In case that $`n^A`$ has the nontrivial solution, i.e. $`n^A`$ has no singularity in the Riemannian manifold $`M,`$ there is

$$det(_an^A)=0,$$

or

$$\epsilon ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}\epsilon _{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}_{a_1}n^{A_1}_{a_2}n^{A_2}\mathrm{}_{a_n}n^{A_n}=0.$$

Thus we have $`I=0,`$ i.e. the coefficient $`k`$ can be treated arbitrarily in the non-singularities, so we only need to consider the $`k`$ in the singularity for the $`n`$-form $`I`$. Considering the property of manifold, each closed neighborhood $`M_i`$ of singularity can always be immersed in a ($`n+1`$)-dimensional Euclidean space $`R^{n+1}`$Eisenhart . In this Euclidean space $`R^{n+1}`$ there exist a vector $`N^\mu `$

$$N^\mu =\frac{1}{n!}\frac{1}{\sqrt{g}}ϵ^{\mu \mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n}ϵ^{a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n}B_{a_1}^{\mu _1}B_{a_2}^{\mu _2}\mathrm{}B_{a_n}^{\mu _n},\mu =1,2,\mathrm{},n+1$$

which is normal to $`M_i,`$ i.e. $`N^\mu B_a^\mu =0`$. Similarly we have

$$H^A=B_a^\mu e^{Aa}dN^\mu .$$

From Eqs. (13) one can obtain

$$H^A=kdn^A.$$
(50)
then,

$$dn^A=k^1dN^\mu B_a^\mu e^{Aa}.$$
(51)
In terms of Eq. (51) the $`n`$-form $`I`$ can be expressed as

$$I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)n!}\epsilon _{\lambda \mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n}N^\lambda dN^{\mu _1}dN^{\mu _2}\mathrm{}dN^{\mu _n}.$$

Let $`S^n=S^++S^{}`$, and $`S^+=S^{n1},`$ we have

$$\begin{array}{c}_{S^+}I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)}_{S^+}𝑑s\\ =\frac{2}{A(S^n)}\frac{1}{2}A(S^n)\\ =1.\end{array}$$
(52)
where $`ds`$ is the area element of $`S^n`$

$$ds=\frac{1}{n!}\epsilon _{\lambda \mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n}N^\lambda dN^{\mu _1}dN^{\mu _2}\mathrm{}dN^{\mu _n}.$$

Suppose that there are $`l`$ isolated singularities in the $`M,`$ the $`i`$th singularity is

$$u=z_i,i=1,2,\mathrm{},l.$$

We know that there is at least a singularity when we enclose the sphere using a open face, and set this singularity is $`z_i`$. With Eq. (49) and Stokes’ theorem we have

$$\begin{array}{c}_{S^+}I=\frac{2}{A(S^n)}_{S^+}\frac{1}{n!}k^nϵ_{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}𝑑n^{A_1}dn^{A_2}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}\\ =\frac{2}{A(S^n)}\frac{k^n}{n!}_{S^{n1}}ϵ_{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_n}n^{A_1}𝑑n^{A_2}dn^{A_3}\mathrm{}dn^{A_n}\\ =\frac{2}{A(S^n)}\frac{k^n}{n!}(n1)!A(S^{n1}).\end{array}$$
(53)
Considering the Eq. (52) one can find

$$k^n=\frac{A(S^n)n!}{2A(S^{n1})(n1)!}=\frac{n!!}{(n1)!!},$$
(54)
which shows the relationship of the Gauss mappings between the $`n`$-dimension and the $`(n+1)`$-dimension. Obviously the Eq. (53) is valid in other singularities, in the other words, we have the result (54) for all singularities. Then for the $`n`$-form $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ we obtain the relation

$$H^A=(\frac{n!!}{(n1)!!})^{1/n}dn^A,$$

this is just the Eq. (18).


text:
# The host galaxy - AGN connection at low and high redshift.

## 1. Introduction

The discovery that many and probably all apparently inactive nearby early type galaxies harbour a dormant black hole (BH) in their nuclei (e.g. Ferrarese 2002) has changed the view that distinguished active from inactive galaxies. It is also becoming clear that a full comprehension of the processes that produced the galaxies we observe today must take into account the formation of supermassive black holes in their centers.

It is well assessed that the high energy phenomena observed in AGN occur in the nuclei of massive galaxies. Less understood is, however, the link between the properties of the active nucleus and those of the host galaxy. Nevertheless a number of issues are emerging from recent studies. Nuclear activity associated with radio emission is present almost exclusively on galaxies dominated by the spheroidal component. On the other hand radio quiet objects are found in both types of galaxies (bulge and disc dominated galaxies).

A detailed comparison of the host properties of various type of AGNs together with those of normal (inactive) galaxies can help to investigate the origin of the nuclear activity. In particular one can explore if and how the nuclear activity depends on the global properties (e.g. total luminosity and scale-length) of the galaxies, if there are difference in the stellar population with respect to inactive galaxies and what is the role of interactions (disturbed morphologies, close companions). Such kind of comparison can be done with different degree of details that depends in part on the distance of the sources and on the prominence of the nucleus with respect to the host galaxy. Radiogalaxies are the nearest active objects and exhibit only faint nuclei and are therefore the most easy AGN to study. On the other hand quasars are rare objects locally, have extremely bright nuclei and are rather more difficult to study.

The recent discovery that the BH mass (MBH) is correlated with the properties of the bulge component of the host galaxy, which is translated into the relationships between MBH and the bulge luminosity (Kormendy & Richstone 1995; Magorrian et al. 1998; Richstone et al. 1998; Kormendy & Gebhardt 2001) and between MBH and the velocity dispersion $`\sigma `$ of the host galaxy (Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000; Merritt & Ferrarese 2001b) offers a new tool for evaluation of BH masses in AGNs if a reliable measurement of host galaxy luminosity or velocity dispersion is done.

While for AGN with strong emission lines (as QSO and Seyfert galaxies) the standard methods (e.g. reverberation mapping) under virial assumptions of the emitting regions can be used to derive MBH ( see e.g. Wandel et al. 1999 and Kaspi et al. 2000), the above relations may be the only way to estimate MBH for active galaxies that lack of emission lines (as BL Lac objects) or that are too far (most of nearby radiogalaxies) to resolve the region of influence of the BH.

In addition the knowledge of the properties of the galaxies hosting active nuclei may also yield fundamental insight for probing the unification models of AGN. The main ingredient of the unification scenario of radio loud AGN (e.g. Urry and Padovani 1995) is that the observed properties of an object may depend on orientation effects (because of an isotropic obscuration or emission from the nucleus). Two objects with identical intrinsic properties may therefore exhibit apparent different nuclear activity because they are seen at different angles.

A simple test for this hypothesis is to compare the properties of the host galaxies (that do not depend on orientation) of various classes of AGN. Radio loud AGNs constitute only a small fraction of active galaxies but they seem to form a homogeneous class of sources whose phenomenology could be explained within the same scenario.

In this paper I’ll first review the properties of the galaxies hosting low redshift (z$`<`$ 0.5) radio loud active nuclei. This includes radiogalaxies, BL Lac objects and radio loud quasars (RLQs). Then using the relationships between BH mass and host properties I derive and compare the distribution of BH masses in the various classes of active galaxies. In the second part of this work I’ll sketch the view of quasar hosts beyond z $``$ 1. Finally a summary of the main conclusions of this work are given together with a perspective of the future studies on high redshift sources.

## 2. Host galaxies of radio loud active nuclei at z $`<`$ 0.5.

In this section I’ll briefly review the properties of the galaxies hosting active nuclei that exhibit strong radio emission. These include radio galaxies at z $`<`$ 0.2, BL Lac objects and radio loud quasars at z $`<`$ 0.5. In order to make the comparison of host properties as much as possible homogeneous I considered ground based data for low redshift radiogalaxies while only observations taken with HST were considered for the active galaxies with bright nuclei (BLL and RLQ). Moreover all the data presented here have been homogenized in terms of used passband, galactic extinction, k-correction and use the same cosmological parameters ( H0 = 50 km s-1 Mpc-1 and deceleration parameter q0 = 0 are used throughout this paper).

### 2.1. Radiogalaxies

Nearby radiogalaxies (RGs) are the most easy active objects to study because of they are relatively abundant in the local universe and their nuclei are faint compared with the starlight emission. The largest and homogeneous optical study of nearby radiogalaxies has been presented by Govoni et al (2000). They report detailed surface photometry for 79 objects at z $`<`$ 0.12 and extracted from two complete samples of radiosources (see Fasano et al 1996 for details). It turns out that RGs are systems dominated but the spheroidal component with average absolute magnitude $`M_R(tot)=24.0`$; FRI sources are hosted in galaxies $``$ 0.5 mag more luminous than FRII galaxies.

The detailed study of the luminosity profiles showed the presence of nuclear point sources whose luminosity is about few percent that of the whole galaxy. The luminosity of this component appears correlated with the core radio power but independent of the luminosity of the host galaxy. This result has been well confirmed by HST observations where these nuclei are well visible on direct images (Chiaberge Capetti & Celotti 1999). The shape of the luminosity profile has also emphasized the frequent presence of an excess of light with respect to the bulge component which could be interpreted as due to a conspicuous halo. As far as the internal structure of these galaxies is concerned (ellipticity, isophote shape, twisting), it was shown that radio galaxies are indistinguishable from the normal (non radio) ellipticals.

As a whole, these studies have therefore shown that the optical morphological/structural and photometrical properties of radio and non-radio ellipticals are remarkably similar, suggesting that all ellipticals may go through a phase of nuclear activity lasting for a small fraction of the total life of the galaxy.

At variance with this, however, it was found that RG are on average slightly bluer and with a bluer gradient across the galaxy with respect to a sample of non radio ellipticals. This suggests a possible effect connecting the phase of radio activity with that of star formation.

It is known that the global properties of early–type galaxies are fairly well described through a three dimensional space of observables which, besides the effective radius $`r_e`$ and the corresponding average surface brightness $`\mu `$, involves the central velocity dispersion $`\sigma _c`$ (Djorgovski & Davis 1987, Dressler et al 1987). A full comparison between radio and non radio galaxies needs therefore to take into account also the kinematical properties.

Using photometrical and dynamical data for 73 low red-shift (z$`<`$0.2) radio galaxies (Bettoni et al 2001) were able to compare the Fundamental Plane (FP) of RG (see Fig 1) with that defined by inactive ellipticals (Jørgensen et al. 1996, JFK96). They showed that the same FP holds for both radio and non radio ellipticals. Radio galaxies occupy the region of the most luminous and large ellipticals. The consistency even of the kinematics properties lead further support to the idea that virtually, all ellipticals have the basic ingredients for becoming active.

### 2.2. BL Lac objects

Until about a decade ago the host galaxies of BL Lacs were poorly investigated and only for the nearest and most famous sources the global properties of the galaxies were known (see e.g. Ulrich 1989). The dramatic improvement of the telescope instrumentation and detectors has allowed one to perform a more systematic study of the faint nebulosity associated with BL Lacs. Using high quality imaging obtained from ground based telescopes (mainly CFHT at Hawaii, NTT at ESO Chile and NOT at La Palma) various groups have provided systematic measurements of the basic properties of the hosts (Wurtz et al 1996 Falomo 1996, Falomo and Kotilainen 1999, Nilsson et al 2002 this conference) for large samples of objects. These works have consistently shown that BL Lac hosts are virtually all massive ellipticals (average luminosity MR = -23.7 and effective radius Re = 10 kpc) located in poor groups (but there are some notable exceptions: PKS 0548-32, Falomo et al 1995) The few exceptions to this scheme (i.e. claims of disc dominated host galaxies) regards specific objects (e.g. AO 0235+164, PKS0537-441, MS0205.7+3509) that were proposed to be candidates for microlensing (e.g. Stickel et al 1988a,b; Stocke Wurtz & Perlman 1995) For these sources various pro and con observations have been reported and discussed in the literature (Abraham et al 1993; Falomo Melnick & Tanzi 1992; Falomo et al 1997; see also Heidt at this conference). To the present time there is not convincing case of a BL Lac object hosted in (or superposed to) a disc dominated galaxy.

A further significant improvement to the knowledge of the properties of the galaxies hosting BL Lacs has been provided by the R band ( F702W filter) high resolution images collected by WFPC2 camera on-board of HST during a snapshot (short exposure) survey of BL Lacs (Scarpa et al 2000, Urry et al 2000). This has produced a homogeneous set of high quality images for 110 BLL from which their environments can be investigated. All (57) but three targets at z $`<`$ 0.5 have been well resolved and emphasized the early type morphology of the hosts. Characterization of the host global properties indicated that they are indistinguishable from the population of luminous inactive ellipticals. These data also showed that no significant difference is present between the hosts of HBL and those of LBL in spite of the remarkable difference of their SED (Urry et al 2000).

Moreover for lower redshift (z $`<`$ 0.2) objects a detailed study of isophote centering, twisting and isophote shape was performed (Falomo et al 2000). It was found that both the ellipticity and the isophotal shape distributions are similar to those of radio galaxies and radio-quiet ellipticals. This suggests that tidal interactions are very infrequent or are short-lived with respect to the nuclear activity time scale. Moreover no indication of off-centering of the galaxy isophotes with respect to the nucleus (with accuracy of $`0.05`$ arcsec) was found, meaning that the unresolved nuclear source truly sits at the center of its galaxy. This rules out the microlensing hypothesis for BL Lacs, which predicts frequent off-centering of the nucleus (Ostriker & Vietri 1990). HST imaging therefore confirm with high level of details that the hosts of BL Lacs are not different from ”normal” unperturbed massive spheroidal galaxies.

### 2.3. Radio loud quasars

The host galaxies of low redshift (z $`<`$ 0.5) quasars have been thoroughly investigated using both ground-based imaging (e.g. McLeod & Rieke 1995; Taylor et al. 1996; Percival et al. 2000) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST; e.g. Bahcall et al. 1997; Boyce et al. 1998; McLure et al. 1999). These investigations have shown that most quasars live in galaxies at least as bright as the Shechter function’s characteristic luminosity L (e.g. Mobasher, Sharples & Ellis 1993). While most quasar host galaxies are brighter than L, and in many cases comparable to brightest cluster member galaxies (BCM; Thuan & Puschell 1989), some undetected or marginally detected hosts may be under-luminous. Recent morphological studies of host properties at low $`z`$ (e.g. Taylor et al. 1996; Percival et al. 2000) have concluded that while RLQs are found exclusively in giant elliptical galaxies, radio-quiet quasars (RQQ) reside in both elliptical and spiral (disc dominated) galaxies. It has been suggested that the morphological type may depend on the power of the quasar, with the most luminous quasars found only in spheroidal host galaxies (Taylor et al. 1996).

Since there is not a homogeneous and large set of HST observations for RLQs, I have constructed a sample of objects from merging three different subsets (Bahcall et al. 1997; Boyce et al. 1998; Dunlop et al. 2001). Since the subsets have statistically indistinguishable host luminosity distributions (Treves et al 2001) we have merged these subsamples have been merged. The combined data set consists therefore of 18 objects with redshift in the range 0.158$`<z<`$0.389, $`<z>`$=0.26$`\pm `$0.07 and $`<M_R>=24.04\pm 0.4`$ (see also Falomo et al 2002) As in the case of BLL an elliptical model is always a good representation for the host galaxies. Although based on small (but homogeneous) samples the comparison between BL Lacs and RLQs suggests that the latter are hosted in galaxies that are systematically more luminous by $``$0.5 magnitudes. High power nuclear activity like that observed in the RLQ sample appear therefore to occur only in the most luminous and massive galaxies and it is therefore a rare event.

## 3. Super massive Black Holes and host galaxies properties

There is a large consensus about the existence of supermassive black holes (SBHs) at the center of nearby inactive galaxies as well as in the nuclei of active galaxies and quasars (see e.g. Ferrarese 2002 for a recent review). A large body of data, in particular based on high resolution HST observations, is now available (see e.g. Kormendy & Gebhardt 2001) to support the presence of such massive BH using different techniques.

SBHs play an important role in the formation and evolution of massive spheroids and are also a key component for the development of the nuclear activity. In spite of this apparently ubiquitous presence of SBH in galaxies our understanding on how the galaxies and their central BHs are linked in the process of formation of the observed structures is still poorly understood (Silk & Rees 1998; Kauffmann and Helmet 2000; Adams et al. 2001).

From the observational point of view it was shown that ($`M_{BH}`$) is correlated with the bulge mass ($`M_{bulge}`$) component of the host galaxy which is translated into a relationship between $`M_{BH}`$ and bulge luminosity $`L_{bulge}`$ (Magorrian et al. 1998;Kormendy & Gebhardt 2001 ) and between $`M_{BH}`$ and the velocity dispersion ($`\sigma `$) (Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; \[FM\]; Gebhardt et al. 2000 ). These relationships are based on a small number ($``$40) of nearby galaxies for which direct dynamical measurements of $`M_{BH}`$ have been secured. On the other hand, although these empirical relationships have a scatter of $``$0.4 dex, they offer a new tool for evaluating $`M_{BH}`$ of AGN provided that bulge luminosities and/or velocity dispersion be measured (e.g. McLure & Dunlop 2002 ).

Bettoni et al (2002) have derived the relations between $`M_{BH}`$ and $`L_{bulge}`$ and $`\sigma `$ using a sample of 20 E-type galaxies in the Kormendy & Gebhardt (2001) galaxy list with measured BH masses. The two relations are:

$$Log(M_{BH}/M_{})=0.50\times M_R2.97$$
(1)
$$Log(M_{BH}/M_{})=4.55\times Log(\sigma )2.27,$$
(2)
The two relations were used to evaluate the mass of the BH in RGs, BL Lacs and RLQs samples discussed in the previous sections. For the sample of 73 RGs a mean value (using eq. 2) $`<Log(M_{BH})>`$=8.66$`\pm `$0.45 is found and a slighter higher value if host galaxy luminosities (eq. 1) are used: $`<Log(M_{BH})>`$=8.94$`\pm `$0.37. The reason for this ($``$ a factor of 2) systematic difference is not well understood but it needs to be taken into account when comparing BH masses using different methods (see also discussion in Bettoni et al 2002).

Only for a small number of BL Lac objects the stellar velocity dispersion of the host galaxy has been measured (Falomo Kotilainen and Treves 2002; see also Kotilainen et al at this conference ). The BH mass of 7 BL Lacs derived from measurements of $`\sigma `$ is $`<Log(M_{BH})>`$=8.62$`\pm `$0.23 while using the host galaxy luminosity of the sample of 57 objects at z $`<`$ 0.5 imaged by HST a slighter higher value of BH mass is found $`<Log(M_{BH})>`$=8.76$`\pm `$0.25 (see also Falomo Carangelo & Treves 2002).

For RLQs no measurements of the stellar velocity dispersion are available therefore MBH can be derived only from the luminosity of the host galaxy. Again if we consider only objects imaged by HST the derived average BH mass is $`<Log(M_{BH})>`$=9.05$`\pm `$0.20. The distributions of BH masses for the three subsamples are compared in Figure 2.

It turns out thus that within a factor of two RGs, BLL and RLQs have similar BH masses but their total intrinsic nuclear luminosities are remarkably different. In addition to the higher observed nuclear/host ratio of RLQ with respect to BLL for the latter a substantial beaming factor is present ($`\delta `$15 see Ghisellini et al. 1998, Capetti & Celotti 1999). Both effects make the intrinsic nuclear luminosities different by a factor $``$ 100. This implies a dramatic difference of the Eddington ratio $`\xi _E=L/L_E`$ where LE=1.25$`\times `$10$`{}_{}{}^{38}\times `$(MBH/M) erg s-1 (see also O’Dowd et al 2001; Treves et al 2001). Basing on the estimated total QSO luminosity of L$`3\times `$ 10$`{}_{}{}^{12}L_{}^{}`$ (e.g. Elvis et al. 1994) and assuming BH masses of 1x 109 M, it is found that RLQ may be emitting at rates of 10% or higher than their Eddington power, while BLL are always emitting at regimes that are much lower than LE. Given the similarity of BH masses the key parameters distinguishing RLQs from BLL should be considered the accretion rate $`\dot{M}`$ (see also Cavaliere and D’Elia 2002), and the jet beaming parameter $`\delta `$, rather than the black hole mass.

## 4. Host galaxies of radio loud active nuclei at high redshift

A good knowledge of quasar host galaxies is essentially limited to z $`<`$ 1 and it has enabled only a preliminary insight into the cosmological (z–dependent) quasar–host galaxy connection. This evolution should become much clearer in the redshift interval 1 $`<`$ z $`<`$ 3, since z$``$2 is close to the epoch of the most vigorous nuclear activity. The observed similarity of the cosmic quasar evolution with the rate of galaxy formation (e.g. Franceschini et al 1999) may represent the overall effect of a fundamental link between massive galaxies and their nuclei, that has driven their formation history.

Due to the increasing difficulty of detecting quasar hosts at high redshift only a few studies of RLQ hosts at z $`>`$ 1 have been conducted so far. Using 4m class telescopes (e.g. Lehnert et al. 1992, 1999; Hutchings et al. 1999) the observations suggest RLQs are hosted in very luminous galaxies with possibly high star formation rates. On the other hand similar studies of RQQs at z$``$2.5 (e.g. Lowenthal et al. 1995) were unable to resolve the hosts.

More recently deep, high spatial resolution NIR images of high redshift RLQs obtained either using large ground based telescopes (Falomo et al 2002) or HST (Kukula et al 2001) show a modest increase with redshift of host luminosity, which is consistent with that expected from simple passive evolution of massive spheroids. The luminosities of the high $`z`$ RLQs hosts (M$`{}_{H}{}^{}`$ –27.5) are very similar to those of high redshift 6C RG (Eales et al. (1997). The scenario appears, however, different for RQQ hosts since HST and NICMOS imaging of 5 (z $``$2) RQQs ( Ridgway et al 2000) indicates their host are 1-2 less luminous. than those found in RLQs.

There is also evidence that the systematic difference of host luminosity between RLQs and RQQs, already noted at low redshift (e.g. Bahcall et al. 1997 ), is more significant at higher redshift. This suggest a different formation and/or evolutionary history of the two types of AGN depending on whether or not they can develop radio emission.

Models of galaxy formation and evolution based on hierarchical clustering (e.g. Kauffmann & Hähnelt 2000) predict progressively less luminous host galaxies for quasars at high redshift. This seems to be in reasonable agreement with the observations of high $`z`$ RQQ hosts (Ridgway et al. 2000; Hutchings 1995), which may still be undergoing major mergers to evolve into the low redshift giant ellipticals. This scenario, contrasts with the results for high $`z`$ RLQs. Note, however, that the available data set of the properties of high redshift hosts galaxies is still very scanty and further high quality observations extended up to z $``$ 3 are needed to properly assess the above points.

## 5. Conclusions and future perspectives

I have shown that at low redshift (z $`<`$ 0.5)the galaxies hosting radio sources exhibit very similar properties. In all classes considered (RG, BL Lacs and RLQs) the hosts are luminous galaxies dominated by the spheroidal component. These objects seem to follow the behaviour of massive spheroids that are well formed at z $`>`$ 2 and then undergo passive evolution.

Assuming that the relationship between galaxy mass (luminosity or velocity dispersion) and central black hole mass, found for nearby early type galaxies, holds also for these more distant active galaxies, the similarity of host properties translates into a similarity of MBH. The differences in the observed nuclear properties must therefore be either in their viewing angle or/and in the level of accretion. Also a different BH spin could play a relevant role.

Further studies of the host galaxies and their nuclei require to extend the analysis to higher redshift. In particular it is important to explore, with a statistical data set, QSO hosts up to z $``$ 3 in order to assess the host evolution around the peak of QSO activity. To pursue this goal it is imperative to gather observations with high spatial resolution and great efficiency in order to detect the faint nebulosity surrounding the bright nuclei. These requirements appear well matched by next generation instrumentation, in the near IR, that make use of adaptive optics at large ground based telescopes or with the future James Webb Space Telescope in space.

#### Acknowledgments.

I wish to thank D. Bettoni, N. Carangelo, G. Fasano, J. Kotilainen, and A. Treves for comments and usage of unpublished data.

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