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# Analytic Solution of Strongly Coupling Schrödinger Equations

## I Introduction

The main task in application of quantum mechanics is to solve Schrödinger equations for various potentials. Unfortunately, only few of them can be solved exactly. In textbooks various approximation methods, especially the perturbation theory, are discussed with great length. While the perturbation theory, as the most important approximation method, has exhibited its power in a lot of weakly coupling cases, it is not applicable to strongly coupling problems which, however, exist widely and play important roles in the real world. How to analytically solve the Schröedinger equations in nonperturbative case remains an open question.

Recently, a new method to discuss strongly coupling potentials was presented by Friedberg, Lee and Zhao. The goal is to solve the ground state of the time independent Schröedinger equation with strongly coupling potential

$$(\frac{\widehat{\stackrel{}{p}}}{2m}+V)\psi =E\psi .$$
(1)
Considering a boundary potential $`V(\stackrel{}{r})0`$ with the minimum $`V(\stackrel{}{r})=0`$ at the origin point $`\stackrel{}{r}=0`$, one introduces a dimensionless scalar parameter g which reflects the intensity of the potential by writing

$$V(\stackrel{}{r})=g^2v(\stackrel{}{r}).$$
(2)
For strong potentials we are interested in, $`g`$ is a large number, the ground state $`\psi `$ and the corresponding ground energy $`E`$ can be expanded in the inverse number of $`g`$,

$`\psi (\stackrel{}{r})=e^{S(\stackrel{}{r})},`$ (3)
$`S(\stackrel{}{r})=gS_0(\stackrel{}{r})+g^0S_1(\stackrel{}{r})+g^1S_2(\stackrel{}{r})+\mathrm{}`$ (4)
$`E=gE_0+g^0E_1+g^1E_2+\mathrm{}.`$ (5)
Substituting the expansion into (1) and then comparing the coefficients of $`g^n`$ on the both sides, one obtains a series of first order differential equations(by contrast, the Schrödinger equation itself is of second order):

$`(S_0)^2=2mv,`$ (6)
$`S_0S_1={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^2S_0mE_0,`$ (7)
$`S_0S_2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(^2S_1S_1S_1)mE_1,`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{}`$ (9)
where $`m`$ is the particle mass. The first equation of the above hierarchy contains only $`S_0`$ as unknown term and can be solved by direct integration with boundary condition. The second equation contains only $`S_1`$ as unknown term (note that $`S_0`$ has been solved by the first equation) and can be solved in the same way as $`S_0`$, and $`E_0`$ can be fixed by considering the convergence of $`S_1`$ at the origin. With the same procedure, all $`S_i`$ and $`E_i`$ can be determined step by step. To illustrate the procedure clearly, one considers the familiar one dimension harmonic oscillator with $`V(x)=g^2m^3x^2`$. In this case the hierarchy (6) is reduced to

$`({\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dx}})^2=2m^4x^2,`$ (10)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dx}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_1}{dx}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2S_0}{dx^2}}mE_0,`$ (11)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dx}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_2}{dx}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}({\displaystyle \frac{d^2S_1}{dx^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_1}{dx}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_1}{dx}})mE_1.`$ (12)
$`\mathrm{}`$ (13)
Using the boundary condition $`\psi (\pm \mathrm{})=0`$ or $`S_0(\pm \mathrm{})=\mathrm{}`$ and the convenient renormalization $`\psi (0)=1`$ or $`S_0(0)=0`$, the integration of the first equation gives $`S_0(x)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}m^2x^2`$. With the solved $`S_0`$, the second equation is reduced to $`S_1^{}=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{E_0}{\sqrt{2}m})/x`$. To avoid divergence of $`S_1^{}`$ at $`x=0`$, the only way is to choose $`E_0=\frac{m}{\sqrt{2}}`$. With the same procedure, all $`S_i`$ and $`E_i`$ with $`i>0`$ can be proven to be zero, and the final result gives precisely the same solution as that in any textbook. For details, see -.

The readers who are familiar with the well-known WKB approximation may ask the difference between the WKB and the hierarchy (6). While the hierarchy (6) looks similar to the WKB hierarchy, they are very different from each other. The most explicit difference is that in WKB the energy $`E`$ appears always in the fist equation of the hierarchy together with the potential $`V`$, but here $`E_0`$ and $`v`$ may not appear in the first equation simultaneously, see (6). In WKB, the energy is determined by the continuity condition of wave functions at the so-called ”classical turning point”, or equivalently by using the Bohr-Sommerfeld like quantization condition. In the approach here, the energy eigenvalue is directly determined by the boundary condition. Physically, in WKB the wave function is expanded in $`\mathrm{}`$, it is useful only for semiclassical systems, while the wave function and energy eigenvalue here are expanded in the inverse number of the strong coupling constant, the hierarchy (6) is like the expansion in the inverse number of large $`N`$ often used in nonperturpative treatment of quantum field systems, see, for instance, . Also the WKB wave function $`e^{\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}\alpha (x)}`$ is an oscillating form which corresponds to real particles, so that more applicable to semiclassical case, but the wave function in (6) is a damping form and more suitable for dealing with bound states.

Although the new method is powerful in solving strongly coupling Schrödinger equations, the step of writing the wave function $`\psi (\stackrel{}{r})`$ in the form $`\psi (\stackrel{}{)}=e^{S(\stackrel{}{r})}`$ in (3) is a strong constraint in the application of the method to more kinds of potentials. For example, the linear potential $`V=gr`$ cannot be solved through expansion (3) due to the divergence encountered in dealing with (6). From the analysis in Section 2 we will see that the expansion with the form of (3) is only suitable for harmonic-oscillator-like potentials which can be expanded quadratically around the minimum. On the other hand, the expansion (3) is valid mainly for ground states, an excited state can not be expressed as a pure exponential function.

To make the expansion method more applicable, one should construct carefully the expansion form of $`\psi (\stackrel{}{r})`$ through physical analysis of different potentials and of different states. In this paper, we first investigate the coupling constant dependence of bound states for power-law central forces in order to construct proper expansions of $`\psi `$ and $`E`$ in inverse coupling constant in Sections 2 and 3, and then apply the extended expansion method to Coulomb potential and resolve the excited states in Section 4. Finally we discuss Yukawa potential and obtain the low-lying states approximately in Section 5. The Conclusions are given in Section 6. We have chosen $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$ throughout the paper.

## II  Coupling constant dependence of bound states solutions

As mentioned above, the dependence of bound states solutions on coupling constant is crucial since the method is based on the coupling constant expansion. Qualitatively speaking, when coupling constant $`g`$ in potentials like (1) increases, the bound state energy drops down and the space extension of the corresponding wave function becomes narrower, that is, the system is more bounded. In the following we concentrate our discussion on power-law central forces $`V(r)g^kr^n`$, the reason is twofold: first, with those potentials the coupling constant dependence can be factorized, as we will see below; second, any boundary potential closely around its minimum point can be approximated well by power-law curve with certain value of $`n`$.

### A  Coupling constant dependence of energy

Let’s consider a power-law central potential

$`\widehat{H}={\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{p}^2}{2m}}+V,`$ (14)
$`V(r)=\pm g^km(mr)^n.`$ (15)
In order to keep boundary condition we should choose the sign $`+`$ for $`n>0`$ and $``$ for $`n<0`$. Here the coupling constant $`g`$ is guaranteed to be dimensionless. For instance, the harmonic oscillator $`V=\frac{1}{2}m\omega ^2r^2`$ can be written as $`V=g^km^3r^2`$ with $`g^k=\frac{1}{2}(\frac{\omega }{m})^2`$.

Considering $`g`$ as a parameter in the Hamiltonian, we apply Hellmann-Feynman Theorem for any arbitrary energy level E and the corresponding state $`|\psi `$

$$\frac{E}{g}=\psi |\frac{\widehat{H}}{g}|\psi $$
(16)
to (14) and obtain

$$\frac{E}{g}=\frac{k}{g}\psi |V|\psi .$$
(17)
From Virial Theorem,

$$\psi |V|\psi =\frac{2}{n+2}\psi |\widehat{H}|\psi =\frac{2}{n+2}E,$$
(18)
we get

$$\frac{E}{g}=\frac{2k}{n+2}\frac{1}{g}E,$$
(19)
and its solution

$$E(g)=g^{\frac{2k}{n+2}}ϵ,$$
(20)
where $`ϵ`$ depends on $`r`$ only, the coupling constant dependence is factorized. A useful consequence of this factorization is that for a given potential $`V(r)`$ one can determine firstly $`ϵ`$ in some ideal case, for instance, the limit $`g1`$ or $`g1`$, and then obtain the energy $`E`$ of the real system by multiplying $`ϵ`$ by the $`g`$-factor $`g^{\frac{2k}{n+2}}`$.

When a potential is not in the power-law form, the factorization (20) fails. However, in strongly coupling cases the low-lying states are restricted in a small region around the origin $`r=0`$, and the potential can be expressed in the power-law form

$$\underset{r0}{lim}V(r)\pm g^km(mr)^n$$
(21)
in the neighborhood of the origin, the factorization is still approximately valid, and the leading term $`E_0`$ in the expansion (3) is given by (20). This conclusion will be used to solve the Yukawa potential

$$V(r)=g^2e^{\alpha r}/r$$
(22)
in Section 5.

### B  Scale transformation

For central forces, the bound state wave functions can be written as

$$\psi (\stackrel{}{r})=R(r)Y_{LM}(\theta ,\varphi ),$$
(23)
where $`Y_{LM}(\theta ,\varphi )`$ is the spherical harmonic function carrying quantum numbers $`L`$ and $`M`$, and $`R(r)`$ which is related to the coupling constant satisfies the radial equation

$$\frac{d^2R(r,g)}{dr^2}+\frac{2}{r}\frac{dR(r,g)}{dr}+2m(EV)R(r,g)\frac{L(L+1)}{r^2}R(r,g)=0.$$
(24)
Considering a scale transformation

$`rr_s=ar,`$ (25)
$`gg_s=bg,`$ (26)
with a and b being two positive and real constants, and using the factorization (20) the radial equation (24) is transformed into

$$\frac{1}{a^2}\frac{d^2R(r_s,g_s)}{dr^2}+\frac{1}{a^2}\frac{2}{r}\frac{dR(r_s,g_s)}{dr}+2m(b^{\frac{2k}{n+2}}Eb^ka^nV)R(r_s,g_s)\frac{1}{a^2}\frac{L(L+1)}{r_s^2}R(r_s,g_s)=0.$$
(27)
If the constants $`a`$ and $`b`$ are restricted by

$$b^{\frac{2k}{n+2}}=b^ka^n=a^2,$$
(28)
$`R(r_s,g_s)`$ and $`R(r,g)`$ satisfy the same radial equation and the same boundary conditions at the origin and at infinity( the transformation does not change boundary conditions ), that is

$$R(r_s,g_s)=cR(r,g),$$
(29)
where c is a $`g`$ and $`r`$ independent constant and can be removed by normalization.

The invariance of the equation of motion under the scale transformation (25) and (28) originates from the symmetry of the Hamiltonian (14),

$$\widehat{H}\widehat{H_s}=\frac{1}{a^2}\widehat{H}.$$
(30)
Under the transformation all eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian are rescaled by a constant factor $`1/a^2`$ and all eigenfunctions are unchanged.

The scale transformation property of the radial function implies that we can replace the original two variables $`r`$ and $`g`$ by one dimensionless scale variable

$$s=g^k(mr)^{n+2}$$
(31)
which is invariant under the scale transformation (25) and (28). With properly selected normalization scheme, the radial functions $`R(s_1)`$ and $`R(s_2)`$ with two different coupling constants $`g_1`$ and $`g_2`$ are related by

$`R(g_1^k(mr)^{n+2})`$ $`=`$ $`R\left(g_2^k\left({\displaystyle \frac{g_1}{g_2}}\right)^k(mr)^{n+2}\right)`$ (32)
$`=`$ $`R\left(g_2^k\left(\left({\displaystyle \frac{g_1}{g_2}}\right)^{\frac{k}{n+2}}mr\right)^{n+2}\right).`$ (33)
Therefore, the wave function at point $`r`$ with coupling constant $`g_1`$ equals the wave function at point $`(g_1/g_2)^{k/n+2}r`$ with $`g_2`$. The wave function is contracted in a smaller region when the coupling becomes stronger while extended to a larger region when the coupling becomes weaker. With the relation (32), the behavior of a weakly coupling system at the place far from the origin is equivalent to that of a strongly coupling system near the origin.

The conclusion of this section can be summarized as

$`V=\pm g^km(mr)^n,`$ (34)
$`E=g^{\frac{2k}{n+2}}ϵ,`$ (35)
$`R(r,g)=R(g^k(mr)^{n+2}).`$ (36)
For the potentials with power-law behavior (21) around the origin, the leading terms of the energy and wave function are also given by (34). This conclusion tells us how to write down the expansion in $`g`$ for a power-law or a power-law-like central potential. For example, the expansion (3) is only suitable for harmonic oscillator and the similar potentials.

## III  Extended expansion method

The key point of the method by Friedberg, Lee and Zhao is to expand the energy and wave function of a strongly coupling system in the inverse number of the coupling constant $`g`$. As mentioned above, the original expansion (3) is 1) only suitable for the potentials with harmonic oscillator behavior around the minimum, and 2) only valid for ground states. To solve (1) by the expansion method, we should proceed three steps: First, write a proper g-power expansion for energy and wave function according to the scaling property discussed in previous section; Second, substitute the expansion back into (1) and obtain a hierarchy of first-order differential equations; Last, integrate the hierarchy one by one with the help of the boundary and convergence conditions, as described in the example of one dimension harmonic oscillator in Section 1.

As a pedagogical goal, let’s extend the method to solve three dimensional Coulomb and harmonic oscillator problems in quantum mechanics.

In  and , the expansion and solution of the ground state are given by

$`V`$ $`=`$ $`g^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}`$ (37)
$`E`$ $`=`$ $`g^4E_0+g^2E_1+g^0E_2+\mathrm{}`$ (38)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g^4m`$ (39)
$`S(r)`$ $`=`$ $`g^2S_0(r)+g^0S_1(r)+g^2S_2(r)+\mathrm{}`$ (40)
$`=`$ $`g^2mr`$ (41)
for Coulomb potential, and

$`V`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g^2m^3r^2`$ (42)
$`E`$ $`=`$ $`gE_0+g^0E_1+g^1E_2+\mathrm{}`$ (43)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}gm`$ (44)
$`S(r)`$ $`=`$ $`gS_0(r)+g^0S_1(r)+g^1S_2(r)+\mathrm{}`$ (45)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}gm^2r^2`$ (46)
for harmonic oscillator. It is clear that the expansions for the two potentials are in accord with the scaling law shown in (34).

Since any excited state is not so bounded like the ground state, we assume that the excited states differ from the ground state $`e^{S(r)}`$ by a smooth function $`P(r)`$,

$$R(r)=P(r)e^{S(r)}.$$
(47)
When $`P(r)=1`$ we go back to the ground state. From the spirit of the expansion method we express $`P(r)`$ and $`S(r)`$ as finite polynomials of $`1/g`$. With the help of the scaling law (34), they can be further rewritten as polynomials of a dimensionless scaling variable $`g^2mr`$ for Coulomb potential

$`S(r)={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{\alpha }{}}}b_{1j}(g^2mr)^j,`$ (48)
$`P(r)={\displaystyle \underset{i=\beta }{\overset{\gamma }{}}}a_i(g^2mr)^i,`$ (49)
$`E=g^4ϵ,`$ (50)
or $`gm^2r^2`$ for harmonic oscillator

$`S(r)={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{\alpha }{}}}b_{1j}(gm^2r^2)^j,`$ (51)
$`P(r)={\displaystyle \underset{i=\beta }{\overset{\gamma }{}}}a_i(gm^2r^2)^i,`$ (52)
$`E=gϵ.`$ (53)
Here $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma `$ are nonnegative integers, and $`a_i,b_{1j}`$ are $`g`$ and $`r`$ independent constants. Note that the expressions (48) and (51) obtained from the scaling analysis guarantee a wider spread of excited states than the ground state. The expansions here are also in accordance with the discussion with algebra method.

We now substitute the expansions into the corresponding radial equations and discuss the convergence in the limit $`r0`$. It is easy to prove that when $`\alpha >0`$ the most divergent term in the radial equation is $`\alpha ^2g^{4\alpha }b_{\alpha +1}^2r^{(\gamma +2\alpha +2)}`$ for Coulomb potential and $`4\alpha ^2g^{2\alpha }b_{\alpha +1}^2r^{2(\gamma +2\alpha +1)}`$ for harmonic oscillator. Since there is only one most divergent term, it is impossible to cancel it by other terms. The only way is to take $`\alpha =0`$. In this case, the expansion of $`S(r)`$ in (48) or (51) is reduced to two terms, and the constant term can be absorbed by the normalization of the wave function. Moreover, the terms with negative powers ($`\gamma >0`$) in the expansion of $`P(r)`$ must vanish also in order to keep the whole radial wave function $`R(r)=P(r)e^{S(r)}`$ from divergence at the origin $`r=0`$. Finally we obtain for any bound state the extended expansion

$`S(r)=b_0g^2mr,`$ (54)
$`P_N(r)={\displaystyle \underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}a_i(g^2mr)^i`$ (55)
for Coulomb potential, and

$`S(r)=b_0gm^2r^2`$ (56)
$`P_N(r)={\displaystyle \underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}a_k(gm^2r^2)^i`$ (57)
for harmonic oscillator with $`N1`$.

## IV  Solutions for Coulomb potential

We now turn to the second step, namely substitute the convergent expansion (54) into the radial equation for Coulomb potential, and get a series of equations in different orders of $`g`$:

$`g^{2N+2}:`$ $`b_0^2m+2ϵ=0`$ (58)
$`g^{2N}:`$ $`1b_0N=0`$ (59)
$`g^{2k}(0<k<N):`$ $`\left(k(k+1)L(L+1)\right)a_k+{\displaystyle \frac{2}{N}}(Nk)a_{k1}=0`$ (60)
$`g^0:`$ $`L(L+1)a_0=0`$ (61)
From the first two equations we derive immediately the energy level $`ϵ_N=\frac{m}{2N^2}`$ and the coefficient $`b_0=\frac{1}{N}`$ in $`S`$.

To obtain the coefficients $`a_i`$ in the polynomial $`P`$, we need to discuss the relation between the two quantum numbers $`N(1)`$ and $`L(0)`$, they come from the polynomial $`P_N(r)`$ and the spherical harmonic function $`Y_{LM}(\theta ,\varphi )`$. For $`N=1`$, the requirement $`P_1(r)=a_00`$ leads to $`L=0`$ from the last equation of (58), the general expression (54) is then reduced to the ground state solution (37).

For $`N>1`$, we discuss three cases for the quantum number $`L`$ separately: 1) $`L=0`$, the third equation of (58) determines the recursion relation between the coefficients $`a_k`$

$`R_{N0}=\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}a_k(g^2mr)^k\right)e^{g^2mr/N}`$ (62)
$`a_k={\displaystyle \frac{2(Nk)}{Nk(k+1)}}a_{k1},0<k<N,`$ (63)
the only unknown coefficient $`a_00`$ is determined by the normalization. 2) $`0<L<N`$, the last two equations of (58) lead to the coefficients $`a_0=a_1=a_2=\mathrm{}=a_{L1}=0`$, and then the radial solutions are written as

$`R_{NL}=\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=L}{\overset{N1}{}}}a_k(g^2mr)^k\right)e^{g^2mr/N}`$ (64)
$`a_k={\displaystyle \frac{2}{N}}{\displaystyle \frac{Nk}{L(L+1)k(k+1)}}a_{k1},L<k<N`$ (65)
$`a_L0`$ is determined by the normalization too. 3) $`LN`$, the last two equations of (58) require $`a_0=a_1=a_2=\mathrm{}=a_{N1}=0`$, and there is no nonzero solution in this case.

We summarize the solution of the bound states for Coulomb potential:

$`E_N={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2N^2}}g^4m`$ (66)
$`\psi _{NLM}(r,\theta ,\varphi )=\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=L}{\overset{N1}{}}}a_k(g^2mr)^k\right)e^{g^2mr/N}Y_{LM}(\theta ,\varphi )`$ (67)
$`a_k={\displaystyle \frac{2}{N}}{\displaystyle \frac{Nk}{L(L+1)k(k+1)}}a_{k1},`$ (68)
$`N>0,L=0,1,2,\mathrm{},N1`$ (69)
with $`a_L0`$ determined by the normalization of the wave function. (66) is exactly the same as what obtained by solving the second-order Schrödinger equation directly in normal textbooks, but here by using the expansion in coupling constant and with the help of the scaling law the complicated second-order differential equations are replaced by simple algebra equations.

In a similar way one can also derive all the bound states for harmonic oscillator by substituting the convergent expansion (56) into the radial equation.

## V Yukawa potential

The potential (22) was first introduced into physics in 1930s by Yukawa in the study of strong interaction between nucleons through meson exchange. It is also known as Debye-Hückel potential in plasma physics and Thomas-Fermi potential in solid-state physics. While the Yukawa potential is important in physics, the corresponding Schrödinger equation can not be solved analytically and exactly. A lot of publications have been contributed to the problem using different approximations (see  \-  and references therein). Here we use the extended expansion method to obtain its ground state and low-lying excited states. Comparison with strict but numerical calculation will be made.

We first consider the proper $`1/g`$ expansion for Yukawa potential. Since Yukawa potential is not a power-law central force, the $`g`$ dependence of its bound states can not be simply factorized like (34). In strong coupling case with $`g>>1`$, however, the low-lying wave functions are mainly distributed in the vicinity of the origin. Since in the limit of $`r0`$, Yukawa potential approaches to Coulomb potential, we can thus write the expansion of the low-lying states of Yukawa potential by properly modifying the expansion of Coulomb potential. The inverse of the parameter $`\alpha `$ in the Yukawa potential (22) represents the mean potential range. To make our calculation based on Coulomb potential( whose potential range approaches infinity) more effective, we should require the mean potential range to be much larger than the ”Bohr radius” of Coulomb potential, that is, $`\frac{1}{\alpha }>>\frac{1}{g^2m}`$, or equivalently $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}<<1`$. We will show below how the dimensionless number $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}`$ controls the expanding series.

We now deal with the ground state. In the light of (37) for Coulomb potential, we expand the energy and wave function as

$`E=g^4E_0+g^2E_1+g^0E_2+\mathrm{}`$ (70)
$`R=e^{S(r)}`$ (71)
$`S(r)=g^2S_0(r)+g^0S_1(r)+g^2S_2(r)+\mathrm{}`$ (72)
Note that the expansions of $`E`$ and $`S`$ are finite for strict Coulomb potential but infinite for Coulomb-like potentials.

By Substituting the expansions (70) into the corresponding stationary Schrödinger equation, we obtain an infinity hierarchy of first-order differential equations (10). With similar procedure in dealing (10), we can solve them one by one to any order we want. The energy obtained to $`𝒪(g^4)`$ and the wave function to $`𝒪(g^2)`$ read:

$`E={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g^4m+g^2\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{3\alpha ^2}{4m}}+g^2{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^3}{2m^2}}+𝒪(g^4)=g^4m[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}}{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^3+𝒪(({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^4)],`$ (73)
$`S(r)=g^2mr+{\displaystyle _0^r}𝑑r^{}[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}(1e^{\alpha r^{}})\alpha ]+𝒪(g^2)=g^2m[r+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}}{\displaystyle _0^r}𝑑r^{}({\displaystyle \frac{1e^{\alpha r^{}}}{\alpha r^{}}}1)+𝒪(({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^2)].`$ (74)
We see clearly that the dimensionless parameter $`\alpha /g^2m`$ controls the degree of convergence of the expansion. When $`\alpha `$ vanishes, Yukawa potential is reduced to Coulomb potential, and therefore, the above solution is reduced to the strict solution (37).

We now consider the lowest excited state. By modifying the expansion (54) with $`N=2`$ for Coulomb potential, we write the following expansion

$`E=g^4E_0+g^2E_1+g^0E_2+\mathrm{}`$ (75)
$`\psi =P(r)e^{S(r)}Y_{LM}(\theta ,\varphi )`$ (76)
$`P(r)=g^2b_1(r)+g^0b_0(r)`$ (77)
$`S(r)=g^2S_0(r)+g^0S_1(r)+g^2S_2(r)+.`$ (78)
Unlike the expansion for strict Coulomb potential, here $`E`$ and $`S(r)`$ have infinite terms, and the $`r`$-dependence of $`b_0`$ and $`b_1`$ in $`P(r)`$ is unknown and only in the limit case we have:

$`\underset{r0}{lim}b_1(r)=\underset{\alpha 0}{lim}b_1(r)mr,`$ (79)
$`\underset{r0}{lim}b_0(r)=\underset{\alpha 0}{lim}b_0(r)1.`$ (80)
Substituting the expansions (75) into the radial equation with $`N=2`$, we get again a series of first-order differential equations. The first two which are respectively proportional to $`g^6`$ and $`g^4`$ read

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dr}}=\sqrt{2mE_0},`$ (81)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_1}{dr}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{b_1}}{\displaystyle \frac{db_1}{dr}}{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dr}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}({\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dr}}me^{\alpha r})mE_1.`$ (82)
By using (79) the condition to keep convergence of $`dS_0/dr`$ and $`dS_1/dr`$ at $`r=0`$ result in

$`E_0={\displaystyle \frac{m}{8}},`$ (83)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_0}{dr}}={\displaystyle \frac{m}{2}},`$ (84)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dS_1}{dr}}={\displaystyle \frac{12e^{\alpha r}}{r}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{b_1}}{\displaystyle \frac{db_1}{dr}}2E_1.`$ (85)
In a similar way we can solve the equations proportional to $`g^2`$ and $`g^0`$ to determine $`E_1`$ and $`S_1`$

$`E_1={\displaystyle \frac{6+L(L+1)}{8}}\alpha ,`$ (86)
$`b_0=1L,`$ (87)
$`b_1={\displaystyle \frac{m}{2\alpha }}(1e^{\alpha r}).`$ (88)
Put the constituents obtained above together we finally get approximately the analytical solution of the lowest excited state for Yukawa potential as follows

$`E={\displaystyle \frac{m}{8}}g^4+{\displaystyle \frac{6+L(L+1)}{8}}g^2\alpha +𝒪(g^0)={\displaystyle \frac{g^4m}{8}}[1{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}}(L^2+L+6)+𝒪(({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^2)],`$ (89)
$`S(r)=g^2m[{\displaystyle \frac{r}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}}{\displaystyle _0^r}𝑑r^{}({\displaystyle \frac{12e^{\alpha r^{}}}{\alpha r^{}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\alpha r^{}}}{1e^{\alpha r^{}}}}{\displaystyle \frac{L^2+L+6}{4}})+𝒪(({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{g^2m}})^2)],`$ (90)
$`P(r)=a_0\left((1L){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{g^2m}{\alpha }}(1e^{\alpha r})\right),`$ (91)
$`N=2,L=0,1,`$ (92)
the only constant $`a_0`$ is determined by normalization. Again, the dimensionless parameter $`\alpha /g^2m`$ dominates the convergence. The analytic result $`E`$ for ground and lowest excited states is compared with the strict but numerical result $`E_N`$ and with the Coulomb result $`E_C`$ in Tabel (1) for different values of the dimensionless parameter $`\alpha /g^2m`$. All the energy values have been scaled by $`g^4m`$. Since the ground state energy is calculated to the fourth order, it always agrees well with the strict solution. The Coulomb energy is just the leading order of the Yukawa energy, its deviation from the strict result is very strong, especially for the excited states. then relatively large. When the parameter $`\alpha /g^2m`$ decreases, the analytic result to the second order for the excited states becomes more and more close to the strict solution.

We also compared our energy eigenvalues with the often cited numerical calculations in . The deviation of our analytical result from the high accurate numerical result is less than $`2.5\%`$ for $`1s`$ state with $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}<1/3`$, $`5\%`$ for $`2s`$ state with $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}<1/30`$, and $`5\%`$ for $`2p`$ state with $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}<1/20`$. The deviation decreases when the dimensionless parameter $`\alpha /g^2m`$ becomes smaller.

The other excited states ( $`N=3,4,\mathrm{}`$ ) can be obtained with the similar method.

The solutions (73) and (89) have the following features:
1) The leading orders are just the solutions of Coulomb potential, and therefore are invariant under the scale transformation (25). The high order corrections break the scale invariance explicitly. When $`\alpha 0`$ or $`r0`$, the high order corrections approach to zero and the scale invariance is restored.
2) Different from the accidental degeneracy for Coulomb potential, the energy level for Yukawa potential depends on the quantum number $`L`$.
3) The expanding series are controlled by the combined dimensionless parameter $`\frac{\alpha }{g^2m}`$. For sufficiently small values, namely for very strong interaction, the expansions (73) and (89) converge very fast, one can consider the lower-order contributions only.

## VI Summary

The recently developed expansion method \-  provides an alternative way to solve analytically Schröedinger equations with strong coupling. The key point of the method is to construct proper expansions for different potentials and different quantum states. Through investigating the scale transformation invariance of the bound states for power-law central forces, we have extended the expansion method from ground state to any excited state for power-law central forces and to low-lying states for power-law-like central forces. With the extended expansion method, we obtained analytically the strict solutions of all bound states for Coulomb potential and the approximate solutions of low-lying states for Yukawa potential. Further application of the method to other physical potentials is of interest and value.

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful to H. Zhai and W.Q.Zhao for valuable discussions. The work was supported in part by the NSFC and the project 973 of China.


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# Hadronic Entropy Enhancement and Low Density QGP

## I Introduction

The understanding of nuclear matter under extreme conditions is a crucial and indispensable aim of nuclear and stellar physics, especially with much more experimental information to come with RHIC and Alice/LHC accelerators. It is now widely believed that at sufficiently high energy, in heavy-ion collisions, a central hot region is formed . This region is commonly associated with the existence of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). Following many prescriptions, this hot region expands, cools down and freezes out into hadrons, exhibiting a hadron-gas phase transition. In order to observe this transition to the deconfined phase, some observable signatures have been proposed as, for example, electromagnetic radiation , strangeness enhancement , and J/$`\psi `$ suppression . High-energy heavy-ion collisions data has brought still more excitation about the predictions of QCD on this subject. In fact, based on the results from different experiments done at CERN-SPS, it is believed that a new state of matter has been formed, the quark matter .

Recently, phase transition signatures at resonance-rich matter in heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies has been analyzed in central Au + Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s}`$= 200 A GeV . These studies, using a microscopic transport model (UrQMD) calculation, showed the equilibration of hot matter through a $`T`$x$`\mu `$ phase diagram. Confronting these results with RHIC, SPS and AGS data, it was shown that for central collisions the rising of the incident energy implies a strong evidence for hadronic-QGP phase transition at very small baryon chemical potentials and temperatures lying between 150 to 200 MeV.

Some time ago, using the resonance model, Heinz et al.  , have studied the Hadron-QGP phase transition at this regime. They found a strong enhancement of the entropy from the hadron to QGP phase. When they included all the resonances and mesons, the entropy of the hadron phase increased but a considerable entropy gap still remained between the two phases. In this paper we will study this transition in relativistic mean field (RMF) models, where we have not only a repulsive vector interaction but also an attractive scalar interaction, that was not considered in the resonance model study  . This scalar interaction, as we will show in this paper, is quite important in order to study this hadron-QGP transition at low net baryon density. At this regime there is no vector field and the pressure is composed only from the nucleon thermal gas and from the scalar field pressures. The abrupt fall in the nucleon mass at high temperature, seen in many of the RMF hadronic models, is due to the abrupt increasing of the scalar field. This effect resembles a phase transition when the system becomes a dilute gas of baryons in a sea of baryon-antibaryon pairs, and it is caracterized by a large enhancement of the entropy . Thus, our study in RMF models is quite important because the entropy enhancement depends strongly on the scalar interaction presented in these type of models. It is important to stress, that in all these models the entropy enhancement is maximized at zero chemical potential because when we increase the baryon density, the fall of the nucleon mass with the temperature and also the increase of the entropy become smaller . The importance of the entropy production in relativistic heavy ions collisions has also been addressed to analyze the QGP phase transition, where the entropy density jump at the phase boundary for low net baryon density has been pointed out .

At the hadronic level, RMF models are able to describe well a number of nuclear phenomena through different conceptions of meson-nucleon and meson-meson couplings. Most of them follows the basic Walecka model  in which improvements have been done in order to better fit the finite nuclei data . It is known that hadronic models may present phase transitions at higher temperatures. For example, in reference , hot nuclear matter was extensively studied using the Walecka model regarding the finite temperature behavior for zero baryon density (nucleon-antinucleon plasma). The authors explored this model for different scalar-vector coupling constants to conclude that, depending on the values taken by those constants, the Walecka model may or may not generate a phase transition into a nucleon-antinucleon plasma. The order (first or second) of this phase transition depends crucially on the scalar coupling constant of the model.

The question we pose in this paper is whether the phase transition for the hadronic sector itself, described from hadronic models, may or not have importance to the QGP phase transition. To answer this question we bring to this discussion a representative class of recent RMF hadronic models . We have also considered derivative coupling models  and different parametrizations of the non-linear Walecka model such as NL1, NL2, NL3 and NLSH models very well known in the literature . Most of these models were successfully employed to calculate nuclear matter bulk properties as well as the spectra of finite nuclei. The aim of our work is to present a systematic comparative study of a set of hadronic models, at extreme temperatures and very low net baryon density, and the hadronic-QGP phase transition, emphasizing the entropy density behaviour in both phases. The QGP phase is represented by a perturbative QCD derivation . We studied the hadronic-QGP phase transition for a broad range of bag constant $`B`$ and QCD running coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$ values. The particular case of free quarks ($`\alpha _s=0`$) is also explicited. This kind of phase transition has been investigated by many authors . In particular, aspects of the role played by the nucleon exclude volume have also been studied .

As a result, we find that practically all the analyzed hadronic models signalize approximately the same critical QGP temperature. This finding is quite independent whether the hadronic models have or not hadronic phase transition themselves at high temperature. This suggests strongly a RMF hadronic model independence for the QGP phase transition in this regime. To the best of our knowledge, this is a remarkable and unknown feature of the hadronic models. We have traced back the reason for this and conclude that it comes from the fact that the QGP entropy (the slope of the pressure versus temperature) is much larger than the hadronic entropy obtained in all the hadronic models. Therefore, insofar the entropy through sophisticated calorimeters in the future may be a measured quantity, we believe that at very low net baryon density, the enhancement of the entropy may become a signature of a QGP. Previous works have already addressed the role played by the entropy at the QGP formation . We have observed a large jump of the hadronic entropy density, seen in almost all of the RMF models. An enhancement of the entropy per baryon with the rising of the incident energy was also found in recent microscopic transport model (UrQMD) calculations . However, this model did not include a QGP phase but can be taken as leading credence for our hadronic model phase entropy enhancement signals. This enhancement may favour the hadron-QGP phase transition once it decreases the latent heat for the QGP formation. Thus, we expect in central collisions with a low net baryon density, the formation of a very rich baryon-antibaryon matter in the region of the QGP phase. This results is in agreement with recent data obtained in the STAR collaboration at RHIC where in fact it was found a rich proton-antiproton matter .

The outline of this paper is as follows. In Sec. II we present the phase transition calculation. In section III we show our results and discussion, followed by the conclusions in section IV.

## II The phase transition calculation at high T and $`\mu =0`$

At low temperatures and baryon densities (around the nuclear matter ground state), renormalization group arguments  show that the QCD running coupling constant is greater than one, indicating confinement of quarks and gluons inside hadrons which are the appropriate degrees of freedom of the nuclear matter in this regime. In this region, QHD based on effective Lagrangians works quite well. The phase transition is supposed to occur at sufficiently high temperatures and densities, where in this case the QCD running coupling constant becomes smaller than one, suggesting deconfinement of quarks and gluons. If one assumes the validity of QHD far beyond the normal nuclear matter ground state, the transition can be characterized by the process of hadrons loosing their identities, and quarks and gluons becoming the elementary degrees of freedom.

In order to see the hadronic-quark-gluon phase transition we need distinct models for the two different phases of the baryonic matter. We describe the hadronic phase (H) by the models of Ref.  in the Hartree approximation extended to finite temperature at zero net baryon density. For the quark-gluon plasma phase, the equation of state is given given by . A study of the hadron-QGP phase diagram for finite baryonic density of the models presented in Ref.  has been done in Ref. . The Gibbs criteria used in the analysis of the phase transition for zero density is given by $`\mu _H(T_c)=\mu _{QGP}(T_c)=0`$ and $`p_H(T_c)=p_{QGP}(T_c)`$ .

The functional, used for the hadronic phase, originates from an effective Lagrangian, with additional physical constraints ensuring QCD symmetries . The pressure is

$`p(M^{},\rho _B)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_s^2}{g_s^2}}\mathrm{\Phi }^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _3}{3!}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{M}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _4}{4!}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }^2}{M^2}}\right)`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2g_v^2}}\left(1+\eta _1{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{M}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\eta _2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }^2}{M^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\eta _3}{3!}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }^3}{M^3}}\right)m_v^2W^2`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4!g_v^2}}\left(\zeta _{}+\zeta _1{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{M}}\right)W^4+W\rho _B`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma }{(2\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle d^3k\frac{k^2}{E^{}(k)}(f_+(k,T)+f_{}(k,T))},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`W`$ are the scalar and vector meson fields respectively , $`E^{}(k)=(𝐤^2+M^2)^{1/2}`$ and $`f_\pm (k,T)`$ stand for the Fermi-Dirac distribution for baryons (antibaryons). The baryon density $`\rho _B`$ is defined by $`\rho _B=\frac{\gamma }{(2\pi )^3}d^3k[f_+(k,T)f_{}(k,T)]`$. Thus, in the zero net baryon density regime we have the same number of baryons and anti-baryons.

The constants (see Table I) are already adjusted to reproduce some of the bulk properties of the nuclear matter ground state . Here $`W1`$ stands for the usual Walecka model. $`C1`$ and $`Q1`$ are nonlinear $`\sigma `$ models, having scalar field self-interaction added to the $`W1`$ model in order to improve some nuclear matter bulk properties of $`W1`$. Most of the developed hadronic models has the $`C1`$ structure, given by cubic and quartic scalar field self-interaction . In this aspect it is a very representative model category. The scalar cubic and quartic self-interaction are usually claimed to simulate three-body and four-body forces effects respectively. The others as $`Q2`$, $`G1`$ and $`G2`$ are models representing further improvements by including different scalar-scalar, vector-vector and scalar-vector fields couplings. We have also considered for the hadronic phase derivative coupling models  and different parametrizations of the nonlinear Boguta-Bodmer model , NL1, NL2, NL3 and NLSH models .

For the quark-gluon plasma phase, at high temperature, the pressure and the density is given by the expansion

$`p_{QGP}(\mu _q,T_q)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi ^2T_q^4}{45}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{15\alpha _s}{4\pi }})+N_f[{\displaystyle \frac{7\pi ^2T_q^4}{60}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{50\alpha _s}{21\pi }})`$ (6)
$`+({\displaystyle \frac{\mu _q^2T_q^2}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _q^4}{4\pi ^2}})(1{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{\pi }})]B,`$
$$\rho _{QGP}=\frac{1}{3}N_f\left(\mu _qT_q^2+\frac{\mu _q^3}{\pi ^2}\right)\left(1\frac{2\alpha _s}{\pi }\right),$$
(7)
where $`B`$ is the bag constant, $`N_f`$ is the number of flavors, $`\alpha _s`$ is the QCD running coupling constant, depending on the quark-gluon plasma temperature $`T_q`$ and the quark chemical potential $`\mu _q`$ through the first order perturbative expression

$$\alpha _s=4\pi \left\{\left(11\frac{2N_f}{3}\right)\mathrm{ln}[\left(0.8\mu _q^2+15.622T_q^2\right)/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2]\right\}^1.$$
(8)
At the zero density regime we are interested we set $`\mu _q=0`$.

The model for the QGP phase which we use in this work has some parameters such as $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`B`$ and $`N_f`$. As a first approximation, we examine the simplest case with $`N_f=2`$ (quarks $`u`$ and $`d`$ only). The QCD scale parameter $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is fixed at 200 MeV, consistent with the current data set. We will use two different bag constants in our analysis: $`B^{1/4}=174`$ MeV and $`B^{1/4}=238`$ MeV, corresponding to $`B=119`$ MeV fm-3 and $`B=418`$ MeV fm-3 respectively. These are the limiting values of the broad range of values used in the literature.

## III Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the effective nucleon mass ratio $`m^{}`$ vs. $`T`$ for the studied models. We see that ZM, ZM3, C1 and G2 models do not present signals of a first order phase transition in opposite to the others. Then, not all of the hadronic models considered here (twelve in total) have the hot nucleon-antinucleon phase transition in the hadronic sector, manifested by the large decrease of the effective nucleon mass $`M^{}`$.

By using the Gibbs criteria of phase equilibrium $`p_1=p_2`$, $`\mu _1=\mu _2=0`$ and $`T_1=T_2`$ we have obtained the critical temperatures for $`NL1`$ ( 188MeV ), $`NL3`$ ( 191MeV ), $`NLSH`$ ( 192MeV ), $`W1`$ ( 186MeV ), $`Q1`$ ( 192MeV ), $`Q2`$ ( 192MeV) and $`G1`$ ( 191MeV ) models. The other models studied in this paper do not present first order hadronic phase transition. The critical temperatures for this hadron nucleon-antinucleon phase transition for hot nuclear matter at the hadronic sector itself are remarkably close to the critical temperature of the hadron-QGP phase transition. This hadron nucleon-antinucleon phase transition where the effective nucleon mass becomes very small can be seen as the Quantum Hadrodynamics version of the chiral phase transition. It is interesting that in recent lattice calculations the chiral and the deconfinement transitions coincide and in our calculation both transitons seem also to appear at the same temperature depending on the value of the bag constant $`B`$ we choose.

We present in figure 2 the pressure for hadronic-QGP phases (in units of the Stefan-Boltzmann pressure) as a function of $`T`$. In this figure we have used the extreme values $`B^{1/4}=174`$ MeV and $`B^{1/4}=238`$ MeV. It is to remark how the QGP critical temperatures are close for all the hadronic models. From this figure we see the critical temperatures very close to 151 MeV for $`B^{1/4}=174`$ MeV and around 198 MeV for $`B^{1/4}=238`$ MeV . The reason lies in the slope for the QGP pressure. This slope is nothing but the entropy density, that we show in figure 3. Notice how far, by a factor around five ( for $`\alpha _s=0`$ ) and around three ( for $`\alpha _s0`$ ), the entropy amounts are different in both phases. It causes the hadronic model independence for the hadronic-QGP critical temperature.

When the hadronic model itself presents the nucleon-antinucleon phase transition it increases substantially the entropy density as can be seen in figure 3. However, this enhancement is not enough when compared with the QGP entropy. This shows a discontinuity in the entropy signalizing a first order hadron-QGP phase transition, once we are committed with only nucleon-antinucleon in the hadronic phase. Let us also note that the QGP entropy density is independent of the bag constant $`B`$ since it is given by ($`_{QGP}+p_{QGP}`$)/T. Note how, in figure 2 for different bag constants, the two slopes are the same for $`p_{QGP}`$. However, as pointed out above, the bag constant has effect on the hadronic-QGP value of $`T_c`$. Therefore, if one thinks that the enhancement of the hadronic entropy density would help the QGP formation, only values of $`B^{1/4}`$ greater than 200MeV should be considered.

We have then included, in an ad hoc fashion, a thermal pion gas contribution to the hadronic phase. By analyzing the behaviour of $`/p`$ as a function of $`T`$ with and without pions we conclude that the change in the critical phase transition temperature is very small. When we have only nucleons and pions in the hadronic phase, the hadronic-QGP phase transition at very low net baryon density takes place for approximately the same value of $`T_c`$ in all the studied hadronic models. The hadronic-QGP phase transition is essentially given by the QGP phase and lies very close to the temperature where $`p_{QGP}`$ crosses zero from below.

The chiral transition version we found in the hadronic models can be identified by a strong decreasing in the effective baryon mass and an abrupt increasing of the entropy density in the hadronic phase ( see Fig. 1 and Fig. 3) . This large hadronic jump of the entropy density favours the hadron-QGP phase transition because it requires a smaller latent heat at the transition compared with the models that do not show that pure hadronic nucleon-antinucleon plasma phase. Thus, from our results, we would expect at very low net baryon density a formation of a very rich baryon-antibaryon matter just before the QGP phase.

It is important to stress that, even with the formation of this rich baryon plasma, the entropy enhancement is not enough yet to be compared with the QGP entropy density and still requires a large latent heat at the phase transition. The latent heat and entropy at the transition, as it has been discussed before on the $`\mu =0`$ central rapidity region , may be seen by a large change in the specific volume that slows down the time scale for the conversion of QGP into the hadron matter: a large entropy discontinuity implies a long lifetime of the plasma. This point itself, the entropy discontinuity, has deserved intense work and analysis from many authors . In fact it addresses direct the order of the hadronic-QGP phase transition. We are aware of the limitations of our analysis. The results are dependent on the QGP equation of state we are using, obtained by a perturbative expansion in which we treat the quarks as massless. Note in figure 3 how the entropy density decreases with the increase of the running coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$ that at the phase transition is around $`0.4`$ to $`0.6`$ . This suggests that a non perturbative treatment for the QGP equation of state would reduce the entropy density. Indeed, recent lattice QCD results for the pressure and entropy density  have also obtained a strong entropy enhancement close to the phase transition exactly at the order of our critical hadronic entropy density (Figure 3). These lattice results were also reproduced by a non perturbative purely gluonic QCD calculation . Therefore, we should say that the order of the hadron-QGP phase transition is still an open point in our work.

## IV Conclusions

Using many different RMF models for the hadronic phase and a perturbative QCD equation of state for the QGP, we study the hadron-QGP phase transition at zero net baryon density and high temperature. We show that the critical temperature $`T_c`$ for this transition is hadronic model independent. We have traced back the reason for this and conclude that it comes from that the QGP entropy (the slope of the pressure versus T) is much larger than the hadronic entropy obtained in all the RMF models. This finding is quite independent whether the hadronic models have or not a hadronic phase transition at high temperature when the system becomes a dilute gas of baryons in a sea of baryon-antibaryon pairs.

The hadronic-QGP phase transition at zero net baryonic density takes place for approximately the same value of $`T_c`$ in all the studied hadronic models. Among the studied hadronic models most of them showed a pure hadronic phase transition, the Quantum Hadrodynamics version of the chiral phase transition, seen by a strong decreasing in the effective baryon masses and an abrupt increasing of the entropy density in the hadronic phase. This fact by itself does not change the hadronic-QGP value of $`T_c`$. However, it is important to remark that the latent heat given by $`T_c(S_{QGP}S_H)`$ connecting both phases is much lower (but still not small, $`S_{QGP}/S_H=3`$ with a non zero $`\alpha _s`$, see figure 3) for the hadronic models which present this hadronic phase transition to a baryon-anti-baryon plasma, favouring the Hadron-QGP transition. This result enlarges the knowledge of this transition regarding RMF models and may reinforce different model calculations conjecturing the enhancement of the entropy as a signature for a hadronic-QGP phase transition at low net baryonic density. This signature it is quite important nowadays with the underway experiments, such as the collaboration STAR at RHIC, because recent theoretical studies showed that for central collisions the rising of the incident energy from AGS to RHIC decreases the value of the chemical potential in the Hadron-QGP phase diagram. Thus, the formation of QGP at RHIC energies may be expected to occur at very small values of the chemical potential, exactly the regime we are analyzing in this paper, were we expect a jump on the hadronic entropy density due to the formation of a rich baryon-antibaryon matter. Finally, we stress the importance of the direct measure through calorimeters of this quantity.

Acknowledgements We would like to express our thanks to the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for partial financial support.


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# Endohedral Impurities in Carbon Nanotubes

(September 14, 2002)

## Abstract

A generalization of the Anderson model that includes pseudo-Jahn-Teller impurity coupling is proposed to describe distortions of an endohedral impurity in a carbon nanotube. Treating the distortion within mean-field theory, spontaneous axial symmetry breaking is found when the vibronic coupling strength $`g`$ exceeds a critical value $`g_c`$. The effective potential in the symmetry-broken state is found to have O(2) symmetry, in agreement with numerical calculations. For metallic zigzag nanotubes endohedrally-doped with transition metals in the dilute limit, the low-energy properties of the system may display two-channel Kondo behavior; however, strong vibronic coupling is seen to exponentially suppress the Kondo energy scale.

Single wall carbon nanotubes Dresselhaus et al. (1996) (SWNTs) are often cited as having the potential to contribute to a number of important technologies, such as electrochemical storage, nanoelectronics, medical imaging, and quantum computing. In these examples, it is the controlled introduction of impurities, either exohedrally or endohedrally, that are of importance. Experimentally, as with the fullerenes, SWNTs have been doped by a variety of atoms and molecules. Recent techniques have led to “peapod nanotubes,” where one dimensional arrays of fullerenes Smith et al. (2000); Smith and Luzzi (2000) and metallofullerenes Hirahara et al. (2000) have been encapsulated by SWNTs. It was subsequently demonstrated Hornbaker et al. (2002) using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) that the endohedral doping of SWNT with fullerenes does indeed modify the local electronic structure of the SWNT.

For the case of SWNTs endohedrally-doped with atoms or small molecules, Cole and collaborators Calbi et al. (2001) have identified two distinct structural phases: the axial phase, where the impurity is confined to the vicinity of the tube’s axis of symmetry, and the shell phase, where the impurity is confined to an internal cylindrical surface concentric with the tube. For lithium in a (5,5) SWNT, the stability of the shell phase has been seen numerically Meunier et al. (2002), while the axial phase is the ground state for a system of H2 molecules at low densities in a (5,5) SWNT Ma et al. (2002).

Here, the focus is on the development of a theoretical framework for describing a single impurity in a SWNT. The shell phase can be thought of a resulting from the spontaneous breaking of axial symmetry within mean-field theory. Such a description is the ferroelastic analog of local magnetic moment formation in a metal within the Anderson model. The inversion symmetry breaking in metallofullerenes proceeds along similar lines Clougherty and Anderson (1998).

It is anticipated that, in analogy with magnetic impurities in non-magnetic metallic hosts, the dynamics of the vibronic impurity in a metallic nanotube will lead to Kondo-related effects. In a different context, spin-flip Kondo effects in a carbon nanotube system already have been experimentally explored Nygard et al. (2000) where the electronic states of a section of a nanotube, analogous to the local electronic states of a quantum dot, play the role of the impurity states. Kondo effects for magnetic Co clusters adsorbed on metallic SWNT Odom et al. (2000) have been discovered using low temperature STM and have been subsequently analyzed theoretically Fiete et al. (2002).

The vibronic states resulting from endohedral doping and the subsequent Kondo coupling resulting from virtual occupation of those levels give rise to another kind of possible Kondo system. For strong vibronic coupling, the Kondo temperature, roughly the temperature below which Kondo-related effects are manifested, is exponentially suppressed.

There are three classes of electronic band structure for the SWNT Saito et al. (1998), and they can be characterized by the degeneracy at the Fermi energy. The first class is semiconducting with no density of states at the Fermi energy. The remaining SWNTs are metallic with the second class having two non-degenerate bands crossing at the Fermi energy away from the zone center; the third class has two doubly degenerate bands crossing at the zone center at the Fermi energy. The armchair SWNTs $`(n,n)`$ fall in the second class, and the zigzag SWNTs $`(3q,0)`$ $`qZ^+`$ fall in the third class, while all others are semiconducting.

For the case where the SWNT has a single non-degenerate band at or near the Fermi energy (the second class and many cases of the first class), the $`a_{1g}`$ band electrons may hop to the localized electronic state of the same parity on the impurity site. This impurity state is taken to be vibronically coupled through the linear pseudo-Jahn-Teller effect to a low-lying state of opposite parity under the transverse displacement $`\stackrel{}{Q}`$ of the impurity from the axially symmetric position. (Actually, this displacement can be regarded as a normal coordinate that includes an accompanying distortion of a nanotube unit cell with the appropriate $`e_{2u}`$ symmetry.) Vibronic terms that are of $`𝒪(Q^2)`$ and higher are neglected here, as they have been seen to be small in the related endohedral fullerene systems Clougherty and Anderson (1998).

Thus, the electronic Hamiltonian is taken as

$$_e=\underset{k}{}ϵ_kc_k^{}c_k+\underset{m}{}E_md_m^{}d_m+\underset{k}{}(V_kc_k^{}d_0+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.)$$
(1)
where $`m=0,\pm 1`$ corresponding to the axial angular momentum of the electronic states and the localized one-electron energies have a double degeneracy with $`E_1=E_1E_{}`$. The operators $`c_k^{}`$ ($`c_k`$) create (destroy) an electron on the nanotube with wavevector $`k`$ ($`k0`$). The operator $`d_m^{}`$ ($`d_m`$) creates (destroys) an electron on the unit cell containing the endohedral dopant. All energies are relative to the Fermi energy. The Hamiltonian is diagonal in the spin index. Thus, spin indices are suppressed.

The discussion here is restricted to the case where the on-site Coulomb repulsion $`U`$ is sufficiently large that in the limit $`V_k=0`$ only the singly occupied $`m=0`$ impurity state is below the Fermi energy $`E_f`$ (infinite-$`U`$ model in the local moment regime). Estimates based on metallofullerene calculations Wästberg and Rosen (1988) indicate this case to be relevant to alkali-doped nanotubes.

The pseudo-Jahn-Teller contribution to the Hamiltonian must be invariant under symmetry operations of the nanotube. For a nanotube with at least D3 symmetry, the vibronic term for this model has continuous axial symmetry. The form of the coupling term is determined by symmetry Griffith (1962) up to an overall coupling constant $`g`$ to be

$$_{JT}=g\underset{m=\pm 1}{}(Q_md_m^{}d_0+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.)$$
(2)
where $`Q_{\pm 1}=Q_x\pm iQ_y`$.

Lastly, the form of the elastic energy of the distortion is taken to be

$$_v=\frac{\kappa }{4}\underset{m=\pm 1}{}|Q_m|^2$$
(3)
This model is now considered for a classical field $`\stackrel{}{Q}`$, a mean-field theory in the distortion. Writing the distortion in polar form $`Q_m=Q\mathrm{exp}(im\varphi )`$, the phase $`\varphi `$ is gauged away by transforming $`d_md_m\mathrm{exp}(im\varphi )`$, leaving only the magnitude $`Q`$. The Hamiltonian is bilinear in operators and thus is easily diagonalized. The impurity Green’s function $`G_{00}`$ is simply that of the non-interacting Anderson model with an additional contribution to the self-energy due to the pseudo-Jahn-Teller term

$$G_{00}0|G|0=\frac{1}{\omega +i\eta E_0\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )}$$
(4)
with the self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )`$

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )=\underset{k}{}\frac{|V_k|^2}{\omega +i\eta ϵ_k}+\frac{2g^2Q^2}{\omega E_{}}$$
(5)
The energy change due to the vibronic impurity is given by

$$E=\frac{2}{\pi }𝑑\omega \mathrm{Im}\mathrm{ln}G_{00}(\omega )+\frac{\kappa }{2}Q^2$$
(6)
For systems with coupling strength $`g>g_c`$, a distorted equilibrium with $`Q0`$ is energetically favorable. All distortion phases $`\varphi `$, however, are degenerate, corresponding to an adiabatic potential with an equipotential circle concentric with the symmetry axis. Such $`O(2)`$ invariance is broken with the inclusion of higher-order Jahn-Teller couplings. As numerical calculations Meunier et al. (2002); Ma et al. (2002) point to continuous rotational symmetry of the equilibrium positions of the dopants considered, the linear PJT model proposed is consistent with these results.

In analogy with the Anderson model for magnetic impurities, the broken symmetry is an artifact of the mean-field description. Phase fluctuations of the distortion stemming from zero point motion of the dopant restore axial symmetry.

For a linear conduction band with width $`2t`$, $`V_k`$ independent of $`k`$ and $`E_0`$ near $`E_f`$, it is straightforward to derive the Stoner-like criterion that

$$\frac{8g_c^2}{\pi \kappa \mathrm{\Gamma }}I=1$$
(7)
and

$$I(\gamma ,e_{},e_0)=_0^1𝑑\xi \frac{1}{\xi +e_{}}\frac{\gamma ^2}{(\xi +e_0)^2+\gamma ^2}$$
(8)
where $`\gamma `$ is the width of the virtual bound state resonance near $`E_f`$ in units of $`t`$, $`\gamma =\pi |V|^2\rho /t`$, $`e_{}=E_{}/t`$, and $`e_0=(E_0ϵ)/t`$ where $`ϵ`$ is the shift in the resonance at $`E_f`$ due to the hybridization self-energy. The integral in Eq. 8 can be expressed in terms of elementary functions, yielding the analytic form for Eq. 7 which is plotted in Fig. 2.

For the case where the SWNT has a doubly degenerate band at or near the Fermi energy (the third class and the remainder of the first class), d-states of a transition metal impurity could readily hybridize with the $`e_g`$ bands of the nanotube, leading to an electronic model of the following form

$`_e`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{km}{}}ϵ_kc_{km}^{}c_{km}+{\displaystyle \underset{mp}{}}E_pd_{mp}^{}d_{mp}`$ (9)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{km}{}}(V_kc_{km}^{}d_{m1}+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.)`$ (10)
where $`p=\pm 1`$ is the parity of the localized orbital doublets.

The impurity states of opposite parity can be coupled through the impurity distortion via the pseudo-Jahn-Teller effect.

$$_{JT}=g\underset{m}{}(mQ_md_{m1}^{}d_{m1}+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.)$$
(11)
As in the case of the Hamiltonian in Eq. 2, the phase of the displacement can be gauged away with the transformation

$$d_{mp}d_{mp}\mathrm{e}^{i\frac{p}{2}(m\varphi +(m1)\frac{\pi }{2})}$$
(12)
The pseudo-Jahn-Teller contribution to the self-energy in this $`(E_uE_g)e_u`$ model is found to be one-half that of Eq. 5. Thus, a qualitatively similar phase diagram is found for the two-band model with $`g_c^2g_c^2/2`$.

For SWNTs of the third class, for $`gg_c`$, orbitally degenerate conduction electrons are coupled to orbital impurity states through virtual fluctuations in impurity occupancy. Orbital states can be labeled by a pseudospin, leading to a possible two-channel Kondo description where the real spin gives rise to the channel indices Cox (1987); however, the low density of states $`\rho `$ of metallic zigzag SWNTs tends to lower the Kondo temperature $`T_K`$ relative to standard metallic hosts.

Under linear vibronic mixing, the ground state double degeneracy of the isolated impurity is preserved. For finite $`U`$, provided that fluctuations between the ground state orbital doublet and a doubly occupied, doubly degenerate set of states dominate over fluctuations to the unoccupied singlet, the two-channel Kondo description is still operative; however, $`T_K`$ is modified by changes in the hybridization and impurity energy levels.

This can be quantified in the strong coupling limit $`gg_c`$. At low temperatures, fluctuations of the magnitude of the distortion can safely be neglected. Hence, the impurity atom acts as a quantum rotor, displaced from the tube axis by $`Q_0`$, the mean-field value of the magnitude of the distortion.

The hybridization term can be rewritten as

$$_\mathrm{a}=\underset{km}{}(\stackrel{~}{V}_kc_{km}^{}|0m|+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.)$$
(13)
where $`|m`$, $`(m=\pm 1)`$ are the impurity eigenstates with energy $`\xi =E_1+\frac{1}{2}(\delta \mathrm{\Delta })`$, $`\delta =E_1E_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2=\delta ^2+4g^2Q_0^2`$. The hybridization is reduced by vibronic mixing in the strong coupling regime to give $`\stackrel{~}{V}_k=V_k\frac{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }+\delta }}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Delta }}}`$. Additionally, with increasing coupling strength, the vibronic energy levels drop, with $`\xi \frac{g^2}{2\kappa }`$ as $`g\mathrm{}`$.

Collectively, this implies that the Kondo exchange coupling $`J`$, as obtained from the generalized Anderson model through a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, behaves asymptotically as $`J\frac{V^2\kappa }{g^2}`$ as $`g\mathrm{}`$, leading to $`T_K(g)T_K(0)\mathrm{exp}(g^2/V^2\kappa \rho )`$. Strong vibronic coupling can quickly suppress the temperature scale below which Kondo effects will be manifested.

In summary, a vibronic generalization of the Anderson model is seen to be a convenient framework for understanding the structural phases of endohedral impurities in SWNTs. An analogy is noted between the formation of impurity moments in the magnetic Anderson model and the distortion of the endohedral dopant in this vibronic generalization.

Within mean-field theory, the high symmetry axial phase exists for vibronic coupling $`gg_c`$. For strong coupling, the shell phase is seen to be stable. Beyond mean-field theory, for the models considered where orbital degeneracy becomes vibronic degeneracy, a modification of the two-channel Kondo effect is operative; however, $`T_K`$ is seen to be exponentially suppressed for strong vibronic coupling.

Support from DARPA under grant no. MDA9720110041 is gratefully acknowledged.


text:
# Chapter 1 Toward Ultra Short Gamma Ray Burst Ground Based Detection, SGARFACE status

## Chapter 1 Toward Ultra Short Gamma Ray Burst Ground Based Detection, SGARFACE status

### Abstract

We present the status and motivation of the Short GAmma Ray Front Air Cherenkov Experiment (SGARFACE) which will be operated parallel to standard Very High Energy $`\gamma `$-ray observations using the Whipple 10m telescope. SGARFACE is sensitive to $`100\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$-$`10\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$ $`\gamma `$-ray bursts with durations ranging from $`100\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}`$ to $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ providing a fluence sensitivity as low as few $`10^9\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Preliminary data taking started in November 2002.

### 1. Introduction

Gamma-ray bursts observed with space-based detectors span a wide range of durations limited by the detector integration time to time scales $`\mathrm{t}1\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}`$. Satellite-based detectors are not efficiently triggered by pulses with time scales shorter than $`1\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}`$ because their effective collection area is too small to allow for faster time sampling of signals with typical fluences. Nevertheless, among the detected bursts, millisecond and sub-millisecond variability is common (Walker & Schaefer 2000).

A front of low energy $`\gamma `$-rays entering the Earth’s atmosphere results in the development of small electromagnetic cascades at $`20\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}`$ altitude. Each of them produces Cherenkov light spread over an area of $`500\mathrm{m}`$ in radius at ground level. The Cherenkov light from all the showers should give a detectable glow extending over $`2^\mathrm{o}`$ centered on the direction of the burst (figure LABEL:sgarface:principle). The diffuse night sky background (our sensitivity limitation) of collected over such a solid angle during $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ is comparable to the Cherenkov light yield from a few $`100\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$ $`\gamma `$-ray burst with a fluence of $`10`$ $`\gamma `$-ray $`\mathrm{m}^2`$. This also corresponds to the fluence sensitivity of a space-based detector with collection areas of $`1\mathrm{m}^2`$. Going toward shorter time scales, the noise contamination is reduced and atmospheric Cherenkov detectors gain in sensitivity following the square root of the burst duration. The fluence sensitivity for a 100 ns burst of 1 GeV $`\gamma `$-rays is $`0.1\gamma \mathrm{ray}\mathrm{m}^2`$ (Krennrich et al., 2000). The timing and imaging analysis allows to remove the dominant $`100\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ background due to atmospheric scintillation produced by ultra-high-energy cosmic-ray showers. The features of the multi-$`\gamma `$-ray front initiated shower images are unique. Both the light distribution and the time structure of the Cherenkov light image are centered on the direction of the burst and should be symmetric. We are not aware of any phenomenon capable of producing fake signals and we expect the technique to allow background free detection of bursts.

SGARFACE is the first ground-based experiment using the imaging and time sampling to search for ultra-short bursts of $`\gamma `$-rays. The Whipple observatory 10 m $`\gamma `$-ray telescope will be used to collect the Cherenkov light and form the image. After discussing the design and status of SGARFACE, we will review some of its motivations.

### 2. SGARFACE

The photomultiplier signals coming from the Whipple 10 m (Finley et al. 2001) Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope are duplicated before they reach the standard electronic system used for TeV observations. This allows to carry out a search for bursts at the same time the telescope is used for VHE-astronomy. The signals (see figure LABEL:sgarface:experiment) are sent to the Trigger I modules for digitization and subsequent real time-analysis in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Each time the FPGAs detects a potentially interesting pulse, they send a signal to a coincidence unit (Trigger II module).

#### 2.1. Splitter summer modules

Since the glow produced by a $`\gamma `$-ray burst is quite extended ( 1deg.), it is possible to sacrifice the high angular resolution provided by the Whipple 10m telescope camera ($`0.13^\mathrm{o}`$) to cost effectiveness. The splitter summer has been designed to produce the analog sum of seven neighboring photomultiplier signals providing an effective angular resolution of $`0.4^\mathrm{o}`$. A passive splitter preserves the bandwidth of the standard Whipple 10m electronics and reduce their amplitude by about $`10\%`$. Each NIM module consists of five boards. Each board takes the inputs of seven signals and provides 1 output channel for SGARFACE. A total of 55 boards are necessary for the complete operation of SGARFACE on the Whipple 10m telescope.

#### 2.2. Trigger-I, multi time scale discriminators

Since the duration of the pulse to be detected is not known a priori, the trigger decision must depend on the integrated signal over a range of time scales. The integral of the signal over time is derived by continuously summing the difference between the values at the input and output of a ”first-in-first-out” register stack through which the digitized signal amplitudes are driven at a 50MHz rate. In the SGARFACE design, the signal is integrated over 3 contiguous time windows and a trigger signal is formed when the three integral values exceed a predefined threshold at the same time. This design allows the suppression of frequent short (less than 40ns) Cherenkov pulses produced by single particle induced cosmic-ray showers. This logic is replicated in a cascade providing sensitivity over time windows of width 60ns, 180ns, 540ns, 1620ns, 4860ns and 14580ns. Trigger signals from each time scale are sent to the coincidence unit which can issue a global trigger. The multi-time-scale discriminators are 16-channel VME-based boards. Hence, 4 Trigger-I modules are sufficient for the entire experiment. The digital signal processing is done by a re-programmable Xilinx FPGA for each channel. After a trigger occurs the local computer can read out the data present in the multi-time-scale discriminator logic.

#### 2.3. Trigger-II, topological trigger

The Trigger-II is designed to take 64 asynchronous inputs. Only one such module is necessary for the operation of SGARFACE. It can be made sensitive to 64 overlapping sectors in order to reduce the accidentals rate. For each sector, the number of inputs in a high state is calculated and compared to a multiplicity threshold. When any of the 64 sectors reach the trigger conditions a global trigger signal is issued. This signal is used to freeze the trigger-I modules and hold the pulse information. It is also used to generate an interrupt to notify the local computer that new data is available to be read. The design of the Trigger-II module is very similar to the Trigger-I. The logic is implemented in a single Xilinx FPGA chip.

#### 2.4. Present status

As of November 2002, the complete system of 11 signal splitter modules is installed and working as well as three Trigger-I boards and the trigger-II module. While final tunings are made on the boards, various data taking strategies are being explored and we expect to start taking data continuously in January 2003. The first data taken toward the sky were encouraging and figure LABEL:sgarface:event shows a cosmic ray event. From left to right the image acquired on time scales ranging from $`60\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}`$ to $`15\mu \mathrm{s}`$ are displayed and the traces under each image show the pulse profile from each channel smoothed to the appropriate time scale.

### 3. Science perspective

Searching for $`\gamma `$-ray bursts ultra-short durations has not been explored yet with good sensitivity(Halzen et al. 1991). Sub-millisecond structures in Gamma-Ray Bursts have been reported by various authors. Bursts of $`\gamma `$-ray with durations of less than $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ have also been suggested as a possible signature of the existence of primordial black holes. In a quite different domain, some pulsars show giant radio pulses with durations of few microseconds which could have $`\gamma `$-ray counterparts.

#### 3.1. Primordial Black Holes

The process of black hole evaporation leads to a violent explosion accompanied by $`\gamma `$-ray emission. The time scale and details of this explosion are mostly unknown and depend on particle physics. However, the total energy emitted is largely model independent $`5\times 10^{34}\mathrm{ergs}`$ and a large fraction of that likely dissipated into $`\gamma `$-rays. Short explosions of primordial black-holes could be detected with SGARFACE as far as 250 pc from Earth. Depending on the time scale, SGARFACE individual burst fluence sensitivity will be up to 100 times better than that of space based-detectors like GLAST compensating for the smaller field of view and duty cycle.

#### 3.2. Pulsar giant pulses

Giant radio Pulses from the Crab pulsar reach up to 2000 times the fluence of the average single pulse. It was recently shown (Sallmen et al. 1999) that giant radio pulse from the Crab pulsar have typical durations of a few microseconds and less. Searches for counterparts of giant pulses in optical, X-ray and low energy $`\gamma `$-ray (Patt 1999) proved unsuccessful. EGRET was not sensitive to individual pulses with 2000 times the average pulsed gamma-ray fluence. Rare microsecond bursts correlated with short giant radio pulses could not be excluded (Ramanamurthy 1998; Ramanamurthy 1995). SGARFACE sensitivity is such that a 100ns to $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ burst would be detectable at $`\mathrm{E}>0.25\mathrm{GeV}`$ gamma-rays if giant pulses were to occur at $`\gamma `$-ray energies and exceed the average $`\gamma `$-ray fluence of a single pulse by a factor of 1000 or more. SGARFACE clearly matches the observed time scales of giant pulses and the relative fluence increases seen in the radio. Another good candidate for this search is PSR1937+21 which is is the fastest known millisecond pulsar (1.56ms) and exhibits giant radio pulses with amplitudes larger than 1000 times the average pulse amplitude.

### 4. Conclusion

With the installation of SGARFACE at the Whipple 10m telescope, its sensitivity will be expanded to GeV photon bursts of $`0.1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ to $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$. SGARFACE is expected to have a fluence sensitivity of 500 times that of EGRET for microsecond bursts of GeV photons. Data taking should start before the end of 2002 and will be the object of an interesting search for sub-millisecond $`\gamma `$-ray signal with possible implications for primordial black holes and pulsar giant pulses.

### 5. References

Walker, K.C. and Schaefer, B.E., 2000, ApJ, 537:264-269.

Krennrich, F., LeBohec, S. and Weekes, T.C., 2000, ApJ, 529:506-512.

F.Halzen et al., 1991, Nature, Vol. 353: 807-814.

Sallmen et al., 1999, ApJ, 517: 460.

Patt et al. 1999, ApJ, 522: 440.

Ramanamurthy et al., 1998, ApJ, 496: 863.

Ramanamurthy et al. 1995, ApJ, 450: 791.

Lundgren et al. 1995, ApJ, 453: 433.

## Entry Form for the Proceedings

### 6. Title of the Paper

The Cosmic Ray Background as a Tool for Relative Calibration of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes

### 7. Author(s)

* + Full Name: Stephan LeBohec
    + First Name: Stephan
    + Middle Name:
    + Surname: LeBohec
    + Initialized Name: S.LeBohec
    + Affiliation: Iowa State University
    + E-Mail: lebohec@iastate.edu
    + Ship the Proceedings to: Department of Physics and Astronomy,ISU Ames, IA, 50011, USA
* + Full Name: Frank Krennrich
    + First Name: Frank
    + Middle Name:
    + Surname: Krennrich
    + Initialized Name: F.Krennrich
    + Affiliation: Iowa State University
    + E-Mail: krennrich@iastate.edu
    + Ship the Proceedings to: Department of Physics and Astronomy,ISU Ames, IA, 50011, USA