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# 1 A Propagator

1. Introduction

One of the most challenging problems in the study of non-Abelian gauge theories is to discover the dual string description . After many years of relative stagnation, the discovery of the AdS/CFT correspondence  has led to important progress in the resolution of this problem. This approach relies heavily on ideas from string theory and supersymmetry, and it can deal effectively with only a fairly restricted class of field theories.

Recently, we initiated a program , one of the goals of which is to establish the duality between field and string theories. The idea, which goes back to Nielsen, Olesen, Sakita and Virasoro , and which was given a systematic foundation via ’t Hooft’s $`1/N_c`$ expansion , is to construct a world sheet description of the planar graphs of a general field theory. As shown in , planar graphs are selected by introducing an internal color degree of freedom and taking $`N_c\mathrm{}`$ limit, and the use of a mixed coordinate-momentum space light cone coordinates leads to the world sheet description. Although originally only a $`\varphi ^3`$ theory was considered for simplicity , this approach is sufficiently flexible to be able to handle more realistic cases, including nonsupersymmetric  and supersymmetric  gauge theories.

The original world sheet model suggested by ’t Hooft was non-local. In reference , it was shown how to reformulate this model as a local world sheet field theory by introducing additional non-dynamical fields. The world sheet structure of a given graph consists of the bulk and a bunch of “solid” lines, which describe the multiple internal boundaries representing the loops of a multi-loop planar diagram. The dynamics is all in the boundaries, and the only function of the fields that live in the bulk is to instantaneously transmit the interaction from one boundary to another. Therefore, the local world sheet theory can be thought of as a topological theory.

The representation of planar graphs by a topological field theory is perhaps elegant, but it has no new physical content. The elimination of the bulk fields would lead back to the original non-local structure of ’t Hooft. One gets something new and interesting if the topological bulk fields are somehow promoted into genuine dynamical fields. One way for this to happen is through the condensation of the solid lines (the boundaries). In a graph of a given order, the density of the solid lines, by which we mean the percentage of the area on the world sheet occupied by solid lines, is zero. This is because solid lines are lines; they have zero thickness. However, as the order of the graph asymptotes to infinity, solid lines become more and more numerous and dense, and ultimately, one can envisage a limit in which they acquire a finite density on the world sheet. This is what we mean by the condensation of the boundaries. In this limit, the distinction between the bulk and the boundary disappears, the world sheet acquires a uniform texture, and it becomes possible to have a string formulation of the sum of the Feynman graphs in terms of dynamical fields on the world sheet. We will call this mechanism string formation through condensation of boundaries. Whether this really happens depends on the dynamics: One clearly needs an attractive interaction and also an effectively strong coupling, leading to the domination of higher order graphs.

The worldsheet formalism of  might also provide a natural setting for understanding confinement in real QCD, where strong coupling is only a feature of infrared dynamics. Then the physical world sheet representing the confining flux tube would not have the uniform texture mentioned above but would include important fluctuations in which regions of the world sheet would not have solid line condensation and would retain the topological character of perturbation theory. These fluctuations would describe the point-like structures implied by asymptotic freedom.

In an earlier paper , using $`\varphi ^3`$ theory as a prototype toy model, we investigated the possibility of boundary condensation leading to string formation. Although this is an unphysical theory, it provides a simple setting for developing the tools needed to attack more interesting and also more complicated theories. The main tool used in  was the mean field approximation, or the self consistent field approximation. This approximation has been widely used in both field theory and many body theory, in most cases leading to at least qualitatively reasonable answers. For the problem at hand, the easiest way to implement it systematically is to consider the limit of large $`D`$, where $`D`$ is the number of transverse dimensions in the light cone picture. We should add that although the large $`D`$ limit provides a convenient bookkeeping device, it does not truly capture the physics of the problem in most cases. The critical factor is the number of degrees of freedom of the system in question: The mean field approximation is usually successful when applied to a system with a large number of degrees of freedom. Of course, one way to to have a large number of degrees of freedom is to have a large number of space dimensions, but this is rather artificial in most cases. A more physical situation is to have a large number of particles in a many body system, and this is the case in most of the standard applications. In our case, as explained above, we are interested in graphs with a large number of boundaries, and we can roughly identify the number of boundaries with the degrees of freedom. With this identification, the mean field method should be a good tool for investigating problems involving graphs with a large number of boundaries. There is then no need to appeal to the large $`D`$ limit, except, as a convenient bookkeeping device.

In this article we aim to improve the treatment of  in several respects. First, we applied the mean field approximation to a system of Ising spins introduced as a representation of the sum over all arrangements of solid lines. Since the world sheet on which these spins lived remained 2 dimensional even as $`D\mathrm{}`$, it was not clear why that should justify replacing each spin by a mean field. Instead the large $`D`$ limit is actually that of an $`O(D)`$ vector model. As is well-known this limit justifies treating the $`O(D)`$ invariants, the scalar products of the vector fields, classically. In fact the process of replacing the scalars with classical fields eventually leads to a mean field treatment of the Ising spins as well, but, unlike in , there are no ambiguities in how to set up the action for the classical mean fields. We incorporate this clarification in the current article. But the most substantial improvement we make here is in the treatment of the Dirichlet boundary conditions. In  we introduced Gaussian representations of delta functions of the type

$$\delta (\dot{𝐪})=\underset{\beta \mathrm{}}{lim}\left(\frac{\beta }{2\pi }\right)^{D/2}e^{\beta \dot{𝐪}^2}$$

to enforce the boundary conditions. Keeping $`\beta `$ finite amounts to imposing an infrared cutoff on target space. With a sufficiently exact calculation there is nothing wrong with this. But after making an approximation to the cutoff theory, the delicacy of removing the infrared cutoff might well invalidate the approximation. In the current article we shall impose the boundary conditions exactly, thereby eliminating this difficulty. The price will be the need to introduce a more complicated system of mean fields, some of which are nonlocal on the world sheet. The presence of such nonlocal mean fields might even make it easier to incorporate the non-homogeneous worldsheet textures required for a realistic worldsheet description of QCD. We are then able to derive a set of equations for these fields, which relies on no other approximation except for the mean field approximation. We consider these equations (eqs.(46) and (47)) as the main result of this article. Although these equations are non-linear and somewhat complicated, it should be possible to attack them by various approximation schemes and numerical methods. However, in this article, we will be content with studying them in some limiting cases, and we leave a full investigation of this problem to future research.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we present a brief review of the world sheet formalism developed in  for summing planar graphs. We also argue that, in the leading order of the mean field approximation, a good deal of simplification takes place: The ghost fields can be dropped, and the world sheet dynamics is described by a free action (eq.(7)), plus constraints on the boundaries given by eq.(8). In section 3, the boundary constraints are re-expressed in a form suitable for inclusion in the effective action and also for taking the large $`D`$ limit. This is done by introducing auxiliary scalar fields, which are equal to the scalar products of the vector fields in $`D`$ dimensions. The important point is that these scalar fields become classical in the large $`D`$ limit. Section 4 is devoted to the construction of the effective action as a function of the scalar fields. This is done by explicitly carrying out the functional integration over the vector fields. The classical equations for the scalar fields resulting from this effective action completely determines the large $`D`$ dynamics. In section 5, we investigate these equations in various limits, and we argue that one solution, although not stable, can lead to condensation of the boundaries and string formation. This is a moderately encouraging but preliminary result, although no definite conclusions can be reached until we have the full solution. Section 6 summarizes our conclusions. In the appendix, we show that the contribution of the ghost fields is unimportant in the leading order of the large $`D`$ limit.

2. A Brief Review

We will be working with a massless $`\varphi ^3`$ matrix field theory in the large $`N`$ limit, which amounts to a summation of the planar graphs. As ’t Hooft has shown , Feynman rules are especially simple if a particular mixture of coordinate and momentum light cone variables are used. We will use the following notation: A Minkowski vector $`v^\mu `$ will be written as $`(v^+,v^{},𝐯)`$, where $`v^\pm =(v^0\pm v^3)/\sqrt{2}`$, and the boldface letters label the components along the transverse directions. The Lorentz invariant product of two vectors $`v`$ and $`w`$ is given by $`vw=𝐯𝐰v^+w^{}v^{}w^+`$. The evolution parameter (time) is $`x^+`$, and the Hamiltonian conjugate to this time is $`p^{}`$. A massless on-shell particle thus has the energy $`p^{}=𝐩^2/2p^+`$. The number of transverse dimensions $`D`$ is arbitrary to start with, and eventually, we will consider the large $`D`$ limit. As explained in , this limit is a convenient method of organizing the mean field approximation. Of course, the eventual case of interest is $`D=2`$.

Let us now briefly review the Feynman rules derived in . A specific graph is represented by a set of parallel solid lines drawn on the world sheet. A propagator corresponds to a strip bounded by two solid lines (Fig.(1)).

If $`p`$ is the momentum carried by the propagator, the strip has width $`p^+`$, and length $`\tau =x^+`$. We associate two transverse momenta $`𝐪_1`$ and $`𝐪_2`$ with the two solid lines forming the boundary. The transverse momentum $`𝐩`$ of the propagator is their difference:

$$𝐩=𝐪_1𝐪_2,$$

and using a Euclidean world sheet metric, the propagator is given by

$$\frac{\theta (\tau )}{2p^+}\mathrm{exp}\left(\tau (𝐪_1𝐪_2)^2/2p^+\right),$$
(1)
Now let us consider a more complicated graph, with interaction vertices, pictured in Fig.(2).

Interaction takes place at the points where a solid line ends, and a factor of $`g`$ is associated with each such vertex, where $`g`$ is the coupling constant. After putting together the propagators and coupling constants associated with the graph, one has to integrate over the positions of the solid lines and the position of the interaction vertices, as well as the momenta carried by solid lines. We note that momentum conservation is automatic in this formalism.

These Feynman rules look quite non-local; however, it was shown in reference  that they can be reproduced by a local field theory defined on the world sheet. Later, this result was extended from $`\varphi ^3`$ to more complicated and more realistic theories . The world sheet field theory in question can be formulated either on a latticized or continuum world sheet, and here we choose the continuum version. We will eventually need to specify some cutoffs, but we defer that until the need arises. Using the coordinates $`\sigma `$ in the $`p^+`$ direction and $`\tau `$ itself in the $`x^+=\tau `$ direction, the bosonic fields $`𝐪(\sigma ,\tau )`$ and the fermionic fields $`b(\sigma ,\tau )`$ and $`c(\sigma ,\tau )`$, called ghosts, are introduced. In contrast to $`𝐪`$, which has $`D`$ components, $`b`$ and $`c`$ each have $`D/2`$ components. (Here, we are assuming that $`D`$ is even). The free part of the action on the world sheet is given by

$$S_0=_{\tau _i}^{\tau _f}𝑑\tau _0^{p^+}𝑑\sigma \left(b^{}c^{}\frac{1}{2}𝐪^2\right),$$
(2)
where the prime denotes derivative with respect to $`\sigma `$. Here $`p^+`$ is the $`+`$ component of the total momentum flowing through the graph. For convenience, we have also restricted the $`\tau `$ integration; eventually, we will let $`\tau _i\mathrm{}`$ and $`\tau _f+\mathrm{}`$. This action is to be supplemented by the following boundary conditions: On solid lines, $`𝐪(\sigma ,\tau )`$ is constrained to be independent of $`\tau `$, or, equivalently, the Dirichlet boundary condition

$$\dot{𝐪}=0$$

is imposed, where the dot denotes derivative with respect to $`\tau `$. Also, if the transverse momentum carried by the whole graph is $`𝐩`$, the constraint

$$_0^{p^+}𝑑\sigma 𝐪^{}=𝐩$$
(3)
has to be imposed. For simplicity, we will set $`𝐩=0`$ in what follows, which means periodic boundary conditions on $`𝐪`$:

$$𝐪(\sigma =0)=𝐪(\sigma =p^+).$$
(4)
The corresponding boundary conditions on the ghosts are simple:

$$b=c=0$$
(5)
on the solid lines.

In addition to $`S_0`$, it was shown in  that the full action contains interaction terms in the form of the insertion of ghost vertices. These insertions are needed to correctly reproduce the factor $`1/2p^+`$ in front of the exponential in the expression (1) for the propagator. If, for example, one integrates the matter and ghost fields of $`S_0`$ with the boundary conditions appropriate for the propagator, without any vertex ghost insertions, the result is

$$\theta (\tau )\mathrm{exp}\left(\tau 𝐩^2/2p^+\right),$$
(6)
instead of (1). Local ghost vertex insertions can be arranged to correct this defect. However, we will now argue that this is the correct leading term in the large $`D`$ expansion. To see this, let us rewrite the propagator in the form

$$\theta (\tau )\mathrm{exp}\left(\tau 𝐩^2/2p^+\mathrm{ln}(2p^+)\right).$$

The first term in the exponent really corresponds to $`D`$ terms since it is the square of a vector with $`D`$ components. Consequently, in the large $`D`$ limit, its contribution is of the order of $`D`$. In contrast, the contribution of the second term is $`D`$ independent. Therefore, in the leading order in $`D`$, which is all we are going to consider in this paper, the factor of $`1/2p^+`$ can be dropped. This means that, in the large $`D`$ limit, we are entitled to work with $`S_0`$ given by eq.(2) and ignore the ghost insertion terms.

We are going to take advantage of one more simplification. Although the fermionic (ghost) part of $`S_0`$ does contribute in the large $`D`$ limit, it will be shown in the appendix that its contribution harmlessly shifts some of the fields we had already introduced. So, bearing in mind that the fields might need to be interpreted differently, we are going to drop the ghost contributions.

To summarize, the starting point of the present work will be the action

$$S_0_{\tau _i}^{\tau _f}𝑑\tau _0^{p^+}𝑑\sigma \left(\frac{1}{2}𝐪^2\right),$$
(7)
plus the Dirichlet boundary conditions

$$\dot{𝐪}=0$$
(8)
on solid lines and the periodicity condition given by eq.(4). We would like to stress that the terms we have neglected do contribute in the non-leading orders of the large $`D`$ expansion.

3. The Boundary Conditions

Our goal is to express the sum over all the planar graphs in the form of an effective action. We start with eqs.(7) and (8), which generate the simplified Feynman rules of the large $`D`$ limit. We would like to rewrite the conditions (8) in a form that can be identified as a contribution to the action, and cast them in a form suitable for taking the large $`D`$ limit. We note that the boundary conditions decouple in the $`\sigma `$ direction, and so it is convenient first to discretize the $`\sigma `$ coordinate into small segments of length $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma =ϵ_1`$, and to impose the conditions for each discrete value of $`\sigma `$ separately. (In  this cutoff $`ϵ_1`$ was called $`m`$ the minimal unit of $`p^+`$ in the discretized formulation.) The parameter $`ϵ_1`$ will play the role of an ultraviolet cutoff on the worldsheet. It should be pointed out that we are making an important change in the way we classify graphs. The customary classification is according to the total number of solid lines, which is the same as counting the powers of the coupling constant. This is analogous to a Fock space description. Instead, we are now going to focus on the distribution of solid lines separately for each value of $`\sigma `$. This is more analogous to the occupation number description. If one is interested in the condensation of the solid lines, the occupation number description is clearly superior, since counting the number of lines in a condensate is not very useful.

Next, for a fixed value of $`\sigma `$, we are going to carry out the summation over all possible partitionings of solid lines and over all values of momenta flowing through them. This will result in an integral equation. In particular, we note that the Dirichlet boundary conditions (8) will be taken into account exactly. In this respect, the present treatment is superior to the one given in ; in that work, only a weaker version of these boundary conditions was imposed.

In Fig.(3), we have drawn lines located at the discrete values of $`\sigma `$ and extending in the $`\tau `$ direction.

These lines consist of alternating solid and dotted segments: As before, the solid lines are located where the boundary conditions (8) hold, whereas the dotted lines run through what used to be blank space, where there are no boundary conditions. Now consider a typical line located at some $`\sigma `$, starting at $`\tau _i`$ and ending at a variable point $`\tau `$. For simplicity, we assume that this line contains an equal number of solid and dotted line segments, and we call this number $`m`$. One has then to sum over all possible partitions of this line between alternating solid and dotted segments for a given $`m`$, and then sum over all $`m`$. Let $`F_m(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )`$ be the factor that takes care of (8) on the solid segments. This function satisfies the following recursion relation:

$$F_{m+1}(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )=g^2_{\tau _i}^\tau 𝑑\tau _1_{\tau _1}^\tau 𝑑\tau _2K(\sigma ,\tau _2,\tau )F_m(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau _1).$$
(9)
In going from $`F_m`$ to $`F_{m+1}`$, we have added a dotted segment extending from $`\tau _1`$ to $`\tau _2`$, and a solid segment extending from $`\tau _2`$ to $`\tau `$. Since there is no boundary condition on the dotted segment, we associate with it a factor of one. With the solid segment, we associate the factor $`K(\sigma ,\tau _2,\tau )`$, which is introduced to take care of the corresponding boundary condition. The total $`F`$ is then given by

$$F(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )=\underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}F_m(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau ).$$
(10)
and it satisfies the integral equation

$$F(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )=F_0(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )+g^2_{\tau _i}^\tau 𝑑\tau _1_{\tau _1}^\tau 𝑑\tau _2K(\sigma ,\tau _2,\tau )F(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau _1).$$
(11)
So far, we have defined an $`F`$ that implements (8) for a single line located at $`\sigma `$. To find the $`F`$ that implements these boundary conditions for the whole world sheet, we have to multiply the $`F`$’s associated with each discrete value of $`\sigma `$ and let $`\tau \tau _f`$:

$$F(\tau _i,\tau _f)=\underset{n}{}F(\sigma _n,\tau _i,\tau _f).$$
(12)
Now let us return to the integral equation (11). We will set

$$F_0(\sigma ,\tau _i,\tau )=\delta (\tau _i\tau ).$$
(13)
The kernel $`K`$, which has to implement (8) on the solid line segment extending from $`\tau _2`$ to $`\tau `$, is given by

$$K(\sigma ,\tau _2,\tau )=𝑑𝐤D𝐥\mathrm{exp}\left(i_{\tau _2}^\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})\left(𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐤\right)\right).$$
(14)
The integration over $`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})`$ sets $`𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})`$ equal to a constant $`\tau `$ independent vector $`𝐤`$ in the interval $`(\tau _2,\tau )`$, and then $`𝐤`$ is integrated over. It is clear that this is equivalent to the condition that $`𝐪`$ is independent of $`\tau ^{}`$ in this interval.

It will become clear as we proceed that an ultraviolet cutoff in the variable $`𝐤`$ is needed to avoid divergences. We therefore modify the expression for $`K`$ by introducing a suitable cutoff of the form of $`\mathrm{exp}(ϵk^2)`$ and then do the integration over $`𝐤`$:

$`K(\sigma ,\tau _1,\tau _2){\displaystyle 𝑑𝐤D𝐥\mathrm{exp}\left(ϵk^2+i_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}𝑑\tau ^{}𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})\left(𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐤\right)\right)}`$
$`={\displaystyle }D𝐥(\pi /ϵ)^{D/2}\mathrm{exp}(i{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}d\tau ^{}𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4ϵ}}{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}d\tau ^{}{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}d\tau ^{\prime \prime }𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{\prime \prime })).`$ (15)
We note that in addition to the worldsheet ultraviolet cutoff $`ϵ_1`$ introduced earlier, we now have a second ultraviolet cutoff $`ϵ`$, acting in the target space. Later, we will find that a third cutoff may be necessary, although it is likely that the third cutoff is expressible in terms of the first two.

It is worth noting that the nonlocal term in eq.(15) is entirely due to the integration over $`𝐤`$, the Dirichlet value of $`𝐪`$ on the internal boundary which $`K`$ adds to the worldsheet. But in the worldsheet formalism applied to gauge theories with extended supersymmetry , the worldsheet variables $`𝐪(\sigma ,\tau )`$ were $`2+d`$ dimensional where $`d=2`$ for $`𝒩=2`$ supersymmetry and $`d=6`$ for $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetry. The process of dimensional reduction, which leads to the 4 dimensional theory with extended supersymmetry, was achieved in  by imposing the boundary condition $`q^I=0`$ on all boundaries, external and internal, whenever $`I=3,4,\mathrm{}d`$. This means that the same components of the vector $`𝐤`$ are put to zero and not integrated. In other words the nonlocality is not introduced for the components of $`𝐥`$ in the extra dimensions. This worldsheet locality for the dimensions associated with the field theoretic internal degrees of freedom could be associated with the generic appearance of $`S_n`$ factors of the space-time manifold on the strong coupling side of the AdS/CFT correspondenceWe thank J. Maldacena for an illuminating conversation that inspired this suggestion..

We are dealing here with a vector model, and the standard first step in taking the large $`N`$ (in this case, the large $`D`$) limit, is first to express everything in terms of the scalar products of the vectors. From eq.(15), we see that this goal has been achieved: The kernel $`K`$ is expressed in terms of the scalar products $`𝐪𝐥`$ and $`𝐥𝐥`$. In the next step, the scalar products are replaced by their vacuum expectation values, which are proportional to D, and which we denote by $`D\varphi _1`$ and $`D\varphi _2`$ respectively:

$`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})`$ $``$ $`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐪(\sigma ,\tau ^{})=D\varphi _1(\sigma ,\tau ^{}),`$
$`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{\prime \prime })`$ $``$ $`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{\prime \prime })=D\varphi _2(\sigma ,\tau ^{},\tau ^{\prime \prime }).`$ (16)
We would like to make it clear that $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ are fixed classical background fields, not to be integrated over. They are the saddle points that dominate the large $`D`$ limit, to be determined by minimizing the effective action. The general rule is that vector valued fields are quantum mechanical, and they are to be integrated over. In contrast, scalar valued fields are classical background fields.

The kernel $`K`$ can now be written solely in terms of $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$:

$`K(\sigma ,\tau _1,\tau _2)`$ $`=`$
$`(\pi /ϵ)^{D/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(iD{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}𝑑\tau ^{}\varphi _1(\sigma ,\tau ^{}){\displaystyle \frac{D}{4ϵ}}{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}𝑑\tau ^{}{\displaystyle _{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}}𝑑\tau ^{\prime \prime }\varphi _2(\sigma ,\tau ^{},\tau ^{\prime \prime })\right).`$
Substituting this expression back into eq.(11), we have to solve an integral equation to find $`F(\tau _i,\tau _f)`$. We will reconsider this problem in the next section, after the simplifications following from translation invariance are taken into account. Here we note that once $`F`$ is known, the total action $`S`$, which incorporates the boundary condition (8) on solid lines, is given by

$$\mathrm{exp}(S)=\mathrm{exp}(S_1)F(\tau _i,\tau _f),$$
(18)
where,

$`S_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{p^+}}𝑑\sigma {\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \left(\frac{1}{2}(𝐪^{}(\sigma ,\tau ))^2+i\lambda _1(\sigma ,\tau )\left(𝐥(\sigma ,\tau )𝐪(\sigma ,\tau )D\varphi _1(\sigma ,\tau )\right)\right)}`$ (19)
$``$ $`i{\displaystyle _0^{p^+}}𝑑\sigma {\displaystyle 𝑑\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}\lambda _2(\sigma ,\tau ,\tau ^{})\left(𝐥(\sigma ,\tau )𝐥(\sigma ,\tau ^{})D\varphi _2(\sigma ,\tau ,\tau ^{})\right)}.`$
The first term on the right is $`S_0`$ (eq.(7)). In the rest of the terms in $`S_1`$, the Lagrange multipliers $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\lambda _2`$ enforce the definition of $`\varphi _{1,2}`$ given by (16).

4. The Effective Action

In this section, we will address the problem of the computation of the effective action. This will involve

a) solving the integral equation (11) for $`F`$ and

b) doing the functional integrations over the vector-valued fields $`𝐪`$ and $`𝐥`$, keeping all the scalar valued fields fixed.

We will be able to make only partial progress in solving eq.(11). In contrast, the functional integrations over $`𝐪`$ and $`𝐥`$ can be carried out in closed form. Once the effective action is derived, the classical fields $`\varphi _{1,2}`$ and $`\lambda _{1,2}`$ are determined by the equations

$$\frac{\delta S_e}{\delta \varphi _{1,2}}=0,\frac{\delta S_e}{\delta \lambda _{1,2}}=0.$$
(20)
The calculations outlined above are greatly simplified by making use of translation invariances in both the $`\sigma `$ and $`\tau `$ directions on the world sheet. This symmetry means that various background fields are either constants or functions of a single variable:

$`\lambda _1(\sigma ,\tau )\lambda _1,`$ $`\varphi _1(\sigma ,\tau )\varphi _1,`$
$`\lambda _2(\sigma ,\tau ,\tau ^{})\lambda _2(\tau \tau ^{}),`$ $`\varphi _2(\sigma ,\tau ,\tau ^{})\varphi _2(\tau \tau ^{}),`$ (21)
where $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\varphi _1`$ are independent of $`\sigma `$ and $`\tau `$, and $`\lambda _2`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ depend only on the difference $`\tau \tau ^{}`$. Substituting this in eq.(20), we see that $`S_1`$ will be non-local in the $`\tau `$ coordinate. This makes the problem of finding the minimum of the effective action more difficult; instead of an algebraic equation, we have to solve functional equations in one variable.

Let us now go back to the integral equation (11), taking advantage of the simplification resulting from translation invariance. First, we note that the functions $`K`$ and $`F`$ simplify:

$$K(\sigma ,\tau _1,\tau _2)K(\tau _2\tau _1),F(\sigma ,\tau _1,\tau _2)F(\tau _2\tau _1).$$
(22)
Now, eq.(11) can be formally solved using Fourier transforms. We define

$$\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )=\frac{1}{2\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau e^{i\omega \tau }K(\tau ),\stackrel{~}{F}(\omega )=\frac{1}{2\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau e^{i\omega \tau }F(\tau ).$$
(23)
The lower limits of integration start at zero, since both $`F`$ and $`K`$ are defined to be zero for negative values of the argument. The solution to eq.(11) is then given by

$$F(\tau )=𝑑\omega e^{i\omega \tau }\stackrel{~}{F}(\omega )=\frac{1}{2\pi }𝑑\omega e^{i\omega \tau }\frac{\omega }{\omega 2\pi ig^2\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )},$$
(24)
where $`\stackrel{~}{K}`$ can be written in the form

$$\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )=\frac{1}{2\pi }(\frac{\pi }{ϵ})^{D/2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau \mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega \tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{D}{4ϵ}L(\tau )\right)$$
(25)
and where we have defined

$$L(\tau _2\tau _1)=_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}𝑑\tau ^{}_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}𝑑\tau ^{\prime \prime }\varphi _2(\tau ^{\prime \prime }\tau ^{}).$$
(26)
The contribution of $`F`$ to the effective action follows from eq.(18):

$$S=S_1+S_F,S_F=\mathrm{ln}\left(F(\tau _f\tau _i)\right).$$
(27)
Now, let us examine $`S_F`$ in more detail. The time interval $`\tau _f\tau _i`$, which corresponds to $`\tau `$ in eq.(23), will eventually tend to infinity. It is a standard result in Fourier transform that this limit will be dominated by the lowest lying singularity in the variable $`\omega `$ of the integrand in eq.(23), which could be the tip of a cut or a pole. Since, being conjugate to time, $`\omega `$ is energy, a cut corresponds to the continuum and the pole to a bound state. We are particularly interested in bound states, since they can lower the energy of the system and lead to a non-trivial solution to our variational problem. Therefore, we will assume that the lowest lying singularity is a pole In reference , the energy spectrum consisted of only discrete states due to the infrared cutoff introduced in the Gaussian representation of the delta functions imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions., and we will be looking for the zeroes of the denominator in eq.(24):

$$\omega 2\pi ig^2\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )=0.$$
(28)
If $`\omega _0`$ is a solution to this equation, the corresponding energy is given by

$$E_0=i\omega _0,$$
(29)
and the corresponding contribution to the action is

$$S_F=\frac{i}{ϵ_1}p^+(\tau _f\tau _i)\omega _0,$$
(30)
where $`ϵ_1`$ is the cutoff resulting from the discretization of the interval along the $`\sigma `$ direction. (See eq.(12)). At this point, we should note that bound states cannot arise in perturbation theory, so our treatment from now on is definitely non-perturbative. There is also the question of the reality of $`E_0`$. In a stable theory, the spectrum should be real and bounded from below; however, since we are dealing with $`\varphi ^3`$, an intrinsically unstable theory, we may end up with complex energies. We will investigate this question in section 5 in the context of a simple model.

For the time being, we cannot proceed any further with the bound state problem without knowing $`\varphi _2`$, so we will leave its solution in the implicit form defined by eqs.(24), (25) and (28). Let us now turn to the next problem, that of carrying out the functional integrals over the quantum fields $`𝐪`$ and $`𝐥`$. Replacing $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\lambda _2`$ in eq.(19) by their translation invariant forms (eq.(21)), this equation can be rewritten as

$`S_1`$ $`=`$ $`S_1^{}+S_1^{\prime \prime },`$
$`S_1^{}`$ $`=`$ $`iD{\displaystyle _0^{p^+}}𝑑\sigma \left({\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \lambda _1\varphi _1}+{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1𝑑\tau _2\lambda _2(\tau _1\tau _2)\varphi _2(\tau _1\tau _2)}\right),`$
$`S_1^{\prime \prime }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{p^+}}𝑑\sigma {\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \left(\frac{1}{2}𝐪^2+i\lambda _1𝐥𝐪\right)}`$ (31)
$``$ $`i{\displaystyle _0^{p^+}}𝑑\sigma {\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1𝑑\tau _2\lambda _2(\tau _2\tau _1)𝐥(\sigma ,\tau _1)𝐥(\sigma ,\tau _2)}.`$
It turns out to be more convenient to work in the momentum space. We define

$`𝐪(\sigma ,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑p_0\underset{p_1}{}\mathrm{exp}(ip_1\sigma +ip_0\tau )\stackrel{~}{q}(p_0,p_1)},`$
$`𝐥(\sigma ,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑p_0\underset{p_1}{}\mathrm{exp}(ip_1\sigma +ip_0\tau )\stackrel{~}{l}(p_0,p_1)},`$
$`\lambda _2(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑p_0\mathrm{exp}(ip_0\tau )\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)},`$
$`\varphi _2(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑p_0\mathrm{exp}(ip_0\tau )\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p_0)},`$ (32)
where

$$p_1=2\pi m/p^+,mZ,$$

because of the periodic boundary conditions in the $`\sigma `$ direction.

Before attempting to do the functional integrals over $`𝐪`$ and $`𝐥`$, we will examine the classical equations of motion. They will enable us to make a comparison with the standard string action. Written in momentum space, the equations of motion are

$`i\lambda _1\stackrel{~}{l}p_1^2\stackrel{~}{q}`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$
$`\lambda _1\stackrel{~}{q}4\pi \stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)\stackrel{~}{l}`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (33)
The solution to these equations is

$$p_1^2=\frac{i\lambda _1^2}{4\pi \stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)}.$$
(34)
The usual string action corresponds to taking

$$\frac{\lambda _1^2}{\stackrel{~}{\lambda _2}(p_0)}=16\pi i\alpha ^2p_0^2,$$
(35)
where $`\alpha `$ is the slope parameter. One can see this as follows: In coordinate space, eq.(35) is equivalent to the action

$$S_s=\frac{1}{2}_0^{p^+}𝑑\sigma 𝑑\tau \left(4\alpha ^2\dot{𝐪}^2+𝐪^2\right).$$

The Hamiltonian corresponding to this action is the light cone energy $`p^{}`$, and the quantized values of $`p^{}`$ are given by the usual string result

$$p^{}=\frac{n\pi }{\alpha p^+},$$

where $`n`$ is a positive integer. We are really interested in the squares of the masses of the excitations, and these are given by

$$M^2=2p^+p^{}=\frac{2n\pi }{\alpha },$$

since we have set (see eq.(4)) $`𝐩=0`$. From this result, we see that the slope parameter is given by $`\alpha =(2T_0)^1=\pi \alpha ^{}`$, where $`\alpha ^{}`$ is the slope of open string Regge trajectories. A string that is linearly confining at large distances corresponds to a $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ that has the dependence given by the eq.(35) for small $`p_0`$, so we are going to investigate whether such a behavior is compatible with our dynamical scheme.

After this diversion, let us now carry out the integrations over $`\stackrel{~}{q}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{l}`$ in $`S_1^{\prime \prime }`$. The result is the determinant, which is the product of the eigenvalues $`\kappa `$ that satisfy the equations

$`i\lambda _1\stackrel{~}{l}p_1^2\stackrel{~}{q}`$ $`=`$ $`\kappa \stackrel{~}{q},`$
$`i\lambda _1\stackrel{~}{q}4\pi i\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)\stackrel{~}{l}`$ $`=`$ $`\kappa \stackrel{~}{l},`$ (36)
or

$$\kappa ^2+\left(p_1^2+4\pi i\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)\right)\kappa +\lambda _1^2+4\pi ip_1^2\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p_0)=0.$$
(37)
The eigenvalues depend on both $`p_0p`$, which is continuous, and on

$$p_1=\frac{2\pi m}{p^+}$$

with $`m`$ an integer. After the integration over $`\stackrel{~}{q}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{l}`$, we end up with the factor

$$(det)^{D/2}=\underset{m}{}\underset{p}{}\left(4\pi i\left(\frac{2\pi m}{p^+}\right)^2\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)+\lambda _1^2\right)^{D/2}$$

The corresponding $`Tr\mathrm{ln}`$ is given by

$$\frac{D}{2}Tr\mathrm{ln}=\frac{D(\tau _f\tau _i)}{4\pi }\left(𝑑p\left(\underset{m}{}\mathrm{ln}\left((\frac{2\pi m}{p^+})^2\frac{i\lambda _1^2}{4\pi \stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)}\right)+\frac{p^+}{ϵ_1}\mathrm{ln}(\stackrel{~}{\lambda _2}(p))\right)\right).$$
(38)
In writing the right hand side of this equation, we have factored $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ from the first term on the right, and we incorporated it into the second term in the form of $`\mathrm{ln}(\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2)`$. The coefficient of this term involves a sum over m and appears to be divergent. However, remembering that the $`\sigma `$ variable was discretized into segments of length $`ϵ_1`$, this sum is easily seen to be equal to $`p^+/ϵ_1`$.

We now collect various contributions to the effective action:

$$S_e=S_1^{}+S_F\frac{D}{2}Tr\mathrm{ln}.$$
(39)
The terms that appear in this formula are given in eqs.(31), (30) and (38). It is now easy to write down various classical equations of motion that follow from this action. The equation obtained by varying with respect to $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ is

$$2\pi iDp^+(\tau _f\tau _i)\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)\frac{D}{2}\frac{\delta (Tr\mathrm{ln})}{\delta (\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p))}=0,$$
(40)
or

$$\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)=\frac{\lambda _1^2}{(4\pi )^3\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2^2(p)s^{1/2}(p)}\mathrm{coth}\left(\frac{p^+}{2}s^{1/2}(p)\right)\frac{i}{8\pi ^2ϵ_1\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)},$$
(41)
where, for convenience, we have defined

$$s(p)=\frac{i\lambda _1^2}{4\pi \stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)}.$$

Eq.(41) is the first fundamental equation of our dynamical scheme; it establishes a relation between $`\varphi _2`$ and $`\lambda _2`$. A second relation follows from varying the action with respect to $`\varphi _2`$:

$$\frac{\delta (S_e)}{\delta (\varphi _2)}=0.$$

In this case, it turns out to be more convenient to stay in position space and use $`L`$ instead of $`\varphi _2`$ as the independent function. The connection between them is

$$2\varphi _2(\tau )=L^{\prime \prime }(\tau ),$$

where we have assumed that $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)`$ is an even function of $`p`$. This assumption, although not crucial, simplifies matters. It is consistent with all our equations and with the approximate solutions given in Section 5.

Taking into account the contribution of $`S_1^{}`$ (eq.(31)) and of $`S_F`$ (eq.(30)), we have

$$D\lambda _2^{\prime \prime }(\tau )=\frac{2}{ϵ_1}\frac{\delta (\omega _0)}{\delta (L(\tau ))}.$$
(42)
We have now to compute the functional derivative of $`\omega _0`$ with respect to $`L`$ from eq.(28). Differentiating this equation gives

$$\frac{\delta (\omega _0)}{\delta (L(\tau ))}=2\pi ig^2\frac{\delta (\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega _0))}{\delta (L(\tau ))}\left(12\pi ig^2\stackrel{~}{K}^{}(\omega _0)\right)^1,$$
(43)
and from eq.(25), we find

$$\frac{\delta (\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega _0))}{\delta (L(\tau ))}=\frac{D}{8\pi ϵ}\left(\frac{\pi }{ϵ}\right)^{D/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{DL(\tau )}{4ϵ}\right).$$
(44)
Eqs(42),(43) and (44) put together give us the second relation between $`\varphi _2`$, or equivalently $`L`$, and $`\lambda _2`$:

$$\lambda _2^{\prime \prime }(\tau )=\frac{ig_0^2\mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{DL(\tau )}{4ϵ}\right)}{2ϵϵ_1\left(1+g_0^2_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau \tau \mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{DL(\tau )}{4ϵ}\right)\right)},$$
(45)
where the dimensionless coupling constant $`g_0`$ is defined by

$$g_0^2=g^2\left(\frac{\pi }{ϵ}\right)^{D/2}.$$

To the above equations, one has to add the equations resulting from varying the action with respect to $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\varphi _1`$:

$`\lambda _1\varphi _1`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi {\displaystyle 𝑑p\left(\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)+\frac{i}{8\pi ^2ϵ_1}\right)},`$
$`\lambda _1`$ $`=`$ $`2iϵ{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \tau \lambda _2^{\prime \prime }(\tau ).`$ (46)
We now have a complete set of equations needed to solve for the classical fields $`\varphi _{1,2}`$ and $`\lambda _{1,2}`$. We would like to stress that, apart from the large $`D`$ limit, which is the basis of the mean field method, so far everything is exact. Unfortunately, to make progress, we need to know $`\omega _0`$, which is only given implicitly through eq.(28). Ultimately, it should not be too difficult to find approximate solutions by numerical methods. We will, however, leave this problem to future research. Instead, in the next section, we will try to extract as much information as we can from these equations by analytic methods. Such information should be useful for the eventual numerical work.

5. Consequences of the Dynamical Equations

In the last section, we have derived a complete set of equations for the dynamical variables $`\lambda _{1,2}`$ and $`\varphi _{1,2}`$. This section will be devoted to the investigation of the consequences of these equations. First, for the convenience of the reader, we collect the the set of equations to be investigated; namely, eqs.(28),(41) and (45):

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _0ig_0^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\tau \mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau {\displaystyle \frac{D}{4ϵ}}L(\tau )\right),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _1^2}{(4\pi )^3\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2^2(p)s^{1/2}(p)}}\mathrm{coth}\left({\displaystyle \frac{p^+}{2}}s^{1/2}(p)\right){\displaystyle \frac{i}{8\pi ^2ϵ_1\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)}},`$
$`\lambda _2^{\prime \prime }(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{ig_0^2\mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{DL(\tau )}{4ϵ}\right)}{2ϵϵ_1\left(1+g_0^2_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau \tau \mathrm{exp}\left(i\omega _0\tau +iD\varphi _1\tau \frac{DL(\tau )}{4ϵ}\right)\right)}},`$ (47)
where

$$L(\tau )=\frac{dp}{p^2}\left(2e^{ip\tau }e^{ip\tau }\right)\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p),$$
(48)
which follows from eq.(26).

We will now try to find an approximate solution to eqs.(47), and the approximation will be based on a pole dominance model. This is a crude model, which is at best valid only for large $`\tau `$, or equivalently, for small $`p`$. We remind the reader that this region is of interest in probing string formation (see the section following eq.(35)), so any information gleaned is of value. Our starting point is the ansatz

$$\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2\beta p^2$$
(49)
as $`p0`$, where $`\beta `$ is a constant. The basic idea is to cycle this limiting behavior through the dynamical equations to check its consistency. We first need to restate it in the position ($`\tau `$) space. Consider the $`\tau \mathrm{}`$ limit of $`L(\tau )`$ from eq.(48). In the terms involving the exponentials, this limit can be deduced from the well known Fourier relation: Large $`\tau `$ is dominated by small $`p`$. Since the integrand is non-singular at $`p=0`$ by virtue of the ansatz on $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2`$, the exponential factors oscillate to zero for $`\tau \mathrm{}`$, with the result that

$$L(\tau )L_0,$$
(50)
where $`L_0`$ is a constant. This constant is given by

$$L_0=\frac{dp}{p^2}\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p).$$
(51)
If $`L(\tau )`$ goes to a constant as $`\tau \mathrm{}`$, the integral for $`\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )`$ (eq.(25)) develops a pole in the variable $`\omega `$. We will now make the assumption that this pole is a good approximation for $`\stackrel{~}{K}`$ for small values of $`\omega `$ (pole dominance). We therefore have

$$\stackrel{~}{K}(\omega )\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\frac{\pi }{ϵ}\right)^{D/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{DL_0}{4ϵ}\right)\frac{i}{\omega +D\varphi _1}.$$
(52)
Eq.(28) now becomes

$$\omega _0^2+D\varphi _1\omega _0+\overline{g}^2=0,$$
(53)
where we have defined

$$\overline{g}^2=g_0^2\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{DL_0}{4ϵ}\right).$$
(54)
The two solutions to this equation are

$$\omega _0^\pm =\frac{1}{2}D\varphi _1\pm \frac{i}{2}\left(4\overline{g}^2D^2\varphi _1^2\right)^{1/2}.$$
(55)
We will investigate both solutions.

Next, we evaluate $`\lambda _2`$ by replacing $`L(\tau )`$ by $`L_0`$ on the right hand side of eq.(45). As explained above, this should be a good approximation in the large $`\tau `$, small $`p`$ regime. Transforming into the momentum space, we have

$`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{g}^2}{4\pi ϵϵ_1}}{\displaystyle \frac{(\omega _0+D\varphi _1)^2}{\left((\omega _0+D\varphi _1)^2\overline{g}^2\right)(\omega _0+D\varphi _1p)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p^2}}`$ (56)
$`\stackrel{p0}{}`$ $`\pm {\displaystyle \frac{i\overline{g}^2}{4\pi ϵϵ_1p^2}}\left(4\overline{g}^2(D\varphi _1)^2\right)^{1/2}.`$
We note that the $`1/p^2`$ dependence of $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ for small $`p`$ is exactly what is needed for string formation (see eq.(35)). We can now substitute this result in eq.(41) to determine the small p behavior of $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2`$, to see whether it is consistent with our initial ansatz (49). In the limit $`p0`$, we indeed find that

$`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{8\pi ^2\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{p^+}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ϵ_1}}\right)`$ (57)
$``$ $`\mathrm{const}p^2,`$
establishing consistency.

It is also important to establish the reality properties of various variables within the context of our approximate solution. We will initially assume that $`\varphi _1`$ is pure imaginary and $`\overline{g}^2`$ is real and positive. It then follows from eq.(56) that, at least for small $`p`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ is pure imaginary. In the same small $`p`$ limit, eq.(57) tells us that $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2`$ is real, and therefore, from eq.(51), so is $`L_0`$. We are now able to verify one of our initial assumptions: A real $`L_0`$ means that $`\overline{g}^2`$ is real and positive (eq.(54)). It then follows from eq.(55) that $`\omega _0^\pm `$ are pure imaginary, and the corresponding energies $`E_0^\pm `$ (eq.(29)) are real, as they should be. Next, we will investigate $`\lambda _1`$. It can be calculated from the second eq.(46), where $`\lambda _2^{\prime \prime }`$ is given by eq.(45), with $`L(\tau )`$ replaced by $`L_0`$. The result is

$$\lambda _1=\frac{\overline{g}^2}{ϵ_1}\frac{1}{\overline{g}^2\left(\omega _0+D\varphi _1\right)^2},$$
(58)
which shows that $`\lambda _1`$ is real. Finally, we go back to the first equation (46): Since $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2`$ are real, and $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ is pure imaginary, it follows that $`\varphi _1`$ is pure imaginary, verifying the remaining initial assumption.

From the above analysis, we have seen that $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)`$ goes like $`p^2`$ for small $`p`$, which is the necessary condition for string formation. However, in addition, the square of the slope parameter $`\alpha `$ (eq.(35)) must be real and positive. Using eq.(56), this parameter is given by

$$\alpha ^2=\frac{\lambda _1^2}{16\pi ip^2\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)}=\frac{ϵϵ_1\lambda _1^2}{4\overline{g}^2}\left(4\overline{g}^2D^2\varphi _1^2\right)^{1/2},$$
(59)
and remembering that $`\lambda _1`$ is real and $`\varphi _1`$ is pure imaginary, $`\alpha ^2`$ is positive for the lower sign. This means that in eq.(55) for $`\omega _0`$, we must also choose the lower sign. This is then the string forming solution, and from the same equation, we see that the corresponding energy $`E_0^{}`$ is positive. However, the other solution, corresponding to the upper sign, has lower energy, since $`E_0^+`$ is negative, so that it will actually dominate the worldsheet path integral, and not describe a string. The state that looks like string is at best meta-stable and more likely completely unstable. This is, of course, not unexpected, since $`\varphi ^3`$ is an inherently unstable theory. We expect a more realistic theory, such as a non-Abelian gauge theory, to retain the string forming solution but to be free of the instability. As explained in the introduction, our goal in studying $`\varphi ^3`$ is to develop the tools needed to attack more realistic but also more complicated theories in a simpler setting. We find it encouraging that, despite the instability, we find a signal for string formation.

The results discussed above were based on the pole dominance approximation. As we have argued earlier, this is probably a reasonable approximation for small $`p`$. In fact, the $`1/p^2`$ dependence of $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ for small $`p`$, which leads to string formation, appears to be generic. This is easily seen from eq.(45): In momentum space, the double derivative on $`\lambda _2`$ turns into a factor of $`p^2`$, and unless the right hand side of this equation vanishes accidentally at $`p=0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2`$ must have a $`1/p^2`$ dependence. On the other hand, we cannot expect the pole dominance model to be valid for large $`p`$. In fact, we show below that the large $`p`$ regime is quite different from the small $`p`$ regime.

We will try to determine the large $`p`$ behavior of the fields through self consistency. We start with the ansatz

$$\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)b|p|,$$

for $`p\mathrm{}`$, where $`b`$ is a constant, or, equivalently

$$\varphi _2(\tau )\frac{2b}{\tau ^2}$$

as $`\tau 0`$. It then follows from

$$2\varphi _2(\tau )=L^{\prime \prime }(\tau )$$

that

$$L(\tau )4b\mathrm{ln}(\tau ),$$

in the same limit. Eq.(45) then gives

$$\lambda _2(\tau )\mathrm{const}\tau ^{(2bD/ϵ)}$$

again, as $`\tau 0`$. The motivation for the original ansatz was in fact to obtain a power behavior for $`\lambda _2`$, which translates into

$$\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)\mathrm{const}|p|^{bD/ϵ3}$$

for large $`p`$ in momentum space. Now, from eq.(41), we find that

$$\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)\mathrm{const}\stackrel{~}{\lambda }(p)^{3/2}\mathrm{const}|p|^{9/23bD/2ϵ},$$

and comparing this with the initial ansatz, we see that it is consistent if

$$\frac{bD}{ϵ}=\frac{7}{3}.$$

Admittedly, this is a crude analysis, but if we accept it, we have asymptotic limit

$$\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)\mathrm{const}|p|^{2/3},\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)\mathrm{const}|p|,$$
(60)
for $`p\mathrm{}`$. This is quite different from the small $`p`$ behavior

$$\stackrel{~}{\lambda }_2(p)\mathrm{const}1/p^2,\stackrel{~}{\varphi }_2(p)\mathrm{const}p^2.$$
(61)
We end this section with a short discussion of the need for a third cutoff. The asymptotic behavior derived above shows that the integral for $`L`$ (eq.(48), as well as the integral for $`\lambda _1\varphi _1`$ (eq.(46)), are divergent at large $`p`$. The integrals have to be regulated, say, by a factor of the form

$$\mathrm{exp}(ϵ_2p^2),$$

where $`ϵ_2`$ is a third cutoff, in addition to $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_1`$. This new cutoff is probably not independent of $`ϵ`$. The argument goes as follows: Instead of an exponential cutoff, let us latticize the $`\tau `$ direction, with a lattice spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$. From (6), we see that one lattice step $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ corresponds to a factor of

$$\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\tau 𝐩^2/2p^+\right).$$

Comparing this with the cutoff $`\mathrm{exp}(ϵk^2)`$ (eq.(15)), we can identify

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\tau ϵp^+.$$
(62)
On the other hand, there is a rough relation between $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau `$ and $`ϵ_2`$:

$$ϵ_2(\mathrm{\Delta }\tau )^2,$$

and therefore, it follows that

$$ϵ_2(ϵp^+)^2.$$
(63)
In view of this connection between $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_2`$, it is tempting to conjecture that one of them is redundant. In fact, in eqs.(46) and (47), $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_1`$ do not regulate any divergent integrals; they merely appear as parameters. One can easily eliminate the singular dependence on these parameters by the following scaling of the fields:

$`\varphi _2`$ $``$ $`ϵ\varphi _2,\lambda _2{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _2}{ϵϵ_1}},`$
$`\lambda _1`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _1}{ϵ_1}},\varphi _1\varphi _1,\omega _0\omega _0.`$ (64)
After this scaling, as far as the equations are concerned, one can let

$$ϵ0,ϵ_10,$$

while keeping the dimensionless coupling constant $`g_0`$ fixed. Let us see how some physical quantities behave under this scaling. As indicated above, $`\omega _0`$ and therefore $`E_0`$ are independent of $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_1`$, whereas the slope parameter $`\alpha ^2`$ scales as $`ϵ/ϵ_1`$ (eq.(35)). Keeping this ratio finite as each cutoff parameter goes to zero would avoid any singular behavior. So it appears that at least in the leading order of the mean field approximation, both $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ_1`$ are redundant. In contrast, as pointed out earlier, the cutoff $`ϵ_2`$ cannot be dispensed with; it is really needed to regulate integrals over $`p`$ in equations (46) and (48). Clearly, the problems involving cutoff dependence and renormalization must await a better understanding of the solution to eqs.(47).

6. Conclusions

The main result of this article is the derivation of a set of equations for the sum of all planar graphs the $`\varphi ^3`$ field theory, subject to the mean field or large $`D`$ approximation. Apart from this single approximation, the treatment is exact. This is in contrast to our earlier paper , where the same problem was considered, but also further and somewhat questionable approximations were made. The present treatment is therefore a definite improvement over the one presented in .

The equations derived in this article are somewhat involved but they appear treatable by numerical methods. As a preliminary step, we have studied them in the large and small momentum regimes. The latter is especially important since it is relevant to string formation. We find that a string forming solution is consistent with our equations, although this solution is unstable. Given that we are dealing with an unstable theory to start with, we still find this result encouraging.

Much still remains to be done. A thorough numerical analysis of the equations derived here should be carried out. Since we do not necessarily expect to find interesting results for the $`\varphi ^3`$ model, the methods developed in this article should be applied to more physical theories, whose world sheet formulations are already available . It is also important to go to next to leading order in the large $`D`$ expansion, both as a check on the leading order, and also to investigate questions such as Lorentz invariance. Acknowledgments We would like to thank Jeff Greensite for valuable discussions. This work was supported in part by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098, in part by the National Science Foundation Grant 22386-13067-44-X-PHHXM, and in part by the Department of Energy under Grant No. DE-FG01-97ER-41029

Appendix. Contribution of the Ghost Sector

In this appendix, we will discuss the changes resulting from taking into account the ghost fields $`b`$ and $`c`$. First of all, an additional factor has to be added to $`K`$ given by (14):

$$KK\times K_g,$$

where,

$$K_g(\sigma ,\tau _2,\tau )=D\overline{b}D\overline{c}\mathrm{exp}\left(i_{\tau _2}^\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}\left(\overline{b}(\sigma ,\tau ^{})b(\sigma ,\tau ^{})+\overline{c}(\sigma ,\tau ^{})c(\sigma ,\tau ^{})\right)\right).$$
(65)
Here, $`\overline{b}`$ and $`\overline{c}`$ are lagrange multipliers that enforce the boundary conditions (5) on solid lines. Moreover, there is a ghost contribution to the action(eq.(28)):

$$SS+S_g,$$

where,

$$S_g=_0^{p^+}𝑑\tau \left(b^{}c^{}+\kappa _1(\overline{b}bD\eta _1)+\kappa _2(\overline{c}cD\eta _2)\right).$$
(66)
In this expression, the first term comes from eq.(2), and in the rest of the terms, the lagrange multipliers $`\kappa _{1,2}`$ set the expectation value of $`\overline{b}b`$ and $`\overline{c}c`$ equal to $`\eta _{1,2}`$. As before, this is in preparation for taking the large $`D`$ limit: Vector valued fields $`\overline{b}`$ and $`\overline{c}`$ are traded for scalar valued fields $`\kappa _{1,2}`$ and $`\eta _{1,2}`$.

Next, as in eq.(22), we use translation invariance to replace the fields $`\kappa _{1,2}`$ and $`\eta _{1,2}`$ by constants independent of $`\sigma `$ and $`\tau `$. As a result, we can set

$$K_g\mathrm{exp}\left(iD(\eta _1+\eta _2)(\tau \tau _2)\right),$$
(67)
and eq.(18) gets replaced by

$$K(\pi /ϵ)^{D/2}\mathrm{exp}\left(iD(\tau _2\tau _1)(\varphi _1+\eta _1+\eta _2)\frac{D}{4ϵ}L(\tau _2\tau _1)\right).$$
(68)
We see that as far as $`K`$ and therefore $`F`$ is concerned, all that the ghosts have done is to shift $`\varphi _1`$ by $`\eta _1+\eta _2`$. As a result, eqs.(25) through (28) still continue to be valid, with the proviso that $`\varphi _1`$ be replaced by the shifted $`\varphi _1`$. These shifts do not change anything done in this paper, since we have never made any use of the actual value of $`\varphi _1`$, and that is the reason why we have suppressed the ghost sector in the main body of the paper. We expect them to become important in the next non-leading order in $`D`$.

Although we do not need it, for the sake of completeness, we will carry out the functional integrations over $`b`$, $`c`$, $`\overline{b}`$ and $`\overline{c}`$ in $`S_g`$ (eq.(62)). The resulting $`Tr\mathrm{ln}`$ is very simple:

$$Tr\mathrm{ln}_g=p^+(\tau _f\tau _i)\frac{C}{16}\kappa _1^2\kappa _2^2,$$
(69)
where $`C`$ is a cutoff dependent constant. The reason for this simple answer is that the term $`b^{}c^{}`$ in (62), the only term that “propagates” the ghosts, does not contribute to the determinant. This is an example of the non-dynamical, or equivalently, non-propagating ghosts discussed in . In the absence of propagation, the determinant, or the $`Tr\mathrm{ln}`$ has purely algebraic dependence on the $`\kappa `$’s. In any case, we see that the ghost contribution to the action is relatively trivial.


text:
# Disordered systems on various time scales: a-Si3B3N7 and homogeneous sintering

## 1 Introduction

Classically, the properties and dynamics of materials systems can, in principle, be described with the help of their energy landscape. At each given moment in time, we associate with the current configuration of N particles a point in a 3N-dimensional space and an energy. The dynamics of the system is reflected in the movement of this point on the energy landscape. However, this energy landscape is highly complicated, and trying to analytically compute the dynamics is not possible. Thus we are thrown back to the use of numerical simulations, which gravely limit the time window over which we are able to perform accurate calculations. Furthermore, it can be rather difficult to extract physically relevant results from large multi-particle simulations.

However, the systems often possess features that can aid our quest. Many properties of a given system do not depend on time or change according to simple (phenomenological) laws, at least within the accuracy of our measurements. This allows us to understand the behavior of the system quite well by using simple (phenomenological) models. Frequently, the underlying reason for this success is the applicability of separation of time scales arguments that one can use to distill the important degrees of freedom relevant on short or long time scales.

Some of the typical processes, each possessing characteristic time scales, relevant in materials systems are e.g.

* Relaxation of electronic degrees of freedom
* Lattice vibrations (phonons)
* Breaking/formation of chemical bonds
* Changes in the structure of sub-systems, switching between modifications, growth of nuclei
* Grain boundary movement / annealing
* Diffusional transport, and relaxation to equilibrium due to diffusion
* Decay of non-equilibrium phases
* Appearance of fluctuations of certain size (formation of nuclei)
* Transitions among double (multi) well systems
* Equilibration of various physical properties
* Changes in the shapes of sub-systems
* Interactions among sub-systems
* $`\mathrm{}`$

After a short general discussion concerning simplifications of dynamics from the point of view of time scales, we will present examples of relevant time scales and their application to modeling for two systems, amorphous silicon boron nitride, a-Si3B3N7, and homogeneous sinters.

## 2 Time scales and modeling

Materials systems consisting of many atoms, are characterized by a very large number of degrees of freedom $`(x_k)=(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)`$ ($`N10^{23}`$). As a consequence, a complete description of their dynamical properties by solving the appropriate quantum mechanical equations over the many time scales of interest constitutes an impossible task.

However, once one is willing to restrict oneself to particular questions and properties concerning such a system, it is in many cases feasible to construct a simplified model of the system whose dynamics is amenable to numerical or (ideally) analytical solution. Technically, such simplifications can be achieved by a number of approaches:

* Direct reduction in the number of degrees of freedom:

$$(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)(x_1,x_2).$$
(1)
Such an approach is particularly useful, if we are interested in a limited time range, over which we want to compute the dynamics, which only depends on the variables $`(x_1,x_2)`$ in that time-range. If $`(x_1,x_2)`$ and $`(x_3,\mathrm{},x_N)`$ are fast and slowly varying variables, respectively, we can replace $`(x_3,\mathrm{},x_N)`$ by some constant initial value $`(x_3,\mathrm{},x_N)(x_3(0),\mathrm{},x_N(0))`$. On the other hand, if $`(x_1,x_2)`$ vary slowly, while $`(x_3,\mathrm{},x_N)`$ fast fluctuate around some average value, it is appropriate to set the latter equal to this average $`(x_3,\mathrm{},x_N)(x_3^{(av)},\mathrm{},x_N^{(av)})`$.

Mathematically, this kind of analysis can be performed in a formal way, and we refer to the literature on differential equations for more detail.
* Simplification of the dynamics, up to the point where analytically solvable equations for the observables of interest, $`[A_s]`$, result (on a restricted time scale),

$$[A_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)][\widehat{A}_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)].$$
(2)
This is a very common approach, which consists of applying physically reasonable approximations not to the set of variables but to the dynamical equations instead.

Often, one can combine this approach with the one mentioned above, and, in addition, reduce the number of variables one considers, $`[\widehat{A}_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)][\widehat{A}_s(x_1,x_2)]`$
* A related approach consists of focussing the analysis on a small number of quantities of interest $`[A_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)]`$, which might exhibit a simpler dynamics, possibly depending on fewer variables, than the full system with all observables $`[A_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)]`$, $`s=1,\mathrm{},m`$:

$$[A_s(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)][A_1(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N),A_2(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)][A_1(x_1,x_2),A_2(x_1,x_2)].$$
(3)
* Finally, and this constitutes perhaps the crowning achievement in a separation of time scales approach, one can set up a hierarchy of dynamical systems in a stepping-stone procedure. Starting with the full system with all degrees of freedom on the fastest time scale $`(1)`$, $`[A_s^{(1)}(x_k^{(1)})]`$, one successively reduces the number of degrees of freedom until one derives a (phenomenological) set of equations for those observables that are relevant for the dynamical description on the longest times, up to infinity.

One should note that during this procedure, we might employ different sets of observables $`[A_s^{(i)}]`$ and variables $`(x_k^{(i)})`$ for the description of the dynamics on different time scales $`(i)`$. Furthermore, in many cases, the dynamics on the longer time scale will depend on parameters $`\alpha `$ that incorporate the outcome of the fast dynamics, such as a diffusion constant computed from an atomic simulation. In general, these parameters $`\alpha `$ will parametrically depend on the values of the slow variables as prescribed for the fast-scale calculation:

$$[A_s^{(i)}(x_k^{(i)})][A_s^{(i+1)}(x_k^{(i+1)};\alpha (x_k^{(i+1)}))].$$
(4)

In many cases, a rigorous mathematical analysis of the approximations involved is not possible or insufficient, and needs to be supplemented by physical reasoning born from experience. For materials systems, three general concepts have turned out to be particularly helpful, partial (themodynamical) equilibrium, local (thermodynamical) equilibrium, and stationary state approximations.

* Partial equilibrium describes a situation, where the time scale of some degrees of freedom is so short that they de-couple from the rest of the system in the following sense: Before the slow degrees of freedom change appreciably, the fast ones reach thermodynamical (statistical) equilibrium among themselves. This allows two kinds of simplifications:

On very short time scales, we can study the relaxation behavior of the fast degrees of freedom while keeping the slow degrees of freedom fixed.

Conversely, one can study the long-term dynamics of the slow degrees of freedom by replacing the fast degrees of freedom by their statistical averages. Such averages might depend on the current values of the slow variables, and thus require the introduction of additional (phenomenological) terms in the dynamical equations for the slow variables on these variables via

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dx_i}{dt}}=F(x_1,x_2,x_3,\mathrm{},x_N),i=1,\mathrm{},N`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dx_i}{dt}}F(x_1,x_2,x_3^{av}(x_1,x_2),\mathrm{},x_N^{av}(x_1,x_2)),i=1,2.`$ (5)
Furthermore, in many situations, one needs to include the fluctuations in the fast variables (around the respective averages) in the dynamics for the slow variables. One common way to achieve this is by adding the fluctuations as a stochastic force acting on the slow degrees of freedom.
* A second, related type of simplifications derives from the concept of local (thermodynamic) equilibrium. This refers to the equilibration of all (!) degrees of freedom on the (3N-dimensional) energy landscape of the system. As a consequence, the energy landscape can be divided into a set of locally ergodic regions $``$, where the system can be considered being in (metastable) thermodynamic equilibrium. However, in contrast to the partial equilibrium, this state of affairs only persists for a limited time, until the escape time $`\tau _{esc}`$ from the locally equilibrated regions $``$ has been reached. Thus, the local ergodicity of $``$ is only present on a certain time scale,

$$\tau _{eq}<t_{obs}\tau _{esc},$$
(6)
where $`\tau _{eq}`$ indicates the time required for the regions $``$ to equilibrate. Mathematically, $`\tau _{eq}`$ is defined as the smallest time $`t^{}`$ for which the difference between time- and ensemble average of observables in $``$ falls below a certain prescribed accuracy $`a`$ for all $`t>t^{}`$,

$$|𝒪_{ens}𝒪_t|<at>t^{}\tau _{eq}.$$
(7)
For $`t_{obs}>\tau _{esc}`$, the regions $``$ lose their special relevance. Usually, some larger regions $`^{}`$ take their place, which are locally ergodic for times between $`\tau _{eq}(^{})\tau _{esc}()`$ and $`\tau _{esc}(^{})`$.

From the point of view of modeling the dynamics, the relevant configuration space can be viewed as being essentially discretized for time scales $`t_{obs}>\tau _{eq}()`$. Here, the regions $``$ correspond to points on a metagraph (decribed via variables $`(y_j)`$), on which the dynamics of the (possibly new) observables $`[A_s^{(i+1)}]`$ proceeds, e.g.:

$$[A_s^{(i)}(x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)][A_s^{(i+1)}(y_1,y_2)].$$
(8)
In certain situations, one can treat $`(y_j)`$ as if it were a set of continuous variables. Describing the dynamics commonly requires developing phenomenological deterministic or stochastic models for $`(y_j)`$ and/or $`[A_s^{(i+1)}]`$.

In many situations, we encounter a combination of partial and local equilibrium. This commonly occurs, if we are dealing with local spatial equilibrium, where the system can be modeled as a union of spatially separate pieces, with each being in local equilibrium.
* A special instance of local/partial equilibration that allows the use of separation of time scales arguments is the so-called steady-state-situation. Here, external forces are applied to the system, such that essentially constant matter/energy flows are created in the system. Thus, the system never reaches a ”traditional” thermodynamic equilibrium, since e.g. the temperature is no longer constant throughout the system. However, we might be able to establish a time-independent temperature distribution throughout the material, which would correspond to a locally/partially equilibrated state under certain boundary conditions. This allows us to separate slow and fast degrees of freedom, where the fast ones equilibrate within a short time, and the relevant dynamics of the system on long time scales can be modeled using only a small number of variables.

## 3 Amorphous Silicon Boron Nitride a-Si3B3N7

In an amorphous system such as a-Si3B3N7, processes take place over a range of very different time scales. Many of these are also present in typical crystalline solids, but the fact that amorphous systems do not reside in the region around the global (or ’for all practical purposes’ global) minimum of the energy landscape leads to a steady drift in configuration space on all time scales. Although local ergodicity is usually present on certain time scales, we always find an escape time beyond which the system must be treated as unstable, a process which is commonly denoted as aging. In contrast, systems that explore the neighborhood of the global minimum (or any minimum with a similar barrier structure representing a stable crystalline modification) of the landscape usually possess a limiting time scale, beyond which the system can be treated as globally ergodic, i.e. as being in global equilibrium.

Nevertheless, simplified modeling of amorphous systems using separation of time scales is clearly possible. In the following, we are going to list some of the most important time scales (with estimates of their value) and discuss their use in modeling the dynamics of a-Si3B3N7.

* Movement and relaxation of electronic degrees of freedom ($`\tau 10^{15}`$ sec).
This is the time scale on which electronic, magnetic or optical properties, need to be addressed. From the point of view of a stepping stone approach for the longer time dynamics, one would attempt to employ ab initio calculations to derive empirical potentials that can be used in subsequent steps when performing Monte Carlo or Molecular Dynamics calculations. For a-Si3B3N7, several such potentials have been constructed, which have been employed in the calculations discussed below.
* Lattice vibrations ($`10^9`$ sec $`>\tau ^{vib}>10^{14}`$ sec)
We note that if we perform simulations of the system in the picosecond region, we are able to study the vibrations of the network, because the time scales on which the network itself changes ($`\tau _{BSP}`$, see below) are longer by far, at least at low temperatures. This can be seen in the vibrational spectra along the trajectories (c.f. fig. 1).

There, we observe that for low temperatures, only a very small percentage indicate imaginary modes, i.e., that the trajectory is in a neighborhood of a saddle point in the corresponding eigendirection. Clearly, most of the time we are in the process of vibrating around a local minimum. Only at high temperatures close to or above the glass transition point ($`T_c`$, see below) do we encounter a substantial fraction of imaginary modes.

Encouraged by the separation of time scales argument, one can study the spectrum of real eigenvalues of the minima located along the actual trajectories (c.f. fig. 2).

Here, we find that the energy landscape of the liquid ($`T>T_c`$) and the glassy ($`T<T_c`$) state are very similar with regard to the local minima lying below. The general shape of the frequency spectrum of all minima is nearly identical, and one only observes a slight change towards a higher average frequency at minima with lower potential energy. Since the deeper-lying local minima are encountered more frequently in the glassy state, there should therefore occur a slight softening of the vibrations when passing through the glass transition region upon increasing the temperature. But we note that this effect is not large enough to account for the peak in the specific heat (c.f. fig. 3) observed in this temperature range. Regarding this figure, one should note that the contribution of the kinetic energy ($`3/2k_B`$) has already been subtracted. For $`T\mathrm{}`$, $`C_V`$ drops below $`3/2k_B`$ because the anharmonic part of the potential becomes dominant and the potential goes to zero for long distances. For $`T<T_c`$, $`C_V`$ falls below $`3/2k_B`$ because of aging effects involved in the numerical computation of $`E(T)`$ for neighboring temperatures $`T_{1,2}`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }T=T_2T_1`$). This effect is a consequence of the different rates of decrease $`m`$ in minimum energies with temperature shown in fig. 5, which have a maximum around $`1750`$ K.
* Time scales associated with the transport of energy
A typical time scale of energy transport that is relevant during molecular dynamics simulations is given by: $`\tau _SL/v_S10^{11}10^{13}`$ sec, where $`L`$ is the length of the simulation cell (typically, $`L10100`$ Å), and $`v_S`$ is the speed of sound (typically, $`v_S10^310^4`$ m/sec). Turning this relation around, we can estimate the speed of sound in our system by studying the time evolution of a heat pulse that is excited along one layer of the system at a given time. From the speed with which the energy spike travels through the system, we can deduce a value for $`v_S34\times 10^3`$ m/sec for the energy flow, a value which lies in the range of the speeds of sound found experimentally in crystalline Si3N4 ($`v_S1.1\times 10^4`$ m/sec) and BN ($`v_S7\times 10^3`$ m/sec). Simulations of energy transport in Si3N4 and BN, using the same interaction potential, yield velocities $`v_S7.5\times 10^3`$ m/sec and $`v_S8\times 10^3`$ m/sec, respectively.

This transport time $`\tau _S`$ competes with the time needed to dissipate the energy throughout the system, mostly due to phonon-phonon-interactions. This dissipation time also can be estimated from the heat pulse experiment, to yield $`\tau _{diss}50`$ fs. One should note that this value strongly increases with the degree of crystallinity in the system (similar observations were made for amorphous Se when compared with crystalline Se).

One important application of this analysis is that we can simulate and measure the heat conductivity of a-Si3B3N7 by generating a steady-state heat flow through the system. To achieve this, we perform the following simulation procedure:

1. Equilibrate the system at constant temperature for a sufficiently long time $`\tau _{wait}`$ (see below) to keep aging to a minimum for the remainder of the experiment.
    2. Increase the temperature along a layer of atoms located at $`L/4`$ in the simulation cell by $`\mathrm{\Delta }T=0.1\times T`$, and decrease it be the same amount along a layer at $`3L/4`$.
    3. One now lets the system relax on the time scale of the dissipation time. By then a temperature gradient is established, and a constant flow of heat into and out of the system is present.
    4. We maintain this steady-state situation for an observation time $`t_{obs}<\tau _{wait}`$, and measure the average heat flow from the hot to the cold plate.
    5. This information can be used as input into the standard phenomenological heat transport law,

    $$\kappa =\frac{|j|}{|T|}=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }E}{A\mathrm{\Delta }t}\frac{L/2}{2\mathrm{\Delta }T},$$
    (9)
    to deduce the heat conductivity $`\kappa `$, where $`|j|=\mathrm{\Delta }E/(A\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ is the average heat flow through a cross section $`A`$, and $`|T|=4\mathrm{\Delta }T/L`$ is the temperature gradient.
    6. In a final step, one repeats this procedure for larger simulation cells, in order to take the limit of $`\kappa `$ for infinite cell size ($`L\mathrm{}`$).

Figure 4 shows the extrapolated heat conductivity as a function of temperature. We note that this value, $`\kappa 4`$ W/mK, shows only a small variation with temperature, similar to the results obtained for amorphous Se. Since no experimental value has been measured up to now for a-Si3B3N7, we estimate the reliability of the procedure by studying the corresponding crystalline binary systems. One finds that the experimental value exceeds the one from the simulations by about a factor $`35`$, similar to what we had found in the case of Selen. Thus, one would conclude that the true value of $`\kappa `$ should be about $`\kappa _{exp}15`$ W/mK.
* Aging, Dissipation, and Response

Unless interested in relaxation processes as such, one usually waits until the system being simulated has relaxed into a state of partial or local equilibrium. Several time scales are of particular interest in this context: The time(s) $`\tau _{init}`$ necessary to ”forget” various aspects of the initial conditions, and the time(s) $`\tau _{resp}`$ needed to react to the application of an external force. In the latter case, we might be dealing with either constant or time-varying, in particular sinusoidal, forces. We note that $`\tau _{resp}`$ usually implies a relatively weak external disturbance of a system that is already equilibrated. In contrast, $`\tau _{init}`$ refers to a relaxation from a possibly highly non-equilibrium initial condition of our simulations.

Up to this point, these considerations are applicable to both crystalline and amorphous solids. But when simulating amorphous systems, one has to take into account that the region of the energy landscape we explore is not centered around a (global) minimum that is separated from similarly deep minima by insurmountable (on the time scale of the simulation) barriers. Instead, a permanent drift towards lower and lower energy minima takes place. Although the barriers needed to be crossed to reach the lower-lying minima constantly increase, this only leads to a logarithmic decrease in the speed with which deeper regions become accessible but does not stop this drift.

As a consequence, we are dealing with a so-called aging process: For observation times short compared to the time $`\tau _{wait}`$ the system has been allowed to relax freely, the system behaves as if it were in thermal equilibrium, while for times exceeding $`\tau _{wait}`$ non-equilibrium behavior sets in. This can be seen by studying various two-time correlation functions, such as the two-time energy-energy average

$$\varphi (t_w,t_{obs};T)=\frac{E(t_w)E(t_w+t_{obs})_{ens}}{E(t_w)_{ens}^2}$$
(10)
or the closely related two-time autocorrelation function

$$C_E(t_w,t_{obs};T)E(t_w)E(t_w+t_{obs})_{ens}E(t_w)_{ens}E(t_w+t_{obs})_{ens},$$
(11)
which in a (quasi)-equilibrium regime equals a generalized standard equilibrium specific heat $`k_BT^2C_V(t_w,t_{obs};T)`$.

In figure 5, we show the potential energy $`E_{pot}`$ of local minima along MC-trajectories as function of time $`\mathrm{ln}t_{obs}`$ for several temperatures averaged over many trajectories.

One clearly notices that after $`\tau _{init}10^3`$ MCC (Monte-Carlo cycles) the behavior changes and a clear downward drift of the energy occurs which is proportional to $`\mathrm{ln}t`$. This value of $`\tau _{init}`$ is also observed in other quantities such as the diffusion of atoms. For $`t>\tau _{init}`$, the ’ballistic’ phase appears to be over, and vibrations about local minima together with slow hopping from minimum to minimum on the landscape best describe the dynamics in configuration space.

This drift on the landscape leads to aging as can be seen in figure 6, where we show the development of the two-time energy-energy average as a function of waiting time. The departure from the (quasi-)equilibrium value ($`=1`$) for $`t_{obs}>\tau _{wait}`$ is clearly observable.
* Change of the Network

The major events that take place during the aging process are associated with changes in the topology of the network. One quantity that reflects this behavior is the bond survival probability $`BSP`$, which is defined as the probability as a function of time that a bond that was present at time $`t_1`$ is still present at time $`t_2`$ (without having been broken in-between). Figure 7 for the Si-N bonds shows that for high temperatures, where the system is essentially fluid, $`BSP(\tau _{init},t)`$ follows a stretched exponential curve, $`BSP(t)\mathrm{exp}((\frac{t}{\tau _{BSP}})^\beta )`$; the curves for B-N bonds exhibit the same functional behavior. A similar behavior is found for low temperatures, although here one cannot observe the decrease to zero - on the time scale of the simulations, most of the bonds remained unbroken.

The characteristic time scale is $`\tau _{BSP}`$, which increases exponentially once we go below a critical temperature $`T_c20002500`$ K. Quite generally, the behavior of a-Si3B3N7 is comparable to that of a glass when crossing this temperature region: A freezing-in of the structure, associated with a peak in the specific heat and an exponential increase of the viscosity. For temperatures below $`T_c`$, we observe some weak aging in the bond survival probability, i.e. the network becomes more resistant to change as time passes. This is not surprising considering the downward drift in the potential energy.

Nevertheless, the existence of a typical time scale for bond-breaking allows us to apply separation of time scales arguments to the modeling of the system. For $`t_{obs}\tau _{BSP}`$ ($`\tau _{BSP}10^7`$ sec for $`T500`$ K), we can dispense of the vibrational degrees of freedom, and choose the topology of the system as the relevant quantity. It is then possible, to replace the continuous configuration space by a metagraph, where each node corresponds to a (possibly stretched) network topology, and the edges of this graph correspond to the possible bond-breaking and bond-stretching moves of the atoms. In order to assign realistic energies to these configurations, one would place the network on a lattice with an appropriately chosen lattice-spacing, and study the resulting energy landscape, and model the dynamics as a stochastic process on the metagraph.

Such work has been performed in the past for a number of discrete complex systems, such as the TSP-landscape, chain-polymers or one-component 2d- and 3d-lattice networks. While such calculations have not yet been attempted for a-Si3B3N7, it would be a natural further step to take, in order to model dynamical properties of this system for very long times.

## 4 Homogeneous Sintering

Once we leave the realm of physical phenomena that can be described on picosecond time scales, we are even more urgently in need of physically reasonable simplifications, if we want to model and understand the various processes taking place during the generation of a macroscopic material, and its properties on macroscopic time scales. As an example we are going to analyze homogeneous sintering, and show how one can use a stepping stone approach to model the complete sintering process starting with clusters and ending with a dense macroscopic sinter.

We begin with a short summary of the sintering process, where for simplicity it is assumed that only one type of (metal) atoms is involved. Typically, at the outset a dense packing of small particles or atom clusters is prepared, which in many cases has already been arranged in a particular macroscopic shape needed as a part in a work-piece. This conglomerate is now heated to about $`2/3`$ of the melting temperature of the bulk material, leading to an enhanced diffusional motion of the atoms. The total amount of ’liquid’ (= mobile atoms) present is relatively small, and the necks between the clusters are wetted. During this time, new ’liquid’ will be produced throughout the sinter at places favoring high atomic mobility (e.g. naked surface of small spheres), while some of the ’liquid’ will solidify in thermodynamic sinks of the material (e.g. in the interior of the necks connecting the spheres). At the beginning, the communication among the various ’liquid-like’ wetted regions is rather slow, and the shapes of the neck-configurations correspond to locally equilibrated arrangements of the mobile atoms.

The surface tension generated by the wetting process leads to a net-movement of the clusters towards each other, in order to minimize the total surface energy, and a redistribution of the atoms at the necks and on the surface of the clusters. This process competes with the exchange of ’liquid’ material among the various pores and necks, which would lead to a global equilibration among the wetted regions. At this stage, an important role can be played by the heat-flow through the system. This flow is rather complicated due to the many melting and re-freezing processes that can, in principle, take place within the sinter.

Once a certain densification of the solid-like skeleton has been achieved, the open channels providing for easy surface diffusion-driven communication among the ’liquid-like’ regions are closed off, and atom transport is now only possible via grain boundary diffusion or bulk diffusion. At this stage of the process, it is energetically favorable for the isolated pores to become more spherical. Furthermore the annealing of the grain boundaries that had been generated at the necks between the spheres and along the closed off channels begins. In addition, the smaller pores start drifting, and mergers among them can occur at this stage of the process.

These processes continue into the final stage of sintering, where a coarsening process among the surviving (spherical) pores takes place. Here, atoms are exchanged via bulk and grain boundary diffusion, leading to a net growth of larger pores at the expense of smaller ones. In the ideal case, no pores will be left after a very long time, all ”vacancies” having diffused to the surface. During the whole process outlined, the sinter is likely to have shrunk in volume by 20 - 40 %. Controlling the local macroscopic shrinkage rates is therefore an important issue in the efficient production of pre-shaped work-pieces using the sintering process.

When trying to model this complicated process, preferably starting at the atomic scale, separation of time scales arguments turn out to be very helpful. Some of the relevant time scales for sintering are:

* Relaxation of electronic degrees of freedom ($`\tau ^{el}<10^{15}`$ sec)
* Lattice vibrations ($`10^9>\tau ^{vib}>10^{14}`$ sec)
* Achieving local (spatial) equilibrium during wetting ($`10^4>\tau ^{eq}>10^8`$ sec)
* Production of the mobile pool ($`10^2>\tau ^{pr}>10^6`$ sec)
* Atomic transport (communication time) among locally equilibrated wetted regions ($`10^2>\tau ^{com}>10^6`$ sec)
* Equilibration among wetted regions ($`10^2>\tau ^{eqens}>10^6`$ sec)
* Movement of solid particles across several atom-atom distances ($`10^2>\tau ^{core}>10^6`$ sec)
* Annealing (movement) of grain boundaries ($`10^5>\tau ^{gb}>10^1`$ sec)
* Rounding of pores ($`10^3>\tau ^{ro}>10^2`$ sec)
* Equilibration of the atoms within grain boundaries ($`10^3>\tau ^{eqgb}>10^4`$ sec)
* Time needed for atoms to diffuse between isolated pores ($`10^5>\tau ^{diff}>10^3`$ sec)

Of course, all these times are strongly dependent on pressure, temperature, connectivity of the sinter, type of atoms, etc.

These time scales suggest that modeling of sintering involves two different classes of models, the analysis of the atomic movement in an effective potential, and a continuum thermodynamic model that employs the parameters deduced from the atomic simulations as input. The first class includes the computation of parameters for an effective potential of atom movements, followed by molecular dynamics simulations of the behavior of clusters and their fusion. Finally it involves the calculation or estimation of various parameters and time scales needed in the thermodynamic model, such as diffusion constants, the time scales for movements of grain boundaries, the speed with which pores are closed off and become spherical, and the time scale for isolated pores to diffuse through the sinter and merge with other pores.

Here, we are going to focus on the thermodynamic continuum model, where we use the separation of time scales to identify the following processes:

* Fastest process: local wetting of pores and necks.
* Slower competing processes: melting / re-freezing / transport of mobile material, equilibration among the wetted regions, movement of solid nano-particles constituting the solid skeleton.
* Slowest processes: annealing of grain boundaries, drift of isolated pores, and coarsening of isolated pores via emission and absorption of atoms / vacancies.

This general concept was implemented with several groups participating. J. Bernholc and co-workers at NCSU derived EAM-potentials, and H.P. Cheng and R.S. Berry in Chicago studied the melting and fusion of clusters. Summarizing their most important results, they observed surface melting for clusters and found that a neck grew between two clusters via wetting and that a grain boundary was created along the neck, which only slowly could be removed.

The process of sintering several clusters, through the closure of pores, their movement and merger, and coarsening via vacancy emission was studied using a very simplified lattice-gas type model, in order to be able to bridge the many time scales involved. It was found that the closure of pores did occur relatively fast, and that the shape of the clusters and pores exhibited strong fluctuations about the spherical ”ideal” minimum energy shape. For small pores, merging was the dominant coarsening process for high pore density (the density of the pores was essentially given by the overall density of the sinter). In contrast, for larger pores, standard Ostwald-ripening occurred except for very closely neighboring pores, where large shape fluctations (e.g. a massive elongation of the pore) could lead to a direct contact among these pores resulting in a fast merger and rounding of the merged pore.

Besides the separation of time scales, the guiding principle of the thermodynamic model is the minimization of the (free) energy. This energy minimization corresponds to the determination of the average values of the fast degrees of freedom in partial and/or local thermodynamic equilibrium. Regarding the initial configuration of our model of the sintering process, we note that the starting sinter is created by densely packing small particles, perhaps under application of pressure. Thus, a minimum energy configuration corresponds to an as dense as possible packing of these particles. Finding the densest packing for e.g. spheres of different sizes is a global optimization problem. But even determining local minima, i.e. arrangements that can no longer be compressed any further by infinitesimal shifts of the spheres and are stable against small to moderately large rearrangements of the spheres, is a non-trivial task. Such arrangements of spheres constitute random close packings of spheres, which we have generated by appropriate algorithms.

The next step in our approach requires the wetting of pores and necks. At the beginning, the optimal location for the mobile pool of atoms is within the necks between pairs of fixed unchangeable nearest-neighbor spheres. The minimum energy configuration is given by minimizing the surface energy of the two-sphere system for a given amount of liquid (Plateau’s problem). While this task can be solved analytically in terms of elliptic functions, we have found it more useful to directly solve the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equation with the appropriate boundary conditions, and tabulate the shapes of the optimal solid+liquid configurations as a function of radii of the spheres, center-center distance of the spheres and amount of liquid available. For single necks, the minimum energy surface is axisymmetric, exhibits constant mean curvature, and the cross section is given by a Delaunay curve.

The transport of liquid material between the wetted regions can be modelled via network thermodynamics. Here, one describes the net-diffusive transport $`I_{ij}`$ between many sources and sinks $`i`$ and $`j`$ containing $`N_i`$ and $`N_j`$ atoms, respectively, in analogy to an electric network consisting of resistors and capacitors. In the model, the conductivity and the voltage differences correspond to the effective diffusivity $`\sigma _{ij}`$ along the channel or grain boundary and the difference in chemical potentials $`\mu _j(N_j)\mu _i(N_i)`$ (surface energies of the wetted regions), respectively:

$$\frac{dN_i}{dt}=\underset{ji}{}I_{ij}=\underset{ji}{}\sigma _{ij}(\mu _j(N_j)\mu _i(N_i))$$
(12)
We note that this model also applies to the description of the interaction via grain boundary diffusion of a dense distribution of isolated pores at the beginning of the coarsening process.

The movement of the individual solid spheres follows simple Newton’s equations, where three types of forces contribute:

* Force, due to minimization of local surface tension:

$$\stackrel{}{F}_s=\sigma \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{A_i(|\stackrel{}{h}_i|)}{h_i}\widehat{\stackrel{}{h}}_i,$$
(13)
where $`\widehat{\stackrel{}{h}}_i`$ is the unit vector along the center-center axis between neighbor spheres along neck $`i`$, $`\sigma `$ the surface tension, and $`A_i(|\stackrel{}{h}_i|)`$ the surface area of the neck, respectively.
* Damping force due to the viscosity caused by refreezing of the necks:

$$\stackrel{}{F}_{vis}=\eta \stackrel{}{v}_i,$$
(14)
where $`\eta `$ is the viscosity.
* Forces due to steric constraints.

Depending on temperature, viscous forces or steric constraints tend to dominate, in the sense that we can assume that the particles either move with a nearly constant (’final’) velocity (dominated by viscous forces) or move at each step the maximum distance allowed until solid-solid contact is established.

If the changes in the skeleton are slow compared to the transport of material among the liquid pools and the production of new liquid material via surface melting of the spheres, the network thermodynamics model applies. In the extreme case of very slow addition of new material to the liquid pool (low rate of surface melting) and nearly unchanged solid skeleton, then a global equilibration among the wetted regions can take place. This equilibration constitutes again a global optimization problem, and can be solved e.g. using dynamical programming.

On the other hand, if the liquid production is very slow, but liquid transport is fast and the solid particles easily movable, we are dealing with a generalization of Plateau’s problem, i.e., we search for the minimum surface of a combination of many solid movable particles plus a freely deformable liquid pool.

The most cumbersome task we are faced with is the determination of the detailed shape of the wetted regions once several necks coalesce, but the channels between the pores have not yet closed. No analytical solutions are available (the solutions are no longer axisymmetric surfaces), and the number of possible multi-sphere+liquid configurations that need to be considered becomes very large. Therefore, tabulating the numerical solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations does no longer appear to be an efficient approach, and one has to use e.g. a numerical minimum surface solver at this stage after every liquid-redistribution step. However, our simple model simulations mentioned above indicate that this stage does not last very long, and that the pores rather quickly become isolated. Once this has happened, rounding of the pores begins to take place, together with a slow drift, both of which are amenable to analytical modeling. Depending on the size and the density of the pores, the interaction at this stage will be best modeled by network thermodynamics or by models of merging pores analogous to the von Smoluchowski-approach.

Once the pores can be considered as essentially immovable, standard coarsening processes will take over. Here, one needs to address the question of bulk vs. grain boundary diffusion, and the issue of shielding of the pores by neighboring pores. Clearly, the models depend on whether the interaction among the pores proceeds via three- or two-dimensional diffusion. Bulk diffusion clearly goes via three dimensions, while the case of grain boundary diffusion is not as clear-cut. We might regain three-dimensional diffusion, if the grain boundaries intersect very frequently in ’zero volume’ pores or lines. In such a case, the vacancies / atoms within the two-dimensional grain boundary network ’notice’ the three-dimensionality of the embedding space, and the net-diffusion throughout the solid can be treated as if it were three-dimensional, although with a different effective diffusion coefficient.

If the grain boundary network is rather sparse with each grain boundary connecting many pores and most pores intersecting one grain boundary only, however, we can replace the three-dimensional sinter by a single two-dimensional plane that intersects all the three-dimensional pores. In this situation, we can solve the equations involved (2d-diffusion-, 3d-Fokker-Planck-equation, 3d-conservation of vacancies) employing some generalization of the standard procedures.

Again, separation of time scales comes to our assistance by allowing us to separately analyze the process of rounding of the pores to spherical cavities, the establishment of a diffusional flow of one-atom-size vacancies between the individual pores and the environment at infinity, and also the net exchange of material among pores and the growth of the average size of the surviving pores. (Note that at the final stage the dynamics takes place on a metagraph, whose nodes correspond to the feasible distributions of clusters of various sizes, and whose edges correspond to allowed changes of the cluster distribution.)

The result is similar to the one derived for bulk-diffusion, i.e. the scaled radius $`x`$ is related to the scaled time $`t^{}`$ via $`x(t^{})^{1/3}`$, but with correction terms:

$$x=\left(\frac{4}{9}(t^{}p_0)\right)^{1/3}[1\frac{9}{8}(4/9)^{2/3}f_2(t^{}p_0)^(1/3)+O(f_2^2(t^{}p_0)^{2/3})],$$
(15)
where $`p_0`$ and $`f_2`$ are combinations of several constants characteristic of the sintering material and its state at the beginning of the coarsening process.

We note that in the standard approach, the pores only interact via a sea of vacancies (at infinity), either in the bulk (3d) or in the infinite grain boundary (2d). If the density of pores is still quite high, however, this can no longer be assumed to hold, and shielding of the pores by neighboring pores becomes important. Again, this problem can be treated analytically on various time scales, and we find that e.g. the mean cluster size $`\overline{M}`$ in $`d`$ dimensions grows as

$$\overline{M}(t)t^{d/(4+d)}.$$
(16)
At first sight, this example of a homogeneous sinter might appear to be far removed from the field of non-crystalline and partially crystalline materials, which has been the topic of this workshop. But from the point of view of the modeler both the general techniques employed and even many of the particular algorithms presented can easily be adapted to the analysis and modeling of macroscopic dynamical processes in amorphous systems, such as the growth of crystals from the amorphous phase or the generation of nanocrystalline material with a specific texture.