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# Luminosity function and density field of the Sloan and Las Campanas Redshift Surveys

## 1 Introduction

The study of the distribution of matter on large scales is usually based on the distribution of individual galaxies or clusters of galaxies. An alternative is to use the density field applying smoothing of galaxy or cluster distribution with a suitable kernel and smoothing length. This approach is customary in N-body simulations, where in each step a smoothed density field is evaluated. To the real cosmological data the smoothed density method has been applied in the study of the topology of the galaxy distribution by Gott et al. (gmd86 (1986)). The IRAS redshift survey was used by Saunders et al. (sfr91 (1991)) to calculate the density field up to a distance 140 $`h^1`$ Mpc. Recently Basilakos et al. (bpr00 (2000)) applied the same method using the PSCz-IRAS redshift survey by Saunders et al. (s00 (2000)). In all three studies a 3-dimensional spatial distribution was found. Due to the small volume density of galaxies with known redshifts a rather large smoothing length was used. This was sufficient to investigate topological properties of the galaxy distribution in the first case, and to detect superclusters of galaxies and voids in other cases.

In this paper, we shall calculate the number and luminosity density fields based upon the Early Data Release (EDR) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by Stoughton et al. (s02 (2002)) and the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (LCRS) by Shectman et al. (Shec96 (1996)). The SDSS Early Data Release consists of two slices of about 2.5 degrees thickness and $`6590`$ degrees width, centred on celestial equator, LCRS consists of six slices of 1.5 degrees thickness and about 80 degrees width. The number of galaxies observed per slice (over 10.000 in the SDSS slices and about 4,000 in LCRS slices) and their depth (almost 600 $`h^1`$ Mpc) are sufficient to calculate the 2-dimensional density fields with a high resolution (here $`h`$ is the Hubble constant in units of 100 km s-1 Mpc-1). Using high-resolution number or luminosity density maps with smoothing scale of the order of 1 $`h^1`$ Mpc it is possible to find density enhancements in the field, which correspond to groups and clusters of galaxies. Using a larger smoothing length we can extract superclusters of galaxies as done by Basilakos et al. (bpr00 (2000)). In calculating the density fields we can take into account most of the known selection effects, thus we hope that the density field approach gives additional information on the structure of the Universe on large scales. Clusters of galaxies from the SDSS were extracted previously by Goto et al. (2002) using the cut and enhance method. Loose groups of galaxies from LCRS were found by Tucker et al. (Tucker00 (2000)). In accompanying papers by Einasto et al. (e02a (2002), e02b (2003), papers II and III, respectively) we use the density fields of SDSS and LCRS galaxies to derive catalogues of clusters and superclusters and to compare samples of density-field defined clusters and superclusters with clusters and superclusters found with conventional methods.

In the next section we describe the Early Data Release of the SDSS, and the LCRS samples of galaxies used. In section 3 we derive the luminosity function for the SDSS and LCRS galaxies using distances found for a cosmological model with dark matter and energy. In section 4 we calculate the density fields using SDSS and LCRS galaxy samples. We analyse our results in section 5, section 6 brings conclusions.

## 2 The data

### 2.1 Early Data Release of the SDSS

The Early Data Release (EDR) of SDSS consists of two slices about 2.5 degrees thick and $`6590`$ degrees wide, centred on celestial equator, one in the Northern, and the other in the Southern Galactic hemisphere (Stoughton et al. s02 (2002)), and contains about 35,000 galaxies with measured redshifts. SDSS Catalogue Archive Server was used to extract angular positions, Petrosian magnitudes, and other available data for all EDR galaxies. From this general sample we obtained the Northern and Southern slice samples using redshift interval $`1000cz60000`$ km s-1, and Petrosian $`r^{}`$magnitude interval $`13.0r^{}17.7`$.

### 2.2 LCRS

The LCRS is an optically selected galaxy redshift survey which extends to a redshift of $`z0.2`$ and is composed of 6 $`1.5^{}\times 80^{}`$ slices, 3 in the Northern and 3 in the Southern Galactic hemisphere. The survey contains 26,418 galaxy redshifts, measured via a 50-fibre or 112-fibre Multi-Object Spectrograph. The 50-fibre fields have nominal apparent magnitude limits of $`16.0R<17.3`$, and the 112-fibre fields $`15.0R<17.7`$). A galaxy was included in the calculation of the density fields if its flux and surface brightness lie within the official survey limits (see Lin et al. lks96 (1996) or Tucker et al. Tucker00 (2000) for details). Differences in sampling density and magnitude limits were taken into account using statistical weighting of galaxies, as will be explained in section 4.

## 3 The luminosity function of the SDSS and LCRS samples

Luminosity function is one of the basic characteristics of galaxy population which gives us the co-moving number density of galaxies per magnitude interval and it is certainly necessary to determine it in order to understand selection effects in large scale studies. In this section we are going to estimate luminosity function for the above mentioned SDSS and LCRS samples.

For the LCRS this analysis has been done for the critical matter density case by Lin et al. (lks96 (1996)) (L96) but here we are going to reconsider it in case $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7.`$ Luminosity function for the SDSS galaxies in all filters ($`u^{},g^{},r^{},i^{},z^{}`$) has been determined by Blanton et al. (b01 (2001), hereafter B01) using the commissioning phase data which covered approximately $`230`$ square degrees of the sky along the Celestial Equator in the region bounded by $`145^{}<\alpha <`$ $`236^{}`$ and $`<`$ $`1.25^{}`$. Here we shall calculate it for the SDSS EDR data which covers $`400`$ square degrees of the sky and thus contains approximately twice as much information.

There exists a variety of methods to estimate luminosity function e.g. ’$`1/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method’ by Schmidt (s68 (1968)), parametric maximum likelihood method by Sandage et al.(sty79 (1979)) (STY79), ’$`C^{}`$ method’ by Lynden-Bell (lb71 (1971)), stepwise maximum likelihood method by Efstathiou et al. (eep88 (1988)) etc. In our case we follow the STY79 approach which assumes special parametric type for the differential luminosity function $`\varphi \left(M\right)`$, namely the one in the form of Schechter function (Schechter Schechter76 (1976))

$`\varphi \left(M\right)dM`$ $`=`$ $`0.4\mathrm{ln}\left(10\right)\varphi ^{}F\left(M\right)^{\alpha +1}\mathrm{exp}\left[F\left(M\right)\right]dM,`$
$`F\left(M\right)`$ $`=`$ $`10^{0.4\left(MM^{}\right)},`$ (1)
and finds maximum likelihood estimates for the free parameters $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$. Once we have fixed the form for the luminosity function we can immediately write down the probability that galaxy $`i,`$ that is observed at the redshift $`z_i,`$ has absolute magnitude $`M_i`$ as

$`P_iP\left(M_iz_i\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{P(M_i,z_i)}{P\left(z_i\right)}}=P\left(M_i\right)=`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\varphi \left(M_i\right)}{\underset{M_{\mathrm{min}}\left(z_i\right)}{\overset{M_{\mathrm{max}}\left(z_i\right)}{}}\varphi \left(M\right)𝑑M}},`$
where the third equality follows from the usual and rather crude assumption that luminosity function is independent of the spatial location. Here $`M_{\mathrm{max}}\left(z_i\right)`$ and $`M_{\mathrm{min}}\left(z_i\right)`$ determine the observational window in absolute magnitude at redshift $`z_i`$ that corresponds to the surveys limiting apparent magnitudes $`m_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`m_{\mathrm{min}}`$, so

$`\left\{\begin{array}{c}M_{\mathrm{min}}\left(z_i\right)\\ M_{\mathrm{max}}\left(z_i\right)\end{array}\right\}=\left\{\begin{array}{c}m_{\mathrm{min}}\\ m_{\mathrm{max}}\end{array}\right\}`$ $``$ $`255\mathrm{log}d_L\left(z_i\right)`$ (7)
$``$ $`k\left(z_i\right)A(l,b),`$ (8)
where as usual $`d_L\left(z_i\right)`$ denotes the luminosity distance, $`k\left(z_i\right)`$ is the k-correction and $`A(l,b)`$ is the absorption term. Now we can immediately express the likelihood function $``$ for finding $`N`$ galaxies with absolute magnitudes $`M_i`$ ($`i=1\mathrm{}N`$) as

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}P_i(\alpha ,M^{})\mathrm{ln}(\alpha ,M^{})=`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\left[\mathrm{ln}\varphi \left(M_i\right)\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \underset{M_{\mathrm{min}}\left(z_i\right)}{\overset{M_{\mathrm{max}}\left(z_i\right)}{}}}\varphi \left(M\right)𝑑M\right],`$
and the best fitting values for $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ are found by maximising $`\mathrm{ln}(\alpha ,M^{})`$. Assuming Gaussianity, the corresponding error ellipses are found as usual

$$\mathrm{ln}=\mathrm{ln}_{\mathrm{max}}\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2,$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$ is the critical value for the desired confidence level for the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution with two degrees of freedom (Press et al. ptv92 (1992)). Let us now discuss some pros and cons for the STY79 method.

Pros:

* as maximum likelihood method it gives us optimal estimates (i.e. the ones with the minimum variance) for the parameters $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha ,`$
* STY79 method is insensitive to galaxy clustering and density evolution

… and cons:

* the goodness of fit of the proposed parametric luminosity function (i.e. Schechter function) cannot be assessed111 To overcome this problem Efstathiou et al. (eep88 (1988)) proposed stepwise maximum likelihood method.,
* the normalisation $`\varphi ^{}`$ has to be determined using other methods.

The first of these two problems is not really very serious since it is well known that the Schechter function has almost always served as a very good approximation and in our case it is important to mention that earlier studies of the SDSS and LCRS data have certainly demonstrated this fact (B01, L96). Since our main task here is to estimate the selection function, which certainly doesn’t depend on the absolute normalisation of the luminosity function, we are going to determine $`\varphi ^{}`$ and its uncertainty only for the SDSS data using rather simple arguments. Namely $`\varphi ^{}`$ is obtained so as to produce the observed number counts and its error is estimated using re-sampling techniques (to be more precise, ”Jackknife” method). Here we must also correct for the fact that some galaxies are missing due to lack of fibres in dense regions, due to spectroscopic failures as well as fibre collisions. These effects together give an average sampling rate of 92% (B01).

In order to calculate the luminosity distance, $`d_L(z)=r(z)(1+z)`$ (for coordinate distance $`r(z)`$ see equation (13)) as well as to estimate k-corrections, we have to fix the cosmological model. As already mentioned, we take spatially flat model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$. To estimate k-corrections

$`k(z)`$ $`=`$ $`2.5\mathrm{log}\left(1+z\right)+`$ (11)
$`+2.5\mathrm{log}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}F\left(\lambda \right)R\left(\lambda \right)\lambda 𝑑\lambda }{\underset{0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}F\left(\frac{\lambda }{1+z}\right)R\left(\lambda \right)\lambda 𝑑\lambda }}\right],`$
we use spectral templates $`F\left(\lambda \right)`$ obtained from Shimasaku (s98 (1998)) and SDSS filter response curves $`R\left(\lambda \right)`$ (which include atmospheric and CCD responses) as compiled by Strauss and Gunn222 See http://archive.stsci.edu/sdss/documents/response.dat. For these template spectra we first calculate $`g^{}r^{}`$ colours for a range of redshifts. Now, for each observed galaxy, we interpolate on this grid to find the intrinsic $`g^{}r^{}`$ colours (according to which we classify our objects) that correspond to the observed colours and redshifts. For the same template spectra we calculate k-corrections for different redshifts, and now taking into account the obtained intrinsic $`g^{}r^{}`$ colours, we can interpolate to find the desired k-corrections for each galaxy. Finally, we used the Schlegel et al. (sfd98 (1998)) maps to obtain the reddening-corrected absolute magnitudes.

We are going to estimate the luminosity function of the SDSS galaxies only for the $`r^{}`$ band (i.e. the one with the highest sensitivity) using the following constraints for the apparent magnitude and recession velocity:

* $`m_r^{}:14.5\mathrm{}17.5,`$
* $`v_{rec}:1000\mathrm{}60000`$ km/s.

Since for the LCRS we have apparent magnitudes only in the ”hybrid” Kron-Cousins R filter i.e. there is not any colour information, we are going to approximate (as was also done by L96) spectral energy distributions by power law $`F\left(\nu \right)\nu ^\alpha ,`$ assuming average spectral index $`\alpha 2.`$ The filter is ”hybrid” since the LCRS photometry was obtained through a Gunn r filter, although the calibration was done relative to standard stars in the Kron-Cousins R-band (for more information on LCRS see e.g. Tucker t94 (1994)). In this case equation (11) can be trivially integrated to give us

$$k(z)=2.5\left(\alpha 1\right)\mathrm{log}\left(1+z\right)\stackrel{\left(\alpha 2\right)}{}2.5\mathrm{log}\left(1+z\right).$$
(12)
To estimate Galactic extinction effects for the LCRS magnitudes we use directly dust maps by Schlegel et al. (sfd98 (1998)) assuming that these ”hybrid” magnitudes differ only negligibly from ”true” Kron-Cousins R magnitudes (see e.g Tucker t94 (1994)) in which case absorption $`A_{R_{KC}}`$ is related to the colour excess $`E\left(BV\right)`$ through a relation $`A_{R_{KC}}=2.673E\left(BV\right).`$ Magnitude limits for the LCRS were quoted in the previous section and for the recession velocity we take an interval $`1000\mathrm{}45000`$ km/s. Here, as the photometry is not so precise as in the case of the SDSS, we take into account that the observed luminosity function is a convolution of the ’true’ luminosity function with the magnitude errors which we assume to be Gaussian distributed with the variance $`\sigma =0.1`$ magnitude (L96). Since in the LCRS first 20% of data was obtained using 50-fibre spectrograph and the rest using 112-fibre system, one must take into account field-to-field variations in the sampling ratio. Also we correct for the surface brightness selection effects and for the apparent magnitude and surface brightness incompletenesses. For more detailed information on these issues we again refer to L96.

The results for the STY79 maximum likelihood method are given in Tables 1 and 2 and in Figures 1 and 2 for the SDSS and LCRS samples, respectively. Slices that are located in the Northern and Southern Galactic hemispheres are denoted by N and S, and for the LCRS the numbers 50 and 112 denote the number of fibres used. For the LCRS this kind of division is the same as used by L96 and so their Figure 4 (which was obtained assuming critical matter density) can be compared directly to Figure 2 (which assumes $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$). As already mentioned, luminosity function normalisation $`\varphi ^{}`$ was calculated only for the SDSS data, giving us the value $`\varphi ^{}=\left(151\pm 6\right)10^4h^3`$ Mpc$`^3.`$ If the analysis was performed separately for the Northern (N) and Southern (S) slices, then the values $`0.0140h^3`$ Mpc-3 and $`0.0158h^3`$ Mpc-3 were obtained for N and S, respectively. If we assumed the best values for $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ obtained for the whole sample (i.e. $`M^{}=20.71,\alpha =1.12`$) then normalisations for N and S were $`0.0152h^3`$ Mpc-3 and $`0.0149h^3`$ Mpc-3, respectively. Our results for $`\alpha `$ and $`\varphi ^{}`$ for the SDSS N slice (which covers the commissioning phase data analysed by B01) agree well with the values quoted by B01, although for the Schechter parameter $`M^{}`$ our value $`20.76`$ is somewhat lower, agreeing only marginally with their result.

In Figure 3 we compare the best fitting Schechter function obtained via STY79 method with the results of the simple ’$`1/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method’ along with the corresponding Poissonian error-bars. This serves just as an independent cross-check of our results, although it is of course well known that ’$`1/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ method’ gives unbiased results only for a homogeneous distribution (Felten f76 (1976)).

## 4 Density field

We have extracted from the SDSS and LCRS catalogues subsamples of galaxies with redshifts $`z0.2`$. The calculation of the density fields consists of three steps: 1) calculation of the distance, absolute magnitude, and weight factor for each galaxy of the sample; 2) calculation of rectangular coordinates of galaxies and rotation of coordinate axes in order to minimise projection effects; and 3) smoothing of the density field using an appropriate kernel and smoothing length.

Observed redshifts were first corrected for the motion relative to the CMB dipole (Lineweaver et al. lts96 (1996)). Co-moving distances of galaxies were calculated as follows (e.g. Peacock p99 (1999)):

$$r(z)=\frac{c}{H_0}\underset{0}{\overset{z}{}}\left\{1+\mathrm{\Omega }_m\left[\left(1+x\right)^31\right]\right\}^{\frac{1}{2}}𝑑x.$$
(13)
As already mentioned, we used a cosmological model with density parameters: matter density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, dark energy density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, total density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=\mathrm{\Omega }_m+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1.0`$, all in units of the critical cosmological density. With these parameters the limiting redshift $`z_{lim}=0.2`$ corresponds to co-moving distance $`r_{lim}=571`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. Because both surveys cover relatively thin slices on sky, we shall calculate in the following 2-dimensional density fields, projecting all galaxies to a plane through the slice. A 2-dimensional density field of SDSS EDR was calculated also by Hoyle et al. (h02 (2002)), who compared the geometry of the large-scale matter distribution with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM simulations.

Our redshift surveys cover a fixed interval in apparent magnitude which corresponds to a certain range in luminosity, $`L_1`$ and $`L_2`$, depending on the distance of the galaxy. This range, and the observed luminosity of the galaxy, $`L_{obs}`$, were found as described in the previous section.

We regard every galaxy as a visible member of a density enhancement (group or cluster) within the magnitude window of the group. Further we suppose that the luminosity function, calculated for the whole sample, can be applied also for individual groups and clusters. We shall discuss in Paper II problems associated with the calculation of the density field and properties of clusters and superclusters, found from density field. Based on these assumptions we calculate the number and luminosity density fields. In case of the number density the weighting factor is proportional to the inverse of the selection function,

$$w\frac{1}{n^{\mathrm{exp}}(f,D)},$$
(14)
where $`n^{\mathrm{exp}}(f,D)`$ is the expected number of galaxies in the whole luminosity range

$$n^{\mathrm{exp}}(f,D)=F\frac{_0^{\mathrm{}}\varphi (L)𝑑L}{_{L_1}^{L_2}\varphi (L)𝑑L}.$$
(15)
Here $`F`$ is the field-to-field sampling fraction, $`\varphi (L)`$ is the luminosity function, and luminosities $`L_1`$ and $`L_2`$ correspond to the observational window of apparent magnitudes at the distance of the galaxy. The fraction $`F`$ takes into account the difference between 50-fibre and 112-fibre data and other effects, for details see L96. We assume that galaxy luminosities are distributed according to the Schechter function (Schechter Schechter76 (1976)):

$$\varphi (L)(L/L^{})^\alpha \mathrm{exp}(L/L^{})d(L/L^{}),$$
(16)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`L^{}`$ are parameters. The values of these parameters used in our calculations are given in Table 3 for each of the slices. For the LCRS $`6^{}`$ N slice we have taken different values for $`\alpha `$ and $`L^{}`$ since this slice was covered entirely with 50-fibre measurements.

In the case of luminous density every galaxy represents a luminosity

$$L_{tot}=L_{obs}W_L,$$
(17)
where $`L_{obs}=L_{}10^{0.4\times (M_{}M)}`$ is the luminosity of the visible galaxy of absolute magnitude $`M`$, $`M_{}`$ is the absolute magnitude of the Sun in an appropriate filter. In the SDSS $`r^{}`$ filter $`M_{}=4.62`$ (B01) and in the Kron-Cousins R-band $`M_{}=4.47`$ (Binney & Merrifield bm98 (1998)). The weight (the ratio of the expected total luminosity to the expected luminosity in the visibility window) is

$$W_L=\frac{_0^{\mathrm{}}L\varphi (L)𝑑L}{_{L_1}^{L_2}L\varphi (L)𝑑L}.$$
(18)
We calculated expected luminosities by numerical integration using a finite total luminosity interval, low limit $`L_0`$ corresponds to absolute magnitude $`M_0=13.0`$, and upper limit $`L_{lim}`$ to magnitude $`M_{lim}=24.5`$. In the case of SDSS we adopt the apparent magnitude window $`m_1=17.70`$, $`m_2=13.0`$ in $`r^{}`$-band; in the case of LCRS the apparent magnitude window is different for various fields and is taken into account using corresponding tables.

This weighting procedure was used also by Tucker et al. (Tucker00 (2000)) in the calculation of total luminosities of groups of galaxies. A different procedure was applied by Moore, Frenk & White (moore93 (1993)) (adding the expected luminosity of faint galaxies outside the observational window). We assume that density and luminosity distributions are independent, which leads to a multiplicative correction.

To find the number and luminosity density fields we calculated for all galaxies rectangular equatorial coordinates as follows:

$`x`$ $`=`$ $`r(z_c)\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{cos}\alpha ,`$
$`y`$ $`=`$ $`r(z_c)\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}\alpha ,`$ (19)
$`z`$ $`=`$ $`r(z_c)\mathrm{sin}\delta ,`$
here $`z_c`$ is the redshift, corrected for the motion relative to CMB dipole. Next we rotated this coordinate system around the $`z`$-axis to obtain a situation where the new $`y`$-axis were oriented toward the average right ascension of each slice (see Table 3) and finally we rotated this new system around its $`x`$-axis so as to force the average $`z`$-coordinate to be zero in order to minimise projection effects.

In Table 3 we also present some of the characteristic parameters for each of the studied slice as the average declination $`\delta `$ and right ascension $`R.A.`$, the number of galaxies, $`N_{gal}`$, included in the calculations of the density fields etc.

The EDR of SDSS and LCRS consists of essentially 2-dimensional slices of about $`80^{}`$ wide and about 450 $`h^1`$ Mpc depth. The width of slices is $`1.52.5^{}`$, thus in space slices form thin conical (wedge-like) volumes; the thickness of the cones at a characteristic distance 300 $`h^1`$ Mpc from the observer is only $`812`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. Due to the thin shape of slices we shall calculate only a 2-dimensional density fields.

To smooth the density field two approaches are often used. The first one uses top-hat smoothing as customary in N-body calculations. In this case the density in grid corners is found by linear interpolation where the ’mass’ of the particle is divided between grid corners according to the distance from the respective corner. Variable smoothing length can be obtained by changing the size of the grid cell. A better and smoother density field can be obtained when we use Gaussian smoothing. In this case the ’mass’ of the particle is distributed between neighbouring cells using the Gaussian smoothing

$$W_{jg}=\left(2\pi \sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{|𝐱_j𝐱_𝐠|^2}{2\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}^2}\right),$$
(20)
here $`𝐱_j`$ and $`𝐱_𝐠`$ are positions of the galaxy and the grid cell, respectively, and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}`$ is the smoothing length.

To calculate the density fields, we have formed a grid of cell size 1 $`h^1`$ Mpc. On farther part of the survey only very bright galaxies can be observed, the weight factor becomes large and the fields are noisy. To decrease this effect we have calculated the density fields for the LCRS only for co-moving distance up to $`r_{lim}450`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. Very close to the observer the density fields are also noisy. Here slices become very thin in real space, and only galaxies of low luminosity fall into the window of apparent magnitudes observed. For nearby region the density fields were calculated but density enhancements were not considered as clusters if $`r50`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc.

In calculations we have used several smoothing lengths. First, we tried a smoothing length $`\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}=2`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. This smoothing yields a very smooth field where density enhancements (clusters and groups of galaxies) can be easily identified. However, the size of these enhancements clearly exceeds the size of real clusters of galaxies. Thus we have used a smaller smoothing length, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}=0.8`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc, to calculate a density field which can be considered as an approximation to the true density field of dark matter associated with luminous galaxies.

To identify superclusters of galaxies we have used a larger smoothing length, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{sm}}=10`$ $`h^1`$ Mpc. Experience with numerical simulations has shown that this smoothing length is suitable to select supercluster-size density enhancements (Frisch et al. f95 (1995)). To take into account the thickness of the slice, the smoothed density fields were divided by the volume of the column at the location of the particular cell in the real 3-D space, covered by observations of the slice. In this way the density fields are reduced to a plane parallel sheet of constant thickness.

The high-resolution number and luminosity density fields for the SDSS EDR Southern slice are shown in Figure 4. The density fields of all EDR SDSS slices are presented in Einasto et al. (e02a (2002)), the fields of LCRS slices are presented in Einasto et al. (e02b (2003)).

## 5 Analysis

So far we have determined the number and luminosity density fields for the SDSS EDR and LCRS samples. In order to estimate the selection effects we have calculated the luminosity function assuming Schechter type of parametrisation.

To be sure that we are not grossly under- or overestimating the statistical weights we are applying to visible objects (in order to take account their invisible companions), we perform some simple calculations. Namely, we calculate the number and luminosity density averaged over thin shells as a function of the coordinate distance. What concerns the number density, then we expect it to fall in the distant part of the samples since there we miss some of the faintest systems totally. The same need not be true for the luminosity density since even the modest amount of luminosity evolution could compensate the decrease in the number density. The results for the number and luminosity density for the SDSS EDR data are given in Figure 5. We see that indeed the number density starts to decline at the largest distances, as expected, indicating that we are at the right track. Contrary to the number density the luminosity density is almost constant for the Northern slice, but shows a slightly increasing trend in the Southern slice on large distances. This is also evident from the Figure 4 where densities are colour coded. For the LCRS slices we get essentially the same results and for the brevity we are not going to present them here. All this suggests that our statistical weighting scheme looks quite reasonable for such a preliminary study.

The second thing we want to mention is the fact that we have assumed that the same Schechter parameters $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ apply for the whole sample. In order to study the possible evolution with redshift $`z`$ we have divided our SDSS EDR sample into two parts: low $`z`$ part ($`v_{rec}=1000\mathrm{}30000`$ km/s) and high $`z`$ part ($`v_{rec}=30000\mathrm{}57000`$ km/s) and performed the STY79 maximum likelihood analysis for both of these separately. The results that are given in Figure 6 probably suggest that $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ are evolving in time. From this figure we obtain a simple linear approximation

$`M^{}`$ $`=`$ $`4.2z20.37,`$
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`6.7z0.63,`$ (21)
where we have taken into account the fact that the average $`z`$ for the low $`z`$ sample is 0.067 and for the high $`z`$ one 0.136. If we assume this kind of $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ dependences on $`z`$ for the whole sample and calculate the number and luminosity densities as above then we get pretty bad results. So certainly this kind of big linear variation with $`z`$ makes things worse.

Next we divide the SDSS EDR Southern sample into three parts: $`v_{rec}=1000\mathrm{}15000`$ km/s, $`v_{rec}=15000\mathrm{}30000`$ km/s and $`v_{rec}=30000\mathrm{}60000`$ km/s. In this case we get non-monotonic dependences for $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ on $`z`$ (see Figure 7). We also notice that variations in $`M^{}`$ and $`\alpha `$ are correlated with the density of the surroundings: due to the effects of the nearby dense regions the value for $`M^{}`$ is smaller than on average; as we move further away $`M^{}`$ gets bigger, which is caused by the large void at distances $`200\mathrm{}350h^1`$ Mpc (see Figure 4). In distant parts, as the density rises again, $`M^{}`$ gets accordingly smaller. This suggests that environmental effects are more important than evolutionary ones (which we expect to be monotonic in $`z`$), and so the usual assumption in determining the luminosity function $`\varphi \left(M\right)`$ that it is independent of the spatial position cannot be strictly correct.

To study this aspect in more detail we calculated the dependence of luminosity function parameters on the density of the environment. We calculated for every galaxy the global density $`\delta _0`$ (with 10 $`h^1`$ Mpc smoothing) and used this value as environmental parameter. Galaxies were divided into three types according to density (expressed in units of the mean density). Parameters of the luminosity function are given in Table 4 and Figure 8. We see that parameter $`M^{}`$ changes considerably with density: in high-density regions its value is more negative, i.e. galaxies are brighter. A similar tendency has been recently observed in other surveys (Bromley et al. (1998), Beisbart & Kerscher (2000), Norberg et al. (2001)).

The density field with 10 $`h^1`$ Mpc smoothing characterizes the density on supercluster scales. The dependence of galaxy luminosity on density has been found also on smaller scales. In Figure 9 we plot luminosities of galaxies of the Southern SDSS EDR slice as a function of the density smoothed on 2 $`h^1`$ Mpc scale. This smoothing is sensitive to density changes within clusters of galaxies and in galaxy filaments. We see a strong dependence of the upper end of luminosities: brightest galaxies in low-density regions are about 5 times less luminous than in high-density regions. This difference in luminosity corresponds to a difference 1.7 magnitudes, much more than expected from the analysis based on larger smoothing length. We plan to address all these issues in more detail in the forthcoming papers. Physical interpretation of these phenomena needs theoretical studies.

We repeat that all the density fields (see Figure 4) compiled in this paper refer to the redshift space.

## 6 Conclusions

In this paper we have calculated the galaxy luminosity function for the SDSS EDR and LCRS samples and used it to construct the number and luminosity density fields (smoothed on $`0.8h^1`$ Mpc scale) assuming flat underlying cosmologies with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7.`$ The analysis presented here is rather simple and serves as a first step in the study of the distribution of galaxies in SDSS and LCRS samples. The principal conclusion from our study is: parameters of the galaxy luminosity function depend on the distance from the observer, density of the environment, they are different for the Northern and Southern slice. The largest effect is the dependence on the density of the environment: in high-density regions brightest galaxies are more luminous than in low-density regions by a factor up to 5 (1.7 magnitudes). Some of these effects suggest that it is not yet possible to find an universal set of parameters of the luminosity function valid for a fair sample of the Universe. In other words, presently available samples are still too small to be considered as candidates for the fair sample.

###### Acknowledgements.

The present study was supported by Estonian Science grants ETF 3601, ETF 4695 and TO 0060058S98. P.H. was supported by the Finnish Academy of Sciences. J.E. thanks Fermi-lab and Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam for hospitality where part of this study was performed.
Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.
The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are The University of Chicago, Fermi-lab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, The Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The term Spacetime Foam was introduced for the first time by J.A. Wheeler at the end of the fifties to indicate that quantum fluctuations come into play at the Planckian scale, changing topology and metric . Apart the pioneering path integral approach to Spacetime Foam, considered by S.W. Hawking , only recently the subject has been widely reconsidered in the context of brane physics , spin foam models  and on a phenomenological ground . We will briefly introduce a different approach based on a large Nw-wormhole semi-classical approximation. This model is motivated by the results on the computation of the Casimir energy computed on some wormhole backgrounds of spherical symmetry (Schwarzschild, Schwarzschild-de Sitter, Schwarzschild-Anti-de Sitter and Reissner-Nordström metrics) which have as a reference space the presumed ground state (Minkowski, de Sitter and Anti-de Sitter metrics) . The formulation of the Casimir effect in general is synthesized by the Eq.

$$E_{Casimir}\left[\right]=E_0\left[\right]E_0\left[0\right],$$
(1)
where $`E_0`$ is the Zero Point Energy (Z.P.E.) and $``$ is a boundary. It is immediate to see that the Casimir energy involves a vacuum subtraction procedure and since this one is related to Z.P.E., we can extract information on the ground state. In concrete terms, we compute the following quantity

$$E\left(wormhole\right)=E\left(nowormhole\right)$$

$$+\mathrm{\Delta }E_{nowormhole}^{wormhole}{}_{|classical}{}^{}+\mathrm{\Delta }E_{nowormhole}^{wormhole}{}_{|1loop}{}^{},$$
(2)
representing the total energy computed to one-loop in a wormhole background. $`E\left(nowormhole\right)`$ is the reference space. $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{nowormhole}^{wormhole}_{|classical}`$ is the classical energy difference between the wormhole and no-wormhole configuration stored in the boundaries and finally $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{nowormhole}^{wormhole}_{|1loop}`$ is the quantum correction to the classical term. Usually, the last term in the examined metrics exhibits an unstable mode. In the Coleman language, we are perturbing the false vacuum . Instead of rejecting such a configuration, we take into examination a large wormholes number.

## 2 Large Nw-wormhole approach to Spacetime foam

We consider $`N_w`$ non-interacting wormholes in a semiclassical approximation and assume that there exists a covering of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=_{i=1}^{N_w}\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$, with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i\mathrm{\Sigma }_j=\mathrm{}`$ when $`ij`$. Each $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$ has the topology $`S^2\times R^1`$ with boundaries $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i^\pm `$. Furthermore, we assume the existence of a bifurcation surface $`S_0`$, which is the case for the wormhole background considered. On each surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$ the energy stored in the boundaries is zero because we assume that on each copy of the single wormhole there is symmetry with respect to each bifurcation surface111This can be proved in terms of quasilocal energy.. In this context, the total energy contribution comes only by quantum fluctuations. Moreover, the instability appearing in the single wormhole case is eliminated in the multi-wormhole picture. As a consequence, the regularized total energy - Casimir energy - assumes the form, at its minimum,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{N_w}\left(\overline{x}\right)=N_w\frac{V}{64\pi ^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}$$
(3)
valid even for the Schwarzschild-Anti-de Sitter case222The case of the Schwarzschild-de Sitter case gives for the Z.P.E. the following expression
$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{N_w}\left(\overline{x}\right)=N_w\frac{V}{32\pi ^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}.$$
.

### 2.1 Some consequences of a foamy spacetime

Here we will consider some applications of the foam model. One consequence is a natural quantization process in terms of the wormholes constituents. In particular, the area of a black hole is examined in this context. The area is measured by the quantity

$$A\left(S\right)=_Sd^2x\sqrt{\sigma }.$$
(4)
$`\sigma `$ is the two-dimensional determinant coming from the induced metric $`\sigma _{ab}`$ on the boundary $`S`$. The evaluation of the mean value of the area

$$A\left(S\right)=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_F\left|\widehat{A}\right|\mathrm{\Psi }_F}{\mathrm{\Psi }_F|\mathrm{\Psi }_F}=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_F\left|\widehat{_Sd^2x\sqrt{\sigma }}\right|\mathrm{\Psi }_F}{\mathrm{\Psi }_F|\mathrm{\Psi }_F},$$
(5)
is computed on the following state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_F=\mathrm{\Psi }_1^{}\mathrm{\Psi }_2^{}\mathrm{}\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{N_w}^{}.$$
(6)
Suppose to consider the mean value of the area $`A`$ computed on a given macroscopic fixed radius $`R`$. On the basis of our foam model, we obtain $`A=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}A_i`$, with $`A_iA_j=\mathrm{}`$ when $`ij`$. Thus $`A=4\pi l_p^2N\alpha `$. $`\alpha `$ represents how each single wormhole is distributed with respect to the black hole in terms of the area. When compared with the Bekenstein area spectrum proposal, $`\alpha `$ is fixed to $`\mathrm{ln}2/\pi `$ and

$$M=\frac{\sqrt{N}}{2l_p}\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{ln}2}{\pi }},$$
(7)
namely the Schwarzschild black hole mass is quantized in terms of $`l_p`$. The level spacing of the transition frequencies is

$$\omega _0=\mathrm{\Delta }M=\left(8\pi Ml_p^2\right)^1\mathrm{ln}2.$$
(8)
An interesting aspect comes when we consider Schwarzschild-Anti-de Sitter wormholes as foam constituents. Indeed, the level spacing of the transition frequencies is

$$\omega _0=\mathrm{\Delta }M_S^{AdS}=\left(8M_Sl_p^2\right)^1\frac{9\mathrm{ln}2}{16\pi }=\mathrm{\Delta }M\frac{9}{16}$$
(9)
that it means that for a given Schwarzschild black hole of mass $`M`$, the S-AdS foam representation gives smaller frequencies. In this respect, we have found a possibility to understand which constituents form our foam model. The inclusion of a charge is straightforward and leads to

$$Q^2=\sqrt{N_2}\left(\sqrt{N_1}\sqrt{N_2}\right)\alpha l_p^2,$$
(10)
where $`N_2`$ is the wormholes number used for the covering of the RN black hole area. We immediately see that from the above equation we have $`N_1N_2`$, where the equality corresponds to the vanishing charge. Moreover we choose $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$ in such a way that $`Q^2=\alpha l_p^2q`$, $`q=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$. This means that

$$\sqrt{N_2}\left(\sqrt{N_1}\sqrt{N_2}\right)=q.$$
(11)
When $`q=0`$, we recover the Schwarzschild case, namely $`N_2=N_1`$. On the other hand, when we consider $`N_1=4q`$, we get $`N_2=q`$ corresponding to the extreme case. This leads to the quantization of the Reissner-Nordström black hole mass

$$M=\frac{\sqrt{\alpha }}{2l_p}\sqrt{N_2}\left(1+\frac{q}{N_2}\right).$$
(12)
When we consider a transition in mass with a fixed charge, on the level spacing we get

$$\omega _0=\mathrm{\Delta }M=\frac{M}{r_+}\frac{dr_+}{dN}\mathrm{\Delta }N=\frac{\pi }{A}\left(r_+r_{}\right)\alpha $$
(13)
with $`\mathrm{\Delta }N=1`$, which vanishes in the extreme limit. Finally, for the de Sitter geometry, we write

$$S=N\mathrm{ln}2=\frac{3\pi }{l_p^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_c}=\frac{A}{4l_p^2}=\frac{N4\pi l_p^2}{4l_p^2}=N\pi ,$$
(14)
that is

$$\frac{3\pi }{l_p^2N\mathrm{ln}2}=\mathrm{\Lambda }_c.$$
(15)
An interesting aspect appears when we put numbers in Eq.$`\left(\text{15}\right)`$. When $`N=1`$, the foam system is highly unstable and the cosmological constant assumes the value, in order of magnitude, of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c10^{38}GeV^2`$. However the system becomes stable when the whole universe has been filled with wormholes of Planckian size and this leads to the huge number $`N=10^{122}`$ corresponding to the value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c10^{84}GeV^2`$ which is the order of magnitude of the cosmological constant of the space in which we now live.

### 2.2 Lorentz invariance?

Recently, a lot of interest has been devoted to the problem of Lorentz invariance at high energies. There are several reasons to suspect that Lorentz invariance may be only a low energy symmetry. This possibility is suggested by the ultraviolet divergences of local quantum field theory, as well as by tentative results in various approaches to quantum gravity and string theory . One signal of breaking of such a symmetry should be given by a modification of the dispersion relation deviating from

$$E^2(p)=p{}_{}{}^{2}+m^2,$$
(16)
where for simplicity we have considered the case of a massive scalar field. One possible simple distortion can be characterized at low energies by an expansion with integral powers of momentum,

$$E^2=m^2+Ap^2+Bp^3/E_0+Cp^4/E_0^2+O(p^5).$$
(17)
$`E_0`$ is the “quantum gravity” scale (Planck energy $``$ $`10^{19}`$ GeV). The dispersion relation is not Lorentz invariant. It can only hold in one reference frame. One possible “preferred reference frame” could be represented by space-time foam333See also Ref., where Lorentz symmetry has been explicitly broken.. In our foam model we have the possibility to verify the above dispersion relation, which can be also used to probe the validity of this picture.


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# Large N Quantum Cryptography

## 1 Introduction

It is now well known that quantum information can guarantee classically unattainable security in a variety of important cryptographic tasks. We know too from no-go results that quantum cryptography cannot guarantee perfect security for every task. We cannot presently characterise precisely the tasks for which perfectly secure quantum protocols exist, or even the range of cryptographic tasks for which perfectly secure quantum protocols might possibly exist, because quantum cryptography involves more than devising quantum protocols for tasks known to be useful in classical cryptography. The properties of quantum information allow new and cryptographically useful tasks, which have no classical counterpart. Also, reductions and relations between classical cryptographic tasks need not necessarily apply to their quantum equivalents. This means that there is a wider range of tasks to consider, and that no-go theorems may not necessarily be quite as powerful as classical reasoning would suggest.

These remarks apply in particular to bit commitment and coin tossing, important cryptographic protocols whose potential for physically secure implementation has been extensively investigated. It is known that unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment is impossible for non-relativistic protocols: that is, protocols in which the two parties are restricted to single pointlike sites, or more generally, in which the signalling constraints of special relativity are ignored. No unconditionally secure non-relativistic coin tossing protocol has been found; no proof that no such protocols exist has yet been published either.

Unconditionally secure bit commitment is conjectured to be possible between parties controlling appropriately separated pairs of sites, when the impossibility of superluminal signalling is taken into account. Unconditionally secure coin tossing is simple to implement under these conditions. However, we restrict attention to non-relativistic protocols in the rest of this paper, taking this as understood rather than inserting “non-relativistic” throughout.

Some variants of bit commitment, for which non-relativistic protocols are not known to be impossible, have previously been studied. We consider here a different generalisation, bit string commitment, in which one party commits many bits to another in a single protocol. Two non-relativistic bit string commitment protocols, which offer classically unattainable levels of security against cheating, are described.

## 2 Bit string commitment

Consider the following classical cryptographic problem. Two mistrustful parties, A and B, need a protocol which will (i) allow A to commit a string $`a_1a_2\mathrm{}a_n`$ of bits to B, and then, (ii) at any later time of her choice, reveal the committed bits. The protocol should prevent $`A`$ from cheating, in the sense that she should have little or no chance of unveiling bits $`a_i^{}`$ different from the $`a_i`$ without B being able to detect the attempted detection. In other words, A should be genuinely committed after the first stage. The protocol should also prevent $`B`$ from being able to completely determine the bit string. More precisely, it must guarantee that, before revelation, $`B`$ has little or no chance of obtaining more than $`m`$ bits of information about the committed string, for some fixed integer $`m<n`$.

This $`(m,n)`$ bit string commitment problem is a generalisation of the standard bit commitment problem, in which $`n=1`$ and $`m=0`$. Clearly, a protocol for bit commitment would solve this generalised problem, since the protocol could be repeated $`n`$ times to commit each of the $`a_i`$, and $`B`$ would be able to obtain no information about the committed string. Conversely, classical reasoning implies that a protocol for the generalised problem, for any integers $`m`$ and $`n`$ with $`m<n`$, could be used as a protocol for standard bit commitment. For $`A`$ and $`B`$ can use any coding of a single bit $`a`$ by the $`n`$ bit string such that none of the $`m`$ bits available to $`B`$ give information about $`a`$, and then use the protocol to commit $`A`$ to $`a`$.

Classically, then, $`(m,n)`$ bit string commitment is essentially equivalent to bit commitment. However, there is no obvious equivalence between quantum $`(m,n)`$ bit string commitment and quantum bit commitment. The impossibility of unconditionally secure quantum bit commitment does not necessarily imply that, with an analogous definition of security, unconditionally secure quantum bit string commitment is impossible. In fact, the next sections show it can be achieved.

## 3 Protocol 1

Define qubit states $`\psi _0=|0`$ and $`\psi _1=\mathrm{sin}\theta |0+\mathrm{cos}\theta |1`$, where $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta =\delta `$. We take $`\theta >0`$ and $`r=nm`$ to be security parameters for the protocol.

Commitment: To commit a string $`a_1\mathrm{}a_n`$ of bits to $`B`$, $`A`$ sends the qubits $`\psi _{a_1},\mathrm{},\psi _{a_n}`$, sequentially. Unveiling: To unveil, $`A`$ simply declares the values of the string bits, and hence the qubits sent. Assuming that $`B`$ has not disturbed the qubits, he can test the bit values $`a_i^{}`$ claimed by $`A`$ at unveiling by measuring the projection onto $`\psi _{a_i^{}}`$ on qubit $`i`$, for each $`i`$. If he obtains eigenvalue $`1`$ in each case, he accepts the unveiling as an honest revelation of a genuine commitment. If he obtains eigenvalue $`0`$ in any case, he concludes (assuming that noise is negligible) that $`A`$ has cheated. Security against A: Whatever strategy $`A`$ follows, once she transmits the qubits to $`B`$, their respective density matrices $`\rho _i`$ are fixed. Let $`p_i^j=\psi _j|\rho _i|\psi _j`$ be the probability of $`B`$ accepting a revelation of $`j`$ for the $`i`$-th bit. We have

$$p_i^0+p_i^1\mathrm{cos}^2((\pi /4)(\theta /2))+\mathrm{sin}((\pi /4)+(\theta /2)),$$
(1)
which is $`1+\theta `$ for small $`\theta `$. This is the standard definition of security against $`A`$ for an individual bit commitment, with security parameter $`\theta `$. In other words, $`A`$’s scope for cheating on any bit of the string is limited to slightly increasing the probability of revealing a $`0`$ or $`1`$, by an amount $`\theta `$, which can be made arbitrarily small by choosing the security parameters appropriately. Security against B: We assume that, prior to the commitment, $`B`$ has no information about the bit string and regards every possible value as equiprobable. From $`B`$’s perspective, then, he has to obtain information about a density matrix of the form

$$\rho =(1/2^n)\underset{a_1\mathrm{}a_n}{}|\psi _{a_1}\mathrm{}\psi _{a_n}\psi _{a_1}\mathrm{}\psi _{a_n}|.$$
(2)
Holevo’s theorem tells us that the accessible information available to $`B`$ by any measurement on $`\rho `$ is bounded by the entropy

$`S(\rho )=(((1+\mathrm{sin}\theta )/2)\mathrm{log}_2((1+\mathrm{sin}\theta )/2)+`$ (3)
$`((1\mathrm{sin}\theta )/2)\mathrm{log}_2((1\mathrm{sin}\theta )/2))^n.`$
Now, for any fixed $`\theta >0`$, we have $`S(\rho )<n`$. For any fixed $`r`$, by taking $`n`$ sufficiently large, we can ensure $`nS(\rho )>r`$. In other words we can ensure that, however $`B`$ proceeds, an average of at least $`r`$ bits of information about the string will remain inaccessible to him. By choosing $`n`$ suitably large, we can also ensure that the probability of his obtaining more than $`nr`$ bits of information about the string is smaller than $`ϵ`$, for any given $`ϵ>0`$.

A more efficient version of this protocol can be devised using qutrit states — an observation I owe to Rob Spekkens.

## 4 Protocol 2

Protocol 1 ensures bit-wise security against $`A`$, but uses a rather inefficient bit string coding which allows $`B`$ to obtain almost all of the bit string before revelation. For large $`n`$, more efficient codings allow the security against $`B`$ to be greatly enhanced, though with a weakened notion of security against $`A`$.

We again take $`\theta >0`$ to be a security parameter and write $`ϵ=\mathrm{sin}\theta `$. Now, for any $`\theta >0`$ and large $`n`$, explicit constructions are known for sets $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_{f(n)}`$ of vectors in $`H^n`$ such that $`|v_i|v_j|<\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ for all $`ij`$, with the property that $`f(n)=O(\mathrm{exp}(Cn))`$, where $`C`$ is a positive constant that depends on $`\theta `$. (The use of these constructions for efficient quantum coding of classical information has previously been noted by Buhrman et al., who describe efficient quantum fingerprinting schemes which reduce communication complexity in the simultaneous message passing model.) A string of $`O(Cn)`$ bits can thus be encoded by vectors in $`H^n`$, such that the overlap between the code vectors for two distinct strings is always less than $`\mathrm{sin}\theta `$, suggesting the following bit string commitment protocol.

Commitment: Let $`N`$ be the number of bits that can be encoded in $`H^n`$ by the above construction. To commit a string $`a_1\mathrm{}a_N`$ of bits to $`B`$, $`A`$ sends the state $`v_{a_1\mathrm{}a_N}`$, treating the index as a binary number. Unveiling: To unveil, $`A`$ simply declares the values of the string bits, and hence the state sent. Assuming that $`B`$ has not disturbed the qubits, he can test $`A`$’s claim at unveiling by measuring the projection onto $`v_{a_1\mathrm{}a_N}`$. If he obtains eigenvalue $`1`$, he accepts the unveiling as an honest revelation of a genuine commitment. If he obtains eigenvalue $`0`$, he concludes that $`A`$ has cheated. Security against A: As before, once $`A`$ transmits a quantum state to $`B`$, its density matrix $`\rho `$ is fixed. Consider some set $`i_1,\mathrm{},i_r`$ of bit strings which $`A`$ might wish to maintain the option of revealing after commitment. Let $`P_i`$ be the projection onto $`v_i`$, let $`p_i=\mathrm{Tr}(\rho P_i)`$ be the probability of $`A`$ successfully revealing string $`i`$, and write

$$Q=P_{i_1}+\mathrm{}+P_{i_r}.$$
(4)
It is not too hard to verify that

$$\mathrm{Tr}(\rho Q)1+(r1)ϵ$$
(5)
In other words,

$$p_{i_1}+\mathrm{}+p_{i_r}1+f(ϵ,r),$$
(6)
where, for any fixed $`r`$, $`f`$ can be made as small as desired by choosing $`\theta `$ suitably small.

So, given that $`A`$ is determined to reveal a bit string from some finite set of size $`r`$, her scope for cheating is limited to increasing the probability of revealing any given element of the set by a fixed amount. For any fixed $`r`$, that amount can be made arbitrarily small by choosing the security parameters appropriately. If $`B`$’s concern is to prevent cheating of this type, for some predetermined $`r`$, the protocol can guarantee him security. Security against B: Holevo’s theorem implies that the information about the $`NCn`$ bit string accessible to $`B`$ is at most $`\mathrm{log}n`$ bits.

## 5 Asymptotically secure coin tossing

Consider the following non-relativistic protocol for generating a string of $`N`$ random bits between mistrustful parties. We assume that $`N`$ is large, and take $`M`$ also to be large, with $`\mathrm{log}MN`$. A prepares $`M`$ batches of $`N`$ Bell singlet states, and sends one particle from each of the $`MN`$ singlets to B. B chooses $`(M1)`$ of the batches, and asks A to send the second particle from each of the $`(M1)N`$ singlets in these batches. B tests that these $`(M1)N`$ pairs of particles are indeed singlets. If not, he concludes that A is cheating, and the protocol ends. If so, he accepts that A is honest. A and B then use the last batch of singlets to generate $`N`$ random bits, by carrying out correlated measurements (say of $`\sigma _z`$) and converting the results to a bit string using a previously agreed protocol.

Security against A: A can only cheat by preparing non-singlet states which bias the outcomes towards those she would prefer. Her scope for cheating is limited by the cut-and-choose step of the protocol, which ensures that, if any batch has low fidelity to $`N`$ singlet states, her cheating will almost surely be detected.

Security against B: B can cheat by carrying out measurements on every particle from every batch sent to him, deciding which batch gives the bit string most favourable for his purposes, and choosing the other $`(M1)`$ for the test. However, this will allow him to fix only $`\mathrm{log}M`$ bits of information about the $`N`$ bit string. With suitable $`M,N`$ this is an insignificant fraction.

## Acknowledgments

Much of this work was carried out while a visiting academic researcher in the QIP Group at Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol. I thank Serge Massar, Bill Munro, Tim Spiller, Rob Spekkens, Terry Rudolph and Alain Tapp for helpful discussions. This work was partially supported by the European collaboration EQUIP.


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# Charge and Phase Fluctuations in Attractive Hubbard Model

## Abstract

Using the negative $`U`$ Hubbard model we analyze normal state properties of a superconductor. In this model there exists a characteristic pairing temperature $`T_P`$ above a superconducting critical temperature. Below $`T_P`$ electrons start to form incoherent pairs. The fluctuations in charge and phase are precursors of charge density wave and superconductivity phases depending on band filling. They lead naturally to pseudogap opening in the density of states.

thanks: Fax: +48-815250808; E-mail: litak@archimedes.pol.lublin.pl

The pseudogap in electronic spectra of HTc superconducting cuprates has attracted a lot of attention last time . The discussion on its origin and nature is not closed  however one of possible explanations could be that it is a precursor of superconducting gap formation . In this paper we will follow that way analyzing the phase fluctuations of superconducting order  parameter mediated by fluctuations of charge.

In this paper we employ the simplest purely electronic model which can lead to superconductivity, namely, the negative $`U`$ Hubbard model :

$$\widehat{H}=\underset{ij\sigma }{}\left(\mu \delta _{ij}t_{ij}\right)\widehat{c}_{i\sigma }^+\widehat{c}_{j\sigma }+\frac{1}{2}U\underset{i}{}\widehat{n}_{i\sigma }\widehat{n}_{j\sigma },$$

where $`i`$ and $`j`$ label the sites of a square lattice, $`t_{ij}`$ are electron hopping integrals between nearest neighbour sites, $`U<0`$ describe attraction between electrons occupying the same site $`i`$, $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential.

The self-consistent Hartree-Fock-Gorkov (HFG) equation:

$$\underset{j}{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}(E+\mu \frac{Un_i}{2})\delta _{ij}+t_{ij}& \mathrm{\Delta }_i\delta _{ij}\\ \mathrm{\Delta }_i^{}\delta _{ij}& (E+\mu +\frac{Un_i}{2})\delta _{ij}t_{ij}\end{array}\right)𝐆(j,k;E)=\mathrm{𝟏}\delta _{ik}.$$
(1)
In this case the superconducting order parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ and the local charge $`n_i`$ at a finite temperature $`T`$ ($`\beta =1/kT`$) are given by following relations:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}dE{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}G^{12}(i,i;E)}{\mathrm{e}^{\beta E}+1}},n_i={\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}dE{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}G^{11}(i,i;E)}{\mathrm{e}^{\beta E}+1}}.`$ (2)
To go beyond the HFG we apply fluctuations of phase  and charge via Hubbard III approximation . Thus random local pairing potential gains different phase $`\mathrm{\Theta }_i`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i\mathrm{\Delta }_i(\mathrm{\Theta }_i)=|\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{e}^{i\mathrm{\Theta }_i}`$ dependent on lattice site $`i`$. The charge also changes randomly $`n_in_i=n\pm \delta n_i`$ with lattice site $`i`$.

In such approach the equation of motion has the following form:

$$\underset{j}{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}(E+\mu \frac{Un_i}{2})\delta _{ij}+t_{ij}& |\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Theta }_i}\delta _{ij}\\ |\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Theta }_i}\delta _{ij}& (E+\mu +\frac{Un_i}{2})\delta _{ij}t_{ij}\end{array}\right)𝐆(j,k;E)=\delta _{ik}.$$
(3)
Here the local pairing parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ and the local charge $`n_i`$ are given by self–consistent relations:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Theta }_i)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}dE{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}G_{\mathrm{\Theta }_i}^{12}(i,i;E)}{\mathrm{e}^{\beta E}+1}},`$ (4)
$`\delta n={\displaystyle \frac{n_An_B}{2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}d\omega {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}(G_A^{11}(i,i;E))(G_B^{11}(i,i;E))}{\mathrm{e}^{\beta E}+1}},`$ (5)
where $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_i=0`$ and $`\overline{n}_i=n`$ ($`n_A=n+\delta n`$ and $`n_B=n\delta n`$).
The set of above equations (Eqs. 4-6) can be solved by means of Coherent Potential Approximation (CPA) . Single site condition for the coherent potential $`𝚺(i,i,E)=𝚺(E)`$ is defined by the zero value of an average T-matrix:

$$<𝐓_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}(i,i;E)>=<(𝐕_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}𝚺(E))(\mathrm{𝟏}[𝐕_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}𝚺(E)]\overline{𝐆}(i,i;E))^1>,$$
(6)
where

$$V_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}\frac{Un_\alpha }{2}& |\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Theta }}\\ |\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Theta }}& \frac{Un_\alpha }{2}\end{array}\right]\mathrm{and}\alpha =A,B,\mathrm{\Theta }[0,2\pi ].$$
(7)
Equations (5) and (6) can now be expressed through conditionally averaged Green functions:

$$𝐆_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}(i,i;E))=\overline{𝐆}(i,i;E)(\mathrm{𝟏}[𝐕_{\alpha ,\mathrm{\Theta }}𝚺(E)]\overline{𝐆}(i,i;E))^1.$$
(8)
The above model (Eqs 4-9) has been solved for a square lattice and large enough interaction $`|U|/W=1,2`$ ($`W=8t`$ is a band width). Fig. 1a shows characteristic temperatures $`T_C`$ of phase (pairing temperature - $`T_P`$) and charge fluctuations appearance. Such fluctuations can be naturally related to precursors of long range order phases formation like superconductivity and charge density wave (CDW), respectively. Note that, fluctuations are characterized by different regions of band filling $`n`$. Charge fluctuations appear around half filled band ($`n=1`$) while phase fluctuations are present for any $`n`$. Interestingly, for particle-hole symmetric situation ($`n=1`$) the characteristic temperatures $`T_C`$ are the same for both fluctuations and they can coexist (Fig. 1a). In this case the state can be described by a generalized local order parameter $`\mathrm{\Psi }_i=\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Delta }|^2+\left(U\delta n\right)^2}`$ (Fig. 1b). It is similar to low temperature behaviour where the coexistence of superconductivity and CDW . However, in that case the CDW state was not stable in presence of diagonal non-magnetic disorder . The opening of a pseudogap above the superconducting critical temperature $`T_C(sup)`$  can be easily explained by such fluctuations. The corresponding densities of states for $`U/W=1`$ are presented in Fig. 2. Note that, for smaller temperature $`T<0.18W`$ (Fig. 2c) the pseudogap eluate into a proper gap in electronic spectrum. However to investigate further transition into superconducting state one has to investigate Kosterlitz-Thouless scenario .

Acknowledgements
This work has been partially supported by KBN grant No. 5P03B00221.