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# Untitled Document

Brown Het-1251, CTP-MIT-3069

On the polarization of unstable D0-branes into non-commutative odd spheres

Zachary Guralnik

Center for Theoretical Physics,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139

Sanjaye Ramgoolam

Department of Physics

Brown University

Providence, RI 02912

zack@mitlns.mit.edu, ramgosk@het.brown.edu

We consider the polarization of unstable type IIB D0-branes in the presence of a background five-form field strength. This phenomenon is studied from the point of view of the leading terms in the non-abelian Born Infeld action of the unstable D0-branes. The equations have $`SO(4)`$ invariant solutions describing a non-commutative $`3`$-sphere, which becomes a classical $`3`$-sphere in the large $`N`$ limit. We discuss the interpretation of these solutions as spherical D3-branes. The tachyon plays a tantalizingly geometrical role in relating the fuzzy $`S^3`$ geometry to that of a fuzzy $`S^4`$.

12/2000

1. Introduction

The view that zero-branes are fundamental objects that capture a number of important features of M-theory leads one to expect that higher branes can be constructed from zero branes in Type IIA string theory \[1,,2,,3\]. Zero branes of Type IIA can be polarized into D2-branes in the presence of background Ramond-Ramond flux , leading to a natural physical context where the non-commutative 2-sphere  appears. The equations defining the non-commutative 2-sphere appear naturally as conditions obeyed by the matrices corresponding to transverse coordinates in the worldvolume theory of the zero-branes. In this paper, we will instead consider the polarization of unstable type IIB D0-branes by Ramond-Ramond flux. This provides a natural physical context for obtaining odd non-commutative spheres.

Recently, much progress has been made in understanding the dynamics of unstable branes. One of the remarkable features of these systems is that stable branes can be obtained as solitons of higher dimensional unstable branes \[6,,7,,8\], leading to an interpretation of brane charges in terms of K-theory. A Non-abelian Born-Infeld type action for unstable D-branes has been written down \[9,,10,,11,,12,,13,,14\] as have their Chern-Simons couplings to Ramond-Ramond forms \[9,,8,,16,,17,,18,,19\]. This action is for the most part phenomenological, satisfying certain physical requirements. Its exact form is unknown, although the tachyon potential and kinetic term have been computed exactly within the context of boundary string field theory , giving a result agreeing with a proposal in . Using the nonabelian action of unstable D0-branes, solutions corresponding to higher dimensional branes with a flat geometry were obtained in . In the presence of a constant Ramond-Ramond five-form field strength, the D0 action gives a system of matrix equations which one might expect to have unstable solutions describing a fuzzy three-sphere.

We will find matrices $`\varphi ^i`$, for $`i=1\mathrm{}4`$, which define a fuzzy $`3`$-sphere and solve the D0 equations of motion in the five-form background. These matrices satisfy $`\varphi ^i\varphi ^i=R^2`$ and commute in the large $`N`$ limit. Our construction is based on that which gave the fuzzy $`4`$-sphere of . The fuzzy $`S^3`$ may be interpreted as a subspace of the fuzzy $`S^4`$. The solution for the tachyon is is related to the fifth embedding coordinate involved in the definition of the fuzzy $`S^4`$. These solutions exist for matrices of size $`N=\frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{2}`$, where $`n`$ is an odd number.

At finite $`N`$, the coupling of our solutions to the five-form field strength resembles the dipole moment coupling of a spherical D3-brane. However, in the large $`N`$ limit where the non-commutative $`S^3`$ becomes a classical $`S^3`$, this dipole moment vanishes for the particular class of large $`N`$ solutions we consider. Thus we do not interpret these solutions as spherical D3-branes. We expect that this situation may change if one considers a consistent supergravity background, instead of a flat geometry with five-form flux. Furthermore, if a dual D3-brane description exists, then the phenomenological Lagrangian which we work with might be insufficient to obtain the correctly normalized couplings, which depend sensitively on tachyon dynamics.

2. Unstable D0-brane action

We are interested in the behavior of an unstable IIB D0-brane in a constant background RR five-form field strength

$$H^{(5)}=hdtdx^1dx^2dx^3dx^4hdx^5dx^6dx^7dx^8dx^9$$

The low energy action for an unstable D0-brane in type IIB string theory can be obtained by T-dualizing the unstable IIA D9-brane action as in . There is a large literature on Born-Infeld and Chern-Simons terms for unstable branes \[9,,10,,11,,12,,13,,14,,8,,16,,17,,18,,19\]. The D9 action is $`S^9=S_{DBI}^9+S_{CS}^9`$ where

$$S_{DBI}^9=\frac{1}{g_s\alpha _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{5}(2\pi )^9}d^{10}xTr\left[V(T)\sqrt{det(G+2\pi \alpha ^{}F)}+\alpha ^{}f(T)\sqrt{detG}D_\mu TD_\mu T\right]$$

Following conjectures of Sen , one is led to expect that $`f(T)`$ and $`V(T)`$ vanish at the global minimum of $`V(T)`$, for a suitable choice of the variable $`T`$. If one changes variables such that the tachyon kinetic term is canonically normalized, or $`f(T)=1`$, then the Chern-Simons coupling is of the form :

$$S_{CS}^9=TrDTCe^{F+B}$$

A form for the potential and kinetic terms was proposed in  and computed exactly within the context of boundary string field theory in , giving

$$V(T)=\mu f(T)$$

with

$$V(T)=e^{T^2/4}$$

and

$$\mu =\frac{1}{2ln2}.$$

We shall find solutions for this particular potential and kinetic term, however the existence of fuzzy three-sphere solutions does not depend on the detailed form of the potential. With a choice of variables such that the tachyon kinetic term is given by (2.1)(2.1) , the Chern-Simons coupling is1 We thank Barton Zwiebach for pointing this out.

$$S_{CS}^9=Tr\sqrt{2ln2}e^{T^2/8}DTCe^{F+B}.$$

Upon T-dualizing in all 9 spatial directions, one finds the D0 action in the presence of the above five-form field strength is $`S^0=S_{DBI}^0+S_{CS}^0`$ where

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill S_0^{DBI}=\frac{1}{g_s\alpha _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{1/2}}𝑑tSTrV(T)\sqrt{det(\delta _{ab}+2\pi \alpha ^{}[X^a,X^b])}& \\ \hfill \alpha ^{}f(T)[X^a,T][X^a,T]+\mathrm{}& \end{array}$$

and

$$S_0^{CS}=\alpha _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{3/2}h𝑑tSTre^{T^2/8}\left[[X^l,T]ϵ_{ijkl}X^iX^jX^k\right],$$

where $`STr`$ indicates a symmetrized trace. The indicies $`i,j,k,l`$ run from $`1`$ to $`4`$ and label the matrix coordinates in which the fuzzy $`S^3`$ will be embedded. We have absorbed numerical factors of order $`1`$ in the definition of $`h`$. Since we will look for a static solution, time derivative terms have been dropped.

In terms of dimensionless adjoint scalars, $`\varphi ^i=\sqrt{\alpha ^{}}X^i`$, and keeping only the leading terms in the DBI action for$`[\varphi ^i,\varphi ^j]<<1`$, we have:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill S=\frac{1}{g_s}𝑑tStrV(T)\left(1\frac{1}{4}[\varphi ^i,\varphi ^j][\varphi ^i,\varphi ^j]\right)\left(f(T)[\varphi ^i,T][\varphi ^i,T]\right)& \\ \hfill he^{T^2/8}\varphi ^i\varphi ^j\varphi ^k[\varphi ^l,T]ϵ_{ijkl}& \end{array}$$

We shall find a class of solutions for which $`T^2`$ is proportional to the identity, and $`\{T,\varphi ^i\}=0`$. In this case, the equations of motion are

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill V^{}(T)(1\frac{1}{4}[\varphi ^i,\varphi ^j][\varphi ^i,\varphi ^j])f^{}(T)[\varphi ^i,T][\varphi ^i,T]& \\ \hfill [[\varphi ^i,T]f(T),\varphi ^i][f(T)[\varphi ^i,T],\varphi ^i]& \\ \hfill 2he^{T^2/8}ϵ_{ijkl}\varphi ^i\varphi ^j\varphi ^k\varphi ^l& \end{array}$$

and

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill [[\varphi ^i,T]f(T),T]+[f(T)[\varphi ^i,T],T]& \\ \hfill +\frac{1}{2}[[\varphi ^i,\varphi ^k]V(T),\varphi ^k]+\frac{1}{2}[V(T)[\varphi ^i,\varphi ^k],\varphi ^k]& \\ \hfill he^{T^2/8}ϵ_{ijkl}\left([\varphi ^j,\varphi ^k][\varphi ^l,T]+[\varphi ^l,T][\varphi ^j,\varphi ^k]\right)=0.& \end{array}$$

Note that the Chern-Simons contribution to the above equations is modified if one seeks a more general class of solutions.

3. Non-commutative $`S^3`$ solutions at $`N=4`$

We will initially consider $`N=4`$ and seek solutions with the ansatz

$$\varphi ^i=a\gamma ^i+ib\gamma ^i\gamma ^5.$$

and

$$T=d\gamma ^5,$$

where the $`\gamma ^i`$ are $`4\times 4`$ hermitian matrices satisfying the $`Spin(4)`$ Clifford algebra, and $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`d`$ are real numbers.

Note that there is a more general $`Spin(4)`$ invariant class of solutions having

$$T=c+d\gamma ^5,$$

For this the ansatz for $`T`$, one has

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f(T)& =q+r\gamma ^5,\hfill \\ \hfill f^{}(T)& =\omega +\lambda \gamma ^5.\hfill \end{array}$$

where the quantities $`q,r,\omega `$ and $`\lambda `$ depend on $`c`$ and $`d`$ in a manner determined by the form of the potential. More explicitly;

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill q& =1/2(f(c+d)+f(cd))\hfill \\ \hfill r& =1/2(f(c+d)f(cd))\hfill \\ \hfill \omega & =1/2(f^{}(c+d)+f^{}(cd))\hfill \\ \hfill \lambda & =1/2(f^{}(c+d)f^{}(cd))\hfill \end{array}$$

Since we restrict ourselves here to the class of solutions for which for which $`c=0`$, and since $`f(T)=f(T)`$, one has $`r=0`$ and

$$\omega =trf^{}(T)=trV^{}(T)=0.$$

Writing $`V(T)=\mu f(T)`$ and inserting the above ansatz into the equations of motion gives:

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \lambda \gamma ^5\left(\mu +\frac{3}{4}\mu R^4+4d^2R^2\right)\hfill \\ \hfill +& \left(8dqR^23he^{d^2/8}R^4\right)\gamma ^5=0.\hfill \end{array}$$

for the $`T`$ equation of motion, and

$$\left(d^2q+\frac{3}{8}\mu qR^2\frac{3}{2}hdR^2\right)(a\gamma ^i+ib\gamma ^i\gamma ^5)=0.$$

for the $`\varphi ^i`$ equations of motion, where

$$R^2=\varphi ^i\varphi ^i=4(a^2+b^2).$$

is the squared radius of the fuzzy $`S^3`$. For solutions of this form note that we can write the above equations of motion as :

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \left(\mu \lambda +\frac{3}{4}\lambda \mu R^4+4d^2R^2\lambda +8dqR^23he^{d^2/8}R^4\right)\frac{T}{d}& =0\hfill \\ \hfill \left(d^2q+\frac{3}{8}\mu qR^2\frac{3}{2}he^{d^2/8}dR^2\right)X^i& =0\hfill \end{array}$$

Since $`c=0`$,

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \mu q=e^{d^2/4},\hfill \\ & \mu \lambda =\frac{d}{2}e^{d^2/4}.\hfill \end{array}$$

Thus if one defines

$$\widehat{h}=e^{d^2/8}h$$

The equations of motion become,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{d}{2}\frac{3}{8}dR^42\frac{d^3}{\mu }R^2+8\frac{d}{\mu }R^23\widehat{h}R^4=0& \\ \hfill \frac{d^2}{\mu }+\frac{3}{8}R^2\frac{3}{2}\widehat{h}dR^2=0& \end{array}$$

These two equations can be solved for $`d(h)`$ and $`R(h)`$. The physical solutions require real positive $`R^2`$.

The energy of the solutions is given by

$$E=4q(\mu +\frac{3}{4}\mu R^4+4d^2R^2)48hdR^4$$

The solutions of interest here are unstable. Therefore unlike the polarization of $`D0`$ into $`D2`$ discussed in  solutions of interest may have higher energy than the trivial solution with $`\varphi ^i=0`$. Both the energies and couplings to Ramond-Ramond forms of these solutions are subject to modifications by higher order terms in the action, which may have to be taken into account in attempts to compare the large $`N`$ solutions with D3-branes. We will discuss solutions of the large $`N`$ generalization of these equations in section 5.

4. Fuzzy $`S^3`$ for general $`N`$

One can generalize the above solutions to larger matrices in a manner which gives a commutative $`S^3`$ in the large $`N`$ limit. This can be done using methods similiar to those used in the construction of the fuzzy $`S^4`$ , with a few crucial differences. In particular, it neccessary to embed the solutions in certain reducible representations of $`Spin(4)`$. In some sense, the fuzzy $`S^3`$ which we obtain can be viewed as a subspace of the fuzzy $`S^4`$

For the fuzzy $`S^4`$, the matrices $`G_\mu `$ satisfying $`G_\mu G_\mu =R^2`$ are embedded in the irreducible symmetric tensor representations of $`Spin(5)`$;

$$G_\mu =\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu 11\mathrm{}1+1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu 1\mathrm{}1\mathrm{}+1\mathrm{}1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \right)_{sym}$$

The index $`\mu `$ runs from $`1`$ to $`5`$. It is convenient to rewrite this as

$$G_\mu =\underset{k}{}\rho _k(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu )P_n$$

where the right hand side is a set of operators acting on the n-fold tensor product $`VV\mathrm{}V`$. The expression $`\rho _k(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu )`$ is the action of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu `$ on the $`k`$’th factor of the tensor product.

$$\rho _k(A)|e_{i_1}e_{i_2}\mathrm{}e_{i_k}\mathrm{}e_{i_n}>=A_{i_k}^{j_k}|e_{i_1}e_{i_2}\mathrm{}e_{j_k}\mathrm{}e_{i_n}>$$

The symmetrization operator $`P_n`$ is given by $`P_n=_{\sigma S_n}\frac{1}{n!}\sigma `$ where $`\sigma `$ acts as :

$$\sigma |e_{i_1}e_{i_2}\mathrm{}e_{i_k}\mathrm{}e_{i_n}>=|e_{i_{\sigma (1)}}e_{i_{\sigma (2)}}\mathrm{}e_{i_{\sigma (n)}}>$$

We wish to construct a fuzzy $`S^3`$ with manifest $`Spin(4)`$ covariance. As a first step in constructing a fuzzy $`S^3`$, we will consider the matrices $`G_i`$ defined above, with index $`i`$ running from $`1`$ to $`4`$. The symmetric tensor representations of $`Spin(5)`$ decompose under $`Spin(4)`$ into a sum of reducible representations. The matrices $`G_i`$ are maps between irreducible representations of $`Spin(4)`$. A fuzzy $`S^3`$ will be defined by matrices $`\widehat{G}_i`$ whose matrix elements are those of $`G_i`$ in a direct sum of irreducible $`Spin(4)`$ representations related by $`G_i`$. The irreducible representations in this direct sum will be fixed by requiring $`\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_i`$ to be proportional to the identity.

Since $`Spin(4)=SU(2)\times SU(2)`$, the irreducible representations are labelled by a pair of spins $`(j_l,j_r)`$. The fundamental spinor representation $`V`$ of $`Spin(5)`$ decomposes under $`Spin(4)`$ into $`(1/2,0)(0,1/2)=P^+VP^{}V`$, where $`P^+`$ and $`P^{}`$ are positive and negative chirality projectors. The symmetric tensor representations of $`Spin(5)`$, $`Sym^n(V)`$, decompose into irreducible representations of $`Spin(4)`$ as follows;

$$Sym(V^n)=_{k=0}^nV_{(\frac{nk}{2},\frac{k}{2})}$$

This can be proved by observing

$$Sym(V^n)=P_nV^n=P_n(P_++P_{})^nV^n=P_n\underset{k}{}(P_{+}^{}{}_{}{}^{k}P_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{nk})_{sym}V^n$$

The dimension of $`Sym^n(V)`$ is $`\frac{(n+1)(n+2)(n+3)}{6}`$. It is easy to check that the above decomposition is consistent with the dimensions of the representations.

$$\underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}(nk+1)(k+1)=\frac{(n+1)(n+2)(n+3)}{6}$$

Since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^iP_+=P_{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^i`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^iP_{}=P_+\mathrm{\Gamma }^i`$, $`G_i`$ is a map between different irreducible representations of $`Spin(4)`$ and vanishes when restricted to a particular irreducible representation. The fuzzy $`S^3`$ will be defined the matrices

$$\widehat{G}_i=P_{}G_iP_{}$$

where $`P_{}`$ is the projector to a reducible representation $``$. We require that $`_{i=1}^4G_iG_i`$ is proportional to the identity within $``$. One can show that $`_{i=1}^4G_iG_i`$ commutes with the $`Spin(4)`$ generators $`_l\rho _l(\sigma _{jk})`$ (see the appendix), where $`\sigma _{ij}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_i\mathrm{\Gamma }_j\mathrm{\Gamma }_j\mathrm{\Gamma }_i`$. By Schur’s lemma, $`_iG_iG_i`$ is proportional to the identity within each irreducible representation2 For $`n=1`$, $`G_iG_i`$ is equal to $`1`$ for every $`i`$, without any need to sum on $`i`$. For large $`n`$ one must sum over $`i`$ to obtain something which is proportional to the identity. This is fortunate, since otherwise one could not obtain a classical $`S^3`$ in the large $`n`$ limit. However, the proportionality factor may differ between them. We must therefore take $``$ to be the direct sum of irreducible representations related by $`G_i`$ and having the same $`_iG_iG_i`$.

In the representation $`(\frac{n+k}{2},\frac{nk}{2})`$, one finds (see the appendix) that

$$\underset{i}{}\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_i=4(n+nkk^2).$$

This is symmetric under $`knk`$. However there is no other degeneracy. Thus $`G_iG_i`$ is proportional to the identity in the representation $`(\frac{k}{2},\frac{nk}{2})(\frac{nk}{2},\frac{k}{2})`$. For $`\widehat{G}_i`$ to be nontrivial in this representation, $`G_i`$ must be a map between it’s irreducible components. This gives $`k=nk\pm 1`$ and

$$=_+_{}=(\frac{n+1}{4},\frac{n1}{4})(\frac{n1}{4},\frac{n+1}{4})$$

The dimension of $``$ is

$$N=\frac{1}{2}(n+1)(n+3).$$

The restriction to this particular sum of $`Spin(4)`$ irreducible representations essentially amounts to considering a subspace of the fuzzy $`S^4`$ of , which previously included $`Spin(4)`$ representations with all values of $`k`$. The fuzzy $`S^4`$ has

$$\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{5}{}}G_\mu G_\mu =n^2+4n.$$

For the fuzzy $`S^3`$ in the representation $``$, we find (see the appendix) that

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{4}{}}\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_i=n^2+4n1$$

Note that in the large $`n`$ limit, the leading term is the same for the $`S^3`$ and the $`S^4`$. Thus the fuzzy $`S^3`$ is a “great sphere” on an equator of the fuzzy $`S^4`$. One can easily check that $`G_5G_5=1`$ when restricted to the representation $``$.

A general form for a fuzzy $`S^3`$ which approaches a classical $`S^3`$ in the large $`n`$ limit is given by matrices

$$\varphi _i=\frac{1}{n}(a\widehat{G}_i+ib\widehat{G}_i(P__+P_{_{}}))=\frac{1}{n}(a\widehat{G}_i+ib\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_5)$$

which is the natural generalization of the $`n=1`$ expression $`\varphi _i=a\mathrm{\Gamma }_i+ib\mathrm{\Gamma }_i\mathrm{\Gamma }_5`$. Since

$$\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_5=\widehat{G}_5\widehat{G}_i,$$

it follows that

$$R^2=\varphi _i\varphi _i=(a^2+b^2)\frac{(n^2+4n1)}{n^2}.$$

The sphere is classical in the large $`n`$ limit because $`\varphi _i`$ has eigenvalues of order 1, whereas

$$[\varphi _i,\varphi _j]=\frac{(a^2+b^2)}{n^2}P_{}\underset{l}{}\rho _l(\sigma _{ij})P_{}$$

has largest eigenvalue of order $`\frac{1}{n}`$.

5. Large $`N`$ equations.

We now insert the ansatz $`\varphi _i=\frac{1}{n}(a\widehat{G}_i+ib\widehat{G}_i\widehat{G}_5)`$ into the equations of motion. For the tachyon, we make the ansatz

$$T=c+d(P__+P_{_{}})=c+d\widehat{G}_5$$

With this ansatz, the relations (3.1) and (3.1) still apply with $`\gamma _5P__+P_{_{}}=\widehat{G}^5`$. Note that for $`c=b=0`$, the tachyon behaves like the fifth embedding coordinate of a fuzzy $`S^4`$, restricted to a particular $`Spin(4)`$ representation. Considering the class of solutions with $`c=0`$, and using properties described in the appendix, one finds the following equations of motion.

The $`T`$ equation of motion is;

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \widehat{G}^5[\mu \lambda +\mu \lambda \frac{(n+1)(n+5)}{(n(n+4)1)^2}R^4+2d^2\lambda \frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{n(n+4)1}R^2\hfill \\ & +4dq\frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{n(n+4)1}4he^{d^2/8}\frac{(n+5)(n+1)}{(n(n+4)1)^2}R^4]=0\hfill \end{array}$$

The $`\varphi `$ equations of motion are;

$$\left(d^2q+\frac{3\mu q}{2}\frac{R^2}{n(n+4)1}2hde^{d^2/8}\frac{R^2(n+2)}{n(n+4)1}\right)\varphi ^i=0$$

6. Solutions

We discuss here some properties of solutions to the above equations. While these solutions certainly have some of the requisite physical properties, we have no convincing identification with integral numbers of spherical D3-branes, as we will elaborate in the following.

At large $`n`$ the equations take the form :

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \mu \lambda +2d^2\lambda R^2+\frac{\mu \lambda }{n^2}R^4\frac{4he^{\frac{d^2}{8}}R^4}{n^2}+4dqR^2=0\hfill \\ & d^2q+\frac{3\mu q}{2}\frac{R^2}{n^2}2he^{d^2/8}d\frac{R^2}{n}=0.\hfill \end{array}$$

We consider solutions with $`d=\frac{\stackrel{~}{d}}{n}`$ and $`R^2=\stackrel{~}{R}^2n`$ with $`\stackrel{~}{d}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$ finite in the large $`n`$ limit. For the potential $`V=e^{\frac{d^2}{4}}`$, one has $`\lambda =\stackrel{~}{d}/2n`$, and $`\mu q=1`$ in the large $`n`$ limit. The leading terms in the equations of motion at large $`n`$ give

$$\stackrel{~}{d}=\frac{3}{4h}$$

and

$$\widehat{R}^2=\frac{\stackrel{~}{d}}{\mu h}$$

Since $`\mu `$ is positive, this gives positive $`R^2`$.

For finite $`n`$, the energy is given by

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill E=& q\frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{2}\left[\mu +\frac{(n+1)(n+5)}{(n(n+4)1)^2}\mu R^4+2\frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{n(n+4)1}d^2R^2\right]\hfill \\ & 2dh\frac{(n+1)^2(n+3)(n+5)}{n^4}\hfill \end{array}$$

Similar remarks as in the $`n=1`$ case regarding stability and corrections apply here.

6.1. Ramond-Ramond couplings

The relation to spherical D3-branes can be explored by a simple argument analogous to the discussion of fuzzy four-spheres . The net brane-charge is zero, however one can determine the number of spherical D3-branes by computing a charge contribution from a single hemisphere.

Recalling  that the 3-brane potential couples to the zero-brane action through the term

$$𝑑t[\varphi _1,\varphi _2][\varphi _3,T]C_{0123}$$

The calculation of the charge of a single hemisphere is closely analogous to that which gives the 4-brane charge in the case of zero-branes polarizing to fuzzy 4-spheres . In our case we have

$$\frac{(2\pi )^4}{8\pi ^2}ϵ_{ijkl}Tr_{1/2}\varphi ^j\varphi ^k[\varphi ^l,T]$$

where $`Tr_{1/2}`$ indicates that the trace is evaluated in the subspace for which the eigenvalues of $`\varphi ^i`$ are positive. At large $`n`$, one finds this to be equal to $`2d`$ times the volume of the $`\varphi ^i>0`$ hemisphere, where $`d`$ is the quantity which enters our ansatz for the tachyon (5.1).

$$\begin{array}{cc}& 2\pi ^2ϵ_{ijkl}Tr_{1/2}\varphi ^j\varphi ^k[\varphi ^l,T]=\hfill \\ & 4\pi ^2d\frac{(n+2)}{n^3}Tr_{1/2}G^iR^3\hfill \\ & d4\pi ^2R^3=2dVol_{1/2}.\hfill \end{array}$$

Thus it appears that $`d`$ is proportional to the number of D3-branes.

Alternatively, one may compute the dipole coupling of of a spherical D3-brane to the Ramond-Ramond four-form and compare it to the coupling of the D0 solution. The couping of $`Q_3`$ spherical D3-branes to the a constant RR $`5`$-form field strength of the form (2.1) is given by

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \mu _3Q_3𝑑t_{S^3}PB(C^{(4)})=\hfill \\ & \mu _3Q_3𝑑t_{S^3}hϵ_{ijkl}X^i\frac{X^j}{\sigma ^\alpha }\frac{X^k}{\sigma ^\beta }\frac{X^l}{\sigma ^\gamma }𝑑\sigma ^\alpha d\sigma ^\beta d\sigma ^\gamma =\hfill \\ & 2\pi ^2\mu _3Q_3hR^4\hfill \end{array}$$

On the other hand the coupling arising for the D0 configuration is proportional to

$$h\mu _0𝑑tϵ_{ijkl}Tr\left[[\varphi ^i,T]\varphi ^j\varphi ^k\varphi ^l\right]$$

which for our ansatz (4.1)(5.1)becomes

$$\begin{array}{cc}& 𝑑tϵ_{ijkl}Tr\left[2d\varphi ^i\varphi ^j\varphi ^k\varphi ^l\right]\hfill \\ & =2dhR^4\frac{(n+1)^2(n+3)(n+5)}{(n^2+4n1)^2}\hfill \end{array}$$

or $`2dhR^4`$ for $`n\mathrm{}`$.

Therefore (up to a numerical factor) the quantity $`d`$ which appears in the Tachyon ansatz (5.1), would be identified with the number of spherical three-branes if such a dual description existed. However, for the large $`n`$ solutions which we have found, this quantity is zero as $`n\mathrm{}`$. Thus we cannot identify these large $`n`$ solutions with spherical D3-branes. Note that for the fuzzy $`S^3`$ ansatz, there are continuous classes of solutions, with $`d`$ depending on $`h`$. In this case, one would never expect a quantization of the dipole moment consistent with a description in terms of integer numbers of D3-branes. Perhaps this situation changes if one considers probe D0-branes in a consistent IIB supergravity background, such as $`ADS_5\times S_5`$ with quantized five-form flux on the $`S^5`$. The polarization of stable branes in an a consistent AdS background was considered in .

7. Other odd non-commutative spheres

The basic ingredients that went into our construction of the non-commutative three-sphere admit a number of generalizations. To understand this it is useful to reformulate our discussion of the non-commutative 3-sphere in a more abstract form. Essentially we needed objects $`X^\mu `$ as matrices in some family of representations of $`SO(4)`$ parametrized by an integer $`n`$. They were identified with maps between representations $`R_1`$ and $`R_2`$. $`R_1`$ was an irreducible representation of $`SO(4)`$ of positive chirality, i.e a representation where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_5`$ takes eigenvalue $`1`$. $`R_2`$ was a representation of negative chirality, i.e a representation where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_5`$ takes eigenvalue $`1`$. We needed a non-zero coupling between $`R_1`$, $`R_2`$ with the vector representation of $`Spin(4)`$. We may think of $`X`$ as the Clebsch-Gordan coupling $`R_1R_2`$ to the vector representation.

Two natural generalizations are suggested by the above. One is to consider odd spheres of other dimensions. For example for $`5`$-spheres we would like to take two representations of $`Spin(6)`$ satisfying the above conditions. Since $`Spin(6)`$ is isomorphic to $`SU(4)`$, we can exploit this to give a simple description of the desired representations. The two chiral four dimensional representations of $`Spin(6)`$ can be identified with the fundamental and the anti-fundamental of $`SU(4)`$. These are represented in Young Tableau notation by a single box, and a column of three boxes respectively. We can take the representation $`R_1`$ to be given by the Young tableau with $`n`$ columns of length $`3`$, and $`n1`$ columns of length $`1`$. The representation $`R_2`$ can be taken to be given by the Young Tableau with $`n1`$ columns of length $`3`$ and $`n`$ columns of length $`1`$.

Another generalization would to be consider q-deformation. We could take as our definition of $`X`$ the Clebsch-Gordans of the appropriate quantum group. It would be interesting to compare such a construction with the quantum spheres of  for example.

8. Summary and Outlook

We have found matrices defining non-commutative 3-spheres with a $`Spin(4)`$ invariance. This construction is applicable for matrices of size $`N=\frac{(n+1)(n+3)}{2}`$, where $`n`$ is odd. These three-spheres can be viewed as a subspace of the non-commutative four-sphere defined in . We have also proposed a general construction of higher dimensional odd fuzzy spheres along these lines. While the construction of  gave a description of non-commutative even spheres as solutions to Matrix Theory (see also  for a variety of fuzzy spheres appearing in Matrix Theory), the description of fluctations of fuzzy spherical branes is left as an open problem. This should be related to the problem of giving a complete characterization of the algebra of functions and differential calculus on the non-commutative sphere. Likewise, we leave for future research the description, in terms of non-commutative geometry, of the fluctuations of the solutions we described. The techniques of  may be useful here.

We have obtained unstable solutions of the IIB D0-brane equations of motion in the presence of a background RR-5 form background. The adjoint scalars are given by the matrices defining the fuzzy $`S^3`$, and the tachyon is related to the fifth matrix coordinate involved in the definition of the fuzzy $`S^4`$ in which the $`S^3`$ is embedded. The tachyon as an extra dimension has been hinted at in several papers  and the full significance of this intriguing geometrical behaviour remains to be understood.

At finite $`n`$, the solutions we find carry an apparent D3 dipole moment. In the large $`n`$ limit, the non-commutative $`S^3`$ becomes a classical $`S^3`$ and the dipole moment vanishes. Thus, contrary to what one may have expected, we can not view these solutions as spherical D3-branes. However, this may simply be a consequence of having considered an inconsistent supergravity background. Note that if one did find solutions which could be regarded as D3-branes on a classical $`S^3`$, then it seems likely that the D0-branes could be described by sphalerons in a dual $`D3`$ description. The correspondance between sphalerons and unstable branes has been discussed, in a different context in \[27,,28\].

It would be very interesting to understand the mechanism which might lead to D3-charge quantized in the standard way. The choice of a consistent supergravity background mentioned above, the geometrical nature of the tachyon in relation to fuzzy 4-spheres, as well as detailed properties of the tachyon dependent couplings to Ramond-Ramond forms in unstable branes might be expected to enter the story.

Odd spheres also appear in the ADS/CFT context and non-commutative versions based on quantum groups have been studied in the context of the stringy exclusion principle . The investigation of the relation between quantum 3-sphere constructions and the non-commutative 3-sphere in this paper is left for the future. Techniques like those of  where a connection between fuzzy 2-sphere and q-2sphere was established may be useful. A different context where odd non-commutative spheres have been discussed recently is . A relation between non-commutative $`S^4`$ and quantum $`S^3`$ also appears in . Earlier discussions of fuzzy spheres appear in . It will be undoubtedly illuminating to undesrtand the physical and mathematical relations between these different constructions of non-comuutative spheres.

Acknowledgements: We wish to thank for pleasant discussions Steve Corley, Amihay Hanany, Antal Jevicki, David Lowe, Robert Myers, Jan Troost and Barton Zwiebach. This research was supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG02/19ER40688-(Task A).

9. Appendix

We describe here some useful formulae. In this section Roman indicies are taken to run from $`1`$ to $`4`$ and Greek indicies to run from $`1`$ to $`5`$. Consider the symmetric tensor product representations of $`Spin(5)`$ :

$$Sym(V^n)=(V_1V_2V_3\mathrm{}V_n)_{sym}$$

where each $`V_\alpha `$ is a $`4`$ dimensional spinor and the symmetrization is as defined in (4.1). The generators of $`Spin(5)`$ are

$$G_{\mu \nu }=\underset{l=1}{\overset{n}{}}\rho _l(\sigma _{\mu \nu })=\sigma _{\mu \nu }11\mathrm{}+1\sigma _{\mu \nu }1\mathrm{}$$

It is easy to verify that

$$[\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{5}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu 11\mathrm{},G_{\mu \nu }]=0$$

Thus in any irreducible representation of $`Spin(5)`$ the matrix $`_{\mu =1}^5\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu 11\mathrm{}`$ is proportional to the identity. In the symmetric tensor representations, this proportionality factor is one, as can be verified by multiplying the whole expression on the left by $`_{\mu =1}^5\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu 11\mathrm{}`$ twice and deriving a cubic equation for the constant using $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-matrix identities. Using this, one finds that matrices $`G^\mu `$ defined in the symmetric tensor representations of $`Spin(5)`$ by

$$G^\mu =\underset{l=1}{\overset{n}{}}\rho _l(\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu )=(\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu 11\mathrm{}+1\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu 1\mathrm{}+\mathrm{})_{sym}$$

satisfy the property

$$\underset{\mu =1}{\overset{5}{}}G^\mu G^\mu =n^2+4n.$$

The symmetric tensor representations of $`Spin(5)`$ decompose under $`Spin(4)`$ as in (4.1)(4.1);

$$Sym(V^n)=P_n\underset{k}{}(P_{+}^{}{}_{}{}^{k}P_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{nk})_{sym}V^n.$$

The matrices of the form

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{4}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^i\mathrm{\Gamma }^i11\mathrm{}=1\mathrm{\Gamma }^5\mathrm{\Gamma }^511\mathrm{}$$

commute with all the $`Spin(4)`$ generators $`G_{ij}`$. If one restricts to one of the $`Spin(4)`$ irreducible representations labelled by $`k`$, then this quantity is proportional to the identity by Schur’s Lemma. Using (9.1) it can be shown that

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{4}{}}G^iG^i=4(n^2+nkk^2),$$

when restricted to the representation labelled by $`k`$.

Let us now consider the reducible $`Spin(4)`$ representation $`(\frac{n+1}{4},\frac{n1}{4})(\frac{n1}{4},\frac{n1}{4})`$ which is the sum of representations with $`k=(n+1)/2`$ and $`k=(n1)/2`$ with odd $`n`$. We write the restriction of $`G^\mu `$ to this reducible representation as $`\widehat{G}^\mu `$. Taking $`T=c+d\widehat{G}^5`$ and $`f(T)=q+r\widehat{G}^5`$, one obtains the following relations for the terms which appear in the equations of motion.

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \widehat{G}^i\widehat{G}^i=n^2+4n1\hfill \\ & [\widehat{G}^i,\widehat{G}^j][\widehat{G}^i,\widehat{G}^j]=4(n+1)(n+5)\hfill \\ & [\widehat{G}^i,T][\widehat{G}^i,T]=2d^2(n+1)(n+3)\hfill \\ & [\widehat{G}^i,\{[\widehat{G}^i,T],f(T)\}]=4dq(n+1)(n+3)\widehat{G}_5\hfill \\ & ϵ_{ijkl}\widehat{G}^i\widehat{G}^j\widehat{G}^k\widehat{G}^l=2(n+1)(n+5)\widehat{G}_5\hfill \\ & [\{f(T),[\widehat{G}^i,T]\},T]=8d^2q\widehat{G}^i\hfill \\ & [\{f(T),[\widehat{G}^i,\widehat{G}^k]\},\widehat{G}^k]=24q\widehat{G}^i\hfill \\ & ϵ_{ijkl}\{[\widehat{G}^j,\widehat{G}^k],[\widehat{G}^l,T]\}=16d(n+2)\widehat{G}^i\hfill \end{array}$$

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# X-rays from the environment of supermassive black holes in active galaxies

## 1 Introduction

Active galaxies (AGN) are believed to be powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes at their centers. X-ray observations currently provide the most powerful way to explore the black hole region of AGN. The bulk energy output of active galactic nuclei is in the X-ray bandpass, and the X-ray properties of AGN, particularly their high luminosity and rapid variability, originally gave the best evidence that supermassive black holes (SMBHs hereafter) do reside at the centers of AGN.

Below, we first summarize the results of X-ray observations of radio-quiet AGN, LINERs and ultraluminous IR galaxies carried out with the ROSAT (Trümper 1983) X-ray observatory111ASCA results on AGN are presented by K. Iwasawa, these proceedings. We then address the X-ray search for SMBHs in non-active galaxies.

## 2 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)

In the course of the ROSAT all-sky survey (Voges et al. 1996), many new AGN have been identified222e.g., Schwope et al. 2000, Wei et al. 1999, Appenzeller et al. 1998, Bade et al. 1995, 1998, confirming that X-ray surveys are very efficient in finding new AGN, and many have been studied in detail in the later phase of pointed observations on selected bright targets. Large-sample studies of radio-quiet quasars gave a mean powerlaw photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{x}2.5`$ and indicated a flattening of the X-ray spectrum with increasing energy/redshift, interpreted as the onset of a new spectral component (e.g., Schartel et al. 1996a,b, Ciliegi & Maccacaro 1996, Yuan et al. 1998). A large sample study of Seyfert galaxies observed during the ROSAT all-sky survey showed the spetra to span a range in powerlaw indices between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{x}=1.6\mathrm{}3.4`$ (Walter & Fink 1993). Many spectra of Seyfert galaxies show complexity in form of soft excesses or ionized absorbers.

X-rays at the centers of AGN originate in the accretion-disk region (see Mushotzky et al. 1993, Collin et al. 2000 for reviews). On larger scales, but still within the nucleus, X-rays might be emitted by a hot intercloud medium at distances of the broad or narrow-line region, BLR or NLR (e.g., Elvis et al. 1990; Ogle et al. 2000).

The X-rays which originate from the accretion-disk region are reprocessed in form of absorption and partial re-emission (e.g., Netzer 1993, 1996, Krolik & Kriss 1995) as they make their way out of the nucleus. The reprocessing bears the disadvantage of veiling the intrinsic X-ray spectral shape, and the spectral disentanglement of many different potentially contributing components is not always easy. However, reprocessing also offers the unique chance to study the physical conditions and dynamical states of the reprocessing material, like: the ionized absorber; the torus, which plays an important role in AGN unification schemes (Antonucci 1993, see also Elvis 2000); and also the BLR and NLR. Detailed modeling of the reprocessor(s) is also necessary to recover the shape and properties of the intrinsic X-ray spectrum. In the soft X-ray bandpass, the best-studied reprocessor so far is the so-called ‘warm absorber’, highly ionized gas in the circum-nuclear environment. This is because it is nearly completely ionized in Hydrogen and Helium, and does not absorb at very soft energies, like torus, BLR and NLR will, if they are located along the line-of-sight.

With ROSAT, the signatures of a warm absorber, absorption edges of highly ionized oxygen ions at $`E_{\mathrm{OVII}}=0.74`$ keV and $`E_{\mathrm{OVII}}=0.87`$ keV, were first detected in MCG-6-30-15 (Nandra & Pounds 1992). Detailed studies of many other AGN followed, with the following results (see Komossa 1999 for a review on warm absorbers):

Ionized absorbers are observed in $``$50% of the well-studied Seyfert galaxies333e.g., MCG-6-30-15, Nandra & Pounds 1992; NGC 3783, Turner et al. 1993; NGC 5548, Nandra et al. 1993; NGC 4051, Pounds et al. 1994; NGC 3227, Komossa & Fink 1997b; a more complete list of objects including observations from other X-ray satellites is given by Komossa (1999). They are less abundant in quasars (e.g., Ulrich & Molendi 1996, Laor et al. 1997), but do occur in some444e.g., 3C351, Fiore et al. 1993; 3C212, Mathur 1994; MR 2251-178, Komossa 2001. In many Seyfert galaxies, warm absorbers replaced the soft excess, i.e., steep X-ray spectra in the soft X-ray band, originally thought to stem from black-body-like soft excess emission turned out to be caused by the presence of warm absorbers.

From the general lack of rapid variability in response to intrinsic luminosity variations, low densities of the absorbers were generally inferred. For example, the limits on density and location of the ionized material in NGC 4051 are $`n_\mathrm{H}\text{ }<`$ $`3\times 10^7`$cm-3 and $`r\text{ }>3\times 10^{16}`$ cm, its column density is $`N_\mathrm{w}10^{22.7}`$ cm-2, and its electron temperature is a few 105 K (Komossa & Fink 1997a). Several approaches were made to assess the thermal stability of the warm absorber in the context of multi-phase cloud equilibrium models (e.g. Reynolds & Fabian 1995, Komossa & Fink 1997a,b), addressing the possibility that the ionized material is in equilibrium with a hotter (or cooler) gas phase. Results are summarized in Fig. 1.

Whereas the existence of warm absorbers was first deduced from X-ray spectra, there is now evidence that the same material also shows up in other spectral bands, and the multi-wavelength approach is a powerful one. There is good evidence that the dust which causes the optical reddening of several AGN is mixed with the ionized absorber (Komossa & Bade 1998 and references therein; see Tab. 1 of Komossa 1999 for a list of dusty warm absorbers). Further, several AGN have been presented where UV- and X-ray warm absorber are likely one and the same component, or are related to each other (e.g., Mathur 1997 and references therein).

Finally, warm absorbers have been invoked to explain some otherwise puzzling observations like the dramatic spectral variability of the Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy RXJ0134-4258 (Komossa & Meerschweinchen 2000), or the apparent huge excess cold X-ray absorption in high-redshift quasars (Schartel et al. 1997, Fabian et al. 2001).

Absorption features at $``$1.1 keV (e.g., Ulrich & Molendi 1996) have been interpreted in terms of relativistic outflow of the ionized medium (Leighly et al. 1997, see also Brandt et al. 1994), but several alternative explanations – most of them still linked to a warm absorber albeit in a different way – have been suggested (e.g., Ulrich et al. 1999, Nicastro et al. 1999, Turner et al. 1999).

Recent Chandra observations of the Seyfert galaxies NGC 5548 and NGC 3783 revealed a rich absorption line spectrum (Kaastra et al. 2000, Kaspi et al. 2000) and demonstrate the power of high-resolution spectroscopy to probe the physics of the ionized gas in the nuclei of AGN.

In summary, the study of the ionized absorbers provides a wealth of information about the nature of the warm absorber itself, its relation to other components of the active nucleus, and the intrinsic AGN X-ray spectral shape, and leads to a better understanding of the black hole region of AGN, and its cosmic evolution.

## 3 LINER galaxies

LINER (Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-Line Region) galaxies are characterized by their optical emission line spectrum which shows a lower degree of ionization than AGN (Heckman 1980). Their major power source and line excitation mechanism have been a subject of lively debate ever since their discovery. LINERs manifest the most common type of activity in the local universe. If powered by accretion, they probably represent the low-luminosity end of the quasar phenomenon, and their presence has relevance to, e.g., the evolution of quasars, the faint end of the Seyfert luminosity function, the soft X-ray background, and the presence of SMBHs in nearby galaxies.

The soft X-ray properties of LINERs are inhomogeneous (Komossa et al. 1999, and references therein). Whereas the spectra of about 50% of them are best described by AGN-like powerlaws, the others are dominated by thermal Raymond-Smith emission with evidence that the spectra are more complex than emission from single-temperature gas in collisional-ionization equilibrium. X-ray luminosities are in the range $``$1038-41 erg/s (for comparison: Seyfert 1 galaxies and quasars typically exceed 1042 erg/s). The general absence of short-time scale (hours-weeks) variability is consistent with the suggestion that LINERs accrete in the advection-dominated mode (e.g, Yi & Boughn 1998, 1999, and references therein).

## 4 Ultraluminous Infrared galaxies (ULIRGs)

ULIRGs, characterized by their huge power-output in the infrared which exceeds 10$`{}_{}{}^{12}L_{}^{}`$ (Sanders & Mirabel 1996), are powered by massive starbursts or SMBHs. The discussion, which one actually dominates received a lot of attention in recent years (e.g., Joseph 1999, Sanders 1999).

Many distant SCUBA sources, massive and dusty galaxies, are ULIRG equivalents at high redshift. Local ULIRGs are ideal laboratories to study the physics of galaxy formation and the processes of IGM enrichment (e.g., Heckman 1999), and the physics of superwinds (Breitschwerdt & Komossa 2000 and references therein) driven by the nuclear starbursts.

With a redshift $`z=0.024`$ and a far-infrared luminosity of $`10^{12}L_{}`$, NGC 6240 is one of the nearest members of the class of ULIRGs. Whereas X-rays from distant Hyperluminous IR galaxies, HyLIRGs, were not detected by Wilman et al. (1999), and the ULIRGs in the study of Rigopoulou et al. (1996) were X-ray weak, NGC 6240 turned out to be exceptionally X-ray luminous. It is the most luminous emitter in extended soft X-rays among ULIRGs (Komossa et al. 1998). Starburst-driven superwinds are the most likely interpretation of the extended emission (see Schulz & Komossa 1999 for alternatives), albeit being pushed to their limits to explain the huge power output (Schulz et al. 1998).

## 5 X-ray search for SMBHs in non-active galaxies

Do SMBHs exist at the centers of all galaxies ? This question is relevant for, e.g., the study of the formation and evolution of galaxies and AGN in general (see Kormendy & Richstone 1995, Schulz & Komossa 1999 for reviews).

One efficient method to search for such usually quiescent SMBHs in nearby, non-active galaxies is to make use of the expected flares from tidally disrupted stars (e.g., Lidskii & Ozernoi 1979, Rees 1988, 1989), and the first excellent candidates for tidal disruption events in optically non-active galaxies have been discovered in the last few years (e.g., Bade et al. 1996, Komossa & Bade 1999). Depending on its orbits, a star approaching a SMBH will be tidally disrupted if

$$r_\mathrm{t}r_{}(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_{}})^{\frac{1}{3}},$$
(1)
where $`r_\mathrm{t}`$ is the tidal radius, and $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ the black hole mass. The star is first heavily distorted, then disrupted. About half of the gaseous debris will be unbound and gets lost from the system (Young et al. 1977). The rest will be eventually accreted by the black hole (Cannizzo et al. 1990, Loeb & Ulmer 1997). The debris, first spread over a number of orbits, quickly circularizes (Rees 1988, Cannizzo et al. 1990) due to the action of strong shocks when the most tightly bound debris interacts with other parts of the stream (Kim et al. 1999). The process is accompanied by a flare of electromagnetic radiation with the maximum in the UV or EUV spectral region, and with a duration of months to years.

The giant-amplitude X-ray outbursts which have recently been discovered with ROSAT from several non-active galaxies were interpreted in terms of such tidal disruption events (e.g., Bade et al. 1996, Komossa & Bade 1999, Komossa & Greiner 1999). The X-ray emission of these galaxies varied by up to a factor $``$200 (NGC 5905) and they reached X-ray luminosities as large as 1044 erg/s (RXJ1242-1119); a summary of the observations is given in Table 1.

These flares enable us to investigate the very vicinity of the SMBH. Increased sensitivity of future X-ray instruments will allow to follow the disruption and accretion process in detail, and study the strongly relativistic effects related to them (e.g., they depend on relativistic precession effects around the Kerr metric).

## Acknowledgments

The ROSAT project has been supported by the German Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF/DLR) and the Max-Planck-Society. Preprints of this and related papers can be retrieved at http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/$``$skomossa/


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# Pinning of stripes in cuprate superconductors

## I Introduction

During the last decade evidence emerged from theoretical work and from experiments on cuprates and closely related nickelates for the existence of striped structures within the $`M`$O2 ($`M=`$ Cu, Ni) planes. These stripes are highly correlated states of holes which are introduced into the planes by doping and which order into a unidirectional charge-density wave (CDW, wave length $`a`$) that may be accompanied by a simultaneous spin-density wave of period $`2a`$ in the sublattice magnetization of the antiferromagnetic metallic spins. Qualitatively, one may think of stripes as parallel strings of holes that constitute an antiphase boundary for spin order.

Particular interest in these stripes arises from the possible interplay between these stripes and superconductivity. Thereby it is important to distinguish between “dynamic” and “static” stripes. While there is evidence that superconductivity can coexist with both dynamic and static stripes, static stripes tend to suppress superconductivity, in contrast to dynamic stripes. Therefore the study of the structure and dynamics of stripes is of principal importance.

Various phenomenological pictures have been developed for the theoretical description of stripes. While charge and spin order are naturally described within a Landau theory, the aspect that stripes act as magnetic domain walls suggests to describe them as string-like objects. In the ideally ordered case these strings form a periodic array. Dynamic fluctuations are generated by thermal and quantum effects, whereas potentials tend to suppress dynamic fluctuations while they may reduce or increase static conformations of the stripes.

In such phenomenological models, the crystalline structure of the underlying atomic lattice (period $`b`$) has to be taken into account by a periodic potential, which tends to increase the positional order of the stripe array since is can be the source of lock-in effects. On the other hand, the spatially inhomogeneous distribution of dopants provides a disorder potential for the stripes because of the (screened) Coulomb interaction between dopants and holes. For low enough temperatures, these dopants can be considered as quenched.

Pinning by the periodic potential is of particular interest since lock-in effects might explain the special role of certain values for the stripe spacing. In the cuprate system La2-xSrxCuO4, the mismatch $`\delta `$ of magnetic Bragg satellite peaks has a nonzero value only beyond a threshold doping $`x_c0.04`$, where $`\delta x`$ holds. Eventually a saturation value $`\delta =\frac{1}{8}`$ is observed for $`x0.12`$. Since the mismatch $`\delta `$ is related to the lattice and CDW periods via $`\delta =b/2a`$, it allows for a natural explanation of the “$`x=\frac{1}{8}`$-problem”: Since at $`\delta =\frac{1}{8}`$ the periods of the CDW and the Cu spacings have an integer ratio $`p:=a/b=4`$ this saturation could be a commensuration effect. Similarly, the nickelate system La2-xSrxNiO4+y shows anomalous thermodynamic behavior at the values $`p=2,3`$ which seem to be stable over certain respective ranges of the hole concentration $`x+2y`$. Even more, evidence was reported for plateaus of the mismatch as a function temperature at rational values $`\delta =\frac{3}{22}`$, $`\frac{5}{36}`$ in La2NiO4.125.

On the other hand, the stripe array can also be pinned by disorder. Therefore it is important to take a closer look at the competitive pinning by the periodic atomic lattice and by disorder in order to understand to what extent lock-in effects can persist. A first step in this direction was made by Hasselmann et al. who focus on a single stripe. However, since a single stripe and a stripe array differ in dimensionality one expects qualitatively distinct behavior of the response of the system to disorder.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of periodic and disorder potentials on the structural order of the two-dimensional stripe array on large scales. Quantum fluctuations turn out to be irrelevant in the presence of disorder, i.e. the system behaves essentially as a classical stripe array. We find that a locked state with long-ranged positional order can exist only in the absence of disorder. Disorder always leads to unlocking and a state with short-ranged positional order where dislocations proliferate.

The outline of this article is as follows. In Sec. II we establish an elastic model for the quantum stripe array with periodic and pinning potentials. The effects of these potentials are discussed in Sec. III in the classical limit. In Sec. IV we demonstrate the irrelevance of quantum fluctuations. Our conclusions are drawn in Sec. V where we discuss the relation of our work to previous work, the role of topological defects and implications for experiments.

## II The Model

We describe the stripe system as an array of interacting quantum strings. The strings are assumed to be aligned in $`y`$ direction and to have an average spacing $`a`$ in $`x`$ direction. In the following we ignore topological defects in the array, the role of which will be discussed in Sec. V. Then the stripe array can be considered as an elastic system. The displacement field $`u`$ represents a bosonic collective mode of the electron system. Its fluctuations are governed by a (“reduced”) dynamic action

$`𝒮`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}/T}}𝑑\tau \left\{{\displaystyle d^2r\frac{\mu }{2}(_\tau u)^2}+\right\}.`$ (1)
The action is formulated using the imaginary time (we set $`k_\mathrm{B}=1`$). We identify $`𝐫=(x,y)`$, $`\mu `$ is a mass density and the Hamiltonian $``$ has a contribution from the elastic energy

$`_{\mathrm{el}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^2r\frac{\gamma }{2}(\mathbf{}u)^2}`$ (2)
with a stiffness constant $`\gamma `$ which includes the line tension of the strings as well as their interaction. Besides a contributions of entropic nature, the main contribution to this interaction will stem from the Coulomb interaction between the stripes. A further contribution arises from a crystal field that aligns the stripes in $`y`$ direction. A priori, the stiffness can be anisotropic with an elastic energy density $`\gamma _x(_xu)^2+\gamma _y(_yu)^2`$. To simplify the analysis, such an anisotropy can be removed by rescaling the $`y`$ coordinate. Then the effective isotropic stiffness constant is related to the original anisotropic constants through $`\gamma =\sqrt{\gamma _x\gamma _y}`$. Note that $`\gamma _x`$ is dependent on the stripe spacing $`a`$, i.e., on doping. With increasing distance $`a`$ between the stripes $`\gamma `$ will shrink.

We will examine the coupling of the stripe array to the periodic potential $`U(x)`$ generated by the atomic structure as well as to a random potential $`V(x,y)`$ due to the interaction between the holes and the dopants which may be considered quenched at low temperatures. The corresponding energy contributions read

$`_U={\displaystyle d^2r\rho (𝐫)U(x)},_V={\displaystyle d^2r\rho (𝐫)V(x,y)}`$ (3)
in terms of the stripe density

$`\rho (𝐫,\tau ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}\left\{{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}e^{iQ_m[xu(𝐫,\tau )]}_xu(𝐫,\tau )\right\}`$ (4)
where $`Q_m:=2\pi m/a`$ are reciprocal lattice vectors of the stripe array. The elastic and disorder pinning energies of the stripe array are similar to those of vortex lines in planar type-II superconductors. A recent review of the latter system can be found in Ref. .

$`U`$ is assumed to be periodic, $`U(x)=U(x+b)`$, with a period $`b<a`$ (the modulation along the stripes is negligible for our purposes). For simplicity we take $`U(x)`$ as an even function (this restriction is for the simplicity of our analysis but not essential for the results)

$`U(x)={\displaystyle \underset{n1}{}}U_n\mathrm{cos}(pQ_nx)`$ (5)
with $`p>1`$. We assume that the random potential $`V(x,y)`$ is Gaussian distributed with zero average and a variance

$`\overline{V(𝐫)V(\mathrm{𝟎})}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{\sqrt{2\pi }\xi }}e^{x^2/2\xi ^2}\delta (y)`$ (6)
with a correlation length $`\xi `$ and a weight $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$.

Subsequently we will establish the global phase diagram for the total system with a partition sum

$`𝒵`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟[u]e^S}.`$ (7)
Since the system without pinning provides an important reference point we start with a brief discussion of thermal and quantum fluctuations of the displacement. There is a characteristic length scale $`\mathrm{}_T:=\sqrt{\mathrm{}^2\gamma /T^2\mu }`$ beyond which thermal fluctuations dominate over quantum fluctuations. A related temperature scale $`T_a:=\sqrt{\mathrm{}^2\gamma /a^2\mu }`$ is defined by the coincidence $`\mathrm{}_T=a`$. In terms of these scales, the displacement fluctuations in systems with a large size $`L\mathrm{}_T`$ are obtained as

$`u^2\{\begin{array}{cc}{\displaystyle \frac{T}{2\pi \gamma }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{L}{a}}\hfill & \text{ for }TT_a,\hfill \\ {\displaystyle \frac{T}{2\pi \gamma }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{L}{\mathrm{}_T}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2a\sqrt{\pi \gamma \mu }}}\hfill & \text{ for }TT_a.\hfill \end{array}`$ (10)
Thus, while the unpinned stripe array is flat (i.e., $`u^2`$ is finite for $`L\mathrm{}`$) at $`T=0`$, it is logarithmically rough (i.e., $`u^2\mathrm{ln}L`$ for $`L\mathrm{}`$) at any finite temperature.

## III Classical limit ($`\mathrm{}=0`$)

For the analysis of the effects of the potentials it is convenient to examine the various limiting cases defined by the relative strength of thermal fluctuations, quantum fluctuations, periodic pinning and disorder pinning. We start from the consideration of the classical limit $`\mathrm{}0`$ acting on the $`\mathrm{}`$ appearing explicitly in Eq. (1) but not on possible implicit dependences of other model parameters. In this limit temporal fluctuations become negligible and one has to examine the system governed by the Hamiltonian

$``$ $`=`$ $`_{\mathrm{el}}+_U+_V.`$ (11)
In the absence of the potentials $`U`$ and $`V`$ thermal fluctuations lead to an average displacement that diverges logarithmically with the system size $`L`$ \[cf. Eq. (10) for $`T_a=0`$\] which means that the stripe structure has only quasi-long-range order in the position of the stripes.

### A Periodic potential only ($`V=0`$)

To analyze the relevance of a periodic pinning potential we focus on commensurabilities of low order with integer $`p`$. In this case the stripe structure can lock into the periodic potential at low temperatures while it unlocks at large temperatures. The transition between these two states is analogous to the roughening transition of crystal surfaces. We follow the standard analysis of the roughening transition (see Ref.  and references therein) in order to obtain the transition temperature $`T_\mathrm{R}`$. Combining Eqs. (3), (4) and (10) we find an average potential energy

$`_U`$ $``$ $`L^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}{\displaystyle \underset{n1}{}}U_n\mathrm{exp}\left(p^2Q_n^2u^2/2\right)`$ (13)
$``$ $`L^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}{\displaystyle \underset{n1}{}}U_n\left({\displaystyle \frac{L}{a}}\right)^{p^2Q_n^2T/4\pi \gamma }`$ (14)
for an infinitesimally weak periodic potential. The lowest harmonic $`n=1`$ gives the most relevant contribution to this energy. The stripes are locked when the average potential energy does not vanish in the limit $`L\mathrm{}`$, i.e., for temperatures below

$`T_\mathrm{R}={\displaystyle \frac{2\gamma a^2}{\pi p^2}}.`$ (15)
The transition temperature increases with increasing strength of the potential since $`\gamma `$ is renormalized to larger values. The effective parameters on large length scales $`L=ae^l`$ are described by renormalization group (RG) flow equations

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dl}}U_1`$ $`=`$ $`(2{\displaystyle \frac{\pi p^2T}{a^2\gamma }})U_1,`$ (17)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dl}}\gamma `$ $`=`$ $`A{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ^4p^2}{\gamma a^2}}U_1^2,`$ (18)
with a temperature dependent coefficient $`A`$ which is of order one near the roughening transition. These equations lead to the phase diagram sketched in Fig. 1.

The case with noninteger $`p`$ involves the analysis of higher order commensurable states or incommensurable states. In such cases the periodic potential is less relevant than in the low order commensurate cases examined above. Since we find later on that the periodic potential is irrelevant in the presence of disorder for integer $`p2`$ this will be true also for noninteger $`p`$. For more details on commensurate/incommensurate systems the interested reader is referred to Refs. .

### B Pinning potential only ($`U=0`$)

In order to discuss the relevance of disorder pinning, we start from the Hamiltonian $`_V`$ as given in Eq. (3), discard rapidly oscillating terms that are irrelevant on scales much larger than $`a`$ and keep only the most relevant term $`m=1`$ in the sum over harmonics for the density (see Ref.  for intermediate steps). After averaging over disorder we find the effective replica pinning Hamiltonian

$`_V^{\mathrm{rep}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \beta }{}}{\displaystyle }d^2r\{{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^2\sigma }{2T}}\mathbf{}u^\alpha \mathbf{}u^\beta `$ (20)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{a^2T}}\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{a}}[u^\alpha (𝐫)u^\beta (𝐫)]\}`$
Disorder couples to the $`_xu`$ term in the density Eq. (4) as a random field and gives rise to the first term in Eq. (20) with a value $`\sigma =\frac{\pi \mathrm{\Delta }}{a^2\gamma ^2}`$. (Note that strictly speaking this term should contain only $`_xu^\alpha _xu^\beta `$ in the unrenormalized Hamiltonian; the form written in Eq. (20) anticipates that renormalization generates a random field coupling to both components of the gradient.) Similar to the estimate for the roughening temperature above, one can estimate the relevance of $`_V^{\mathrm{rep}}`$ from its average with respect to $`_{\mathrm{el}}`$,

$`_V^{\mathrm{rep}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha ,\beta =1}{\overset{N}{}}}L^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{a^2T}}\mathrm{exp}(2\pi ^2[u^\alpha u^\beta ]^2/a^2)`$
$`=`$ $`L^2N(N1){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{a^2T}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{L}{a}}\right)^{\frac{2\pi }{a^2}\frac{T}{\gamma }},`$
where we used $`u^\alpha (𝐫)u^\beta (𝐫)=\delta ^{\alpha \beta }\frac{1}{2\pi }\frac{T}{\gamma }\mathrm{ln}\frac{L}{a}`$. For temperatures above

$$T_{\mathrm{SR}}=\frac{\gamma a^2}{\pi }$$
(21)
the average disorder energy vanishes on large scales. Below, disorder shows to be relevant and its effects have to be calculated by renormalization group techniques. Note that

$`T_{\mathrm{SR}}{\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2}}T_\mathrm{R}.`$ (22)
This relation becomes an identity if the renormalization of $`\gamma `$ due to the presence of the potentials can be neglected. Then $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}>T_\mathrm{R}`$ for $`p>\sqrt{2}`$.

Cardy and Ostlund were the first to derive RG equations near the transition and Villain and Fernandez studied the flow of parameters to their large-scale values at zero temperature. A concise summary of these two approaches is given in Ref. . We combine the flow equations for these two temperature ranges by the interpolation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dl}}`$ $`=`$ $`c_1{\displaystyle \frac{a^2\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{T^2\gamma ^2a^4+\mathrm{\Delta }(\gamma ^2a^4+c_2\mathrm{\Delta })}},`$ (24)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Delta }}{dl}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(2{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi T}{\gamma a^2}}\right)\mathrm{\Delta }2{\displaystyle \frac{c_2\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{\gamma ^2a^4+c_2\mathrm{\Delta }}}.`$ (25)
The numbers $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ are of order unity and depend only weakly on temperature. $`\gamma `$ is not renormalized due to a statistical symmetry, just like $`\sigma `$ does not feed back to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. This holds for the replica Hamiltonian (20) which is a good approximation on large length scales. Smaller scales will weakly renormalize the stiffness $`\gamma `$ to larger values and generate additional irrelevant terms. From the flow equations, $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}=\gamma a^2/\pi `$ is identified as the temperature above which $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is renormalized to zero. Nevertheless, disorder is marginal for $`T>T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ since $`\sigma `$ takes a finite fixed-point value. Thus, here one has displacement fluctuations

$$\overline{u^2}=\frac{1}{2\pi }\left(\frac{T}{\gamma }+\sigma \right)\mathrm{ln}\frac{L}{a}.$$
(26)
Below the transition temperature ($`TT_{\mathrm{SR}}`$), $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ flows to a finite fixed-point value and $`d\sigma /dl`$ becomes constant. $`\sigma `$ thus asymptotically has a logarithmic dependence on the scale $`L`$ and gives the dominant contribution to the fluctuations

$$\overline{[u(𝐫)u(\mathrm{𝟎})]^2}a^2\chi \mathrm{ln}^2\frac{r}{a}.$$
(27)
Slightly below $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$, $`\chi (1T/T_{\mathrm{SR}})^2`$. This squared-logarithmic roughness (27) defines the superrough (SR) phase. In this phase thermal fluctuations can still give a logarithmic contribution to the correlator (27) which – however – is sub-dominant.

### C With complete potential

In the presence of both a disorder potential and a periodic pinning potential it is not immediately clear which one will prevail in what part of the phase diagram. At first sight it seems to be possible to have a flat phase, a $`\mathrm{ln}`$-rough phase, or a $`\mathrm{ln}^2`$-rough phase. We assume that $`U`$ and $`V`$ are weak such that a renormalization of the stiffness $`\gamma `$ as well as of $`T_\mathrm{R}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ is negligible. Then one always has $`T_\mathrm{R}<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ for $`p>\sqrt{2}`$. Thus, at high temperatures $`T>T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ the system will be logarithmically rough since both $`U`$ and $`V`$ are irrelevant. At intermediate temperatures in the interval $`T_\mathrm{R}<T<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$, $`V`$ is relevant while $`U`$ is irrelevant with respect to thermal fluctuations. This suggests that the system is superrough. Although we ultimately find this to be true (see below), the argument needs to be refined since it is no longer sufficient that $`U`$ is irrelevant with respect to thermal fluctuations. Instead, we one has to argue that $`U`$ is irrelevant at the disorder-dominated, superrough fixed point. Eventually, for $`T<T_\mathrm{R}`$ one might expect to find a superrough phase if $`U`$ is weak compared to $`V`$ and a flat phase if $`V`$ is weak compared to $`U`$. However, the following arguments show that a flat phase is not stable in the presence of disorder and that superroughness should persist for all $`T<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$.

In order to argue that a flat phase cannot exist for arbitrarily weak $`V`$ and that the stripe array is superrough for all $`T<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$, we show (i) that weak periodic potentials ($`UV`$) are irrelevant at the superrough fixed point and (ii) that arbitrarily weak disorder ($`VU`$) will roughen the stripe array even for $`T<T_\mathrm{R}`$, i.e. that disorder is relevant at the flat-phase fixed point, which implies that $`U`$ is renormalized to zero and the system is superrough on large scales.

Consideration (i). For $`UV`$ the irrelevance of a periodic potential follows from an analysis in analogy to the one in Sec. III A. We assume that the disorder-induced fluctuations of the displacement field are Gaussian with a correlator $`\overline{u^2}\frac{1}{2}a^2\chi \mathrm{ln}^2(L/a)`$ \[which is implied by Eq. (27)\]. This replaces the thermal correlator in Eq. (13). This now leads to

$`\overline{_U}L^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}{\displaystyle \underset{n1}{}}U_n\left({\displaystyle \frac{L}{a}}\right)^{\pi ^2n^2p^2\chi \mathrm{ln}(L/a)}`$ (28)
and the average periodic pinning energy vanishes for large system sizes.

Consideration (ii). The situation $`VU`$ is more subtle. We assume that the stripes are locked into a flat state. We neglect thermal fluctuations which would renormalize $`U`$ to smaller values. For simplicity of our argument we assume that $`p=2`$ although the argument can be generalized to any $`p>1`$. In addition, we retain only the most relevant, lowest harmonic of the periodic pinning energy,

$`_U{\displaystyle \frac{U_1}{a}}{\displaystyle d^2r\mathrm{cos}\frac{2\pi p}{a}u(𝐫)}.`$ (29)
In the absence of $`V`$ all flat states $`u(𝐫)=nb`$ with some integer $`n`$ would be equivalent. Disorder certainly breaks this degeneracy and one might expect the stripe array to find a ground state where $`u(𝐫)`$ fluctuates only weakly around $`na`$ with some particular $`n`$, say $`n=0`$. However, one can show that the ground state is not given by small fluctuations within this particular “valley” $`n=0`$ but that solitons (i.e., local areas where $`u(𝐫)\delta nb`$ with a shift $`\delta n0`$, cf. Fig. 3) are preferred energetically. The proliferation of a large number of such solitons implies the irrelevance of $`U`$ and hence the superroughness of the stripe array on large scales.

We now examine a disk-like soliton of Radius $`R`$ and estimate its elastic energy cost and typical gain of pinning energy in order to decide whether such solitons are favorable. From an energetical point of view the creation of $`\delta n=1`$ solitons is equivalent to the creation of a magnetic domain in a random-field Ising model. For a strong periodic pinning potential, $`U_1\gamma a`$, the soliton has a narrow border of width $`\mathrm{}_U\sqrt{a\gamma /U_1}b`$ and of an energy per unit length $`ϵ\sqrt{U_1a\gamma }/p`$. Thus the elastic energy cost is proportional to the border length, $`E_{\mathrm{el}}ϵR`$. In the area of the soliton the strings are exposed to a different disorder potential $`V`$ (we assume the disorder correlation length to be small, $`\xi a`$). Then the typical energy gain is proportional to the square root of the area $`E_V\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }R^2/a\xi }`$. This gain is larger than the elastic energy cost for solitons of all sizes for a disorder strength beyond a threshold value

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{c}a\xi ϵ^2.$$
(30)
However, for large solitons one has to take into account that the soliton border will be roughened by disorder. The equivalent roughening of domain walls in the random field Ising model was studied in Refs. . As a consequence, the border line tension $`ϵ`$ is renormalized to zero on a finite length scale

$$\mathrm{}_ϵa\mathrm{exp}\left(c\frac{a\xi ϵ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }}\right),$$
(31)
where $`c`$ is a constant of order unity. The creation of solitons of a size $`R`$ larger than $`\mathrm{}_ϵ`$ is thus energetically favorable. Overlapping solitons of unbounded size imply a roughness of the stripe array, provided the sum of the shifts $`_i\delta n_i`$ at a given position increases with the number of solitons (enumerated by the index $`i`$) that include this site. In principle, the interaction between solitons could lead to a compensation of the shifts between pairs of solitons. However, the interaction between the solitons is short-ranged on the scale $`\mathrm{}_U`$ and it cannot compete with a disorder energy that discriminates between a shift $`\delta n_i=1`$ and a $`\delta n_i=1`$ for each soliton. Although the pinning energy of these two states is identical in the bulk area, the disorder energy of these two solitons is different in the border region and leads to an energy contribution proportional to $`\sqrt{R}`$. Therefore the multiple creation of large and overlapping solitons leads to uncorrelated contributions to shifts $`\delta n`$ and therefore implies the roughness of the stripe array on scales beyond $`\mathrm{}_ϵ`$. In this sense $`U`$ is irrelevant on large scales in the presence of arbitrarily weak $`V`$, although on small scales the stripes will be confined to valleys of $`U`$. Since $`U`$ is irrelevant, the stripe array will be superrough as in the absence of $`U`$.

Although the case $`p=1`$ appears not to be of physical relevance for striped systems, we add as a side remark that for $`p=1`$ a flat phase can exist. In this case the elastic energy cost $`R`$ of a soliton cannot be compensated by a disorder energy which no longer has a bulk contribution $`R`$ but only a border contribution $`\sqrt{R}`$.

Strictly speaking, we have shown the irrelevance of $`U`$ only for integer values of $`p`$. Since noninteger rational values of $`p`$ would correspond to commensurabilities of higher order, they are even more susceptible to the destruction of long-range order by $`U`$.

It is interesting to note that the absence of a flat phase for $`p>1`$ is peculiar to two dimensions. In dimensions $`2<d<4`$ a flat phase is stable for disorder weaker than a threshold value. Therefore, a stack of planar stripe arrays with a finite coupling between the planes will exhibit also a flat phase for a disorder strength below a certain threshold value.

## IV Adding quantum fluctuations

Now we finally study how the potentials $`U`$ and $`V`$ affect the elastic string model taking into account its quantum mechanical nature. In order to analyze whether these potentials are relevant at all, the scaling arguments used in section III can be applied analogously to the dynamic action. Since the displacement correlations of the unpinned array are qualitatively different for $`T=0`$ (where the array is flat) and $`T>0`$ (where the array is rough) these cases will be discussed separately.

### A At zero temperature

In this section we focus on the case with disorder but without a periodic potential. Before we turn to the analysis of this case, it is worthwhile to point out that this system is essentially a two-dimensional “Bose glass.” Because of an analogy between a $`d`$-dimensional bosonic problem at zero temperature and a classical $`(d+1)`$-dimensional problem a finite temperature, superconducting vortices in the presence of columnar pinning centers provide another equivalent system that has received a lot of recent attention. The problem at hand, a bosonic one-component displacement field at $`T=0`$, is equivalent to a stack of classical elastic layers which was studied by Balents. According to his analysis – which is restricted to dimensions close to $`d=4`$ – the displacement field is logarithmically rough. We now focus on two dimensions because characteristic modifications leading to superroughness are to be expected.

The analysis of the disorder pinning is most convenient using the replicated action

$`𝒮_V^{\mathrm{rep}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \beta }{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau d\tau ^{}d^2r\{{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^2\sigma }{2\mathrm{}^2}}\mathbf{}u^\alpha (𝐫,\tau )\mathbf{}u^\beta (𝐫,\tau ^{})`$ (33)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{a^2\mathrm{}^2}}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}[u^\alpha (𝐫,\tau )u^\beta (𝐫,\tau ^{})]\}`$
where

$`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u)=\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{a}}u`$ (34)
if we retain only the lowest harmonic of the stripe density as most relevant term as in Eq. (20).

For a scaling analysis of this action contribution, we consider a rescaling of space, time, displacement and action quantum according to

$`𝐫=e^l𝐫_l,\tau =e^{zl}\tau _l,u=e^{\zeta l}u_l,\mathrm{}=e^{\eta l}\mathrm{}_l`$ (35)
with a dynamical exponent $`z`$, roughness exponent $`\zeta `$ and action scaling exponent $`\eta `$. In order to analyze the relevance of quantum fluctuation later on we allow for a rescaling of $`\mathrm{}`$. We note that due to a statistical tilt symmetry the flow equation of $`\gamma `$ consists only of the scaling part

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dl}}\gamma =(z\eta +2\zeta )\gamma `$ (36)
which implies

$`\eta =z+2\zeta `$ (37)
at any possible fixed point. If $`\eta >0`$ quantum fluctuations are irrelevant on large scales and the fixed point can be called a “classical” ($`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{}}=0`$) fixed point in analogy to the irrelevance of thermal fluctuations for classical systems.

To establish the relevance of pinning we note that the action of the unpinned system $`𝒮_{\mathrm{el}}`$ is invariant under a rescaling with $`z=1`$, $`\eta =0`$ and $`\zeta =\frac{1}{2}`$. According to Eq. (10) the displacement fluctuations are finite for $`T=0`$ (this is reflected by the negative value of $`\zeta `$) which implies that $`\mathrm{cos}\frac{2\pi }{a}[u^\alpha (𝐫,\tau )u^\beta (𝐫,\tau ^{})]`$ is finite since in the unpinned system $`[u^\alpha (𝐫,\tau )u^\beta (𝐫,\tau ^{})]^2\mathrm{}/(a\sqrt{\pi \gamma \mu })`$ for $`l\mathrm{}`$ and thus disorder is strongly relevant, $`𝒮_V^{\mathrm{rep}}e^{4l}`$.

Disorder can be taken into account on a crude level (the “random field” approximation) by retaining in action (33) only the harmonic parts bilinear in $`u`$. Then this action part is found to be scale invariant together with $`𝒮_{\mathrm{el}}`$ for $`z=1`$, $`\zeta =1`$, and $`\eta =3`$. To gain qualitative insight into the spatio-temporal correlations we calculate the displacement fluctuations in this random-field approximation. We find

$`\overline{[u^\alpha (𝐫,\tau )u^\beta (\mathrm{𝟎},0)]^2}=C_1^{\alpha \beta }(𝐫,\tau )+C_2(𝐫)`$ (39)
with a contribution $`C_1`$ from quantum fluctuations and a disorder contribution $`C_2`$. $`C_1^{\alpha \beta }(𝐫,\tau )`$ vanishes for $`\alpha =\beta `$ and $`𝐫=\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and $`\tau =0`$ and takes a finite value

$`C_1^{\alpha \beta }(𝐫,\tau ){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{a\sqrt{\pi \gamma \mu }}}`$ (40)
for $`\alpha \beta `$ or $`ra`$ or $`\tau \sqrt{\mu /\gamma }a`$. $`C_2(𝐫)`$ is rough; its roughness

$`C_2(𝐫){\displaystyle \frac{\sigma }{\pi }}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{r}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi \mathrm{\Delta }}{\gamma ^2a^4}}r^2`$ (41)
is dramatically overestimated in this approximation. From this correlation function we recognize that while disorder roughens the displacement in spatial directions (consider large $`r`$ for $`\tau =0`$), it preserves the flatness in temporal directions (consider large $`\tau `$ for $`r=0`$). These qualitative properties should hold even after renormalization effects due to the anharmonic terms in action (33) are taken into account.

Although a systematic renormalization group analysis is very intricate and beyond the scope of this article, we present arguments in favor of $`\eta >0`$ at the true fixed point. First, we use the fact that a fixed point with a periodic correlator $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u)`$ can exist only for $`\zeta =0`$. Thus

$`\eta =z`$ (42)
from Eq. (37) and it is sufficient to show $`z>0`$ for the irrelevance of quantum fluctuations. It is natural to assume that the dynamic exponent is positive, if not diverging on large scales as is typical of glassy systems where the dynamics is governed by tunneling through divergent barriers.

The difficulty to calculate $`z`$ is related to the fact that $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u)`$ may become nonanalytic near $`u=0`$. While such a nonanalyticity follows from a functional renormalization group analysis near $`d=4`$, it is not clear whether such a nonanalyticity is present in $`d=2`$. According to the analysis summarized in Sec. III B, such a nonanalyticity is absent at finite temperature near $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$. At zero temperature, the strong coupling analysis of Villain and Fernandez misses such a possible nonanalyticity. Therefore we consider both possibilities.

We first assume analyticity of the function $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u)`$. In this case the “dynamic stiffness” will be renormalized according to

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dl}}\mu =(2z+2\zeta \eta )\mu +\beta _\mu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}].`$ (43)
The functional $`\beta _\mu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]`$ represents the vertex corrections arising from the $`𝒮_V^{\mathrm{rep}}`$. These corrections are expected to be positive since disorder pins the stripes at minima of $`V`$, thereby confining the temporal fluctuations which amounts to an increase of the renormalized $`\mu `$. If $`\beta _\mu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]`$ is finite at the fixed point, then $`\eta =z=1+\beta _\mu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]/(2\mu ^{})`$ ($`\mu ^{}`$ denotes the fixed-point value of $`\mu `$). Then $`\eta >0`$ and the fixed point will be classical.

In case the fixed-point correlator is nonanalytic the functional $`\beta _\mu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]`$ diverges. This signals a qualitative increase of the dynamic stiffness, which should be described by a kinetic term of the form

$`𝒮_{\mathrm{kin}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}/T}}𝑑\tau {\displaystyle d^2r\nu |_\tau u|}`$ (44)
which is more relevant than the original kinetic term in Eq. (1). The coefficient $`\nu `$ would flow according to

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dl}}\nu =(2+\zeta \eta )\nu +\beta _\nu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]`$ (45)
with another functional $`\beta _\nu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]>0`$. This would imply an even larger dynamical exponent $`z=\eta =2+\beta _\nu [\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}]/\nu ^{}`$ and even stronger irrelevancy of quantum fluctuations.

Thus, in any case $`\eta >0`$ and the system flows to the classical fixed point value for $`V0=U`$. Quantum effects will result only in a finite renormalization of the parameters in the classical system. The most important renormalization effect concerns an increase of the dynamic stiffness with a possible generation of $`\nu `$. Although there is no way of handling a kinetic action of the form (44), we expect quantum fluctuations on small scales to induce a flat but finite quantum contribution $`C_1`$ to the displacement correlation. The classical contribution $`C_2`$ will be renormalized as in the absence of quantum fluctuations \[the proper correlation can be obtained from equation (41) by inserting the scale-dependent values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\sigma `$ as obtained from the flow equations (III B) without rescaling; in the superrough phase $`\sigma \mathrm{ln}r`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{ln}r)/r^2`$\].

Since the presence of the disorder potential implies the irrelevance of quantum fluctuations, they cannot be expected to modify the competition between $`U`$ and $`V`$ as was analyzed in Sec. III C. Thus, the quantum array has superrough spatial correlations at $`T=0`$.

### B At finite temperature

An inspection of the correlator (10) of the unpinned system suggests that thermal fluctuations dominate over quantum fluctuations on large scales. In fact, quantum fluctuations are irrelevant at the classical fixed point also for $`T>0`$.

This can be seen from the action as follows. The classical fixed points (with both thermal roughness or superroughness) are described by $`\zeta =0`$. The finiteness of the time integral implies $`z=0`$ and according to Eq. (37) also $`\eta =0`$. Then the effective “dynamical stiffness” flows to infinity according to Eq. (43) or Eq. (45). Thereby temporal fluctuations of the displacement are suppressed on large scales, on which the system is described by the static limit

$`𝒮{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T}}.`$ (46)
Thus quantum fluctuations will lead only to a renormalization of the parameters in the classical description. Therefore the scaling arguments that were applied in section III to the Hamiltonian hold also for the dynamic action. Thus the system in disorder will be superrough at low temperatures – without or with an additional periodic potential – while it will be thermally rough at high temperatures.

## V Summary and Discussion

So far, we have analyzed the stripe array in the elastic approximation, i.e. neglecting dislocations. Before we discuss the relevance of dislocations, we summarize our results. In general, we found quantum fluctuations to be irrelevant in the presence of thermal and/or disorder-induced fluctuations, i.e., to renormalize the classical elastic model only weakly.

In the absence of disorder ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$), the stripe array locks into a commensurate periodic potential below a roughening temperature $`T_\mathrm{R}=2\gamma b^2/\pi =2\gamma a^2/\pi p^2`$. This transition temperature is proportional to the stiffness $`\gamma `$ which is implicitly temperature dependent due to an entropic contribution $`\gamma _{\mathrm{entr}}=\pi T/a^2`$. If there were only this entropic contribution, the system would always be unlocked ($`T>T_\mathrm{R}`$) at finite temperatures for $`p>\sqrt{2}`$. However, a temperature independent contribution to $`\gamma `$, which arises from the Coulomb interaction, leads to a lock-in transition at a finite temperature for $`p>\sqrt{2}`$, where the translational order changes from long ranged to quasi-long ranged (with logarithmic roughness).

The large-scale structure of the stripe array is dramatically influenced by the presence of disorder ($`\mathrm{\Delta }>0`$). If there were no periodic potential, the stripe array would undergo a superroughening transition at $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}=\gamma a^2/\pi `$. For $`T>T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ the array would be unpinned with $`\mathrm{ln}`$-roughness, while it would be pinned and superrough for $`T<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$. The same scenario holds also in the presence of the periodic potential, from which the stripe array always unlocks (on sufficiently large scales even for arbitrarily weak disorder). Therefore, the array is rough at all temperatures for $`\mathrm{\Delta }>0`$. However, for weak disorder and strong periodic potential the crossover length scale from flat to superrough correlations will be exponentially large, cf. Eq. (31).

Hasselmann et al. previously proposed a phase diagram for a single stripe with flat and disordered phases. To our understanding, the disorder was effectively assumed to have long-ranged correlations, which allows for the existence of a flat phase even for a single stripe. In contrast to this we consider disorder with short-ranged correlations and find that it always roughens the stripe array. Because a single stripe represents an elastic system of lower dimensionality than the stripe array, our finding implies also the roughness of a single stripe in disorder with short-ranged correlations.

Now we come back to discuss the relevance of topological defects in the stripe array, starting with the simplest situation for $`U=V=0`$. At low temperatures the stripe array can be considered as a “smectic” with quasi-long-range translational order and long-range orientational order. At a temperature

$`T_\mathrm{m}={\displaystyle \frac{\gamma a^2}{8\pi }}`$ (47)
it would melt due to a proliferation of dislocations into a “nematic” liquid with short-range translational order and quasi-long-range orientational order, before the proliferation of disclinations drives a second transition into an isotropic liquid with short-ranged orientational order. While this scenario is well known for classical systems (for a review see e.g. Ref. ), its relevance to doped Mott insulators was pointed out by Kivelson, Fradkin, and Emery.

It is instructive to compare the melting temperature to the other characteristic temperatures related to the potentials. As pointed out by José et al., distinct melting and lock-in transitions can exist only for $`p4`$ since $`T_\mathrm{R}=(4/p)^2T_\mathrm{m}`$. For $`p<4`$ they will merge to a single phase transition. The effect of disorder is quite virulent: In the elastic approximation, it makes the system superrough at temperatures below $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}=8T_\mathrm{m}`$. However, superroughness implies that dislocations become energetically favorable \[this follows from the flow equations (III B), see. e.g. Ref. \]. Therefore, their density will be finite even at zero temperature. Nevertheless, for weak disorder and at low temperatures the length scale where free dislocation appear can be extremely large because of a $`U`$ that tends to lock the stripes up to exponentially large scales. Since melting in the absence of disorder occurs at a temperature, $`T_\mathrm{m}<T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$, free dislocations will be present at all temperatures.

The presence of dislocations reduces the quasi-long-range order (where the satellite peaks have an algebraic singularity due to the $`\mathrm{ln}`$-roughness; $`\mathrm{ln}^2`$-roughness corresponds to an algebraic singularity with an exponent that depends weakly on the wave vector) to short-range order with a correlation length of the order of the distance between (free) dislocations. Thus, the saturation of the dislocation density at low temperatures implies also the saturation of the correlation length at a maximum value. This conclusion is consistent with experimental observations in the cuprates (here it was observed in magnetic ordering, which can be destroyed due to a coupling to disorder even without a distortion of the stripe array) as well as in the nickelates (here the correlation length is explicitly that of charge order).

Note that the true correlation length of charge order $`\xi ^\mathrm{C}`$ (which we identify with the distance between free dislocations) can be related to the measured width of peaks in the structure function only if the wave-vector resolution is much smaller than $`1/\xi ^\mathrm{C}`$. Thus, a system without dislocations (with $`\mathrm{ln}`$\- or $`\mathrm{ln}^2`$-roughness) has an infinite correlation length and the apparent correlation length deduced from experiments would be resolution limited. Zachar recently proposed an explanation of the observed apparent correlation lengths in terms of chaotic fluctuations of the distance between neighboring stripes (see also Ref. ), excluding explicitly a key role of dislocations. However, this argument is based on the assumption of noninteger $`p`$ and cannot account for the finite correlation length observed for integer $`p`$ in the nickelates and the cuprates. It also cannot explain why the transverse correlation length (along the stripes) – which apparently is not resolution limited – can be finite. Even more, the fact that longitudinal and transverse correlation lengths are roughly of the same size is consistent with their relation to the dislocation density.

As both the roughening transition is washed out by disorder and the superroughening transition is washed out by the presence of dislocations, no sharp transition will exist in the thermodynamic limit. Nevertheless, crossover phenomena may be observable. For weak disorder and/or strong lattice potential the stripe array appears to be locked to the lattice potential up to very large length scales. It “unlocks” also on finite scales with increasing temperature or decreasing lattice potential. An apparent lock-in transition was observed in La2-x-yNdySrxCuO4 where the strength of the lattice potential corresponds to the Nd concentration. Since $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}T_\mathrm{m}`$ the density of free dislocations will be high near $`T_{\mathrm{SR}}`$ so that reminiscences on finite scales of the superroughening transition are unlikely to survive.

Since the array has short-range order at all temperatures for $`\mathrm{\Delta }>0`$ we expect the absence of commensurate/incommensurate transitions (identified from fluctuations on asymptotically large length scales). Nevertheless, the experimental observations of anomalies at particular values of $`p`$ can be related to the effects of $`U`$ on finite length scales.

In view of our conclusion about the absence of commensuration effects we comment on the $`\delta =\frac{1}{8}`$ problem, i.e., the observation that $`\delta =1/2p`$ apparently saturates at $`\delta =\frac{1}{8}`$ near a doping $`x=0.125`$ of the cuprates. If this were a commensuration effect as suggested previously,  one would expect to observe the value $`\delta =\frac{1}{8}`$ around $`x=\frac{1}{8}`$, i.e. above ($`x>\delta `$) and below ($`x<\delta `$) the matching $`x=\delta `$. To the best of our knowledge (cf. the data collected in Fig. 7 of Ref. ), there is no evidence for data with $`x<\delta `$. As pointed out by Yamada et al., the saturation of $`\delta `$ coincides with a saturation of the effective hole concentration in the CuO2 planes beyond a certain doping level $`x0.12`$. Thus it is conceivable that other mechanisms limit the effective hole concentration and lead to a plateau in $`\delta `$.

In conclusion, we have pointed out the relevance of disorder for a stripe array even in states where its period is commensurate with the atomic structure. We found that on large scales pinning by disorder dominates over pinning by the atomic structure. This induces the superroughness of the array and, on sufficiently large scales, the presence of free dislocations even at low temperatures, which explains the saturation of the correlation length observed in experiments.

## Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to T. Nattermann for stimulating discussions and valuable hints. They acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through SBF341.