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# Supersymmetric radiative corrections at large tan𝛽 Talk given at 30 Years of Supersymmetry, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, October 13-27, 2000.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

In the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) , radiative corrections involving supersymmetric (SUSY) particles modify the tree level relation between fermion masses and their Yukawa couplings . In this paper we review the sources and behavior of these SUSY Yukawa corrections and describe their phenomenological effects.

The behavior of the SUSY Yukawa corrections is most easily derived in the context of an effective field theory (EFT), in which we take the low energy effective theory of the MSSM below the SUSY scale to be a two Higgs doublet model (2HDM) and absorb the effects of SUSY radiative corrections into the parameters of the EFT. At tree level, the fermion Yukawa couplings and masses arise from the Lagrangian,111For a review of the MSSM Higgs sector, see Ref. .

$$^{\mathrm{tree}}=ϵ_{ij}\left[y_b\overline{b}_RH_1^iQ_L^j+y_t\overline{t}_RQ_L^iH_2^j\right]+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.$$
(1)
where we use third generation quark notation and the Higgs doublets are

$`H_1`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{c}(v_1+\varphi _1^{0,r}i\varphi _1^{0,i})/\sqrt{2}\\ \varphi _1^{}\end{array}\right),`$ (4)
$`H_2`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{c}\varphi _2^+\\ (v_2+\varphi _2^{0,r}+i\varphi _2^{0,i})/\sqrt{2}\end{array}\right).`$ (7)
The Higgs vacuum expectation values (vevs) are constrained by $`v_1^2+v_2^2=4M_W^2/g^2`$ and their ratio is parameterized by $`v_2/v_1\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. The fermion masses arise from replacing the Higgs fields with their vevs:

$`^{\mathrm{tree}}`$ $`=`$ $`y_b{\displaystyle \frac{v_1}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{b}_Rb_L+y_t{\displaystyle \frac{v_2}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{t}_Rt_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`m_b\overline{b}_Rb_L+m_t\overline{t}_Rt_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
so that $`m_b=\sqrt{2}y_bM_W\mathrm{cos}\beta /g`$ and $`m_t=\sqrt{2}y_tM_W\mathrm{sin}\beta /g`$. At tree level, down-type fermions receive their masses from $`H_1`$ while up-type fermions receive their masses from $`H_2`$. This is a consequence of the holomorphicity of the superpotential in unbroken SUSY; if SUSY were unbroken, it would be true to all orders in the EFT.

In a model with more than one Higgs doublet, tree-level flavor-changing neutral Higgs couplings can be eliminated if the right-handed fermion singlets with each value of hypercharge are allowed to couple to only one Higgs doublet . Under this requirement, called “natural flavor conservation”, there are two different configurations possible for the couplings of the two Higgs doublets $`H_1`$ and $`H_2`$ of a 2HDM to quarks: in the Type I 2HDM all the quarks couple to $`H_1`$ and none to $`H_2`$, while in the Type II 2HDM the down-type right-handed quark singlets couple to $`H_1`$ while the up-type right-handed quark singlets couple to $`H_2`$. The most general 2HDM without natural flavor conservation, in which the right-handed fermion singlets with each value of hypercharge couple to both Higgs doublets, is called the Type III 2HDM. In unbroken SUSY, the Higgs couplings take the form of a Type II 2HDM.

However, SUSY must be broken in nature. When SUSY is broken, non-holomorphic Higgs couplings to fermions arise at one loop in the EFT. We first consider down-type fermions. At one loop, diagrams such as those in Fig. 1

give rise to a correction to the coupling of $`b`$ quarks to $`H_1`$ and a non-holomorphic coupling of $`b`$ quarks to $`H_2`$:

$`^{1\mathrm{loop}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(y_b+\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1)}\right)\overline{b}_Rb_LH_1^0`$ (9)
$`+\left(\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(2)}\right)\overline{b}_Rb_LH_2^0+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
Examining Eq. 9, we see that in the EFT, the right-handed down-type quarks couple to both $`H_1`$ and $`H_2`$. Thus,the low energy effective theory of the MSSM is a Type III 2HDM.222A review of the phenomenology of a general Type III 2HDM is given in Ref. .

The $`b`$ quark mass at one loop is obtained by inserting the Higgs vevs into Eq. 9:

$`^{1\mathrm{loop}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(y_b+\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1)}\right){\displaystyle \frac{v_1}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{b}_Rb_L`$ (10)
$`+\left(\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(2)}\right){\displaystyle \frac{v_2}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{b}_Rb_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
$`=`$ $`m_b\overline{b}_Rb_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
Solving for $`m_b`$ we find,

$`m_b`$ $`=`$ $`y_b{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{g}}`$ (11)
$`\times \left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1)}}{y_b}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(2)}}{y_b}}\mathrm{tan}\beta \right).`$
Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}/y_b1`$ because of the loop suppression. However, the third term in Eq. 11 is enhanced by a factor of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, and thus can be quite large at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ . This $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced correction to $`m_b`$ has significant phenomenological consequences at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ because it modifies the relation between $`m_b`$ and $`y_b`$.333In Ref.  it was shown that it is even possible to have $`y_{b,s,d}=0`$ at tree level (so that $`m_{b,s,d}=0`$) and generate the down-type quark masses at one loop through SUSY breaking terms. At tree level, $`y_b=gm_b/\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta `$. At one loop, $`y_b`$ can be significantly smaller or larger than the tree-level value, depending on the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(2)}/y_b`$.

In the up-type fermion sector, an analogous calculation gives,

$`m_t`$ $`=`$ $`y_t{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{sin}\beta }{g}}`$ (12)
$`\times \left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_t^{(1)}}{y_t}}\mathrm{cot}\beta +{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_t^{(2)}}{y_t}}\right).`$
In particular, there is no $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhancement and the corrections to the relation between $`m_t`$ and $`y_t`$ are small. These corrections can still be important; for example, they enter the MSSM Higgs mass calculation at the two loop level and lead to a few GeV change in the upper bound on $`M_{h^0}`$ in some regions of parameter space .

We now examine the behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ as the SUSY mass scale is varied. It is easy to see from, e.g., the first diagram in Fig. 1 that $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ are independent of $`M_{SUSY}`$. This diagram scales like $`\mu M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}/M_{SUSY}^2`$, where the factor of $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ comes from a helicity flip in the gluino line, the factor of $`\mu `$ comes from the dimensionful Higgs-squark-squark coupling, and the factor of $`1/M_{SUSY}^2`$ comes from the three-point loop integral (here $`M_{SUSY}`$ is the largest of the masses in the loop and we neglect external momenta; see Eq. 27). Thus if all the soft SUSY breaking parameters and the $`\mu `$ parameter are scaled by a common factor, $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ are unchanged; i.e., they do not decouple with $`M_{SUSY}`$ when the ratios between SUSY parameters are held fixed. These SUSY Yukawa corrections are also universal; i.e., they are independent of the external momenta and thus process-independent. In general, there are additional contributions to physical processes at one loop that depend on the external momenta; however, these are suppressed by powers of $`p^2/M_{SUSY}^2`$.

Although $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ do not decouple with $`M_{SUSY}`$, they do not represent a violation of the decoupling theorem : in the limit of large pseudoscalar Higgs mass $`M_A`$, the effects of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ appear only in the couplings of the heavy Higgs bosons, as we will now illustrate. Because in the Type III 2HDM the right-handed down-type fermions couple to both Higgs doublets, there is no longer a special Yukawa basis for the Higgs fields. We are then free to write them in a new basis chosen such that one of the doublets has zero vev (the “vev basis”):

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{c}G^+\\ (v_{SM}+\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}+iG^0)/\sqrt{2}\end{array}\right),`$ (15)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{c}H^+\\ (\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}+iA^0)/\sqrt{2}\end{array}\right),`$ (18)
where $`v_{SM}=2M_W/g`$ is the Standard Model (SM) Higgs vev and we have performed the rotation ($`H_1^c=i\tau _2H_1^{}`$)

$`H_1^c`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_1\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_2,`$
$`H_2`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_1+\mathrm{cos}\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_2.`$ (19)
Note that in the vev basis $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ contains the Goldstone bosons while $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ contains $`H^+`$ and $`A^0`$. The two CP-even neutral Higgs mass eigenstates $`h^0`$ and $`H^0`$ are given in terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}`$ by

$`h^0`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}+\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}`$
$`H^0`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}\mathrm{sin}(\beta \alpha )\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}.`$ (20)
In the limit of large $`M_A`$, $`\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )`$ goes to zero:

$$\mathrm{cos}(\beta \alpha )\frac{M_Z^2\mathrm{sin}4\beta }{2M_A^2},$$
(21)
so $`h^0\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}`$. Thus in the limit of large $`M_A`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ contains the Goldstone bosons, the SM Higgs vev, and the light Higgs boson $`h^0`$, while $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ contains all the heavy Higgs states, $`H^\pm `$, $`A^0`$ and $`H^0`$.

The effective Lagrangian in the vev basis can be written as,

$$^{\mathrm{eff}}=\lambda _1^b\mathrm{\Phi }_1^0\overline{b}_Rb_L+\lambda _2^b\mathrm{\Phi }_2^0\overline{b}_Rb_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,$$
(22)
where $`\lambda _1^b`$ and $`\lambda _2^b`$ are the Yukawa couplings in the vev basis. Inserting the Higgs vevs we obtain the $`b`$ quark mass:

$`^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda _1^b{\displaystyle \frac{v_{SM}}{\sqrt{2}}}\overline{b}_Rb_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$ (23)
$`=`$ $`m_b\overline{b}_Rb_L+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$ (24)
In particular, $`\lambda _1^b=\sqrt{2}m_b/v_{SM}=gm_b/\sqrt{2}M_W`$ is fixed by the $`b`$ quark mass, while $`\lambda _2^b`$ is unconstrained. Thus the coupling of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ to quarks must be SM-like while that of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ is unconstrained and can contain the effects of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$. In the decoupling limit  of large $`M_A`$, $`h^0\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{0,r}`$ so the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling approaches its SM value, while the effects of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(1,2)}`$ are confined to the heavy Higgs bosons in $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$.

We now write down the SUSY radiative corrections to the down-type mass-Yukawa relation (keeping only the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced contributions) :

$`m_b`$ $``$ $`y_b{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{g}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_b^{(2)}}{y_b}}\mathrm{tan}\beta \right)`$ (25)
$``$ $`y_b{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }{g}}\left(1+\mathrm{\Delta }_b\right),`$
where the correction $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ is given by 444Because the SUSY-QCD contribution to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ is proportional to the product $`\mu M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$, it has been suggested in Ref.  to use the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ and the sign of $`\mu `$ (measured in some other process) to determine the sign of $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$ and test the anomaly-mediated SUSY breaking scenario , which predicts a negative $`M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}`$.

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta I(M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1},M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2},M_{\stackrel{~}{g}})`$ (26)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _t}{4\pi }}A_t\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta I(M_{\stackrel{~}{t}_1},M_{\stackrel{~}{t}_2},\mu ).`$
Here $`\alpha _t=y_t^2/4\pi `$ and $`I(a,b,c)`$ is a loop integral,

$`I(a,b,c)`$ $`=`$ $`[a^2b^2\mathrm{log}(a^2/b^2)+b^2c^2\mathrm{log}(b^2/c^2)`$ (27)
$`+c^2a^2\mathrm{log}(c^2/a^2)]/`$
$`[(a^2b^2)(b^2c^2)(a^2c^2)],`$
which is positive for any $`a,b,c`$ and goes like $`1/\mathrm{max}(a^2,b^2,c^2)`$.

Solving Eq. 25 for $`y_b`$ , we find

$$y_b=\frac{gm_b}{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }\frac{1}{1+\mathrm{\Delta }_b},$$
(28)
where we have not expanded the denominator to one loop order. It was proven in Ref.  that Eq. 28 includes a resummation of terms of order $`(\alpha _s\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY})^n`$ to all orders of perturbation theory. In particular, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ in Eq. 28 gets no $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced corrections at higher orders of the form $`(\alpha _s\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY})^n`$. The remaining higher order corrections to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ are not $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced and are thus insignificant compared to the one loop piece (Eq. 26). The proof in Ref.  that Eq. 28 receives no higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced contributions relies on the facts (1) that $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enters the calculation at higher orders only multiplied by $`m_b`$, e.g., from the $`\mu m_b\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ term in the bottom squark mass matrix; and (2) that no factors of $`1/m_b`$ can arise from the loop diagrams to cancel the $`m_b`$ factor multiplying $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, because the Yukawa coupling operator is dimension four.

Expanding Eq. 28 to one loop order, we have

$$y_b=\frac{gm_b}{\sqrt{2}M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }(1\mathrm{\Delta }_b).$$
(29)
An expression of this form arises in on-shell diagrammatic one-loop calculations, in which $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ enters through the $`b`$ quark mass counterterm. Although Eqs. 28 and 29 are equivalent at one loop, they differ at higher orders: Eq. 29 does not contain a resummation of terms of order $`(\alpha _s\mu \mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY})^n`$ to all orders of perturbation theory.555A proof as in Ref.  does not hold for Eq. 29, in which the $`b`$ mass operator is renormalized, because the $`b`$ mass operator is not dimension four. See Ref.  for details. In our EFT analyses in the remainder of this paper we will use Eq. 28 in order to take advantage of the resummation of higher order terms.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We examine the effect of the SUSY Yukawa corrections on the process $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ in Sec. 2 and on the $`H^+\overline{t}b`$ coupling in Sec. 3. In Sec. 4 we describe how flavor-changing neutral Higgs interactions arise in the EFT from the SUSY Yukawa corrections, and in Sec. 5 we summarize recent results for specific flavor changing processes. In Sec. 6 we discuss the renormalization of the CKM matrix. In Sec. 7 we briefly discuss resummation of the SUSY Yukawa corrections to flavor changing processes. Finally in Sec. 8 we give a summary and outlook.

## 2 SUSY CORRECTIONS TO $`𝐡^\mathrm{𝟎}𝐛\overline{𝐛}`$

Accurate knowledge of the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ branching ratio is important for determining the reach of the upcoming Higgs searches at the Tevatron and LHC . Also, once a light Higgs boson is discovered, precision measurements of its branching ratios (e.g., at a future $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider) can be used to distinguish a SM Higgs boson from a MSSM Higgs boson in some regions of parameter space . The SUSY Yukawa corrections can have a significant effect on these branching ratios . For example, the ratio $`BR(h^0b\overline{b})/BR(h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{})`$ is sensitive to the SUSY Yukawa corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$.666The $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ coupling also receives $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY Yukawa corrections, but they are proportional to electroweak gauge couplings and are expected to be much smaller than the corrections to the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling. At tree level, the ratio $`BR(h^0b\overline{b})/BR(h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{})`$ is the same in the SM and the MSSM ($`m_b^2/m_\tau ^2`$). Further, in the MSSM the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ and $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ couplings have the same dependence on the CP-even Higgs mixing angle $`\alpha `$, so that $`BR(h^0b\overline{b})/BR(h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{})`$ is also insensitive to the radiative corrections to $`\alpha `$. Thus in the context of the MSSM, a deviation of $`BR(h^0b\overline{b})/BR(h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{})`$ from its SM value provides a direct window onto the SUSY Yukawa corrections .

### 2.1 EFT calculation

We begin by computing the SUSY corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ in the EFT approach; that is, we assume $`M_{SUSY}>M_A`$ and neglect the external momenta.777We will consider the effects of the external momenta and lower $`M_{SUSY}`$ in the next section. Using Eqs. 9 and 28, the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling is given by

$`g_{hbb}^{\mathrm{EFT}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{gm_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha }{2M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta }}`$ (30)
$`\times \left[1{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_b}{1+\mathrm{\Delta }_b}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{tan}\alpha \mathrm{tan}\beta }}\right)\right]`$
where the tree level coupling is $`g_{hbb}^{\mathrm{tree}}=gm_b\mathrm{sin}\alpha /2M_W\mathrm{cos}\beta `$ and $`=g_{hbb}h^0\overline{b}b+\mathrm{}`$. As shown in Sec. 1, the SUSY radiative corrections to $`g_{hbb}`$ should decouple in the limit of large $`M_A`$. Indeed, we have,

$$\left(1+\frac{1}{\mathrm{tan}\alpha \mathrm{tan}\beta }\right)\frac{2M_Z^2}{M_A^2}\mathrm{cos}2\beta ,$$
(31)
so that $`g_{hbb}`$ approaches its SM value as expected in the decoupling limit .

### 2.2 Diagrammatic calculation

Up to this point we have neglected the effects of the external momenta on $`h^0b\overline{b}`$. These give contributions of order $`(p^2\mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY}^2)`$, where $`p^2=M_{h^0}^2`$. These contributions can be sizeable because of the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhancement, especially when the SUSY scale is relatively low. For example, for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 50`$, $`(M_{h^0}^2\mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY}^2)`$ is of order one even for $`M_{SUSY}1`$ TeV. In order to treat the external momenta correctly, we must do an on-shell diagrammatic calculation. We focus here on the SUSY-QCD contributions to $`g_{hbb}`$,888The SUSY-electroweak contributions will be considered in the next section. for which diagrammatic calculations are available in Refs. .999Note that, unlike the EFT calculations, the one-loop diagrammatic calculations do not incorporate a resummation of higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced contributions. For compactness we give here an approximate formula101010The full one loop result may be found in Refs. . expanded in powers of $`M_{EW}^2/M_{SUSY}^2`$ and $`M_{EW}^2/M_A^2`$, where we have taken $`M_{SUSY}M_S=\mu =M_{\stackrel{~}{g}}=A_b`$ and $`M_S^2=(M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_1}^2+M_{\stackrel{~}{b}_2}^2)/2`$. Defining $`g_{hbb}^{\mathrm{diag}}=g_{hbb}[1+\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}]`$, we have

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{3\pi }}\{{\displaystyle \frac{2M_Z^2}{M_A^2}}\mathrm{cos}2\beta \mathrm{tan}\beta `$ (32)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{M_{h^0}^2}{12M_{SUSY}^2}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta 1)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{M_Z^2}{3M_{SUSY}^2}}\mathrm{cos}2\beta (\mathrm{tan}\beta 2)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{m_b^2\mathrm{tan}^2\beta }{2M_{SUSY}^2}}(\mathrm{tan}\beta 4)\}.`$
The first term in Eq. 32 was found before in the EFT calculation; it remains constant as $`M_{SUSY}\mathrm{}`$ at fixed $`M_A`$. The remaining terms are neglected in the EFT approach; they decouple as $`M_{SUSY}\mathrm{}`$ but remain constant as $`M_A\mathrm{}`$ at fixed $`M_{SUSY}`$. Because of their $`1/M_{SUSY}^2`$ dependence they can be identified as coming from higher dimensional operators that were neglected in our EFT calculation. The correction $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SQCD}`$ decouples in the limit that both $`M_A`$ and $`M_{SUSY}\mathrm{}`$.

### 2.3 SUSY-Electroweak corrections

The SUSY-electroweak corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ are of order $`\alpha _t`$ instead of order $`\alpha _s`$ and arise from the second diagram of Fig. 1. The SUSY-electroweak Yukawa corrections are easily calculated in the EFT approach (see Eq. 26). There are also large corrections to $`h^0`$ decays at order $`\alpha _t`$ from the radiative corrections to the CP-even Higgs mixing angle $`\alpha `$ . These corrections are usually taken into account by inserting the radiatively corrected value of $`\alpha `$ into the tree level Higgs couplings to fermions.

At tree level, the off-diagonal elements of the CP-even Higgs mass matrix are $`(_{12}^2)_{\mathrm{tree}}=(M_A^2+M_Z^2)\mathrm{sin}\beta \mathrm{cos}\beta `$ . When $`M_A`$ is small and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ is large, $`(_{12}^2)_{\mathrm{tree}}`$ can be quite small, of the same order as its one loop radiative corrections. Then it is possible to tune the radiatively corrected $`_{12}^2`$ to zero by a careful choice of the MSSM parameters, thereby driving the mixing angle $`\alpha `$ to zero. If $`\mathrm{sin}\alpha =0`$, the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ and $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ couplings both vanish at tree level. However, the SUSY-QCD Yukawa corrections to the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling are nonzero, because they depend on the $`h^0`$ couplings to bottom squarks which remain finite at $`\mathrm{sin}\alpha =0`$. Thus at $`\mathrm{sin}\alpha =0`$, the $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ coupling vanishes while the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling is nonzero due to the SUSY-QCD Yukawa corrections. If we then vary the supersymmetric parameters, we can tune $`\alpha `$ so that the tree level value of the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling cancels its SUSY-QCD Yukawa corrections. Then the corrected $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ coupling vanishes while the $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ coupling is again nonzero. Thus the $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ and $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ couplings vanish at different values of $`\alpha `$, or equivalently, at different points in SUSY parameter space. This behavior was first pointed out in Ref. .

Of course, an on-shell diagrammatic calculation is needed to take into account terms of order $`(p^2\mathrm{tan}\beta /M_{SUSY}^2)`$ from the external momenta. In Ref.  a partial on-shell diagrammatic calculation was performed, which includes an on-shell calculation of the corrections to $`\alpha `$ and the on-shell SUSY-QCD corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$, but does not include the $`𝒪(\alpha _t)`$ SUSY-electroweak Yukawa corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$. A full one-loop diagrammatic calculation of the SUSY-electroweak corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ was performed in Ref. , although compact explicit expressions are not available. A similar calculation is in progress .

## 3 SUSY CORRECTIONS TO THE $`𝐇^+\overline{𝐭}𝐛`$ COUPLING

The $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY Yukawa corrections modify the $`H^+\overline{t}b`$ coupling through, e.g., the first diagram of Fig. 1 with $`b_L`$ ($`\stackrel{~}{b}_L`$) replaced by $`t_L`$ ($`\stackrel{~}{t}_L`$) and taking the charged Higgs states in $`H_1`$, $`H_2^{}`$. These corrections have important implications for the charged Higgs boson search through $`tH^+b`$ at the Tevatron  because the reach in $`M_{H^+}`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ depends on the effective $`t`$ and $`b`$ Yukawa couplings.

The one loop SUSY Yukawa corrections to $`tH^+b`$ can be very large, of order the tree level amplitude, so that reliable calculations require a resummation or improvement. Using the EFT approach, we have at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$

$$g_{H^+tb}\frac{gm_b}{\sqrt{2}M_W}\frac{1}{1+\mathrm{\Delta }_b}\mathrm{tan}\beta ,$$
(33)
with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ as in Eq. 26. As described in Sec. 1, in this result $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ gets no $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced corrections at higher orders of the form $`(\alpha _s\mathrm{tan}\beta \mu /M_{SUSY})^n`$ . The remaining higher order corrections to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ are not $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced.

The SUSY Yukawa corrections to the $`H^+\overline{t}b`$ coupling have also been computed diagrammatically in Refs.  (SUSY-QCD) and  (SUSY-electroweak), giving results of the form

$$g_{H^+tb}=\frac{gm_b}{\sqrt{2}M_W}(1\mathrm{\Delta }_b)\mathrm{tan}\beta .$$
(34)
This is equivalent to Eq. 33 at one loop level, but in Eq. 34 $`\mathrm{\Delta }_b`$ receives $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced radiative corrections at higher orders. In Ref.  the tree-level input parameters were carefully chosen to keep the one-loop corrections in Eq. 34 small. This is analogous to using running quark masses to absorb QCD corrections; however it does not take into account the higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY corrections.

## 4 FLAVOR CHANGING NEUTRAL HIGGS COUPLINGS

The $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY Yukawa corrections lead to flavor changing neutral Higgs interactions in the EFT. This was first pointed out in Ref.  for $`B`$-$`\overline{B}`$ mixing and expanded upon in Ref.  for leptonic $`B`$ meson decays. Similar results have been found in diagrammatic calculations for a number of processes; these will be discussed in Sec. 5. In this section we describe how flavor changing neutral Higgs interactions arise in the EFT.

As shown in Sec. 1, for $`M_A<M_{SUSY}`$ the low energy effective theory of the MSSM is the Type III 2HDM. In the Type III 2HDM, there is no natural flavor conservation and flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings arise in general . In three generation notation, Eq. 22 becomes

$$^{\mathrm{eff}}=\lambda _1^{ij}\mathrm{\Phi }_1^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j+\lambda _2^{ij}\mathrm{\Phi }_2^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,$$
(35)
where we again use the vev basis, Eq. 18. Here $`i,j`$ are fermion generation indices and $`\lambda _{1,2}^{ij}`$ are general Yukawa matrices, not necessarily diagonal. The down-type quark mass matrix is obtained by replacing the Higgs fields with their vevs:

$$^{\mathrm{eff}}=\lambda _1^{ij}\frac{v_{SM}}{\sqrt{2}}\overline{d}_R^id_L^j+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.$$
(36)
Note that $`\lambda _2`$ does not appear in Eq. 36 because $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ has zero vev. Diagonalizing the mass matrix in Eq. 36 diagonalizes the Yukawa matrix $`\lambda _1^{ij}`$, which parameterizes the down-type fermion couplings to $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$. The Yukawa matrix $`\lambda _2^{ij}`$, which parameterizes the down-type fermion couplings to $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$, is not in general diagonal in the fermion mass basis. Rewriting Eq. 35 in the fermion mass basis, we have

$$^{\mathrm{eff}}=\frac{gm_i}{\sqrt{2}M_W}\mathrm{\Phi }_1^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^i+\lambda _2^{ij}\mathrm{\Phi }_2^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.$$
(37)
Clearly, the couplings of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$ to down-type fermions are flavor diagonal, while those of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ are not. The off-diagonal elements in $`\lambda _2^{ij}`$ give flavor changing couplings of the states in $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2^0`$ ($`A^0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}`$) to down-type fermions. Note that the flavor changing effects of the SUSY Yukawa corrections in physical processes should decouple at large $`M_A`$, for which $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2^{0,r}H^0`$ and $`M_{H^0}M_A`$.

There are two potential sources of flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings in the MSSM: minimal and non-minimal flavor violation. In the MSSM with minimal flavor violation, the sfermion mass matrices are flavor-diagonal in the same basis as the quark and lepton mass matrices. Then the only source of flavor changing is the CKM matrix, as in the SM. In this case the flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings arise from one loop diagrams that contain a generation-changing $`W^\pm `$, $`H^\pm `$, or chargino coupling and an associated CKM matrix element.

Non-minimal flavor violation occurs when the sfermion mass matrices are not flavor-diagonal in the same basis as the quark and lepton mass matrices. When the sfermion mass matrices are diagonalized, flavor changing gluino-squark-quark and neutralino-sfermion-fermion couplings arise. Non-minimal flavor violation is present in the most general MSSM, and can lead to large flavor-changing effects in contradiction to experiment in, e.g., $`K`$-$`\overline{K}`$ mixing. This is the SUSY flavor problem, which must be solved in any realistic MSSM scenario. Attempts to solve the SUSY flavor problem include flavor-blind SUSY breaking scenarios (e.g., minimal supergravity), in which the sfermion mass matrices are flavor diagonal in the same basis as the quark and lepton mass matrices at the SUSY-breaking scale. However, a small amount of non-minimal flavor violation is typically regenerated as the sfermion and fermion mass matrices are run down to the electroweak scale. If non-minimal flavor violation is present in the MSSM, then the flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings receive contributions from one loop diagrams that contain a flavor-changing gluino or neutralino coupling, in addition to the contributions present in the minimal flavor violation scenario.

## 5 SOME SPECIFIC FLAVOR CHANGING PROCESSES

### 5.1 $`bs\gamma `$

The SUSY contributions to $`bs\gamma `$ are well known . In particular, the chargino-top squark contribution to the amplitude is proportional to $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. It is possible to obey the experimental constraint on $`bs\gamma `$ and still have large flavor changing effects in other processes from the chargino-top squark loop by choosing heavy enough chargino and top squark masses .

Recently in Ref.  the higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced contributions to $`bs\gamma `$ were resummed, following the formalism of Ref. . These higher order contributions can be large and can modify the regions of MSSM parameter space excluded by $`bs\gamma `$ .

### 5.2 $`B_{s,d}\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$

Because the SM amplitude for $`B\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ is helicity suppressed, contributions from neutral Higgs boson exchange in the 2HDM or MSSM can compete with the SM amplitude at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. In the MSSM with large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the dominant contribution to the amplitude comes from $`h^0`$, $`H^0`$ and $`A^0`$ exchange with a flavor changing SUSY bubble in the external $`s`$ quark line, and grows with $`\mathrm{tan}^3\beta `$ . In the MSSM with minimal flavor violation the flavor changing SUSY bubble is a chargino-top squark loop; if non-minimal flavor violation is present, additional contributions come from a gluino-bottom squark and neutralino-bottom squark loop. All other one-loop SUSY contributions have at most a $`\mathrm{tan}^2\beta `$ enhancement. In the Type II 2HDM with large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, penguin and box diagrams give a contribution to the amplitude that grows with $`\mathrm{tan}^2\beta `$ and is of the same order as the SM contribution .

In the MSSM, $`B_{s,d}\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ can be enhanced by three orders of magnitude over the SM rate because of the $`\mathrm{tan}^3\beta `$ enhancement in the amplitude. This has been demonstrated in an EFT calculation in Ref.  and in diagrammatic calculations in Refs. . The experimental sensitivity is best in the channel $`B_s\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$; here the SM predicts $`BR(B_s\mu ^+\mu ^{})=4.3_{0.8}^{+0.9}\times 10^9`$ , while the current experimental bound is $`BR(B_s\mu ^+\mu ^{})<2.6\times 10^6`$ (95% CL) . At large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and low $`M_A`$, there are regions of SUSY parameter space in which $`BR(B_s\mu ^+\mu ^{})`$ can exceed its current upper bound ; thus SUSY parameter space is already being probed by this decay. Future experiments at the Tevatron Run II should improve the experimental bound by a factor of 40 with 2 fb-1 of data , and further at an extended Run II. At the LHC this decay is expected to be observed at the SM rate after three years of running at low luminosity .

### 5.3 $`B`$-$`\overline{B}`$ mixing

$`B`$-$`\overline{B}`$ mixing has been analyzed in the context of the effective Type III 2HDM in Refs. . In the EFT, a tree-level neutral Higgs boson exchange diagram with flavor changing couplings at each vertex contributes to $`B`$-$`\overline{B}`$ mixing. If the tree-level relations for MSSM Higgs boson masses and couplings are used, then the three tree-level EFT diagrams involving $`h^0`$, $`H^0`$ and $`A^0`$ exchange sum to zero . However, the tree-level relations for the MSSM Higgs boson masses and couplings are in general a poor approximation, and when radiative corrections to these masses and couplings are included the neutral Higgs mediated contributions to $`B`$-$`\overline{B}`$ mixing no longer cancel.

## 6 RENORMALIZATION OF THE CKM MATRIX

In the SM, the radiative corrections to the CKM matrix are very small electroweak effects. In the MSSM, however, there are $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced flavor changing loop diagrams that may yield significant corrections to the CKM matrix. In Ref.  the down-type quark mass matrix was run down from a high scale and the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY corrections were included at the scale where the SUSY particles were integrated out; diagonalizing the quark mass matrices then yielded the radiatively corrected CKM matrix. Here we describe the source of the SUSY corrections to the CKM matrix in the EFT.

When we diagonalized the down-type quark mass matrix in Eq. 36, the one loop SUSY corrections were implicitly included. Writing the one loop corrections explicitly, we have

$`^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(y_{ij}+\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(1)}\right)H_1^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j`$ (38)
$`+\left(\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(2)}\right)H_2^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
In the vev basis this becomes,

$`^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ (39)
$`=y_{ij}\mathrm{cos}\beta \left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(1)}}{y_{ij}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(2)}}{y_{ij}}}\mathrm{tan}\beta \right)\mathrm{\Phi }_1^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j`$
$`y_{ij}\mathrm{sin}\beta \left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(1)}}{y_{ij}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(2)}}{y_{ij}}}\mathrm{cot}\beta \right)\mathrm{\Phi }_2^0\overline{d}_R^id_L^j`$
$`+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.`$
Comparing this to Eq. 35, $`\lambda _1^{ij}`$ is given by

$$\lambda _1^{ij}=y_{ij}\mathrm{cos}\beta \left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(1)}}{y_{ij}}+\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(2)}}{y_{ij}}\mathrm{tan}\beta \right).$$
(40)
Diagonalizing the down-type quark mass matrix diagonalizes $`\lambda _1^{ij}`$. Since $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_{ij}^{(1,2)}`$ are not in general diagonal in the same basis as the tree-level Yukawa matrix $`y_{ij}`$, they yield an additional rotation of the mass matrix. This additional rotation is a correction to the CKM matrix.

At present, the CKM elements are not predicted by theory and must be input from experiment. If the CKM elements are measured solely through $`W`$ couplings to quarks, the SUSY corrections can simply be absorbed into the bare elements and are undetectable. However, if the CKM elements derived from $`W`$-quark-quark, $`H^\pm `$-quark-quark, and especially chargino-squark-quark couplings can be compared, the SUSY corrections may become apparent. We expect the chargino-squark-quark couplings to receive large corrections relative to the $`W`$-quark-quark couplings because SUSY-breaking effects will lead to different results for the flavor changing SUSY bubble diagrams in the external down-type quark and down-type squark lines.

## 7 RESUMMATION REVISITED

The SUSY radiative corrections that lead to flavor changing neutral Higgs couplings are enhanced by $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and can be quite large, as we have seen. As in the flavor conserving case, these $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced corrections should be resummed. Such a resummation has been performed recently in Ref.  for higher-order corrections to $`bs\gamma `$, following the results in Ref. . However, it is unclear whether this procedure will work in general because it is unclear whether the proof in Ref.  that all higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced terms are automatically resummed if the relation in Eq. 28 is used is applicable to the flavor changing case. For example, factors of $`m_b/m_s`$ or $`m_s/m_b`$ can in principle arise at higher orders. This issue should be clarified before the resummation procedure is applied to additional flavor changing processes.

## 8 SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK

It is clear that the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY corrections to the relation between down-type fermion masses and their Yukawa couplings has the potential to be a good handle on the MSSM at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. These corrections lead to large effects in both Higgs physics and $`B`$ physics. Because these effects can be quite large, reliable calculations are needed. In Higgs boson decays, the external momenta are on the order of the electroweak scale and their effects should be included through diagrammatic calculations; these are available for the SUSY-QCD corrections to $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ and calculations are in progress for the SUSY-electroweak corrections to both $`h^0b\overline{b}`$ and $`h^0\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$. In addition, resummation of higher order $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced contributions beyond the one loop level is very important in some regions of parameter space. This resummation is well known and straightforward in the EFT approach but should also be incorporated into the diagrammatic calculations. In flavor changing processes such as rare $`B`$ meson decays and CKM matrix renormalization, it is not entirely clear how the resummation should be done. Finally, the SUSY corrections to the CKM matrix may have a significant effect on the $`H^\pm `$ and chargino couplings to (s)fermions relative to the $`W^\pm `$ couplings. In short, the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ enhanced SUSY corrections to the relation between down-type fermion masses and their Yukawa couplings offer a wide range of challenges and opportunities for MSSM phenomenology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the members of the University of Minnesota Theoretical Physics Institute for organizing an excellent symposium and workshop where this work was presented, and to the other workshop participants for many lively discussions. I also thank U. Nierste and T. Plehn for fruitful discussions. Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association Inc. under contract no. DE-AC02-76CH03000 with the U.S. Department of Energy.


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# Exact diagonalisation study of charge order in the quarter-filled two-leg ladder system NaV2O₅

## I Introduction

The interplay of charge ordering (CO) and spin structure and dynamics has recently been in the focus of interest especially in the layered 3d-perovskites like cubic and bilayer manganites. A CO transition is caused by inter-site Coulomb interactions dominating the kinetic hopping energy of the electrons of transition elements below a critical temperature Tc. It localizes the electrons and thus defines an associated low temperature spin lattice which then may exhibit magnetic ordering and possibly low dimensional spin excitations. Such an interplay of charge order and spin excitations, supplemented by a lattice distortion is present in the Trellis lattice compound NaV2O$`_5`$. Its basic building blocks consist of two leg ladders whose rungs are occupied by one d-electron on the average (Fig.1). It is an insulating compound with an effective charge transfer gap given by the hopping ta across the rung. The electronic structure of this compound was investigated in Refs.(-) in detail and hopping parameters for a tight binding model were derived. Susceptibility measurements  NMR- experiments  and x-ray analysis  have shown that a spin gap evolves below T$`{}_{c}{}^{}=33^{}K`$ at the same time when NaV2O$`_5`$undergoes a CO- transition and lattice distortion. Sofar there is no complete understanding of both the low temperature structure and the origin of the spin gap.

A model for the coupling of CO to spin degrees of freedom in NaV2O$`_5`$was introduced in Ref.() based on a pseudospin representation for the rungs such that the CO transition can be described within a generalized 2D Ising model. Many proposals for the proper low temperature structure have been made. According to the model by Lüdecke et al  only every second ladder has zig-zag CO whereas the other ladder stays disordered. This CO is also supported by neutron scattering results  discussed in Ref.(). On the other hand, this charge distribution disagrees with an x-ray anomalous scattering measurement which indicates charge modulation along the b-axis . Furthermore the structure in Ref.() leads to three inequivalent V- sites in valence states V4+, V4.5+ and V5+ which is incompatible with NMR results  which show that only two inequivalent V-sites exist. A solution of this puzzle has been proposed in Ref.() where it was shown that this structure actually leads to asymmetric and incomplete charge order where two of the inequivalent sites have almost identical valences. However incomplete charge order complicates the naive application of conventional exchange models for the spin dynamics. Therefore it is first necessary to study the influence of charge ordering on the superexchange mechanism. It was shown  how charge correlations in the rungs and CO progressively reduce the superexchange of spins which occupy rung molecular orbitals. For this calculation to be carried through, some mean field like approximations in the charge (pseudo- spin) variables have to be made to start from a restricted orbital space for the calculation of exchange integrals. Finally we mention that some recent results emphasize the fully zig-zag CO in the ladders below Tc for NaV2O$`_5`$, but the stacking perpendicular to the ladders for this model is still controversial.

As long as the critical temperature (Tc) is finite one may guess that only classical fluctuations are responsible for the phase transition phenomena. However an estimate of the critical point in the whole phase diagram will show whether the quantum fluctuations should be considered. Since the scale of hopping energies and Coulomb interactions are in the order of 1 eV then the critical temperature in this unit is Tc=0.0028 eV. This shows that our model is very close to quantum critical point and quantum fluctuations are very important in the phase transition. Moreover the results at T=0 can explain the phase transition phenomena to a very good extent. It is therefore desirable to do a fully quantum mechanical calculation which treats the charge (pseudo- spin $`\stackrel{}{\tau }`$) and spin $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ variables of the V-V rungs on the same level. Such an approach is presented in this work and carried through by using exact diagonalisation methods with the Lanczos algorithm. In Sec. II we introduce the pseudospin model that describes the charge ordering transition and the coupling of intra-rung charge fluctuations to the spins. Sec. III is devoted to the description of the numerical methods employed. Sec. IV gives the computational results for the correlation functions and the conjectured phase diagram of CO, furthermore the influence of the spin exchange on the critical CO parameter is studied. In addition we investigate the finite size scaling of the spin excitation gap and its dependence on the degree of charge order. Moreover we have studied the effect of spin exchange bond-alternation on the energy gap and the scaling of spin gap for small value of dimerization $`\gamma `$. A summary of our results is given in Sec. V.

## II Charge ordering and Pseudo-spin models

An attractive feature of the NaV2O$`_5`$compound that simplifies its theoretical study, is the fact that the charge ordering happens to be in an already insulating mixed valent (MV) state. It is characterized by a noninteger valence 4.5+ of each vanadium atom of the rung which therefore is occupied by only one d- electron on the average. The ordering is due to the fact that the large intra-rung hopping $`\mathrm{t}_a`$ leads to a half-filled (rung-) bonding band that is separated into an (empty) upper and (filled) lower Hubbard band. The effective insulating gap is then a charge transfer gap approximately given by $`\mathrm{t}_a`$. Although this scenario is suggestive, a detailed theory for the insulating state of NaV2O$`_5`$is still lacking. Due to the charge gap, each rung accommodates only one d-electron which can occupy the right (R) or left (L) position of the rung. As first proposed in Ref.(), this charge degree of freedom can be described by an Ising pseudospin variable $`\tau _z`$ and its resonating behaviour by the transverse isospin variable $`\tau _x`$. The latter is responsible for the tendency towards the formation of a bonding state. The Coulomb interactions between d-electrons on different rungs may then be mapped onto Ising-like interactions on the one-particle subspace of the rungs. Altogether the charge degrees of freedom are then described by

$`H_c=\mathrm{t}_a{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\tau _x^i+\mathrm{K}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}\tau _z^i\tau _z^j\mathrm{K}^{}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}\tau _z^i\tau _z^j`$ (1)
The first term describes the intra-rung hopping, which is the largest hopping element $`\mathrm{t}_a`$, see Ref.(). The terms $`\mathrm{K},\mathrm{K}^{}`$ are effective intra- and inter-ladder Coulomb interactions, respectively (Fig.1), which contain also the effect of virtual inter-rung hopping. An interesting particular case of this Hamiltonian occurs if we consider only a single ladder (i.e. set $`\mathrm{K}^{}=0`$). Then this Hamiltonian describes the 1D Ising model in a transverse field of strength $`\mathrm{t}_a`$ whose exact solution, including the correlation functions $`\tau _z^i\tau _z^j`$ and $`\tau _x^i\tau _x^j`$ (j=i$`\pm `$1), is known . It has been discussed in the present context in Ref.(). The model is able to describe the appearance of the zig-zag charge ordering along the ladder as a function of the control parameter K/ta; strictly speaking an infinitesimal staggered field due to inter-ladder coupling is necessary to stabilize the order parameter. Due to the peculiar structure of the Trellis lattice (rungs of neighbouring ladders are shifted by half a lattice constant b) the inter-ladder effective Coulomb interaction $`\mathrm{K}^{}`$ leads to a frustration in the zig-zag CO state. If it exceeds a critical value $`\mathrm{K}_c^{}`$, then the zig-zag CO is destroyed and in-line CO would be prefered. This transition corresponds to a change in the modulation vector of the pseudo-spin density $`\tau _z(\stackrel{}{Q}`$) from $`\stackrel{}{Q}=(\frac{\pi }{a},\frac{\pi }{b})`$ to $`\stackrel{}{Q}=0`$. The Hamiltonian of Eq.(1) with K$`>`$0 describes a 2D frustrated Ising model in a transverse field (ITF) on a trigonal lattice.

In this work our aim is to present a more detailed study of the correlation functions and phase diagram of this model.

It was shown in Ref.() that the spin exchange between the ladders is strongly influenced by the charge fluctuations and the charge order parameter. In this investigation the intra-rung charge fluctuations have been eliminated by using the 1D- Ising model exact solution. This is only possible for one ladder and not in the 2D frustrated Ising model appropriate for the Trellis lattice. Therefore we will keep the general interaction term of charge and spin degrees of freedom as proposed in Ref.()

$`H_{CS}`$ $`=`$ $`J{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16}}[(1+\tau _z^i)(1+\tau _z^j)\stackrel{}{\sigma }^i\stackrel{}{\sigma }^j`$ (2)
$`+`$ $`(1\tau _z^i)(1\tau _z^j)\stackrel{}{\sigma }^i\stackrel{}{\sigma }^j]`$ (3)
$`+`$ $`J^{}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{32}}[(1+\tau _z^i)(1\tau _z^j)\stackrel{}{\sigma }^i\stackrel{}{\sigma }^j`$ (4)
$`+`$ $`(1\tau _z^i)(1+\tau _z^j)\stackrel{}{\sigma }^i\stackrel{}{\sigma }^j]`$ (5)
The first and second term describe the coupling of charge fluctuations to the intra- and inter-ladder exchange, respectively. For clarity we use explicitely the R,L pseudospin projectors $`\frac{1}{2}(1\pm \tau _z)`$ in the Hamiltonian. Approximate expressions for the superexchange constants $`J,J^{}`$ have been given in Ref.(). In general we ignore superexchange paths along the ladder diagonals, although this is not completely justified ; we will consider its effects in a few cases. So far we have introduced a large number of coupling constants as free parameters in these models. It is not our purpose to compute the properties of them for any range of the parameters involved. Instead, we shall be interested in those values that are physically relevant for the underlying NaV2O$`_5`$compound. They were obtained in LDA+U calculations assuming full charge order. In this method, the 3d-occupation of each vanadium site is fixed and an empirical on- site Coulomb interaction U is added to the LDA potential which shifts occupied 3d-states downward and unoccupied 3d-states upward with respect to the Fermi level and in this way leads to a proper insulating state for NaV2O$`_5`$. From these LDA+U calculations the following hopping and exchange constants were obtained: $`\mathrm{t}_a`$= -340 meV, $`J=`$ 30 meV and $`J^{}=`$ -5 meV, i.e. there is antiferromagnetic (AF) intra-ladder and ferromagnetic (FM) inter-ladder exchange. As the effective inter-site Coulomb constants are not known, they are left as variable parameters in a range of up to 1 eV. The on-site Coulomb interaction, which does no longer appear in our effective low energy Hamiltonian, has the magnitude $`U=4`$ eV.

## III Ladder Hilbert space and computational technique

In our numerical computation, each rung i is associated with the four dimensional Hilbert space {$`|\sigma _i|\tau _i`$} where $`\sigma _i,\tau _i=,`$. We classify the states used according to their total spin quantum number $`\sigma _z`$ and restrict to the space with $`\sigma _z`$=0 for the ground state calculations. Note that the total pseudo spin z-component $`\tau _z`$= 0 is not conserved due to the first term in Eq.(1). As a consequence of this, all states in the pseudo-spin sector have to be included in the calculation. Therefore the maximum number of sites which we treat is N=28. They may be arranged in different structures, some of them are shown in Fig.1. In Fig.(1-a) we have plotted an isolated single ladder where N=28. The intra-ladder coupling constant K (which is the result of Coulomb interaction on neighbouring rungs) exists on each leg of the ladder. Similarly the exchange constant $`J`$ on each leg represents the coupling of the spin degrees of freedom of each electron. The hopping parameter ta is defined on each rung. Most of our calculation on the single ladder is considered with periodic boundary condition (BC) in the legs direction. We have only considered the open BC when we compare the correlation functions of a single ladder and two coupled ladders. The interactions of two ladders is assigned in Fig.(1-b) with inter-ladder couplings K and $`J^{}`$ which is denoted by dashed lines. All of results presented here on two coupled ladders are in open BC. The interaction between three and four ladders is depicted in Fig.(1-c and d). The results of computations on this latter configurations are not presented here because the lattice dimension on each direction is very small and we cannot avoid boundary effects. However this results help us to see what will be the effect of more ladder interation and find a qualtitative phase diagram for our model.

We use a single ladder to study the finite size scaling of various quantities as function of the number of sites N. We also use some more two dimensional structures as shown in Fig.1 corresponding to various N to investigate the effects of inter-rung interactions, especially concerning the phase diagram as a function of $`\mathrm{K},\mathrm{K}^{}`$. We represent correlations for open boundary conditions on the ladder since for the former the correlation functions are symmetric around the midpoint of the ladder and therefore presumably contain less information. The periodic boundary condition is applied in the b-direction and used to compute the energy levels.

## IV Results of exact diagonalization

In this section we present the results of our calculations for correlation functions of the Hamiltonian ($`H`$) with both spin and pseudo-spin degrees of freedom ($`H=H_c+H_{CS}`$). From this information, we are able to conjecture a phase diagram in the $`(K,K^{})`$\- plane. Furthermore, we also study the influence of the exchange on the critical value $`K_c`$ for charge ordering in the single ladder. Subsequently, we come to the important question about the nature of excited states (charge type vs. spin type) and discuss the finite size scaling of the energy gap in a single ladder. We have also considered the effect of bond-alternation (dimerization, $`\delta `$) of the spin exchange on the single-ladder system. This shows the scaling behaviour of spin gap due to $`\gamma `$.

### A Correlation functions and CO transition

The pseudo-spin interaction $`\mathrm{K}>0`$ along the ladder legs is of “antiferro” type because physically the d-electrons sitting on the same side of adjacent rungs have a larger repulsion than if they were located across the ladder diagonal. Thus the second term in Eq.(1) tends to localize the electrons on opposite sites of the ladder in zig-zag fashion (Fig.1). On the other hand the first term in Eq.(1) which describes the hopping energy within the rung prefers the disordered mixed valent state where the d-electron occupies the symmetric rung-bonding state with equal probability of sitting on the L and R sites. This state is realized for $`\mathrm{K}=0`$ (and $`\mathrm{t}_a`$ as given above from LDA+U calculations). If K increases above a critical value $`\mathrm{K}_c=\mathrm{t}_a`$, eventually the ordered state with a zig-zag correlation is preferred. This behaviour is clearly exhibited in Fig.2 for the single ladder (K=0).

The correlation function for a single ladder with periodic BC is plotted for N=28 in Fig.(2). For small values of K (K$`<0.4`$) there is no LRO and correlations decay very fast. By increasing K (K$`>0.4`$), the correlation function shows zig-zag (alternating) LRO where the amplitude of the correlations is approximately constant for all distances (r). The critical interaction can be seen to be $`\mathrm{K}_c`$= 0.35-0.4 eV $``$ $`\mathrm{t}_a`$. The coupling to adjacent ladders (third term in Eq.(1)) would however prefer the “ferro” type arrangement, which leads to a frustration of charge (pseudo-spin) order. The effect of this frustration is clearly visible in Fig.3 and Fig.4 for the correlation functions with K$`{}_{}{}^{}>`$0, most directly for the 2nd neighbour rung (r=2). Its correlation for K$`{}_{}{}^{}=0`$ is of ferro type, then increasing K becomes first antiferro-type and finally, when K is large enough so that the in-line ordering is prefered, it becomes of ferro type again. This non-monotonic behaviour of $`\tau ^z(i)\tau ^z(i+2)`$ is due to the competition of different interaction paths, either directly along the legs of the given ladder, involving K, or indirectly via adjacent ladders which involves K.

A similar behaviour is seen in the two-dimensional lattice by considering three or four ladders interacting via K. In this case the number of rungs is reduced to four and three respectively in each ladder (Fig.1-(c) and (d)). We shall explain the case of the two-ladder system in more detail. In this case the system is composed of two 6-rung ladders with open boundary conditions imposed. The pseudo-spin correlation functions are plotted in Fig.3 and Fig.4. We have plotted $`\tau ^z(0)\tau ^z(r)`$ along the b-direction for both single and double ladder systems. The case of a single-ladder is added for comparison. In Fig.3, the value of K is fixed to K=0.35 $`<`$ Kc. The case of single-ladder (K=0) shows a rapid decay with distance which verifies that no LRO exists in the ladder. By turning on the K coupling, the second ladder interacts with the first one. We have plotted the correlation functions at the same points of the single-ladder for different value of K. When K=0.175 or 0.35 eV, the qualitative behaviour does not change which verifies the absence of LRO. By increasing K’ the ordering of the first neighbour (r=1) goes from anti-ferro to ferro type. For the 2nd neighbour (r=2) this ordering goes from ferro- to anti-ferro and finally again to ferro- type for enough high value of K (in this case K$`{}_{}{}^{}>1.25`$). As mentioned above, the competition between different paths of interactions via K and K is responsible for this behaviour. It happens for 0.35 $`<`$ K$`{}_{}{}^{}<`$ 0.7 eV which is a phase with no LRO and will appear in the phase diagram (Fig.5). For high value of K an in-line LRO appears on each ladder of the model.

In addition, Fig.4 shows a similar behaviour like Fig.3, while K is fixed to K=0.5 eV $`>`$Kc in the zig-zag ordered phase of a single-ladder system. The correlation function shows that for the single-ladder (K=0), a true zig-zag LRO exists. As before, a small value of K does not change the ordering of the single-ladder (K=0.25 and 0.5 eV). For an intermediate value of K, the disordered (no LRO) phase will appear (0.5 $`<`$ K$`{}_{}{}^{}<`$ 1.5 eV). Then by increasing K a complete in-line ordering starts to stabilise.

### B Phase Diagram for CO

As we have seen in the previous sections, the transition from antiferromagnetic (zig-zag) to ferromagnetic (in-line) type CO depends on the ratio of K to $`\mathrm{t}_a`$ and on the “frustration” ratio K/K. As the 2nd neighbour (r=2) correlation along the ladder shows the transition is not abrupt but gradual. This signals an intermediate region in the K, K plane which has to be considered as a phase of no LRO. We believe that this phase is very similar to the “floating phase” discovered in the 2D-ANNNI (anisotropic next nearest-neighbour Ising) model on a square lattice even though in this case it exists only at finite temperature (e.g. Ref.()). The inherent geometric frustration of the Trellis lattice might stabilize it even for zero temperature. The phase diagram obtained from systematic study of the correlation function is shown in Fig.5. For simplicity, let us neglect the spin coupling and consider Eq.(1) in two marginal cases. First, if K$`{}_{}{}^{}=0`$, Eq.(1) reduces to a one-dimensional ITF model. Then for K$`<`$Kc there is no LRO for charge degrees of freedom while a 2nd-order quantum phase transition will occur at Kc to an anti-ferroelectric (zig-zag) LRO. In the other extreme case where K=0, Eq.(1) is reduced to a two-dimensional ITF model on a square lattice. Obviously for small value of K, the first term in Eq.(1) prevents the existence of LRO for charge degrees of freedom. If K goes to large values respect to ta, the two-dimensional square lattice shows a ferro-electric (in-line) ordering. Therefore the phase diagram of Eq.(1) in the K-K plane consists of two boundary lines which divide a phase with no LRO in the intermediate regime from the other in-line and zig-zag LRO. This phase boundary is an extension of two critical points Kc and K$`{}_{c}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ in the K-K plane which is supported by numerical data on two-dimensional clusters (Figs.3 and 4).

The phase boundary for the upper in-line phase and the lower zig-zag phase are obtained by requiring a threshold value of 90% for the correlation of each type. As critical values we obtain K$`{}_{c}{}^{}`$ 0.39 eV (the effect of spin coupling has been considered) and K$`{}_{c}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ is the critical value of a two-dimensional ITF model on a square lattice including the spin coupling by Eq.(5). If we neglect the effect of Eq.(5) then K$`{}_{c}{}^{}`$0.054 eV . These phase boundaries enclose the disordered phase with no clearly discernible long range correlation. Although specifying the properties of the intermediate no LRO phase is beyond our numerical computations our data show that the period of oscillation of correlation functions has doubled in comparison to the zig-zag ordered phase. This can be seen in Fig.(3) at K=0.7 and in Fig.(4) at K=1.0.

The phase boundaries for CO also depend on the size of the exchange constants. This has been studied for the point (K,K)=(Kc,0), corresponding to the single ladder case in more detail as shown in Fig.6. The critical value Kc for development of long range order is defined by the simultaneous crossing point where curves for different ladder lengths (N=20-28) meet. One can clearly see that Kc shifts as a function of the exchange $`J`$ along the ladder leg. This can be explained as follows. In the disordered phase there is a certain amount of stabilisation energy of the spin singlet. The incipient zig-zag CO which localizes the d-electrons on opposite sites of the ladder diagonal tends to reduce this stabilisation energy and hence, if J increases the critical Kc for CO to set in also has to increase. It is shown for two different values of $`J`$ (30, 100 meV) in Fig.6. In the case of single-ladder by setting $`J=0`$, we have a one-dimensional ITF model where Kc=ta. It is shown in Fig.6-a that the intersection of the pseudo-spin correlation function for different values of N (20, 24, 28) is at Kc=0.39 eV where $`J`$=0.03 eV (ta=0.34 eV). A similar curve in Fig.6-b shows that the intersection is at Kc=0.40 eV where J is increased to $`J`$=0.1 eV at fixed ta. This verifies the monotonic dependence of Kc on the exchange constant $`J`$.

### C Nature of excited states, finite size scaling and effective exchange

We have implemented the Lanczos method in different $`S_{tot}^z`$ subspaces to determine the structure of excited states. For the single-ladder system, the ground state and first excited state are always spin singlet and triplet state respectively, as long as we do not include the exchange path along the ladder diagonals. This is true even in the coupled ladder system (2D Trellis lattice). As we have a Heisenberg exchange term, the singlet- triplet gap has to vanish in the thermodynamic limit N$`\mathrm{}`$.

However, from the finite size scaling behaviour we may extract the “effective exchange” along the ladder for a pure spin model, which is modified from its bare value J due to the effect of intra-rung charge fluctuations. In Fig.7-a the scaling behaviour of the singlet- triplet gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ for a single ladder is shown as a function of 1/N (N=16, 20, 24, 28) for various interaction paramters K. All curves show a decrease in the energy gap with increasing N, which leads to gapless behaviour by extrapolation to $`N\mathrm{}`$. We use a scaling form for the energy gap given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(N)\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}+\frac{\alpha }{N^\nu }$$
(6)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}`$0 for N$`\mathrm{}`$, $`\alpha `$ is constant and $`\nu `$ a scaling exponent. These values are given in Table 1 for various K and we see that $`\nu `$ $`<`$ 1 for K $`<`$ Kc and $`\nu `$ $`>`$ 1 for K $`>`$ Kc.

| $`K`$ | $`\alpha `$ | $`\nu `$ |
| --- | --- | --- |
| $`0.3`$ | $`0.03379`$ | $`0.75224`$ |
| $`0.35`$ | 0.03332 | 0.88581 |
| $`0.392`$ | $`0.03633`$ | $`1.04005`$ |
| $`0.4`$ | 0.03683 | 1.06949 |
| $`0.45`$ | $`0.03699`$ | $`1.21717`$ |
| $`0.5`$ | $`0.02862`$ | $`1.23286`$ |

Table 1. Numerical values of the coefficients in the scaling function of the energy gap in Fig.7-a. The scaling exponent is $`\nu <1`$ for $`K<K_c0.39`$ and $`\nu >1`$ for $`K>K_c`$. The scaling form is $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}+\frac{\alpha }{N^\nu }`$. (Data has been obtained by imposing a least square root error of $`10^8`$ for the scaling function ).

This shows the different curvature of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ versus $`1/N`$. (To have the best fit of the data in Fig.7-a at fixed $`\nu =1`$ we have considered more terms in the curve fitting form; $`\mathrm{\Delta }(N)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}+\frac{C_1}{N}+\frac{C_3}{N^3}+\frac{C_5}{N^5}`$ which is justified for the case of pure spin- $`\frac{1}{2}`$ chain ). For a pure spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ system without coupling to charge degrees of freedom, one has $`\nu `$=1 and the coefficient $`C_1`$ is related to

$$C_1=2\pi ^2S^2J_{\mathrm{eff}}$$
(7)
Comparison with our $`C_1`$ coefficient from the scaling plots in Fig.7-a gives us the variation of the effective exchange constant Jeff(K) with the interaction K that controls the charge order (for a given ta). This variation is shown in Fig.8. A steep drop in Jeff(K) is seen in the region where the charge order sets in (K$``$0.39). Eventually for K$``$ta when zig-zag CO is almost complete, Jeff has to approach zero because in the zig-zag structure the exchange J along the legs is ineffective.

The situation changes when we also include exchange along the ladder diagonals. In this case we will add an exchange term similar to the first term of Eq.(5) along the ladder diagonal in each plaquette (not shown in Fig.1). The value of diagonal exchange is considered to be $`J_d=32.7meV`$ which has been obtained by LDA+U calculations in Ref.(). For K $`<`$ Kc the first excited state is a spin triplet, for K $`>`$ Kc however the first excited state is not a spin triplet, rather it has spin zero like the ground state and therefore it should be interpreted as a charge excitation. This leads to a very different scaling of the energy gap for K $`>`$ Kc (Fig.7-b) while the case K $`<`$ Kc is very similar to the model without diagonal exchange (Fig.7-a). The scaling behaviour in Fig.7-b for K$`<`$0.35 is roughly linear which behaves like the former spin excitations while for K$`>`$0.4 the scaling behaviour is completely different.

We have also considered the effect of dimerization ($`\delta `$) of the exchange coupling on the energy gap of a single-ladder. This is of interest because it seems now clear that the charge disordered ladders in the low temperature structure of NaV2O$`_5`$discussed in the introduction have a large superexchange dimerisation due to the shift of oxygen positions. Therefore we consider the influence of the dimerisation for K$`<`$Kc in the disordered regime. This means that the exchange constant (J) of the first term in Eq.(5) is replaced by $`J(1\pm \gamma )`$ in an alternating way. The dimerization parameter varies as $`\gamma `$=0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, $`\mathrm{}`$, 0.6. Obviously an energy gap opens by turning on $`\gamma `$ which does not scale to zero with increasing N ($`N\mathrm{}`$) as it did for the undimerized case $`\gamma `$=0. In Fig.9-b we have plotted the log-log plot of energy gap versus $`\gamma `$. For small value of $`\gamma `$ the energy gap scales as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta ^\eta `$ where $`\eta =2.25\pm 0.25`$.

## V Summary

The main results of our exact diagonalisation investigation for the present NaV2O$`_5`$model are the following: For the single ladder the ratio of K/ta controls the onset of charge order which is observed in the evolution of the pseudospin correlation function (Fig.2). This is similar as in the exact 1D Ising model in transverse field results .

For the 2D Trellis lattice, it depends on the relative size of intra- and inter-ladder effective Coulomb interactions K,K and the size of K with respect to the intra-rung hopping ta whether in-line or zig zag structures are realized. This agrees with LDA+U total energy calculations which show that these two structures are very close in energy with the zig-zag structure slightly lower . In addition however we have shown that in a wide region in the K, K plane a disordered phase should exist which does not show long range correlations of charge due to the inherent frustration of the Trellis lattice structure. According to Lüdecke et al  in the real NaV2O$`_5`$structure only every second ladder is charge ordered and the intervening ladders stay in the MV state. This might be an indication that NaV2O$`_5`$is not far from the regime with a disordered state, i.e. close to a quantum critical point.

We have also studied the effect of spin coupling on the charge order transition. We have shown that Kc has a monotonic dependence on the exchange constant($`J`$), i.e. for J=30 meV it leads to 15 percent increase of the 1D ITF result.

We have addressed the issue of excitation type in our charge-spin model. As long as the spin exchange along the ladder diagonal is absent the excitations are singlet to triplet. By adding a diagonal spin exchange on ladders we will observe charge excitations in the ordered phase while it is still spin type in the disordered phase.

From the finite size scaling analysis of the singlet triplet excitation gap we obtain the dependence of the effective inter-rung exchange on the ladder as function of the degree of charge order, i.e. as function of K. A steep drop of Jeff is observed around the critical value Kc for charge order. Eventually it will be reduced to zero in the fully CO regime in qualitative agreement with perturbation calculations

## VI Acknowledgement

A.L. would like to thank A. Bernert, V. Yushankhai and I. Peschel for fruitful discussions and acknowledge Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems for computer facilities and M.A.M.D. would like to thank the Centro de Supercomputación Complutense for the allocation of CPU time in the SG-Origin 2000 Parallel Computer. M.A.M.-D. was supported by the DGES spanish grant PB97-1190.