text:
# Probabilistic manipulation of entangled photons

## Abstract

We propose probabilistic controlled-NOT and controlled-phase gates for qubits stored in the polarization of photons. The gates are composed of linear optics and photon detectors, and consume polarization entangled photon pairs. The fraction of the successful operation is only limited by the efficiency of the Bell-state measurement. The gates work correctly under the use of imperfect detectors and lossy transmission of photons. Combined with single-qubit gates, they can be used for producing arbitrary polarization states and for designing various quantum measurements.

PACS numbers: 03.67.Lx, 42.50.-p

Entanglement plays an important role in various schemes of quantum information processing, such as quantum teleportation , quantum dense coding , certain types of quantum key distributions , and quantum secret sharing. It is natural to expect that entanglement shared among many particles will be useful for more complicated applications including communication among many users. Among the physical systems that can be prepared in entangled states, photons are particularly suited for such applications because they can easily be transferred to remote places. Several schemes for creating multiparticle entanglement from a resource of lower numbers of entangled particles have been proposed, and experimentally a three-particle entangled state \[a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state\] was created from two entangled photon pairs .

In order to synthesize any states of $`n`$ photons on demand, the concept of quantum gates is useful. The universality of the set of the controlled-NOT gate and single-qubit gates implies that you can create any states by making a quantum circuit using such gates. In addition to synthesizing quantum states, this scheme also enables general transformation and generalized measurement in the Hilbert space of $`n`$ photons. A difficulty in this strategy is how to make two photons interact with each other and realize two-qubit gates. One way to accomplish this is to implement conditional dynamics at the single-photon level through the strong coupling to the matter such as an atom, and a demonstration has been reported , which is a significant step toward this goal. On the other hand, if we restrict our tools to linear optical elements, a never-failing controlled-NOT gate is impossible, which is implied by the no-go theorem for Bell-state measurements . It is, however, still possible to construct a “probabilistic gate”, which tells us whether the operation has been successful or not and do the desired operation faithfully for the successful cases. While the probabilistic nature hinders the use for the fast calculation of classical data that outruns classical computers, such a gate will still be a useful tool for the manipulation of quantum states of a modest number of photons, because no classical computer can be a substitute for this purpose.

In this Rapid Communication, we propose probabilistic two-qubit gates for qubits stored in the polarization of photons. The gates are composed of photon detectors and linear optical components such as beam splitters and wave plates. As resources, the gates consume entangled photon pairs. When the detectors with quantum efficiency $`\eta `$ are used, the success probability of $`\eta ^4/4`$ can be obtained, which is only limited by the efficiency of the Bell measurement used in the scheme. Combined with single-qubit gates that are easily implemented by linear optics, the proposed gates can build quantum circuits conducting arbitrary unitary operations with nonzero success probabilities.

In Fig. 1 we show the schematic of scheme I, the simplest of the schemes we propose in this paper. The gate requires two photons and a pair of photons in a Bell state as resources. Initially, they are in the states $`|H_{2a}`$, $`|H_{2b}`$, and $`(|H_{3a}|V_{3b}|V_{3a}|H_{3b})/\sqrt{2}`$. The wave plate WP5 rotates the polarization of mode $`3a`$ by $`45^{}`$, namely, $`|H_{3a}(|H_{3^{}a}+|V_{3^{}a})/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`|V_{3a}(|H_{3^{}a}|V_{3^{}a})/\sqrt{2}`$. After WP5, the entangled photon pair becomes

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}`$ $`(|V_{3^{}a}|V_{3b}+|H_{3^{}a}|V_{3b}`$ (2)
$`+|V_{3^{}a}|H_{3b}|H_{3^{}a}|H_{3b}).`$
The polarizing beam splitter PBS1 transmits $`H`$ photons and reflects $`V`$ photons. Combined with WP2, it gives the transformation $`|H_{2a}|H_{3^{}a}(|H_{4a}|H_{5a}+|V_{4a}|H_{4a})\sqrt{2}`$ and $`|H_{2a}|V_{3^{}a}(|V_{4a}|V_{5a}+|H_{5a}|V_{5a})\sqrt{2}`$. Photons in the $`b`$ modes are similarly transformed, and we obtain the state

$`(\beta /2)(|V_{4a}|V_{4b}|V_{5a}|V_{5b}+|H_{4a}|V_{4b}|H_{5a}|V_{5b}`$ (3)
$`+|V_{4a}|H_{4b}|V_{5a}|H_{5b}|H_{4a}|H_{4b}|H_{5a}|H_{5b})`$ (4)
$`+\sqrt{1\beta ^2}|\varphi \beta |\mathrm{\Psi }+\sqrt{1\beta ^2}|\varphi ,`$ (5)
where $`\beta =1/2`$, and $`|\varphi `$ is a normalized state in which the number of photons in mode $`4a`$ or mode $`4b`$ is not unity.

The photon in the input mode $`1a`$ $`(1b)`$ passes through wave plate WP1 (WP4), which rotates its polarization by $`90^{}`$, and is mixed with the photon in mode $`4a`$ $`(4b)`$ by a 50/50 polarization-independent beam splitter BS1 (BS2). After the beam splitters, the photon number of each mode and each polarization is measured by a photon counter. Let us assume that the state of the input qubits is

$`\alpha _1`$ $`|V_{1a}|V_{1b}+\alpha _2|V_{1a}|H_{1b}`$ (7)
$`+\alpha _3|H_{1a}|V_{1b}+\alpha _4|H_{1a}|H_{1b}.`$
The total state after the beam splitter can be calculated straightforwardly, but we do not write down the whole since it is too lengthy. We focus on the terms in which one $`H`$ photon is found in modes $`6a`$ or $`7a`$, one $`V`$ photon is found in modes $`6a`$ or $`7a`$, and similar conditions hold for $`b`$ modes. There are 16 such combinations. For example, the terms including $`|V_{6a}|H_{7a}|V_{6b}|H_{7b}`$ are found to be

$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{8}}|V_{6a}|H_{7a}|V_{6b}|H_{7b}(\alpha _1|V_{5a}|V_{5b}`$ (9)
$`+\alpha _2|V_{5a}|H_{5b}+\alpha _3|H_{5a}|V_{5b}+\alpha _4|H_{5a}|H_{5b}),`$
and the terms including $`|V_{6a}|H_{6a}|V_{7b}|H_{7b}`$ are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{8}}`$ $`|V_{6a}|H_{6a}|V_{7b}|H_{7b}(\alpha _1|V_{5a}|V_{5b}`$ (11)
$`\alpha _2|V_{5a}|H_{5b}\alpha _3|H_{5a}|V_{5b}+\alpha _4|H_{5a}|H_{5b}).`$
As seen in these examples, the state in modes $`5a`$ and $`5b`$ depends on the photon distribution in modes 6 and 7. However, it is easy to check that this dependence is canceled if we introduce a phase shift by phase modulator PM1, $`|H_{5a}|H_{8a}`$ and $`|V_{5a}|V_{8a}`$, only for the cases of $`|V_{6a}|H_{6a}`$ and $`|V_{7a}|H_{7a}`$, and similar operation for PM2. Then, for all 16 combinations, the state in modes $`8a`$ and $`8b`$ becomes

$`\alpha _1`$ $`|V_{8a}|V_{8b}+\alpha _2|V_{8a}|H_{8b}`$ (13)
$`+\alpha _3|H_{8a}|V_{8b}+\alpha _4|H_{8a}|H_{8b}.`$
The evolution from Eq. (7) to Eq. (13) shows that this scheme operates as a controlled-phase gate if we assign $`|0=|H`$ and $`|1=|V`$. The probability of obtaining these results is $`\beta ^2/4=1/16`$. The factor of $`1/4`$ appearing here can be understood as due to the twofold use of Bell-state measurement schemes with 50% success probability, used in the dense coding experiment . If we place two additional wave plates in modes $`1b`$ and $`8b`$, which rotate polarization by $`45^{}`$ and $`45^{}`$, respectively, we obtain a probabilistic controlled-NOT gate.

Next, we consider the effect of imperfect quantum efficiency of photon detectors. In order to characterize the behavior of the detector, we introduce the parameter $`\eta _2`$ in addition to the quantum efficiency $`\eta `$, in such a way that it detects two photons with probability $`\eta ^2\eta _2`$ when two photons simultaneously arrive. For example, conventional avalanche photodiodes (APDs) have $`\eta _2=0`$ since they cannot distinguish two-photon events from one-photon events. Use of $`N`$ conventional APDs after beam splitting the input to $`N`$ branches leads to an effective value of $`\eta _2=11/N`$. Recently, a detector with high $`\eta `$ and with clearly distinguishable signals for one- and two-photon events was also demonstrated.

There are two distinctive effects caused by the imperfect quantum efficiency. The first one is that the detectors report some successful events as false ones by overlooking incoming photons. The success probability of $`1/16`$ in the ideal case thus reduces to $`p_{\mathrm{true}}^{(\mathrm{I})}\eta ^4/16`$. The second effect is that the detectors report some failing events as successful ones. This may occur when two photons enter mode $`4a`$ or $`4b`$, hence the output mode $`8a`$ or $`8b`$ has no photon. After some simple algebra, the probability $`p_{\mathrm{false}}^{(\mathrm{I})}`$ of this occurrence is obtained as $`p_{\mathrm{false}}^{(\mathrm{I})}=\eta ^4(3\kappa )(1\kappa )/4`$, with $`\kappa \eta (1+\eta _2)/2`$. Because of this effect, after discarding the failing events indicated by the results of the photon detection, the output of the gate still includes errors at probability $`p_{\mathrm{err}}^{(\mathrm{I})}p_{\mathrm{false}}^{(\mathrm{I})}/(p_{\mathrm{true}}^{(\mathrm{I})}+p_{\mathrm{false}}^{(\mathrm{I})})`$. In the following, we describe two methods for removing these errors.

The first method is the postselection that is applicable when every output qubit of the whole quantum circuit is eventually measured by photon detectors. As we have seen, the errors in the gate always accompany the loss of photons in the output. We also observe easily that if the input mode $`1a`$ $`(1b)`$ is initially in the vacuum state, the output mode $`8a`$ $`(8b)`$ has no photon whenever the detectors show successful outcomes. This implies that if one of the gates in the circuit causes errors, at least one photon is missing in the final state of the whole circuit. The errors can thus be discarded by postselecting the events of every detector at the end of the circuit registering a photon. This method also works when the Bell-state source fails to produce two photons reliably and emits fewer photons on occasion.

The second method is to construct more reliable gates, using scheme I for the initialization processes, as shown in Fig. 2(a). This method is advantageous when the Bell-state source is close to ideal and good optical delay lines are available. In scheme II, we use two Bell pairs of photons in the state $`(|H|H|V|V)/\sqrt{2}`$, and operate conditional-phase gate (scheme I) on the two photons, one from each pair. If the operation fails, we discard everything and retry from the start. The initialization process is complete when the operation of scheme I is successful, and the outputs are sent to modes $`4a`$ and $`4b`$. The remaining photons of Bell pairs are sent to modes $`5a`$ and $`5b`$. At this point, the quantum state is prepared in the following mixed state,

$$(1p_{\mathrm{err}}^{(\mathrm{I})})|\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }|+p_{\mathrm{err}}^{(\mathrm{I})}\widehat{\rho },$$
(14)
where $`\widehat{\rho }`$ is a normalized density operator representing a state in which no photon exists in mode $`4a`$ or $`4b`$. After this point, the operation of scheme II follows that of scheme I. The crucial difference from scheme I is that the state $`\widehat{\rho }`$ has no chance to produce successful outcomes. This leads to $`p_{\mathrm{false}}^{(\mathrm{II})}=p_{\mathrm{err}}^{(\mathrm{II})}=0`$, namely, the faithful operation is obtained with the success probability of $`p_{\mathrm{true}}^{(\mathrm{II})}=(1p_{\mathrm{err}}^{(\mathrm{I})})\eta ^4/4`$. When one of the input modes is in the vacuum, this gate never reports the successful operation. This implies that errors caused by the loss of photons in the upstream circuit are detected and hence discarded.

Using scheme II for the initializing process, we can enhance the success probability. Scheme III shown in Fig. 2(b) is exactly the same as scheme II, except that scheme I inside is replaced by scheme II itself. When the initialization is completed, the gate inside produces exactly the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$. For this scheme, the probability of a successful operation is $`p_{\mathrm{true}}^{(\mathrm{III})}=\eta ^4/4`$, and in the ideal case it is $`1/4`$. This limitation stems from the success probability (50% each) of the two Bell-state measurements. It should be noted that the maximum of this probability is still an open question, and if a more efficient way of Bell measurement is discovered, it will be used in our scheme to enhance the success probability of the gate.

Scheme III can be viewed as a particular implementation of the general scheme of constructing quantum gates using the concept of teleportation and Bell measurement, to the case of qubits stored in photons. In the general argument that considers the use of single-qubit gates, three-particle entangled states (GHZ states) are required as resources. What was shown here is that linear optical components for qubits made of photons have more functions than the single-qubit gates, and the resource requirement is further reduced to two-particle entanglement.

Since the set of the controlled-NOT gate and single-qubit gates is universal, any unitary transformation can be realized with a nonzero success probability by quantum circuits composed of the proposed gates and linear optical components. For the tasks that take classical data as an input and return classical data as an output, the quantum circuits here will not surpass the conventional classical computers due to the probabilistic nature. But there are other applications in which either the input or the output includes quantum states. For instance, they can be used as a quantum-state synthesizer, which produces any quantum state on the polarization degree of freedom with a nonzero probability. They are also used as designing various types of quantum measurement. For any positive operator valued measure (POVM)  given by the set of positive operators $`\{F_1,\mathrm{},F_n\}`$ with $`_kF_k=\mathrm{𝟏}`$, it is possible to realize a POVM given by $`\{pF_1,\mathrm{},pF_n,(1p)\mathrm{𝟏}\}`$, where $`p`$ is a nonzero probability of success. As transformers of quantum states, they may be used for the purification protocol of entangled pairs. This implies that if reliable resources of entangled photon pairs are realized, it may be possible to produce maximally entangled pairs shared by remote places connected only by noisy channels.

Finally, we would like to mention the requirement on the property of the entangled-pair resources. While the mixing of fewer-photon states can be remedied as discussed before, the mixing of excess photons leads to errors that are difficult to correct. For example, the photon-pair source by parametric down-conversion of coherent light with a pair production probability of $`\eta _{\mathrm{PDC}}`$ emits two pairs with the probability of $`O(\eta _{\mathrm{PDC}}^2)`$. This portion causes severe effects when the two or more gates are connected in series. The recent proposal for the regulated entangled photon pairs from a quantum dot  seems to be a promising candidate for the resources of the proposed gates.

Note added in proof — Recently, a proposal of quantum gates for photons, which is aimed at fast computation, was made by Knill et al. .

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (Grant No. 12740243) by the Japan Society of the Promotion of Science.


format: text

text:
# Calculation of master integrals by difference equations

## Acknowledgement

The author wants to thank E. Remiddi and M. Caffo for useful discussions and encouragement in the very early stage of this work.

.

## Figure Captions

Figure 1: Diagrams corresponding to the master integrals evaluated..

(S. Laporta, Calculation of master integrals by difference equations)

.

.

(S. Laporta, Calculation of master integrals by difference equations)

.

.

(S. Laporta, Calculation of master integrals by difference equations)


text:
# Isospin Effect on the Process of Multifragmentation and Dissipation at Intermediate Energy Heavy Ion Collisions

## 1 Introduction

In recent years, the establishment of radioactive beam facilities at many laboratories over the world and the use of radioactive beams with large neutron or proton excess have offered an excellent opportunity to investigate the isospin-dependence of heavy ion collision (HIC) dynamics\[1-4\]. This kind of study has made it possible to obtain the information about the equation of state (EOS) of asymmetric nuclear matter ranging from symmetric nuclear matter to pure neutron matter and the information on isospin-dependence of in-medium nucleon-nucleon (N-N) cross section, which are significantly important not only in understanding nuclear properties but also in exploring the explosion mechanism of supernova and the cooling rate of neutron stars. However two essential ingredients in HIC dynamics, the symmetry potential of the mean field and the isospin-dependent in-medium N-N cross section, have not been well determined so far. Recently, Li et al. made use of the isospin dependent transport theory to investigate nuclear symmetry energy and showed that the rate of pre-equilibrium neutron-proton emitted in intermediate energy HIC is sensitive to the density dependence of nuclear symmetry potential, but insensitive to the incompressibility of symmetric nuclear matter and the in-medium N-N cross section. Also, R.Pak and Bao-An Li et al. have found that the isospin dependence of collective flow and balance energy are mainly originated from the isospin-dependent in-medium N-N cross section,\[7-11\]. Recently we have found that nuclear stopping can be used as a good probe for exploring the in-medium N-N cross section in HIC in the beam energy ranging from above Fermi energy to 150MeV/nucleon. However, it is still not clear how the nuclear stopping depends on the neutron-proton ratio of the colliding system. In viewing that little information is known about the in-medium N-N cross section and its isospin dependence up to now, it is thus very desirable to find an efficient way to gain such kind of knowledge.

It is known that many intermediate mass fragments(IMF) are emitted in the process of intermediate energy HIC and that the element distribution and fragment multiplicity indicate a strong correlation between the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ and the total number of charged particles $`N_c`$ . The question is whether the multifragmentation and dissipation, especially the $`N_{imf}`$ and $`Q_{zz}`$ are sensitive to the neutron-proton ratio of the colliding system. To answer this question, we have investigated the isospin effect on the process of multifragmentation and dissipation in HIC for the colliding systems with different ratios of neutron to proton by using isospin dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD). To increase the efficiency of detectors and the statistics of $`N_{imf}`$ and $`Q_{zz}`$, the reversible kinetic reactions with heavy projectiles on light targets are suggested to have more intermediate mass fragments emitted towards forward angles.

The calculated results show prominent isospin effect for the multifragmentation $`N_{imf}`$ and the quadrupole of single particle momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ for the colliding systems with different neutron or proton excesses. The multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ of neutron-poor systems is always larger than that of neutron-rich systems, while the quadrupole of single particle momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ for neutron-poor systems is smaller than that of neutron-rich systems at the beam energies from 50MeV/nucleon to 150MeV/nucleon for all the reversible colliding systems studied here. The mechanism responsible for the above isospin effect can be found from the fact that the mean N-N cross section for a neutron-poor system is larger than that of the corresponding neutron-rich system with the same masses of projectile and target. The calculated results also show that the correlation between the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ and the total number of charged particles $`N_c`$, depends strongly on the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section and weakly on the symmetry potential in the chosen beam energy region. In Ref., it is found that $`Q_{zz}`$ is very sensitive to the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section and insensitive to the symmetry potential. In the present paper, the calculations show that the conclusion drawn in Ref. about $`Q_{zz}`$ remains true for the reversible kinetic reactions with heavy projectiles on light targets, but it is found that $`Q_{zz}`$ increases slightly as increasing the neutron-proton ratio of the colliding system. Therefore, $`Q_{zz}`$ can be a good probe for extracting information on in-medium N-N cross section in HIC in the beam energies ranging from above Fermi energy to 150MeV/nucleon, while the correlation between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ may serve as a complementary one.

## 2 Theoretical Model

The dynamics of intermediate energy HIC described by QMD\[13-14\] contains three ingredients: density dependent mean field, in-medium N-N cross section and Pauli blocking. To describe isospin effect appropriately, QMD should be modified properly: the density dependent mean field should contain correct isospin terms including symmetry energy and Coulomb potential, the in-medium N-N cross section should be different for neutron-neutron ( proton-proton ) and neutron-proton collisions, and the Pauli blocking should be counted by distinguishing neutrons and protons. In addition, the initial condition of the ground state of two colliding nuclei should also contain isospin information. In the present calculation, the ground state of each colliding nucleus is prepared by using the initial code of IQMD, according to its density distribution obtained from the Skyrme-Hatree-Fock calculation with the parameter set of SKM. The interaction potential is as follows,

$$U(\rho )=U^{Sky}+V_c(1\tau _z)+U^{sym}+V^{yuk}+U^{MDI}+U^{Pauli}$$
(1)
$`U^{Sky}`$ is the density-dependent Skyrme potential,

$$U^{Sky}=\alpha (\frac{\rho }{\rho _0})+\beta (\frac{\rho }{\rho _0})^\gamma $$
(2)
$`V_c`$ is Coulomb potential. $`U^{Yuk}`$ is the Yukawa potential ,

$$\begin{array}{cc}U_j^{Yuk}=\hfill & t_3_{ij}\frac{e^{L/m^2}}{r_{ij}/2m}\{e^{r_{ij}/m}[1\mathrm{\Phi }(\sqrt{L}/mr_{ij}/2\sqrt{L})]\hfill \\ & \\ & e^{r_{ij}/m}[1\mathrm{\Phi }(\sqrt{L}/m+r_{ij}/2\sqrt{L})]\}\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the error function. $`U^{MDI}`$ is the momentum dependent interaction ( MDI ),

$$U^{MDI}=t_4ln^2[t_5(\stackrel{}{p_1}\stackrel{}{p_2})^2+1]\frac{\rho }{\rho _0}$$
(4)
$`U^{Pauli}`$ is the Pauli potential\[17-18\],

$$U^{Pauli}=V_p\{\frac{\mathrm{}}{p_0q_0})^3exp(\frac{(\stackrel{}{r_i}\stackrel{}{r_j})^2}{2q_0^2}\frac{(\stackrel{}{p_i}\stackrel{}{p_j})^2}{2p_0^2}\}\delta _{p_ip_j}$$
(5)
$$\delta _{p_ip_j}=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{for neutron-neutron or proton-proton}\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{for neutron-proton}\hfill \end{array}$$

$`U^{sym}`$ is the symmetry potential. In the present paper, three different kinds of $`U^{sym}`$ have been used,

$$U_1^{sym}=cF_1(u)\delta \tau _z$$
(6)
$$U_2^{sym}=cF_2(u)\delta \tau _z+\frac{1}{2}cF_2(u)\delta ^2$$
(7)
$$U_3^{sym}=cF_3(u)\delta \tau _z\frac{1}{4}cF_3(u)\delta ^2$$
(8)
with

$$\tau _z=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{for neutron}\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{for proton}\hfill \end{array}$$

Here $`c`$ is the strength of the symmetry potential, taking the value of 32MeV. $`F_1(u)=u`$, $`F_2(u)=u^2`$ and $`F_3(u)=u^{1/2}`$, $`u\frac{\rho }{\rho _0}`$, $`\delta `$ is the relative neutron excess $`\delta =\frac{\rho _n\rho _p}{\rho _n+\rho _p}=\frac{\rho _n\rho _p}{\rho }`$. $`\rho `$ and $`\rho _0`$, $`\rho _n`$ and $`\rho _p`$ are the nuclear density and its normal value, neutron density and and proton density, respectively. The parameters of the interaction potentials are given in table 1.

Table 1. The parameters of the interaction potentials
$`\alpha `$ $`\beta `$ $`\gamma `$ $`t_3`$ m $`t_4`$ $`t_5`$ $`V_p`$ $`p_0`$ $`q_0`$    (MeV) (MeV)  (MeV) (fm) (MeV) ($`MeV^2`$) (MeV) (MeV/c) (fm)  $``$390.1 320.3 1.14 7.5 0.8 1.57 $`5\times 10^4`$ 30 400 5.64

It is worth mentioning that recent studies of collective flow in HIC at intermediate energies have indicated a reduction of the in-medium N-N cross sections\[19-21\]. An empirical expression of the in-medium N-N cross section is used:

$$\sigma _{NN}^{med}=(1+\alpha \frac{\rho }{\rho _0})\sigma _{NN}^{free}$$
(9)
with the parameter $`\alpha 0.2`$ which has been found to better reproduce the flow data \[19-20\]. Here $`\sigma _{NN}^{free}`$ is the experimental N-N cross section. The neutron-proton cross section is about 3 times larger than the proton-proton or neutron-neutron cross section below 300 MeV.

$`Q_{zz}`$ will be used to describe the nuclear stopping:

$$Q_{ZZ}=\underset{i}{\overset{A}{}}(2P_z(i)^2P_x(i)^2P_y(i)^2).$$
(10)
In order to make the isospin effect on the multifragmentation process in HIC more prominent, comparable study is carried out for two pairs of reversible reaction systems. For each pair of comparable reaction systems the same mass of heavy projectiles and light targets, the same incident energy and the same impact parameter have been used as follows: $`{}_{48}{}^{120}Cd+_{18}^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{54}{}^{120}Xe+_{20}^{40}Ca`$ with the neutron-proton ratios 1.42 and 1.16; $`{}_{30}{}^{76}Zn+_{18}^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{36}{}^{76}Kr+_{20}^{40}Ca`$ with the neutron-proton ratios 1.42 and 1.07. Hence the differences of $`N_{imf}`$ and $`Q_{zz}`$ for each pair of the comparable colliding systems are mainly due to the isospin effect on the process of multifragmentation and dissipation.

By means of the modified isospin-dependent coalescence model, we construct clusters within which the particle relative momentum is smaller than $`p_0`$= 300MeV/c and the relative distance is smaller than $`R_0`$= 3.5fm. To avoid the nonphysical clusters, the restructured aggregation model is used until no nonphysical cluster is produced.

## 3 Results and Discussions

$`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ are calculated event by event with the charge number of IMF from Z=3 to 13 for the heavy colliding systems, and Z=3 to 8 for the medium mass colliding systems.

### 3.1 The isospin effect on the process of multifragmentation and dissipation in HIC

Fig.1 shows the time evolution of $`N_{imf}`$ for the central reactions $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ (line 1) and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{40}Ca`$ (line 2) at $`E`$=80 MeV/nucleon (left panel), and $`{}_{}{}^{120}Cd+^{40}Ar`$ (line 1) and $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$ (line 2) at $`E`$=100 MeV/nucleon (right panel). From Fig.1 one can see that $`N_{imf}`$ for the two neutron-poor colliding systems $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{40}Ca`$ are larger than those for the neutron-rich systems $`{}_{}{}^{120}Cd+^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$. This difference are mainly due to the isospin effect on the multifragmentation because other reaction conditions, except the ratios of neutron to proton, are the same.

As is well known that nuclear reaction mechanism and reaction yields are sensitive to both impact parameter and incident energy. Denoted by the same lines as in Fig.1, Fig.2 depicts the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ as a function of impact parameter for the two pairs of colliding systems, $`{}_{48}{}^{120}Cd+_{18}^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{54}{}^{120}Xe+_{20}^{40}Ca`$, $`{}_{30}{}^{76}Zn+_{18}^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{36}{}^{76}Kr+_{20}^{40}Ca`$. The incident energy $`E`$ is 100 MeV/nucleon for the heavy systems (left panel), and 80 Mev/nucleon for the medium systems (right panel). As in Fig.1, at small impact parameters, the lines labeled 2 for the neutron-poor colliding systems are always above the corresponding lines labeled 1 for the neutron-rich systems. The difference between them disappears gradually as increasing impact parameter.

Fig.3 shows $`N_{imf}`$ as a function of beam energy from 15 MeV/nucleon to 200 MeV/nucleon at $`b`$=0 fm for the above two pairs of colliding systems with the line labels as in Fig.1. The relative locations between the two lines in each panel of the figure are also similar to those in Fig.1, namely, $`N_{imf}`$ for the two neutron-poor colliding systems $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{40}Ca`$ are larger than those for the corresponding neutron-rich systems $`{}_{}{}^{120}Cd+^{40}Ar`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ for the beam energy above 50MeV/nucleon. However, as the beam energy decreases to below 50MeV/nucleon the collision dynamics is governed by both the mean field and the nucleon-nucleon collisions. In this case, the difference between the two lines of the colliding systems in each pair vanishes gradually.

From Figs.1, 2, and 3 we can see that the intermediate mass fragment multiplicity $`N_{imf}`$ for the neutron-poor colliding system are larger than that of the corresponding neutron-rich system with the same mass projectile on the same mass target and with the same entrance channel conditions except that the ratios of neutron to proton of the colliding systems are different.

The correlation between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ for the central collision of the above two pairs of colliding systems with the same beam energies as above is shown in Fig.4. It is seen from the figure that the correlation between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ for the two pairs of colliding systems displays a clear isospin effect, i.e., the $`N_{imf}`$-$`N_c`$ correlation for the neutron-poor systems is different from that of the neutron-rich systems. Considering the total yield of $`N_{imf}`$ (namely the integral area of each curve in the figure), one can reach the same conclusion as from Fig.1, Fig.2, and Fig.3. This means that the $`N_{imf}`$ for neutron-poor systems (solid line), on average, is larger than that for the corresponding neutron-rich systems (dash line). The difference comes mainly from the isospin effect on multifragmentation in intermediate energy HIC.

The mechanism of the above fragmentation process can be understood as follows. Experimentally the free neutron-proton cross section is about three times larger than the free neutron-neutron or proton-proton cross section below 300 MeV. The mean N-N cross section is defined as:

$$<\sigma >=\frac{N_{np}\sigma _{np}+(N_{nn}+N_{pp})\sigma _{pp}}{N_{np}+N_{pp}+N_{nn}}=\frac{(3N_{np}+N_{nn}+N_{pp})}{N_{np}+N_{nn}+N_{pp}}\sigma _{pp}=(1+\frac{2N_{np}}{N})\sigma $$
(11)
where $`N_{np}`$, $`N_{nn}`$ and $`N_{pp}`$ are the collision numbers for neutron-proton, neutron-neutron, and proton-proton, respectively, and $`N=N_{np}+N_{nn}+N_{pp}`$. $`\sigma _{np}`$, $`\sigma _{nn}`$, and $`\sigma _{pp}`$ are the free N-N cross sections for neutron-proton, neutron-neutron, and proton-proton, respectively. In general, $`\sigma _{nn}=\sigma _{pp}=\sigma `$. Because the total collision numbers for two colliding systems with the same mass projectile and the same mass target are the same, and the number of neutron-proton collisions for neutron-poor colliding system is larger than that of the neutron-rich colliding system, the mean total N-N cross section $`<\sigma >`$ of neutron-poor system is thus larger than that of neutron-rich system. Due to the effect of Pauli blocking, the effective collision numbers become smaller. But after considering the Pauli blocking, the above conclusion remains unchanged. Therefore, the neutron-poor system will have more effective N-N collisions and lead to stronger compression-expansion, resulting in a large number of multifragmentation $`N_{imf}`$ for the neutron-poor system in comparison to the neutron-rich system in the above 50MeV region where the N-N collisions are dominant.

In Fig.5 is plotted the time evolution of the quadrupole of single particle momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ for the reactions $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ ( dash line ) and $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{40}Ca`$ ( solid line ) ( bottom panel), $`{}_{}{}^{120}Cd+`$ $`{}_{}{}^{40}Ar`$ ( dash line ) and $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+`$ $`{}_{}{}^{40}Ca`$ ( solid line)(top panel) at $`E`$=80, 100, 150MeV/nucleon and $`b=0.0`$fm. In the figure, $`Q_{zz}`$ for the neutron-poor system is always smaller than that of the corresponding neutron-rich system. Smaller $`Q_{zz}`$ indicates larger dissipation of the initial longitudinal collective motion into the internal chaotic motion and the subsequent thermalization of the system.

### 3.2 A good probe and a complementary probe to in-medium N-N cross section

Since the reaction dynamics of HIC is mainly governed by both nuclear EOS and in-medium N-N cross section, to understand the collision dynamics in details, both ingredients should be studied carefully. As is well known that the effects of both ingredients are usually mixed in the dynamics and the main uncertainty of the information about the nuclear EOS extracted from HIC is due to our poor knowledge of the N-N cross section in medium. If one can find an experimental probe which can distinguish the contribution of EOS from that of in-medium N-N cross section, that will be very desirable. In this paper we have found that $`Q_{zz}`$ may serve as a good probe to in-medium N-N cross section.

In Fig.6 is given $`Q_{zz}`$ as a function of neutron-proton ratio for seven colliding systems $`{}_{}{}^{76}Kr+^{40}Ca`$, $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$, $`{}_{}{}^{64}Ni+^{40}Ar`$, $`{}_{}{}^{86}Kr+^{40}Ar`$, $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$, $`{}_{}{}^{85}Ge+^{40}Ar`$, $`{}_{}{}^{74}Ni+^{47}Ar`$ with the neutron-proton ratios 1.07, 1.16, 1.26, 1.33, 1.42, 1.5 and 1.56 at $`E`$=100MeV/nucleon and $`b`$=0.0 fm for four cases: (1) the symmetry potential $`U_1^{sym}`$ being employed and in-medium N-N cross section $`\sigma _{NN}^{med}`$ being isospin-dependent, namely, $`U_1^{sym}`$+$`\sigma ^{iso}`$; (2) $`U_1^{sym}`$ and N-N cross section $`\sigma _{NN}^{med}`$ being isospin-independent, denoted by $`U_1^{sym}`$ \+ $`\sigma ^{noiso}`$; (3) $`U_2^{sym}`$ and $`\sigma _{NN}^{med}`$ being isospin-dependent, denoted by U$`{}_{}{}^{sym}{}_{2}{}^{}`$\+ $`\sigma ^{iso}`$; (4) $`U_3^{sym}`$ and $`\sigma _{NN}^{med}`$ being isospin-dependent, denoted by $`U_3^{sym}`$\+ $`\sigma ^{iso}`$. In fig.6, lines labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4 correspond to the above four cases.

It is clear to see that $`Q_{zz}`$ depends strongly on the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section and weakly on the symmetry potential ( namely, line 1 is located near lines 3 and 4, but far away from line 2 in Fig.6), though $`Q_{zz}`$ increases slightly with increasing neutron-proton ratio of asymmetry colliding system. In this case, $`Q_{zz}`$ is a good probe for extracting information on the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section. We have discussed this in more details in Ref., but it is not clear in Ref. how $`Q_{zz}`$ depends on the neutron-proton ratio of colliding system. In addition, we shall report a complementary probe for extracting the information on in-medium N-N cross section: the correlation between the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ and the total number of charged particles $`N_c`$, based on the fact that it is also sensitive to the in-medium N-N cross section and insensitive to the symmetry potential in the chosen energy region. To study the contributions to $`N_{imf}`$ from different ingredients separately, we consider four cases as the same as in Fig.6.

In Fig.7 is plotted the time evolution of $`N_{imf}`$ for two different asymmetric colliding systems, $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ at $`E=80`$MeV/nucleon and $`b=0.0`$fm (left panel), $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+`$ $`{}_{}{}^{40}Ca`$ at $`E=100`$MeV/nucleon and $`b=0.0`$fm (right panel). It is noted that lines 1 are always located near lines 3 and 4, but far away from lines 2 with increasing colliding time. This implies that the isospin effect of in-medium N-N cross section on $`N_{imf}`$ is more important than that of the symmetry potential in the energy region studied here.

As is well known that nuclear reaction products and reaction mechanism sensitively depend on impact parameter. Fig.8 shows the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ as a function of impact parameter for the four cases as illustrated in Fig.6 for the reactions $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ at $`E=80`$MeV/nucleon ( left panel ) and $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$ at $`E=100`$MeV/nucleon ( right panel ). As in Fig.6, lines 1 in the figures locate near lines 3 and 4, but far away from lines 2 at small impact parameters. This indicates again that the isospin effect of in-medium N-N cross section on $`N_{imf}`$ is larger in comparison with that of symmetry potential. With increasing impact parmeter this isospin effect disappears gradually.

The correlations between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ for the four cases are plotted in Fig.9 for the reactions $`{}_{}{}^{76}Zn+^{40}Ar`$ at $`E=80`$MeV/nucleon ( left panel ) and $`{}_{}{}^{120}Xe+^{40}Ca`$ at $`E=100`$MeV/nucleon ( right panel ). The behaviors of the four kinds of lines in each panel are similar to those in Fig.6, namely, the integral area of the curve 1 is always close to those of the curves 3 and 4, but larger than that of the curve 2. From Fig.7, Fig.8, and Fig.9 one can see that the isospin effect of in-medium N-N cross section on the correlation between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ is more important than that of symmetry potential. Here it should be stressed that we have to choose the incident energy for certain asymmetric colliding system carefully to get the above feature, namely, in this energy region the N-N collisions should be dominant. In this case we may conclude that the correlation between the multiplicity of intermediate mass fragments $`N_{imf}`$ and the total number of charged particles $`N_c`$ can be used as a complementary probe to the isospin dependence of the in-medium N-N cross section in HIC.

## 4 Summary and conclusions

Starting from the simulation of the intermediate energy HIC by using IQMD, the calculated results have shown prominent isospin effects on the process of multifragmentation and dissipation, i.e., the intermediate mass fragment multiplicity $`N_{imf}`$ for a neutron-poor colliding system is always larger than that of the corresponding neutron-rich system, while the quadrupole of single particle momentum distribution $`Q_{zz}`$ for a neutron-poor system is smaller than that of the neutron-rich system with the same masses of projectile and target, and the same entrance channel conditions for small impact parameters. We also can see that $`Q_{zz}`$ increases slight with increasing ratio of neutron to proton in the colliding system.

From the theoretical simulation, it is clear to see that $`Q_{zz}`$ depends strongly on the isospin dependence of in-medium N-N cross section and weakly on the symmetry potential in the beam energies ranging from about 50 MeV/nucleon to 150MeV/nucleon. And the correlation between $`N_{imf}`$ and $`N_c`$ has the same properties as $`Q_{zz}`$ in the chosen energy region. So we would suggest that $`Q_{zz}`$ may serve as a good probe and $`N_{imf}`$ a complementary probe for extracting the information on the isospin dependent N-N cross section in HIC.

## Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by 973 Project Grant No.G2000077400, 100 person Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Foundation of China under Grants No. 19775057 and No. 19775020, No. 19847002, No. 19775052 and KJ951-A1-410, and by the Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences