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# Schrödinger equation from an exact uncertainty principle

## 1 Introduction

The uncertainty principle is generally considered to be a fundamental conceptual tool for understanding differences between classical and quantum mechanics. As first argued by Heisenberg in 1927 , the fact that quantum states do not admit simultaneously precise values of conjugate observables, such as position and momentum, does not necessarily imply an incompleteness of the theory, but rather is consistent with not being able to simultaneously determine such observables experimentally to an arbitrary accuracy.

Corresponding uncertainty relations such as $`\mathrm{\Delta }x\mathrm{\Delta }p\mathrm{}/2`$ “give us that measure of freedom from the limitations of classical concepts which is necessary for a consistent description of atomic processes” . The uncertainty principle provides the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, famously used by Bohr in defending the completeness of the theory against critics such as Einstein .

If regarded as merely asserting a physical limit on the degree to which classical concepts can be applied, the uncertainty principle is not sufficiently restrictive in content to supply a means for moving from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics. Thus Landau and Lifschitz write that “this principle in itself does not suffice as a basis on which to construct a new mechanics of particles” . In particular, uncertainty relations expressed as imprecise inequalities are not enough to pin down the essence of what is nonclassical about quantum mechanics. Authors have tended to point instead, for example, to the commutation relation $`[\widehat{x},\widehat{p}]=i\mathrm{}`$ for quantum observables , or to the principle of superposition of wavefunctions , in this regard.

However, it will be shown here that an exact form of the uncertainty principle may in fact be formulated, which provides the single key element in moving from the equations of motion of a classical ensemble to those of a quantum ensemble. In particular, if it is assumed that a classical ensemble is subject to random momentum fluctuations, where the strength of these fluctuations is precisely determined by and scales inversely with uncertainty in position (as characterised by the position probability density), then the resulting modified equations of motion are equivalent to the Schrödinger equation. Thus, surprisingly, there is an exact formulation of the uncertainty principle which does in fact capture the essence of what is “quantum” about quantum mechanics.

In the following section we recall the description of a classical ensemble in terms of a pair of equations in configuration space (the Hamilton-Jacobi equation and the continuity equation), and provide the corresponding Lagrangian from which these equations follow. In section 3 we show that the above exact uncertainty principle leads to a modification of this Lagrangian (essentially incorporating the kinetic energy of the random momentum fluctuations), the form of which yields equations of motion equivalent to the Schrödinger equation. Further, an exact uncertainty relation for position and momentum uncertainties is derived, corresponding to the exact uncertainty principle, from which the usual Heisenberg inequality follows as a consequence.

Of course, equations of motion equivalent to the Schrödinger equation do not in themselves imply the full quantum formalism. Accordingly, in section 4 a Hamiltonian formulation is provided for the equations of motion, which leads naturally to the usual wavefunction representation as corresponding to the normal modes of the modified system. Conclusions are presented in section 5.

## 2 Classical Mechanics

For simplicity, we limit ourselves to the case of a single particle, described in a configuration space of $`n`$ dimensions. In the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation of classical mechanics, the equation of motion takes the form

$$\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}SS+V=0.$$
(1)
The velocity field $`𝐮(𝐱,t)`$ that describes the motion of the particle is related to the momentum potential $`S(𝐱,t)`$ by

$$𝐮=\frac{1}{m}S.$$
(2)
We assume that the initial conditions are not known exactly, and that the probability of finding the particle in a given volume of the configuration space is described by a probability density $`P(𝐱,t)`$. The probability density must satisfy the following two conditions: it must be normalized,

$`{\displaystyle Pd^nx}=1,`$and it must satisfy a continuity equation,

$$\frac{P}{t}+\left(P\frac{1}{m}S\right)=0.$$
(3)
Eqs. (1) and (3), together with (2), completely determine the motion of the classical ensemble. Eqs. (1) and (3) can be derived from the Lagrangian

$$L_C=P\left\{\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}SS+V\right\}d^nx𝑑t$$
(4)
by fixed end-point variation ($`\delta P=\delta S=0`$ at the boundaries) with respect to $`S`$ and $`P`$.

## 3 The transition from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics

### 3.1 Momentum fluctuations

Consider now the possibility that the classical Lagrangian is not quite right, because $`S`$ is actually an average momentum: one also has a fluctuation $`𝐍`$ about $`S`$. Thus the physical momentum is

$`𝐩=S+𝐍.`$No particular underlying physical model will be assumed for the momentum fluctuation $`𝐍`$. Indeed, one could instead regard the fluctuations as fundamentally nonanalyzable, being introduced as a simple device to remove the notion of individual particle trajectories (since $`𝐮`$ in Eq. (2) is no longer ascertainable).

Since the momentum fluctuation $`𝐍`$ may conceivably depend on position, the average over such fluctuations for a given quantity $`A`$ at point $`𝐱`$ will be denoted by $`\overline{A}`$, while the average over fluctuations and position will be denoted by $`<A>`$. One hence has the general relation $`<A>=P\overline{A}d^nx.`$ A physically very reasonable randomness assumption for the momentum fluctuation $`𝐍`$ is that it vanishes on average everywhere, i.e., $`\overline{𝐍}0`$. However, here only two weaker assumptions will be made:

$$<𝐍>=0,<S𝐍>=0.$$
(5)
The first of these states that the fluctuations are unbiased, and the second that the fluctuations are linearly uncorrelated with the average momentum $`S`$.

It follows that when the momentum fluctuations are significant, the kinetic energy term $`<\frac{1}{2m}SS>`$ in the Lagrangian should be replaced by by $`<\frac{1}{2m}(S+𝐍)(S+𝐍)>`$, yielding the modified Lagrangian

$`L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle P\left\{\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}\overline{\left(S+𝐍\right)\left(S+𝐍\right)}+V\right\}d^nx𝑑t}`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle P\left\{\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}SS+V\right\}d^nx𝑑t}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}{\displaystyle P\overline{𝐍𝐍}d^nx𝑑t}`$ (7)
$``$ $`L_C+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}{\displaystyle \left(\mathrm{\Delta }N\right)^2𝑑t}`$ (8)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ is the average rms momentum fluctuation, given by $`<𝐍𝐍>^{1/2}`$. Thus the consequence of taking into consideration the momentum fluctuations is to add a positive term to the Lagrangian, arising from the additional kinetic energy due to the fluctuations.

### 3.2 Exact uncertainty principle

How can we estimate the magnitude of this additional term, if we don’t know anything else about the system except the probability density $`P`$ and the average momentum $`S`$? To estimate the magnitude of the momentum spread, we will assume that an exact uncertainty principle holds, in the sense that the strength of the momentum fluctuations at a given time are inversely correlated with uncertainty in position at that time, where the uncertainty of position is characterized by $`P`$. Clearly, this assumption is an additional hypothesis that is independent of classical mechanics.

To make this assumption precise, consider the general case of an $`n`$-dimensional space and a one-parameter family of probability distributions (which we label with a parameter $`k>0`$) at time $`t_0`$, related by a rescaling of variables

$`P(𝐱)P_k(𝐱)k^nP(k𝐱).`$These transformations preserve the normalization,

$`{\displaystyle P(𝐱)d^nx}{\displaystyle k^nP(k𝐱)d^nx}={\displaystyle P(𝐲)d^ny}`$where we have introduced the change of variables $`𝐲=k𝐱.`$ We also have

$`P(𝐱)P(𝐱)`$ $``$ $`k^{2n+2}_yP(𝐲)_yP(𝐲)`$
$`𝐱P(𝐱)`$ $``$ $`k^n𝐲_yP(𝐲).`$
Under such a transformation, any direct measurement of position uncertainty $`\delta x`$ such as the rms uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }x`$ changes according to the rule

$`\delta x\delta x_k{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k}}\left(\delta x\right).`$Thus probability densities with different values of $`k`$ represent physical systems that only differ in how well we know the location of the particle, since the shape of the probability densities are the same except for the rescaling. The exact uncertainty principle that we want to make use of corresponds roughly to the assumption that such a scaling of position by a factor $`1/k`$ scales the momentum fluctuation by a factor $`k`$.

More precisely, the exact uncertainty principle is equivalent to the statement that the momentum fluctuation $`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ is determined by the uncertainty in position, where the latter is characterised by the probability density $`P`$, and where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Nk\mathrm{\Delta }N$$
(9)
under $`k`$ transformations. Note that the uncertainty product $`\delta x\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ is thus preserved under $`k`$ transformations, for any direct measure of position uncertainty $`\delta x`$.

To apply the exact uncertainty principle, we assume that the Lagrangian formalism remains applicable to $`L`$. Hence the additional term in Eq. (8) must be a spacetime integral over a scalar function of $`𝐱`$, $`P`$ and $`S`$ and their derivatives. Moreover, since $`\left(\mathrm{\Delta }N\right)^2`$ is determined solely by position uncertainty (where the latter is characterised by $`P`$), then this additional term is in fact independent of $`S`$. Finally, for causality to be preserved (i.e., the equations of motion require only $`P`$ and $`S`$ to be specified on an initial surface), second and higher order derivatives of $`P`$ must be excluded***Requirements of causality do not exclude a term linear in $`^2P`$, but since it can be shown that such a term does not lead to a different result we will not consider it here.. Hence, the additional term in the Lagrangian (8) can be written in the form

$$\left(\mathrm{\Delta }N\right)^2𝑑t=Pf(𝐱,P,𝐱P,PP)d^nx𝑑t.$$
(10)
The exact uncertainty principle requires $`f`$ to transform under $`k`$ transformations as follows,

$`{\displaystyle P(𝐱)f[𝐱,P(𝐱),𝐱P(𝐱),PP(𝐱)]d^nx𝑑t}`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle P(𝐲)f(k^1𝐲,k^nP(𝐲),k^n𝐲_yP(𝐲),k^{2n+2}_yP(𝐲)_yP(𝐲))d^ny𝑑t}`$
$``$ $`k^2{\displaystyle P(𝐲)f(𝐲,P(𝐲),𝐲_yP(𝐲),_yP(𝐲)_yP(𝐲))d^ny𝑑t}.`$
This leads to the homogeneity condition

$$f(k^1𝐱,k^nu,k^nv,k^{2n+2}w)=k^2f(𝐱,u,v,w),$$
(11)
where we have introduced the more compact notation

$`u`$ $`=`$ $`P`$ (12)
$`v`$ $`=`$ $`𝐱P`$ (13)
$`w`$ $`=`$ $`PP.`$ (14)
From this requirement we derive the first order partial differential equation

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}x_i\frac{f}{x_i}+nu\frac{f}{u}+nv\frac{f}{v}+(2n+2)w\frac{f}{w}=2f.$$
(15)
The problem of finding the general integral of such an equation is equivalent to the problem of finding the general integral of a system of ordinary differential equations , which in our case is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dx_1}{x_1}}=\mathrm{}={\displaystyle \frac{dx_n}{x_n}}={\displaystyle \frac{du}{nu}}={\displaystyle \frac{dv}{nv}}={\displaystyle \frac{dw}{(2n+2)w}}={\displaystyle \frac{df}{2f}}.`$This system of ordinary differential equations has ($`n`$+3) independent integrals, which can be chosen as

$`u^1w^{1/2}x_i`$ $`=`$ $`const.`$
$`u^1v`$ $`=`$ $`const.`$
$`u^{2/n}𝐱𝐱`$ $`=`$ $`const.`$
$`u^2w^1f`$ $`=`$ $`const.`$
and the solution of the first order partial differential Eq. (15) is then of the general form

$$f=\left(u^2w\right)g(u^1w^{1/2}𝐱,u^1v,u^{2/n}𝐱𝐱)$$
(16)
where $`g`$ is an arbitrary function.

### 3.3 Independent subsystems

To determine $`f`$ completely, we need to fix the form of $`g`$ in Eq. (16). We therefore introduce a natural independence condition, by the requirement that the Lagrangian $`L`$ decomposes into additive subsystem contributions for the case of a system composed of independent subsystems. This is equivalent to the condition that the momentum fluctuations $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$ are linearly uncorrelated for two such subsystems, and hence can equivalently be interpreted as a further randomness assumption for the momentum fluctuations.

To investigate the requirements imposed on $`f`$ by the independence condition, it will be sufficient to consider the case where we have a system consisting of two uncorrelated particles of mass $`m`$ that do not interact, one particle described by a set of coordinates $`𝐱_1`$ and the other by $`𝐱_2`$. Thus $`P`$ is of the form

$$P(𝐱_1,𝐱_2)=P_1(𝐱_1)P_2(𝐱_2),$$
(17)
and hence from Eqs. (8) and (10) the independence condition requires

$$Pf=P_1P_2\left(f_1+f_2\right)$$
(18)
where subscripts 1 and 2 refer to subsystems 1 and 2 respectively.

Eq. (17) immediately implies the relations

$`u`$ $`=`$ $`u_1u_2`$
$`v^{}`$ $``$ $`u^1v=u_1^1v_1+u_2^1v_2=v_1^{}+v_2^{}`$
$`w^{}`$ $``$ $`u^2w=u_1^2w_1+u_2^2w_2=w_1^{}+w_2^{},`$
and hence Eq. (16) becomes

$`f=\left(w_1^{}+w_2^{}\right)g(\sqrt{w_1^{}+w_2^{}}𝐱,v_1^{}+v_2^{},\left(u_1u_2\right)^{2/n}𝐱𝐱),`$where $`𝐱=(𝐱_1,𝐱_2)`$. From Eq. (18), this form of $`f`$ must decompose into the sum of a function of $`u_1`$, $`v_1^{}`$, $`w_1^{}`$and $`𝐱_1`$, and a function of $`u_2`$, $`v_2^{}`$, $`w_2^{}`$ and $`𝐱_2`$. Since the factor that multiplies $`g`$, and the second and third arguments of $`g`$, are such functions (with respect to $`w^{}`$$`v^{}`$, and $`𝐱`$ respectively), these terms cannot be mixed by the functional form of $`g`$. It follows that $`g`$ must be of the form

$`g(𝐚,b,c)=C+g_0(𝐚)+bg_1(𝐚)+cg_2(𝐚)`$where $`C`$ is a constant, and the functions $`g_j`$ satisfy the condition

$$g_j(\lambda 𝐚)=\lambda ^2g_j(𝐚),j=0,1,2$$
(19)
(to allow cancellation of the factor $`w_1^{}+w_2^{}`$ that multiplies $`g`$). Hence

$`f=C\left(w_1^{}+w_2^{}\right)+g_0(𝐱_1,𝐱_2)+\left(v_1^{}+v_2^{}\right)g_1(𝐱_1,𝐱_2)+\left(u_1u_2\right)^{2/n}\left(𝐱_1𝐱_1+𝐱_2𝐱_2\right)g_2(𝐱_1,𝐱_2).`$

The independence condition Eq. (18) places further conditions on the $`g_j`$. First, $`g_0`$ is required to be a sum of a function of $`𝐱_1`$ and a function of $`𝐱_2`$. Hence it only represents a classical additive potential term (that satisfies the homogeneity condition (19) above), and so can be ignored as having no nonclassical role (it can be absorbed into the classical potential $`V`$ in the Lagrangian). Second, to avoid subsystem cross terms, $`g_1`$ must be constant. But the homogeneity condition (19) is then only satisfied by the choice $`g_1=0`$. Third, cross terms in $`u_1`$ and $`u_2`$ can only be avoided by choosing $`g_2=0`$.

The form of $`f`$ thus reduces to the first term, $`C\left(w_1^{}+w_2^{}\right)`$. From Eq. (18) this term is to be identified with the sum of $`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$, thus yielding the final form

$$f=Cw^{}=C\frac{1}{P^2}PP$$
(20)
for $`f`$, where $`C`$ is a universal constant. Note from Eq.(10) that $`C`$ must be positive.

### 3.4 Equations of motion

The modified Lagrangian follows from Eqs. (8), (10) and (20) as

$$L=P\left\{\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}SS+\frac{C}{2m}\frac{1}{P^2}PP+V\right\}d^nx𝑑t.$$
(21)
Fixed end-point variation with respect to $`S`$ leads again to (3), while fixed end-point variation with respect to $`P`$ leads to

$$\frac{S}{t}+\frac{1}{2m}SS+\frac{C}{2m}\left[\frac{1}{P^2}PP\frac{2}{P}^2P\right]+V=0.$$
(22)
Eqs. (3) and (22) are identical to the Schrödinger equation

$`i\mathrm{}\psi /t=(\mathrm{}^2/2m)^2\psi +V\psi ,`$provided the wave function $`\psi (𝐱,t)`$ is written in terms of $`S`$ and $`P`$ by

$`\psi =\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}(i{\displaystyle \frac{S}{\mathrm{}}})`$and the constant $`C`$ is set equal to

$`C=\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\right)^2.`$Just why one would introduce the wavefunction $`\psi `$ at all is considered in section 4 below.

Note that the classical limit of the Schrödinger theory is not the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for a classical particle, but Eqs. (1) and (3) which describe a classical ensemble.

### 3.5 Exact uncertainty relation

The Schrödinger equation has been derived above using an exact uncertainty principle to fix the strength of random momentum fluctuation in terms of the uncertainty in position. Note that no specific measure of position uncertainty was assumed; it was required only that the momentum fluctuations scale inversely with position uncertainty under $`k`$ transformations. However, having obtained a unique form, Eq. (20), for the function $`f`$ in (10) we are now in a position to write down an exact uncertainty relation relating position and momentum uncertainties.

For simplicity we consider the case of one dimension ($`n=1`$), and define

$`\delta x=\left[{\displaystyle P\left(\frac{1}{P}\frac{dP}{dx}\right)^2𝑑x}\right]^{1/2}.`$For the case of a Gaussian probability density with rms uncertainty $`\sigma `$ one has $`\delta x=\sigma `$. More generally, this measure has units of position, scales appropriately with $`x`$ ($`\delta y=\lambda \delta x`$ for $`y=\lambda x`$), and vanishes in the limit that $`P`$ approaches a delta function. Hence it represents a direct measure of uncertainty for position. From Eqs.(10) and (20) one has

$$\delta x\mathrm{\Delta }N=\sqrt{C}=\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}.$$
(23)
Thus we have an exact uncertainty relation between position and momentum. A quantum-operator form of this relation has been derived elsewhere, in which $`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ is replaced by the rms deviation of a nonclassical momentum operator .

The usual Heisenberg uncertainty relation can be derived from the above exact uncertainty relation. From the Cramer-Rao inequality of statistical estimation theory  one has $`\mathrm{\Delta }x\delta x`$, while the randomness assumptions in Eqs. (5) imply

$`\left(\mathrm{\Delta }p\right)^2=\mathrm{Var}(dS/dx+N)=\mathrm{Var}(dS/dx)+\left(\mathrm{\Delta }N\right)^2\left(\mathrm{\Delta }N\right)^2,`$and hence it follows immediately from Eq. (23) that $`\mathrm{\Delta }x\mathrm{\Delta }p\mathrm{}/2`$.

## 4 Hamiltonian formulation and wave function representation

### 4.1 Hamiltonian formulation

In the previous section, we derived an extension of the classical Lagrangian which yields equations of motion equivalent to the Schrödinger equation. The Lagrangian field formalism was conveniently used because it is well known. However, one can in fact obtain equivalent results using the Hamiltonian form of field theory, with no essential differences in the assumptions and manipulations used.

The Hamiltonian formalism does provide one important advantage: the concept of canonical transformations. In the previous section, the wavefunction representation $`\psi =\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}(i\frac{S}{\mathrm{}})`$ was simply “magicked out of thin air”, to obtain the Schrödinger equation written in terms of the wavefunction $`\psi `$ instead of the hydrodynamical variables $`P`$ and $`S`$. In contrast, in the Hamiltonian formalism this complex combination of $`P`$ and $`S`$ arises immediately from asking a natural question about canonical transformations.

The Hamiltonian form corresponding to Lagrangian (21) is given by

$$H=P\left\{\frac{1}{2m}SS+\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{8m}\frac{1}{P^2}PP+V\right\}d^nxd^nx.$$
(24)
The field $`P`$ plays the role of a field coordinate, and $`S`$ the role of the momentum canonically conjugate to $`P`$. The equations of motion are given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`\{P,H\}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta S}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{S}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`\{S,H\}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta P}}`$
where the Poisson bracket of two functions $`F`$ and $`G`$ is defined by

$$\{F(P(𝐱),S(𝐱)),G(P(𝐱^{}),S(𝐱^{}))\}=\left[\frac{\delta F(𝐱)}{\delta P(𝐱^{\prime \prime })}\frac{\delta G(𝐱^{})}{\delta S(𝐱^{\prime \prime })}\frac{\delta F(𝐱)}{\delta S(𝐱^{\prime \prime })}\frac{\delta G(𝐱^{})}{\delta P(𝐱^{\prime \prime })}\right]d^nx^{\prime \prime }.$$
(25)
To simplify the formulae, we will sometimes use the notation $`PP(𝐱)`$, $`P^{}P(𝐱^{})`$, etc. which allows us to write Eq. (25) in the concise form

$`\{F,G^{}\}={\displaystyle \left[\frac{\delta F}{\delta P^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta G^{}}{\delta S^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta F}{\delta S^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta G^{}}{\delta P^{\prime \prime }}\right]d^nx^{\prime \prime }}.`$From

$$\frac{\delta P}{\delta P^{}}=\frac{\delta S}{\delta S^{}}=\delta ^n(𝐱𝐱^{})$$
(26)
we derive the Poisson bracket of the canonically conjugate fields,

$`\{P,S^{}\}=\delta ^n(𝐱𝐱^{}).`$The equations of motion that correspond to $`H`$ are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta S}}=\left(P{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}S\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{S}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta H}{\delta P}}=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}SS+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{8m}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{P^2}}PP{\displaystyle \frac{2}{P}}^2P\right)+V\right].`$
These equations are of course identical to (3) and (22) which were derived using the Lagrangian formalism.

### 4.2 Wavefunctions and normal modes

The Hamiltonian form $`H`$ has been expressed in (24) in terms of fields which represent important physical quantities: $`P`$ has the physical interpretation of a position probability density, and $`S`$ that of an average momentum potential. However, $`H`$ can be rewritten in terms of any pair of fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ without changing the physical content provided they are related to $`P`$ and $`S`$ by a canonical transformation,

$$\{P,S^{}\}=\left[\frac{\delta P}{\delta \varphi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta S^{}}{\delta \chi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta P}{\delta \chi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta S^{}}{\delta \varphi ^{\prime \prime }}\right]d^nx^{\prime \prime }=\{\varphi ,\chi ^{}\}.$$
(27)
Of course, such a transformation is generally only of interest if the new fields have some particular physical significance.

One transformation of obvious physical interest, when it exists, is to two fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ which have uncoupled equations of motion. Such fields label two independent physical degrees of freedom in the system, and hence have fundamental physical significance as the “normal modes” of the system. It is therefore natural to ask whether such a transformation exists for $`H`$, i.e., whether there is a one-one mapping

$`P`$ $`=`$ $`P(\varphi ,\chi )`$
$`S`$ $`=`$ $`S(\varphi ,\chi )`$
such that the fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ are uncoupled. It will be seen that this question is sufficient to derive the wavefunction representation $`\psi =\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}(i\frac{S}{\mathrm{}})`$ and its complex conjugate from the Hamiltonian $`H`$, as corresponding to the physical fields describing the “normal modes” of the system.

To examine the question of whether there is a canonical transformation that will lead to uncoupled equations of motion for $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ we first need to establish the following Lemma.

Lemma: A necessary condition for two conjugate fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ to be uncoupled is that the corresponding Hamiltonian density $`^{}`$ has the form

$`^{}=F(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )+A_k(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )_k\varphi +B_k(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )_k\chi +G_{jk}(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )\left(_j\varphi \right)\left(_k\chi \right)`$where $`k=1,\mathrm{},n`$, repeated indices are summed over, and $`_k`$ denotes the partial derivative with respect to $`x_k`$. Furthermore, the symmetric part of $`G_{jk}`$ is independent of $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$, i.e.,

$`G_{jk}(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )+G_{kj}(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi )=2G_{jk}(𝐱)`$where $`G_{jk}(𝐱)`$ is symmetric with respect to $`j`$ and $`k`$.

Proof: For a Hamiltonian

$`H^{}={\displaystyle ^{}(𝐱,\varphi ,\chi ,_k\varphi ,_k\chi )d^nx}`$the equations of motion are given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^{}}{\chi }}{\displaystyle \frac{^2^{}}{x_k\left(_k\chi \right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{^2^{}}{\left(\varphi \right)\left(_k\chi \right)}}_k\varphi {\displaystyle \frac{^2^{}}{\left(\chi \right)\left(_k\chi \right)}}_k\chi `$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2^{}}{\left(_l\varphi \right)\left(_k\chi \right)}}_{kl}\varphi {\displaystyle \frac{^2^{}}{\left(_l\chi \right)\left(_k\chi \right)}}_{kl}\chi .`$
A similar expression is obtained for $`\frac{\chi }{t}`$. Since we assume that $`\varphi `$ evolves independently of $`\chi `$, then in particular no second derivatives of $`\chi `$ can appear in the above equation of motion for $`\varphi `$, and similarly, no second derivatives of $`\varphi `$ can appear in the corresponding equation of motion for $`\chi `$. Hence $`^{}`$ must be linear in both $`_k\varphi `$ and $`_k\chi `$, and so $`^{}`$ has the general form given in the statement of the Lemma. Substituting this form into the equation of motion for $`\varphi `$ gives

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}={\displaystyle \frac{F}{\chi }}_kB_k+\left({\displaystyle \frac{A_k}{\chi }}{\displaystyle \frac{B_k}{\varphi }}_jG_{kj}\right)_k\varphi {\displaystyle \frac{G_{jk}}{\varphi }}\left(_j\varphi \right)\left(_k\varphi \right)G_{jk}_{kl}\varphi `$and a similar equation for $`\frac{\chi }{t}`$. Hence, since $`G_{jk}`$ is the coefficient of $`_{kl}\varphi `$ and $`_{kl}\chi `$ in the respective equations of motion, the fields are uncoupled only if the symmetric part of $`G_{jk}`$ is independent of both $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$. $`\mathrm{}`$

If we now express the Hamiltonian density $``$ (24) in terms of the new variables, we find

$``$ $`=`$ $`P\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}[\left({\displaystyle \frac{S}{\varphi }}\right)^2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\varphi }}\right)^2]\varphi \varphi `$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{S}{\chi }}\right)^2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\chi }}\right)^2\right]\chi \chi `$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}[{\displaystyle \frac{S}{\varphi }}{\displaystyle \frac{S}{\chi }}+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\varphi }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\chi }}]\varphi \chi +V\}.`$
It follows immediately from the Lemma that the first two terms of $``$ must vanish, implying

$`{\displaystyle \frac{S}{\varphi }}`$ $`=`$ $`i\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\varphi }}`$ (28)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{S}{\chi }}`$ $`=`$ $`i\beta {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\chi }}`$ (29)
where $`\alpha ,\beta =\pm 1`$. Since $`P`$ and $`S`$ are real, the normal modes are therefore complex fields. Substituting Eqs. (28) into the third term of $``$, the Lemma further implies that

$`G_{jk}(𝐱)=P\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1\alpha \beta }{m}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\varphi }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\chi }}\delta _{jk}=G\delta _{jk}`$where $`G`$ is a constant (the last equality follows since the second term has no explicit $`𝐱`$ dependence). Now, if $`\alpha =\beta `$, the Hamiltonian density reduces to $`=P(\varphi ,\chi )V`$, and the inverse transformation to the fields $`P`$ and $`S`$ then yields a Hamiltonian density proportional to $`V`$, which is inconsistent with the form of $``$. Therefore

$$\alpha =\beta ,2P\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}\right)^2\frac{1}{m}\left[\frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\varphi }\frac{\mathrm{ln}P}{\chi }\right]=G.$$
(30)
From Eqs. (28) and (30) the Hamiltonian density $``$ in terms of $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ is

$`=G\varphi \chi +P(\varphi ,\chi )V`$and the equations of motion take the simple form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{\chi }}VG^2\varphi `$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\chi }{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{P}{\varphi }}VG^2\chi .`$
For these equations to be uncoupled $`P`$ must be of the form $`P=W+X\varphi +Y\chi +Z\varphi \chi `$, which when substituted into (30) yields

$$P=\left(\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}\right)^2\frac{m}{2}G\left(\varphi +K\right)\left(\chi +L\right),$$
(31)
where $`K`$ and $`L`$ are constants (related to $`X`$, $`Y`$ and $`Z`$). The general form of $`S(\varphi ,\chi )`$ is found by substitution of (31) in (28) with $`\alpha =\beta `$, which leads to a pair of differential equations with solution

$$S=b+i\alpha \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\varphi +K}{\chi +L},$$
(32)
where $`b`$ is an arbitrary complex constant.

Eqs. (31) and (32) establish the functional forms of $`P(\varphi ,\chi )`$ and $`S(\varphi ,\chi )`$ that will permit uncoupled equations of motion for $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$. We now have to check that these functional forms lead to a canonical transformation. This requires

$`\{P,S^{}\}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \left[\frac{\delta P}{\delta \varphi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta S^{}}{\delta \chi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta P}{\delta \chi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta S^{}}{\delta \varphi ^{\prime \prime }}\right]d^nx^{\prime \prime }}`$
$`=`$ $`mG\left(i\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{}}}\right)\delta ^n(𝐱𝐱^{})`$
$`=`$ $`\delta ^n(𝐱𝐱^{})`$
and thus the value of $`G`$ is fixed to be

$`G=i\alpha \mathrm{}/(2m).`$Recalling that $`P`$ and $`S`$ are real (and using the property that $`P`$ is positive), one can show that the inverse transformation follows from (31) and (32) as

$`\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`a\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}\left(i\alpha S/\mathrm{}\right)K`$ (33)
$`\chi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha \mathrm{}}{ia}}\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}\left(i\alpha S/\mathrm{}\right)L`$ (34)
where $`a`$ is an arbitrary complex constant (related to $`b`$).

Thus, an essentially unique canonical transformation to uncoupled fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ indeed exists, given by Eqs. (33) and (34). We recognise that these fields are, up to a scale factor and additive constant, the usual wavefunction $`\psi =\sqrt{P}\mathrm{exp}(i\frac{S}{\mathrm{}})`$ and its complex conjugate, and hence the wavefunction has a fundamental physical significance as a “normal mode” of the system. The corresponding Hamiltonian density $``$ follows as

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i\alpha \mathrm{}}{2m}}\varphi \chi +{\displaystyle \frac{i\alpha }{\mathrm{}}}V\left(\varphi +K\right)\left(\chi +L\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\left|\psi \right|^2+V\left|\psi \right|^2`$
for all choices of $`a`$, $`K`$ and $`L`$, and leads directly to the Schrödinger equation and its conjugate.

We point out a quantization condition that follows from Eqs. (32), (33), and (34). If $`\mathrm{\Phi }(𝐱)`$ is a single-valued complex function, $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a multi-valued function which satisfies $`_Cd\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Phi }=\pm i2\pi n`$, where $`n`$ is an integer. If we make the assumption that the fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$ describing the “normal modes” of the system are single-valued functions, then

$`{\displaystyle _C}𝑑S=i\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _C}d\left(\mathrm{ln}\psi \mathrm{ln}\psi ^{}\right)=\pm 2\pi \mathrm{}n.`$This is precisely the quantization condition that was introduced by Takabayasi as “a new postulate” in his hydrodynamic interpretation of quantum mechanics . This subsidiary condition is of course compatible with the equations of motion.

### 4.3 Expectation values

While the wavefunction and the corresponding wave equation have been obtained, these do not represent the full quantum formalism. For example, the nature of the assumptions about momentum fluctuations in section 3.1 provide recipes for calculating the first two moments of the momentum distribution in terms of integrals that can now be expressed in terms of the wavefunction, since

$`<`$ $`𝐩>={\displaystyle PSd^nx}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{i}}{\displaystyle \psi ^{}\psi d^nx},`$
$`<`$ $`p^2>={\displaystyle P\left(SS+\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{2}\right)^2\frac{1}{P^2}PP\right)d^nx}=\mathrm{}^2{\displaystyle \left|\psi \right|^2d^nx}.`$
However, it is not immediately clear how within this framework higher-order moments are to be calculated, nor expectation values of functions of position and momentum. We briefly note here a possible approach to this problem, based on a symmetry in the representation of position and momentum displacements, which leads to the usual relations assumed in the Hilbert space formulation of quantum mechanics.

Under a position displacement $`T_a:𝐱𝐱+𝐚`$, the fields $`P`$ and $`S`$ transform as $`P(𝐱)P(𝐱𝐚)`$, $`S(𝐱)S(𝐱𝐚)`$. Hence in the wavefunction representation one has

$$T_a:\psi (𝐱)\psi (𝐱𝐚).$$
(35)
Under a momentum displacement $`M_q:𝐩𝐩+𝐪`$, the position distribution (which is given by the field $`P`$) should be unaffected, while the average momentum must change by $`𝐪`$, $`SS+𝐪`$. Therefore, the fields $`P`$ and $`S`$ transform as $`P(𝐱)P(𝐱)`$, $`S(𝐱)S(𝐱)+𝐪𝐱`$ (where an arbitrary additive constant added to $`S`$ has been ignored, as it has no effect on the equations of motion). Hence in the wavefunction representation one has

$$M_q:\psi (𝐱)\mathrm{exp}(i𝐪𝐱/\mathrm{})\psi (𝐱).$$
(36)
Comparing (35) and (36), one recognises that the transformations $`T_a`$ and $`M_q`$ are Fourier-pairs. In particular, if one defines the Fourier transform of $`\psi (𝐱)`$ by

$`\phi (𝐩)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left(2\pi \sigma \right)^{n/2}}}{\displaystyle \psi (𝐱)\mathrm{exp}(i𝐱𝐩/\sigma )d^nx}`$where $`\sigma `$ is a constant with units of action, then one has

$`T_a`$ $`:`$ $`\phi (𝐩)\mathrm{exp}(i𝐚𝐩/\sigma )\phi (𝐩)`$
$`M_q`$ $`:`$ $`\phi (𝐩)\phi (𝐩\sigma 𝐪/\mathrm{}).`$
Comparing with Eqs. (35) and (36), there is a direct symmetry between $`\psi `$ and $`\phi `$ under position and momentum translations, provided one sets $`\sigma =\mathrm{}`$.

In light of this symmetry, it is natural to postulate that, in analogy to $`P(𝐱)=|\psi (𝐱)|^2`$, the momentum probability density is given by $`\stackrel{~}{P}(𝐩)=|\phi (𝐩)|^2`$. Under this postulate one finds that

$`<f(𝐩)>={\displaystyle \stackrel{~}{P}(𝐩)f(𝐩)d^np}={\displaystyle \psi ^{}(𝐱)f(\frac{\mathrm{}}{i})\psi (𝐱)d^nx},`$which then leads to the natural generalisation

$$<f(𝐱,𝐩)>=\psi ^{}(𝐱)f(𝐱,\frac{\mathrm{}}{i})\psi (𝐱)d^nx$$
(37)
as per standard quantum theory (where in general an operator ordering must be specified for the expectation value to be well defined).

Finally, we point out another approach that is also natural within this framework. Since the equations of motion in the variables $`\psi `$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ are linear, it is natural to investigate the group of canonical transformations that preserve the linearity of these equations. This leads to considering the group of transformations of the form

$`\rho (𝐲)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle K(𝐱,𝐲)\psi (𝐱)d^nx}`$
$`\rho ^{}(𝐲)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle K^{}(𝐱,𝐲)\psi ^{}(𝐱)d^nx}.`$
Using (26), a simple calculation leads to the following condition for the transformation to be canonical,

$`\{\rho ,\rho ^{}\}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \left[\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta \psi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta \rho ^{}}{\delta \psi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta \psi ^{\prime \prime }}\frac{\delta \rho ^{}}{\delta \psi ^{\prime \prime }}\right]d^nx^{\prime \prime }}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle K(𝐱^{\prime \prime },𝐲)K^{}(𝐱^{\prime \prime },𝐲^{})d^nx^{\prime \prime }}=\delta (𝐲𝐲^{}).`$
This is the condition for a transformation to be unitary. Arguments similar to the ones discussed above can then be used to single out the choice

$`K(𝐱,𝐲)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left(2\pi \mathrm{}\right)^{n/2}}}\mathrm{exp}(i𝐱𝐲/\mathrm{})`$which corresponds to the transformation that leads to the momentum space representation.

## 5 Conclusions

We have shown that an exact uncertainty principle, formulated in the form that the strength of the momentum fluctuations is inversely correlated with the uncertainty in position, leads from the classical equations of motion to the Schrödinger equation. The assumptions that we used for this fall into three main categories: maximal randomness \[Eqs. (5) and (18)\]; an exact uncertainty principle \[Eq. (9)\]; and causality \[Eq. (10)\]. An alternative derivation is given in .

The additional term in the Lagrangian is essentially the Fisher information, originally introduced by Fisher  as a measure of “intrinsic accuracy” in statistical estimation theory. This Fisher information term was derived using an information theoretic approach in . The connection between Fisher information and quantum mechanics has been developed further in , where it is shown that the Fisher information is proportional to the difference of a classical and quantum variance (thus providing a measure of nonclassicality), and to the rate of entropy increase under Gaussian diffusion (thus providing a measure of robustness). The operator formulation of the exact uncertainty relation in Eq. (23) is studied in detail in , including its extension to entangled systems. We point out that in all of these references the Fisher information is defined in the usual way, that is, as a functional of the probability distribution – and therefore, one should not confuse it with the quantity by the same name that appears in Frieden , which is essentially a generalized Fisher information defined for wavefunctions and proportional to the quantum kinetic energy.

It is worth noting that the approach here, based on exact uncertainty, is rather different from other approaches which assign physical meaning to fields $`P`$ and $`S`$ related to the wavefunction. For example, in the de Broglie-Bohm approach , there are no momentum fluctuations, and the classical equations of motion for $`P`$ and $`S`$ are instead modified by adding a mass-dependent “quantum potential”, $`Q`$, to the classical potential term in the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The form of this quantum potential is left unexplained, and is interpreted as arising from the influence of an associated wave acting on the system. Similarly, while Bohm and Vigier generalise Bohm’s original formalism to permit fluctuations of momentum about $`S`$, this is merely to ensure that an ensemble of such particles will quickly evolve to have a stable distribution given by the modulus-squared of the associated wave . In contrast, in the exact uncertainty approach $`S`$ is an average momentum, the form of an additional kinetic energy term arising from random momentum fluctuations is derived, and no associated wave is assumed. The formal connection between the two approaches is the relation

$`\delta (LL_C)={\displaystyle 𝑑td^nxQ\delta P}.`$

The exact uncertainty approach is also very different from the stochastic mechanics approach . The latter postulates the existence of a classical stochastic process in configuration space, with a drift velocity assumed to be the gradient of some scalar, and defines an associated time-symmetric “mean acceleration” $`𝐚`$ in terms of averages over both the stochastic process and a corresponding time-reversed process, which is postulated to obey Newton’s law $`m𝐚=V`$. In contrast, the exact uncertainty approach does not rely on a classical model of fluctuations, nor on a new definition of acceleration, nor on properties of stochastic processes running backwards in time. Indeed, as remarked in section 3.1, one may view the introduction of $`𝐍`$ as a means of effectively eliminating the notion of trajectories, differentiable or otherwise, from the classical hydrodynamical formulation of section 2. The formal connections between the approaches are

$`S=m𝐮,(\mathrm{\Delta }N)^2=m^2𝐯𝐯,`$where $`𝐮+𝐯`$ and $`𝐮𝐯`$ are the drift velocities of the forward-in-time and backward-in-time processes respectively. It should be noted that $`𝐮𝐯0`$, and hence, noting Eq. (5), one cannot identify $`m𝐯`$ with the random momentum fluctuation $`𝐍`$.

In  it was suggested that the Fisher information term represented an “epistemological” contribution to the action, which in the context of the present analysis can be interpreted as reflecting a lack of detailed knowledge of nonclassical momentum fluctuations. In our approach we do not attempt to provide a “realistic” model of such fluctuations, which would at any rate require a whole new (and nonlocal) theory that goes beyond quantum mechanics. Our approach to understanding quantum mechanics is therefore different from other descriptions based on the postulate of an underlying stochastic process, such as stochastic mechanics . What our analysis primarily offers is a new way of viewing the uncertainty principle as the key concept in quantum mechanics. While it is true that no one before quantum mechanics would think of taking an uncertainty principle as a fundamental principle, our analysis is valuable in that it enforces the importance of the uncertainty principle in distinguishing quantum mechanics from classical mechanics – in a sense, it says that the uncertainty principle is the fundamental element that is needed for the transition to quantum mechanics.


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# Effective interactions in the stripe state of the two-dimensional Hubbard model

## I Introduction

The existence of electronic inhomogeneities is now a well established experimental fact in underdoped high Tc materials (see e.g. ). Especially in lanthanum cuprates these inhomogeneities can develop in the form of antiphase domain walls where quasi one-dimensional charge stripes are separated by hole-free antiferromagnetically (AF) ordered regions. It is worth to note that stripe textures have been predicted as stable Hartree-Fock (HF) saddle-points of the Hubbard model  before they were found experimentally in cuprates and nickelates. Stripe textures in high-Tc materials have been first detected in Nd-doped lanthanum cuprate by neutron scattering experiments where due to the occurence of a low temperature tetragonal phase (LTT) both incommensurate AF and charge order are pinned . The relevance of structural distortions for the formation of antiphase domain wallls has been recently studied in Ref. . In Nd-free compounds  these measurements have up to now only detected the magnetic part of the scattering which remarkably displays the same incommensurability than in the Nd-doped system. In addition evidence for incommensurate charge fluctuations comes from the analysis of optical phonon measurements in YBa2Cu3O6.6  and neutron diffraction experiments  in La2-xSrxCuO4 (LSCO). Taking the stripes as an experimental fact the question arises wether they have something to do with high-Tc superconductivity or if they are just some ’strange byproduct’ of the strong correlations which are at work in these materials. In fact there are many experiments which support the point of view that stripe correlations could give rise to high transition temperatures. First , it has been shown that the stripe spacing in LSCO compounds is inversely proportional to the transition temperature up to optimal doping . A close connection between transition temperature and stripe incommensurability has also been found in YBCO  where interestingly there seems to appear a discontinuous jump of incommensurability from $`1/6`$ at optimal doping to $`1/8`$ for the Tc=60K underdoped compound. Second, the occurence of domain walls can be interpreted in terms of a quantum critical point (QCP)  located near optimal doping xopt which is a quite appealing concept in order to account for the anomalous normal state transport of high-Tc materials around this particular doping. As a consequence the QCP scenario allows for a natural subdivision of the phase diagram into overdoped metallic and the underdoped pseudogap phase. It has been argued  that the QCP can be deduced from the amplitude of the incommensurate magnetic peaks vansishing near xopt. This coincides with experiments where superconducting order has been suppressed by strong pulsed magnetic fields  and which have revealed an underlying metal insulator transition at about the same concentration in agreement with the QCP concept. Temperature dependent measurements of the charge and spin sector in Nd-doped LSCO  as well as NQR experiments  further support the idea that it is the charge rather than the spins which is reponsible for the stripe state instability.

The possibility of d-wave pairing near a incommensurate CDW instability has been investigated in Ref.  within a BCS-type scheme. This analysis was restricted to the overdoped and optimally doped region of the phase diagram where according to the QCP scenario strong ICDW fluctuations are present but without symmetry breaking of the translational invariance. In the underdoped system the opening of a ICDW gap naturally leads to a suppression of the superconducting order parameter due to a reduction in the density of states around the Fermi level (see e.g. ,). However, in addition the ICDW fluctuations are strongly modified in the symmetry-broken state but to our knowledge no detailed analysis of the corresponding pairing interaction has been performed yet. The present paper is dedicated to explore the effective electron-electron interactions in the underdoped regime of the phase diagram thus starting with a ground state which exhibits long-range incommensurate stripe order. Our considerations are based on the Hartree-Fock (HF) decoupled two-dimensional Hubbard model where we obtain the domain wall structure via a self-consistent iteration of the on-site charge and spin expectation values. From the formal point of view our investigations can be viewed as a generalization of the spin-bag approach  to incommensurate antiferromagnetism. The basic idea of the spin-bag mechansim is that a hole doped into the commensurate antiferromagnet locally perturbes the AF order parameter and consequently two holes gain energy when they share a common deformation (bag) in analogy to a standard lattice bipolaron. In Ref.  this scenario has been worked out by considering the pairing in the longitudinal spin channel of a commensurate antiferromagnet which indeed turns out to be attractive for small momentum transfers whereas it becomes repulsive for large $`𝐪(\pi ,\pi )`$. The charge channel plays a minor role for pairing in the spin-bag approach since it does not exhibit an instability and renormalization effects are rather weak. It has been argued in Ref.  that the repulsion in the transverse spin channel at large $`𝐪`$ may be suppressed by the coherence factors entering the vertex of the pairing interaction. However, as pointed out by Frenkel and Hanke  the vanishing of the vertex is cancelled by the Goldstone pole in the spin susceptibility thus leading to a finite repulsive contribution in the transverse channel for momenta $`𝐪(\pi ,\pi )`$ comparable to that for the amplitude fluctuations.

We want to emphasize that our HF approach to the stripe phase fails to account for some of the experimental facts mentioned above but on the other hand allows for a simple description of some basic features regarding the electron-electron interaction in a system posessing stripe order. First, it is well known  that a HF decoupling of the one-band Hubbard model cannot properly describe the observed stripe charge structure in the cuprates which is characterized by one hole for every second unit cell along the domain wall (’half-filled’). In contrast HF calculations result in completely filled stripes thus predicting twice the observed stripe periodicity and it has turned out that correlations beyond HF theory have to be included  in order to account for the measured stripe structure within the Hubbard model.

Thus in our investigations we will restrict to excitations perpendicular to the domain walls which should be less affected by the actual stripe filling than excitations along the walls which of course crucially depend on the doping of the stripes. Second, it has been shown in Ref.  that the HF stripe instability is due to an instability in the spin channel and the corresponding charge modulation is generated as a higher harmonic of the longitudinal spin scattering. Thus in our model the spins are the driving force behind the domain wall formation in contrast to what is observed in Nd-doped LSCO. An alternative approach where antiphase domain walls are enslaved by a frustrated phase seperation scenario has been discussed in . However, since we restrict on zero temperature we believe that within the limitations discussed above our approach can capture some features of the electron-electron interaction in the stripe state of underdoped cuprates. We note that a similar study for the calculation of correlation functions has been performed in Ref.  where the authors focussed on the renormalization of the spin velocity in the stripe state.

The paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II we outline the formalism of our approach starting from HF theory and the subsequent derivation of effective hamiltonians for the residual RPA-type interactions in the stripe phase. In Sec. III we present results for these interactions focussing on the different contributions from vertex functions and susceptibilities respectively. We finally conclude our discussion in Sec. IV.

## II Formalism

### A Mean-field theory

We start with the Hubbard hamiltonian

$$H=\underset{k,\sigma }{}ϵ_kc_{k,\sigma }^{}c_{k,\sigma }+\frac{U}{2}\underset{q,\sigma }{}\rho _{q,\sigma }\rho _{q,\sigma }$$
(1)
where $`c_{k,\sigma }^{()}`$ destroys (creates) an electron in the state k and energy $`ϵ_k`$, $`\rho _{q,\sigma }=_kc_{k+q,\sigma }^{}c_{k,\sigma }`$ denotes the density operator.

For one elecron per site the ground state shows two-sublattice commensurate antiferromagnetic order. It has been shown by Schulz  using the RPA-type Stoner criterion that for a small number of holes the system posesses a magnetic instability at an incommensurate modulation wavevector $`(\pi ,\pi )+𝐪_𝐬`$. In principle the corresponding (mean-field) symmetry-broken state could be realized either by a modulation of the transverse spin degrees of freedom i.e. a spiral phase  or the corresponding modulation of the longitudinal magnetization. From general arguments  and also from unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations (see e.g. ) one finds that usually the symmetry breaking occurs in the longitudinal channel of the magnetic system. As a consequence this leads to a strong coupling between charge- and spin degrees of freedom resulting in the formation of antiphase domain walls where the charge is distributed along the phase boundaries. It should be noted that the inclusion of the vacuum renormalization of the effective interaction may stabilize the commensurate antiferromagnet at small dopings .

Within unrestricted HF theory (see e.g. ) one finds that for small values of the on-site interaction U the stripes are oriented along the verticals and whereas for large U they run along the (1,1)-direction. In the following we consider a rather small value of U close to the instability in order to realize the vertical stripe phase.

Moreover we restrict ourselves to an energy dispersion arising from nearest neighbor hopping $`\epsilon _k=2t(cosk_x+cosk_y)`$ with bandwidth $`B=8t=4eV`$. For doping $`\delta =0.13`$ (measured from half-filling) one finds from the Stoner criterion the occurence of the magnetic instability at $`𝐐^𝐭=\pi (1\pm 1/8,1)`$ and $`𝐐^𝐭=\pi (1,1\pm 1/8)`$ when the Hubbard interaction exceeds the critical value U$`{}_{c}{}^{}0.9eV`$. In principle these four equivalent wave vectors allow either for an unidirectional stripe structure or for a two-dimensional grid pattern of antiphase domain walls. In the spin glass phase of LSCO where the stripes run along the diagonals neutron scattering provides convincing evidence for a one-dimensional modulation , however, in the superconducting regime this point remains unclear although from general arguments  unidirectional scattering seems to be favored.

Restricting ourselves to the (longitudinal) domain wall structure the Hubbard interaction can be decoupled via

$`\rho _{q,\sigma }\rho _{q,\sigma }`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left(\rho _q\rho _q+\rho _q\rho _q\mu _q\mu _q\mu _q\mu _q\right)`$ (2)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left(\rho _q\rho _q\mu _q\mu _q\right)`$ (3)
where $`\rho _q=_\sigma \rho _{q,\sigma }`$ and $`\mu _q=_\sigma \sigma \rho _{q,\sigma }`$ denote the charge and spin densities respectively. Although the Stoner criterion signals the instability at a single wave vector $`𝐐^𝐭=(\pi ,\pi )+𝐪_𝐬`$ the anharmonicity of the domain wall structure in the symmetry broken phase naturally incorporates higher harmonics also. It is well known  that the topological nature of the stripe phase implies the relation $`𝐪_𝐜=2𝐪_𝐬`$ between the basic charge ($`𝐪_𝐜`$) and spin ($`𝐪_𝐬`$) modulations.

In order to illustrate the role of these harmonics in the charge- and spin channel respectively, we have sketched in Fig. 1 the charge ($`\chi (x)`$) and spin order ($`\mathrm{\Delta }(x)`$) parameter for a simple rectangular stripe pattern in the periodicity interval $`[0,l]`$. One can easily convince oneself that the corresponding Fourier coefficients $`\chi _k`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_k`$ are given by

$`\chi _k={\displaystyle \frac{4\chi _0}{k\pi }}\mathrm{cos}(k\pi /2)\mathrm{cos}({\displaystyle \frac{k\pi \xi }{l}})`$ (4)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_k={\displaystyle \frac{4\mathrm{\Delta }_0}{k\pi }}\mathrm{sin}(k\pi /2)\mathrm{sin}({\displaystyle \frac{k\pi \xi }{l}})`$ (5)
where $`\xi `$ denotes the width of the magnetic domains. Thus the magnetic scattering only involves odd harmonics whereas the charge scattering is due to the even harmonics. This fact holds in general when both magnetic and charge stripes are symmetric under reflection with respect to their central axis. As a result one can describe the modulation of charge and spin densities in terms of the single wave vector $`𝐐^𝐭`$

$`\rho (𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \underset{p(even)=2}{\overset{M1}{}}}\rho _{p𝐐^𝐭}\mathrm{cos}(p𝐐^𝐭𝐫),`$ (6)
$`\mu (𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \underset{p(odd)=1}{\overset{M1}{}}}\mu _{p𝐐^𝐭}\mathrm{sin}(p𝐐^𝐭𝐫)`$ (7)
where the commensurability M of the stripe is defined as the number of scattering events in the same direction needed to return to the equivalent state, i.e. $`|𝐤+M𝐐^𝐭=|𝐤`$. Note that within this definition a large commensurability M not necessarily implies a scattering vector $`𝐐^𝐭`$ very distant from $`(\pi ,\pi )`$.

For the vertical stripe orientations along the x-direction considered here we can write $`𝐐^𝐭=\pi (\frac{2}{M}+\mathrm{\Theta }(M2),1)`$ where the step function is defined with $`\mathrm{\Theta }(0)=0`$. This guarantees the correct behavior for commensurate AF (M=2) i.e. $`𝐐^𝐭=(\pi ,\pi )`$. Note that within these definitions the commensurability M corresponds to the period of the stripe structure (in units of the lattice constant) as is indicated in Fig. 2a. Furthermore we are now able to construct the reduced Brillouin zone (BZ) which is spanned by vectors $`𝐐^𝐭`$ and $`𝐐_{}=\frac{4\pi }{(2+M\mathrm{\Theta }(M2))^2+M^2}(M,2+M\mathrm{\Theta }(M2))`$. In order to illustrate the new zone scheme we plot in Fig. 2b the reduced BZ for the case $`M=16`$ which will be studied below. Note that the reduced BZ is not only due to charge order (the corresponding vertically striped BZ is also indicated in Fig. 2b) but is rotated and divided in half due to the presence of (modulated) antiferromagnetism.

Introducing reduced zone notation for the electron operators

$$c_n(k,\sigma )c_{k_x+(n1)Q_x^t,k_y+(n1)Q_y^t,\sigma }$$
(8)
we thus obtain the following hamiltonian

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n,k,\sigma }{}}ϵ_n(k)c_n^{}(k,\sigma )c_n(k,\sigma )`$ (9)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{p,n,k,\sigma }{}}[\chi _{2p}c_{n+2p}^{}(k,\sigma )c_n(k,\sigma )+h.c.]`$ (10)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{p,n,k,\sigma }{}}\sigma [\mathrm{\Delta }_pc_{n+p}^{}(k,\sigma )c_n(k,\sigma )+h.c.]`$ (11)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2N}{U}}{\displaystyle \underset{p}{}}(|\mathrm{\Delta }_p|^2|\chi _{2p}|^2)`$ (12)
where we have introduced the charge and spin order parameters as $`\chi _{2p}=(U/2)\rho _{2p𝐐^𝐭}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p=(U/2)\mu _{p𝐐^𝐭}`$.

The hamiltonian eq. (12) can be diagonalized via

$$c_n(k,\sigma )=\underset{m=1}{\overset{M}{}}A_{nm}(k,\sigma )f_m(k,\sigma )$$
(13)
and from the symmetry of H it turns out that the transformation matrices obey the relations $`A_{nm}(k)A_{nm}(k,\sigma )=(1)^nA_{nm}(k,\sigma )`$ and $`A_{nm}(k,\sigma )=A_{Mn+2,Mm+2}^{}(k,\sigma )`$.

We finally obtain the hamiltonian in diagonal representation as

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k,\sigma }{}}{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}E_n(k)f_n^{}(k,\sigma )f_n(k,\sigma )`$ (14)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2N}{U}}{\displaystyle \underset{p}{}}(|\mathrm{\Delta }_p|^2|\chi _{2p}|^2)`$ (15)
where $`E_n(k)`$ denotes the dispersion of the n-th subband in the reduced BZ (dark shaded rectangle in Fig. 2b). The order parameters have to be determined self-consistently.

In Fig. 3 we show a cut of the bandstructure through the reduced zone and the density of states for a stripe structure with commensurability M=16 corresponding to the scattering vector $`𝐐^𝐭`$ as defined above. As can be seen the spectrum is composed of 16 quasi one-dimensional subbands. Since the choosen carrier concentration $`\delta =0.13`$ slightly exceeds the integer fraction $`\delta =1/8`$ the chemical potential is located within but near the top edge of the 7th subband.

The following sections deal with the RPA fluctuations around the HF stripe state and it is quite instructive to consider the functional dependence of the ground state energy from the spin- and charge order parameters which is shown in Fig. 4. In fact, since RPA excitations can be derived from the expansion around the HF saddle-point in the density fluctuations (see e.g. ) one can already qualitatively deduce from Fig. 4 the possible instabilities of the system. Note that for the $`E(\mathrm{\Delta }_1)`$ curve the charge order parameter is adjusted selfconsistently while for the $`E(\chi _2`$) curve the spin order parameter is taken at the saddle point. The $`(H,\mathrm{\Delta }_1)`$ curve displays the standard behavior of a second-order phase transition towards the SDW ground state with minimum at $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=0.14eV`$. On the other hand it turns out that the saddle-point of $`(H,\chi _2)`$ corresponds to a maximum in the energy-order parameter space which is also obvious from the decoupling eq. (2) . This simple picture already demonstrates that in the present framework charge order is completely due to the SDW instability.

Moreover, note that for $`\chi _20`$ the $`(H,\chi _2)`$ curve has a finite derivative which signals the absence of critical fluctuations in the charge channel for the homogeneous system in contrast to models where the instability mechanism is due to frustrated phase separation .

### B Susceptibilities for general commensurability

We start from the following definitions for charge and spin-density correlations functions

$`\chi _{mm^{}}^+(q,q^{},t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{N}}TS_{q+(m1)Q^t}^+(t)S_{q^{}(m^{}1)Q^t}^{}(0),`$ (16)
$`\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,q^{},t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{N}}T\rho _{q+(m1)Q^t,\sigma }(t)\rho _{q^{}(m^{}1)Q^t,\sigma ^{}}(0),`$ (17)
$`\chi _{mm^{}}^{00}(q,q^{},t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}}\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,q^{},t),`$ (18)
$`\chi _{mm^{}}^{zz}(q,q^{},t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}}\sigma \sigma ^{}\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,q^{},t),`$ (19)
where the wave vectors $`q`$ are within the reduced zone. Since the mean-field hamiltonian eq. (14) commutes with $`_iS_i^z`$ the excitations in the longitudinal spin and charge channel are decoupled from the transverse channel where the solution of the RPA approximated Dyson equation for the latter case leads to

$$\chi _{mm^{}}^+(q,\omega )=[1U\chi _{mm^{}}^{(0),+}(q,\omega )]^1\chi _{mm^{\prime \prime }}^{(0),+}(q,\omega )$$
(20)
The bare transverse stripe susceptibilities read as

$`\chi _{mm^{}}^{(0),+}(q,\omega )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{kst}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{tsm^{}}^{}(k,\stackrel{~}{k+q})`$ (21)
$`[{\displaystyle \frac{n_t(\stackrel{~}{k})[1n_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})]}{\omega +E_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})E_t(k)i\eta }}{\displaystyle \frac{n_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})[1n_t(k)]}{\omega +E_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})E_t(k)+i\eta }}]`$ (22)
where we have introduced the vertex functions:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)={\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}A_{𝒩,s}^{}(\stackrel{~}{k+q})A_{n,t}(k)(1)^{n1}`$ (23)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{tsm}^{}(k,\stackrel{~}{k+q})=(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},k))^{}`$ (24)
and $`A_{nt}(k)`$ is defined in Eq. (13). Here the index $`𝒩=𝒩(n,m,k,q)`$ defines the number of the BZ which contains the unreduced state $`|k+q`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{k+q}`$ denotes the corresponding reduced wave vector.

We now turn to the evaluation of the correlation function in the longitudinal channel. In this case we start from the RPA decoupled Dyson equation for $`\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,\omega )`$

$$\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,\omega )=\chi _{mm^{}}^{(0),\sigma \sigma }(q,\omega )+U\chi _{mm^{\prime \prime }}^{(0),\sigma \sigma }(q,\omega )\chi _{m^{\prime \prime }m}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,\omega )$$
(25)
where

$`\chi _{mm^{}}^{(0),\sigma \sigma }(q,\omega )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{kst}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{tsm^{}}^\sigma (k,\stackrel{~}{k+q})`$ (26)
$`[{\displaystyle \frac{n_t(k)[1n_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})]}{\omega +E_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})E_t(k)i\eta }}{\displaystyle \frac{n_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})[1n_t(k)]}{\omega +E_s(\stackrel{~}{k+q})E_t(k)+i\eta }}]`$ (27)
and the vertex functions are given by

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)={\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}A_{𝒩,s}^{}(\stackrel{~}{k+q})A_{n,t}(k)\sigma ^{n+𝒩}`$ (28)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{tsm}^\sigma (k,\stackrel{~}{k+q})=(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{k+q},k))^{}`$ (29)
Since we have to project $`\chi _{mm^{}}^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}(q,\omega )`$ onto the charge and longitudinal spin sector we introduce the new matrices

$$\kappa _{mm^{}}=\frac{1}{2}(\begin{array}{cc}\chi _{mm^{}}^{\rho \rho }& \chi _{mm^{}}^{\rho z}\\ \chi _{mm^{}}^{z\rho }& \chi _{mm^{}}^{zz}\end{array})=A^1\frac{1}{2}(\begin{array}{cc}\chi _{mm^{}}^{}& \chi _{mm^{}}^{}\\ \chi _{mm^{}}^{}& \chi _{mm^{}}^{}\end{array})A.$$
(30)
where

$$A=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(\begin{array}{cc}1& \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}\\ 1& 1\end{array})$$
(31)
Within these definitions we can rewrite eq. (25) as a $`2M\times 2M`$ matrix equation for the charge and spin density correlations respectively

$$\mathrm{\Xi }=[1U\mathrm{\Xi }^oT_z]^1\mathrm{\Xi }^o$$
(32)
and the matrices $`T_z`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ read as

$$\mathrm{\Xi }=(\begin{array}{ccccc}\kappa _{11}& \kappa _{12}& & & \\ \kappa _{21}& \kappa _{22}& & & \\ & & & & \\ & & & & \\ & & & & \end{array});T_z=(\begin{array}{ccccc}\tau _z& 0& 0& & \\ 0& \tau _z& 0& & \\ 0& 0& \tau _z& & \\ & & & & \\ & & & & \end{array}).$$
(33)
Obviously both charge and longitudinal spin excitations are strongly coupled except in the half-filled system where the ground state corresponds to a commensurate antiferromagnet.

### C Effective interactions for general commensurability

Having determined the collective excitations in the striped phase we are now in the position to study the interactions of two holes within the same subband with opposite spin and momenta in the spin- and charge channel respectively. Note that the susceptibilities defined in eq. (19) acquire non-diagonal matrix elements in the stripe state, which implies the possibility of creating Cooper pairs with a finite momentum (which is a multiple of $`𝐐^𝐭`$). However, for simplicity we will consider only scattering of zero momentum Cooper pairs and therefore neglect nondiagonal contributions of the susceptibilities ($`mm^{}`$) to the interaction. Additionally we will cast these interactions in the form of effective hamiltonians thus restricting on the static limit with an appropriate frequency cutoff.

We find in the orientational spin-fluctuation channel

$`H^+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U^2}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{kq}{mst}}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^+(\stackrel{~}{kq},k)\chi _{mm}^+(q)`$ (34)
$`\times `$ $`f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},\sigma )f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{kq},\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma )`$ (35)
in the charge-fluctuation channel

$`H^{\rho \rho }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U^2}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{kq}{mst}}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{kq},k)\chi _{mm}^{\rho \rho }(q)`$ (36)
$`\times `$ $`f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},\sigma )f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{kq},\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma )`$ (37)
and in the amplitude spin-fluctuation channel

$`H^{zz}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U^2}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{kq}{mmst}}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{k+q},k)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^\sigma (\stackrel{~}{kq},k)\chi _{mm}^{zz}(q)`$ (38)
$`\times `$ $`f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{k+q},\sigma )f_s^+(\stackrel{~}{kq},\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma )f_t(k,\sigma ).`$ (39)
In order to illustrate the behavior of the vertex functions in the various channels let us consider the case of well developed stripe order (i.e. large charge- and spin order parameters). In this limit we can as a first approximation neglect the kinetic energy in eq. (12) and the transformation eq. (13) takes the form

$$A_{nt}(k)\frac{1}{\sqrt{M}}exp[i\frac{2\pi }{M}nt].$$
(40)
As a result the vertex contribution in the transverse spin channel is given by

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(k,q)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^+(k,q)=(1)^{(m1)}\delta _{s,t+\frac{M}{2}}$$
(41)
and thus the coupling to spin-flip scattering vanishes for intraband transitions.

On the other hand the intraband coupling in the charge and longitudinal spin channel survives  and can be expressed in the form

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(k,q)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(k,q)=(1)^{(m1)}\delta _{s,t}$$
(42)
Now remember that the index m in $`\chi _{mm}(𝐪)`$ labels the multiple of $`𝐐^𝐭`$ which has to be added to the reduced transfered momentum $`\stackrel{~}{𝐪}`$, i.e. the transfered momentum in the full BZ is $`𝐪=\stackrel{~}{𝐪}+(m1)𝐐^𝐭`$. Thus an odd (even) index $`m`$ corresponds to enhanced charge (spin) susceptibilities which therefore in general mediate attractive (repulsive) interactions respectively. In addition upon assuming that the charge (spin) susceptibility has some finite contribution for odd (even) $`m`$ only, one recovers the result of Ref.  that the effective interaction in these channels becomes proportional to the commensurability of the charge modulation, i.e. $`_m\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(k,q)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{stm}^{}(k,q)=\pm M/2`$.

## III Results

We now apply the formalism developed above to the calculation of the effective interaction within the HF stripe state of the two-dimensional Hubbard model. We restrict ourselves to the domain wall considered in Sec. IIa, i.e. commensurability $`M=16`$ for which the total scattering vector is $`Q^t=(\pi ,\pi +\frac{\pi }{8})`$. Fig. 5 displays the different RPA susceptibilities for $`\omega =0`$ and $`\omega =25meV`$ respectively. Note that the q-scans for the magnetic susceptibilities are along the $`(q_x,q_y=\pi )`$ axis whereas the charge susceptibility is shown along $`(q_x,q_y=0)`$. The structure in $`\chi ^+`$ is dominated by the Goldstone pole at $`Q^t`$ due to the breaking of spin-rotational invariance in the stripe state. As can be seen from Fig.6 the mode splits with increasing frequency and the two branches result from the defolding of the reduced BZ (Ref. ). Moreover beyond the gap energy (roughly corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$) the magnetic excitations rapidly lose intensity.

The longitudinal spin and charge channel do not display a physical pole at $`\omega =0`$. However, a mode like feature is present at $`Q^t`$ for the amplitude fluctuations and at $`2Q^t`$ for the charge susceptibility which reflects the enhanced susceptibility of the stripe state to perturbations with the respective wave numbers. Since both charge and spin are coupled within the RPA formalism the respective excitations follow the same dispersion in ($`q,\omega `$)-space (Fig. 6) but since the charge ’mode’ appears as a second harmonic to the longitudinal spin excitation its intensity is significantly lower. It is interesting to observe that at the energy ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$) where the longitudinal spin fluctuations become commensurate the charge fluctuations show the periodicity of the static spin modulation (i.e. $`𝐪_𝐬`$) which again is a consequence of the defolding of the reduced BZ. Note that this energy does not correspond to the maximum in the intensity, which appears for slightly lower frequencies.

Finally, in order to determine the efficieny of the pairing in the various channels we have to calculate the vertex functions which determine the coupling of the charge carriers to the corresponding correlation functions. Generally speaking the vertex functions determine the overall sign of the effective interaction in the Brillouin zone. Let us briefly illustrate this effect in the limit of a commensurate spin-density wave ($`M=2`$) where the vertex functions can be calculated analytically. It is then shown below that the qualitative behavior of the coupling still holds for higher commensurability. Note that the pairing interaction mediated by amplitude fluctuations of AF order constitutes the basis of the so called “spin bag mechanism to high-Tc superconductivity” as proposed by Schrieffer et al. in Ref. . In this case the antiferromagnetic scattering $`Q=(\pi ,\pi )`$ doubles the unit cell and we denote conduction and valence band by the superscripts $`c`$ and $`v`$ respectively. The corresponding energies are given by $`E_k^{c/v}=\pm E_k=\pm \sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }^2+ϵ_k^2}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the SDW order parameter.

Restricting ourselves on the ’hole doped’ case the relevant coupling functions can be written within our notation as

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{vvm}^\sigma \mathrm{\Gamma }_{vvm}^\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{m1}}{2}}[1{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^mϵ_kϵ_{k+q}\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{E_kE_{k+q}}}]`$ (43)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{vvm}^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{vvm}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^{m1}}{2}}[1{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^mϵ_kϵ_{k+q}+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{E_kE_{k+q}}}]`$ (44)
Obviously there is a difference in sign between small q- ($`m=1`$) and large q- ($`m=2`$) scattering. Since in an antiferromagnet the magnetic susceptibilities are peaked at $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ the attractive interaction for small momentum transfer (as anticipated in the spin-bag mechanism) is accompanied by a large repulsion at $`𝐪𝐐`$ (see e.g. Ref. , for a more detailed analysis of this point).

Let us now consider the case of commensurability M=16. As already mentioned the considered hole doping $`\delta =0.13`$ is slightly above the ’magic’ concentration $`1/8`$ so that the Fermi level is located within the 7th subband in the reduced BZ.

In Fig. 7 we have plotted the corresponding vertex functions for intraband scattering which for convenience are defolded along $`(q_x,0)`$ and $`(q_x,\pi )`$. It turns out that also in this case the coupling around odd multiples of $`Q^t`$ is negativ whereas it is positive around the even harmonics. Thus also in the stripe phase the large q scattering which is dominated by the magnetic fluctuations is repulsive whereas attraction predominantly arises from the coupling to charge fluctuations. Naturally for stripes the latter are much more pronounced in comparison to the spin-bag model. With regard to the effective hamiltonian eqs. (34-38) the cutoff of the pairing potential is an important parameter in determining the interaction strength. From the right panel of Fig. 5 we conclude that for the relevant wave-vectors near the ’modes’ the cutoff energy approximately is of the order of the charge order parameter $`\chi _2`$.

Besides the enhancement of charge fluctuation mediated pairing in the stripe phase the contribution of spin-flip scattering to the interaction is also significantly different from the spin-bag approach. First note that the coupling to the transverse susceptibility for large momenta (upper right panel of Fig. (7)) is by two orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding coupling to charge and longitudinal spin fluctuations. In addition it vanishes at the momentum of the Goldstone pole i.e. $`q=Q^t`$. For the commensurate $`M=2`$ case this can be seen directly from eq. (44) in the limit $`𝐪(\pi ,\pi )`$ (note that in our reduced notation this is equivalent to $`𝐪=0`$ in eq. (44). In Ref.  this fact led to some confusion concerning the relevance of the transverse fluctuations within the spin-bag approach. However, it has been shown in Ref.  that the vanishing of the vertex is cancelled by the gapless Goldstone pole of $`\chi ^+(Q)`$ and as a result the interaction in the spin-flip channel around $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ becomes comparable to the pairing from the amplitude fluctuations in the spin-bag scenario.

In order to study the coupling to transverse fluctuations for commensurability $`M=16`$ we have performed a numerical expansion of the vertex and the transverse susceptibility around $`q=Q^t`$. Contrary to the low commensurability case one finds that the contribution from the transverse channel to the pairing is only $`5\%`$ of that of the spin amplitude fluctuations. We consider this as a consequence of the spatial separation of charge carriers and spin fluctuations in the stripe model.

## IV Conclusion

To summarize, we have calculated the effective interactions arising from the RPA fluctuations around the HF stripe phase of the two-dimensional Hubbard model. Since our approach is a generalization of Ref.  to higher commensurabilities the general features resemble closely those of the spin-bag mechanism. However, significant differences arise due to the inhomogeneous charge distribution in the stripe state where the holes are confined to the domain walls separating antiphase AF regions. As a result the charge correlations are enhanced for wave-vectors corresponding to the stripe periodicity resulting in a much more pronounced small q attractive pairing as compared to the spin-bag approach where the system is translationally invariant with respect to the charge degrees of freedom. Due to the fact that HF theory generates the charge order as a second harmonic of the longitudinal spin modulation the pairing is still dominated by the large q repulsion due to magnetic fluctuations. However, in models where the stripe instability is driven by the charge an analogous approach should yield a comparable interaction strength in spin-and charge channels respectively. Thus depending on the repulsive contribution due to magnetic scattering either a d-wave or anisotropic s-wave SC order parameter minimizes the free energy of the system. Obviously non of these order parameters will be really realized in a purely one-dimensional stripe phase as considered in the present paper, however, our investigations can be considered as complementary to Ref.  where the coexistence between incommensurate antiferromagnetism and anisotropic superconductivity has been investigated. In this context the effective interaction derived above may provide a microscopic origin for the superconducting correlations considered in Ref. . Anyhow, in order to have true d-wave order one has to anticipate a scenario where the stripes fluctuate between the x- and y- directions in order to restore the two-dimensional symmetry. In principle one could symmetrize the pairing interaction derived above and use it in a BCS-type approach in order to evaluate the superconducting gap. Alternatively, one could consider the interactions arising from the fluctuations of an eggbox-type domain wall structure as in Ref.  in order to mimic orientational stripe fluctuations. Furthermore it has been proposed  that domains of stripes running along the crystalographic directions can couple via the twin boundaries which also leads to ’symmetric’ d-wave superconductivity.

However, within the obvious limitations of our approach which we have already discussed in the introduction a quantitative evaluation of the superconducting gap would not be very instructive and beyond the scope of the present paper. Here our purpose is to simply outline the general features of stripe fluctuation induced pairing and to eventually supplement considerations within more sophisticated approaches.


text:
# Solar models and electron screening

## 1 Introduction

The solar interior is, thanks to the tremendous progress of helioseismology, known to such great accuracy that the Sun can in fact be used as a laboratory for physics. Examples are investigations about the equation of state (Däppen & Nayfonov (2000)) or axion properties (Schlattl et al. (1999)). In this paper, we will apply it to the Coulomb screening of the nuclear reactions.

The plasma correction to nuclear reaction rates, also known as screening, is one of the ingredients for stellar and solar model calculations, which has repeatedly been rediscussed in the literature. The standard derivation by Salpeter (1954) discusses electrostatic screening in the Debye-approximation, where the electrostatic potential around an ion of charge $`Z_1e`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=(Z_1e/r)\mathrm{exp}(r/D),$$
(1)
where $`D`$ is the Debye radius ($`D=kT/4\pi e^2n_e`$; $`n_e`$: electron density), within which ($`rD`$) the electrostatic potential around $`Z_1`$ is reduced to

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=Z_1e/rZ_1e/D.$$
(2)
This reduced Coulomb potential gives rise to an increased reaction rate by a factor

$$f=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{Z_1Z_2e^2}{kTD}\right)1+f_\mathrm{S}=1+0.188Z_1Z_2\xi ^{\frac{1}{2}}\rho ^{\frac{1}{2}}T_6^{\frac{3}{2}},$$
(3)
$`Z_2e`$ denoting the partner charge in the nuclear reaction, and $`\xi =_Z\frac{(Z^2+Z)X_Z}{A_Z}`$ the effective charge.

Eq. 3 has been challenged in various papers (e.g. Carraro et al. (1988); Shaviv & Shaviv (1996) Shaviv & Shaviv (1996), Shaviv & Shaviv (2000); Savchenko (1999)), either developing different pictures for the configuration of $`Z_2`$ around $`Z_1`$, or by pointing out the static character of Salpeter’s derivation, asking for a dynamical one, since we are dealing with a plasma. All these papers have been refuted by other work pointing out flaws, inconsistencies or by re-derivation of Eq. 3 (e.g. Brueggen & Gough (1997), Gruzinov & Bahcall (1998)). Recently, Bahcall et al. (2000a) have summarized five different derivations of the plasma correction to nuclear reaction rates at the centre of the Sun, all arriving at the Salpeter formula. At the same time they review several papers with deviant screening rates, stressing that all these papers arrive at different factors. In their summary, Bahcall et al. (2000a) emphasize that in the future proving the correctness of screening formulae should be part of the corresponding work. Among the work criticised was also that of one of the present authors (Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000); Tsytovich (2000)), in which screening results in a suppression of nuclear reaction rates in the Sun.

Since many of the paper in this field are not easy to understand and in particular their correctness not easy to be verified nor falsified, we used in Flaskamp et al. (2000) a different approach. Following our previous applications of the Garching Solar Model (GARSOM; Schlattl (1999)) as a highly sensitive laboratory for stellar and particle physics (e.g. Schlattl (1999); Schlattl et al. (1999)) we applied the screening rates of Tsytovich (2000) to our solar model and compared the resulting sound speed with a model with Salpeter’s equation. In this preliminary work we reported about changes in sound speed both at the solar centre and in the radiative regions around $`r/R_{}0.65`$ ($`R_{}`$ is the solar radius), which are inconsistent with helioseismological results.

In the present paper we are extending our analysis to general modifications of Eq. 3 and repeat it for a slightly modified derivation of the screening compared to the original work by Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000). In Section 2 we will briefly summarize our solar models and describe the modified screening values. In Section 3 we show the influence on sound speed, neutrino rates and global solar properties and demonstrate that, given the accuracy of the helioseismologically inferred sound speed, even the case of reactions rates without screening ($`f=1`$) can be excluded.111We note that a very similar investigation has recently and independently been published by Fiorentini et al. (2000). We then turn around our approach to show that a slightly improved solar model can be obtained by increasing Salpeter’s screening by a moderate amount ($`5\%`$). Finally, in the last section, we conclude that the present work demonstrates convincingly that the Sun can be used as a laboratory for nuclear reaction screening; this could be helpful in the future to settle the on-going dispute about screening.

## 2 Calculations and models

### 2.1 Solar models

We calculated solar models with the program and input physics as described in Schlattl (1999) or Schlattl et al. (1999). The physics is very similar to other standard models such as published recently by Bahcall et al. (2000b). We avoid repeating details here, but emphasize that helium and metal diffusion are included and the present solar luminosity, radius and surface value of $`Z/X=0.0245`$ are matched (note that Bahcall et al. (2000b) use a slightly lower value of 0.0230; Grevesse & Sauval (1998)). The resulting model parameters (Table 1) and sound profile (Fig. 1; solid line) agree well with Bahcall et al. (2000b).

For our standard model (“GARSOM”) we have used Salpeter’s formula. In all other models, screening factors were replaced as described next. Otherwise the model calculations are identical.

### 2.2 Screening factors

Except for the Tsytovich-screening model (Fig. 1; dashed line), the screening factor $`f`$ of all reactions of pp-chains and CNO-cycle was multiplied by a constant factor $`g`$, ranging from 0.9 to 1.1, such that $`f=(1+f_\mathrm{S})g`$ for the models shown in Fig. 2, or was replaced by $`f=1`$ for the no-screening model (Fig. 1; dash-dotted line).

For the Tsytovich-screening model a varying screening factor depending on reaction and composition was used for the $`\mathrm{p}+\mathrm{p}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}+^3\mathrm{He}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}+^4\mathrm{He}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+\mathrm{p}`$, and $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+e^{}`$ reactions. (For all other reactions standard Salpeter values were used.) These factors were determined by starting out with the formulae given in Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000), which involve the solution of multi-dimensional integrals, which depend on temperature, density, and abundances of the participating nuclei. Instead of evaluating these integrals at all points within the solar model, we did so for a selected number of mass coordinates for several models along a standard model evolution sequence and found that to very good approximation the screening factors can be expressed as a function of helium content (as a parameter describing both the spatial coordinate and the evolution with time within the energy generating core). In Eq. 3 we replace $`Z_1Z_2\xi ^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ by $`FL_{ij}`$, where $`F`$ is depending on composition and $`L_{ij}`$ on reaction $`ij`$. For the centre of the Sun we recover the screening factors given in Table 1 of Tsytovich (2000) when using $`F`$ and $`L_{ij}`$ from Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000).

We note that the original results of Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000) have been modified slightly by V.N. Tsytovich until the time of the computations presented here and are subject to further ongoing research. With respect to the original paper, the quantity $`L_{ij}`$ became temperature-dependent (except for $`e^{}`$-capture on 7Be) and some additional terms in expansion series had been added. Meanwhile the formalism has been improved to treat two-particle distribution functions, a sign-error in one term has been corrected for, and it appears that in addition to the dynamical screening terms the static ones, which correspond to the Salpeter-screening and which canceled in the original derivation (Tsytovich & Bornatici (2000)) could remain, depending on whether plasma perturbations induced by the nuclear reactions themselves can decay in time.

The new derivation and results will be published in a forthcoming paper (Tsytovich 2001, in preparation). We therefore emphasize that the purpose of the present paper is not to investigate the Tsytovich (2000) screening rates, because they are already under further development, but to demonstrate the capability of the Sun as a laboratory for screening using the screening formulation by Tsytovich (2000) as an example.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Sound speed

The results of our experiments are displayed in Figs. 1 and 2 for the sound speed difference between models ($`c_\mathrm{m}`$) and the seismic Sun ($`c_\mathrm{s}`$). The inferred sound speed profile we took from Basu (1998). For the error range of $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ we show two different results: the extremely conservative estimation by Degl’Innocenti et al. (1997), shown as the grey-shaded area in Fig. 1, and a more recent analysis about the uncertainty of the inversion procedure (Basu et al. (2000)). In the latter paper use of SOHO-results was made and the authors concluded that the relative sound speed errors due to the measurements are of order $`310^4`$ ($`3\sigma `$) and that inversion method and starting model add about equally, thus that a conservative error range based on this paper would be of order $`110^3`$ for $`0.2<r/R_{}<0.8`$. This is indicated by the long-dashed line in both figures.

It is immediately clear from Fig. 1 that the model with Tsytovich-screening is stronly discrepant with the seismic model and even the no-screening model is outside the conservative error range for small radii and below the convective envelope. The deviation from the standard model is of order the conservative error range or larger, such that it can be excluded. This is in particular true for the more up-to-date error estimate by Basu et al. (2000) in the radiative interior.

It is interesting to note that going from Salpeter- to Tsytovich-screening there are systematic changes in both the core and sub-convective regions, which are anti-correlated. The model’s sound speed is increasing in the core due to the higher central temperatures necessary to provide the same number of pp-reactions per second (the solar luminosity constraint). At the same time $`c_\mathrm{m}`$ is decreasing in that part of the radiative zone outside the energy-generating core (extending to $`r/R_{}0.2`$) due to a slightly more expanded structure. The Sun appears to be more centrally concentrated than it is for standard screening. Recognizing this it is only a small step to ask if the two extrema in Fig. 1 along the standard-model can be reduced simultaneously by increasing the screening above the Salpeter value.

The result of the corresponding experiment is shown in Fig. 2 for different factors multiplied to Eq. 3 for all reactions. An increase of the screening can indeed improve the situation at the discrepant bump around $`r/R_{}0.65`$, but leads to a comparatively large change in the core. An increase over Salpeter’s screening by more than 10% will become problematic even in the case of the conservative error estimates; reductions by 5% or more can clearly be excluded. There are two lessons to be drawn from this:

1. agreement with the seismic sound speed profile is obtained from screening factors not deviating by more than +10/-5% from Salpeter’s formula;

2. the discrepant region below the convective envelope might not necessarily be due to missing physics only in that region; it should not be forgotten that the Sun is a system coupling different regions and that changes in the core also affect the rest of the Sun.

We close this section by reminding that the structural changes just discussed depend to first order only on the screening of the pp-reaction (as we have verified in test calculations), which is the one directly connected to the solar luminosity. All statements made above therefore restrict the screening of only this reaction. We also remind the reader that the reaction rate itself is influencing the model as shown by Antia & Chitre (1999); we are using the rate by Adelberger et al. (1998), where $`S(0)=4.0010^{25}`$ MeVb. This value, together with that of the central metallicity ($`Z_c=0.021`$) is marginally consistent with helioseismic data, as shown in Antia & Chitre (1999), Figure 2.

### 3.2 Other properties

The Sun does not only show the influence of screening in its sound speed profile, but also in some other properties (Table 1; lower part). Related to results based on helioseismology are the depth of the convective envelope and the present surface helium content, for which the determined values are $`R_{\mathrm{bcz}}/R_{}=0.713\pm 0.001`$ (Basu & Antia (1997)) and $`Y_\mathrm{s}=0.249\pm 0.003`$ (Basu & Antia (1995)). While the Salpeter-model nicely fits, the no-screening case already is at the border of the error range and the Tsytovich-model disagrees with the value for $`R_{\mathrm{bcz}}`$ and is only marginally consistent with that for $`Y_\mathrm{s}`$. Note that these are envelope resp. surface quantities, but the change to the physics is done deep inside the core!

The central temperature $`T_\mathrm{c}`$ is increasing with decreasing reaction efficiency, as expected. This is due mainly to the pp-reaction, which is the one closely linked to the luminosity of the Sun and therefore reduced screening must be balanced by higher temperature. The effect is measurable because of the rather low dependence of the reaction on temperature under solar conditions. For the same luminosity reason the flux of pp-neutrinos remains almost unchanged (Table 1; upper part). Temperature sensitive $`\nu `$-emission rates should increase more ($`pep`$ and $`hep`$), unless the influence of the reduced screening is dominant. Considering the 7Be flux, the transition to no-screening reduces it by 2.7%, but the further step to Tsytovich-screening leads to a reduction of 16.3%. The 8B-source, however, actually increases due to the increased temperature and its extreme temperature sensitivity. Note that in Flaskamp et al. (2000) we reported about a strongly reduced 8B-flux. This result was wrong, because we erroneously had not modified the screening of the $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+e^{}`$ reaction, which does not appear explicitely in our nuclear network, but only as a rate relative to the $`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{Be}+p`$-capture.

As a consequence of the modified neutrino emission rates, the predictions for the neutrino experiments change. Most interesting is the case of Super-Kamiokande, which the Tsytovich-screening model predicts to measure even more neutrinos than the standard model does, although the rate is much stronger suppressed (see Tsytovich (2000), Tabel 1) than the pp-reaction. However, due to the luminosity constraint and increased central temperature, the modified screening effect is overcompensated.

## 4 Conclusions

We have demonstrated that the Sun has become a sensitive laboratory to investigate the correct plasma screening for its own nuclear reactions. The high precision of the seismic Sun does not allow for deviations of more than a few percent from the original formula by Salpeter (1954). A slightly enhanced screening factor improves the agreement with the seismic sound speed profile. We emphasized that not only the central parts, where the influence of changes to the nuclear reaction rates is immediate, but also the outer layers will have a modified structure pointing out discrepancies. We have to recall, however, that this is mostly due to changing the screening of the pp-reaction. Reactions in the higher pp-chains only will not influence the models significantly. Because of these reaction rates, in contrast, the neutrino fluxes will change, not leading to the once proposed solution of the classical neutrino problem (which, as is known by now, cannot be solved by changing reaction rates only; Hata et al. (1994)), but instead to even larger discrepancies, as we found for the Super-Kamiokande prediction of the Tsytovich-screening model, although this modified screening suppresses the reactions at fixed temperature.

One should keep in mind that physical pictures deriving alternative screening rates should in principle also be used to rederive the configurational effects in the equation of state and opacities to arrive at consistent physical model input. Our present work thus must remain incomplete in this respect, but we trust that the success of the standard solar model with Salpeter’s screening is unlikely to be due to a conspiracy of using erroneous physics for three major model ingredients.

We believe that the Sun itself will help to settle the dispute about the true amount of screening of nuclear reactions. It has become a truely invaluable celestial laboratory for physics.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank H. Schlattl for his assistance in calculating the solar models and for permission to use his excellent code. A.W. acknowledges travel support from the Fulbright foundation and is grateful for the hospitality at the Princeton Observatory and the Institute for Advanced Study. He thanks A. Gruzinov, P. Krastev, and J. Bahcall for stimulating discussions. This work was supported in part by “Sonderforschungsbereich 375-95 für Astro-Teilchenphysik der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft”.