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# Interpretation of SAMPLE and HAPPEX Experimental Results on Strange Nucleon Form Factors

## Abstract

A behaviour of strange nucleon form factors is predicted by means of Jaffe’s idea about the relations of $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$ vector-meson coupling constant ratios. Its application to a specific eight-resonance unitary and analytic model of nucleon electromagnetic structure, describing also the time-like nucleon electromagnetic form factor data, explains the positive central values from recent SAMPLE and HAPPEX experiments.

PACS numbers: 12.40.Vv, 13.40.Fn, 14.20.Dh

There has been considerable interest concerning the question of strangeness contribution to the nucleon structure which is represented by various strange operators, like $`\overline{s}s`$ extracted from the analysis of the pion-nucleon $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$-term, $`\overline{s}\gamma _\mu \gamma _5s`$ measured in deep-inelastic lepton scattering off protons and the vector current $`\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s`$, accessible in parity-violating elastic and quasielastic electron scattering from the proton and nuclei . More recently, a well-defined experimental program has just started determination of the nucleon matrix element $`p^{}|\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s|p`$ of the strange-quark vector current by means of the elastic scattering of polarized electron beam on a liquid hydrogen target, in which unexpected positive values of the strange nucleon form factors (FF’s) were revealed. The first result for the strange nucleon magnetic FF $`G_M^s(t)`$ at $`t=0.1GeV^2`$ ($`t=q^2=Q^2`$ is the four-momentum transfer squared) associated with this matrix element has been reported by the SAMPLE Collaboration at MIT/Bates Linear Accelerator Center

$$G_M^s(0.1)=+0.23\pm 0.37\pm 0.15\pm 0.19[\mu _N].$$
(1)
Later, a combination of the strange nucleon electric and magnetic FF’s at $`t=0.48GeV^2`$ has been determined by the HAPPEX Collaboration at TJNAF

$$G_E^s(0.48)+0.39G_M^s(0.48)=+0.023\pm 0.034\pm 0.022\pm 0.026.$$
(2)
As the error bars in both previous experimental results are large, no strict conclusions about the strangeness in the nucleon could follow from them.

However, the SAMPLE Collaboration at MIT/Bates Linear Accelerator Center has just recently reported  a new experimental measurement of the strange nucleon magnetic FF, in which an improved monitoring and control of systematic errors as well as better statistical precision have been achieved. As a result the clearly positive value of the strange nucleon magnetic FF at $`t=0.1GeV^2`$ is found

$$G_M^s(0.1)=+0.61\pm 0.17\pm 0.21\pm 0.19[\mu _N]$$
(3)
suggesting also the strange magnetic moment of the nucleon $`\mu _s`$= $`G_M^s(0)`$ quite likely to be positive.

In this Letter we present an explanation of these positive central values by an application of Jaffe’s idea  to a specific eight-resonance (four isoscalar and four isovector vector mesons) unitary and analytic model of nucleon electromagnetic (EM) structure, by means of which a behaviour of corresponding strange nucleon FF’s is predicted.

The momentum dependence of the nucleon matrix element of the strange-quark vector current $`J_\mu ^s`$=$`\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s`$ is contained in the Dirac $`F_1^s(t)`$ and Pauli $`F_2^s(t)`$ strange nucleon FF’s defined by the relation

$$p^{^{}}|\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s|p=\overline{u}(p^{^{}})\left[\gamma _\mu F_1^s+i\frac{\sigma _{\mu \nu }q^\nu }{2m_N}F_2^s\right]u(p)$$
(4)
in a complete analogy to the nucleon matrix element

$$p^{^{}}|J_\mu ^{I=0}|p=\overline{u}(p^{^{}})\left[\gamma _\mu F_1^{I=0}+i\frac{\sigma _{\mu \nu }q^\nu }{2m_N}F_2^{I=0}\right]u(p)$$
(5)
of the isoscalar EM current $`J_\mu ^{I=0}`$=1/6 $`(\overline{u}\gamma _\mu u+\overline{d}\gamma _\mu d)`$-1/3$`\overline{s}\gamma _\mu s`$, where $`q^\nu =(p^{^{}}p)^\nu `$ is the four-momentum transfer, $`\overline{u}(p^{^{}})`$, $`u(p)`$ are the free nucleon Dirac bi-spinors and $`F_1^{I=0}(t)`$ and $`F_2^{I=0}(t)`$ are isoscalar parts of the Dirac and Pauli nucleon EM FF’s, respectively.

We note here that (as a result of the isospin zero value of the strange quark) the nucleon strange FF’s $`F_1^s(t)`$ and $`F_2^s(t)`$ contribute just to $`F_1^{I=0}(t)`$ and $`F_2^{I=0}(t)`$ and never to $`F_1^{I=1}(t)`$ and $`F_2^{I=1}(t)`$ which are defined by the matrix element

$$p^{^{}}|J_\mu ^{I=1}|p=\overline{u}(p^{})\left[\gamma _\mu F_1^{I=1}+i\frac{\sigma _{\mu \nu }q^\nu }{2m_N}F_2^{I=1}\right]u(p)$$
(6)
of the isovector EM current $`J_\mu ^{I=1}`$=1/2$`(\overline{u}\gamma _\mu u\overline{d}\gamma _\mu d)`$.

Then the main idea of a prediction of strange nucleon FF behaviours, based on the $`\omega \varphi `$ mixing and on the assumption that the quark current of some flavour couples with universal strength exclusively to the vector-meson wave function component of the same flavour, consists in the following.

If one knows free parameters $`(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^e)`$, $`(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^e)`$ (i=1,2) of the suitable model of $`F_1^{I=0}(t)`$, $`F_2^{I=0}(t)`$ i.e.

$$F_i^{I=0}(t)=f[t;(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^e),(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^e)](i=1,2)$$
(7)
where $`f_{\omega NN}^{(i)},f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}`$ are coupling constants of $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$ to nucleons and $`f_\omega ^e,f_\varphi ^e`$ are virtual photon$``$V=$`\omega ,\varphi `$ coupling constants given by the corresponding leptonic decay widths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(Ve^+e^{})`$, then the unknown free parameters $`(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^s),(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^s)`$ of a strange nucleon FF’s model

$$F_i^s(t)=\overline{f}[t;(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^s),(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^s)](i=1,2)$$
(8)
of the same inner analytic structure as the isoscalar parts of the nucleon EM FF’s, but of course with different norms and possibly with different asymptotics (therefore denoted by $`\overline{f}`$), are numerically evaluated by the relations

$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^s)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{6}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\epsilon }{\mathrm{sin}(\epsilon +\theta _0)}}(f_{\omega NN}^{(i)}/f_\omega ^e)`$ (9)
$`(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^s)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{6}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cos}\epsilon }{\mathrm{cos}(\epsilon +\theta _0)}}(f_{\varphi NN}^{(i)}/f_\varphi ^e)`$ (10)
$`(i`$ $`=`$ $`1,2)`$ (11)
where $`f_\omega ^s,f_\varphi ^s`$ are strange-current $`V=\omega ,\varphi `$ coupling constants and $`\epsilon =3.7^0`$ is a deviation from the ideally mixing angle $`\theta _0=35.3^0`$.

The isoscalar Dirac and Pauli EM FF’s of the nucleon $`F_i^{I=0}(t)`$ (i=1,2), as well as the strange quark vector current Dirac and Pauli FF’s $`F_i^s(t)`$ (i=1,2), are assumed to be real analytic (i.e. the reality condition $`F_i^{}(t)=F_i(t^{})`$ is satisfied) in the whole complex t-plane except for cuts placed on the positive part of the real axis between $`t_0^{I=0}=9m_\pi ^2`$ ($`m_\pi `$ is the pion mass) and $`+\mathrm{}`$.

They are normalized at t=0

$$F_1^{I=0}(0)=\frac{1}{2},F_2^{I=0}(0)=\frac{1}{2}(\mu _p+\mu _n),$$
(12)
where $`\mu _p`$ and $`\mu _n`$ are the anomalous magnetic moments of the proton and neutron, respectively. Similarly, as the overall strangeness charge of the nucleon is zero, then

$$F_1^s(0)=0,F_2^s(0)=\mu _s,$$
(13)
where $`\mu _s`$ is the strangeness nucleon magnetic moment, expected to be determined numerically from a predicted behaviour of $`F_2^s(t)`$.

At a very large space-like $`t`$ the $`F_1^{I=0}(t)`$ and $`F_2^{I=0}(t)`$ obey the asymptotic behaviour

$$F_1^{I=0}(t)_{|t|\mathrm{}}t^2;F_2^{I=0}(t)_{|t|\mathrm{}}t^3.$$
(14)
For $`F_1^s(t)`$ and $`F_2^s(t)`$ we assume the same asymptotic conditions to be fulfilled.

All these properties, together with the experimental fact of a creation of vector-meson resonances of the photon quantum numbers in electron-positron annihilation processes into hadrons, are contained consistently in the following unitary and analytic models

$`F_1^{I=0}[v(t)]=({\displaystyle \frac{1v^2}{1v_N^2}})^4\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})+`$ (15)
$`[L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\omega ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\omega )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}`$ (16)
$`L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})](f_{\omega NN}^{(1)}/f_\omega ^e)+`$ (17)
$`[L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\varphi ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\varphi )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\varphi ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\varphi )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}`$ (18)
$`L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})](f_{\varphi NN}^{(1)}/f_\varphi ^e)\},`$ (19)
$`F_2^{I=0}[v(t)]=({\displaystyle \frac{1v^2}{1v_N^2}})^6\{L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\omega )`$ (20)
$`[1{\displaystyle \frac{C_\omega }{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}({\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega )}{C_\omega ^{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\omega )}{C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}}})]`$ (21)
$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(2)}/f_\omega ^e)+L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\varphi )`$ (22)
$`[1{\displaystyle \frac{C_\varphi }{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}({\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\varphi )}{C_\omega ^{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\varphi )}{C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}}})]`$ (23)
$`(f_{\varphi NN}^{(2)}/f_\varphi ^e)\}`$ (24)
and

$`F_1^s[v(t)]=({\displaystyle \frac{1v^2}{1v_N^2}})^4\times `$ (25)
$`\{[L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\omega ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\omega )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}`$ (26)
$`L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})](f_{\omega NN}^{(1)}/f_\omega ^s)+`$ (27)
$`[L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\varphi ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\varphi )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}L(v_\omega ^{})L(v_\varphi ){\displaystyle \frac{(C_\omega ^{}C_\varphi )}{(C_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}C_\omega ^{})}}`$ (28)
$`L(v_{\omega ^{\prime \prime }})L(v_\omega ^{})](f_{\varphi NN}^{(1)}/f_\varphi ^s)\}.`$ (29)
$`F_2^s[v(t)]`$ has the same analytic form as (24) with the replacement $`f_\omega ^e,f_\varphi ^ef_\omega ^s,f_\varphi ^s`$. All models are defined on a four-sheeted Riemann surface with complex conjugate pairs of resonance poles placed only on the unphysical sheets, where

$`L(v_r)={\displaystyle \frac{(v_Nv_r)(v_Nv_r^{})(v_N1/v_r)(v_N1/v_r^{})}{(vv_r)(vv_r^{})(v1/v_r)(v1/v_r^{})}},`$
$`(r=\omega ,\varphi ,\omega ^{},\omega ^{\prime \prime })`$
$`C_r={\displaystyle \frac{(v_Nv_r)(v_Nv_r^{})(v_N1/v_r)(v_N1/v_r^{})}{(v_r1/v_r)(v_r^{}1/v_r^{})}},`$
$`(r=\omega ,\varphi ,\omega ^{},\omega ^{\prime \prime })`$
$$v(t)=i\frac{\sqrt{[\frac{t_{N\overline{N}}t_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}+[\frac{tt_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}}\sqrt{[\frac{t_{N\overline{N}}t_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}[\frac{tt_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}}}{\sqrt{[\frac{t_{N\overline{N}}t_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}+[\frac{tt_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}}+\sqrt{[\frac{t_{N\overline{N}}t_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}[\frac{tt_0^{I=0}}{t_0^{I=0}}]^{1/2}}}$$
(30)
$$v_N=v(t)_{|t=0};v_r=v(t)_{|t=(m_ri\mathrm{\Gamma }_r/2)^2};(r=\omega ,\varphi ,\omega ^{},\omega ^{\prime \prime }),$$
(31)
and $`t_{N\overline{N}}=4m_N^2`$ is a square-root branch point corresponding to $`N\overline{N}`$ threshold.

Here we would like to emphasize the following two facts concerning the unitary and analytic models of $`F_1^{I=0}[v(t)]`$, $`F_2^{I=0}[v(t)]`$, $`F_1^s[v(t)]`$, $`F_2^s[v(t)]`$.

Since $`\mu _s`$ is unknown in advance, one could not utilize the second normalization of (13) in a construction of the model for $`F_2^s[v(t)]`$. In order to keep the same inner analytic structure of $`F_2^{I=0}[v(t)]`$, we did not apply neither the second normalization condition of (12) in a construction of the model (24).

In despite of the saturation of $`F_i^{I=0}[v(t)]`$ and $`F_i^s[v(t)]`$, $`(i=1,2)`$ by four isoscalar vector-mesons $`\omega ,\varphi ,\omega ^{},\omega ^{\prime \prime }`$ those FF’s depend finally only on $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$ coupling constant ratios. This reduction of the number of free parameters is a consequence of an application of normalizations (12),(13) and the asymptotic conditions (14) to the constructed models, which enabled us to express the coupling constant ratios of $`\omega ^{}`$ and $`\omega ^{\prime \prime }`$ through $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$ coupling constant ratios.

The latter in $`F_1^{I=0}[v(t)]`$ and $`F_2^{I=0}[v(t)]`$ can be evaluated numerically by a comparison of expressions (19) and (24) with experimental data on proton and neutron electric and magnetic FF’s, $`G_E^p(t),G_M^p(t),G_E^n(t),G_M^n(t),`$ in the space-like and also (this is crucial) in the time-like regions simultaneously. However, in a realization of such a program we are in need also of the unitary and analytic models of the isovector parts of the Dirac and Pauli nucleon FF’s:

$`F_1^{I=1}[w(t)]=({\displaystyle \frac{1w^2}{1w_N^2}})^4\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})+`$ (32)
$`[H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho )}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})}}L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho )`$ (33)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho )}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})}}H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})](f_{\rho NN}^{(1)}/f_\rho ^e)+`$ (34)
$`[H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{}){\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})}}L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{})`$ (35)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})}}H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})](f_{\rho ^{}NN}^{(1)}/f_\rho ^{}^e)\},`$ (36)
$`F_2^{I=1}[w(t)]=({\displaystyle \frac{1w^2}{1w_N^2}})^6\times `$ (37)
$`\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mu _p+\mu _n)H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{})+`$ (38)
$`[H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho )(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho )}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})}}`$ (39)
$`+L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{})L(w_\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho )(D_\rho ^{}D_\rho )}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})}}`$ (40)
$`H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{})L(w_\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_\rho )(D_\rho ^{}D_\rho )}{(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }}D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})(D_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }}D_\rho ^{})}}`$ (41)
$`H(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }})L(w_{\rho ^{\prime \prime }})L(w_\rho ^{})](f_{\rho NN}^{(2)}/f_\rho ^e)\}`$ (42)
(43)
with

$`H(w_v)={\displaystyle \frac{(w_Nw_v)(w_Nw_v^{})(w_N+w_v)(w_N+w_v^{})}{(ww_v)(ww_v^{})(w+w_v)(w+w_v^{})}},`$ (44)
as there are relations between $`G_E^{p,n}(t),G_M^{p,n}(t)`$ and $`F_i^{I=0}(t),F_i^{I=1}(t)`$ $`(i=1,2)`$ as follows

$`G_E^{p,n}=[F_1^{I=0}\pm F_1^{I=1}]+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{4m_{p,n}^2}}[F_2^{I=0}\pm F_2^{I=1}]`$ (46)
$`G_M^{p,n}=[F_1^{I=0}\pm F_1^{I=1}]+[F_2^{I=0}\pm F_2^{I=1}].`$ (47)
The optimal description of all existing data on $`G_{E,M}^{p,n}(t)`$ is achieved with the following numerical values of the corresponding coupling constant ratios

$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(1)}/f_\omega ^e)=0.73045;(f_{\varphi NN}^{(1)}/f_\varphi ^e)=0.12139;`$ (48)
$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(2)}/f_\omega ^e)=0.20178;(f_{\varphi NN}^{(2)}/f_\varphi ^e)=.25619;`$ (49)
$`(f_{\rho NN}^{(1)}/f_\rho ^e)=0.51613;(f_{\rho ^{}NN}^{(1)}/f_\rho ^{}^e)=0.71113;`$ (50)
$`(f_{\rho NN}^{(2)}/f_\rho ^e)=3.3377,`$ (51)
provided all masses and widths of vector-mesons under considerations (except for the $`\rho ^{\prime \prime \prime }(2150)`$, for which they are taken from ) are fixed at the table values . Then from (51), by means of the relations (10), one finds

$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(1)}/f_\omega ^s)=.18347;(f_{\varphi NN}^{(1)}/f_\varphi ^s)=.38181;`$ (52)
$`(f_{\omega NN}^{(2)}/f_\omega ^s)=.05068;(f_{\varphi NN}^{(2)}/f_\varphi ^s)=0.80580.`$ (53)
Substituting the latter into $`F_1^s[v(t)]`$ and $`F_2^s[v(t)]`$ and defining strange nucleon electric and magnetic FF’s

$`G_E^s(t)=F_1^s(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{4m_N^2}}F_2^s(t)`$ (54)
$`G_M^s(t)=F_1^s(t)+F_2^s(t)`$ (55)
in analogy to nucleon Sachs FF’s, one predicts the behaviour of $`G_E^s(t)`$ and $`G_M^s(t)`$ as they are presented in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively.

One can see from Fig. 2 that the improved SAMPLE collaboration result  for the central value is preferred to the older one  and that the strange magnetic moment of the nucleon takes the value $`\mu _s=G_M^s(0)=+0.73[\mu _N]`$.

On the other hand, by using the same behaviour of $`G_E^s(t)`$ and $`G_M^s(t)`$ one can predict at $`t=0.48GeV^2`$ a value of the combination

$$G_E^s(0.48)+0.39G_M^s(0.48)=+0.185$$
(56)
again indicating the positive central value like in (2).

This behaviour gives also a prediction at $`t=0.23GeV^2`$ for the following combination

$$G_E^s(0.23)+0.22G_M^s(0.23)=+0.135;$$
(57)
just measured at the MAMI A4  running experiment.

In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that all these predictions supporting the positive central values on the strange nucleon FF’s from recent SAMPLE and HAPPEX experiments, are based on two key ingredients. Form factor models incorporate assumed analytic properties and as a result the simultaneous description of all available data on the nucleon EM FF’s, including also the time-like region, is achieved.

The work was in part supported by Slovak Grant Agency for Sciences, Gr. No 2/5085/2000 (S.D.) and Gr. No 1/7068/2000 (A.Z.D.).


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# Detecting Galactic MACHOs with VERA through Astrometric Microlensing of Distant Radio Sources

## 1 introduction

Gravitational microlensing is one of the most powerful tools to trace the Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) in the Galaxy’s halo. After the first proposal by Paczynski(1986), a number of extensive searches for gravitational microlensing have been performed toward the Magellanic clouds and the Galactic bulge. In such studies, more than a million of stars are being monitored frequently, typically once per night, to look for the brightness variation caused by gravitational microlensing. Up to date, searches for such ’photometric microlensing’ events have detected more than a dozen of events toward the Magellanic Clouds (e.g., Alcock et al. 1993; 1997; 2000; Aubourg et a. 1993). Based on a statistical study of the detected events, the MACHO collaboration (Alcock et al. 1997; 2000) have obtained the lens mass of $`0.5M_{}`$, and suggested that the MACHOs in the Galactic halo may be old white dwarfs. However, the lens mass is strongly dependent on the halo model, and a more or less massive lens is also consistent with the observations depending on the halo model of the Galaxy (e.g., Honma & Kan-ya 1998). Moreover, the uncertainty in lens distance allows different interpretations of observed microlensing events other than MACHOs. In fact, there are several arguments that the lensing objects may be stars in warped disk (e.g., Evans et al. 1998), stars in previously-unknown intervening objects (e.g., Zaritsky & Lin 1997; Zhao 1998), or stars in the Magellanic clouds themselves (e.g., Sahu 1994). Thus, the nature of MACHOs remains unclear.

In order to reveal the nature of MACHOs, some additional information other than what comes from photometric lensing is highly important. One potential way to extract additional information for microlensing events is to measure a positional shift due to microlensing. Several investigations have been made to discuss the implications of such an astrometric observation of microlensing events, demonstrating that such a positional shift can be detected by upcoming space satellite missions, and also that from astrometric observation one can determine the lens parameters such as lens distance and lens mass (e.g., Hog et al. 1995; Miyamoto & Yoshii 1995; Walker 1995). These astrometric observations are to be performed after the event detection based on the photometric monitoring, and in this sense, supplementary to photometric microlensing event.

On the other hand, it is also known that astrometric observation alone can be used to study the nature of lensing objects. For instance, it has been argued that an astrometric effect of gravitational microlensing can be used to measure the mass of a nearby stars (e.g., Hosokawa et al. 1993; Paczynski 1996; 1998; Miralda-Escude 1996). Recently, the fluctuation of the radio reference frame by microlensing due to disk stars and MACHOs in the Galaxy has been studied by Hosokawa et al.(1997), and possibility to observe astrometric microlensing events with ground-based or space optical-interferometer have been discussed by Miralda-Escude (1996), Boden et al.(1998), Paczynski (1998), and Dominik & Sahu (2000). These studies revealed that astrometric microlensing events are practically detectable and useful for studying the nature of lensing objects, if we obtain a position accuracy of 10 $`\mu `$as level. Thus, the astrometric microlensing will soon become one of major tools to study lensing objects.

Following the recent studies on astrometric microlensing, in this paper we investigate astrometric microlensing of distant sources (QSOs and radio sources) due to MACHOs, focusing on the possible application to the VERA project (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry). The VERA project (see for detail Sasao 1996; Kawaguchi et al. 2000; Honma et al.2000), which aims at radio astrometry at 10 $`\mu `$as level, has been approved in 2000, and is anticipated to start its observation by 2003. Distant radio sources like QSOs and radio galaxies, which are one of major observational objects of VERA, are potential targets for tracing astrometric microlensing with VERA, but few studies have been made concerning the astrometric microlensing of distant radio sources after the pioneering work by Hosokawa et al.(1997). For these reasons, we study the astrometric microlensing of distant radio sources and discuss the implications for VERA.

The plan of this paper is as follows; in section 2, we briefly review on astrometric microlensing, in particular parameters that can be extracted from the image trajectory. In section 3 we investigate the event duration of astrometric microlensing. In section 4 and 5, we calculate optical depth and event rate, and show that one can detect an astrometric microlensing based on monitoring of a few hundred sources for 10 to 20 years. Finally in section 6, we discuss the implication of astrometric microlensing for VERA, and present a practical strategy for detecting astrometric microlensing.

## 2 Brief Review on Astrometric Microlensing

### 2.1 Astrometric Microlensing Event

In this chapter we briefly review the characteristics of astrometric microlensing. When a source is closely aligned with a lens, the gravitational deflection of light produces two images whose positions are given by (e.g., Paczynski 1986)

$$r_{1,2}=\frac{u\pm \sqrt{u^2+4}}{2}.$$
(1)
Here $`r_{1,2}`$ is the separation between the lens and the two images in the lens plane, and $`u`$ is the separation between the source and the lens in the lens plane. Note that both $`r_{1,2}`$ and $`u`$ are normalized with the Einstein ring radius $`R_\mathrm{E}`$; for instance, the lens-source separation $`u`$ can be written as

$$u=\frac{R}{R_\mathrm{E}},$$
(2)
where $`R`$ is the lens-source distance projected onto the lens plane. As widely-known, the Einstein radius $`R_\mathrm{E}`$ is given by (e.g., Paczynski 1986)

$$R_\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM}{c^2}\frac{D_\mathrm{d}D_{\mathrm{ds}}}{D_\mathrm{s}}}.$$
(3)
Here $`M`$ is the lens mass, and $`D_\mathrm{d}`$, $`D_\mathrm{s}`$, and $`D_{\mathrm{ds}}`$, are lens distance, source distance and lens-source distance, respectively.

Here we introduce a coordinate system on the lens plane where the source is at the origin and the lens is moving parallel to the $`x`$ axis (figure 1). The origin of time $`t=0`$ is set at the time of the closest approach between the lens and the source. In such a coordinate system, the lens position is described as $`(v_{}t,\beta R_\mathrm{E})`$, where $`v_{}`$ is the tangential velocity of the lens, and $`\beta `$ is the impact parameter normalized with $`R_\mathrm{E}`$ (note that $`\beta `$ is always positive). With the parameters described above, the lens-source distance $`R`$ can be written as

$$R=\sqrt{(v_{}t)^2+(\beta R_\mathrm{E})^2}.$$
(4)
Here we calculate the positional shift of sources due to gravitational microlensing. Generally, two images produced by gravitational microlensing cannot be resolved, but the centroid of two images can be observed to trace the astrometric effect in microlensing. If the lens is far from the source in the lens plane (i.e., $`u1`$), the secondary image becomes too faint, and the image centroid coincides with that of the primary image. Since most of astrometric microlensing events with 10 $`\mu `$as-level positional shift have $`u1`$ (as we will see in next sections), in the present paper we concentrate on the case of $`u1`$, and approximate the image centroid motion by that of the primary image (for more general treatment, see Boden et al.1998; Dominik & Sahu 2000).

In case that $`u1`$, the position of primary image (eq.) is well approximated by,

$$r=u+\frac{1}{u}.$$
(5)
The first term $`u`$ corresponds to the lens-source separation in the lens plane, and the second term $`1/u`$ describes the image shift due to gravitational microlensing. Hence, the angular positional shift of the image relative to the original source position is obtained as

$$\theta _\mathrm{s}=\frac{1}{u}\theta _\mathrm{E}.$$
(6)
Here $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ is the angular Einstein radius which is related to the Einstein ring radius $`R_\mathrm{E}`$ as

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}=\frac{R_\mathrm{E}}{D_\mathrm{d}}.$$
(7)
The angular position of the image in the lens plane can be described as

$$(\theta _x,\theta _y)=(\theta _\mathrm{s}\mathrm{cos}\delta ,\theta _\mathrm{s}\mathrm{sin}\delta ),$$
(8)
where the angle $`\delta `$ is defined as (see figure 1)

$$\mathrm{tan}\delta =\frac{\beta R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}t}.$$
(9)
Using equations described above, one may rewrite the image position as

$$(\theta _x,\theta _y)=(\frac{(\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta )(t/\beta t_\mathrm{E})}{(t/\beta t_\mathrm{E})^2+1},\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta }{(t/\beta t_\mathrm{E})^2+1}),$$
(10)
where we have introduced the Einstein ring crossing time $`t_\mathrm{E}`$ which is defined as

$$t_\mathrm{E}\frac{R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}}.$$
(11)
After a simple calculation, one may easily find the following relation between $`\theta _x`$ and $`\theta _y`$,

$$\theta _x^2+\left(\theta _y\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{2\beta }\right)^2=\left(\frac{\theta _\mathrm{E}}{2\beta }\right)^2.$$
(12)
Hence, the trajectory of the image is a circle centered on $`(0,\theta _\mathrm{E}/2\beta )`$ with a diameter of $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta `$ (Boden et al.1998; Dominik & Sahu 2000). We hereafter refer to this image trajectory as ‘trajectory circle’. In figure 1, we show a schematic view of the image motion along the trajectory circle. The time intervals between adjacent dots are equal to 0.4$`\times (\beta t_\mathrm{E})`$. As seen in figure 1, the image motion is faster in the upper half of the trajectory circle than in the lower half, and vanishes toward the origin where the source should be located in case of no microlensing. The largest image shift parallel to the x-axis occurs when $`t_\mathrm{q}=\pm \beta t_\mathrm{E}`$, i.e., $`R=\sqrt{2}\beta R_\mathrm{E}`$. Note that an image goes through an upper quarter of the trajectory circle within the time interval of $`t_\mathrm{q}`$. Thus, $`t_\mathrm{q}`$ gives a characteristic time-scale of an astrometric microlensing event. Note that from the observation of trajectory circle, one can obtain $`t_\mathrm{q}(=\beta t_\mathrm{E})`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta `$.

### 2.2 Angular Size of Astrometric Lens

Here we estimate the angular size of astrometric lenses. Since we mainly consider the implications of astrometric microlensing for VERA, in the following analysis we assume that the sources are radio galaxies and QSOs which are much more distant (at least a few Mpc) than the lens (typically $``$10 kpc). In such a case, the source distance $`D_\mathrm{s}`$ and the lens-source distance $`D_{\mathrm{ds}}`$ are much greater than the lens distance $`D_\mathrm{d}`$, and the Einstein ring radius (equation ) is well approximated as

$$R_\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM}{c^2}D_\mathrm{d}}.$$
(13)
Similarly, the angular Einstein ring radius $`\theta _\mathrm{E}`$ may be approximated as

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}=\sqrt{\frac{4GM}{c^2D_\mathrm{d}}}.$$
(14)
If one substitutes typical parameters of MACHOs (e.g., Alcock et al. 1997; 2000), the angular Einstein ring can be estimated as

$$\theta _\mathrm{E}=0.72\times \left(\frac{M}{0.5M_{}}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{D_\mathrm{d}}{8\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{mas}.$$
(15)
Since the angular diameter of lens trajectory is given by $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta `$, the maximum value of $`\beta `$ for a detectable event is given by

$$\beta _{\mathrm{max}}=\theta _\mathrm{E}/\theta _{\mathrm{min}},$$
(16)
where $`\theta _{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the minimum position shift that can be measured. The astrometric projects planned to start within a decade (e.g., SIM, GAIA, VERA) aims at the position accuracy of 10 $`\mu `$as or higher. Since we consider the observation of astrometric microlensing with those projects (in particular VERA), we set $`\theta _{\mathrm{min}}=10`$ $`\mu `$as. Thus, the maximum value of $`\beta `$ ($`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$) is given as follows,

$`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$ $`=`$ $`72\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{M}{0.5M_{}}}\right)^{1/2}`$ (17)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{D_\mathrm{d}}{8\mathrm{k}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}}}\right)^{1/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}{10\mu \mathrm{as}}}\right)^1.`$
This indicates that the astrometric microlensing is detectable even when the minimum lens-source separation is larger than the Einstein ring radius by several tens. This makes the probability of astrometric microlensing much higher than the normal microlensing.

## 3 Event Duration

### 3.1 Basic Equations

In this section, we investigate the event duration of astrometric microlensing. Usually, the duration of microlensing event is defined as the time during which the source is inside the lens. For the photometric microlensing, the lens size is equal to the Einstein ring radius $`R_\mathrm{E}`$, and the event duration $`t_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is given as the time for which $`RR_\mathrm{E}`$. Similarly to the photometric microlensing case, the lens size of an astrometric microlensing event is given by $`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}`$, and the duration of an astrometric microlensing event is defined as the time for which $`R\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}`$ (in other words, the time during which the image position shift is larger than the accuracy of position measurement $`\theta _{\mathrm{min}}`$). Thus, the event duration $`t_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ can be written as

$$t_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{2\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}}\mathrm{cos}\varphi .$$
(18)
See figure 2 for a schematic view of lens-source geometry and the definition of the angle $`\varphi `$. The average event duration can be obtained by integrating $`t_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ over possible range of $`\varphi `$. Since the probability of an event with a certain value of $`\varphi `$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$, the average event duration can be given as follows,

$$\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{t_{\mathrm{ast}}\mathrm{cos}\varphi d\varphi }{\mathrm{cos}\varphi d\varphi }.$$
(19)
Substituting equation (18) into equation (19) and performing the integration with respect to $`\varphi `$, one obtains that

$$\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{\pi }{2}\left(\frac{\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}}\right).$$
(20)
Substituting the expressions of $`R_\mathrm{E}`$ and $`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$ (equations , , and ), one can obtain

$$\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{2\pi GM}{c^2v_{}\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}.$$
(21)
Interestingly, the average duration $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ contains only two unknown parameters, the lens mass $`M`$ and its tangential velocity $`v_{}`$, but independent of the lens distance $`D_\mathrm{d}`$. Hence, the degree of degeneracy in the event duration is lower than that in case of photometric microlensing, where the event duration depends on three parameter; $`v_{}`$, $`D_\mathrm{d}`$ and $`M`$ (note that this independence of the lens distance comes from the assumption of distant source. If this assumption is invalid, the event duration $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ depends also on the lens distance $`D_\mathrm{d}`$). Moreover, the average event duration $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is proportional to the lens mass $`M`$, and inversely proportional to the tangential velocity $`v_{}`$. Thus, once the average event duration is observed, the mass is scaled as $`Mv_{}\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$. This dependence contrasts to that of photometric microlensing, where the event duration $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is proportional to $`M^{1/2}v_{}^1`$ (e.g., Paczynski 1986). Hence, for photometric microlensing events, the lens mass $`M`$ is scaled as $`M(v_{}\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ph}})^2`$, depending more strongly on the unknown parameter $`v_{}`$ than in case of astrometric microlensing. This indicates that the event duration of astrometric microlensing is a better quantity to investigate the mass and the nature of MACHOs rather than that of photometric microlensing.

### 3.2 Halo Microlensing

Here we estimate a typical value of the event duration for halo MACHO case based on the same parameters used in the previous sections. Substituting $`M=0.5M_{}`$, $`v_{}=200`$ km s-1, and $`\theta _{\mathrm{min}}=10`$ $`\mu `$as, the event duration is obtained as

$`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ $`=`$ $`15.3\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{M}{0.5M_{}}}\right)`$ (22)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{v_{}}{200\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}{10\mu \mathrm{as}}}\right)^1\mathrm{yr}.`$
As seen in above equation, the event duration of astrometric microlensing event is significantly longer than that of photometric microlensing event. This is due to large $`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$ for astrometric microlensing, typically $``$70, while $`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is unity for photometric microlensing. In fact, if one takes a typical value of $`t_\mathrm{E}=40`$ days from LMC microlensing (e.g. Alcock et al. 1997; 2000), a rough estimate gives that $`t_{\mathrm{ast}}2\beta _{\mathrm{max}}t_\mathrm{E}=15`$ yr.

An event duration of $``$ 15 yr may seem to be too long for practical monitoring observation. This is because the event duration $`t_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is the time during which the image shift is larger than $`\theta _{\mathrm{min}}`$. On the other hand, we have already shown in figure 1 that the image trajectory is a circle, and that the image motion is faster in the upper half of the trajectory circle than in the lower half. As seen in previous section, tracing a quarter of the trajectory circle is enough to extract physical parameters for astrometric microlensing such as $`t_\mathrm{q}(=\beta t_\mathrm{E})`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta `$. Thus, practically it is necessary to trace the image motion for the time interval $`t_\mathrm{q}`$, which was defined in section 2 as the time during which the image passes the upper quarter of the trajectory circle. This duration $`t_\mathrm{q}`$ is given by (see figure 2)

$$t_\mathrm{q}=\beta t_\mathrm{E}=\frac{\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}}|\mathrm{sin}\varphi |.$$
(23)
Similarly to $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ (eq.), by performing the integration with respect to $`\varphi `$ we can obtain the average of $`t_\mathrm{q}`$ as

$$\overline{t}_\mathrm{q}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\beta _{\mathrm{max}}R_\mathrm{E}}{v_{}}.$$
(24)
Comparing equations (20) and (24), one finds that $`\overline{t}_\mathrm{q}=\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}/\pi `$, and thus a typical value of $`\overline{t}_\mathrm{q}`$ is $``$ 5 yr. This means that one can obtain physical parameters of astrometric microlensing such as $`\beta t_\mathrm{E}(=t_\mathrm{q})`$ and $`\theta _\mathrm{E}/\beta `$ based on $`5`$ yr monitoring of the event, which is rather reasonable for practical observations.

### 3.3 Disk Microlensing

Here we estimate the event duration for disk star lensing. As a typical mass of disk stars, we take the mass of $`M=0.3M_{}`$, corresponding to a lower main-sequence star. Since we mainly consider disk-star lensing at relatively high latitude (i.e., $`b10^{}`$) in which the lens is likely to be a nearby star, we take the tangential velocity of 20 km s-1, corresponding to a random velocity of disk star in the vicinity of the Sun. With these parameters, the event duration for disk star microlensing is obtained as

$`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ $`=`$ $`92\left({\displaystyle \frac{M}{0.3M_{}}}\right)`$ (25)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{v_{}}{20\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}{10\mu \mathrm{as}}}\right)^1\mathrm{yr}.`$
Thus, the event duration for disk stars is much longer than that for halo MACHOs. This applies for most of the sky regions except for the Galactic plane, and hence the discrimination of disk lensing from MACHO lensing is easy. However, if one observes sources in the Galactic plane, the tangential velocity of the disk star is dominated by the galactic rotation, which is of $`200`$ km s-1. This indicates that in the galactic plane the event duration of disk lensing can be quite close to that of MACHO lensing, and hence sources in the middle of the galactic plane are not suitable for studying astrometric microlensing due to MACHOs,

## 4 Optical Depth

### 4.1 Basic Equations

Similarly to the optical depth of photometric microlensing (e.g., Paczynski 1986), the optical depth for the astrometric microlensing can be defined as follows (Miralda-Escude 1996),

$$\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}=\pi \beta _{\mathrm{max}}^2R_\mathrm{E}^2\frac{\rho (D_\mathrm{d})}{M}𝑑D_\mathrm{d}.$$
(26)
Here $`\rho `$ is the density, $`D_\mathrm{d}`$ is the lens distance from the observer, and $`M`$ is the lens mass. For simplicity here we assume that the lens mass $`M`$ is unique, as usually assumed in microlensing studies.

Substituting equations (13), (14) and (16), the optical depth (for distant sources) can be written as,

$$\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{16\pi G^2M}{c^4\theta _{\mathrm{min}}^2}\rho 𝑑D_\mathrm{d}.$$
(27)
As is already known (e.g., Miralda-Escude 1996), the optical depth for astrometric microlensing is proportional to the lens mass $`M`$, in contrast to that for photometric lensing which is independent of the lens mass $`M`$. It is also remarkable that the optical depth is simply proportional to the column density, $`\rho 𝑑D_\mathrm{d}`$. This simple dependence on the column density comes from the approximation of distant source in equations (13) and (14). In more general case, the optical depth is proportional to $`\rho (1x^2)𝑑D_\mathrm{d}`$, where $`xD_\mathrm{d}/D_\mathrm{s}`$ is the fractional distance to the lens normalized with source distance (Dominik & Sahu 2000).

### 4.2 Halo Microlensing

In order to calculate the optical depth due to MACHOs in the Galactic halo, here we introduce an axisymmetric logarithmic halo model (Binney & Tremaine 1987) to describe the halo density distribution. The density distribution of the axisymmetric logarithmic halo model is given by,

$`\rho (R,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{4\pi Gq^2}}`$ (28)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{(2q^2+1)R_\mathrm{c}^2+R^2+(2q^2)z^2}{(R_\mathrm{c}^2+R^2+z^2q^2)^2}}.`$
Here $`R`$ and $`z`$ describes the cylindrical coordinate, and $`v_0`$, $`R_\mathrm{c}`$, and $`q`$ are halo parameters which describe the circular rotation velocity, the core radius, and the halo flatness, respectively. In the following analysis, we set $`R_\mathrm{c}=5`$ kpc and $`v_0=200`$ km s-1, which are typical values used in microlensing studies. We also introduce a cut-off radius beyond which the density vanishes. In the present study the cut-off radius is set to be 100 kpc, but note that our result would be only slightly changed by varying the cut-off radius, as we will see later. In addition to halo parameters in equation (28), the mass of lens is necessary for optical depth calculation, as $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}`$ depends on the lens mass (equation ). We set the MACHO mass $`M=0.5M_{}`$, according to the recent result from the LMC microlensing (e.g., Alcock et al. 1997; 2000). We also assume that the distance to the Galactic Center, $`R_0`$, is 8.5 kpc.

The optical depth for astrometric microlensing is calculated for two values of $`q`$; $`q=1`$ (spherically symmetric halo) and $`0.75`$ (flattened halo). Figure 3 shows the optical depth variation with Galactic longitude $`l`$. As seen in figure 3, the optical depth $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is quite high toward the galactic center, being $`23\times 10^2`$. For a comparison, we note that the optical depth for photometric microlensing $`\tau _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is $`5.4\times 10^6`$ for $`l=0^{}`$ and $`b=0^{}`$ ($`q=1`$ is assumed). This high optical depth for astrometric microlensing can be easily understood from the fact that typical $`\beta _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is more than 70 (see previous section). From the high value of $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}`$, one can expect that one of 30 to 50 distant sources seen around the galactic center is always being lensed, if the halo fully consists of MACHOs. Recent results of LMC microlensing indicate that the halo MACHO fraction is around 25$``$50%, and thus the optical depth may be 2 to 4 times smaller than what is obtained above. However, the probability is still as high as $`5\times 10^3`$, indicating that at least one of a few hundred sources is always being lensed. Note that in figure 3 the optical depth is larger for flat halo case ($`q=0.75`$) than for spherical case ($`q=1`$). This is because the halo density at the Galaxy’s center increases with flattening of the halo. For instance, at the Galaxy center ($`R=0`$, $`z=0`$) the halo density is proportional to $`(2q^2+1)/q^2`$, which is 3.778 for $`q=0.75`$ while 3 for $`q=1`$.

In order to study a typical lens distance, in figure 4 we plot the differential optical depth for astrometric microlensing which is given by

$$\frac{d\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}}{dD_\mathrm{d}}=\frac{16\pi G^2M}{c^4\theta _{\mathrm{min}}^2}\rho .$$
(29)
Figure 4 shows that the largest contribution to the optical depth occurs at $`D8.5`$ kpc, i.e., around the Galactic center. This is of course because that the halo density is largest at the Galactic center region. As seen in figure 4, the differential optical depth beyond 50 kpc is quite small compared to the Galactic center region. Therefore, the optical depth $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}`$ only slightly depends on the value of cut-off radius (which is assumed to be 100 kpc), provided it is sufficiently large.

### 4.3 Disk Microlensing

Since the stellar disk is a dominant component in the inner Galaxy, we have to take into account the contribution of stellar disk to astrometric microlensing. In order to calculate the optical depth due to disk stars, here we assume a disk which has an exponential profile both in radial and vertical directions, namely,

$$\rho _\mathrm{d}(R,z)=\rho _0\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{RR_0}{d}\frac{|z|}{h}\right).$$
(30)
Here $`\rho _0`$ is the local disk density, and $`d`$ and $`h`$ are radial and vertical scale length, respectively. We take typical values for these parameters as $`\rho _0=0.08M_{}`$, $`d=3.5`$ kpc, and $`h=300`$ pc, which are the same to those used in previous studies (e.g., Hosokawa et al. 1997; Dominik & Sahu 2000). We show in figure 5 the optical depth for astrometric microlensing due to disk stars assuming $`M=0.3M_{}`$. As seen in figure 5, the optical depth is close to 0.1 at the galactic center, indicating that one of about 10 sources is always being lensed. This optical depth by disk stars is consistent with previous studies such as Hosokawa et al.(1997). If one observes a source relatively far from the galactic center but in the middle of the galactic plane ($`b=0^{}`$), the optical depth due to disk star is larger than 0.02 for $`l50^{}`$ . Therefore, as long as one observes sources in the Galactic plane, the optical depth is significantly higher than that for halo MACHOs, and hence sources in the galactic plane are not suitable for astrometric microlensing study of MACHOs (but of course they are useful for studying the galactic disk, particularly the stellar mass and the disk scale length; e.g., Hosokawa et al. 1993; Dominik & Sahu 2000). However, as seen in figure 5, the optical depth due to disk stars decreases quite rapidly with increasing the galactic longitude. Thus a source at relatively high galactic latitude ($`b10^{}`$) may be used to search for astrometric microlensing due to MACHOs.

Similarly to the halo case, in figure 6 we show the differential optical depth for disk stars. As easily understood, the differential optical depth in the galactic plane ($`b=0^{}`$) becomes maximum at the Galactic center. On the other hand, for sources at relatively high galactic latitude, the differential optical depth for disk stars is largest at $`D_\mathrm{d}=0`$, and hence it is dominated by local stars located within a few kpc from the sun. In such a case, one can discriminate the disk star microlensing from halo MACHO microlensing based on the event duration, as seen in the previous section.

## 5 Event Rate

The event rate is another important quantity in microlensing study, because the event rate is tightly related to the observational strategy of microlensing search. Once the optical depth $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}`$ and the average event duration $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ are known, the event rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is obtained as,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}}{\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}}.$$
(31)
Substituting equations (21) and (27) into above equation, the event rate for astrometric microlensing may be written as follows,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}=\frac{8Gv_{}}{c^2\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}\rho 𝑑D_\mathrm{d}.$$
(32)
Remarkably, the event rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ does not depend on the MACHO mass $`M`$, as is the case for the optical depth for photometric microlensing ($`\tau _{\mathrm{ph}}`$). Also, the event rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is simply proportional to the column density $`\rho 𝑑D_\mathrm{d}`$. These facts indicate that the event rate of astrometric microlensing is a good tracer of density distribution rather than the mass of individual lenses.

If we put into equation (31) $`\overline{t}_{\mathrm{ast}}=15`$ yr and $`\tau _{\mathrm{ast}}=1.5\times 10^2`$, which corresponds to the optical depth at 20 away from the Galactic center, we obtain

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ $`=`$ $`1.0\times 10^3\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_{}}{200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1}}\right)`$ (33)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta _{\mathrm{min}}}{10\mu as}}\right)^1\mathrm{event}\mathrm{yr}^1.`$
Thus, if one observes 100 sources for 10 years, at least one event will be detected. However, note that this calculation is for the case that the halo totally consists of MACHOs. Since the halo MACHO fraction is estimated to be 25%-50% by recent studies (Alcock et al. 1997; 2000), one has to observe 2-4 times more sources or longer period to detect an event. This indicates that it is necessary to monitor a few hundred sources for a few decades. This number of source and the time span may seem to be long, but the frequency of monitoring can be fairly low because of the long event duration, and thus such an observation can be done with upcoming astrometric projects like VERA (we will discuss this in next section in detail).

For the disk star lensing, the event rate is expected to be much smaller than that for halo MACHO lensing because the event duration $`t_{\mathrm{ast}}`$ is significantly larger. From figure 5, the optical depth for disk star lensing at $`b=20^{}`$ is $`1.2\times 10^3`$ (note that this value is almost independent of the galactic latitude $`l`$). Using the event duration of 92 yr, one obtains an event rate for astrometric microlensing due to disk star as $`1.3\times 10^5`$, which is smaller by two orders of magnitude than that for halo MACHO lensing. Thus, the contribution of disk star lensing is negligible in the off-plane region.

## 6 Implications for VERA

In this section we discuss the implication of astrometric microlensing for VERA. As we have briefly mentioned in section 1, VERA is a new VLBI array to measure the relative position of two adjacent sources based on the phase-referencing technique. Although VERA aims at astrometry with 10 $`\mu `$as-level accuracy similarly to other space missions (e.g., SIM, GAIA), VERA is very unique as it is an array of ground-based radio telescopes. The advantage of using VERA for astrometric search is that the project life time is much longer than that of other space missions, being $``$20 years (as for space missions like SIM and GAIA, the mission lifetime is around 5 years). As we have seen in the previous sections, the event duration is as long as 10 years, and thus a monitoring span exceeding 10 years is indispensable for studying astrometric microlensing event.

As we have shown previously, to detect an astrometric microlensing event, a few hundred sources should be monitored for a few decades. If one wants to detect more events for statistical studies, the number of sources to be observed becomes larger. Thus, it is important to examine if there are enough number of sources for astrometric microlensing search with VERA. The main target of VERA are compact continuum sources and maser sources. The compact continuum sources are mainly distant radio galaxies and QSOs, and thus they are suitable to astrometric microlensing studies. On the other hand, the maser sources are mostly late-type stars and star forming regions in the Galaxy, and so unsuitable for the purpose of the present study. As for continuum sources, about 2000 VLBI sources (which are compact enough to observe with VLBI) are currently known (e.g., ICRF catalog, Ma et al. 1998; VLBA Calibrator Survey, Peck & Beasley 1998). At high galactic latitude where VLBI sources are searched relatively deeply, the average number of VLBI sources is close to 0.08 per square degree. This number roughly corresponds to one VLBI source in a circle with radius of 2. If the same source distribution applies to the sky region toward the galactic center, one can expect to find about 100 sources within 20 of the Galactic center, and 220 sources within 30 of the Galactic center, indicating that there are enough number of VLBI sources that can be observed with VERA. Moreover, there are several hundreds of VLBI source candidates like those in Jodrel-Bank VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS; Patnaik et al. 1992; Browne et al. 1998; Wilkinson et al. 1998). By a deeper and more massive survey, one can expect to increase the number of VLBI sources that can be used for astrometric microlensing search. Hence, one can expect to have a plenty of VLBI sources around the galactic center regions.

Next we estimate the time required for such a monitoring observation. The signal-to-noise ration (S/N) of VLBI can be estimated using the following equation (e.g., Thompson et al 1986),

$$R_{\mathrm{S}/\mathrm{N}}=\frac{\eta }{2k}\sqrt{\frac{A_1A_2}{T_{\mathrm{sys1}}T_{\mathrm{sys2}}}}\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Delta }\nu t_\mathrm{i}}S.$$
(34)
Here $`A`$ is the effective antenna collecting area, $`T_{\mathrm{sys}}`$ is the system noise temperature, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ is the bandwidth, $`t_\mathrm{i}`$ is the integration time, $`k`$ is the Boltzmann constant, $`\eta `$ is the quantization efficiency, and $`S`$ is the source flux (subscripts denote the observational stations). The major specifications of VERA telescopes are currently anticipated as follows; the effective collecting area $`A`$ of 157 m2 (assuming 20m diameter and antenna efficiency of 0.5), system noise temperature $`T_{\mathrm{sys}}`$ of 120 K, bandwidth $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ of 256 MHz, and the quantization efficiency $`\eta `$ of 0.88 (two-bit quantization). With these values, the S/N ratio $`R_{\mathrm{S}/\mathrm{N}}`$ is $``$ 16 for 100 mJy source with integration time $`t_\mathrm{i}`$ of 300 seconds. Since the accuracy of fringe phase measurement is determined as $`1/R_{\mathrm{S}/\mathrm{N}}`$ in radian, its accuracy will be 0.063 radian, or 3.6 degree. This corresponds to an error in geometric delay of 0.13 mm ($`=3.6\times \pi /180\times \lambda `$, where $`\lambda `$ is the wavelength) at the wavelength of 1.3 cm, which is one of the major frequency band of VERA. The position accuracy can be roughly estimated as (0.13 mm/2300 km)=5.65$`\times 10^{11}`$ radian, which equals to 11.7 $`\mu `$as (2300 km is the longest baseline of VERA). Thus, for sources with a flux of $``$ 100 mJy, the thermal error can be reduced to 10 $`\mu `$as level within 5 minutes.

If one spends 20 minutes for a single measurement (one measurement of separation of two adjacent sources), the total number of sources that can be observed in 24 hours exceeds 100 (note that two sources are observed in a single measurement). Thus, 2-3 days are enough for observing a few hundred sources. In practice, one separation measurement for each pair is not enough for detecting a position shift of $``$10 $`\mu `$as. To achieve higher position accuracy (i.e., a few $`\mu `$as), we may need 10 sets of observations of a few hundred sources, which requires total observation of 20-30 days. On the other hand, typical timescale for a image to move along a quarter of the trajectory is about 5 years, and so the interval of such observations can be as long as six months. If we spend 30 days for astrometric microlensing in six months, this requires 15% of the telescope time to be dedicated to such a monitoring observation. This is indeed massive expense, but is worth spending when one considers the significance of scientific outputs; in addition to astrometric microlensing, one can establish a radio reference frame with an accuracy of 10 $`\mu `$as, which is more accurate by two orders of magnitude than the reference frame currently achieved, and also one can measure proper motions of nearby AGNs (up to a few tens Mpc), from which 3 dimensional structure of the local universe can be studied.

One possible way to incorporate such a massive microlensing search with VERA is to perform a geodetic observation based on the dual-beam observation. The geodetic observation is necessary to determine the baseline parameters with sufficient accuracy. Usually, a geodetic observation is made at S (2GHz) and X (8GHz) bands with a single beam. In case of S/X geodetic observation, the baseline parameters and absolute position of radio sources with an accuracy of 1 mas are solved based on a few hundred observations of radio sources. On the other hand, baseline measurements are also possible based on the relative fringe phase of two sources that are observed with dual beam system of VERA. In case of dual-beam geodetic observation, what can be obtained are the baseline parameters and ‘relative’ position of adjacent two sources with an accuracy of 10 $`\mu `$as level. Thus, if dual-beam geodetic observation is performed, one can obtain relative position of radio sources for a few hundred sources with an accuracy of 10 $`\mu `$as. Currently, VERA is planned to perform one-day geodetic observation every week, and thus the frequency of the observation is just the same to what we need for astrometric microlensing search (i.e., 15% of the telescope time). Therefore, dual-beam geodetic observation, if possible, is more practical for the massive monitoring of astrometric microlensing.

## 7 Conclusion

We have investigated the properties of astrometric microlensing of distant sources due to MACHOs. We have shown that in case of astrometric microlensing of distant sources, the event duration depends only on two unknown parameters, the lens mass $`M`$ and the tangential velocity $`v_{}`$, in contrast to that for photometric microlensing of nearby stars. We have also shown that a typical event duration of astrometric microlensing is 15 years, and also that the event rate of astrometric microlensing is larger than 2.5$`\times 10^4`$ within $`20^{}`$ of the Galactic center, assuming that 25% of Galaxy’s halo is made up with MACHOs. This implies that one can detect an astrometric microlensing event if a few hundred sources are monitored for 20 years. Detections of astrometric microlensing will be possible with VERA within decades, and thus astrometric microlensing will become a new tool to study the nature of MACHOs.

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# Conditional large Fock state preparation and field state reconstruction in Cavity QED

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## Abstract

We propose a scheme for producing large Fock states in Cavity QED via the implementation of a highly selective atom-field interaction. It is based on Raman excitation of a three-level atom by a classical field and a quantized field mode. Selectivity appears when one tunes to resonance a specific transition inside a chosen atom-field subspace, while other transitions remain dispersive, as a consequence of the field dependent electronic energy shifts. We show that this scheme can be also employed for reconstructing, in a new and efficient way, the Wigner function of the cavity field state.

\]

Harmonic oscillators have been, from the very beginning, at the core of the quantum theory. It was not until the invention of the laser , however, that their most interesting statistical properties could be tested in controlled experiments associated with electromagnetic fields. Since then, considerable theoretical and experimental efforts have been devoted to the production and characterization of nonclassical states of light, such as sub-Poissonian , squeezed , or Schrödinger cat states .

A great advance in the field came with the micromaser , where two-level Rydberg atoms interact with one mode of a high-Q cavity in an experimental realization of the Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model . Many important experiments have followed, expliciting the dynamical properties of this model, such as the observation of collapse and revivals  and the discrete character of the Rabi oscillations  of the atom-field doublets. The micromaser technique has also allowed the investigation of the most fundamental, nonclassical states of harmonic oscillators, specially the number (Fock) states. In particular, recent papers reported the QND measurement of the one photon Fock state  and the preparation of up to two photons  in the cavity mode.

The atom-field dynamics as well as the statistical properties of the field are observed, in Cavity QED, through the detection of the atoms, which work either as a probe for the coupled system or as a measuring device for the light mode state, depending on the setup. Indeed, several theoretical results have showed that appropriate settings of this system enable a complete reconstruction of the quantum state of the cavity field . However, despite the great advances in the latest years, the implementation of these proposals, as well as the generation and characterization of large Fock states remain as challenging experimental problems in this field. In these cases, the characteristics of the JC model require the use of improved apparatus, such as cavities with higher quality factor and enhanced ways to control and manipulate the atoms.

Alternatively, different atom-field couplings could be used. In particular, selective interactions  present new ways to induce transitions in this system. Unlike the JC model, where the same resonant or dispersive regime applies for all initial atom-field states, selective interactions separate these states in subspaces with distinct coupling regimes. This property represents more versatility and the possibility to implement new classes of experiments even under current technological conditions.

In this paper, we show that it is possible to implement a selective interaction between three level atoms, a classical field and a quantized cavity mode. We study the feasibility of our scheme based on available experimental parameters and propose, as a first application, the preparation of large Fock states in the quantized mode. As a second relevant application, we show that selectivity in this system allows for the measurement of the probability distribution $`P(n)`$ of the quantized field state in the Fock state basis $`|n`$. Finally, we show that it is possible, as a natural consequence, to propose an efficient reconstruction method of the Wigner function  of the cavity field and, therefore, of its complete quantum state .

Our proposal relies on the Raman excitation of a three level atom by a classical field of frequency $`\omega _L`$ and a quantized cavity mode of frequency $`\omega _0`$, in a lambda configuration (see Fig. 1). The classical field drives dispersively the transition from level $`|g`$ to level $`|h`$, with coupling constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_L`$ and detuning $`\delta =\omega _{hg}\omega _L|\mathrm{\Omega }_L|`$. The cavity mode couples level $`|e`$ to level $`|h`$, with coupling constant $`g`$ and the same detuning $`\delta =\omega _{he}\omega _0|g|`$. In the interaction picture, the interaction Hamiltonian in the RWA approximation is given by

$$\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{int}}=\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega }_L\widehat{\sigma }_{hg}e^{i\delta t}+\mathrm{}g\widehat{\sigma }_{he}\widehat{a}e^{i\delta t}+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.,$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{\sigma }_{jm}|jm|`$ is an electronic flip operator and $`\widehat{a}`$ is the annihilation operator of the quantized cavity mode. Since level $`|h`$ is coupled dispersively with both levels $`|g`$ and $`|e`$, it can be adiabatically eliminated giving rise to an effective second order anti-Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian

$`\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}=`$ $`\mathrm{}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|\mathrm{\Omega }_L|^2}{\delta }}\widehat{\sigma }_{gg}+\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\left|g\right|^2\widehat{a}^{}\widehat{a}}{\delta }}\widehat{\sigma }_{ee}`$ (2)
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{|g\mathrm{\Omega }_L^{}|}{\delta }}(\widehat{\sigma }_{eg}\widehat{a}^{}+\widehat{\sigma }_{ge}\widehat{a}),`$ (3)
where we chose $`\mathrm{\Omega }_L`$ in phase with $`g`$. The first two terms correspond to dynamical energy shifts of levels $`|g`$ and $`|e`$, and the last two terms describe transitions between these levels, accompanied by creation or annihilation of a photon in the cavity mode. Notice that the difference of the energy shifts of level $`|g`$ and $`|e`$, which depends explicitly on the number $`n`$ of photons in the cavity mode, will determine the effective resonance frequency of the $`|g|e`$ transition.

The Hamiltonian (3) is block separable in the subspaces spanned by the states $`\{|g,n,|e,n+1\}`$ of the atom-field system. There is a specific difference of energy shifts $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{eg}^n`$, associated to each one of these subspaces, which may be compensated by external action on either the atom (dc Stark shift) or the cavity mode (by shifting its frequency). In this way, transitions inside a chosen subspace may be tuned to resonance, while other transitions remain dispersive, producing a selective interaction in the atom-field Hilbert space. Once this frequency adjustment is made for one specific subspace $`\{|g,N_o,|e,N_o+1\}`$, the detunings associated with the remaining subspaces ($`nN_o`$) change to

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_n\mathrm{\Delta }_{eg}^n\mathrm{\Delta }_{eg}^{N_o}=\frac{|g|^2}{\delta }(nN_o).$$
(4)
By controlling the ratio between $`g`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_L`$, the detunings $`\mathrm{\Delta }_n`$ can be made large enough for considering the effective interaction in the remaining subspaces as dispersive, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Delta }_n\frac{|g\mathrm{\Omega }_L^{}|}{\delta }`$. In this case, if the atom enters the cavity in state $`|g`$, it can only experiment a Rabi flip to level $`|e`$ if the cavity has $`N_o`$ photons.

Hamiltonian (3) can be easily diagonalized. In particular, after the frequency adjustment made in Eq. (3), its stationary eigenstates are given by the ground state $`|e,0`$ and the doublets

$$|\pm ,n=\frac{G_n|g,n+\lambda _{\pm ,n}|e,n+1}{\sqrt{\lambda _{\pm ,n}^2+G_n^2}},$$
(5)
with respective eigenvalues $`0`$ and $`\lambda _{\pm ,n}=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_n}{2}\pm \mathrm{\Omega }_n`$. In Eq. (5), $`G_n=\frac{|g\mathrm{\Omega }_L^{}|}{\delta }\sqrt{n+1}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }_n^2/4+G_n^2}`$.

For arbitrary values of the detunings $`\mathrm{\Delta }_n`$, if the atom enters the cavity in state $`|g`$, and the field is initially in state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_0=_nc_n|n`$, the state of the system evolves, after an interaction time $`t`$, to

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}c_ne^{i\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_nt}{2}}[(\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Omega }_nt+{\displaystyle \frac{i\mathrm{\Delta }_n}{2\mathrm{\Omega }_n}}\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Omega }_nt)|g,n`$ (7)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{iG_n}{\mathrm{\Omega }_n}}\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Omega }_nt|e,n+1]\text{.}`$
In particular, if the atom is found in state $`|e`$, after it has interacted with the light fields during a time interval $`\tau =\frac{\pi \delta }{2|g\mathrm{\Omega }_L^{}|\sqrt{N_o+1}}`$, the correlated state of the cavity mode is

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }_e(\tau )=\frac{c_{N_o}|N_o+1+_{nN_o}b_n|n}{\sqrt{\left|c_{N_o}\right|^2+_{nN_o}\left|b_n\right|^2}}.$$
(8)
The coefficients $`b_n`$ are given by

$$b_n=\frac{c_n(i)e^{i\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_n\tau }{2}}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi }{2}\sqrt{\frac{q}{N_o+1}}}{\sqrt{q}},$$
(9)
where $`q=\frac{r^2(nN_o)^2}{4(n+1)}+1`$, and $`r=\frac{|g|}{|\mathrm{\Omega }_L|}`$. Note that, as $`q`$ increases, the coefficients $`b_n`$ become negligible compared to the coefficient $`c_{N_o}`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_e(\tau )`$ tends to the Fock state $`|N_o+1`$. For a chosen $`N_o`$, this condition is satisfied if $`r2\sqrt{N_o+2}`$. In this limit, the Fock state $`|N_o+1`$ could be produced in the cavity field, as long as $`c_{N_o}0`$. In principle, one could use this scheme to produce any Fock state in the quantized mode. In practice, however, one is limited by the decay time of the cavity, $`\tau _c`$, which must be much longer than the interaction time, $`\tau `$. Typically, for Rydberg atoms interacting with high-Q microwave cavities, $`g/2\pi 50\mathrm{k}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$ . For $`N_o10`$, $`\delta /2\pi 1\mathrm{MHz}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_L\frac{g}{30}`$ ($`r30`$), $`\tau `$ will be of the order of $`1\mathrm{ms}`$. Interaction times of this order are still much shorter than the decay time of the microwave cavities with highest quality factor used nowadays (of the order of 0.3 s ). This suggests that, in principle, our proposal could be implemented immediately.

We may define the fidelity of generating the selected Fock state $`|N_o+1`$ as $`F|N_o+1|\mathrm{\Phi }_e(\tau )|^2`$. $`F`$ is approximately given by $`1_n\frac{|b_n|^2}{|c_{N_o}|^2}`$ and it approaches unity when the coefficients $`b_n`$’s go to zero. Initial states for which $`c_{N_o}>c_n`$ enhance the protocol efficiency. In this sense, good candidates for initial cavity state are coherent states with mean number of photons around $`N_0`$. Not only do they satisfy $`c_{N_o}>c_n`$, but they are also easily produced in microwave cavities, by just coupling them to a microwave generator . In Fig. 2, we show an example for the preparation of large Fock states in the cavity mode, after only one atom has interacted with the fields. From an initial coherent state $`|\alpha `$ with $`|\alpha |^2=5`$, the Fock state $`|6`$ is prepared in the cavity with a fidelity higher than $`0.99`$.

The Fock state preparation is conditioned to finding the atom in state $`|e`$. From Eqs. (7), (8) and (9), it is easy to show that as $`r`$ becomes larger, the probability $`P_e`$ of measuring the atom in the excited state approximates the probability $`P_{N_o}`$ of finding $`N_o`$ photons in the initial cavity field state. If $`r`$ cannot be made large enough due to experimental limitations, the state one wants to prepare is polluted by marginal Fock states populations. In this case, one only needs to send a second atom in state $`|g`$ and set the experimental parameters to the transition $`|g,N_o+1|e,N_o+2`$. The probability of finding both atoms in the excited state becomes closer to $`P_{N_o}`$, and the field state produced will be, with very high fidelity, state $`|N_o+2`$.

The equivalence between $`P_e`$ and $`P_{N_o}`$ for large $`r`$ suggests a very practical and easy way to obtain the photon statistics $`P_n`$ of an arbitrary state in the cavity mode. In fact, for each selected transition $`|g,N|e,N+1`$, the proportion of atoms measured in state $`|e`$, $`P_e`$, gives directly $`P_N`$, for all possible values of $`N`$. Combined with the possibility of coherently displacing microwave cavity fields, this allows one to fully reconstruct the Wigner function of the state of the quantized mode. Since it does not rely on additional devices, such as Ramsey interferometers, this scheme simplifies the task of field state reconstruction, as we will discuss below.

The Wigner function of the state $`\widehat{\rho }`$ of a harmonic oscillator, can be written as

$$W(\alpha )=\frac{2}{\pi }\underset{n}{}(1)^nP_n(\alpha ),$$
(10)
where $`P_n(\alpha )=n\left|\widehat{D}(\alpha )\widehat{\rho }\widehat{D}^1(\alpha )\right|n`$ is the number distribution of state $`\widehat{\rho }`$ displaced coherently in the phase space by $`\alpha `$ . This tells us that, to obtain the Wigner function of the cavity field on each point of the phase space, all one needs to know is the number distribution of the field, after it has been displaced in the phase space. The coherent displacement of the cavity field can be easily implemented by coupling the cavity to a microwave generator. After this step, one can use the selective scheme discussed above to measure $`P_n(\alpha )`$ and, then, Eq. (10) to calculate $`W(\alpha )`$. This method is exact for large values of $`r`$, and it represents an experimentally simple way to measure the photonic statistics of the cavity field and to reconstruct its Wigner function. For once, it does not require the preparation of atoms in a coherent superposition of upper and lower states, as in usual schemes that rely on Ramsey interferometry. This simplifies the experimental setup and, more important, permits the use of closed higher quality cavities with characteristic lifetimes much longer than the interaction times in question. As an example, we show in Fig. 3 the efficient reconstruction of the Wigner function of the Fock state $`|6`$ for the realistic parameter $`r=30`$. By subtracting the exact Wigner function from the reconstructed one, we also show that the errors introduced by suposing that transitions occur only inside each selected subspace $`|g,N|e,N+1`$ (perfect selectivity) are negligibly small.

In conclusion, we have proposed a scheme to implement a selective interaction in cavity QED, between three level atoms, a classical field and a quantized cavity mode. It relies on the possibility of tuning to resonance a specific transition inside a chosen atom-field subspace, while other transitions remain dispersive, as a consequence of the field dependent electronic energy shifts. As a first relevant application of this scheme, we have proposed a method for generating large Fock states in the cavity mode. Aditionally, we have shown that this scheme allows for the reconstruction of the Wigner function of an arbitrary cavity field state, with simplified experimental setup. Many other application examples could be imagined, specially those exploring the entanglement created between the atoms and different field states, as is the case in quantum logic and quantum communication schemes.

We want to thank the hospitality of the organizers of the Pan-American Advanced Study Insitute on ”Chaos, Decoherence and Quantum Entanglement” and S. Haroche for fruitful discussions about the experimental implementation of the proposed scheme. This work has been supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), Fundação Universitária José Bonifácio (FUJB), and Programa de Apoio a Núcleos de Excelência (PRONEX).