text:
# Quantum Computation and Many Worlds

## Introduction

In quantum computation at the moment we do not have a physical picture of what is actually going on in a computation, as this is dependent on the interpretation that one has of quantum mechanics. In this paper we will look at what is going on in a general quantum computational process, from the point of view of the Everett (‘Many Worlds’) interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is sometimes argued that quantum computation is to be regarded as proof of an Everett-style interpretation (Deutsch 1997; Wallace, in preparation). This is *not* the aim of the current paper.

In this paper we will not deal with the arguments for or against the particular Everett interpretation used here (a combination of the interpretations of Saunders (1995, 1996) and Zurek (1991, 1993, 2001)111There is also a lot of similarity with the Everett-style theories used by Gell-Mann & Hartle (1990)., recently expanded and explicated by Wallace (2001$`a`$,$`b`$)), nor against Everett interpretations in general. However there are some arguments that appear to object to using Everett interpretations in quantum computation at all, and these we shall address, most notably that given by Steane (2000). The problem with such arguments is that they often seem to be attacking an Everett theory that does not really exist: there does not seem to be a real understanding of exactly what an Everett theory says is going on in a quantum computation. The purpose of the present paper is to provide such an understanding in detail.

The structure of the paper is as follows.
In section 1 is presented the Everett theory that we will be using in the rest of the paper.
In section 2 our Everett theory is used to give a physical picture of quantum computation.
In the light of the previous sections, in section 3 we look at some objections often raised against using an Everett theory to describe a quantum computation process.

## 1 The Everett-Saunders-Zurek Interpretation

The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a problem since the very beginnings of the theory. It is not the intention here to enter into a detailed discussion of the problem and the various proposed solutions; such a study can be found in many places, for example Davies & Brown (1986). We will, however, briefly outline the main difficulty (the ‘measurement problem’) before going on to describe the proposed solution that is of relevance here.

### 1.1 The Measurement Problem in Brief

As we all know, quantum mechanics predicts undetermined states for microscopic objects most of the time: for example, in an interferometer the photon path is indeterminate between the two arms of the apparatus. We deal with such states all the time, and are seemingly happy with them for the unobservable realm.

Such happiness is destroyed when we consider an experiment (such as the infamous Schrödinger’s Cat set-up) where macroscopic outcomes are made dependent on microscopic states. We are then faced with an ‘amplification of indeterminism’ up to the macro-realm: the state of the system+cat is something like

$$|0|\mathrm{cat}\mathrm{dead}+|1|\mathrm{cat}\mathrm{alive}$$
(1)
This is the measurement problem: how do we reconcile the fact that quantum mechanics predicts macroscopic indeterminism with the fact that we observe a definite macro-realm in everyday life?

### 1.2 ESZ

Almost all proposed solutions to the measurement problem start from this assumption: that a superposition of states such as (1) cannot describe macroscopic physical reality. In one way or another all terms bar one are made to vanish, leaving the ‘actual’ physical world.

The exception to this way of solving the problem was first proposed by Everett (1957). His interpretation has since been modified and improved, but the central posit remains the same: that physical reality at all levels is described by states such as (1), and each term in such a superposition is equally actualized.

Dispute over what this actually *means* gives rise to the myriad of different Everettian interpretations that we have (Many Worlds, Many Minds, etc. etc. etc.). One thing we can say about all Everett interpretations is that they include at some level and to some degree a multiplicity of what we would commonly refer to as the ‘macroscopic world’: each term in the superposition is actual, the cat is *both* dead *and* alive. In general this gives rise to the ‘incredulous stare’ argument, arguing against such a huge increase in ontological commitment. However, as has always been the case in physics, extra ontology is welcomed into the theory when it does explanatory work (for example the extra ontology required for the huge universe of modern cosmology over previous theories).

There are two pressing problems at this point for the Everettian222Actually there are three, but the third (the problem of probability — see eg Saunders (1998)) lies well outside the scope of this paper.. Firstly, the measurement problem itself: if all terms are real, why do we only see one? Secondly, there is the logical problem: how can anything be in two states at once?
Taking the second problem first, we note that we do not get a logical contradiction when something is in two different states with respect to an external parameter. For example, I am both sitting at my desk typing and standing by the window drinking tea, with respect to the parameter time: *now* I am at my desk, but (hopefully) *soon* I will be drinking tea. The parameter in Everett theories with respect to which cats, etc., have their properties is variously called the world, branch, universe, or macrorealm (see below for a note on terminology). The idea (very very basically) is that in one world (branch, etc.) the cat is dead, and in another it is alive. Extending this to include experimenters we get the answer to our first question: in one world the experimenter sees the cat dead, in another she sees it alive.

We now have the problem of making these rather vague ideas concrete. As noted above, the differing ways of doing this give rise to different Everett-style interpretations. We shall now turn to a specific theory (chosen as the best of the Everett-style theories on offer), an amalgam of the ideas of Everett (1957), Saunders (1995, 1996) and Zurek (1991, 1993, 2001) (and the expansion of these by Wallace (2001$`a`$,$`b`$)), which we will call the Everett-Saunders-Zurek interpretation, hereafter ESZ.

The main ideas of the interpretation are the following. Physical reality is represented by the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$: the ‘state of the universe’. Within this main structure we can identify substructures that behave like what we would intuitively call a single universe (the sort of world we see around us). There are many such substructures, which we identify as single universes with different histories. The identification of these substructures is not fundamental or precise - rather, they are defined for all practical purposes (FAPP), using criteria such as distinguishability and stability over time. Decoherence plays an important role in identifying macroscopic worlds, but (as will be important when we go on to talk about quantum computation) worlds can be identified when the system is fully coherent. A further concept is where distinguishable structures are not stable over time: we can still identify worlds structures, but only at a point in time.

A note on terminology before we proceed further.

The totality of physical reality, described by the ‘universal state’. There is no larger system than this: this is the main structure.

A substructure of the multiverse that we would intuitively call a ‘universe’: a distinct macrorealm with a definite (or quasi-definite) history evolving stably over time. This is the level of description that we need to recover in order to solve the measurement problem.

A world is similar to a branch, only the structures thus identified are not stable over long timescales. We can identify them within the main state over relevant timescales (that are long enough for the structures to be useful to us), but they do not evolve stably and keep their structure for longer times.

In these terms, the claim of ESZ is that physical reality is the multiverse, and within that there are branches that we as observers inhabit. States such as (1) describe the multiverse, with each term in the superposition being a branch, that being what an experimenter sees. As well as these long-lasting branches there are also identifiable worlds within the main structure, at many different levels – within a branch we may have a structure within which many worlds may be identifiable for a certain length of time.

There are now further questions that must be answered: how are the branches and worlds defined, and how does their stability arise?

The main points here are that branches and worlds keep their structure for long enough to be useful, and that they evolve essentially independently of other structures. Because these structures are not fundamental ontology it does not matter that they are defined thus roughly (and indeed have no precise definition) – what matters is that they stay recognizable for long enough for us to frame theories about their behaviour (see §1.3 below for additional comments on this).

For branches, stability and FAPP independence comes from a definite mechanism: decoherence. Decoherence is the lynchpin of ESZ’s response to the measurement problem, allowing the stable evolution of definite substructures of universes within the universal state. I will not here go through all the mechanics of the decoherence process (this may be found in many places, for example Joos & Zeh (1985) and Omnés (1994)), but merely state the relevant points.

Decoherence occurs when a system becomes entangled with a larger environment. If we then look at the behaviour of the system alone then we have to trace out the environment - which, as is well known, leads to the loss of the interference terms between states of the decoherence basis. Thus, at any given instant, we can identify a multiplicity of non-interfering substructures, which are (in the above terminology) worlds. Furthermore this lack of interference persists over time if decoherence is ongoing: that is, individual substructures (elements of the decoherence basis) evolve virtually independently, with minimal interference with other such substructures.

### 1.3 FAPP Structures

The foregoing, or similar has been the claim of Everett theories ever since decoherence came on the scene; what then is different about ESZ? The difference comes about in the way in which this specification of the branches (and worlds) is handled. In, for example, a naive many worlds interpretations (eg Deutsch 1985) one cannot find the preferred basis to specify the branches using decoherence as the branch structure is absolute and decoherence, as is well known, is only an approximate process: we get a specification of branches for all practical purposes (FAPP), but not in any absolute sense. It is a common assertion in the literature on the preferred basis problem that the preferred basis must be defined absolutely, explicitly and precisely, and that therefore the failure to give such a definition (and indeed the impossibility of doing so) is a terminal problem for an Everett interpretation.

The difference with ESZ is that the branch and worlds structure is *not* absolute, and so no such explicit or precise rule is required333This vital understanding is found in Wallace (2001$`b`$), from which the material for this section is taken. The key to understanding how this works is to move away from the idea, implicit in much of the literature, that the measurement problem must be solved at the level of the basic theory: that is, that we must recover a single macrorealm (or the appearance of one) in the fundamental posits of our theory. ESZ does something different, by defining the worlds, in Wallace’s phrase, as ‘higher order ontology’. The structures of the worlds and branches are not precisely defined, but FAPP they are a useful way to look at the overall state. Furthermore, we as observers are some such structures, and so we must look at the evolution of these structures and the rest of the state relative to them in order to recover predictions about the branch we live in from quantum mechanics – ultimately, to answer the measurement problem.

Physics (and indeed science in general) is no stranger to the idea of using approximately-defined structures. In everyday life we deal with them all the time. For example, we can go to the beach and (if we are in a suitably meditative mood) count the waves as they come in. If we are feeling more energetic then we can paddle out and use one particular wave to surf on. The waves exists as real entities (I can count them and surf on them), they persist over time as distinct structures (we can follow them as they come into shore and break), and if I surfed on one then I would talk about *the* wave I caught.

Waves are, however, not precisely defined: where does this wave end and that one begin? Where does this one end and the sea begin? Different water molecules comprise it at different points in its history – given this, how is the wave defined? We cannot find any method that will tell us absolutely when a given molecule is part of the wave or not, and this is not merely a *technical* impossibility: there is simply no fact of the matter about when a wave ends and the sea begins. We can use rough rules of thumb, but at the fine-grained level there is no precise fact to find.

We thus see that there are many objects that we would unhesitatingly call real that we nevertheless cannot define absolutely and objectively. Such entities are part of our higher order ontology, not ‘written in’ directly in the fundamental laws of the theory, but nevertheless present and real and explanatorily useful.

It is at such a level that the ESZ concept of a world or branch operates. It is not an entity written into the fundamental laws of the interpretation: in fact, what ESZ does is (merely?) explain how, from quantum mechanics alone (decoherence is a straight consequence of the basic laws), the structures can emerge that describe the world that we see around us everyday444This is in fact one of the great strengths of ESZ as an interpretation: there are no mathematics added to standard quantum mechanics (a strength particularly for those physicists who do not wish a theory to be changed for conceptual or philosophical reasons); it is truly an *interpretation*.. These structures are not (and cannot be) absolutely defined, but this is no argument against their reality.

## 2 Quantum Computation

We now come to the main question of this paper: what physical picture does ESZ give us of a quantum computational process in particular?

There is of course no one particular process that *is* quantum computation: there are many different algorithms, quite apart from their physical instantiation. However we will find that ESZ tells us things about how information is processed in these algorithms *in general*. Nevertheless, in working through this, it will be useful to have a concrete example before us. For simplicity we will chose one of the simplest algorithms for our example — the Deutsch algorithm.

### 2.1 The Deutsch Algorithm

Suppose we have a function $`f(x)`$ whose domain and range are both $`\{0,1\}`$. We want to find out whether $`f(0)=f(1)`$ or not. Classically, there is no quicker way to do this than evaluating both $`f(0)`$ and $`f(1)`$ and comparing them. However there is a quantum algorithm that can do it with only *one* evaluation — this is the Deutsch Algorithm.

To start the algorithm we take a two qubit register in the state

$$|01=|0_a|1_b$$

We then perform two Hadamard transformations (one on each qubit), so that

$$|01(|0+|1)(|0|1)=|\psi $$
(2)
Let us now define the transformation $`U_f`$ as

$$U_f:|x,y|x,yf(x)$$

where f(x) is our original function, and ‘$``$’ stands for addition modulo 2. For the state $`|x(|0|1)`$ there are two options when acted on by $`U_f`$:

$$|x(|0|1)\{\begin{array}{c}|x(|0|1)f(x)=0\\ |x(|1|0)f(x)=1\end{array}$$

That is,

$$|x(|0|1)(1)^{f(x)}|x(|0|1)$$

We therefore see that the action of $`U_f`$ on the state given by (2) is

$`U_f|\psi `$ $`=`$ $`(1)^{f(0)}|0(|0|1)+(1)^{f(1)}|1(|0|1)`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{c}\pm (|0+|1)(|0|1)f(0)=f(1)\\ \pm (|0|1)(|0|1)f(0)f(1)\end{array}`$ (6)
We now act on the first qubit by another Hadamard transformation, so we are left with the state of our two qubits as

$`\pm |0(|0+|1)f(0)=f(1)`$
$`\pm |1(|0+|1)f(0)f(1)`$
If we now measure the first qubit then we will find out with probability 1 whether $`f(0)=f(1)`$ or not (if we measure 0 then it is, if 1 then it is not) — with one measurement.

### 2.2 General Algorithms

Following Wallace (in preparation), there are three main stages to the Deutsch algorithm that are common to all quantum algorithms so far discovered that give a speed-up over their classical counterparts555We must note, however, that there are still only a very few quantum algorithms that have been discovered, and that generalising from such a small number is always a potentially risky business.. They are the Hadamard transformations at the beginning and end of the manipulation, and the manipulation of the state itself.

#### 2.2.1 Hadamard 1

In general, algorithms start by having two registers, the first of which is the input register (in the Deutsch algorithm this is a single qubit, qubit a, but in general it will be $`n`$ qubits long). The register starts in the state $`|0^n`$ (that is, $`|000\mathrm{}0`$ with $`n`$ lots of 0’s) and then has $`n`$ Hadamard transformations acted on it, resulting in a superposition of all its possible states,

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}\underset{\alpha }{}|\alpha $$

where $`\alpha `$ ranges over all these states. In our example above this is the action of step (2) on qubit a (note that the Hadamard performed on qubit b is not an example of this general step), resulting in the qubit going from state $`|0`$ to state $`|0+|1`$.

#### 2.2.2 Manipulation

The common feature of the state manipulation is that states in the second register (above, qubit b) become correlated with states of the first, and that the correlated states are a constant function of their states in the first register. That is, that the state of the two registers evolves as

$$\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}\underset{\alpha }{}|\alpha \right)|y\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}\underset{\alpha }{}|\alpha |g(\alpha )$$
(7)
where $`|y`$ is the initial state of the second register.

In the Deutsch algorithm this is shown in (3), which we can re-write as

$$|0(1)^{f(0)}(|0|1)+|1(1)^{f(1)}(|0|1)$$

#### 2.2.3 Hadamard 2

In general, this step is more complicated than the single Hadamard in the Deutsch algorithm, although at least one such transformation is always a part of it. The aim of this step is to leave the system in such a state that a measurement of it will give the answer that we require. This is done by increasing the amplitude of the part of the state containing the correct answer, to the detriment of other parts. Some algorithms, such as Grover’s, are probabilistic so the amplitude of the ‘correct’ part of the state is high but not 1, and others, like the Deutsch algorithm, are definite, so the amplitude is exactly 1.

In essence, what this step does is interfere all the different parts of the state in a particular way (in our example, by a single Hadamard) to give the required answer.

### 2.3 A Physical Picture

So what does ESZ say is going on physically in this process?

To start with, it is useful to make clear the distinction in this case between branches and worlds. We will concentrate on one branch (one ‘distinct macrorealm’, one experimenter running the computer, etc.) and we will see that in the computation running within this one branch we can identify many computational worlds.

The first set of Hadamard transformations is the easiest step to describe. We go from a state in which we can identify a single pattern corresponding to the first register (in the state $`|00\mathrm{}0`$) to one where we can identify $`n`$ patterns, each of which is a register in a different state. In our example, we start with one register pattern in the state $`|0`$ and end up with a superposition of two patterns, one of which is in the state $`|0`$ and the other in the state $`|1`$. These are now two computational worlds.

At this point in the proceedings there is nothing special to mark out these worlds over others that we could identify within the same state using a different basis. What will justify our looking at these particular patterns is how they evolve during the course of the computation, most importantly at the next step of manipulation.

Prior to the manipulation stage if we look at the state of the whole qubit array then we see the $`n`$ different patterns of the first register, and one pattern of the second which is in its default state (in our example, $`|1`$). During the manipulation, states of the second register ($`|g(\alpha )`$) become correlated with states of the first ($`|\alpha `$) as the two become entangled. We can now identify multiple patterns, each of which is two registers, which are in a state $`|\alpha |g(\alpha )`$.

Thus all the $`|g(\alpha )`$ states actually exist within the state — in the common parlance of quantum parallelism, the function $`g(\alpha )`$ has been evaluated for all values of $`\alpha `$ simultaneously. We also note that none of the $`|g(\alpha )`$ are interfering with each other at this stage in the calculation. Furthermore, we note that if our input state was not a superposition but a single (classical) value for $`\alpha `$, say $`a`$ (say if we looked at our computer during the computation and so ‘collapsed’ the superposition) then the state at this point would be the single (classical) state $`\{a,g(a)\}`$ which we could measure unambiguously: there is no essentially quantum feature of this step, it is purely the linearity of quantum mechanics that gives us the state $`_\alpha |\alpha |g(\alpha )`$ from the input $`|\alpha `$.

It is from this existence of all the $`|g(\alpha )`$, their mutual non-interference, and the knowledge of what happens to a single value for $`\alpha `$ that we say that we have multiple computational worlds present, with in each world the function $`g(\alpha )`$ being evaluated for a single value of $`\alpha `$. In the Deutsch algorithm we have two worlds, one of which has the registers in the state $`|0(1)^{f(0)}(|0|1)`$, and in the other they are in the state $`|1(1)^{f(1)}(|0|1)`$. Of course, were we to measure the state of the second register at this point then we would only find one value of $`g(\alpha )`$ — because our measuring device would be entangled with it, and the different values of $`g(\alpha )`$ would each have their own associated pattern that was a measuring device measuring a certain value.

In the last step, what we are trying to do is extract some global property of all the values of $`g(\alpha )`$ that we have in the state, and to as it were ‘put’ that information into a world with a high amplitude, so that when we come to measure we will be very likely to find out that information. How we do this is the key step in getting the speed-up over classical algorithms. We can see this from two further considerations:

1. Entropies of preparation and measurement. The entropy of the preparation is the Shannon (classical) information of the preparation process of a quantum state, and is bounded from below by the von Neumann entropy (quantum) of the state thus prepared. The entropy of measurement is the Shannon information of an ensemble of measurement outcomes, and again is bounded from below by the von Neumann entropy of the state being measured. Taken together, these two state that the maximum amount of (classical) information that can be stored and retrieved in one qubit is one bit. Essentially what is going on here in ESZ is that two bits are being stored in the qubit (one in each world), but only the information content of one world (ie one bit) can be retrieved by measurement.
2. Amount of information processed in quantum computations. Steane (2000) points out that the actual information that one gains in a quantum computation is quantitatively the same as from a classical computation of the same length. In our example, the quantum computation gives us a 1 bit output (the answer yes/no to the question ‘does $`f(0)=f(1)`$?’) for one measurement of the system, and a similar one-measurement classical computation also gives one bit (the value 0 or 1 of the function $`f(0)`$ or $`f(1)`$, depending on the input). Again, we can see this clearly in an ESZ picture: the final result will always be the information content of one world. The relation between classical and quantum computation is that in classical throughout the entire computation there is only one computational world, from which the answer is then read at the end; in quantum there are many computational worlds during the computation, but an observer will only ever have access to one world. From the fact that a classical description of an $`N`$ qubit system requires $`2^N`$ bits, (and yet we can only extract $`N`$ bits of information from it) we say that we have $`2^N`$ computational worlds. The essential difference between the two computations is that the quantum computation worlds can interfere, and so we can manipulate the state so that information pertaining to all worlds is included in just one world (or a few if the algorithm is probabilistic) by the end.

In our example, this important step is done by interfering the two worlds by a Hadamard transformation so that if the two function values are the same then we will get one result by measuring the first register, and if they are different then we will get another. By the end of the manipulation step (6) we have the first register in a different state depending on the relationship between the function values, but this information is as it were ‘spread out’ over both worlds, because measuring the first register at this point cannot distinguish between the states $`|0+|1`$ and $`|0|1`$. We therefore in this final step rotate the computational basis so that these two states become measurably distinct as $`|0`$ and $`|1`$.

To summarize. The picture ESZ gives us of a quantum computation is essentially parallel classical computations the results of which are then interfered. All of the state exists physically, and so all values of $`g(\alpha )`$ are calculated and actually exist. Up until stage three of the calculation they do not interfere with each other, and are entangled with $`|\alpha `$ states which also do not interfere, so we say we have $`M`$ computational worlds, where $`M`$ is the number of distinct states. Finally, these worlds are made to interfere with one-another, and then by measurement the experimenter becomes correlated with one of the remaining worlds, thus reading the output of the computation.

## 3 Some Objections — and (Hopefully) Some Answers

Debate on the utility of an Everettian picture of quantum computation has generally been carried out at an informal level. However, some objections have also been made in the literature, most notably Steane (2000). In this section we will deal with the issues raised in that paper in detail, and then discuss some objections that have not made it into the literature.

### 3.1 ‘A Quantum Computer Only Needs One Universe’

There are two main claims made by Steane (2000). The first is that quantum computers are not, in his words, ‘wedded to’ Everett interpretations for their understanding (ie he is arguing against a Deutsch-style argument (Deutsch 1997) that quantum computation is proof of the existence of many worlds). The second goes further than this, and says that the understanding of quantum computation that Everett gives is not only not necessary, but actually unhelpful at best and misleading at worst. As we noted in the introduction, this present paper is not concerned with the first of these two points - however the second presents a direct challenge to the acceptability of physical pictures such as the one given above, §2.3.

We first note that Steane is not dealing with ESZ in particular, but rather some fairly vague notion of a general Everett-style theory. We will find that a lot of his arguments simply do not apply to ESZ, or have missed the mark for anything other than a very naive Everett theory. This is not a surprising conclusion, given his remark in §I that he is unable to present the theory with ‘crystal clarity’. The main thrust of his argument is trying to show that it is more rigorous and intuitively correct to think in terms of quantum computation happening in a single universe rather than in ‘many universes’. He makes some comments, then six ‘remarks’, then a conclusion. We will deal with these separately.

#### 3.1.1 Universes

In presenting his idea of Everett, Steane comments that the term ‘world/universe’ seems to be used differently depending on whether decoherence has taken place or not (in his terminology, whether the process being described in reversible or irreversible. Of course in ESZ there is no such thing as an irreversible process). This corresponds to our definitions of ‘branch’ and ‘world’. Recall that a ‘branch’ is a complete macrorealm, whose stability and independent evolution is given by decoherence, and a ‘world’ is stable only over ‘relevant’ timescales, and its independence may be given by decoherence or may — as is the case with the computational worlds above — be given by the process being one where the worlds do not interfere for some part.

#### 3.1.2 Remark 1

The first remark was brought up in §2.3: that the information content of the output of a quantum computation is the same as for a classical one of the same length. Steane thus uses this to say that it is ‘not self-evident that a quantum computer does exponentially more computations than a classical computer’.

This fact is explained, as we showed above, in a natural way from ESZ, so it is not an intuitive argument against it. It is not an argument against the physical understanding that we get from ESZ: we can explain from the theory just how we can get global information about a function without consecutive evaluations of it, and in doing so we nevertheless explain why we cannot extract all the information from all worlds.

#### 3.1.3 Remark 2

As well as expanding on the previous Remark, this one makes the point that often mathematical notation can be misleading, and that there are some cases where one can interpret (naively) what has happened as many more processes than have actually occurred. Thus there is no straight argument from the existence of decompositions of the state such as (7) to the existence of many worlds.

Steane is correct that notation can be misleading, and also that we can sometimes incorrectly say that many processes have happened when only one has. However, there is more going on in the ESZ picture than simply extrapolating from the existence of the decomposition (7) to the existence of many worlds. As we have said, what defines the worlds is their explanatory usefulness and their stability and independence. Were these criteria not fulfilled for the $`|\alpha |g(\alpha )`$ states then we would have no right to call them ‘worlds’ in our Everett theory.

Furthermore, it is not only that we *can* identify a worlds decomposition of the state in this case, but that this identification does work for us explanatorily. The ‘extra’ ontology that we are committed to by saying that all values of $`g(\alpha )`$ are *really* evaluated helps us explain how we can calculate global properties of the function so quickly. The argument is not simply that we can interpret the process of a quantum computer as many parallel evaluations, but that this interpretation does work for us by helping us explain what is going on.

#### 3.1.4 Remark 3

This Remark expands on the previous one that mathematical notation can mislead, especially with reference to (7). Thus we cannot ‘read off’ from the mathematics just how many computational steps have actually been performed.

As above, the point is that there is more going on in ESZ than simply leaping from mathematical notation to ontological commitment.

#### 3.1.5 Remark 4

The point is made that the different worlds are not fully independent — evolution is unitary (and, although he does not say it, at the end of the computation the different worlds are interfered).

This is not a problem for ESZ as the claim is only that the worlds are independent insofar as we consider the manipulation stage. That is all that is claimed, not that they are completely independent. The claim is that we can *identify* worlds within the state of the computation, rather than that the state is composed of many worlds. This point is explored further below, in the discussion of Josza’s objection.

#### 3.1.6 Remark 5

The sensitivity to error in an $`N`$-qubit quantum computation is different from that of $`2^N`$ classical computations running in parallel. Such a classical computer would be sensitive to errors of the order $`1/2^N`$, whereas from error-correction theory we find the quantum computer to be sensitive only to O$`(1/poly(N))`$. Steane uses this to question the idea that the $`2^N`$ calculations are actually taking place.

Again, this is explained naturally from ESZ. The difference with a classical parallel computer is that an error process in a quantum computer (such as decoherence) will act on the whole state being processed. In other words, it will act on all of the worlds identified within the state in exactly the same way. In classical parallel computing errors can happen to individual computations (‘worlds’), but because the worlds are not fully independent (see above) in quantum computation, errors act globally. From this, we would *expect* the sensitivity to error to be O$`(1/poly(N))`$ — it is not a surprise.

#### 3.1.7 Remark 6

This Remark is essentially an expansion of Remark 4, that the state of the system in computation is a single entity, not a composition of many entities. Further to this, it is a way of representing all the different states $`g(\alpha )`$ without ‘actually’ calculating them or having them really exist. An analogy is drawn between identifying worlds in the state and calling them real, and granting reality to the individual Fourier components of a wave.

The idea that the state ‘represents’ all the $`|g(\alpha )`$ states without them being real is trying to show that Everett is not the only physical explanation of quantum computation, so is not relevant to the current paper. The analogy with Fourier components is quite interesting, however, as it is a good example to contrast with the worlds within a state, but which looks the same mathematically.

We note first of all that when we are talking about physical systems (rather than mathematical idealizations), ‘a wave’ is itself very much a part of a high-order ontology: it is a FAPP structure, as discussed above in §1.3. It is the excitation of various parts of the medium (say water) in different ways at different times — yet we call it a single ‘thing’ because it is relatively stable and acts independently and is explanatorily useful (we can have a useful theory which talks about waves as single objects). We can mathematically analyse this object in terms of its Fourier components. This is often useful mathematically; however in deciding whether or not to grant them *physical* reality, we must look at their physical usefulness.

The main problem with an explanation in terms of Fourier components is that they are not independent for any useful purpose. That is, we do not usefully have transformations that act separately on each component, as we do in (7). That is, they do not evolve separately under the action of the transformation, so there is no explanatory gain to be had by positing them as real. This in fact comes down to the fact that wave mechanics is not in this sense linear, whereas quantum mechanics is: were we to transform each Fourier component separately and then add them together, we would in general get something different from what we would get by transforming the sum of the components (the wave).

### 3.2 In Which World did the Calculation Happen?

One objection that is often raised to a picture of quantum computation in terms of many worlds was given by Jozsa (2001, seminar). Although it is fairly evident that it does not impact on ESZ, it is worth dealing with in detail to bring out one important aspect of ESZ: the breakdown in some situations of the ‘worlds’ concept. The objection is that by the end of the computation we cannot tell in which of the computational worlds the computer has been — so why do we want to say that the ‘worlds’ are individual and separate?

Even asking the question in this way does not make sense in ESZ. The state of the computation contains all the different worlds — this is the whole point, if it had only contained one then we would not have got speed up. This is all, remember, within a single branch, or macrorealm: within the state of the quantum computer in our single branch we can identify many computational worlds. As we have noted many times, the worlds are not wholly independent, and cease even for practical purposes to be independent when they interfere.

This last point is the important one: at some points during the computation we can identify worlds within the state, and at others we cannot. That is, the ‘worlds’ concept, as with all emergent concepts, breaks down at some point666A good analogy with phonons is given in Wallace (2001$`b`$): the concept of a phonon as an entity is a good and useful one when they decay slowly on relevant timescales, and once the decay becomes quick the ‘phonon’ concept begins to break down.. This is neither a worry nor a problem, but simply a part of the fact that we are dealing with higher-order ontology that is only defined in certain practical situations. In a quantum computation, we can identify worlds from after the first Hadamard until after the manipulation stage, but in the final Hadamard transformation the worlds concept breaks down as they interfere. All we can say is that before the transformation we could identify $`p`$ worlds, and after we identified $`q`$ worlds. The worlds do not persist throughout the entire computation. The reason why we identify them in ESZ is that they do not need to exist throughout in order to be useful and to count as real. Their usefulness lies in the manipulation stage, where we can say that we have *actually* calculated all the values of the function, and so we can explain what happens in a computation and where the speed-up over classical algorithms comes from. It is also necessary for the explanation that they do not evolve independently for the entire computation — it is only by interfering them, in which process the individual identities of the worlds are lost, that we can extract information pertaining to all computed values of the function, and hence make quantum computation distinct from classical.

###### Acknowledgements.

Many thanks to Hilary Carteret, Andrew Steane, David Wallace and Vlatko Vedral for conversations on this topic, to David Wallace for reading and commenting on §1, and to Vlatko Vedral for reading and commenting on the whole paper.


format: text

text:
# Dynamics of Strongly Deformed Polymers in Solution

## 1 Introduction

The slow internal dynamics of polymers makes polymer solutions viscoelastic which is manifest in such spectacular effects as turbulent drag reduction. In spite of active research for more than 60 years already, the understanding of these phenomena is still incomplete . Progress towards a microscopically founded rather than empirical description of flowing polymer solutions is possible only by a thorough analysis of the interplay between single polymers and the flow. However, only recent experiments on individual DNA molecules allow to observe the molecular conformations  and computer simulations facilitate a treatment of the nonlinear interactions within the polymer-solvent system .

The dynamics of fluctuations of a polymer in flow is commonly characterized by relaxation times and modes, which also determine the linear viscoelastic properties. These quantities are known analytically only for the linear Rouse and Zimm models . Questions arising are: Is there an effective method for determining the complete relaxation spectrum and the corresponding modes for fluctuations around an arbitrary stationary state also for more realistic nonlinear polymer models? What is their dependence on the polymer deformation and which decay laws describe the whole relaxation process of a strongly stretched polymer to equilibrium?

Here we give answers for the model problem of a tethered polymer in uniform flow which has been much investigated recently both experimentally  and theoretically using blob models  and bead spring models . By simulation of bead spring chains we determine the relative importance for the polymer dynamics of various interactions such as finite extensibility, excluded volume interactions (EVI), and hydrodynamic interactions (HI).

Due to Brownian motion, even in a steady state the beads fluctuate around some time-independent average positions. In the equilibrium state of a tethered polymer these average positions all coincide with the tether-point, while if the polymer is stretched by a flow or force they assume non-trivial values. Our analysis of the conformational fluctuations in such a statistically steady state is based on the covariance matrix of bead positions. This approach yields the full relaxation spectrum rather than only the longest relaxation time considered in previous works and it provides numeric values for the relaxation times which cannot be obtained from common scaling arguments. Furthermore it gives a corresponding complete set of uncorrelated relaxation modes and thus constitutes a generalization of the normal mode analysis used for the linear models of Rouse and Zimm which is applicable to nonlinear polymer models.

Theories of polymer deformation in simple shear or elongational flows rely on the so-called time criterion : the polymer will be significantly deformed when the inverse shear or elongation rate $`\kappa ^1`$ is shorter than the longest polymer relaxation time. Since the latter is conformation-dependent because of hydrodynamic backflow, it was argued that a hysteretic transition between a coiled and a stretched polymer conformation may occur upon varying $`\kappa `$ . Implicit in the use of the time criterion is the assumption that the polymer is in the steady state corresponding to the local flow field at any time. This requires variations in the flow field experienced by the polymer to be slow – an assumption which is probably not valid in flows as they occur e.g. in turbulent drag reduction. An interesting model for such rapidly varying flows is provided by the immediate start–up and cessation of simple flows like the uniform flow acting on a tethered polymer considered here. For this case we identify several regimes governed by different decay laws which have not been described before. This complex behavior cannot be captured by a simple dumbbell model and it coincides with the relaxation of fluctuations in the steady state only in the linear response regime of polymer dynamics.

## 2 Bead Spring Polymer Model

In our simulations we follow the Brownian dynamics of a bead spring model as described in more detail in Refs. . The equation of motion for the vector $`𝐑=(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_N)`$ of all bead positions may be written in the form

$$\dot{𝐑}=𝐯+𝐇𝐅+\sqrt{2k_BT𝐇}𝝃.$$
(1)
Here $`𝐯=v\widehat{𝐱}`$ is the velocity of the unperturbed flow, $`k_B`$ is the Boltzmann constant, $`T`$ the temperature and $`\xi (t)`$ is an uncorrelated Gaussian white noise with zero mean and unit variance. The potential forces $`𝐅`$ comprise a repulsive Lennard Jones force describing the excluded volume interactions (EVI) and the next-neighbor bond forces for which we use either a linear or the familiar FENE (Finite Extensible Nonlinear Elastic) force law. The latter provides a reasonable approximation of polymers with a fixed bond length for flow velocities $`v0.5`$. Throughout this work we use a chain length of $`N=100`$ and the parameters appearing in the potential forces $`𝐅`$ are the same as in Ref. , where this choice was shown to prohibit bond crossings in the case with EVI. The hydrodynamic interactions (HI) are incorporated in the Oseen tensor approximation , where the flow perturbations due to all beads simply superimpose and the additional drag forces can be expressed by the off–diagonal part of the mobility tensor $`𝐇`$. We have $`𝐇_{ij}=\mathrm{\Omega }(𝐑_i𝐑_j)`$ for $`ij`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }(𝐫)=(\mathrm{𝟏}+\widehat{𝐫}\widehat{𝐫}^T)/(8\pi \eta |𝐫|)`$ and $`𝐇_{ii}=\mathrm{𝟏}/\zeta `$ with $`\zeta =6\pi \eta a`$ the friction coefficient of a bead with radius $`a`$ in a solvent of viscosity $`\eta `$. In contrast to previous work  we do not average $`𝐇`$ which would effectively linearize the equation of motion. Since the Oseen tensor becomes non-positive for bead separations of the order of $`a`$, we always consider HI together with EVI. The values $`\eta =0.2`$, $`\zeta =1.0`$, $`k_BT=1.0`$ and $`b=1.0`$ (harmonic springs) or $`b=0.961`$ (FENE springs) for the bond length $`b`$ fix the strength of the HI and the units of force, energy, length etc. .

## 3 Covariance Matrix

Analytically the polymer relaxation spectrum and modes can be calculated only for the Rouse and Zimm models  which are governed by linear equations of motion by virtue of the assumptions made. For realistic polymer models in contrast, the equation of motion, as described above, is nonlinear.

Nevertheless, the relaxation times $`\tau _p`$ of the Rouse amplitudes are often used also for nonlinear polymer models in order to characterize the dynamics of fluctuations in steady states. Each Rouse amplitude is obtained by projecting a time series of polymer conformations on the respective Rouse mode and $`\tau _p`$ is determined by an exponential fit to the time evolution of this amplitude . The determination of $`\tau _p`$ in this way is tedious and error-prone so that in practice only the few longest relaxation times can be obtained. In addition, the significance of the Rouse modes for nonlinear models is unclear. Another approach  aims at the relaxation spectrum directly, without referring to corresponding modes, by applying an inverse Laplace transform to a single time series of some observable like the end–to–end distance. Due to the presence of noise in the data this requires the use of special regularization techniques and the results may depend strongly on the regularization parameter.

Here we determine the polymer relaxation spectrum and a corresponding set of uncorrelated modes from the covariance matrix of bead positions. This approach is motivated by a relation between the initial decay–rate of correlations in the dynamics of conformational fluctuations in a steady state and the second moments of the statistics of bead positions. This relation may be proved for arbitrary polymer models in thermal equilibrium, for models without HI, or for a preaveraged mobility tensor $`𝐇`$ by using the the linear response formalism as described e.g. in Ref.. To be specific: A large sample of data is generated by integrating equation (1) numerically over a long time and storing all bead positions in equal time intervals. Then from this time series $`𝐱(\mu )=𝐑(\mu \mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ the mean bead positions $`𝐑=_{\mu =1}^M𝐑(\mu \mathrm{\Delta }t)/M`$ are calculated as well as the covariance matrix $`𝐂`$ of the deviations $`𝐲=𝐑𝐑`$

$$𝐂=\mathrm{𝐲𝐲}^Tk_\mathrm{B}T𝐇^1.$$
(2)
Once $`𝐂`$ is obtained, its eigenvalues $`\tau _p`$ give the complete spectrum of relaxation times of fluctuations in a steady state. The eigenvectors $`𝐲_p^\alpha `$ of $`𝐂`$, $`\alpha =x,y,z`$, $`p=1\mathrm{}N`$, are uncorrelated and form a basis of the space of polymer conformations such that the deviations $`𝐲`$ may be expressed as a linear combination $`𝐲=_{p,\alpha }a_p^\alpha 𝐲_p^\alpha `$ with amplitudes $`a_p^\alpha `$. At equilibrium $`𝐑=0`$ and the modes $`𝐲_p^\alpha =𝐑_p^\alpha `$ describe special polymer conformations where the position of the $`i`$–th bead $`[𝐑_p^\alpha ]_i`$ may be factored in a direction $`\widehat{𝐄}^\alpha `$ and a distance function $`R_{pi}`$ as $`[𝐑_p^\alpha ]_i=R_{pi}\widehat{𝐄}^\alpha `$. The relaxation spectrum is threefold degenerate due to symmetry. In the presence of a uniform flow one can distinguish one longitudinal mode along the flow direction and two transverse modes perpendicular to it. Since $`𝐑0`$ away from equilibrium, $`[𝐲_p^\alpha ]_i`$ is not the absolute position of bead $`i`$ when the mode is excited but the deviation from its mean position. The $`[𝐲_p^\alpha ]_i`$ are a natural generalization of the Rouse modes for deformed polymers with nonlinear laws of motion. From a practical point of view this method to compute relaxation times is fast, easy to use, needs no adjustments of parameters or additional assumptions, and yields the complete spectrum in one sweep. A more detailed discussion and a possible extension of this method that does not invoke preaveraging of $`𝐇`$ will be given elsewhere.

## 4 Relaxation of Fluctuations

The relaxation spectrum of a Rouse chain in thermal equilibrium as calculated by the method described above is shown in Fig. 1. It agrees perfectly with the analytical result

$$\tau _p^R=\frac{\zeta }{k_H}\left(4\mathrm{sin}^2\left(\frac{2p1}{2N+1}\frac{\pi }{2}\right)\right)^1,$$
(3)
where $`\zeta `$ is the single bead friction coefficient and $`k_\mathrm{H}`$ is the force constant of the springs connecting the beads. The usual scaling $`\tau _p^R(2p1)^2`$  follows for $`(2p1)/N0`$. Of the nonlinear effects considered here EVI have not been included in previous work concerned with strong deformations of polymers . However, a comparison with the Rouse modes in Fig. 1 shows that even in equilibrium EVI leads to a small but significant modification of the relaxation modes. The scaling of the relaxation times in this case is $`\tau _p(2p1)^{2.2}`$. This is precisely the inverse of the power law dependence on the chain length $`\tau N^{2\nu +1}`$ predicted by scaling theory  for a polymer with EVI where $`\nu =3/5`$ which is also reproduced by the analysis given above. In contrast to scaling theory, our method also yields a number for the longest relaxation time $`\tau _1=6.510^3`$ which turns out to be about a factor of $`5`$ larger with than without EVI. Upon addition of HI to the model the properties of the Zimm model  are reproduced, i.e. $`\tau _p(2p1)^{1.8}`$.

Replacing harmonic by FENE springs does not affect the equilibrium relaxation times or modes. Away from equilibrium, however, this has a profound impact. As shown in Fig. 2, the modes are very different from the Rouse form and the relaxation times decrease strongly with increasing flow velocity. A decrease of the relaxation times has been reported recently also for a chain which is pulled at the ends . Experimentally it was observed that the polymer relaxation in this case can be described by the Rouse modes . Pulling a polymer at the ends, however, is special in that the tension along the polymer is everywhere the same. In contrast, when the polymer is stretched by a flow then the tension in general is inhomogeneous . A comparison of the modes calculated for both cases reveals that just this inhomogeneity causes the strong deviation of the modes from the Rouse form as shown in Fig. 2. We remark that such inhomogeneous tension also arises due to EVI and HI .

To identify the effects of HI on the relaxation of a polymer in uniform flow, we compare models with harmonic springs and EVI for the two cases without and with HI. In the first case the relaxation times decrease in stronger flows since EVI are less important for an elongated polymer . For $`v\stackrel{>}{}0.2`$ the modes assume Rouse shape and both scaling and numerical values of the relaxation spectrum exhibit a crossover to Rouse behavior. Upon adding HI to the model, the relaxation times behave non-monotonic: after an initial decay they increase with $`v`$ in an intermediate range $`0.2\stackrel{<}{}v\stackrel{<}{}2.0`$ and only at very large flow velocities $`v>5.0`$ there is a crossover to Rouse behavior. For the chain lengths available in the present study, the combination of FENE springs with EVI and HI results in a monotonic decrease of the longest relaxation time.

## 5 Average Dynamics

After cessation of the uniform flow the tethered polymer relaxes from an elongated to a coiled state. For the model with harmonic springs the mean $`x`$–component of the end–to–end vector $`X_E(t)`$ decays exponentially with a time constant $`\tau _p^R`$, cf. Eq. (3). When EVI are added, the polymer relaxation exhibits three distinct regimes as shown in Fig. 3. Initially, $`X_E(t)`$ decays exponentially with time constant $`\tau _1^R`$. This regime is dominated by the relaxation of the stretched part of the chain close to the tether-point where EVI are negligible. Then, one finds a stretched exponential decay $`X_E(t)\mathrm{exp}((t/\tau _1^R)^\beta )`$ with stretching exponent $`\beta 0.5`$. Neither simple exponentials nor power laws gave satisfactory agreement with the simulation data. During this stage, the relaxation is increasingly slowed down because self-avoidance constraints become more important. A common explanation of stretched exponential behavior is by a superposition of single exponential decays with time constants that obey a power law. A power law spectrum of modes is provided here by the Rouse modes which all become excited due to the nonlinear coupling by EVI even when initially only the lowest mode is present. It is unlikely that this complex relaxation behavior can be captured by a single mode theory like the dumbbell model. In a third regime finally, which sets in when $`X_E(t)`$ equals the equilibrium end–to–end distance $`R_E=22.2`$, the entangling process is completed and the vanishing equilibrium value of $`X_E`$ is approached by only local rearrangements within the coil. This process is again described by a single exponential decay law where the time constant is now given by the longest relaxation time in equilibrium, cf. Fig. 1. When in addition to EVI also HI are included in the model, a very different behavior results in the initial phase of the relaxation for large velocities $`v0.5`$. In this case the polymer at first appears to move freely, i.e. $`X_E/tv`$. This is the consequence of a large flow perturbation due to average forces acting on the beads which leads to a highly cooperative motion. This is very different from the steady state where the flow perturbation is caused only by fluctuating forces. Replacing the harmonic by FENE springs causes a short and rapid initial recoil but the later stages of the relaxation remain qualitatively unaffected.

After the flow is started, simulation data (not shown in the figure) reveal for all models at first a short period of apparent free polymer motion. This is followed by a single exponential growth of $`X_E`$ which is well described by the longest relaxation time in the stretched final state. The pure Rouse model is exceptional since the initial regime is confined to the shortest relaxation time.

## 6 Conclusions

Using the second moments of the statistics of bead positions, we have applied a powerful method for the determination of the complete polymer relaxation spectrum and corresponding modes from simulation data. Our approach works for both nonlinear polymer models and arbitrary steady states as caused by the action of flows or forces on the polymer. For a tethered polymer in uniform flow, the finite extensibility causes a monotonic decrease of relaxation times with increasing elongation. Older theories of the coil stretch transition in elongational flow, in contrast, were based on the assumption of increasing relaxation times . This finding agrees with recent results obtained for a chain pulled only at the ends  where the modes remain Rouse-like. The modes for a polymer stretched by a flow, in contrast, are very different from the Rouse modes because the tension along the polymer then in general is inhomogeneous. On the other hand we found that HI may lead to a non-monotonic velocity dependence of the relaxation times. In order to draw a final conclusion about the occurrence of a coil-stretch transition as predicted for elongational flow, longer chains would have to be considered.

Going beyond the relaxation dynamics of polymers close to steady states, we also dropped the common preaveraging approximation for the mobility tensor. Thus, in contrast to other recent work, all effects relevant for uncharged polymers in flows are covered. Specifically, we have considered the response of a tethered polymer to start-up or cessation of the flow and found that EVI causes a stretched exponential relaxation which can only be described by a model with many degrees of freedom and not by a simple dumbbell model. Scaling relations predicted by common blob models  are unlikely to occur in simulations because the blob models do not include inhomogeneous effects of EVI and HI . A more detailed discussion of relations to other work and an extension of this study to other flow fields will be given elsewhere.

\***

It is a pleasure to acknowledge fruitful discussions with B. Dünweg and D. Kienle.


text:
# High Energy Neutrinos from Magnetars

## 1. Introduction

The most widely discussed high energy neutrino sources include gamma-ray bursts (e.g. Waxman & Bahcall 1997, 2000; Dai & Lu 2001; Mészáros & Waxman 2001; Guetta, Spada & Waxman 2001), blazars (e.g. Stecker et al. 1991; Atoyan & Dermer 2001) and micro-quasars (e.g. Levinson & Waxman 2001). Another type of objects, pulsars, have been also considered for some time to be high energy neutrino emitters (e.g. Eichler 1978; Helfand 1979). The direct motivation is that pulsars are unipolar generators which induce a large potential to accelerate protons to high energies (see Blasi, Epstein & Olinto 2000; Arons 2003, for recent discussions on the topic). Such high energy protons, when colliding with target photons or materials, can generate neutrinos mainly through pion decay. In the immediate environment of a pulsar (e.g. within its magnetosphere), however, the main difficulty is the lack of a large enough target column density for pion production. The pulsar neutrino emission is therefore usually discussed within the context of pulsar wind nebulae (Beall & Bednarek 2002; Bednarek 2001) or binary systems (e.g. Eichler 1978).

Here we show that the conditions for neutrino production via photomeson interaction are realized in the inner magnetospheres of the so-called “magnetars”, pulsars with superstrong surface magnetic fields ($`B_s10^{15}`$ G) (Duncan & Thompson 1992; Paczýnski 1992; Usov 1992), if they are young enough to allow acceleration of protons above the photomeson threshold. These objects are the leading candidate for explaining the widely observed soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) (Thompson & Duncan 1995, 1996; see observational reviews by Hurley 2000, Mereghetti 2000, and a theoretical review by Thompson 2000). We will estimate the high energy neutrino flux of these objects, as well as their detectability with currently operating and planned large area neutrino telescopes, such as AMANDA-II, ICECUBE, ANTARES, NESTOR and NEMO. We will also estimate a diffuse high energy neutrino background contributed by all young magnetars in the universe.

## 2. Basic picture and photomeson threshold

In the original definition of Thompson & Duncan, magnetars are neutron stars powered by decaying magnetic fields (Goldreich & Reisenegger 1992; Thompson & Duncan 1996; Heyl & Kulkarni 1998; Colpi, Geppert & Page 2000). However, since they are rotating neutron stars, a conventional power source, i.e., the spindown energy of the star should also play a noticeable role. Although in the slowly rotating magnetars (corresponding to SGRs and AXPs) the spindown power is much lower than the magnetic power, it can exceed the magnetic power during the magnetar’s early life time when the star spins much more rapidly. In any case, there are in principle two main energy sources that power a magnetar. Within the context of our proposed neutrino production mechanism, the dominant photomeson interaction leading to neutrinos occurs through the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-resonance,

$$p\gamma \mathrm{\Delta }n\pi ^+n\nu _\mu \mu ^+n\nu _\mu e^+\nu _e\overline{\nu }_\mu .$$
(1)
In magnetars, the spindown power serves to accelerate protons, and the magnetic power provides copious near-surface photon targets, so that the condition for photomeson interaction is in principle realized. In order to achieve substantial neutrino production rate, however, a threshold condition

$$ϵ_pϵ_\gamma \stackrel{>}{}0.3(\mathrm{GeV})^2f_g$$
(2)
has to be satisfied. Here

$$f_g(1\mathrm{cos}\theta _{p\gamma })^1$$
(3)
is a geometric factor, where $`\theta _{p\gamma }`$ is the maximum lab-frame incidence angle between protons and photons.

The maximum potential drop of a magnetar with the rotation frequency, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2\pi /P`$ (where $`P`$ is the period), and surface magnetic field at the pole, $`B_p=10^{15}\mathrm{G}B_{p,15}`$, is

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^2B_pR^3}{2c^2}6.6\times 10^{15}\mathrm{V}B_{p,15}R_6^3P^2,$$
(4)
where $`R=10^6\mathrm{cm}R_6`$ is the stellar radius. For a fraction $`f=0.5f_{1/2}`$ (the nominal value is for the case assuming a random distribution of the inclination angles) of the magnetars whose spin and magnetic moment point in opposite directions, i.e., $`𝛀𝐁_p<0`$, the spin-induced parallel electric field accelerates positive charges from the surface. The neutron star surface composition is poorly known. Current modeling of the X-ray data from some nearby isolated neutron stars suggests that it likely consists of light elements such as hydrogen or helium (Zavlin, Pavlov & Trümper 1998; Sanwal et al. 2002) rather than heavy elements such as iron. Recently, Ibrahim et al. (2002, 2003) reported discoveries of the cyclotron resonance features from SGR 1806-20 during outburst which are well interpreted as proton cyclotron features in a magnetar environment, lending credence that the surface composition of magnetars is hydrogen. Here we assume a hydrogen composition of the magnetar surface. According to the standard pulsar theory, protons are accelerated from the polar cap region within charge-depleted gaps (e.g. Ruderman & Sutherland 1975; Arons & Scharlemann 1979). If surface temperatures of magnetars are high enough to allow free emission of protons, space-charge limited flow models of electron acceleration (Arons & Sharlemann 1979; Harding & Muslimov 1998, 2001, 2002) will apply to the acceleration of protons in this case.

Magnetars are also strong X-ray emitters. During the early epochs of their lives, magnetars emit thermal radiation, thought to be due to decay of the strong magnetic fields. This maintains a high X-ray luminosity (typically $`10^{35}10^{36}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$ as observed in SGRs/AXPs) over a long period of time. The nominal field decay law, $`dB_p/dt=bB_p^{1+\delta }`$, leads to a magnetic field strength time dependence $`B_p(t)=B_{p,0}/[1+t/\tau _{mag}]^{1/\delta }`$ (Colpi et al. 2000), where $`B_{p,0}`$ is the initial surface field at the pole. Thus the magnetar surface field, and hence its quiescent X-ray luminosity, remains almost constant for a typical decaying timescale $`\tau _{mag}=(b\delta B_{p,0}^\delta )^110^4`$ yr. The observed blackbody temperature for SGR/AXP quiescent emission is $`kT_{\mathrm{}}(0.40.6)`$ keV (e.g. Hurley 2000; Meregheti 2001; Thompson 2001). The typical near-surface photon energy is therefore

$$ϵ_\gamma =2.8kT_{\mathrm{}}(1+z_g)(1.62.4)\mathrm{keV},$$
(5)
where $`(1+z_g)1.4`$ is the near-surface gravitational redshift. The threshold proton energy from eq.(2) is therefore

$$ϵ_{p,th}(125188)f_g\mathrm{TeV}.$$
(6)
The potential across the polar cap \[eq.(4)\] drops as $`P^2`$ as the star spins down. The typical energy of the protons accelerated in the inner gap is a fraction of $`e\mathrm{\Phi }`$, which also drops as the magnetar ages. The proton energy acquired in the inner gap can be written as $`ϵ_p=\eta _pe\mathrm{\Phi }`$, where $`\eta _p`$ parameterizes the uncertainties in the utilization of the polar cap unipolar potential. The maximum efficiency could be as high as $`\eta _{p,max}(0.150.85)`$ (eqs. and  of Zhang, Harding & Muslimov 2000), if the electric field parallel to the magnetic field line is not effectively screened, and if the particle acceleration is not radiation-reaction-limited. For proton accelerators, radiation reaction is negligible for the known magnetar candidates (SGRs/AXPs), mainly because of the small magnetic field curvature in slow rotators. Soft X-rays could be Lorentz-boosted in the proton’s rest frame and pair-produce in its Coulomb field (Cheng & Ruderman 1977; Heitler 1954), with a cross section $`\sigma _\pm Z^2\alpha \sigma _T(3/8\pi )[(28/9)\mathrm{ln}(E_\gamma ^{}/m_ec^2)218/27]Z^27\times 10^{27}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ for $`ϵ_pϵ_{p,th}`$, where $`Z`$ is atomic number, $`\alpha `$ is the fine-structure constant, $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson cross section, and $`E_\gamma ^{}`$ is the Lorentz-boosted photon energy in the rest frame of the proton. The typical pair-production mean free path is $`l_\pm (n_\gamma \sigma _\pm )^11.3\times 10^4`$ cm, comparable to that in old normal pulsars whose primary pairs are produced through non-resonant inverse Compton scattering. Comparing with the numerical results in the pulsar case (Harding & Muslimov 2002), the pairs produced in such an environment are likely to be too few to fully screen the parallel electric field before the protons reach the photomeson threshold. The cascade pair multiplicity for old magnetars is small. As a result, $`\eta _p\eta _{p,max}`$ could be achieved in old magnetars, so that

$$ϵ_{p,max}\eta _{p,max}e\mathrm{\Phi }(40220)\mathrm{TeV}B_{p,15}R_6^3(P/5\mathrm{s})^2.$$
(7)
Although in young magnetars the parallel electric fields may be screened before $`ϵ_p`$ reaching $`ϵ_{p,max}`$, this nonetheless happens well above $`ϵ_{p,th}`$. Thus, one can define a “neutrino death valley” for magnetars by requiring that $`ϵ_{p,max}`$ (7) exceeds the threshold energy $`ϵ_{p,th}`$ (6), which gives

$$P<(2.46.8)\mathrm{s}B_{p,15}^{1/2}R_6^{3/2}f_g^{1/2}.$$
(8)
The range of periods in the right hand side of eq.(8) defines two diagonal lines in the $`PB_p`$ plane (Figure 1). Photomeson interactions and neutrino emission cease when the magnetar crosses this valley from left to right during its evolution. Magnetars lying in the valley itself are marginal neutrino emitters, i.e., they could be neutrino-loud for favorable parameters.

## 3. Discrete sources

Here we investigate the possibility of detecting neutrino emission from the individual known magnetar candidates (i.e. SGRs and AXPs), which are typically slow rotators.

As seen in eq.(8), the location of the neutrino death valley depends on the geometric factor $`f_g`$ (eq.). Below we will discuss the possible value of this factor. For the simplest case, thermal photons are expected to be emitted from the surface semi-isotropically, so that $`\theta _{p\gamma }90^\mathrm{o}`$ and $`f_g1`$. In recent magnetar models (Thompson, Lyutikov & Kulkarni 2002) the magnetosphere is assumed to be globally twisted and current-carrying. The non-relativistic charges in the closed field line region form a resonant cyclotron screen at a high altitude (about 10 stellar radii) with an optical depth higher than unity (see also Wang et al. 1998 for a similar discussion within the context of normal pulsars). The emergent X-ray photons would endure multiple Comptonization before escaping, and the mechanism is used to interpret the observed hard X-ray non-thermal tail in the SGR/AXP spectrum (Thompson et al. 2002). In such a picture, it is natural to expect some downward X-ray photons (with a luminosity comparable to what is observed) reflected from the resonant cyclotron screen into the open field line region. Here we assume a $`50\%`$ efficiency of backscattering of the surface thermal photons, but the real fraction has to be treated more carefully by incorporating the detailed radiation transfer processes. In such a most favorable case, $`\theta _{p\gamma }\stackrel{<}{}180^\mathrm{o}`$ could be achieved so that $`f_g\stackrel{>}{}1/2`$. This is the most optimistic case for neutrino production.

If such a pair reflection screen is ineffective, however, $`f_g`$ is larger. Defining the typical photomeson interaction mean free path as $`l_{p\gamma }`$ and the physical hot spot radius as $`r_h`$, one can estimate111The length for the proton to achieve significant acceleration is at most comparable to $`l_{p\gamma }`$ within various acceleration models (Harding & Muslimov 1998; Ruderman & Sutherland 1975). Therefore we may regard $`l_{p\gamma }`$ as the typical vertical length scale for photomeson interaction.

$$\mathrm{cos}\theta _{p\gamma }=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left[1\left(\frac{R}{R+l_{p\gamma }}\right)^2\right]^{1/2},\hfill & l_{p\gamma }l_{cr},\hfill \\ \left[1+\left(\frac{r_h}{l_{p\gamma }}\right)^2\right]^{1/2},\hfill & l_{p\gamma }>l_{cr}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
where $`l_{cr}`$ satisfies the relation $`[1+(r_h/l_{cr})^2][1(R/R+l_{cr})^2=1`$, and is the critical height at which the horizon is just the boundary of the hot spot. In typical SGRs/AXPs, the surface area of the hot region is large, which could be roughly estimated as $`AL/\sigma [(1+z_g)T_{\mathrm{}}]^44.0\times 10^{11}\mathrm{cm}^2L_{35}(kT_{\mathrm{}}/0.5\mathrm{keV})^4`$, where $`\sigma =ac/4`$ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. This gives a rough estimate of the “hot spot” radius $`r_h3.6\times 10^5\mathrm{cm}L_{35}^{1/2}(kT_{\mathrm{}}/0.5\mathrm{keV})^2`$. Given a typical neutron star radius $`R10^6`$ cm and this particular $`r_h`$ value, one can solve for $`l_{cr}3.0\times 10^5`$ cm. On the other hand, the photomeson interaction mean free path could be estimated as $`l_{p\gamma }(n_\gamma \sigma _{p\gamma })^11.8\times 10^5\mathrm{cm}(kT_{\mathrm{}}/0.5\mathrm{keV})^3`$, where $`n_\gamma (a/2.8k)[(1+z_g)T_{\mathrm{}}]^31.1\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^3(kT_{\mathrm{}}/0.5\mathrm{keV})^3`$ is the soft photon number density, $`\sigma _{p\gamma }5\times 10^{28}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ is the photomeson interaction cross section, and $`a`$ and $`k`$ are the blackbody radiation density constant and the Boltzmann constant, respectively. We can see $`l_{p\gamma }<l_{cr}`$ for typical parameters, so that the first expression in eq.(9) is relevant. The salient feature of this expression is that it does not depend on the poorly determined parameter $`r_h`$, as long as it is large enough. The gravitational bending effect also helps to decrease $`f_g`$. For the above typical parameters, we have $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _{p\gamma }=[1(R/R+l_{p\gamma })^2]^{1/2}0.5`$, or $`f_g2`$. Both $`l_{p\gamma }`$ and $`r_h`$ are steep function of the surface temperature, but for reasonable magnetar surface temperatures, e.g., $`kT_{\mathrm{}}>0.4`$ keV, $`l_{p\gamma }<l_{cr}`$ is satisfied. However, $`f_g`$ will be significantly increased for smaller $`kT_{\mathrm{}}`$, rendering all SGRs/AXPs below the neutrino death valley. On the other hand, however, higher surface temperatures (which is usually associated with the post-burst situation) and a larger neutron star radius will decrease $`f_g`$ and significantly ease the threshold condition. Observationally it has been found that the SGR quiescent luminosity is greatly increased for a long period of time (e.g. Woods 2003), so that we expect a more facilitated condition and a higher luminosity for a post-burst magnetar.

In Figure 1, we plot all the SGRs and AXPs with period $`P`$ and spin-down rate $`\dot{P}`$ measurements relative to the neutrino death valleys for $`f_g=1/2`$ (dotted), $`f_g=1`$ (solid) and $`f_g=2`$ (dashed). The polar cap magnetic field for each magnetar is estimated as $`B_p=6.4\times 10^{19}\mathrm{G}(P\dot{P})^{1/2}R_6^3I_{45}^{1/2}`$, where $`I`$ is the stellar moment of inertia. A typical magnetar evolutionary track with $`\tau _{mag}10^4`$ yr is also plotted, with typical ages marked. We find that, although none of the magnetars are firmly above any of the death valley definitions, four of them are within the $`f_g1/2`$ valley, two of them are within the $`f_g=1`$ valley, and SGR 1900+14 lies within the $`f_g=2`$ valley.

We estimate the neutrino emission luminosity $`L_\nu `$ for these “marginal” magnetars. If pions decay immediately after production, the neutrino emission power can be estimated as $`P_\nu 0.05(4/3)\sigma _{p\gamma }c\gamma _p^2aT^44\times 10^5\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1(ϵ_p/100\mathrm{T}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})^2(T_{\mathrm{}}/0.5\mathrm{keV})^4`$, where the factor $`0.05=(1/4)\eta _{p\pi }`$, $`\eta _{p\pi }0.2`$ is the average fraction of the energy transferred from the proton to the pion, and the factor (1/4) takes into account the equal energy distribution among other three leptons besides $`\nu _\mu `$ (Halzen & Hooper 2002). The total number of protons is estimated as $`N_pn_{gj}_0^{r_\nu }A_o(r)𝑑r`$, where $`n_{gj}=\mathrm{\Omega }B(r)/2\pi ce`$ is the Goldreich-Julian (1969) number density, $`A_o(r)`$ is the cross section of the open-field line region, and $`r_\nu R`$ is the typical length for effective neutrino radiation. This gives

$`L_{\nu ,0}`$ $`=`$ $`N_pP_\nu 2.3\times 10^{33}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}`$ (10)
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\eta _p}{0.5}}\right)^2B_{p,15}^3R_6^{10}\left({\displaystyle \frac{P}{5\mathrm{s}}}\right)^6\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{}}}{0.5\mathrm{keV}}}\right)^4.`$
The $`\pi ^+`$’s can also undergo radiative loss and possible reacceleration in the unscreened parallel electric field before decaying to $`\nu _\mu `$. The final neutrino luminosity is then

$$L_\nu =f_cL_{\nu ,0},$$
(11)
where $`f_c`$ is a correction factor for cooling or reacceleration. For the four marginal magnetars, reacceleration is not important, since $`ϵ_p`$ is already close to $`ϵ_{p,max}`$. The synchrotron cooling is rapid, and the $`\pi ^+`$’s soon settle into their ground Landau state with a parallel energy component $`\gamma _{}=\gamma /(1+(\gamma ^21)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )^{1/2}`$ (Zhang & Harding 2000), which is essentially $`\gamma `$ when the pion injection angle $`\theta 0`$ (which is usually valid, especially for slow rotators). For threshold interactions, the typical pion Lorentz factor upon production is $`\gamma _{\pi ^+}2.1\times 10^5(ϵ_{\pi ^+}/30\mathrm{T}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})`$. The pions cool via inverse Compton scattering (IC) with thermal photons in the Klein-Nishina regime, with a cooling time-scale $`\tau _{\mathrm{IC}}3\times 10^4\mathrm{s}(ϵ_{\pi ^+}/30\mathrm{T}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})^1(ϵ_\gamma /2\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})^4`$, which is shorter than the pion decay time $`\tau _{decay}2.6\times 10^8\mathrm{s}\gamma _{\pi ^+}=5.5\times 10^3\mathrm{s}(ϵ_{\pi ^+}/30\mathrm{TeV})`$. Thus the pions undergo some IC cooling before they decay, and the typical neutrino energy is down by a factor $`f_c=(0.3/5.5)^{1/2}0.23`$ relative to the $`ϵ_{\nu ,th}`$. Therefore for discrete sources, the typical neutrino energy is

$$ϵ_\nu 0.05f_cϵ_{p,th}(1.42.2)f_g\mathrm{TeV}.$$
(12)
The final neutrino luminosity is

$`L_\nu `$ $`=`$ $`L_{\nu ,0}f_c5.8\times 10^{32}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\eta _p}{0.5}}\right)^2`$ (13)
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{f_c}{0.25}}\right)B_{p,15}^3R_6^{10}\left({\displaystyle \frac{P}{5\mathrm{s}}}\right)^6\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{}}}{0.5\mathrm{keV}}}\right)^4.`$
Since the spindown luminosity is $`L_{sd}=1.5\times 10^{34}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}B_{p,15}^2R_6^6(P/5\mathrm{s})^4`$, the neutrino emission efficiency is then

$`\eta _\nu `$ $`=`$ $`L_\nu /L_{sd}0.04\left({\displaystyle \frac{\eta _p}{0.5}}\right)^2`$ (14)
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{f_c}{0.25}}\right)B_{p,15}R_6^4\left({\displaystyle \frac{P}{5\mathrm{s}}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{}}}{0.5\mathrm{keV}}}\right)^4.`$
We assume that this luminosity is beamed into a sweep-averaged solid angle $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu 0.1`$, which is typical for a polar cap angle $`0.01`$ and a moderate inclination angle of the rotator. A smaller/larger $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$ increases/decreases the on-beam neutrino flux, but decreases/increases the probability of on-beam detection. For an on-beam observer, the neutrino number flux at earth is

$`\varphi _\nu `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{L_\nu }{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu D^2ϵ_\nu }}2.1\times 10^{12}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ (15)
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{0.1}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\eta _p}{0.5}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{f_c}{0.25}}\right)B_{p,15}^3R_6^{10}`$
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{P}{5\mathrm{s}}}\right)^6\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{}}}{0.5\mathrm{keV}}}\right)^4\left({\displaystyle \frac{D}{5\mathrm{kpc}}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_\nu }{2\mathrm{TeV}}}\right)^1,`$
where $`D`$ is the distance to the source. The probability of detecting a neutrino-induced upward muon with planned neutrino telescopes is $`P_{\nu \mu }1.3\times 10^6(ϵ_\nu /\mathrm{TeV})`$ (Halzen & Hooper 2002), giving an on-beam upward muon event rate

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dAdt}}(\mathrm{discrete})1.7\mathrm{km}^2\mathrm{yr}^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{0.1}}\right)^1\left({\displaystyle \frac{\eta _p}{0.5}}\right)^2`$
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{f_c}{0.25}}\right)B_{p,15}^3R_6^{10}\left({\displaystyle \frac{P}{5\mathrm{s}}}\right)^6\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{}}}{0.5\mathrm{keV}}}\right)^4\left({\displaystyle \frac{D}{5\mathrm{kpc}}}\right)^2.`$ (16)
The chances for the observer to be in the neutrino beam are not large. Nonetheless, there is a small but finite probability for directly detecting some neutrinos from these objects. In Table 1, we give the predicted muon event rates for the four magnetar candidates which may be neutrino loud under favorable conditions, assuming an on-beam observation. Since other magnetars all lie below the most favorable $`f_g=1/2`$ death valley, they are definetely below the photomeson threshold, and we do not consider them as neutrino emission candidates. From Table 1, we see that SGR 1900+14 and 1E 1048-5937 may be detected by km3 telescopes with several years of operation, if they are above the photomeson threshold and if their neutrino beams sweep the Earth. Accompanying the neutrinos there should also be electromagnetic signals from $`\pi ^0`$-decay and $`\pi ^+`$ cooling and cascading. The high $`\gamma B`$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ pair-formation and photon splitting opacity in the strong magnetic fields may degrade the typical photon energy to $``$ 40 MeV, below the EGRET band (e.g. Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997; Baring & Harding 2001), but it may fall into the INTEGRAL band.

## 4. Diffuse flux

A direct inference from the above proposal is that the entire population of young magnetars in the universe will contribute to a diffuse neutrino background, before crossing the neutrino death valley. The number flux of this background can be generally estimated as

$$\overline{\varphi }_\nu \frac{0.5f_{1/2}}{4\pi \overline{ϵ}_\nu }_0^{D_H}\left[_0^{\tau _{mag,\nu }}\frac{L_\nu (t)f_b(t)}{4\pi f_b(t)D^2}𝑑t\right](D)(4\pi D^2)𝑑D,$$
(17)
where $`D_H10^{28}`$ cm is the Hubble distance, and $`\overline{ϵ}_\nu `$ is the typical energy of the neutrino background. The inner integral is the average total neutrino energy fluence per magnetar emitted towards earth during its neutrino-loud life time $`\tau _{mag,\nu }5\times 10^3`$ yr, which is based on the known magnetars being marginal neutrino emitters. Since 9 magnetars have been discovered in the Galaxy with typical ages of $`10^4`$ yr, the local (redshift $`z=0`$) magnetar birth rate can be conservatively estimated $`(0)10^3\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{galaxy}^1_32\times 10^5\mathrm{yr}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^3_3`$, for a number density of galaxies $`n_g=0.02\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ (Allen 1973). Assuming that the magnetar birth rate follows the star forming rate, $`(z)(0)(1+z)^3`$ for $`z<2`$ (Lilly et al. 1996). The time-dependent beaming parameter $`f_b(t)`$ (which is the fraction of magnetars whose neutrino beams are directed towards us, so the sweep-averaged solid angle of the neutrino beam is $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }(t)=4\pi f_b(t)`$) cancels out. The outer integral is over the Hubble volume. For remote magnetars, the neutrino flux of an individual source drops as $`D^2`$ while the total number of magnetars increases as $`D^3`$ for $`z1`$. Therefore most of the diffuse neutrino emission comes from the farthest magnetars whose birth rate is the highest.

For young magnetars, the time-dependent neutrino luminosity may be estimated as in §3. There are some noticeable differences, however. For example, due to radiation reaction and possible pair screening effect, $`\eta _p1`$. On the other hand, the pair screening altitude could be much higher than the altitude where pions are generated, so that pions could undergo substantial reacceleration before decaying. As a result $`f_c`$ could be $`1`$. Notice that these uncertainties only influence the typical energy of the neutrino background, $`\overline{ϵ}_\nu `$, but do not influence the number counts of the neutrino background (17), which can be estimated as follows. The time-dependent neutrino luminosity is $`L_\nu (t)=A_{pc}(t)cn_{\pi ^+}(t)\overline{ϵ}_\nu `$, where $`A_{pc}(t)=\pi \mathrm{\Omega }(t)R^3/c`$ is the time-dependent polar cap area, $`\mathrm{\Omega }(t)=\mathrm{\Omega }_0(1+t/t_c)^{1/2}`$ is the time-dependent spin frequency of the magnetar since birth, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`t_c`$ are constants dependent on the initial rotation period and polar magnetic field of the magnetar; $`n_{\pi ^+}(t)=\xi n_{_{\mathrm{GJ}}}(t)=10\xi _1n_{_{\mathrm{GJ}}}(t)`$ is the time-dependent number density of pions; $`\xi R/l_{p\gamma }10`$ is the typical pion multiplicity; $`n_{_{\mathrm{GJ}}}(t)=\mathrm{\Omega }(t)B_p/2\pi ce`$; $`\overline{ϵ}_\nu `$ is the typical neutrino energy whose detailed value does not enter the problem (i.e. canceled out in eq.). Averaging over the magnetar neutrino-loud lifetime $`\tau _{mag,\nu }`$, and properly taking into account the cosmological evolution, we estimate

$$\overline{\varphi }_\nu 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1f_{1/2}\xi _1_3.$$
(18)
This background is insensitive to the location of the neutrino death valley ($`\mathrm{ln}\tau _{mag,\nu }`$), because logrithmically the entire magnetar life-time essentially contribute to the final value equally. The detectability of this background, however, is sensitively dependent on the typical energy of the neutrinos, which in turn depends on whether the secondary pions undergo substantial reacceleration before decaying to neutrinos. This is a difficult problem, which is beyond the scope of the current paper, and may be addressable by performing detailed numerical simulations such as those by Harding & Muslimov (2002). Nonetheless, we can set lower and upper bounds for the typical neutrino energies. If pion reacceleration is unimportant, the typical neutrino energy is bound from below to $`2`$ TeV according to the IC cooling argument (§3), in which case the diffuse background is completely masked by the atmospheric background and non-detectable. If pion reacceleration is efficient, however, the typical neutrino energy is bound from above by the radiation reaction limit of the pions, and the typical neutrino energy could reach 1 PeV or even higher. Such a neutrino background would become observationally interesting for ICECUBE if $`\overline{ϵ}_\nu 100`$ TeV (D. F. Cowen, 2003, private communication), and at such energies, the diffuse emission from other neutrino sources becomes weaker than this component (Protheroe 1999).

## 5. Discussion

We have argued that young magnetars with oppositely oriented magnetic and spin moments ($`𝛀𝐁_𝐩<0`$) can emit high energy neutrinos from their polar caps. We point out four neutrino emission candidates (Table 1) among the known magnetars. The chances of detecting neutrinos from these objects with future km3 neutrino telescopes (such as ICECUBE) is small, because their emission is faint and beamed. Nonetheless, it is finite, and we suggest that these are possible discrete neutrino sources for the telescopes to monitor. Furthermore, post-burst magnetars (SGRs) should have higher X-ray luminosities and hence, should contribute higher neutrino fluxes. This enhances the chance of detecting neutrinos from known magnetars. The level of the diffuse neutrino background contributed by young magnetars in the whole universe is weak and marginally detectable, depending on the poorly known typical neutrino energy subject to further detailed modeling.

We have concentrated on the possible photomeson interactions near the magnetar polar cap. However, similar neutrino production processes may also take place in the magnetar wind nebula, which could contribute additional neutrino emission components besides the one discussed here.

This work was supported by NASA NAG5-9192, NSF AST 0098416, National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 19825109) and National 973 Project of China (NKBRSF G19990754). BZ acknowledges helpful conversations or email communications with C. Thompson, J. Arons, D. F. Cowen, K. Hurley, B. Gaensler, and T. Montaruli.


text:
# hep-lat/0210008RBRC-252 Nucleon Decay Matrix Elements for Domain-Wall Fermions

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Nucleon decay is one of the most important aspect that any (SUSY) GUT model has. In low-energy effective theories it is represented by dimension six operators made of one lepton field and three quark fields. In the decay of $`p\pi ^0+e^+`$, for example, we need to calculate hadronic matrix element of the three quark operator $`𝒪_{R/L;L}^{B/}=ϵ^{ijk}(u^{iT}CP_{R/L}d^j)P_Lu^k`$ with initial proton and final pion states, where $`C`$ is the charge conjugation matrix. $`P_{R/L}`$ represents the right or left projection matrix, respectively.

Lattice calculation of the nucleon decay matrix elements historically started with the indirect calculation . First, one estimates the overlap of the operator to the proton state, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$,

$`\alpha P_Lu_p`$ $``$ $`0|𝒪_{R;L}^{B/}|p;\stackrel{}{k}=\stackrel{}{0},`$ (1)
$`\beta P_Lu_p`$ $``$ $`0|𝒪_{L;L}^{B/}|p;\stackrel{}{k}=\stackrel{}{0},`$ (2)
with $`u_p`$ being the proton spinor. Then, with the help of chiral perturbation theory, one can calculate the nucleon decay matrix elements. The first attempt to calculate the nucleon decay matrix element directly handling the three point function is done by Gavela et. al , showing significant deviation from the indirect calculations. Recently JLQCD  pointed out the incompleteness of the calculation . The matrix element has a tensor structure,

$$\pi ;\stackrel{}{p}|𝒪_{R/L;L}^{B/}|p;\stackrel{}{k}=P_L[W_0iq/W_q]u_p,$$
(3)
where $`q=kp`$. The relevant form factor $`W_0`$ is what we need since the term proportional to $`q/`$ vanishes after multiplying the lepton spinor. $`W_q`$ is called the irrelevant form factor. JLQCD uses quenched Wilson gauge configurations and Wilson fermion at parameters summarized in Table 1 (c). The three quark operators are renormalized with one-loop perturbation theory. Now the difference of direct and indirect calculations is not huge, but, still $`30`$ to $`40\%`$ for most cases.

In this study we try to calculate nucleon decay matrix elements with domain-wall fermions in the quenched approximation. Using DBW2 gauge action makes chiral symmetry breaking especially small compared to the other actions . With this good chiral symmetry one expects the good property to calculate hadronic matrix elements: 1) preventing operator mixing with different chiral structure, and 2) good scaling, even down to $`1/a1`$ GeV region . We restrict ourselves to the case of degenerate quark mass in the meson. In this case, one can calculate $`p\pi ^0+l^+`$ and $`p\pi ^++\overline{\nu }`$ decay amplitudes. The latter is obtained by multiplying the former by $`\sqrt{2}`$ under the exact SU(2) symmetry of $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks.

## 2 PROCEDURE AND RESULTS

The parameters of our simulation are shown in Table 1 (a). Our quark propagator is obtained by averaging two propagators calculated using periodic and anti-periodic boundary conditions. Thus, the effective temporal extent is $`64`$. 100 independent gauge configurations are analyzed for the three and two point functions to calculate the ratio ,

$$R(t)=\frac{J_\pi (t_1)𝒪_{R/L;L}^{B/}(t)\overline{J_p}(t_0)}{J_\pi (t_1)J_\pi ^{}(t)J_p(t)\overline{J_p}(t_0)}\sqrt{Z_\pi Z_p}.$$
(4)
In the three point function proton and pion interpolating fields are located at $`t_0=6`$ and $`t_1=24`$ respectively. Momentum $`\pm \stackrel{}{p}`$ with $`\stackrel{}{p}a=(1,0,0)\pi /8`$ or $`(1,1,0)\pi /8`$ is injected to the pion and the operator in the three point function, as well as in the pion two point function in the denominator. $`\sqrt{Z_\pi }`$ and $`\sqrt{Z_p}`$ are overlap of $`J_\pi `$ and $`J_p`$ to the corresponding pion and proton states, which is estimated from the fit of two point functions. We take four different quark masses $`m_fa=0.02`$, $`0.04`$, $`0.06`$, $`0.08`$, among which the strange mass is located between the last two. After appropriate projection, trace and the subtraction of the irrelevant contribution, $`W_0`$ is calculated with a fit to plateau of the ratio. The results with bare operator $`𝒪_{L;L}^{B/}`$ are shown in Figure 1. $`W_0`$ can only depend on $`q^2`$ and on $`m_f`$ which can enter through the masses of proton and pion. We assume a form of the fitting function of $`W_0=c_0+c_1q^2+c_2(q^2)^2+c_3m_f`$. In our precision the physical kinematics are approximated as $`m_f=0`$ and $`q^2=0`$. The filled diamond in the figure represents the result extrapolated to this point.

We also calculate the chiral lagrangian parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ extrapolated to $`m_f=0`$. By the tree-level chiral perturbation theory , the relevant part of the matrix element is obtained,

$$\pi ^0|𝒪_{L;L}^{B/}|p_{\text{rel}}\beta (1+D+F)P_Lu_p/\sqrt{2}f,$$
(5)
where $`D=0.47`$ and $`F=0.80`$ from the experiment , and $`f`$ is $`f_\pi =0.131`$ GeV. The open diamond in Fig. 1 represents this indirect estimation. There is no significant difference between direct and indirect results in the current statistics. However, $`40\%`$ excess for the central value from indirect method is quite similar to the JLQCD result. Similar of result is obtained also for $`\pi ^0|𝒪_{R;L}^{B/}|p`$.

The above results need be renormalized for the value in the $`\overline{\text{MS}}`$ scheme in continuum theory. We expect these operators are multiplicatively renormalized as the chiral symmetry breaking is small ($`m_{res}1.5`$ MeV). The renormalization factor for DBW2 gauge action is available for one-loop perturbation theory  with $`L_s`$ treated as infinity. In Table 2 we list the values of renormalization factors for the nucleon decay by perturbation theory with two different mean field (MF) improvement schemes. The MF factor $`u`$ is either $`P^{1/4}`$ or $`1/8K_c`$, where $`P`$ stands for plaquette, $`K_c`$ the critical hopping parameter of the four dimensional Wilson fermion. We also list the renormalization factor for the axial vector current, for which we know the non-perturbative value at the parameter point of (b) in Table 1 with the method using the conserved current .

For the axial vector current renormalization, the mean field improvement with $`K_c`$ is in better agreement with the non-perturbative one, while the other is 30% larger. This difference is considered as the systematic error of the perturbative estimate. The difference arises mainly from the quark wave function renormalization and the MF factor. Thus, this problem does not apply to quantities defined by a particular ratio in which those factors cancel out. $`B_K`$ is one of those cases.

In Table 3 we list the result of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ of ours and by JLQCD. The operators are renormalized at $`\mu =1/a`$ with $`\overline{\text{MS}}`$ for both results. Renormalization factor with $`K_c`$ is employed for our calculation. Our values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ in \[$`\text{GeV}^3`$\] obtained by setting the scale with the $`\rho `$ mass input, are quite different from those with Wilson fermion by JLQCD. The origin of the discrepancy could be, 1) discretization error, 2) systematic error of the MF perturbation, 3) difference of the renormalization scale. 2) is about 30% for DWF, 3) is almost negligible. 1) is expected to be most severe as it is seen in the difference of the scale from $`\rho `$ mass for Wilson and DWF with Wilson gauge background at same $`1/g^2`$ (see (c) and (d) in Table 1). Indeed, if we set the scale from different quantity $`r_0`$, which eliminates order $`a`$ error in the scale for Wilson fermion, the values are consistent.

## 3 SUMMARY

We calculated proton decay matrix elements with DBW2 gauge action and DWF. We did not find a significant difference in values obtained by direct and indirect methods within our current numerical precision. Further simulation with non-degenerate quark masses will reduce the error of direct calculation and make the extraction of nucleon to kaon decay amplitudes possible. Within the current systematic error of the perturbation theory the chiral lagrangian parameters for the nucleon decay calculated with DWF are consistent with those obtained with Wilson fermion by JLQCD if the scale is set by $`r_0`$. More stringent comparison will be done for those values after non-perturbative renormalization is performed.