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# Isospin relation and SU(3) breaking effects of strong phases in Charmless B decays

## I Introduction

B meson physics and CP violation are the central topics of the present day particle physics. Recently, exciting experimental results are reported from two B factories at SLAC and KEK. One of the angles $`\beta `$ in the unitarity triangle of Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements is determined through decay mode $`BJ/\psi K_S`$ Aubert et al. (2002a); Abe et al. (2002) with a good precision and found to be consistent with the other indirect measurement within Standard Model (SM) Hocker et al. (2001). The recent preliminary measurements of time dependent CP violation in other channels such as $`B\varphi K_S`$ Aubert et al. (2002b); Abe et al. (2002) also provide us useful information for an independent determination of the weak phase $`\beta `$ and for probing new physics beyond the SM. Besides mixing induced CP violation, rare B decays and direct CP violations are also of great importance in determining other weak phase angles of the unitarity triangle and testing the Kobayashi-Maskawa (KM) mechanism Kobayashi and Maskawa (1973) in SM. With the successful running of B factories, higher precision data on the rare hadronic B decay modes such as $`B\pi \pi ,\pi K`$ Aubert et al. (2002c, d, e); Casey (2002); Abe et al. (2001); Cronin-Hennessy et al. (2000) have been obtained, which provide us good opportunities to extract the weak phase angle $`\gamma `$, to test the theoretical approaches for evaluating the hadronic transition matrix elements and to explore new physics beyond the SM.

On the theoretical side, great efforts have been made to improve the calculations of hadronic matrix elements. The recently proposed methods such as QCD Factorization Beneke et al. (1999, 2000) and pQCD approach Keum et al. (2001a, b) have been extensively discussed. From those methods, useful information of weak phase angles such as $`\gamma `$ can be extractedBeneke et al. (2001); Keum (2002). Other approaches which are based on flavor isospin and SU(3) symmetries are still helpful and important Zeppenfeld (1981); Savage and Wise (1989); Gronau et al. (1995); He (1999); Paz (2002) . The advantage of this kind of approaches is obvious that they are model independent and more convenient in studying the interference between weak and strong phases. Recently the flavor isospin and SU(3) symmetries in charmless B decays are studied by using global fits to the experiment data Zhou et al. (2001); He et al. (2001); Fu et al. (2002). In a general isospin decomposition, there exist a lot of independent free parameters. By considering the flavor isospin and SU(3) symmetries, the number of parameters is greatly reduced and the method of global fit becomes applicable. Through direct fit, the isospin or SU(3) invariant amplitudes as well as the corresponding strong phases can be extracted with a reasonable precision . The early results Zhou et al. (2001) have already indicated some unexpected large isospin amplitudes and strong phases . The fitted amplitudes and strong phases can also provide useful information for the weak phase $`\gamma `$ He et al. (2001). However unlike isospin symmetry, the flavor SU(3) symmetry is known to be broken down sizably Gronau et al. (1999); Gronau and Pirjol (2000). The ways of introducing SU(3) breaking may have significant influence on the final results. In the usual considerations, the main effects of SU(3) breaking are often taken into accounted only in the amplitudes. To be more general, the study of SU(3) breaking including strong phases is necessary.

In this paper, we begin with the general isospin and flavor SU(3) relations in charmless hadronic B decays $`B\pi \pi ,\pi K`$. By using a general isospin decomposition, isospin invariant amplitudes are determined from latest data through global fit. Different patterns of SU(3) breaking in both amplitudes and strong phases are studied in detail. It is observed that in the SU(3) limit the current data suggest a large violation of a isospin relation which is associated with the electroweak penguin diagrams in SM. The results is found to be insensitive to the value of $`\gamma `$ when its value lies in the range $`60^{}\gamma 120^{}`$. The inclusion of SU(3) breaking effects, especially the one in the strong phases can improve the agreement between experiment and theory.

## II a general isospin decomposition and isospin relations

The isospin symmetry is a good symmetry, it is helpful to start from a pure isospin discussion and then include flavor SU(3) symmetry and its breaking effects in the next step .The effective Hamiltonian for $`\mathrm{\Delta }S=0`$ nonleptonic B decays is given by

$`H_{eff}={\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{q=u,c}{}}\lambda _q\left(C_1O_1^q+C_2O_2^q+{\displaystyle \underset{i=3}{\overset{10}{}}}C_iO_i\right),`$ (1)
with $`\lambda _q=V_{qb}V_{qd}^{}`$ is the products of CKM matrix elements and the operators are

$`O_1^q`$ $`=(\overline{d}_\alpha q_\alpha )_{VA}(\overline{q}_\beta b_\beta )_{VA},`$ $`O_2^q`$ $`=(\overline{d}_\beta q_\alpha )_{VA}(\overline{q}_\beta b_\alpha )_{VA},`$
$`O_3`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\alpha )_{VA}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\beta )_{VA},`$ $`O_4`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\beta )_{VA}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\alpha )_{VA},`$
$`O_5`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\alpha )_{V+A}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\beta )_{VA},`$ $`O_6`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\beta )_{V+A}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\alpha )_{VA},`$
$`O_7`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}e_q(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\alpha )_{V+A}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\beta )_{VA},`$ $`O_8`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}e_q(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\beta )_{V+A}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\alpha )_{VA},`$
$`O_9`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}e_q(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\alpha )_{VA}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\beta )_{VA},`$ $`O_{10}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}e_q(\overline{q}_\alpha q_\beta )_{VA}(\overline{d}_\beta b_\alpha )_{VA},`$ (2)
where $`O_{1,2}^{u(c)}`$, $`O_{3,\mathrm{},6}`$ and $`O_{7,\mathrm{},10}`$ are related to tree, QCD penguin and electroweak penguin diagrams respectively.

The final states of $`\pi \pi `$ have isospin of $`2`$ and $`0`$. Let us define the isospin amplitudes $`A_2`$ and $`A_0`$ as follows

$`A_2`$ $``$ $`\pi \pi ,I=2\left|H_{eff}^{3/2}\right|B=\lambda _ua_2^ue^{i\delta _2^u}+\lambda _ca_2^ce^{i\delta _2^c},`$
$`A_0`$ $``$ $`\pi ,\pi ,I=0\left|H_{eff}^{1/2}\right|B=\lambda _ua_0^ue^{i\delta _0^u}+\lambda _ca_0^ce^{i\delta _0^c},`$ (3)
where $`a_I^q,(q=u,c\text{ and }I=2,0)`$ are the amplitudes associated with $`\lambda _q`$. The QCD penguin operators $`O_{3,\mathrm{},6}`$ have isospin of $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=1/2`$. But the other operators may have more isospin components. Taking $`O_1^u=(\overline{d}u)_{VA}(\overline{u}b)_{VA}`$ as an example, the isospin decomposition gives $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟐}}\mathrm{𝟐}\mathrm{𝟐}=\mathrm{𝟒}\mathrm{𝟐}^{^{}}\mathrm{𝟐}`$. Thus it contains a $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=3/2`$ and two independent $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=1/2`$ isospin invariant operators. Let us denote them as $`𝒪(3/2),𝒪(1/2)`$ and $`𝒪^{}(1/2)`$ respectively, then the other operators can be decomposed in the same way, for example:

$`O_1^u`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}[𝒪(3/2)𝒪(1/2)+2𝒪^{}(1/2)],`$
$`O_2^u`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}[𝒪(3/2)+2𝒪(1/2)𝒪^{}(1/2)],`$
$`O_3`$ $`=`$ $`𝒪(1/2)O_4=𝒪^{}(1/2),`$
$`O_9`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}O_1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}O_3={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[𝒪(3/2)2𝒪(1/2)+2𝒪^{}(1/2)],`$
$`O_{10}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}O_2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}O_4={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[𝒪(3/2)+2𝒪(1/2)2𝒪^{}(1/2)].`$
Among those operators, $`𝒪(3/2)`$ has the highest isospin $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=3/2`$. In the decays $`B\pi \pi `$ it is the only operator which can contribute to the final isospin $`I=2`$ states. Rewrite the effective Hamiltonian in terms of isospin invariant operators in Eq.(II) and pick up the isospin 2 parts, one finds

$`A_2={\displaystyle \frac{G_F}{\sqrt{2}}}[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\lambda _u(C_1+C_2+C_9+C_{10}))+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\lambda _c(C_9+C_{10}))]I=2|𝒪(3/2)|B,`$ (5)
and

$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_2^c}{a_2^u}}R_{EW}={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{C_9+C_{10}}{C_1+C_2+C_9+C_{10}}}.`$ (6)
Taking the Wilson coefficients at $`\mu =m_b`$, one has $`C_1=1.144,C_2=0.308,C_9=1.28\alpha ,C_{10}=0.328\alpha `$. Thus

$`R_{EW}=1.25\times 10^2,\text{and}\delta _2^c=\delta _2^u.`$ (7)
This relation is well known and has been extensively discussed Neubert and Rosner (1998); He (1999); He et al. (2001); Fu et al. (2002); Paz (2002). Here we would like to emphasize the importance of this relation in a model independent analysis, namely:

1) The relation is obtained without the knowledge of the matrix element $`I=2\left|𝒪(3/2)\right|B`$. It only depends on the isospin structure of the effective Hamiltonian and the final states. Thus it is independent of any model calculations, such as naive factorization or pQCD factorization etc.

2) It can not be affected by the final state inelastic rescattering processes with lower isospin as it is only related to the highest isospin component $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=3/2`$. For example, it is expected that the processes of $`BDD\pi \pi `$ may be considerable in B decaysKamal (1999); Xing (2000). Whereas the effective Hamiltonian of $`BDD`$ have isospin $`1/2`$, its contribution to final state with $`I=2`$ vanishes, thus the above mentioned relation remains unchanged. The elastic rescattering process $`B\pi \pi \pi \pi `$ can contribute to the highest isospin amplitude, but their effects can be absorbed into the effective value of $`I=2\left|𝒪(3/2)\right|B`$ and will not affect the value of $`R_{EW}`$ which is the ratio of two isospin amplitudes sharing the same matrix elements. Thus this relation is less likely to be modified in the presence of final state interaction (FSI).

3) In the usual digram language, the decay $`B\pi ^{}\pi ^0`$ receives contributions from several diagrams, i.e., $`A(\pi ^{}\pi ^0)=T+T^C+P_{EW}+P_{EW}^C`$ (here ”$`T`$” and ”$`P_{EW}`$” stand for tree and electroweak penguin diagrams, the superscription “$`C`$” stands for the corresponding color suppressed one). It is expected that the interference between them may result in a small direct CP violation. However from relation $`\delta _2^c=\delta _2^u`$, it is easy to see that as long as the isospin symmetry is imposed, there is $`no`$ direct CP violation in $`B\pi ^{}\pi ^0`$. This conclusion purely relies on the isospin considerations and thus looks quite robust. A similar observation was also made within SU(3) symmetry in Ref.Fu et al. (2002). However when comparing to the possible nonnegligible SU(3) breaking effects, the conclusion based on isospin symmetry seems more reliable.

4) The value of $`R_{EW}`$ is the ratio between the electroweak penguin and tree diagrams. It is then sensitive to new physics effects beyond the SM in electroweak penguin sector. The new physics effects on $`R_{EW}`$ have been discussed in Refs.He et al. (2000); Grossman et al. (1999); Ghosh et al. (2002); Xiao et al. (2002), it seems quite sensitive to several new physics models. A precise determination of $`R_{EW}`$ from experiments may be helpful to single out possible new physics or study flavor symmetry breaking in charmless B decays. To describe the possibility that the value of $`R_{EW}`$ extracted from experiments could be different from the SM calculations, we introduce a factor $`\kappa `$ as follows

$`R_{EW}^{exp}=\kappa R_{EW}0.0125\kappa ,`$ (8)
where $`R_{EW}^{exp}`$ stands for its value extracted from experiments and obviously $`\kappa =1`$ in SM.

Let us consider the operators with lower isospins. Note that the operators $`O_1^c`$ and $`O_2^c`$ have isospin of $`1/2`$. As final states $`\pi \pi `$ are charmless and have isospin $`2`$ and $`0`$, those operators can not contribute directly. However, through inelastic final state interaction (FSI) processes such as $`BDD\pi \pi `$, their contributions to the final state with isospin $`0`$ may be non-negligible. At present stage, there is no good theoretical estimation of such kind of processes. The operator $`O_5`$ and $`O_6`$ also have isospin $`1/2`$ but with different Lorenz structure. In general, the matrix elements of $`O_{5,6}`$ are different from $`O_{3,4}`$. Thus the isospin amplitude $`A_0`$ receives contributions from many different operators with the same isospin $`1/2`$. The matrix elements of those operators may develop different strong phases. Although for each operator there exist relations between $`\lambda _u`$ and $`\lambda _c`$ parts, there is no simple relation for their sum. In the most general case $`a_0^u`$ and $`a_0^c`$ are independent of each other and $`\delta _0^u\delta _0^c`$.

A similar discussion can be made in decay modes $`B\pi K`$, where the effective Hamiltonian has isospin $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=1,0`$. In this case one can define three isospin components

$`A_{3/2}`$ $``$ $`\pi K,I=3/2\left|H_{eff}^{\mathrm{\Delta }I=1}\right|\overline{B}^0=\lambda _ua_{3/2}^ue^{i\delta _{3/2}^u}+\lambda _ca_{3/2}^ce^{i\delta _{3/2}^c},`$
$`A_{1/2}`$ $``$ $`\pi K,I=1/2\left|H_{eff}^{\mathrm{\Delta }I=0}\right|\overline{B}^0=\lambda _ua_{1/2}^ue^{i\delta _{1/2}^u}+\lambda _ca_{1/2}^ce^{i\delta _{1/2}^c},`$
$`B_{1/2}`$ $``$ $`\pi K,I=1/2\left|H_{eff}^{\mathrm{\Delta }I=1}\right|B^{}=\lambda _ub_{1/2}^ue^{i\delta _{1/2}^u}+\lambda _cb_{1/2}^ce^{i\delta _{1/2}^c}`$ (9)
As there are two kind of Lorenz structure $`(\overline{q}q)(\overline{s}b)`$ and $`(\overline{s}q)(\overline{q}b)`$ with the same isospin, there are two independent operators with highest isospin $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=1`$. One can not construct a similar relation of Eq.(6) within isospin symmetry. However, as it will be discussed below, one can obtain from SU(3) symmetry some useful relations.

From the above discussions the general form of isospin decomposition of the decay amplitudes for $`B\pi \pi (\pi K)`$ decays reads

$`A^{\pi \pi (\pi K)}=\lambda _u^{(s)}A_u^{\pi \pi (\pi K)}+\lambda _c^{(s)}A_c^{\pi \pi (\pi K)},`$ (10)
where $`\lambda _u^{(s)}=V_{ub}V_{ud(s)}^{}`$, $`\lambda _c^{(s)}=V_{cb}V_{cd(s)}^{}`$ and

$`A_q^{\pi ^{}\pi ^+}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}a_0^qe^{i\delta _0^q}+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}a_2^qe^{i\delta _2^q},`$
$`A_q^{\pi ^0\pi ^0}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}a_0^qe^{i\delta _0^q}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}a_2^qe^{i\delta _2^q},`$
$`A_q^{\pi ^{}\pi ^0}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}},a_2^qe^{i\delta _2^q},`$ (11)
and

$`A_q^{\pi ^+K^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}a_{1/2}^qe^{i\delta _{1/2}^q}+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}a_{3/2}^qe^{i\delta _{3/2}^q},`$
$`A_q^{\pi ^0\overline{K^0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}a_{1/2}^qe^{i\delta _{1/2}^q}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}a_{3/2}^qe^{i\delta _{3/2}^q},`$
$`A_q^{\pi ^0K^{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}b_{1/2}^qe^{i\delta _{1/2}^q}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}a_{3/2}^qe^{i\delta _{3/2}^q},`$
$`A_q^{\pi ^{}\overline{K^0}}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}b_{1/2}^qe^{i\delta _{1/2}^q}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}a_{3/2}^qe^{i\delta _{3/2}^q}.`$ (12)
with $`q=u,c`$. By using relation Eq.(6) and dropping a global phase which is unphysical, there are totally 17 free parameters.

## III flavor SU(3) symmetry and its breaking effects

The advantage of the isospin decomposition allows one to study $`SU(3)`$ relations and $`SU(3)`$ breaking effects in a convenient way that the isospin symmetry clearly persists. In SU(3) limit with annihilation topology ignored, the isospin amplitudes satisfy the following relations:

$`a_0^ue^{i\delta _0^u}`$ $`=`$ $`a_{1/2}^ue^{i\delta _{1/2}^u},`$
$`a_0^ce^{i\delta _0^c}`$ $`=`$ $`a_{1/2}^ce^{i\delta _{1/2}^c},`$
$`a_2^ue^{i\delta _2^u}`$ $`=`$ $`a_{3/2}^ue^{i\delta _{3/2}^u},`$
$`a_2^ce^{i\delta _2^c}`$ $`=`$ $`a_{3/2}^ce^{i\delta _{3/2}^c}.`$ (13)
If these relations are adopted, the number of free parameters is reduced to be nine. From Eq. (6) and the above relation, one finds that

$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_{3/2}^c}{a_{3/2}^u}}={\displaystyle \frac{a_2^c}{a_2^u}}=R_{EW}.`$ (14)
Thus the highest isospin amplitudes for the $`B\pi K`$ decays satisfy the same relation as the one in the $`B\pi \pi `$ decay. When SU(3) breaking effects are considered, the above relations have to be modified. At present stage, it is not very clear how to describe the SU(3) breaking effects. a widely used approach is introducing a breaking factor $`\xi `$ which characterizes the ratio between $`B\pi K`$ and $`\pi \pi `$ decay amplitudes, i.e.,

$`a_{1/2}^{u(c)}=\xi a_0^{u(c)},a_{3/2}^{u(c)}=\xi a_2^{u(c)},`$ (15)
but their strong phases are assumed to remain satisfying the SU(3) relations

$`\delta _{1/2}^{u(c)}=\delta _0^{u(c)},\delta _{3/2}^{u(c)}=\delta _2^{u(c)}.`$ (16)
Typically $`\xi =f_K/f_\pi 1.23`$ with $`f_\pi `$ and $`f_K`$ being the pion and kaon meson decay constants, which comes from the naive factorization calculations. It is easy to see that this pattern of SU(3) breaking is a quite special one. The value of $`\xi `$ is highly model dependent. It can only serve as an order of magnitude estimation and it is even not clear whether a single factor can be applied to all the isospin amplitudes. The equal strong phase assumption implies that the SU(3) breaking effects on strong phase are all ignored, which may be far away from the reality. In a more general case, all the strong phases could be different when SU(3) is broken down. The breaking effects on strong phases may have significant effects on the prediction for the direct CP violations in those decay modes.

To describe the possible violations of relations in eq. (16) or the SU(3) breaking effects on strong phases, we may introduce the following phase differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q(q=u,c`$ and $`I=3/2,1/2)`$:

$`\delta _0^q=\delta _{1/2}^q+\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^q,\delta _2^q=\delta _{3/2}^q+\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^q(q=u,c).`$ (17)
On the other hand, the SU(3) breaking effects in amplitudes may also be given in a more general way

$`a_{1/2}^q=\xi ^qa_0^{u(c)},a_{3/2}^q=\xi ^qa_2^q(q=u,c)`$ (18)
The SU(3) limit corresponds to the case that all $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q`$ vanish and $`\xi ^q=1`$. In general, the simple SU(3) breaking pattern in Eq.(15) and Eq.(16) may become unreliable. Note that in the simple SU(3) breaking pattern in Eq.(15) and Eq.(16) the relation of Eq.(14) remains to be unchanged as it is the ratio of two isospin amplitudes. The calculation based on the naive factorization shows a very small breaking of this relation Neubert and Rosner (1998). For simplicity, in the following discussions we should not discuss the violation of amplitude relation in Eq.(14), but the exact value of $`R_{EW}`$ (i.e. $`R_{EW}^{exp}`$ or $`\kappa `$) will be studied in detail and also the possible violation of strong phases will be discussed.

Without any model calculations, all the isospin amplitudes and the strong phases are unknown free parameters. Those parameters can in principle be extracted from the experimental data, namely through a global fit of the data on branching ratios as well as direct CP violations of the related decay modes. The precision of the fitted parameters depend on the precision of the current data. Especially for the values of strong phases which strongly depend on the measurements of direct CP violation.

## IV value of $`\kappa `$ in different patterns of SU(3) breaking

The basic idea of the global fit is the maximal likelihood or minimal $`\chi ^2`$ method. For a set of measurements on observables $`Y_i(i=1,m)`$ which contain $`n`$ parameters $`\alpha _j(j=1,n)`$, a quantity $`\chi ^2`$ is constructed as follows

$`\chi ^2={\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{Y_i^{th}(\alpha _j)Y_i^{ex}}{\sigma _i}}\right)^2,`$ (19)
where $`Y_i^{th}(\alpha _j)`$ and $`Y_i^{ex}`$ are corresponding to the theoretical and experimental values of the observable $`Y_i`$ which, in our present case, is a decay rate or direct CP violation in charmless B decays. $`\sigma _i`$ is the corresponding error of the measurements. The set of $`\alpha _j`$ which minimize the value of $`\chi ^2`$ corresponds to the best estimated value for $`\alpha _j`$.

From the general isospin decomposition of Eqs.(II) and (II) and the isospin relation of Eq.(6) as well as the SU(3) relation (III), there are nine free parameters left

$$a_{1/2}^u,\delta _{1/2}^u,a_{3/2}^u,\delta _{3/2}^u,a_{1/2}^c,b_{1/2}^u,\delta _{1/2}^u,b_{1/2}^c,\delta _{1/2}^c$$

Here we set $`\delta _{1/2}^c=0`$ as a phase convention since one of the phases can always be removed without affecting the physics. All the other phases are defined within the range $`(\pi ,+\pi )`$. The theoretical values of those parameters have been calculated in Ref.Zhou et al. (2001) which are normalized to the branching ratio of B decays and in units of $`10^3`$. The calculation shows a hierarchical structure with $`a_I^ua_I^c`$ which corresponds to $`TP`$ in diagram language. The value of $`b_{1/2}^u`$ is found to be significantly smaller than $`a_{1/2}^u`$. Due to further suppression of small CKM matrix element, the contribution of $`b_{1/2}^u`$ is quite small. Unlike $`a_{1/2}^u`$ which is connected to $`B\pi \pi `$ amplitudes through SU(3) symmetry, $`b_{1/2}^u`$ only appears in the charged decay modes $`B\pi ^0K^{},\pi ^{}\overline{K}^0`$, its value only has a little effect on the fit of other parameters. It have been checked that the fitted values for other parameters are quite stable even under the significant changes of $`b_{1/2}^u`$Zhou et al. (2001). Thus it is a good approximation to fix $`b_{1/2}^u`$ at its theoretical value $`b_{1/2}^u416`$ and $`\delta _{1/2}^u0`$. With this approximation, only seven free parameters are left in the flavor SU(3) symmetry limit.

In the following section, the global fit of charmless B decay modes are made under several different cases of SU(3) breaking. The latest data of the decays $`B\pi \pi ,\pi K`$ used in the fits are summarized in table 2. Among other parameters concerning CKM matrix elements, the most uncertain one is the weak phase $`\gamma `$. The most recent updated global fit on CKM matrix elements is summarized in Ref.F.Parodi (2002), which gives $`\overline{\rho }=0.199\pm 0.04`$ and $`\overline{\eta }=0.345\pm 0.026`$, corresponds to $`\gamma 60^{}`$. In this work, the various SU(3) relations are examined with the value of $`\gamma `$ varying from $`60^{}`$ to $`120^{}`$. For a concrete illustration, three interesting cases are discussed:
Case 1. The value of $`\gamma `$ is taken to be $`60^{}`$ and $`\kappa `$ is fixed to be unity. The global fit is done with $`\xi =1`$ and $`\xi =f_K/f_\pi =1.23`$ which corresponds to the exact SU(3) symmetry and the simple SU(3) breaking. The results are shown in the first (a) and second (b) column of table 1. In both cases large strong phases are resulted with the minimal of $`\chi ^2`$ around 5.8(9.2) for $`\xi =1(1.23)`$. From the fit result, the corresponding direct CP violation can also be obtained. The best fitted direct CP violation for example, in case (c) is given by

$`A_{CP}(\pi ^+\pi ^{})`$ $`0.3`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^0\pi ^0)`$ $`0.4`$
$`A_{CP}(\pi ^+K^{})`$ $`0.1`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^0\overline{K}^0)`$ $`0.1`$
$`A_{CP}(\pi ^0K^{})`$ $`0.0`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^{}\overline{K}^0)`$ $`0.1`$ (20)
Case 2
a) The value of $`\gamma `$ is fixed at $`60^{}`$ but the value of $`\kappa `$ taken as a free parameter which is to be determined from global fit with $`\xi =1.0`$ and 1.23. The results are shown in the third (c) and fourth (d) column of table 1. In this case, the best fitted value of $`\kappa `$ is found to be quite large with a very low $`\chi _{min}^21`$, which indicates that a large $`\kappa `$ is in a better agreement with the current data. The numerical results for the best fitted value are

$`\kappa =12.0(10.7)\text{for }\xi =1.0(1.23),`$ (21)
which is about an order of magnitude larger than the expected one from the SM. While the results confirm our earlier numerical results obtained in Ref.Zhou et al. (2001) where the equal phase assumption such as $`\delta _0^u=\delta _0^c`$ has been adopted to reduce the number of free parameters. Here the fit is made in the most general case where $`\delta _i^u\delta _i^c`$ and thus more reliable.

b) To examine whether the above results hold only for a particular value of the weak phase $`\gamma =60^{}`$, similar fits are made with $`\gamma =75^{},90^{},105^{}`$ and $`120^{}`$. The results listed in Table.3 clearly show that the $`\gamma `$ dependence is rather weak. For all the values of $`\gamma `$ the best fitted values of $`\kappa `$ are found to be large. Even at $`\gamma =120^{}`$ the best fitted value of $`\kappa 7.4`$ is still much higher than unity. While the global fit based on naive factorization and QCD factorization calculations prefer a large value of $`\gamma >90^{}`$He et al. (1999); Beneke et al. (2001), the model independent estimations show a less sensitivity of weak phase $`\gamma `$ Wu and Zhou (2000); He et al. (2001); Zhou et al. (2001). For example, in our earlier analysises based on diagram decompositionWu and Zhou (2000) and SU(3) symmetryHe et al. (2001) in $`B\pi \pi ,\pi K`$ decays, two allowed ranges of $`\gamma `$ are found, the one with $`\gamma <90^{}`$ and the other one with $`\gamma >90^{}`$. Both values of $`\gamma `$ with appropriate strong phases can reproduce the experimental data. The resulted large $`\kappa `$ which is insensitive to the weak phase $`\gamma `$ implies that the breaking effects of flavor SU(3) symmetry may be considerable.

Let us discuss the possibility of a large $`\kappa `$ or $`a_{2(3/2)}^c`$ from the phenomenological point of view. It is well known that due to the suppression of small CKM matrix element $`V_{ub}`$, the decays $`B\pi K`$ are dominated by QCD penguin diagrams. The naive factorization calculations indicate that the dominant terms in the decay amplitudes are those with the CKM factor $`\lambda _c^s`$. If $`a_{2(3/2)}^c`$ is negligible small, one finds that $`Br(\pi ^+K^{})2Br(\pi ^0\overline{K}^0)`$. When $`a_{3/2}^c`$ is large, namely $`\kappa `$ is large, the interference between $`a_{1/2}^c`$ and $`a_{3/2}^c`$ will be important. From Eq.(II) it follows that when both the amplitude $`a_{3/2}^c`$ and the strong phase $`\delta _{3/2}^c\delta _{1/2}^c`$ become large, such an interference will enhance the branching ratios of $`B\pi ^0\overline{K}^0`$ , and suppress the ones of $`B\pi ^+K^{}`$. Similarity occurs in the decay mode $`B\pi ^0\pi ^0`$. As the tree diagram contributions in this decay mode are color suppressed, the penguin contributions are more important than the ones in other modes $`B\pi ^{}\pi ^0`$ and $`\pi ^{}\pi ^+`$. Thus large value of $`\kappa `$ and $`\delta _{3/2}^c\delta _{1/2}^c`$ will also enhance the branching ratio of $`B\pi ^0\pi ^0`$. From the relation of Eq.(14) and the definition of $`\delta _{1/2}^c=0`$, one has $`\delta _{3/2}^c\delta _{1/2}^c=\delta _{3/2}^c=\delta _{3/2}^u`$. As the fitting results also give large $`\delta _{3/2}^u=1.43(80^{})`$ for $`\xi =1.0`$, such an anomaly is closely related to the observed enhancement of $`B\pi ^0\overline{K}^0`$. For decay mode $`B\pi ^0\pi ^0`$, the current data can only give an upper bound of $`Br(B\pi ^0\pi ^0)<3.6\times 10^6`$ Bona ; Unno and Suzuki (2003); Aubert et al. (2003), however, the primitive measurements from CLEO, Babar and Belle also show an indication of a large averaged value of $`Br(B\pi ^0\pi ^0)=1.96\times 10^6`$ ( see table 2), which need to be confirmed by the future experiments. From the most recent experimental data in table 2, one has

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2Br(\pi ^0\overline{K}^0)}{Br(\pi ^+K^{})}}1.09,{\displaystyle \frac{Br(\pi ^0\pi ^0)}{Br(\pi ^{}\pi ^+)}}<0.87(0.43),`$ (22)
which may be compared with the recent theoretical estimations by using QCD factorization Beneke et al. (2001); Du et al. (2000)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2Br(\pi ^0\overline{K}^0)}{Br(\pi ^+K^{})}}0.52,{\displaystyle \frac{Br(\pi ^0\pi ^0)}{Br(\pi ^{}\pi ^+)}}0.01.`$ (23)
It is clear that the data present the unexpected large ratio for the decay modes $`B\pi ^0\overline{K}^0`$ , which significantly deviates from the QCD factorization predictions. The current data also imply the probability that $`B\pi ^0\pi ^0`$ could be much larger than the expected one from QCD factorization.

The value of $`\kappa `$ is sensitive to the contributions from electroweak penguin diagrams. Since many new physics models can give significant corrections to this sector, it may be helpful to study new physics effects on $`\kappa `$. However, to explore any new physics effects and arrive at a definitive conclusion for the existence of new physics from the hadronic decays, it is necessary to check all the theoretical assumptions and make the most general considerations. It is noted that the above results are obtained by assuming SU(3) symmetry with its breaking only in amplitudes. Therefore, we shall first extend the above results to a more general case of SU(3) symmetry breaking before claiming any possible new physics signals.

Case 3
a) The value of gamma is fixed at $`60^{}`$ and the SU(3) breaking effects on strong phases are turned on, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q0`$. In this case, it is difficult to extract those breaking factors with a reasonable precision as we have no enough data ( especially data of direct CP violations ) at hand. For illustrations, we then take some typical values for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q`$ to show how the best fitted values of $`\kappa `$ depend on the ways of SU(3) breaking in strong phases. For simplicity and also to see how the SU(3) symmetry breaking of each strong phase affects the best fitting value of $`\kappa `$, we take four typical values for each $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q`$, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q=\pi /3,\pi /6,+\pi /6`$ and $`+\pi /3`$, with others angles being fixed to be zero. The numerical results can be seen in table 4. It follows from the table that the inclusion of nonzero $`\mathrm{\Delta }_I^q`$ can greatly modify the best fitted value of $`\kappa `$. In some cases, the best fitted values are found to be close to unity. For example, in cases of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^u=+\pi /6`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^c=+\pi /6,+\pi /3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^c=+\pi /6,+\pi /3`$, the best fitted values of $`\kappa `$ are around 1.5 with the minimal $`\chi _{min}^24`$. The direct CP violation for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^u=+\pi /6(\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^c=+\pi /6)`$ is as follows.

$`A_{CP}(\pi ^+\pi ^{})`$ $`0.1(0.5),`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^0\pi ^0)`$ $`0.5(0.2),`$
$`A_{CP}(\pi ^+K^{})`$ $`0.1(0.1),`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^0\overline{K}^0)`$ $`0.2(0.1),`$
$`A_{CP}(\pi ^0K^{})`$ $`0.1(0.0),`$ $`A_{CP}(\pi ^{}\overline{K}^0)`$ $`0.1(0.1).`$ (24)
Compared with the ones with SU(3) syemmetry in Eq.(IV), the predicted values of direct CP violation can be quite different. The above results indicate that if we want to explain the current data within the scope of SM, the SU(3) breaking effects on strong phases may play an important role. At present, the calculation of SU(3) breaking on strong phases is not reliable without well considering the nonperturbative effects and it is hard to estimate how large it could be. The phenomenological approach adopt in this paper may provide us some clues to understand the SU(3) symmetry breaking due to final state interactions.

b) To illustrate the possible $`\gamma `$ dependence, two other fits are made with $`\gamma =90^{}`$ and $`120^{}`$. The numerical results are shown in Table. 5 and 6. In the case of $`\gamma =90^{}`$, some results are found with $`\kappa 1.0`$ and small $`\chi _{min}^2`$. For example, for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^u=\pi /3,\pi /6`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^c=\pi /3,\pi /6`$ the best fitted value of $`\kappa `$ are around 1.0 with the minimal $`\chi _{min}^23.0`$. However, in the case of $`\gamma =120^{}`$, no solution is found with both small $`\chi _{min}^2`$ and $`\kappa 1`$. As only several typical values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2(3/2)}^{u(c)}`$ are used in the fit, one should not draw a conclusion that the case of $`\gamma =120^{}`$ is not likely to be consistent with current data even the SU(3) breaking effects of strong phases are taken into account. However, it is clear that for very large value of $`\gamma `$, the allowed parameter space for the strong phase differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2(3/2)}^{u(c)}`$ is much smaller.

The results summaried in table 4, 5 and 6 also indicate the prefered values of some strong phases. For instance, the best fited value of $`\kappa `$ is found to be insensitive to the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^u`$. When $`\gamma `$ is taken to be $`60^{}`$ and $`90^{}`$ the best fitted value of $`\kappa `$ is close to unity for all the values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^u`$, with a small $`\chi _{min}^2`$. But for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^u=60^{}`$, the $`\chi _{min}^2`$ has a minimal of 2.3(2.1) for $`\gamma =60^{}(90^{})`$. It implies that the favoured value for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^u`$ should be close to $`60^{}`$ from the current data. Simiarlily, the fit results favour a large negative value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{3/2}^c`$ and a small positive $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/2}^u`$.

## V conclusions

In summary, we have investigated the isospin and flavor SU(3) relations and their validity in the charmless hadronic B decays $`B\pi \pi ,\pi K`$. Through a global fit to the latest data, the amplitudes as well as the corresponding strong phases are extracted with different patterns of SU(3) breaking.

It has been shown that in the case of SU(3) limits and the case with SU(3) breaking only in amplitudes, the fitting results require a large value for the ratio of two isospin amplitudes $`a_{3/2}^c/a_{3/2}^u`$. The rescaled ratio $`\kappa `$ which is equal to 1 in SM is found in this case to be

$$\kappa =12.0(10.7)\text{for}\xi =1.0(1.23),$$

with a minimal $`\chi ^2`$ around 1. Such a value of $`\kappa `$ is about an order of magnitude greater than the SM prediction. This results is insensitive to the weak phase $`\gamma `$. The SU(3) breaking effects on strong phases have been studied in several cases. It has been seen that the best fitted value of $`\kappa `$ can significantly be lowed or even close to the SM prediction $`\kappa =1`$ with a minimum $`\chi ^2`$ at about 4. It implies that to understand the current data within SM, the SU(3) breaking effects of the strong phases must be considered and it is likely to play an important role. The direct test on the SU(3) breaking of the strong phases require more precise measurements of direct CP violation. With the accumulating of the data in B factories, this may become possible in the near future.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is supported in part by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and NSFC under Grant $`\mathrm{\#}`$ 19625514. YFZ acknowledges the support by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. YFZ also thanks G. Buchalla for reading the manuscript and Z.Z. Xing for helpful discussions. YLW is grateful to L. Wolfenstein for very useful discussions concerning the importance of strong phases.


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# 1 Emptiness formation probability at large distance

## 1 Emptiness formation probability at large distance

The Hamiltonian of the $`XXZ`$ spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ Heisenberg chain is given by

$$H=\underset{m=1}{\overset{M}{}}\left(\sigma _m^x\sigma _{m+1}^x+\sigma _m^y\sigma _{m+1}^y+\mathrm{\Delta }(\sigma _m^z\sigma _{m+1}^z1)\right).$$
(1.1)
Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the anisotropy parameter, $`\sigma _m^{x,y,z}`$ denote the usual Pauli matrices acting on the quantum space at site $`m`$ of the chain. The emptiness formation probability $`\tau (m)`$ (the probability to find in the ground state a ferromagnetic string of length $`m`$) is defined as the following expectation value

$$\tau (m)=\psi _g|\underset{k=1}{\overset{m}{}}\frac{1\sigma _k^z}{2}|\psi _g,$$
(1.2)
where $`|\psi _g`$ denotes the normalized ground state. In the thermodynamic limit ($`M\mathrm{}`$), this quantity can be expressed as a multiple integral with $`m`$ integrations . Recently, in the article , a new multiple integral representation for $`\tau (m)`$ was obtained. It leads in a direct way to the known answer at the free fermion point $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ , in particular using a saddle point method, and to its first exact determination outside the free fermion point, namely at $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{1}{2}`$ .

The purpose of this letter is to present the evaluation of the asymptotic behavior of $`\tau (m)`$ at large distance $`m`$, in the massless regime $`1<\mathrm{\Delta }<1`$, via the saddle point method. We find

$$\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}\tau (m)}{m^2}=\mathrm{log}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }+\frac{1}{2}\underset{i0}{}\frac{d\omega }{\omega }\frac{\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\omega }{2}(\pi \zeta )\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{\omega \zeta }{2}}{\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi \omega }{2}\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\omega \zeta }{2}\mathrm{cosh}\omega \zeta },$$
(1.3)
where $`\mathrm{cos}\zeta =\mathrm{\Delta }`$, $`0<\zeta <\pi `$. If $`\zeta `$ is commensurate with $`\pi `$ (in other words if $`e^{i\zeta }`$ is a root of unity), then the integral in (1.3) can be taken explicitly in terms of $`\psi `$-function (logarithmic derivative of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-function). In particular for $`\zeta =\frac{\pi }{2}`$ and $`\zeta =\frac{\pi }{3}`$ (respectively $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1/2`$) we obtain from (1.3)

$$\begin{array}{c}\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}\tau (m)}{m^2}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}2,\mathrm{\Delta }=0,\hfill \\ \text{}\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}\tau (m)}{m^2}=\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{log}33\mathrm{log}2,\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{1}{2},\hfill \end{array}$$

which coincides with the known results obtained respectively in  and in . For the particular case of the $`XXX`$ chain ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=1`$, $`\zeta =0`$) the asymptotic behavior can be evaluated also by the saddle point method and it is given by

$$\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}\tau (m)}{m^2}=\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{3}{4})\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{2})}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{4})}\right)\mathrm{log}(0.5991),$$
(1.4)
which is in good agreement with the known numerical result $`\mathrm{log}(0.598)`$, obtained in .

Below, we explain the main features of our method. A more detailed account of the proofs and techniques involved will be published later.

## 2 The saddle point method

The multiple integral representation for $`\tau (m)`$ obtained in  can be written in the form

$`\tau (m)=\left({\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sin}\zeta }}\right)^m\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\zeta }}\right)^{\frac{m^2m}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝒟}{}}d^m\lambda F(\{\lambda \},m)`$
$`\times {\displaystyle \underset{a>b}{\overset{m}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _a\lambda _b)}{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a\lambda _bi\zeta )\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a\lambda _b+i\zeta )}}{\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{m}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a\frac{i\zeta }{2})\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a+\frac{i\zeta }{2})}{\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\lambda _a}}\right)^m,`$ (2.1)
with

$$F(\{\lambda \},m)=\underset{\xi _1,\mathrm{}\xi _m\frac{i\zeta }{2}}{lim}\frac{1}{\underset{a>b}{\overset{m}{}}\mathrm{sinh}(\xi _a\xi _b)}\underset{m}{det}\left(\frac{i\mathrm{sin}\zeta }{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j\xi _k)\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j\xi _ki\zeta )}\right).$$
(2.2)
Here the integration domain $`𝒟`$ is $`\mathrm{}<\lambda _1<\lambda _2<\mathrm{}<\lambda _m<\mathrm{}`$.

Following the standard arguments of the saddle point method we estimate the integral (2) by the maximal value of the integrand. Let $`\{\lambda ^{}\}`$ be the set of parameters corresponding to this maximum. They satisfy the saddle point equations and for large $`m`$ we assume that their distribution can be described by a density function $`\rho (\lambda ^{})`$:

$$\rho (\lambda _j^{})=\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{m(\lambda _{j+1}^{}\lambda _j^{})}.$$
(2.3)
Thus for large $`m`$, one can replace sums over the set $`\{\lambda ^{}\}`$ by integrals. Namely, if $`f(\lambda )`$ is integrable on the real axis, then

$$\begin{array}{c}\frac{1}{m}\underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}f(\lambda _j^{})_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f(\lambda )\rho (\lambda )𝑑\lambda ,\hfill \\ \text{}\frac{1}{m}\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{j=1}{jk}}{\overset{m}{}}\frac{f(\lambda _j^{})}{\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{}}V.P._{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{f(\lambda )}{\lambda \lambda _k^{}}\rho (\lambda )𝑑\lambda ,\hfill \end{array}m\mathrm{}.$$

Due to (2) it is easy to see that in the point $`\lambda _1^{},\mathrm{},\lambda _m^{}`$ the products in the second line of (2) behave as $`\mathrm{exp}(cm^2)`$.

Our goal is now to estimate the behavior of the term $`F(\{\lambda ^{}\},m)`$. To do this we factorize the determinant in (2.2) as follows for large $`m`$:

$`\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{i\mathrm{sin}\zeta }{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j^{}\xi _ki\zeta )}}\right)`$
$`=(2\pi i)^m\underset{m}{det}\left(\delta _{jk}{\displaystyle \frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})}{2\pi im\rho (\lambda _k^{})}}\right)\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)}}\right),`$ (2.4)
with

$$K(\lambda )=\frac{i\mathrm{sin}2\zeta }{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda i\zeta )\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda +i\zeta )}.$$
(2.5)
Indeed, for $`m\mathrm{}`$ one has

$`\underset{m}{det}\left(\delta _{jk}{\displaystyle \frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})}{2\pi im\rho (\lambda _k^{})}}\right)\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)}}\right)`$
$`=\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{m}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _l^{})}{2\pi im\rho (\lambda _l^{})}}{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _l^{}\xi _k)}}\right)`$ (2.6)
$`\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{i}{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\mu )}{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle \frac{id\mu }{2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\mu \xi _k)}}\right)`$
$`=\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}\right)^m\underset{m}{det}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\zeta }{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j^{}\xi _k)\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _j^{}\xi _ki\zeta )}}\right).`$
Here we have used the fact that the function $`i/2\zeta \mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _j\xi )`$ solves the Lieb integral equation for the density of the ground state of the $`XXZ`$ magnet  (and we have used the notations of ) . The second determinant in the r.h.s. of (2) is a Cauchy determinant, hence,

$$F(\{\lambda ^{}\},m)=(i)^m\left(\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\right)^{\frac{m^2+m}{2}}\frac{\underset{a>b}{\overset{m}{}}\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _a^{}\lambda _b^{})}{\underset{a=1}{\overset{m}{}}\mathrm{cosh}^m\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\lambda _a^{}}\underset{m}{det}\left(\delta _{jk}\frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})}{2\pi im\rho (\lambda _k^{})}\right).$$
(2.7)
The behavior of the determinant in (2.7) can be estimated via Hadamard inequality

$$|\underset{m}{det}(a_{jk})|(\mathrm{max}|a_{jk}|)^mm^{\frac{m}{2}}.$$
(2.8)
applied to the above determinant and to the determinant of the inverse matrix , which shows that

$$\underset{m\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{m^2}\mathrm{log}\underset{m}{det}\left(\delta _{jk}\frac{K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})}{2\pi im\rho (\lambda _k^{})}\right)=0.$$
(2.9)
The last equation means that $`det_m\left(\delta _{jk}K(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})/2\pi im\rho (\lambda _k^{})\right)`$ does not contribute to the leading term of the asymptotics. Hence, it can be excluded from our considerations.

Thus, up to subleading corrections of the exponential type the emptiness formation probability behaves as

$$\tau (m)\left(\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\right)^{m^2}e^{m^2S_0},m\mathrm{},$$
(2.10)
with

$`S_0S(\{\lambda ^{}\})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{m^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a>b}{\overset{m}{}}}\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda _a^{}\lambda _b^{})}{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a^{}\lambda _b^{}i\zeta )\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a^{}\lambda _b^{}+i\zeta )}}\right)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}{\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{m}{}}}\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a^{}i\zeta /2)\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda _a^{}+i\zeta /2)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\lambda _a^{}}}\right).`$ (2.11)
Here the parameters $`\{\lambda ^{}\}`$ are the solutions of the saddle point equations

$$\frac{S_0}{\lambda _j^{}}=0.$$
(2.12)
In our case the system (2.12) has the form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\zeta }}\mathrm{tanh}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \lambda _j^{}}{\zeta }}\mathrm{coth}(\lambda _j^{}i\zeta /2)\mathrm{coth}(\lambda _j^{}+i\zeta /2)`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{m}}{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k=1}{kj}}{\overset{m}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\zeta }}\mathrm{coth}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\zeta }}(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{})\mathrm{coth}(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{}i\zeta )\mathrm{coth}(\lambda _j^{}\lambda _k^{}+i\zeta )\right).`$ (2.13)
Using (2) we transform (2) into the integral equation for the density $`\rho (\lambda )`$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\zeta }}\mathrm{tanh}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \lambda }{\zeta }}\mathrm{coth}(\lambda i\zeta /2)\mathrm{coth}(\lambda +i\zeta /2)`$
$`=V.P.{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\zeta }}\mathrm{coth}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\zeta }}(\lambda \mu )\mathrm{coth}(\lambda \mu i\zeta )\mathrm{coth}(\lambda \mu +i\zeta )\right)\rho (\mu )𝑑\mu .`$ (2.14)
Respectively the action $`S_0`$ takes the form

$`S_0={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\lambda \rho (\lambda )\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda i\zeta /2)\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda +i\zeta /2)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{\pi }{\zeta }\lambda }}\right)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\mu 𝑑\lambda \rho (\lambda )\rho (\mu )\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\frac{\pi }{\zeta }(\lambda \mu )}{\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda \mu i\zeta )\mathrm{sinh}(\lambda \mu +i\zeta )}}\right).`$ (2.15)
Since the kernel of the integral operator in (2) depends on the difference of the arguments, this equation can be solved via Fourier transform. Then

$$\widehat{\rho }(\omega )=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}e^{i\omega \lambda }\rho (\lambda )𝑑\lambda =\frac{\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\omega \zeta }{2}}{\mathrm{cosh}\omega \zeta }.$$
(2.16)
Making the inverse Fourier transform we find

$$\rho (\lambda )=\frac{\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\pi \lambda }{2\zeta }}{\zeta \sqrt{2}\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\pi \lambda }{\zeta }},$$
(2.17)
which obviously satisfies the needed normalisation condition for density (integral on the real axis equals one). It remains to substitute (2.16), (2.17) into (2), and after straightforward calculations we arrive at

$$S_0=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i0}{}\frac{d\omega }{\omega }\frac{\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\omega }{2}(\pi \zeta )\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{\omega \zeta }{2}}{\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\pi \omega }{2}\mathrm{sinh}\frac{\omega \zeta }{2}\mathrm{cosh}\omega \zeta }.$$
(2.18)
Thus, we have obtained (1.3).

In the case of the $`XXX`$ chain ($`\mathrm{\Delta }=1`$) one should rescale $`\lambda _j\zeta \lambda _j`$, $`\xi _j\zeta \xi _j`$ in the original multiple integral representation (2) for $`\tau (m)`$ and then proceed to the limit $`\zeta 0`$ . The remaining computations are then very similar to the ones described above, therefore we present here only the main results. The behavior of $`\tau (m)`$ is now given by

$$\tau (m)\pi ^{m^2}e^{m^2S_0},m\mathrm{}.$$
(2.19)
The action $`S_0`$ in the saddle point has the form

$`S_0={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda i/2)(\lambda +i/2)}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\pi \lambda }}\right)\rho (\lambda )𝑑\lambda `$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\mu 𝑑\lambda \rho (\lambda )\rho (\mu )\mathrm{log}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\pi (\lambda \mu )}{(\lambda \mu i)(\lambda \mu +i)}}\right).`$ (2.20)
The analog of the integral equation (2) in the $`XXX`$ case is

$$2\pi \mathrm{tanh}\pi \lambda \frac{2\lambda }{\lambda ^2+\frac{1}{4}}=V.P._{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\left(2\pi \mathrm{coth}\pi (\lambda \mu )\frac{2(\lambda \mu )}{(\lambda \mu )^2+1}\right)\rho (\mu )𝑑\mu .$$
(2.21)
The solution of this equation is

$$\rho (\lambda )=\frac{\mathrm{cosh}\frac{\pi \lambda }{2}}{\sqrt{2}\mathrm{cosh}\pi \lambda }.$$
(2.22)
Substituting (2.22) into (2) we finally arrive at (1.4).

## Acknowledgments

N. K. is supported by JSPS grant P01177. N. K. would like to thank M. Jimbo for help. N. S. is supported by the grants RFBR-02-01-00484, Foundation of the Support of Russian Science, Leading Scientific Schools 00-15-96046, the Program Nonlinear Dynamics and Solitons and by CNRS. J.M. M. is supported by CNRS. V. T is supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-96ER40959 and by CNRS. N. K, N. S. and V. T. would like to thank the Theoretical Physics group of the Laboratory of Physics at ENS Lyon for hospitality, which makes this collaboration possible. We also would like to thank the organizors of the ”6th International Workshop Conformal Field Theory and Integrable Models” held in Chernogolovka, September 15-21, 2002, for the nice and stimulating scientific (and extra-scientific) atmosphere they succeeded to generate.


text:
# Induced vortex tunneling in a superconducting wire

## I Introduction

Tunneling of magnetic flux across weak superconducting links of various nature is of interest for both fundamental physics and applications. In particular, devices using Josephson junctions have been discussed recently in connection with proposals for quantum computing (qubits). (For a review of various types of superconducting qubits, see ref. .) Such devices (SQUIDs) can be, for many purposes, reduced to just a few degrees of freedom, so it becomes possible to numerically simulate their quantum behavior. In this way, one can discuss not only the amplitude transfer between the basis states, but also the residual excitation due to population of the higher levels .

As the strength of the weak link is increased, by going from a Josephson contact to a narrow wire, and then to a wider wire, superconductivity becomes more robust, and the tunneling rate drops. In ultrathin wires, with widths $`L_x\xi `$, where $`\xi `$ is the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length, the relevant tunneling events are quantum phase slips . Crossover to the wide-wire case occurs at widths $`L_x\xi `$, and for wider wires transport of flux happens via formation of vortices.

Robustness of superconductivity in wires with $`L_x\xi `$ can be useful in applications that require long coherence time, such as qubits. Indeed, we expect that in a suitable implementation such a wire will not be subject to any shunting effects except for thermal quasiparticles. Possible implementations include a wire defined lithographically on a substrate or a multiwall carbon nanotube coated with a superconducting film. In either case, the superconducting circuit has to be closed to allow a persistent current, which presumably can be done using ordinary bulk superconductors.

On the other hand, when a wire with $`L_x\xi `$ is used in place of a weak link, inducing a transition between the basis states of the qubit becomes a nontrivial matter, since flux does not travel easily across wider wires. We propose to use for this purpose a pulse of electric current along the wire, which can be produced by coupling the qubit, either directly or inductively, to some external circuit. The pulse will lower the potential barrier separating the basis states and thus encourage the motion of flux across the wire. We call this process induced vortex tunneling.***As we explain in more detail below, the pulse of current is supposed to enhance tunneling of flux but not induce real-time, over-barrier transitions. Thus, our problem is quite distinct from that of a resistive state in thin wires  or films . In particular, real-time classical simulations based on the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation are clearly inapplicable in our case.

Because this process involves many degrees of freedom, the theory of it has to be constructed from an entirely different standpoint than the few-degree-of-freedom modeling common in the theory of SQUIDs. In this paper we develop and compare two approaches. One approach uses instantons, i.e., Euclidean solutions, which in our case correspond to motion of vortices and antivortices across the wire in Euclidean (imaginary) time. This approach makes it possible to discuss the effects of the environment (specifically, fermions at the vortex cores) on tunneling, but for calculations of the residual excitation left in the system by the pulse, is less convenient than the other approach, based on duality. In the dual formulation, vortices are described by a fundamental quantum field, and the tunneling rate appears as a finite-size effect due to mode quantization in a confined geometry.

For definiteness, we consider cylindrical geometry, in which the wire is formed by a thin superconducting film on an insulating cylindrical surface. The “width” $`L_x`$ of the wire is the circumference of the cylinder. Although this may not be the simplest geometry to manufacture, it has the advantage of simple (periodic) boundary conditions in the $`x`$ direction. Results for other geometries, e.g., thin strips should be substantially similar.

Short Abrikosov flux lines that can propagate in the film will be referred to as vortices and antivortices, depending on which direction the flux points. Motion of the flux across a cylindrical wire can be viewed as creating a vortex-antivortex pair on one side of the cylinder, transporting them along the circumference, and annihilating them on the other side, see Fig. 1. This process has been discussed in various contexts in the literature . Here, we present a detailed calculation of the rate, including the effect of core fermions, and a discussion of the residual excitation.

Vortex instantons have been used to discuss the phenomenon of quantum creep . That discussion employed the ordinary non-relativistic vortex action. In our case, since a tunneling event requires formation of a vortex-antivortex pair, we are constrained to use a “relativistic” action, with the speed of light replaced by some other limiting speed $`c_1`$. We will see that in this “relativistic” case, instantons are characterized by large (Euclidean) velocities and correspondingly short timescales, one of the consequences being that the core contribution to the vortex mass is greatly reduced.

We stress that when we speak about production of a vortex pair, transporting vortices around the cylinder, etc. we mean a virtual process, i.e., tunneling. Production of real vortices is detrimental to our goal, since these vortices would be easily “detected” by the environment (e.g., by electrons at the vortex cores), and that would result in rapid decoherence of quantum superpositions that we intend to form. To prevent decoherence, induced transitions should leave as little imprint on the environment as possible. The main result of the present work is that it is possible, at least theoretically, to use a slowly (adiabatically) changing current that has an exponentially small probability to create a real vortex but still leads to a sizeable transport of the vortex number around the cylinder.

At the first-quantized level, the dual description we use coincides with that employed in the theory of vortex transport in arrays of Josephson junctions . However, to consider effects of zero-point vortex-antivortex pairs fluctuating “in and out of existence”, we need to apply duality at the second-quantized level. In a second-quantized description, vortices are represented by a fundamental quantum field. Such a description was used in refs.  to study nucleation of vortex-antivortex pairs in the presence of a static supercurrent. The main differences between that problem and ours are that in our case the process is, first, time-dependent and, second, avoids as much as possible production of real vortex pairs.

The paper is organized as follows. Sect. II describes the duality map. Effects of core fermions and of the vortex-antivortex potential on vortex tunneling are discussed, using the instanton picture, in Sect. III. This discussion gives us confidence that the linear equation (11) obtained in Sect. 2 indeed captures the essential physics of the process. Sect. IV contains definitions of the average vortex current, which is used to measure the tunneling amplitude, and of the residual excitation left in the system after the pulse (the number of real vortices produced). In Sect. V we consider the adiabatic limit (a slowly changing current) and show that it is possible to have a sizeable amplitude transfer with exponentially small residual excitation. Some numerical estimates are given in Sect. VI. We find that for a film of thickness $`d=10`$ nm, a suitable width of the wire is of order 1 $`\mu `$m. Sect. VII is a conclusion.

## II Duality map

The original quantum description of a superconductor contains the usual vector potential $`A_\mu `$ as well as fields corresponding to other degrees of freedom: fluctuations of the order parameter, normal electrons at vortex cores, etc. We introduce field $`a_\lambda `$, dual to the electromagnetic field $`A_\mu `$, by rewriting the corresponding factor in the functional integral as a Gaussian integral:

$`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{id}{16\pi \mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle F_{\mu \nu }^2d^2x𝑑t}\right)=\mathrm{const}.\times `$ (2)
$`{\displaystyle 𝒟a_\mu \mathrm{exp}\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}\left(\frac{gc}{4\pi }ϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda }F_{\mu \nu }a_\lambda +\frac{g^2c^2}{2\pi d}a_\lambda ^2\right)d^2x𝑑t}.`$
Here $`d`$ is the film’s thickness,

$$g=\frac{2e}{\mathrm{}c},$$
(3)
$`e`$ is the magnitude of electron charge ($`e>0`$), and $`c`$ is the speed of light. We have already incorporated the condition that the film is thin, so that parallel fields penetrate inside undiminished. Greek indices run over values 0,1,2; Latin indices over 1,2. Sums over repeated indices are implied.

The next step is to separate the original field $`A`$ into $`A^{(\mathrm{vort})}`$, which consists of narrow flux tubes attached to vortices, and the remaining long-range part $`A^{(\mathrm{long})}`$. In thin films, the screening length for perpendicular magnetic fields is very large , so a narrow flux tube does not account completely for the magnetic field of a vortex: part of the field will appear in $`A^{(\mathrm{long})}`$ and will be responsible for long-range interactions between the vortices. However, the electric field of a moving vortex is confined to the vortex core , and that makes introduction of the flux tubes useful. For the field strength we have

$$F_{\mu \nu }=F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{long})}+F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{vort})}.$$
(4)
We define a (conserved) current of vortices as

$$J^\lambda \frac{gc}{4\pi }ϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda }F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{vort})}.$$
(5)
Thus a state with $`J_0=c\delta (𝐱)`$ carries precisely a unit flux quantum $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=2\pi /g`$ of $`F^{(\mathrm{vort})}`$.

To obtain a dual description of vortices, we introduce a new complex field $`\chi `$ with a unit charge with respect to the field $`a`$. The action of the vortex field is taken in the form

$`S_\chi ={\displaystyle }d^2xdt\left[\right|_t\chi +(ic/\mathrm{})a_0\chi |^2`$ (7)
$`c_1^2|_i\chi +(i/\mathrm{})a_i\chi |^2M^2(t)|\chi |^2],`$
where $`M(t)`$ is half of the pair-production frequency. During a pulse of current, this frequency is time-dependent. Eq. (7) is a “relativistic” action, except that the role of the speed of light is played by some other speed $`c_1`$, cf. refs. . We will discuss the value of $`c_1`$ in Sect. VI.

The “relativistic” form of (7) may seem ad hoc, but in fact the form of the vortex action is highly constrained by symmetries. For example, the presence of a conserved vortex current dictates that $`\chi `$ should be a complex field, while the possibility of pair production dictates that the kinetic term should be quadratic in the time derivative. The absence of terms with higher spatial derivatives is a good approximation as long as wavenumbers do not exceed a certain ultraviolet cutoff, which we expect to be of order of the lattice spacing. Finally, self-interaction of the vortex field (higher-order terms in $`\chi `$) can be neglected as long as vortices are sufficiently rare.

The simple action (7) neglects other degrees of freedom, in particular, fermions at the vortex core . These are nearly gapless and, as well known, cause large friction for slow vortex motions . For a tunneling process, involving virtual vortices only, the expected effect of such a dissipative environment is a reduction in the tunneling rate . We analyze this effect in the next section and find that for rapid, large-frequency Euclidean motions corresponding to tunneling, the role of dissipative processes is greatly reduced, so much so that they do not affect the main exponential factor in the tunneling rate, but can only affect the preexponent. Because our main conclusions are based on the value of the exponential factor, we take

$$S_{\mathrm{dual}}=d^2x𝑑t\left(\frac{gc}{4\pi }ϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda }F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{long})}a_\lambda +\frac{g^2c^2}{2\pi d}a_\lambda ^2\right)+S_\chi $$
(8)
as the full action of our dual description.

The vortex current in this description is given by the usual formula $`J^\lambda =\delta S_\chi /\delta a_\lambda `$. In particular, the spatial components are

$$J^i=\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}c_1^2\left(\chi ^{}_i\chi _i\chi ^{}\chi +\frac{2i}{\mathrm{}}\chi ^{}\chi a_i\right).$$
(9)
From (8), we obtain an equation for $`a`$ in the form

$$\frac{g^2c^2}{\pi d}a^\lambda =\frac{gc}{4\pi }ϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda }F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{long})}+J^\lambda .$$
(10)
Combined with eqs. (4) and (5) this is seen to be completely equivalent to the saddle-point condition for the integral (2), i.e., to the original definition of $`a`$.

Equation of motion for $`\chi `$ is obtained from (7) and reads

$$[_t+(ic/\mathrm{})a_0]^2\chi c_1^2[_i+(i/\mathrm{})a_i]^2\chi +M^2\chi =0.$$
(11)
When we use (10) in this equation, we obtain an interaction of vortices with the long-range field $`F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{long})}`$. (The interaction with the short-ranged $`J^\lambda `$ is negligible if vortices are rare.) As we have mentioned above, the field $`F_{\mu \nu }^{(\mathrm{long})}`$ includes the long-range tails  of vortex magnetic fields and thus gives rise to a logarithmic interaction between vortices. Accordingly, the frequency $`M`$ in (11) should be understood as being due to the vortex core only. However, for instanton processes, involving a single vortex-antivortex pair, we can, instead of keeping track of the vortex contribution to $`a^\lambda `$, model the vortex-antivortex potential by making $`M`$ position-dependent. Moreover, as we will see in the next section, for calculation of the tunneling exponent, such $`x`$-dependent frequency can be replaced simply by its average value along the vortex path. Within this model, and with the short-ranged $`J^\lambda `$ dropped from (10), components of $`a`$ do not contain any fields due to vortices and reduce to external $`𝐄`$ and $`𝐁`$ fields only:

$$(a_0,a_1,a_2)=\frac{d}{2gc}(B_z,E_y,E_x).$$
(12)
Eq. (11) is a second-quantized description of vortices, which allows us to study effects due to virtual vortex-antivortex pairs. Similar descriptions were used previously in refs.  to study the instability of a static supercurrent via production of real vortex-antivortex pairs. In the limit when vortex-antivortex fluctuations are neglected (not a suitable limit here), eq. (11) gives rise to a first-quantized description, in which a vortex of mass $`m=\mathrm{}M/c_1^2`$ moves under action of a Lorentz force built from dual electric and magnetic field. These fields, $`𝐞=a_0(1/c)_t𝐚`$ and $`𝐛=\times 𝐚`$ can be expressed through the electric current and charge density, using (12) and Maxwell’s equations. The resulting expressions coincide with those appearing in the first-quantized theory of ref. .

For a static supercurrent $`I`$ in the $`y`$ direction, we would have $`a_1(t)It`$. In contrast, the adiabatic case considered below corresponds to a slowly changing pulsed $`a_1`$: $`a_1(t\pm \mathrm{})=0`$.

An additional constant “magnetic” field $`𝐛`$ can be used to describe a Magnus force on the vortex. However, as we will find in the next section, for tunneling processes the Magnus force is canceled, to a very high accuracy, by the spectral flow force  due to core fermions. Accordingly, we set the total effective Magnus force to zero: $`𝐛=0`$.

Eq. (11) simplifies further if we restrict our attention to the cylindrical geometry of Fig. 1. A pulse of electric current will be applied lengthwise, in the $`y`$ direction. The resulting field $`E_y`$ will induce a virtual pair of vortex and antivortex to travel along the circumference of the cylinder (i.e., in the $`x`$ direction). So, we set $`E_x=B_z=0`$, and $`E_y=E(t)`$. For the present configuration, $`E`$ is independent of $`x`$ and $`y`$. Thus, the equation of motion takes the form

$$\ddot{\chi }c_1^2_y^2\chi c_1^2\left[_xi\frac{d}{4e}E(t)\right]^2\chi +M^2(t)\chi =0.$$
(13)
Although we will not need any such relation in what follows, we note that the two time-dependent parameters in (13), $`E`$ and $`M`$, can be expressed through a single function of time—the electric current (see ref.  for details).

## III Instantons and the effects of the environment

It is well known that motion of vortices in superconductors is subject to strong renormalization effects due to the “environment” of normal electrons at the vortex cores. For low-frequency motions, in very clean superconductors, the main effect is a drastic reduction of the limiting speed $`c_1`$ in eq. (11). Indeed, in such cases it is natural to expect that $`c_1`$ will be equal to the critical velocity of the superconductor $`v_{\mathrm{cr}}=\mathrm{\Delta }/v_F`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the value of the gap outside the core. At larger speeds, the vortex becomes a “tachyon” and causes an instability via production of quasiparticles from the core. Equivalently, the small $`c_1=v_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ can be interpreted as a large value of the inertial mass $`m`$ of the vortex, since from (11) In this section, we set $`\mathrm{}=1`$.

$$m=M/c_1^2.$$
(14)
This estimate is consistent with direct calculations  of the inertial mass (provided the frequency $`M`$ is understood as the core contribution only).

Situation, however, is entirely different at large frequencies, or short timescales, which as we will see below is the case relevant to tunneling. The characteristic frequency associated with the fermionic response is determined by the “minigap” $`\omega _0\mathrm{\Delta }^2/ϵ_F`$, separating different states at the vortex core . When the timescale of the vortex motion is much shorter than $`\omega _0^1`$, the response and the contribution of fermions to the inertial mass will be diminished. Here, we calculate this effect for the vortex motion corresponding to our tunneling problem. The motion takes place in the Euclidean (imaginary) time. We will employ the kinetic equation  for core states, which gives their evolution in real time, and then analytically continue the results to the Euclidean domain.

The low-lying (“anomalous”) branch of fermion spectrum  at the vortex core runs in energy approximately from $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ to $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ (for a review and further references, see ref. ). This branch is characterized by two quantum numbers: $`k_z`$, the momentum in the $`z`$ direction (which in our case is perpendicular to the film), and the angular momentum $`l`$. For a vortex at rest, the energy levels are given approximately by $`E_l(k_z)=\omega _0(k_z)l`$, with $`\omega _0(k_z)=\mathrm{\Delta }^2/2v_Fk_{}`$, and $`k_{}^2=k_F^2k_z^2`$. In particular, $`\omega _0(0)=\mathrm{\Delta }^2/2v_Fk_F`$ . Motion of the vortex relative to the superfluid results in an interaction Hamiltonian and can cause transitions between different core levels. The distribution function $`n`$ in general depends on the quantum numbers $`k_z`$ and $`l`$ and their conjugate coordinates $`z`$ and $`\varphi `$. If $`n`$ is independent of $`z`$, the kinetic equation  reads

$$\frac{n}{t}\omega _0(k_z)\frac{n}{\varphi }+𝐤\times 𝐯(t)\frac{n}{l}=0,$$
(15)
where $`𝐤=(k_{}\mathrm{cos}\varphi ,k_{}\mathrm{sin}\varphi ,k_z)`$, and $`𝐯`$ is the vortex velocity. Note that we write the kinetic equation in the collisionless (Vlasov) approximation. This is appropriate whenever the characteristic timescale of the motion is much shorter than the collision time.

Solutions to eq. (15) can be obtained analytically for any form of the vortex velocity. Here we consider the case of main relevance to us, when the velocity is in the $`x`$ direction at all times. Then, the zero-temperature solution is a step-function

$$n(\varphi ,l;t)=\theta \left[l+k_{}\omega _0𝑑t^{}G_R(tt^{})h(\varphi ;t^{})\right],$$
(16)
where

$$h(\varphi ;t)=v(t)\mathrm{cos}\varphi +\omega _0^1_tv(t)\mathrm{sin}\varphi ,$$
(17)
and $`G_R`$ is the retarded Green function for $`_t^2+\omega _0^2`$: $`G_R(t<t^{})=0`$, $`G_R(t>t^{})=\omega _0^1\mathrm{sin}[\omega _0(tt^{})]`$. (More generally, the step-function can be replaced by an arbitrary function in (16), so finite-temperature solutions can also be constructed.) Eq. (16) describes excitation of the core system, originally in its ground state, by the vortex motion.

If velocity $`v(t)`$ is peaked around $`t=0`$ at the timescale $`t_1`$ shorter than both $`\omega _0^1`$ and the “observation time” $`t`$, we can replace it in (17) with a pulse of the form $`v(t)=x\delta (t)`$, where $`x`$ is the displacement. This yields $`n(\varphi ,l;t)=\theta (l)`$ for $`t<0`$, and

$$n(\varphi ,l;t)=\theta \left[l+k_{}x\mathrm{sin}(\omega _0t+\varphi )\right]$$
(18)
for $`t>0`$. Integrating over all modes, we obtain the total momentum transferred to electrons upon a vortex displacement $`x`$:

$$p_x(x)=\frac{d}{2}x_{k_F}^{k_F}\frac{dk_z}{2\pi }k_{}^2\mathrm{sin}\omega _0t,$$
(19)
while for $`p_y`$ the sine gets replaced by $`\mathrm{cos}\omega _0t`$. The remaining dependence on $`t`$ means that even after the displacement has been completed, and the vortex has stopped, fermions at the core continue to oscillate (“wobble”).

Tunneling in a wire can be visualized as motion in Euclidean time of a vortex and an antivortex, each by half-width of the wire, or alternatively as motion of the vortex alone by the full width $`L_x`$. For definiteness, we will discuss the latter process. We refer to it as an instanton. The instanton has two timescales associated with it: time $`\tau _0`$ it takes to create or destroy a vortex-antivortex pair, and time $`\tau _1`$ it takes the vortex to travel the distance $`L_x`$. Both $`\tau _0`$ and $`\tau _1`$ are variational parameters that adjust themselves to achieve the largest tunneling amplitude.

A natural estimate for $`\tau _0`$ is $`\tau _0M^1`$, and we will see that this estimate is unaffected by the presence of the environment. We will also find that in the limit when instantons are dilute, i.e., when the vortex motion has a large Euclidean action, we have $`\tau _1M^1`$, but still $`\omega _0\tau _11`$. So, to understand the effect of the environment on $`\tau _1`$, we analytically continue to $`t=i\tau `$ and expand in small $`\omega _0\tau `$. The change in the vortex momentum is opposite to (19), and the corresponding contribution to the Euclidean action of the vortex is

$$i_0^{L_x}p_x𝑑x=\frac{d}{16}L_x^2k_F^3\omega _0(0)\tau .$$
(20)
In our case, we need to replace $`\tau `$ with $`\tau _1`$, and although this just invalidates the approximation under which (19) was obtained, and the precise form of the velocity pulse begins to matter, we can still obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate for $`p_x𝑑x`$. Let us first obtain this estimate for the case when the instanton gas just ceases being dilute, and $`\tau _1`$ becomes of order $`M^1`$. In the case of induced tunneling, parameters $`M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ should be taken at time when the transition actually occurs. However, because (20) is now proportional to $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2/M`$, and $`M`$ scales as $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$, we can as well use the unperturbed, equilibrium values. Using $`M(k_Fd)ϵ_F`$, and $`\omega _0(0)=\mathrm{\Delta }^2/4ϵ_F`$, we estimate (20) as $`(k_FL_x)^2(\mathrm{\Delta }/ϵ_F)^2/64`$. This is small for typical values $`k_FL_x10^3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }/ϵ_F10^3`$, but can become large for larger $`L_x`$. In the latter case, or in the dilute regime when $`\tau _1`$ is sufficiently large in comparison with $`M^1`$, the action (20) begins to play a role in determining the value of the variational parameter $`\tau _1`$.

To see how that happens, consider the Euclidean action for a single vortex, without the environment correction:

$$S_E=𝑑\tau M(1+v_E^2)^{1/2},$$
(21)
where $`v_E`$ is the Euclidean velocity, and we use units with $`c_1=1`$. Strictly speaking, the mass $`M`$ should be made $`x`$-dependent, to include the vortex-antivortex potential. For now, however, we will consider it as some constant average mass; we will justify this replacement later. Then, during the vortex motion, $`v_E`$ is constant, and $`\tau _1=L_x/v_E`$. The exponential factor in the tunneling amplitude in this case is given by

$$\frac{d\tau _1}{\tau _1}e^{S_E}=𝑑v_E\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{ML_x}{v_E}(1+v_E^2)^{1/2}\mathrm{ln}v_E\right].$$
(22)
For large values of the product $`ML_x`$, the saddle-point value of $`v_E`$ is large: $`v_E=(ML_x)^{1/2}`$, while $`\tau _1=(L_x/M)^{1/2}`$. The saddle-point value of the exponent in this case is

$$S_E=ML_x/c_1+O(1)$$
(23)
(we have restored $`c_1`$ in this formula), so the limit of large $`ML_x`$ is precisely the limit when the instanton gas is dilute. Now, including the correction (20), with $`\tau \tau _1`$, we obtain a new effective action, which in the limit of large $`v_E`$ has the form

$$S_{\mathrm{eff}}ML_x+\frac{ML_x}{2v_E^2}+CL_x^3k_F^3\omega _0(0)\frac{d}{16v_E}+\mathrm{ln}v_E,$$
(24)
where $`C`$ is a numerical coefficient of order 1. Depending on the parameters, either the second or the third term in (24) can be more important in determining the saddle point value of $`v_E`$. In either case, however, the effective action on the saddle point will have the same form as eq. (23). We conclude that the longitudinal momentum transfer from the vortex to fermions at the core affects at most the tunneling preexponent, but not the main exponential factor.

The $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{const}.L_x)`$ form of the tunneling exponent had been discussed in the literature for various systems supporting vortices . The main point of this section is that it holds also for the “relativistic” action (21), and in this case the value of the exponent is not affected by the longitudinal correction (20).

Turning to the transverse momentum, and following the steps that led to eq. (20), we obtain the following contribution to the Euclidean action:

$$ip_y(L_x)y=i\frac{k_F^3d}{3\pi }L_xy\left[1+O(\omega _0^2\tau _1^2)\right],$$
(25)
where $`y`$ is a small displacement in the $`y`$ direction. Unlike (20), this contribution is purely imaginary: it gives rise to phase differences between vortex paths lying at different values of the lengthwise coordinate $`y`$. If significant phase differences existed, the tunneling amplitude would be drastically reduced. However, the magnitude of the leading term in (25) is such that, for $`k_F`$ equal to the value of the Fermi momentum outside the vortex core, it precisely cancels the action corresponding to the Magnus force. This is the well known cancellation of the Magnus force by the force due to spectral flow . The remaining correction in (25) is of order $`\omega _0^2`$ and is already quite small. Still, an even more complete cancellation can be achieved, because $`k_F`$, which measures the electron density at the core, is also a variational parameter and does not have to coincide with the value outside the core. As eq. (25) shows, a tiny self-adjustment of $`k_F`$ is sufficient to render the effective Magnus force exactly zero.

Finally, we need to restore the effect of the vortex-antivortex potential. As before, we consider the situation when, upon creation of a virtual vortex-antivortex pair, the antivortex stays in place, while the vortex makes a complete circle around the cylinder. Then, for the vortex action, we can still use eq. (21) but $`M`$ should now be replaced by some (periodic) function of $`x`$. Accordingly, $`v_E`$ is no longer a constant. We notice, however, that the reason why (21) previously simplified into (23) was not that $`v_E`$ was constant, but that it was large: $`v_E1`$. This still applies now, during most of the path. Taking this limit in eq. (21) with $`MM(x)`$, we obtain

$$S_E\frac{1}{c_1}M(x)𝑑x,$$
(26)
which is equivalent to (23) with $`M`$ replaced by its average value along the path.

## IV Observables

We have seen in the preceding section that the instanton picture of tunneling, with instantons corresponding to vortices and antivortices moving along closed paths in the Euclidean time, provides a very appealing and intuitive picture of flux tunneling across a wire of width $`L_x\xi `$. This picture has allowed us to estimate the effects of the environment and to obtain the main exponential factor in the tunneling amplitude. However, for certain tasks, in particular for understanding the adiabatic limit, it is more convenient to use the dual description (11). In this section, we discuss what observables can be calculated in that dual theory that will contain information about tunneling.

We will be interested primarily in two observables. The first is the average vortex current. The corresponding operator is given by (9); in our present case, only $`J_x`$ has a nontrivial average. To reduce the number of factors of $`\mathrm{}`$ in the subsequent formulas, it is convenient to introduce instead of $`\chi `$ a new field

$$X=\frac{\chi }{\sqrt{\mathrm{}}}.$$
(27)
Then,

$$J_x=ic_1^2\left[X^{}_xX_xX^{}X\frac{id}{2e}E(t)X^{}X\right].$$
(28)
For our cylindrical configuration, the field $`X`$ satisfies periodic boundary conditions in the $`x`$ direction. The boundary conditions in the $`y`$ direction will not matter; we take them to be periodic as well. The Fourier expansion of $`X`$ is

$$X(𝐱,t)=\underset{𝐤}{}\left(\alpha _𝐤f_𝐤(t)+\beta _𝐤^{}f_𝐤^{}\right)e^{i\mathrm{𝐤𝐱}},$$
(29)
where $`𝐤=(k_x,k_y)`$, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are the usual annihilation operators, and the mode functions satisfy

$$\ddot{f_𝐤}+\omega _𝐤^2(t)f_𝐤=0$$
(30)
with a time-dependent frequency

$$\omega _𝐤^2(t)=c_1^2k_y^2+c_1^2\left[k_x\frac{d}{4e}E(t)\right]^2+M^2(t).$$
(31)
To achieve the correct commutation relation between $`X`$ and $`_tX`$, the mode functions $`f`$ should be normalized by the condition

$$f_𝐤\dot{f}_𝐤^{}\dot{f}_𝐤f_𝐤^{}=\frac{i}{V},$$
(32)
where $`V`$ is the total two-dimensional volume. At some initial time $`t=t_i`$, before the pulse, we have $`E(t_i)=0`$ and $`M(t_i)=M_0`$, so we can use the usual plane-wave exponentials as initial conditions for $`f_𝐤(t)`$. Equivalently,

$`f_𝐤(t_i)`$ $`=`$ $`[2\omega _𝐤(t_i)V]^{1/2},`$ (33)
$`\dot{f}_𝐤(t_i)`$ $`=`$ $`i\omega _kf_𝐤(t_i),`$ (34)
where $`\omega _𝐤^2(t_i)=c_1^2k^2+M_0^2`$.

As discussed in the preceding sections, to include the effect of the vortex-antivortex potential, the frequency $`M(t)`$ in these formulas is taken to be the average frequency along the vortex path. We note also that eq. (30) with the initial conditions (33)–(34) can be used for numerical studies of vortex transport .

Substituting (29) in (28), and assuming that the quantum state of the system is the vacuum of the operators $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, we obtain the average current as

$$J_x(t)=2c_1^2\underset{𝐤}{}\left[k_x\frac{d}{4e}E(t)\right]|f_𝐤|^2.$$
(35)
The integral of this over time gives the average total vortex number transported around the cylinder (i.e. in the $`x`$ direction), per unit length in the $`y`$ direction. So, it measures the efficiency of the amplitude transfer between the basis states of the qubit.

The second quantity of interest is a measure of the residual excitation left in the system after the pulse. It is simply the total average number of vortices left at some final time $`t=t_f`$ and is obtained as the sum $`_𝐤n_𝐤(t_f)`$ of the occupation numbers of all the individual modes. These occupation numbers, as functions of time, are given by

$$n_𝐤(t)=\frac{V}{2\omega _𝐤(t)}\left[|\dot{f}_𝐤(t)|^2+\omega _𝐤^2(t)|f_𝐤(t)|^2\right]\frac{1}{2}.$$
(36)
Our next goal will be to show that a sufficiently slow, adiabatic change in $`E`$ and $`M`$ can lead to a sizable transport of the vortex number, while leaving $`n_𝐤(t\mathrm{})`$ exponentially suppressed.

## V Adiabatic limit

When the frequency (31) for each mode changes with time slowly (adiabatically), i.e.

$$|_t\omega _𝐤|\omega _𝐤^2,$$
(37)
the adiabatic theorem  guarantees that particle production will be absent in any finite order in $`|_t\omega _𝐤|/\omega _𝐤^2`$. In other words, $`n_𝐤(t)`$, which was zero initially, will be zero at $`t\mathrm{}`$ to exponential accuracy. The mode functions can then be approximated by WKB-type expressions:

$$f_𝐤(t)[2\omega _𝐤(t)V]^{1/2}\mathrm{exp}\left\{i_{t_i}^t\omega _𝐤(t^{})𝑑t^{}\right\}.$$
(38)
Substituting this into (35), we obtain the average current as

$$J_x(t)\frac{c_1^2}{V}\underset{𝐤}{}\frac{1}{\omega _𝐤(t)}\left[k_x\stackrel{~}{E}(t)\right],$$
(39)
where we have introduced notation

$$\stackrel{~}{E}(t)\frac{d}{4e}E(t).$$
(40)
The summand in (39) depends on $`k_x`$ only in combination $`k_x\stackrel{~}{E}`$, and it is odd in that combination. So, if we could replace the sum over $`k_x`$ by an integral and make a shift of the integration variable, we would prove that (39) is zero. There are, however, two obstructions to this procedure. First, the integral needs an ultraviolet regularization, which we take to be symmetric in $`k_x`$, not in $`k_x\stackrel{~}{E}`$. As a result, the far ultraviolet modes contribute a finite amount proportional to $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$. Second, the difference between the sum and the integral results in a correction, which is periodic in $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$ with period $`2\pi /L_x`$, where $`L_x`$ is the circumference of the cylinder. This correction vanishes when $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$ is an integer multiple of $`\pi /L_x`$, but is finite otherwise. It will be important for us to understand the structure of this correction.

To make the argument more transparent, let us consider the case of a weak electric field, $`|\stackrel{~}{E}|2\pi /L_x`$, so that we can expand the expected periodic correction in $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$. To simplify things even further, we will also assume that

$$b^{}=\frac{ML_x}{2c_1}1.$$
(41)
Then, we can expand $`1/\omega _𝐤`$ in (39) in $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$, to obtain

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\omega _𝐤}}(k_x\stackrel{~}{E})`$ (43)
$`=(k^2+M^2)^{1/2}\left\{k_x{\displaystyle \frac{c_1^2k_y^2+M^2}{c_1^2k^2+M^2}}\stackrel{~}{E}+O(\stackrel{~}{E}^2)\right\}.`$
The first term in the braces gives zero upon summation over $`k_x`$ (assuming a symmetric ultraviolet cutoff), so we have

$$J_x(t)\frac{c_1^2\stackrel{~}{E}}{V}\underset{k_y}{}m^2\underset{k_x}{}\frac{1}{(c_1^2k_x^2+m^2)^{3/2}}+O(\stackrel{~}{E}^2),$$
(44)
where

$$m^2=c_1^2k_y^2+M^2.$$
(45)
To compute the sum over $`k_x`$ in (44), we use the representation

$`{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\pi ^2n^2+b^2)^{3/2}}}`$ (47)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi b^2}}\left(1+{\displaystyle _b^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\omega d\omega }{\sqrt{\omega ^2b^2}\mathrm{sinh}^2\omega }}\right);`$
in our case

$$b=\frac{mL_x}{2c_1}.$$
(48)
Under the condition (41), $`b`$ is large, and we can expand the integral in (47) in $`e^{2b}`$. We obtain

$`{\displaystyle \underset{k_x}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(c_1^2k_x^2+m^2)^{3/2}}}`$ (50)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{L_x}{\pi c_1m^2}}\left[1+2\sqrt{\pi b}e^{2b}+O(e^{4b})\right].`$
If we were to neglect the discreteness of modes, i.e. replace the sum on the left-hand side of (50) with an integral, we would obtain only the first term in the bracket. According to (44), the average current due to this term is proportional to $`E`$, with no other time-dependent factors (the factors of $`m^2`$ cancel out). In the absence of sources of dissipation, such as pair-produced quasiparticles or real (non-virtual) vortices, we have $`E=(1/c)_tA`$, so the integral of $`E`$ over time is zero. Thus, the total vortex number transported around the cylinder is determined entirely by the exponential correction in (50).

The remaining sum over $`k_y`$ can be replaced by an integral and easily evaluated, noting that, at large values of $`b^{}`$, $`e^{2b}`$ confines $`k_y`$ to rather small values: $`c_1^2k_y^2M^2/b^{}`$. Thus, in the limit (41) we finally obtain

$$𝑑tJ_x(t)\frac{1}{\pi }𝑑t\stackrel{~}{E}M\mathrm{exp}(ML_x/c_1).$$
(51)
This quantity has dimension of inverse length, as it gives the transported vortex number per unit length of the cylinder.

The exponential factor in (51) coincides with the one obtained in sect. III by means of instanton calculus. Moreover, the periodicity with respect to $`\stackrel{~}{E}`$, noted after eq. (40), has a simple explanation in the instanton picture. Indeed, from (13) we see that the product $`\stackrel{~}{E}L_x`$ equals (up to a constant) the “solenoidal flux” $`a_x𝑑x`$. So, for $`\stackrel{~}{E}0`$ the amplitudes due to a single instanton and a single antiinstanton acquire opposite phases, equal in magnitude to $`|\stackrel{~}{E}L_x|`$. In the limit (41), when the instanton gas is dilute, the average vortex current is then proportional to

$$\mathrm{exp}(ML_x/c_1)\mathrm{sin}\stackrel{~}{E}L_x,$$
(52)
which has precisely the same periodicity as that deduced from eq. (39). We stress that in the dual calculation these results appear as a consequence of the quantization of vortex modes in a confined geometry, without any reference to instantons. So, the present calculation is complementary to the instanton calculation of sect. III.

Note that eq. (51) determines also the value of the preexponent. As we have already discussed, unlike the exponent, the preexponent may in certain cases be affected by fermions at the vortex core. Any such modification will be absent from eq. (51). We will, however, continue to use this equation, since our main conclusions are based on the value of the exponential factor.

The exponential suppression seen in (51) is of entirely different origin—and, hence, generally of different magnitude—than the adiabatic suppression of $`n_𝐤`$. To remove the exponential suppression in (51) altogether, we need, at some time $`t`$ during the pulse, to go just outside the limit (41), i.e. achieve the condition

$$M(t)=c_1/L_x.$$
(53)
(At this point, the $`O(e^{4b})`$ terms in (50) will become important.) Eq. (53) will not jeopardize adiabaticity provided that the characteristic timescale $`t_p`$ of the pulse (e.g. the ramp time) satisfies

$$t_p/2\pi 1/M(t)=L_x/c_1.$$
(54)
On the other hand, one can choose parameters of the device so that, before and after the pulse, the probability of random “errors”, i.e., spontaneous transitions between the basis states, is vanishingly small. (The amplitude of such spontaneous transitions is proportional to $`\mathrm{exp}(M_0L_x/c_1)`$, where $`M_0`$ is the unperturbed initial mass.)

## VI Numerical estimates

Let us summarize various conditions we have obtained so far on the parameters of the system. One is the inequality (54), which is the condition that a significant (order 1) vortex number transport is compatible with the adiabatic suppression of production of real vortex pairs. Another is the condition of exponential suppression of spontaneous tunneling transitions (“errors”):

$$L_x\lambda c_1/M_0.$$
(55)
The quantity $`\lambda `$ here, of the dimension of length, is analogous to the Compton wavelength of an elementary particle.

To (54) and (55), we should add the condition that pair production of quasiparticles is also exponentially suppressed (since quasiparticles, like vortices, lead to decoherence A quasiparticle pair can detect passage of flux through Aharonov-Bohm scattering. Although it remains to calculate how strong this effect actually is, we nevertheless impose the condition of negligible pair production below.) and the condition that the coherence length of the superconductor remains smaller than $`L_x`$, so that vortices remain well defined. These two conditions should be written so as to take into account the reduction of the superconducting gap $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, and the corresponding increase in the coherence length $`\overline{\xi }`$, during the pulse:

$`t_p/2\pi `$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}/\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}(t)={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}\overline{\xi }(t)}{\xi \mathrm{\Delta }}},`$ (56)
$`L_x`$ $``$ $`\overline{\xi }(t).`$ (57)
Quantities without the bar denote the unperturbed values, i.e. those before and after the pulse. We now obtain estimates for $`M_0`$, $`c_1`$, and $`\lambda `$.

To obtain these estimates we use the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) energy of superconductor

$$H_{\mathrm{GL}}=dd^2x\left[\zeta |(+ig𝐀)\psi |^2|r||\psi |^2+\frac{s}{2}|\psi |^4\right],$$
(58)
where $`\zeta `$, $`r`$, and $`s`$ are parameters. Although this expression is strictly applicable only near critical temperature, we will use it at temperatures close to absolute zero, where our device is supposed to operate, since all we need are order-of-magnitude estimates.

From the GL energy (58), $`M_0`$, which was defined as half of the threshold frequency required to produce a real vortex-antivortex pair, can be estimated as

$$\mathrm{}M_02\pi d\zeta |\psi _0|^2.$$
(59)
Here $`\psi _0`$ is the order parameter in the absence of current. This is an estimate for the “core” frequency. The long-range interaction between a vortex and an antivortex will contribute an additional amount, enhanced relative to (59) by $`\mathrm{ln}L_x/\overline{\xi }`$. However, since for the values of the parameters that we use below this logarithm is of order one, the estimate (59) will be sufficient for our purposes. It can be rewritten using the London screening length $`\delta `$:

$$\mathrm{}M_0\frac{e^2d}{16\alpha _{\mathrm{EM}}^2\delta ^2},$$
(60)
where $`\delta ^2=32\pi e^2\zeta |\psi _0|^2/\mathrm{}^2c^2`$, and $`\alpha _{\mathrm{EM}}`$ is the fine structure constant. (In thin films, $`\delta `$ determines the strength of the London current but not the actual screening length of the vortex magnetic field.)

We now turn to estimating the limiting speed $`c_1`$, or equivalently the vortex inertial mass (14). There are two types of contributions to $`m`$ : from the electric field caused by the vortex motion and from core fermions. We have discussed the mass due to core fermions in sect. III and have seen that for vortex tunneling, characterized by short timescales, the effect is not as large as for slow motions: on a short timescale the vortex cannot transfer a large longitudinal momentum to the fermion subsystem. In particular, the core contribution to the mass does not affect the value of the instanton exponent. Accordingly, for our estimates we take $`m`$ to be given by the small electromagnetic mass of the vortex

$$m\frac{\mathrm{}^2d}{16e^2\xi ^2}.$$
(61)
(See refs.  for how this estimate can be obtained.) This estimate results in a large value of $`c_1`$:

$$c_1(\xi /\delta )c.$$
(62)
The vortex’s “Compton wavelength” can be now obtained from (55):

$$\lambda \frac{16\alpha _{\mathrm{EM}}\xi \delta }{d}.$$
(63)
For numerical estimates, we use the following values: $`d=10`$ nm, $`\xi =30`$ nm, and $`\delta =100`$ nm. Then, according to (63), $`\lambda 35`$ nm, and (55) suggests that to suppress spontaneous transitions it is sufficient to use $`L_x`$ of order 1 $`\mu `$m. Comparing (53) and (55), we see that in this case the pulse will need to reduce the vortex frequency $`M`$ by a factor

$$\frac{M_0}{M(t)}=\frac{L_x}{\lambda }30.$$
(64)
Because $`M(t)`$ depends quadratically on the gap $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}(t)`$ (cf. (59)), eq. (64) corresponds to a reduction in $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$, and an increase in $`\overline{\xi }`$, by a factor of order 5. For a superconductor with a quasiparticle gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }=10`$ K, this turns the condition (56) into

$$t_p/2\pi 4\times 10^{12}\mathrm{s}.$$
(65)
Meanwhile, the competing condition (54) is

$$t_p/2\pi 10^{14}\mathrm{s}.$$
(66)
So, for the above values of the parameters, adiabaticity with respect to quasiparticle production is a stronger condition than adiabaticity with respect to production of vortices. Finally, the condition (57) can be easily verified.

## VII Conclusion

Our main result is the demonstration that for topological transitions, involving transport of magnetic flux via vortices, there exists a potentially useful adiabatic limit. In that limit, the probability to produce real vortex or quasiparticle pairs is exponentially small (as might be expected), but the transport of the vortex number due to virtual vortices can in principle be of order one.

Our choice of the cylindrical geometry was motivated by the ease of imposing boundary conditions on the vortex field in the dual formulation. We expect the result to apply to other geometries, which may also be easier to fabricate.

We have presented two calculations of the leading exponential factor in the tunneling amplitude: one based on instantons, and the other based on the dual formulation, in which vortices are described by a fundamental quantum field. The results have been shown to agree.

In addition, the instanton approach has allowed us to estimate the effects of the core fermions on vortex tunneling. The process at hand, i.e. an adiabatic transition in which no vortices are produced in the final state, turns out to have a very short (Euclidean) timescale, resulting in only a small transfer of longitudinal momentum to the fermions. As a consequence, the effective inertial mass of the vortex during tunneling is much smaller than the known estimates corresponding to slow motions. We have also discussed the effect of the vortex-antivortex potential and have found that, for calculating the leading exponential factor, the position-dependent vortex mass can be replaced with its average over the vortex path.

Our calculations were done under the condition that the wire width $`L_x`$ (the circumference of the cylinder) exceeds the GL coherence length $`\xi `$, so that vortices remain well defined. (This is the limit opposite to that of an ultra-thin wire, where tunneling is due to quantum phase slips.) Our results suggest that for $`L_x`$ in the micron range, induced vortex tunneling may be experimentally observable.

Moreover, since the adiabatic limit, i.e. a slow switching on and off of the current, eliminate the most obvious sources of decoherence, namely, pair production of vortices or quasiparticles, the process may be suitable for forming quantum superpositions of flux states. There are other possible sources of decoherence, in particular those due to components of the environment, such as nuclear or impurity spins, that are sensitive to magnetic fields caused by persistent currents, but we do not expect the situation here to be worse than for the conventional SQUID designs .

The author thanks Dane Bass and Albert Chang for discussions, and M. Stone and G. Volovik for correspondence on the physics of core fermions.