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# Two-loop self-dual QED

## 1 Introduction

In gauge theory a very special role is played by self-dual fields, i.e. fields satisfying the condition

$`F_{\mu \nu }=\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }F^{\alpha \beta }`$ (1.1)
Fields of this type are prominent in QCD for a number of different reasons:

* Instantons are self-dual.
* Among all covariantly constant gluon backgrounds, only the self-dual quasi-abelian background is stable (at one-loop) under fluctuations .
* Large classes of integrable models can be obtained by dimensional reduction starting from self-dual Yang-Mills theories .
* Self-dual fields are helicity eigenstates, so that the effective action in such a field carries the information on the corresponding gluon amplitudes with all equal helicities . Such ‘all $`+`$’ amplitudes generally exhibit a particularly simple structure, at the tree level  and beyond .

In the abelian case most of this motivation does not exist, with the exception of the last point mentioned, which holds in the abelian case as well. Correspondingly, little use has been made so far of self-dual fields in QED. In the present contribution, we will consider the case of constant self-dual fields in QED, and show that the self-duality condition leads to very remarkable simplifications for the effective action in such a background field .

## 2 One-loop Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians

Before presenting these two-loop results, let us shortly recapitulate some facts about Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians. At one-loop, the on-shell renormalized effective Lagrangians in a constant background field, for spinor and scalar QED, are given by the well-known formulas

$`_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dT}{T}}\text{e}^{m^2T}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{e^2ab}{\mathrm{tanh}(eaT)\mathrm{tan}(ebT)}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{3}}(a^2b^2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{T^2}}\right]`$
$`_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dT}{T}}\text{e}^{m^2T}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{e^2ab}{\mathrm{sinh}(eaT)\mathrm{sin}(ebT)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{6}}(a^2b^2){\displaystyle \frac{1}{T^2}}\right]`$
Here $`a,b`$ are related to the two invariants of the Maxwell field by $`a^2b^2=B^2E^2,ab=𝐄𝐁`$.

These effective Lagrangians are real for a purely magnetic field, while in the presence of an electric field there is an imaginary (absorptive) part, indicating the process of electron–positron (resp. scalar–antiscalar) pair creation by the field. For example, in the case of a purely electric field, $`E`$, the effective Lagrangians (LABEL:L1) have imaginary parts given by:

$`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{8\pi ^3}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi k}{\beta }}\right]`$
$`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{16\pi ^3}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^k}{k^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi k}{\beta }}\right]`$ (2.3)
where $`\beta =eE/m^2`$. These expressions are clearly non-perturbative in terms of the field and coupling. Their physical interpretation is that the coefficient of the $`k`$-th exponential can be directly identified with the rate for the coherent production of $`k`$ pairs by the field .

## 3 Two-loop Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians

The two-loop corrections to the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians, taking into account an additional photon exchange in the loop, where first calculated by Ritus in the seventies  (see also ). More recently these Lagrangians have been recalculated  using the ‘string-inspired’ formalism . However, in all cases the results are not nearly as explicit as the one-loop formulas (LABEL:L1); they involve two-parameter integrals and a counterterm from one-loop mass renormalization. As far as the magnetic case is concerned, where the effective Lagrangian is real, the complicated form of these representations is perhaps not too bothersome. For values of the magnetic field small compared to the ‘critical’ field strength $`B_c\frac{m^2}{e}`$, the Lagrangian can be computed using the weak field expansion, whose coefficients are easy to compute to fairly high orders :

$`_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}[B]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha m^4}{(4\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{81}}\left[64\left({\displaystyle \frac{B}{B_{\mathrm{cr}}}}\right)^4{\displaystyle \frac{1219}{25}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{B}{B_{\mathrm{cr}}}}\right)^6+{\displaystyle \frac{135308}{1225}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{B}{B_{\mathrm{cr}}}}\right)^8\mathrm{}\right]`$
For general values of the field strength numerical integration can be used.

Calculating the imaginary part of the corresponding Lagrangian for the electric field case is a more difficult matter. At the one-loop level, the imaginary parts (2.3) can be obtained from (LABEL:L1) by a simple application of the residue theorem. The analogous analysis for the two-loop parameter integrals is already highly nontrivial. Nevertheless, Ritus and Lebedev  were able to obtain along these lines the following two-loop generalization of the Schwinger decompositions (2.3):

$`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)}(E)+\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{8\pi ^3}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}+\alpha \pi K_k^{\mathrm{spin}}(\beta )\right]\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi k}{\beta }}\right]`$
$`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)}(E)+\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)}(E)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{16\pi ^3}}\beta ^2{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}+\alpha \pi K_k^{\mathrm{scal}}(\beta )\right]\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\pi k}{\beta }}\right]`$
where $`\alpha =\frac{e^2}{4\pi }`$ is the fine-structure constant. The coefficient functions $`K_k^{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}(\beta )`$ appearing here were not obtained explicitly by . However, it was shown that they have small $`\beta `$ expansions of the following form:

$`K_k^{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_k}{\sqrt{\beta }}}+1+\mathrm{O}(\sqrt{\beta })`$
$`c_1=0,`$ $`c_k={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\sqrt{k}}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{k1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{l(kl)}}},k2`$ (3.6)
Note that to the order given $`K_k^{\mathrm{spin}}=K_k^{\mathrm{scal}}`$. For $`k2`$, these expansions start with terms that are singular in the limit of vanishing field $`\beta 0`$, which seems to be at variance with the fact that these coefficients have a direct physical meaning. In  a physically intuitive solution was offered to this dilemma. Its basic assumption is that, if one would take into account contributions from higher loop orders to the prefactor of the $`k`$-th exponential, then one would find the two lowest order terms in the small – $`\beta `$ expansion of $`K_k^{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}(\beta )`$ to exponentiate in the following way,

$`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}+\alpha \pi K_k^{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{eE}{m^2}}\right)+\mathrm{}\right]\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{k\pi m^2}{eE}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{k\pi m_{}^2(k,E)}{eE}}\right]`$
(3.7)
It would thus be possible to absorb their effect completely into a field-dependent shift of the electron mass:

$`m_{}(k,E)`$ $`=`$ $`m+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\alpha kc_k\sqrt{eE}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\alpha keE/m`$ (3.8)
Moreover, these contributions to the mass shift have a simple meaning in the coherent tunneling picture : The negative term can be interpreted as the total Coulomb energy of attraction between opposite charges in a coherent group; the positive term, which is present only in the case $`k2`$, represents the energy of repulsion between like charges. For the attractive term, a completely different derivation of the same exponentiation was given in .

## 4 The imaginary part via Borel dispersion relations

Clearly, it would be of interest to understand in greater detail this prefactor series $`K_k^{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}(\beta )`$. In an effort to learn more about it, in  we used Borel techniques to study the imaginary part of the two-loop effective Lagrangian for a constant electric field background.

Let us review some basic facts on Borel summation. Consider an asymptotic series expansion of some function $`f(g)`$

$`f(g){\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}a_ng^n`$ (4.9)
where $`g0^+`$ is a small dimensionless perturbation expansion parameter. In many physics applications perturbation theory leads to a divergent series in which the expansion coefficients $`a_n`$ have leading large-order behaviour

$`a_n(1)^n\rho ^n\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu n+\nu )(n\mathrm{})`$ (4.10)
for some real constants $`\rho `$, $`\mu >0`$, and $`\nu `$. When $`\rho >0`$, the perturbative expansion coefficients $`a_n`$ alternate in sign and their magnitude grows factorially, just as in the Euler-Heisenberg case. Borel summation is a useful approach to this case of a divergent, but alternating series. The leading Borel approximation is

$`f(g){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{ds}{s}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+s}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{s}{\rho g}}\right)^{\nu /\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{s}{\rho g}}\right)^{1/\mu }\right]`$ (4.11)
For a non-alternating series, we need $`f(g)`$. The Borel integral (4.11) is an analytic function of $`g`$ in the cut $`g`$ plane: $`|\mathrm{arg}(g)|<\pi `$. So a dispersion relation (using the discontinuity across the cut along the negative $`g`$ axis) can be used to define the imaginary part of $`f(g)`$ for negative values of the expansion parameter:

$`\mathrm{Im}f(g){\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\mu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho g}}\right)^{\nu /\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho g}}\right)^{1/\mu }\right]`$ (4.12)
Returning to the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian, for a uniform magnetic background the weak-field expansions of the one-loop Lagrangians (LABEL:L1) are precisely of the form (4.9),(4.10) with $`g=(\frac{eB}{m^2})^2`$. For example, in the spinor QED case one has

$`a_n^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2^{2n}_{2n+4}}{(2n+4)(2n+3)(2n+2)}}(1)^n{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(2n+2)}{\pi ^{2n}}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^{2n+4}}}+\mathrm{}\right)`$
where the $`_m`$ are Bernoulli numbers. For a uniform electric background, the only difference perturbatively is that $`B^2`$ is replaced by $`E^2`$; that is, $`g=(\frac{eB}{m^2})^2`$ is replaced by $`g=(\frac{eE}{m^2})^2`$. So the perturbative one-loop Euler-Heisenberg series becomes non-alternating. Then from (4.12), with $`\rho =\frac{1}{\pi ^2}`$ and $`\mu =\nu =2`$, we immediately deduce the leading behaviour of the imaginary part of the one-loop Euler-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian:

$`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)}(E){\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{8\pi ^3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{eE}{m^2}}\right)^2\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{m^2\pi }{eE}}\right]`$ (4.14)
Taking into account also the sub-leading corrections (LABEL:growth) to the leading large-order behaviour of the expansion coefficients $`a_n^{(1)}`$, one can apply (4.12) successively to reconstruct the full Schwinger series (2.3).

At the two-loop level, no closed-form expression is known for the corresponding expansion coefficients $`a_n^{(2)}`$, so that the corresponding analysis becomes much more involved. In , first the integral representation for the purely magnetic case obtained in  was used to compute these coefficients up to $`n=15`$. It was then established by a numerical analysis that

$`a_n^{(2)}(1)^n{\displaystyle \frac{16}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(2n+2)}{\pi ^{2n}}}\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{0.44}{\sqrt{n}}}+\mathrm{}\right]`$ (4.15)
Thus the leading large-order growth corresponds to the form (4.10), and moreover differs from the one-loop case (LABEL:growth) only by a global prefactor. To the contrary, the subleading correction term given in (4.15) shows a much weaker $`n`$ dependence than is found for the first correction in the one-loop case (LABEL:growth). This means that in the two-loop case the dominant corrections are to the prefactor in the leading behaviour. This is in contrast to the one-loop case where the first correction to the leading behaviour is exponentially suppressed. Indeed, applying the Borel relations, the correction term (4.15) leads to

$`\mathrm{Im}\left(_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)}(E)+_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}(E)\right)`$ $``$ $`\left(1+\alpha \pi \left[1(0.44)\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2eE}{\pi m^2}}}+\mathrm{}\right]\right)`$ (4.16)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{8\pi ^3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{eE}{m^2}}\right)^2\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{m^2\pi }{eE}}\right]`$
Thus the structure of (4.16) conforms already to the form (LABEL:fullimag2l),(3.6).

## 5 The self-dual case

It seems very difficult to make further progress along these lines for the purely magnetic/electric field cases, let alone the general constant field case. To the contrary, in the self-dual case this analysis can be carried much further . Technically, this is because the self-duality condition (1.1) implies that

$`F^2`$ $`=`$ $`f^21\text{ }`$ (5.17)
where $`f^2=\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }`$, and $`1\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }`$ denotes the identity matrix in Lorentz space. This leads to enormous simplifications for this type of calculations.

In the self-dual (‘SD’) case, the integral representation (LABEL:L1) for the renormalized one-loop scalar effective Lagrangian becomes

$`_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(SD)}(\kappa )={\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dt}{t^3}}e^{2\kappa t}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{\mathrm{sinh}^2(t)}}1+{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{3}}\right]`$ (5.18)
where $`\kappa \frac{m^2}{2e\sqrt{f^2}}`$ is the natural dimensionless parameter. The Lagrangian for the spinor QED case differs from this only by the standard global factor of $`2`$ for statistics and degrees of freedom:

$`_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)(SD)}(\kappa )=2_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(SD)}(\kappa )`$ (5.19)
Note that this relation holds for the renormalized effective Lagrangians, not for the unrenormalized ones. It is due to a supersymmetry of the self-dual background . For real $`\kappa `$, this self-dual Lagrangian is real and has properties very similar to the magnetic Lagrangian. Similarly, for purely imaginary $`\kappa `$ the self-dual Lagrangian has an imaginary part, and provides a good analogue of the electric field case. These cases will therefore be called ‘magnetic’ and ‘electric’ in the following. In particular, the imaginary part of the ‘electric’ Lagrangian has a Schwinger-type expansion

$`\mathrm{Im}\left[_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(SD)}(i\kappa )\right]={\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2\pi \kappa }{k}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2}}\right)e^{2\pi k\kappa }`$ (5.20)
Surprisingly, for the self-dual case even at two loops all parameter integrals can be done in closed form, leading to the following explicit formulas :

$`_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)(SD)}(\kappa )`$ $`=`$ $`2\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^2}}\left[3\xi ^2(\kappa )\xi ^{}(\kappa )\right]`$
$`_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)(SD)}(\kappa )`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\xi ^2(\kappa )\xi ^{}(\kappa )\right]`$
Here we have introduced the function $`\xi `$,

$`\xi (x)x\left(\psi (x)\mathrm{ln}(x)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2x}}\right)`$ (5.22)
and $`\psi (\kappa )=\frac{d}{d\kappa }\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\kappa )`$ is the digamma function. This function has very simple expansions at zero as well as at infinity,

$`\psi (x)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{x}}\gamma +{\displaystyle \underset{k=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k\zeta (k)x^{k1}`$ (5.23)
$`\psi (x)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{ln}x{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2x}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{_{2k}}{2kx^{2k}}}`$ (5.24)
so that the formulas (LABEL:L2SD) directly yield closed-form expressions for the coefficients of both the weak-field and strong-field expansions of the self-dual Lagrangians. Moreover, it is easy to obtain also a closed representation for their imaginary parts which exist in the ‘electric’ case:

$`\mathrm{Im}\left[_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)}(i\kappa )\right]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \pi {\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa }}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left[k{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi \kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{3\kappa }{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^l_{2l}}{2l\kappa ^{2l}}}\right]e^{2\pi \kappa k}`$
$`\mathrm{Im}\left[_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}(i\kappa )\right]`$ $`=`$ $`2\alpha \pi {\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa }}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left[k{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi \kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{3\kappa }{\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^l_{2l}}{2l\kappa ^{2l}}}\right]e^{2\pi \kappa k}`$
Note that these formulas display the same structure found by Ritus and Lebedev for the physical electric case, (LABEL:fullimag2l),(3.6), but that in the self-dual case we have simple closed formulas for all the prefactors of the Schwinger exponentials. In (LABEL:fullimag2loopsd) we have written these prefactors as series in $`\frac{1}{\kappa }`$, which corresponds to the $`\beta `$ \- expansion (3.6). It is easy to see that this expansion is asymptotic, rather than convergent, for all $`k`$. For the scalar QED case, we have also verified  that the first ($`k=1`$) exponential in (LABEL:fullimag2loopsd), including its complete prefactor, can be correctly reproduced by an analysis of the asymptotic behaviour of the weak field expansion coefficients and the application of the Borel dispersion relations. It is also immediately evident that, for any given value of $`\kappa `$, the two-loop contribution to the prefactor of the $`k`$-th exponential will dominate over the corresponding one-loop quantity in (5.20) if $`k`$ is taken large enough. Given the close similarity between the electric and ‘electric’ cases at the one-loop level it is natural to assume that these properties hold also true for the electric case.

## 6 The $`N`$ \- photon amplitudes

As is well-known, the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians (LABEL:L1) can be used to obtain the one-loop QED $`N`$ \- photon amplitudes in the low-energy approximation, i.e. for photon momenta $`k_i`$ such that $`m^2`$ is much larger than all $`k_ik_j`$ ’s. After specializing to a self-dual background it still contains the information on the component of the $`N`$ \- photon amplitude with all helicities equal, say, all ‘+’. Using (LABEL:L1),(LABEL:L2SD),(5.24) together with the standard spinor helicity formalism (see, e.g., ), one obtains for this low-energy limit the following explicit formulas: At one loop,

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2e)^N}{(4\pi )^2m^{2N4}}}c_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)}({\scriptscriptstyle \frac{N}{2}})\chi _N`$
$`c_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)}(n)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_{2n}}{2n(2n2)}}`$
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(1)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]`$
and at two loops

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \pi {\displaystyle \frac{(2e)^N}{(4\pi )^2m^{2N4}}}c_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)}({\scriptscriptstyle \frac{N}{2}})\chi _N`$
$`c_{\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)}(n)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{2n3}{2n2}}_{2n2}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{_{2k}}{2k}}{\displaystyle \frac{_{2n2k}}{(2n2k)}}\right\}`$
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]`$ $`=`$ $`2\alpha \pi {\displaystyle \frac{(2e)^N}{(4\pi )^2m^{2N4}}}c_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}({\scriptscriptstyle \frac{N}{2}})\chi _N`$
$`c_{\mathrm{spin}}^{(2)}(n)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{2n3}{2n2}}_{2n2}+3{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{_{2k}}{2k}}{\displaystyle \frac{_{2n2k}}{(2n2k)}}\right\}`$
In these formulas, the information on the external momenta is all contained in the invariant $`\chi _N`$,

$`\chi _N`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{({\scriptscriptstyle \frac{N}{2}})!}{2^{\frac{N}{2}}}}\left\{[12]^2[34]^2\mathrm{}[(N1)N]^2+\mathrm{all}\mathrm{permutations}\right\}`$
Here $`[ij]=k_i^+|k_j^{}`$ denote the basic spinor products .

## 7 Conclusions

The existence of the simple closed-form expressions (LABEL:L2SD) for the self-dual two-loop Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangians is surprising, and we do not know of any comparable result in gauge theory. These results have allowed us to perform a more complete analysis of these effective Lagrangians than is possible for other backgrounds , including the complete elucidation of the structure of the imaginary parts. Moreover, we have used them to obtain explicit formulas for the low-energy limits of the ‘all $`+`$’ components of the two-loop $`N`$ \- photon amplitudes. Let us close with a remark on the behaviour of these amplitudes in the limit where the number of photons becomes large. It is easy to show that

$`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}^{(2)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]}}`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \pi `$ (7.28)
The Borel dispersion relations allow one to relate this quantity to the $`\kappa \mathrm{}`$ limit of the corresponding ratio of the imaginary parts (5.20),(LABEL:fullimag2loopsd), and thus to the factor $`\alpha \pi `$ appearing in the Lebedev-Ritus exponentiation formula (3.7). Based on the expectation that this exponentiation occurs also in the self-dual case, we conjecture that at loop order $`l`$, the weak-field expansion will take the form

$`^{(l)(SD)}(\kappa )={\displaystyle \frac{(\alpha \pi )^{l1}}{(l1)!}}{\displaystyle \frac{m^4}{(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n^{(l)}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^{2n}}}`$ (7.29)
where for each $`l`$, the expansion coefficients $`c_n^{(l)}`$ have the same leading large $`n`$ growth rate as $`c_n^{(1)}`$. This would imply that

$`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}^{(l)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{spin},\mathrm{scal}}^{(1)(EH)}[k_1,\epsilon _1^+;\mathrm{};k_N,\epsilon _N^+]}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(\alpha \pi )^{l1}}{(l1)!}}`$ (7.30)
It would be very interesting to verify this identity at the three-loop level.


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# Effects of Preheated Clusters on the CMB Spectrum

## 1 Introduction

In the hierarchical structure formation model of cold dark matter, gravitationally bound objects ought to obey self-similar scaling relations. That is, at any cosmic epoch the mass of a collapse object scales as the third power of its size, and the squared velocity dispersion or temperature scales as the second power of the size . These scaling relations follow from a straightforward dimensional analysis, given that gravitational collapse occurs much faster than Hubble expansion and depends on only two dimensional (quasi-)constants: the gravitational constant $`G`$ and the background matter density $`\rho _{m0}`$. Although $`\rho _{m0}`$ varies on the Hubble time scale, such dependence on long time scale affects only the interior profiles of bound objects (Navarro et al. 1996; Shapiro & Iliev 2002; Chiueh & He 2002).

However, $`x`$-ray observations in the past years have consistently indicated that gases in bound objects violate the self-similar scaling relations. The observed $`x`$-ray luminosity-temperature ($`LT`$) relation shows that at a given luminosity the cluster temperature appears considerably higher than the scaling relation ($`LT^2`$), more so for low-mass clusters than for high-mass clusters (Ponman et al. 1996; Allen & Fabian 1998; Xue & Wu 2000). The observed mass-temperature (M-T) relation also follows the same trend in violating the $`MT^{3/2}`$ scaling law (Finoguenov et al. 2001). More remarkably, recent XMM observations of metal lines that directly probe the core temperatures of cooling-flow clusters find that gases of temperature below some fraction of bulk temperature are unexpectedly rare (Peterson et al. 2002), suggestive of an entropy floor at the cluster core (Ponman, Cannon & Navarro 1999; Loewenstein 2000) thus requiring some form of non-gravitational energy injection to compensate for Bremsstrahlung cooling.

One candidate for the quested heat sources in clusters and groups is the outflow from Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). (Tabor & Binney, 1993; David et al. 2001). If this is correct, such a mechanism should be more pronounced in the far past when quasars were highly active than the present. For this and other reasons, investigators have tested various schemes for heat injection at $`z4`$ (da Silva et al. 2001; Bialek et al. 2001; Muanwong et al. 2002). However, recent combined analyses of the ASCA data on the entropy profiles in galaxy groups and the structure formation model indicate that preheating should occur impulsively around $`z=22.5`$ (Finoguenov et al. 2002). A similar conclusion has also been reached from a different perspective, using the constraint on Compton $`y`$ ($`<1.5\times 10^5`$) provided by the COBE/FIRAS data in testing the SZ effect at the hot spots of AGN jets (Yamada & Fujita 2001). The present work has been so motivated to consider impulsive heating around $`z2`$.

On the other hand, the recent Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) experiment discovered that the temperature anisotropy of cosmic-microwave-background radiation (CMB) exhibits a $`3\sigma `$ higher level of anisotropy, around the harmonic mode number $`2000<l<3500`$, than anticipated with Silk damping (Pearson et al. 2002). This feature has been attributed to the large SZ flux (Bond et al. 2002). In order to account for such a large SZ flux, the value of $`\sigma _8`$ needs to be at least as large as unity, though from Figs.10 and 11 of Bond et al.(2002), a slightly larger $`\sigma _8`$ fits the CBI data even better.

The SZ flux has been known to depend very sensitively on $`\sigma _8`$ (Fan & Chiueh 2001; Komatsu & Seljak 2002), due to the sensitive dependence of cluster number density on the amplitude of matter fluctuations at the high end of mass function. Hence the SZ effect can serve as a unique probe to fix $`\sigma _8`$ to high precision. As of today, the large-scale galaxy distribution combined with distant supernova and CMB data have constrained $`\sigma _8`$ within a narrow window $`0.75<\sigma _8<1`$ (Bond et al. 2002). From the perspective of cluster abundance explored by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) (Bahcall et al. 2002), the extreme value $`\sigma _8=1`$ has, however, placed a considerably low ceiling for the matter density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.175\pm 0.025`$.

If the SZ effect indeed accounts for the CBI deep-field excess, preheating can actually exacerbate the awkward situation pertinent to a high value of $`\sigma _8`$. Past works have indicated that preheating generally reduces the SZ flux (Bialeck et al, 2001; da Silve et al. 2001). However, these works were not able to reproduce both observed $`LT`$ and $`MT`$ relations and hence the reduction factor for SZ flux cannot be reliably gauged. The present paper reports that impulsive heating around $`z=2`$ can reproduce the observed $`LT`$ and $`MT`$ relations and yields a modified SZ power spectrum lower than that without preheating by a factor $`2`$. It therefore pushes $`\sigma _8`$ upward by a factor $`1.1`$ for SZ effects to explain the CBI high-$`l`$ result, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ downward by $`1.2`$ constrained by local cluster abundance.

## 2 Simulations, M-T and L-T Relations

Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations with the GADGET code (Springel, Yoshida & White 2001) were run for both $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ cases in a periodic box of comoving size $`100h^1`$ Mpc on our 32-node, dual-cpu Athlon cluster. The simulations contain $`256^3/2`$ dark matter particles and $`256^3/2`$ gas particles, and the gravitational softening length is chosen to be $`20h^1`$ kpc. Both adiabatic and preheating runs start at $`z=100`$ with the same initial conditions of $`n_s=1`$ and $`(\sigma _8,\mathrm{\Omega }_m,\mathrm{\Omega }_b,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h)=(0.94,0.34,0.05,0.66,0.66)`$ and $`(1,0.3,0.044,0.7,0.64)`$ separately.

Preheating takes place at $`z=2`$ with a density-dependent injection energy per mass,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }u=u_0\mathrm{exp}[\frac{\beta \rho _{m0}}{\rho _m}],$$
(1)
where $`\rho _{m0}`$ is the background matter density. Both $`u_0`$ and $`\beta `$ are parameters to be tuned to fit the observed $`MT`$ and $`LT`$ relations described below. This form of energy injection ensures that the low-density regions receive no heat, giving rooms for some cool gases to survive and the high density regions receive a constant energy per mass $`u_0`$. The injected entropy has minima at the cores of bound objects and maxima at the outskirts around $`\rho _m\beta \rho _{m0}`$. This heating scheme is similar, though not in detail, to the entropy injection of Borgani et al.(2001 & 2002). The best parameters are found to be $`\beta =1`$ and $`u_0=(500`$ km/sec)2. Such a value of $`u_0`$ corresponds to $`1`$ keV temperature, and the amount of injected heat is equivalent to giving every baryon a $`0.5`$ keV temperature jump. This amount is roughly consistent with those suggested by recent studies on heat injection from the bound-object interiors (Loewenstein 2000; Wu, Fabian & Nulsen 2000; Bower et al. 2001; Borgani et al. 2001 & 2002; Xue & Wu 2002).

Standard FOF algorithm with a $`0.2`$ linking length is employed to locate halos. The mass centers may considerably deviate from the peaks of spherical over-density, such as in the case of major mergers. In these cases, the over-density so obtained is not useful for testing the $`LT`$ and $`MT`$ relations. They are avoided by selecting only those haloes with nonzero $`M_{2500}`$, where $`M_n`$ represents the mass within a sphere of over-density $`n`$ times that of the critical density. The temperature $`T`$ of an ionized plasma is related to the internal energy per mass $`u`$ of the neutral-fluid in hydrodynamic simulations by $`k_BT=(2/3)\mu m_pu`$, where $`\mu `$ is the mean ”molecular” weight of $`e^{}`$, $`p^+`$ and $`He^{2+}`$ and equal to $`0.588`$. In addition, we define the Bremsstrahlung emission-weighted temperature $`n_e^2T^{3/2}/n_e^2T^{1/2}`$, to be compared with the measured temperature of $`x`$-ray continuum.

Figure 1 compares both adiabatic and preheating $`M_{500}`$-$`T_{500}`$ relations from our $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ simulations with the fitting formula given by Evrard, Metzler & Navarro (1996) from their adiabatic simulations, and with the fitting formula of Finoguenov, Reiprich, & Böhringer (2001) derived from the observational data re-scaled to $`z=0`$. Only data with luminosity higher than $`10^{41}`$ erg/sec are plotted here. The $`M_{500}T_{500}`$ relation of the adiabatic simulation agrees fairly with that of Evrard et al., but both predict too low a temperature in bound objects. On the other hand, our preheating simulations yield $`M_{500}T_{500}`$ relations of $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ agreeing quite well with the observations.

The $`x`$-ray luminosity requires somewhat sophisticated treatments (Mathiesen & Evrard 2001), since line emission below $`0.5`$ keV can vastly dominate the Bremsstrahlung continuum. A constant metalicity, $`0.3`$ times the solar value, is adopted and the bolometric luminosity reads

$$L_{500}=1.4\times 10^{27}T^{1/2}g(T)n_e(\underset{i}{}n_iZ_i^2)𝑑V$$
(2)
in unit of erg/sec, where the volume integration is up to $`R_{500}`$, the summation is over different ion species, $`Z`$ is the atomic number, and $`g(T)`$ the Gaunt factor. Figure 2 shows $`L_{500}`$ against the emission weighted $`T_{500}`$. Also shown are the observed $`L_{500}`$ and $`T_{500}`$ compiled from Arnaud & Evrard (1999), Helsdon & Ponman (2000) and Markevitch (1998). The preheating results for both $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ cases again show excellent agreement with $`x`$-ray observations. Interestingly, Novicki, Sornig & Henry (2002) pointed out that the $`LT`$ relation is consistent with no evolution in a low-density universe. Our preheating result does display this tendency within $`0<z<1`$. This behavior also suggests that after initial transients, the heated clusters quickly assume certain relaxed states since $`z=1`$.

## 3 SZ and CMB Power Spectra

The agreement of our $`MT`$ and $`LT`$ relations with observations confirms the proposed heating scheme to be quantitatively viable. We thus proceed to construct the $`1`$ deg2 SZ map by projecting the electron pressure through the randomly displaced and oriented simulation boxes, separated by $`100h^1`$Mpc, along a viewing cone to the redshift direction up to $`z=2.5`$. The average power spectra of $`40`$ such SZ maps for each adiabatic and preheating simulation of $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ cases are shown in Fig.3. The adiabatic results are consistent with earlier GADGET results (Springel et al. 2001), where small-scale structures are more abundant than those in grid-based hydrodynamic simulations (Zhang et al. 2002). Both $`\sigma _8=0.94`$ and $`1`$ runs show that preheating lowers the averaged SZ power spectrum by a factor $`2`$ on few-arcminute scales.

In Fig.3 we have rescaled the power spectra of the $`\sigma _8=1`$ case from original $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.018`$ to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.022`$ so as to be compared with those analyzed in Bond et al.(2002). The CBI deep-field observations scanned a 9 deg2 sky (Pearson et al. 2002). We hence compute the preheated SZ power spectrum averaged over 9 one-deg2 SZ maps, which is then added to the (error-free) primary CMB spectrum of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.04,\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7,n_s=0.975,h=0.68`$, parameters used in Fig.11 of Bond et al.(2002), to obtain one realization. A total of 40 realizations are constructed.

The preheated SZ power spectrum of $`\sigma _8=1`$ looks very much like the adiabatic power spectrum of $`\sigma _8=0.9`$, according to the scaling law given by Komatsu & Seljak (2001) that the peak SZ power approximately scales as $`\sigma _8^7`$. The $`1\sigma `$ error bars for the $`\sigma _8=1`$ preheated SZ$`+`$CMB power arise from the cosmic variance of SZ clusters and are seen to be within a factr $`1.3`$ from the mean. Also clear in Fig. 3 is that the preheated SZ$`+`$CMB power spectrum nearly misses the 2-$`\sigma `$ error box of band-averaged power in CBI deep data by $`1\sigma `$. Such reduction of SZ power by preheating makes it implausible for the SZ effect to explain the excess flux detected by CBI around $`2000<l<4000`$ under the framework of concordance model with $`\sigma _8=1`$. Employing the $`\sigma _8^7`$ scaling law, we estimate that the required $`\sigma _8`$ needs to be raised to $`1.1`$ in order to be consistent with the CBI high-$`l`$ excess.

## 4 Conclusions

The agreement of our preheating cosmological simulations with the observed $`MT`$ and $`LT`$ relations demonstrates that the impulsive heating scheme described by Eq.(1) is a plausible prescription, though it is probably not the unique one and its physical origin is unclear. Contrary to our results, recent simulations of Borgani et al.(2002) adopting entropy injection failed in producing the observed $`MT`$ relation despite their successful reproduction of the $`LT`$ relation. Various preheating schemes so far reported tend to yield reduced SZ flux, which in our case can be attributed to that gases impulsively blown away from the gravitational potential well form an extended halo, which can subsequently not fall into, therefore compressionally heated by, the ever-growing potential well. The agreement of our results with the observed $`MT`$ and $`LT`$ relations encourages us to believe that our quantitative prediction of the preheated SZ flux reduced by a factor $`2`$ is founded on an empirically sound base.

This reduction of SZ flux has a significant implication to the interpretation of the CBI deep-field results, in that the measured $`3\sigma `$ enhancement of CMB high-$`l`$ anisotropy is unlikely to be caused by the SZ effect of intra-cluster gases in a $`\sigma _8=1`$ universe of concordance model proposed in the original CBI paper (Bond et al. 2002). We estimate that $`\sigma _8`$ needs to assume a value $`1.1`$ for this mechanism to work. The unfortunate consequence of it is that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ is then pushed to lie about $`0.15\pm 0.02`$, constrained by $`\sigma _8\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.6}=0.35\pm 0.03`$ of recent SDSS cluster abundance studies (Bahcall et al. 2002). Such an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ can be just too low to be consistent with the observed $`x`$-ray baryon fraction $`(1/4)`$ in massive clusters (Ettori & Fabian 1999; Mohr et al. 1999).

We thank M. Birkinshaw, C.J. Ma, U. Pen, K. Umetsu, D. Worrall, P.J.H. Wu, X.P. Wu, Y.J. Xue and P. Zhang for various helpful discussions. Supports from NSC of Taiwan, under the grant NSC90-2112-M-002-026, and uses of the NCHC computing facilities are acknowledged.


text:
# OKHEP–02–08 Dark Energy as Evidence for Extra Dimensions

## 1 Introduction

It has been appreciated for many years that there is an apparently fundamental conflict between quantum field theory and the smallness of the cosmological constant . This is because the zero-point energy of the quantum fields (including gravity) in the universe should give rise to an observable cosmological vacuum energy density,

$$u_{\mathrm{cosmo}}\frac{1}{L_{\mathrm{Pl}}^4},$$
(1)
where the Planck length is

$$L_{\mathrm{Pl}}=\sqrt{G_N}=1.6\times 10^{33}\text{cm}.$$
(2)
(We use natural units with $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$. The conversion factor is $`\mathrm{}c2\times 10^{14}\text{GeV\hspace{0.17em}cm}`$.) This means that the cosmic vacuum energy density would be

$$u_{\mathrm{cosmo}}10^{118}\text{ GeV\hspace{0.17em}cm}^3,$$
(3)
which is 123 orders of magnitude larger than the critical mass density required to close the universe:

$$\rho _c=\frac{3H_0^2}{8\pi G_N}=1.05\times 10^5h_0^2\text{GeV\hspace{0.17em}cm}^3,$$
(4)
in terms of the dimensionless Hubble constant, $`h_0=H_0/100\text{km\hspace{0.17em}s}^1\text{Mpc}^1`$. From relativistic covariance the cosmological vacuum energy density must be the $`00`$ component of the expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor, which we can identify with the cosmological constant:

$$T^{\mu \nu }=ug^{\mu \nu }=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{8\pi G}g^{\mu \nu }.$$
(5)
\[We use the metric with signature $`(1,1,1,1)`$.\] Of course this is absurd with $`u`$ given by Eq. (3), which would have caused the universe to expand to zero density long ago.

For most of the past century, it was the prejudice of theoreticians that the cosmological constant was exactly zero, although no one could give a convincing argument. Recently, however, with the new data gathered on the brightness-redshift relation for very distant type Ia supernovæ , corroborated by the balloon observations of the anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background , it seems clear that the cosmological constant is near the critical value, or

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mathrm{\Lambda }/8\pi G\rho _c0.60.7.$$
(6)
It is very hard to understand how the cosmological constant can be nonzero but small.

## 2 Quantum Fluctuations

We here present a plausible scenario for understanding this puzzle. It seems quite clear that vacuum fluctuations in the gravitational and matter fields in flat Minkowski space give a zero cosmological constant. For example, we can consider fluctuations of conformal matter in $`R\times S^3`$, which give rise to the following forms of the energy and free energy at high and low temperature

$`F`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}a_4(2\pi aT)^4,E{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}3a_4(2\pi aT)^4,aT1,`$
$`F`$ $`=`$ $`E={\displaystyle \frac{a_0}{a}},aT1,`$ (7)
where $`a`$ is the radius of $`S^3`$. Here, for example, $`a_4=1/48`$ and $`a_0=3/16`$ for $`𝒩=4`$ SUSY. \[It should be noted that at present the universe is in the high temperature regime; since inflation $`aT10^{29}.`$\] Either regime corresponds to a relation typical of radiation,

$$p=\frac{}{V}F=\frac{1}{3}u,u=\frac{E}{V},V=2\pi ^2a^3.$$
(8)
Other vacuum fluctuation phenomena are also unlikely to contribute to the cosmological constant. For example, fluctuations of quark and gluon fields inside a hadronic bag of radius $`R`$ give a zero-point energy of roughly

$$E_{\mathrm{ZPE}}\frac{0.7}{R}.$$
(9)
Johnson’s model of the QCD vacuum  as consisting of a sea of virtual bags might suggest then a corresponding energy density

$$u_{\mathrm{QCD}}\frac{E_{\mathrm{ZPE}}}{\frac{4\pi }{3}R^3}10^{39}\text{GeV\hspace{0.17em}cm}^3$$
(10)
if $`R=0.5\text{fm}`$, some 44 orders of magnitude too large. Yet this is surely an unreasonable inference: Rather $`E_{\mathrm{ZPE}}`$ is absorbed into a renormalization of QCD parameters, as a contribution, for example, to the masses of the observed hadrons. Thus, we expect quite confidently that there is no QCD vacuum gravitational effect.111After mentioning the QCD zero-point contribution to the cosmological constant, Weinberg in 1989  pointed out that the classical vacuum energy resulting from spontaneous symmetry breaking need not give rise to an effective cosmological constant at the present era.

## 3 Extra Dimensions

On the other hand, since the work of Kaluza and Klein it has been an exciting possibility that there exist extra dimensions beyond those of Minkowski space-time. Why do we not experience those dimensions? The simplest possibility seems to be that those extra dimensions are curled up in a space $`𝒮`$ of size $`a`$, smaller than some observable limit.

Of course, in recent years, the idea of extra dimensions has become much more compelling. Superstring theory requires at least 10 dimensions, six of which must be compactified, and the putative M theory, supergravity, is an 11 dimensional theory. Perhaps, if only gravity experiences the extra dimensions, they could be of macroscopic size. Various scenarios have been suggested .

Macroscopic extra dimensions imply deviations from Newton’s law at such a scale. Two years ago, millimeter scale deviations seemed plausible, and many theorists hoped that the higher-dimensional world was on the brink of discovery. Experiments were initiated . Recently, the results of the first definitive experiment have appeared , which indicate no deviation from Newton’s law down to 200 $`\mu `$m. This poses a serious constraint for model-builders.222We might also mention short distance constraints on Yukawa-type corrections to the gravitational potential coming from Casimir measurements themselves. See Ref. . Most recently, stringent limits have now appeared for Yukawa forces with ranges between 200 and 500 microns .

It seems to be commonly believed that submillimeter tests of gravity put no limits on the size of extra dimensions if $`N>2`$. This is because of the relation of the size $`R`$ of the extra dimensions in the ADD scheme to the fundamental $`4+N`$ gravity scale $`M`$ :

$$R\frac{1}{M}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{M}\right)^{2/N},$$
(11)
where $`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}=1/L_{\mathrm{Pl}}=1.2\times 10^{16}`$ TeV is the usual Planck mass. Moreover, the supernova limits on ADD extra dimensions (due to production of Kaluza-Klein gravitons) become rapidly smaller with increase in $`N`$ :

$`N=2:R`$ $`<`$ $`0.9\times 10^4\text{mm},`$ (12)
$`N=3:R`$ $`<`$ $`1.9\times 10^7\text{mm}.`$ (13)
(Cosmological constraints are even stronger , but are less certain.) Thus direct tests of Newton’s law are not competitive. However, as we will see, the resulting Casimir contribution to the cosmological constant would be enormous for such small compactified regions, and it would seem impossible to naturally resolve this problem.

The situation at first glance seems rather different with the RS scenario. In the original scheme, gravity is localized in the “Planck brane,” while the standard-model particles are confined to the “TeV brane.” As a consequence, it might appear that the quantum fluctuations of both brane and bulk fields are negligible . It has been stated that the cosmological constant becomes exponentially small as the brane separation becomes large . However, this is at the “classical level,” without bulk fluctuations; explicit considerations show that quantum effects give rise to a large cosmological constant, of order of that given by Eq. (3), unless an appeal is made to fine tuning . Moreover, if the scenario is extended so that the world brane contains compactified dimensions in which gravity lives , the constraints we deduce here directly apply.

Here we propose that a very tight constraint indeed emerges if we recognize that compact dimensions of size $`a`$ necessarily possess a quantum vacuum or Casimir energy of order $`u(z)a^4`$. These can be calculated in simple cases. Appelquist and Chodos  found that the Casimir energy for the case of scalar field on a circle, $`𝒮=S^1`$, was

$$u_C=\frac{3\zeta (5)}{64\pi ^6a^4}=\frac{5.056\times 10^5}{a^4},$$
(14)
which needs only to be multiplied by 5 for graviton fluctuations. The general case of scalars on $`𝒮=S^N`$, $`N`$ odd, was considered by Candelas and Weinberg , who found that the Casimir energy was positive for $`3N19`$, with a maximum at $`N=13`$ of $`u_C=1.374\times 10^3/a^4`$. The even dimensional case was much more subtle, because it was divergent. Kantowski and Milton  showed that the coefficient of the logarithmic divergence was unique, and adopting the Planck length as the natural cutoff, found

$$S^N,N\text{ even}:u_C^N=\frac{\alpha _N}{a^4}\mathrm{ln}\frac{a}{L_{\mathrm{Pl}}},$$
(15)
but $`\alpha _N`$ was always negative for scalars. In a second paper  we extended the analysis to vectors, tensors, fermions, and to massive particles, among which cases positive values of the (divergent) Casimir energy could be found. Some representative results for massless particles are shown in Table 1. In an unsuccessful attempt to find stable configurations, the analysis was extended to cases where the internal space was the product of spheres .

It is important to recognize that these Casimir energies correspond to a cosmological constant in our $`3+1`$ dimensional world, not in the extra compactified dimensions or “bulk.” They constitute an effective source term in the 4-dimensional Einstein equations. Note that because the scale $`a`$ makes no reference to four-dimensional space, the total free energy of the universe (of volume $`V`$) arising from this source is $`F=Vu_c`$, so as required for dark energy or a cosmological constant,

$$p=\frac{}{V}F=u_c,T^{\mu \nu }=u_cg^{\mu \nu }.$$
(16)
The goal, of course, in all these investigations was to include graviton fluctuations. However, it immediately became apparent that the results were gauge- and reparameterization-dependent unless the DeWitt-Vilkovisky formalism was adopted . This was an extraordinarily difficult task. Among the early papers in which the unique effective action is given in simple cases we cite Ref. . Only in 2000 did the general analysis for gravity appear, with results for a few special geometries . Cho and Kantowski obtain the unique divergent part of the effective action for $`𝒮=S^2`$, $`S^4`$, and $`S^6`$, as polynomials in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }a^2`$. (Unfortunately, once again, they are unable to find any stable configurations.)

The results are also shown in Table 1, for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }a^2G/a^21`$. It will be noted that graviton fluctuations dominate matter fluctuations, except in the case of a large number of matter fields in a small number of dimensions. Of course, it would be very interesting to know the graviton fluctuation results for odd-dimensional spaces, but that seems to be a more difficult calculation; it is far easier to compute the divergent part than the finite part, which is all there is in odd-dimensional spaces.

These generic results may be applied to recent popular scenarios. For example, in the ADD scheme only gravity propagates in the bulk, while the RS approach has other bulk fields in a single extra dimension.

Let us now perform some simple estimates of the cosmological constant in these models. The data suggest a positive cosmological constant, so we can exclude those cases where the Casimir energy is negative. For the odd $`N`$ cases, where the Casimir energy is finite, let us write

$$𝒮=S^N,N\text{odd}:u_C^N=\frac{\beta _N}{a^4},$$
(17)
so merely requiring that this be less than the critical density $`\rho _c`$ implies ($`\beta >0`$)

$$a>\beta ^{1/4}h_0^{1/2}67\mu \text{m}\beta ^{1/4}80\mu \text{m},$$
(18)
taking $`h_0=0.7`$ (with about a 10–20% uncertainty). As seen in Table 2 these lower limits (for a single species) are still an order of magnitude below the experimental upper limit.

Much tighter constraints appear if we use the divergent results for even dimensions. We have the inequality ($`\alpha >0`$)

$$a>[\alpha \mathrm{ln}(a/L_{\mathrm{Pl}})]^{1/4}80\mu \text{m},$$
(19)
where we can approximate $`(\mathrm{ln}a/L_{\mathrm{Pl}})^{1/4}2.9`$. Again results are shown in Table 2, which rules out all but one of the gravity cases ($`S^2`$) given by Cho and Kantowski. For matter fluctuations only, excluded are $`N>14`$ for a single vector field and $`N>6`$ for a single tensor field. (Fermions always have a negative Casimir energy in even dimensions.) Of course, it is possible to achieve cancellations by including various matter fields and gravity.

In general the Casimir energy is obtained by summing over the species of field which propagate in the extra dimensions,

$$u_{\mathrm{tot}}=\frac{1}{a^4}\underset{i}{}\left[\alpha _i\mathrm{ln}(a/L_{\mathrm{Pl}})+\beta _i\right]\frac{\beta _{\mathrm{eff}}}{a^4},$$
(20)
which leads to a lower limit according to Eq. (18). Presumably, if exact supersymmetry held in the extra dimensions (including supersymmetric boundary conditions), the Casimir energy would vanish, but this would seem to be difficult to achieve with large extra dimensions (1 mm corresponds to $`2\times 10^4`$ eV.)

That there is a correlation between the currently favored value of the cosmological constant and submillimeter-sized extra dimensions has been noted qualitatively before .

## 4 Conclusions

We have proposed the following scenario to explain the predominance of dark energy in the universe.

* Quantum fluctuations of gravity/matter fields in extra dimensions give rise to a dark energy, or cosmological constant, $`1/a^4`$ where $`a`$ is the size of the extra dimensions.
* The dark energy will be too large unless $`a>10300`$ $`\mu `$m.
* Laboratory (Cavendish) tests of Newton’s law require $`a<200`$ $`\mu `$m.
* Thus, we may be on the verge of discovery of extra dimensions, or
* Extra dimensions do not exist and dark energy has another origin.

## Acknowledgements

I thank the US Department of Energy for partial support of this research. This talk is based on Ref. , and I thank my co-authors, Ron Kantowski, Yun Wang, and Chung Kao, for their contributions.