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# Dynamics of electrons in the quantum Hall bubble phases

## I Introduction

It is now well established both theoretically stripesdebut  and experimentallylilly ,du  that the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) ground state near half filling in the higher Landau levels ($`N>1`$) is the quantum Hall stripe state. Transport experiments have shown that this stripe state has an highly anisotropic longitudinal conductivity i.e. $`\sigma _{yy}>>\sigma _{xx}`$ (where $`\widehat{x}`$ is the direction perpendicular to the stripes) and a Hall conductivity $`\sigma _{xy}`$ that is not quantized. Away from half filling, more precisely at partial filling factors around $`\nu ^{}1/4`$ and $`\nu ^{}3/4`$ in Landau level $`N=2`$, the isotropy of the longitudinal conductivity is restored and a minima appears in the diagonal resistance. Concomitantly, the Hall conductivity is quantized, but at a value equal to that of the nearest integer quantum Hall effect plateaus. These other ground states around $`\nu ^{}1/4`$ and $`\nu ^{}3/4`$ in $`N=2`$ have been called reentrant integer quantum hall states (RIQHS) cooper . Studies by Koulakov, Fogler, and Shklovskii and Moessner and Chalker stripesdebut  suggest that the RIQHS are due to the formation of bubble states. These states can be described as triangular Wigner crystals of electron clusters. Each cluster (or “bubble”) contains a fixed number $`M`$ of electrons such that, within them, the local filling factor is equal to one. The bubble states, being pinned by disorder, should be insulating in contrast to the stripe states. A review of these novel ground states in higher Landau level is given in Ref. foglerreview, .

The ground state of the 2DEG changes discontinuously as the partial filling factor $`\nu ^{}`$ is changed. In the Hartree-Fock approximation (HFA), the ground state is a Wigner crystal at small filling $`\nu ^{}`$ or, equivalently, a bubble state with one guiding center per bubble. As the partial filling is increased, bubble states with increasing number $`M`$ of electrons per bubble are stabilized so that the 2DEG evolves from the Wigner crystal, through a succession of bubble states, into finally the stripe state near half filling. In Landau level $`N`$, it can be shown that (in the HFA) the last bubble state has $`M=N+1`$. The optimal number of guiding centers in a bubble is well approximated by the formula $`M=3\nu ^{}N`$ corresponding to an average separation between the bubbles equal to $`a=3.3R_c`$ where $`R_c=\sqrt{2N+1}\mathrm{}`$ is the cyclotron radius and $`\mathrm{}=\sqrt{\mathrm{}c/eB}`$ is the magnetic length. This sequence of phase transitions in higher Landau levels has been verified by a number of authors. By comparing the energy of the Laughlin liquid at $`\nu ^{}=1/3`$ and $`\nu ^{}=1/5`$ with that of the bubble states in several Landau levels, Fogler and Koulakovfogler1  showed, within the HFA, that the bubble states are lower in energy than the Laughlin liquid at filling factor $`\nu ^{}=1/3`$ for $`N2`$ and at filling factor $`\nu ^{}=1/5`$ for $`N3`$. Rezayi et al. rezayi  used exact diagonalization studies on finite size systems to show the absence of fractional quantum hall states (FHQS) in higher Landau levels and a tendancy to charge density wave (CDW) ordering. Recent calculations by Yoshioka and Shibatayoshioka  using the density matrix renormalization group method (DMRG) basically confirms the Hartree-Fock scenario with some minor corrections. For $`N=2`$ and $`N=3`$, the DMRG gives a wider region of stability for the stripe phase than in the HFA. As a result, the last bubble state (that with $`M=N+1`$) is absent from the phase diagram. The transitions between different bubble states occur at slightly different filling factors in the two approaches. Both calculations, however, give first order phase transitions between the bubble states and between the bubble and stripe states. The possibility of a continuous phase transition involving the deformation of the bubbles from a isotropic shape to a more elliptical shape as the stripe state is approached was investigated (with a negative result) by Ren et al. ren  within the HFA. These authors also claimedyang  that the $`\nu ^{}=1/6`$ composite fermion state has lower energy than the corresponding bubble state in $`N=2`$ and that this liquid state could be an intermediate state between the Wigner crystal and the $`M=2`$ bubble state. (See, however, Ref. yoshioka, .) In any case, the difference in the cohesive energy of the various possible ground states at any given filling factor is usually quite small and the possibility that quantum fluctuations, disorder, finite extension of the wave function in the third dimension, screening corrections, etc. modify the above scenario cannot be ruled out.

The existence of the bubble state near filling factors $`\nu ^{}1/4`$ and $`\nu ^{}3/4`$ in $`N=2`$, was first evidenced by transport measurements showing its insulating behaviorlilly ,du  and its nonlinear $`IV`$ propertiescooper . In more recent experiments, Lewis and al.lewis  and Ye et al.ye  measured the diagonal conductivity $`\sigma _{xx}`$ of the 2DEG in the microwave regime and found sharp resonances in $`\mathrm{}\left[\sigma _{xx}\right]`$ at some frequency. These resonances are strongest near $`\nu ^{}1/4`$ and $`\nu ^{}3/4`$ in level $`N=2.`$ They appear for a range of partial filling factors around $`\nu ^{}1/4`$ and $`\nu ^{}3/4`$ and only for temperatures below $`0.1`$ K. It is believed that these resonances are due to the excitation of the pinning mode of the bubble states realized at these filling factors. The experiments show no hint of discontinuous transitions among the different bubble states. It is possible that thermal or disorder effects may smear out any sharp effects on the pinning mode.

In light of these microwave experiments, it is natural to ask how one could observe a transition between bubble states, and also how one could distinguish between bubble states of different $`M`$ numbers. In this paper, we study how the behavior of several measurable physical properties of the bubble states evolve as the filling factor, $`\nu ^{}`$, is increased from the Wigner crystal state at low filling to the stripe state at half filling. We show that the series of transitions between bubble states lead to oscillations and discontinuity in the orbital magnetization and susceptibility and to features in the one-particle density of states that are directly related to the number of electrons per bubble. Working in the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation (TDHFA), we also compute the dispersion relation of the phonon as well as those of other higher-energy modes that correspond to excitations localized on the bubbles. These localized excitations are interesting because (in contrast to the phonon mode) they are gapped and probably less sensitive to the disordering potential. Their dispersion can be computed, in a first approximation, by neglecting disorder which is difficult to take into account in these charge density wave states. We thus apply the TDHFA to show that, within the range of frequencies accessible in microwave experiments, the first order transitions between the bubble states can be tracked by looking at the discontinuous behavior of the first few high-energy modes as a function of partial filling factor.

The outline of the paper is as follows. In Sec. II, we briefly describe the Hartree-Fock procedure to compute the order parameters of the charge density wave states as well as the orbital magnetization and the one-particle density of states. We then introduce the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation and describe how we get the dispersion relation of the collective excitations in these ordered states. In Sec. III, we discuss our numerical results for these quantities. We conclude in Sec. IV, by discussing how our results could be related to the experiments of Lewis et al. and Ye et al..

## II Hartree-Fock formalism

### II.1 Order parameters

The bubble phase is a crystal state that can be described by the set of average values $`\left\{n\left(𝐆\right)\right\}`$ where $`n\left(𝐆\right)`$ is the ground-state average of the density operator and $`𝐆`$ is a reciprocal lattice vector of the crystal. It is convenient, in the Landau gauge, to define a related density operator by the expression

$$\rho (𝐆)=\frac{1}{N_\phi }\underset{X}{}e^{iG_xX+iG_xG_yl_{}^2/2}c_{N,X}^{}c_{N,XG_yl_{}^2},$$
(1)
where $`c_{N,X}^{}`$ creates an electron in Landau level $`N`$ with guiding center quantum number $`X`$ and $`N_\phi `$ is the Landau level degeneracy. This new density operator is related to the real density by the expression

$$n(𝐆)=N_\phi F_{N,N}(𝐆)\rho (𝐆),$$
(2)
where $`F_{N,N}(𝐆)`$ is a form factor for the $`N`$ th Landau level which is given by

$$F_{N,N}(𝐆)=e^{G^2\mathrm{}^2/4}L_N^0\left(\frac{G^2\mathrm{}^2}{2}\right),$$
(3)
and $`L_N^0\left(x\right)`$ is a generalized Laguerre polynomial. At a semiclassical level, the average $`\rho (𝐆)`$ can be viewed as a Fourier transform of a “guiding center density” of cyclotron orbits.

In this paper, we make the usual approximations of neglecting any Landau level mixing and consider that the filled Landau levels are inert. It follows that the filled levels do not enter in our calculation and we will, whenever possible, drop the level index $`N`$ from now on to simplify the notation. Moreover, we assume that the partially filled level is completely spin polarized.

The average values $`\rho (𝐆)`$ are obtained by computing the single-particle Green’s function

$$G(X,X^{},\tau )=Tc_X\left(\tau \right)c_X^{}^{}\left(0\right),$$
(4)
whose Fourier transform we define as

$$G(𝐆,\tau )=\frac{1}{N_\varphi }\underset{X,X^{}}{}e^{\frac{i}{2}G_x\left(X+X^{}\right)}\delta _{X,X^{}G_yl_{}^2}G(X,X^{},\tau ),$$
(5)
so that

$$\rho \left(𝐆\right)=G\left(𝐆,\tau =0^{}\right).$$
(6)
We compute the single-particle Green’s function of Eq. (5) by solving numerically the Hartree-Fock equation of motion

$$\left[i\omega _n+\mu \right]G(𝐆,i\omega _n)\underset{𝐆^{}}{}U\left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)e^{i𝐆\times 𝐆^{}\mathrm{}^2/2}G(𝐆^{},i\omega _n)=\delta _{𝐆,0},$$
(7)
where $`\omega _n`$ is a fermionic Matsubara frequency and the Hartree-Fock potential $`U\left(𝐪\right)`$ is given by

$$U\left(𝐪\right)=\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐪\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐪\right)\right]\rho \left(𝐪\right).$$
(8)
In Eq. (8), the Hartree and Fock interactions are given by

$`H_{N,N}\left(𝐪\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{q\mathrm{}}}e^{\frac{q^2\mathrm{}^2}{2}}\left[L_N^0\left({\displaystyle \frac{q^2\mathrm{}^2}{2}}\right)\right]^2,`$ (9)
$`X_{N,N}\left(𝐪\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right)\sqrt{2}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑xe^{x^2}\left[L_N^0\left(x^2\right)\right]^2J_0\left(\sqrt{2}xq\mathrm{}\right),`$ (10)
where $`\kappa `$ is the dielectric constant of the host semiconductor and $`J_0\left(x\right)`$ is the Bessel function of order zero.

The electronic density in real space is obtained by the relation

$$n\left(𝐫\right)=\frac{1}{2\pi \mathrm{}^2}\underset{𝐆}{}e^{+i𝐆𝐫}F_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\rho \left(𝐆\right).$$
(11)
### II.2 Hartree-Fock energy

We solve the Hartree-Fock equation of motion (Eq. (7)) numerically by using an iterative approach that was described in detail in Refs. cote1,  . Once the order parameters$`\left\{\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right\}`$ are found, the Hartree-Fock energy per particle in the partially filled level can be written as

$$\frac{E_{HF}}{N_s}=\frac{1}{2\nu ^{}}\underset{𝐆}{}\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\left(1\delta _{𝐆,0}\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\right]\left|\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right|^2,$$
(12)
where $`\nu ^{}`$ is the filling factor of Landau level $`N`$ and $`N_s`$ is the number of electrons in the partially filled level. The total filling factor of the two-dimensional electron gas is $`\nu =2N+\nu ^{}`$.

### II.3 Density of states

In our iterative approach, the single-particle Green’s function is computed by first finding the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the interaction matrix

$$F_{𝐆,𝐆^{}}U\left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)e^{i𝐆\times 𝐆^{}\mathrm{}^2/2}.$$
(13)
This matrix is hermitian and can be diagonalized with the unitary transformation

$$F=VDV^{},$$

where $`V`$ is the matrix of the eigenvectors of $`F`$ and $`D_{i,j}=d_j\delta _{i,j}`$ is the diagonal matrix of the eigenvalues of $`F`$. The Green’s function is then readily given by

$$G(𝐆,\omega _n)=\underset{j}{}\frac{V_{𝐆,j}\left[V^{}\right]_{j,𝐆=0}}{i\omega _n+\left(\mu d_j\right)/\mathrm{}}.$$
(14)
The density of states is defined as

$$g\left(\omega \right)=\frac{1}{\pi }𝑑𝐫\mathrm{}\left[G^R(𝐫,𝐫,\omega )\right],$$
(15)
where $`G^R`$ is the retarded single-particle Green’s function which can be computed from the eigenvalues and eigenvectors found above. We then have

$$g\left(\omega \right)=\frac{N_\varphi }{\pi }\mathrm{}\left[\underset{j}{}\frac{\left|V_{𝐆=0,j}\right|^2}{\omega +i\delta d_j/\mathrm{}}\right].$$
(16)
### II.4 Collective modes

As shown in Refs. cote1, , the order parameters $`\left\{\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right\}`$ can also be used to compute the density-density response function $`\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,\tau )`$ defined by

$$\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,\tau )=N_\phi T\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐤+𝐆,\tau )\stackrel{~}{\rho }(𝐤𝐆^{},0),$$
(17)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }\rho \rho `$. The collective modes of the bubble state are found from the poles of this response function. By following the poles with non-vanishing weight as the wavevector $`𝐤`$ is varied in the Brillouin zone of the reciprocal lattice, we get the dispersion relation of the phonon and higher-energy collective modes.

The equation of motion for the density response in the TDHFA is given by the matrix equation

$$\underset{𝐆^{\prime \prime }}{}\left[i\mathrm{\Omega }_n\delta _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}M_{𝐆,𝐆^{\prime \prime }}\left(𝐤\right)\right]\chi _{𝐆^{\prime \prime },𝐆^{}}(𝐤,i\mathrm{\Omega }_n)=B_{𝐆,𝐆^{}}\left(𝐤\right),$$
(18)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n`$ is a Matsubara bosonic frequency and the matrices $`M_{𝐆,𝐆}`$ and $`B_{𝐆,𝐆^{}}`$ are defined by

$`M_{𝐆,𝐆^{}}\left(𝐤\right)`$ $`=`$ $`2i\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\mathrm{}\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right)\rho \left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)`$
$`\times \mathrm{sin}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\left(𝐆\times 𝐆^{}\right)\mathrm{}^2}{2}}\right]\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)H_{N,N}\left(𝐆^{}\right)+X_{N,N}\left(𝐆^{}\right)\right],`$
and

$$B_{𝐆,𝐆^{}}\left(𝐤\right)=2i\mathrm{sin}\left[\frac{\left(𝐆\times 𝐆^{}\right)\mathrm{}^2}{2}\right]\rho \left(𝐆𝐆^{}\right)$$
(20)
respectively.

To solve for $`\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,i\mathrm{\Omega }_n)`$, we diagonalize the matrix $`M_{𝐆,𝐆^{\prime \prime }}\left(𝐤\right)`$ by the transformation

$$M=WTW^1,$$
(21)
where $`W`$ is the matrix of the eigenvectors of $`M`$ and $`T_{i,j}=t_j\delta _{i,j}`$ is the diagonal matrix of its eigenvalues. The analytic continuation of $`\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,i\mathrm{\Omega }_n)`$ is given by

$$\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,\omega )=\underset{j,k}{}\frac{W_{𝐆,j}\left(𝐤\right)\left[W\left(𝐤\right)^1\right]_{j,k}B_{k,𝐆^{}}\left(𝐤\right)}{\omega +i\delta t_j\left(𝐤\right)}.$$
(22)
The $`j`$th eigenvector in the matrix $`W`$ of the eigenvectors of the matrix $`M`$ gives the Fourier transform of the density modulation associated with the $`j`$th eigenvalue of $`M`$. We can thus produce an animation of the motion of the density modulation with the frequency $`t_j`$ and wave vector $`𝐤`$ by computing the time-dependent density

$$\delta n(𝐫,t)e^{it_jt}\underset{𝐆}{}e^{i\left(𝐤+𝐆\right)𝐫}F_{N,N}\left(𝐤+𝐆\right)W_{𝐆,j}\left(𝐤\right)$$
(23)
at several values of $`t`$ in one period of the motion and then superimposing this density to the ground state density given by the Hartree-Fock calculation (eq. (11)). We thus compute $`n(𝐫,t)=n_{HF}\left(𝐫\right)+\alpha \delta n(𝐫,t)`$ where $`\alpha `$ is choosen sufficiently small to satisfy $`\left|\delta n(𝐫,t)\right|<n_{HF}\left(𝐫\right)`$.

### II.5 Orbital magnetisation and magnetic susceptibility

The orbital magnetisation and susceptibility can be obtained from the dependence of the Hartree-Fock energy with filling factor. At $`T=0K`$, the orbital magnetisation per electron is given by

$$m=\frac{1}{N}\left(\frac{E}{B}\right),$$
(24)
while the orbital magnetic susceptibility per particle is

$$\chi =\left(\frac{m}{B}\right),$$
(25)
where $`E`$ is the ground state energy of the 2DEG.

When all Landau levels are taken into account, the Hartree-Fock energy per particle, excluding the Zeeman contribution, is (for $`0\nu ^{}1`$)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{E_{HF}^{TOTAL}}{N_T}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}{\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}\left(M+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\mathrm{}\omega _c+{\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\left(N+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\mathrm{}\omega _c`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right){\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}{\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{M^{}<N}{}}X_{M,M^{}}\left(𝐆=0\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right){\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}X_{M,N}\left(𝐆=0\right)\nu ^{}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right){\displaystyle \underset{𝐆}{}}\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\left(1\delta _{𝐆,0}\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\right]\left|\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right|^2,`$
where

$$X_{N,M}\left(𝐪\right)=\left(\frac{\mathrm{min}(M,N)!}{\mathrm{max}(M,N)!}\right)_0^+\mathrm{}𝑑y\left(\frac{y^2}{2}\right)^{\left|NM\right|}e^{y^2/2}\left[L_{\mathrm{min}(N,M)}^{\left|NM\right|}\left(\frac{y^2}{2}\right)\right]^2J_0\left(q\mathrm{}_{}y\right),$$
(27)
is the exchange interaction between electrons in Landau levels $`N`$ and $`M,`$ and $`\alpha `$ is the spin index. To derive this formula, we have assumed that all levels below $`N`$ are occupied and that only the spin level $`\alpha =1`$ in Landau level $`N`$ is partially occupied. The total number of particles $`N_T`$ is assumed fixed.

With the definitions

$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_0\left(N\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}\left(M+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right),`$ (28)
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\left(N\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{M^{}<N}{}}X_{M,M^{}}\left(𝐆=0\right),`$ (29)
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }_2\left(N\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{M<N}{}}X_{M,N}\left(𝐆=0\right),`$ (30)
$`F(N,\nu ^{})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\nu ^{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐆}{}}\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\left(1\delta _{𝐆,0}\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\right]\left|\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right|^2,`$ (31)
Eq. (II.5) can be written as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{E_{HF}^{TOTAL}}{N_T}}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{\Lambda }_0\left(N\right){\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}\omega _c}{\nu }}+\left(N+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\mathrm{}\omega _c`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right)\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\left(N\right){\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right)\mathrm{\Lambda }_2\left(N\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{\kappa \mathrm{}}}\right)F\left(\nu ^{}\right),`$
where

$$F\left(\nu ^{}\right)=\frac{1}{2\nu ^{}}\underset{𝐆}{}\left[H_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\left(1\delta _{𝐆,0}\right)X_{N,N}\left(𝐆\right)\right]\left|\rho \left(𝐆\right)\right|^2,$$
(33)
is the (dimensionless) Hartree-Fock energy per particle in the partially filled level i.e. the energy given in Eq. (12).

Differentiating Eq. (II.5) once (twice) with respect to the magnetic field at constant density and adding the spin contribution, we get the total magnetization (total spin susceptibility). We write

$$\mu =\mu _B\left(\frac{m}{m^{}}\right)\left(\mu _1+\mu _2+\mu _3+\mu _4\right),$$
(34)
where $`\mu _B=e\mathrm{}/2mc`$ is the Bohr magneton. The four contributions to the magnetization are defined (for $`0\nu ^{}1`$) by

$`\mu _1`$ $`=`$ $`8\mathrm{\Lambda }_0{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}2\left(N+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{4N}{\nu }}\right),`$ (35)
$`\mu _2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}g^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{m^{}}{m}}\right)\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{4N}{\nu }}\right),`$
$`\mu _3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{\sqrt{2}}}r_s\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\left(N\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\nu }}}\sqrt{2}r_s\mathrm{\Lambda }_2\left(N\right)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\nu +3N\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\nu }}},`$
$`\mu _4`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{2}r_s\sqrt{\nu }\left(\nu 2N\right){\displaystyle \frac{F\left(\nu ^{}\right)}{\nu ^{}}}+\sqrt{2}r_s\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\nu +3N\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\nu }}}F\left(\nu ^{}\right).`$
Similarly, we write (for $`0\nu ^{}1`$) the total magnetic susceptibility as the sum of the four contributions

$$\chi =\frac{e^2}{4\pi nm^{}c^2}\left(\chi _1+\chi _2+\chi _3+\chi _4\right),$$
(36)
where

$`\chi _1`$ $`=`$ $`8\mathrm{\Lambda }_0\left(N\right)+8N\left(N+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right),`$ (37)
$`\chi _2`$ $`=`$ $`2Ng^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{m^{}}{m}}\right),`$
$`\chi _3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3r_s}{2\sqrt{2}}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\left(N\right)\sqrt{\nu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}r_s\mathrm{\Lambda }_2\left(N\right)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\nu ^{3/2}}{2}}+3N\sqrt{\nu }\right],`$
$`\chi _4`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{2}r_s\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left(\nu +6N\right)\sqrt{\nu }F\left(\nu ^{}\right)\left(\nu +2N\right)\nu ^{3/2}{\displaystyle \frac{F\left(\nu ^{}\right)}{\nu ^{}}}\left(\nu 2N\right)\nu ^{5/2}{\displaystyle \frac{^2F\left(\nu ^{}\right)}{\nu ^2}}\right].`$
The four contributions to the magnetization and susceptibility come respectively from the kinetic energy ($`\mu _1,\chi _1`$), the Zeeman energy ($`\mu _2,\chi _2`$), the exchange energy between electrons in the filled levels or between electrons in the filled levels and those in level $`N`$ ($`\mu _3,\chi _3`$) and the Hartree-Fock energy of electrons in level $`N`$ ($`\mu _4,\chi _4`$). In Eq. (37), we have introduced the gas parameter $`r_s=1/\sqrt{\pi na_B^2}`$where $`a_B=\mathrm{}^2\kappa /m^{}e^2`$ is the effective Bohr radius and the effective $`g`$ factor $`g^{}`$. We remark that our units for the susceptibility can also be written as $`e^2/4\pi nm^{}c^2=\mu _B^{}/B_{\nu =1}`$ where $`\mu _B^{}=e\mathrm{}/2m^{}c`$ and $`B_{\nu =1}`$ is the magnetic field required to get a filling factor of $`\nu =1`$ for a total density of $`n`$.

## III Numerical results

We now discuss our numerical results for the physical quantities introduced above.

### III.1 Hartree-Fock energy

Figures 1(a)-(c) shows the Hartree-Fock energy per electron as a function of filling factor for the bubble and stripe phases in Landau levels $`N=2,3`$and $`5`$. The filling factors at which the transitions between states occur are indicated in an inset in each figure. In all cases, the transitions are of first order and the transition scenario is that described in our introduction: the ground state evolves from the Wigner crystal at low filling, through a succession of bubble states with increasing values of guiding centers per bubble, and finally into the stripe state near half filling. The number of possible bubble states increases with Landau level index $`N`$. Our results for $`N=2,3`$are in agreement with previously obtained Hartree-Fock energies for the bubble statesyoshioka . Energies for $`N=5`$ have not been computed before. As shown in Ref. yoshioka, , the Hartree-Fock results are similar to those obtained by a DMRG calculation except that the region where the stripe phase is stable is wider in the DMRG calculation and, consequently, the bubble state with $`N+1`$electron per bubble disappears. Oscillations in the Laguerre polynomial entering the form factor in Eq. (3) make it difficult to compute numerically accurate phase diagram for higher Landau level indices using our equation of motion technique.

### III.2 Density pattern

Figure 2 shows how the density pattern given by Eq. (11) evolves as the filling factor increases in Landau level $`N=3`$. When the bubbles are relatively far apart, the density pattern on each crystal site is well approximated by the trial wave function of Fogler and Koulakovfogler1 . For a bubble of $`M`$ electrons in Landau level $`N`$, that wave function is the Slater determinant

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_N(𝐫_1,𝐫_2,\mathrm{},𝐫_M)=\left|\begin{array}{cccc}\phi _{N,0}\left(𝐫_1\right)& \phi _{N,0}\left(𝐫_2\right)& \mathrm{}& \phi _{N,0}\left(𝐫_M\right)\\ \phi _{N,1}\left(𝐫_1\right)& \phi _{N,1}\left(𝐫_2\right)& \mathrm{}& \phi _{N,1}\left(𝐫_M\right)\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ \phi _{N,M1}\left(𝐫_1\right)& \phi _{N,M1}\left(𝐫_2\right)& \mathrm{}& \phi _{N,M1}\left(𝐫_M\right)\end{array}\right|.$$
(38)
where $`\phi _{N,m}\left(𝐫\right)=C_{N,m}\left(\frac{r}{\mathrm{}}\right)^{\left|mN\right|}e^{r^2/4\mathrm{}^2}e^{i\left(Nm\right)\theta }L_{\left(N+m\left|mN\right|\right)/2}^{\left|mN\right|}\left(\frac{r^2}{2\mathrm{}^2}\right)`$is the normalised wave function of an electron in the symmetric gauge $`𝐀=(B_0y/2,B_0x/2,0)`$ with Landau level $`N`$ and angular momentum $`m`$. The one-particle density

$$n_N\left(𝐫\right)=\left[\underset{i=2}{\overset{i=M}{}}𝑑𝐫_i\right]\left|\mathrm{\Psi }_N(𝐫,𝐫_2,\mathrm{},𝐫_M)\right|^2,$$
(39)
is just

$$n_N\left(𝐫\right)=\underset{m=0}{\overset{m=M1}{}}\left|\phi _{N,m}\left(𝐫\right)\right|^2.$$
(40)
As the filling factor increases in the $`M`$th bubble state, the outer ring from each bubble gets closer to its neighbors and the density pattern given by Eq. (40) is strongly modified. When rings from two adjacent bubbles start to overlap, there is a transition to the $`M+1`$th bubble state. In Landau level $`N`$, the last bubble state before the transition to the stripe phase has $`M=N+1`$. We note that the stripe state obtained in our Hartree-Fock approximation is not the quantum Hall smectic state. It has density modulations along the stripes and can be described as an highly anisotropic Wigner crystal. However, it is likely that this state is unstable due to quantum fluctuations to the smectic statefertig .

### III.3 Density of states

Figure 2 shows the behavior of the single-particle density of states $`g\left(E\right)`$ defined in Eq. (16) for Landau level $`N=3`$ and for filling factors corresponding to bubble states with $`M=1,2,3`$ and $`4`$ electrons per bubble. In Landau level $`N=0`$ where the Wigner crystal state with $`M=1`$is the ground state for all filling factor, our calculation for $`g\left(E\right)`$ reproduces the well-known Hofstadter butterfly structure. For $`\nu ^{}=q/p`$, the density of states consists of $`p`$ subbands of which $`q`$ low-energy bands are filled and separated by a gap from the remaining $`pq`$ subbands. In Fig. 2, we see that the density of states in the bubble state has a different structure. The number of low-energy subbands that can be resolved by our numerical calculation clearly corresponds to the number $`M`$ of electrons per bubble. A measurement of the density of states, by a double-well tunneling experiment or photoluminescence, could serve to determine $`M`$. In computing the tunneling current, one would have to take into account other processes involved, particularly phonon shake-up. This is however beyond the scope of our paper and is left for future research. We note for now, however, that the typical phonon bandwidth (discussed below) is not larger than the splittings among the occupied bands in the density of states, so that the multiplicities of peaks associated with different bubble states are likely to survive such effects.

### III.4 Magnetic susceptibility

The Hartree-Fock energy shown in Fig. 1 has discontinuous change of slope and curvature at the transitions between bubble states with different number $`M`$ of electrons per bubble. This, in turn, gives rise to discontinuities in the behavior of the magnetic susceptibility with filling factor. To show this, we compute the susceptibility in Landau level $`N=3`$ by numerically evaluating the first and second derivatives of the function $`F\left(\nu ^{}\right)`$defined in Eq. (33). We use the parameters $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_0\left(3\right)=9/2,\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\left(3\right)=6.29`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_2\left(3\right)=1.32`$ appropriate to $`N=3`$ and assume a typical total electronic density of $`n=3\times 10^{11}`$e/cm<sup>2</sup>so that the gas parameter is $`r_s=1.011`$. The other parameters are $`g^{}=0.45`$ and the effective mass $`m^{}=0.067m`$.

Figures 3(a) and 3(b) show the behavior of the four contributions to the magnetic moment and magnetic susceptibility defined in Eq. (35) and Eq. (37). The singular behavior (contributions $`\mu _4`$ and $`\chi _4`$) comes, in both cases, from the Coulomb interaction between electrons in the partially filled level. The magnetic moment and susceptibility change discontinuously at the transition between bubble states and between bubble and stripe state. In both cases the effect is sizeable. Consequently, the transitions between bubble states should, in theory, be observable in a measurement of the magnetization or magnetic susceptibility levy .

### III.5 Collective excitations

We now discuss the collective excitations of the bubble states. We compute the density-density response function of Eq. (22) and follow its poles when the wave vector $`𝐤`$ is varied along the edges of the irreducible Brillouin zone of the triangular lattice of the crystal. Figures 4(a) to 4(f) show examples of the dispersion relation we obtain. In these figures, the dispersion is plotted along the path $`\mathrm{\Gamma }JX\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ corresponding to the wavevectors $`(k_x,k_y)=(0,0),\frac{2\pi }{a}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}},\frac{1}{3}),\frac{2\pi }{a}(\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}},0),(0,0)`$ where $`a`$ is the lattice constant. The wavevector $`k`$ represents the total distance, in reciprocal space and in units of $`2\pi /a`$ where $`a`$ is the lattice constant, along the path $`\mathrm{\Gamma }JX\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ from the origin $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. For a given value of $`𝐤,`$ Eq. (II.5) provides us with a way to image the motion of the density in a particular mode.

We remark that our calculation does not include disorder so that the lowest-energy mode in figs. 4 is a gapless phonon mode. For small wave vector, this phonon mode has the typical $`\omega k^{3/2}`$ dispersion of a Wigner crystal. In the presence of disorder, this phonon mode would be gapped.

Upon entering a state with $`M`$ electrons per bubble, the dispersion and maximal frequency of the phonon mode first increases with the filling fraction. Near the critical filling factors $`\nu _{MM+1}^{}`$ computed above in the HFA, the phonon mode starts to soften at a finite wave vector $`𝐤`$. This indicates that the bubble states become locally unstable when the outer rings of adjacent bubbles start to touch. For the cases $`N=2,3,5`$ that we have studied, we find that the phonon mode frequency vanishes at this wavevector for $`\nu ^{}>`$$`\nu _{MM+1}^{}`$ so that a second order transition is preempted by a first order one. This is also the case for the transition between the $`M=N+1`$ bubble state and the stripe state as we show in Fig. 5 where we plot the dispersion relation of phonon mode of the stripe state for wave vector $`k`$ along the direction of the stripes ($`k_x=\pi /\xi `$ where $`\xi `$ is the interstripe distance). The dispersion is shown for several values of the filling factor from $`\nu ^{}=0.42`$ to $`\nu ^{}=0.50`$ in Landau level $`N=2`$. It is clear that the dispersion of the phonon (and in particular the region around the roton miminum) does not change significatively near $`\nu =0.428,`$ the filling factor at which the Hartree-Fock calculation predicts a transition between the $`M=3`$ bubble state and the stripe state.

For Landau level index $`N=1`$, we find an interesting exception in that the softening of the phonon mode occurs for $`\nu ^{}<\nu _{12}^{}`$. This indicates the possible existence of some new charge ordered state. We did not study this case further, however, since our approximations do not include correlations responsible for the correlated liquid states that are present in $`N=1`$yoshioka .

Another indication of the limitations of the HFA and TDHFA is that the last bubble state ($`M=N+1`$) is stable, in contrast with the DMRG resultyoshioka . The DMRG method includes correlations neglected in the HFA and is, in principle, more exact than the HFA. In any case, for values of $`\nu `$ where a bubble state is stable, we expect the TDHFA to give a reasonable approximation of the dispersion of its collective excitations.

We see from figs. 4 that, above the phonon mode and in the region where the $`M=1`$bubble state is stable, there is a series of higher-energy modes that are almost dispersionless except near filling factors where the transitions between bubble states do occur. As we explained in Ref. cote1, , more and more of these modes appear in the response function when we increase the size of the matrix $`M_{𝐆,𝐆}\left(𝐤\right)`$in the equation of motion (Eq. (18)) for the response function $`\chi _{𝐆,𝐆^{}}(𝐤,\omega )`$. As more modes appear, the previous ones are not shifted in energy so that these modes are not numerical artifacts associated with the truncation of the infinite dimensional matrix $`M_{𝐆,𝐆}\left(𝐤\right)`$. For higher values of $`M`$, a general trend of the dispersion (except close to transition points) is that there are $`M`$ low-energy dispersive modes close in energy and a number of higher-energy much less dispersive modes. For large values of $`M`$, each bubble has a complex pattern of density modulations and a large number of reciprocal lattice vectors are needed to describe its structure adequately. It follows that our numerical procedure is less precise in this case as can be seen from Fig. 4(f).

The small dispersion of the higher-energy modes suggests that they can be identified as local oscillations of the density within a bubble. This is indeed what can be seen from an animation of these modes using Eq. (II.5). Figs. 6 show several snapshots of these modes representing the motion of the density in the second, third, and fourth modes for $`M=1`$ in Landau level $`N=2`$. From these figures, we see that the higher-energy modes are density waves propagating along the rings of the bubbles. These modes can be readily identified by the number of wavelengths of these waves enclosed in the perimeter of the rings. For example, the second mode corresponds to the case where the perimeter of the rings enclosed two wavelengths, the third mode to the case where the perimeter enclosed three wavelengths and so on. When the separation between the bubbles decreases in a given $`M`$ bubble state, the density waves on each bubble become more and more coupled and the dispersion of the higher-energy modes can be very pronounced.

The frequency of the higher-energy collective modes change discontinuously with the transition between the bubble states. A measurement of the frequency of these modes could then provide yet another signature of the bubble states. It would be interesting if variations in the gap $`\omega \left(𝐤0\right)`$of these higher-energy modes could be detected experimentally. Recently, Lewis et al.lewis  reported the observation of an absorption peak in a measurement of the microwave absorption of a ultrahigh mobility two-dimensional electron system in Landau levels $`N=2`$ and $`N=3`$. A peak of absorption occurs at a frequency that decreases as the center ($`\nu ^{}=0.5`$) of the Landau level is approached from either above or below. The resonances in the absorption are sharpest for filling factors $`\nu ^{}`$ around $`1/4`$ and $`3/4`$ corresponding to the values where the RIQHE occur in transport experimentslilly . At these filling factors, the resonance frequency is approximately $`f=500`$MHz. It is natural to associate this resonance with a pinned phonon mode of the bubble states (of either electrons or holes for $`\nu ^{}<0.5`$or $`\nu ^{}>0.5`$).

The higher-energy modes of the bubble states are gapped at $`\omega \left(𝐤=0\right)=0`$. In Fig. 7, we plot the gap $`f\left(𝐤=0\right)=\omega \left(𝐤=0\right)/2\pi `$ in the first high-energy mode as a function of filling factor $`\nu ^{}`$ for Landau levels $`N=2,3,5`$. To convert our frequencies (in units of $`e^2/\mathrm{}\kappa \mathrm{}`$) to GHz, we assume $`\kappa =12.9`$ for the dielectric constant of the host semiconductor (GaAs) and take a typical density of $`n=3.2\times 10^{11}`$ electrons/cm<sup>2</sup> so that $`e^2/\mathrm{}\kappa \mathrm{}=3827/\sqrt{\nu }`$GHz where $`\nu `$ is the total filling factor of the 2DEG. At filling factor $`\nu `$, the magnetic field is given by $`B=nh/e\nu =13.2/\nu `$ Tesla. As Fig. 7 shows, the transitions between bubble states lead to abrupt changes in the gap frequency when the filling factor is varied. The discontinuities are more pronounced for lower Landau level indices $`N`$. The frequency range of the first higher-energy mode is in a range of frequencies that can be obtained in a microwave absorption experiment; thus, such experiments can in principle proble the transitions among bubble states. We remark that other effects not included in our calculation, particularly the modeling of a finite width for the electronic wave function in the quantum well, could lead to a reduction of the gap frequency. This would make behavior such as that seen in Fig. 7 easier to detect.

To complete our calculation, it would be necessary to find out whether these higher-energy collective excitations are really detectable by a measurement of the absorption power. For this, one needs to compute the longitudinal conductivity $`\sigma _{xx}`$in the presence of the disorder potential since otherwise (by Kohn’s theorem) only the cyclotron mode will show up in $`\sigma _{xx}`$. This calculation is beyond the scope of this paper but is in progress and will be reported elsewhere.

## IV Conclusion

In this work, we have studied several physical properties of the bubble states that form in higher Landau levels. We have computed the energy and density pattern of the 2DEG ground state, in Landau levels $`N=2,3,`$and $`5`$, when the filling factor of the partially filled level is gradually increased from $`\nu ^{}=0`$ to $`\nu ^{}=0.5`$. In the Hartree-Fock approximation, the Wigner crystal at small $`\nu ^{}`$evolves into the modulated stripe state near $`\nu ^{}=0.5`$ by passing through a succession of bubble states with increasing number of guiding centers per bubble. In all cases ($`N>1`$) that we have studied, the transitions are first order.

We have shown that several physical quantities such as the single-particle density of states, the magnetization, the magnetic susceptibility and the dispersion of the collective excitations change discontinuously at the transition between these different ground states. We believe that these abrupt changes can be detected experimentally. In particular, we noticed that the density of states structure in the bubble states has features that allow one to determine, at least in principle, the number of guiding centers per bubble.

We have studied more closely the collective excitations of the bubble states and, in particular, the structure of the higher-energy modes (i.e. those modes above the phonon mode). In light of the recent microwave experiments by Lewis et al.lewis , we think that some of these modes are likely to be accessible experimentally. More work is needed to compute the real weight of these modes in the absorption. If these higher-energy modes can be detected in microwave absorption experiments, they will show a discontinuous change of the frequency $`f\left(𝐤=0\right)`$ at each transition between the bubble states.

## V Acknowledgements

The authors thank R. Lewis and L. Engel for several useful discussions. This work was supported by a research grant (for R.C.) and undergraduate research grants (for C.D. and J.B.) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). H.A.F. acknowledges the support of the NSF through Grant No. DMR-0108451.


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# Generalized q-Deformed Symplectic sp(4) Algebra for Multi-shell Applications

## 1 Introduction

The symplectic $`sp(4)`$ algebra, which is isomorphic to $`so(5)`$ , has been successfully used for a description of pairing correlations when two types of particles are taken into account . The algebra can be generalized to multiple levels  so the particles can occupy more than a single orbit. When applied to nuclear structure, this generalization of the $`sp(4)`$ algebra makes a study of nuclei with mass numbers $`56<A<100`$ possible.

An additional degree of freedom can be introduced through a $`q`$-deformation of the classical $`sp(4)`$ Lie algebra . While this preserves the underlying symmetry, it introduces non-linear terms into the theory. In contrast with the usual formulation of $`q`$-deformation for the symplectic $`sp(4)`$ algebra and its $`su(2)`$ subalgebras that is normally used in mathematical studies  and in nuclear physics applications , we have discovered a new formulation that depends upon the dimensionality of the underlying space . Because of this dependence, a generalization of the $`q`$-deformed symplectic $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra to a multi-orbit case is an interesting exercise that introduces new elements into the theory.

To apply the $`q`$-deformed theory (single-level or multiple-orbit) to real physical systems, the action of the generators of $`Sp_q(4)`$ on the basis states must be known. We have derived an analytical form for accomplishing this. The results can be used to build a $`q`$-deformed analog of the second-order Casimir invariant of the $`sp(4)`$ algebra. The results also provide for analytical matrix elements of a model interaction and therefore for an exact solution of the corresponding Hamiltonian problem. The results are what is needed for nuclear structure applications and an investigation into the physical significance of $`q`$-deformation.

## 2 Generalized sp(4) algebra and its q-deformed extension

The multi-shell generalization of the fermion realization of $`sp_{(q)}(4)`$ follows the single-$`j`$ construction of the algebra . The $`sp(4)`$ algebra, which is isomorphic to $`so(5),`$ is realized in terms of creation and annihilation fermion operators $`c_{j,m,\sigma }^{}`$ and $`c_{j,m,\sigma }`$, which describe a particle of type $`\sigma `$ ($`=\pm 1`$ for protons/neutrons) in a state of total angular momentum $`j`$ (half-integer) with a third projection $`m`$ ($`jmj`$). For a given $`\sigma ,`$ the dimension of the fermion space is $`2\mathrm{\Omega }=_j2\mathrm{\Omega }_j=_j(2j+1)`$, where the sum $`_j`$ is over all orbits that are considered to be active.

The deformation of the $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra is introduced in terms of $`q`$-deformed creation and annihilation operators $`\alpha _{j,m,\sigma }^{}`$ and $`\alpha _{j,m,\sigma },`$ $`(\alpha _{j,m,\sigma }^{})^{}=\alpha _{j,m,\sigma }`$, where $`\alpha _{j,m,\sigma }^{()}c_{j,m,\sigma }^{()}`$ in the limit $`q1.`$ The deformed single-particle operators are defined through their anticommutation relation for every $`j`$, $`\sigma `$, and $`m`$ in a similar way as for the single-level problem

$$\begin{array}{cc}\{\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m},\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m^{}}^{}\}_{\pm 1}=q^{\pm \frac{N_\sigma }{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\delta _{m,m^{}},\hfill & \{\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m},\alpha _{j^{},\sigma ^{},m^{}}^{}\}=0,\sigma \sigma ^{},jj^{},\hfill \\ \{\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m}^{},\alpha _{j^{},\sigma ^{},m^{}}^{}\}=0,\hfill & \{\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m},\alpha _{j^{},\sigma ^{},m^{}}\}=0,\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
where the two Cartan generators $`N_\sigma =_j_{m=j}^jc{}_{j,m,\sigma }{}^{}c_{j,m,\sigma }`$ count the number of particles of each type $`\sigma `$ and by definition the $`q`$-anticommutator is given as $`\{A,B\}_k=AB+q^kBA.`$

In the deformed case a pair of fermions can be created ($`F_{0,\pm 1}\stackrel{q1}{}A_{0,\pm 1}`$) or destroyed ($`G_{0,\pm 1}\stackrel{q1}{}B_{0,\pm 1}`$) by the operators:

$$F_{\frac{\sigma +\sigma ^{}}{2}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }(1+\delta _{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}})}}\underset{j}{}\underset{m=j}{\overset{j}{}}(1)^{jm}\alpha _{j,m,\sigma }^{}\alpha _{j,m,\sigma ^{}}^{},$$
(2)
$$G_{\frac{\sigma +\sigma ^{}}{2}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }(1+\delta _{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}})}}\underset{j}{}\underset{m=j}{\overset{j}{}}(1)^{jm}\alpha {}_{j,m,\sigma }{}^{}\alpha {}_{j,m,\sigma ^{}}{}^{},$$
(3)
where $`F_{0,\pm 1}=(G_{0,\pm 1})^{}`$. The number preserving Weyl generators are defined as:

$$T_+=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{j}{}\underset{m=j}{\overset{j}{}}\alpha {}_{j,m,1}{}^{}\alpha {}_{j,m,1}{}^{},T_{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\underset{j}{}\underset{m=j}{\overset{j}{}}\alpha {}_{j,m,1}{}^{}\alpha {}_{j,m,1}{}^{},$$
(4)
where ($`T_\pm \stackrel{q1}{}\tau _\pm `$). In addition to the Cartan generators $`N_{\pm 1}`$ (or their linear combinations $`N=N_{+1}+N_1`$ and $`T_0\tau _0=(N_{+1}N_1)/2`$), the operators (2)-(4) close on the $`q`$-deformed $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra and their non-deformed counterparts close on the $`sp(4)`$ algebra. In physical applications, the number generators $`N_{\pm 1}`$ along with the total number of particles $`N`$ and the third projection $`T_0`$ (of the operator with two other components $`T_\pm `$), represent physical observables, which are always non-deformed.

In the deformed and non-deformed cases, the generators (2)-(4) are related to the corresponding single-level operators $`X^{(j)}`$ as $`X=_j\frac{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_j}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}}X^{(j)}`$, where $`X=\{F,G,T\}`$ or $`X\stackrel{q1}{=}\{A,B,\tau \}`$. In the non-deformed limit, the ten operators $`A_{0,\pm 1}^{(j)}`$, $`B_{0,\pm 1}^{(j)}`$, $`\tau _{0,\pm }^{(j)}`$ and $`N^{(j)}`$ close on the $`sp^{(j)}(4)`$ algebra for each $`j`$-level and the direct sum holds, $`sp(4)=_jsp^{(j)}(4)`$.

A different situation occurs in the deformed case, where the single-level generators do not close within the $`sp_q^{(j)}(4)`$ algebra (e.g. $`[T_+^{(j)},T_{}^{(j)}][2\frac{T_0^{(j)}}{2\mathrm{\Omega }_j}]`$) but rather within the generalized $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra, since

$$[T_+^{(j)},T_{}^{(j)}]=[2\frac{T_0}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}],[F_0^{(j)},G_0^{(j)}]=[\frac{N2\mathrm{\Omega }}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}],[F_{\pm 1}^{(j)},G_{\pm 1}^{(j)}]=\rho _\pm [\frac{N_{\pm 1}\mathrm{\Omega }}{\mathrm{\Omega }}],$$

where by definition $`[X]_k=\frac{q^{kX}q^{kX}}{q^kq^k}`$ and $`\rho _\pm =\frac{q^{\pm 1}+q^{\pm \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}{2}`$. The rest of the commutation relations remain within the single-$`j`$ $`q`$-deformed algebra, for example $`[T_0^{(j)},T_\pm ^{(j)}]=\pm T_\pm ^{(j)}`$. However, several of these relations, like $`[T_l^{(j)},F_0^{(j)}]_{\frac{[2]}{2}}=\frac{1}{2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_j}}F_l^{(j)}(q^{\frac{N_l}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+q^{\frac{N_l}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}})`$, $`l=\pm 1`$, include a multiplicative $`q`$-factor with a dependence on the averaged multi-level number, $`N_{\pm 1}/(2\mathrm{\Omega })`$. This behavior of $`sp_q^{(j)}(4)`$ can be traced back to the generalized $`q`$-deformation (1), where the anticommutation relations of two fermions on a single-$`j`$ level depend on the total number of particles of one kind averaged over the multi-shell space. Another interesting consequence of (1) is the single-$`j`$ $`q`$-deformed quantity

$$\underset{m}{}\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m}^{}\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m}=2\mathrm{\Omega }_j[\frac{N_\sigma }{2\mathrm{\Omega }}],\sigma =\pm 1.$$
(5)
In the non-deformed limit, the left-hand side of (5) represents the single-level number operator $`N_\sigma ^{(j)}`$, while in the deformed extension the zeroth approximation of (5) gives an even distribution of the particles over the entire multi-level space weighed by the single-$`j`$ dimension. In this way, the $`q`$-deformation for the generalized $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra introduces probability features at the constituent single-$`j`$ levels of the theory.

In the deformed case (as in the “classical” case), each finite representation is spanned by completely paired states, which are constructed as pairs of fermions coupled to a total angular momentum and parity $`J^\pi =0^+`$ ,

$$|n_1,n_0,n_1)_q=(F{}_{1}{}^{})^{n_1}(F{}_{0}{}^{})^{n_0}\left(F_1\right)^{n_1}|0,$$
(6)
where $`F_{0,\pm 1}`$ are defined in (2) and $`n_1,n_0,n_1`$ are the total number of pairs of each kind, $`(\sigma ,\sigma ^{})=(++),(+),()`$, respectively. The basis states (6) in a multiple-orbit space of dimension $`2\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a linear combination of the single-level basis states which depend on what pairs occupy which levels .

The states (6) are eigenvectors of the total number operators $`N_{\pm 1}`$ with eigenvalues $`N_\pm `$, where $`N_\pm =2n_{\pm 1}+n_0`$. Both $`N`$ and $`\tau _0(T_0)`$ are diagonal in the basis (6) with eigenvalues $`n=2(n_1+n_1+n_0)`$ and $`i=n_1n_1`$, respectively. While the single-$`j`$ fermion number operators $`N_{\pm 1}^{(j)}`$ project onto the single-level basis, the $`q`$-deformed analog (5) is diagonal in the basis (6) with eigenvalue $`2\mathrm{\Omega }_j[\frac{2n_\sigma +n_0}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}]`$, $`\sigma =\pm 1`$.

The generalized model has the same symmetry properties as the single-level realization of the theory . All formulae that are constructed in terms of commutation relations of the single-level generators (like action of a group generator on the basis states, Casimir invariants, eigenvalues, normalization coefficients of the basis vectors) coincide at the algebraic level and have the same form under the substitution $`\mathrm{\Omega }_j\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The three important reduction limits of the $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra to $`u_q(2)`$ are summarized in Table 1 with the eigenvalues of the first and second-order Casimir invariants and the basis states given for each limit. Also, the $`q`$-deformed symplectic algebra reverts back to the “classical” limit when $`q1`$.

For nuclear structure applications we use the set of the commutation relations that is symmetric with respect to the exchange $`qq^1`$ . The $`q`$-coefficients, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{lk}(N_p)`$, obtained in  for the following commutation relations

$$[T_l,Y_{\pm k}]=\pm \frac{Y_{\pm l\pm k}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\pm 1}(N_{\pm k})}{2[2]\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}},l,k0;[F_l,G_k]=\frac{T_{l+k}\mathrm{\Psi }_{|l||k|}(N_{lk})}{2[2]\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}},l+k0,$$

(where $`Y=F(G)`$ for the ‘$`+`$’ (‘$``$’) case) can be written in a compact way as

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{\pm 1}(N_p)=2\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}\left[2_{N_p\pm 1/2\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}=\{\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Psi }_{l0}(N_p)\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Psi }_{0k}(N_p)\hfill \end{array},$$
(7)
where we define $`[2_X]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\frac{\left[2X\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}{\left[X\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}=q^{\frac{X}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+q^{\frac{X}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\stackrel{q1}{}2`$.

## 3 Action of first and second-order operators on the basis vectors

In addition to a generalization of the $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra to multi-$`j`$ shells, an algebraic form for the action of the product of two or more generators of the symplectic symmetry can be given. This allows one to calculate the overlaps between states in a number preserving sequence, to build a $`q`$-deformed second-order diagonal operator in terms of all the ten generators of $`Sp_q(4)`$, and to obtain the matrix elements of a model Hamiltonian.

### 3.1 The $`su_q^T(2)`$ limit

In the $`q`$-deformed case, the commutators of the raising (lowering) $`T_\pm `$ operator with the pair creation operators, $`(F_{})^{n_1}`$ and $`(F_0)^{n_0}`$, which enter into the construction of the basis states (6), are

$`[T_\pm ,(F_{})^{n_1}]=F_0(F_{})^{n_11}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}[2]}}[n_1]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{N_1+n_11/2\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$
$`[T_\pm ,(F_0)^{n_0}]_{\left(\frac{[2]}{2}\right)^{n_0}}=F_\pm (F_0)^{n_01}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}}}{\displaystyle \underset{p=0}{\overset{n_01}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[2]^p}{2^p}}[2_{N_1+n_01p}]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ (8)
With the use of (8), the general formula for the action of the $`k`$-th order product of $`T_\pm `$ on the lowest (highest) weight basis state can be determined,

$`T_\pm ^k(F_{})^{n_1}|0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=0}{\overset{k/2}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}[2]}}\left[2_{n_1\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right)^{ki}{\displaystyle \frac{[n_1]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}!\theta (k,i)}{[n_1k+i]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}!}}`$ (9)
$`\times (F_\pm )^i(F_0)^{k2i}(F_{})^{n_1k+i}|0,`$
where $`kn_{\pm 1}`$ and the functions in the sum are defined as

$`\theta (k,0)=1,k`$
$`\theta (k,i)=\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{\theta (k1,i)\left[2_{n_1i\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}{\left[2_{n_1\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}+\frac{\theta (k1,i1)}{2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}}_{p=0}^{k2i}\frac{[2]^p}{2^p}[2_{k2ip}]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}},ik/2\hfill \\ 0,i>k/2\hfill \end{array}.`$ (12)
This implies that $`\theta (k,\frac{k}{2})=\frac{\theta (k1,\frac{k}{2}1)}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ when $`k`$ is even. Starting from the lowest (highest) weight basis state the action of the $`T_\pm `$ operator (9) gives all the number preserving vectors with a definite maximum value of the $`T`$ quantum number. (Recall that for given $`n`$ and $`i`$, $`T`$ takes the values, $`T=\frac{\stackrel{~}{n}}{2},\frac{\stackrel{~}{n}}{2}2,\mathrm{},2\frac{i}{2}`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{n}=\mathrm{min}\{n,4\mathrm{\Omega }n\}`$.) The rest of the vectors with lower $`T`$ values and the same $`(n,i)`$ quantum numbers can be found as independent and orthogonal vectors to those constructed in (9).

In nuclear systems, the $`T_\pm `$ generators represent the raising and lowering isospin operators and as such they generate $`\beta ^{}`$-decay transitions in an isobaric sequence. It follows that formula (9) derived above is used extensively in the calculation of the strength of these transitions. Also, the construction of the isospin states (9) allows one to compute overlaps with the pair states (6) and with the eigenvectors of a model Hamiltonian.

### 3.2 Action of products of two generators on the basis states

We are also able to give an analytical form of the action of the anticommutator $`\{T_+,T_{}\}=T_+T_{}+T_{}T_+`$ on the basis states

$`\{T_+,T_{}\}|n_1,n_0,n_1)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{M_{1,+2,1}^T}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}|n_11,n_0+2,n_11)`$ (13)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{M_{0,0,0}^T}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}|n_1,n_0,n_1)+{\displaystyle \frac{M_{+1,2,+1}^T}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}|n_1+1,n_02,n_1+1),`$
where the coefficients $`M_{n_1^{},n_0^{},n_1^{}}^T`$ (with $`n_1^{},n_0^{},n_1^{}`$ indicating the number of pairs of each kind added ($`+`$)/removed ($``$)) are $`q`$-deformed functions of the pair numbers given in terms of the $`n_1,n_0,n_1`$ by

$`M_{1,+2,1}^T`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4[2]^2}}\{\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_11)\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0+1,n_11)`$
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_11)\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0+1,n_11)\}`$
$`M_{0,0,0}^T`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4[2]}}\{\mathrm{\Phi }(n_01)(\mathrm{\Psi }(n_01,n_1)+\mathrm{\Psi }(n_01,n_1))`$
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }(n_0)(\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_11)+\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_11))\}`$
$`M_{+1,2,+1}^T`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }(n_01)\mathrm{\Phi }(n_02),`$ (14)
where we define

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(n_0)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{n_0}{}}\frac{\left[2\right]^k}{2^k}\left[2_{n_0k}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}},$$

$`\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_{\pm 1})`$ $`=`$ $`\left[n_0+2n_{\pm 1}+1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[n_01\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[n_0+2n_{\pm 1}+22\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[n_02\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ (15)
$`=`$ $`2\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}\left[n_\pm +1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_0+n_\pm +1/2\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}.`$
The second expression of $`\mathrm{\Psi }(n_0,n_{\pm 1})`$ (15) allows the non-diagonal term that scatters two identical particle pairs of opposite kinds into two non-identical particle pairs (14) to be rewritten as

$`M_{1,+2,1}^T`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\rho _+\rho _{}}{[2]^2}}\left[n_1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[n_1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\times `$ (16)
$`\{\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }+\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }+\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\}.`$
In a similar way, the action of the second-order product, $`F_0G_0`$, on the basis states yields the following non-diagonal term

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}M_{1,+2,1}^P`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\stackrel{~}{n}_1\stackrel{~}{n}_1`$ (17)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _+\rho _{}}{[2]^2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[n_1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[n_1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}},`$
and for $`F_{+1}G_{+1}+F_1G_1`$ it is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}M_{+1,2,+1}^P={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}}{\left[2\right]}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n_01}{}}}S_q(k),`$ (18)
where we define $`\stackrel{~}{n}_{\pm 1}\frac{1}{2[2]}(\left[2n_{\pm 1}1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[2n_{\pm 1}2\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[2\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+1)=\frac{1}{[2]}\sqrt{\rho _+\rho _{}}\left[n_{\pm 1}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_{\pm 1}\mathrm{\Omega }1/2}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ $`\stackrel{q1}{}n_{\pm 1}`$, and $`S_q(k)[2_{k\mathrm{\Omega }1/2}]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}_{i=0}^{k1}\frac{\left[2\right]^i}{2^i}[2_{k1i}]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\stackrel{q1}{}4k`$ . The diagonal elements, $`M_{0,0,0}^P`$, of $`F_0G_0`$ and $`F_{+1}G_{+1}+F_1G_1`$ are discussed in detail in .

### 3.3 Second-order operators

The analytical relations (14)-(18) allow us to find a $`q`$-deformed second-order operator, $`O_2(sp_q(4))`$, that is diagonal in the $`q`$-deformed basis and that in the limit when $`q`$ goes to one reverts to the second-order Casimir invariant of the $`sp(4)`$ algebra ,

$`O_2(sp_q(4))={\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _1}{2}}(\{F_{+1},G_{+1}\}+\{F_1,G_1\})+\gamma _0{\displaystyle \frac{C_2(su_q^0(2))}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}+{\displaystyle \frac{C_2(su_q^T(2))}{\mathrm{\Omega }}},`$ (19)
where the $`\gamma `$-coefficients are $`q`$-functions of the pair numbers, $`\gamma _1=\frac{M_{+1,2,+1}^T}{2M_{+1,2,+1}^P}\stackrel{q1}{}2`$ and $`\gamma _0=\frac{\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }+\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }+\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_0+n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}{2\left[2_{n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[2_{n_1\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{1}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}}\stackrel{q1}{}1`$. The Casimir invariants in (19) are $`C_2(su_q^T(2))=\mathrm{\Omega }(\{T_+,T_{}\}+\left[\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]\left[T_0\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2)`$ and $`C_2(su_q^0(2))=\mathrm{\Omega }(\{F_0,G_0\}+\left[\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]\left[\frac{N}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2)`$ .

The second-order operator can be written in terms of the Casimir operators of all four limits, $`\{+,,0,T\}`$, as

$`O_2(sp_q(4))={\displaystyle \underset{k=+,,0,T}{}}\gamma _k{\displaystyle \frac{C_2(su_q^k(2))}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _1}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right]\{\rho _+\left[{\displaystyle \frac{N_1\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2+\rho _{}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{N_1\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2\}`$ (20)
where $`\gamma _\pm \gamma _1,\gamma _T1`$ and $`C_2(su_q^\pm (2))=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}(\{F_{\pm 1},G_{\pm 1}\}+\rho _\pm \left[\frac{2}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\right]\left[\frac{N_{\pm 1}\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2)`$ . Its eigenvalue in the basis set (6) (see Table 1 and (14)-(18)) is

$`O_2(sp_q(4))`$ $`=`$ $`\gamma _1(\rho _++\rho _{})\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }n_0}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }n_0}{2}}+1\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ (21)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _1}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right]\{\rho _+\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2n_++n_0\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2+\rho _{}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2n_{}+n_0\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2\}`$
$`+2\gamma _0\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right]\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{\Omega }2(n_1+n_1)}{2}}\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{\Omega }2(n_1+n_1)}{2}}+1\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{M_{0,0,0}^T}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}+\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right][n_1n_1]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2\stackrel{q1}{}\mathrm{\Omega }+3.`$
The second-order operator (19) is a Casimir invariant only in the non-deformed limit of the theory. In that limit its eigenvalue $`(\mathrm{\Omega }+3)`$ labels the $`Sp(4)`$ representations. While an explicit form for the second-order Casimir operator of $`sp_q(4)`$ for other $`q`$-deformed schemes can be given , this is not the case here because the scheme includes, by construction , a dependence on the shell structure which is suitable for nuclear physics applications. Nevertheless, the importance of the second-order operator (19) in the $`q`$-deformed case is obvious. It is an operator that consists of number preserving products of all ten $`q`$-deformed group generators, and the pair basis states (6), which span the entire space for a given $`Sp_q(4)`$ representation, are its eigenvectors. Its zeroth-order approximation commutes with the generators of the $`q`$-deformed symplectic symmetry, which means that only the higher-order terms introduce a dependence on the quantum numbers that label the states. It also gives a direct relation between the expectation values of the second-order products of the generators that build $`O_2(sp_q(4))`$.

The analytical formulae, which were derived above, are also used for finding the matrix elements of the interaction in a system with symplectic dynamical symmetry. The model Hamiltonian  is another second-order operator that is expressed in terms of the generators of the $`Sp_q(4)`$ group :

$`H_q=`$ $`\overline{ϵ}^qNG_qF_0G_0F_q(F_{+1}G_{+1}+F_1G_1){\displaystyle \frac{E_q}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}(C_2(su_q^T(2))\mathrm{\Omega }\left[{\displaystyle \frac{N}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right])`$ (22)
$`C_q2\mathrm{\Omega }\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right](\left[{\displaystyle \frac{N}{2}}\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2\left[\mathrm{\Omega }\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2)(D_q{\displaystyle \frac{E_q}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}})\mathrm{\Omega }\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\right]\left[T_0\right]_{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}}^2,`$
where $`ϵ^q=\overline{ϵ}^q+(\frac{1}{2}2\mathrm{\Omega })C_q+\frac{D_q}{4}>0`$ is the Fermi level of the system, $`G_q,F_q,E_q,C_q`$ and $`D_q`$ are constant interaction strength parameters. The classical Hamiltonian, $`H_{cl}`$, is obtained in the limit $`q1`$. For a nuclear system with $`N_+`$ valence protons and $`N_{}`$ valence neutrons, the interaction represents proton-neutron and identical-particle isovector pairing (with $`G_q0`$ and $`F_q0`$ strength parameters), a symmetry term ($`E_q`$), a diagonal proton-neutron isoscalar force ($`E_q`$ and $`C_q`$)  and an isospin breaking term ($`D_q\frac{E_q}{2\mathrm{\Omega }}`$). The quantum extension of the $`sp(4)`$ algebra introduces higher-order interactions and accounts for non-linear effects. The $`q`$-deformed model can be applied to multi-$`j`$ major shells, like $`1f_{5/2}2p_{1/2}2p_{3/2}1g_{9/2}`$, and is exactly solvable. The second-order diagonal operator $`O_2(sp_q(4))`$ (19) sets a linear dependence between the $`q`$-deformed pairing and symmetry energies, which allows for a reduction of the number of the phenomenological parameters in the Hamiltonian (22).

### 3.4 Boson approximation

Although the fermion generalization allows many $`j`$-orbitals to be considered, the dimension of the space should not be allowed to grow too large because the effect of the deformation diminishes as the size of the model space grows. For example, in the case of very large $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ the anticommutation relation of the fermions (1) reduces to the simpler form $`\{\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m},\alpha _{j,\sigma ,m^{}}^{}\}_{q^{\pm 1}}=\delta _{m,m^{}}`$ and all $`q`$-brackets $`[X]`$ or $`[X]_{\frac{1}{(2)\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ go to $`X`$ when X is not a function of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In this limit the pair-operators obey boson commutations and a boson approximation is achieved. The model Hamiltonian (22) is diagonal in the pair states and does not include scattering between different kinds of bosons. In the limit of large $`\mathrm{\Omega }\{\frac{N}{2},N_{\pm 1}\}`$, the action of the operators $`AB`$ ($`FG`$) on the basis states counts the number of different kinds of bosons: $`F_0G_0`$ counts the number of non-identical particle pairs and remains non-deformed; $`F_\pm G_\pm `$ counts the number of identical particle pairs and only scales its non-deformed analog by a factor of $`\frac{1+q^{\pm 1}}{2}`$. As another direct consequence of the dependence of the deformation on the space dimension is that in this large $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ limit the direct product of the single-$`j`$ quantum symplectic algebras holds, $`sp_q(4)=_jsp_q^{(j)}(4)`$, as for the non-deformed case for all $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

## 4 Conclusion

In this article we introduced a multi-shell extension of the quantum $`sp_q(4)`$ algebra. While in the non-deformed case this is a direct sum of the single-$`j`$ symplectic $`sp_q^{(j)}(4)`$ algebras, in the deformed case a direct sum result is only achieved in a boson approximation of the theory that is applicable in the large space limit, $`\mathrm{\Omega }\{\frac{N}{2},N_{\pm 1}\}`$. The dependence of the deformation on the dimensionality of the space makes the generalization unique and non-trivial.

We also derived an analytical solution for the action of the $`q`$-deformed raising and lowering operators on the basis states. This, in turn, allows one to calculate the overlap between number preserving states. It also makes the construction of $`q`$-deformed basis vectors with a definite isospin value possible and allows one to calculate $`\beta `$-decay transition probabilities between these states.

We were also able to obtained formulae for computing the action of the product of two generators of the $`Sp_q(4)`$ group on the basis states. From this we found a $`q`$-deformed second-order operator in the group generators that is diagonal in the basis set with its zeroth-order approximation commuting with all the $`Sp_q(4)`$ generators. The results can also be used to provide for an exact solutions of a $`q`$-deformed model Hamiltonian.

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation, Grant Numbers 9970769 and 0140300. The authors thank Dr. Vesselin G. Gueorguiev for use of his MATHEMATICA programs for non-commutative algebras.


text:
# Cluster expansions & correlation functions

## 1. Introduction

Cluster expansions were introduced at the dawn of Statistical Mechanics for the study of high temperature gases of interacting particles. They constitute a powerful perturbative method that is suitable for geometrically large systems, such as encountered in Statistical Physics. Numerous articles have contributed to the subject; a list of relevant publications is \[GK, Cam, Bry, KP, Pfi, Dob, BZ, Mir, Far\] and references therein. Cluster expansions can now be found in standard books, see Chapter 4 of Ruelle \[Rue\], or Chapter V of Simon \[Sim\]. They apply to continuous systems such as classical or quantum models of interacting particles, and also to discrete systems such as polymer models, spin models (with discrete or continuous spin spaces), or lattice particle models. The methods for treating these various situations share many similarities, but a somewhat different cluster expansion was so far required in each case.

The exposition of the cluster expansion is often intricate, and the paper of Kotecký and Preiss \[KP\] should be singled out for proposing a clear and concise theorem, that involves a neat criterion for the convergence of the expansion. This theorem applies to discrete systems only, and its rather difficult proof was subsequently simplified in \[Dob, BZ, Mir\]. Explicit expressions for the contribution of cluster terms can be found in the article of Pfister \[Pfi\]; this helps clarifying the situation and allows for computations of lowest order terms. The condition for the convergence is the same as in \[KP\] in the case where polymers are subsets of a lattice.

The goal of this paper is to present a general theorem that applies to both continuous and discrete systems. The condition for the convergence is given by an extension of the criterion of Kotecký and Preiss, see Equation (3) below, and the contribution of cluster terms involves explicit expressions. Furthermore, we derive expressions and estimates for correlation functions.

The theorems presented here are illustrated in Section 4 in three different situations, namely classical and quantum gases of interacting particles, and lattice polymer models.

## 2. Cluster expansions

Let $`(𝔸,𝒜,\mu )`$ be a measure space; $`\mu `$ is a complex measure and $`|\mu |(𝔸)<\mathrm{}`$, where $`|\mu |`$ is the total variation (absolute value) of $`\mu `$. Let $`\zeta `$ be a complex measurable symmetric function on $`𝔸\times 𝔸`$. The partition function $`Z`$ is defined by

$$Z=\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}}{}\frac{1}{n!}d\mu (A_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (A_n)\underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}n}{}\left(1+\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right).$$
(1)
The term $`n=0`$ of the sum is understood to be 1.

We denote by $`𝒢_n`$ the set of all (unoriented) graphs with $`n`$ vertices, and $`𝒞_n𝒢_n`$ the set of connected graphs of $`n`$ vertices. We introduce the following combinatorial function on finite sequences $`(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)`$ of $`𝔸`$:

$$\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{if }n=1\hfill \\ \frac{1}{n!}_{G𝒞_n}_{(i,j)G}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\hfill & \text{if }n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
The product is over edges of $`G`$. A sequence $`(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)`$ is a cluster if the graph with $`n`$ vertices and an edge between $`i`$ and $`j`$ whenever $`\zeta (A_i,A_j)0`$, is connected.

The cluster expansion allows to express the logarithm of the partition function as a sum (or an integral) over clusters.

###### Theorem 1 (Cluster expansion).

Assume that $`|1+\zeta (A,A^{})|\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$ for all $`A,A^{}𝔸`$, and that there exists a nonnegative function $`a`$ on $`𝔸`$ such that for all $`A𝔸`$,

$$\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A^{})|\zeta (A,A^{})|\mathrm{e}^{a(A^{})}\mathrm{}a(A),$$
(3)
and $`\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A)\mathrm{e}^{a(A)}<\mathrm{}`$. Then we have

$$Z=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}d\mu (A_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (A_n)\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)\right\}.$$

Combined sum and integrals converge absolutely. Furthermore, we have for all $`A_1𝔸`$

$$1+\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}}{}n\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_n)|\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^{a(A_1)}.$$
(4)
The rest of the section is devoted to the proof of this theorem; the reader interested in results only should jump to Section 3 that discusses correlation functions.

###### Proof.

Another inequality turns out to be helpful. Multiplying both sides of (4) by $`|\zeta (A,A_1)|`$ and integrating over $`A_1`$, we find using (3)

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_1)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_n)\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}|\zeta (A,A_i)|\right)|\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|\mathrm{}a(A)$$
(5)
for all $`A𝔸`$.

The strategy is to show inductively that (3) implies (4). Convergence of the cluster expansion follows and allows to prove Theorem 1.

We prove that the following holds for all $`N`$,

$$1+\underset{n=2}{\overset{N}{}}n\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_n)|\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^{a(A_1)}.$$
(6)
The case $`N=1`$ is clear and we consider now any $`N`$. The left side is equal to

$$1+\underset{n=2}{\overset{N}{}}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_n)\frac{1}{(n1)!}\left|\underset{G𝒞_n}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|.$$
(7)
Let us focus on the sum over connected graphs $`G`$. Removing all edges of $`G`$ with one endpoint on 1 yields a possibly disconnected graph $`G^{}`$. Let $`(G_1,\mathrm{},G_k)`$ be a sequence of connected graphs where $`G_i`$ has set of vertices $`V_i`$, $`V_1\mathrm{}V_k=\{2,\mathrm{},n\}`$, and $`V_iV_j=\mathrm{}`$ if $`ij`$. Each sequence determines a graph $`G^{}`$, and to each $`G^{}`$ corresponds $`k!`$ such sequences. See Fig. 1 for an illustration. Therefore

$$\left|\underset{G𝒞_n}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|\mathrm{}\underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\frac{1}{k!}\left|\underset{(G_1,\mathrm{},G_k)}{}\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}\left\{\underset{(i,j)G_{\mathrm{}}}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\underset{G_{\mathrm{}}^{}}{}\underset{(i,j)G_{\mathrm{}}^{}}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right\}\right|.$$
(8)
The sum over $`G_{\mathrm{}}^{}`$ runs over nonempty sets of edges with one endpoint on 1 and one endpoint in $`V_{\mathrm{}}`$ ($`i=1`$ in the last product). We have

$$\underset{G_{\mathrm{}}^{}}{}\underset{(i,j)G_{\mathrm{}}^{}}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)=\underset{iV_{\mathrm{}}}{}\left(1+\zeta (A_1,A_i)\right)1.$$
(9)
Using

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1+\alpha _i)1=\left[\underset{i=1}{\overset{n1}{}}(1+\alpha _i)1\right](1+\alpha _n)+\alpha _n,$$
(10)
one easily proves inductively that the absolute value of (9) is smaller than $`_{iV_{\mathrm{}}}|\zeta (A_1,A_i)|`$.

The sum over sequences $`(G_1,\mathrm{},G_k)`$ can be done by first choosing the respective numbers of vertices $`m_1,\mathrm{},m_k`$ whose sum is $`n1`$, then by summing over partitions of $`\{2,\mathrm{},n\}`$ in sets $`V_1,\mathrm{},V_k`$ with $`|V_i|=m_i`$, and finally by choosing connected graphs for each set of vertices. The number of partitions is $`\frac{(n1)!}{m_1!\mathrm{}m_k!}`$. Then (7) can be bounded by

$$\begin{array}{c}1+\underset{n=2}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\frac{1}{k!}\underset{\begin{array}{c}m_1,\mathrm{},m_k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}\\ m_1+\mathrm{}+m_k=n1\end{array}}{}\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}[\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_1^{})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(A_m_{\mathrm{}}^{})\hfill \\ \hfill |\phi (A_1^{},\mathrm{},A_m_{\mathrm{}}^{})|\underset{i=1}{\overset{m_{\mathrm{}}}{}}|\zeta (A_1,A_i^{})|].\end{array}$$
(11)
We can sum over $`n`$; the constraint $`m_1+\mathrm{}+m_k\mathrm{}N1`$ can be relaxed into $`m_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{}N1`$ for all $`\mathrm{}`$. Using (5) with $`n\mathrm{}N1`$, we obtain the bound

$$1+\underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\frac{1}{k!}[a(A_1)]^k=\mathrm{e}^{a(A_1)}.$$
(12)
This proves inequality (4). Absolute convergence of the cluster expansion follows from (4) and summability of $`\mathrm{e}^{a(A)}`$.

The rest of the proof is standard and consists in showing that clusters are indeed the terms of the expansion of the logarithm of the partition function. The idea is to expand $`Z`$ so as to recognize an exponential.

$$Z=1+\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\frac{1}{n!}d\mu (A_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (A_n)\underset{G𝒢_n}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j).$$
(13)
The sum over $`n`$ converges absolutely. We proceed as above and consider sequences of connected graphs $`(G_1,\mathrm{},G_k)`$ whose sets of vertices form a partition of $`\{1,\mathrm{},n\}`$. Summing first over the number of vertices of each partition, then over partitions, we get

$`Z`$ $`=1+{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k!}}{\displaystyle \underset{\begin{array}{c}m_1,\mathrm{},m_k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}\\ m_1+\mathrm{}+m_k=n\end{array}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{m_1!\mathrm{}m_k!}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}}\left\{{\displaystyle d\mu (A_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (A_m_{\mathrm{}})\underset{G𝒞_m_{\mathrm{}}}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)}\right\}`$ (14)
$`=1+{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k!}}{\displaystyle \underset{\begin{array}{c}m_1,\mathrm{},m_k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}\\ m_1+\mathrm{}+m_k=n\end{array}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}}{\displaystyle d\mu (A_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (A_m_{\mathrm{}})\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_m_{\mathrm{}})}.`$
Absolute convergence of the clusters allows to remove the sum over $`n`$, and this completes the proof. ∎

## 3. Correlation functions

An advantage of the cluster expansion is to characterize correlation functions. The relevant general expressions are

$`Z(A_1,\mathrm{},A_m)`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(nm)!}}{\displaystyle d\mu (A_{m+1})\mathrm{}d\mu (A_n)\underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}n}{}\left(1+\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right)};`$ (15)
$`\widehat{Z}(A_1,\mathrm{},A_m)`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{n!}{(nm)!}}{\displaystyle d\mu (A_{m+1})\mathrm{}d\mu (A_n)\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)}.`$ (16)
It is understood that in both expressions, the case $`n=m`$ corresponds to taking the integrand without integrating on polymers.

###### Theorem 2 (Correlation functions).

Under the same assumptions as in Theorem 1, we have

$$\frac{Z(A_1,\mathrm{},A_m)}{Z}=\underset{\{V_1,\mathrm{},V_k\}}{}\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\widehat{Z}\left((A_i)_{iV_j}\right)$$

where the sum is over partitions of $`\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$, i.e. $`V_1\mathrm{}V_k=\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$, and $`V_iV_j=\mathrm{}`$ if $`ij`$.

The next result deals with estimates of correlations. To exhibit a suitable decay, an efficient strategy is to establish the criterion (3) in a stronger form. We consider a nonnegative function $`b`$ on $`𝔸`$, and a nonnegative symmetric function $`c`$ on $`𝔸\times 𝔸`$ (both can be identically zero, but the larger they are the better). We introduce the notation

$`\mu _b(A)=\mu (A)\mathrm{e}^{b(A)}`$
$`\zeta _c(A,A^{})=\zeta (A,A^{})\mathrm{e}^{c(A,A^{})}`$
$`c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)=\underset{G𝒞_n}{\mathrm{min}}{\displaystyle \underset{(i,j)G}{}}c(A_i,A_j)\text{if }n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3}`$
$`\phi _c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)=\phi (A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)\mathrm{e}^{c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)}.`$
The utility of functions $`b`$ and $`c`$ will be illustrated in Section 4. The following theorem contains estimates on correlations; compare with the definition (16) of $`\widehat{Z}(A_1,\mathrm{},A_m)`$.

###### Theorem 3 (Decay of correlations).

Assume that $`|1+\zeta _c(A,A^{})|\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$ for all $`A,A^{}𝔸`$, and that there exists a nonnegative function $`a`$ on $`𝔸`$ such that

$$\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A^{})|\zeta _c(A,A^{})|\mathrm{e}^{a(A^{})}\mathrm{}a(A)$$
(17)
for all $`A𝔸`$. Then the following estimate holds true for all $`m\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$, and all $`A_1,\mathrm{},A_m𝔸`$,

$`{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{n!}{(nm)!}}`$ $`{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_{m+1})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_n)|\phi _c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|}`$
$`\mathrm{}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{1}{m\gamma }\left[(1+\gamma )^m1\right]{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}}a(A_i)\right\}{\displaystyle \underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}m}{}}\left(1+|\zeta _c(A_i,A_j)|\right).`$
Here, we set

$$\gamma =\underset{n}{sup}\underset{A_0,\mathrm{},A_n}{sup}\left|\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\left(1+\zeta (A_0,A_i)\right)1\right|$$
(18)
(clearly, $`0\mathrm{}\gamma \mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}`$).

Notice that the case $`m=1`$ is

$$1+\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}}{}n\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_n)|\phi _c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^{a(A_1)}$$
(19)
which is reminiscent of (4). Multiplying both sides of (19) by $`|\zeta _c(A,A_1)|`$ and integrating over $`A_1`$, we obtain from (17)

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_1)\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_n)\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}|\zeta _c(A,A_i)|\right)|\phi _c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)|\mathrm{}a(A)$$
(20)
for all $`A𝔸`$. (19) and (20) can be proved exactly the same way as (4) and (5).

We turn to the proofs of Theorems 2 and 3. Readers interested in applications should jump to Section 4. We start with the proof of Theorem 3 as it will imply the convergence of the terms appearing in Theorem 2. We assume that (20) has been established.

###### Proof of Theorem 3.

A connected graph $`G`$ on $`\{1,\mathrm{},n\}`$ can be decomposed into a graph $`G^{}`$ on $`\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$; a partition $`\{W_1,\mathrm{},W_k\}`$ of $`\{m+1,\mathrm{},n\}`$; connected graphs $`G_1,\mathrm{},G_k`$ where $`G_i`$ has set of vertices $`W_i`$; non-empty subsets $`V_1,\mathrm{},V_k`$ of $`\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$; non-empty sets of edges between $`W_j`$ and each vertex of $`V_j`$. This is illustrated in Fig. 2. Conversely, choosing these graphs and sets of vertices yields a graph on $`\{1,\mathrm{},n\}`$; it is not necessarily connected, but we obtain an upper bound by dropping this constraint. Therefore we get

$$\begin{array}{c}\left|\underset{G𝒞_n}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|\mathrm{e}^{c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)}\mathrm{}\underset{G^{}𝒢_m}{}\underset{(i,j)G^{}}{}|\zeta _c(A_i,A_j)|\underset{\{W_1,\mathrm{},W_k\}}{}\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}\{\left|\underset{G_{\mathrm{}}𝒞(W_{\mathrm{}})}{}\underset{(i,j)G_{\mathrm{}}}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|\mathrm{e}^{c((A_i)_{iW_{\mathrm{}}})}\\ \hfill \underset{\begin{array}{c}V_{\mathrm{}}\{1,\mathrm{},m\}\\ V_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{}\end{array}}{}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{iV_{\mathrm{}},jW_{\mathrm{}}}{\mathrm{min}}c(A_i,A_j)\right\}\underset{iV_{\mathrm{}}}{}|\underset{jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}(1+\zeta (A_i,A_j))1|\}.\end{array}$$
(21)
From the definition (18) of $`\gamma `$, we have

$`{\displaystyle \underset{iV_{\mathrm{}}}{}}\left|{\displaystyle \underset{jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}}\left(1+\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right)1\right|`$ $`\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^{|V_{\mathrm{}}|1}}{|V_{\mathrm{}}|}}{\displaystyle \underset{iV_{\mathrm{}}}{}}\left|{\displaystyle \underset{jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}}\left(1+\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right)1\right|`$
$`\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^{|V_{\mathrm{}}|1}}{|V_{\mathrm{}}|}}{\displaystyle \underset{iV_{\mathrm{}},jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}}|\zeta (A_i,A_j)|.`$ (22)
We used (9) and (10) for the second inequality. Furthermore

$$\underset{\begin{array}{c}V_{\mathrm{}}\{1,\mathrm{},m\}\\ V_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{}\end{array}}{}\frac{\gamma ^{|V_{\mathrm{}}|1}}{|V_{\mathrm{}}|}\underset{iV_{\mathrm{}},jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}|\zeta (A_i,A_j)|=\frac{1}{m\gamma }\left[(1+\gamma )^m1\right]\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}\underset{jW_{\mathrm{}}}{}|\zeta (A_i,A_j)|.$$
(23)
Then

$$\begin{array}{c}\underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}\frac{1}{(nm)!}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_{m+1})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_n)\left|\underset{G𝒞_n}{}\underset{(i,j)G}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|\mathrm{e}^{c(A_1,\mathrm{},A_n)}\hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{}\underset{G^{}𝒢_m}{}\underset{(i,j)G^{}}{}|\zeta _c(A_i,A_j)|\underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}\underset{k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}}{}\frac{1}{k!}\underset{\begin{array}{c}n_1,\mathrm{},n_k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}\\ n_1+\mathrm{}+n_k=nm\end{array}}{}\\ \hfill \underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}\{\frac{1}{n_{\mathrm{}}!}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_1^{})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}|\mu _b|(A_n_{\mathrm{}}^{})\left|\underset{G_{\mathrm{}}𝒞_n_{\mathrm{}}}{}\underset{(i,j)G_{\mathrm{}}}{}\zeta (A_i,A_j)\right|\mathrm{e}^{c(A_1^{},\mathrm{},A_n_{\mathrm{}}^{})}\\ \hfill \frac{1}{m\gamma }[(1+\gamma )^m1]\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}\underset{j=1}{\overset{n_{\mathrm{}}}{}}|\zeta _c(A_i,A_j)|\}.\end{array}$$
(24)
The case $`k=0`$ of the right side should be understood as the case $`n=m`$ of the left side. The expression inside brackets in the right side converges because of (20); this allows to sum over $`n`$, and we get Theorem 3. ∎

###### Proof of Theorem 2.

We expand the product in (15) and we obtain a sum over graphs of $`𝒢_n`$. A graph of $`𝒢_n`$ can be written as a sequence of graphs $`(G_1,\mathrm{},G_k,G^{})`$, where each $`G_i`$ is connected and has at least one vertex in $`\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$, and the vertices of $`G^{}`$ are in $`\{m+1,\mathrm{},n\}`$.

Let $`W_i`$ be the set of vertices of $`G_i`$, $`V_i=W_i\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$, and $`W^{}`$ be the set of vertices of $`G^{}`$. $`\{V_1,\mathrm{},V_k\}`$ is a partition of $`\{1,\mathrm{},m\}`$ and $`W^{}\{m+1,\mathrm{},n\}`$. Furthermore, let $`n_j=|W_jV_j|`$, $`1\mathrm{}j\mathrm{}k`$, and $`p=|W^{}|`$.

The number of partitions $`\{W_1,\mathrm{},W_k,W^{}\}`$ of $`\{1,\mathrm{},n\}`$ corresponding to given $`n_1`$, …, $`n_k`$, $`p`$, and $`\{V_1,\mathrm{},V_k\}`$, is equal to $`\frac{(nm)!}{p!_in_i!}`$. Therefore

$$\begin{array}{c}Z(A_1,\mathrm{},A_m)=\underset{\{V_1,\mathrm{},V_k\}}{}\underset{n\mathrm{}m}{}\underset{\begin{array}{c}n_1\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0},\mathrm{},n_k\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}\\ n_1+\mathrm{}+n_k\mathrm{}nm\end{array}}{}\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{k}{}}[\frac{(|V_{\mathrm{}}|+n_{\mathrm{}})!}{n_{\mathrm{}}!}\mathrm{d}\mu (A_1^{})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}\mu (A_n_{\mathrm{}}^{})\hfill \\ \hfill \phi ((A_i)_{iV_{\mathrm{}}},A_1^{},\mathrm{},A_n_{\mathrm{}}^{})]\frac{1}{p!}\mathrm{d}\mu (A_1^{})\mathrm{}\mathrm{d}\mu (A_p^{})_{G𝒢_p}_{(i,j)G}\zeta (A_i^{},A_j^{}),\end{array}$$
(25)
where $`p=nm_{i=1}^kn_i`$. All terms converge absolutely and uniformly in $`n`$ because of Theorems 1 and 3; this allows to perform the sum over $`n`$, and we obtain Theorem 2. ∎

## 4. Illustrations

The first two examples are classical interacting particles and lattice polymers — they are well-known but nevertheless constitute nice illustrations of the results above. The last example deals with quantum interacting particles and is more involved.

### 4.1. Classical interacting gas

We consider a gas of particles that are subject to pair interactions. Let $`𝔸=\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ be a bounded subset of $`^d`$ and $`\mathrm{d}\mu (x)=z\mathrm{d}x`$, where $`z_+`$ is the fugacity and $`\mathrm{d}x`$ is the Lebesgue measure. Let $`\beta `$ be the inverse temperature and $`U(xy)\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}`$ represent the interactions between particles at positions $`x,y\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Setting $`\zeta (x,y)=\mathrm{e}^{\beta U(xy)}1`$, the partition function is given by (1). We choose $`a(x)=1`$ and we easily check that the criterion (3) holds whenever

$$zdx(1\mathrm{e}^{\beta U(x)})\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^1.$$
(26)
This condition for the convergence of the cluster expansion is well-known, see \[Rue\] Chapter 4. One then obtains an expression for the thermodynamic pressure $`p(\beta ,z)`$, namely

$$\beta p(\beta ,z)=z+\underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}z^{n+1}dx_1\mathrm{}dx_n\phi (0,x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)$$
(27)
where integrals are over $`^d`$. This expression is absolutely convergent because of (4). Furthermore the function $`\phi ()`$ is analytic in $`\beta `$; by Vitali convergence theorem (see e.g. \[Sim\] Theorem V.2.7 in the context of statistical physics), $`p(\beta ,z)`$ is analytic in $`\beta ,z`$ when the condition (26) is satisfied.

We study now the correlations. For bounded $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, we consider the functions

$`\rho _1(x_1)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{Z}}{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{z^n}{(n1)!}}{\displaystyle dx_2\mathrm{}dx_n\underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}n}{}\left(1+\zeta (x_i,x_j)\right)},`$
$`\rho _2(x_1,x_2)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{Z}}{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{z^n}{(n2)!}}{\displaystyle dx_3\mathrm{}dx_n\underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}n}{}\left(1+\zeta (x_i,x_j)\right)}.`$
By Theorem 2, the truncated two-point correlation function $`\rho _2^\text{t}(x_1,x_2)`$ is given by

$`\rho _2^\text{t}(x_1,x_2)`$ $`=\rho _2(x_1,x_2)\rho _1(x_1)\rho _1(x_2)`$
$`={\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}}{}}n(n1)z^n{\displaystyle dx_3\mathrm{}dx_n\phi (x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)}.`$ (28)
We use Theorem 3 (with $`\gamma =1`$) to get a bound for the decay of correlations. Let $`b0`$ and $`c(x)\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}`$ satisfy the triangle inequality, such that

$$zdx\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\beta U(x)}\right)\mathrm{e}^{c(x)}\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^1.$$
(29)
We have

$`\mathrm{e}^{c(x_1x_2)}|\rho _2^\text{t}(x_1,x_2)|`$ $`\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \underset{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}}{}}n(n1)z^n{\displaystyle dx_3\mathrm{}dx_n|\phi (x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)|\mathrm{e}^{c(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)}}`$
$`\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^3\left\{1+\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\beta U(x_1x_2)}\right)\mathrm{e}^{c(x_1x_2)}\right\}.`$ (30)
The right side converges to $`\mathrm{e}^3`$ as $`|x_1x_2|\mathrm{}`$. This shows that

$$|\rho _2^\text{t}(x_1,x_2)|\mathrm{}\text{const}\mathrm{e}^{c(x_1x_2)}$$
(31)
for all functions $`c`$ satisfying (29).

### 4.2. Polymer models

A polymer is a connected subset of $`^d`$. Let $`𝔸`$ be the set of polymers in a finite set $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^d`$. The measure $`\mu `$ is taken to be the counting measure multiplied by a weight $`w(A)`$ satisfying $`|w(A)|\mathrm{}\mathrm{e}^{\eta |A|}`$ with $`\eta =2\mathrm{log}(2d\varphi )+\varphi ^1`$. Here $`\varphi =\frac{\sqrt{5}+1}{2}`$ is the Golden Ratio. Polymers interact through a condition of non-intersection, that is, $`\zeta (A,A^{})`$ is $`1`$ if $`AA^{}\mathrm{}`$, and is 0 otherwise.

To check the criterion (3), we choose $`a(A)=\varphi ^1|A|`$. It is enough to consider the case where $`A=\{0\}`$. If $`A`$ is a connected set, there exists a closed walk with nearest-neighbor jumps whose support is $`A`$, and whose length is at most $`2|A|`$. This can be seen by induction: knowing the walk for $`A`$, it is easy to construct one for $`A\{x\}`$. The number of connected sets of cardinality $`n`$ that contain the origin is therefore smaller than the number of walks of length $`2n`$ starting at the origin, which is equal to $`(2d)^{2n}`$. The left side of (3) is bounded by $`_{n\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}(2d)^{2n}\mathrm{e}^{(\eta \varphi ^1)n}`$ and this is equal to $`\varphi ^1`$.

The cluster expansion provides absolutely convergent series for thermodynamic quantities. Many physical models can be mapped onto a polymer model, and Theorem 3 typically provides informations on correlation functions.

### 4.3. Quantum interacting gas

The description of a gas of quantum particles in a bounded domain $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^d`$ should start with the state space of the system, which is the Fock space $`_\pm =_{N\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}}P_\pm (L^2(\mathrm{\Lambda }))^N`$, where $`P_+`$ (resp. $`P_{}`$) is the projector onto symmetric (resp. antisymmetric) functions. Next one should introduce the Hamiltonian (Laplacian for the kinetic energy of the particles, and another operator for the interactions). One could then write down the partition function $`Z=\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{e}^{\beta (H\mu N)}`$.

It serves better our purpose to define the model in the Feynman-Kac representation. See \[Gin\] for a complete description of this representation, and for the definition of the Wiener measure, to be used below. Results of this section can actually be found in \[Gin\], but the cluster expansion used there is very intricate.

We start with the partition function

$$\begin{array}{c}Z=\underset{N\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}}{}\frac{z^N}{N!}_\mathrm{\Lambda }dx_1\mathrm{}_\mathrm{\Lambda }dx_N\underset{\pi S_N}{}\epsilon ^{|\pi |}dW_{x_1x_{\pi (1)}}^\beta (\omega _1)\mathrm{}dW_{x_Nx_{\pi (N)}}^\beta (\omega _N)\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\chi _\mathrm{\Lambda }(\omega _i)\underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}N}{}\mathrm{exp}\left\{_0^\beta U\left(\omega _i(t)\omega _j(t)\right)dt\right\}.\end{array}$$
(32)
Here, $`S_N`$ is the permutation group of $`N`$ elements, $`\epsilon =1`$ for bosons and $`\epsilon =1`$ for fermions, $`|\pi |`$ is the number of transpositions of $`\pi `$, $`\chi _\mathrm{\Lambda }(\omega )`$ is 1 if $`\omega (t)\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ for all $`0\mathrm{}t\mathrm{}\beta `$ and is 0 otherwise, and $`U(x)`$ represents a pair interaction potential. For simplicity we assume that $`U`$ is nonnegative and summable. Recall that the Wiener measure $`\mathrm{d}W_{xy}^\beta (\omega )`$ satisfies the following property; if $`0<t_1<\mathrm{}<t_n<\beta `$ and if $`f`$ is a function $`^{nd}`$, we have

$$\begin{array}{c}dW_{xy}^\beta (\omega )f(\omega (t_1),\mathrm{},\omega (t_n))\hfill \\ \hfill =_^ddx_1\mathrm{}_^ddx_n\psi _{t_1}(x_1x)\psi _{t_2t_1}(x_2x_1)\mathrm{}\psi _{\beta t_n}(yx_n)f(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n),\end{array}$$
(33)
where $`\psi _t(x)`$ is the Gaussian

$$\psi _t(x)=(2\pi t)^{d/2}\mathrm{e}^{x^2/2t}.$$
(34)
The first step is to derive an expression for the partition function that is of the form (1). A permutation $`\pi S_N`$ can be decomposed in $`k`$ cycles of lengths $`\mathrm{}_1,\mathrm{}\mathrm{}_k`$ whose sum is $`N`$. Given $`\mathrm{}_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{}_k`$, there are

$$\frac{1}{k!}\frac{N!}{_{i=1}^k\mathrm{}_i}$$

corresponding permutations. Furthermore, the integrations over $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_{\mathrm{}}`$ and over $`\omega _1`$, …, $`\omega _{\mathrm{}}`$, where $`\omega _j`$ is a path from $`x_j`$ to $`x_{j+1}`$ (with $`x_{\mathrm{}+1}x_1`$), can be performed by a single integration over $`x`$, followed by an integration over a path $`\omega `$ with the measure $`W_{xx}^\mathrm{}\beta `$. We denote $`𝝎=(\mathrm{},x,\omega )`$ where $`\mathrm{}`$ is a positive integer, $`x\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and $`\omega `$ is a path $`[0,\mathrm{}\beta ]^d`$ with $`\omega (0)=\omega (\mathrm{}\beta )=x`$. We consider the following measure $`\mu `$

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{d}\mu (𝝎)=\frac{z^{\mathrm{}}\epsilon ^{\mathrm{}+1}}{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}W_{xx}^\mathrm{}\beta (\omega )\chi _\mathrm{\Lambda }(\omega )\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{0\mathrm{}m<n\mathrm{}\mathrm{}1}{}\mathrm{exp}\left\{_0^\beta U\left(\omega (m\beta +t)\omega (n\beta +t)\right)dt\right\}.\end{array}$$
(35)
The partition function (32) can be written as

$$\begin{array}{c}Z=\underset{N\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}}{}\frac{1}{N!}d\mu (𝝎_1)\mathrm{}d\mu (𝝎_N)\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{1\mathrm{}i<j\mathrm{}N}{}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}_i1}{}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}_j1}{}}_0^\beta U\left(\omega _i(m\beta +t)\omega _j(n\beta +t)\right)dt\right\}.\end{array}$$
(36)
We obtain (1) by setting

$$\zeta (𝝎,𝝎^{})=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}1}{}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}^{}1}{}}_0^\beta U\left(\omega (m\beta +t)\omega ^{}(n\beta +t)\right)dt\right\}1.$$
(37)
We now establish the criterion (3). The condition below involves $`z`$, $`\beta `$, and $`U`$, see (41), and is not the most general that can be achieved. It is enough for the purpose of an illustration of the use of cluster expansions, however.

We take $`a(𝝎)=(\mathrm{log}z)\mathrm{}`$. Since $`1\mathrm{e}^t\mathrm{}t`$, we have

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{d}|\mu |(𝝎^{})|\zeta (𝝎,𝝎^{})|z^{\mathrm{}^{}}\mathrm{}\underset{\mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\frac{1}{\mathrm{}^{}}dx^{}dW_{x^{}x^{}}^\mathrm{}^{}\beta (\omega ^{})\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}1}{}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}^{}1}{}}_0^\beta U\left(\omega (m\beta +t)\omega ^{}(n\beta +t)\right)dt.\end{array}$$
(38)
Now for all $`y`$ and all $`0<t^{}<\mathrm{}^{}\beta `$, it is not hard to see that

$$dx^{}dW_{x^{}x^{}}^\mathrm{}^{}\beta (\omega ^{})U\left(y\omega ^{}(t^{})\right)=(2\pi \mathrm{}^{}\beta )^{d/2}U(x)dx.$$
(39)
We get then

$$\mathrm{d}|\mu |(𝝎^{})|\zeta (𝝎,𝝎^{})|z^{\mathrm{}^{}}\mathrm{}\frac{\mathrm{}\beta }{(2\pi \beta )^{d/2}}U(x)dx\underset{\mathrm{}^{}\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\mathrm{}_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{d/2}.$$
(40)
The criterion is fulfilled if the right side of the expression above is smaller than $`(\mathrm{log}z)\mathrm{}`$, that is, if

$$\frac{\beta }{(2\pi \beta )^{d/2}}U(x)dx\underset{\mathrm{}\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}}{}\mathrm{}^{d/2}\mathrm{}\mathrm{log}z.$$
(41)
This assumes in particular that $`z\mathrm{}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}`$. The thermodynamic pressure is analytic in $`z,\beta `$ in the range of parameters where (41) holds, and no condensation takes place, whether classical or of the Bose-Einstein type.

Correlations are given by ‘reduced density matrices’ and require more efforts.