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# Reliability of the beamsplitter based Bell-state measurement

(March 2003)

## Abstract

A linear 50/50 beamsplitter, together with a coincidence measurement, has been widely used in quantum optical experiments, such as teleportation, dense coding, etc., for interferometrically distinguishing, measuring, or projecting onto one of the four two-photon polarization Bell-states $`|\psi ^{()}`$. In this paper, we demonstrate that the coincidence measurement at the output of a beamsplitter cannot be used as an absolute identifier of the input state $`|\psi ^{()}`$ nor as an indication that the input photons have projected to the $`|\psi ^{()}`$ state.

The phenomenon of non-local correlations, or entanglement, between quantum mechanical particles is central to the growing field of quantum information science. Entangled states have been used for experimentally verifying various violations of Bell’s inequalities bell1 ; bell11 ; bell2 , as well as for demonstrations of quantum cryptography crypt , quantum teleportation bouw ; kim , and quantum dense coding mattle . In addition, the field of quantum computing relies on the ability to generate and manipulate multi-particle entangled states nielson . Perhaps the simplest examples of entangled states are the polarization-entangled Bell states:

$`|\psi ^{(\pm )}`$ $`=`$ $`(|H_1|V_2\pm |V_1|H_2)/\sqrt{2},`$
$`|\varphi ^{(\pm )}`$ $`=`$ $`(|H_1|H_2\pm |V_1|V_2)/\sqrt{2},`$
where $`|H`$ and $`|V`$ refer to the horizontal and vertical polarization states of a single-photon, respectively. Such states are routinely generated via the process of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) bell2 ; bell3 ; bell4 .

Since the Bell-states form a complete (entangled) basis for the two-particle polarization Hilbert space, it should be possible to build a measurement device capable of distinguishing all four Bell states. Although the Bell-state measurement (BSM) plays a critical role in many of the quantum applications mentioned above, it is not trivial to build such a device, as non-linear photon-photon interactions are required for a complete BSM bsm2 . Thus far, there has been only one experimental demonstration of a complete BSM (for teleportation) using non-linear optical effects kim . On the other hand, a simple linear optical beamsplitter has been claimed to distinguish at least one out of four Bell-states bsm  and has been used in several recent experiments mattle ; bouw .

The beamsplitter based BSM can be briefly explained as follows. Consider a 50/50 beamsplitter in which two photons in a Bell state enter via modes 1 and 2 and exit via modes 3 and 4 (see the beamsplitter BS in Fig. 1). It is straightforward to show that, out of the four Bell-states, only the $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ input results in exactly one photon in each output port bsm . Assuming perfect detectors, therefore, the probability of a coincidence count between two detectors located at modes 3 and 4 is unity for the $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ input state. For the other three Bell-states, the probability of coincidence is zero because both photons always end up either in mode 3 or in mode 4.

Experimentally, the presence of a coincidence or null-coincidence can be confirmed by varying the overlap of the ‘photon wavepackets’ at the beamsplitter. If photons do not overlap at the beamsplitter, they scatter randomly and the probability of (background) coincidence is 1/2. When the paths are properly aligned, the state $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ produces a peak in the coincidence rate that is twice the background coincidence rate. Likewise, the other three Bell-states produce a dip in the coincidence rate as the photon overlap at the beamsplitter is varied. The presence of these coincidence features is often regarded as evidence that a particular apparatus is properly aligned and is functioning as a BSM device. In this paper, we show that these features may be observed even when Bell states are not used as the inputs. Thus, the presence of a coincidence peak does not guarantee that the input state is $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$. The implication, therefore, is that a coincidence event cannot be used as an absolute indication that an unknown input state has collapsed to $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$.

The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. A 3 mm thick type-II BBO crystal is pumped by a train of 120 fsec ultrafast pulses centered at 390 nm. Photons centered at 780 nm are emitted into two distinct cones, one corresponding to the e-ray (V-polarized) and the other to the o-ray (H-polarized) of the crystal. Interest is restricted to the intersections of the two light cones, shown in the inset, where photons of either polarization may be found. Before being directed to the input ports of an ordinary non-polarizing beamsplitter, the photons pass through 600$`\mu `$m thick quartz plates QP1 and QP2, which are oriented with their optic axes parallel to that of the BBO crystal. The quartz plates are used to adjust the phase between the interfering terms, as described below. After exiting the beamsplitter, the photons are detected by single-photon counters, D3 and D4, and the coincidence rate is measured using a time-to-amplitude converter and a multi-channnel analyzer with an effective coincidence window of 3 nsec. F3 and F4 are 20 nm (FWHM) spectral filters centered at 780 nm.

The two-photon state exiting the quartz plates may be written in simple form as

$$|\psi =(|H(t_H)_1|V(t_V)_2+e^{i\varphi }|V(t_V)_1|H(t_H)_2)/\sqrt{2},$$

where, for example, $`|H(t_H)_1|V(t_V)_2`$ represents a horizontally polarized photon in path 1 and a vertically polarized photon in path 2 with the most probable times of emission being $`t_H`$ and $`t_V`$, respectively. The photon wave packets are centered at different times because they propagate through the birefringent materials at different speeds. In most experiments involving this type of source, birefringent plates are used to temporally overlap the orthogonally polarized photons bell3 ; rubin . No such compensation is present here, however. The relative phase $`\varphi `$ between the two terms is determined by the transit times for the orthogonally polarized photons in the two sets of quartz plates. Tilting the plates in one arm increases the effective thickness of the plates, permitting precise phase adjustment.

The coincidence data is shown in Fig. 2, with the two different data sets corresponding to two different phase settings (0 and $`\pi `$). The phase is adjusted by tilting QP2. This adjustment also increases the total effective path in the lower arm, an effect which is manifested as an offset between the peak and the dip.

In spite of the fact that the data clearly shows the coincidence peak and dip typically associated with BSM, the input states are not Bell states: polarization correlation measurements performed here would not yield the high-visibility sinusoidal curves associated with polarization-entangled states and, consequently, these polarization states could not be used to violate Bell’s inequality. The lack of entanglement here is due not only to the problems typically associated with ultrafast-pumped type-II sources, see Ref. ultrafast1 ; kimgrice1 ; ultrafast2 , but also to the fact that the orthogonally polarized photons are not temporally overlapped, as described above.

The data shown in Fig. 2 shows, therefore, that polarization entanglement is not required at the beamsplitter input to observe the coincidence peak (or dip) at the beamsplitter output. The effect, which is discussed in more detail elsewhere kimgrice4 , can be understood in terms of the Feynman diagrams for the events leading to a coincidence detection. There are two ways (corresponding to the two terms in the two-photon state) that photons may be emitted into the two input arms. A coincidence may be recorded either when both photons are transmitted (t-t) or when both are reflected (r-r), for a total of four Feynman amplitudes, as shown in Fig. 3. For a given emission event ($`|H(t_H)_1|V(t_V)_2`$, for example), the r-r and t-t cases are distinguishable, since they lead to different sequences of detection events (compare $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ in Fig. 3). As long as the two arms of the interferometer are identical, though, a particular detection sequence may be obtained via two distinct emission events (compare $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_4`$ in Fig. 3), i.e., the amplitudes are pairwise indistinguishable. Depending on the phase between the two emission terms, the resulting interference may be either constructive or destructive.

Interference curves similar to those shown in Fig. 2 are typically used to align a BSM device. It is then assumed that an unknown input state is projected to $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ whenever a coincidence is observed at the outputs. We have shown here that the same curves may be obtained with states that are not Bell states. It follows, then, that a coincidence detection does not necessarily project the input state to $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$. Rather, the coincidence measurement projects the input state to a class of states that possess a particular symmetry and, as we shall see below, the Bell state $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ is just one of many two-photon states which exhibit such symmetry.

The symmetry condition mentioned above can be identified by determining the input state that results exclusively in the two photons exiting the beamsplitter via different paths, i.e., the input state that always leads to a coincidence detection (coincidence peak). We start by considering the more general two-photon state

$`|\psi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\omega _Hd\omega _V\{_{H1,V2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)\widehat{a}_{H1}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V2}^{}(\omega _V)`$ (1)
$`+`$ $`_{V1,H2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)\widehat{a}_{V1}^{}(\omega _V)\widehat{a}_{H2}^{}(\omega _H)\}|0/\sqrt{2},`$
where, for example, $`\widehat{a}_{H1}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V2}^{}(\omega _V)|0`$ represents a horizontally polarized single photon of frequency $`\omega _H`$ in path 1 and a vertically polarized single photon of frequency $`\omega _V`$ in path 2. The two-photon joint spectral function $`_{H1,V2}(\omega _1,\omega _2)`$ describes the energy distribution probabilities for the photon pair and can be calculated explicitly in the case of SPDC rubin ; ultrafast1 ; kimgrice1 . The most general two-photon state should also include terms of the form $`\widehat{a}_{H1}^{}(\omega _1)\widehat{a}_{H2}^{}(\omega _2)`$ and $`\widehat{a}_{V1}^{}(\omega _1)\widehat{a}_{V2}^{}(\omega _2)`$, but since these terms always lead to the symmetry condition in which two photons exit via the same output path (null coincidence or coincidence dip), we can restrict attention to the terms shown in Eq. (1) without loss of generality.

The input and output modes of the beamsplitter are related by $`\widehat{a}_{j3}(\omega )=\left[\widehat{a}_{j2}(\omega )+i\widehat{a}_{j1}(\omega )\right]/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`\widehat{a}_{j4}(\omega )=\left[\widehat{a}_{j1}(\omega )+i\widehat{a}_{j2}(\omega )\right]/\sqrt{2},`$ where the subscript $`j`$ identifies the polarization (H or V). Inserting these operators into Eq. (1) yields the state at the output of the beamsplitter,

$`|\psi _{3,4}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle }d\omega _Hd\omega _V\{[_{H1,V2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)_{V1,H2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)][\widehat{a}_{H4}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V3}^{}(\omega _V)\widehat{a}_{H3}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V4}^{}(\omega _V)]`$
$`+i[_{H1,V2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)+_{V1,H2}(\omega _H,\omega _V)][\widehat{a}_{H3}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V3}^{}(\omega _V)+\widehat{a}_{H4}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V4}^{}(\omega _V)]\}|0.`$ (2)
If the input state is to lead to exactly one photon in each of the output paths, then the coefficients preceding operators of the forms $`\widehat{a}_{H3}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V3}^{}(\omega _V)`$ and $`\widehat{a}_{H4}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V4}^{}(\omega _V)`$ must be zero. This leads to the condition $`_{H1,V2}(\omega _1,\omega _2)=_{V1,H2}(\omega _2,\omega _1)`$. Imposing this condition on Eq. (1) yields the anti-symmetric state

$`|\psi _{AS}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\omega _Hd\omega _V(\omega _H,\omega _V)\{\widehat{a}_{H1}^{}(\omega _H)\widehat{a}_{V2}^{}(\omega _V)`$ (3)
$``$ $`\widehat{a}_{V1}^{}(\omega _V)\widehat{a}_{H2}^{}(\omega _H)\}|0/\sqrt{2},`$
which has the property that the photons’ spectral and temporal properties are correlated with their polarizations. This condition is satisfied in the type-II emission scheme employed here, as long as the optical path lengths in the two arms are identical (path length mismatch is manifested as a frequency dependent phase factor).

The symmetry exhibited in Eq. (3), while sufficient for deterministically generating a coincidence at the beamsplitter output, does not guarantee that the state is a Bell state. This can be seen by analyzing the polarization correlations of the two photons bell11 ; bell2 ; bell3 ; bell4 . If a pair of photons in a polarization-entangled state are directed to detectors preceded by polarizers, the coincidence rate will vary sinusoidally with either the sum or difference of the polarizer angles. Any state exhibiting this type of correlation may be used to violate a Bell inequality. For the $`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ state, the coincidence rate is given by $`R_c\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta _1\theta _2)`$, where $`\theta _1`$ and $`\theta _2`$ are the orientations of the polarizers. The coincidence rate for the general state $`|\psi `$ is given by

$$R_c(\omega _1,\omega _2)|\theta _1(\omega _1)|\theta _2(\omega _2)|\psi |^2,$$

where $`\theta _j(\omega _j)|=0|(\mathrm{cos}\theta _j\widehat{a}_{Hj}(\omega _j)+\mathrm{sin}\theta _j\widehat{a}_{Vj}(\omega _j))`$. With the state $`|\psi `$ given in Eq. (1), the coincidence rate becomes

$`R_c(\omega _1,\omega _2)`$ $``$ $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _1\mathrm{sin}\theta _2_{H1,V2}(\omega _1,\omega _2)`$ (4)
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _2\mathrm{sin}\theta _1_{V1,H2}(\omega _2,\omega _1)|^2,`$
which is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta _1\theta _2)`$ only if $`_{H1,V2}(\omega _1,\omega _2)=_{V1,H2}(\omega _1,\omega _2)`$. As before, this condition may be imposed on Eq. (1) to give the Bell state

$`|\psi _{Bell}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\omega _1d\omega _2(\omega _1,\omega _2)\{\widehat{a}_{H1}^{}(\omega _1)\widehat{a}_{V2}^{}(\omega _2)`$ (5)
$``$ $`\widehat{a}_{V1}^{}(\omega _1)\widehat{a}_{H2}^{}(\omega _2)\}|0,`$
where the different labeling scheme reflects a symmetry that is subtly different than that shown in Eq. (3). Here, the spectral and temporal properties of the photons are correlated with path, rather than with polarization. For the Bell-state, therefore, the horizontally polarized photon in a particular path must be identical to the vertically polarized photon in that path. This condition is not satisfied for the photon pair source employed here, not only because the orthogonally polarized photons are centered at different times rubin , but also because the different spectral properties of the emitted photons are correlated with polarization ultrafast1 ; kimgrice1 . However, the symmetry condition shown in Eq. (5) can be met if the two-photon state is “rearranged” so that any properties originally correlated with polarization become correlated, instead, with path bell4 .

These results are summarized as follows: a two-photon state with the symmetry of Eq. (3) will produce a coincidence at the beamsplitter output, while a state with the symmetry of Eq. (5) will exhibit the polarization correlations of a Bell state. Of course it is possible for a state to possess both types of symmetry, in which case the beamsplitter really would identify the $`|\psi ^{()}`$ Bell state . Both symmetry conditions are met if the photons’ spectral and temporal properties are correlated with neither path nor polarization, i.e. if $`(\omega ,\omega ^{})=_(\omega ^{},\omega )`$. In this case, the two photons are spectrally and temporally identical, as is the case with the photon pair source described in Ref. bell3 . For ultrafast-pumped type-II SPDC used in this paper, this condition may be satisfied by configuring it to eliminate spectral differences between the photons kimgrice1 ; griceuren .

The analysis presented above shows that the symmetry condition that leads to a coincidence at the beamsplitter output is different than the symmetry condition required for polarization entanglement. Although the analysis was carried out in the spectral domain, equivalent results would be obtained in the time domain, where the improperly comensated temporal walk-off would be represented as a temporal shift, rather than an additional phase factor. It has been assumed here that the emitted photons, while not spectrally identical, have identical center wavelengths. Nothing in the analysis, however, requires this to be so and the differences in the symmetry conditions may best be illustrated by considering a two-color two-photon source. Imagine a source that emits one red and one blue photon into two distinct paths and that either polarization may be found in each path, with the polarizations always found to be orthogonal when measured in the H-V basis. Depending on whether photon color is correlated with polarization or with path, such a source may: i) have unit probability of producing a coincidence count (coincidence peak) at the beamsplitter output while exhibiting no polarization entanglement, e.g., $`(|H_R_1|V_B_2|V_B_1|H_R_2)/\sqrt{2}`$ (the same result as in the experiment presented here); or ii) be polarization-entangled ($`|\psi ^{()}_{1,2}`$ state), but fail to produce a coincidence peak at the beamsplitter output, e.g., $`(|H_{1R}|V_{2B}|V_{1R}|H_{2B})/\sqrt{2}`$. In the latter case, the red photon is always found to be in path 1, while the blue photon is always in path 2 last . The pair would be entangled in polarization (assuming no additional timing information), but when incident on a beamsplitter the photons would not exhibit the interference features shown in Fig. 2, since the coincidence detection events would no longer be pairwise indistinguishable as in Fig. 3.

In conclusion, we have presented experimental evidence that a successful Bell-state measurement cannot be claimed solely based on the coincidence data alone, because the interference features (coincidence peak or dip) which are commonly considered as the signature of a successful BSM may, in fact, be obtained with input states incapable of violating a Bell inequality. We have also shown that the conditions which lead to a positive result (coincidence at the beamsplitter outputs) are indeed different than the conditions required of a polarization-entangled state or a proper Bell-state projection.

The authors wish to acknowledge several enlightening discussions with D. Branning and helpful comments by V. Protopopescu. This research was supported in part by the National Security Agency and the LDRD Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed for the U.S. DOE by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.


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# First Order Formalism for Mixed Symmetry Tensor Fields

## Introduction

Last times there is a renewed interest in the mixed symmetry high spin tensor fields -. The reason is that such fields naturally appear in a number of physically interesting theories such as superstrings, supergravities and (supersymmetric) high spin theories. One of the technical problems one faces working with such fields is that to get analog of gauge invariant ”field strengths” one has to build expressions with more and more derivatives , . This problem appears already for the massless spin two field in gravity, but in this case there exist very elegant solution: one goes to the first order formalism and obtains the description in terms of tetrad $`e_\mu ^a`$ and Lorentz connection $`\omega _\mu ^{[ab]}`$ which play the roles of the gauge fields and ”normal” gauge invariant field strengths $`T_{[\mu \nu ]}^a`$ and $`R_{[\mu \nu ]}^{[ab]}`$ having nice geometrical interpretation as torsion and curvature.

In this paper we follow the same way for the three examples of massless mixed symmetry tensor fields $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }`$, $`T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ],\beta }`$ and $`R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}`$. In all three cases we managed to construct first order formalism which is very much similar to the tetrad formalism in gravity and in which the Lagrangians take very simple and suggestive form. We hope that such formalism could simplify the investigation of possible interactions among such fields. Moreover, we give a couple of simple but interesting examples of such interactions.

For completeness, we remind basic properties of the first order formalism in gravity which will be important for us throughout the paper. Usual second order formulation for the massless spin two field uses symmetric second rank tensor field $`h_{\{\mu \nu \}}`$ with the Lagrangian:

$$_0=\frac{1}{2}_\alpha h^{\mu \nu }_\alpha h_{\mu \nu }(h)^\mu (h)_\mu +(h)^\mu _\mu h\frac{1}{2}^\mu h_\mu h$$
(1)
where $`(h)^\mu =_\nu h^{\nu \mu }`$, $`h=h_\mu ^\mu `$, which is invariant under the gauge transformations $`\delta h_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \xi _\nu +_\nu \xi _\mu `$. In this, there is no any gauge invariant expression with one derivative analogous to field strength in Yang-Mills theories and the Lagrangian can not be rewritten as expression quadratic in them. As is well known the simplest gauge invariant object is the tensor:

$$R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}=_\mu _\alpha h_{\nu \beta }_\nu _\alpha h_{\mu \beta }_\mu _\beta h_{\nu \alpha }+_\nu _\beta h_{\mu \alpha }$$

Now, let us abandon the requirement that the field $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ is symmetric. Instead, let us consider the most general second order Lagrangian and require that it will be invariant under the gauge transformations $`\delta h_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \xi _\nu `$. This time, it is a trivial task to construct gauge invariant object which is first order in derivatives: $`T_{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }=_\mu h_{\nu \alpha }_\nu h_{\mu \alpha }`$ so that the most general gauge invariant Lagrangian could be written as:

$$=\frac{1}{8}T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }+\frac{a_1}{2}T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \alpha ,\nu }+\frac{a_2}{2}T^\mu T_\mu $$
(2)
where $`T_\mu =T_{\mu \nu }^\nu `$. But in so doing we have introduced additional degrees of freedom, namely antisymmetric part of $`h_{\mu \nu }`$. Let us decompose our field into symmetric and antisymmetric parts: $`h_{\mu \nu }=f_{\{\mu \nu \}}+B_{[\mu \nu ]}`$. In terms of $`f_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ our Lagrangian takes the form:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+2a_1}{4}}^\mu h^{\nu \alpha }_\mu h_{\nu \alpha }{\displaystyle \frac{1+2a_12a_2}{4}}(f)^\mu (f)_\mu a_2(f)^\mu _\mu f+{\displaystyle \frac{a_2}{2}}^\mu f_\mu f+`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{12a_1}{4}}^\mu B^{\nu \alpha }_\mu B_{\nu \alpha }{\displaystyle \frac{16a_12a_2}{4}}(B)^\mu (B)_\mu `$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1+2a_1+2a_2}{2}}(f)^\mu (B)_\mu `$
We see that in general there exists mixing between $`f_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ components so to understand which physical degrees of freedom such Lagrangian describes one has to go through careful Hamiltonian analysis. But there exists at least one trivial solution 111Note that in this the Lagrangian written in terms of ” torsion” $`T_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }`$ belongs to one parameter family of so called teleparallel Lagrangians.: $`2a_2=(1+2a_1)`$ for which mixing term is absent and we get:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+2a_1}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^\mu h^{\nu \alpha }_\mu h_{\nu \alpha }(f)^\mu (f)_\mu +(f)^\mu _\mu f{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}^\mu f_\mu f\right]`$ (4)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{12a_1}{4}}\left[^\mu B^{\nu \alpha }_\mu B_{\nu \alpha }2(B)^\mu (B)_\mu \right]`$
One can see that up to normalization we have a sum of two independent Lagrangians: usual gauge invariant Lagrangian for symmetric tensor as well as (also gauge invariant) Lagrangian for antisymmetric field. The well known tetrad formulation of gravity (i.e. massless spin two filed) corresponds to the choice $`a_1=1/2`$. In this, antisymmetric field $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ completely decouples and does not introduce any additional physical degrees of freedom, while the Lagrangian has the form:

$$=\frac{1}{8}T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }+\frac{1}{4}T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \alpha ,\nu }\frac{1}{2}T^\mu T_\mu $$
(5)
It is easy to check that this Lagrangian is invariant not only under the gauge transformations $`\delta h_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \xi _\nu `$, but under the local shifts $`h_{\mu \nu }h_{\mu \nu }+\eta _{[\mu \nu ]}`$ as well222Clearly, this is a manifestation of $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ decoupling. This last invariance suggests the following procedure for transition from second order formalism to the first order one. One introduces auxiliary field $`\omega _{\mu ,[\alpha \beta ]}`$ which will play the role of gauge field for the local $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ transformations. Then it is easy to construct the first order Lagrangian

$$_I=\frac{1}{2}\omega ^{\mu ,\alpha \beta }\omega _{\alpha ,\mu \beta }+\frac{1}{2}\omega ^\mu \omega _\mu \frac{1}{2}\omega ^{\mu ,\alpha \beta }T_{\alpha \beta ,\mu }\omega ^\mu T_\mu $$
(6)
which is invariant under the gauge transformations $`\delta \omega _{\mu ,\alpha \beta }=_\mu \eta _{\alpha \beta }`$, $`\delta h_{\mu \nu }=\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ as well as (trivially) under the $`\delta h_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \xi _\nu `$. The algebraic equations of motion for the $`\omega `$-field can be solved giving us:

$$\omega _{\mu ,\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{2}[T_{\mu \alpha ,\beta }T_{\mu \beta ,\alpha }T_{\alpha \beta ,\mu }]$$
(7)
In this, substituting this expression into the first order Lagrangian (6) one obtains exactly the second order Lagrangian (5).

Moreover, if we formally divide all indices into the ”local” and ”world” ones this Lagrangian could be rewritten in a very simple and suggestive form:

$$_I=\frac{1}{2}\{{}_{ab}{}^{\mu \nu }\}\omega _\mu {}_{}{}^{ac}\omega _{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{bc}\frac{1}{2}\{{}_{abc}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha }\}\omega _\mu {}_{}{}^{ab}_{\nu }^{}h_\alpha ^c$$
(8)
Here

$$\{{}_{ab}{}^{\mu \nu }\}=\delta _a{}_{}{}^{\mu }\delta _{b}^{}{}_{}{}^{\nu }\delta _a{}_{}{}^{\nu }\delta _{b}^{}^\mu $$

and so on. Such form points to the nice geometric interpretation of these fields we have already mentioned and greatly simplify understanding of the possible interactions. Indeed, if one suppose that interaction Lagrangian has the same general form as the free one, then one easily, by the finite number of iterations can reproduce complete non-linear gravitational interactions.

As it is evident from (8) this construction works for the space-time dimensions $`d3`$ only. In the minimal dimension333there are no physical degrees of freedom in this case $`d=3`$ one can introduce dual variables:

$$f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{abc}\omega _{\mu ,bc},\eta ^a=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{abc}\eta _c$$
(9)
and rewrite the Lagrangian in the following simple form:

$$=\frac{1}{2}\{{}_{ab}{}^{\mu \nu }\}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}+\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha }f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}_{\nu }^{}h_\alpha ^a$$
(10)
in this, gauge transformations look like:

$$\delta f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=_\mu \eta ^a\delta h_{\mu a}=\epsilon _{\mu ab}\eta ^b$$

Then one can introduces rather exotic interaction  by adding to the Lagrangian and gauge transformations additional terms:

$$_{int}=\frac{\kappa }{6}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha }\epsilon _{abc}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}f_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}\delta _1h_{\alpha b}=\kappa \epsilon _{abc}f_\alpha {}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{}^{c}$$
(11)
where $`\kappa `$ — arbitrary constant having dimension $`m^2`$. Note that in the first order formalism such a model looks very simple, but if one tries to solve algebraic equation of motion for the $`f`$-field, one obtains essentially non-linear theory with infinite number of derivatives.

In the following three sections we consider generalization of this approach for massless mixed symmetry tensor fields $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }`$, $`T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ],\beta }`$ and $`R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}`$.

## 1 $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }`$ tensor

Usual second order formulation for this field uses the tensor $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }`$ satisfying additional condition $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ,\alpha ]}=0`$. In this, the free Lagrangian is invariant under two gauge transformations:

$$\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=_\mu x_{\nu \alpha }_\nu x_{\mu \alpha }+2_\alpha y_{\mu \nu }_\mu y_{\nu \alpha }+_\nu y_{\mu \alpha }$$

where $`x_{\{\mu \nu \}}`$ is symmetric while $`y_{[\mu \nu ]}`$ antisymmetric. As in the spin two case to construct a gauge invariant object one needs at least two derivatives. Let us abandon additional condition $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ,\alpha ]}=0`$ and simultaneously join two gauge transformations into: $`\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=_\mu z_{\nu \alpha }_\nu z_{\mu \alpha }`$ where $`z_{\mu \nu }`$ is arbitrary second rank tensor , . Then it is easy to get gauge invariant field strength with one derivative:

$$T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }=_{[\mu }\mathrm{\Phi }_{\nu \alpha ],\beta }$$

Let us consider the most general second order free Lagrangian invariant under the $`z_{\mu \nu }`$-transformations:

$$=\frac{1}{6}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }+\frac{a_1}{4}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }T_{\mu \nu \beta ,\alpha }+\frac{a_2}{4}T^{\mu \nu }T_{\mu \nu }$$
(12)
In discarding additional condition $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{[\mu \nu ,\alpha ]}=0`$ we introduce additional degrees of freedom into the theory, so to understand what physical degrees of freedom such a model describes we decompose our field $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }+C_{\mu \nu \alpha }`$, where $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{[\mu \nu ,\alpha ]}=0`$ and $`C_{[\mu \nu \alpha ]}`$ — completely antisymmetric tensor. In terms of these components the Lagrangian takes the form:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2a_1}{4}}^\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{\alpha \beta ,\nu }_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\alpha \beta ,\nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{a_2}{4}}_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{\alpha \beta ,\mu }_\nu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\alpha \beta ,\nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{2a_1}{2}}_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{\mu \alpha ,\beta }^\nu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\nu \alpha ,\beta }+`$ (13)
$`+a_2_\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{\alpha \beta ,\mu }_\alpha \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\beta +{\displaystyle \frac{a_2}{2}}^\alpha \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^\beta _\alpha \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_\beta {\displaystyle \frac{a_2}{2}}(\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }})(\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }})`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1+a_1}{2}}^\mu C^{\nu \alpha \beta }_\mu C_{\nu \alpha \beta }+{\displaystyle \frac{4+7a_1+a_2}{4}}(C)_{\alpha \beta }{}_{}{}^{2}+`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{a_1+a_22}{2}}^\mu \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{\alpha \beta ,\mu }(C)_{\alpha \beta }`$
Once again we see that there is a mixing of two components so to understand what degrees of freedom such theory describes and how physical they are one needs to go through careful analysis. But there is one evident solution, namely, $`a_2=2a_1`$. In this, the Lagrangian becomes a sum of two independent Lagrangians for the fields $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }`$ and $`C_{\mu \nu \alpha }`$. Such a theory could be of some interest, especially in $`d=4`$ where $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }`$ does not describe any physical degrees of freedom, while $`C_{\mu \nu \alpha }`$ is equivalent to the vector field. Following the tetrad formulation of gravity in this paper we will adopt the most conservative approach ”one field — one object” and we will choose $`a_1=1`$, $`a_2=3`$. Then it is easy to check that the resulting Lagrangian

$$=\frac{1}{6}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }\frac{1}{4}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }T_{\mu \nu \beta ,\alpha }+\frac{3}{4}T^{\mu \nu }T_{\mu \nu }$$
(14)
is invariant not only under the $`z`$-transformations, but under the local shifts $`\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=\eta _{[\mu \nu \alpha ]}`$ as well. This, in turn, suggests the following procedure for transition to first order formalism. One introduces auxiliary field $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu ,[\nu \alpha \beta ]}`$ antisymmetric in the last three indices which will play a role of gauge field for the $`\eta `$-transformations. Then it is easy to construct a first order Lagrangian

$$=\frac{3}{4}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\nu ,\mu \alpha \beta }\frac{3}{4}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\alpha \beta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\alpha \beta }\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }T_{\nu \alpha \beta ,\mu }+\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\alpha \beta }T_{\alpha \beta }$$
(15)
invariant both under the $`\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=_\mu z_{\nu \alpha }_\nu z_{\mu \alpha }`$ and

$$\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{\nu \alpha \beta }=_\mu \eta ^{\nu \alpha \beta }\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }=\eta _{\mu \nu \alpha }$$
(16)
Now, if we solve the algebraic equation of motion for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ field, we get:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }=\frac{2}{3}T_{\nu \alpha \beta ,\mu }+\frac{1}{3}[T_{\mu \alpha \beta ,\nu }+T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }+T_{\mu \beta \nu ,\alpha }]$$
(17)
Substituting this expression back into the first order Lagrangian gives us exactly the second order one. Moreover, if we formally divide all indices into the ”local” and ”world” ones, then this Lagrangian could also be rewritten in a very simple and suggestive form:

$$=\frac{1}{4}\{{}_{abcd}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\}[3\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{aef}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{bef}\delta _{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}\delta _{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}\frac{1}{3}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{abc}T_{\nu \alpha \beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}]$$
(18)
As we see from the last formula the whole construction works for the space-time dimensions $`d4`$ only. In $`d=4`$ (where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }`$ does not describe any physical degrees of freedom) one can introduce dual variables:

$$f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=\frac{1}{6}\epsilon ^{abcd}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{bcd},\eta ^a=\frac{1}{6}\epsilon ^{abcd}\eta _{bcd}$$

Then the first order Lagrangian could be rewritten in the following form:

$$=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }[3\epsilon _{abcd}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}\delta _{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}\delta _{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}T_{\nu \alpha \beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{a}]$$
(19)
in this, the gauge transformations look like:

$$\delta f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=_\mu \eta ^a\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,c}=\epsilon _{\mu \nu cd}\eta ^d$$

By analogy with the $`d=3`$ case for gravity one can easily construct an example of (rather exotic) interaction by adding to the Lagrangian and to the gauge transformation laws additional terms:

$$_1=\frac{\kappa }{4}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\epsilon _{abcd}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}f_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}\delta _{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}\delta _1\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu ,c}=\frac{\kappa }{2}f_{[\alpha }{}_{}{}^{a}\delta _{\beta ]}^{}{}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta ^d$$
(20)
Computing the commutator of two $`\eta `$-transformations we get:

$$[\delta _1,\delta _2]\mathrm{\Phi }_{\alpha \beta ,c}=_{[\alpha }z_{\beta ]c},z_{\beta c}=\frac{\kappa }{2}\epsilon _{a\beta cd}\eta _1{}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{2}^{}^d$$

so that the whole algebra of $`z`$ and $`\eta `$-transformations closes.

We can proceed and consider next order interaction by introducing quartic terms to the Lagrangian and quadratic ones to the gauge transformation laws:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{\kappa _2}{8}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\epsilon _{abcd}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}f_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}f_{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\alpha \beta ,c}=\kappa _2f_\alpha {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta ^d$$
(21)
In this, we obtain additional terms for the commutator of two $`\eta `$-transformations:

$$[\delta _1,\delta _2]\mathrm{\Phi }_{\alpha \beta ,c}=\kappa _2_{[\alpha }\stackrel{~}{z}_{\beta ]c}\kappa _2_{[\alpha }f_{\beta ]}{}_{}{}^{a}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta _1{}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{2}^{}^d$$
(22)
where $`\stackrel{~}{z}_{\beta c}=f_\beta {}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta _1{}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{2}^{}^d`$.

By adjusting the values of two arbitrary coupling constants $`\kappa `$ and $`\kappa _2`$ and adding necessary linear terms to the Lagrangian the whole model could be written in the formally covariant form:

$$=\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }[\frac{1}{32}\epsilon _{abcd}E_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}E_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}E_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c}E_{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{d}E_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}T_{\nu \alpha \beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{a}]$$
(23)
where $`E_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=\delta _\mu {}_{}{}^{a}+\kappa f_\mu ^a`$. This Lagrangian is invariant under the following local gauge transformations:

$$\delta E_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=_\mu \eta ^a,\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_{\alpha \beta ,c}=_{[\alpha }z_{\beta ]c}+\frac{1}{2}E_\alpha {}_{}{}^{a}E_{\beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta ^d$$
(24)
the commutator of two $`\eta `$-transformations having the form:

$$[\delta _1,\delta _2]\mathrm{\Phi }_{\alpha \beta ,c}=\frac{1}{2}_{[\alpha }\stackrel{~}{z}_{\beta ]c}\frac{1}{2}_{[\alpha }E_{\beta ]}{}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta _1{}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{2}^{}^d$$
(25)
and $`\stackrel{~}{z}_{\beta c}=E_\beta {}_{}{}^{b}\epsilon _{abcd}^{}\eta _1{}_{}{}^{a}\eta _{2}^{}^d`$.

## 2 $`T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ],\beta }`$ tensor

Our next example — mixed tensor $`T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }`$ antisymmetric on first three indices. This case is very much similar to the previous one so we will be brief. Usual description uses this tensor with additional condition $`T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta ]}=0`$ and two gauge transformations with parameters $`\chi _{[\mu \nu ],\alpha }`$ such that $`\chi _{[\mu \nu ,\alpha ]}=0`$ and $`\eta _{[\mu \nu \alpha ]}`$. In this, to construct minimal gauge invariant expression one needs at least two derivatives. Let us abandon additional condition $`T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta ]}=0`$ and simultaneously combine to gauge transformation into unconstrained one:

$$\delta T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }=_{[\mu }\chi _{\nu \alpha ],\beta }$$
(26)
Then it is trivial task to construct gauge invariant object of the first order:

$$E_{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }=_{[\mu }T_{\nu \alpha \beta ],\rho }$$

Now if we consider the most general (gauge invariant) Lagrangian quadratic in $`E`$-tensor and require that this Lagrangian be invariant under the local shifts $`\delta T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }=\eta _{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }`$ we obtain:

$$=\frac{1}{24}E^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }E_{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }+\frac{1}{18}E^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }E_{\mu \nu \alpha \rho ,\beta }\frac{2}{9}E^{\mu \nu \alpha }E_{\mu \nu \alpha }$$
(27)
Let us make a transition to the first order formalism. First of all we introduce auxiliary field $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu ,[\nu \alpha \beta \rho ]}`$ antisymmetric on the last four indices which will play the role of gauge field for the $`\eta `$-transformations. Then we construct a first order Lagrangian

$$_I=\frac{2}{9}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\rho ,\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu ,\rho \nu \alpha \beta }+\frac{2}{9}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu \alpha }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu \alpha }\frac{1}{9}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\rho ,\mu \nu \alpha \beta }E_{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }\frac{4}{9}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu \alpha }E_{\mu \nu \alpha }$$
(28)
which is invariant not only under the $`\chi `$-transformations (), but also under

$$\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_\rho {}_{}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }=_\rho \eta ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta },\delta T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta }=\eta _{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }$$

If one solves the algebraic equation of motion for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ field one get

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{\rho ,\mu \nu \alpha \beta }=\frac{3}{4}E_{\mu \nu \alpha \beta ,\rho }\frac{1}{4}E_{\rho [\nu \alpha \beta ,\mu ]}$$
(29)
In this, substitution of this expression back into the first order Lagrangian () results exactly in the second order Lagrangian (). As in the previous case by dividing all indices into the ”local” and ”world” ones the first order Lagrangian () could be rewritten in the simple and convenient form:

$$_I=\frac{2}{9}[\{{}_{ab}{}^{\mu \nu }\}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{acde}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{bcde}\frac{1}{48}\{{}_{abcde}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta \gamma }\}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{abcd}E_{\nu \alpha \beta \gamma }^{}{}_{}{}^{e}]$$
(30)
This time our construction works for the space-time dimensions $`d5`$ only. In the minimal $`d=5`$ case one can introduce dual variables:

$$f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=\frac{1}{24}\epsilon ^{abcde}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mu {}_{}{}^{bcde},\eta ^a=\frac{1}{24}\epsilon ^{abcde}\eta _{bcde}$$
(31)
Then the Lagrangian takes the form:

$$=\frac{4}{3}\{{}_{ab}{}^{\mu \nu }\}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}\frac{1}{9}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta \gamma }f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}E_{\nu \alpha \beta \gamma }^{}^a$$
(32)
while the gauge transformations leaving it invariant look like:

$$\delta f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}=_\mu \eta ^a,\delta T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,a}=\epsilon _{\mu \nu \alpha ab}\eta ^b$$

It is not hard to give an example of interaction for this case by adding to the Lagrangian and gauge transformation laws new terms:

$$_1=\kappa \{{}_{abc}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha }\}f_\mu {}_{}{}^{a}f_{\nu }^{}{}_{}{}^{b}f_{\alpha }^{}{}_{}{}^{c},\delta _1T_{\alpha \beta \gamma ,a}=\kappa \epsilon _{abc[\alpha \beta }f_{\gamma ]}{}_{}{}^{b}\eta _{}^{c}$$
(33)
Again this Lagrangian looks very simple in the first order formalism, but it corresponds to highly non-linear second order Lagrangian with non limited number of derivatives.

## 3 $`R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}`$ tensor

In this section we consider more interesting and less evident example — tensor $`R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}`$. Usual description is based on the tensor with constraint $`R_{\mu [\nu ,\alpha \beta ]}=0`$ and gauge transformations with a parameter $`\chi _{\mu ,[\alpha \beta ]}`$ also constrained by $`\chi _{[\mu ,\alpha \beta ]}=0`$. We abandon both constraints and consider arbitrary $`R_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta ]}`$ tensor with gauge transformations $`\delta R_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta }=_\mu \chi _{\nu ,\alpha \beta }_\nu \chi _{\mu ,\alpha \beta }`$, where $`\chi _{\mu ,\alpha \beta }`$ antisymmetric on the last two indices. Then it is trivial to get gauge invariant ”field strength”:

$$T_{[\mu \nu \alpha ],[\beta \gamma ]}=_{[\mu }R_{\nu \alpha ],\beta \gamma }$$

Now we consider the most general Lagrangian quadratic in $`T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }`$ and require that it has to be invariant under the local shifts:

$$R_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta }R_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta }+\eta _{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }\eta _{\nu ,\mu \alpha \beta }$$

where $`\eta _{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }`$ antisymmetric on the last three indices. We obtain:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }T_{\mu \nu \beta ,\alpha \gamma }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}T^{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }T_{\mu \beta \gamma ,\nu \alpha }`$ (34)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \nu ,\alpha }3T^{\mu \nu ,\alpha }T_{\mu \alpha ,\nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}T^\mu T_\mu `$
To make a transition to first order formalism we introduce auxiliary field $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{[\mu \nu ],[\alpha \beta \gamma ]}`$ antisymmetric on the first two as well as last three indices which will play a role of gauge field for the $`\eta `$-transformations. The following first order Lagrangian:

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\alpha \beta ,\mu \nu \gamma }+6\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu ,\nu \alpha }\mathrm{\Omega }_{\nu ,\mu \alpha }{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{\Omega }^\mu \mathrm{\Omega }_\mu +`$ (35)
$`+\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }T_{\alpha \beta \gamma ,\mu \nu }+6\mathrm{\Omega }^{\mu ,\nu \alpha }T_{\nu \alpha ,\mu }+3\mathrm{\Omega }^\mu T_\mu `$
is invariant not only (by construction) under the local $`\chi `$\- transformations, but under the local transformations

$$\delta \mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }=_\mu \eta _{\nu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }_\nu \eta _{\mu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }\delta R_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta }=\eta _{\mu ,\nu \alpha \beta }\eta _{\nu ,\mu \alpha \beta }$$

as well. By solving algebraic equation of motion for the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ field one obtains:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu ,\alpha \beta \gamma }=\frac{1}{3}T_{\alpha \beta \gamma ,\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{6}[T_{\mu \beta \gamma ,\alpha \nu }T_{\nu \beta \gamma ,\alpha \mu }+(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )]+\frac{1}{3}[T_{\mu \nu \alpha ,\beta \gamma }+(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )]$$
(36)
Substituting this expression back into the first order Lagrangian one reproduces exactly the second order Lagrangian.

As in all previously considered cases if we divide all indices into the ”local” and ”world” ones it is possible to rewrite our Lagrangian in the following form:

$$=\frac{3}{8}\{{}_{abcd}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }{}_{}{}^{abe}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\alpha \beta }^{}{}_{}{}^{cde}+\frac{1}{12}\{{}_{abcde}{}^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta \gamma }\}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }{}_{}{}^{abc}T_{\alpha \beta \gamma }^{}^{de}$$
(37)
This time our construction also works for the space-time dimensions $`d5`$ only.

## Conclusion

Thus we have managed to construct first order formalism for the three examples of mixed symmetry high spin fields. In all three cases the formulation is very much similar to the usual tetrad formalism in gravity so that the Lagrangians have very simple and suggestive form and gauge invariance is almost evident. We hope that such formalism could be useful in investigations of possible interactions for such fields.


text:
# Neutrinos from the Propagation of a Relativistic Jet Through a Star

## 1 INTRODUCTION

In this paper we discuss neutrino production in collapsars (Woosley, 1993; MacFadyen & Woosley, 1999). Collapsars, or failed supernovae, are one of two or a few currently favored explanations for the origin of long duration GRBs. In collapsars, the relativistic jet which shocks and ultimately gives rise to observed GRB photons must first pass through a massive stellar mantle. Here it is shown that this passage is associated with an interesting neutrino signal.

A number of GRB-related neutrino sources have been previously investigated. These sources can be roughly divided according to whether they involve pion production via photomeson interactions or via strong interactions. Neutrinos resulting from photomeson interactions typically have very high energies ($`>10^2\mathrm{TeV}`$) and are possibly the most easily detectable in planned km-scale neutrino detectors such as ICECUBE (Halzen, 1999). Waxman & Bahcall (1997) discussed photomeson production of neutrinos in collisionless GRB shocks and argued that detection of these neutrinos would give information on the spectra of photons and protons within the shocks, as well as place stringent constraints on fundamental neutrino properties.

Neutrinos from inelastic nuclear collisions typically have energies of the order of 10 GeV. Unless the phototube density in ICECUBE and other next generation neutrino telescopes is higher than currently planned, these detectors will have a small effective detector area for such low energy neutrinos and will not be sensitive to them (Karle, 2002). However, there is a growing indication that, like neutrinos from $`\mathrm{p}\gamma `$ interactions, these neutrinos may be an important clue to conditions in and around the GRB central engine. Bahcall & Mészáros (2000) discussed the neutrino signal from inelastic collisions occurring during the dynamic decoupling of neutrons in the acceleration stage of the evolution of a GRB fireball. These neutrinos offer an indication of the composition and Lorentz factor of the GRB jet. Neutron diffusion in GRB environments was considered in a more general context by Mészáros & Rees (2000). Those authors showed that internal shocks at radii $`r310^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$ and transverse diffusion of neutrons into the jet at much larger radii can lead to an appreciable neutrino signal. The possibility of using neutrinos to distinguish between collapsars and supranovae (Vietri & Stella, 1998, 1999) was discussed by Guetta & Granot (2002). The scenario envisaged by Guetta and Granot is unique in that it predicts TeV neutrinos from nuclear processes. This is because of the presence in their model of protons accelerated to very high energies in a pulsar wind bubble.

The multi-GeV collapsar neutrino signal we study here is related to the mechanism giving rise to the variation in Lorentz factor of the outgoing jet. As with any GRB model invoking internal shocks, the jet variability must be substantial in order to explain observed temporal variability in GRBs, as well as to allow efficient conversion of kinetic energy to electromagnetic energy (see Piran (1999) for a general overview). In most GRB models, the jet variability is related to a variability in the mass ablation rate or luminosity of the central source driving the outflow. By contrast, the jet variability in the collapsar can arise from instabilities along the jet-stellar wall interface (Zhang, Woosley, & MacFadyen, 2003). These instabilities operate at radii large compared to the size of the central black hole. Consequently, the instabilities act to slow a jet which has already had ample time to reach ultra-relativistic velocities. We point out that when free neutrons are present in the jet, this slowing is not elastic and is accompanied by a sizeable neutrino flux.

In the next section we discuss details of how the slowing of the neutrons in the jet leads to the conversion of jet energy to potentially observable neutrinos. Estimates of neutrino detection rates and energies are presented. We will show that the neutrino signal of the slowing of the jet can originate from radii some two orders of magnitude smaller than the signal of processes discussed by Mészáros & Rees (2000). Also, the neutrino production we discuss here is relatively insensitive to the bulk Lorentz factor of the outgoing jet, unlike other proposed sources of multi-GeV GRB neutrinos.

## 2 Pion and Neutrino Production Deep Within the Collapsar

The mechanism giving rise to the variability in the outgoing jet can be crudely represented as the closing of a dense door composed of stellar material at some point along the jet axis. This results in a forward shock propagating into and accelerating the stellar material, and a reverse shock propagating backwards and slowing the jet. Because the stellar material blocking the passage of the jet is typically very dense relative to the jet material, the forward shock will only be mildly relativistic and uninteresting as far as a detectable neutrino signature is concerned. The top panel of Fig. 1 illustrates the shocking and structure of the outgoing jet.

As particles in the jet traverse the reverse shock, they are decelerated from a Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}`$ to a Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}^{(L)}<\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}`$. Here the superscript $`(L)`$ denotes a quantity as measured in the rest frame of the collapsing star. The relative Lorentz factor across the shock is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}/2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}^{(L)}`$. Numerical simulations of relativistic jets propagating in stars indicate that the typical relative Lorentz factor is substantial. Zhang et al. studied the propagation of a relativistic jet in a 15$`M_{\mathrm{}}`$ star for 3 different initial jet conditions. Typical values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}`$ for their simulations are given in Table 1. The simulations of Zhang et al., as well as observations of many peaks in observed GRB lightcurves, indicate that a substantial fraction (half or more) of the jet undergoes a slowing via relativistic shocks.

The gross properties of the reverse shock slowing the jet are given by the Rankine-Hugoniot jump conditions. In particular, the proper baryon number density in the shocked jet (i.e. the baryon number density as measured in a frame comoving with the shocked fluid) is $`n_{sh}4\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}n_j`$, where $`n_j`$ is the proper baryon number density in the unshocked jet. For radii larger than $`10^6\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}\mathrm{cm}`$, which is the region of interest in the present work, the outgoing jet is coasting rather than accelerating (Piran, Shemi, & Narayan, 1993). In the coasting regime, $`n_j`$ is determined by baryon number conservation as $`n_j=L/4\pi r^2m_Nc^3(\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)})^2`$. Observations of GRBs suggest that the isotropic equivalent luminosity $`L`$ is of order $`L10^{52}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{sec}`$ (Frail et al., 2001), and that typically $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}200`$ (Lithwick & Sari, 2001). The energy density in the shocked jet fluid is $`U_{sh}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}n_{sh}m_Nc^2`$, provided that the specific enthalpy in the unshocked jet is small (i.e. that the jet is in the coasting regime). In the middle panel of Fig. 1 we show the evolution of $`n_j`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}`$ in the jet.

Pion production and associated neutrino production in the reverse shock depend in detail on the processes mediating the shock. It is convenient in discussing the shock structure to consider separately those particles which interact electromagnetically (protons-$`e^\pm `$-photons) and the neutrons. Neutrons can only be slowed by strong collisions with other nucleons. Because the length scales associated with electromagnetic processes are small compared to the neutron mean free path, an upper limit to the width of the shock can be obtained by considering the case where strong nucleon-nucleon collisions alone mediate the shock. Such collisional shocks have been studied by Mott-Smith (1951) in the non-relativistic case and by Chapline & Weaver (1979) and Cercignani & Majorana (1988) in the relativistic case.

We take as an upper limit to the shock width the collisional width $`\delta _c1.9/\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}n_j\sigma _{NN}`$ found from the Monte-Carlo simulations of Chapline & Weaver (1979). Here $`\sigma _{NN}`$ is the strong scattering cross section and the shock width is as measured in a frame comoving with the shock. For center of mass energies a few hundred MeV above the threshold for pion production, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{NN}}410^{26}\mathrm{c}m^2`$, and approximately $`80\%`$ of this cross section goes towards inelastic production of pions (see Hagiwara et al. (2002) for a compilation of strong cross sections). For this work, the important properties of $`\delta _c`$ are I) that because the shock width is at most a few collisional mean free paths, the neutron-nucleon collisions slowing the shock are hard and produce pions, and II) because $`\delta _c1/n_{sh}\sigma _{NN}`$, the number of inelastic collisions suffered by a typical neutron in traversing the shock is approximately independent of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}`$. A close-up view of inelastic neutron-nucleon collisions and associated pion production in the reverse shock is shown in the bottom panel of Fig. 1.

Protons in the shock will be slowed by electromagnetic, rather than strong, processes. Deep within the star, where the shocks considered in this paper are occurring, the plasma is optically thick and the thermalization time for radiation is short. Consequently, we approximate the protons as being in thermal equilibrium with the background $`e^\pm /\gamma `$ plasma111The opposite limiting case for the proton distribution is that where the protons are Fermi-accelerated and achieve a power law distribution. In this case, the maximum proton energy (typically much larger than the proton rest mass) is that for which the acceleration and cooling times are equal (Waxman, 1995).. The temperature of the protons in this case is small, $`kTm_pc^2`$, and the protons are non-relativistic in the shocked plasma frame.

Our assumption about the proton distribution function is in accord with results from studies of shock propagation in type II SNe (e.g. Ensman & Burrows (1992)). However, Mészáros & Waxman (2001) have argued that protons shocked in mildly relativistic collisions at large radii inside the collapsar will be driven to a power law distribution, but that protons shocked in the strongly relativistic collision between the jet head and the stellar mantle may or may not have a power law distribution. The question of the precise radius (presumably larger than $`10^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$) at which shocks are collisionless rather than radiative is not addressed here. As we are most interested in processes at $`r10^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$, this issue is not so important for the present study.

In the inelastic collisions slowing the neutrons, the total energy going into pion production in the center of mass frame of the collision is $`E_\pi ^{tot}(1/2)(E_{cm}2m_Nc^2)`$ (e.g. Mannheim & Schlickeiser (1994)). Here $`E_{cm}`$ is the energy of the collision in the center of mass frame, and the above equation is valid provided that $`E_{cm}2m_Nc^2`$ is larger than a few times the pion rest mass energy. Very near the threshold for pion production, $`E_\pi ^{tot}E_{cm}2m_Nc^2`$. The average energy of individual pions created in the collision is $`E_\pi ^{tot}/\xi `$, where $`\xi `$ is the multiplicity of produced pions. As measured in a frame at rest with respect to the star, the energy of pions produced in a neutron-nucleon collision is

$$E_\pi ^{(L)}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{cm}E_\pi ^{(tot)}=\left(\frac{m_Nc^2}{2}\right)\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}^{(L)}2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{cm}\right).$$
(1)
Here we have made the assumption that the typical collision occurs between a nucleon with Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}`$ and a nucleon with Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}^{(L)}`$. In Eq. 1, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{cm}`$ is the Lorentz factor of the center of mass frame as measured in the lab frame. In terms of the Lorentz factors of the unshocked and shocked portions of the jet, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{cm}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}^{(L)}}`$ if $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}`$ is larger than two or three, and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{cm}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}/2}`$ if $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}1`$. The observed energy of an individual pion created in a collision will again be a factor of $`1/\xi `$ smaller than the estimate in Eq. 1. For example, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}=100`$, $`E_\pi ^{(L_)}/\xi 10`$, 12, and 7 GeV, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{sh}=30`$, 10, and 1 respectively.

The neutrino signal of the inelastic collisions depends on how the spectrum of pions produced in these collisions is modified by cooling processes. Pion cooling may proceed through inelastic strong scatterings, or via electromagnetic interactions - coulomb scattering off the background electrons, inverse compton scattering, and synchrotron emission.

Cooling via strong scatterings is simply characterized by the $`\pi `$nucleon interaction time. We can roughly approximate $`\pi \mathrm{N}`$ collisions as occurring in the shocked region (as opposed to the region of width $`\delta _c`$ characterizing the shock). In this case the $`\pi `$nucleon interaction time is

$$\tau _{\pi N}=\frac{1}{c\sigma _{N\pi }n_{sh}},$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _{N\pi }`$ is the nucleon-pion scattering cross section. For center of mass energies a few hundred MeV larger than the pion rest mass, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{N}\pi }2.510^{26}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Hagiwara et al., 2002). As with NN collisions, the bulk of this cross section goes toward inelastic $`\pi `$ production. Though inelastic $`\pi \mathrm{N}`$ collisions may roughly conserve the total energy in pions, they tend to reduce the average pion energy, making detection of the product neutrinos more difficult. Note that because $`\sigma _{\mathrm{N}\pi }`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{NN}}`$ are comparable, a more accurate expression for $`\tau _{\pi N}`$ should involve an effective nucleon number density within the region of width $`\delta _c`$ (rather than the $`n_{sh}`$ appearing in Eq. 2). Because the number density within the shock is smaller than $`n_{sh}`$, Eq. 2 represents a lower bound on $`\tau _{\pi N}`$ (or an upper limit on the influence of $`\pi N`$ scatterings).

Pion energy loss via coulomb scattering off the background electrons is given by the Bethe-Bloch formula for ionization losses (see Groom et al. (2000)), with the ionization potential for completely ionized material equal to $`\mathrm{}\omega _p`$. Here $`\omega _p=\sqrt{4\pi n_ee^2/m_e}`$ is the electron plasma frequency, and $`n_e`$ is the electron number density. Neglecting an unimportant (for our applications) logarithmic dependence on $`n_e`$, pion energy loss via coulomb scattering is given by $`dE/dx(2/3)10^{26}n_e\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{cm}`$. The timescale for energy loss via $`\pi e^{}`$ scatterings is then $`\tau _{\pi e^{}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi /2)(n_{\mathrm{sh}}/n_e)\tau _{\pi N}`$, with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi `$ the pion Lorentz factor as measured in the shocked fluid frame. When strong scatterings are inefficient at cooling the pions, the temperature in the shocked plasma is generally too low for efficient pair $`e^\pm `$ production. In this case $`n_en_{sh}`$ and $`\pi e^{}`$ interactions are at most only as important as strong scatterings. Pion energy loss via bremsstrahlung and pair production is not important for pion energies less than about 100 GeV (Groom et al., 2000).

Pions lose energy to the background photon and magnetic fields at a rate $`(dE_\pi /dt)_{\pi \gamma }(c\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi ^2)(m_e/m_\pi )^2\sigma _TU_{em}`$, where $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson cross section, $`m_\pi `$ is the pion mass, and $`U_{em}`$ is the energy density in the photon and magnetic fields. A cooling time $`\tau _{\pi \gamma }`$ can be defined as $`\tau _{\pi \gamma }=E_\pi (dE_\pi /dt)_{\pi \gamma }^1`$. Cooling of pions via these electromagnetic interactions dominates over cooling via strong interactions when

$$\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi }{400}\right)\left(\frac{U_{em}}{n_{sh}m_Nc^2}\right)\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi }{400}\right)<1.$$
(3)
Here we have made use of the fact that $`U_{em}U_{sh}`$ for relativistic shocks in an optically thick flow. Only in some of the more extreme cases that we consider here is the above inequality not satisfied. By contrast, for shocks at large radii ($`r10^{12}\mathrm{cm}`$) when the protons are accelerated to high energies via plasma processes, typical pions produced in photomeson interactions have Lorentz factors of $`10^6`$, and synchrotron cooling is more important than strong scattering.

In the shocked plasma rest frame the lifetime of a charged pion is $`\tau _{\pi D}=2.610^8\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi \mathrm{s}`$. The fraction of pions that decay before suffering a strong scattering is $`1/(\tau _{\pi D}/\tau _{\pi N}+1)`$. The pion Lorentz factor relative to the shocked plasma for which $`\tau _{\pi D}=\tau _{\pi N}`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\pi ,cool}710^2\frac{(r/10^{10}\mathrm{cm})^2(\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}/100)^2}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}L_{52}}.$$
(4)
Pions with a Lorentz factor greater than $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\pi ,cool}`$ will on average scatter before decaying, and pions with a Lorentz factor smaller than $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\pi ,cool}`$ will on average decay before scattering. Eq. 4 indicates that for $`r10^9\mathrm{cm}`$, pions produced in mildly relativistic collisions ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}2`$) will decay before cooling. Conversely, for $`r10^9\mathrm{cm}`$, pions produced in strongly relativistic shocks ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}10`$, as in case JA in the calculations of Zhang et al.) will cool before decaying. Neutrinos from the decay of cooled pions will typically have observed energies $`1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$, and will be difficult to detect. For $`r10^{10}\mathrm{cm}`$, Eq. 4 indicates that pions produced even in very relativistic shocks will decay before cooling.

In Fig. 2 we show the ratios of the timescales for the pion cooling processes discussed above to the timescale for pion decay. For this figure we have approximated the electron and nucleon number densities in the post-shock region as being equal and we have also made the assumption that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi `$. As can be seen from Fig. 2, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}=2`$ and $`r1.510^9\sqrt{L_{52}}(100/\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)})\mathrm{cm}`$, pion cooling processes are unimportant (e.g. the timescale for all cooling processes is more than twice the decay timescale and less than 30$`\%`$ of the pion energy is lost). For $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{rel}=10`$, pion cooling processes are unimportant for $`r710^9\sqrt{L_{52}}(100/\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)})\mathrm{cm}`$.

On average, neutrinos carry away $`2/3`$ of the pion energy. The typical energies of the three neutrinos the pion (and daughter muon) decays to are in the range 30-50MeV as measured in the pion rest frame. This implies observed neutrino energies in the range $`[1/51/3](E_\pi ^{(L)}/\xi )(1+z)^1\mathrm{GeV}`$, with $`z`$ the redshift at which the burst occurs. In Table 1, typical neutrino energies for the different simulations of Zhang et al. are shown. Note that the observed neutrino energy scales linearly with jet Lorentz factor. For example, for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}=400`$, the expected neutrino energies are a factor of approximately four higher than shown in Table 1.

The fraction of jet kinetic energy lost to neutrinos is approximately

$$(1Y_e)\left(\frac{2}{3}\right)\left(\frac{2}{3}\right)\frac{E_\pi ^{(L)}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}m_Nc^2}$$
(5)
for collisions ocurring at radii large enough that the charged pions do not cool before decaying. Here the electron fraction $`Y_e`$ is the ratio of protons to baryons in the flow. Recent studies indicate that the outgoing jet is likely neutron rich, with plausible values of $`Y_e`$ in the range $`1/20Y_e1/2`$ (Pruet, Woosley, & Hoffman, 2002; Beloborodov, 2002). In Eq. 5, one factor of $`2/3`$ approximately accounts for the fraction of charged pions (as opposed to $`\pi ^0`$’s) produced, while the other factor of $`2/3`$ accounts for the fraction of the charged pion energy going to neutrinos. The estimate in Eq. 5 assumes that after one inelastic collision the decelerating neutron does not undergo subsequent inelastic collisions. For this reason, Eq. 5 represents a lower bound to the fraction of jet energy lost to neutrinos. The true fraction could be as much as a factor of $`2`$ higher, depending on the jet composition and details of the shocking. For the jet dynamics calculated by Zhang et al., estimates of the fraction of jet energy going to neutrinos lie in the range $`[0.10.2](1Y_e)`$.

To facilitate comparison with studies of other GRB related neutrino production processes, we closely follow the analysis and notation of Bahcall & Mészáros (2000) and Mészáros & Rees (2000) in estimating the neutrino detection rate. In the notation of those authors, the average neutrino detection rate of events at redshift $`z`$ is $`R_\nu (N_t/4\pi D^2)R_bN_n\sigma _{\nu \overline{\nu }}`$. Here $`N_t`$ is the number of protons in the terrestrial detector, $`D`$ is the proper distance out to redshift $`z`$, $`R_b`$ is the GRB rate within a Hubble radius, and $`N_n`$ is the isotropic equivalant number of neutrons undergoing inelastic scattering. The neutrino detection cross section averaged over neutrinos and anti-neutrinos is $`\sigma _{\nu \overline{\nu }}0.510^{38}(E_\nu /1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})(1+z)^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Gaisser, 1990), where $`E_\nu (2/3)E_\pi ^{(L)}`$ is the total energy of all neutrinos resulting from an inelastic neutron-nucleon collision. Using Eq. 1 and adopting an Einstein-de Sitter cosmology with Hubble constant $`H=65h_{65}\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{Mpc}`$ gives

$$R_\nu 2E_{53}(1Y_e)\left(\frac{100}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)}}\right)f_{shock}\left(\frac{E_\pi ^{(L)}}{m_Nc^2}\right)\left(\frac{N_t}{10^{39}}\right)\left(\frac{R_b}{10^3}\right)h_{65}^2\left(\frac{2\sqrt{2}}{1+z\sqrt{1+z}}\right)^2\mathrm{year}^1.$$
(6)
Here $`E_{53}`$ is the isotropic equivalant jet energy in units of $`10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, and $`f_{shock}`$ is the fraction of the jet undergoing a relativistic slowing at radii large enough the produced pions do not cool and decay to unobservable neutrinos ($`r10^9\mathrm{cm}`$ for mildly relativistic collisions and $`r10^{10}\mathrm{cm}`$ for ultra-relativistic collisions). For illustration, the models of Zhang et al. predict neutrino detection rates of $`21/\mathrm{year}`$ (JA), $`7/\mathrm{year}`$ (JB), and $`10/\mathrm{year}`$ (JC), for $`E_{53}=1`$, $`Y_e=1/2`$, and $`f_{shock}`$=1/2. For model JB, where the relative Lorentz factors across the shock deep within the star are very similar to the relative Lorentz factors typical of internal shocks occurring at $`10^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$, the expected detection rate is roughly the same as that calculated by Mészáros & Rees (2000) for neutrinos from internal shocks. For models JA and JC, in which the jet is more dramatically slowed, the expected detection rates are somewhat larger, approaching the sorts of detection rates expected for efficient sideways diffusion of neutrons into the jet.

As can be seen from Eq. 6, $`R_\nu `$ does not depend explicitly on the beaming angle of emitted neutrinos. However, as we discuss below, a temporal and directional correlation between detected neutrinos and the parent GRB is needed in order to distinguish GRB neutrinos from background atmospheric neutrinos. If the beaming angle of emitted neutrinos ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$) is smaller than the beaming angle of GRB photons ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma `$), then a parent GRB is always visible in coincidence with detected GRB neutrinos. If the opposite case holds ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu >\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma `$), then those neutrinos emitted outside of the photon beaming angle are effectively lost to observation and the detection rate is effectively decreased by a factor of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma /\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$. Two competing processes affect $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu /\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma `$: the focusing of an initially wide jet as the jet propagates through the star (Aloy et al., 2000; Zhang, Woosley, & MacFadyen, 2003), and the expansion of the high enthalpy jet as it breaks free of the star (Zhang, Woosley, & MacFadyen, 2003). Jet focusing tends to increase $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu /\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma `$ because it makes the jet opening angle within the star larger than the jet opening angle at the stellar surface. Expansion of the high enthalpy jet tends to decrease $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu /\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma `$. Present 2-d simulations of jet propagation do not definitively determine which process is dominant, though they are roughly consistent with $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu /\mathrm{\Omega }_\gamma )1`$.

It should be emphasized that Eq. 6 and the detection rates estimated for GeV neutrinos from GRBs neglect many of the experimental difficulties associated with detecting these neutrinos. As noted in the introduction, the detector phototube spacing must be small enough to allow detection of $`10\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$ muons with $`50\mathrm{m}`$ pathlengths (e.g. see Halzen & Hooper (2002)). In addition, the angle of the incident neutrino relative to the GRB must be sufficiently well known to distinguish a GRB neutrino from the background atmospheric neutrinos. Rough estimates can be made by scaling detection rates for Super-Kamiokande to the larger detectors discussed here. In the search through the Super-Kamiokande data for GRB neutrinos, a high-energy neutrino ($`E_\nu >200\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$) background rate of $`210^3(20\mathrm{sec})^1`$ was assumed (Fukuda et al., 2002). Estimating that roughly 1/5 of these have energies larger than a few GeV, approximating the volume of a km3 detector as being $`10^5/5`$ times larger than the volume of Super-Kamiokande, and supposing the angle of the incident neutrino relative to the GRB position is known to within a cone of $`10\mathrm{°}`$ half-opening angle gives a background in a km3 detector of $`0.1(20\mathrm{sec})^1`$. With this background rate, a total sample of 1000 GRBs, and no other information, a detection of 20 neutrinos from 20 separate GRBs (out of a thousand) is not statistically significant, but the detection of two or three neutrinos from a single GRB is quite significant (see Table 1 in Fukuda et al. for detailed estimates). As a definite example of the potential of large neutrino detectors, the slowing of a relativistic jet in GRB 980425 ($`z=0.0085`$ (Galama et al., 1998)) should have given roughly 100 neutrino detections in a km3 detector. Even without directional information, such a detection would be significant.

## 3 Summary

Numerical simulations of the propagation of a relativistic jet through a stellar envelope indicate that, deep within the star, instabilities along the jet-stellar wall interface slow the jet. This slowing gives rise to a variation in the Lorentz factor of an initially uniform jet. As we have shown, the slowing of neutrons within the jet also gives rise to an interesting and potentially detectable neutrino signal.

Neutrinos produced during the slowing of the jet can precede GRB photons by tens to several tens of seconds, depending on the jet dynamics and stellar progenitor. By contrast, neutrinos produced in a jet that is not subsequently dramatically slowed arrive within $`0.3(r_\gamma /10^{12}\mathrm{cm})(100/\mathrm{\Gamma }_j^{(L)})`$ seconds of the GRB photons, where $`r_\gamma `$ is the radius where the jet shocks and produces observed photons. The observation of GeV neutrinos preceding a GRB flash by $`20`$ seconds would be an indication that a relativistic jet had been slowed while optically thick. In turn, this could imply that the jet had punched through a stellar envelope.

Slowing of the jet within the star also has an impact on the jet composition. This is because neutron-neutron collisions, which dominate the slowing of neutrons if the jet is neutron rich, preferentially produce protons. Near threshold, for example, roughly $`75\%`$ of the inelastic nn(pp) cross section goes toward the production of a p(n) (McGill et al., 1984). A jet born near the central black hole with a very low electron fraction will arrive at large radii with $`Y_e1/2`$. This will influence subsequent nucleosynthesis in the jet (Pruet, Guiles, & Fuller, 2002; Lemoine, 2002), as well as the production of neutrinos by inelastic nuclear processes at large radii.

Apart from composition effects, though, the source of GeV neutrinos we have discussed arises independently of other proposed sources of GeV neutrinos in relativistic fireballs. For example, neutron diffusion in internal shocks at $`r>10^{11}\mathrm{cm}`$ or the transverse diffusion of neutrons into the jet at larger radii (Mészáros & Rees, 2000), and inelastic nuclear collisions during neutron decoupling (Bahcall & Mészáros, 2000), can still occur and produce neutrinos. In the most optimistic case where all of these various processes occur, the detection rate of neutrinos in a km-scale detector could be as high as 30 per year.

The author acknowledges helpful correspondence with Weiqun Zhang regarding the conditions in collapsar jets and several useful suggestions from the referee John Beacom. This research has been supported by the DOE Program for Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC; DE-FC02-01ER41176). This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore Laboratory under contract W-7405-ENG-48.