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# Infrared Parallaxes for Methane T dwarfsBased on observations obtained at the European Southern Observatory, Chile. Programmes 65.L-0061, 66.C-0404, 67.C-0029, 68.C-0004 & 69.C-0044.

## 1 Introduction – Methane T-type Brown Dwarfs

Numerous examples of the field counterparts to the extremely cool methane brown dwarf Gl 229B (Nakajima et al., 1995) are now known (Strauss et al., 1999; Burgasser et al., 1999, 2000a, 2000b; Leggett et al., 2000; Tsvetanov et al., 2000; Cuby et al., 2000). These objects are now uniformly classified as “T dwarfs” (Burgasser et al., 2002b; Geballe et al., 2002), and have such low photospheric temperatures (800-1300K), that their photospheres are dominated by the effects of dust and methane formation (Allard et al., 2001), neither of which are amenable to simple modeling. The discovery of sizable numbers of T dwarfs, means that we are now in a position to use direct trigonometric parallax observations to empirically determine the loci of T dwarf cooling curves, rather than relying on models. The discovery of several T dwarfs by SDSS with spectra bridging the L and T spectral types (e.g. Leggett et al. 2002; Geballe et al. 2002) means we are also in a position to empirically determine where on these brown dwarf cooling curves the L-T transition occurs.

Trigonometric parallaxes are also essential to understanding the space density of T dwarfs. Luminosity function estimates for T dwarfs (eg. Burgasser 2002a) are currently based on limited parallaxes and assumptions about object binarity. (Recent programs targeting more L and T dwarfs (Martıǹ, Brander & Basri, 1999; Koerner et al., 1999; Reid et al., 2001; Burgasser et al., 2003a; Close et al., 2003), indicate that $``$10-20% of objects observed in sufficient detail are found to be binary.) Luminosity functions based on currently available colour-magnitude relations will therefore be problematic at best. Trigonometric parallaxes are therefore required to determine the actual luminosities of these objects and indicate whether they are single or binary, so that more meaningful luminosity functions for T dwarfs can be constructed.

## 2 Parallaxes and the Infrared

Traditional parallax techniques based on photography are completely unable to target objects as faint and red as T dwarfs. CCD parallax work in the optical at the USNO, ESO and Palomar (Monet et al., 1992; Dahn et al., 2002; Tinney, 1996; Tinney et al., 1995; Tinney, 1993) have shown that parallaxes can be obtained for objects as faint as I=18-19 at distances $``$70 pc. However, this still leaves the T dwarf class of objects (with I$``$21) unobservable. To date only a few of the very brightest and closest T dwarfs have proved tractable for CCD parallax work (Dahn et al., 2002).

Over the last two years, therefore, we have been extending optical CCD astrometric techniques into the infrared, where the J$`<`$16 magnitudes of most of the detected T dwarfs make significant progress possible. Indeed, there are several reasons to prefer the infrared for high precision astrometry. First, the effects of differential colour refraction (the different amount of refraction the atmosphere produces in red target stars, compared to blue reference stars, see Monet et al. 1992) are reduced by working at longer wavelengths. Second, because T dwarfs suffer methane absorption at the red end of their J- and H-band spectra, their effective wavelengths through a J- or H-filter are much closer to that of a typical background reference star, than is the case in the optical. These effects combined mean that the stringent requirements on maintaining control of observations at constant hour angles (at least for T dwarfs) is not present in the infrared (cf. Section 6.1). This considerably increases the flexibility and efficiency of infrared parallax observing, over the optical. Third, seeing improves in the infrared, leading to smaller images, smaller amounts of differential seeing, and so higher astrometric precision. And finally, T dwarfs show much greater contrast to sky in the near-infrared than in the optical.

Infrared parallax observations have been pioneered by Jones (2000), who targeted the extremely active (and unfortunately at 76 pc also quite distant) late M dwarf PC0025+0447, as well as the nearby M dwarf VB10. The USNO also has an infrared astrometric program in operation, from which published results are expected shortly (Vrba et al., 2002).

## 3 Observations & Sample

Observations were carried out at 7 epochs over the period 2000 April 17 to 2002 May 30. At each epoch, observations were carried out on either two half- or two full-nights. All observations were obtained with the SOFI infrared camera on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.5m New Technology Telescope (NTT). SOFI was used in its “large field” mode in which it provides a 4.92′$`\times `$4.92′ field-of-view with 0.28826″ pixels (cf. Section 4.2).

Exposures of each target were acquired with a fixed dither pattern (Fig. 2) as eight 120s exposures though the SOFI J filter. The exposure pattern was designed so that this 16 minutes of dithered exposure time sampled many different inter-pixel spacings. As much as was feasible (given observing time constraints) we attempted to acquire all epoch observations at the same hour angle as the very first epoch observation acquired, so as to minimise DCR effects. Each epoch observation was also carried out with a specified reference star positioned within a few pixels of its position when observed on the very first epoch. This ensures all observations are carried out as near differentially as possible.

Seeing conditions over the course of this program varied. Figure 1 shows a histogram of the seeing full-width at half maxmimum for all our astrometric observations. The median seeing was 0.82″, with 80% of data being acquired in seeing conditions between 0.55 and 1.25″.

In addition to these epoch observations, all targets were also observed as they rose and set, so that DCR calibrations for each target could be developed, following the technique described in Tinney et al. (1995); Tinney (1996). The J filter was chosen for these observations as it offers the best contrast between sky- and T dwarf brightness. Typical near-infrared sky colours at La Silla are J–H=1.7, H–K=1.0-2.0 (2.0 for dark, 1.0 for bright) (ESO SOFI on-line documentation). By contrast typical T dwarf colours are -0.5$`<`$J–H$`<`$0.5 and H–K$`<`$0.5 (Burgasser et al., 2002b), which means most T dwarfs are around a magnitude brighter compared to the sky in J, than they are in H or K.

The sample of objects observed is listed in Table 1, along with indications as to which targets were observed at which epochs. SOFI has a nominal gain of 5.6e-/adu, and a nominal read-noise of 14e- per exposure.

### 3.1 Object Names

With the exception of $`ϵ`$ Ind B (Scholz et al., 2003), all the objects discussed in this paper have been discovered by either the 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass), SDSS (www.sdss.org) or DENIS (cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/denis.html) sky surveys, and have been given object names by those surveys, based on their positions in J2000 coordinates. These names have the advantage of being very specific and informative, and the disadvantage of being lengthy and clumsy. Throughout this paper, therefore, we will generally give an object’s complete name when it is first used, and thereafter refer to it (when not confusing to do so) by a shortened 2Mhhmm, SDhhmm or Dhhmm form where hh and mm are the right ascension hour and minute components of its name.

## 4 Analysis

The analysis adopted for these data falls into two main areas: processing to produce linearised, flattened and sky subtracted images, which was quite specific to the SOFI instrument; and astrometric processing of these images, which identically follows that described in Tinney (1993); Tinney et al. (1995); Tinney (1996).

### 4.1 Processing SOFI data

Dark frames and zero-points : Dark frames obtained with SOFI reveal significant structure, which can be broken down into a few components.

1. a significant ($``$50-100 adu peak-to-peak) vertical structure, known as the “shade”, which varies in intensity and shape with the overall level of illumination of the array;
2. a small (1-20 adu) dark current from the instrument and a small readout amplifier glow in each quadrant; and
3. a tiny ($`<`$1 adu) but fixed “ray” pattern left after the previous two are modeled and removed from dark current data.

The shade pattern is of most concern as the remaining fixed patterns are small compared to the sky brightness. Figure 3 shows a dark current image displaying the shade effect, together with a set of vertical medianned profiles through the shade. Unfortunately, this shade profile is not constant - it varies with the intensity of the overall level of illumination of the array during an exposure, meaning one has an unknown zero-point for every pixel in every exposure.

Calibration of the shade was achieved as follows. A small aperture (used to mask the instrument entrance when observing with one of the smaller fields of view) was inserted into the NTT focal plane, and a series of flat fields obtained with varying exposure times. Because only the central quarter of the array is illuminated by this procedure, it is possible to extract a shade profile from the edge of each image. It is also possible to record the level of illumination of the array which produced that shade profile. By performing a least-squares cubic polynomial fit through each pixel of these shade profiles (which correspond to rows on the detector) as a function of array illumination, it is possible to develop a parametrization for the shade profile. Using this parametrization it is a simple matter to produce a shade profile estimate for each data image, and subtract it. The result is an image with zero-point constant across the array.111Sample parameterizations can be found at http://www.aao.gov.au/local/www/cgt/sofi.

Linearity : All infrared detectors are non-linear to some extent. For SOFI, ESO usually recommends keeping sky and target object intensities below 10,000 adu in order to maintain linearity at better than 1%. Unfortunately, such an observing strategy is not useful for astrometry, which demands the largest possible dynamic range to ensure targets (and reference stars) of widely differing magnitudes are usable in widely varying seeing conditions. We therefore calibrated the linearity of SOFI using the same shade profile data obtained above. Once the data have been shade corrected, they can then be used to examine the response of each pixel to a constant light source over widely varying exposure times. Repetition of a ’calibration’ exposure time throughout the sequence allows the lamp’s constancy to be calibrated – usually to within $`\pm `$ 0.5%. A sample of the resulting linearity correction is shown in Fig. 5 for one of the SOFI quadrants. In all cases these tests were performed independently for each quadrant, and the results were always consistent with the same linearity correction for all quadrants. A single correction was therefore derived as the mean of those in each quadrant. Fig. 5 shows that the detector is $``$2.5% non-linear at 20,000adu above bias, but that data can be obtained and linearity corrected even up to 25,000adu.

To linearise a pixel, then, with raw intensity $`I_{ij}`$, it is simply necessary to multiply it by the polynomial P($`I_{ij}`$) = $`a_0+a_1I_{ij}+a_2I_{ij}^2+a_3I_{ij}^3`$. The coefficients adopted were $`a_0=1.0,a_1=0.0,a_2=1.11329\times 10^{10},a_3=2.46799\times 10^{15}`$ for 2000 April - 2001 April, and $`a_0=1.0,a_1=0.0,a_2=8.6124661\times 10^{11},a_3=1.6986849\times 10^{15}`$ for 2001 July - 2002 May.

Inter-quadrant Row Crosstalk : HgCdTe detectors typically show an effect known as inter-quadrant row crosstalk (Finger & Nicolini, 1998). This has the effect that a constant, small fraction of the total flux seen in each row is seen as crosstalk at the same row in all the other quadrants. Correction of this effect is straightforward. The detector is integrated up into a single vertical column, then the two halves of this cut (Y=1-512 and Y=513-1024) are averaged, multiplied by a single cross-talk constant, and subtracted from every column of the detector. We found a crosstalk coefficient of 2.8$`\times `$10-5 worked well.

Flat-fielding  : Flat-fielding was performed using dome flats. Because of the (variable) shade pattern present in every dome flat, NTT staff have developed an observing recipe to obtain a “special” flat-field without a shade pattern present. Or one can used the shade calibration procedure described above to correct standard dome-flat fields. Both were tried for this program and both provided similar results. In the end every run’s data was flattened with a “special” dome flat, as per usual for SOFI observing.

Sky subtraction  : Each group of eight 120s dithered exposures was then used to create a normalised and medianned sky frame, which was re-normalised to each of the twelve observations to perform sky subtraction. So that the data frames would maintain approximate photon-counting errors, an appropriate constant sky level was then added back in to each frame

Astrometric processing : Following this processing then, we have eight bias-subtracted, linearised, cross-talk corrected, flattened and sky-subtracted data frames for each astrometric epoch. These were then subject to further processing (ie. object finding and point-spread function fitting using DAOPHOT, DCR calibration and proper-motion and parallax solution fitting) as eight individual observations, in a manner identical to that described in Tinney (1993); Tinney et al. (1995); Tinney (1996).

### 4.2 Astrometric Calibration of SOFI

Astrometric calibration observations were acquired in USNO Astrometric Calibration Region M (Stone et al., 1999) on 2001 July 12 and 13. These consisted of sixteen 60s exposures (on each night) scattered throughout the 3.2°$`\times `$7.6° region which Stone et al. (1999) have astrometrically calibrated. These were processed identically to our main astrometric targets. Reference catalogue positions were extracted from the USNO ACR catalogue222This data can be obtained from the Vizier service. in SOFI-field-sized regions around each nominal telescope pointing position. These positions were then tangent projected (using the SLALIB library Wallace 1999) to provide reference data sets in arcsecond offsets on the sky for each observation. These were matched against the observed data to derive a set of linear (ie shift, scale and rotate) transformations from the SOFI pixel positions to arcsecond offsets on the sky333This step made extensive use of M.Richmond’s excellent match implementation of the Valdes et al. (1995) object list matching algorithm, which is available at http://acd188a-005.rit.edu/match/. These transformations determine the SOFI plate scale on this night to be 0.28826$`\pm `$0.00003″/pixel, and that the detector pixel’s misalignment with N-S (0.030$`\pm `$0.003°). These data were also analysed to examine the amount of astrometric distortion (ie. variability in the instrument plate scale with position in the field) present in the SOFI optical train. The astrometric calibration data show there is no significant astrometric distortion in the SOFI Large Field optics. The plate scale in the field corners is the same as that in the field center to within 0.1%. The SOFI field can be considered astrometrically flat to 0.1%.

## 5 Results for T dwarfs

Astrometric solutions for our T dwarf targets were evaluated in a manner identical to that used by Tinney et al. (1995). Briefly the procedure is to transform (using a linear transformation with rotation and a scale factor) all the frames for a given object, onto a chosen master frame of good seeing (known to have the detector rows and columns aligned with the cardinal directions to within $`\pm 0.1`$°), using a set of well exposed reference stars which were required to appear in every frame; differential colour refraction (DCR – see Tinney et al. (1995)) coefficients were then evaluated for each of these reference stars (relative to the unknown ‘mean’ DCR coefficient for the reference star set), and the reference frame corrected for DCR; each frame was then re-transformed onto the ‘master’ frame; the DCR coefficient for the program object (relative to the DCR-corrected reference frame) was then evaluated; the program object was DCR corrected; and finally, an astrometric solution in parallax and proper motion was made independently for both the $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ directions, using a linear weighted-least-squares fit. Uncertainties arising from the DCR correction and the residuals about the reference frame transformation for each frame were carried through to this solution fit, so observations taken in poor seeing or with poor signal-to-noise due to cloud autmoatically receive low weight. The final parallax was taken to be the weighted mean of the $`\alpha `$ and $`\delta `$ solutions. Finding charts for our target stars (taken from our SOFI data) showing both the target and reference stars adopted can be seen in Fig. 4.

The resulting relative astrometry is presented in Table 2, the columns of which show; the number of frames (Nf), nights (Nn) and reference stars (Ns) used in each solution; the parallax and proper motion solutions (relative to the background reference stars chosen); and the derived tangential velocity for each target )based on the measured parallax, except for 2MASS0559, for which we adopt the distance of Dahn et al. 2002). Plots of these fits are shown in Fig. 6. The reference stars used to obtain this relative astrometry are typically within $`\pm `$1 mag. of the apparent magnitude of our target T dwarf. At these magnitudes (J=15-18) the reference stars will most commonly be G- to early M type stars at distances of 500-2000pc. Thus although we do not have the photometry available to estimate detailed corrections from relative to absolute parallax, we can estimate with some confidence, that such corrections will generally be less than 1 mas in size, and so not significant in comparison to our random astrometric uncertainties.

It is instructive to examine the root-mean-square residuals obtained for the reference frame stars in our astrometry, since they tell us how precise we can expect the astrometry of our target objects to be. Over the course of our program we found that for a single 120s exposure, the median value of this rms residual was 0.042 pixel or 12.1 mas, with 80% of observations having an rms residual between 6.9 and 20.2 mas. Recall that at each epoch we acquired 8 such observations in a total exposure time of 960s, which would suggest the median precision from a single epoch is 12.1/sqrt(8) = 4.3 mas. Residuals within these groups of eight were somewhat correlated (presumably because they are largely acquired in similar seeing conditions).

The USNO have published astrometry for three T dwarfs: 2MASS0559, SDSS1254 & SDSS1624 (Dahn et al., 2002). While all three were included in our program, insufficient epochs were obtained for 2MASS0559 to measure a parallax. The equivalent relative parallax solution quantities for those we obtained (Table 2), are given by Dahn et al. as; for SDSS1254-01: 84.1$`\pm `$1.9 mas, 496.1$`\pm `$1.8 mas/y, 285.2$`\pm `$0.4°, and for SDSS1624+00 : 90.7$`\pm `$2.3 mas, 383.2$`\pm `$1.9 mas/y, 269.6$`\pm `$0.5°. These independent observations and solutions agree within uncertainties for almost all parameters – the exception being the parallax for SDSS1254, for which the two solutions are different by about 5-$`\sigma `$, though Dahn et al. do comment that with only 1.2 years of data on this target their solution is only considered to be preliminary.

Finally we note that with only 3 epochs of observation per year over two-plus years, there is always the possibility that systematic errors on individual runs may have impacted on our results. For example, a major change in SOFI’s astrometric distortion or a decollimation between the telescope and SOFI on a single run could systematically effect our results. The only way to detect such problems is by detecting a poor match between our astrometric model and the data we obtain, which is difficult with less than 6 epochs. We believe the likelihood of this is small because; (1) exactly the same automated telescope image analysis procedures were used to control the NTT’s primary figure throughout every night of every run, making the chance of an unusual NTT collimation with SOFI unlikely; (2) SOFI’s astrometric distortion (as we have shown above) is tiny, so changes in it can have only negligible effect; (3) SOFI is a Nasmyth mounted instrument, and so is always mounted horizontally and subject only to rotation about its optical axis, greatly reducing the likelihood of flexure within the instrument; and finally (4) because infrared instruments sit in temperature-controlled dewars they suffer almost none of the temperature-dependent flexure and defocus effects present in optical reimaging systems, and they are also much less prone to being opened and modified over the course of an astrometric program. On-going monitoring and independent observations by independent programs are the best way to test for unforeseen systematic errors, and we look forward to checking our results against programs being carried out elsewhere.

## 6 Discussion

### 6.1 Differential Colour Refraction for T dwarfs

An interesting result of the DCR calibrations we performed for our T dwarf targets, was to find that T dwarfs have effective wavelengths in the J-band which are essentially indistinguishable from the ensemble of background reference stars against which their positions are measured. This is shown in Fig. 8 which plots histograms of the DCR coefficients determined for reference stars and programme T dwarfs - the similarities in the ensemble values are clear. (These coefficients were derived using the method described in Tinney 1993 and Tinney 1996. Typical uncertainties in the individual determinations are $`\pm 26`$ mas$`/`$tan(ZA).) As a result, though we have calibrated and applied DCR corrections to our data, such a procedure is not strictly necessary for near-infrared observations of T dwarfs. These observations, therefore, are not rigidly tied to being carried out near the meridian, which adds enormously to the flexibility and efficiency of infrared parallax programmes.

### 6.2 Photometry for L and T dwarfs

There are currently only a few large and systematic photometric databases for late M, L and T dwarfs extant. The first is the photometry from the 2MASS database Cutri et al. 2001, which has the advantage of being a well established photometric system which covers the whole sky, and includes all of our T dwarf targets, and almost of all of the other known L and T dwarfs (Burgasser, 2002a). Unfortunately, the photometry for these objects in the J and Ks 2MASS bands is often near the 2MASS photometric limits, so typical uncertainties of $`\pm `$0.1 mag. or greater are not uncommon. Moreover, because 2MASS does not include an optical passband, colour information has to rely on the J–K colour, which is typically small compared to the photometric precision, as well as giving only a small wavelength “lever arm” on the spectral evolution of L and T dwarfs.

We make use of absolute MJ and MKs values on the 2MASS system compiled by Burgasser (2002a) which is based on the parallaxes presented in Dahn et al. (2002). Dahn et al. (2002) also present optical photometry in the $`I_C`$ passband, and J,H,K photometry in a photometric system approximating that of the CIT system of Elias et al. (1982), as well as data form other work transformed onto this system.

A second extensive database is that compiled by Leggett et al. (2002). This includes Z band photometry (on a UKIRT defined photometric system) as well as J,H,K photometry transformed by the authors onto the MKO photometric system (see Leggett et al. 2002, Section 3 for details). Because these data were acquired with a 4m telescope, their photometric precision is much higher than that for 2MASS. Great care should be taken in inter-comparing these two sets of photometry – the systematic differences between the two photometric systems are very significant. This is particularly true of the Z photometric system of Leggett et al. (2002), which is based on a relatively narrow interference filter (0.851-1.056 $`\mu `$m) used with a HgCdTe infrared array, leading to effective wavelengths for L and T dwarfs of $``$1.0 $`\mu `$m, unlike the more common optical Z-type observations which are based on long-pass filters ($``$0.85 $`\mu `$m) and the declining sensitivity of CCDs at $`>`$1 $`\mu `$m, leading to effective wavelengths $``$0.9 $`\mu `$m. 666Indeed the two are so different that a distinctive distinctive name – Y – for these HgCdTe-based Z magnitudes is being widely adopted. UKIRT Z photometry should not be assumed to be directly comparable with optically based Z photometry. In the discussion that follows, therefore, we will discuss only features in the absolute magnitudes within an individual photometric system. For this reason we do not make use of the more heterogeneous J,H,K compilation of Dahn et al. (2002).

To these data sets we add observations of the recently announced T dwarf $`ϵ`$ Ind B Scholz et al. (2003), which has a mean I=16.7$`\pm `$0.1 and 2MASS photometry of J=11.91$`\pm `$0.04 and Ks=11.21$`\pm `$0.04 (Burgasser, priv.comm.).

### 6.3 Photometric corrections for known binaries

Several of the systems published in the photometric compilations listed above are known to be binaries, having been resolved either from the ground (Koerner et al., 1999; Leggett et al., 2001), or using HST (Martıǹ, Brander & Basri, 1999; Reid et al., 2001; Burgasser et al., 2003a). Unfortunately, not all these systems have measured magnitude differences in all the passbands of interest, so we are forced to estimate magnitudes for the A and B components of these systems based on available colour-colour relationship data. In some cases (especially 2M0850B) these extrapolations are large, and the decomposed magnitudes should be treated as indicative only. Table 3 shows the magnitude differences between each component and the total magnitude of each system, along with estimated spectral types from Burgasser et al. (2003a). Because of the similarity between the effective wavelengths of the HgCdTe-based Z and J bands, we assume that the magnitude differences in Z are the same as those derived at J. We do not differentiate here between UKIRT and 2MASS J and K bands.

2M0746AB, 2M1146AB & 2M0850AB were observed by Reid et al. (2001) in the HST F814W filter from which magnitude differences for the components were derived in the IC passbands. Infrared J-band magnitude differences were then estimated using the L dwarf sequence of the MI versus IC–J colour-magnitude diagram (which has a roughly constant slope). With the exception of 2M0850B, this procedure will be adequate for all the L dwarfs, and those values are shown in Table 3. 2M0850B is an exception because its absolute magnitude at IC is so faint that it must be an early- to mid-T dwarf, rather than an L dwarf. And, as we show in Section 6.5, the colour-magnitude diagram is not even remotely linear across the L-T dwarf transition. For 2M0850B, therefore, we have used the MI for the AB system of Dahn et al. (2002), and the magnitude differences of Reid et al. (2001) to derive for the B component MI = 20.02$`\pm `$0.23. The colour-magnitude diagrams in Section 6.5 then imply IC–J $``$ 5.1$`\pm `$0.2, from which we derive the B component J magnitude difference shown in the Table.

To derive K-band magnitudes for the components of these systems, we have plotted J–Ks versus IC–J for all the L and T dwarfs in Burgasser (2002a) and Dahn et al. (2002) in Figure 9. The data reveal two separate sequences – the L dwarfs in which J–Ks becomes redder along with IC–J, and the T dwarfs in which the reverse holds. The two lines on the plot are linear fits to these two regimes (arbitrarily divided at IC–J=4.4). From these relations we predict J–Ks colours for L and T dwarfs from their I–J colours, and so derive the magnitude differences for each component in Table 3.

D0205AB & D1228AB were both observed by Koerner et al. (1999) in the K band at Keck, and D0205AB was independently observed at UKIRT by Leggett et al. (2001). D1228 was also observed in the J band with HST by Martıǹ, Brander & Basri (1999). D0205 was found to be a pair of objects with equal brightness at K, and in the absence of any other information we assume it to be an equal mass binary. D1228 is a nearly equal mass binary – from the marginal J–K colour difference between the two components we can extrapolate to a magnitude difference between the components at I of 0.48.

2M1225AB, 2M1534AB have been observed by Burgasser et al. (2003a) with HST in the F814W and F1042M filters (the latter enabling the derivation of approximate J magnitude differences for the systems). Once again we use the I–J colours of these objects to extrapolate to K magnitude differences for 2M1225AB’s components. For 2M1534AB the magnitude differences estimated at F1042 are only marginally different from zero, so we assume equal brightnesses in this system at J and K.

### 6.4 Spectral-Type-Magnitude relations for L and T dwarfs

Table 4 lists Burgasser (2002a), Dahn et al. (2002) and Leggett et al. (2002) photometry for our NTT parallax sample, along with the resulting absolute magnitudes in these systems. Also listed are spectral types on the scheme of Burgasser et al. (2002b).

Figure 10 shows plots of spectral type against MZ, MI, MJ and MKs/MK. Also shown are absolute magnitudes for late M and L dwarfs using parallaxes and 2MASS photometry from Dahn et al. (2002) for the 2MASS panels, and parallaxes from Dahn et al. (2002) and UKIRT photometry from Leggett et al. (2002) for the UKIRT panels. The spectral types are on the system of Kirkpatrick et al. (1999) for the M and L dwarfs, and Burgasser et al. (2002b) for the T dwarfs. Known multiple systems are noted with circles, and decomposed into their component magnitudes as discussed above.

The two K-band plots (Fig. 10a and 10b) indicate that in both systems, the L-T transition is marked by a steepening of the spectral-type-magnitude relation. In general, however, the relationship between absolute magnitude at K and spectral type is well behaved for the purpose of estimating absolute magnitudes from spectral types. This is certainly not true in the 2MASS and UKIRT J passbands (Fig. 10c and 10d). Indeed, both sets of data indicate a strong inflection (a “hump”) in the relationship between absolute magnitude and spectral type for early T dwarfs – as a class, the T0-T4 brown dwarfs have absolute magnitudes brighter than the latest L dwarfs by a magnitude or more. Put another way, a simple extrapolation of the spectral-type-magnitude relationship for L dwarfs (eg. that from Dahn et al. (2002) shown in the figure) underestimates the absolute magnitude of the early- to mid-T dwarfs by up to two magnitudes. This “early T hump” has been noted previously (Dahn et al., 2002), though on the basis on fewer T dwarf parallaxes. It has been suggested (Burgasser, 2002a) that binarity could be the cause for early T dwarfs being more luminous than the late L dwarfs. While it is certainly true that the L and T dwarfs which have been resolved as binaries are displaced to apparently high absolute magnitudes when plotted as unresolved objects, the addition of new parallaxes would seem to indicate the over-luminosity of early T dwarfs is a general property, rather than being due to the selection of objects which happen to be binaries. Moreover, the magnitude or more of over-luminosity is too large an effect to be due equal-mass binarity which can produce a brightening of only 0.75 mag. A similar (though possibly less pronounced) inflection is seen in the MZ relation (Fig. 10f), while the MI relation (Fig. 10e) would appear to be almost as monotonic as that at K, though with a more pronounced inflection at the L-T boundary. Having said this, however, 2M0559 continues to appear to be over-luminous compared to the other early- to mid-T dwarfs in the figure. Burgasser et al. (2003a) failed to resolve a binary companion in this system with HST, implying that if it is a binary it must have a separation of less than 0.5 a.u. We also note that it has been suggested (Tsuji & Nakajima, 2003) that the selection of preferentially young objects could produce the “early T hump” – we discuss this further in Section 6.6.2.

There are good physical reasons for expecting a monotonic relationship between effective temperature (Teff) and luminosity (L) in these objects, since these quantities are directly determined by interior (rather than photospheric) properties. However, it must be remembered that as proxies for Teff and luminosity, absolute magnitude in a given passband and spectral type are far from perfect. Spectral typing is in essence an arbitrary allocation of a quantity to an object based on what its spectra look like – there is no guarantee that the relationship between spectral type and Teff (even if monotonic) should not have significant changes in slope. Similarly, the relationship between absolute magnitude in a given passband and luminosity is even more problematic. From the spectra of objects ranging from L to T spectral types, and indeed from their J–K colours (Dahn et al., 2002), we know that significant changes take place in their photospheres. There is significant redistribution of flux in the spectra of brown dwarfs across the L-T transition. We should not be surprised if this results in the relationship between luminosity absolute magnitude in a given passband not only containing changes in slope, but not even being monotonic.

Given our current parallax database, spectral type is a very poor proxy for absolute magnitude in the Z and J bands from mid-L to mid-T spectral types. The sequences in Fig.10 will need to be filled in by many more L and T dwarfs before precise absolute magnitudes can be estimated from spectral types with confidence.

### 6.5 Colour Magnitude Diagrams for L and T dwarfs

Using the same photometry, we can construct a variety of colour-magnitude diagrams. Figure 11 shows such diagrams based around Cousins Ic, UKIRT Z and both UKIRT and 2MASS J,K photometry, while Figure 13 shows similar diagrams for UKIRT and 2MASS J–K colours. The most noticeable feature of these diagrams is how few are actually useful as traditional colour-magnitude diagrams – almost none show the simple monotonic relationships between absolute magnitude and colour which hold for stars and brown dwarfs down to the early L dwarfs.

Fig 11c,d show that I–K colours jumps to the blue by I–K$``$0.5 mag as the L-T transition is crossed at MI$``$19, MK$``$ 13, but then tends redward again for later and later T dwarfs. However, Gl 570D, one of the latest and faintest T dwarfs currently known, never becomes as red as the latest L dwarfs. This blueward jump is particularly pronounced at MI where the absolute magnitudes of L8 and early T dwarfs are indistinguishable. As a result I–K should be considered a poor indicator for determining the absolute magnitude or effective temperature of late L to late T dwarfs. In particular, and luminosity function based on I–K$``$5 will be subject to serious biases which will introduce completely spurious structure into the luminosity function.

Fig 11a,b shows that I–J colour-magnitude diagrams can be considered the “best of a bad bunch” when it comes to the traditional use of colour-magnitude diagrams (i.e. estimating absolute magnitudes from photometric colours), since the cooling curves of brown dwarfs do not reverse in I–J as they do for every other panel of Figs 11 and 13. Even so, between I–J=4 and I–J=5 they show the same pronounced “S-curve” seen in the spectral type data of Fig. 10, with early T dwarfs being up to a magnitude brighter in MJ than late L dwarfs. And, once again we see that 2M0559 appears anomalously bright, suggestion binarity in spite of Burgasser et al. (2003a)’s failure to resolve it with HST..

The Z–J colour-magnitude diagrams (Fig.11e,f) reveal a very steep colour-magnitude relation, with scatter which is significantly larger than the photometric errors. The slope of the colour-magnitude relation is so steep that no meaningful estimate of MZ or MJ can be derived from a Z–J colour. This is not surprising, given the very close effective wavelengths of HgCdTe-based Z and J photometry. There is some evidence for trend at the bottom of this colour-magnitude diagram that at M$`{}_{Z}{}^{}16.5`$ and M$`{}_{Ks}{}^{}14.5`$, Z–J colours becomes bluer for fainter and later-type objects.

Colour magnitude diagrams involving Z–K (Figs 11g-h) and J–K (Figs 13a-d) show an especially pronounced reversal of the brown dwarf cooling curves beyond M$`{}_{K}{}^{}12.5`$, M$`{}_{J}{}^{}14`$ and M$`{}_{Z}{}^{}16`$. This has been noted in J–K colour-magnitude diagrams by several authors (e.g. Burgasser et al. 2002c). Major changes take place in photospheres below the L-T transition, with the result that T dwarfs swap from very red, to very blue, J–K colours. It is interesting that the Z–K diagrams show almost identical behavior, with Z–K colours for the very faintest T dwarfs becoming as blue as Z-K$``$-1. This compares with colours based on the SDSS $`z^{}`$ filter (see eg.Dahn et al. 2002 Fig. 3) which continue to become redder for the latest T dwarfs. This once again clearly demonstrates the considerable difference between CCD-based $`z^{}`$, and the HgCdTe-based Z.

There is a clear warning to astronomers implicit in these diagrams – conclusions reached about luminosity- and mass-functions based on luminosity and/or colours for the L-T effective temperature range are fraught with difficulty. In particular, luminosity functions determined from the colours of objects in field samples will produce completely spurious features in the derived luminosity- and mass-functions, unless the various “bumps and wiggles” in these diagrams are adequately and correctly modeled. (See for example Reid & Gizis (1997)’s demonstration of the formation of a “false” peak in M dwarf luminosity function based on the traditional – and inadequate – parametrization of the M dwarf colour-magnitude relation). Similarly, determining bolometric luminosity functions from apparent magnitudes in cluster-based samples is problematic, as we can expect similar “bumps and wiggles” to be present in the bolometric correction relations for the L and T dwarfs.

Features like these can introduce significant systematic biases into the mass functions derived from even a perfect statistical sample. Actual statistical data with all the added complexities of uncertain age and binarity distributions add yet more complications. Monte Carlo simulations are essential to the interpretation of any luminosity- or mass-function in the L-T effective temperature range. it is important to carefully “reverse” model such functions from sets of mass-function models, through a variety of possible colour-magnitude and bolometric-correction relations (as allowed by the extant data), to sample observational data. Then such artificial data can then be meaningfully compared to statistical samples in the observational plane. Mass- or luminosity functions which do not include such extensive reverse modeling should be treated with the utmost suspicion.

### 6.6 Theoretical Models for L and T dwarfs

Ultra-cool dwarfs are notoriously difficult to model – the components which need to be included in models for L and T dwarfs include (Allard et al., 1997): the effects of tens of millions of molecular transitions in species including H2O, CH4, TiO, VO, CrH, FeH, and a host of others; complex treatments of the line wings of enormously H2 and He pressure-broadened neutral alkali lines like K and Na, Rb and Cs; collision-induced molecular H2 opacity; both the chemistry and opacity involved in the condensation, settling, revapourisation and diffusion of a variety of condensates including liquid Fe, solid VO, and a range of aluminium, calcium, magnesium and titanium bearing refractories; and finally (and least readily modeled of all) the effects of rotation-induced weather on the cloud decks which condensates will form.

Significant progress has been made in recent years on the detailed solution of photospheric models using very large line lists (see Allard et al. (1997) for a review). Probably the largest outstanding problem for modelers of L and T dwarfs is dealing with condensation. Three approximations to this complex situation have currently been implemented. “Dusty” models (eg. the DUSTY model of Allard et al. 2001) assume condensates remain well suspended and in chemical equilibrium where they form in the photosphere. In general such models have been shown to work reasonably well for L dwarfs, suggesting that their cloud layers lie within their photospheres. “Condensation” models (eg. the COND models of Baraffe et al. 2003, and the CLEAR models of Burrows et al. 1997) neglect dust opacities, to simulate the removal of all condensates from the photosphere as they form (most likely through gravitational settling). The “CLOUDY” models of Ackerman & Marley (2001) and Marley et al. (2002) incorporate a model for condensate cloud formation, based on an assumed sedimentation efficiency parameter $`f_{rain}`$.

#### 6.6.1 Colour-magnitude diagrams in J–K and Z–K

Figures 11 and 13 have over-plotted on them a variety of these models, including the DUSTY (Chabrier et al., 2000; Allard et al., 2001) and COND models (Baraffe et al., 2003) for an age of 1 Gyr, and the CLEAR and CLOUDY models as presented in Burgasser et al. (2002c) for $`f_{rain}=3`$ (determined as the best fit for this model in Jupiter’s ammonia cloud deck Marley et al. 2002). As previous studies have shown, DUSTY models reproduce the general features (if not the precise colours) of the cooling curves for L dwarfs, but then proceed to much redder colours than are observed beyond L8. This has been interpreted as indicating that condensates are present in the photosphere of L dwarfs. The COND and CLEAR models reproduce the general features of the cooling curves for late T dwarfs, indicating that at these effective temperatures condensate opacities do not contribute to the radiative transfer, which suggests that the condensate layers have dropped below the photosphere. DUSTY and CLEAR/COND models, therefore, describe the “boundary conditions” to the condensate opacity problem, and are appropriate for the L and late T types respectively. But what about the intermediate case which must be appropriate to early T dwarfs? This is exactly the situation with the sedimentation models of Marley et al. (2002) should be able to address.

Burgasser et al. (2002c) compared their CLOUDY models for $`f_{rain}=3`$ with a 2MASS MJ:J-K colour-magnitude diagram (as we do in Fig. 13). As for the DUSTY models, the CLOUDY models predict the general behaviour of L dwarfs, and then veer towards bluer J–K colours at late T dwarf temperatures. However, this transition does not match the observed sequence, which transitions nearly horizontally between the L dwarf/DUSTY/CLOUDY sequence and late-T dwarf/CLEAR/COND model at MJ$``$14, MKs$``$13. (We note that though the equivalent models are not available in the UKIRT Z,J,K bandpasses, very similar behaviour is seen in Fig. 11, with a clear transition between the L dwarf and late T dwarf sequences.) Burgasser et al. (2002c) suggested that a possible resolution for this discrepancy could be the appearance of uneven cloud cover on the surface of early T dwarfs. This would allow the emergent spectrum to appear as a “mixture” of the CLEAR/COND and CLOUDY spectra. They modeled this by interpolating between their CLEAR and CLOUDY models at effective temperatures of 800 K, 1000 K, 1200 K, 1400 K, 1600 and 1800 K with varying fractions of the two models (ie. 20%,40%,60 & 80%). The tracks for these “mixture” models are shown in Fig. 13 as dotted lines, and suggest that there is a transition sequence between L and T dwarfs at Teff $``$ 1300K. SDSS1021, SDSS1254, 2M1225, $`ϵ`$ Ind B and possibly 2M0850B (though with some uncertainty because of the poor quality of its decomposed secondary flux) fill out this transition region. The status of 2M0559 is unclear. If it is a single object, then it probably represents the ‘top’ of the late T dwarf cooling sequence, which is $`>`$1 mag. brighter in MJ than the bottom of the L dwarf sequence. If however, it is a binary, then the prototype for the ‘top’ of the late T dwarf cooling sequence is probably more like the object 2M1225A or 2M1346 at a spectral type of T5.5-T6. The “transition temperature” indicated by the additional T dwarfs in this work is slightly warmer ($``$1300K) than that found by Burgasser et al. (2002c).

An alternative dust model to the sedimentation models of Marley et al. has been developed by Tsuji & Nakajima (2003). These “Unified Cloudy Models” (UCM) are built around a single thin dust layer in which particles of size greater than a critical radius are removed from the photosphere by sedimentation. This critical radius is parametrized by a critical temperature $`T_{cr}`$ below which dust particles sediment, which is determined by comparing model results to colour-magnitude diagrams. This single model has the advantage of predicting the gross behaviour of brown dwarfs as they transition from L to T spectral types, with a single model. Unfortunately, (Tsuji & Nakajima, 2003, Fig.2) the detailed behaviour of the models does not match observations. In particular, UCM cannot make L dwarf as red or faint in MJ:J–K as they actually appear. Nor does it predict the observed brightening of the “early T dwarf hump” other than as an age-selection effect, which we conclude below, is not the case.

It should be noted, however, that the interpretation of Marley et al. models and data in Fig. 13 in terms of cloud openings (i.e. as providing evidence for the existence of weather in early T dwarfs) is quite dependent on the details present in the Marley et al. (2002) models. An independent test of this conclusion is clearly desirable. Fortunately, Fig. 13 indicates that J and K band time-series photometry can provide that test. The location of a given object on the “transition sequence” will depend critically on its fractional cloud cover. Because this could be expected to change as each brown dwarf rotates, a statistical study of the J-band variability from late L dwarfs to late T dwarfs should find stronger variability in early T dwarfs, than in late L dwarfs or late T dwarfs.

Finally, we note that although the COND models do not do a very good job of predicting the absolute colours of late T dwarfs in Z–J and Z–K (Fig. 11e-h), they do suggest a trend for late T dwarfs to become bluer in both Z–J and Z–K as they get colder and fainter than MJ$``$14.5 and MK$``$14.75. Moreover, the available data suggest this trend is real, though the absolute colours of T dwarfs at these magnitudes are somewhat redder than the models would predict.

#### 6.6.2 The “Early T Hump”

The MJ:IC–J colour-magnitude diagrams shown in Fig. 11a-b indicate a remarkable brightening at MJ for the observed early T dwarfs. Unfortunately, neither the COND nor the DUSTY models indicate why this should be so. The DUSTY models predict an extension of the L dwarf sequence, which we have good reason to believe is not correct, based on the analysis of colour-magnitude diagrams in J–K above. Unfortunately, the COND models also fail to look even remotely like the available data for T dwarfs in Fig. 11a-d. Shortcomings in these models at short wavelengths have been noted by Baraffe et al. (2003), which are thought to be due to an inadequate treatment of the extremely broad wings of the K and Na lines at these wavelengths.

One possible interpretation of the “early T hump” in Fig. 11a-b, is that it could be a gravity effect (Tsuji & Nakajima, 2003). Very young brown dwarfs will have isochrones slightly offset to brighter magnitudes than older brown dwarfs, because of their lower gravities. This effect is particularly pronounced in photospheres in which dust is an important opacity source. It is possible then that the “early T hump” could be produced by the preferential selection of young, bright brown dwarfs.

Fig. 14 plots the same data as that shown in Fig. 11a-b, but now we plot four isochrones spanning 50 Myr-5 Gyr to examine the effects of age. The figure shows that, as expected, the DUSTY models (most appropriate for L dwarfs) show significant offsets in their isochrones of a magnitude or more between 50 Myr and 5 Gyr. These offsets are not as marked for the COND models. Unfortunately, interpreting the “early T hump” as an age effect is severely complicated by the fact that it occurs at exactly the point where there is good evidence to believe neither the DUSTY or COND models are working.

For the L dwarfs and late T dwarfs, the spread in the colour-magnitude diagram is not pronounced, (particularly when known binaries are decomposed), suggestive of the small 100 Myr – 1 Gyr age spread seen in other studies of L and T dwarfs (Dahn et al., 2002; Scholz et al., 2003). It is certainly nowhere near as pronounced as would be necessary to produce the age spread required to account for the more than 1 magnitude brightening of the“early T hump” all by itself. Moreover, there is a definite spectral type trend along the track represented by the “early T hump”, as seen in the spectral-type-magnitude diagrams of Fig. 10 – from the late L dwarfs, through $`ϵ`$ Ind B, SD1254, SD1021 to 2M0559. This same trend is seen in the colour-magnitude diagrams. We interpret this as indicating that the “early T hump” truly is a feature in the cooling curve of brown dwarfs, rather than an artifact of youth and selection.

### 6.7 The Onset of CH4 absorption in Clusters

Methane filters centered on the strong CH4 absorption bands in the H-band have been acquired by a number of observatories for use in their infrared cameras. Given we have now measured just where, in absolute magnitude, the T dwarf class occurs, the question arises, “At what magnitudes will CH4 absorption in young star clusters set in?” Fig. 15 shows UKIRT MJ and MH:J–K colour-magnitude diagrams, along with the DUSTY and COND models at ages from 10 Myr to 5 Gyr. Based on these diagrams, we can conclude that for field T dwarfs, as discovered by the 2MASS and SDSS surveys, CH$`4`$ absorption (corresponding to spectral classes around T2 and later) sets in at at MH$``$13, and somewhat more confusingly at MJ$``$14 – though because of the brightening of “early T hump” at J non-CH4-absorbing L dwarfs will actually be fainter than the earliest CH4 absorbing T dwarfs.

Because the turn on of CH4 absorption is primarily an effect driven by effective temperature, to first order it will occur at the same absolute magnitude in young clusters as it does in the field. Looked at in slightly more detail, however, we can see that for a given colour in Fig. 15, there is a small offset to brighter magnitudes for younger objects – in the DUSTY atmosphere case a 10 Myr dwarf at the end of the L8 sequence will be $``$1.0 mag. brighter than a 1 Gyr dwarf of the same colour and effective temperature, and 1.3 mag brighter than a 5 Gyr dwarf. In the COND case the equivalent differences are 1.3 and 1.7 magnitudes. The likely ages for our field T dwarfs will be somewhere in the range 100 Myr-1 Gyr (Dahn et al., 2002; Scholz et al., 2003). This would suggest that in clusters like IC 2391 or IC 2602 of age 10-20 Myr at d$``$150 pc the absolute magnitude for CH4 onset will be MH$``$12-12.5, or equivalently H$``$18-18.5. For older clusters like the Pleiades (100 Myr, d$``$125 pc) these numbers are more like MH$``$12.5-13 or H$``$18-18.5.Both of these are eminently reachable magnitude limits with wide-field cameras on 4m-class telescopes, suggesting that CH4 imaging may be a powerful tool for easily conducting an unbiased census of T dwarfs in large open clusters. Similarly for more compact, but distant clusters, like Trapezium ($``$25 Myr, 450 pc) observations at H$``$20-20.5 are tractable over the fields-of-view required on 8m-class telescopes.

Fig. 15 also has implications for the interpretation of potential cluster membership. For example, Zapatero Osorio et al. (2002) have found a T6 dwarf in the direction of the $`\sigma `$ Orionis cluster. Fig. 15 suggests that a field brown dwarf of this spectral type will have MH=15.0$`\pm `$0.5. For the much younger age of $`\sigma `$ Orionis (1-8 Myr Zapatero Osorio et al. 2002) this will be more like MH=14.0$`\pm `$0.5, which would imply a distance to the $`\sigma `$ Ori J053810.1-023626 T6 dwarf of 192$`\pm `$50 pc – more consistent with being a foreground object than a member of the cluster at d=352 pc (Perryman et al., 1997).

### 6.8 Colour-Magnitude & Spectral-Type-Magnitude relations for L and T dwarfs

Figures 10 and 11 have over-plotted on some of their panels high-order polynomial fits to the weighted (and binary decomposed) data. As inspection of the figures shows, these fits are not always particularly successful at modeling the extremely complex behaviour of these cooling curves in the observed passbands. Nonetheless, in the absence of working atmospheric models the fits may be a useful tool, so long as their weaknesses are acknowledged. We therefore provide the coefficients for these fits, and the root-mean-square scatter about the fits in Table 5.

## 7 Conclusion

We have shown that high precision parallaxes can be obtained with common-user near-infrared cameras using techniques very similar to those used in optical CCD astrometry. The new generation of large format infrared imagers based on HAWAII1 (1K) and HAWAII2 (2K) HgCdTe arrays, and the new generation of large format InSb arrays, offer exciting prospects for the astrometry of cool brown dwarfs in the future. Due to their infrared methane absorption bands, T dwarfs have quite similar effective wavelengths to the ensemble of background reference stars, which makes the correction of differential colour refraction effects considerably easier. The “early T hump” (i.e. the brightening at the J band of early T dwarfs relative to late L dwarfs) appears to be a feature of brown dwarf cooling curves, rather than an effect of binarity or age. And finally, these data imply that detection of T dwarfs in clusters can be made directly at tractable magnitudes in the H-band, opening the way to a new generation of cluster mass function studies based on the powerful technique of CH4 differential imaging.

The authors gratefully acknowledge support for this program from the Australian Goverment’s Access to Major Research Facilities Program (grants 99/00-O-15 & 01/02-O-02), and the AAO Director Dr B.Boyle. CGT would like to thank Dr Joss Hawthorn for his assistance with an early draft. Publication funds were provided through support for HST proposal 8563, and AJB acknowledges support by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-01137.01. Both are provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. JDK acknowledges the support of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, which is operated under contract with NASA. This publication makes use of data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by NASA and the NSF. Finally, we would like to thank Dr Hugh Harris for a helpful and efficient referee’s report.


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# Field theories of paramagnetic Mott insulators

## 1 INTRODUCTION

In a recent article (intended for an audience of experimentalists), the author has reviewed arguments that many aspects of the physics of the cuprate superconductors can be understood by using their proximity to paramagnetic Mott insulators. Further, a distinction was made between Mott insulators with collinear and non-collinear spin correlations, and it was argued that current experimental evidence suggests that we need only consider the collinear class. A phenomenological description of the ground states and excitations of these classes of Mott insulators was provided, along with a discussion of their experimental implications. A more technical discussion (intended for theorists) of such insulators, along with a description of the effective field theories which describe their low energy properties appears in Ref. . Here, we briefly recall the derivation and properties of the effective field theory of Mott insulators with collinear spin correlations, which is expressed in terms of a compact U(1) gauge field. The non-collinear class leads naturally to a $`Z_2`$ gauge theory, but we will not consider it here. The reader is referred to these previous reviews  for complete citations to the literature.

## 2 Compact U(1) gauge theory of Mott insulators

We focus on Mott insulators on a $`d`$ dimensional bipartite lattice of sites $`j`$. The SU(2) spin operator $`𝐒_j`$ on site $`j`$ at imaginary time $`\tau `$ can be written as

$$𝐒_j(\tau )=\eta _jS𝐧(r_j,\tau );$$
(1)
here $`\eta _j=\pm 1`$ on the two sublattices, $`r_j`$ is the spatial co-ordinate of site $`j`$, $`𝐧`$ is a unit length vector in spin space, and $`S`$ is the (integer or half-odd-integer) angular momentum of each spin. The antiferromagnetic exchange interaction between near neighbor spins implies that $`𝐧(r_j,\tau )`$ will be a slowly varying function of its spacetime arguments. A standard analysis of the coherent state path integral of over the SU(2) $`𝐒_j`$ spins shows that the low energy quantum fluctuations are described by the following partition function

$`𝒵`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }𝒟𝐧(r,\tau )\delta (𝐧^2(r,\tau )1)\mathrm{exp}[iS{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\eta _j{\displaystyle }d\tau 𝒜_\tau (𝐧(r_j,\tau ))`$ (2)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2gc}}{\displaystyle }d^drd\tau ((_\tau 𝐧)^2+c^2(_r𝐧)^2)],`$
where $`c`$ is the spin-wave velocity, and $`g`$ is a coupling constant which controls the strength of the quantum fluctuations. Excluding the first Berry phase term, this is the action of the O(3) non-linear sigma model in $`d+1`$ spacetime dimensions. Here we are primarily interested in the consequences of the Berry phases: $`𝒜_\tau (𝐧(\tau ))d\tau `$ is defined to be the oriented area of the spherical triangle defined by $`𝐧(\tau )`$, $`𝐧(\tau +d\tau )`$, and an arbitrary reference point $`𝐧_0`$ (which is usually chosen to be the north pole).

The theory (2) can be considered to be the “minimal model” of antiferromagnets. In dimensions $`d>1`$ it has at least two phases: at small $`g`$ there is the conventional magnetically ordered “Néel” phase with $`𝐧0`$, while at large $`g`$ there is a “quantum disordered” paramagnetic phase which preserves spin rotation invariance with $`𝐧=0`$. We are especially interested here in the nature of this paramagnetic state. In this section, we will manipulate $`𝒵`$ in this large $`g`$ regime, and derive an alternative formulation which allows easier computation of the integral over the Berry phases.

The key to an analysis of the large $`g`$ regime is a better understanding of the nature of $`𝒜_\tau `$. We will see that $`𝒜_\tau `$ behaves in many respects like the time-component of a compact U(1) gauge field, and indeed, this accounts for the suggestive notation. All physical results should be independent of the choice of the reference point $`𝐧_0`$, and it is easy to see by drawing triangles on the surface of a sphere that changes in $`𝐧_0`$ amount to gauge transformations of $`𝒜_\tau `$. If we change $`𝐧_0`$ to $`𝐧_0^{}`$, then the resulting $`𝒜_\tau ^{}`$ is related to $`𝒜_\tau `$ by

$$𝒜_\tau ^{}=𝒜_\tau _\tau \varphi (\tau )$$
(3)
where $`\varphi (\tau )`$ measures the oriented area of the spherical triangle defined by $`𝐧(\tau )`$, $`𝐧_0`$, and $`𝐧_0^{}`$. Furthermore, as we will discuss more completely below, the area of any spherical triangle is uncertain modulo $`4\pi `$, and this accounts for the ‘compactness’ of the U(1) gauge theory.

We proceed with our analysis of $`𝒵`$. First, we discretize the gradient terms of the O(3) sigma model. We will limit our considerations here to antiferromagnets on $`d`$ dimensional cubic lattices, but similar considerations apply to other bipartite lattices. We also discretize the imaginary time direction, and (by a slight abuse of notation) use the same index $`j`$ to refer to the sites of a $`d+1`$ dimensional cubic lattice in spacetime. On such a lattice we can rewrite (2) as

$$Z=\underset{j}{}d𝐧_j\delta (𝐧_j^21)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{2g}\underset{j,\mu }{}𝐧_j𝐧_{j+\widehat{\mu }}iS\underset{j}{}\eta _j𝒜_{j\tau }\right),$$
(4)
where the sum over $`\mu `$ extends over the $`d+1`$ spacetime directions. We have also dropped unimportant factors of the lattice spacing and the spin-wave velocity in (4).

As noted above, we are especially interested here in the large $`g`$ regime where there are strong fluctuations of the $`𝐧_j`$. There are strong cancellations from the Berry phases between different spin configurations in this regime, and so the second term in $`Z`$ has to be treated with great care. We will do this by promoting the field $`𝒜_{j\mu }`$ to an independent degree of freedom, while integrating out the $`𝐧_j`$. Notice that we have now introduced all $`d+1`$ components of the compact U(1) gauge field with the index $`\mu `$, while only the $`\mu =\tau `$ component appears explicitly in (4). The remaining components appear naturally as suitable degrees of freedom when we integrate the $`𝐧_j`$ out. Formally, the integration over the $`𝐧_j`$ can be done by introducing new ‘dummy’ variables $`A_{j\mu }`$ and rewriting (4) by introducing factors of unity on each link; this leads to

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j\mu }{}dA_{j\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left(i2S\underset{j}{}\eta _jA_{j\tau }\right)\underset{j}{}d𝐧_j\delta (𝐧_j^21)\delta (𝒜_{j\mu }/2A_{j\mu })}`$ (5)
$`\times \mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2g}}{\displaystyle \underset{j,\mu }{}}𝐧_j𝐧_{j+\widehat{\mu }}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j\mu }{}dA_{j\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left(𝒮_A(A_{j\mu })i2S\underset{j}{}\eta _jA_{j\tau }\right)}.`$
In the first expression, if the integral over the $`A_{j\mu }`$ is performed first, we trivially return to (4); however, in the second expression we perform the integral over the $`𝐧_j`$ variables first, at the cost of introducing an unknown effective action $`𝒮_A`$ for the $`A_{j\mu }`$. In principle, evaluation of $`𝒮_A`$ may be performed order-by-order in a “high temperature” expansion in $`1/g`$: we match correlators of the $`A_{j\mu }`$ flux with those of the $`𝒜_{j\mu }`$ flux evaluated in the integral over the $`𝐧_j`$ with positive weights determined only by the $`1/g`$ term in (4). Rather than undertaking this laborious calculation, we can guess essential features of the effective action $`𝒮_A`$ from some general constraints. First, correlations in the $`𝐧_j`$ decay exponentially rapidly for large $`g`$ (with a correlation length $`1/\mathrm{ln}(g)`$), and so $`𝒮_A`$ should be local. Second, it should be invariant under the lattice form of the gauge transformation (3)

$$A_{j\mu }^{}=A_{j\mu }\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu \varphi _j/2$$
(6)
associated with the change in the reference point on the unit sphere from $`𝐧_0`$ to $`𝐧_0^{}`$, with $`\varphi _j`$ equal to the area of the spherical triangle formed by $`𝐧_j`$, $`𝐧_0`$ and $`𝐧_0^{}`$. Finally the area of any triangle on the sphere is uncertain modulo $`4\pi `$ and so the effective action should be invariant under

$$A_{j\mu }A_{j\mu }+2\pi .$$
(7)
The simplest local action which is invariant under (6) and (7) is that of compact U(1) quantum electrodynamics and so we have

$$Z=\underset{j\mu }{}dA_{j\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{e^2}\underset{\mathrm{}}{}\mathrm{cos}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu A_{j\nu }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu A_{j\mu }\right)i2S\underset{j}{}\eta _jA_{j\tau }\right),$$
(8)
for large $`g`$; comparison with the large $`g`$ expansion shows that the coupling $`e^2g^2`$. In (8), $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu `$ is the discrete lattice derivative along the $`\mu `$ direction, and the sum over $`\mathrm{}`$ extends over all plaquettes of the $`d+1`$ dimensional cubic lattice—both notations are standard in the lattice gauge theory literature.

The first term in the action (8) is, of course, the standard ‘Maxwell’ term of a compact U(1) gauge field. In this language, the Berry phase has the interpretation of a $`J_\mu A_\mu `$ coupling to a fixed matter field with ‘current’ $`J_\mu =2S\delta _{\mu \tau }`$. This corresponds to static matter with charges $`\pm 2S`$ on the two sublattices. It is this matter field which will crucially control the nature of the ground state.

The remaining analysis of $`Z`$ depends upon the spatial dimensionality $`d`$. In $`d=1`$, a dual model of (8) is solvable, and the results are in complete accord with those obtained earlier by Bethe ansatz and bosonization analyses of spin chains. We will consider the $`d=2`$ case in the section below. There has been relatively little discussion of the $`d=3`$ case (which exhibits both confining and deconfining phases of the gauge theory), and this remains an important avenue for future research.

## 3 Duality mapping in $`d=2`$

As is standard in duality mappings, we first rewrite the partition function in $`2+1`$ spacetime dimensions by replacing the cosine interaction in (8) by a Villain sum over periodic Gaussians:

$$Z=\underset{\{q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\}}{}\underset{j\mu }{}dA_{j\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{2e^2}\underset{\mathrm{}}{}\left(ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu A_{j\lambda }2\pi q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\right)^2i2S\underset{j}{}\eta _jA_{j\tau }\right),$$
(9)
where $`ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }`$ is the total antisymmetric tensor in three dimensions, and the $`q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }`$ are integers on the links of the dual cubic lattice, which pierce the plaquettes of the direct lattice. Throughout this subsection we will use the index $`\overline{ȷ}`$ to refer to sites of this dual lattice, while $`j`$ refers to the direct lattice on sites on which the spins are located.

We will now perform a series of exact manipulations on (9) which will lead to a dual interface model . This dual model has only positive weights—this fact, of course, makes it much more amenable to a standard statistical analysis. This first step in the duality transformation is to rewrite (9) by the Poisson summation formula:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{\{q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\}}{}}\mathrm{exp}`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2e^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left(ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu A_{j\lambda }2\pi q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\right)^2\right)`$ (10)
$`={\displaystyle \underset{\{a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\}}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\overline{ȷ}}{}}a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^2i{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{}}ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu A_{j\lambda }\right),`$
where $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }`$ (like $`q_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }`$) is an integer-valued vector field on the links of the dual lattice (here, and below, we drop overall normalization factors in front of the partition function). Next, we write the Berry phase in a form more amenable to duality transformations. Choose a ‘background’ $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }=a_{\overline{ȷ}}^0`$ flux which satisfies

$$ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu a_{\overline{ȷ}\lambda }^0=\eta _j\delta _{\mu \tau },$$
(11)
where $`j`$ is the direct lattice site in the center of the plaquette defined by the curl on the left-hand-side. Any integer-valued solution of (11) is an acceptable choice for $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0`$, and a convenient choice is shown in Fig 1.

Using (11) to rewrite the Berry phase in (9), applying (10), and shifting $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }`$ by the integer $`2Sa_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0`$, we obtain a new exact representation of $`Z`$ in (9):

$$Z=\underset{\{a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\}}{}\underset{j\mu }{}dA_{j\mu }\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{e^2}{2}\underset{\overline{ȷ},\mu }{}(a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }2Sa_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0)^2i\underset{\mathrm{}}{}ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu A_{j\lambda }\right).$$
(12)
The integral over the $`A_{j\mu }`$ can be performed independently on each link, and its only consequence is the imposition of the constraint $`ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu a_{\overline{ȷ}\lambda }=0`$. We solve this constraint by writing $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }`$ as the gradient of a integer-valued ‘height’ $`h_{\overline{ȷ}}`$ on the sites of the dual lattice, and so obtain

$$Z=\underset{\{h_{\overline{ȷ}}\}}{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{e^2}{2}\underset{\overline{ȷ},\mu }{}(\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu h_{\overline{ȷ}}2Sa_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0)^2\right).$$
(13)
This is the promised 2+1 dimensional interface, or height, model in almost its final form.

The physical properties of (13) become clearer by converting the “frustration” $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0`$ in (13) into offsets for the allowed height values. This is done by decomposing $`a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0`$ into curl and divergence free parts and writing it in terms of new fixed fields, $`𝒳_{\overline{ȷ}}`$ and $`𝒴_{j\mu }`$ as follows:

$$a_{\overline{ȷ}\mu }^0=\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu 𝒳_{\overline{ȷ}}+ϵ_{\mu \nu \lambda }\mathrm{\Delta }_\nu 𝒴_{j\lambda }.$$
(14)
The values of these new fields are shown in Fig 2.

Inserting (14) into (13), we can now write the height model in its simplest form

$$Z_h=\underset{\{H_{\overline{ȷ}}\}}{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{e^2}{2}\underset{\overline{ȷ}}{}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_\mu H_{\overline{ȷ}}\right)^2\right),$$
(15)
where

$$H_{\overline{ȷ}}h_{\overline{ȷ}}2S𝒳_{\overline{ȷ}}$$
(16)
is the new height variable we shall work with. Notice that the $`𝒴_{j\mu }`$ have dropped out, while the $`𝒳_{\overline{ȷ}}`$ act only as fractional offsets (for $`S`$ not an even integer) to the integer heights. From (16) we see that for half-odd-integer $`S`$ the height is restricted to be an integer on one of the four sublattices, an integer plus 1/4 on the second, an integer plus 1/2 on the third, and an integer plus 3/4 on the fourth; the fractional parts of these heights are as shown in Fig 2a; the steps between neighboring heights are always an integer plus 1/4, or an integer plus 3/4. For $`S`$ an odd integer, the heights are integers on one square sublattice, and half-odd-integers on the second sublattice. Finally for even integer $`S`$ the offset has no effect and the height is an integer on all sites. We discuss these classes of $`S`$ values in turn in the following subsections.

### 3.1 $`S`$ even integer

In this case the offsets $`2S𝒳_{\overline{ȷ}}`$ are all integers, and (15) is just an ordinary three dimensional height model which has been much studied in the literature. Unlike the two-dimensional case, three-dimensional height models generically have no roughening transition, and the interface is always smooth. With all heights integers, the smooth phase breaks no lattice symmetries. So square lattice antiferromagnets with $`S`$ even integer can have a paramagnetic ground state with a spin gap and no broken symmetries. This is in accord with the exact ground state for a $`S=2`$ antiferromagnet on the square lattice found by Affleck et al., the AKLT state .

### 3.2 $`S`$ half-odd-integer

Now the heights of the interface model can take four possible values, which are integers plus the offsets on the four square sublattices shown in Fig 2a. As in Section 3.1, the interface is always smooth i.e. any state of (15) has a fixed average interface height $`_{\overline{ȷ}}H_{\overline{ȷ}}`$, and any well-defined value for this average height breaks the uniform shift symmetry of the height model under which $`H_{\overline{ȷ}}H_{\overline{ȷ}}\pm 1`$. After accounting for the height offsets, we will see below that any smooth interface must also break a lattice symmetry with the development of bond order: this allows a number of distinct spin gap ground states of the lattice antiferromagnet.

It is useful, first, to obtain a simple physical interpretation of the interface model in the language of the $`S=1/2`$ antiferromagnet . From Fig 2a it is clear that nearest neighbor heights can differ either by 1/4 or 3/4 (modulo integers). To minimize the action in (15), we should choose the interface with the largest possible number of steps of $`\pm 1/4`$. However, the interface is frustrated, and it is not possible to make all steps $`\pm 1/4`$ and at least a quarter of the steps must be $`\pm 3/4`$. Indeed, there is a precise one-to-one mapping between interfaces with the minimal number of $`\pm 3/4`$ steps (we regard interfaces differing by a uniform integer shift in all heights as equivalent) and the dimer coverings of the square lattice: the proof of this claim is illustrated in Fig 3.

We identify each dimer with a singlet valence bond between the spins (the ellipses in Fig 2), and so each interface corresponds to a quantum state with each spin locked in the a singlet valence bond with a particular nearest neighbor. Fluctuations of the interface in imaginary time between such configurations correspond to quantum tunneling events between such dimer states, and an effective Hamiltonian for this is provided by the quantum dimer model .

The nature of the possible smooth phases of the interface model are easy to determine from the above picture and by standard techniques from statistical theory . Interfaces with average height $`H_{\overline{ȷ}}=1/8,3/8,5/8,7/8`$ (modulo integers) correspond to the four-fold degenerate bond-ordered states in Fig 4a, while those with $`H_{\overline{ȷ}}=0,1/4,1/2,3/4`$ (modulo integers) correspond to the four-fold degenerate plaquette bond-ordered states in Fig 4b.

All other values of $`H_{\overline{ȷ}}`$ are associated with eight-fold degenerate bond-ordered states with a superposition of the orders in Fig 4a and b.

Support for the class of bond-ordered states described above has appeared in a number of numerical studies of $`S=1/2`$ antiferromagnets in $`d=2`$ which have succeeded in moving from the small $`g`$ Néel phase to the large $`g`$ paramagnet. These include studies on the honeycomb lattice , on the planar pyrochlore lattice , on square lattice models with ring-exchange and easy-plane spin symmetry , and square lattice models with SU($`N`$) symmetry .

### 3.3 $`S`$ odd integer

This case is similar to that $`S`$ half-odd-integer, and we will not consider it in detail. The Berry phases again induce bond order in the spin gap state, but this order need only lead to a two-fold degeneracy.

## 4 Conclusions

The primary topic discussed in this paper has been the effective field theory of paramagnetic Mott insulators with collinear spin correlations. This field theory is the compact U(1) gauge theory in (8), and applies in all spatial dimensions. We also reviewed duality mappings of (8) which are special to $`d=2`$ spatial dimensions, and mapped the theory onto the interface model (15). Finally, we reiterate that paramagnetic Mott insulators with non-collinear spin correlations are described by a $`Z_2`$ gauge theory which has not been presented here.


text:
# Two-Photon Interference without Bunching Two Photons

## Abstract

We report an interference experiment in which the two-photon entangled state interference cannot be pictured in terms of the overlap and bunching of two individual photons on a beamsplitter. We also demonstrate that two-photon interference, or photon bunching effect on a beamsplitter, does not occur if the two-photon Feynman amplitudes are distinguishable, even though individual photons do overlap on a beamsplitter. Therefore, two-photon interference cannot be viewed as interference of two individual photons, rather it should be viewed as two-photon or biphoton interfering with itself. The results may also be useful for studying decoherence management in entangled two-qubit systems as we observe near complete restoration of quantum interference after the qubit pairs, generated by a femtosecond laser pulse, went through certain birefringent elements.

Two-photon quantum interference effects in spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) klyshko  fields have been playing an important role from the study of fundamental problems of quantum physics eprb  to recent demonstrations of quantum cryptography gisin  due to the entanglement between the two down-converted photons.

Among many different quantum interference effects in SPDC, the observation of null (or close to zero) coincidence counts between the detectors placed at the two output ports of a beamsplitter, when two photons of SPDC are brought back together on the beamsplitter from the different input ports at the same time, has attracted a lot of attention over the years. It was first observed by Shih and Alley first  and later by Hong, Ou, and Mandel second . This effect, which we refer to as SA/HOM effect, has the following formal interpretation: The two-photon interference occurs because the two two-photon amplitudes leading to a coincidence count (both photons are reflected at the beamsplitter, r-r, or both photons are transmitted at the beamsplitter, t-t) become indistinguishable, even in principle, and cancel each out when the photons arrive the beamsplitter simultaneously. Due to the destructive interference (because each photon accumulates $`i`$ phase shift upon reflection at the beamsplitter) between r-r and t-t amplitudes, null coincidence counts are expected second ; kwiat1 .

This formal interpretation is, however, always accompanied by a physical picture that two individual photons somehow become bunched together at the beamsplitter when they arrive at the same time. Since now bunched two photons leave the beamsplitter from the same output port, null coincidence is expected. Due to this picture, it is indeed quite common for people to think that two photons must overlap in time at the beamsplitter for these types of two-photon interference effects to occur pittman1 . Such a picture, however, gives too much credit for SA/HOM effect to a simple linear optical beamsplitter since it implies some types of local nonlinear interactions.

We now ask: Is the overlap of the two down-converted SPDC photons indeed necessary for SA/HOM effect? Pittman et al. first reported an experiment which dealt with this question pittman . In their experiment, a delay, which is bigger than the individual photons’ coherence times, introduced to one photon before the beamsplitter is compensated by twice the delay introduced to its twin photon after the beamsplitter (postponed compensation). They were then able to observe SA/HOM effect even though the two photons did not overlap at the beamsplitter. However, the laser which pumps the SPDC process must have coherence time much bigger than the delay introduced between the photon pairs for Pittman et al.’s scheme to work. In fact, a cw Argon ion laser, which had several orders of magnitude bigger coherence time than the delay time, was used in their experiment. Since it is known that the entangled photon pair of SPDC collectively has the properties of the pump photon, it may be said that the SPDC photons do overlap at the beamsplitter within the coherence time of the pump photon in Pittman et al.’s scheme. Thus, Pittman et al.’s experiment does not provide us with a clear answer to the question.

In this paper, we wish to report an experiment which conclusively demonstrates that the ‘photons overlapping and bunching at the beamsplitter’ picture is not a valid explanation of general SA/HOM effect (whether ‘photons’ refer to the pump photons or the SPDC photons). In this experiment, the two photon-wavepackets not only never overlap at the beamsplitter but also the arrival time difference between the photon pair at the beamsplitter is much bigger than the coherence time of the pump photon (pulse). Therefore the ‘photon bunching’ picture is simply not applicable to this scheme. We also present an experiment in which the SPDC photons do overlap at the beamsplitter, but SA/HOM interference does not (and cannot) occur. The quantum mechanical picture based on in(distinguishability) of ‘two-photon amplitudes’, however, correctly predicts the presence(absence) of the interference.

The basic idea of the experiment can be seen in Fig. 1. The photon pair is generated from a 3 mm thick type-II BBO crystal, with its optic axis oriented vertically, pumped by an ultrafast laser pulse with coherence time of approximately 120 fsec. The pump pulse, vertically polarized, has the central wavelength of 390 nm and the wavelengths of the SPDC photons are centered at 780 nm. As in Ref. kwiat , we consider the intersections of the cones made by the e- and o-rays exiting the BBO crystal. In each of these two directions, a photon of either polarization (horizontal or vertical) may be found, with the orthogonal polarization found in the conjugate photon (i.e., individual photons are unpolarized) note .

Each photon then passes through a 20 mm long quartz rod (QR1 and QR2), which generates a relative group delay between the two photons, depending on the polarization of the photon and the orientation of the optic axis of the quartz rod. The polarization of one of the photons is then flipped by a $`45^{}`$ oriented half-wave plate (HWP). The interferometer is completed by a polarizing beamsplitter (PBS) and the delay between the two arms is introduced by moving one of the two trombone prisms (P1 and P2). Photon pairs are then detected by two single-photon counting modules (D1 and D2) after passing through polarizers (A1 and A2). In front of each detectors, a 20 nm FWHM interference filter is introduced to reduce background noise. The outputs from the two detectors were fed to a time-to-amplitude converter (TAC) and the TAC output was analyzed by a multi-channel analyzer with a coincidence window set to 3 nsec.

Let us first consider the case in which SA/HOM effect is observed even though the photons never overlap at the beamsplitter (the arrival time difference between the photons at the beamsplitter is much greater than the coherence times of the pump photon and the SPDC photons). This case can be realized by setting the optic axes of both QR1 and QR2 vertically. As explained before, there are two possibilities for the polarization state photon pair; $`|H_o|V_e`$ or $`|V_e|H_o`$. $`|H`$ and $`|V`$ refer to the orientation of the polarization of the photon, horizontal and vertical, respectively and the subscripts $`e`$ and $`o`$ refer to whether the photon belongs to the e-ray or o-ray of the crystal, initially. For example, $`|H_o`$ refers to the photon polarized horizontally and belongs to the o-ray of the crystal. Note, however, that $`|H_e`$ can never occur due to the orientation of the BBO crystal.

Since the optic axes of both quartz rods are oriented vertically (i.e., fast axis oriented horizontally), a horizontally polarized photon experiences relatively less group delay with respect to the vertically polarized its twin. This relative delay is calculated to be approximately $`T630`$ fsec for 20 mm long quartz rods used in this experiments. This delay $`T`$ is much bigger than 130 fsec pump pulse coherence time and the coherence times of the SPDC photons which are defined by the bandwidth of the interference filters: $`\tau \lambda ^2/(c\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda )100`$ fsec. Note that the delay $`T`$ is different from the relative delay between the two arms of the interferometer which is introduced by moving P1.

This situation is well represented in the Feynman-like space-time diagram shown in Fig. 2(a). Since the HWP transforms the polarization state $`|H|V`$, there are only two possible two-photon amplitudes: both photons reflected (r-r) or both photons transmitted (t-t). It is not hard to see that the arrival time difference between the photon pair at the beamsplitter, $`T`$, is much bigger than both the coherence times of the photons themselves, $`\tau `$, and the pump pulse. However, if the both arms of the interferometer have the same length (P1 delay = 0 fsec), the amplitudes r-r and t-t cannot be distinguished by the arrival times of the photons (even with infinitely fast photodetectors). The only distinguishing information for the two amplitudes is in their polarization and it can be erased by setting the polarization analyzers either at A1/A2 = $`45^{}/45^{}`$ or at $`45^{}/45^{}`$ eraser . Therefore, even though the two photons never overlap at the beamsplitter and the arrival time difference is much bigger than the pump coherence time, SA/HOM effect may still occur. This is because the SA/HOM effect, in general, is the result of indistinguishability between two two-photon amplitudes but not due to ‘photon bunching at beamsplitter’ effect.

We can also consider when both QR1 and QR2 are horizontally oriented. In this case, nothing is changed except that the delays experienced by each photons are reversed. The two-photon amplitudes for this case can be seen in Fig. 2(b). It is clear that the two-photon amplitudes remain indistinguishable however the order in which the detectors fire has reversed. In Fig. 2(a), D2 always fires before D1 by time $`T`$. In Fig. 2(b), D1 always fires before D2 by the same amount of time.

The experimental data for these two cases are shown in Fig. 3. When taking the data, we fixed the orientations of the quartz rods and scanned the interferometer arm delay by moving the trombone prism P1. This procedure was repeated for different orientations of quartz rods for two different analyzer settings: A1/A2 = $`45^{}/45^{}`$ and $`45^{}/45^{}`$. The observed visibilities are higher than the classical limit (50%) as well as the limit for the Bell-inequality violation (71%) which clearly establishes that the observed interference is of quantum origin.

Let us now consider the case in which two down-converted SPDC photons do overlap at the beamsplitter, yet no quantum interference (SA/HOM effect) can occur. To consider this case, we need to choose orientations of the quartz rods other than both vertical and horizontal. Here we consider QR1 = V and QR2 = H. In this case, the photon pair experiences the same group delay in both arms of the interferometer because the photon pair has the polarization state $`|H|V`$ or $`|V|H`$. The Feynman diagram for this case can be seen in Fig. 4(a) and Fig. 4(b). It is clear that the individual photons do overlap at the beamsplitter for both r-r and t-t amplitudes. However, the two amplitudes are intrinsically distinguishable because if we had infinitely fast detectors, the pump pulse would act as a clock and we would then be able to distinguish the two amplitudes. However, should SA/HOM effect be a result of ‘photon bunching’, a dip or peak in coincidence counts should occur. We have done this experiment and observed no interference for any polarizer settings, see Fig. 4(c). This clearly shows that the photon bunching picture often used in literature is indeed incorrect in general and should not be used whenever possible.

Note that it is, however, possible to observe interference if the pump pulse coherence time is bigger than $`T`$ in Fig. 4. The uncertainty provided by a long coherence time of the pump pulse would then make the two amplitudes indistinguishable, thus leading to interference. We are then back to the situation where the photon bunching picture and the quantum amplitude picture are both valid. This situation is then similar to Pittman et al’s scheme. It is therefore necessary that all relevant coherence times should be much smaller than the photon arrival time difference at the beamsplitter to be able to make a clear distinction between the two pictures.

To summarize, we reported a quantum interference experiment in which two-photon quantum interference was observed even though the photon pair arrival time difference at the beamsplitter was much bigger than the coherence times of the individual photons as well as the pump pulse. We have also discussed the case in which photons did overlap at the beamsplitter but no quantum interference could be (had been) observed. This experiment clearly demonstrates that SA/HOM effect is indeed due to indistinguishability of two-photon amplitudes but not due to the ‘photon bunching’ effect of individual photon wavepackets. It also demonstrates that genuine higher-order interference effects should not and cannot be explained by using lower-order interference picture.

Dirac, in his famous textbook, stated “Each photon then interferes only with itself dirac .” In two-photon interference experiments, we may then say “Two-photon or biphoton interferes only with itself nonlocal0 .”

Finally, we note that this work may be of some use in quantum cryptography and in studying decoherence management in entangled two-qubit systems as we observe near complete restoration of quantum interference (without any post-selection in principle) after the qubit pairs (which are in mixed states), generated by a femtosecond laser pulse, went through certain birefringent elements newsource .

The author wishes to thank C. D’Helon, W.P. Grice, and Y. Shih for helpful comments. This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the National Security Agency, and the LDRD program of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed for the U.S. DOE by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.