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# Quantum four-body system in 𝐷 dimensions

## I Introduction

Recent years have witnessed a flurry of investigations into the arbitrary $`D`$-dimensional problems  in many branches of physical chemistry and chemical physics. The problems associated with the $`D`$-dimensional hydrogen atom , the $`D`$-dimensional harmonic oscillator , and the connection between the two  have been thoroughly discussed. During the past few years, with the application of dimensional scaling to the quantum theory of atomic and molecular structure, large-$`D`$ helium problem has also been studied by many authors . This approach requires solving the few-body Schrödinger equation in a $`D`$-dimensional coordinate space and has been applied to a large number of physically interesting problems . Due to the complexity of the problem for an $`N`$-body system in $`D`$ dimensions, so far there is no complete theoretical solution when $`N>3`$.

In our recent work , a new method for separating the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones in a few-body system was proposed. The power of this new approach is in its ability of great simplification in calculation of energy levels of a few-body system in terms of the generalized radial equations involved only internal variables, which are derived from the Schrödinger equation without any approximation. Some typical three-body system in three-dimensional space, such as a helium atom  and a positronium negative ion  have been solved numerically with high precision. The key to the approach is that we have found a complete set of independent eigenfunctions of angular momentum for the system, which are homogeneous polynomials in the components of Jacobi coordinate vectors and satisfy the Laplace equation, and chosen a suitable set of internal variables. Any wave function with a given angular momentum can be expanded with respect to the base functions where the coefficients, called the generalized radial functions, depend only upon the internal variables. The generalized radial equations satisfied by the generalized radial functions are easily derived owing to the nice property of the base functions . This method has been generalized to the arbitrary dimensional space for a three-body system . The exact interdimensional degeneracies in the system can be obtained directly from the generalized radial equations .

To further this study, we expect to apply this approach to an $`N`$-body system in $`D`$ dimensions. As noticed in our previous paper , the cases with $`N<D`$ are very different to the cases with $`ND`$. The general formulas are hard to express uniformly due to arbitrariness of $`D`$ and $`N`$. However, the main characters are manifested fully in a four-body system of $`D`$ dimensions, but not fully in a three-body system. The four-body problems also play a fundamental role in nuclear and hypernuclear physics . In this paper we will study the problem of separating the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones for a quantum four-body system in $`D`$ dimensions in some detail. The general case ($`N`$-body system) will be summarized.

The plan of this paper is as follows. In Sec. II, after separating the motion of the center of mass by Jacobi coordinate vectors, we will define the generalized spherical harmonic polynomials for a four-body system in $`D`$ dimensions and prove that they constitute a complete set of independent base functions for a given total orbital angular momentum in the system. Some new features in comparison with the three-body case are also discussed in this section. The generalized radial equations satisfied by the generalized radial functions are established in Sec. III. In Sec. IV, we will generalize this method to separate the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones for an $`N`$-body system in $`D`$ dimensions. Some conclusions will be given in Sec. V.

## II The generalized spherical harmonic polynomials

For a quantum $`N`$-body system in an arbitrary $`D`$-dimensional space, we denote the position vectors and the masses of $`N`$ particles by $`𝐫_k`$ and by $`m_k`$, $`k=1,2,\mathrm{},N`$, respectively. $`M=_km_k`$ is the total mass. The Schrödinger equation for the $`N`$-body system with a pair potential $`V`$, depending upon the distance of each pair of particles, $`|𝐫_j𝐫_k|`$, is

$$\frac{1}{2}^2\mathrm{\Psi }+V\mathrm{\Psi }=E\mathrm{\Psi },^2=\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}m_k^1_{𝐫_k}^2,$$
$`(1)`$
where $`_{𝐫_k}^2`$ is the Laplace operator with respect to the position vector $`𝐫_k`$. For simplicity, the natural units $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$ are employed throughout this paper. The total orbital angular momentum operators $`L_{ab}`$ in $`D`$ dimensions are defined as

$$L_{ab}=L_{ba}=i\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left\{r_{ka}\frac{}{r_{kb}}r_{kb}\frac{}{r_{ka}}\right\},a,b=1,2,\mathrm{}D,$$
$`(2)`$
where $`r_{ka}`$ denotes the $`a`$th component of the position vector $`𝐫_k`$. Now, we replace the position vectors $`𝐫_k`$ with the Jacobi coordinate vectors $`𝐑_j`$:

$$𝐑_0=M^{1/2}\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}m_k𝐫_k,𝐑_j=\left(\frac{m_{j+1}M_j}{M_{j+1}}\right)^{1/2}\left(𝐫_{j+1}\underset{k=1}{\overset{j}{}}\frac{m_k𝐫_k}{M_j}\right),$$

$$1j(N1),M_j=\underset{k=1}{\overset{j}{}}m_k,M_N=M,$$
$`(3)`$
where $`𝐑_0`$ describes the position of the center of mass, $`𝐑_1`$ describes the mass-weighted separation from the second particle to the first particle. $`𝐑_2`$ describes the mass-weighted separation from the third particle to the center of mass of the first two particles, and so on. It is straightforward to illustrate that the potential $`V`$ is a function of $`𝐑_j𝐑_k`$ and is rotationally invariant.

In the center-of-mass frame, $`𝐑_0=0`$. A straightforward calculation by replacement of variables shows that the Laplace operator in Eq. (1) and the total orbital angular momentum operator $`L_{ab}`$ in Eq. (2) are directly expressed in $`𝐑_j`$:

$$\begin{array}{c}^2=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}_{𝐑_j}^2,L_{ab}=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}L_{ab}^{(j)}=i\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\{R_{ja}\frac{}{R_{jb}}R_{jb}\frac{}{R_{ja}}\},\hfill \\ 𝐋^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}L_{ab}^2,\left(𝐋^{(j)}\right)^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}\left(L_{ab}^{(j)}\right)^2.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(4)`$
For a four-body system, there are three Jacobi coordinate vectors $`𝐑_1`$, $`𝐑_2`$ and $`𝐑_3`$, which will be denoted for simplicity by $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$ and $`𝐳`$, respectively:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 𝐱& =\left[\frac{m_1m_2}{m_1+m_2}\right]^{1/2}\left\{𝐫_2𝐫_1\right\},\hfill \\ \hfill 𝐲& =\left[\frac{(m_1+m_2)m_3}{m_1+m_2+m_3}\right]^{1/2}\left\{𝐫_3\frac{m_1𝐫_1+m_2𝐫_2}{m_1+m_2}\right\},\hfill \\ \hfill 𝐳& =\left[\frac{(m_1+m_2+m_3+m_4)m_4}{m_1+m_2+m_3}\right]^{1/2}𝐫_4.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(5)`$
Hence,

$$\begin{array}{cc}^2=_𝐱^2+_𝐲^2+_𝐳^2,\hfill & L_{ab}=L_{ab}^{(x)}+L_{ab}^{(y)}+L_{ab}^{(z)}\hfill \\ 𝐋^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}L_{ab}^2,\hfill & \left[𝐋^{(x)}\right]^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}\left[L_{ab}^{(x)}\right]^2,\hfill \\ \left[𝐋^{(y)}\right]^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}\left[L_{ab}^{(y)}\right]^2,\hfill & \left[𝐋^{(z)}\right]^2=\underset{a<b=2}{\overset{D}{}}\left[L_{ab}^{(z)}\right]^2.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(6)`$
The Schrödinger equation (1) for $`DN=4`$ reduces to

$$\begin{array}{c}\{_𝐱^2+_𝐲^2+_𝐳^2\}\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=2\{EV(\xi _j,\eta _j,\zeta _j)\}\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳),\hfill \\ \xi _1=𝐱𝐱,\xi _2=\eta _1=𝐱𝐲,\xi _3=\zeta _1=𝐱𝐳,\hfill \\ \eta _2=𝐲𝐲,\eta _3=\zeta _2=𝐲𝐳,\zeta _3=𝐳𝐳.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(7)`$
where $`\xi _j`$, $`\eta _j`$, and $`\zeta _j`$ are internal variables. It is worth noticing that for the cases $`3=D<N`$ two Jacobi coordinate vectors $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐲`$ can determine the body-fixed frame and this set of internal variables is not complete because two configurations with different directions of $`𝐳`$ reflecting to the plane spanned by $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐲`$ are described by the same internal variables. As pointed in Ref. , the variables $`\zeta _3`$ has to be changed to $`\left(𝐱\times 𝐲\right)𝐳`$. We will further discuss this problem in Sec. IV.

Since Eq. (7) is rotational invariant, the total orbital angular momentum is conserved. As discussed in Ref. , in $`D`$-dimensional space, the wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ with a given total angular momentum has to belong to an irreducible representation of SO($`D`$), and the angular momentum is also denoted by the representation. For a four-body system, there are only three Jacobi coordinate vectors so that the possible irreducible representation is described by a three-row Young pattern $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of SO$`(D)`$, or its highest weight $`𝐌=(M_1,M_2,M_3,0,\mathrm{},0)`$, where

$$M_1=\mu \nu ,M_2=\nu \tau ,M_3=\tau .$$
$`(8)`$
We only need to consider the highest weight state $`\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ because its partners can be calculated from it by the lowering operators. In this paper the highest weight state will be simply called the wave functions with the given angular momentum $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ for simplicity.

Now we are going to find a complete set of independent eigenfunctions of total orbital angular momentum, where ”independent” means that each one in the set cannot be expressed as a combination of the remaining with coefficients only depending on the internal variables. As discussed in our previous paper , the spherical harmonic polynomials $`𝒴_𝐦^{(l)}(\widehat{𝐱})`$ are homogeneous polynomials in the components of $`𝐱`$ of degree $`l`$, spanning an irreducible traceless tensor space describes by the Young pattern $`(l)[l,0,0]`$. When $`D>6`$, the explicit forms for some polynomials with higher weights $`𝐦`$ are as follows :

$$\begin{array}{c}𝒴_{(l)}^{(l)}(𝐱)=N_{D,l}(x_1+ix_2)^l,\hfill \\ 𝒴_{(l2,1,0,\mathrm{},0)}^{(l)}(𝐱)=\sqrt{l}N_{D,l}(x_1+ix_2)^{l1}(x_3+ix_4),\hfill \\ 𝒴_{(l4,2,0,\mathrm{},0)}^{(l)}(𝐱)=\sqrt{l(l1)/2}N_{D,l}(x_1+ix_2)^{l2}(x_3+ix_4)^2,\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(9)`$
where the last equality holds for $`l>1`$, and $`N_{D,l}`$ denotes the normalization factor given in . The product of two spherical harmonic polynomials $`𝒴_𝐦^{(l)}(\widehat{𝐱})`$ and $`𝒴_𝐦^{}^{(l^{})}(\widehat{𝐲})`$ belongs to the direct product of two representation $`(l)`$ and $`(l^{})`$, which is a reducible representation. It can be reduced by the Littlewood-Richardson rule and contraction of a pair of $`x_a`$ and $`y_a`$, where the latter relates to the internal variables:

$$(l)(l^{})\underset{s=0}{\overset{min\{l,l^{}\}}{}}\underset{t=0}{\overset{min\{l,l^{}\}s}{}}[l+l^{}s2t,s,0].$$
$`(10)`$
Since a base function containing a factor depending on internal variables is not independent, only those representations $`[l+l^{}s,s,0]`$ \[$`t=0`$ in Eq. (10)\] calculated by the Littlewood-Richardson rule are related to the independent base functions . Calculating by the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients and removing the normalization factor, we obtain the independent base functions for the representations $`[l+l^{}s,s,0]`$, called the generalized spherical harmonic polynomial $`Q_l^{(l+l^{}s)s}(𝐱,𝐲)`$. Changing the parameters $`\mu =l+l^{}s`$, $`\nu =s`$ and $`q=l`$, we define the generalized spherical harmonic polynomial $`Q_q^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,𝐲)`$ for the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ]`$  as

$$\begin{array}{c}Q_q^{\mu \nu }(𝐱,𝐲)=\frac{X_{12}^{q\nu }Y_{12}^{\mu q}}{(q\nu )!(\mu q)!}(X_{12}Y_{34}Y_{12}X_{34})^\nu ,0\nu q\mu ,\hfill \\ X_{12}=x_1+ix_2,X_{34}=x_3+ix_4,Y_{12}=y_1+iy_2,Y_{34}=y_3+iy_4.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(11)`$
For the product of three spherical harmonic polynomials, Eq. (10) is generalized to

$$\begin{array}{c}(l)(l^{})(l\mathrm{"})\hfill \\ \underset{r=0}{\overset{min\{l,l^{}\}}{}}\underset{\nu =r}{\overset{min\{(l+l^{}r),(r+l\mathrm{"})\}}{}}\underset{\tau =0}{\overset{min\{r,(l\mathrm{"}\nu +r)\}}{}}[l+l^{}+l\mathrm{"}\nu \tau ,\nu ,\tau ]\mathrm{}.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(12)`$
The ellipsis denotes those representations related to the base functions which are not independent.

Filling the digits $`1`$, $`2`$ and $`3`$ arbitrarily into a given Young pattern $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ ($`\mu \nu \tau `$) we obtain a young tableau. A Young tableau is called standard if the digit in every column of the tableau increases downwards and the digit in every row does not decrease from left to right. In fact, the digits $`\mathrm{"}1\mathrm{"}`$, $`\mathrm{"}2\mathrm{"}`$ and $`\mathrm{"}3\mathrm{"}`$ denote the components of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$, and $`𝐳`$, respectively. Obviously, the representation $`[l+l^{}+l\mathrm{"}\nu \tau ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ listed in Eq. (12) corresponds to a standard Young tableau, where the number of digit $`\mathrm{"}1\mathrm{"}`$ in the first row is $`l`$, the numbers of digit $`\mathrm{"}2\mathrm{"}`$ in the first and the second rows are respectively $`(l^{}r)`$ and $`r`$, and the numbers of digit $`\mathrm{"}3\mathrm{"}`$ in the first, second and third rows are respectively $`(l\mathrm{"}+r\nu \tau )`$, $`\nu r`$ and $`\tau `$. The base functions in the remaining representation spaces, which correspond to non-standard Young tableaux, are not independent.

For a given pattern $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$, each standard Young tableau is determined by three parameters $`q`$, $`p`$ and $`r`$, where $`q`$ is the number of digit $`\mathrm{"}1\mathrm{"}`$ in the first row, $`p`$ and $`r`$ are the numbers of digit $`\mathrm{"}2\mathrm{"}`$ in the first and the second rows, respectively. $`q`$, $`p`$ and $`r`$ should satisfy the constraints: $`\tau rq`$ and $`r\nu q+p\mu `$. The number of standard Young tableaux for the given Young pattern $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ is equal to the dimension of the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of the SU(3) group:

$$d_{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(SU(3))=\frac{1}{2}(\mu \tau +2)(\nu \tau +1)(\mu \nu +1).$$
$`(13)`$
For a given representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of SO($`D`$), each standard Young tableau denoted by $`(q,p,r)`$ corresponds to a representation space. The highest weight state in the representation space $`(q,p,r)`$ is the generalized spherical harmonic polynomial $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$:

$$\begin{array}{c}Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{X_{12}^{q\nu }Y_{12}^pZ_{12}^{\mu qp}T_{12}^{r\tau }T_{13}^{\nu r}T^\tau }{(q\nu )!p!(\mu qp)!(r\tau )!(\nu r)!},\hfill & \mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \\ \frac{Y_{12}^{q+p\nu }Z_{12}^{\mu qp}T_{12}^{r\tau }T_{13}^{qr}T_{23}^{\nu q}T^\tau }{(q+p\nu )!(\mu qp)!(r\tau )!(qr)!(\nu q)!},\hfill & \mathrm{when}q<\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ \tau rq,r\nu q+p\mu ,\hfill \\ X_{12}=x_1+ix_2,Y_{12}=y_1+iy_2,Z_{12}=z_1+iz_2,\hfill \\ X_{34}=x_3+ix_4,Y_{34}=y_3+iy_4,Z_{34}=z_3+iz_4,\hfill \\ X_{56}=x_5+ix_6,Y_{56}=y_5+iy_6,Z_{56}=z_5+iz_6,\hfill \\ T_{12}=X_{12}Y_{34}X_{34}Y_{12},T_{13}=X_{12}Z_{34}X_{34}Z_{12},T_{23}=Y_{12}Z_{34}Y_{34}Z_{12},\hfill \\ T=X_{12}Y_{34}Z_{56}+X_{34}Y_{56}Z_{12}+X_{56}Y_{12}Z_{34}X_{12}Y_{56}Z_{34}X_{34}Y_{12}Z_{56}X_{56}Y_{34}Z_{12}.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(14)`$
It is evident that $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ do not contain a function of the internal variables as a factor, nor do their partners due to the rotational symmetry. Therefore, $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ are independent base functions for the given angular momentum described by $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$. Due to Eq. (12), the set of $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is complete. The reason why the generalized spherical harmonic polynomial denoted by a non-standard Young tableau is not independent can be seen from the following identity:

$$T_{23}X_{12}=T_{13}Y_{12}T_{12}Z_{12},\begin{array}{cc}\text{2}& \text{1}\\ \text{3}& \end{array}=\begin{array}{cc}\text{1}& \text{2}\\ \text{3}& \end{array}\begin{array}{cc}\text{1}& \text{3}\\ \text{2}& \end{array}.$$
$`(15)`$
This identity is similar to the Fock’s cyclic symmetry condition . The left-hand-side of Eq. (15) corresponds to a non-standard Young tableau, and two terms in the right-hand-side correspond to two standard Young tableaux, respectively.

Since the problem on completeness of the set is very important, we are going to prove this problem by another method. On the one hand, because the base function $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree $`\mu +\nu +\tau `$ in the components of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$ and $`𝐳`$, we calculate the number $`R_D(l)`$ of base functions in the sets for the representations $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ with $`\mu +\nu +\tau =l`$. Namely, we want to calculate how many homogeneous polynomials of degree $`l`$ exist in the sets of the independent base functions . We first calculate how many base functions exist in the set for a given representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$. The dimension of the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of SO($`D`$) is $`d_D([\mu ,\nu ,\tau ])`$:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d_D([\mu ,\nu ,\tau ])& =(D+2\mu 2)(D+\mu +\nu 3)(D+\mu +\tau 4)(D+2\nu 4)\hfill \\ & \times (D+\nu +\tau 5)(D+2\tau 6)(\mu \tau +2)(\mu \nu +1)(\nu \tau +1)\hfill \\ & \times \frac{(D+\mu 5)!(D+\nu 6)!(D+\tau 7)!}{(D2)!(D4)!(D6)!(\mu +2)!(\nu +1)!\tau !}.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(16)`$
Thus, the number of base functions in the set for the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ is $`d_{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(SU(3))d_D(\mu ,\nu ,\tau )`$. Then, the number $`R_D(l)`$ of base functions in the sets for the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ with $`\mu +\nu +\tau =l`$ is:

$$R_D(l)=\underset{\tau =0}{\overset{[l/3]}{}}\underset{\nu =\tau }{\overset{[(l\tau )/2]}{}}d_{[(l\nu \tau ),\nu ,\tau ]}(SU(3))d_D([(l\nu \tau ),\nu ,\tau ]),$$
$`(17)`$
where $`[x]`$ denotes the largest integer less than or equal to $`x`$.

On the other hand, the number of linear independent homogeneous polynomials of degree $`l`$ in the components of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$ and $`𝐳`$ is $`M_D(l)`$:

$$M_D(l)=\left(\begin{array}{c}l+3D1\\ 3D1\end{array}\right).$$

After removing those polynomials in the form $`\xi _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$, $`\eta _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ and $`\zeta _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ where $`f(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is a polynomial of degree $`(l2)`$, the number $`M_D(l)`$ reduces to $`K_D(l)`$:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill K_D(l)& =M_D(l)6M_D(l2)+15M_D(l4)20M_D(l6)\hfill \\ & +15M_D(l8)6M_D(l10)+M_D(l12)\hfill \\ & =\{(3D7)(3D8)(3D9)(3D10)(3D11)(3D12)\hfill \\ & +12l(D4)[72+(3D10)(3D11)(27D^2153D+236)]\hfill \\ & +4l^2[184+45(D4)(3D11)(9D^257D+98)]\hfill \\ & +480l^3(D4)(9D^263D+126)+80l^4(27D^2207D+404)\hfill \\ & +576l^5(D4)+64l^6\}\frac{(l+3D13)!}{l!(3D7)!},\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(18)`$
where $`l+3D13`$ and $`K_4(0)=1`$. It is checked by MATHEMATICA that

$$R_D(l)=K_D(l).$$
$`(19)`$
Thus, we have proved again that $`d_{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(SU(3))`$ polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ construct a complete set of independent base functions for the angular momentum $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$.

The generalized spherical harmonic polynomial $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degrees $`q`$, $`(p+r)`$ and $`(\mu +\nu +\tau qpr)`$ in the components of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$ and $`𝐳`$, respectively. It is a simultaneous eigenfunction of $`_𝐱^2`$, $`_𝐲^2`$, $`_𝐳^2`$, $`_𝐱_𝐲`$, $`_𝐱_𝐳`$, $`_𝐲_𝐳`$, and the angular momentum operators $`𝐋^2`$, $`\left[𝐋^{(x)}\right]^2`$, $`\left[𝐋^{(y)}\right]^2`$, $`\left[𝐋^{(z)}\right]^2`$,

$$\begin{array}{c}_𝐱^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=_𝐲^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=_𝐳^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=0,\hfill \\ _𝐱_𝐲Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=_𝐱_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=_𝐲_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=0,\hfill \\ 𝐋^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=C_2([\mu ,\nu ,\tau ])Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳),\hfill \\ C_2([\mu ,\nu ,\tau ])=\mu (\mu +D2)+\nu (\nu +D4)+\tau (\tau +D6),\hfill \\ \left[𝐋^{(x)}\right]^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=q(q+D2)Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳),\hfill \\ \left[𝐋^{(y)}\right]^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=(p+r)(p+r+D2)Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳),\hfill \\ \left[𝐋^{(z)}\right]^2Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=(\mu +\nu +\tau qpr)(\mu +\nu +\tau qpr+D2)\hfill \\ \times Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳).\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(20)`$
where $`C_2([\mu ,\nu ])`$ is the Casimir calculated by a general formula (see (1.131) in Ref. ). The parity of $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is obviously equal to $`(1)^{\mu +\nu +\tau }`$.

Now, we turn to discuss the case $`D6`$. As is well known, the irreducible traceless tensor space of SO($`D`$) described by a Young pattern has the following properties. It is a null space if sum of the lengths of the first two columns of the Young pattern is larger than $`D`$. It reduces into the selfdual and antiselfdual tensor spaces if the row number of the Young pattern is equal to $`D/2`$. Two representations are equivalent if their Young patterns are the same as each other except for the first column and the sum of their row numbers is equal to $`D`$. Those properties cause the situation for $`D6`$ different to that for $`D>6`$.

When $`D=6`$, there is no problem for the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ with $`\tau =0`$, but when $`\tau 0`$, the representation is reducible. We denote the generalized spherical harmonic polynomials for the selfdual and antiselfdual representations by $`Q_{qpr}^{(S)\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ and $`Q_{qpr}^{(A)\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$, respectively. $`Q_{qpr}^{(S)\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is the same as that given in Eq. (14), and $`Q_{qpr}^{(A)\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ can be obtained from $`Q_{qpr}^{(S)\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ by replacing $`X_{56}`$, $`Y_{56}`$ and $`Z_{56}`$ with $`X_{56}^{}`$, $`Y_{56}^{}`$ and $`Z_{56}^{}`$:

$$X_{56}^{}=x_5ix_6,Y_{56}^{}=y_5iy_6,Z_{56}^{}=z_5iz_6.$$
$`(21)`$
The formula (16) for the dimension of the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of SO($`D`$) holds for $`D=6`$ when $`\tau =0`$. When $`\tau 0`$, $`d_D([\mu ,\nu ,\tau ])`$ in Eq. (16) is equal to the sum of the dimensions of the selfdual and antiselfdual representations such that the equality (19) still holds for $`D=6`$.

When $`D=5`$, in the possible Young pattern $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$, $`\tau `$ has to be 0 or 1. The representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,1]`$ is equivalent to the representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,0]`$. Their dimensions calculated from Eq. (16) are also the same. The generalized spherical harmonic polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ given in Eq. (14) hold for $`D=5`$ except for $`x_6=y_6=z_6=0`$ and $`\tau =0`$ or $`1`$. Therefore, the equality (19) holds for $`D=5`$.

For $`D=3`$, two Jacobi coordinate vectors, say $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐲`$, can completely determine the body-fixed frame so that the variables $`\zeta _3`$ has to be changed as $`\left(𝐱\times 𝐲\right)𝐳`$ in order to distinguish two configurations with different directions of $`𝐳`$. We have discussed in detail the four-body system in three dimensions in our previous paper .

The case of $`D=4`$ is quite complicated because $`SO(4)`$ is not a simple group. The representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,0]`$ reduces to a direct sum of a selfdual representation $`[(S)\mu ,\nu ,0]`$ and an antiselfdual one $`[(A)\mu ,\nu ,0]`$. The generalized spherical harmonic polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{(S)\mu \nu 0}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ for the selfdual representations is the same as $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ with $`\tau =0`$ given in Eq. (14). The generalized spherical harmonic polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{(A)\mu \nu 0}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ for the antiselfdual representation can be obtained from $`Q_{qpr}^{(S)\mu \nu 0}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ by replacing $`X_{34}`$, $`Y_{34}`$ and $`Z_{34}`$ with $`X_{34}^{}`$, $`Y_{34}^{}`$ and $`Z_{34}^{}`$:

$$X_{34}^{}=x_3ix_4,Y_{34}^{}=y_3iy_4,Z_{34}^{}=z_3iz_4.$$
$`(22)`$
If $`\tau =1`$, then $`\nu =1`$ and the representation $`[\mu ,1,1]`$ is equivalent to the representation $`[\mu ,0,0]`$. The standard Young tableau is described by the parameters $`q`$ and $`p`$ ($`r=1`$), where $`q`$ and $`p`$ are respectively the numbers of digits $`\mathrm{"}1\mathrm{"}`$ and $`\mathrm{"}2\mathrm{"}`$ in the first row of the Young tableau. The generalized spherical harmonic polynomials for two representations $`[\mu ,\lambda ,\lambda ]`$, $`\lambda =0`$, or 1, are

$$\begin{array}{c}Q_{qp}^{\mu \lambda \lambda }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=\frac{X_{12}^{q\lambda }Y_{12}^pZ_{12}^{\mu qp}T^\lambda }{(q\lambda )!p!(\mu qp)!},\hfill \\ T=X_{12}Y_{34}Z_{34}^{}+X_{34}Y_{34}^{}Z_{12}+X_{34}^{}Y_{12}Z_{34}X_{12}Y_{34}^{}Z_{34}X_{34}Y_{12}Z_{34}^{}X_{34}^{}Y_{34}Z_{12}.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(23)`$
The surprising thing is that Eq. (19) does not satisfied for $`D=4`$ and $`l6`$. For example,

$$\begin{array}{cccccc}l=\hfill & 6& 7& 8& 9& 10\\ R_4(l)\hfill & 5346& 10908& 20550& 36332& 60996\\ K_4(l)\hfill & 5336& 10836& 20256& 35436& 58728\end{array}$$
$`(24)`$
The reason is that the formula (18) for $`K_D(l)`$ does not hold for $`D=4`$ and $`l6`$. For $`D=4`$ we find an identity with respect to the polynomials of degree $`6`$ checked by MATHEMATICA:

$$\begin{array}{c}\xi _1T_{23}^2+\eta _2T_{13}^2+\zeta _3T_{12}^22\xi _2T_{13}T_{23}+2\xi _3T_{12}T_{23}2\eta _3T_{12}T_{13}=0.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(25)`$
The identity obtained from Eq. (25) by replacing $`X_{34}`$, $`Y_{34}`$ and $`Z_{34}`$ respectively with $`X_{34}^{}`$, $`Y_{34}^{}`$ and $`Z_{34}^{}`$ still holds. Those equalities obtained by applying the lowering operators and (or) by multiplying a factor to above two identities are also identities. Thus, the forms $`\xi _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$, $`\eta _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ and $`\zeta _jf(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$, where $`f(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ is a homogeneous polynomial of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐲`$ and $`𝐳`$ of degree $`(l2)`$, are not independent when $`l6`$. It is easy to count by MATHEMATICA that the revised $`K_4(l)`$ by considering the identities coincides with $`R_4(l)`$.

## III Generalized radial equations

In the preceding section we proved that $`d_{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(SU(3))`$ polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ construct a complete set of independent base functions for the angular momentum $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$. Thus, any function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ with angular momentum $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ in the system can be expanded with respect to the base functions $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$, where the coefficients are functions of internal variables.

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)=\underset{q=\tau }{\overset{\mu }{}}\underset{p=\mathrm{max}\{(\nu q),0\}}{\overset{\mu q}{}}\underset{r=\tau }{\overset{min\{q,\nu \}}{}}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(\xi _j,\eta _j,\zeta _j)Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳),$$
$`(26)`$
where the coefficients $`\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(\xi _j,\eta _j,\zeta _j)`$ are called the generalized radial functions. When substituting Eq. (26) into the Schrödinger equation (5), the main calculation is to apply the Laplace operator (4) to the function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$. The calculation consists of three parts. In the following, we remove the arguments $`(\xi _j,\eta _j,\zeta _j)`$ and $`(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$ for simplicity. The first is to apply the Laplace operator to the generalized radial functions $`\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(\xi _j,\eta _j,\zeta _j)`$, which can be calculated by replacement of variables:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill ^2\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }& =\{4\xi _1_{\xi _1}^2+4\eta _2_{\eta _2}^2+4\zeta _3_{\zeta _3}^2+2D(_{\xi _1}+_{\eta _2}+_{\zeta _3})+(\xi _1+\eta _2)_{\xi _2}^2\hfill \\ & +\left(\xi _1+\zeta _3\right)_{\xi _3}^2+\left(\eta _2+\zeta _3\right)_{\eta _3}^2+4\xi _2\left(_{\xi _1}+_{\eta _2}\right)_{\xi _2}+4\xi _3\left(_{\xi _1}+_{\zeta _3}\right)_{\xi _3}\hfill \\ & +4\eta _3(_{\eta _2}+_{\zeta _3})_{\eta _3}+2\eta _3_{\xi _2}_{\xi _3}+2\xi _3_{\xi _2}_{\eta _3}+2\xi _2_{\xi _3}_{\eta _3}\}\psi ^{\mu \nu \tau }_{qpr},\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(27)`$
where $`_\xi `$ denotes $`/\xi `$ and so on. The second is to apply the Laplace operator to the generalized spherical harmonic polynomials $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }`$. This part is vanishing because $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }`$ satisfies the Laplace equation. The last is the mixed application

$$\begin{array}{c}2\{\left(_{\xi _1}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)2𝐱+\left(_{\xi _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐲+\left(_{\xi _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐳\}_𝐱Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2\{\left(_{\xi _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐱+\left(_{\eta _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)2𝐲+\left(_{\eta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐳\}_𝐲Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2\{\left(_{\xi _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐱+\left(_{\eta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)𝐲+\left(_{\zeta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\right)2𝐳\}_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(28)`$
From the definition (14) for $`Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }`$ we have

$$\begin{array}{c}𝐱_𝐱Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=qQ_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },𝐲_𝐲Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=(p+r)Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\hfill \\ 𝐳_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=(\mu +\nu +\tau qpr)Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\hfill \\ 𝐲_𝐱Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{(p+1)(qr)}{q\nu }Q_{(q1)(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{(\mu qp+1)(r\tau +1)}{q\nu }Q_{(q1)p(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\hfill \\ \mathrm{when}q>\nu ,\hfill \\ (\nu q+1)Q_{(q1)(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ 𝐱_𝐲Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}(q\nu +1)Q_{(q+1)(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \\ \frac{p(qr+1)}{\nu q}Q_{(q+1)(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{(\mu qp+1)(r\tau +1)}{\nu q}Q_{(q+1)(p2)(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\hfill \\ \mathrm{when}q<\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ 𝐳_𝐱Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{(\mu qp+1)(q\nu +r\tau )}{q\nu }Q_{(q1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{(p+1)(\nu r+1)}{q\nu }\hfill \\ Q_{(q1)(p+1)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q>\nu ,\hfill \\ (\nu q+1)Q_{(q1)(p+1)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ 𝐱_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}(q\nu +1)Q_{(q+1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \\ \frac{(q+p\nu +1)(qr+1)}{\nu q}Q_{(q+1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{(r\tau +1)(\mu +\nu 2qp)}{\nu q}\hfill \\ \times Q_{(q+1)(p1)(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q<\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ 𝐳_𝐲Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}(\mu qp+1)Q_{q(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+(\nu r+1)Q_{qp(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \\ (\mu qp+1)Q_{q(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+(qr+1)Q_{qp(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q<\nu ,\hfill \end{array}\hfill \\ 𝐲_𝐳Q_{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }=\{\begin{array}{c}(p+1)Q_{q(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+(r\tau +1)Q_{qp(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q\nu ,\hfill \\ (q+p\nu +1)Q_{q(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+(r\tau +1)Q_{qp(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{when}q<\nu .\hfill \end{array}\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(29)`$
Hence, we obtain the generalized radial equation, satisfied by the functions $`\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }(\xi ,\eta ,\zeta )`$:

$$\begin{array}{c}^2\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4q_{\xi _1}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(p+r)_{\eta _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(\mu +\nu +\tau pqr)_{\zeta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +\frac{2p(qr+1)}{q\nu +1}_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{2(\mu qp)(r\tau )}{q\nu +1}_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q+1)p(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(q\nu )_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q1)(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+\frac{2(\mu qp)(q\nu +r\tau +1)}{q\nu +1}_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q+1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ \frac{2p(\nu r)}{q\nu +1}_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(q\nu )_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(\mu qp)_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(\nu r)_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2p_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(r\tau )_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ =2\left(EV\right)\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{for}q>\nu ,\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(30a)`$
$$\begin{array}{c}^2\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4q_{\xi _1}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(p+r)_{\eta _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(\mu +\tau pr)_{\zeta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2p(qr+1)_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }2(\mu qp)(r\tau )_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q+1)p(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(p+1)(qr)_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q1)(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }2(\mu qp)(r\tau )_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q1)(p+2)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(\mu qp)(r\tau +1)_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q+1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }2p(qr)_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2p(qr)_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }2(r\tau )(\mu qp+1)_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q1)(p+1)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(\mu qp)_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(qr)_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2p_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(r\tau )_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }=2\left(EV\right)\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{for}q=\nu ,\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(30b)`$
$$\begin{array}{c}^2\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4q_{\xi _1}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(p+r)_{\eta _2}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }+4(\mu +\nu +\tau pqr)_{\zeta _3}\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(\nu q)_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+\frac{2(p+1)(qr)}{\nu q+1}_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q1)(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ \frac{2(\mu qp)(r\tau )}{\nu q+1}_{\xi _2}\psi _{(q1)(p+2)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }2(\nu q)_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q+1)(p1)(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +\frac{2(q+p\nu )(qr)}{\nu q+1}_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q1)pr}^{\mu \nu \tau }\frac{2(r\tau )(\mu +\nu 2qp+1)}{\nu q+1}_{\xi _3}\psi _{(q1)(p+1)(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(\mu qp)_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p+1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(qr)_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r+1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }+2(q+p\nu )_{\eta _3}\psi _{q(p1)r}^{\mu \nu \tau }\hfill \\ +2(r\tau )_{\eta _3}\psi _{qp(r1)}^{\mu \nu \tau }=2\left(EV\right)\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau },\mathrm{for}q<\nu ,\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(30c)`$
where $`^2\psi _{qpr}^{\mu \nu \tau }`$ is given in Eq. (27). Only six internal variables $`\xi _1`$, $`\xi _2`$, $`\xi _3`$, $`\eta _2`$, $`\eta _3`$, and $`\zeta _3`$ are involved both in the equations and in the functions. Eq. (30) holds either for $`D>6`$ or for $`4D6`$. For the latter cases some selfdual representation, antiselfdual representation, or equivalent representations may occur. Especially, for a four-body system in $`D=4`$ dimensions, the representation $`[\mu ,1,1]`$ is equivalent to the representation $`[\mu ,0,0]`$, but the generalized radial equations for them are decoupled. They will be coupled for the $`N`$-body system with $`N>D=4`$.

## IV  Quantum $`N`$-body system in $`D`$ dimensions

It is hard to write a unified formulas of the generalized radial equations for an $`N`$-body system in arbitrary $`D`$-dimensions. However, from the study of the three-body  and four-body system, we are able to summarize the main features on separating the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones for an $`N`$-body Schrödinger equation in $`D`$ dimensions.

First, after removing the motion of the center of mass, there are $`(N1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors $`𝐑_j`$ for an $`N`$-body system. On the other hand, in an $`D`$-dimensional space it needs $`(D1)`$ vectors to determine the body-fixed frame. When $`DN`$, all Jacobi coordinate vectors are used to determine the body-fixed frame, and all internal variables can be chosen as $`𝐑_j𝐑_k`$. The numbers of the rotational variables and the internal variables are $`(N1)(2DN)/2`$ and $`N(N1)/2`$, respectively. When $`D<N`$, only $`(D1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors are involved to determine the body-fixed frame, and the rest can be expressed by the first $`(D1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors and the internal variables. The set of internal variables $`𝐑_j𝐑_k`$ is no longer complete because it could not distinguish two configurations, say with different $`𝐑_D`$ reflecting to the superplane spanned by the first $`(D1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors. The correct choice for the internal variables are

$$\begin{array}{c}\xi _{jk}=𝐑_j𝐑_k,\zeta _\alpha =\underset{a_1\mathrm{}a_D}{}ϵ_{a_1\mathrm{}a_D}R_{1a_1}\mathrm{}R_{(D1)a_{D1}}R_{\alpha a_D},\hfill \\ 1jD1,jkN1,D\alpha N1.\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(31)`$
The numbers of the rotational variables and the internal variables are $`D(D1)/2`$ and $`D(2ND1)/2`$, respectively.

Second, for an $`N`$-body system in $`D`$-dimensions ($`DN`$), the angular momentum is described by an irreducible representation of SO($`D`$) denoted by an $`(N1)`$-row Young pattern $`[\mu ][\mu _1,\mu _2,\mathrm{},\mu _{N1}]`$, $`\mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _{N1}`$. Due to the rotational symmetry, one only needs to discuss the eigenfunctions of angular momentum with the highest weight. The complete set of independent base functions with the highest weight consists of the eigenfunctions $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{N1})`$ identified by the standard Young tableau $`(q)`$. Filling the digits $`1`$, $`2`$, $`\mathrm{}`$, $`N1`$ arbitrarily into a given Young pattern $`[\mu ]`$ we obtain a young tableau. A Young tableau is called standard if the digit in every column of the tableau increases downwards and the digit in every row does not decrease from left to right. Any standard Young tableau is described by a set of parameters $`(q)`$ which contains $`(N1)(N2)/2`$ parameters $`q_{jk}`$, $`1kjN1`$, denoting the number of the digit $`j`$ in the $`k`$th row in the standard Young tableau. The number of independent base functions $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{N1})`$ in the complete set is equal to the dimension $`d_{[\mu ]}[SU(N1)]`$ of the irreducible representation $`[\mu ]`$ of the SU($`N1`$) group. $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{N1})`$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree $`\mu _k`$ with respect to the components of $`(N1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors $`𝐑_j`$, and satisfies the generalized Laplace equations \[see Eq. (20)\]. The explicit form of $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{D1})`$ for the given standard Young tableau $`(q)`$ is very easy to write. In the Young tableau, for each column with the length $`t`$, filled by digits $`j_1<j_2<\mathrm{}<j_t`$, $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{D1})`$ contains a determinant as a factor. The $`r`$th row and $`s`$th column in the determinant is $`R_{j_r(2s1)}+iR_{j_r(2s)}`$ if $`D>2(N1)`$. $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{D1})`$ also contains a numerical coefficient for convenience. When $`ND2(N1)`$, some selfdual representation, antiselfdual representation and equivalent representations have to be considered just like the discussion given in the end of Sec. II. When $`D<N`$, only the first $`(D1)`$ Jacobi coordinate vectors are involved in the base functions $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{D1})`$, which are the same as those for smaller $`N=D`$.

At last, when $`DN`$, any wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1})`$ with the given angular momentum $`[\mu ]`$ can be expanded with respect to the complete and independent base functions $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1})`$

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1})=\underset{(q)}{}\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi )Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1}),$$
$`(32)`$
where the coefficients $`\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi )`$, called the generalized radial functions, only depends upon the internal variables. When $`D<N`$, $`\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi )`$ and $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1})`$ in Eq. (32) have to be replaced with $`\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi ,\zeta )`$ and $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{D1})`$, respectively. Substituting Eq. (32) into the $`N`$-body Schrödinger equation in the center-of-mass frame

$$\begin{array}{c}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}_{𝐑_j}^2\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1})=2\left\{EV\left(\xi \right)\right\}\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{},𝐑_{N1}),\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(33)`$
one is able to obtain the generalized radial equations. The main calculation is to apply the Laplace operator to the function $`\mathrm{\Psi }_𝐌^{[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]}(𝐱,𝐲,𝐳)`$. The calculation consists of three parts. The first is to apply the Laplace operator to the generalized radial functions $`\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi )`$, which can be calculated by replacement of variables. When $`DN`$ we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill ^2\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(\xi )& =\{\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}(4\xi _{jj}_{\xi _{jj}}^2+2D_{\xi _{jj}})\hfill \\ & +\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\underset{k=j+1}{\overset{N1}{}}\left[\left(\xi _{jj}+\xi _{kk}\right)_{\xi _{jk}}^2+4\xi _{jk}\left(_{\xi _{jj}}+_{\xi _{kk}}\right)_{\xi _{jk}}\right]\hfill \\ & +2\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\underset{jk=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\underset{jt=k+1}{\overset{N1}{}}\xi _{kt}_{\xi _{jk}}_{\xi _{jt}}\}\psi ^{[\mu ]}_{(q)}(\xi ),\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(34)`$
where $`\xi _{jk}=\xi _{kj}`$ and $`_\xi `$ denotes $`/\xi `$ and so on. The second is to apply the Laplace operator to the generalized spherical harmonic polynomials. This part is vanishing because the polynomials satisfy the Laplace equation. The last is the mixed application. When $`DN`$ we have

$$\begin{array}{c}2\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\{\left(_{\xi _{jj}}\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}\right)2𝐑_j+\underset{jk=1}{\overset{N1}{}}\left(_{\xi _{jk}}\psi _{(q)}^{[\mu ]}\right)𝐑_k\}_{𝐑_j}Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]},\hfill \end{array}$$
$`(35)`$
where the formulas for $`𝐑_j_{𝐑_j}Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}`$ and $`𝐑_k_{𝐑_j}Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}`$ can be calculated from the property of the polynomial $`Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}(𝐑_1,\mathrm{}𝐑_{N1})`$. When $`D<N`$, the internal variables have to be chosen as those given in Eq. (31) so that Eq. (34) becomes more complicated and Eq. (35) contains more terms of $`{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta _\alpha }{𝐑_j}}_{𝐑_j}Q_{(q)}^{[\mu ]}`$ .

## V Conclusions

In this paper, the problem of separating the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones for the Schrödinger equation of a four-body system in $`D`$ dimensions is studied in detail by the method of the generalized spherical harmonic polynomials. We have found a complete set of independent base functions with the given angular momentum described by an irreducible representation $`[\mu ,\nu ,\tau ]`$ of SO($`D`$). This set of base functions have different form for the case $`D>6`$ and $`3D6`$. We have provided an appropriate choice of internal variables for this system and derived the generalized radial equations depending solely on internal variables. The main features on the problem of separating the rotational degrees of freedom from the internal ones for the Schrödinger equation of a $`N`$-body system in $`D`$ dimensions is summarized.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.


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# Observation of Magnetic Flux Generated Spontaneously During a Rapid Quench of Superconducting Films

## Abstract

We report observations of spontaneous formation of magnetic flux lines during a rapid quench of YBa2Cu3O7-δ films through Tc. This effect is predicted according to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism of creation of topological defects of the order parameter during a symmetry-breaking phase transition. Our previous experiment, at a quench rate of 20K/sec, gave null results. In the present experiment, the quench rate was increased to $`>`$108 K/sec. Within experimental resolution, the dependence of the measured flux on the cooling rate is consistent with the prediction.

A certain class of grand unified theories describes the early universe in terms of a series of symmetry breaking phase transitions. In that context, Kibble  predicted that if a system having a complex order parameter is quenched through a phase transition into an ordered state,topological defects will be created. This is due to the evolution of uncorrelated regions of the newly formed phase, each region having different values of the order parameter. The defects appear in between several coalesced regions of this kind. Zurek developed this idea to predict the initial density of defects as a function of quench rate and suggested specific experiments on condensed matter systems to test this scenario. The natural candidates for such tests are superfluids and superconductors, in which the topological defects are quantized vortex lines. Superconductors have an added degree of complexity, due to the presence of the gauge field A which evolves with time. Results of various experiments done so far are not unambigous; spontaneously generated vortices were observed in superfluid 3He but not in 4He. Experiments with homogeneous superconductors have so far shown null results. Other related systems are liquid crystals undergoing an isotropic-nematic transition (in this case the topological defects are disclinations). Experiments done with superconducting rings were done in a regime where usual thermal fluctuations dominate, rather than Zurek’s mechanism. Experiments using Josephson junctions gave results broadly consistent with the Zurek scenario. However, these are intrinsically inhomogeneous systems which do not fall into the class of systems directly comparable with this theory. Here, we report the results of a new, improved experiment with superconducting films.

We used 300nm thick c-axis oriented YBa2Cu3O7 films with T$`{}_{c}{}^{}`$90K, grown on a SrTiO3 substrate and patterned into a disc, 6mm in diameter .The basic experimental setup is described in Ref. 7. Briefly, the sample is placed atop the sensing coil of a HTSC SQUID magnetometer, at a distance of 1mm. In our arrangement the SQUID remains at a temperature of 77K, and is not affected by the temperature of the sample which can be heated and cooled independently. To avoid spurious magnetic fields generated by electrical current used in resistive heating, the film is heated above Tc using a light source and cools by exchanging heat with its environment. The system is carefully shielded from the earth’s magnetic field, with a residual magnetic field of less than 0.05 mG. Additional small coil adjacent to the sample was used to test the field dependence of the results. Instead of $``$ 1 sec long illumination from a quartz lamp used to heat the sample in our previous work, the light source in the present experiment is a pulsed YAG laser . Single pulses, 10-8 sec long, were used to heat the film. After passing through a diffuser, the laser pulse passes through the substrate and illuminates homogenously a 9mm diameter area of the film, larger than our sample. At a laser wavelength of 1.06 $`\mu `$m, the SrTiO3 substrate is transparent and practically all the light is absorbed in the film. Hence, only the film heats up, while the substrate remains near the base temperature of 77K. The 1mm thick substrate has a heat capacity about 103 larger than that of the film. Therefore, an energy of $``$ mJ is sufficient to heat the film above Tc, rather than a $``$ J used previously. The heat from the film escapes into the substrate, which acts as a heat sink. This strongly reduced thermal mass which is cooled allows us to achieve cooling rates in excess of 108 K/sec, 7 orders of magnitude faster than previously. The cooling rate at T$`_{c\text{ }}`$can be varied by changing the amount of energy delivered by the laser pulse (see Fig. 1 ). As the figure shows, increasing this energy reduces the cooling rate. The cooling rate was determined by monitoring the time dependence of the film resistance following a laser pulse. Because heat flow into the substrate takes place in a direction normal to the plane of the film, the temperature of the sample is approximately the same along its lateral dimensions. Measurement of the net flux is done continuosly during the heating-cooling cycle.

Achieving as high a cooling rate as possible is extremely important in order to enter the regime where the Zurek scenario applies. To observe the effect, the system needs to be out of equilibrium over a temperature interval wider than the critical regime near Tc. Due to the anisotropy of the superconducting properties of YBCO, our films are effectively 2D near Tc. We therefore expect that quantized vortices will develop only perpendicular to the film surface. The 2D Ginzburg-Landau model yields a 10-2K as the width of the critical regime (the 2D-XY model gives an even smaller value). At quench rates between 107-108K/sec the system remains out of equilibrium over an interval of 0.1-0.2K of Tc. Thus, the condition for observing this effect are satisfied in our case. Because the coherence length of HTSC is small, the predicted $`initial`$ flux-line density $`n_i`$ generated in the film by a thermal quench is very large according to this scenario, $`n_i=10^{11}10^{12}cm^2`$ . This includes both vortices and antivortices, with the lower value corresponding to G-L model, and the larger to 2D-XY model. In our experiment we measure directly the difference between the number of vortices and antivortices, namely the net flux. If the picture of regions having a well defined phase, and with the choice of a minimal phase gradient between the regions (the geodesic rule) is correct, than the net rms flux should scale as $`n_{net}(L)^{1/2}(n_i)^{1/4}`$, where L is the length of the sample perimeter. In terms of the quench rate dT/dt, $`n_{net}(dT/dt)^{1/8}`$. We point out that this weak dependence leads to a predicted $`n_{net}`$ which inreases only by 20% while the quench rate increases by an order of magnitude. In the range of our experiment, the net flux density is predicted to be $``$102 $`\varphi _0/`$cm2 .The noise level of our magnetometer is equivalent to a flux noise of $``$5 net $`\varphi _0`$, referred to the film. Thus, the effect should be observable. It should be noted that our measuring system can detect only the net flux ”frozen” in the film, due to the fact that the film’s total cooling time is of the order of 1$`\mu \mathrm{sec}`$, while the SQUID system responds on a time scale of about 10 $`\mu \mathrm{sec}`$. Flux will be ”frozen” in the film if the pinning site density is much larger than the flux density. The pinning site density in similar films was estimated in Ref. 17 (and in references therein) as 1-6x1010 cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}`$ $`n_{net}`$. Since pinning inYBCO films is very strong at temperatures below the critical regime, we conclude that the net flux generated during the quench should remain inside the film.

In a typical experiment, the SQUID’s output is recorded vs. time as the sample cools following a thermal quench. Such measurements were performed both on superconducting samples and on a control sample. The control sample is a similar film of underdoped YBCO, having Tc of 60K, which is not superconducting in our temperature range. Indeed, net flux was observed with the superconducting film while no flux was seen in the control experiment. Fig. 2 shows data from 100 such measurements. According to the Zurek scenario, the rms of spontaneously generated flux should increase in amplitude with the cooling rate while the sign of the net flux should be random from one quench to the next. Fig. 2 clearly shows that this indeed is the case. Further, the signal obtained with superconducting film is much larger than the control signal. A typical distribution of flux from such measurements is plotted in Fig. 3. It can be seen that the distribution of the signal is symmetric about zero flux, as expected from this scenario. In order to check for the effect of any residual field, our measurements were repeated under different fields up to 10mG, about 103 times larger than our residual field. The inset in Fig. 3 shows that the magnetic field has no significant influence on our results.

The net flux was deduced by deconvoluting the noise from the measured signal. The net flux distribution width vs. the cooling rate is shown in Fig. 4. The solid line shows the $`(dT/dt)^{1/8}`$ dependence predicted by Zurek, with a prefactor given by Rudaz et al.. To agree quantitatively with the data, the theoretical prediction was scaled down by a factor of 4. It is seen that the data are consistent with this prediction. The consistency of our results with the $`(dT/dt)^{1/8}`$ dependence further implies that the geodesic rule is valid in a non equilibrium regime. The validity of this rule was not considered obvious. Extrapolating the data shown in Fig. 4 down to a cooling rate of 20K/sec, that of ref. , gives a predicted flux density of $``$ 6 $`\varphi _0`$/cm2 for that experiment. This value is very close to the noise level, and thus explains the null result obtained. Finally, we carried out several checks to see how the magnitude of a signal is influenced by temperature gradients. The presence of temperature gradients is important with respect to the homogeneous approximation. We estimate our maximum temperature gradient as $`T`$ 1 K/cm parallel to the film surface, similar to the spread of Tc across the film. Under these conditions, the homogeneous approximation is valid in our experiment. In these additional experiments, we created intentional temperature gradients in order to check whether the scaling factor between theory and experiment cited here is a result of such gradients present in our film. We found that this was not the case.

We thank M. Ayalon, L. Yumin, and S. Hoida for technical assistance. We thank P. Leiderer, B. Biehler and B. Shapiro for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by the Israel Science Foundation, The Hertz Minerva Center on Superconductivity, and the Technion Fund for Research.


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# Spin squeezing criterion with local unitary invariance

## I Introduction

The non-classical nature of quantum entanglement is a key ingredient in the rapidly developing science of quantum information Nie00 ; Bou00 . One of the important tasks involved is quantifying quantum entanglement, which is essential in assessing the performance of a quantum system in several applications such as quantum teleportation Ben93 , quantum cryptography Eke91 ; Cir97 ; Fuc97 , quantum computation Bra99 ; Eke98 ; Ben92 ; Eis00  and quantum communication Eis00 ; Cir99 . There has been an ongoing effort devoted to characterizing quantum entanglement, especially the entanglement of multi-particle states shared by several distant parties Thapliyal99 ; Kem99 ; Ben99 ; Dur99 ; DiV99 ; Smo00 ; Dur00 ; Shor00 ; Wong01 . In view of the recent interest in creating and manipulating correlated collective atomic states Win92 ; Kuz97 ; Kuz98 ; Pol99 ; Hald99 ; Kuz00 ; Duan00 ; Koz00 ; Sor01a , an experimentally relevant characterization of entanglement in terms of  *spin squeezing* Kit93 ; Win92 ; Lukin ; Vernac ; Youli ; kasevich ; uffe ; Ber02 ; Dominic ; Usha ; Gasenzer ; Stockton ; Add1 ; Add2 ; WangSpin  has been highlighted Sor01a ; Sor01b . Most studies are concentrated on collective symmetric multi-particle states where individual particles are assumed to be inaccessible. Our aim is to develop a spin squeezing criterion for a multi-qubit system that is invariant under local unitary transformations on individual qubits. The motivation for this work is to explore the fundamental connection between spin squeezing and entanglement, recognizing that entanglement is invariant under local unitary transformation.

Let us first review spin squeezing criteria. Several definitions of spin squeezed states have been proposed in the literature Sor01a ; Kit93 ; Wod85 ; Aga90 ; Win94 . Kitagawa and Ueda Kit93  pointed out that a definition of spin squeezing, based only on the uncertainty relation Wod85 , does not reveal quantum correlations among the elementary spins. They first identified a mean spin direction

$$\widehat{n}_0=\frac{\stackrel{}{J}}{|\stackrel{}{J}|},|\stackrel{}{J}|=\sqrt{\stackrel{}{J}\stackrel{}{J}},$$
(1)
where the collective spin operator $`\stackrel{}{J}`$ for an $`N`$-qubit system is defined by $`\stackrel{}{J}\frac{1}{2}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i`$ with $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i=(\sigma _x,\sigma _y,\sigma _z)^T`$ the Pauli vector of the $`i^{\mathrm{th}}`$ qubit. Associating a mutually orthonormal set $`(\widehat{n}_{},\widehat{n}_{},\widehat{n}_0)`$, we have another set of collective operators

$$J_\mu =\stackrel{}{J}\widehat{n}_\mu ,\mu \{,,0\},$$
(2)
which satisfy the angular momentum commutation relations. Kitagawa and Ueda Kit93  proposed that a multi-qubit state can be regarded as spin squeezed if the minimum of $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_\theta `$ of a spin component normal to the mean spin direction is smaller than the standard quantum limit $`\sqrt{N}/2`$ of the spin coherent state, where

$$J_\theta =J_{}\mathrm{cos}\theta +J_{}\mathrm{sin}\theta .$$
(3)
A parameter incorporating this feature may be defined by

$$\xi _1\frac{2(\mathrm{\Delta }J_\theta )_{\text{min}}}{\sqrt{N}},$$
(4)
where the minimization is over $`\theta `$. A spin squeezed state satisfies $`\xi _1<1`$.

In the context of Ramsey spectroscopy on a sample of $`N`$ two-level atoms, Wineland et al. Win94  showed that the frequency resolution depends on the parameter

$$\xi _2=\frac{\sqrt{N}(\mathrm{\Delta }J_\theta )_{\text{min}}}{J_0}=\frac{2N\xi _1}{J_0},$$
(5)
and spin squeezing manifested by $`\xi _2<1`$ leads to reduction in the frequency noise. This identification opened up possible applications of spin squeezed states to high precision atomic clocks Win94  and atomic interferometers Yur86 . Note that spin squeezing established through $`\xi _1<1`$ is a necessary condition for $`\xi _2<1`$, but it is not a sufficient condition since $`J_02N`$.

Spin squeezing, in the original sense, is defined for multi-qubit states belonging to the maximum multiplicity subspace of the collective angular momentum operator $`\stackrel{}{J}`$. These states exhibit symmetry under the interchange of particles. The concept of spin squeezing is therefore restricted to symmetric multi-particle systems that are accessible to collective operations alone. We explore the possibility of extending the concept of spin squeezing to multi-qubit systems, where individual qubits are accessible. This requires a criterion of spin squeezing that exhibits invariance under local unitary operations on the qubits. In contrast, Eqs. (4) and (5) are not invariant under arbitrary local unitary transformations on the qubits. In order to see this, consider a state of two qubits given by

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}=\mathrm{cos}\varphi |01+\mathrm{sin}\varphi |10,$$
(6)
in which the expectation value of the collective angular momentum $`\stackrel{}{J}=0`$, and therefore one cannot properly define spin squeezing for this state. However, under a local unitary operation $`U_1U_2=𝟙\sigma _𝕩`$, the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}`$ transforms to

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^{}=\mathrm{cos}\varphi |00+\mathrm{sin}\varphi |11,$$
(7)
where $`𝟙`$ is a $`2\times 2`$ identity matrix. One can readily verify that the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^{}`$ is spin squeezed with the squeezing parameters of Eqs. (4) and (5) given by

$$\xi _1=\sqrt{1|\mathrm{sin}2\varphi |}1,\xi _2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+|\mathrm{sin}2\varphi |}}1.$$
(8)
Therefore, the spin squeezing by either criterion is modified by a local unitary transformation.

A simpler example is a product state $`|\psi _1|\psi _2`$, which is in general non-symmetric. For the non-symmetric case, we find that the squeezing parameter $`\xi _1`$ can be less than 1. This fact implies that the squeezing parameter $`\xi _1`$ works well for symmetric states; however, for non-symmetric cases, one cannot distinguish a correlated state from an uncorrelated one.

In this paper, we provide a local unitary invariant version of spin squeezing criteria, which reveals quantum correlations for arbitrary multi-qubit states. It is well-known that quantum entanglement is locally unitary invariant. The local unitary invariant property of the spin squeezing criteria and quantum entanglement suggests that they may exhibit closer relations comparing with relations between the original spin squeezing criteria and entanglement.

The paper is organized as follows: In Sec. II, we introduce two spin squeezing criteria, which are shown to be locally unitary invariant. In Sec. III, we provide relations between spin squeezing and quantum entanglement, and find that (i) for arbitrary two-qubit pure states, spin squeezing implies entanglement, and vice versa, and (ii) for an arbitrary multi-qubit state, if the local invariant version of squeezing parameter $`\xi _2`$ is less than 1, then the state is entangled. The conclusion is given in Sec. IV.

## II Local unitary invariant spin squeezing criteria

Now we introduce local unitary invariant spin squeezing criteria for $`N`$ qubits. We denote unit vectors along the mean orientations (mean spin directions) of the qubit $`i`$ by

$$\widehat{n}_{i0}=\frac{\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i}{|\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i|},|\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i|=(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i)^{\frac{1}{2}}.$$
(9)
Associating a mutually orthogonal set $`(\widehat{n}_i,\widehat{n}_i,\widehat{n}_{i0})`$ of unit vectors with each qubit, we may define the collective operators

$${}_{}{}^{}=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_i,{}_{}{}^{}=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_i,{}_{0}{}^{}=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0},$$
(10)
which satisfy the usual angular momentum commutation relations. For instance,

$$[{}_{}{}^{},{}_{}{}^{}]=\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}=\mathrm{i}{}_{0}{}^{},$$
(11)
and this leads to the uncertainty relations

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{}{}^{})(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{}{}^{})\frac{1}{2}{}_{0}{}^{}.$$
(12)
Analogous to the definitions of $`\xi _k,k\{1,2\}`$, we define the two spin squeezing parameters $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$,

$$\stackrel{~}{\xi }_1=\frac{2(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}}{\sqrt{N}},\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2=\frac{\sqrt{N}(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}}{{}_{0}{}^{}},$$
(13)
where

$${}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{}=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i},\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}=\widehat{n}_i\mathrm{cos}\theta _i+\widehat{n}_i\mathrm{sin}\theta _i,$$
(14)
and the minimization is over all $`\theta _i,i\{1,2,\mathrm{},N\}`$. They satisfy local unitary invariance as we show below. Therefore, we have given locally invariant versions of the original spin squeezing criteria. A system of $`N`$ qubits are regarded as spin squeezed if $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k<1`$ for $`k\{1,2\}`$.

Now we show the key property of the spin squeezing parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ given by
Proposition 1: The spin squeezing parameters $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ are invariant under the local unitary operator

$$U=U_1U_2\mathrm{}U_N.$$
(15)
Proof: From the expressions of $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ given by Eq. (13), we only need to prove that $`𝒥_0`$ and $`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}^2`$ are invariant. We now use the well-known fact that, for every unitary transformation $`U_i`$ on a qubit $`i`$, there corresponds a unique $`3\times 3`$ orthogonal rotation matrix $`O_i`$ such that

$$\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i^{}U_i^{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_iU_i=O_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i,\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i^{}=O_i\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i.$$
(16)
From Eqs. (9) and (10), we may write the expectation value $`𝒥_0`$ as

$$𝒥_0=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}|\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i|.$$
(17)
From Eqs. (16) and (17), we observe that the expectation value $`𝒥_0`$ is invariant under the local unitary transformation.

To prove that $`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}^2`$ is invariant, we first write it as

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}^2=\frac{1}{4}[N+2\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{j>i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}^T𝒯^{(ij)}\widehat{n}_{\theta _j}\right)_{\mathrm{min}}],$$
(18)
where

$$𝒯_{\alpha \beta }^{(ij)}=\sigma _{i\alpha }\sigma _{j\beta },\alpha ,\beta =x,y,z,$$
(19)
are the matrix elements of the $`3\times 3`$ correlation matrix Hor96  for a given qubit pair $`i,j`$. Note that $`\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}`$ is a column vector.

From Eq. (16), under the unitary transformations $`U`$, the parameter $`\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}`$ and the correlation matrix $`𝒯^{(ij)}`$ transform as follows Hor96 :

$$\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}^{}=O_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i},𝒯^{{}_{}{}^{}(ij)}=O_i𝒯^{(ij)}O_j^T.$$
(20)
Applying the above equation to Eq. (18) leads to the invariance of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}^2`$ under the unitary transformation $`U`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

Though the minimization $`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}`$ over all the directions $`\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}`$ (orthogonal to the qubit orientations) appears to be non-trivial, local invariance of $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ leads to a simplified analysis for multi-qubit systems. For instance, we may consider a product state with each qubit being in a different state. For this case, we can always find a unitary operator $`U`$ to transform this state to the symmetric product state $`|0\mathrm{}|0`$, for which the squeezing parameters $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ are easily found to be 1. This simple example indeed displays that when the quantum correlations do not exist, the spin squeezing parameter cannot be less than 1. Recognizing that the both the spin squeezing parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ and quantum entanglement are invariant under local unitary transformations, we next investigate the relations between spin squeezing and entanglement.

## III Relations to quantum entanglement

Spin squeezing is closely related to, and implies, quantum entanglement Sor01a ; Kit01 ; Dominic2 ; Sanmore ; Xia03 . As the spin squeezing criteria we propose satisfy local unitary invariance, a close relation between these criteria and quantum entanglement is expected.

### III.1 Two-qubit states

To see the relations of the local unitary invariant spin squeezing to quantum entanglement, let us examine the arbitrary two-qubit pure state given by

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}=\alpha |00+\beta |01+\gamma |10+\delta |11.$$
(21)
It has been shown earlier Kit01  that for a pure symmetric state of pair qubits (with $`\beta =\gamma `$ in Eq. (21)), the concurrence quantifying two-qubit entanglement Hill97  is related to the spin squeezing parameter $`\xi _1`$ of Eq. (4) through $`𝒞=1\xi _1^2`$, thereby implying the equivalence between spin squeezing and quantum entanglement. However, the squeezing parameter $`\xi _1`$ cannot apply to the non-symmetric state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}`$ with $`\beta \gamma `$ as the parameter can be larger than unity even for a non-symmetric product state. The spin squeezing criterion $`\xi _1<1`$ cannot separate an entangled state from a non-entangled one. The relationship between the local invariant spin squeezing parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ and the concurrence, for a pure state of two qubits given by Eq. (22), therefore provides a generalization of the earlier result Kit01  applicable to both symmetric as well as non-symmetric pure states of two qubits.

For the general two-qubit state we have
Proposition 2: Spin squeezing with local unitary invariance and quantum entanglement are equivalent for arbitrary two-qubit pure states. The quantitative relations between spin squeezing parameters and the concurrence are given by

$$\stackrel{~}{\xi }_1=\sqrt{1𝒞},\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+}}.$$
(22)
Proof: Up to local unitary operations, we can express the state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}`$ using a Schmidt decomposition through

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}=\lambda _1|00+\lambda _2|11,`$
$`0\lambda _1,\lambda _21,\lambda _1^2+\lambda _2^2=1,`$ (23)
where the Schmidt coefficients $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\lambda _2`$ are related to $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\mathrm{and}\delta `$ by

$`\lambda _1^2=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[1+\sqrt{1+4|(\beta \gamma \alpha \delta )|^2}\right],`$
$`\lambda _2^2=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[1\sqrt{1+4|(\beta \gamma \alpha \delta )|^2}].`$ (24)
The mean spin is along the $`z`$ direction, and it is easy to see that

$${}_{0}{}^{}=|\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2|.$$
(25)
Then, from Eq. (18), we find

$`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})^2=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1+\mathrm{cos}\theta _1\mathrm{cos}\theta _2\sigma _{1x}\sigma _{2x}`$
$`+\mathrm{sin}\theta _1\mathrm{sin}\theta _2\sigma _{1y}\sigma _{2y}`$
$`+\mathrm{sin}\theta _1\mathrm{cos}\theta _2\sigma _{1y}\sigma _{2x}`$
$`+\mathrm{cos}\theta _1\mathrm{sin}\theta _2\sigma _{1x}\sigma _{2y})`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}[1+2\mathrm{cos}(\theta _1+\theta _2)\lambda _1\lambda _2],`$ (26)
which manifestly implies that

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})_{\mathrm{min}}=\sqrt{\frac{12\lambda _1\lambda _2}{2}}.$$
(27)
Therefore, from Eqs. (25), (27), and the definition of squeezing parameters $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$, we have

$$\stackrel{~}{\xi }_1=\sqrt{12\lambda _1\lambda _2},\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2=\frac{\sqrt{12\lambda _1\lambda _2}}{|(\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2)|}.$$
(28)
Identifying now that the concurrence Hill97  is related to the Schmidt coefficents $`\lambda _1,\lambda _2`$ through

$$=2\lambda _1\lambda _2=2|(\beta \gamma \alpha \delta )|,$$
(29)
and expressing $`|(\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2)|=\sqrt{1^2}`$ in Eq. (28), we obtain the proposition. $`\mathrm{}`$

This proposition reveals that *a pair of qubits, which share a pure entangled state ($`0`$), is always in a spin squeezed state*. This one-to-one relation between spin squeezing and entanglement implies that we can use $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ as a measure of entanglement for pure bipartite states of qubits. However, it should be noted that the maximum spin squeezing characterized by $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_1=0`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2=1/\sqrt{2}`$ for $`=1`$ (maximally entangled states) is realised in the limit of $`1`$, since the qubits have no preferred orientation in space ($`\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i=0)`$ when they share a maximally entangled state.

### III.2 Multi-qubit states

We now examine the relations between spin squeezing and quantum entanglement for arbitrary multi-qubit states. For all separable $`N`$-qubit states, it was already shown that the original spin squeezing parameter $`\xi _21`$ Sor01a . However, here the parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2`$ is locally unitary invariant, and therefore more closely related to quantum entanglement as we have seen in Proposition 2.

For separable states, we have
Proposition 3: For all separable $`N`$-qubit states, $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_21`$.
Proof: Along similar lines of proof $`\xi _21`$ Sor01a , we now give the proof. A separable state can be written as

$$\rho =\underset{k}{}p_k\rho _1^{(k)}\rho _2^{(k)}\mathrm{}\rho _N^{(k)},\underset{k}{}p_k=1.$$
(30)
Calculating the variance of $`_{\{\theta _i\}}`$, we find

$`(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})^2`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{N}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{ji=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\widehat{n}_{\theta _j}_k`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{N}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k\stackrel{}{\sigma }_j\widehat{n}_{\theta _j}_k`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k^2`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{N}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k\left({\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k\right)^2`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k^2`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{N}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k^2.`$ (31)
Using the condition

$$\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k^2+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}^{}_k^2+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k^21$$
(32)
with

$$\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}^{}=\mathrm{sin}(\theta _i)\widehat{n}_i+\mathrm{cos}(\theta _i)\widehat{n}_i,$$
(33)
we obtain

$`{\displaystyle \frac{N}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}_k^2`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}(\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{\theta _i}^{}_k^2+\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k^2)`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k^2`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{k,i}{}}\sqrt{p_k}^2{\displaystyle \underset{k,i}{}}\left(\sqrt{p_k}{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k^2}{2}}\right)^2`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4N}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}p_k{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k\right)^2`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{}_{0}{}^{}^2}{N}},`$ (34)
where the last inequality follows from the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, and the last equality from

$${}_{0}{}^{}^2=\frac{1}{4}\left(\underset{k}{}p_k\underset{i}{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_i\widehat{n}_{i0}_k\right)^2$$
(35)
in the separable state.

Therefore, we obtain the inequality

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }{}_{\{\theta _i\}}{}^{})^2\frac{1}{N}{}_{0}{}^{}^2,$$
(36)
which leads to the result that $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_21`$ for all separable states. $`\mathrm{}`$

In this way, local unitary invariant spin squeezing characterized by $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2<1`$ serves as a sufficient condition for quantum entanglement.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion, we have proposed a local invariant criterion of spin squeezing in multi-qubit systems, which is applicable for arbitrary multi-qubit states. Due to the local unitary invariant property of the spin squeezing criteria and quantum entanglement, we find that (i) for arbitrary two-qubit states, spin squeezing is equivalent to quantum entanglement, and (ii) for arbitrary multi-qubit states, we find that the squeezing parameter $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2<1`$ implies quantum entanglement. The inequality $`\stackrel{~}{\xi }_2<1`$ serves as a sufficient condition for entanglement.

###### Acknowledgements.

ARU acknowledges the support of a Macquarie University Visiting Fellowship. We acknowledge valuable comments from Prof. Li You and helpful discussions with Dominic W. Berry. This project has been supported by an Australian Research Council Large Grant and by an Australian Department of Education, Science and Training Innovation Access Program Grant to support the European Fifth Framework Project QUPRODIS.