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# Magnetotransport in Two-Dimensional Electron Systems with Spin-Orbit Interaction

## I Introduction

The Rashba spin-orbit coupling rash60 ; bych84  that exists in systems with axial symmetry, plays a key role in spintronics wolf01  realized with two-dimensional (2D) carriers in semiconductor heterostructures as it allows to manipulate the spin by a gate-controlled confinement potential. Spin-orbit (SO) coupling mixes the spin states and removes the spin degeneracy for states with finite momentum. Besides the Rashba term caused by the asymmetry of the confinement, there exists also a SO coupling due to the inversion asymmetry of the crystalline structure of the semiconductor bulk material (Dresselhaus term dres55 ). Both types of SO coupling combine to an anisotropic spin-splitting of 2D electrons, which has been analyzed by inelastic light scattering juss  and play a role also in weak localization studies pikus\_pikus ; schie02 . The intimate relation between spin splitting and spin relaxation, well-known for bulk material titkov ; dp  has found renewed interest for 2D electrons golub ; jk , furthered by the possibility to measure spin-relaxation times with monopolar optical orientation ganichev . The zero-field spin splitting lomm88  has to compete with the Zeeman spin-splitting if a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the plane of the 2D electron system. This results in a fan chart showing characteristic crossings of Landau levels, which in magnetotransport data are detected as beating of the Shubnikov de-Haas (SdH) oscillations nitt97 ; heid98 ; schae98 ; hu99 . For hole sytems, the two SO coupling mechanisms have been found to be responsible for anomalous SdH oscillations wink00 ; kepp02 . The structural asymmetry of the confinement can be tuned into a regime where the Rashba SO coupling dominates over the bulk inversion asymmetry lomm88 . In spite of this current interest in the Rashba SO coupling and its relevance for spin-related transport in two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) it is surprising that there is so far no rigorous magnetotransport calculation which takes this coupling into account.

Here, we present fully quantum-mechanical calculations of the magnetoconductivity including the Rashba SO interaction. The calculations are based on the evaluation of the Kubo formula with an extension of the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) by taking into account the electron spin degree of freedom. Our results show besides the known beats in the SdH oscillations an additional modulation connected with the crossing of Landau levels. This modulation, which is not seen in the density of states, arises as we take into account spin-conserving impurity scattering which is suppressed when the SO coupled states are not degenerate. It survives even at higher temperatures, when SdH oscillations have died out, and could serve, if experimentally detected, as another fingerprint of SO interaction. In lateral superlattices weis91 , where a 2DES is subjected to a periodic potential, there exist besides the SdH oscillations other $`1/B`$ periodic magnetotransport oscillations due to commensurability between cyclotron radius and lattice constant weis89\_wink89  and due to the formation of a miniband structure albr99 ; deut01 . From our magnetotransport calculations for lateral superlattices with weak uni-directional (1D) modulation we predict a splitting of these periods due to SO coupling and calculate their dependence on its strength and carrier density.

The paper is organized in the following way. After this introduction we describe in the section II the energy spectrum and the eigenstates of a 2DES with Rashba SO interaction. For the calculation of the conductivity we simplify the energy spectum and introduce a constant spin-splitting model. In the section III the SCBA is extended by the spin degree of freedom to describe the scattering of spin-conserving impurities in a 2DES with SO interaction. The effects of this extension are illustrated for a two level system, where it is shown that for non-degenerate SO coupled states the scattering efficiency is suppressed. In section IV we present the conductivity and compare the cases with and without SO coupling. Finally in the section V we show results for a system with SO interaction and a 1D periodic modulation and study in the power spectrum of the magnetoconductivity the evolution of the characteristic periods with increasing SO coupling.

## II Energy spectrum and the constant spin-orbit coupling model

The Hamiltonian of a 2DES (in the $`xy`$-plane) realized in the lowest subband of a semiconductor heterostructure with effective mass $`m^{}`$, Rashba SO interaction due to the $`z`$-confinement with coupling constant $`\alpha _z`$, and Zeeman term with effective $`g`$-factor $`g^{}`$, in a magnetic field $`𝐁=B\widehat{𝐞}_z`$, is given by

$$H=\frac{1}{2m^{}}\left(\pi _x^2+\pi _y^2\right)\frac{\alpha _z}{\mathrm{}}\left(\sigma _x\pi _y\sigma _y\pi _x\right)+\frac{1}{2}g^{}\mu _\mathrm{B}\sigma _zB,$$
(1)
where $`\pi _\mu `$ denotes the kinetic momentum and $`\sigma _\mu `$ the Pauli spin matrices, $`\mu \{x,y,z\}`$. The spin (up/down) is quantized in $`z`$-direction. The energy spectrum is isotropic and without the magnetic field, $`B=0`$, it depends on the wavevector $`𝒌`$ and is given by rash60

$$E_𝒌^\pm =\frac{\mathrm{}^2𝒌^2}{2m^{}}\pm \alpha _z|𝒌|.$$
(2)
The SO coupling lifts the spin degeneracy even without external magnetic field and the energy branches are split by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}}=2\alpha _z|𝒌|.$$
(3)
Including the external magnetic field, the Hamiltonian can be formulated with ladder operators $`a^{}|n=\sqrt{n+1}|n+1`$, $`a|n=\sqrt{n}|n1`$. In the Pauli representation the Hamiltonian can be written as

$$H=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(\begin{array}{cc}a^{}a+\frac{1}{2}+\beta & \alpha a\\ \alpha a^{}& a^{}a+\frac{1}{2}\beta \end{array}\right).$$
(4)
with the parameters $`\beta =\frac{g^{}\mu _BB}{2\mathrm{}\omega _c}`$ and $`\alpha =\frac{\alpha _z\sqrt{2}}{\lambda _c\mathrm{}\omega _c}`$, the cyclotron frequency $`\omega _c=\frac{eB}{m^{}}`$ and the magnetic length $`\lambda _c=\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{eB}\right)^{1/2}`$.

In Fig. 1 we show the spectrum of Hamiltonian (1) without magnetic field (left) and with magnetic field (right) for parameter values corresponding to InAs ($`m^{}=0.023m_0`$, $`g^{}=14.9`$). In Fig. 1a the situation without SO coupling with spin-degenerate parabolic dispersion (left) and regular fan-chart of Landau levels (right) is depicted. Including spin-orbit coupling the picture of Fig. 1b is obtained with the k-dependent splitting of the subband dispersion (left) and the characteristic crossing pattern of Landau levels (right). For this calculation the SO coupling parameter $`\alpha _z`$ was choosen to be $`\alpha _z=2.0\times 10^{11}`$eVm close to the experimental values reported for InAs samples nitt97 . The Hamiltonian (4) indicates that in the presence of SO coupling the spin states, quantized in $`z`$-direction and used in the Pauli representation, are no longer eigenstates. Instead Hamiltonian (4) is diagonal for the states rash60

$$|n,r=\left(\begin{array}{c}c_{rn}^u\mathrm{\Phi }_n\\ c_{rn}^d\mathrm{\Phi }_{n+1}\end{array}\right)\text{ and }|n,l=\left(\begin{array}{c}c_{ln}^u\mathrm{\Phi }_{n1}\\ c_{ln}^d\mathrm{\Phi }_n\end{array}\right)$$
(5)
which can be classified by the helicity $`\kappa \{\text{right},\text{left}\}`$ and the Landau index $`n=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$. $`\mathrm{\Phi }_n`$ are the eigenfunctions of the Landau oscillator. These right/left states evolve with increasing SO coupling from the spin up/down states, respectively, by the following choice of the coefficients:

$`c_{nr}^u={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha \sqrt{n+1}}{\sqrt{(n+1)\alpha ^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )\sqrt{d_r}\right)^2}}},`$
$`c_{nr}^d={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \sqrt{d_r}\right)}{\sqrt{(n+1)\alpha ^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )\sqrt{d_r}\right)^2}}},`$ (6)
for the right states and

$`c_{nl}^u={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha \sqrt{n}}{\sqrt{n\alpha ^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )+\sqrt{d_l}\right)^2}}},`$
$`c_{nl}^d={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta +\sqrt{d_l}\right)}{\sqrt{n\alpha ^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )+\sqrt{d_l}\right)^2}}},`$ (7)
for left states with $`d_r=\sqrt{(n+1)\alpha ^2+(\frac{1}{2}\beta )^2}`$ and $`d_l=\sqrt{n\alpha ^2+(\frac{1}{2}\beta )^2}`$. The energy eigenvalues of these states are

$`E_{nr}`$ $`=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(1+n\sqrt{(n+1)\alpha ^2+\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \right)^2}\right),`$ (8)
$`E_{nl}`$ $`=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(n+\sqrt{n\alpha ^2+\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \right)^2}\right).`$ (9)
In the following we use the notation

$$|n,\kappa =\underset{\sigma }{}c_{n\kappa }^\sigma |n\frac{\sigma \kappa }{2},\sigma .$$
(10)
where $`\sigma `$ denotes the spin quantized in $`z`$-direction (1: up, -1: down) and $`\kappa `$ the helicity (1: right, -1: left).

The low temperature magnetoconductivity is determined by the electron states close to the Fermi energy. We will be interested mainly in the low-magnetic field regime where the conductivity is dominated by contributions from Landau levels with $`n1`$ and we may simplify the energy spectrum by replacing $`\alpha \overline{\alpha }/\sqrt{a^{}a+\frac{1}{2}}`$ with $`\overline{\alpha }=\frac{\overline{\alpha }_z}{2\mathrm{}\omega _c}`$. With the approximation $`\frac{n+1}{n}1`$ we arrive at a model with constant spin-splitting $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SO}=2\overline{\alpha }_z`$ and the coefficients of (II) and (II) take the forms

$`c_r^u={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\alpha }}{\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )\sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)^2}}},`$
$`c_r^d={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)}{\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )\sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)^2}}}`$ (11)
and

$`c_l^u={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\alpha }}{\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )+\sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)^2}}},`$
$`c_l^d={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta +\sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)}{\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left((\frac{1}{2}\beta )+\sqrt{\overline{d}}\right)^2}}}`$ (12)
respectively, where $`\overline{d}=\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+(\frac{1}{2}\beta )^2}`$. For this constant SO coupling model the energy eigenvalues are

$`E_{nr}`$ $`=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(1+n\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \right)^2}\right),`$ (13)
$`E_{nl}`$ $`=\mathrm{}\omega _c\left(n+\sqrt{\overline{\alpha }^2+\left(\frac{1}{2}\beta \right)^2}\right).`$ (14)
The energy spectrum of this model (Fig. 1c) consists of the two branches of right and left states which by our choice of $`\overline{\alpha }_z`$ are shifted by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}}=5`$meV. The crossing of Landau levels takes place for all levels at the same magnetic field. Thus our model preserves the two main effects of SO coupling, the crossing of Landau levels and the mixing of spin components up/down.

## III SCBA with spin-degree of freedom

For the calculation of the conductivity scattering has to be taken into account. The impurity-averaged Green function of the system $`G`$ is given by the Dyson equation

$$G=G_0+G_0\mathrm{\Sigma }G.$$
(15)
The scattering is included by the selfenergy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) ando82 . The matrixelements of the selfenergy $`\alpha |\mathrm{\Sigma }|\alpha ^{}=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}`$, $`\alpha =(n\kappa )`$ read in the basis of eigenstates (10)

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}=\underset{\beta \beta ^{}}{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta \beta ^{}\alpha ^{}}G_{\beta \beta ^{}}.$$
(16)
The kernel $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta \beta ^{}\alpha ^{}}`$ is given by the expression

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta \beta ^{}\alpha ^{}}=\frac{dq^2}{(2\pi )^2}\left|\stackrel{~}{v}_\mathrm{I}(𝒒)\right|^2\alpha \left|e^{i𝒒𝒓}\right|\beta \beta ^{}\left|e^{i𝒒𝒓}\right|\alpha ^{},$$
(17)
where $`\stackrel{~}{v}_\mathrm{I}(𝒒)`$ denotes the Fourier transform of the impurity potential gerh75 .

We consider spin-conserving short range impuritiy scattering. By this choice we neglect magnetic impurities and SO coupling with the scattering center, thus without Rashba SO coupling scattering is possible only between states with the same spin-quantum number. In the new basis (10), including the Rashba term, scattering between states with different helicity becomes possible. For $`\delta `$-scatterers Eq. (17) simplifies to

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta \beta ^{}\alpha ^{}}`$ $`=\mathrm{\Gamma }^2{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}}\left(c_{n\kappa }^\sigma \right)^{}c_{m\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}^\sigma \left(c_{m^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}^\sigma ^{}\right)^{}c_{n^{}\kappa ^{}}^\sigma ^{}\times `$ (18)
$`\times \delta _{n{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{\sigma \kappa }{2}},n^{}{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{\sigma ^{}\kappa ^{}}{2}}}\delta _{m{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{\sigma \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{2}},m^{}{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{\sigma ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}{2}}},`$ (19)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^2=\frac{1}{2\pi }\mathrm{}\omega _c\frac{\mathrm{}}{\tau }`$ is connected through the relaxation time $`\tau `$ with the mobility $`\mu =e\tau /m^{}`$ in the case without magnetic field. The Kronecker symbols have the form $`\delta _{n^{},n\theta }`$ and $`\delta _{m^{},m\mu }`$ with $`\theta =\frac{1}{2}(\sigma \sigma ^{}\kappa +\kappa ^{})=2,1,0,1,2`$ and $`\mu =\frac{1}{2}(\sigma \sigma ^{}\stackrel{~}{\kappa }+\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{})=2,1,0,1,2`$. We restrict ourselves to the diagonal approximation in the spacial quantum numbers by considering only $`\theta =\mu =0`$. In this approximation the selfenergy reads $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{nn^{}}^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}=\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}\delta _{nn^{}}`$ with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}`$ independent of $`n`$, and the Green function $`G_{mm^{}}^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}=G_m^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}\delta _{mm^{}}`$. Thus the SCBA selfenergy becomes

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}=\mathrm{\Gamma }^2\underset{m}{}\underset{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}{}\alpha _{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}G_m^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}$$
(20)
with

$$\alpha _{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}=\underset{\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}\left(c_\kappa ^\sigma \right)^{}c_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}^\sigma \left(c_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}^\sigma ^{}\right)^{}c_\kappa ^{}^\sigma ^{}\delta _{\sigma \sigma ^{},\kappa \kappa ^{}}\delta _{\sigma \sigma ^{},\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}$$
(21)
and

$$\left(G_m^{\kappa \kappa ^{}}\right)^1=\left(G_{0m}^\kappa \right)^1\delta _{\kappa \kappa ^{}}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\kappa \kappa ^{}},$$
(22)
where $`G_{0m}^\kappa `$ is the Green function of the system without impurities. Using the abbreviations $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\kappa \kappa }\mathrm{\Sigma }^\kappa `$, $`G_m^{\kappa \kappa }G_m^\kappa `$ and $`\alpha _{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}^{\kappa \kappa }\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\delta _{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }\stackrel{~}{\kappa }^{}}`$ the selfenergy can now be calculated from

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^\kappa =\mathrm{\Gamma }^2\underset{m\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}{}\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}G_m^{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\text{with}\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}=\underset{\sigma }{}\left|c_\kappa ^\sigma \right|^2\left|c_{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }}^\sigma \right|^2.$$
(23)
The off-diagonal elements of the selfenergy will be neglected.

The density of states for the left and right components are obtained by the trace over the spectral funktions $`A_m^\kappa =\text{Im}\left\{\frac{1}{\pi }G_m^\kappa \right\}`$.

$`D^\kappa (E)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{L_xL_y}}\text{Tr}_m\{A_m^\kappa \}=`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(\pi \lambda _\mathrm{c}\mathrm{\Gamma })^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\kappa ^{}}{}}(\alpha ^1)_{\kappa \kappa ^{}}\text{Im}\left\{\mathrm{\Sigma }^\kappa ^{}(E)\right\}.`$ (24)
Here $`(\alpha ^1)_{\kappa \kappa ^{}}`$ is the inverse of the matrix formed from the $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa ^{}}`$ of Eq. (23) for which $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }+\alpha _{\kappa (\kappa )}=1`$. For vanishing SO coupling one has $`\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\delta _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}`$ and the standard SCBA result is reproduced. For strong SO coupling if $`\overline{\alpha }>1`$, i.e. the Landau splitting is smaller than the splitting induced by the SO interaction, one has $`\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}\frac{1}{2}`$.

Due to the SO interaction the Landau levels of different helicity cross as seen in Fig. 1b and c. To demonstrate the influence of scattering around these crossing points we apply the described extension of the SCBA to a two level system with different spacings. The two states at the energies $`E_r`$, $`E_l`$ have different helicity and evolve with increasing SO coupling from the spin up/down states with energy $`E_u`$ and $`E_d`$.

In Fig. 2a the situation without SO interaction $`\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}=\delta _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}`$ is shown. For decreasing energy difference $`E_uE_d`$ the form of the selfenergy, calculated from Eq. (23), and the density of states, from Eq. (III), keeps unchanged.

In contrast, in the case of SO coupled states (Fig. 2b, with $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }=0.6`$) the impurity scattering adds to the selfenergy a contribution at the neighbouring state with opposite helicity. If the states are not degenerate, both width and height of the imaginary part of the selfenergy are reduced as compared with Fig. 2a, while for the degenerate levels the selfenergy and the density of states are identical with the situation of pure spin states. For strongly SO coupled states $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }\frac{1}{2}`$ the height and width of the imaginary part of the selfenergy are reduced by $`1/\sqrt{2}`$, as can be seen from Eq. (23). As these parameters are inversely proportional to the relaxation time we conclude, that the scattering time is increased by the SO coupling, away from the crossing points.

To summarize, the scattering strength depends on the level separation, i.e. on the distance from crossing points in Fig. 1. As this distance varies with the magnetic field we expect a modulation of the scattering strength with the magnetic field.

## IV Conductivity

Based on the exact eigenstates of the constant SO coupling model we evaluate the Kubo formula

$$\sigma _{\mu \mu }=\frac{e^2\pi \mathrm{}}{L_xL_y}𝑑E(\frac{df_0}{dE})\underset{\alpha \alpha ^{}}{}\left|\alpha |v_\mu |\alpha ^{}\right|^2A_\alpha A_\alpha ^{}$$
(25)
to calculate the conductivity. Here the spectral function $`A_\alpha `$ includes the impurity scattering in SCBA as described in Sec. III and the Fermi distribution function yields the temperature average. The velocity is given by the equation $`i\mathrm{}v_\mu =[x_\mu ,H]`$, which results in

$`v_x=\frac{1}{m^{}}\left(\pi _x+\frac{\alpha _z}{\mathrm{}}\sigma _y\right)\text{and}v_y=\frac{1}{m^{}}\left(\pi _y\frac{\alpha _z}{\mathrm{}}\sigma _x\right).`$ (26)
Besides $`\sigma _{\mu \mu },\mu =x,y`$ we calculate also the thermodynamic density of states at the Fermi energy $`D_\mathrm{F}=𝑑E(\frac{df_0}{dE})D(E)`$. In Fig. 3 both quantities are shown for the two temperatures $`T=1`$K and $`T=3`$K with the Fermi energy determined from the constant electron density $`n_s`$. For comparison the classical high temperature limit of the SCBA for decoupled Landau levels is given by the dashed line.

The effect of spin-orbit coupling is seen in $`D_F`$ as the beating pattern, well-known from measured SdH oscillations nitt97 ; heid98 ; schae98 ; hu99 , while in $`\sigma _{xx}`$ it causes an additional modulation, which survives even at a higher temperature when the SdH oscillations are damped out. The period of this modulation is determined by the crossing of Landau levels (marked in Fig. 3) induced by the spin-orbit coupling. The self-energy enters differently into $`D_\mathrm{F}`$ and $`\sigma _{xx}`$. In $`D_\mathrm{F}`$ it leads to a modulated broadening of the Landau levels which is washed out in the high-temperature limit, while in $`\sigma _{xx}`$ it acts in addition as a scattering time whose dependence on the level separation remains even at higher temperatures. This is seen by comparing with the classical SCBA limit for decoupled Landau levels (dashed lines): the Kubo formula (25) yields a magnetoconductivity which is reduced away from the crossing points due to suppression of impurity scattering. (Note, that we are in the limit $`\omega _\mathrm{c}\tau 1`$, where the Drude conductivity is proportional to $`1/\tau `$.) To demonstrate the effect of scattering between states of different helicity in our extension of the SCBA, we show in Fig. 4 the dependence of the conductivity at $`T=3`$K on the mixing coefficient $`\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}`$ by keeping the energy spectrum with spin-orbit splitting unchanged but varying $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }`$, which otherwise is given by the coefficients $`c_\kappa ^\sigma `$. Neglecting the scattering between states of different helicity $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }=1`$, the crossing of Landau levels has no effect on the conductivity. For dominant spin-orbit coupling, $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }\frac{1}{2}`$, we see that the conductivity is reduced between crossing points of Landau levels. We can distinguish two situations (top of Fig. 4): The states with different helicity are degenerate (A) and the scattering efficiency keeps unchanged; When right/left-states are not degenerate (B) the conductivity depends on $`\alpha _{\kappa \stackrel{~}{\kappa }}`$.

In Fig. 5, we have varied the strength of the impurity scattering by changing the parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. At the classical limit of the SCBA with decoupled Landau levels (dashed lines), we see that the conductivity rises with increasing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. The modulation of the conductivity due to the crossing of Landau levels decreases, because the limit of decoupled Landau levels cannot be reached for large enough $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

We have shown by a quantum mechanical calculation, that the SO coupling causes the expected beats of the SdH oscillations. In addition our results exhibit a new modulation of the magnetoconductivity which can be ascribed to a modification of impurity scattering in the presence of SO coupling. This could help in experiments to distinguish the effect of the SO coupling from that of inhomogeneous electron densities which was invoked in Ref. bros99  to explain beatings in the SdH oscillations.

## V Magnetotransport in lateral superlattices with spin-orbit coupling

Lateral semiconductor superlattices have proven to be well suited for studying the physics of Bloch electrons in artificial periodic systems weis91 . A variety of oscillations have been observed in magnetotransport experiments for systems, in which the lattice constant $`a`$ is comparable with achievable magnetic lengths $`\lambda _c=\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}}{eB}}`$ and both being much smaller (at low temperature) than the carrier mean-free-path. After having studied the SdH oscillations in the previous section we focus here on the influence of the Rashba SO interaction on the various magnetoconductivity oscillations due to the periodic modulation mentioned in the introduction. For the lateral superlattice with Rashba SO interaction the Hamiltonian is given by

$$H=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2m^{}}(\pi _x^2+\pi _y^2)& \frac{\alpha _z}{\mathrm{}}(\pi _x+i\pi _y)\\ \frac{\alpha _z}{\mathrm{}}(\pi _xi\pi _y)& \frac{1}{2m^{}}(\pi _x^2+\pi _y^2)\end{array}\right)+\left(\begin{array}{cc}V(x,y)& 0\\ 0& V(x,y)\end{array}\right).$$
(27)
We consider here a periodic modulation in $`x`$ direction described by

$$V(x)=\frac{V_0}{2}\mathrm{cos}(\frac{2\pi }{a}x).$$
(28)
It removes the degeneracy of the Landau levels and is taken into account in evaluating the Kubo formula together with the spin-conserving impurity scattering in the extension of the SCBA as for the homogeneous 2DES. In Fig. 6 the longitudinal magnetoconductivities $`\sigma _{xx}`$ and $`\sigma _{yy}`$, in the direction of the modulation and perpendicular to it, respectively, are depicted for potential parameters $`V_0=3`$meV, $`a=75`$nm, and two temperatures. The Fermi energy was fixed to $`E_F=30`$meV, much larger than the amplitude of the periodic potential, which defines the weak modulation case. The mixing coefficient was fixed to the maximum value $`\alpha _{\kappa \kappa }=\frac{1}{2}`$. Different types of oscillations can be identified of which at the higher temperature ($`3`$K) only the commensurability oscillations and the modulation due to SO coupling survive. The periods (seen in the $`1`$K traces) can be quantified in simplified models. Following Onsager onsa31  the SdH periods are

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/B}^{\mathrm{SdH}:+/}=\frac{e\mathrm{}}{m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})},$$
(29)
where the appearance of two Fermi contours due to the spin-splitting is accounted for kepp02 . The period of the commensurability oscillations in given by maga94

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/B}^{\mathrm{CO}:+/}=\frac{ea}{2\sqrt{2m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})}}.$$
(30)
where again the spin-split Fermi contours are considered. The periods reflecting the formation of the miniband structure due to the periodic potential albr98 ; lang00 ; deut01  are quantified by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/B}=\frac{2\pi e}{\mathrm{}}\frac{1}{A},$$
(31)
where $`A`$ is the cross section of the modified Fermi contour given in Ref. lang00 . Again the spin-splitting due to SO coupling is to be considered and Eq. (31) yield two periods for the Fermi cross sections

$`A^{1\mathrm{D}:+/}={\displaystyle \frac{2m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})\pi }{\mathrm{}^2}}`$ (32)
$`2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{a}}\right)\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})}{\mathrm{}^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{a}}\right)^2}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{4m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})}{\mathrm{}^2}}\mathrm{arcsin}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \mathrm{}}{a\sqrt{2m^{}(E_\mathrm{F}\pm \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}})}}}.`$ (33)
Finally we may conclude from the eigenvalues of Eq. (8) for $`n1`$ a period of

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/B}^{\mathrm{SO}}=\frac{e\mathrm{}}{m^{}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SO}}}$$
(34)
for the modulation connected with the crossing points of the Landau levels at the Fermi energy.

In order to analyze all these oscillations we take the power spectrum of the differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{\mu \mu }`$, $`\mu =x,y`$, of the calculated longitudinal conductivities at $`1`$ and $`8`$K. It is shown in dependence on the strength of the SO coupling (Fig. 7) and on the Fermi energy $`E_\mathrm{F}`$ (Fig. 8) together with the periods predicted from Eqs. (29)-(34). In Fig. 7 we see that

with increasing SO coupling the frequencies of all (but one) resolved 1/B periodic oscillations split and the maxima of the Fourier transform follow the predictions of the simplified models. This is not the case for the peaks showing up at the lowest $`f_{1/B}`$ values. These peaks, being due to the modulation resulting from our extension of the SCBA (Sec. III), do not split and follow the analytic expressions of Eq. (34). In Fig. 8 the oscillation period is shown in dependence on the Fermi energy.

Again the maxima of our full quantum-mechanical calculation follow the predictions of the simplified models of Eqs. (29)-(34).

## VI Summary

We have calculated the magnetoconductivity for a homogenous 2DES with spin-orbit interaction including a non-trivial extension of the SCBA which takes into account the spin-degree of freedom. The crossing of Landau levels with different helicity, which is induced by the spin-orbit interaction, manifests itself in an additional modulation of the conductivity. It is due to a modification of impurity scattering in the presence of SO coupling. This signature could be used - besides the beating of SdH oscillations - for the experimental verification of SO coupling.

Further we have investigated the influence of SO interaction on the magnetoconductivity oscillations in 1D lateral superlattices. The prediction of the frequencies by simple models and the numerical calculations are in agreement and should motivate an experimental verification.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been supported by the DFG via Forschergruppe 370 Ferromagnet-Halbleiter-Nanostrukturen.


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# Ladder-QCD at finite isospin chemical potential

## I INTRODUCTION

In the last few years the study of QCD at finite density has become rather important. In particular it has been established that at zero temperature and in the high density limit a color superconducting phase exists (for a review see Rajagopal:2000wf ). From a phenomenological point of view there are two areas where finite density is relevant. The first area is the realm of compact stellar objects where the central density can reach values up to ten times the saturation density $`\rho `$, with $`\rho 0.14`$ fm<sup>-3</sup> evaluated as the inverse of the volume of a sphere of radius $`1.2`$ fm. Since the temperature of a compact star is much smaller than the typical color superconducting gap (of order of tens of $`\mathrm{MeV}`$) one can safely consider the limit $`T0`$. The second area can be found in heavy ion physics. However, in this case, color superconductivity is not relevant given the large entropy per baryon produced in heavy ion collisions. But here another important feature of QCD might be relevant. According to different models Barducci:1989wi ; kunihiro ; Halasz:1998qr ; Berges:1998rc  the phase diagram of QCD in the plane $`(\mu _B,T)`$ exhibits a tricritical point. Since this point should be located at moderate density and temperature there is some possibility of observation in heavy ion experiments. Another important point in heavy ion physics is the fact that in the experimental setting there is a non zero isospin chemical potential, $`\mu _I`$. Studies at finite $`\mu _I`$ have been the object of several papers Bedaque:1999nu ; Alford:2000ze ; Buballa:1998pr ; Steiner:2000bi ; Neumann:2002jm ; Steiner:2002gx  but mainly in the regime of low temperature and high baryon chemical potential. The first complete study of the phase diagram in the three-parameter space $`(\mu _B,T,\mu _I)`$ has been made in the context of a Random Matrix model Klein:2003fy . It has been found that the first order transition line ending at the tricritical point of the case $`\mu _I=0`$ actually splits in two first order transition lines and correspondingly two crossover regions are present at low values of baryon chemical potential. The existence of this splitting has also been shown in the context of a Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in Toublan:2003tt . It should also be noticed that in Frank:2003ve  the NJL model has been augmented by the four-fermi instanton interaction relevant in the case of two flavors. These authors have found that the coupling induced by the instanton interaction between the two flavors might wash completely the splitting of the first order transition line. This happens for values of the ratio of the instanton coupling to the NJL coupling of order 0.1-0.15.

In this paper we will consider the effect of a finite isospin chemical potential in a model (ladder-QCD) where the existence of a tricritical point was shown several years ago Barducci:1989wi . The reason of doing this analysis in a model different from the NJL model is due to the fact that QCD at finite baryon density is difficult to be studied on the lattice (however it should be noticed that recently a new technique has been proposed Fodor:2001au  and a first evaluation of the tricritical point has been given in Fodor:2001pe ). It is therefore important to study certain features in different models in order to have a feeling about their universality. For instance the existence of a tricritical point seems to enjoy such a characteristic. What we are presenting here is a preliminary study, and therefore we will restrict the analysis at small isospin chemical potential. The interest for this topic is due to results from lattice simulations and effective theories which show the existence of a phase transition at finite $`\mu _I`$ Kogut:2002tm ; Kogut:2002zg ; Son:2000xc ; Toublan:1999hx . We also ignore the effects from color superconductivity, since these are present only for temperatures lower than some tens of $`\mathrm{MeV}`$.

In our model all the three flavors are present, and the relevant instanton effects would give rise to a six-fermi contact interaction. Therefore it is not clear if these effects will wash out the splitting as in the two flavor case Frank:2003ve . We will consider this problem in a future work.

## II THE MODEL (REVISITED)

In this Section we will review a model that was used several years ago to describe the chiral phase of QCD both at zero temperature Barducci:1984pr ; Barducci:1987gn  and at finite temperature and density Barducci:1989wi ; Barducci:1993bh . This model is an approximation to QCD based on the evaluation of the effective potential at two-loop level and on a parametrization of the self-energy consistent with the OPE results. The effective action that we evaluate is a slight modification (see for instance Barducci:1989wi ) of the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis action for composite operators Jackiw:cv ; Cornwall:vz . We recall here the major steps of this calculation. We start from the Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis formula

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }[S]=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2[S]+\mathrm{Tr}\left[S\frac{\delta \mathrm{\Gamma }_2}{\delta S}\right]\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}\left[S_0^1+\frac{\delta \mathrm{\Gamma }_2}{\delta S}\right]+\mathrm{counterterms}$$
(1)
where the free fermion inverse propagator is

$$S_0^1(p)=i\widehat{p}m$$
(2)
and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ is the sum of all 2PI diagrams with propagator $`S`$, which has to coincide with the exact fermion propagator at the absolute minimum of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. Thus $`S`$ is the dynamical variable in this variational approach. However it turns out useful to trade $`S`$ for

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{\delta \mathrm{\Gamma }_2}{\delta S}$$
(3)
which coincides with the fermion self-energy at the minimum of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

In the present model (ladder-QCD) we will make the very rough approximation of evaluating $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ at the lowest order. That is, we evaluate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ at two-loops with one gluon exchange. The relevant Feynman diagram is given in Fig. 1. It turns out that this approximation works rather well phenomenologically (see for instance Barducci:1987gn ). Therefore, at this order the effective action is simply Barducci:1987gn

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }[\mathrm{\Sigma }]`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}\left(S_0^1\mathrm{\Sigma }\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{Tr}\left(S\mathrm{\Sigma }\right)+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{t}.`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{ln}\left(S_0^1\mathrm{\Sigma }\right)+\mathrm{\Gamma }_2\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }\right]+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{t}.`$
As in refs. Barducci:1984pr ; Barducci:1987gn , we use the following parametrization for $`S`$

$$S(p)=iA(p)\widehat{p}+B(p)+i\gamma _5C(p)$$
(5)
Then, by working in the Landau gauge, it is possible to show that no renormalization of the wave function is required and also that the Ward identity at this order is satisfied by taking the free quark-gluon vertex and the free gluon propagator. We also consider the so-called rigid case, where the strong coupling $`g`$ is considered fixed at $`p^2=M^2`$, where $`M`$ is a convenient mass scale to be fixed later. In this way the relation between the scalar and pseudoscalar contribution to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and the terms $`B,C`$ in Eq. (5) can be easily inverted, leading to the following expression for the effective action, fully expressed in terms of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (Barducci:1987gn )

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }[\mathrm{\Sigma }]=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2[\mathrm{\Sigma }]+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{log}}[\mathrm{\Sigma }]$$
(6)
where, separating $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\mathrm{\Sigma }_s+i\gamma _5\mathrm{\Sigma }_p`$

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_2[\mathrm{\Sigma }]=\frac{8\mathrm{\Omega }_4N_c\pi ^2}{3g^2C_2}\frac{d^4q}{(2\pi )^4}\mathrm{tr}[\mathrm{\Sigma }_s(q^2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Sigma }_s(q^2)+\mathrm{\Sigma }_p(q^2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Sigma }_p(q^2)]$$
(7)
with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_4`$ being the four-volume and $`C_2=4/3`$ for $`N_c=3`$ the quadratic Casimir of $`SU(3)_c`$. Besides $`M`$, also $`g`$ is a parameter of the model. The one-loop term is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{log}}[\mathrm{\Sigma }]=\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{log}\left(S_0^1\mathrm{\Sigma }\right)=\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{log}\left[i\widehat{p}m\mathrm{\Sigma }_s(p^2)i\gamma _5\mathrm{\Sigma }_p(p^2)\right]$$
(8)
where the scalar and pseudoscalar parts of the dynamical variable are matrices in $`SU(3)`$ flavor space (as well as $`m`$), related to the scalar and pseudoscalar quark condensates through the following equation

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_s(p^2)+i\gamma _5\mathrm{\Sigma }_p(p^2)=(s+i\gamma _5p)f(p^2)$$
(9)
The function $`f(p^2)`$ which contains the momentum dependence of the self-energy will be discussed in a moment. The fields

$$s_{ab}=\frac{3C_2g^2}{4NM^3}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_a\mathrm{\Psi }_b$$
(10)
$$p_{ab}=\frac{3C_2g^2}{4NM^3}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_ai\gamma _5\mathrm{\Psi }_b$$
(11)
will be determined by minimizing the effective action. In Eq. (8), $`m`$ is the mass matrix in flavor space which is taken diagonal

$$m=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}m_u& 0& 0\\ 0& m_d& 0\\ 0& 0& m_s\end{array}\right)$$

The function $`f(p^2)`$ will be chosen requiring that it goes to a constant for $`p0`$ and as $`1/p^2`$ (mod log terms) for large values of $`p`$ as suggested by the OPE expansion. By introducing a dimensionless variable $`x^2=p^2/M^2`$ we will consider the following family of functions

$$\frac{f_N(x^2)}{M}=\frac{1+x^2+x^4+\mathrm{}+x^{2N2}}{1+x^2+x^4+\mathrm{}+x^{2N2}+x^{2N}}$$
(12)
In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ we get the function used in Barducci:1984pr ; Barducci:1987gn

$$\frac{f(x^2)}{M}=\theta \left(1x^2\right)+\theta \left(x^21\right)\frac{1}{x^2}$$
(13)
Notice that for $`x0`$ we get

$$\frac{f_N(x^2)}{M}1x^{2N}+..$$
(14)
Now, let us consider for simplicity the chiral limit and zero chemical potentials. In this case it is simple to get the mass-shell condition from the one loop term in Eq. (8) (see for instance Barducci:1989wi )

$$p^2+s^2f_N^2=0$$
(15)
where $`s`$ is the field proportional to the scalar condensate (see Eq. (10)). If we want to recover, at least in the infrared regime, a free particle-like dispersion relation (as for instance happens in four fermion theories), we see from Eqs. (14) and (15) that we need $`N2`$. In this paper we will choose $`N=2`$. Notice that the choice $`N=1`$ would lead to the following dispersion relation in the limit of small momenta

$$p^2(12s^2)+M^2s^2+\mathrm{}=0$$
(16)
This might give rise to problems in the broken phase where the coefficient of $`p^2`$ could become negative. However no difficulties arise for the determination of the critical points where $`s0`$. On the contrary the equation of state could be affected.

We can thus evaluate explicitly the effective potential

$$V=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\mathrm{\Omega }_4}$$
(17)
which is UV-finite in the chiral limit, whereas it needs to be properly renormalized in the massive case . We have employed the following normalization condition

$$\frac{V}{(m_a\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_a\mathrm{\Psi }_a)}|_{min}=1$$
(18)
In the chiral limit, this requirement is equivalent to the Adler-Dashen relation (see for instance Barducci:1987gn ). Here we will require the validity of this equation at the values of the quark current masses.
By defining $`\alpha _a=m_a/M`$ and

$$\chi _a=\frac{g^2}{3M^3}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_a\mathrm{\Psi }_a$$
(19)
the normalization condition, using Eq. (10), can be written as

$$\frac{V_a}{(\alpha _a\chi _a)}|_{min}=\frac{3M^4}{2\pi ^2}c=\frac{3M^4}{g^2(M)}$$
(20)
where we have introduced the parameter

$$c\frac{2\pi ^2}{g^2(M)}$$
(21)
The chemical potential and the temperature dependence are introduced following standard methods Dolan:qd  (see for example Barducci:1989wi ). In particular the chemical potential is introduced from the very beginning via the usual substitution $`p^\nu (p_0+i\mu ,\stackrel{}{p})`$ in $`\widehat{p}`$ appearing in the Dirac operator in Eq. (8). On the other hand the temperature dependence is introduced by substituting to $`p_0`$ the Matsubara frequency $`\omega _n=(2n+1)\pi T`$ in all the $`p_0`$ dependent terms appearing in the effective action. The reason for this asymmetrical treatment is that the $`p`$ dependence in the self-energies becomes relevant only at $`pM`$ whereas, as we shall see we will be interested in chemical potentials lower than $`M`$.

## III Results at finite temperature and density

In order to get the effective action we need to calculate the determinant of the operator appearing in Eq. (8). We set to zero the strange quark chemical potential $`\mu _s=0`$ and define $`\mu _I=(\mu _u\mu _d)/2`$ and $`\mu _B=(\mu _u+\mu _d)/2`$. The operator is given by the following $`33`$ matrix in flavor space:

$$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}i(\omega _n+i\mu _u)\gamma _0+i\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{\gamma }F_u& \rho f_2\gamma _5& 0\\ \rho f_2\gamma _5& i(\omega _n+i\mu _d)\gamma _0+i\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{\gamma }F_d& 0\\ 0& 0& i\omega _n\gamma _0+i\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{\gamma }F_s\end{array}\right)$$
(22)
where we have defined $`F_a=m_a+f_2\chi _a`$; $`a=u,d,s`$ and with $`f_2`$ given in Eq. (12) with $`N=2`$. Also $`p^2=\omega _n^2+|\stackrel{}{p}|^2`$. Here $`\rho `$ is related to the charged pion condensate

$$\rho =\frac{g^2}{6M^3}(\overline{u}\gamma _5d\overline{d}\gamma _5u)$$
(23)
We have directly set to zero the hyper-charged condensates in the strange sector, since we do not expect the formation of such condensates for $`\mu _s=0`$. The strange sector thus factorizes and the determination of the phase diagram for approximate chiral symmetry restoration is performed by studying the behavior of the light $`\overline{u}u`$ and $`\overline{d}d`$ quark condensates, independently on the strange quark condensate. To evaluate the effective action, we perform the sum over the Matsubara frequencies which solve the mass-shell condition given by the vanishing of the determinant in Eq. (22) using standard methods Dolan:qd . Although formally straightforward, the calculation is a very hard numerical task. Actually, at each integration step on $`|\stackrel{}{p}|`$, we have to solve a twentieth order algebraic equation in $`\omega _n`$ in the $`ud`$ sector. The part relative to the strange quark is obviously easier to deal with. The coefficients of this equation depend also on the parameters $`\chi _u,\chi _d,\rho ,\mu _u,\mu _d,m_u,m_d`$.

Before discussing the results at finite density and temperature let us review how we fix the parameters appearing in the effective action. This is done by looking at $`T=\mu =0`$. The parameters that we have to fit are $`c`$, $`M`$, $`m_u`$, $`m_d`$, $`m_s`$. These are obtained by using as input parameters the following physical quantities $`m_{\pi ^\pm }`$, $`m_{K^\pm }`$, $`m_{K^0}`$, $`f_\pi `$ and $`f_K`$. The results of the fit are given in Table I, whereas the values of the input experimental quantities, together with the result we get from the fit procedure are given in Table II.

With these values of the parameters, we find that at $`T=\mu =0`$ the quark condensate in chiral limit has the value

$$\overline{\psi }\psi _0=(248\mathrm{MeV})^3$$
(24)
whereas in the massive case

$$\overline{u}u=(251\mathrm{MeV})^3,\overline{d}d=(253\mathrm{MeV})^3,\overline{s}s=(305\mathrm{MeV})^3$$
(25)
and, by defining the constituent quark masses a la Politzer Pol

$$M_{const}=\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}(p^2=4M_{const}^2)$$
(26)
we get

$$M_s=385\mathrm{MeV},M_{u,d}=256\mathrm{MeV}$$
(27)
where, here and in the following the light quarks have been taken degenerate with mass $`\widehat{m}=(m_u+m_d)/2=5.3\mathrm{MeV}`$.
From the general study at $`T=\mu =0`$ and in the chiral limit, one finds also that in order to break the chiral symmetry one must have

$$c<1.37$$
(28)
This condition is satisfied by our choice of parameters.

When $`\mu _I=0`$ it was shown that in the model discussed in Barducci:1989wi  there is a tricritical point in the chiral limit. The model we are presenting here is essentially the same model with some slight modifications, as for instance, the choice of the function $`f_2(x)`$. However the tricritical point is still present as it can be seen from Fig. 2 (central line), obtained with the choice of parameters of Table I.

A complete analysis of the full three parameter space $`(\mu _B,T,\mu _I)`$ has not yet been completed especially in relation with the pion (and hyper-charged) condensate. We have examined the case $`T=\mu _B=0`$ and we have found that there is a phase transition indicated by a finite pion condensate starting at $`\mu _I=70`$ MeV. Since in our model $`m_\pi 140`$ MeV we agree with the results found in the literature Kogut:2002tm ; Kogut:2002zg ; Son:2000xc ; Toublan:1999hx ; Klein:2003fy . We found also that for $`m=0`$ the critical $`\mu _I`$ is zero. Therefore we will limit our considerations at small isospin chemical potential, say $`\mu _I=30`$ MeV, where we expect the pion condensate $`\rho `$ to vanish. In this situation the determinant in Eq. (22) factorizes and the effective action is given by a sum of three independent terms, one for each flavor. Therefore the action is the same as for $`\mu _I=0`$, with each flavor evaluated at its own chemical potential. It follows that the light flavor terms show the same tricritical structure exhibited from the central line in Fig. 2 for $`\mu _I=0`$. Consequently the phase diagram we obtain for a small, fixed isospin chemical potential ($`\mu _I=30\mathrm{MeV}`$) is described by the two side lines in Fig. 2 with each flavor $`u`$ and $`d`$ showing the same structure as the central line but with a split chemical potential $`\mu _{u,d}=\mu _B\pm \mu _I`$. Notice also that although the Figure extends up to zero temperature, this part should not be taken too seriously due to the existence of color superconductivity.

## IV CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we have discussed an approximate model of QCD (ladder-QCD) at finite temperature and densities. In particular we have considered the experimentally important situation of a non-vanishing isospin chemical potential. This situation has been already explored by various authors previously and we confirm, in particular, the results found in Klein:2003fy  and Toublan:2003tt  about the splitting of the first order transition line in the plane $`(\mu _B,T)`$, for small $`\mu _I`$. As pointed out in Toublan:2003tt  this result could be relevant for ion physics since the first order transition line is split symmetrically with respect to the original line at $`\mu _I=0`$. This implies a reduction of the value of the baryon chemical potential at the tricritical point of an amount given by $`\mu _I`$, making easier the possibility of discovering it experimentally. Since it is very difficult to perform first principle analysis of QCD at finite baryon density, we think that it is important to show that certain features as the existence of the tricritical point and the possible splitting of the first order transition line are common to several models. This suggests that these features might possess some universal character. However we should stress that the result of the splitting of the first order transition line is strictly related to the factorization in flavor space. For instance, in the two flavor case, the four-fermi interaction due to the instanton effects leads to a mixing of the flavors that, if sufficiently large, might wash out the mixing. We think that this point needs further analysis in the more complete scheme with three flavors.


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# References

Entanglement of Formation for a Class

of Quantum States

Shao-Ming Fei‡†111Email: fei@uni-bonn.de, Jürgen Jost222Email: jjost@mis.mpg.de, Xianqing Li-Jost333Email: Xianqing.Li-Jost@mis.mpg.de and Guo-Fang Wang444Email: Guofang.Wang@mis.mpg.de

Department of Mathematics, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100037

Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, 04103 Leipzig

Institut für Angewandte Mathematik, Universität Bonn, 53115 Bonn

Abstract

Entanglement of formation for a class of higher dimensional quantum mixed states is studied in terms of a generalized formula of concurrence for $`N`$-dimensional quantum systems. As applications, the entanglement of formation for a class of $`16\times 16`$ density matrices are calculated.

PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 89.70.+c

Key words: Entanglement of Formation, Generalized Concurrence

Quantum entanglement plays important roles in quantum communication, information processing and quantum computing , such as in the investigation of quantum teleportation , dense coding , decoherence in quantum computers  and the evaluation of quantum cryptographic schemes . To quantify entanglement, a well justified and mathematically tractable measure of entanglement is needed. A number of entanglement measures such as the entanglement of formation and distillation , negativity , and relative entropy  have been proposed for bipartite states \[6,8,12-17\]. Nevertheless, most proposed measures of entanglement involve extremizations which are difficult to handle analytically.

The “entanglement of formation” is intended to quantify the amount of quantum communication required to create a given state . Although it is defined for arbitrary dimensions, so far no explicit analytic formulae for entanglement of formation have been found for systems larger than a pair of qubits, due to the fact that two dimensional bipartite mixed states are special in many ways , except for some special symmetric states .

In this letter we study the entanglement of formation for a class of higher dimensional quantum mixed states. For certain $`N`$-dimensional pure quantum systems, we show that the entanglement of formation is a monotonically increasing function of a kind of generalized concurrence. As applications, the entanglement of formation for a class of $`16\times 16`$ density matrices is calculated in detail. The method applies to a large class of quantum states. The construction of these states are presented for $`N`$ dimensional, $`N=2^{k+1}`$, $`2kIN`$, bipartite systems.

Let $``$ be an $`N`$-dimensional complex Hilbert space with orthonormal basis $`e_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},N`$. A pure state on $``$ is generally of the form,

$$|\psi =\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{N}{}}a_{ij}e_ie_j,a_{ij}\text{ }C$$
(1)
with normalization

$$\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{N}{}}a_{ij}a_{ij}^{}=1.$$
(2)
The entanglement of formation $`E`$ is defined as the entropy of either of the two sub-Hilbert space $``$ ,

$$E(|\psi )=\text{Tr}(\rho _1\mathrm{log}_2\rho _1)=\text{Tr}(\rho _2\mathrm{log}_2\rho _2),$$
(3)
where $`\rho _1`$ (resp. $`\rho _2`$) is the partial trace of $`|\psi \psi |`$ over the first (resp. second) Hilbert space of $``$.

Let $`A`$ denote the matrix with entries given by $`a_{ij}`$ in (1). $`\rho _1`$ can be expressed as

$$\rho _1=AA^{}.$$
(4)
For a given density matrix of a pair of quantum systems on $``$, consider all possible pure-state decompositions of $`\rho `$, i.e., all ensembles of state $`|\psi _i`$ of the form (1) with probabilities $`p_i`$,

$$\rho =\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}p_i|\psi _i\psi _i|,\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}p_i=1$$

for some $`MIN`$. The entanglement of formation for the mixed state $`\rho `$ is defined as the average entanglement of the pure states of the decomposition, minimized over all possible decompositions of $`\rho `$,

$$E(\rho )=\text{min}\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}p_iE(|\psi _i).$$
(5)
It is a challenge to calculate (5) for general $`N`$. Till now a general explicit formula of $`E(\rho )`$ is obtained only for the case $`N=2`$. In this case (3) can be written as

$$E(|\psi )|_{N=2}=h(\frac{1+\sqrt{1C^2}}{2}),$$

where

$$h(x)=x\mathrm{log}_2x(1x)\mathrm{log}_2(1x),$$

$`C`$ is called concurrence :

$$C(|\psi )=|\psi |\stackrel{~}{\psi }|=2|a_{11}a_{22}a_{12}a_{21}|,$$

where $`|\stackrel{~}{\psi }=\sigma _y\sigma _y|\psi ^{}`$, $`|\psi ^{}`$ is the complex conjugate of $`|\psi `$, $`\sigma _y`$ is the Pauli matrix, $`\sigma _y=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& i\\ i& 0\end{array}\right)`$.

As $`E`$ is a monotonically increasing function of $`C`$, $`C`$ can be also taken as a kind of measure of entanglement. Calculating (5) is reduced to calculate the corresponding minimum of $`C(\rho )=\text{min}_{i=1}^Mp_iC(|\psi _i)`$, which simplifies the problems.

For $`N3`$, there is no such concurrence $`C`$ in general. The concurrences discussed in  can be only used to judge whether a pure state is separable (or maximally entangled) or not . The entanglement of formation is no longer a monotonically increasing function of these concurrences. Nevertheless, for a special class of quantum states, we can find certain quantities (generalized concurrence) to simplify the calculation of the corresponding entanglement of formation.

\[Theorem 1\]. If $`AA^{}`$ has only two non-zero eigenvalues (each of which may be degenerate), the maximal non-zero diagonal determinant $`D`$ of $`AA^{}`$ is a generalized concurrence. The entanglement of formation of the corresponding pure state is a monotonically increasing function of $`D`$.

\[Proof\]. Let $`\lambda _1`$ (resp. $`\lambda _2`$) be the two non-zero eigenvalues of $`AA^{}`$ with degeneracy $`n`$ (resp. $`m`$), $`n+mN`$. That is,

$$D=\lambda _1^n\lambda _2^m.$$
(6)
From the normalization of $`|\psi `$, one has $`Tr(AA^{})=1`$, i.e.,

$$n\lambda _1+m\lambda _2=1.$$
(7)
$`\lambda _1`$ (resp. $`\lambda _2`$) takes values $`(0,\frac{1}{n})`$ (resp. $`(0,\frac{1}{m})`$). In this case the entanglement of formation of $`|\psi `$ is given by

$$E(|\psi )=n\lambda _1\mathrm{log}_2\lambda _1m\lambda _2\mathrm{log}_2\lambda _2.$$
(8)
According to (6) and (7) we get

$$\frac{E}{D}=\frac{m\lambda _1^{1n}}{1n\lambda _1m\lambda _1}\left(\frac{1n\lambda _1}{m}\right)^{1m}\mathrm{log}_2\frac{1n\lambda _1}{m\lambda _1},$$
(9)
which is positive for $`\lambda _1(0,\frac{1}{n})`$. Therefore $`E(|\psi )`$ is a monotonically increasing function of $`D`$. $`D`$ is a generalized concurrence and can be taken as a kind of measure of entanglement in this case.

Remark: We have assumed that $`\lambda _1`$, $`\lambda _20`$ in our theorem. In fact the right hand side of (9) keeps positive even when $`\lambda _1`$ (or equivalently $`\lambda _2`$) goes to zero. Hence $`E(|\psi )`$ is a monotonically increasing function of $`D`$ for $`\lambda _1[0,\frac{1}{n}]`$ (resp. $`\lambda _2[0,\frac{1}{m}]`$) satisfying the relation (7). Nevertheless if $`\lambda _1=0`$ (or $`\lambda _2=0`$), from (6) one gets $`D=0`$, which does not necessarily mean that the corresponding state $`|\psi `$ is separable. As $`E(|\psi )`$ is just a monotonically increasing function of $`D`$, $`D`$ only characterizes the relative degree of the entanglement among the class of these states.

From (7) and (8), the quantum states with the measure of entanglement characterized by $`D`$ are generally entangled. They are separated when $`n=1`$, $`\lambda _11`$ ($`\lambda _20`$) or $`m=1`$, $`\lambda _21`$ ($`\lambda _10`$). For the case $`n=m>1`$, all the pure states in this class are non-separable. In this case, we have

$$E(|\psi )=n\left(x\mathrm{log}_2x(\frac{1}{n}x)\mathrm{log}_2(\frac{1}{n}x)\right),$$
(10)
where

$$x=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{n}+\sqrt{\frac{1}{n^2}(1d^2)}\right)$$

and

$$d2nD^{\frac{1}{2n}}=2n\sqrt{\lambda _1\lambda _2}.$$
(11)
In this case we define $`d`$ to be the generalized concurrence. $`d`$ takes value from $`0`$ to $`1`$. From (10) one can show that $`E(d)`$ is a convex function (that is, curving upward):

$$\frac{^2E}{d^2}=\frac{\mathrm{log}\frac{1+\sqrt{1d^2}}{1\sqrt{1d^2}}2\sqrt{1d^2}}{(1d^2)^{3/2}\mathrm{log}4}>0,d[0,1].$$

Instead of calculating $`E(\rho )`$ directly, one may calculate the minimum decomposition of $`D(\rho )`$ or $`d(\rho )`$ to simplify the calculations. In the following, as an example, we calculate the entanglement of formation for a class of mixed states with $`N=4`$.

We consider a class of pure states (1) with the matrix $`A`$ given by

$$A=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& b& a_1& b_1\\ b& 0& c_1& d_1\\ a_1& c_1& 0& e\\ b_1& d_1& e& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(12)
$`a_1,b_1,c_1,d_1,b,e\text{ }C`$. The matrix $`AA^{}`$ has two eigenvalues with degeneracy two, i.e., $`n=m=2`$.

$$det(AA^{})=|b_1c_1a_1d_1+be|^4.$$
(13)
According to our theorem, the generalized concurrence

$$d=4|b_1c_1a_1d_1+be|$$
(14)
is a kind of measure of entanglement for all pure states of the form (12).

Let $`p`$ be a $`16\times 16`$ matrix with only non-zero entries $`p_{1,16}=p_{2,15}=p_{3,14}=p_{4,10}=p_{5,12}=p_{6,11}=p_{7,13}=p_{8,8}=p_{9,9}=p_{10,4}=p_{11,6}=p_{12,5}=p_{13,7}=p_{14,3}=p_{15,2}=p_{16,1}=1`$. $`d`$ in (14) can be written as

$$d=|\psi |p\psi ^{}||\psi |\psi |,$$
(15)
where $`\psi |\psi =\psi |p\psi ^{}`$.

We now calculate the entanglement of formation for a special class of mixed states. Let $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ denote the set of pure states (1) with $`A`$ given as the form of (12). We consider all mixed states with density matrix $`\rho `$ such that its decompositions are of the form

$$\rho =\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}p_i|\psi _i\psi _i|,\underset{i=1}{\overset{M}{}}p_i=1,|\psi _i\mathrm{\Psi }.$$
(16)
Let $`s16`$ be the rank of $`\rho `$ and $`|v_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},s`$, be a complete set of orthogonal eigenvectors corresponding to the nonzero eigenvalues of $`\rho `$, such that $`v_i|v_i`$ is equal to the $`i`$th eigenvalue. Other decomposition $`\{|w_i\}`$ of $`\rho `$ can then be obtained through unitary transformations:

$$|w_i=\underset{j=1}{\overset{s}{}}U_{ij}^{}|v_j,$$
(17)
where $`U`$ is a $`t\times t`$ unitary matrix, $`ts`$. The states $`|w_i`$ are so normalized that $`\rho =_i|w_iw_i|`$. It is obvious that for any $`|\psi _i\mathrm{\Psi }`$, the state of complex linear combination of $`|\psi _i`$ (unitary transformations) also belongs to $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$.

The decomposition according to the orthogonal eigenvectors $`|v_i`$ of $`\rho `$ is not the one satisfying (5) in general. As the generalized concurrence can be written as the form (15) for a pure state, we consider the quantity $`w_i|w_j`$. From (17) we have

$$w_i|w_j=(U\tau U^T)_{ij},$$

where the matrix $`\tau `$ is defined by $`\tau _{ij}v_i|v_j`$. The matrix $`p`$ in (15) is a symmetric one. Therefore $`\tau `$ is also symmetric and can always be diagonalized by a unitary matrix $`U`$ such that $`U\tau U^T=diag(\mathrm{\Lambda }_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{\Lambda }_s)`$ . The diagonal elements $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_i`$, in deceasing order, can always be made to be real and non-negative. Since $`U\tau \tau ^{}U^{}`$ is also diagonal, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_i`$ are just the square roots of the eigenvalues of $`\tau \tau ^{}`$. It is straightforward to check that they are also the eigenvalues of the Hermitian matrix $`R\sqrt{\sqrt{\rho }p\rho ^{}p\sqrt{\rho }}`$, or, alternatively, the square roots of the eigenvalues of the non-Hermitian matrix $`\rho p\rho ^{}p`$.

Hence there always exits a decomposition consisting of states $`|w_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},s`$, such that

$$w_i|w_j=\mathrm{\Lambda }_i\delta _{ij}.$$
(18)
We can now deal with the problem in a way similar to . Set

$$|y_1=|w_1,|y_j=i|w_j\mathrm{for}j=2,\mathrm{},s.$$
(19)
Any decomposition can be written in terms of the states $`|y_i`$ via the equation

$$|z_i=\underset{j=1}{\overset{s}{}}V_{ij}^{}|y_j,$$

where $`V`$ is a $`t\times s`$ matrix whose $`s`$ columns are othonormal vectors.

The average concurrence of a general decomposition is given by

$$d=\underset{i}{}|(VYV^T)_{ii}|=\underset{i}{}\left|\underset{j}{}(V_{ij})^2Y_{jj}\right|,$$
(20)
where $`Y`$ is the real diagonal matrix defined by $`Y_{ij}=y_i|y_j`$. Using the fact that $`_i|(V_{ij})^2|=1`$, one gets

$$d|\underset{ij}{}(V_{ij})^2Y_{jj}|\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\underset{i=2}{\overset{16}{}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_i.$$

Therefore the minimum decomposition of the generalized concurrence is

$$d(\rho )=\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\underset{i=2}{\overset{16}{}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_i.$$
(21)
Similar to the case $`N=2`$, there are decompositions such that the generalized concurrence of each individual state is equal to $`d(\rho )`$. Therefore the average entanglement is $`E(d(\rho ))`$.

Different from the case $`N=2`$, the entanglement of formation of density matrices (16) can not be zero in general. As every individual pure state in the decompositions is generally an entangled one, this class of mixed states are not separable.

In the following we call an $`N`$-dimensional pure state (1) $`d`$-computable if $`A`$ satisfies the following relations:

$$\begin{array}{c}det(AA^{})=([A][A]^{})^{N/2}\hfill \\ det(AA^{}\lambda Id_N)=(\lambda ^2A\lambda +[A][A]^{})^{N/2},\hfill \end{array}$$
(22)
where $`[A]`$ and $`A`$ are any quadratic forms of $`a_{ij}`$ (these quadratic forms could be different for different matrix $`A`$), $`Id_N`$ is the $`N\times N`$ identity matrix. We denote $`𝒜`$ the set of matrices satisfying (22), which implies that for $`A𝒜`$, $`AA^{}`$ has at most two different eigenvalues and each one has order $`N/2`$. Formula (21) can be generalized to general $`N^2\times N^2`$ density matrices with decompositions on $`N`$-dimensional $`d`$-computable pure states.

A class of $`N`$-dimensional, $`N=2^k`$, $`2kIN`$, $`d`$-computable states has been constructed in . These states give rise to a special class of density matrices with decompositions in these pure states, and the entanglement of formation for these density matrices can be calculated analytically according to the method above.

Let $`A`$ be an $`N\times N`$ matrix with entries $`a_{ij}\text{ }C`$, $`i,j=1,\mathrm{},N`$, with the following properties:

Set

$$A_2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}a& c\\ c& d\end{array}\right),$$

where $`a,c,d\text{ }C`$. For any $`b_1,c_1\text{ }C`$, a $`4\times 4`$ matrix $`A_4𝒜`$ can be constructed in the following way,

$$A_4=\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_2& A_2\\ A_2^t& C_2^t\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& b_1& a& c\\ b_1& 0& c& d\\ a& c& 0& c_1\\ c& d& c_1& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(23)
where

$$B_2=b_1J_2,C_2=c_1J_2,J_2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right).$$

$`A_4`$ satisfies the relations in (22):

$$\begin{array}{c}\left|A_4A_4^{}\right|=[(b_1c_1+ad+c^2)(b_1c_1+ad+c^2)^{}]^2=([A_4][A_4]^{})^2,\hfill \\ |A_4A_4^{}\lambda Id_4|=(\lambda ^2(b_1b_1^{}+c_1c_1^{}+aa^{}+2cc^{}+dd^{})\lambda \hfill \\ +(b_1c_1+ad+c^2)(b_1c_1+ad+c^2)^{})^2\hfill \\ =(\lambda ^2A_4\lambda +[A_4][A_4]^{})^2,\hfill \end{array}$$

where

$$[A_4]=(b_1c_1+ad+c^2),A_4=b_1b_1^{}+c_1c_1^{}+aa^{}+2cc^{}+dd^{}.$$
(24)
$`A_8𝒜`$ can be obtained from $`A_4`$,

$$A_8=\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_4& A_4\\ A_4^t& C_4^t\end{array}\right),$$
(25)
where

$$B_4=b_2J_4,C_4=c_2J_4,J_4=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 1\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 1& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),b_2,c_2\text{ }C.$$
(26)
For general construction of high dimensional matrices $`A_{2^{k+1}}𝒜`$, $`2kIN`$, we have

$$A_{2^{k+1}}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_{2^k}& A_{2^k}\\ (1)^{\frac{k(k+1)}{2}}A_{2^k}^t& C_{2^k}^t\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}b_kJ_{2^k}& A_{2^k}\\ (1)^{\frac{k(k+1)}{2}}A_{2^k}^t& c_kJ_{2^k}^t\end{array}\right),$$
(27)
$$J_{2^{k+1}}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& J_{2^k}\\ (1)^{\frac{(k+1)(k+2)}{2}}J_{2^k}^t& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(28)
where $`b_k,c_k\text{ }C`$, $`B_{2^k}=b_kJ_{2^k}`$, $`C_{2^k}=c_kJ_{2^k}`$. It can be verified that $`A_{2^k}`$ satisfies the following relations :

$$\begin{array}{c}|A_{2^{k+1}}A_{2^{k+1}}^{}|=([A_{2^{k+1}}][A_{2^{k+1}}]^{})^{2^k}=[((1)^{\frac{k(k+1)}{2}}b_kc_k[A_{2^k}])((1)^{\frac{k(k+1)}{2}}b_k^{}c_k^{}[A_{2^k}]^{})]^{2^k},\hfill \\ |A_{2^{k+1}}A_{2^{k+1}}^{}\lambda Id_{2^{k+1}}|=(\lambda ^2A_{2^{k+1}}\lambda +[A_{2^{k+1}}][A_{2^{k+1}}]^{})^{2^k}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(29)
Therefore the states given by (27) are $`d`$-computable. In terms of (11) the generalized concurrence for these states is given by

$$d_{2^{k+1}}=2^{k+1}|[A_{2^{k+1}}]|=2^{k+1}|b_kc_k+b_{k1}c_{k1}+\mathrm{}+b_1c_1+ad+c^2|.$$

Let $`p_{2^{k+1}}`$ be a symmetric anti-diagonal $`2^{2k+2}\times 2^{2k+2}`$ matrix with all the anti-diagonal elements $`1`$ except for those at rows $`2^{k+1}1+s(2^{k+2}2)`$, $`2^{k+1}+s(2^{k+2}2)`$, $`2^{k+2}1+s(2^{k+2}2)`$, $`2^{k+2}+s(2^{k+2}2)`$, $`s=0,\mathrm{},2^{k+1}1`$, which are $`1`$. $`d_{2^{k+1}}`$ can be written as

$$d_{2^{k+1}}=|\psi _{2^{k+1}}|p_{2^{k+1}}\psi _{2^{k+1}}^{}||\psi _{2^{k+1}}|\psi _{2^{k+1}}|,$$
(30)
where

$$|\psi _{2^{k+1}}=\underset{i,j=1}{\overset{2^{k+1}}{}}(A_{2^{k+1}})_{ij}e_ie_j.$$
(31)
According to the calculations on entanglement of formation for $`d`$-computable states, for a $`2^{2k+2}\times 2^{2k+2}`$ density matrix $`\rho _{2^{k+2}}`$ with decompositions on pure states of the form (31), its entanglement of formation is given by $`E(d_{2^{k+1}}(\rho _{2^{2k+2}}))`$, where

$$d_{2^{k+1}}(\rho _{2^{2k+2}})=\mathrm{\Omega }_1\underset{i=2}{\overset{2^{2k+2}}{}}\mathrm{\Omega }_i,$$
(32)
and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_i`$, in decreasing order, are the the square roots of the eigenvalues of the matrix $`\rho _{2^{2k+2}}p_{2^{k+1}}\rho _{2^{2k+2}}^{}p_{2^{k+1}}`$.

We have studied the entanglement of formation for a class of higher dimensional quantum mixed states. It is shown that for certain $`N`$-dimensional pure quantum systems, the entanglement of formation is a monotonically increasing function of a generalized concurrence. From this generalized concurrence the entanglement of formation for a large class of quantum states can be calculated analytically. The physical properties of these states are remained to be studied further.


text:
# Adaptive optics imaging survey of the Tucana-Horologium association

## 1 Introduction

Young, nearby stellar associations are ideal targets for the direct imaging of sub-stellar companions: (i) their proximity ($`<100`$ pc) allows the exploration of the faint circumstellar environment at relatively small distances from the star, and (ii) sub-stellar objects are hotter and brighter when young ($`1`$0 Myr) and therefore can be more easily detected than more evolved counterparts.

Based on data in the IRAS and Hipparcos catalogs, Zuckerman & Webb (2000) identified comoving stars of the Tucana association within 50 pc from earth. They tentatively assigned an age of $`40`$Myr for this comoving group based on the H$`\alpha `$ emission lines of three members. A consistent estimation of 10-30 Myr was found by Stelzer & Neuhäuser (2001) based on ROSAT data and comparison of the X-ray luminosity functions of Tucana and star forming regions. Zuckerman et al. (2001a) extended the number of probable members to 36 and argue that the Tucana association and the Horologium association, identified from ROSAT measurements by Torres et al. (2000), should be considered as part of the same stream. They may form a large, gravitationally unbound, association composed of $`50`$ stars.

Lowrance et al. (2000) reported the HST/NICMOS detection of a possible sub-stellar companion to the proposed Tucana member HR 7329, with a mass less than 50 MJup (Burrows et al. 1997). This exciting result, confirmed by spectroscopy and astrometry (Guenther et al. 2001), encouraged us to perform an AO imaging survey of this large association, searching for sub-stellar companions close to member stars. Ironically, HR 7329 appears not to be a member of the Tucana association, but rather of the substantially younger $`\beta `$ Pictoris moving group (Zuckerman et al. 2001b). In addition, HIP 92680 and HIP 95270 attributed initially to Tucana by Zuckerman & Webb (2000) also appear rather to be $`\beta `$ Pictoris group members (Zuckerman et al. 2001b). But before this was understood, we observed HIP 95270 with the ADONIS/SHARPII AO system on the ESO 3.6 m telescope.

In Sect. 2, we present the instrumental configuration and the observational strategy we adopted in both classical and coronagraphic imaging. We also give the detection performances commonly achieved during the survey. In Sect. 3, we present our photometric results for the three visual systems HIP 108422, GSC 8047-0232 and HIP 6856 and the confirmed binary HIP 1910 AB. We also report astrometric measurements obtained on November 2000 and October 2001 for the stars HIP 6856 and HIP 1910. The probability that four detected possible secondaries are associated is discussed. In Sect. 4-7, we discuss the photometry of the three companion candidates (CCs) and HIP 1910 AB based on evolutionnary models of Baraffe et al. (2002, 1998) and Chabrier et al. (2000). Our purpose is to test if the photometric results are consistent with physically bound objects and, if so, to determine the corresponding stellar parameters. These evolutionary models provide the most accurate comparison with present observations of young objects but are not as reliable for ages of a few tens of Myr because of unknown initial conditions.

## 2 Observation Strategy and performances

High contrast observations were performed with the AO ADONIS/SHARPII system over two distinct periods: 10-13 November 2000 and 28-29 October 2001. Of suggested members of the Tucana-Horologium association, 24 were observed in J, H and K bands, with and without coronagraphy, to explore the domain between $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`6.0^{\prime \prime }`$ from the central star (i.e., 25 AU to 300 AU for a distance of 50 pc). In both runs, the pixel scale on the detector is estimated to be $`0.0496\pm 0.0003^{\prime \prime }`$/px. The corresponding field of view is $`12.7^{\prime \prime }\times 12.7^{\prime \prime }`$. The orientation direction of true north was found to lie to the west of vertical by $`0.47^o\pm 0.5`$ on November 2000 and $`0.56^o\pm 0.5`$ on October 2001. The plate scale and field rotation are based on astrometric calibrations of ADONIS/SHARPII+/NICMOS3111*h*ttp://www.bdl.fr/priam/adonis/ obtained from observations of the astrometric reference field ($`\theta `$ Ori).

For each coronagraphic observation, a reference star was observed for PSF subtraction after scaling to the brightness of the science object. The coronagraphic masks were $`1.0^{\prime \prime }`$ in diameter on November 2000 and $`0.84^{\prime \prime }`$ on October 2001.

Seeing conditions were relatively good during both observing runs, ranging between $`0.6^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`1^{\prime \prime }`$, except on 28 October 2001 where the average seeing was $`1.3^{\prime \prime }`$. The corresponding H-band strehl and FWHM were $`45\%`$ and $`0.1^{\prime \prime }`$ under good seeing conditions and reduced to $`30\%`$ and $`0.11^{\prime \prime }`$ on 28 October 2001. The (pixel to pixel) detection limits at $`5\sigma `$ were estimated from observations with and without coronagraphy for each object. The case of HIP 1113 is treated as an example in Fig. 1 and presents the typical detection performances achieved on 29 October 2001, in terms of separation and contrast with the primary star. The CC detected near HIP 108422 and GSC 8047-0232, as well as the companion HIP 1910 B, are overplotted.

## 3 Results

Twenty four suggested members of the Tucana and Horologium associations were observed; no CCs were detected around the following stars: HIP 1113, HIP 1481, HIP 1993, HIP 2729, HIP 3556, HIP 6485, HIP 9902, HIP 93815, HIP 95270, HIP 105388, HIP 107345, HIP 107649, HIP 107947, GSC 8497-0995, GSC 8056-0482, HD 13183, CoD-60416, CoD-53544 and CoD-65149. We confirmed the known binary system HR 7329 AB. Figure 2 shows images of the HIP 1910, HIP 108422, GSC 8047-0232 and HIP 6856 systems. The binary system HIP 1910 AB and the CC detected around HIP 108422 were observed without coronagraphy. HIP 1910 AB and HIP 108422 are members of the Tucana association (Zuckerman & Webb 2000; Zuckerman et al. 2001a). Two fainter CCs were detected with coronagraphy around GSC 8047-0232 and HIP 6856, members of the Horologium association (Torres et al. 2000).

### 3.1 Photometry

The photometry of HIP 1910 AB and of the visual systems HIP 108422, GSC 8047-0232 and HIP 6856 was calibrated with photometric standards from the Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared standards : S055D (04:18:18.9 -69:27:35), S294D (00:33:15.2 -39:24:10), S209D (08:01:15.4 -50:19:33) and S301D (03:26:53.9 -39:50:38). The results are reported in Table 1. To estimate the flux and the position of each component in the visual binary HIP 108422, the deconvolution algorithm of Véran & Rigaut (1998) was used. In the closest system HIP 1910 AB, we used the myopic deconvolution algorithm MISTRAL (Fusco et al. 1999; Conan et al. 2000). For the two fainter CCs around GSC 8047-0232 and HIP 6856, detected with coronagraphy, aperture photometry was performed. A small aperture of radius $`1.0^{\prime \prime }`$ was used to avoid subtraction residuals. In the case of the CC to GSC 8047-0232, the photometric estimation was more difficult because this object was contaminated by a diffraction spike of the secondary mirror. Despite several attempts to correct our image for the spike contribution, we could not avoid increased photometric uncertainty.

### 3.2 Astrometry

The systems HIP 1910 AB and HIP 6856 were observed on November 2000 and October 2001. The corresponding astrometry could be determined for both systems. We took into account errors coming from the relative position estimation of both components in each system, the instrumental uncertainties (pixel scale and orientation error; see Sect. 2), as well as the proper motions errors given by the Tycho catalog (Høg et al. 2000).

In the case of HIP 6856, the CC was detected on 12 November 2000 and re-observed on 29 October 2001. The corresponding astrometric results are reported in Table 1. The proper motion of HIP 6856 reported in the Tycho catalog (Høg et al. 2000) is $`\mu _\alpha =104.8\pm 1.2`$ mas/yr and $`\mu _\delta =43.4\pm 1.4`$ mas/yr. Taking the movement of HIP 6856 into account, we show positions of both visual components in Fig. 3, Left Panel. Because the primary was under the occulting mask the positional error ellipses are rather large. Therefore, these measurements do not conclusively determine the nature of the HIP 6856 CC as a background object or gravitationaly bound companion.

The system HIP 1910 AB was also observed at two different epochs, 12 November 2000 and 28 October 2001. The astrometric measurements are presented in Table 1 and Fig. 3. Considering the proper motion of the star HIP 1910 A derived from the Tycho catalog (Høg et al. 2000), $`\mu _\alpha =88.0\pm 1.8`$ mas/yr and $`\mu _\delta =57.9\pm 2.5`$ mas/yr, we find that the proper motions of HIP 1910 A and B are significantly similar. The observed separations and P.A. are in total similar to $`0.12\sigma `$ in the case of a co-moving pair and $`1.5\sigma `$ discrepant from being a background object. Further spectroscopic measurements will allow us to confirm the nature of this companion. For the rest of this paper, we will regard HIP 1910 B as a companion to HIP 1910 A.

For HIP 6856 and HIP 1910, any possible orbital motion between the two epochs is negligible relative to the measurement errors.

### 3.3 Background object probability

To help distinguish between background objects or gravitationaly bound companions one may estimate the probability for these CCs to be background objects. Based on the so-called “Besançon galactic model” which is a synthetic model of the galaxy, the star density at a given galactic longitude and latitude can be obtained as a function of magnitude in a given band. If we assume that the position of stars follow Poisson statistics, we can determine the probability $`\eta _F`$ to find at least one star with a magnitude in the K-band similar to a given CC within the field of view of the SHARPII camera ($`12.7^{\prime \prime }\times 12.7^{\prime \prime }`$). The probability $`\eta _C`$ to find that star within a circle with a radius as large as the CC separation can also be estimated. The corresponding results for the four visual companions detected are presented in Table 2.

## 4 HIP 108422

When astrometry or spectroscopy is not available, a test to see if the CCs may be bound is to compare their photometry to evolutionary model predictions. We used the evolutionary tracks of Baraffe et al. (2002, 1998) based on a dust-free and non-gray atmosphere model (BCAH98). This model is an appropriate description for stellar objects with effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}>2300`$K. The near-IR photometry of HIP 108422 (G8, $`54.9_{3.3}^{+3.8}`$ pc) and its CC is compared to the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) for the near-IR color ($`JK`$) based on an age of 40 Myr (see Fig. 4). The resulting stellar parameters of both objects are reported in Table 3. The model predictions for HIP 108422 are consistent with the G8 spectral type of the unresolved system HIP 108422 (Zuckerman et al. 2001a) which can be attributed to the primary star. The CC, detected at $`1.97\pm 0.02^{\prime \prime }`$, has colors similar to an M3-M5 dwarf.

## 5 GSC 8047-0232

No trigonometric parallaxes have been measured for the system GSC 8047-0232. Torres et al. (2000) initially supposed this star to be part of the Horologium association located at $`60\pm 25`$pc. Zuckerman et al. (2001a) suggest this system to be significantly further away from the large common Tucana-Horologium association, located within 50 pc from earth. To compare our data to model isochrones, we then consider two different distances: 60 pc and 85 pc. Figure 4 shows that BCAH98 and DUSTY CBAH00 models give a better fit for 85 pc than 60 pc, consistent with the greater hypothesized distance. We therefore adopt a distance of 85 pc to derive physical parameters of this possible binary.

The measured spectral type of the unresolved system GSC 8047-0232 is K3V (Torres et al. 2000) and can be attributed to the primary star. The color measurements ($`JK=0.61\pm 0.16`$) and the stellar parameters deduced from the BCAH98 model isochrones (see Table 3) are in good agreement with the Kenyon & Hartman (1995) color table. If we consider the case of the CC to GSC 8047-0232, we see in Fig. 4, that this object falls into the brown dwarf regime with a near-IR color ($`JK=1.35\pm 0.45`$). As mentioned by Baraffe et al. (2002), the BCAH98 model is dust-free and not really appropriate to explain the near-IR colors of late M-dwarfs and L-dwarfs. As dust must be taken into account, we have used the CBAH00 DUSTY model to derive the physical parameters of the GSC 8047-0232 CC (see Table 3), based on the CMD for the near-IR color ($`JK`$) and an age of 50 Myr (Fig. 4). The physical parameters of the GSC 8047-0232 CC are consistent with a sub-stellar object of 20 to 40 MJup and effective temperature between 1760K and 2475K.

The link between near-IR colors, effective temperature and spectral type is well constrained by the model predictions for late M dwarfs, but this is not really the case for the L dwarfs. The treatment of dust, particularly the grain condensation in the photosphere, is challenging and the $`JK`$ color can vary $`0.5`$ magnitude for L dwarfs of the same type (Leggett et al. 2002; Reid et al. 2001; Kirkpatrick et al. 2000). Leggett et al. (2002) have recently compared the infrared photometry of 58 late M, L and T dwarfs to the corresponding spectral classification done by Geballe et al. (2002). Based on these results, our photometry of the CC to GSC 8047-0232 is consistent with M7-L9 dwarfs. Clearly, new observations (without spike contamination) in photometry and spectroscopy are needed to determine precisely the stellar parameters and spectral type of this CC. If the sub-stellar nature of the object is confirmed, this would be the third brown dwarf companion known among young, nearby associations with TWA 5 B in the TW Hydrae association (Lowrance et al. 1999; Neuhäuser et al. 2000) and HR 7329 B in the $`\beta `$ Pictoris group (Lowrance et al. 2000; Guenther et al. 2001; Zuckerman et al. 2001b) being the other two.

## 6 HIP 6856

In the close vicinity of HIP 6856 (K1V, $`37.1_{1.6}^{+1.8}`$pc), the very faint CC detected with the coronagraphic mode of ADONIS/SHARPII has a color ($`JK=0.57\pm 0.35`$) (see Table 1 and Fig. 4). It would have an absolute magnitude $`M_K=14.56`$ if it was a companion. The photometry is not consistent with the CBAH00 DUSTY model predictions, demonstrating that this object is unlikely to be a late M dwarf or L dwarf. However, the photometry is consistent with cooler objects such as T dwarfs, typically with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}<`$ 1300K and where the CO bands are replaced by strong methane absorption in H and K bands responsible for the weakening of the $`JK`$ color (Geballe et al. 2002). This is poorly modelled in both the extreme CBAH00 COND and DUSTY models. Dahn et al. (2002) and Leggett et al. (2002) have presented near-IR measurements of T dwarfs that are consistent with the photometry found for the CC to HIP 6856. Our present astrometric results do not distinguish whether the object is bound or not to HIP 6856 and future astrometric or spectroscopic observations are necessary to confirm its nature. If the CC is a T-type companion, its mass is $`68`$ MJup and at 37.1 pc its angular separation corresponds to a projected physical separation of $`180`$ AU.

## 7 HIP 1910 A and B

AO imaging allows us to resolve the source HIP 1910 (M0V, $`46.3_{4.3}^{+5.3}`$ pc) as a close binary, and photometry was obtained in $`H`$ and $`K`$. Based on the BCAH98 CMD for the color ($`HK`$) for an age of 40 Myr (see Fig. 4, Right Panel), we find that the stellar parameters of HIP 1910 A are consistent with a M0V star (contribution of HIP 1910 B negligible). HIP 1910 B, detected within the errors at the same separation and position angle from HIP 1910 A, is consistent with being a companion. It has photometry consistent with an M3-M5 star. Derived stellar parameters of both components are reported in Table 4.

## 8 Conclusion

We present results of an AO imaging survey of the common associations of Tucana and Horologium. Four candidate companions (CCs) were detected in a sample of 24 stars. We first estimated the probability for these objects to be background objects. We then compare predictions of low-mass stellar and sub-stellar evolutionary models to our photometry to test if the CCs might be physically bound objects. As already mentioned, these models provide an accurate comparison with observations of such young objects but are still not as reliable at an age of a few tens Myr as they depend on the initial conditions. We find that the HIP 108422 CC is likely to be an M3-M5 dwarf, to be confirmed by spectroscopy. Based on the Chabrier et al. (2000) DUSTY model, the CC to GSC 8047-0232 falls into the brown dwarf regime with a deduced mass of 20 to 40 MJup. In comparison to late-M, L and T dwarf observations (Leggett et al. 2002; Geballe et al. 2002), this object could be an M7-L9 dwarf. If confirmed, this object would be the third brown dwarf companion detected among young, nearby associations along with TWA 5 B in the TW Hydrae association (Lowrance et al. 1999; Neuhäuser et al. 2000) and HR 7329 B in the $`\beta `$ Pictoris moving group (Lowrance et al. 2000; Guenther et al. 2001; Zuckerman et al. 2001b).

The photometry of the CC detected in the close vicinity of HIP 6856 is consistent with cooler objects like T dwarfs. Our astrometry did not enable us to conclude whether the CC object is a true companion of HIP 6856. Finally, we demonstrate that HIP 1910 B has a common proper motion with HIP 1910 A and that further spectroscopic measurements are needed to confirm this companionship. Based on comparison of the photometry with model predictions, we also show that HIP 1910 B may be an M3-M5 dwarf.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Eric Becklin for his contribution to this AO imaging campaign on November 2000 and on October 2001. We would like to thank also Isabelle Baraffe who kindly sent us the COND model predictions reported in Fig. 4 for comparison to our data and Franck Marchis who helped us for the ADONIS/SHARPII astrometric calibrations. We thank the staff of the ESO 3.6m telescope and particulary Kate Brooks for her outstanding support and finally Ralph Neuhäuser for his precious comments in acknowledgements.