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# Effects of fermion-boson interaction in neutral atomic systems

## Abstract

We investigate the collective excitations of 3He-4He mixture films at zero temperature within random phase approximation and linear response theory. In low concentration regime of 3He, a level repulsion between zero sound and third sound mode is derived, which opens the possibility to observe quantum mechanical coherence between 3He particle-hole pair and the condensate of 4He. We also investigate the 3He-4He vertex corrections in ladder approximation and show that the third branch, the combined mode of fermionic particle-hole pair and the third sound quanta, provides a unique correction to Landau $`f`$ function. Some implications to the fermion-boson mixture of alkali atoms in a potential trap are discussed.

Two dimensional (2D) Fermi liquid is one of the most important subjects in condensed matter physics; they are in deep connection with high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates and alkali-doped fullerene, and with quantum Hall effect. Free surface of superfluid 4He bulk liquid or films provides ideal fields for 2D fermi systems free from impurities and inhomogeneities in chemical potential due to randomness of walls or substrates. In particular, phase separated 3He-4He mixture films has been a subject of theoretical and experimental interest for the last two decades rf:1 . At very low temperature, it is well-known that 3He atoms are bound to the surface of superfluid 4He rf:2 , and behave as a well-defined 2D Fermi liquid rf:3 ; rf:4 . Therefore, it is regarded as a good candidate of 2D fermion-boson systems. The nature of 3He and 4He films depends strongly on system parameters, such as concentrations, temperature, and van der Waals potential from substrates. This richness of the parameters has provided various suggestions such as Cooper pairing rf:5  and dimerization rf:6 ; rf:7 ; rf:8  of 3He, as well as suppression of the superfluidity rf:9  and Casimir effect rf:10 ; rf:11  of superfluid 4He films.

In this 2D fermion-boson system, 3He particles interact with one another through thickness variation of 4He films, i.e., third sound driven by van der Waals potential rf:5 , as well as direct interactions. A fascinating feature of this system is that characteristic energies can be easily tuned by varying the thickness of 3He and 4He films continuously. Therefore, it is expected that interference between excitations is enhanced, and nonadiabatic effect becomes relevant when suitable parameters are chosen. In this paper, we report a theoretical study of response to the spectrum of collective excitations when thickness of the mixture films is varied at zero temperature. We will show that a level repulsion between zero sound and third sound mode takes place. Moreover, the third branch is derived, which we interpret as combined mode of fermionic particle-hole pair and third sound phonon, by calculating the vertex function in some detail. We also calculate the contribution of this collective excitation to Landau $`f`$ function.

We assume that the system forms a phase-separated double layer, i.e., normal 3He liquid covering 4He which consist of a superfluid layer and a non-superfluid “inert layer” rf:9 ; rf:12 . In this system, particles are sensitive to the modulation of substrate van der Waals potential due to the thickness variation of 3He and 4He films, especially at low concentrations. We take account of this effect into interactions between particles and include other effects in hydrodynamic masses. The effective Hamiltonian which consists of third sound phonons and 3He quasiparticles interacting with one another and phonons was derived by one of the authors rf:5 , and has the following form

$`H_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{𝐤,\sigma }{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2k^2}{2m_3}}c_{𝐤,\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤,\sigma }+v_3{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}\rho _{𝐪,}\rho _{𝐪,}`$ (1)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}\mathrm{}\omega _𝐪b_𝐪^{}b_𝐪+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪,\sigma }{}}g_𝐪(b_𝐪+b_𝐪^{})\rho _{𝐪,\sigma },`$
where correlation between superfluid and inert layers and surface tension of the films are neglected for simplicity. These approximation may be allowed, except the region where the structure normal to substrate becomes remarkable rf:13 . Here, $`\rho _{𝐪,\sigma }=_𝐤c_{𝐤,\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤+𝐪,\sigma }`$ is Fourier transformation of density operator and $`\sigma =,`$ and $`N_4`$ are spin indices and number of 4He atoms respectively. The spectrum of third sound phonon and coupling energies are respectively given by

$`(\mathrm{}\omega _𝐪)^2`$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{}c_\mathrm{B}q)^2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2q^2}{2m_4}}\right)^2`$ (2)
$`v_3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3u_3}{2n_3^2(d+h_3+h_4)^4S}}`$ (3)
$`g_𝐪`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{N_4}}}{\displaystyle \frac{3u_3h_4}{n_3(d+h_3+h_4)^4}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2q^2}{2m_4\mathrm{}\omega _𝐪}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},`$ (4)
where the subscripts $`3`$ and $`4`$ denote 3He and 4He; $`n_i`$, $`h_i`$ are average bulk densities and average thickness of the films, and $`m_i`$, $`u_i`$ are hydrodynamic masses and characteristic van der Waals energies. $`S`$ and $`d`$ are surface area and thickness of inert layer. In the equations above, $`c_\mathrm{B}`$ is the velocity of third sound phonon which strongly depends on concentrations through $`h_3`$ and $`h_4`$, and can be obtained by rf:5 ; rf:14

$`c_\mathrm{B}`$ $`=`$ $`(1\mathrm{\Delta }){\displaystyle \frac{3u_4h_4}{m_4n_4(d+h_4)^4}},`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{u_3}{u_4}}\left[1({\displaystyle \frac{d+h_4}{d+h_3+h_4}})^4\right].`$
It is suggested that the third sound velocity Eq.(5) needs some corrections when the submonolayer regime of 3He is considered rf:15 . We neglect these corrections here, because they does not play a crucial role in this paper.

Similar model has been studied in detail to investigate the equation of state and correlation energy of 3He rf:16 ; rf:17 , whereas we will focus on the low energy collective behaviors of mixture below. To investigate the spectrum of collective excitations, we shall consider a $`2\times 2`$ susceptibility matrix, which is in connection with area density fluctuations (thickness variation) in linear response theory, in which interactions are treated within random phase approximation (RPA) rf:18 ; rf:19 . The unperturbed susceptibility and interaction matrix of the mixtures has the following form

$$\widehat{\chi }^{(0)}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\chi _3& 0\\ 0& \chi _4\end{array}\right),\widehat{V}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}v_3& g_𝐪\\ g_𝐪& 0\end{array}\right).$$
(6)
Here, $`\chi _3`$ and $`\chi _4`$ are the susceptibilities of 2D pure fermion and boson systems, and at zero temperature they are given as

$`\chi _3(𝐪,\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{S}{(2\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^2𝐤\frac{n(ϵ_{𝐤𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐}})n(ϵ_{𝐤+𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐}})}{ϵ_{𝐤𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐}}ϵ_{𝐤+𝐪/\mathrm{𝟐}}+\mathrm{}\omega +i0^+}}`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N(0)}{2}}(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\frac{i\omega }{v_\mathrm{F}q}}{\sqrt{1(\frac{\omega }{v_\mathrm{F}q})^2}}})`$
and

$`\chi _4(𝐪,\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\omega _𝐪/\mathrm{}}{\omega ^2\omega _𝐪^2+i0^+}},`$ (8)
where $`ϵ_𝐤=\mathrm{}^2𝐤^2/2m_3ϵ_\mathrm{F}`$ with $`ϵ_\mathrm{F}`$ being Fermi energy and $`n(ϵ_𝐤)`$, $`v_\mathrm{F}`$, $`N(0)=m_3S/\pi \mathrm{}^2`$ are Fermi-Dirac distribution, Fermi velocity and density of states at Fermi surface of 3He, respectively. In the equations above, terms of order $`q^4`$ are neglected since we are interested in low energy excitations.

Within the RPA treatment, the susceptibility matrix of mixture films can be obtained as a solution of $`\widehat{\chi }=\widehat{\chi }^{(0)}+\widehat{\chi }^{(0)}\widehat{V}\widehat{\chi }`$ rf:19 , which is

$`\widehat{\chi }_{\mathrm{RPA}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1v_3\chi _32g_𝐪^2\chi _3\chi _4}}`$ (11)
$`\times \left(\begin{array}{cc}\chi _3& g_𝐪\chi _3\chi _4\\ g_𝐪\chi _3\chi _4& \chi _4(1v_3\chi _3)\end{array}\right),`$
where the factor $`2`$ in the last term of the denominator comes as a result of summing over the spin indices. If $`g_𝐪=0`$, it can be easily seen that this susceptibility matrix becomes diagonal whose elements are usual RPA susceptibility, $`\chi _3/(1v_3\chi _3)`$, and $`\chi _4`$. Therefore, two poles of this matrix correspond to the spectrum of two eigenmodes; one is zero sound branch of 3He due to the nonlinearity of van der Waals potential, and the other is third sound branch of 4He.

For the third sound phonon, this RPA treatment is equivalent to solving Dyson’s equation in Migdal approximation rf:20 , where effective self-energy of third sound is $`2g_𝐪^2\chi _3/(1v_3\chi _3)`$. At zero temperature and long wave length limit, dispersion relation and damping rate are calculated numerically and the results are shown in Fig.1. Here, we employs the parameters $`u_i`$ and $`d`$, modeling the double layer system on the flat surface of graphite rf:3 . For the films, we fix the thickness of 4He films, and alter the 3He concentration from a small fraction of the monolayer to one layer (a monolayer corresponds to the density 10.6 $`\mu `$mol/m2 for 3He and 12.9 $`\mu `$mol/m2 for 3He rf:8 ). One can see that these two branches exhibit a level repulsion characteristic of reactively coupled oscillators. Hence, the two branch are well-hybridized and show the clear level splitting around the region $`h_30.3`$ layer ($``$ 3.2 $`\mu `$mol/m2), where $`c_\mathrm{B}`$ crosses the bare zero sound velocity $`c_\mathrm{F}=\frac{1+\stackrel{~}{v}/2}{\sqrt{1+\stackrel{~}{v}}}v_\mathrm{F}`$ with $`\stackrel{~}{v}=N(0)v_3`$. As the concentration of 3He particles increases further, one can see from the dynamical structure function of 4He, S$`{}_{}{}^{(44)}(𝐪,\omega )`$, defined as

$`\widehat{S}(𝐪,\omega )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}\mathrm{Im}\widehat{\chi }(𝐪,\omega )=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{S}^{(33)}& \mathrm{S}^{(34)}\\ \mathrm{S}^{(43)}& \mathrm{S}^{(44)}\end{array}\right),`$ (14)
that third sound spectrum evolves continuously from the upper branch ($`+`$) into the lower one ($``$), and gets into the particle-hole continuum of the 3He. This situation results in the strong damping of bosonic third sound by resonantly absorbing 3He particle-hole pair. This behavior of the spectrum has not been verified rf:15 ; rf:21 . To our knowledge, there is no experimental result, investigating carefully around the region where velocities of two components are close to each other.

As for the damping rate, the beginning of damping of hybridized mode can be seen in discontinuous concentration dependence of sound velocity in lower branch. Unlike conventional electron-phonon systems in metals, the ratio of sound velocities of two components is of order unity; therefore the effect of this damping is not small and has a possibility to be observed (see inset of Fig.1). Indeed, imaginary part of the spectrum can be easily estimated to have a behavior $`\left[\lambda /(2+\stackrel{~}{v})\right]\left[c_\mathrm{B}/\sqrt{v_\mathrm{F}^2c_\mathrm{B}^2}\right](c_\mathrm{B}q)`$ at high concentration regime of 3He, i.e., $`c_\mathrm{B}<v_\mathrm{F}`$. Here, $`\lambda =N(0)g_𝐪^2\chi _4(𝐪,0)>0`$ is a dimensionless phonon exchange coupling constant, which is determined by Fermi energy and van der Waals potential rf:5 . Around the region $`c_\mathrm{B}v_\mathrm{F}`$, it has a strong peak which amounts to about 15 $`\mathrm{\%}`$ of the spectrum. In three dimensional (3D) case, similar level repulsion and the damping of bosonic mode are discussed by Yip with dilute boson-fermion mixture gasses of alkali atoms, such as 39K-40K and 6Li-7Li, in mind rf:18 . In his system, fermions are spin polarized because of magnetic trapping and fermion-fermion interaction is not included, hence zero sound, due to phonon exchange interaction only, is discussed.

Having established the existence of the level repulsion and the damping within the RPA treatment, we will discuss effect of vertex function for 3He-4He exchange interaction in more detail. Unlike conventional metals, “Debye energy” is comparable or greater than $`ϵ_\mathrm{F}`$ in our system. This situation opens the possibility of scenario in which nonadiabatic effects are relevant and new qualitative phenomena arise from vertex corrections. Here, we treat the vertex function in ladder approximation rf:22 , i.e., as a solution of Bethe-Salpeter equation

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐪,i\omega _m)`$ $`=`$ $`g_𝐪k_\mathrm{B}T{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{𝑖𝑘}_n}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}g_{𝐤𝐩}^2`$ (15)
$`\times `$ $`\chi _4(𝐩𝐤,\mathrm{𝑖𝑝}_l\mathrm{𝑖𝑘}_n)G(𝐤,\mathrm{𝑖𝑘}_n)`$
$`\times G(𝐤𝐪,\mathrm{𝑖𝑘}_ni\omega _m)\Gamma (𝐪,i\omega _m),`$
where $`G(𝐤,\mathrm{𝑖𝑘}_m)`$ is a bare single-particle propagator of 3He quasiparticles with $`ik_n`$, $`i\omega _m`$ being fermionic and bosonic Matsubara frequency. We assume that the vertex function depends only on the energy-momentum transfer. Here, external fermion frequency $`ip_l`$ is set to zero after analytic continuation. This approximation may be justified when low energy particle-hole excitations give dominant contribution. As for the external wave vector $`𝐩`$, we introduce $`q_\mathrm{c}`$ as a cutoff of wave number transfer $`|𝐩𝐤|`$ rf:23 , which is of order of inverse of coherence length of 4He films. At zero temperature and long wave length limit, this equation is solved analytically and the vertex function has the following form

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐪,\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_𝐪}{1+\frac{\lambda }{2}\left(C(𝐪,\omega )+\frac{\frac{i\omega }{v_\mathrm{F}q}}{\sqrt{1(\frac{\omega }{v_\mathrm{F}q})^2}}\right)}},`$ (16)
$`C(𝐪,\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1(\frac{v_\mathrm{F}q}{c_\mathrm{B}q_\mathrm{c}\omega })^2}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1(\frac{v_\mathrm{F}q}{c_\mathrm{B}q_\mathrm{c}+\omega })^2}}}\right).`$
Here, we neglect polarization contribution of the second term of right hand side in Eq.(11), which has the same dynamical ($`\omega 0`$, $`𝐪=0`$) and static limit ($`\omega =0`$, $`𝐪0`$), because it gives only quantitative difference in the denominator of vertex function. Obviously, Migdal approximation breaks down qualitatively in the region $`\omega v_\mathrm{F}q`$ and the vertex function diverges to $`\pm \mathrm{}`$, as $`\omega \omega _\mathrm{C}`$ from above and below respectively. Here, $`\omega _\mathrm{C}`$ is obtained as

$$\omega _\mathrm{C}\frac{1+\lambda /2}{\sqrt{1+\lambda }}\left(v_\mathrm{F}q\frac{\lambda (1+\lambda ^2/2)}{8(1+\lambda /2)^2}\frac{(v_\mathrm{F}q)^3}{(c_\mathrm{B}q_\mathrm{c})^2}\right).$$
(18)
This means that dynamical phonon-mediated 3He-3He interaction becomes strongly enhanced and even changes its sign. Its behavior resembles Feshbach resonance in alkali atom gasses rf:24 , but this frequency dependent “potential” cannot be used in a Hamiltonian formalism like a scattering length of alkali atoms since the strong frequency dependence of interaction imposes one to take the strong retardation effect into account rf:22 . We expect this break down of perturbation theory not to lead to the violation of Fermi liquid theory. Indeed, the pole provides only a subdominant correction to imaginary part of single-particle self-energy that behaves as Im$`\mathrm{\Sigma }^p(k_F,\omega )\lambda ^3ϵ_F(\mathrm{}\omega /ϵ_F)^2`$ for $`\omega 0^+`$ (subscript $`p`$ denotes the pole contribution). Moreover, nonzero quasiparticle residue $`Z`$ at the Fermi surface can be derived with use of Kramers-Kronig relation. Thus the quasiparticle is well-defined, even with the singularity in vertex function.

We shall investigate the effect of this phonon exchange vertex function to the spectrum of excitations. The singularity of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐪,\omega )`$ in long wave length limit implies the existence of low-lying excitation which obeys Bose-Einstein statistics. We interpret the pole as a excitation energy of an additional collective mode. Physically, this third branch corresponds to a combined mode of 3He particle-hole pair and third sound phonon. It may be considered as the pole of $`D_\mathrm{C}(𝐪,\omega )`$, which is Fourier transformation of $`_\sigma T_t(\varphi _𝐪(t)\rho _{𝐪,\sigma }(0)+\rho _{𝐪,\sigma }(t)\varphi _𝐪(0))`$ rf:20 . Here, $`T_t`$ is usual Wick’s time ordering operator, $`\varphi _𝐪(t)`$ is field operator of third sound phonon, and $`\mathrm{}`$ denotes the average for the ground state of mixture. It should be noted that this “susceptibility” contains multi-phonon processes, thus relation with area density fluctuations is no longer linear. The third spectrum obtained by numerical calculation lies above particle-hole continuum and between upper and lower branch. Furthermore, one can see from dynamical structure function $`S^C(𝐪,\omega )=1/\pi \mathrm{Im}D_C`$ that the combined mode branch has considerable spectral weight except the region where zero sound and third sound are well-hybridized. The behavior of this spectral weight causes the resonant nature of $`S^C(𝐪,\omega )`$ at $`\omega c_\mathrm{B}q`$. Indeed, the combined mode is completely suppressed as $`\omega _\mathrm{C}c_\mathrm{B}q`$. Physically, this behavior causes the mode-mode repulsion rf:18 .

We also investigate the correction of the combined mode to Landau Fermi liquid parameter. At zero temperature, it is obtained as $`f_{\sigma ,\sigma ^{^{}}}(\theta )=\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma (𝐤,ϵ_𝐤)/\delta n_\sigma ^{^{}}(ϵ_𝐤^{^{}})`$ with $`𝐤𝐤^{^{}}=k_\mathrm{F}^2\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ rf:25 . Since the combined mode does not contribute to $`f_{}(\theta )`$, we can obtain the Landau f function as follows rf:25

$`f_{}(\theta )=f_{}(\theta )\mathrm{P}.{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}s}{\pi }\frac{\lambda }{s}\frac{\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐤𝐤^{},s)}{g_{𝐤𝐤^{}}}}.`$ (19)
Here, P. denotes the principal value of the integral. The pole contribution, i.e. the collective mode contribution, comes from delta function part of Im$`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, and is obtained as

$`N(0)(f_{}^p(\theta )f_{}^p(\theta )){\displaystyle \frac{\lambda ^3}{16}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{(v_\mathrm{F}k_\mathrm{F})^2}{(c_\mathrm{B}q_\mathrm{c})^2}}\mathrm{sin}^2({\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}})\right),`$
In addition, contribution from the particle-hole continuum of vertex function can be obtained from the real part of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ with use of Kramers-Kronig relation, and has the following form

$`N(0)(f_{}^{ph}(\theta )f_{}^{ph}(\theta )){\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{1+\frac{\lambda }{2}C(2k_\mathrm{F}\mathrm{sin}(\frac{\theta }{2}),0)}}.`$ (21)
These contributions are not singular. Additionally, the pole gives rise an additional factor $`\lambda ^2`$ to correction for Landau f function. Therefore, third branch contribution may become important at strong coupling region.

As for the observability, this third branch may be observed under the strong van der Waals potential, since it is inherently related to the interaction. Therefore experiment with low-thickness superfluid 4He films and the substrate which has strong van der Waals potential, such as gold, is desired. Recent experiment makes it possible to evaluate the Landau Fermi liquid parameter as a function of 3He concentration rf:4 , therefore the third branch contribution Eq.(16) has a possibility to be observed at the low-concentration regime of 3He. Further, it should be noted that there is no restriction in system components in our method, therefore these discussions can be easily applied to quasi-2D alkali atom gases in which phase separation does not occur. Regarding existence of the third branch, alkali gases system may be better suited for experimental verification because fermion-boson interaction can be almost freely changed as well as other system parameters. In such a case, zero sound with higher spin channel may be taken into account rf:26 .

In conclusion, we have investigated the effects of phonon exchange process to the collective excitations of 3He and 4He at absolute zero. Two remarkable features have been found. One is the level repulsion between zero sound and third sound due to 3He-4He interaction. This repulsion becomes remarkable at region where sound velocities of two components are close to each other. This situation results in hybridization of two eigenmodes and finite level splitting in the spectrum. Furthermore, damping of third sound, resonant decay into particle-hole pair excitation, is also shown to be significant when the third sound velocity is smaller than $`v_\mathrm{F}`$. The other is that Migdal’s theorem breaks down when nonadiabatic effect of 3He-4He interaction is considered. A third branch comes in; this may be interpreted as a combined mode of particle-hole pair and third sound quanta. The concentration dependence of dynamical structure factor and the correction to Landau Fermi liquid parameter of this collective excitation are also discussed.

In the discussions above, we have focused on low energy collective behavior and we have not considered two-body scattering problem. It is expected that interaction between 3He and 4He induces the effective 3He-3He attraction and leads to spin-singlet and neutral superfluid formation rf:5 ; rf:6 ; rf:7 ; rf:8 . We consider in future work the possibility that nonadiabatic phonon exchange may either drive the system into a superfluid transition or polaron formation.

The authors would like to thank M. Nishida, S. Tsuchiya, B. H. Valtan, and A. Morales for useful discussions.


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# Reversal-field memory in magnetic hysteresis

## I Introduction

Hysteresis is a widely observed phenomenon.Bertotti (1998) While many basic features are well understoodSethna et al. (1993); Lyuksyutov et al. (1999); Zhu (1990) a number of effects remain unresolved, such as the noise spectrum,Bertram (1994) frequency dependence,Lederman et al. (1994) and exchange biasMeiklejohn and Bean (1957); Nogués and Schuller (1999) in the hysteresis of magnetic recording media.

Here we report a novel memory effect in magnetic systems that emerges when the magnetic field is first decreased from its saturation value and then increased again from some reversal field $`H_R`$. We find that the system exhibits a singularity at the negative of the reversal field, $`H_R`$, in the form of a sharp kink in the magnetization. Microscopically a finite number of “symmetric clusters” are required for this effect to take place. In these clusters the central spins flip after all spins on the cluster boundary have flipped. In addition, the central spins experience zero effective local field so they are symmetric with respect to the change of direction of the external field. We have observed this “reversal-field memory” effect numerically in spin glasses, as well as experimentally in magnetic thin films commonly used in recording media.

To better illustrate the reversal-field memory effect we use the recently introduced first order reversal curve (FORC) diagram approachPike et al. (1999) which captures the distribution of characteristic properties of hysteretic systems in great detail.

## II Model and Algorithm

We study the Edwards–Anderson (EA) Ising spin-glass HamiltonianBinder and Young (1986)

$$=\underset{i,j}{}J_{ij}S_iS_jH\underset{i}{}S_i.$$
(1)
Here $`S_i=\pm 1`$ are Ising spins on a square lattice of size $`N=L\times L`$ in two dimensions with periodic boundary conditions. The exchange couplings $`J_{ij}`$ are random nearest-neighbor interactions chosen according to a Gaussian distribution with zero mean and standard deviation unity, and $`H`$ is the external magnetic field. The complex energy landscape of the EA spin glass will give rise to hysteretic behavior.

We simulate the zero temperature dynamics of the EA model by changing the external field $`H`$ in small steps, first downward from positive saturation, and then upward from a reversal field $`H_R`$. After each field step, the effective local field $`h_i`$ of each spin $`S_i`$ is calculated:

$$h_i=\underset{j}{}J_{ij}S_jH.$$
(2)
A spin is unstable if $`h_iS_i<0`$. We then flip a randomly chosen unstable spin and update the local fields at neighboring sites and repeat this procedure until all spins are stable.

## III Results

Figure 1 shows a typical reversal curve. The area around $`H_R`$ is enlarged in the inset and shows a sharp “kink”. The observation of any such sharp feature in a disordered system, especially of finite size and after disorder averaging, is quite remarkable.

The size of the change in slope can be characterized by measuring the slope of the magnetization curves to the left and right of $`H_R`$, and comparing the difference with the average (see Fig. 2). The slope changes abruptly by as much as 30 % as we pass through $`H=H_R`$. For this model, the range of reversal-field values for which the kink is present is roughly $`4.5<H_R<1.5`$.

To develop an initial understanding of the microscopic origin of reversal-field memory, we first describe the conditions under which the effect occurs within the Preisach model.Preisach (1935) In that approach, a magnetic system is described as a collection of independent two-state ($`\pm 1`$) switching units (“hysterons”). Unlike Ising spins, which always align with their local field, the hysteron’s state changes from $`1`$ to $`+1`$ at a field $`H_b+H_c`$ different from the field $`H_bH_c`$ required to switch the hysteron from $`+1`$ to $`1`$. Here $`H_b`$ is the bias field and $`H_c`$ is the coercivity of the hysteron. Different systems are then distinguished by their distribution $`\rho (H_b,H_c)`$ of hysterons of a given bias and coercivity, the so-called “Preisach function.”

For “symmetric hysterons,” i.e., $`H_b=0`$, starting from a fully ‘up’ polarized state and decreasing the field to a negative $`H_R`$ switches down all hysterons with $`H_c<|H_R|`$. Reversing the direction of the sweep and increasing the field from $`H_R`$ to $`H_R`$ switches back every switched hysteron. Thus at $`H=H_R`$ saturation is reached, creating a kink in the magnetization. Symmetric hysterons therefore give rise to reversal-field memory, but only if their number is macroscopic. In this case $`\rho (H_b,H_c)`$ must have a Dirac delta singularity at $`H_b=0`$ and $`H_c=|H_R|`$. If the kink is observable in a range of $`H_R`$ values, as in Fig. 2, then the singularities of the Preisach function form a ridge along the $`H_b=0`$ axis for that range of $`H_c`$ values.

The spins in the EA model are not independent. For them to behave as symmetric hysterons, they must possess a local spin-reversal symmetry. By local spin-reversal symmetry we mean that the local field $`h_i`$, felt by $`S_i`$ \[Eq. (2)\], is perfectly reversed if the external field $`H`$ is reversed and all spins coupled to $`S_i`$ are reversed as well. In the EA Hamiltonian a cluster has this symmetry when all neighbors of $`S_i`$ align with the local field before $`S_i`$ does, both for decreasing and increasing fields, i.e., $`S_i`$ flips down only after all of its neighbors are already negative, and during the reverse sweep $`S_i`$ switches up only after all the neighbors.

The importance of the symmetric clusters can be appreciated by noticing that every spin of the EA model seems to have local spin-reversal symmetry. However, note that the spin configurations in general depend on the history of the sample in the glassy phase. Therefore, at $`H_R`$ the neighbors of most spins do not necessarily point in a direction opposite of their direction at $`H_R`$, thus most EA spins do not belong to symmetric clusters. Hence the model Hamiltonian possessing a local spin-reversal symmetry is a necessary but not sufficient condition of having symmetric clusters. In order to test this conclusion we studied the random field Ising model (RFIM).Binder and Young (1986); Sethna et al. (1993) In this model the couplings $`J_{ij}`$ are chosen to be uniform, and the disorder is introduced through random local fields $`h_i`$. Direct inspection reveals that the RFIM does not possess a local spin-reversal symmetry, nor did we find a magnetization kink in our simulations.

To further illustrate the reversal-field memory effect, we define an overlap function $`q`$ between the spins which flip at $`H_R`$ and the spins which flip at $`H>H_R`$:

$`q(H)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}[S_i(H_R+\delta )S_i(H_R)]\times `$ (3)
$`[S_i(H+\delta )S_i(H)].`$
Here $`\delta `$ is the field step. In Fig. 3 we show the overlap versus $`H>H_R`$ for $`H_R=2.28`$. Clearly the spins which flip at $`H_R`$ are highly correlated with the spins which flip at $`H_R`$. This in turn shows that we have a macroscopic number of symmetric clusters. The insets show a much weaker effect at $`H_R=0.40`$ and $`H_R=5.60`$, values outside the ridge of Fig. 2.

The reversal-field memory can be characterized in greater detail by adapting a new tool developed for analyzing experimental data for hysteretic systems.Pike et al. (1999) In this method, a family of FORCs is generated by varying $`H_R`$ in small steps. Let us denote by $`M(H,H_R)`$ the magnetization as the function of the applied and reversal fields. Computing the mixed second derivative with respect to $`H`$ and the reversal field $`H_R`$ yields the “FORC distribution” $`\rho (H_c,H_b)`$, where $`H_c=(HH_R)/2`$ represents the local coercivity and $`H_b=(H+H_R)/2`$ the bias. FORC distributions are more general than Preisach distributions since they are model independent and allow for asymmetries and negative regions.

Figure 4 shows the FORC diagram of the EA model. The ridge along the $`H_c`$ axis corresponds to the peak of Fig. 2 and is therefore a striking representation of the reversal-field memory effect. In contrast, the RFIM exhibits a vertical structure, even though both models have quite similar major hysteresis loops. This sensitivity of the FORC method makes it uniquely suited for analyzing details of hysteretic systems.

To demonstrate the existence of the reversal-field memory in magnetic media, in Fig. 5 we show an experimentally obtained FORC diagram of well-dispersed noninteracting single-domain magnetic Co-$`\gamma `$-Fe2O3 particles. Typically FORC diagrams of various systems exhibit extensive differences (see for example Ref. Pike et al., 2001). There is a striking similarity between the experimentally and numerically determined FORC diagrams: both exhibit a narrow ridge along the $`H_c`$ axis, the ridge “melting” with decreasing $`H_c`$ and narrowing with increasing $`H_c`$. Simulations on more realistic systems with dipolar interactions, such as the ones found in the experimental sample, also show evidence of a ridge and therefore reversal-field memory.

## IV Conclusions

In conclusion, we report a reversal-field memory effect in disordered magnetic systems that manifests itself as a sharp kink in first order reversal curves, and as a sharp ridge on the zero bias axis of FORC diagrams. The effect has been observed numerically in the Edwards–Anderson Ising spin glass and experimentally in well-dispersed recording media samples. The origin of this effect is tied to a local spin-reversal symmetry, and has its microscopic origin in the development of a macroscopic density of symmetric clusters. Our studies also establish that the FORC method is a powerful diagnostic tool for characterizing magnetic materials.

## V Acknowledgments

This work was supported by NSF Grant Nos. DMR-9985978, 99-09468, and INT-9720440.


text:
# CONSTRAINING THE GLUON IN THE PROTON VIA PHOTOPRODUCTION REACTIONS aafootnote aTalk given at the 38th Rencontres de Moriond on QCD and Hadronic Interactions, Les Arcs, France, March 22–29, 2003.

## 1 Introduction

The theoretical predictions for prominent processes like $`ggH`$ or the $`t\overline{t}`$ cross section still suffer from a rather large uncertainty stemming from the parton distributions functions (PDFs) in the proton, in particular from the gluon distribution. In view of the LHC with its large gluon luminosity, it is therefore important to analyse how present experiments can be used to constrain the gluon further. HERA has always played a major role in the task of PDF determinations, most importantly through DIS experiments. However, the large-$`x`$ range ($`x>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.2}`$) is still rather poorly constrained, being mainly probed only by fixed target experiments and recently by the high-$`E_T`$ Tevatron jet data $`^\mathrm{?}`$.

In photoproduction reactions at HERA, a quasi-real photon, emitted at small angle from the electron, interacts with a parton from the proton. The photon can either participate directly in the hard interaction or be resolved into a partonic system, in which case a parton stemming from the photon takes part in the hard interaction. Therefore the interest in photoproduction experiments has rather been focused on measuring the parton distributions in the photon than in the proton. However, as will be argued in the following, photoproduction reactions can also serve to probe the gluon in the proton, complementary to other measurements. Here I will consider in particular the following two reactions: $`\gamma p\gamma +jet`$ and $`\gamma ph^\pm +jet`$, where $`h^\pm `$ is a charged hadron. As compared to dijet photoproduction, these reactions have the experimental advantage that photons as well as charged hadrons are straightforward to measure. However, large-$`p_T`$ photons can also stem from the fragmentation of a hard parton or from light meson decay, such that isolation cuts have to be imposed. While isolation may introduce a source of systematic errors, it also reduces the uncertainty stemming from the photon fragmentation functions. In the case of charged hadron production, the dependence on the hadron fragmentation functions is unavoidable; on the other hand, the $`h^\pm `$ \+ jet cross section has the advantage of being substantially larger than the $`\gamma `$ \+ jet cross section.

The photoproduction of prompt photons has been measured by ZEUS $`^\mathrm{?}`$ and compared to theoretical predictions some time ago $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. The case where a jet in addition to the prompt photon is also measured allows for a more detailed reconstruction of the underlying parton dynamics and has recently been analysed in the context of a determination of the effective transverse momentum $`k_T`$ of the partons in the proton $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. The photoproduction of large-$`p_T`$ charged hadrons has been measured at HERA $`^\mathrm{?}`$ and compared to theoretical predictions $`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$ only for the inclusive case so far.

## 2 Optimisation of the sensitivity to the gluon in the proton

As observables which serve to reconstruct the longitudinal momentum fraction of the parton stemming from the proton respectively photon, it is common to use

$$x_{obs}^p=\frac{p_T\mathrm{e}^\eta +E_T^{\mathrm{jet}}\mathrm{e}^{\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}}}{2E^p},x_{obs}^\gamma =\frac{p_T\mathrm{e}^\eta +E_T^{\mathrm{jet}}\mathrm{e}^{\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}}}{2E^\gamma }$$
(1)
where $`p_T`$ and $`\eta `$ are transverse momentum and pseudo-rapidity bbbWe use the HERA convention that the proton is moving towards positive rapidities. of the final state photon respectively hadron. However, as the determination of $`E_T^{\mathrm{jet}}`$ introduces a source of systematic errors, we propose a slightly different variable which does not depend on $`E_T^{\mathrm{jet}}`$,

$$x_{LL}^p=\frac{p_T(\mathrm{e}^\eta +\mathrm{e}^{\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}})}{2E^p},x_{LL}^\gamma =\frac{p_T(\mathrm{e}^\eta +\mathrm{e}^{\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}})}{2E^\gamma }.$$
(2)
In the case of direct photons in the initial state, the $`x_{obs,LL}^\gamma `$ distributions are peaked at values close to one, whereas resolved photons correspond to lower values of $`x_{obs,LL}^\gamma `$.

In order to constrain the gluon distribution function $`g(x^p)`$ in the proton, we need to find a kinematic region where the sensitivity of the cross section to $`g(x^p)`$ is large. Clearly, $`g(x^p)`$ is large at small $`x^p`$, which means, according to (1) and (2), at small $`\eta ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}`$. On the other hand, small values of $`\eta ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}`$ imply that $`x^\gamma `$ is large and thus processes initiated by direct photons dominate over resolved ones. Therefore, if appropriate rapidity cuts select the backward region, we expect that the contribution from the gluon in the proton is large, while the uncertainty stemming from the parton distributions in the photon is minimised, as the resolved photon component is small.

Let us now verify these considerations by numerical results obtained with the NLO partonic event generator EPHOX$`^{\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?},\mathrm{?}}`$. We used $`\sqrt{s}=300`$ GeV, the MRST01 set 1 proton PDFs $`^\mathrm{?}`$, the AFG photon PDFs $`^\mathrm{?}`$ and the fragmentation functions BFGW $`^\mathrm{?}`$ for the hadrons, BFG $`^\mathrm{?}`$ for the photons. Further, the cuts $`E_T^{\mathrm{jet}}>5`$ GeV, $`p_T^\gamma >6`$ GeV and $`p_T^h>7`$ GeV have been applied in order to be well within the perturbative region.

For the case of hadron+jet production, we can see from Fig. 1 that indeed the gluon (from the proton) initiated processes dominate for $`2<\eta ^h,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<0.5`$. Unfortunately, the scale dependence of the $`h^\pm `$ +jet cross section is also large. Varying the renormalisation scale $`\mu `$ and the initial/final state factorisation scales $`M/M_F`$ diagonally between $`p_T/2`$ and $`2p_T`$ leads to a variation of the cross section of about $`\pm `$20%. On the other hand, a scale optimisation can be performed $`^\mathrm{?}`$, where a region of minimal sensitivity can be localised close to $`\mu =M=M_F=p_T/2`$.

In the case of $`\gamma `$ +jet production, the situation is very different. As the photon is isolated, the fragmentation contribution to the cross section is suppressed, and the leftover candidates for dominant subprocesses at small $`x^p`$ are (a) $`g^p+q^\gamma ,g^\gamma \gamma +jet`$ (resolved $`\gamma `$) , (b) $`g^p+\gamma \gamma +jet`$. However, the process (b) only exists at next-to-leading order! This means that the $`g^p+\gamma `$ initiated subprocess cannot be dominant at small $`x^p`$ as in the case of $`h^\pm `$ production. Although this looks like an inconvenience, we can turn it into a virtue: If we can find a kinematic region where the process (a) dominates, the sensitivity to the gluon in the proton is not confined to the small $`x^p`$ range. The price to pay is of course a dependence on the photon PDFs, but as the quark distributions in the photon are rather well known, the task is to isolate a region where the subprocess $`g^p+q^\gamma \gamma +jet`$ dominates cccIt has to be stressed that selecting only particular subprocesses in an NLO calculation is unphysical, such that the precise magnitude of the subprocess contribution is quite sensitive to scale changes. However, it has been verified that the pattern shown in Fig. 2 remains valid for other scale choices, as it reflects the physical behaviour of the cross section due to the underlying parton dynamics..

In Fig. 2 it is shown that this can in fact be achieved by rapidity cuts only. Fig. 2 (a) shows that the process $`g^p+q^\gamma \gamma +jet`$ contributes about 30% to the cross section $`d\sigma /dx_{LL}^p`$ if the whole rapidity range $`2<\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<2`$ is considered. Selecting the forward region $`0<\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<2`$ increases the contribution of the $`g^p+q^\gamma `$ initiated processes to about 50% of the total, while the contribution from the gluon in the photon is still very small, as can be seen from Fig. 2 (b). If we increase $`\eta _{\mathrm{min}}`$ even further, the total cross section becomes rather small and the gluon from the photon starts to become important, as shown in Fig. 2 (c). Therefore, the region $`0<\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<2`$ is optimal in what concerns the sensitivity to $`g^p`$ while minimising the uncertainty from the photon PDFs.

|  |  |
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An important feature of the $`\gamma +jet`$ cross section is that the scale dependence is very weak. From Figs. 3 (a),(b) one can see that in the bins around 0.02, where the difference between the MRST01 and CTEQ6 parametrisations is significant, the uncertainty due to scale variations is smaller than the difference between these two parametrisations.

Nevertheless, the region $`0<\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<2`$ does not select the high-$`x`$ range. In order to access $`x`$ values beyond $`x^p>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.1}`$, more stringent cuts have to be placed, selecting the very forward region, which has not been accessible by HERA 1, but will be accessible by future HERA experiments. As an example, it is shown in Fig. 4 (a) that $`x_{LL}^p`$ values $`>0.1`$ can be achieved by the cuts $`\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}>2,p_T^\gamma >10`$ GeV.

However, the contribution from the gluon in the proton is rather small in this region. On the other hand, the contribution from the gluon in the photon is substantial, such that this region is favourable to pin down the gluon distribution in the photon, as can be seen from Fig. 4 (b).

## 3 Conclusions and outlook

The $`h^\pm +jet`$ cross section shows a large sensitivity to the gluon distribution $`g(x^p)`$ in the proton around $`x^p0.01`$, but it suffers from a scale dependence of the order of 20%. In contrast, the scale dependence of the $`\gamma +jet`$ cross section is quite weak ($`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}7}`$%). In the $`\gamma +jet`$ case, maximising the sensitivity to $`g(x^p)`$ while at the same time minimising the uncertainty from the photon PDFs suggests the rapidity cuts $`0<\eta ^\gamma ,\eta ^{\mathrm{jet}}<2`$, probing the $`x^p`$-range $`0.01<x^p<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.05}`$. Future HERA experiments with an improved forward tracking system and high statistics could allow to cut even more towards forward rapidities and thus access $`x^p`$ values of about $`0.1<x^p<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.3}`$.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my collaborators M. Fontannaz and J.-Ph. Guillet. I also would like to thank the organisers of the Moriond conference.

References