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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In a previous Letter it has been argued that a non-trivial $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ -vacua may be formed in heavy ion collisions111 In what follows we often omit the label “ind” for the induced $`\theta `$ vacuum state. We hope this state $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ will not be confused with $`|\theta ^{fundamental}`$ which is zero in our world and which can not be changed in QCD. The simplest way to visualize $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ is to assume that right after the QCD phase transition the flavor singlet phase of the chiral condensate is non-zero in a macroscopically large domain. This phase is identified with $`\theta ^{ind}`$. This identification is a direct consequence of the transformation properties of the fundamental QCD lagrangian under $`U(1)_A`$ rotations by which the chiral singlet phase can be rotated away at the cost of the appearence of the induced $`\theta ^{ind}`$ ( see Sections 2.5 and 3.2 for detail explanations of the adopted terminology. See also ).. As is known, in the infinite volume limit and in thermal equilibrium the $`|\theta `$ vacuum state is the absolutely stable ground state of a new world with new physics quite different from ours. In particular, P and CP symmetries are strongly violated in this world. In spite of the fact that the $`|\theta `$ vacuum state has a higher energy (see below) this state is stable due to the superselection rule: There is no any gauge invariant observable $`𝒜`$ in QCD, which would communicate between two different worlds, $`\theta ^{}|𝒜|\theta \delta (\theta \theta ^{})`$. Therefore, there are no transitions between these worlds. The problem of why $`\theta =0`$ in our world is known as the strong CP problem. The best solution of this problem, which has passed the test of time, is the introduction of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry and the corresponding pseudo-goldstone particle known as the axion, -,. The axion solution of the strong CP problem suggests that the $`\theta `$ parameter of QCD is promoted to the dynamical axion field $`\theta \frac{a(x)}{f_a}`$ with very small coupling constant, $`1/f_a1`$. Once $`\theta `$ becomes the dynamical field, it automatically relaxes to $`\theta =0`$ as the lowest energy state.

Of course, we do not expect that such a stable $`|\theta `$ state can be produced in heavy ion collisions: However, we do expect that locally, for a short period of time due to the non-equilibrium dynamics after the QCD phase transition, a large domain with wrong $`|\theta `$ direction may be formed. This provides us with a unique opportunity to study a new state of matter. Numerical calculations of the evolution of the chiral fields after the QCD phase transition support this expectation. An obvious question is how this $`|\theta `$ vacuum state can be observed? To be more concrete, the question we are addressing in this letter is formulated in the following way: “What kind of observable should be measured at RHIC to confirm that a new ground state (and, therefore, a new set of excitations accompanying this ground state) has been created? ”. The most natural answer to this question is that: If the axions do exist, they can be produced during the relaxation of $`|\theta 0^{ind}`$ to the lowest possible state with $`\theta =0`$ as suggested in ,. However, the axion production rate under the conditions which can be achieved at RHIC will be too low in comparison with the limit already achieved from the astrophysical and cosmological considerations. The second obvious choice for the observable which can be a signal of creation of the $`\theta `$ vacuum state is some CP odd correlation as recently suggested in 222In the original papers, the authors discussed not the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua which is the subject of the present paper, but rather some metastable (even in the infinite volume limit) vacua which may (or may not) exist within the given QCD parameters $`m_i,N_c,N_f,0|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i\mathrm{\Psi }_i|0`$ as we know them. It is not the goal of this paper to comment on whether such metastable states are likely /unlikely to exist in Nature; or likely /unlikely to be produced at RHIC. Rather we want to emphasize that the CP odd observables suggested in  are sensitive to any $`CP`$ odd physics, not necessary related to the metastable states introduced in.. However, as Roberto Peccei noticed recently333 I am thankful to Roberto for the discussions on this subject, which actually motivated the present search for an alternative signal on the decay products in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua background. the signal could be considerably washed out by re-scattering of the pions and their interactions in the final states. Indeed, as is well-known (see e.g. reviews), the final state interactions will produce complex phases which mimic true CP-odd effects. In practice it is quite difficult to overcome the difficulty of separating a true CP violation from its simulation due to the final state interactions. For example, it is well known that the final state interactions is the most difficult obstacle in the study of CP violation in $`K^0(\overline{K^0})\pi ^\pm \mu ^{}\nu `$ decays by measuring the muon transverse polarization $`\xi _i`$ (defined by the correlation $`(\stackrel{}{p_\pi }\times \stackrel{}{p_\mu }\stackrel{}{\xi })`$). Fortunately, the final state interactions in the charged kaon decays $`K^+(K^{})\pi ^0\mu ^\pm \nu `$ are strongly suppressed, and therefore a measurement of this correlation in the ongoing experiment at KEK on the level $`>10^6`$ would imply a new source of CP violation. In general, one should expect that similar mimicry of true CP violation due to the final state interactions also occurs in the heavy ion collisions. The main goal of this letter is to offer some new observable which:
a) can be measured at RHIC;
b) will be the signal of the new physics of the $`\theta `$ vacua;
c) does not suffer from the deficiencies mentioned above.
Before I explain the main idea of the construction of such an observable, I would like to explain the low-energy physics in the $`\theta `$ world.

## 2 Low Energy Physics of the $`\theta `$ World

In this section (except subsection 2.5) we study the phenomenology of the world when $`\theta ^{fund}0`$. It will give us some useful hints about CP odd physics in the unusual environment with $`\theta 0`$.

The starting point of our analysis is the low energy effective lagrangian which reproduces the anomalous conformal and chiral Ward Identities. The corresponding construction in the large $`N_c`$ limit has been known for a long time,. The generalization of the construction of ref., for finite $`N_c`$ was given in ,, and we shall use formulae from the papers ,. However, we should remark at the very beginning that all local properties of the effective lagrangians for finite and infinite $`N_c`$ are very much the same. Small quantitative differences in local physics between the description of , on the one hand and the description of, on the other hand, do not alter the qualitative results which follow. First I discuss the properties of the unusual $`\theta `$ vacua itself. Discussions of the properties of the Goldstone bosons in the $`\theta `$ vacuum background will follow after that.

### 2.1  Effective chiral lagrangian and properties of $`\theta `$ vacua

In the effective Lagrangian approach, the light matter fields are described by the unitary matrix $`U_{ij}`$ corresponding to the phases of the chiral condensate $`0|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_L^i\mathrm{\Psi }_R^j|0=|0|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_L\mathrm{\Psi }_R|0|U_{ij}`$. In terms of $`U`$ the effective potential for arbitrary $`\theta `$ takes the form ,:

$$V(U,\theta )=E\mathrm{cos}\left[\frac{1}{N_c}(\theta i\mathrm{log}DetU)\right]\frac{1}{2}Tr(MU+M^+U^+),$$
(1)
where $`M`$ is the diagonal mass matrix for quark masses defined with their condensates ($`M_i=diag(m_i\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_i\mathrm{\Psi }_i)`$ ) and $`E=b\alpha _s/(32\pi )G^2`$, with $`b=11N_c/32N_f/3`$, is the vacuum energy (“cosmological” term ) required by the conformal anomaly. Expanding the cosine (this corresponds to the expansion in $`1/N_c`$) we recover the result of  at lowest order in $`1/N_c`$ together with the constant term $`E`$:

$$V(U,\theta ,N_c\mathrm{})==E\frac{\nu ^2_{YM}}{2}(\theta i\mathrm{log}DetU)^2\frac{1}{2}Tr(MU+M^+U^+)+\mathrm{},$$
(2)
where we used the fact that in the large $`N_c`$ limit $`E(\frac{1}{N_c})^2=\nu ^2_{YM}`$ where $`\nu ^2_{YM}<0`$ is the topological susceptibility in pure YM theory. Corrections in $`1/N_c`$ stemming from Eq.(1) constitute a new result of ref.. First of all, let me review the picture of the vacuum structure for $`\theta 0`$ stemming from the effective potential (1). In the next subsection I review some properties of the Goldstone modes in the $`\theta 0`$ background. To study the vacuum properties it is convenient to parametrize the fields $`U`$ as $`U=diag(\mathrm{exp}i\varphi _q)`$ such that the potential (1) takes the form:

$$V=E\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{1}{N_c}\theta \frac{1}{N_c}\varphi _i\right)M_i\mathrm{cos}\varphi _i,$$
(3)
The minimum of this potential is determined by the following equation:

$$\frac{1}{N_c}\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{1}{N_c}\theta \frac{1}{N_c}\varphi _i\right)=\frac{M_i}{E}\mathrm{sin}\varphi _i,i=1,\mathrm{},N_f.$$
(4)
At lowest order in $`1/N_c`$ this equation coincides with that of . For general values of $`M_i/E`$, it is not possible to solve Eq.(4) analytically. However, in the realistic case $`\epsilon _u,\epsilon _d1,\epsilon _s1`$ where $`\epsilon _i=\frac{N_cM_i}{E}`$, the approximate solution can be found:

$`\mathrm{sin}\varphi _u`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_d\mathrm{sin}\theta }{[m_u^2+m_d^2+2m_um_d\mathrm{cos}\theta ]^{1/2}}}+O(\epsilon _u,\epsilon _d),`$
$`\mathrm{sin}\varphi _d`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_u\mathrm{sin}\theta }{[m_u^2+m_d^2+2m_um_d\mathrm{cos}\theta ]^{1/2}}}+O(\epsilon _u,\epsilon _d),`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{sin}\varphi _s`$ $`=`$ $`O(\epsilon _u,\epsilon _d).`$
This solution coincides with the one of Ref. to leading order in $`\epsilon _u,\epsilon _d`$. In what follows for the numerical estimates and for simplicity we shall use the $`SU(2)`$ limit $`m_u=m_dm_s`$ where the solution (2.1) can be approximated as:

$`\varphi _u{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}},\varphi _d{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}},\varphi _s0,0\theta <\pi `$
$`\varphi _u{\displaystyle \frac{\theta +2\pi }{2}},\varphi _d{\displaystyle \frac{\theta 2\pi }{2}},\varphi _s0,\pi \theta <2\pi .`$ (6)
Once solution (2.1) is known, one can calculate the vacuum energy and topological charge density $`Q=0|\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|0`$ as a function of $`\theta `$. In the limit $`m_u=m_dm,\overline{d}d=\overline{u}u\overline{q}q`$ one has:

$`V_{vac}(\theta )V_{vac}(\theta =0)2m|\overline{q}q|(|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|1)`$
$`\theta |{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }}G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta ={\displaystyle \frac{V_{vac}(\theta )}{\theta }}=m|0|\overline{q}q|0|\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}},`$ (7)
As expected, the $`\theta `$ dependence appears only in combination with $`m`$ and goes away in the chiral limit. One can also calculate the chiral condensate $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_L^i\mathrm{\Psi }_R^i`$ in the $`\theta `$ vacua using solution (2.1) for vacuum phases:

$$\theta |\overline{q}q|\theta =\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0_{\theta =0},\theta |\overline{q}i\gamma _5q|\theta =\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0_{\theta =0}$$
(8)
Both expressions (2.1) and (8) explicitly demonstrate that P, CP symmetries are explicitly broken in the $`\theta `$ vacuum background. This has very important phenomenological consequences which will be discussed in the next section. The crucial point for the analysis presented above is the fact that the $`\theta `$ parameter appears in the effective lagrangian (1) only in the combination, $`(\theta i\mathrm{log}DetU)`$. This is a direct consequence of the transformation properties of the chiral fields under $`U(1)_A`$ rotations. To convince the reader that (1) does indeed represent the anomalous effective low energy Lagrangian, three of its most salient features are listed below :
i) Eq. (1) correctly reproduces the Witten- Di Vecchia -Veneziano effective chiral Lagrangian  in the large $`N_c`$ limit;
ii) it reproduces the anomalous conformal and chiral Ward identities of $`QCD`$;
iii) it reproduces the known dependence in $`\theta `$  up to small corrections. Accordingly, it leads to the correct $`2\pi `$ periodicity of observables.

### 2.2 Goldstone bosons in $`\theta `$ world

In this subsection I would like to describe some unusual properties of the Goldstone modes in the unusual $`\theta `$ environment. I refer the interested readers to the original papers , for a detailed description of the approach. Here I present some old/new results which can be easily derived from the general expressions given in ref.. To study the properties of the pseudo-goldstone bosons, we parametrize the chiral matrix (1) in the form

$$U=U_0\mathrm{exp}\left[i\sqrt{2}\frac{\pi ^a\lambda ^a}{f_\pi }+i\frac{2}{\sqrt{N_f}}\frac{\eta ^{}}{f_\pi }\right],$$
(9)
where $`\lambda ^a`$ are Gell-Mann matrices of $`SU(N_f=3)`$, $`\pi ^a`$ is the octet of pseudo-goldstone bosons, and $`f_\eta ^{}f_\pi 133MeV`$. In this formula $`U_0`$ solves the minimization equations for the effective potential (1), and the fields $`\pi ^a,\eta ^{}`$ all have vanishing vacuum expectation values. In what follows we shall use the approximate solution (2.1) for the vacuum phases $`\varphi _i`$. A simple calculation of the mass matrix in the $`SU(2)`$ limit when $`m_u=m_dm`$ yields the following result for an arbitrary value of $`\theta `$ (for the general case $`m_um_d`$ see):

$`m_\pi ^2={\displaystyle \frac{4}{f_\pi ^2}}(M_q|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|),m_\eta ^2={\displaystyle \frac{4}{3f_\pi ^2}}(M_q|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|+2M_s)`$
$`m_\eta ^{}^2=4{\displaystyle \frac{EN_f}{f_\pi ^2N_c^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{N_f}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{f_\pi ^2}}\left(2M_q|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|+M_s\right),`$ (10)
$`m_{\eta ,\eta ^{}}^2=m_{\eta ^{},\eta }^2=2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3N_f}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{f_\pi ^2}}(2M_q|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|2M_s))`$
In this isospin limit $`m_u=m_dm`$, the $`\pi ^0`$ does not mix with $`\eta `$ or $`\eta ^{}`$, and $`m_{\pi ^0}`$ coincides with the physical mass of the $`\pi ^0`$. At the same time $`\eta `$ and $`\eta ^{}`$ do mix with each other. The mixing is determined by the following matrix:

$`m_{\eta \eta ^{}}^2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{4}{3f_\pi ^2}(2m_s\overline{s}s+m\overline{q}q|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|)& \frac{4\sqrt{2}}{3f_\pi ^2}(m_s\overline{s}sm\overline{q}q|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|)\hfill \\ \frac{4\sqrt{2}}{3f_\pi ^2}(m_s\overline{s}sm\overline{q}q|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|)& \frac{4}{3f_\pi ^2}(m_s\overline{s}s+2m\overline{q}q|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|)+4\frac{EN_f}{f_\pi ^2N_c^2}\hfill \end{array}\right)`$ (13)
which coincides with an accuracy $`O(m^2)`$ with the matrix given by Veneziano at $`\theta =0`$

$`m_{\eta \eta ^{}}^2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{3}(4m_K^2m_\pi ^2)& \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{3}(m_K^2m_\pi ^2)\hfill \\ \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{3}(m_K^2m_\pi ^2)& \frac{2}{3}m_K^2+\frac{1}{3}m_\pi ^2+\frac{\chi }{N_c}\hfill \end{array}\right).`$ (16)
The only difference between eq.(13) and Eq.(16) is that the topological susceptibility $`\chi `$ in pure YM theory in the latter is substituted by the term proportional to the gluon condensate in real QCD in the former.

A few remarks are in order. First, from Eq.(2.2) one could naively think that the $`\pi `$ meson becomes massless at $`\theta =\pi `$. This is a consequence of our approximation $`m_u=m_d`$. For $`m_um_d`$ the $`\pi `$ meson never becomes massless, and in the vicinity $`\theta \pi `$ one should use the exact formula $`m_\pi ^2=\frac{2}{f_\pi ^2}(M_u\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _u)+M_d\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _d))`$ with exact solutions (2.1) for phases $`\varphi _u,\varphi _d`$ ( see). However, the observation that the masses of the pseudo-goldstone bosons get corrections of the order of $`1`$ in the $`\theta 0`$ background is absolutely correct. In particular, the $`\pi `$ meson could easily have a mass of, let us say, $`95MeV`$ for a certain value of $`\theta `$ rather than $`135MeV`$ from the Particle Data Booklet. Masses of all other hadrons are also influenced by the $`\theta `$ vacua. However, this influence is not as profound as for pseudo-goldstone bosons because all effects due to the $`\theta 0`$ background are proportional to $`m`$ and must vanish in the chiral limit. For pseuodo-Goldstone bosons and the $`\eta ^{}`$ meson this effect can be calculated exactly in the limit $`m0`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta =0)m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta 0)}{m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta =0)}}={\displaystyle \frac{8}{3f_\pi ^2m_\eta ^{}^2}}m|\overline{q}q|\left(1|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|\right)>0`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{m_\eta ^2(\theta =0)m_\eta ^2(\theta 0)}{m_\eta ^2(\theta =0)}}={\displaystyle \frac{4}{3f_\pi ^2m_\eta ^2}}m|\overline{q}q|\left(1|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|\right)>0`$ (17)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{m_K^2(\theta =0)m_K^2(\theta 0)}{m_K^2(\theta =0)}}={\displaystyle \frac{2}{f_\pi ^2m_K^2}}m|\overline{q}q|\left(1|\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}}|\right)>0`$
For all other heavy hadrons one can not present analogous calculations; however, one should expect a similar, quite substantial effect

$$\frac{m\overline{q}q}{f_\pi ^2}(100MeV)^2$$

for all hadrons.

My first remark was about masses (spectrum), see discussions above; my second remark is about quantum numbers. Namely, I would like to argue that all hadrons in the $`\theta `$-vacuum environment cease to carry definite P, CP parities but instead become mixtures of the states with different quantum numbers. This remark becomes quite obvious if one remembers that the $`\theta `$ vacuum ground state with the chiral and gluon condensates given by formulae (8) and (2.1) correspondingly, is not invariant under these symmetries. Therefore, in general one should expect that all excitations in this background are not eigenstates of P and CP parities. Therefore: in the presence of a non-zero angle $`\theta `$, the pseudo-goldstone bosons cease to be the pure pseudoscalars and acquire scalar components. This mixing of states with different parities has been known since where it was explicitly demonstrated that the charmonium levels with quantum numbers $`0^+`$ and $`0^{}`$ do mix. In this case the calculations are under theoretical control (due to the large mass $`m_c`$ of the charmed quark), and the result for the mixing is expressed in terms of the CP-odd gluon condensate $`\theta |\frac{\alpha _s}{4\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta =2m|0|\overline{q}q|0|\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}`$, see (2.1). It was also demonstrated in ref. that the $`\eta \pi \pi `$ decay is allowed in the $`\theta `$ vacuum background. This decay also can be interpreted as a result of mixing pseudo-Goldstone bosons $`0^{}`$ with a scalar particle $`0^+`$ which can easily decay to two $`\pi `$ mesons. Due to the phenomenological importance of this result as a definite signature of the produced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state in heavy ion collisions, we derive the decay rate for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \pi \pi )`$ in a separate subsection below. We express the rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \pi \pi )`$ exclusively in terms of the chiral vacuum condensate (8). At small $`\theta `$ our formula coincides with the one presented long ago in ref..

### 2.3 $`\eta \pi \pi `$ decay

As is known, this decay is strongly suppressed in our world with $`\theta =0`$. Indeed, CP parity for the initial state is $`()`$, while for the final state it is $`(+)`$. This is the main reason for a very small full width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.2KeV`$ for $`\eta `$ meson which can decay strongly only to $`3\pi `$ mesons with a strong isospin suppression (three $`\pi `$ mesons can not be in the $`I=0`$ state) as well as a phase volume suppression. The starting point of our calculations is the following matrix element:

$$A(\eta \pi \pi )=2\pi |m_u\overline{u}um_d\overline{d}d|\eta .$$
(18)
Our goal is to estimate this matrix element in the limit of vanishing $`4`$-momenta of the $`\pi `$ and $`\eta `$ mesons. Therefore, one can use the standard PCAC-technique. The result is:

$$A(\eta \pi \pi )=2\pi |m_u\overline{u}um_d\overline{d}d|\eta \frac{2}{\sqrt{6}}\frac{(m_u+m_d)\theta |\overline{u}i\gamma _5u+\overline{d}i\gamma _5d|\theta }{f_\pi ^3}$$

$$\frac{8}{\sqrt{6}}\frac{m\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0_{\theta =0}}{f_\pi ^3},$$
(19)
where at the last step we used formula (8) for the CP odd chiral condensate which is not zero in the $`\theta `$ world. In this derivation we neglect all corrections proportional to $`m_um_d`$ having in mind that at the very end we shall use the approximate solution (2.1) for the chiral phases and masses (2.2) rather than the exact expression (2.1). Now we are ready to estimate the decay rate:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \pi \pi )=\frac{|A(\eta \pi \pi )|^2}{16\pi m_\eta (\theta )}\left(1\frac{4m_\pi ^2(\theta )}{m_\eta ^2(\theta )}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}$$

$$\frac{2}{3\pi m_\eta (\theta )}\left(\frac{m\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0}{f_\pi ^3}\right)^2\left(1\frac{4m_\pi ^2(\theta )}{m_\eta ^2(\theta )}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},$$
(20)
with all masses to be calculated in the $`\theta `$ vacua (2.2). Formula (20) reduces to the corresponding expression of ref. in the limit $`\theta 0`$ when the standard PCAC relation $`m|0|\overline{q}q|0|\frac{1}{4}m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2`$ is substituted into eq.(20). For numerical estimates we neglect the $`\theta `$ dependence of masses and arrive at the following decay rate:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \pi \pi )0.5MeV(\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2})^2,$$
(21)
which essentially determines the full width of the $`\eta `$ meson in the $`\theta 0`$ world.

### 2.4 $`\eta ^{}\pi \pi `$ decay

One can carry out similar calculations for the $`\eta ^{}\pi \pi `$ decay as well. This decay is also strongly suppressed for the same reasons discussed above for the $`\eta \pi \pi `$ decay. The full width of $`\eta ^{}`$ meson (from particle data booklet), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{})0.2MeV`$, is very small in comparison with the “normal” width $`(100MeV)`$ which one could expect for a strongly interacting particle with mass $`1GeV`$. This suppression is due to the small phase volume of the only allowed strong decay, $`\eta ^{}\eta \pi \pi `$.

The starting point of our calculations of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )`$ with $`\theta 0`$ is the following matrix element

$$A(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )=2\pi |m_u\overline{u}um_d\overline{d}d|\eta ^{}.$$
(22)
Our goal is to estimate this matrix element in the limit of vanishing $`4`$-momenta of the $`\pi `$ mesons. We use the standard PCAC-technique as we did above for $`\eta \pi \pi `$ decay. The result of this calculation can be presented in terms of the following $`\eta ^{}`$ matrix element:

$$A(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )=2\pi |m_u\overline{u}um_d\overline{d}d|\eta ^{}\frac{(m_u+m_d)0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|\eta ^{}_\theta }{f_\pi ^2}.$$
(23)
In our world with $`\theta =0`$ this matrix element is obviously zero. However, as discussed above, due to the mixing of states with different parities in the $`\theta 0`$ background this matrix element is expected to be nonzero in the $`\theta 0`$ vacuum state444 it must vanish in $`\theta 0`$ limit though. .

The simplest way to evaluate the $`\eta ^{}`$ matrix element (23) is to make use of our knowledge of the vacuum condensates (2.1, 8)in the $`\theta 0`$ world. One can differentiate $`\theta |\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta `$ with respect to $`m`$ in order to derive the following low energy theorem which will be used for the estimation of the matrix element (23) in what follows.

$`({\displaystyle \frac{}{m_u}}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{m_d}})\theta |{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }}G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta =i\underset{q0}{lim}{\displaystyle 𝑑xe^{iqx}\theta |(\overline{u}u(x)+\overline{d}d(x)),\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}(0)|\theta }=`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|0\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}},`$ (24)
where at the last step we used our knowledge of the $`\theta `$ dependence for the vacuum condensate $`\theta |\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta =m0|\overline{q}q|0\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}`$, see eq. (2.1). The same relation can be obtained in a different way, by differentiating $`\theta |\overline{q}q|\theta `$ with respect to $`\theta `$. Indeed,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\theta }}\theta |\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|\theta =i\underset{q0}{lim}{\displaystyle 𝑑xe^{iqx}\theta |(\overline{u}u(0)+\overline{d}d(0)),\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}(x)|\theta }=`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|0\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}},`$ (25)
where at the last step we used our knowledge of the $`\theta `$ dependence for the vacuum condensate $`\theta |\overline{q}q|\theta =\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0`$, see eq. (8). From this low-energy theorem one can easily estimate the matrix element (23) we are interested in. Indeed, using the standard dispersion relations and keeping in the imaginary part the contribution of the $`\eta ^{}`$ meson only ( justified in the large $`N_c`$ limit), we arrive at the following estimate for the $`\eta ^{}`$ matrix element:

$$0|\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\eta ^{}_\theta \eta ^{}|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|0_\theta =m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta )\frac{1}{2}0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|0\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}.$$
(26)
In the chiral limit one can neglect the $`\theta `$\- dependence in the mass term $`m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta )m_\eta ^{}^2(\theta =0)+0(m)`$ and in the matrix element $`0|\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\eta ^{}_\theta 0|\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\eta ^{}_{\theta =0}+0(m)`$. Therefore, for estimation purposes, one can use the corresponding values calculated for the $`\theta =0`$ vacuum.

$$0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|\eta ^{}_\theta =\frac{\sqrt{3}}{f_\pi (0.50.8)}0|\overline{u}u+\overline{d}d|0\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}$$
(27)
where we used the estimate of the matrix element $`0|\frac{\alpha _s}{4\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\eta ^{}\frac{(0.50.8)}{\sqrt{3}}f_\pi m_\eta ^{}^2`$ from ref.. Substituting this expression into (23), we arrive at the following estimate for the amplitude of $`\eta ^{}\pi \pi `$:

$$A(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )\frac{4\sqrt{3}}{(0.50.8)}\frac{m\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0_{\theta =0}}{f_\pi ^3},$$
(28)
which is the same order of magnitude as $`A(\eta \pi \pi )`$ (19). This value for the amplitude translates to the following estimate for the decay rate

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )\frac{|A(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )|^2}{16\pi m_\eta ^{}}\frac{6}{\pi m_\eta ^{}}\left(\frac{m\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}0|\overline{q}q|0}{f_\pi ^3}\right)^22MeV(\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2})^2,$$
(29)
which is almost an order of magnitude larger than the full width of the $`\eta ^{}`$ meson in the $`\theta =0`$ world. What is more important, this width is exclusively due to the CP odd decay $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{}\pi \pi )`$.

### 2.5 Forming of the induced $`\theta `$ vacua at RHIC

Now we want to argue that the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacuum state with an effective $`\theta ^{ind}0`$ ( which was treated so far as a pure theoretical construction) can, nevertheless, be experimentally produced and studied in the real world in the relativistic heavy ion collider. Of course, we do not expect that a stable $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state can be produced in heavy ion collisions; however, we do expect that a relatively stable and sufficiently large domain with a wrong induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ orientation may be formed due to the non-equilibrium dynamics after the QCD phase transition. If this is indeed the case, such a study gives us a unique opportunity to mimic the physics of the world when the fundamental $`\theta ^{fund}0`$. This situation is believed to have occurred during the QCD phase transition in the development of the early Universe.

The idea is very similar to the old idea of creation of the Disoriented Chiral Condensate (DCC) in heavy ion collisions  ,,  (see also nice review  for a discussion of DCC as an example of an out of equilibrium phase transition). DCC refers to regions of space (interior) in which the chiral condensate points in a different direction from that of the ground state (exterior), and separated from the latter by a hot shell of debris. Our starting point is the conjecture that a classically large domain with a nonzero $`U(1)_A`$ chiral phase may be formed in a heavy ion collisions, i.e. we assume that the expectation value for the chiral condensate in a sufficiently large domain has, in general, a nonzero $`U(1)`$ phase: $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_L\mathrm{\Psi }_Re^{i\varphi ^{singlet}}|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }|`$. This phase is identified with $`\theta ^{ind}`$. Such an identification is a direct consequence of the transformation properties of the fundamental QCD lagrangian under $`U(1)_A`$ rotations when the chiral singlet phase can be rotated away at the cost of the introduction of the induced $`\theta `$, $`\theta ^{ind}=N_f\varphi ^{singlet}`$. The production of non-trivial $`|\theta ^{ind}`$-vacua would occur in much the same way as discussed above for DCC. The new element is that in addition to chiral fields differing from their true vacuum values the induced $`\theta `$-parameter, which is zero in the real world, becomes effectively nonvanishing in the macroscopically large domain. Of course, once such a conjecture is made ( the classically large domain with a nonzero $`U(1)_A`$ chiral phase is formed) one has to check that this assumption is self-consistent. Namely, one should check that (initially) randomly distributed phases $`\varphi _i`$ in the $`\theta ^{ind}`$-induced background will, indeed, relax to the same non-zero value $`\varphi _i\frac{\theta _{ind}}{N_f}`$ in a sufficiently short period of time. The numerical study of ref. suggests this is indeed the case.

We want to pause here to explain the terminology we adopt regarding the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua. Of course the fundamental parameter $`\theta `$ which enters the fundamental QCD lagrangian is zero in our world. One should remember, however, that the fundamental $`\theta =0`$ is a combination of two pieces: the first part is related to the original term $`\theta Q=\theta \frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G^a\stackrel{~}{G}^a`$; the second part is related to the mass matrix $``$ which, in general, may have an arbitrary phase. The $`U(1)_A`$ rotation of the $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ fields brings this matrix to a canonical form, producing however an additional contribution to the $`\theta `$ term555By the way, the famous strong CP problem is formulated in these terms as follows: Why do these two contributions cancel each other with precision better than $`10^9`$?. Our induced $`\theta ^{ind}`$ can be considered as the second term related to the rotation of the $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ fields. After this point we can apply the same philosophy as for DCC. The chiral fields $`\varphi _i`$ are allowed to take random values as discussed above, and they begin to roll toward the true solution $`\overline{\varphi _u}\overline{\varphi _d}\theta /2,\overline{\varphi _s}0`$ (2.1) and of course overshoot it. The situation is very similar to what was described for the DCC with the only difference that in general we expect an arbitrary $`|\theta ^{ind}`$-disoriented state to be created in heavy ion collisions, not necessarily the $`|\theta =0`$ state. It is assumed that the rapid expansion of the high energy shell leaves behind an effectively zero temperature region in the interior which is isolated from the true vacuum. The high temperature non-equilibrium evolution is very suddenly stopped, or “quenched”, leaving the interior region in a non-equilibrium initial state that then begins to evolve according to (almost) zero temperature Lagrangian dynamics. Therefore starting from an initial non-equilibrium state we can study the behavior of the chiral fields using the zero temperature equations of motion. These equations are non-linear and cannot be solved analytically but the numerical analysis can be done and has been presented in ref., where the equations of motion for the phases of the chiral condensate in the theory with two quark flavors have been studied:

$$\ddot{\varphi }_i^2\varphi _i+\gamma \dot{\varphi _i}+\frac{d}{d\varphi _i}V(\varphi _j,\theta )=0i=u,d.$$
(30)
Here $`^2`$ is a three dimensional spatial derivative and the potential is given in (3). Emission of pions and expansion of the domain will contribute to the damping, $`\gamma `$, as might other processes. The contribution of these unknown effects was simulated in ref. by including a damping term with a reasonable value for the damping constant, $`\gamma \mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}200MeV`$. The results of this numerical study can be summarized in the following way:

a)The $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain does form. The production of a non-trivial $`\theta `$ is indicated by the fact that the chiral fields relax to constant non-zero values on a time scale over which spatial oscillations of the fields vanish. In other words, the zero mode settles down to a non-zero value $`\frac{\theta }{2}`$. At the same time, all higher momentum modes vanish extremely rapidly and are negligible long before the zero mode settles down to its equilibrium value.

b)The formation of a non-perturbative condensate is also supported by observation of the phenomenon of coarsening, i.e. the phenomenon of amplification of the zero mode as time increases. The effect of coarsening as well as the formation of a nonperturbative condensate is very similar to earlier discussions in ref..

c)The formation of a non-perturbative condensate is also supported by the test of volume -independence of our results. Namely, our quasi zero mode approaches the same value irrespective of the total spatial volume indicating that this really is a nonperturbative condensate that we are evolving to. If it were not we would expect the value of the coefficient to decrease when volume of the system increases.

## 3 Signatures and observables of the produced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua

Having discussed the properties of the $`\theta `$ vacuum state itself, pseudo-Goldstone bosons as its lightest excitations, and having assumed that this unusual $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ ground state of matter is produced and will live a sufficiently long time $`\tau (10100F)`$, we are now in position to answer the question formulated in the Introduction: “What should we measure to see all these interesting phenomena?”. In what follows we suggest (based on our previous discussions regarding the mass-shifts and other properties of the Goldstone modes) a few simple observables which (hopefully) can be measured and which uniquely signal that the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacuum state indeed has been produced.

Before we begin, a few general remarks are in order. First of all, the produced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ is a relatively short-lived state with respect to electromagnetic and weak interactions and a relatively long-lived state with respect to strong interactions with $`\tau (20MeV)^1(2MeV)^1`$. After the time $`\tau `$, the shell separating $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ world from our world with $`\theta =0`$, breaks down666For numerical estimates presented below we use $`\tau (5MeV)^1`$.. All hadrons which have been formed in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ background will suddenly find themselves in the new vacuum state (with $`\theta =0`$). They have no choice but to transform to the asymptotic states of this new (for them) $`\theta =0`$ world. The dynamics of this strong transformation is quite complicated and beyond the scope of the present work. However, it is absolutely clear that the only signal which might be relevant for the study of $`|\theta ^{ind}`$-physics is a signature which originates during the time $`\tau `$ while $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ exists. If something happens after that time, it can not be relevant for a study of the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua. Our second remark is that a signal must safely penetrate through the debris of the hot shell to deliver the information about the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state and not about something else. Essentially this constraint implies that the decay products originated during the time $`\tau `$ are better to be photons, electrons or muons, rather than the strongly interacting hadrons. In this case the effect related to the electromagnetic rather than strong interactions would be suppressed by a factor $`\tau /\tau _{em}\alpha 1`$, where $`\tau _{em}`$ is a typical time scale for an electromagnetic process. Based on these general remarks and previous discussions (Section 2) regarding the mass-shifts (2.2) and parity-mixing of the hadrons in the $`\theta `$ background, we list below and comment on some signatures which (hopefully) can be measured and would signal the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua creation in Heavy Ion Collisions.

### 3.1  Signatures from the hadron decays in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ background

a. We start from the analysis of $`\eta \pi \pi `$ as the most important signature of the produced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua. As is known, this decay is strongly suppressed in our world due to the opposite CP parities of the initial ($`\eta `$) and final states ($`2\pi `$). In the previous section we have estimated the width (21) for the decay $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \pi \pi )0.5MeV(\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2})^2`$ it turns out to be much larger than the full width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta )1.18\pm 0.11KeV`$ of the $`\eta `$ meson in our world with $`\theta =0`$. One should expect that a noticeable fraction, $`0.5MeV(\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2})^2\times \tau 0.1`$, of all produced $`\eta `$ mesons in the $`\theta ^{ind}`$ background would decay to $`2\pi `$ before the shell separating the $`\theta ^{ind}`$ background and our world with $`\theta =0`$ breaks down. If the transition of these $`2\pi `$ mesons (produced in the $`\theta ^{ind}`$ background ) to our $`|\theta =0`$ background is an adiabatic process, then one should expect these $`2\pi `$ mesons become the asymptotic states of our world with the corresponding masses and quantum numbers $`0^{}`$. However, the effect that these $`\pi `$ mesons were produced from $`\eta `$ decay in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ background should not be washed out and the corresponding resonance behavior in $`\pi \pi `$ invariant mass should be seen in the spectrum. We should remark at this point that a signal is expected only for low momentum pions, because $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ formation is caused by amplification of low momentum modes. As well, as we mentioned in the previous section, $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ will be different for each given event, such that the corresponding average over the large number of events is zero. However, a measurement on an event by event basis should produce a non-zero result. We should also remark here that mass shifts for Goldstone bosons in $`|\theta `$ background and $`|\theta `$ background are the same. In both cases masses are lower than in our vacuum state $`|\theta =0`$ (see (2.2)). Our last remark: the fact that hadron properties are different in an unusual environment (when temperature $`T`$ and/or chemical potential $`\mu `$ are not zero) is not a new idea (see e.g.). However, $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua is a quite special environment: in this background the hadrons do not posses the definite quantum numbers, like $`P`$ parity. Therefore, their properties could be drastically different from the ones which we know from the Particle Data Booklet.

b. One could repeat the same comments regarding $`\eta ^{}\pi \pi `$ decay as a very profound signature of the produced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua. As is known, this decay is also strongly suppressed in our world due to the opposite CP parities of the initial ($`\eta ^{}`$) and final states ($`2\pi `$). Besides that, the full width of $`\eta ^{}`$ is quite small $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{})0.2MeV`$ in our world with $`\theta =0`$. In this case the effect is even more profound than in the previously discussed $`\eta \pi \pi `$ decay because a larger fraction of all produced $`\eta ^{}`$ mesons in the $`\theta ^{ind}`$ background would decay to $`2\pi `$ before the shell separating the $`\theta ^{ind}`$ background from our world with $`\theta =0`$ breaks down. Indeed, from eq.(29)we estimate this fraction on the level $`2MeV(\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2})^2\tau 1/3`$.

c. As we discussed above, the electromagnetic, rather than the strong processes could provide a much better signature for studying the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ induced vacua. Of course, the relevant effects would be suppressed by a factor $`\tau /\tau _{em}1`$, where $`\tau _{em}`$ is a typical time scale for an electromagnetic process, but, the signal is expected to be sufficiently clean due to the free penetrating of leptons and photons through the hot debris of the hadrons. In particular, the mass of $`\eta ^{}`$ meson in $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ induced background (2.2) can be independently measured from $`\eta ^{}\rho (\omega )\gamma `$ decay along with $`\eta ^{}2\pi `$ decay as described above. The corresponding rate is expected to be on the same level as in our world with $`\theta =0`$, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta ^{}\rho (\omega )\gamma )0.06MeV`$. Therefore, a quite noticeable portion of the produced $`\eta ^{}s`$ will decay to $`\rho (\omega )\gamma `$. As usual, we only take into account decays which were originated while the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ vacua existed, therefore the effect is of the order $`\tau 0.06MeV10^2`$. One could discuss similar decays such as $`\omega \pi ^0(\eta )\gamma `$, $`\varphi \pi ^0(\eta )\gamma `$, $`\eta ^{}(\eta ,\pi ^0)2\gamma `$, etc. with the following general conclusion: the hadron mass shifts and the lack of definite $`P,CP`$ quantum numbers would lead, in general, to some deviation from the standard pattern. In particular, the positions of the resonances as well as the polarization properties of photons emitted from these hadrons, are expected to be quite different from what one could anticipate normally in our world with $`\theta =0`$.

### 3.2 Signatures from the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ decay

We have been discussing so far the signatures originating from the hadrons ( which are excitations in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ background). Now we want to discuss a signature which may occur when the ground state $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ decays by itself. We should pause here to recall some relevant properties of the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state.

As explained in the previous sections we expect that, in general, an induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$\- vacuum state would be created in heavy ion collisions, similar to the creation of the disoriented chiral condensate with an arbitrary isospin direction. It should be a large domain ($`L10100F`$) with a wrong $`\theta ^{ind}0`$ orientation which will mimic the physics of the world with fundamental $`\theta ^{fund}0`$. It is expected that this macroscopically large domain would be quite stable (with respect to the strong interactions) with $`\tau (20MeV)^1(2MeV)^1`$. This state can be understood as the appearance of a macroscopically large ($`10100F`$) domain where the flavor- singlet phase of the chiral condensate is strongly correlated. This singlet phase is identified with $`\theta ^{ind}`$ phase. Indeed, this identification is a direct consequence of the transformation properties of the fundamental QCD lagrangian under $`U(1)_A`$ rotations when the chiral singlet phase can be rotated away at the cost of the appearance of the induced $`\theta ^{ind}`$ term. A different name for the same object would be a “ zero (spatially - independent) mode of the $`\eta ^{}`$ field” which exactly corresponds to the flavor-singlet spatial-independent part of the chiral condensate phase. However, we prefer to use the term $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ because the symbol $`\eta ^{}`$ is usually associated with the $`\eta ^{}`$ meson (excitation) and not with a classical constant field (condensate) in a large domain777We would like to make a comment regarding this terminology. In Ref. T.D.Lee considered the possibility of T violation in strong interactions due to the $`\eta ^{}`$ condensate. It is equivalent, in a modern context, to the induced $`\theta ^{ind}0`$ angle in the large domain as explained above. For example, his $`\eta ^{}`$ condensate induces a nonzero electric dipole moment of the neutron, see also comments by D. Kharzeev, R.D.Pisarski, and M.Tytgat in Physics Today..

Having made these short remarks regarding the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state, we are in position to answer on the question: “ What happens to the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state when it blows apart?”. The obvious answer is that it will mainly decay to the neutral pseudo-Goldstone bosons with low momentum modes $`|\stackrel{}{k}|L^1`$. A detailed analysis of the spectrum and other properties of this decay will be presented elsewhere, but here I want to make some estimates based on the simple energetic considerations. As we discussed earlier (2.1), the vacuum energy density in the $`\theta `$ state is greater than in the $`\theta =0`$ vacuum state by the amount:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E=E_{vac}(\theta )E_{vac}(\theta =0)=2m|\overline{q}q|(1|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|).$$

When $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state blows apart, the energy associated with this background will be released as the Goldstone bosons carrying the total energy:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ_\theta 2m_q|\overline{q}q|(1|\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|)V20\left(\frac{V}{(10F)^3}\right)GeV,$$
(31)
where $`V=L^3`$ is $`3d`$ volume of the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ background measured in $`Fermi`$. Therefore, given the $`cm`$ energy $`\sqrt{s}=40TeV`$, only a small fraction:

$$\rho \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ_\theta }{\sqrt{s}}\frac{20(\frac{V}{(10F)^3})GeV}{40TeV}10^3(\frac{V}{(10F)^3})$$

of the total collision energy will be released through the decay of the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state. Two of the most profound features of the Goldstone bosons produced in this decay are the following: 1. Due to the fact that the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ formation is caused by amplification of low momentum modes, we expect the spectrum of the Goldstone bosons from this decay to be strongly enhanced at low $`|\stackrel{}{k}|L^1`$; 2. Due to the nonzero value for the topological density $`\theta |\frac{\alpha _s}{8\pi }G\stackrel{~}{G}|\theta =\frac{V_{vac}(\theta )}{\theta }=m_q|0|\overline{q}q|0|\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}`$, see (2.1), one could expect that some $`P,CP`$ correlations would appear in this background, as discussed in . However, as we argued earlier this signal may be suppressed by the final state interactions.

Therefore we suggest a somewhat different signature to observe the formation of the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain. As mentioned above, an appropriate signal have to be of the electromagnetic origin to be able to deliver the information on the local conditions at its emission site. We argue below that such a signal would be the excess of photons and/or leptons which will be produced through the decay of the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state with a spectrum which is strongly peacked at very low $`|\stackrel{}{k}|L^1`$ and which demonstrates some unusual polarization properties. The electromagnetic energy which we are about to discuss originates from two different sources: 1. the direct photons/leptons which are produced from the electromagnetic vacuum energy stored in the domain$`V`$; 2. the indirect  photons/leptons which are produced from the neutral pseudo -Goldstone bosons $`\pi ^02\gamma ,\eta 2\gamma ,\eta ^{}2\gamma ,\eta 3\pi ^0\gamma ^{}s`$ etc. These neutral pseudo-Goldstone bosons are essentially the decay products of the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state constructed from diagonal $`\varphi _i`$ fields (3).

First of all, let us discuss the direct photon/lepton production. We want to argue that there is an electromagnetic vacuum energy stored in the region where the induced nonperturbative vacuum condensates have nonzero values (2.1,8). The first hint (that the expectation value for the electromagnetic field might not be zero ) comes from analysis of the effective lagrangian (3) including the term $`\mathrm{\Delta }V_{em}`$ related to the electromagnetic anomaly,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V_{em}=\frac{\alpha }{4\pi }N_c\left(\underset{i}{}\varphi _iQ_i^2\right)F_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{F_{\mu \nu }},$$
(32)
where $`\alpha =1/137`$ is the fine structure constant, $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ is electromagnetic field, $`Q_i`$ are the quark charges. Phases, $`\varphi _i`$, in this formula are defined in the same way as before (3). One usually uses the expression (32) for the description of the $`\pi 2\gamma ,\eta 2\gamma ,\eta ^{}2\gamma `$ decays. In this case the $`\varphi _i`$ phases are nothing but the standard Goldstone bosons (with appropariate normalization $`\varphi \frac{\pi }{f_\pi }`$). However, the effective lagrangian (3) together with the additional term (32) has a perfectly physical meaning even when the $`\varphi _i`$ fields describe the vacuum state itself, not necessarilly Goldstone excitations ($`\pi `$ mesons). This was exactly the point of the original papers , and our discussion in section (2.1). In this case, a nonzero $`\varphi _i`$ in a macroscopically large (but finite) domain might imply a nonzero value for the correlation $`\frac{\alpha }{4\pi }N_cF_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{F_{\mu \nu }}`$ over the same region. In other words, due to the electromagnetic interaction $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ with the phase of the quark condensate $`\varphi `$, the electromagnetic field also becomes correlated over the same region.

Another, more direct hint which also suggests that the electromagnetic field has a large scale correlation in the presence of the quark condensate, is based on the observation that the operators $`\frac{\alpha N_c}{4\pi }F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`m\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ do mix. This mixing is absolutely irrelevant for QCD itself, where much more important gluon operator such as $`G_{\mu \nu }^2`$ exists. Nevertheless, such a $`F^2m\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ mixing implies that in QCD where the quark fields condense, the electromagnetic field (due to the interaction with these condensed quarks $`m\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$) also becomes a correlated field in the nonperturbative QCD vacuum background. This electromagnetic vacuum energy together with the standard (infinite) perturbative vacuum energy (due to the zero vacuum fluctuations ) merely causes an unobservable shift of the vacuum energy. This effect can be safely ignored in all cases except the one where a macroscopically large domain is produced and has ground state properties different from our vacuum. In this case, the electromagnetic vacuum energy can be released through the production of photons when the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ states falls apart.

The simplest way estimate the scale of this effect is to estimate the difference between $`F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }`$ in our world with $`\theta =0`$ and with $`\theta 0`$. As was explained above, due to the mixing of the operators $`F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`m\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$, the problem is reduced to the analysis of the chiral condensate as a function of $`\theta `$, which was discussed earlier, see eq.(8). Therefore, for approximate solution (2.1) we arrive at the following estimate:

$$|\theta |\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }|\theta ||0|\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }|0||\frac{3\alpha }{2\pi }(Q_u^2+Q_d^2)\mathrm{ln}(\mu L)\left(1\mathrm{cos}(\frac{\theta }{2})\right)m_q\overline{q}q|,$$
(33)
where $`\mu `$ is the normalization point, and $`L10F`$ is a typical dimensional parameter of the system. The sign in the formula is easy to understand: the electromagnetic vacuum energy for the $`|\theta 0`$ ground state is higher than for the $`|\theta =0`$ state because it is proportional to the vacuum contribution of the chiral condensate $`m_q\overline{q}q`$, which has the lowest value for $`\theta =0`$ state, see (2.1).

As we discussed earlier, when the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state blows apart, the energy associated with this background will be released mainly as the neutral pseudo-Goldstone bosons carrying the total energy given by eq.(31) such that only a small fraction, $`\rho 10^3`$, of the total collision energy will be released through the decay of the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state. Our estimate (33) essentially says that only a small fraction of this energy will be released as electromagnetic energy through production of direct  photons and leptons.

$$\rho _{em}|\frac{3\alpha }{2\pi }(Q_u^2+Q_d^2)\mathrm{ln}(\mu L)|\rho 10^6.$$
(34)
One should say the formula (34) is probably an overestimation of the effect because we assumed in the derivation that along with the formation of the induced $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state, the electromagnetic fluctuations also settle down as prescribed by eq.(33) during the same, relatively short period of time $`\tau 10F`$. This may or may not be the case. A further analysis is needed to study a time-scale required to form the electromagnetic correlation (33) after the chiral quark condensate is formed. In any event, this effect is relatively small and will not play an important role in the discussion which follows.

Now we want to discuss the second (much more important) source of the electromagnetic energy which will be released when $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state blows apart. This source is related to the total energy of the background (31), rather than a small electromagnetic fraction (33) of it. Indeed, as we mentioned earlier, the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain itself will eventually decay to the neutral pseudo-Goldstone bosons $`\pi ^0,\eta ,\eta ^{}`$, the fields which essentially form the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain, see (3). It is important to note that these neutral $`\pi ^0,\eta ,\eta ^{}`$ bosons will mainly decay to photons/dileptons such that large fraction of the background energy (31) eventually will be released as the electromagnetic energy. Indeed, almost all produced $`\pi ^0`$ will decay to photons/dileptons; more than 70 percent of $`\eta `$-mesons will do the same through the decays $`\eta 2\gamma ,\eta 3\pi ^0`$. A noticeable fraction of $`\eta ^{}`$ mesons will also transform to the photons/dileptons through the decays $`\eta ^{}2,\gamma ,\eta ^{}\pi ^0\pi ^0\eta `$. Therefore, we expect that a considerable part of the vacuum energy (31) stored in the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain will be eventually released as it indirect photons/dileptons.

A detailed discussion of the spectrum of the produced particles will be presented elsewhere, but now let me mention that the most profound feature of the photons/dileptons produced in the decay of $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ domain, is quite similar to what we discussed above for the pseudo-Goldstone boson production themselves. Namely, due to the fact that the $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ formation is caused by amplification of low momentum modes, we expect the spectrum of the produced particles to be strongly enhanced at low $`|\stackrel{}{k}|L^1`$. We also expect that the produced particles may have some unusual polarization (P, CP-odd) properties due to the nonzero value of the condensates $`G_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{G_{\mu \nu }}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}i\gamma _5\mathrm{\Psi }`$ inside the domain $`V`$. In particular, one could expect that the number of low-energy ($`kL^1`$) right- and left- handed photons will be different.

To conclude this section regarding the electromagnetic energy stored in the nontrivial background, we would like to make the following remark. The electromagnetic $`F_{\mu \nu }^2`$ is always correlated with the quark condensate. Therefore, the corresponding energy may be released when the quark condensate in a large domain (due to unusual conditions) is different from its vacuum value. The $`|\theta ^{ind}`$ state is only one example where this may happen. Another example would be an unusual environment with nonzero temperature and chemical potential $`\mu `$ where, as is well known, the chiral condensate may have a different magnitude. In this case the stored electromagnetic energy will also be released through the direct photon/lepton production as discussed above. The only difference in the estimate (33) would be a replacement

$$\left(1\mathrm{cos}(\frac{\theta }{2})\right)|m_q\overline{q}q|\left[|m_q\overline{q}q_{(\mu =T=0)}||m_q\overline{q}q_{(\mu T0)}|\right],$$
(35)
at least for sufficiently small $`T`$ and $`\mu `$.

Let me conclude this work with the following speculative conjecture. The longstanding problem regarding the strong enhancement for invariant di-lepton masses below the $`\rho `$ mass reported by various collaborations at CERN may be intimately related to the low-energy indirect photon/dilepton production described above. Indeed, as we argued above, a noticeable fraction of the total energy (31) will be eventually released as electromagnetic energy. The main feature of these photons/dileptons is a strong enhancement of the low-energy modes because the corresponding spectrum of the neutral pseudo-Goldstone bosons is peaked at low $`kL^1`$. Detailed calculations are needed before this speculative conjecture can get further support. At least, the standard theoretical analysis (see e.g. a nice summary in ref.  and references therein for details) fails to reproduce the enhancement in the data. Let me conclude on this optimistic note/speculation.

## 4 Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dima Kharzeev, Larry McLerran, Robert Pisarski and Edward Shuryak for valuable comments. I am also grateful to Adrian Melissinos for useful discussions regarding the feasibility of the experiment. I also would like to thank the members of BNL’s theory group for their interest in this work. The research was supported in part by Canadian NSERC.


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# Spectral statistics of chaotic systems with a point-like scatterer

## Abstract

The statistical properties of a Hamiltonian $`H_0`$ perturbed by a localized scatterer are considered. We prove that when $`H_0`$ describes a bounded chaotic motion, the universal part of the spectral statistics are not changed by the perturbation. This is done first within the random matrix model. Then it is shown by semiclassical techniques that the result is due to a cancellation between diagonal diffractive and off-diagonal periodic-diffractive contributions. The compensation is a very general phenomenon encoding the semiclassical content of the optical theorem.

In quantum systems, the chaotic or disordered nature of the classical motion is reflected in the statistical properties of the high lying eigenvalues and eigenvectors. For example, the spectral statistics of ballistic cavities are universal for energy ranges that are small compared to the inverse time of flight through the system. These universal properties are well described by random matrix theory (RMT) .

Consider now a perturbation imposed to a chaotic system. On the classical side, the dynamics is structurally stable, in the sense that a generic smooth perturbation leaves the dynamics chaotic. We are interested in the quantum mechanical effects of a particular class of perturbations that are non-classical. If the unperturbed motion is described by the Hamiltonian $`H_0`$ acting in an $`N`$-dimensional Hilbert space, we consider Hamiltonians of the form

$$H=H_0+\lambda N|vv|,$$
(1)
where $`|v`$ is a fixed vector. $`N`$ is included in the perturbation for future convenience. The eigenvalues $`\{\omega _i\}`$ of $`H`$ satisfy the equation

$$\underset{k}{}\frac{|v_k|^2}{\omega ϵ_k}=\frac{1}{\lambda N},$$
(2)
with $`\{ϵ_k\}`$ the eigenvalues of $`H_0`$ and $`v_k=\phi _k|v`$ the amplitudes of $`|v`$ in the eigenbasis of $`H_0`$.

Rank-one perturbations like in Eq.(1-2) appear in several contexts. The most common one is when a local short-range impurity or point scatterer is added to the system . The physical consequences of such a perturbation were studied for Fermi gases , in the context of RMT  and for ballistic motion of particles in regular  and chaotic  cavities. Another context is in the physics of many body problems. In the basis of $`H_0`$, the perturbation simply reads $`v_kv_l^{}`$ and is said to be separable. In a mean field approach, it is the simplest model leading to collective modes via the residual interaction . Although our results are general, we adopt for simplicity the language of the localized point scatterer.

A local perturbation is purely wave-mechanical. For a system with $`f`$ degrees of freedom, it represents a modification of the dynamics in a volume $`(2\pi \mathrm{})^f`$ in phase space, that tends to zero in the semiclassical limit. For example, the addition of a point scatterer in a ballistic cavity leaves invariant the classical motion while quantum mechanically it induces wave effects like diffraction. The modifications of the eigenvalues by the perturbation are described by Eq.(2). A statistical analysis of the perturbed spectrum was done for the energy levels of a regular integrable cavity with a point scatterer in . It was demonstrated that a short range repulsion between the eigenvalues, different from RMT, is induced by the perturbation, thus considerably modifying the initial Poisson distribution. More recently, M. Sieber  has studied, using semiclassical techniques, the modifications by a point scatterer of the spectral statistics of chaotic systems. He showed that diffractive orbits produce finite contributions which may induce deviations with respect to the random matrix model. Whether this deviation really exists for chaotic systems, or on the contrary if there are other (non-diagonal) semiclassical contributions that cancel the purely diffractive terms is the question we answer here.

We prove by two different approaches, namely a purely statistical model and a semiclassical calculation, that a local perturbation produces no deviations with respect to RMT. At the first place, assuming that the unperturbed eigenvalues and eigenvectors components in Eq.(2) are distributed according to RMT, i.e. their joint probability density are given by the standard formulae

$$P(\{ϵ_k\})\underset{i>j}{}|ϵ_iϵ_j|^\beta ,$$
(3)
and

$$P(\{v_k\})=\underset{i}{}\left(\frac{\beta N}{2\pi }\right)^{1\beta /2}\mathrm{exp}(\beta N|v_i|^2/2),$$
(4)
we show that the joint probability density for the perturbed eigenvalues is exactly the same as the distribution of the unperturbed ones

$$P(\{\omega _k\})\underset{i>j}{}|\omega _i\omega _j|^\beta .$$
(5)
Here, $`\beta =1`$ (resp. $`2`$) for systems with (resp. without) time-reversal symmetry. In the second place, and to complete the analysis, a semiclassical calculation of the spectral form factor is considered. It is expressed as a double sum over all the periodic and diffractive orbits of the system. The latter are orbits that are scattered by the perturbation. In  the diagonal contribution of the diffractive orbits was obtained (cf Eq.(13) below). We compute the off-diagonal contribution coming from the interference of periodic and diffractive orbits, and find that this contribution exactly cancels the diagonal diffractive term. We thus recover the statistics of RMT. The basic physical ingredient at the basis of this cancellation is the unitarity of quantum scattering processes, i.e. conservation of the flux scattered by the impurity. Although our semiclassical result is less general than Eq.(5) – it is only valid for the short time behavior of a two-point function –, it applies to systems with arbitrary diffraction coefficient not expressible as a Hamiltonian of the form (1).

In chaotic and disordered system the local universal fluctuations of the spectrum are essentially related to the properties of the Jacobian (3). We ignore here problems related to the confinement of the eigenvalues, that are of minor importance for our purpose. We start the proof of Eq.(5) from the joint distribution function of both the old and new eigenvalues, obtained in Ref.

$$P(\{ϵ_i\},\{\omega _j\})\frac{_{i>j}(ϵ_iϵ_j)(\omega _i\omega _j)}{_{i,j}|ϵ_i\omega _j|^{1\beta /2}}\mathrm{e}^{\rho _i(\omega _iϵ_i)},$$

with $`\rho =\beta /2\lambda `$. We restrict for simplicity to $`\lambda >0`$ ($`\lambda <0`$ is treated in the same manner). Eq.(2) imposes the restrictions $`ϵ_i\omega _iϵ_{i+1}`$ (trapping). The distribution for the perturbed eigenvalues, $`\omega _i`$, is then defined as

$`P(\{\omega _i\})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\omega _1}}dϵ_1{\displaystyle _{\omega _1}^{\omega _2}}dϵ_2\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _{\omega _{N1}}^{\omega _N}}dϵ_NP(\{ϵ_i\},\{\omega _j\})`$ (6)
$``$ $`\mathrm{e}^{\rho _i\omega _i}{\displaystyle \underset{i>j}{}}(\omega _i\omega _j)W(\beta ,\rho ),`$ (7)
with

$$W(\beta ,\rho )=_{\mathrm{}}^{\omega _1}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\rho ϵ_1}\mathrm{d}ϵ_1}{F(ϵ_1)}\mathrm{}_{\omega _{N1}}^{\omega _N}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\rho ϵ_N}\mathrm{d}ϵ_N}{F(ϵ_N)}\underset{i>j}{}(ϵ_iϵ_j),$$

and $`F(ϵ)=_j|ϵ\omega _j|^{1\beta /2}`$. Using the standard expression for the Vandermonde determinant in $`W`$ and integrating term by term one obtains

$$W(\beta ,\rho )=det\left[I_j^{(i1)}\right]_{i,j=1,\mathrm{},N},$$
(8)
where $`I_j^{(i)}=_\rho ^iI_j`$ is the i-$`th`$ derivative with respect to $`\rho `$ of

$$I_j=I_j^{(0)}=_{\omega _{j1}}^{\omega _j}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\rho ϵ}\mathrm{d}ϵ}{F(ϵ)}.$$
(9)
For $`j=1`$, $`\omega _{j1}=\mathrm{}`$.

It is straightforward to check that the $`I_j`$’s satisfy, for any $`j`$, the following differential equation

$$\left[\underset{i}{}(_\rho \omega _i)+\frac{\beta }{2\rho }\underset{i}{}\underset{j(i)}{}(_\rho \omega _j)\right]I_j=0.$$
(10)
This differential equation allows to write

$$I_j^{(N)}=\underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}a_iI_j^{(i)},$$

with some coefficients $`a_i`$. $`W(\beta ,\rho )`$ as defined in Eq.(8) is the Wronskian of this equation. It then follows that

$$_\rho W=a_{N1}W,$$
(11)
where in our case $`a_{N1}=_i\omega _i\beta N/2\rho `$. Integration of Eq.(11) leads to

$$W(\beta ,\rho )=\frac{W_0}{\rho ^{\beta N/2}}\mathrm{exp}(\rho \underset{i}{}\omega _i).$$

When this result is replaced in Eq.(6) one gets

$$P(\{\omega _i\})W_0\underset{i>j}{}(\omega _i\omega _j).$$
(12)
$`W_0`$ is an integration factor, independent of $`\rho `$. We compute it from the asymptotic behavior of $`I_j^{(i)}`$ when $`\rho \mathrm{}`$. In this limit the integral in Eq.(9) may be evaluated explicitly

$$\underset{\rho \mathrm{}}{lim}I_j\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\rho \omega _j}}{\rho ^{\beta /2}_{ij}|\omega _i\omega _j|^{1\beta /2}}.$$

To leading order, $`I_j^{(i)}=\omega _j^iI_j`$ and from Eq.(8) one gets

$$W_0\underset{i>j}{}\frac{|\omega _i\omega _j|^\beta }{(\omega _i\omega _j)}.$$

From this equation and Eq.(12) we recover the random matrix distribution function Eq.(5). A chaotic system coupled to the environment through a one-channel antenna has been considered in . The model is equivalent to Eq.(2) but with imaginary $`\lambda `$. For $`\lambda \mathrm{}`$ the imaginary part of the perturbed energies is small and Eq.(5) is obtained. Our method, which takes explicit care of the trapping problem, allows to prove this result for arbitrary $`\lambda `$.

In real physical systems agreement with random matrix theory is observed in a limited range. This universal behavior concerns correlations over energy ranges that are small compared to $`h/T_{\mathrm{min}}`$, with $`T_{\mathrm{min}}`$ the typical period of the shortest periodic orbit. The above random matrix calculation establishes that the universal part of the spectrum is not changed by the presence of the scatterer. On the other hand, the non-universal behavior of the correlation functions occurring at scales of the order of, or larger than, $`h/T_{\mathrm{min}}`$ are modified by the scattering center, since new diffractive orbits are introduced .

Let us now turn to a semiclassical treatment of the spectral correlations. These are based on trace formulae expansions of the density of states $`d(\omega )=_k\delta (\omega \omega _k)`$, written as a sum of smoothed plus oscillatory terms $`d=\overline{d}+d^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$. We characterize the correlations by the spectral form factor defined as

$$K(\tau )=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\mathrm{d}\eta }{\overline{d}}d^{\text{(osc)}}\left(E+\frac{\eta }{2}\right)d^{\text{(osc)}}\left(E\frac{\eta }{2}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(2\pi i\eta \tau \overline{d}\right).$$
(13)
The average indicated by brackets is taken over an energy window containing many quantum levels but whose size is small compared to $`E`$. We again consider a fully chaotic system with a point-like scatterer. In the geometrical theory of diffraction $`d^{(\mathrm{osc})}=d_p^{(\mathrm{osc})}+d_d^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$, where $`d_p^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$ and $`d_d^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$ are expressed as interferent sums over periodic and diffractive orbits, respectively .

$$d_{p,d}^{(\mathrm{osc})}(E)=\underset{p,d}{}A_{p,d}\mathrm{exp}(i\frac{S_{p,d}(E)}{\mathrm{}}i\frac{\pi }{2}\mu _{p,d}),$$
(14)
with

$`A_p={\displaystyle \frac{T_p}{2\pi \mathrm{}|det(M_p1)|^{1/2}}}`$ (15)
$`A_d={\displaystyle \frac{T_d𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n}^{})\mathrm{e}^{i\pi (f+1)/4}|detN|^{1/2}}{4\pi \mathrm{}k(2\pi \mathrm{})^{(f1)/2}}}.`$ (16)
$`S_{p,d}(E)`$ is the action of the periodic (resp. diffractive) orbits, $`T_{p,d}`$ denotes their period, $`M_p`$ is the monodromy matrix of the periodic orbit, $`N`$ is the matrix $`N_{ij}=^2S_d/y_iy_j`$ (where $`\stackrel{}{y}`$ are coordinates orthogonal to the diffractive trajectory). $`𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n}^{})`$ is the scattering amplitude of the scattering center located at $`\stackrel{}{x_0}`$ with incoming $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ and outgoing $`\stackrel{}{n}^{}`$ directions, defined in terms of the perturbed ($`G`$) and unperturbed ($`G_0`$) Green’s functions by the relation

$$G(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{x}^{})=G_0(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{x}^{})+\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}G_0(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{x_0})𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n}^{})G_0(\stackrel{}{x_0},\stackrel{}{x}^{}).$$

Using the properties of the periodic orbits of chaotic systems, the diagonal contribution of $`d_p^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$ in Eq.(13) gives the short-time random matrix result $`K_p(\tau )=(2/\beta )\tau `$ . The one-scattering contribution of the diffractive orbits in the same approximation is

$$K_d(\tau )=\frac{\tau ^2}{8\beta \pi ^2}\left(\frac{k}{2\pi }\right)^{2f4}\sigma ,$$
(17)
with $`k`$ the modulus of the wave vector at the impurity and $`\sigma `$ its total cross section

$$\sigma =|𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n}^{})|^2d\mathrm{\Omega }d\mathrm{\Omega }^{}.$$
(18)
($`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the solid angle element). For simplicity, we restrict the calculations to one scattering event (multiple scattering may be considered likewise).

Our purpose is to compute the off-diagonal cross-term coming from the product of $`d_p^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$ and $`d_d^{(\mathrm{osc})}`$ in Eq.(13). The semiclassical expression for this contribution is

$$K_{pd}(\tau )=\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}}{\overline{d}}\underset{p,d}{}A_pA_d^{}\mathrm{exp}(i(S_pS_d)/\mathrm{})\delta (T\frac{T_p+T_d}{2})+c.c..$$
(19)
After energy smoothing, $`K_{pd}`$ has significant contributions only from orbits with close actions $`S_pS_d`$ (having therefore approximately the same period). Pairs of orbits satisfying this condition may be constructed by considering the neighborhood of the forward scattering orbits. To each periodic orbit passing nearby the scatterer $`𝒪`$ we associate an “almost periodic” diffractive orbit that is similar to the periodic orbit but comes back to $`𝒪`$ with a slightly different momentum. In Eq.(19) the double sum now involves all the possible pairs of trajectories constructed this way. Consider a surface of section that includes $`𝒪`$ and is transversal to the momentum of the periodic orbit when it comes nearby $`𝒪`$. Let coordinates measured from $`𝒪`$ and momenta in the plane be denoted by $`(\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{p})`$. Consider all the periodic orbits of period $`T`$ that cut the section through a differential element $`\mathrm{d}^{f1}q\mathrm{d}^{f1}p`$ located at a distance $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ from $`𝒪`$. The difference of action between these periodic orbits and the diffractive orbits associated to them as mentioned above is

$$S_pS_d=(1/2)Q_{ij}q_iq_j,$$
(20)
with

$$Q_{ij}=^2S/q_iq_j+^2S/q_i^{}q_j+^2S/q_i^{}q_j^{},$$

and $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ ($`\stackrel{}{q}^{}`$) are initial (resp. final) coordinates on the surface of section. Moreover, one can show that

$$|detQ|=|det(M_p1)detN|\mathrm{cos}^2\theta ,$$
(21)
where $`\theta `$ is the angle between the normal to the surface of section and the momentum of the diffractive orbit.

By generalizing arguments used in the derivation of the Hannay - Ozorio de Almeida sum rule  one can prove the following sum rule

$$\underset{p}{}\frac{\delta (TT_p)\chi (\stackrel{}{q}_p,\stackrel{}{p}_p)}{|det(M_p1)|}=\frac{\mathrm{d}^{f1}q\mathrm{d}^{f1}p\chi (\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{p})}{\mathrm{\Sigma }},$$
(22)
where $`\chi (\stackrel{}{q},\stackrel{}{p})`$ is a test function defined on the surface of section and $`(\stackrel{}{q}_p,\stackrel{}{p}_p)`$ are the coordinates of the points at which the periodic orbit $`p`$ crosses the surface of section. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\mathrm{d}^f𝐱\mathrm{d}^f𝐩\delta (EH(𝐱,𝐩))`$ is the total phase-space volume at energy $`E`$. From Eq. (19), using Eqs.(20) and (22), we have

$`K_{pd}=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{d}\tau ^2\mathrm{e}^{i\pi (f+1)/4}}{\beta k(2\pi \mathrm{})^{(f3)/2}\mathrm{\Sigma }}}{\displaystyle \sqrt{|det(M_p1)||detN|}}`$ (24)
$`\times 𝒟^{}(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})\mathrm{e}^{(i/2\mathrm{})Q_{ij}q_iq_j}\mathrm{d}^{f1}q\mathrm{d}^{f1}p+c.c.`$
Integrating the quadratic form in the exponent, taking into account Eq.(21), using the semiclassical density of states $`\overline{d}=\mathrm{\Sigma }/(2\pi \mathrm{})^f`$ and the fact that the differential element for the momenta may be written $`\mathrm{d}^{f1}p=(\mathrm{}k)^{f1}\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }`$, one obtains the final expression

$$K_{pd}(\tau )=\frac{\tau ^2}{2\pi \beta }\left(\frac{k}{2\pi }\right)^{f2}i\left[𝒟^{}(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})\right]d\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(25)
This is the result for the cross-term contribution. Note that it depends only on $`𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})`$, which translates the fact that in general interference terms between periodic and diffractive orbits can be large only for the diffraction in the forward direction.

To make contact with Eq.(17) we use a general relation valid for the elastic scattering on a finite range potential. The conservation of the flux scattered by the scattering center imposes a relation between the imaginary part of the scattering amplitude and the scattering cross section. This is the well known optical theorem , that in $`f`$ dimensions takes the form

$$i\left[𝒟^{}(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n})\right]=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left(\frac{k}{2\pi }\right)^{f2}|𝒟(\stackrel{}{n},\stackrel{}{n}^{})|^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^{}.$$

Combining this relation with Eq. (25) one gets our final result

$$K_{pd}(\tau )=K_d(\tau ).$$
(26)
The interference between periodic and diffractive orbits exactly cancels the diagonal contribution of the diffractive orbits, Eq.(17). We recover from semiclassical methods, at least for a two-point function and short times, the RMT result.

The two basic elements producing the cancellation are the sum rule (22) and the optical theorem. Only the former is characteristic of chaotic systems, the latter being very general. The present semiclassical results may be extended by similar methods to multiple scattering events. In a wider context, it should be mentioned that this is one of the rare cases in which a calculation of off-diagonal contributions (whose role is essential in producing the correct result) is done explicitly for chaotic systems.

We have concentrated on the fluctuation properties of eigenvalues of chaotic systems, and have demonstrated that they are unchanged by a local perturbation. This applies to high lying states, were the statistical hypotheses hold. On the opposite extreme, a local perturbation may lead to important modifications of the properties of the ground state of the system. Take for example a negative $`\lambda `$. According to Eq.(2), each perturbed eigenvalue remains trapped by two unperturbed ones, except the ground state. The energy of the ground state may diminish arbitrarily with increasing $`|\lambda |`$ and, as can easily be shown, the associated wavefunction becomes more and more localized at the impurity. In our considerations we have ignored the presence of this “collective” mode.

The authors are grateful for many useful discussions with O. Bohigas, M. Saraceno, M. Sieber and U. Smilansky. After completion of this manuscript we became aware of related semiclassical results obtained by M. Sieber.