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# Private Quantum Channels and the Cost of Randomizing Quantum Information

## 1 Introduction

Secure transmission of classical information is a well studied topic. Suppose Alice wants to send an $`n`$-bit message $`M`$ to Bob over an insecure (i.e. spied-on) channel, in such a way that the eavesdropper Eve cannot obtain any information about $`M`$ from tapping the channel. If Alice and Bob share some secret $`n`$-bit key $`K`$, then here is a simple way for them to achieve their goal: Alice exclusive-ors $`M`$ with $`K`$ and sends the result $`M^{}=MK`$ over the channel, Bob then xors $`M^{}`$ again with $`K`$ and obtains the original message $`M^{}K=M`$. Eve may see the encoded message $`M^{}`$, but if she does not know $`K`$ then this will give her no information about the real message $`M`$, since for any $`M`$ there is a key $`K^{}`$ giving rise to the same encoding $`M^{}`$. This scheme is known as the Vernam cipher or one-time pad (“one-time” because $`K`$ can be used only once if we want information-theoretic security). It shows that $`n`$ bits of shared secret key are sufficient to securely transmit $`n`$ bits of information. Shannon \[Sha48, Sha49\] has shown that this scheme is optimal: $`n`$ bits of shared key are also necessary in order to transmit an $`n`$-bit message in an information-theoretically secure way.

Now let us consider the analogous situation in the quantum world. Alice and Bob are connected by a one-way quantum channel, to which an eavesdropper Eve has complete access. Alice wants to transmit to Bob some $`n`$-qubit state $`\rho `$ taken from some set $`𝒮`$, without allowing Eve to obtain any information about $`\rho `$. Alice and Bob could easily achieve such security if they share $`n`$ EPR-pairs (or if they were able to establish EPR-pairs over a secure quantum channel), for then they can apply teleportation \[BBC+93\] and transmit every qubit via 2 random classical bits, which will give Eve no information whatsoever. But now suppose Alice and Bob do not share EPR-pairs, but instead they only have the resource of shared randomness, which is weaker but easier to maintain.

A first question is: is it at all possible to send quantum information fully securely using only a finite amount of randomness? At first sight this may seem hard: Alice and Bob have to “hide” the amplitudes of a quantum state, which are infinitely precise complex numbers. Nevertheless, the question has a positive answer. More precisely, to privately send $`n`$ qubits, a $`2n`$-bit classical key is sufficient. The encryption technique is fairly natural. Alice applies to the state $`\rho `$ she wants to transmit a reversible quantum operation specified by the shared key $`K`$ (basically, she applies a random Pauli matrix to each qubit), and she sends the result $`\rho ^{}`$ to Bob. In the most general setting this reversible operation can be represented as doing a unitary operation on the state $`\rho `$ augmented with a known fixed ancilla state $`\rho _a`$. Knowing the key $`K`$ that Alice used, Bob knows which operation Alice applied and he can reverse this, remove the ancilla, and retrieve $`\rho `$. In order for this scheme to be information-theoretically secure against the eavesdropper, we have to require that Eve always “sees” the same density matrix $`\rho _0`$ on the channel, no matter what $`\rho `$ was. Because Eve does not know $`K`$, this condition can indeed be satisfied. Accordingly, an insecure quantum channel can be made secure (private) by means of shared classical randomness.

A second question is, then, how much key Alice and Bob need to share in order to be able to privately transmit any $`n`$-qubit state. A good way to measure key size is by the amount of entropy required to create it. As one might imagine, showing that $`2n`$ bits of key are also necessary is the most challenging part of the article. We prove this in Section 5.111Note that if Alice and Bob share an insecure two-way channel, then they can do quantum key exchange \[BB84\] in order to establish a shared random key, so in this case no prior shared key (or only a very small one) is required. Accordingly, in analogy with the classical one-time pad, we have an optimal quantum one-time pad which uses $`2n`$ classical bits to completely “hide” $`n`$ qubits from Eve. In particular, hiding a qubit is only twice as hard as hiding a classical bit, despite the fact that in the qubit we now have to hide amplitudes coming from a continuous set.

Now imagine an alternative scenario. Alice has a state $`\rho `$ from some specific set and she wants to randomize it completely. How much entropy does she need for this? That is, what is the thermodynamical cost of forgetting quantum information? A natural and general way to do that is for Alice to perform a unitary transformation to $`\rho `$ augmented with an ancilla and then to forget which one. The thermodynamical price of this operation is now the entropy of the probability distribution over the set of unitary transformations. The parallel between these two scenarios should be clear. If one has a private quantum channel, one automatically has a related randomization procedure. Consequently, we obtain the result that $`2n`$ bits are necessary and sufficient to randomize an $`n`$-qubit quantum register. For the case $`n=1`$, this result has also been obtained by Braunstein, Lo, and Spiller \[BLS99, Lo99\].

The article is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces some notation and some properties of Von Neumann entropy. In Section 3 we give a formal definition of a private quantum channel (PQC). In Section 4 we give some examples of PQCs. In particular we show that there is a PQC that privately sends any $`n`$-qubit state using $`2n`$ bits of randomness (shared key). We also exhibit a non-trivial set of $`n`$-qubit states (namely the tensor products of qubits with real amplitudes) for which there is PQC requiring only $`n`$ bits of randomness. The latter result includes the classical one-time pad. In Section 5 we show that $`2n`$ bits of randomness are necessary if we want to be able to send any $`n`$-qubit state privately. Finally, in Section 6 we restate the previous results in terms of the thermodynamical cost of randomization of quantum information.

Remark about related work. A number of recent papers independently discussed issues similar to our work. We already mentioned the result of Braunstein, Lo, and Spiller \[BLS99, Lo99\] for state randomization. Very recently, Boykin and Roychowdhury \[BR00\] exhibited the $`2n`$-bit Pauli-matrix one-time pad and proved a $`2n`$-bit lower bound for the case where the encryption scheme does not allow the use of an ancilla state (they also give a general characterization of all possible encryption schemes without ancilla). In Section 5 we give a simpler proof of this lower bound for the no-ancilla case and give a different and more complicated proof for the lower bound in the case where we do allow an ancilla.

## 2 Preliminaries

### 2.1 States and operators

We use $`v`$ for the Euclidean norm of vector $`v`$. If $`A`$ is a matrix, then we use $`A^{}`$ for its conjugate transpose and $`\mathrm{Tr}(A)`$ for its trace (the sum of its diagonal entries). A square matrix $`A`$ is Hermitian if $`A=A^{}`$, and unitary if $`A^1=A^{}`$. Important examples of unitary transformations are the 4 Pauli matrices:

$$\sigma _0=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right),\sigma _1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right),\sigma _2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& i\\ i& 0\end{array}\right),\sigma _3=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right).$$

Let $`|0,\mathrm{},|M1`$ denote the basis states of some $`M`$-dimensional Hilbert space $`_M`$. We use $`_{2^n}`$ for the Hilbert space whose basis states are the $`2^n`$ classical $`n`$-bit strings. A pure quantum state $`|\varphi `$ is a norm-1 vector in $`_M`$. We treat $`|\varphi `$ as an $`M`$-dimensional column vector and use $`\varphi |`$ for the row vector that is its conjugate transpose. The inner product between pure states $`|\varphi `$ and $`|\psi `$ is $`\varphi |\psi `$. A mixed quantum state or density matrix $`\rho `$ is a non-negative Hermitian matrix that has trace $`\mathrm{Tr}(\rho )=1`$. The density matrix corresponding to a pure state $`|\varphi `$ is $`|\varphi \varphi |`$. Because a density matrix $`\rho `$ is Hermitian, it has a diagonalization $`\rho =_{i=1}^Np_i|\varphi _i\varphi _i|`$, where the $`p_i`$ are its eigenvalues, $`p_i0`$, $`_ip_i=1`$, and the $`|\varphi _i`$ form an orthonormal set. Thus $`\rho `$ can be viewed as describing a probability distribution over pure states. We use $`\stackrel{~}{I}_M=\frac{1}{M}I_M=\frac{1}{M}_{i=1}^M|ii|`$ to denote the totally mixed state, which represents the uniform distribution on all basis states. If two systems are in pure states $`|\varphi `$ and $`|\psi `$, respectively, then their joint state is the tensor product pure state $`|\varphi |\psi =|\varphi |\psi `$. If two systems are in mixed states $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$, respectively, then their joint state is the tensor product $`\rho _1\rho _2`$. Note that $`(|\varphi |\psi )(\varphi |\psi |)`$ is the same as $`|\varphi \varphi ||\psi \psi |`$.

Applying a unitary transformation $`U`$ to a pure state $`|\varphi `$ gives pure state $`U|\varphi `$, applying $`U`$ to a mixed state $`\rho `$ gives mixed state $`U\rho U^{}`$. We will use $`=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\}`$ to denote the superoperator which applies $`U_i`$ with probability $`p_i`$ to its argument (we assume $`_ip_i=1`$). Thus $`(\rho )=_ip_iU_i\rho U_i^{}`$. Quantum mechanics allows for more general superoperators, but this type suffices for our purposes. If two superoperators $`=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\}`$ and $`^{}=\{\sqrt{p_i^{}}U_i^{}1iN^{}\}`$ are identical ($`(\rho )=^{}(\rho )`$ for all $`\rho `$), then they are unitarily related in the following way \[Nie98, Section 3.2\] (where we assume $`NN^{}`$ and if $`N>N^{}`$ we pad $`^{}`$ with zero operators to make $``$ and $`^{}`$ of equal size): there exists a unitary $`N\times N`$ matrix $`A`$ such that for all $`i`$

$$\sqrt{p_i}U_i=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}A_{ij}\sqrt{p_j^{}}U_j^{}.$$

### 2.2 Von Neumann entropy

Let density matrix $`\rho `$ have the diagonalization $`_{i=1}^Np_i|\varphi _i\varphi _i|`$. The Von Neumann entropy of $`\rho `$ is $`S(\rho )=H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)=_{i=1}^Np_i\mathrm{log}p_i`$, where $`H`$ is the classical entropy function. This $`S(\rho )`$ can be interpreted as the minimal Shannon entropy of the measurement outcome, minimized over all possible complete measurements. Note that $`S(\rho )`$ only depends on the eigenvalues of $`\rho `$. The following properties of Von Neumann entropy will be useful later (for proofs see for instance \[Weh78\]).

1. $`S(|\varphi \varphi |)=0`$, for every pure state $`|\varphi `$.
2. $`S(\rho _1\rho _2)=S(\rho _1)+S(\rho _2)`$.
3. $`S(U\rho U^{})=S(\rho )`$.
4. $`S(\lambda _1\rho _1+\lambda _2\rho _2+\mathrm{}+\lambda _n\rho _n)\lambda _1S(\rho _1)+\lambda _2S(\rho _2)+\mathrm{}+\lambda _nS(\rho _n)`$ if $`\lambda _i0`$ and $`_i\lambda _i=1`$.
5. If $`\rho =_{i=1}^Np_i|\varphi _i\varphi _i|`$ with the $`|\varphi _i`$ not necessarily orthogonal, then $`S(\rho )H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)`$.

## 3 Private Quantum Channel

Let us sketch the scenario for a private quantum channel. There are $`N`$ possible keys, which we identify for convenience with the numbers $`1,\mathrm{},N`$. The $`i`$th key has probability $`p_i`$, so the key has entropy $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)`$ when viewed as a random variable. Each key $`i`$ corresponds to a unitary transformation $`U_i`$. Suppose Alice wants to send a pure state $`|\varphi `$ from some set $`𝒮`$ to Bob. She appends some fixed ancilla qubits in state $`\rho _a`$ to $`|\varphi \varphi |`$ and then applies $`U_i`$ to $`|\varphi \varphi |\rho _a`$, where $`i`$ is her key. She sends the resulting state to Bob. Bob, who shares the key $`i`$ with Alice, applies $`U_i^1`$ to obtain $`|\varphi \varphi |\rho _a`$, removes the ancilla $`\rho _a`$, and is left with Alice’s message $`|\varphi \varphi |`$. Now in order for this to be secure against an eavesdropper Eve, we have to require that if Eve does not know $`i`$, then the density matrix $`\rho _0`$ that she gets from monitoring the channel is independent of $`|\varphi `$. This implies that she gets no information at all about $`|\varphi `$. Of course, Eve’s measuring the channel might destroy the encoded message, but this is like classically jamming the channel and cannot be avoided. The point is that if Eve measures, then she receives no information about $`|\varphi `$. It is not hard to see that this is the most general quantum mechanical scenario which allows Bob to recover the message perfectly and at the same time gives Eve zero information.

We formalize this scenario as follows.

###### Definition 3.1

Let $`𝒮_{2^n}`$ be a set of pure $`n`$-qubit states, $`=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\}`$ be a superoperator where each $`U_i`$ is a unitary mapping on $`_{2^m}`$, $`_{i=1}^Np_i=1`$, $`\rho _a`$ be an $`(mn)`$-qubit density matrix, and $`\rho _0`$ be an $`m`$-qubit density matrix. Then $`[𝒮,,\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is called a Private Quantum Channel (PQC) if and only if for all $`|\varphi 𝒮`$ we have

$$(|\varphi \varphi |\rho _a)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}p_iU_i\left(|\varphi \varphi |\rho _a\right)U_i^{}=\rho _0.$$

If $`n=m`$ (i.e. no ancilla), then we omit $`\rho _a`$.

Note that by linearity, if the PQC works for all pure states in $`𝒮`$, then it also works for density matrices over $`𝒮`$: applying the PQC to a mixture of states from $`𝒮`$ gives the same $`\rho _0`$ as when we apply it to a pure state. Accordingly, if $`[𝒮,\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC, then $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)`$ bits of shared randomness are sufficient for Alice to send any mixture $`\rho `$ of $`𝒮`$-states to Bob in a secure way. Alice encodes $`\rho `$ in a reversible way depending on her key $`i`$ and Bob can decode because he knows the same $`i`$ and hence can reverse Alice’s operation $`U_i`$. On the other hand, Eve has no information about the key $`i`$ apart from the distribution $`p_i`$, so from her point of view the channel is in state $`\rho _{Eve}=\rho _0`$. This is independent of the $`\rho `$ that Alice wants to send, and hence gives Eve no information about $`\rho `$.

## 4 Examples of Private Quantum Channels

In this section we exhibit some private quantum channels. The first uses $`2n`$ bits key to send privately any $`n`$-qubit state. The idea is simply to apply a random Pauli matrix to each bit individually. This takes 2 random bits per qubit and it is well known that the resulting qubit is in the completely mixed state. For notational convenience we identity the numbers $`\{0,\mathrm{},2^{2n}1\}`$ with the set $`\{0,1,2,3\}^n`$. For $`x\{0,1,2,3\}^n`$ we use $`x_i\{0,1,2,3\}`$ for its $`i`$th entry, and we use $`\overline{\sigma _x}`$ to denote the $`n`$-qubit unitary transformation $`\sigma _{x_1}\mathrm{}\sigma _{x_n}`$.

###### Theorem 4.1

If $`=\{\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^{2n}}}\overline{\sigma _x}x\{0,1,2,3\}^n\}`$, then $`[_{2^n},,\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}]`$ is a PQC.

Proof  It is easily verified that applying each $`\sigma _i`$ with probability $`1/4`$ to a qubit puts that qubit in the totally mixed state $`\stackrel{~}{I}_2`$ (no matter if it is entangled with other qubits). Operator $``$ just applies this treatment to each of the $`n`$ qubits, hence $`(|\varphi \varphi |)=\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$ for every $`|\varphi _{2^n}`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

Since the above $``$ contains $`2^{2n}`$ operations and they have uniform probability, it follows that $`2n`$ bits of private key suffice to privately send any state from $`_{2^n}`$.

The next theorem shows that there is some nontrivial subspace of $`_{2^n}`$ where $`n`$ bits of private key suffice, namely the set of all tensor products of real-amplitude qubits.

###### Theorem 4.2

If $`B=\{\mathrm{cos}(\theta )|0+\mathrm{sin}(\theta )|10\theta <2\pi \}`$, $`𝒮=B^n`$, and $`=\{\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}\overline{\sigma _x}x\{0,2\}^n\}`$, then $`[𝒮,,\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}]`$ is a PQC.

Proof  This is easily verified: applying $`\sigma _0`$ and $`\sigma _2`$, each with probability 1/2, puts any qubit from $`B`$ in the totally mixed state. Operator $``$ does this to each of the $`n`$ qubits individually. $`\mathrm{}`$

Note that if we restrict $`B`$ to classical bits (i.e. $`\theta \{0,\pi /2\}`$) then the above PQC reduces to the classical one-time pad: flipping each bit with probability 1/2 gives information-theoretical security.

In the previous PQCs, $`\rho _0`$ was the completely mixed state $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$. This is no accident, and holds whenever $`n=m`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$ is one of the states that the PQC can send:

###### Theorem 4.3

If $`[𝒮,,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC without ancilla and $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$ can be written as a mixture of $`S`$-states, then $`\rho _0=\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$.

Proof  If $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$ can be written as a mixture of $`S`$-states, then
$`\rho _0=(\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n})={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}p_iU_i\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}U_i^{}={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_i}{2^n}}U_iU_i^{}={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_i}{2^n}}I_{2^n}=\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}.`$ $`\mathrm{}`$

In general $`\rho _0`$ need not be $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$. For instance, let $`𝒮=\{|0,\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0+|1)\}`$, $`=\{\sqrt{p_1}I_2,\frac{\sqrt{p_2}}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\\ 1& 1\end{array}\right)\}`$ with $`p_1=p_2=1/2`$, and $`\rho _0=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{3}{4}& \frac{1}{4}\\ \frac{1}{4}& \frac{1}{4}\end{array}\right)`$. Then it is easily verified that $`[𝒮,,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC.

## 5 Lower Bound on the Entropy of PQCs

In the previous section we showed that $`2n`$ bits of entropy suffice for a PQC that can send arbitrary $`n`$-qubit states. In this section we will show that $`2n`$ bits are also necessary for this. Very recently and independently of our work, this $`2n`$-bit lower bound was also proven by Boykin and Roychowdhury \[BR00\] for the special case where the PQC is not allowed to use any ancilla qubits. We will first give a shorter version of their proof, basically by observing that a large part of it can be replaced by a reference to the unitary equivalence of identical superoperators stated at the end of Section 2.1.

###### Theorem 5.1

If $`[_{2^n},\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}]`$ is a PQC, then $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)2n`$.

Proof  Let $`=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i\}`$, $`^{}=\{\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^{2n}}}\overline{\sigma _x}x\{0,1,2,3\}^n\}`$ be the superoperator of Theorem 4.1, and let $`K=\mathrm{max}(2^{2n},N)`$. Since $`(\rho )=^{}(\rho )=\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}`$ for all $`n`$-qubit states $`\rho `$, we have that $``$ and $`^{}`$ are unitarily related in the way mentioned in Section 2.1: there exists a unitary $`K\times K`$ matrix $`A`$ such that for all $`1iN`$ we have

$$\sqrt{p_i}U_i=\underset{x\{0,1,2,3\}^n}{}A_{ix}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^{2n}}}\overline{\sigma _x}.$$

We can view the set of all $`2^n\times 2^n`$ matrices as a $`2^{2n}`$-dimensional vector space, with inner product $`M,M^{}=\mathrm{Tr}(M^{}M^{})/2^n`$ and induced matrix norm $`M=\sqrt{M,M}`$ (as done in \[BR00\]). Note that $`M=1`$ if $`M`$ is unitary. The set of all $`\overline{\sigma _x}`$ forms an orthonormal basis for this vector space, so we get:

$$p_i=\sqrt{p_i}U_i^2=\underset{x}{}A_{ix}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^{2n}}}\overline{\sigma _x}^2=\frac{1}{2^{2n}}\underset{x}{}|A_{ix}|^2\frac{1}{2^{2n}}.$$

Hence $`N2^{2n}`$ and $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)2n`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

However, even granted this result it is still conceivable that a PQC might require less randomness if it can “spread out” its encoding over many ancilla qubits — it is even conceivable that those ancilla qubits can be used to establish privately shared randomness using some variant of quantum key distribution. The general case with ancilla is not addressed in \[BR00\], and proving that the $`2n`$-bit lower bound extends to this case requires more work. The next few theorems will do this. These show that a PQC that can transmit any $`n`$-qubit state requires $`2n`$ bits of randomness, no matter how many ancilla qubits it uses. Thus Theorem 4.1 exhibits an optimal quantum one-time pad, analogous to the optimal classical one-time pad mentioned in the introduction.

We will use the notation $`𝒞_k=\{|i0ik1\}`$ for the set of the first $`k`$ classical states. The next theorem states that a PQC that privately conveys $`n`$ qubits using $`m`$ bits of key, can be transformed into a PQC that privately conveys any state from $`𝒞_{2^{2n}}`$, still using only $`m`$ bits of key.

###### Theorem 5.2

If there exists a PQC $`[_{2^n},=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$, then there exists a PQC $`[𝒞_{2^{2n}},^{}=\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i^{}1iN\},\rho _a,\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}\rho _0]`$.

Proof  For ease of notation we assume without loss of generality that $``$ uses no ancilla, so we assume $`\rho _0`$ is an $`n`$-qubit state and omit $`\rho _a`$ (this does not affect the proof in any way). We first show that $`(|xy|)=0`$ whenever $`x,y𝒞_{2^{2n}}`$ and $`xy`$ ($`(|xy|)`$ is well-defined but somewhat of an abuse of notation, since the matrix $`|xy|`$ is not a density matrix). This is implied by the following 3 equalities:
$`\rho _0=\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(|xx|+|yy|)\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left((|xx|)+(|yy|)\right).\rho _0=\left(({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|x+|y))({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(x|+y|))\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left((|xx|)+(|yy|)+(|xy|)+(|yx|)\right).\rho _0=\left(({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|x+i|y))({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(x|iy|))\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left((|xx|)+(|yy|)i(|xy|)+i(|yx|)\right).`$ The first and second equality imply $`(|xy|)+(|yx|)=0`$, the first and third equality imply $`(|xy|)(|yx|)=0`$. Hence $`(|xy|)=(|yx|)=0`$.

We now define $`^{}`$ and show that it is a PQC. Intuitively, $`^{}`$ will map every state from $`𝒞_{2^{2n}}`$ to a tensor product of $`n`$ Bell states by mapping pairs of bits to one of the four Bell states.222The 4 Bells states are $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|00\pm |11)`$ and $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|01\pm |10)`$. The second bits of the pairs are then moved to the second half of the state and randomized by applying $``$ to them. Because of the entanglement between the two halves of each Bell state, the resulting $`2n`$-qubit density matrix will be $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}\rho _0`$. More specifically, define

$$U|x=\left(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n}\right)\frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}\underset{i=0}{\overset{2^n1}{}}|i|i,$$

with $`\overline{\sigma _x}=\sigma _{x_1}\mathrm{}\sigma _{x_n}`$ as in Theorem 4.1. Also define $`U_i^{}=(I_{2^n}U_i)U`$. It remains to show that $`^{}(|xx|)=\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}\rho _0`$ for all $`|x𝒞_{2^{2n}}`$:

$`^{}(|xx|)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}p_i(I_{2^n}U_i)\left[(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}}{\displaystyle \underset{y=0}{\overset{2^n1}{}}}|y|y\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2^n}}}{\displaystyle \underset{z=0}{\overset{2^n1}{}}}z|z|\right)(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}\right](I_{2^n}U_i)^{}`$
$`=`$ $`(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^n}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}p_i(I_{2^n}U_i)\left({\displaystyle \underset{y,z\{0,2^n1\}}{}}|yz||yz|\right)(I_{2^n}U_i)^{}\right](\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}`$
$`=`$ $`(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^n}}{\displaystyle \underset{y,z\{0,2^n1\}}{}}|yz|\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}p_iU_i|yz|U_i^{}\right)\right](\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}`$
$`=`$ $`(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^n}}{\displaystyle \underset{y,z\{0,2^n1\}}{}}|yz|(|yz|)\right](\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}`$
$`\stackrel{()}{=}`$ $`(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^n}}{\displaystyle \underset{y=0}{\overset{2^n1}{}}}|yy|(|yy|)\right](\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}`$
$`=`$ $`(\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})\left[\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}\rho _0\right](\overline{\sigma _x}I_{2^n})^{}`$
$`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^n}\rho _0.`$
In the step marked by $`()`$ we used that $`(|yz|)=0`$ if $`yz`$. $`\mathrm{}`$

Before proving a lower bound on the entropy required for sending arbitrary $`n`$-qubit states, we first prove a lower bound on the entropy required for sending states from $`𝒞_{2^m}`$. Privately sending any state from $`𝒞_{2^m}`$ corresponds to privately sending any classical $`m`$-bit string. If communication takes place through classical channels, then Shannon’s theorem implies that $`m`$ bits of shared key are required to achieve such security. Shannon’s classical lower bound does not translate automatically to the quantum world (it is in fact violated if a two-way quantum channel is available, see Footnote 1). Nevertheless, if Alice and Bob communicate via a one-way quantum channel, then Shannon’s theorem does generalize to the quantum world:

###### Theorem 5.3

If $`[𝒞_{2^m},\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC, then $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)m`$.

Proof  Diagonalize the ancilla as $`\rho _a=_{j=1}^rq_j|\psi _j\psi _j|`$, so $`S(\rho _a)=H(q_1,\mathrm{},q_r)`$. First note that the properties of Von Neumann entropy (Section 2) imply:

$`S(\rho _0)`$ $`=`$ $`S\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}p_iU_i(|00|\rho _a)U_i^{}\right)=S\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{r}{}}}p_iq_jU_i(|00||\psi _j\psi _j|)U_i^{}\right)`$
$``$ $`H(p_1q_1,p_1q_2,\mathrm{},p_Nq_{r1},p_Nq_r)=H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)+H(q_1,\mathrm{},q_r).`$
Secondly, note that

$$S(\rho _0)=S\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}p_iU_i(\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^m}\rho _a)U_i^{}\right)\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}p_iS\left(\stackrel{~}{I}_{2^m}\rho _a\right)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}p_i(m+S(\rho _a))=m+S(\rho _a).$$

Combining these two inequalities gives the theorem. $`\mathrm{}`$

In particular, for sending arbitrary states from $`𝒞_{2^{2n}}`$ we need entropy at least $`2n`$. Combining Theorems 5.2 and 5.3 we thus obtain:

###### Corollary 5.4

If $`[_{2^n},\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC, then $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)2n`$ (and hence in particular $`N2^{2n}`$).

In relation to Theorem 4.2, note that $`𝒞_{2^n}B^n`$. Hence another corollary of Theorem 5.3 is the optimality of the PQC of Theorem 4.2:

###### Corollary 5.5

If $`[B^n,\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC, then $`H(p_1,\mathrm{},p_N)n`$ (and hence in particular $`N2^n`$).

## 6 Randomization of Quantum States

The above concepts and results were motivated by cryptographic goals, namely to enable private transmission of quantum information using a shared classical key. However, our results can also be stated in terms of the problem of “forgetting” or “randomizing” quantum information, as discussed recently by Braunstein, Lo, and Spiller \[BLS99\].

The randomization of a quantum source $`𝒮`$ is a procedure that maps any state $`\rho `$ coming from $`𝒮`$ to some fixed constant state $`\rho _0`$ (for instance the completely mixed state). The process thus “forgets” what was specific to $`\rho `$. To help in this process, we allow the randomizing process to make use of a piece of the environment which is in some fixed state $`\rho _a`$ (ancilla qubits). We also give it access to some source of classical randomness. Because every quantum operation can be viewed as a unitary transformation on a larger space, we can assume without loss of generality that the randomization process has the following form: it uses the source of randomness to pick some $`i`$ with probability $`p_i`$, then it applies some unitary transformation $`U_i`$ to $`\rho `$ and the ancillary environment, and then it forgets $`i`$. The resulting mixed state should be $`\rho _0`$. At this point it should be clear to the reader that if $`[𝒮,\{\sqrt{p_i}U_i1iN\},\rho _a,\rho _0]`$ is a PQC, then it also constitutes a randomization procedure, and vice versa.

We are interested in the amount of entropy that such a randomization procedure needs to generate. This is the entropy of forgetting the random classical input $`i`$. It quantifies the thermodynamic cost of the process. Braunstein, Lo, and Spiller \[BLS99\] have shown that 2 bits of entropy are necessary and sufficient for the randomization of 1 qubit. By translating our PQC-results to the randomization-context, we can generalize their result to:

###### Corollary 6.1

The generation of $`2n`$ bits of entropy is sufficient and necessary in order to randomize arbitrary $`n`$-qubit states.

Proof  Sufficiency follows from Theorem 4.1 and necessity from Corollary 5.4. $`\mathrm{}`$

For the more limited set of states $`𝒮=B^n`$ we have:

###### Corollary 6.2

The generation of $`n`$ bits of entropy is sufficient and necessary in order to randomize arbitrary tensor products of $`n`$ real-amplitude qubits.

Proof  Sufficiency follows from Theorem 4.2 and necessity from Corollary 5.5. $`\mathrm{}`$

## 7 Summary

The main result of this paper is an optimal quantum version of the classical one-time pad. On the one hand, if Alice and Bob share $`2n`$ bits of key, Alice can send Bob any $`n`$-qubit state $`\rho `$, encoded in another $`n`$-qubit state in a way which conveys no information about $`\rho `$ to the eavesdropper. This is a simple scheme which works locally (i.e. deals with each qubit separately) and uses no ancillary qubits. On the other hand, we showed that even if Alice and Bob are allowed to use any number of ancilla qubits, then they still require $`2n`$ bits of entropy. In the context of state randomization, it follows that $`2n`$ bits of entropy are necessary and sufficient for randomization of $`n`$-qubit states.

### Acknowledgment

We thank Richard Cleve, Hoi-Kwong Lo, Michael Nielsen, Harry Buhrman, and P. Oscar Boykin for useful discussions and comments.


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# Multibaryons in the collective coordinate approach to the SU(3) Skyrme model

## I Introduction

In the Skyrme model and its generalizations, baryons arise as topological excitations of a non-linear chiral Lagrangian written in terms of meson fields. These type of models have been quite successful in describing the properties of single baryons such as the nucleon and the strange hyperons (see e.g., Refs.). This has lead people to investigate the lowest energy Skyrmion configurations with topological number greater than one, which are of inherent interest as examples of three dimensional solitonic structures and may also be relevant for nuclear physics. These studies were already started by Skyrme in his pioneer papers at the beginning of the sixties. However, it was only in 1987 that the minimum energy $`B=2`$ Skyrmion was correctly identified. Some time later the authors of Ref. found the solutions with $`B=3,4`$ and $`5`$ by numerical relaxation calculations. Finally, a few years ago, after some demanding numerical work, the global minimum energy configurations with topological number up to $`B=9`$ were constructed. One particularly interesting aspect of all these multi-Skyrmion fields is that they are very symmetric. While for $`B=2`$ the symmetry group corresponds to that of a torus, for $`B=3,4,7,9`$ they possess the symmetries of the platonic polihedra $`T_d,O_h,I_h`$ and $`T_d`$, respectively, and for $`B=5,6,8`$ the dihedral symmetries $`D_{2d},D_{4d},D_{6d}`$, respectively. It should be stressed that, in spite of this, the multi-Skyrmion fields are very complicated functions of the space coordinates which are only known numerically. Fortunately, rather simple and accurate approximations to these configurations have been found. They are based on some Ansätze which are written in terms of rational maps and take advantage of the similarities between multi-Skyrmion fields and Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) monopoles. These developments triggered several investigations concerning the properties of the multi-Skyrmions (such as e.g., vibrational excitations) as well as their application to baryonic systems containing strangeness and heavier flavors. The extension to flavored multibaryons is also motivated by the advent of heavy ion colliders with the possibility of producing strange and even charmed multibaryonic states with rather low baryon number in the laboratory. To describe the strange multibaryons one has to extend the model to SU(3) flavor space. The classical background configurations are simply obtained by embedding the SU(2) static multi-Skyrmions in the isospin subgroup of SU(3). In order to obtain the spectrum with states of well defined spin and isospin quantum numbers, as well as their splittings, we have to perform the quantization of this system. However, the presence of the rather important symmetry breaking terms associated with the mass of the strange quark makes the quantization process not completely trivial. In fact, two alternative methods have been suggested in the literature. One is known as the bound state approach (BSA) in which strange baryons are described as SU(2) rotating soliton-kaon bound systems. The other scheme assumes that the strange degrees of freedom can still be treated as rotational modes but the corresponding collective Hamiltonian is to be diagonalized exactly. This method is usually called the rigid rotator approach (RRA). In two recent articles SU(3) multi-Skyrmions have been investigated following the BSA. In this work we complement such investigations by considering these configurations within the framework of the RRA.

This paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II we provide a brief description of the model and obtain the collective Hamiltonian for the different baryon numbers. In Sec. III we focus on the determination of the multibaryon quantum numbers and wavefunctions. In Sec. IV we present the numerical results and in Sec. V our conclusions. Finally, in the Appendix we give the explicit form of the collective Hamiltonians for $`3B9`$.

## II The Model

We start with the effective action of the SU(3) Skyrme model supplemented with an appropriate symmetry breaking term . Expressed in terms of the SU(3)-valued chiral field $`U(x)`$ it reads

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }={\displaystyle d^4x\left\{\frac{f_\pi ^2}{4}\mathrm{Tr}\left[_\mu U^\mu U^{}\right]+\frac{1}{32e^2}\mathrm{Tr}\left[[U^{}_\mu U,U^{}_\nu U]^2\right]\right\}}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZ}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SB},`$ (1)
where $`f_\pi `$ is the pion decay constant ( $`=93\mathrm{MeV}`$ empirically) and $`e`$ is the so-called Skyrme parameter. In Eq. (1), the symmetry breaking term $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SB}`$ accounts for the different masses and decay constants of the pion and kaon fields while $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZ}`$ is the usual Wess-Zumino action. Their explicit forms are

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{SB}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d^4x\{{\displaystyle \frac{f_\pi ^2m_\pi ^2+2f_K^2m_K^2}{12}}\mathrm{Tr}[U+U^{}2]+{\displaystyle \frac{f_\pi ^2m_\pi ^2f_K^2m_K^2}{6}}\mathrm{Tr}\left[\sqrt{3}\lambda ^8(U+U^{})\right]`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{f_K^2f_\pi ^2}{12}}\mathrm{Tr}\left[(1\sqrt{3}\lambda ^8)(U_\mu U^{}^\mu U+U^{}_\mu U^\mu U^{})\right]\},`$
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZ}`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{N_c}{240\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle d^5x\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta \gamma }\mathrm{Tr}\left[U^{}(_\mu U)U^{}(_\nu U)U^{}(_\alpha U)U^{}(_\beta U)U^{}(_\gamma U)\right]},`$ (4)
where $`\lambda ^8`$ is the eighth Gell-Mann matrix, $`N_c`$ the number of colors, $`m_\pi `$ and $`m_K`$ are the pion and kaon masses, respectively, and $`f_K`$ is the kaon decay constant.

We proceed by introducing the following Ansatz for the time dependent chiral field

$$U(\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝒓},t)=𝒜(t)\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{exp}\left[i\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝝉}\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝝅}(^1(t)\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝒓})\right]& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)𝒜^{}(t),$$
(5)
where the embedded SU(2) background configuration is rigidly rotated both in SU(3) flavor space and real space, the collective coordinates given by $`𝒜(t)`$ SU(3) and $`(t)`$ SO(3), respectively. Substituting $`U(\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝒓},t)`$ given by Eq. (5) into the effective action yields a Lagrangian of the general form

$$L=M_{sol}+L_{coll},$$
(6)
where $`M_{sol}`$ is the static SU(2) soliton mass and $`L_{coll}`$ is the collective Lagrangian, whose general expression will be given below. Following the usual steps in the RRA, we first find the soliton background configuration by minimizing $`M_{sol}`$. For this purpose we introduce the rational map Ansätze  for the pion field

$$\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝝅}(\stackrel{\mathbf{}}{𝒓})=F(r)\widehat{𝒏}.$$
(7)
Here, $`F(r)`$ is the multi-Skyrmion profile which depends on the radial coordinate only and $`\widehat{𝒏}`$ is a unit vector given by

$$\widehat{𝒏}=\frac{1}{1+|R|^2}\left[2\mathrm{}(R)\widehat{\mathit{ı}}+2\mathrm{}(R)\widehat{\mathit{ȷ}}+(1|R|^2)\widehat{𝒌}\right],$$
(8)
with $`R=R(z)`$ the rational map corresponding to a certain winding number $`B`$ which is identified with the baryon number. The complex variable $`z`$ is related to the usual two spherical coordinates $`(\theta ,\varphi )`$ via stereographic projection, namely, $`z=\mathrm{tan}(\theta /2)\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )`$. For example, the map corresponding to the $`B=1`$ hedgehog Ansatz is the identity map $`R=z`$. The explicit form of the rational maps corresponding to the other baryon numbers $`B9`$ and the resulting expression for the soliton mass $`M_{sol}`$ can be found in Refs.. The radial profile function $`F(r)`$ is determined by minimizing the classical soliton energy $`M_{sol}`$. Details of this procedure as well as plots of these profiles for different baryon numbers are given in Ref..

The collective Lagrangian written in terms of the collective degrees of freedom and the corresponding angular velocities $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a,\omega _\alpha `$ defined by ***Here and in the following the spin/isospin indices $`a,b,c`$ run over $`\{1,\mathrm{},3\}`$, the flavor index $`\alpha `$ over $`\{1,\mathrm{},8\}`$ and the $`k\{4,\mathrm{},7\}`$ index corresponds to excitations into strangeness directions.

$`\left(^1\dot{}\right)_{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{abc}\mathrm{\Omega }_c,`$ (9)
$`𝒜^1\dot{𝒜}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\lambda _\alpha \omega _\alpha ,`$ (10)
takes the general form

$`L_{coll}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\left(\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^J\mathrm{\Omega }_a\mathrm{\Omega }_b+\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^N\omega _a\omega _b+2\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^M\mathrm{\Omega }_a\omega _b\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Theta }^S{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\omega _k^2{\displaystyle \frac{N_cB}{2\sqrt{3}}}\omega _8`$ (12)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}G_{SB}\left(1D_{88}\right),`$
with $`D_{88}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Tr}\left[\lambda _8𝒜\lambda _8𝒜^{}\right]`$. The moment of inertia in the strangeness direction $`\mathrm{\Theta }^S`$ is

$$\mathrm{\Theta }^S=d^3r\frac{1c}{2}\left[f_K^2+\frac{1}{4e^2}\left(F_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+2B\frac{s^2}{r^2}\right)\right],$$
(13)
where we have introduced the short hand notation $`s=\mathrm{sin}F`$, $`c=\mathrm{cos}F`$. The spin $`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^J`$, isospin $`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^N`$ and mixed moments of inertia $`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^M`$ are

$`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^J`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3rs^2r^2\left[\left(f_\pi ^2+\frac{F^2}{e^2}\right)+\frac{1}{2}\frac{s^2}{e^2}_c\widehat{𝒏}_c\widehat{𝒏}\right]_a\widehat{𝒏}_b\widehat{𝒏}},`$ (14)
$`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^N`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3rs^2\left[\left(f_\pi ^2+\frac{F^2}{e^2}\right)(\delta _{ab}\widehat{n}_a\widehat{n}_b)+\frac{s^2}{e^2}(\delta _{ab}2\widehat{n}_a\widehat{n}_b)_c\widehat{𝒏}_c\widehat{𝒏}\right]},`$ (15)
$`\mathrm{\Theta }_{ab}^M`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^3rs^2r\left[\left(f_\pi ^2+\frac{F^2}{e^2}\right)+\frac{1}{2}\frac{s^2}{e^2}_c\widehat{𝒏}_c\widehat{𝒏}\right]_a\widehat{n}_b}.`$ (16)
For the rational maps we are interested in all these moments of inertia are diagonal . This is a direct consequence of the symmetries of these Ansätze. Finally, the symmetry breaking parameter $`G_{SB}`$ is

$$G_{SB}=\frac{2}{3}(f_K^2f_\pi ^2)d^3r\left(F_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+2B\frac{s^2}{r^2}\right)c+\frac{4}{3}(f_K^2m_K^2f_\pi ^2m_\pi ^2)d^3r(1c).$$
(17)
Given $`L_{coll}`$, the spin and flavor canonical momentum operators $`\widehat{J}_a`$ and $`\widehat{F}_\alpha `$ are defined in the usual way

$`\widehat{J}_a={\displaystyle \frac{L_{coll}}{\mathrm{\Omega }_a}};\widehat{F}_\alpha ={\displaystyle \frac{L_{coll}}{\omega _\alpha }}.`$ (18)
The collective Hamiltonian is conventionally obtained as the Legendre transformation $`H_{coll}=J_a\mathrm{\Omega }_a+F_\alpha \omega _\alpha L_{coll}`$, resulting in

$$H_{coll}=K^S\left[C_2(SU(3))\frac{3}{4}B^2\widehat{N}^2+\gamma (1D_{88})\right]+H_B^{JN}.$$
(19)
Here, $`C_2(SU(3))=_\alpha \widehat{F}_\alpha ^2`$ stands for the quadratic SU(3) Casimir operator, $`\widehat{N}_a\widehat{F}_a`$ is the isospin operator in the soliton frame, $`\gamma =\mathrm{\Theta }^SG_{SB}`$ is the dimensionless flavor symmetry breaking parameter and $`K^S=1/(2\mathrm{\Theta }^S)`$. In order to obtain Eq. (19) we have used $`N_c=3`$ and the constraint $`F_8=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}B`$. Finally, the detailed form of the spin-isospin collective Hamiltonians $`H_B^{JN}`$ depends on the soliton symmetry group. The method to derive them is very similar to the one described in Sec. III of Ref.. For $`B=1,2`$ the corresponding groups are the continuous groups $`O(3)`$ and $`D_\mathrm{}h`$, respectively. In those cases there are some relations between the spin and isospin operators which lead to the well known expressions for the spin-isospin collective Hamiltonians

$`H_{B=1}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Theta }^J}}\widehat{J}^2,`$ (20)
$`H_{B=2}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Theta }_1^J}}\left(\widehat{J}^2\widehat{J}_3^2\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Theta }_1^N}}\left(\widehat{N}^2\widehat{N}_3^2\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Theta }_3^N}}\widehat{N}_3^2.`$ (21)
On the other hand, for $`B3`$ the symmetry groups are finite. Thus, the general form of the spin-isospin collective Hamiltonian is

$`H_{B3}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}\left(K_a^J\widehat{J}_a^2+K_a^N\widehat{N}_a^22K_a^M\widehat{J}_a\widehat{N}_a\right),`$ (22)
where

$$K_a^J=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_a^N}{\mathrm{\Delta }_a},K_a^N=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_a^J}{\mathrm{\Delta }_a},K_a^M=\frac{1}{2}\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }_a^M}{\mathrm{\Delta }_a}.$$
(23)
and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_a\mathrm{\Theta }_a^J\mathrm{\Theta }_a^N(\mathrm{\Theta }_a^M)^2`$. The explicit form for each baryon number can be found in the Appendix.

## III Quantum numbers and collective wave functions

In order to calculate the rotational corrections to the multi-Skyrmion masses we have to find the corresponding wave functions. Following the Yabu-Ando procedure , they should diagonalize the flavor symmetry breaking term in the collective Hamiltonian. At the same time they should satisfy the constraints imposed by the symmetries of the classical soliton configuration. Thus, the general form of such eigenfunctions will be

$$|BJJ_z,YII_z,N=\underset{J_3N_3}{}\alpha _{J_3N_3}^{JN}D_{J_zJ_3}^J\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)},$$
(24)
Here, $`D_{J_zJ_3}^J`$ is the usual SU(2) Wigner function and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}`$ is a function depending on the 8 Euler angles that parametrize the SU(3) manifold. To obtain $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}`$ we should solve the eigenvalue equation

$$K^S\left[h+\gamma (1D_{88})\right]\mathrm{\Psi }=ϵ\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(25)
where $`h=C_2(SU(3))\frac{3}{4}B^2N(N+1)`$. The coefficients $`\alpha _{J_3N_3}^{JN}`$ are determined in such a way that the full wavefunction transforms as some particular one-dimensional irreducible representation (irrep) of the soliton symmetry group $`G`$. This will be discussed in some detail below.

To solve Eq. (25) we expand $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}`$ in a basis of SU(3) Wigner functions $`D_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}^{(p,q)}`$, where $`(p,q)`$ are the labels used to identify the SU(3) irrep. Namely,

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}=\underset{(p,q)}{}\beta _{(p,q)}\sqrt{d_{(p,q)}}D_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}^{(p,q)},$$
(26)
where $`d_{(p,q)}=(p+1)(q+1)(p+q+2)/2`$ is the dimension of the irrep. In such basis $`h`$ is diagonal and the matrix elements of the symmetry breaking term can be expressed as a product of two SU(3) Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. To determine, for a given value of $`B`$, the allowed values of the $`Y`$, $`I`$ and $`N`$ quantum numbers as well as which SU(3) irrep should be included in the basis we proceed as follows. As already seen, the value of the right hypercharge $`Y_R2F_8/\sqrt{3}`$ is fixed by the constraint $`Y_R=B`$. Thus, any SU(3) irrep that appears in the expansion, Eq.(26), should have a maximum value of hypercharge equal or larger than $`B`$. Thus, the possible values of $`(p,q)`$ should satisfy

$$\frac{p+2q}{3}=B+m,$$
(27)
with $`p`$ and $`q`$ non-negative integer numbers and $`m=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$. The irreps corresponding to $`m=0`$ are the so-called minimal irreps that we will denote $`(p_0,q_0)`$. It is possible to show that the matrix element of $`h`$ in any state that belongs to a minimal irrep is $`<h>_0=3B/2`$. To determine the relevant values of $`Y`$, $`I`$ and $`N`$ it is enough to consider such irreps. Although for non-vanishing strangeness $`S`$ other values of the quantum numbers could be allowed, they will be of no interest to us. In fact, it is not difficult to show that for the first state with “non-minimal quantum numbers” the matrix element of $`h`$ is more than twice $`<h>_0`$. Therefore, such state is expected to appear as a highly excited state in the spectrum. Since the minimal irreps have maximum right hypercharge $`Y_R=B`$ it is clear that corresponding possible values of the body-fixed isospin $`N`$ are $`N=p_0/2`$. On the other hand, those of the hypercharge $`Y`$ are

$$\frac{2p_0+q_0}{3}Y\frac{p_0+2q_0}{3}.$$
(28)
Finally, given a value of $`Y`$ that satisfies this relation, the allowed values of the isospin $`I`$ are

$$\left|\frac{Y}{2}+\frac{p_0q_0}{3}\right|I\frac{p_0+q_0}{2}\frac{1}{2}\left|Y\frac{p_0q_0}{3}\right|.$$
(29)
In Table I we list, for each baryon number $`3B9`$, the minimal SU(3) irrep which lead to states with $`N<3`$ together with the allowed values of isospin for some values of strangeness. Given a set of possible $`(B,I,Y,N)`$ quantum numbers one should find all the SU(3) irreps with $`m>0`$ that enter in the expansion, Eq. (26). This is done by selecting from all the irreps which satisfy Eq. (27) those that contain a state with this same set of quantum numbers. This leads to different towers of SU(3) irreps for each set of quantum numbers. Once this is done, it is a simple task to transform Eq. (25) into an ordinary linear eigenvalue problem whose solution provides the energy eigenvalues $`ϵ`$ and the coefficients $`\beta _{(p,q)}`$. Of course, to do that one should work with a basis of finite size. Since we are interested only in the few lowest eigenvalues the minimum size is fixed by the condition that those eigenvalues remain unchanged under a further increase of such size.

Having determined $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{(Y,I,I_z),(B,N,N_3)}`$ and the corresponding possible quantum numbers we have still to obtain the coefficients $`\alpha _{J_3N_3}^{JN}`$ of Eq. (24) and the allowed values of $`J`$. For this purpose, only the spin $`J`$ and isospin $`N`$ are relevant. Thus, the situation is very similar to that of the $`S=0`$ case discussed in Sec. IV of Ref.. As already mentioned the full wave function should transform as a one dimensional irrep of the multisoliton symmetry group $`G`$. For the configurations we are dealing with we have that, except for the $`B=5`$ and $`B=6`$ cases, such one dimensional irrep is the trivial irrep of the corresponding symmetry groups. For $`B=5`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the $`A_2`$ irrep of $`D_{2d}`$, while for $`B=6`$ the wave functions should transform as the $`A_2`$ irrep of $`D_{4d}`$. Using standard group theoretical arguments  we know that the product representation $`J\times N`$ of SU(2) is in general a reducible representation of $`G`$. The projector operator into the one dimensional irrep $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is

$$P_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{1}{|G|}\underset{gG}{}\chi _\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(g)\rho (g),$$
(30)
where $`|G|`$ is the rank of the group, $`\chi _\mathrm{\Gamma }(g)`$ the character of operation $`g`$, and $`\rho (g)`$ the representation of $`g`$ in $`J\times N`$

$$\rho (g)=D^J(g)\times D^N(D_g).$$
(31)
where $`D_g`$ is the isospin operation associated with the space operation $`g`$. The eigenvalues of $`P_\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ can either vanish or be equal to one. The eigenvectors corresponding to each non-vanishing eigenvalue provide precisely the coefficients $`\alpha _{J_3N_3}^{JN}`$ of Eq. (24), and there are as many wave functions as non-zero eigenvalues. If all eigenvalues vanish there is no collective state with the given $`J,N`$. If there is only one, the wavefunction is an eigenfunction of the collective Hamiltonian. In case there would be more than one, we choose those combinations which diagonalize the parity operator.

## IV Numerical results

To calculate the multibaryon spectra we use the following set of values for the parameters appearing in the effective action, Eqs. (1-4). We fix $`f_\pi `$, $`m_\pi `$ and $`m_K`$ to their empirical values and take $`e=4.1`$ and $`f_K/f_\pi =1.29`$. This set of parameters leads to a single baryon excitation spectrum which is in very good agreement with the one observed for the octet and decuplet baryons. As well known, however, the use of the empirical value for $`f_\pi `$ implies a $`B=1`$ Skyrmion mass of around $`1.7\mathrm{GeV}`$. Consequently, the absolute values of the calculated masses come out to be too large. This problem is nowadays known to be solved by the inclusion of Casimir effects. We will come back to this issue below. With these values we can calculate $`M_{sol}`$ and the different quantities that appear in the expression of $`L_{coll}`$ given by Eq. (12). The results for the different baryon numbers up to $`B=9`$ are tabulated in Tables II and III. From Table II we observe that although $`M_{sol}/B`$ tends, on average, to decrease as a function of $`B`$ it always lies above $`1.5\mathrm{GeV}`$. This clearly indicates that Casimir effects will be also important to determine the absolute masses of the configurations with $`B>1`$. In any case, as in previous works where $`f_\pi `$ was adjusted to reproduce the empirical nucleon mass, we observe some deviation from a smooth behaviour. Also listed in Table II are the strange inertia parameter $`K^S`$ and the symmetry breaking parameter $`\gamma `$. We see that, roughly, $`K^S`$ decreases as $`1/B`$ while $`\gamma `$ increases as $`B^2`$. As we will see this has important consequences on the amount of configuration mixing as a function of the baryon number. In Table III we list the spin, isospin and mixing inertia parameters for the different values of $`B`$. We find that the values we obtained behave, as a function of $`B`$, as those of Ref.. In fact this is to be expected since, as explained in that reference, such behaviour as well as the number of independent components depends only on general properties of the Ansätze.

Given the values of the inertia and symmetry breaking parameters we can proceed to calculate the matrix elements of the rotational Hamiltonian. For this purpose we have to find the solutions of the eigenvalue equation Eq. (25). As explained in the previous section this amounts to determine the coefficients $`\beta _{(p,q)}`$ appearing in Eq. (26). We have done this calculation for the different sets of allowed quantum numbers. It interesting to note that the amount of configuration mixing increases with $`B`$. This can be clearly observed in Fig. 1 where we display the decomposition of the lowest energy states with strangeness $`S=0`$ (full line) and $`S=B`$ (dashed line) for $`B=3`$ and $`B=9`$. In this figure the symbol $`i`$ labels the different $`(p,q)`$ irrep that appear in each decomposition. Of course, $`i=0`$ indicates the corresponding minimal irrep. We see that while for $`B=3`$ about $`80\%`$ of the wavefunction corresponds to the minimal irrep, for $`B=9`$ such irrep represents less that $`30\%`$ with the rest of strength distributed in almost 10 irreps. This kind of behaviour can be simply understood using second order perturbation theory. Within that approximation $`\beta _{i=1}`$, that is the coefficient of the first non-minimal irrep, will be proportional to $`\gamma /(<h>_1<h>_0)`$. It is not hard to show that, for the ground states with $`S=0`$, one has $`(<h>_1<h>_0)B`$. Since we have seen that $`\gamma B^2`$ we obtain that $`\beta _{i=1}`$ should increase roughly as $`B`$. Similar arguments can be used for the case $`S=B`$. This explains why the configuration mixing is quite independent of the value of strangeness as it can be seen in Fig. 1 by comparing the solid lines with the dashed ones. From the numerical point of view the increase of configuration mixing implies that as larger values of $`B`$ are considered one has to increase the size of the basis in which the eigenfunction is expanded in order to obtain convergence. In all the cases of interest we found that no more than $`15`$ to $`20`$ configurations were needed.

The resulting multibaryon spectra are summarized in Tables IV and V. In Table IV we report the rotational corrections to the masses of the $`S=0`$ states. They are given as excitation energies taken with respect to the corresponding lowest energy state whose absolute rotational energy is indicated in brackets. It is important to mention that for the $`B=1`$ systems it was shown that this rather large absolute value is almost completely cancelled by the Casimir corrections due to kaon loops. Since similar cancellations are expected to happen for $`B>1`$, the excitation energies result to be the most meaningful quantities to look at. We observe that the predicted spectra are in agreement with the ones obtained in the alternative bound state approach , except for a few changes in the ordering of the states in the case of $`S=B`$ and $`B=5,8,9`$. From the numbers presented in Tables II, IV and V it is apparent that there is a clear separation of three different energy scales. There is a 1 $`\mathrm{GeV}`$ scale related to the classical masses (per baryon number) and the eigenvalues of Eq. (25) for $`S=0`$ states, there is another scale of about 300 $`\mathrm{MeV}`$ for the excitation of one unit of strangeness, and finally a 10-100 MeV scale related to spin-isospin excitations. This last energy scale is evident in Table IV while it appears as a small correction in Table V. In this way we recover the three leading order contributions in the $`N_c`$ expansion $`N_c,N_c^0`$ and $`N_c^1`$, which are more explicitly separated in the BSA.

## V Conclusions

In this work we have studied the multibaryon spectra for baryon number $`3B9`$ and strangeness values $`S=0,1,B`$ within the SU(3) collective coordinate approach to the three flavor Skyrme model. To describe the classical background solutions we have used Ansätze based on rational maps , which provide very good approximations and also share the same symmetries as the exact solutions. The symmetry structure is responsible for the spin and isospin assignments to the spectrum states. Therefore, the collective Hamiltonians and wave functions we obtain are of general validity, while the mass splittings depend on the particular values of the moments of inertia and of the symmetry breaking parameter.

We have found that, in general, the ordering of the different spin/isospin states corresponding to a given baryon number as well as the energy separation between those states obtained by using the present approach are very similar to the results of the alternative bound state treatment of the SU(3) Skyrme model. This fact together with the observation that in the collective approach the relative strength of the flavor symmetry breaking term increases with increasing baryon number (cf., Fig. 1) seems to indicate that both approaches tend to coincide as $`B`$ grows. In this sense we can conclude that our finding that the increase of one unit of strangeness implies a cost in energy of about 300 MeV rather independently of $`B3`$ appears to be a rather general prediction of the SU(3) Skyrme model.

Finally, note that in the present calculation we have set the meson decay constants to their empirical values. Consequently, all the resulting absolute masses are too large. For example, we find values of $`M_{sol}/B`$ of about 1.60 GeV and $`S=0`$ ground state rotational corrections of about 0.8 GeV. These values are expected to be largely compensated by the pion and kaon contributions to the Casimir energies, respectively. In fact, this has been recently shown to happen in the $`B=1`$ sector of the model. Unfortunately, for $`B>1`$ the difficulties associated with the treatment of the fluctuations around non-spherically symmetric soliton backgrounds have prevented so far the explicit evaluation of the Casimir effect even in the SU(2) case.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported in part by the grant PICT 03-00000-00133 from ANPCYT, Argentina. C.L.S. thanks FAPERJ for financial support and the kind hospitality of Laboratorio TANDAR, CNEA, where part of this work was done.

##

In this Appendix we give the explicit expressions of the spin-isospin collective Hamiltonian for $`B3`$. The form of these expressions depends only on the symmetries of the soliton configurations. The method to derive them is very similar to the one described in Sec. III of Ref. . In fact, the following expressions can be easily obtained from the ones given in that reference by setting the corresponding hyperfine splitting constants to zero.

$`H_{B=3}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`H_{B=9}^{JN}=K^J\widehat{J}^2+K^N\widehat{N}^22K^M\stackrel{}{\widehat{N}}\stackrel{}{\widehat{J}},`$ (32)
$`H_{B=4}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`K^J\widehat{J}^2+K_1^N\widehat{N}^2+(K_3^NK_1^N)\widehat{N}_{3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2},`$ (34)
$`H_{B=5}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`K_1^J(\widehat{J}^2\widehat{J}_{3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})+K_1^N(\widehat{N}^2\widehat{N}_{3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})2K_1^M(\stackrel{}{\widehat{N}}\stackrel{}{\widehat{J}}\widehat{N}_3\widehat{J}_3)`$ (37)
$`+K_3^J\widehat{J}_3^2+K_3^N\widehat{N}_3^22K_3^M\widehat{N}_3\widehat{J}_3,`$
$`H_{B=6}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`H_{B=8}^{JN}=K_1^J\widehat{J}^2+K_1^N\widehat{N}^2+(K_3^JK_1^J)\widehat{J}_3^2+(K_3^NK_1^N)\widehat{N}_3^22K_3^M\widehat{N}_3\widehat{J}_3,`$ (39)
$`H_{B=7}^{JN}`$ $`=`$ $`K^J\widehat{J}^2+K^N\widehat{N}^2.`$ (41)