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# Baryogenesis vs. proton stability in theories with extra dimensions

## I Introduction

Despite the great success of Quantum Field Theory, a consistent scenario where gravity is also included still lacks. The most promising framework that could help in this task is string theory, whose consistency requires additional dimensions beyond the standard $`3+1`$. This extra space is usually assumed to be compact, with a small compactification radius of order $`M_p^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}`$. However, it has been observed in ref.  that, having no test of gravity below the millimeter scale, we do not really need such a tiny compactification radius, provided the extra dimensions are accessible only to gravitational interactions. The Standard Model degrees of freedom must indeed be localized on a $`3`$ dimensional wall whose inverse thickness does not exceed the scale of energy, of order TeV , we currently probe in accelerator experiments.

The choice of such large compactification scale has the main goal of solving (or at least of weakening) the hierarchy problem. Denoting by $`V_n`$ the volume of the compact space – assumed in  to have a trivial metric – and by $`M`$ the fundamental scale of gravity, the observed Planck mass is obtained by the relation $`M_p^2=M^{n+2}V_n`$. Under the condition $`n2`$, $`M`$ can be safely assumed to be very close to the electroweak scale, without conflicting with either cosmological, astrophysical, or laboratory bounds.

Although considerably improving the standard situation, the above scenario retains however some degree of fine tuning, connected to the largeness of the quantity $`V_nM^n`$. A better result in this regard is provided by the more recent work , where, due to the presence of cosmological constants in the bulk and on two walls, the metric is nonfactorizable with an exponential scaling in the extra space. This fact allows the achievement of both a (phenomenologically) acceptable theory with just one extra dimension (that could be even infinite in extension ) and a more satisfactory solution to the hierarchy problem.

There are some other aspects common to all of these theories besides the ones discussed above. In particular, both proton stability and baryogenesis may be problematic in models with very low fundamental masses.

For what concerns proton stability in Grand Unified Theories, the standard way to achieve it is to increase the mass of the additional bosons up to about $`10^{15}10^{16}`$GeV . In the framework of theories with extra–dimensions, an interesting mechanism has been suggested in ref. . ***See also  for alternative suggestions. In this paper, a dynamical mechanism for the localization of fermions on the wall  is adopted: leptons and quarks are however localized at two slightly displaced positions in the extra space, and this naturally suppresses the interactions which “convert” the latter in the former.

However, the observed baryon asymmetry requires baryon number ($`B`$) violating interactions to have been effective in the first stages of the evolution of the Universe. In this paper we thus wonder how this last requirement can be satisfied in a theory which adopts the idea of , to ensure proton stability now and baryon production in the past. Our proposal is that thermal corrections, which are naturally relevant at early times, may modify the localization of quarks and leptons so to weaken the mechanism that suppresses the $`B`$ violating interactions. There exist other proposals for baryogenesis in these theories : in the work , after considering several bounds on baryogenesis with large extra dimensions, a mechanism based on nonrenormalizable operators is proposed; in ref.  baryon number is violated by “evaporation” of brane bubbles that carry a net baryonic charge into the bulk, and the matter–antimatter asymmetry can be due to a primordial collision of our brane with another one, that carried away the missing antimatter; in ref.  baryogenesis is obtained via leptogenesis, the latter being due to the existence of sterile neutrinos in the bulk.

The plan of the work is the following. In section $`2`$ we review the mechanism used in ref.  to localize chiral fermions on a domain wall and to suppress the rate of baryon number violating interactions. In our work, however, we also take into account the finite thickness of the wall: this enforces on the parameters of the model some bounds which are stronger than the ones reported in ref. . In section $`3`$ we estimate the thermal corrections to the parameters of the theory, and in particular to the function that measures the suppression of the B violating interactions. Being our model nonrenormalizable, a perturbative treatment can be meaningful only at low energies. Anyhow, it is conceivable that the results we present in section $`3`$ can be a hint for the behavior of the theory at higher temperatures. The issue of baryogenesis is faced in section $`4`$, where we consider a very simple example reminiscent of GUT baryogenesis. In this mechanism, the baryon asymmetry is achieved through the dacay of a boson, whose interactions violate baryon number. In order for the model to work, the boson must be out of equilibrium before decaying, and this is not obvious in theories with low fundamental masses. In those theories, the Hubble parameter is indeed very low at energies below the fundamental scale of gravity, that sets the natural cutoff of the theory. We will thus consider a model where the bosons responsible for the baryon asymmetry are produced nonthermally (for instance, at the end of inflation) fulfilling thus naturally the out of equilibrium requirement. After considering other bounds, such as the stability of the kink under thermal corrections, we finally calculate the baryon asymmetry in a $`BL`$ conserving scheme. In the conclusions we discuss our results and their possible future extensions.

## II Localization

A simple mechanism for localizing fermions on a wall has been recently revisited in ref. .

In this paper the idea is illustrated in the easiest case where only one extra dimension is added to the usual four. The main ingredient that is needed is a scalar field $`\varphi `$ which couples to the fermionic field $`\psi `$ through the full five dimensional Yukawa interaction $`g\varphi \overline{\psi }\psi `$ and whose expectation value $`\varphi `$ varies along the extra dimension, but it is constant on our four-dimensional world. In this way the VEV $`\varphi `$ breaks the full translational invariance, as it is needed to have a preferred direction orthogonal to the wall.

It is possible to show  that in this case the fermionic field localizes where its total mass $`m=m_0+g\varphi `$ ($`m_0`$ is the bare fermionic mass in the five dimensional theory) vanishes, i.e. on a wall with three spatial dimensions characterized by a particular position $`x_5`$ in the transverse direction.

For definiteness, we consider the theory described by the lagrangian

$`_{\varphi \psi }`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }(i/_5+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0^{1/2}}}\varphi \left(y\right)+m_0)\psi `$ (1)
$`_\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu \varphi ^\mu \varphi \left(\mu _0^2\varphi ^2+\lambda _0\varphi ^4\right),`$ (2)
where $`yx_5`$ is the fifth coordinate, the fields and the parameters have the following mass dimensions

$$\left[\varphi \right]=3/2,\left[\psi \right]=2,\left[m_0\right]=\left[\mu _0\right]=\left[\stackrel{~}{M}_0\right]=1,\left[\lambda _0\right]=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1},$$
(3)
and where the suffix $`0`$ indicates the value of the parameters at zero temperature.

As we said, the localization position of the fermions depends on the vacuum configuration of the field $`\varphi `$. If we consider the kink solution

$$\varphi =\frac{\mu _0}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0}}\mathrm{tanh}\left(\mu _0y\right),$$
(4)
and we approximate it with a straight line interpolating between the two vacua (see figure $`1`$)

$`\{\begin{array}{cc}\varphi \left(y\right)\frac{\mu _0^2}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0}}y,|y|<\frac{1}{\mu _0}\hfill & \\ \varphi \left(y\right)\pm \frac{\mu _0^2}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0}},|y|>\frac{1}{\mu _0},\hfill & \end{array}`$ (5)
we see that the localization can occur only if

$$m_0<\frac{\mu _0}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}},$$
(6)
since otherwise the total fermion mass

$$m_{\mathrm{tot}}=\frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0^{1/2}}\varphi \left(y\right)+m_0$$
(7)
never vanishes.

It can be shown that, from the four dimensional point of view, a left handed chiral massless fermionic field results from the localization mechanism, if the above configuration (4) is assumed for the scalar $`\varphi `$. The right handed part remains instead delocalized in the whole space. This is not a problem since it is customary to limit the Standard Model and the MSSM fermionic content only to left handed fields. §§§Concerning the cancellation of anomalies on the wall and recovering the Standard Model running of the coupling constants, see . The right handed fields can also be localized if a kink–antikink solution is assumed for the scalar $`\varphi `$. As a result, the left fields continue to be localized on the kink, while the right ones are confined to the antikink. If the kink and the antikink are sufficiently far apart, the left handed and right handed fermions however do not interact and again the model reproducing our four dimensional world must be built by fermions of a defined chirality. The fermionic content of the full dimensional theory is in this case doubled with respect to the usual one, and observers on one of the two walls will refer to the other as to a “mirror world”. The presence of this kink–antikink configuration may be required by stability consideration if thermal effects are considered, as it is the case in the next sections. However most of the physics in one brane is not affected by the presence of the mirror one, and in the most of the present work we will concentrate on a single wall as if only the kink (4) configuration was present.

In order to give mass to the fermions, some other scalar field acting as a Higgs in the four dimensional theory must be considered. As it is shown in ref. , the mechanism described above could give an explanation to the hierarchy among the Yukawa couplings responsible for the fermionic mass matrix. If indeed one chooses different five dimensional bare masses for the different fermionic fields, the latter are localized at different positions in the fifth direction. As a consequence, the wave functions of different fermions do only partially overlap, and increasing the difference between the five dimensional bare masses of two fermions results in suppressing their mutual interactions.

The same idea can be adopted to guarantee proton stability. Let us give, respectively, leptons and baryons the “masses”

$$\left(m_0\right)_l=0,\left(m_0\right)_b=m_0,$$

which correspond to the localizations The last inequality in the next expression comes from (6). We assume quarks of different generations to be located in the same $`y`$ position in order to avoid dangerous FCNC mediated by the Kaluza-Klein modes of the gluons .

$$y_l=0,y_b=\frac{m_0\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}}{\mu _0^2}<\frac{1}{\mu _0}$$

The shape of the fermion wave functions along the fifth dimension can be cast in an explicit and simple form if we consider the limit $`y_b1/\mu _0`$, in which the effect of the plateau for $`y>1/\mu _0`$ can be neglected: This is also the limit in which the approximation (5) is valid.

$`f_l\left(y\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu _0^2}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}\pi }}\right)^{1/4}\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _0^2y^2}{2\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}}}\right\}`$ (8)
$`f_b\left(y\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mu _0^2}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}\pi }}\right)^{1/4}\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _0^2\left(yy_b\right)^2}{2\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}}}\right\}.`$ (9)
We assume the Standard Model to be embedded in some theory which, in general, contains some additional bosons $`X`$ whose interactions violate baryon number conservation. If it is the case, the four fermion interaction $`qqql`$ can be effectively described by

$$d^4x𝑑y\frac{qqql}{\mathrm{\Lambda }m_X^2},$$
(10)
where $`m_X`$ is the mass of the intermediate boson $`X`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a parameter of mass dimension one related to the five-dimensional coupling of the X-particle to quarks and leptons.

This scattering is thus suppressed by

$`I`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Lambda }m_X^2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑y\frac{\mu _0^2}{\pi \sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{\mu _0^2/2}{\sqrt{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}}\left[y^2+3\left(yy_b\right)^2\right]\right\}}=`$ (11)
$`\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu _0}{\mathrm{\Lambda }m_X^2\sqrt{2\pi }\left(2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0\right)^{1/4}}}\mathrm{exp}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{3\left(2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0\right)^{1/2}}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_0^2}{\mu _0^2}}\right\}.`$ (12)
Current proton stability requires I

<

(1016GeV) 2,

<

𝐼superscriptsuperscript1016GeV2I\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}\left(10^{16}\,\mbox{GeV}\right)^{-\,2}\;, that is

m0μ0

>

2006Log10(ΛmX2μ0/GeV2)(2λ0M~0)1/4.

>

subscript𝑚0subscript𝜇02006subscriptLog10Λsuperscriptsubscript𝑚𝑋2subscript𝜇0superscriptGeV2superscript2subscript𝜆0subscript~𝑀014\frac{m_{0}}{\mu_{0}}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$>$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}\frac{\sqrt{200-6\,\mbox{Log}_{10}\left(\frac{\Lambda\,m_{X}^{2}}{\mu_{0}}\Big{/}\mbox{GeV}^{2}\right)}}{\left(2\,\lambda_{0}\,{\widetilde{M}}_{0}\right)^{1/4}}\;\;. (13)
The numerator in the last equation is quite insensitive to the mass scales of the model, and – due to the logarithmic mild dependence – can be safely assumed to be of order $`10`$. For definiteness, we will thus fix it at the value of $`10`$ in the rest of our work.

Conditions (6) and (13) give altogether

10μ0(2λ0M~0)1/4

<

m0

<

μ0(2λ0M~0)1/2,

<

10subscript𝜇0superscript2subscript𝜆0subscript~𝑀014subscript𝑚0

<

subscript𝜇0superscript2subscript𝜆0subscript~𝑀012\frac{10\,\mu_{0}}{\left(2\,\lambda_{0}\,{\widetilde{M}}_{0}\right)^{1/4}}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}m_{0}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}\frac{\mu_{0}}{\left(2\,\lambda_{0}\,{\widetilde{M}}_{0}\right)^{1/2}}\;\;, (14)
that we can rewrite

{2λ0M~0

<

104m0μ0

>

102.cases

<

2subscript𝜆0subscript~𝑀0superscript104otherwise

>

subscript𝑚0subscript𝜇0superscript102otherwise\displaystyle\cases{2\,\lambda_{0}\,{\widetilde{M}}_{0}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}10^{-4}&\cr\frac{m_{0}}{\mu_{0}}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$>$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}10^{2}\;\;.} (15)
The last limit in eqs. (15) is stronger than the one given in ref.  where proton stability is satisfied if the ratio of the massive scales of the model is of order $`10`$. However, in ref.  the field $`\varphi `$ simply scales linearly as a function of $`y`$, while we expect that whenever a specific model is assumed, conditions analogous to our (6) and (15) should be imposed.

## III Thermal correction to the coefficients

Once the localization mechanism is incorporated in a low energy effective theory – as the system (1) may be considered –, one can legitimately ask if thermal effects could play any significant role. In the present work we are mainly interested in any possible change in the argument of the exponential in eq. (11), that will be the most relevant for the purpose of baryogenesis. For this reason, we introduce the dimensionless quantity

$$a(T)=\frac{m(T)^2}{\mu (T)^2}\sqrt{2\lambda (T)\stackrel{~}{M}(T)}.$$
(16)
From eqs.(13) and (15), we can set a(0)

>

100

>

𝑎0100a(0)\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$>$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}100 at zero temperature. Thermal effects will modify this value. There are however some obstacles that one meets in evaluating the finite temperature result. Apart from some technical difficulties arising from the fact that the scalar background is not constant, the main problem is that nonperturbative effects may play a very relevant role at high temperature. As it is customary in theories with extra dimensions, the model (1) is nonrenormalizable and one expects that there is a cut-off (generally related to the fundamental scale of gravity) above which it stops holding. Our considerations will thus be valid only for low temperature effects, and may only be assumed as a rough indication for what can happen at higher temperature.

Being aware of these problems, by looking at the dominant finite-temperature one-loop effects, we estimate the first corrections to the relevant parameters to be

$`\{\begin{array}{cc}\lambda \left(T\right)=\lambda _0+c_\lambda \frac{T}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0^2}\hfill & \\ \stackrel{~}{M}\left(T\right)=\stackrel{~}{M}_0+c_{\stackrel{~}{M}}T\hfill & \\ m\left(T\right)=m_0+c_m\frac{T^2}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0}\hfill & \\ \mu ^2\left(T\right)=\mu _0^2+c_\mu \frac{T^3}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0},\hfill & \end{array}`$ (17)
where the $`c`$’s are dimensionless coefficients whose values are related to the exact particle content of the theory.

In writing the above equations, the first of conditions (15) has also been taken into account. For example, both a scalar and a fermionic loop contribute to the thermal correction to the parameter $`\lambda _0`$. While the contribution from the former is of order $`\lambda _0^2T`$, the one of the latter is of order $`T/\stackrel{~}{M}_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}`$ and thus dominates. \**\**\**Notice also that in our model loops with internal leptons dominate over loops with internal quarks, since the former have vanishing five dimensional bare mass and thus are not Boltzmann suppressed. However, although this choice is the simplest one, one may equally consider the most general case where all the fermions have a nonvanishing five dimensional mass.

Substituting eqs. (17) into eq. (16), we get, in the limit of low temperature,

$$a\left(T\right)a\left(0\right)\left[1+\frac{T}{\stackrel{~}{M}_0}\left(\frac{c_\lambda }{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0}+\frac{c_{\stackrel{~}{M}}}{2}+\frac{2c_mT}{m_0}\frac{c_\mu T^2}{\mu _0^2}\right)\right].$$
(18)
From the smallness of the quantity $`\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0`$ \[see cond. (15)\] we can safely assume (apart from high hierarchy between the $`c`$’s coefficients that we do not expect to hold) that the dominant contribution in the above expression comes from the term proportional to $`c_\lambda `$.

We thus simply have

$$a\left(T\right)a\left(0\right)\left(1+c_\lambda \frac{T}{2\lambda _0\stackrel{~}{M}_0^2}\right).$$
(19)
We notice that the parameter $`c_\lambda `$, being related to the thermal corrections to the $`\varphi ^4`$ coefficient due to a fermion loop, is expected to be negative : the first thermal effect is to decrease the value of the parameter $`a(T)`$, making hence the baryon number violating reactions more efficient at finite rather than at zero temperature.

There is another effect which may be very crucial at finite temperature, linked to the stability of the $`Z_2`$ symmetry. When a temperature is turned on, we generally expect the formation of a fermion–antifermion condensate $`\overline{\psi }\psi 0`$. If it is the case, the Yukawa coupling $`\varphi \overline{\psi }\psi `$ in the lagrangian (1) renders one of the two vacua unstable. While this leads to an instantaneous decay of the kink configuration, a kink–antikink system could have a sufficiently long lifetime provided the two objects are enough far apart.

## IV Baryogenesis

We saw in the previous section that thermal effects may increase the rate of baryon number violating interactions of our system. This is very welcome, since a theory which never violates baryon number cannot lead to baryogenesis and thus cannot reproduce the observed Universe. Anyhow baryon number violation is only one of the ingredients for baryogenesis, and the aim of this section is to investigate how the above mechanism can be embedded in a more general context.

A particular scheme which may be adopted is baryogenesis through the decay of massive bosons $`X`$. ††††††We may think of these bosons as the intermediate particles which mediate the four fermion interaction described by the term (10). This scheme closely resembles GUT baryogenesis, but there are some important peculiarities due to the different scales of energy involved. In GUT baryogenesis the massive boson $`X`$, coupled to matter by the interaction $`gX\psi \overline{\psi }`$, has the decay rate

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }\alpha m_x,\alpha =\frac{g^2}{4\pi }.$$
(20)
An important condition is that the $`X`$ boson decays when the temperature of the Universe is below its mass (out of equilibrium decay), in order to avoid thermal regeneration. From the standard equation for the expansion of the Universe,

$$Hg_{}^{1/2}\frac{T^2}{M_p}$$
(21)
(where $`g_{}`$ is the number of relativistic degrees of freedom at the temperature $`T`$), this condition rewrites

mX

>

g1/2αMp.

>

subscript𝑚𝑋superscriptsubscript𝑔12𝛼subscript𝑀𝑝m_{X}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$>$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}g_{*}^{-1/2}\,\alpha\,M_{p}\;\;. (22)
If $`X`$ is a Higgs particle, $`\alpha `$ can be as low as $`10^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}6}}`$. Even in this case however the $`X`$ boson must be very massive. In principle this may be problematic in the theories with extra dimensions we are interested in, which have the main goal of having a very low fundamental scale.

There are some possibilities to overcome this problem. One is related to a possible deviation of the expansion of the Universe from the standard behavior. The issue of the Friedmann law in models with large extra dimensions has been indeed subject of intense debate in the recent past. In the work  a detailed analysis of the Einstein equations with one extra dimension, shows that the expansion rate $`H`$ should (in absence of any energy in the bulk) be proportional to the energy density $`\rho `$ on the brane. This behavior strongly conflicts with the standard one $`H\rho ^{1/2}`$. In refs.  it was then shown that the standard expansion law could be achieved, at least at low temperatures, by a suitable fine tuning of the vacuum energies in the Universe. In particular, this is the case for the Randall–Sundrum model , which offers one of the most satisfactory solutions to the hierarchy problem. The solution proposed in these works  is however itself plagued by some other cosmological problems. For example, in the RS model  gravity turns out to be repulsive on our brane. All the above problems are overcome when some mechanism for the stabilization of the radion is taken into account, as the analyses  show. In particular, in ref. , the case of the model  is examined, and both the standard Friedmann law and the “correct” sign for the Newton constant are obtained. The analysis of ref.  is however performed by computing only the first-order term of the expansion of the square of the Hubble parameter $`H^2`$ as a power series of the energy density $`\rho `$. Terms of order $`\rho ^2`$ could become relevant at temperatures above $`1\text{TeV}`$ or so . This may result in an accelerated expansion of the Universe at high temperatures, and the out of equilibrium condition for the $`X`$ bosons could be consequently considerabily favoured.

However, both the facts that we do not know the exact behavior of the expansion rate at high temperatures in the model , and that one may be interested in embedding our baryogenesis mechanism in some other cosmological scenario, lead us to discuss alternative solutions for the out of equilibrium problem. One very natural possibility is to create the $`X`$ particles non thermally and to require the temperature of the Universe to be always smaller than their mass $`m_X`$. In this way, one kinematically forbids regeneration of the $`X`$ particles after their decay. In addition, although interactions among these bosons can bring them to thermal equilibrium, chemical equilibrium cannot be achieved.

Nonthermal creation of matter has raised a considerable interest in the last years. In particular, it has been shown that this production can be very efficient during the period of coherent oscillations of the inflaton field after inflation . The efficiency of this mechanism has also been exploited in the work  to revive GUT baryogenesis in the context of standard four dimensional theories. Here, we will not go into the details of the processes that could have lead to the production of the $`X`$ bosons. Rather, we will simply assume that, after inflation, their number density is $`n_X`$. To simplify our computations, we will also suppose that their energy density dominates over the thermal bath produced by the perturbative decay of the inflaton field.

Just for definiteness, let us consider a very simple model where there are two species of $`X`$ boson which can decay into quarks and leptons, according to the four dimensional effective interactions

$$gX\overline{q}\overline{q},ge^{a/4}Xlq,$$
(23)
where (remember the suppression given by the different localization of quarks and leptons) the quantity $`a`$ is defined in eq. (16). Again for definiteness we will consider the minimal model where no extra fermionic degrees of freedom are added to the ones present in the Standard Model. Moreover we will assume $`BL`$ to be conserved, even though the extension to a more general scheme can be easily performed.

The decay of the $`X`$ bosons will reheat the Universe to a temperature that can be evaluated to be

$$T_{\mathrm{rh}}\left(\frac{30}{\pi ^2}\frac{m_Xn_X}{g_{}}\right)^{1/4}.$$
(24)
Since we do not want the $`X`$ particles to be thermally regenerated after their decay, we require Trh

<

mX

<

subscript𝑇rhsubscript𝑚𝑋T_{\mathrm{rh}}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}m_{X}, that can be rewritten as an upper bound on $`n_X`$

nX

<

30(g100)mX3.

<

subscript𝑛𝑋30subscript𝑔100superscriptsubscript𝑚𝑋3n_{X}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}30\,\left(\frac{g_{*}}{100}\right)\,m_{X}^{3}\,\,. (25)
Another limit comes from the necessity to forbid the $`B`$ violating four fermion interaction (10) to erase the $`B`$ asymmetry that has been just created by the decay of the $`X`$ bosons. We thus require the interaction (10) to be out equilibrium at temperatures lower than $`T_{\mathrm{rh}}`$. From eq. (11) we see that we can parametrize the four fermion interaction with a coupling $`g^2e^{3a/8}/m_X^2`$. Hence, the out of equilibrium condition reads

g4e3a/4

<

gmXMp(mXTrh)3.

<

superscript𝑔4superscript𝑒3𝑎4subscript𝑔subscript𝑚𝑋subscript𝑀𝑝superscriptsubscript𝑚𝑋subscript𝑇rh3g^{4}\,e^{-3\,a/4}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}g_{*}\,\frac{m_{X}}{M_{p}}\,\left(\frac{m_{X}}{T_{\mathrm{rh}}}\right)^{3}\;\;. (26)
One more upper bound on the reheating temperature comes from the out of equilibrium condition for the sphalerons. This requirement is necessary only if one chooses the theory to be $`BL`$ invariant, while it does not hold for $`BL`$ violating schemes. We can approximately consider the sphalerons to be in thermal equilibrium at temperatures above the electroweak scale. Thus, if $`BL`$ is a conserved quantity, we will require the reheat temperature to be smaller than about $`100\mathrm{GeV}`$.

If one neglects the presence of the thermal bath prior to the decay of the $`X`$ bosons, the very first decays will be only into couples of quarks, since the channel into one quark and one lepton is strongly suppressed by the $`e^{a\left(T=0\right)}`$ factor due to the fact that the kink is not modified by any thermal correction. However, the decay process is not an instantaneous event. It is shown in ref.  that the particles produced in the very first decays are generally expected to thermalize very rapidly, so to create a thermal bath even when most of the energy density is still stored in the decaying particles. ‡‡‡‡‡‡As shown in ref. , what is called the reheating temperature is indeed the temperature of the thermal bath when it starts to dominate. After the first decays, the temperature of the light degrees of freedom can be even much higher than $`T_{\mathrm{rh}}`$. The temperature of this bath can even be considerably higher than the final reheating themperature. The presence of the heat bath modifies in turn the shape of the kink, as shown in the previuos section, and we can naturally expect that this modification enhances the $`B`$ violating interaction.

If the energy density of the Universe is dominated by the $`X`$ bosons before they decay, one has

$$\eta _B\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.1}\left(N_XT_{\mathrm{rh}}/m_X\right)r\overline{r},$$
(27)
where $`N_X`$ is the number of degrees of freedom associated to the $`X`$ particles and $`r\overline{r}`$ is the difference between the rates of the decays $`Xql`$ and $`\overline{X}\overline{q}\overline{l}`$.

We denote with $`X_1`$ and $`X_2`$ the two species of bosons whose interactions (23) lead to baryon number violation, and parametrize by $`ϵ`$ the strength of CP-violation in these interactions. Considering that $`e^{2a}`$ is always much smaller than one, we get

$$r\overline{r}3g^2e^{a/2}ϵ\mathrm{I}m\text{I}_{SS}\left(M_{X_1}/M_{X_2}\right),$$
(28)
where the function $`\mathrm{I}m\text{I}_{SS}(\rho )=[\rho ^2\mathrm{L}og(1+1/\rho ^2)1]/(16\pi )`$ can be estimated to be of order $`10^310^2`$. It is also reasonable to assume $`ϵ10^21`$.

Collecting all the above estimates, and assuming $`N_X`$ to be of order $`10`$, we get

$$\eta _B\left(10^5\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^2\right)g^2\frac{T_{\mathrm{rh}}}{m_X}e^{a\left(T_{\mathrm{rh}}\right)/2}.$$
(29)
From the requirement Trh

<

mX

<

subscript𝑇rhsubscript𝑚𝑋T_{\mathrm{rh}}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}m_{X} we get an upper limit on the baryon asymmetry

ηB

<

(105 102)g2ea/2,

<

subscript𝜂𝐵superscript105superscript102superscript𝑔2superscript𝑒𝑎2\eta_{B}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}\left(10^{-5}\,-\,10^{-2}\right)\,g^{2}\,e^{-a/2}\,\,, (30)
where the factor $`a\left(T\right)`$ has to be calculated for a value of $`T`$ of the order of the reheating temperature.

We get a different limit on $`\eta _B`$ from the bound (26): assuming $`m_X\text{TeV}`$ and $`g_{}100`$ indeed one obtains

ηB

<

(106 1010)g2/3ea/4.

<

subscript𝜂𝐵superscript106superscript1010superscript𝑔23superscript𝑒𝑎4\eta_{B}\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}\left(10^{-6}\,-\,10^{-10}\right)\,g^{2/3}\,e^{-a/4}\,\,. (31)
Since the observed amount of baryon asymmetry is of order $`10^{10}`$, even in the case of maximum efficiency of the process (that is, assuming maximal $`CP`$ violation and $`g1`$), we have that both bounds (30) and (31) imply that $`a\left(T_{\mathrm{rh}}\right)`$ has to be smaller than about $`40`$.

Unfortunately, the temperature at which the condition a(T)

<

40

<

𝑎𝑇40a\left(T\right)\mathrel{\vbox{\hbox{$<$}\nointerlineskip\hbox{$\sim$}}}40\> occurs cannot be evaluated by means of the expansion of eq. (19), that have been obtained under the assumption $`\left|a\left(T\right)a\left(0\right)\right|a\left(0\right)`$. On the other hand, it is remarkable that our mechanism may work with a ratio $`a\left(T_d\right)/a\left(0\right)`$ of order one. We thus expect that a successful baryogenesis may be realized for a range of the parameters of our theory which – although not evaluable through a perturbative analysis – should be quite wide and reasonable.

In scenarios with large extra dimensions and low scale gravity, the maximal temperature reached by the Universe after inflation is strongly bounded from above in order to avoid overproducing Kaluza-Klein graviton modes, which may eventually contradict cosmological observations . For instance, in models with two large extra dimensions the reheating temperature has to be less than about $`10\text{MeV}`$. This value would be too low for our scenario since $`\eta _B`$ is proportional to the ratio $`T_{\mathrm{rh}}/m_X`$, and hence the observed amount of baryons would be reproduced at the price of an unnaturally small value of $`a\left(T_{\mathrm{rh}}\right)`$. However, other schemes with extra dimensions exist where the bounds on $`T_{\mathrm{rh}}`$ are less severe. For example, in the proposals  the mass of the first graviton KK mode is expected to be of order TeV. The reheating temperature can thus safely be taken to be of order $`10100\text{GeV}`$.

An alternative way to overcome the bound (22) relies on the fact that, as observed in the work , the maximal temperature reached by the thermal bath during reheating can indeed be much higher than the final reheating temperature. In this case, even if $`T_{\mathrm{rh}}`$ is considerably lower than $`m_X`$, $`X`$ particles can be produced in a significant amount, and the out of equilibrium condition is easily achieved. However, the treatment of this mechanism is in our case somewhat different from the one given in ref. : due to the slowness of the expansion of the Universe, the $`X`$ bosons will decay before the freeze out of their production. The final baryon asymmetry cannot be estimated with the use of the formulae of , which are valid only if the decay of the $`X`$ particles occurs well after their freeze out.

There are of course several possible baryogenesis schemes alternative to the one just presented. A possible option which also requires a minimal extension to the Standard Model could be to achieve the baryon asymmetry directly through the $`4`$ fermions interactions $`q+qq+l`$ in the thermal primordial bath. The out of equilibrium condition may be provided by the change of the kink as the temperature of the bath decreases. \**\**\**This condition may be easily achieved due of the exponential dependence of the rate of this process on the temperature, see eq. (11). What may be problematic is the source of $`CP`$ violation which may lead the creation of the baryon asymmetry. A possibility in this regard may be provided by considering a second Higgs doublet, but the whole mechanism certainly deserves a deep analysis on its own.

## V Conclusions

The present work concerns the important issue of baryogenesis in theories with large extra–dimensions. Since the observed proton stability requires to a very high degree of accuracy baryon conservation at zero temperature, this task may be problematic within the above theories, which have very low fundamental scales.

Our proposal relies on the localization mechanism for fermions discussed in ref. . While in this work the present proton stability is due to a different localization (in the transverse direction) of leptons and quarks, we believe that thermal corrections may activate early baryon violating interactions.

In our work we first provide a general discussion of the above scheme, without referring to any particular mechanism of baryogenesis. We find indeed that the first thermal corrections are in the direction of increasing the rate of baryon violations.

We then consider a very specific example, where the matter–antimatter asymmetry is achieved through the decay of a (relatively) heavy boson in a $`BL`$ conserving context. In this situation the Sakharov out of equilibrium condition can be obtained in the simplest way by considering nonthermal production of the bosons responsible for $`B+L`$ violation.

Several bounds apply to the whole mechanism. The most general ones concern the localization procedure (we have found that the limits given in ref.  become more stringent once the thickness of the wall is considered) and its stability against thermal corrections. In addition, there are some other constraints which hold in the particular scheme of baryogenesis we adopted. The temperature of the heat bath right after the production of the baryon asymmetry cannot be too high, to avoid thermal regeneration of the bosons that induced baryogenesis. Moreover, this temperature has not to exceed the electroweak scale, in order not to activate the sphaleron transitions that would erase the $`B+L`$ asymmetry produced at some higher energy. Of course, this last bound can be easily overcome by considering some $`BL`$ nonconserving process.

We have found that the observed baryonic asymmetry can be accomplished quite naturally in our example, and we believe this should be the case in a more general context as well.

Possible extensions of the present work are related to the generality of the scenario we discussed. Our idea indeed relies only on the localization mechanism adopted in  and not on the geometry of the bulk, nor on the details of the interactions responsible for the baryon asymmetry.

Future works could thus proceed in two directions. Firstly, one could try to embed the scheme here described in a more complete cosmological setting. Secondly, some other baryogenesis mechanisms, for example à la Affleck–Dine (which does not require very high energy scales), may be explored.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank J. March–Russell, G. Mussardo, H.P. Nilles, M. Pietroni, and A. Riotto for interesting and stimulating discussions. This work is partially supported by the MURST research project “Astroparticle Physics”.


text:
# A NEW BASIS FUNCTION APPROACH TO ’T HOOFT EQUATION

## 1 Introduction

It is expected that light-front (LF) quantization provides an powerful tool for studying many-body relativistic field theories . The bare vacuum is equal to the physical vacuum in the LF coordinate, since all constituents must have non-negative longitudinal momentum. This simple structure of the true vacuum enables us to avoid the insuperable problems which appeared in the Tamm-Dancoff (TD) approximation  in the equal time frame. Therefore, the TD approximation is commonly used in the context of the LF quantization .

Many authors - have developed the effectual techniques for solving LFTD equations in several models. Bergknoff  first applied LFTD approximation to the massive Schwinger model model , which is the extension of the simplest (1+1)-dimensional QED2 . He obtained the so-called Bergknoff equation, which is the light front Einstein-Schrödinger equation truncated to one fermion-antifermion pair. Mo and Perry  presented a prevailing method to handle the ground state and the excited state in the massive Schwinger model. They concluded that the Jacobi polynomials are appropriate basis functions to study the massive Schwinger model. Harada and his coworker  investigated the massive Schwinger model with $`\mathrm{SU}(2)`$ flavor symmetry, including up to four fermion sectors. They applied of simpler basis functions, which are essentially equivalent to the Jacobi polynomials, to the model. Sugihara and collaborators  studied 2-dimensional $`\mathrm{SU}(\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{C})`$ Quantum ChromoDynamics(QCD) , including four fermion sectors, by means of the basis functions of Harada et al.

Although excellent papers exist concerning massless and massive Schwinger models and 2-dimensional QCD -, including excited states, it is worth analyzing the “’t Hooft” equation, the lowest order LFTD equation in $`\mathrm{SU}(\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{C})`$ gauge theory. This is because there is a mathematical interest in the basis function method. There is no mathematical evidence that the wave function can be expanded in terms of the conventional basis function. Contrarily, there is an evidence that the conventional method breaks down if we try to improve the approximation. We would therefore like to improve the basis functions so as to avoid such difficulties.

## 2 Conventional Basis function Method

The ’t Hooft equation for two dimensional $`\mathrm{SU}(\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{C})`$ gauge theory is given in the form

$`M^2\mathrm{\Phi }(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}𝑑yH(x,y)\mathrm{\Phi }(y)`$ (1)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4(m^21)}{14x^2}}\mathrm{\Phi }(x)\mathrm{}{\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}𝑑y{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(y)}{(yx)^2}},1/2x1/2,`$
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a wave function of a bound state, $`M`$ denotes the normalized meson mass, $`m`$ stands for the normalized (anti-)quark mass and $`\mathrm{}`$ denotes the finite part integral. In Eq. (1), we shifted the variable $`x`$ total amount of $`1/2`$ compared with the variable in Refs. , in order to show the symmetry of the wave function transparently.

According to Harada and collaborators , one can expect that the wave function could be expanded as follows:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(x)=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{N}{}}}a_j(14x^2)^{\beta +j}.`$ (2)
The exponent $`\beta `$ and the normalized quark mass $`m`$ are related to each other by the equation

$`(m^21)+\beta \pi \mathrm{cot}\beta \pi =0.`$ (3)
The authors of references  adopted the positive smallest solution $`\beta _0(m)`$ of Eq. (3) as $`\beta `$ in Eq. (2).

Mo and Perry, and Harada and his collaborators presented effective way to determine the coefficients $`a_j`$’s. We will briefly reproduce their procedures. By the use of the expansion in Eq. (2) truncated to given finite number $`N`$ for the wave function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, we multiply both sides of Eq. (1) by $`(14x^2)^{\beta +i}`$ and integrate them over x, then we obtain

$`M^2\widehat{N}\stackrel{}{a}=\widehat{H}\stackrel{}{a},\stackrel{}{a}={}_{}{}^{t}[a_0,a_1,\mathrm{},a_{n1}].`$ (4)
In order to obtain eigenvalues of the generalized eigenvalue equation, we have to solve the eigenvalue problem for norm matrix $`\widehat{N}`$, first, i.e.,

$`\widehat{N}\stackrel{}{v}_i=\lambda _i\stackrel{}{v}_i.`$ (5)
Next, we introduce a transformation matrix $`\widehat{W}`$ by

$`\widehat{W}=[{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{v}_1}{\stackrel{}{v}_1\sqrt{\lambda _1}}},\mathrm{},{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{v}_n}{\stackrel{}{v}_n\sqrt{\lambda _n}}}].`$ (6)
Then, we can transform Eq. (4) into a usual eigenvalue problem of the form

$`M^2\stackrel{}{b}={}_{}{}^{t}\widehat{W}\widehat{H}\widehat{W}\stackrel{}{b},\stackrel{}{a}=\widehat{W}\stackrel{}{b}.`$ (7)
For $`N=3`$ and $`m=0.01`$, we find, for the ground state boson,

Fig. 1

$`\beta `$ $`=`$ $`0.00552328,M^2=0.0366342,`$
$`a_0`$ $`=`$ $`1,a_1=0.00203562,a_2=0.000579369,a_3=0.000165813.`$ (8)
The values of the LHS and the RHS of Eq. (1) are shown in Fig. 1. In Fig. 1, the solid line represents the LHS and the dotted line stands for the RHS. The RHS with $`N=9`$, which is indicated by the dashed line, is exhibited for comparison. The coincidence of the LHS and the RHS is not inadmissible for small values of $`x`$. On the other hand, for $`x\pm 1/2`$, the difference between the LHS and the RHS is not allowable. Only the RHS has sharp spikes at the end points. This behavior is not changed much even if we improve the order of approximation.

We have to note here that in order to solve the generalized eigenvalue problem, the norm matrix should be positive definite. We cannot advance the above procedure beyond $`N12`$, because some of the eigenvalues of the norm matrix $`\widehat{N}`$ become almost zero or negative. These facts strongly suggest that the conventional basis function is not appropriate basis function for 2 dimensional field theories.

## 3 New Basis Function

In order to introduce new basis function, we first notice that there are infinite solutions $`\beta _1<\beta _2<\mathrm{}`$ of Eq. (3) in addition to solution $`\beta _0`$. We are easily led to

$`0\beta _n\beta _0n<1/2,`$
$`0<\beta _n\beta _k(nk)1,n>k.`$ (9)
The above relations imply that Eq. (2) never incorporates terms like $`(14x^2)^{\beta _n+j}`$ with positive integer $`n`$ and non-negative integer $`j`$.

We posit that the wave function is given by an infinite series

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(x)=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{Nn}{}}}c_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{j}\left(14x^2\right)^{\beta _n(m)+j}.`$ (10)
Substituting Eq. (10) into Eq. (1), we have

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`M^2\mathrm{\Phi }(x){\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}𝑑yH(x,y)\mathrm{\Phi }(y)|_{14x^2=ϵ}`$ (11)
$`=`$ $`4{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{0}\left(m^21+\pi \beta _n\mathrm{cot}\pi \beta _n\right)ϵ^{\beta _n1}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}F_{nj}(m;\beta _n;M;c\mathrm{})ϵ^{\beta _n+j}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}G_k(m;\beta _0,\beta _1\mathrm{};M;c\mathrm{})ϵ^k.`$
Of course, the first line in Eq. (11) cancels automatically because of the definition of $`\beta _n`$’s. Suppose that we truncate series in Eq. (10) to $`O(ϵ^{\beta _N})`$. That is, we set $`c_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{j}=0`$ for $`n+j>N`$. We demand Eq. (11) to hold up to $`O(ϵ^{\beta _N1})`$. Then we have $`N(N+3)/2`$ non-trivial equations. On the other hand, there are $`(N+1)(N+2)/2`$ unknown parameters. The number of parameters is larger than that of non-trivial equations by 1. Thus, we can solve the equations for $`c_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{j}`$ in terms of $`M^2`$. Another equation of use to us is obtained by multiplying both sides of Eq. (1) by $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x)`$ and integrating them over x,

$`M^2{\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}𝑑x\left|\mathrm{\Phi }(x)\right|^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}{\displaystyle _{1/2}^{1/2}}𝑑x𝑑y\mathrm{\Phi }(x)H(x,y)\mathrm{\Phi }(y).`$ (12)
For a given $`m`$, we put $`M^2=M_i^2`$. We can then solve Eq. (11) for $`c_{n}^{}{}_{}{}^{j}`$ in terms of $`M_i`$. We thus obtain the $`M_i`$ dependent truncated wave function, say,

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(x;M_i)`$. We can calculate a new mass eigenvalue $`M_{i+1}`$ using this wave function as

$`M_{i+1}^2={\displaystyle \frac{<\mathrm{\Phi }(M_i)|H|\mathrm{\Phi }(M_i)>}{<\mathrm{\Phi }(M_i)|\mathrm{\Phi }(M_i)>}}.`$ (13)
For $`N15`$ and $`m=0.01`$, mass $`M^2`$ converges in 5 iterations. For $`0<m<0.5`$, we obtain $`M^2`$’s and fit them by polynomials, as follows:

$`M^2(m)=3.6276m+3.5803m^2`$
$`+0.06836m^3+O(m^4).`$ (14)
It should be noted here that the

coefficients of $`m`$ are consistent with

Fig. 2

Bergknoff’s result. In order to see the efficacy of this new basis function expansion, we show the wave functions in Fig. 2. There, the thin solid line represents the LHS in Eq. (1), provided that the wave function was approximated by Eq. (10) with $`N=15`$. The dotted line denotes the RHS with $`N=2`$, the dot-dashed line exhibits the RHS with $`N=3`$, the dot-dot-dashed line represents the RHS with $`N=4`$, the dot-dash-dashed line stands for the RHS with $`N=5`$, and the dashed line exhibits the RHS with $`N=10`$. The thick solid line indicates the RHS in Eq. (1) with wave function given in Eq. (10) with $`N=15`$.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

In the previous section we have introduced the new basis function and calculated the mass eigenvalue of the bound state using the new basis function. We have found that (1) the new basis function gives an effective approximation of the wave function, and (2) the mass eigenvalues are consistent with the results of the precursors.

It should be noted that Eq.(10) is, mathematically, the most general expansion. This means that there is no room to introduce any other additional terms like $`d(14x^2)^\gamma `$ for $`\gamma \beta _n+j`$ with non-negative integers $`n`$ and $`j`$. If we introduce such terms, then the following equality should hold

$`0=4d\left(m^21+\pi \gamma \mathrm{cot}(\pi \gamma )\right)(14x^2)^{\gamma 1}.`$ (15)
This demands that $`d0`$.

## Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor K. Tanaka and Professor G.J. Aubrecht for comments and discussions during the early stage of this work. He is also grateful to Dr. Harada for useful discussions. This work was partialy supported by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan (No. 10640198).

## References


text:
# First-order quantum phase transition in the orthogonal-dimer spin chain

## I Introduction

Recent extensive experimental and theoretical investigations on low-dimensional spin systems with frustration have been providing a variety of interesting topics. Among others, the spin-gap compound found recently by Kageyama et al., $`\mathrm{SrCu}_2(\mathrm{BO}_3)_2`$, exhibits a number of nontrivial properties due to strong frustration.  In particular, the discovery of the magnetization plateaus at 1/3, 1/4 and 1/8 of the full moment has been stimulating further intensive studies.  The remarkable point claimed by Miyahara and Ueda is that this frustrated system is a prototypical example of the two-dimensional (2D) version of the orthogonal-dimer model,  whose unique structure gives rise to various unusual properties.  This 2D model is known to be equivalent to the frustrated Shastry-Sutherland model on a square lattice with some diagonal bonds. It has been recently shown that there exists a novel first-order quantum phase transition between the dimer and plaquette phases in the 2D orthogonal-dimer model, which is accompanied by the jump and cusp singularities in the spin gap near the transition point. What is most interesting is that the compound $`\mathrm{SrCu}_2(\mathrm{BO}_3)_2`$ may be located in the vicinity of the first-order transition point.

As seen from the above studies, characteristic properties in the 2D system around the first-order transition point are certainly caused by the strong frustration common to this class of the orthogonal-dimer spin systems. Therefore, to clarify the essential properties of the system, further systematic studies on the quantum phase transition are highly desired. The 1D version of the orthogonal-dimer model may be the most appropriate system for this purpose, because it is the simplest model which possesses the frustration effect due to the dimer-plaquette structure.

Motivated by these hot topics, in this paper, we study the first-order transition in the 1D orthogonal-dimer spin chain in detail. The Hamiltonian we shall deal with is,

$`=J{\displaystyle \underset{(i,j)}{}}𝐒_i𝐒_j+J^{}{\displaystyle \underset{<i,j>}{}}𝐒_i𝐒_jH{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}S_i^z,`$ (1)
where $`𝐒_i`$ is the $`s=1/2`$ spin operator at the $`i`$-th site, and the indices $`(i,j)`$ and $`<i,j>`$ represent the summation over intra- and inter-dimer pairs, respectively (see Fig. 1). The magnetic field is denoted as $`H`$ for which we set $`g\mu _\mathrm{B}=1`$ for convenience. Both of the exchange couplings $`J`$ and $`J^{}`$ are assumed to be antiferromagnetic. We shall use the normalized parameters $`j=J^{}/J`$ and $`h=H/J`$ in the following discussions.

It was previously shown by Ivanov and Richter that the above orthogonal-dimer chain undergoes the first-order quantum phase transition between the dimer phase (for small $`j`$) and the plaquette phase (for large $`j`$) as the coupling ratio $`j`$ is varied. However, the unique properties inherent in this frustrated system have not been discussed in detail yet, especially around the critical point. In what follows, by means of the exact diagonalization (ED) and series expansion methods, we demonstrate that the excitation gap in this system exhibits nontrivial behaviors such as the jump and cusp singularities around the transition point, reflecting the dimer-plaquette dual properties characteristic of this frustrated system. We also point out that such properties are not specific to the 1D system but also common to the 2D orthogonal-dimer system. By computing the magnetization curve by means of the ED together with the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG), we further reveal that the formation of the magnetic plateaus is dramatically affected by the dimer-plaquette dual properties, and the resulting magnetic phase diagram has a rich structure.

This paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, we investigate how the characteristic properties inherent in the orthogonal-dimer chain emerge in the low-energy excitations around the first-order transition point by means of the ED, the DMRG and the series expansion method. In Sec. III, by calculating the magnetization curve by the ED and the DMRG, we show that the plateau formation in the magnetization changes its character around the transition point, reflecting the strong frustration effects. The last section is devoted to summary and discussions.

## II zero-field properties

In this section, we investigate the quantum phase transition in the orthogonal-dimer chain in the absence of the magnetic field, by exploiting the ED and the series expansion methods.

### A Ground state

We start with the ground state properties in the dimer phase. When $`j=0`$, the system is reduced to an assembly of the decoupled dimers denoted by the solid line in Fig. 1, for which the product of independent dimer-singlets gives the ground state. The remarkable point for the orthogonal-dimer chain  is that this simple dimer-singlet state is always an exact eigenstate of the Hamiltonian (1) with the energy $`E_\mathrm{g}/JN=3/8`$ in the entire range of $`j`$ (see Fig. 2), where $`N`$ is the number of total sites. Accordingly, the dimer-singlet state should be the exact ground state up to a certain critical value of $`j`$.

In the opposite limit of large $`j`$, the ground state is given by the disordered singlet state which is adiabatically connected to the isolated plaquette-singlets denoted by the broken line in Fig. 1. Therefore, starting from the isolated plaquette singlets for $`j=\mathrm{}`$, we can evaluate the ground state energy $`E_\mathrm{g}`$ for the plaquette phase with finite $`j`$ by means of the series expansion. Performing the plaquette expansion up to the eleventh order in $`j^1`$ combined with the first-order inhomogeneous differential method, we have obtained the ground state energy $`E_\mathrm{g}`$ rather precisely for the plaquette phase. The result is shown as the solid line in Fig. 2. It is seen that the ground state energy of the plaquette state coincides with that of the dimer state at a certain value of $`j`$, at which the first-order quantum phase transition occurs. The critical value is estimated as $`j_c=0.81900`$, which is further confirmed to be accurate up to the above figure by the DMRG calculation for the infinite chain. We note here that the present results for the ground state are consistent with those obtained by Ivanov and Richter.

### B Spin excitations

Let us move to the spin excitation spectrum. In the dimer phase $`(0<j<j_c)`$, we can construct a low-energy triplet excitation by substituting a local triplet for one of singlet-dimers forming the ground state. The remarkable point is that the hopping of this local triplet across the singlet-dimer such as the $`1`$-$`3`$ dimer in Fig. 1 is forbidden by its characteristic crystal structure. This implies that an excited triplet state is completely localized inside the finite strip $`(N=6)`$, and has no dispersion for its spectrum. Thus we can exactly estimate the spin gap from the ED calculation for the cluster of $`N=6`$. In Fig. 3, the ED results are shown as the solid line in the dimer phase.

In the plaquette phase $`(j>j_c)`$, it is naively expected that the low-energy excitation is described in terms of a triplet excitation on the isolated plaquette. However, the frustrating diagonal interaction in each plaquette should considerably affect the excitation spectrum. To see this, it is instructive to examine the energy-level structure of the isolated plaquette with the diagonal bond (see Fig. 1), whose Hamiltonian reads

$`_{\mathrm{plaquette}}=J𝐬_1𝐬_3+J^{}\left(𝐬_1+𝐬_3\right)\left(𝐬_2+𝐬_4\right).`$ (2)
We list the energy eigenvalues of the plaquette in Table I, where $`S_{13}`$ ($`S_{24}`$) is a quantum number of the spin $`𝐬_1+𝐬_3`$ $`(𝐬_2+𝐬_4)`$ and $`S`$ is that for the total spin.

It is seen in this table that the eigenstates of the isolated plaquette are classified into two sectors: the $`D`$-sector for $`S_{13}=0`$ and the $`P`$-sector for $`S_{13}=1`$. For $`j>1/2`$, the ground state is always singlet in the $`P`$-sector, whereas both of two separated sectors appear for the excitations when the coupling ratio $`j`$ is varied. When $`1/2<j<1`$, the lowest excitation is given by the $`S_{24}`$-singlet and $`S_{24}`$-triplet in the $`D`$-sector, which are four-fold degenerate with the excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/J=2j1`$. In the regime $`j>1`$, the first excitation is a $`P`$-sector triplet with the excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/J=j`$. Note that as far as the singlet-triplet excitations in the $`P`$-sector are concerned, there are no contributions from the $`D`$-sector. This simple fact allows us to replace $`S_{13}`$ in the plaquette with the $`s=1`$ spin, which will be used below to perform the mixed-spin cluster expansion for the $`P`$-sector.

Keeping the above properties in mind, we now turn back to the orthogonal-dimer chain in the thermodynamic limit, by taking into account the interaction among plaquettes. Note that excitations in the $`D`$-sector are still completely separated from those in the $`P`$-sector, according to the constraint specific to the orthogonal-dimer structure. This remarkable fact enables us to study the excitation spectrum for the $`D`$-sector and the $`P`$-sector separately. Namely, we perform the plaquette expansion up to the eleventh order in $`j^1`$ for the $`D`$-sector, whereas for the $`P`$-sector we exploit the mixed-spin cluster expansion up to the seventh order in $`j^1`$ with a starting spin configuration $`1/211/2`$. Applying the first-order inhomogeneous differential method to the obtained series, we then deduce the lowest excitations both for the $`D`$-sector and the $`P`$-sector, as shown in Fig. 3. In this figure, the dashed line in the plaquette phase represents the energy for four-fold degenerate excitations in the $`D`$-sector whereas the solid line is for a triplet excitation in the $`P`$-sector. It is seen that the energy of two kinds of excitations intersects each other at $`j_c^{}=0.872`$, giving rise to a cusp singularity in the spin gap as a function of $`j`$. In the region $`j>j_c^{}`$, both of the ground state and the lowest excited state belong to the $`P`$-sector on each plaquette, as is the case for the simple plaquette chain. On the other hand, when $`j_c<j<j_c^{}`$, the lowest excitation is described by four-fold degenerate level in the $`D`$-sector although the ground state still belongs to the plaquette phase ($`P`$-sector). The present plaquette expansion further uncovers that the wave function of the localized $`D`$-sector excitation with no dispersion is spatially extended over a number of sites, which shows sharp contrast to the dimer phase where the wave function of the triplet excitation is completely localized at a given site. This may imply that the four-fold degenerate excitations characterized by the $`D`$-sector possess the intermediate properties between those typical for the dimer phase and the plaquette phase. As $`j`$ is further decreased, we encounter the first-order quantum phase transition, at which the ground-energy of the two phases coincide with each other, while the first excited states have still different energies. Therefore, the spin gap at the transition point jumps from $`\mathrm{\Delta }^+(j_c)=0.3590(2)`$ for the plaquette phase to $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(j_c)=0.32309`$ for the dimer phase.

In order to complement the series-expansion results, we also compute the lowest triplet excitation by the ED method for the finite chain ($`N=16,24`$) with the periodic boundary condition. The obtained spin gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is shown as the crosses and the open circles in Fig. 3. It is seen that they are in fairly good agreement with the results obtained by the series expansion method, except for the vicinity of the first-order transition point $`j_c`$, where the finite-size effect in the ED still remains. Here it should be noticed that the present results provide much more detailed information for spin excitations than those obtained by Ivanov and Richter, where the spin gap as a function of $`j`$ has only a cusp-like singularity at the critical point. We also note that the ladder system with a similar orthogonal-dimer structure has the jump and the cusp singularities in the spin gap.

## III Plateaus in the magnetization curve

In this section, we study the magnetic properties of the orthogonal-dimer chain. By using the ED and the DMRG methods, we calculate the magnetization curve as a function of the magnetic field $`h(=H/J)`$, and show that their characteristic behavior stems from the dimer-plaquette dual properties found for the excitations in the previous section. To clearly understand the magnetization curve in the low-field region, we shall use the description based on hard-core bosons, in which low-energy triplet excitations are regarded as hard-core bosons.

### A Dimer phase

Let us start with the dimer phase. In Fig. 4, we show the magnetization curve for $`j=0.7(<j_c)`$ obtained by the ED method for the finite chain of $`N=8,16`$ and $`24`$. We also show the results obtained by the DMRG method. In this figure, the plateaus appear in the magnetization curve at 1/4 and 1/2 of the full moment ($`m=1/2`$) clearly.

The mechanism of the $`1/2`$-plateau formation is simply understood according to the unit-cell structure of the chain. As will be shown below, the $`1/2`$-plateau appears in the entire range of $`j`$. On the other hand, the $`1/4`$-plateau may be realized by the commensurate state in which each triplet excitation is aligned periodically at every finite-strip of $`N=8`$, reflecting the completely-localized nature of the triplet excitation discussed in the previous section. Since the localized triplet does not correlate with those in the neighbor strips, the macroscopic number of the triplets become degenerate at the lower-critical field $`h_c`$ (= the spin gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$), where the magnetic first-order transition occurs. In Fig. 4, we can indeed see that the magnetization curve jumps from $`m=0`$ to $`m=1/8`$ (1/4-plateau) at $`h_c`$ without any finite-size correction. Increasing the magnetic field, the other first-order transition to the 1/2-plateau state occurs. It is seen in Fig. 4 that there still remains the large-finite size effect near this critical point, since the triplet excitations correlate with each other in contrast to the transition discussed above.

We here note that several different phases observed in the magnetization process are specified by the spatial arrangement of the spin quantum number, $`S_{13}`$, for the diagonal bond in each plaquette (see Table I). In the dimer phase, the $`D`$-sector ($`S_{13}`$=0) is realized in each plaquette and in the 1/4-plateau state, the $`D`$\- and the $`P`$-sectors are crystallized alternately. On the other hand, in the region of $`m>1/4`$, each diagonal bond in the plaquette forms $`S_{13}=1`$ (the $`P`$-sector), and hence the frustration does not play any role for the magnetization process in this region. Therefore by calculating the magnetization for the unfrustrated plaquette chain, we can simply reproduce that for the orthogonal-dimer chain in this region.

### B Plaquette phase

We recall that there are two sort of excitations characterized by the $`P`$\- and the $`D`$-sector in the plaquette phase, which may provide a variety of the magnetization process. More precisely, the hard-core boson description suggests three possible behaviors for the magnetization curves:

* case I: $`D`$-triplet excitations lie energetically lower than $`P`$-triplet excitations. The magnetization curve has a structure similar to that in the dimer-phase.
* case II: $`D`$-triplet excitations lie slightly above the bottom of the $`P`$-triplet dispersion curve (see Fig. 6). Thus both of the features specific to the $`D`$-triplet and the $`P`$-triplet excitations appear in the magnetization curve.
* case III: $`D`$-triplet excitations lie sufficiently higher above the spin gap for $`P`$-triplet excitations. The magnetization curve may be characterized solely by the $`P`$-triplet excitation.

Since the above classification is simply based on the hard-core boson description, the interaction among bosons becomes more important when the number of bosons (i.e. the strength of the external field) is increased, which requires more proper discussions beyond the hard-core boson description. In what follows, based on the numerical results, we confirm that the magnetization curves are indeed classified into the above three categories.

We start with the analysis of the case I. We show the magnetization process for $`j=0.86`$ in Fig. 5, where we can see the $`1/4`$\- and $`1/2`$-plateaus clearly. In particular the magnetization jumps from zero to the $`1/4`$ plateau at the critical field $`h_c`$ with a small finite-size correction.

In the plaquette phase, the 1/4-plateau is generated by the commensurate state in which the plaquette singlet and triplet in the $`D`$-sector are crystallized alternately. The characteristic point in the 1/4-plateau state is that $`D`$-triplet excitations interact with each other when they are condensed to form the $`1/4`$-plateau, in contrast to those in the dimer phase where each triplet excitation is localized completely. We can indeed see this interaction effect in the ED spectrum, where the triplets gain the condensation energy, by which the critical field $`h_c`$ shifts to a slightly lower field than the spin-gap value. We note here that since the mechanism of the 1/4-plateau formation (first-order transition) at $`h_c`$ is essentially the same in the dimer phase and in the plaquette phase, so that the critical field $`h_c`$ does not show the discontinuity at $`j=j_c`$ as a function of $`j`$ (see Fig.9), being contrasted to the discontinuity observed in the spin gap at $`j=j_c`$. Increasing the field, the magnetic first-order transition takes place to the state in which $`S_{13}=1`$ is formed in each plaquette. Beyond this critical field, the magnetization traces the curve which is the same as that for unfrustrated plaquette chain.

In the case II, the $`D`$-triplet excitation level lies slightly above the bottom of the $`P`$-triplet dispersion curve, as shown in Fig.6.

The coexistence of two-kinds of distinct excitations influences the magnetization curve considerably, as seen in Fig. 7. As $`h`$ increases beyond the critical field $`(h_c=\mathrm{\Delta })`$, the magnetization should develop with $`m(hh_c)^{1/2}`$, since it is dominated by the $`P`$-triplet excitation whose dispersion relation is quadratic near the bottom $`(q=\pi /2)`$. In fact, we can see a staircase structure below the $`1/4`$-plateau for the ED results in Fig. 7, implying that the jump is now changed to the continuous increase in the magnetization. With slightly increasing $`h`$, however, the magnetization may stop to increase continuously and jump to the $`1/4`$-plateau. Beyond the 1/4-plateau, we again encounter the first-order phase transition, which is accompanied by the jump in $`m`$. This jump singularity is followed by the continuous increase in $`m`$, as already discussed in the case I.

In the case III, the excitation energy of the $`D`$-triplet is pushed up in higher energy region of the dispersion curve. Thus, before the Zeeman energy lowers the $`D`$-triplet level down to zero, a number of bosons are accommodated in the $`P`$-triplet excited levels, and then the interaction effect between bosons becomes too significant to use the hard-core boson description. In this parameter region, we find that the $`1/4`$-plateau completely disappears and the magnetization curve becomes smooth up to the $`1/2`$-plateau.

Consequently, we end up with the magnetic phase diagram on the $`(jh)`$ plane as shown in Fig. 9.

In this figure, (a) and (a’) indicate the dimer-singlet and plaquette-singlet phase, respectively. The region (b) exhibits the plateau in the magnetization curve at 1/4 of the full moment. We can see that the 1/4-plateau phase with the dimer-singlet structure exists not only in the dimer phase $`(j<j_c)`$ but also in a part of the plaquette phase. In the region (c), the $`1/2`$-plateau appears, which is stable in the whole parameter region of $`j`$. All spins are polarized in (d). The bold (solid) line shows the phase boundary of the first- (second-) order transition. It is now seen that the magnetic phase diagram possesses quite a rich structure, which is indeed caused by the dimer-plaquette dual properties inherent in this strongly frustrated spin chain. Here we wish to mention that the ladder system with a similar orthogonal-dimer structure has the jump and the cusp singularities in the magnetization curve.

## IV Summary and Discussions

We have studied the low-energy properties of the orthogonal-dimer spin chain with a frustrated dimer-plaquette structure, by means of the exact diagonalization, the density matrix renormalization group and the series expansion method. When the inter-dimer couplings are varied, the first-order quantum phase transition occurs at the critical value $`j_c=0.81900`$ between the dimer-singlet and plaquette-singlet phases. In the dimer phase, the ground state is exactly given by the decoupled dimer-singlet state, and triplet excitations over it are completely localized. In the plaquette phase, on the other hand, we have found that the excited states are characterized by the dual properties: the coexistence of plaquette-like and dimer-like excitations. As a result, both of the cusp and the jump appear in the spin gap as a function of $`j`$, which are caused by the level-crossing between the excited states. We have also clarified how the above dual properties influence the magnetization process of the chain by analyzing the numerical results in terms of the hard-core boson description. In particular, we have shown that three types of the magnetization curves appear around the magnetization plateau at $`1/4`$ of the full moment, according to how two kinds of triplet excitations change their relative positions energetically. We have thus found that the magnetic phase diagram on the $`(jh)`$ plane has a rich structure.

Although we have dealt with the one-dimensional chain in this paper, we believe that the present study captures some essential properties of the first-order phase transition and the resulting rich structure in low-lying excited states even in two dimension. For the compound $`\mathrm{SrCu}_2(\mathrm{BO}_3)_2`$, it is indeed pointed out that the low-energy triplet excitation has quite small mobility reflecting the orthogonal-dimer structure. Since this compound is located in the vicinity of the first-order phase transition point, the present results encourage us to interpret the plateau-formation mechanism of the 2D compound in terms of the dual properties originating from the dimer and plaquette structures. In particular, it is an interesting problem to study how the characteristic properties in 1D are changed into those in 2D by adiabatically introducing the inter-chain coupling, which may provide a clue to fully understand the physics in 2D orthogonal-dimer system.

## Acknowledgement

The work is partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture. A. K. and K. O. are supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. A part of our computational program is based on the TITPACK ver. 2 by H. Nishimori. Numerical computations in this work was carried out at the Yukawa Institute Computer Facility.


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# Baryon Rapidity Loss in Relativistic Au+Au Collisions

## Abstract

An excitation function of proton rapidity distributions for different centralities is reported from AGS Experiment E917 for Au+Au collisions at 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon. The rapidity distributions from peripheral collisions have a valley at mid-rapidity which smoothly change to distributions that display a broad peak at mid-rapidity for central collisions. The mean rapidity loss increases with increasing beam energy, whereas the fraction of protons consistent with isotropic emission from a stationary source at midrapidity decreases with increasing beam energy. The data suggest that the stopping is substantially less than complete at these energies.

PACS number(s): 25.75.-q, 13.85.Ni, 21.65.+f

Nuclear matter is believed to be compressed to high baryon density ($`\rho _B`$) during central collisions of heavy nuclei at relativistic energies. In the interaction region of the colliding nuclei, nucleons undergo collisions which reduce their original longitudinal momentum. This loss of rapidity is an important characteristic of the reaction mechanism, and is often referred to as stopping. The rapidity loss for beam nucleons has been extensively studied in p+A reactions and more recently in heavy-ion reactions. Relativistic heavy-ion collisions are unique in the sense that secondary collisions of excited baryons are expected to contribute to the rapidity loss leading to simultaneous stopping of many nucleons within the interaction volume. The $`\rho _B`$ thus reached may be large enough to induce phase transitions, such as quark deconfinement and/or chiral symmetry restoration . The observation of large numbers of baryons at mid-rapidity is indicative of compression to high $`\rho _B`$, but the quantitative connection to $`\rho _B`$ is only possible via model calculations. An important key to our understanding of this phenomenon is systematic data for the rapidity distributions of baryons over a broad range of conditions, such as beam energy and centrality.

In this Letter, we present an excitation function of the centrality dependence of proton rapidity distributions from Au+Au collisions at 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon. At these energies, the measured ratio of antiprotons to protons is very small ($`<0.03\%`$) and the production of protons from $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ decay contributes less than 5% to the total yield. The measured protons can therefore be considered to directly reflect the distribution in rapidity of the initial baryons (assuming that the neutron rapidity distribution has a similar shape). The measured rapidity distributions at all three beam energies show a similar evolution with centrality. They are clearly bimodal in shape for peripheral collisions and change to shapes which for central collisions may still be bimodal in nature. This suggests that the degree of stopping in central collisions is not complete, even in this heavy system. In addition, it is shown that the protons do not end up as an isotropically emitting source at mid-rapidity, but retain a fair degree of their initial longitudinal motion. This phenomenon is represented by a parameterized fit to the data with a superposition of longitudinally moving sources.

Experiment E917 measured Au+Au reactions at beam kinetic energies of 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon at the Brookhaven AGS, and was the final experiment in the series E802/E859/E866/E917. The experimental apparatus in E917 consisted of a series of beam-line detector arrays which were used for global event characterization, and a large rotatable magnetic spectrometer used to track and identify particles. The tracking system of the spectrometer consisted of a series of drift and multi-wire ionization chambers, which bracketed either side of a dipole magnet, followed by a segmented time-of-flight wall of vertical scintillator slats. The data presented here were taken with a trigger that required at least one track in the spectrometer. The centrality of an event can be selected through either of two approximately equivalent methods: (1) from the multiplicity measured by a large acceptance device called the New Multiplicity Array, or (2) from the energy deposited in the zero degree calorimeter. The data were sorted off-line into different centrality classes, where normalization was provided by prescaled interaction triggers. For each beam energy, the five event classes are reported as the percentage of the total interaction cross section ($`\sigma _{\mathrm{int}}`$ = 6.8 b), corresponding to (0-5)%, (5-12)%, (12-23)%, (23-39)%, and (39-81)% ((39-77)% for 10.8 GeV/nucleon) of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{int}}`$.

The systematic uncertainty on the normalization of the measured invariant spectra and rapidity distributions is dominated by the uncertainty of the single-track efficiency and the loss of tracks due to hit-blocking. The tracking uncertainty increases from 5% to 10% towards mid-rapidity. For peripheral collisions, there is a 10% uncertainty in the cross section, which decreases to 5% for central collisions. These uncertainties lead to a total systematic uncertainty of 15% independent of centrality, with a 5% relative uncertainty across beam energies.

The measured invariant yields of protons from Au+Au collisions at 8 GeV/nucleon are shown in ten rapidity intervals in Fig. 1 as a function of the transverse mass, $`m_t=\sqrt{p_t^2+m_0^2}`$. The spectra at 8 GeV/nucleon are representative of the quality of the data at other beam energies. The errors are statistical only. The data were fit with a Boltzmann-form function in $`m_t`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi m_t}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2N}{dm_tdy}}={\displaystyle \frac{dN/dy}{2\pi (m_0^2T+2m_0T^2+2T^3)}}m_te^{(m_tm_0)/T}`$ (1)
where $`T`$ and $`dN/dy`$ are free parameters. The data points were weighted according to their statistical errors. As has been previously reported, for Au+Au collisions at 10.8 GeV/nucleon, the proton spectra cannot be satisfactorily described by a single exponential function. In contrast, the above form reproduces the spectra well with $`\chi ^2`$ per d.o.f in the range 0.5 - 2.0, and provides the inverse slope parameter ($`T`$) and the rapidity density ($`dN/dy`$) for each rapidity interval.

The centrality dependence of the rapidity density at each beam energy is shown in Fig. 2. The data are shown relative to the rapidity of the center-of-mass of the system ($`y_{\mathrm{cm}}`$) which equals 1.35, 1.47, and 1.61 for beam kinetic energies of 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon, respectively. The data points reflected about mid-rapidity are shown as open symbols. The errors were calculated from the fitting procedure. The present values of $`dN/dy`$ for the most central event class at 10.8 GeV/nucleon are in good agreement with the previously reported values from the E866 Collaboration.

For each beam energy, a common trend is observed in the evolution of the shape of the rapidity distributions as a function of centrality. For the most peripheral event class the distribution has a minimum value of $`dN/dy`$ 6 at mid-rapidity. This concave shape persists to the next most central event class, corresponding to a centrality cut of (23-39)%, consistent with the expectation that most of the participant protons reside at beam rapidities following these relatively peripheral collisions. For more central collisions, the rapidity distributions become progressively flatter, and begin to develop a broad maximum at mid-rapidity for all beam energies. The trend of the data suggests, however, that for the most central collisions, the distribution does not evolve to a single peak centered at mid-rapidity, but rather is consistent with two components each displaced from mid-rapidity, or with a set of sources spread throughout the rapidity range. To qualitatively emphasize this point, we have fit each of the measured distributions with two Gaussian peaks centered symmetrically about mid-rapidity. These are shown superimposed on the data for the three most central event classes at 8 GeV/nucleon in Fig. 3 and clearly display the trend. This result, somewhat surprisingly, implies that complete stopping is not achieved at AGS energies and that the longitudinal rapidity distribution is a result of transparency.

To quantify these results, we calculate the mean rapidity loss from the fits for the most central collisions $`\delta y=y_{beam}y`$ where $`y`$ refers to the Gaussians centered at positive rapidity. These values are listed in Table I. To compare with previous results for the most central data at 10.8 GeV/nucleon, we have also calculated the mean rapidity loss for protons in the restricted rapidity range $`1.11<yy_{\mathrm{cm}}<0`$ and find a value of 1.07$`\pm `$0.05, which is in good agreement with the value of 1.02$`\pm `$0.01 obtained for the (0-4)% most central Au+Au collisions at the same beam energy reported by Videbæk and Hansen .

The mean rapidity losses determined from our data show a systematic increase with incident energy. The mean rapidity loss does not, however, fully characterize all the features of the final rapidity distribution. Despite the fact that a considerable amount of the original longitudinal momentum of the incident particles has been lost, the situation is clearly far from one where they are completely stopped. Fig. 4 shows the $`dN/dy`$ distributions and inverse slopes for the (0-5)% most central event classes at all three energies plotted as solid points. The dashed curves in Fig. 4 show the expected distribution for complete stopping - i.e. isotropic emission from a source at rest in the center-of-mass system emitting protons with a Boltzmann energy distribution, the effective temperature of which is adjusted to reproduce the inverse slope of the transverse mass spectrum at mid-rapidity. The effective temperature thus accounts for the combined effects of radial expansion and temperature of this source.

Whereas this gives a good description of the rapidity dependence of the inverse slope parameters, it completely fails for the $`dN/dy`$ distributions. In fact, only a fraction of the observed yields can be accounted for in such a scenario. The yields can, however, be adequately accounted for by emission from a continuum of isotropic sources, uniformly distributed over a rapidity range $`y_{cm}\pm y_b`$. In order to account for the rapidity dependence of the inverse slope parameter it is, however, necessary to introduce a Gaussian rapidity dependency of the effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}(y)=T_{\mathrm{eff}}^0\mathrm{exp}((yy_{\mathrm{cm}})^2/2\sigma _T^2)`$. The solid curves shown in Fig. 4 were obtained by a four parameter simultaneous fit of $`y_b;T_{\mathrm{eff}}^0;\sigma _T`$; and $`N_0`$ ($`dN/dy`$ normalization) to the experimental $`dN/dy`$ and inverse slope $`T(y)`$ values. Based on the fit $`dN/dy`$-distributions, the total number of protons within the range $`2<yy_{cm}<2`$ ($`_2^2\frac{dN}{dy}𝑑y`$) was found to be 155, 164, and 159 for $`E_{\mathrm{beam}}`$ = 6, 8, and 10.8 GeV/nucleon, respectively. Since the total initial number of protons (158) is approximately accounted for, this suggests that the extrapolation into the unmeasured region is quite reasonable.

The fraction of the observed protons corresponding to complete stopping ($`f_{iso}`$) was calculated as the ratio of the areas under the dashed and solid curves, respectively. The values of $`f_{iso}`$ at each energy are listed in Table I. The values of the absolute rapidity loss from the distributed source fits are also listed in Table I. They are in close agreement with the values from the Gaussian fits and show the same systematic increase with increasing incident energy. This result is different from observations in p+A collisions in which the rapidity loss was found to be independent of beam energy . This would suggest an increased role of secondary interactions which increase stopping in heavy-ion collisions. In contrast, the fractional rapidity loss, $`\delta y/\delta y_{max}`$, where $`\delta y_{max}=y_{beam}y_{cm}`$, is found to be essentially constant with beam energy from 6 to 158 GeV/nucleon, similar to the trend noted in Ref. .

In summary and conclusion, we have measured proton rapidity distributions for Au+Au collisions at three energies as a function of collision centrality. These distributions show a consistent evolution with increasing energy and centrality leading to maximal rapidity loss for the most central collisions and the highest energy. This result suggests the importance of secondary reactions in the heavy-ion case, contrary to the situation in p+A collisions. Nevertheless, the degree of stopping of the incident baryons is far from complete and only a fraction of the observed protons can be accounted for by the emission from a stopped isotropically emitting source. The remainder still possess considerable longitudinal momentum. It is not possible to say unequivocally from the present data alone whether or not this corresponds to a situation where the colliding nuclei are, to some extent, “transparent”, or a fully stopped and compressed system has re-expanded. However, the systematic behavior of the centrality dependence of the shapes of the rapidity distributions suggests, surprisingly, that the former is the case.

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contracts with ANL (No. W-31-109-ENG-38), BNL (No. DE-AC02-98CH10886), MIT (No. DE-AC02-76ER03069), UC Riverside (No. DE-FG03-86ER40271), UIC (No. DE-FG02-94ER40865), and the University of Maryland (No. DE-FG02-93ER40802), the National Science Foundation under contract with the University of Rochester (No. PHY-9722606), and the Ministry of Education and KOSEF (No. 951-0202-032-2) in Korea.