format: text

text:
# Unified approach to quantum capacities: towards quantum noisy coding theorem

## Abstract

Basing on unified approach to all kinds of quantum capacities we show that the rate of quantum information transmission is bounded by the maximal attainable rate of coherent information. Moreover, we show that, if for any bipartite state the one-way distillable entanglement is no less than coherent information, then one obtains Shannon-like formulas for all the capacities. The inequality also implies that the decrease of distillable entanglement due to mixing process does not exceed of corresponding loss information about a system.

The challenge for the present quantum information theory is to determine the quantum capacity of noisy channels . The problem is difficult mainly for two reasons. First, according to the present knowledge, unlike in the classical case, there are at least five different types of quantum capacities . This is because quantum information channel can be supplemented by one- or two-way classical channel . Moreover, there are teleportation channels , for which a bipartite state is a resource. The second reason is that quantum capacity exhibits a kind of nonadditivity  that makes them extremely hard to deal with.

As one knows, the key success of classical information theory is the famous Shannon noisy coding theorem, giving the formula for capacity of noisy channel

$$C=\underset{X}{sup}I(X;Y)$$
(1)
where the supremum is taken over all sources $`X`$; $`I(X;Y)=H(X)+H(Y)H(X;Y)`$ is the Shannon mutual information (with $`H`$ being the Shannon entropy); $`Y`$ is the random variable resulting from action of the noise to $`X`$. In quantum information theory the candidate for the counterpart of mutual information has been found . It is the so-called coherent information (CI). To define it, consider two coherent informations of the bipartite state $`\varrho `$ with reductions $`\varrho _A`$ and $`\varrho _B`$:

$$I^X(\varrho )=S(\varrho _X)S(\varrho ),X=A,B,$$
(2)
for $`S(\varrho ^X)S(\varrho )0`$ and $`I^X=0`$ otherwise. Here $`S(\varrho )=\text{Tr}\varrho \mathrm{log}_2\varrho `$ is the von Neumann entropy. Then one defines the coherent information for a channel $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and a source state $`\sigma `$ as

$$I(\sigma ,\mathrm{\Lambda })=I^B((I\mathrm{\Lambda })(|\psi \psi |)),$$
(3)
where $`\psi `$ is a pure state with reduction $`\sigma `$ (the quantity does not depend on the choice of $`\psi `$). Now, the following connection between coherent information and a quantum capacity is known

$$Q_ø\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{n}\underset{\varrho _n}{sup}I(\varrho _n,\mathrm{\Lambda }^n)I_ø^B(\mathrm{\Lambda })$$
(4)
where $`Q_ø`$ is the maximal number of qubits that can be reliably sent down the channel without any supplementary classical channel. Note that if, instead of inequality, there were equality, then we would have analogue of Shannon formula.

Unfortunately, despite a huge effort devoted to the problem , the equality has not been proven so far. Moreover, remarkably, the similar inequality is not known for other capacities than $`Q_ø`$, i.e. the ones attainable at the support of backword ($`Q_{}`$) or two-way ($`Q_{}`$) classical communication . There are also capacities of quantum teleportation channels, where the resource is bipartite state rather than channel. In the latter case, transmission requires prior manipulations (called distillation ) over the shared pairs, transforming them into pairs in pure maximally entangled states. Then the quantum information can be transmitted by using teleportation . The manipulations include any local actions, and one- or two-way classical communication. Correspondingly, we have two kinds of one-way distillable entanglement of a state $`\varrho `$, $`D_{}`$ or $`D_{}`$ (since $`\varrho `$ need not be symmetric, one distinguishes directions of classical communication) and two-way distillable entanglement $`D_{}`$. In fact, $`Q_{}`$ also necessarily involves the distillation and teleportation process.

The latter processes are so exotic from the point of view of classical information theory, that no analogue of theory of error correcting codes has been worked out for them so far. In contrast, in the case of the capacity $`Q_ø`$, there exists a huge theory of quantum codes, being a generalization of classical error correcting codes theory .

In the above context the basic question arise: Is there possible a consistent approach for all of the capacities? In particular: Is there a single counterpart of the Shannon mutual information? In this paper, we provide a unified framework for all capacities. We show that one and the same coherent information, although in different contexts, is a basic quantity in each case. More specifically, we show that the inequality (4) is, in a sense, universal. Given any type of supplementary resources, the maximal rate of quantum communication (quantum capacity) is bounded by the maximal rate of coherent information attainable via these resources (CI capacity).

Now, there remains the fundamental question: Are the quantum capacities equal to corresponding CI capacities? We will show that the following hypothetical inequality (call it hashing inequality )

$$D_{}(\varrho )I^B(\varrho ),$$
(5)
if satisfied for all bipartite states $`\varrho `$, implies that the capacities are equal to one another in all cases (see Theorem 2). In other words, the hashing inequality implies the Shannon-like formulas for quantum capacities, providing the quantum noisy coding theorem. Consequently, we argue that to prove (or disprove) this inequality is one of fundamental tasks of the present information theory. In particular, if the inequality holds, then to evaluate $`Q_ø`$ one would need to consider only the maximization problem of the right-hand-side of the inequality (4). Finally, we show that the power of the above inequality is even more surprising. Namely, it also implies the relation between loss of classical information, and loss of distillable entanglement .

Surprisingly, the reasoning leading to our results on capacities is extremely simple. Namely, the capacity of a channel or bipartite state at given supplementary resource is the optimal rate of reliable transmission of qubits. However, this is equivalent to optimal rate of reliable sharing two-qubit pairs in maximally entangled (in short, singlet) states . Thus, we can imagine that Alice and Bob, started with large number $`n`$ of pairs in initial state $`\varrho ^n`$ (or disposed $`n`$ uses of quantum channel $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$), aim to share the maximal attainable number $`k`$ of singlet pairs. The capacity is just the optimal rate $`k/n`$. Then, what is the coherent information $`I_{out}^X`$ of the output of such protocol attaining capacity? Since the coherent information is additive, and for singlet state $`I^X=1`$, then $`I_{out}^X`$ equals to the number $`k`$ of final singlet pairs. Thus the obtained rate of the coherent information $`I_{out}^X/n`$ is equal to capacity. But the maximal attainable rate of coherent information (i.e. CI capacity) is no less than the one acheievable in some particular protocol, so that it is no less than the capacity.

Assume now, that for any bipartite state, its capacity (i.e. distillation rate) is no less than its coherent information. Then we consider the following protocol. Alice and Bob start from $`k`$ groups of $`n`$ pairs (or divide $`kn`$ uses of channel into $`k`$ groups), with $`k,n`$ being large, and for any group obtain the final state $`\varrho `$ of maximal attainable coherent information. Then they distill the latter state, and, by assumption, obtain the final number of singlet pair no less than the coherent information of $`\varrho `$. Since the latter was maximal attainable one, we conclude that the capacity of the input state $`\varrho `$ or channel $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is no less than CI capacity. Therefore, due to previous paragraph, the quantities must be equal.

The presented argumentation is very intuitive. It is similar to the approach of Ref. , that has already appeared to be fruitful in a different context . The rigourous version of the above heuristic approach is more or less immediate. Indeed, the main simplification we made was the assumption that exact singlets are produced. In fact, they are always impure (the impurity vanishes in the asymptotic or “thermodynamic” limit of infinite number of input pairs). However such simplification does not lead to wrong conclusions, if only the involved functions exhibit suitable continuity. In the rigorous proofs below we will use continuity of coherent information.

Let us now pass to the rigorous part of the paper. As mentioned, we will be concerned with four supplementary resources $`C\{,,,ø\}`$. (The last one symbolizes no supplementary resource). If Alice and Bob dispose one use of a channel $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (directed, by convention, from Alice to Bob) and the supplemetary resources symbolized by $`C`$, then they can share a bipartite state $`\varrho `$. An operation that produced in this way the state $`\varrho `$ from $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ will be denoted by $`_C`$ so that

$$\varrho =_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }).$$
(6)
If Alice and Bob share initially a bipartite state $`\varrho _{in}`$, then we will use notation $`𝒟_C`$

$$\varrho _{out}=𝒟_C(\varrho _{in})$$
(7)
(The letters used in our notation follows from the common associations: usual channel capacity – error correction, teleportation channels – distillation). Now, the CI capacitites are defined by

$$I_C^X(\mathrm{\Lambda })=\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{n}\underset{_C}{sup}I^X(_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n))$$
(8)
for channels, and

$$I_C^X(\varrho )=\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{n}\underset{𝒟_C}{sup}I^X(𝒟_C(\varrho ^n))$$
(9)
for bipartite states . Throughout the paper, the symbol $`X`$ stands for $`A`$ or $`B`$.

We also define quantum capacities as follows . Define maximally entangled state on the space $``$ by

$$P_+()=|\psi _+()\psi _+()|,\psi _+()=\frac{1}{\sqrt{d}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}|ii,$$
(10)
where $`|i`$ are basis vectors in $``$, while $`d=dim`$. Given a state $`\varrho `$, consider sequence of operations $`\{𝒟_C^n\}`$ (called protocol) transforming the input state $`\varrho ^n`$ into the state $`\sigma _n`$ acting on the Hilbert space $`_n_n`$ and with $`dim_n=d_n`$, satisfying

$$F_n\psi _+(_n)|\sigma _n|\psi _+(_n)1.$$
(11)
The asymptotic ratio attainable via given protocol is then given by

$$D_{\{𝒟_C^n\}}(\varrho )=\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{log}_2dim_n}{n}$$
(12)
Then the capacity $`D_C(\varrho )`$ (call it $`C`$-distillable entanglement) is defined by maximum over all possible protocols

$$D_C(\varrho )=supD_{\{𝒟_C^n\}}(\varrho ).$$
(13)
The usual channel capacities can be defined in the same way. We only need make the following substitutions: $`DQ`$, $`\varrho \mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`𝒟`$. The protocols $`\{_C^n\}`$ and $`\{𝒟_C^n\}`$ that achieve the considered suprema will be called optimal error correction and optimal distillation protocol, respectively. The quantity $`D_ø`$ is a bit pathological, but certainly interesting quantity. We will not be concerned with it here. However, it is likely, that $`D_ø`$ is the amount of pure entanglement that can be drawn from the state reversibly.

We will need a lemma, stating that coherent information $`I^X`$ is continuous on isotropic state. The latter is defined on $``$ (cf. )

$$\varrho (F,d)=pP_+()+(1p)\frac{1}{d^2}I,0p1,$$
(14)
with $`\text{Tr}\left[\varrho (F,d)P_+()\right]=F`$, $`d=dim`$.

Lemma. For a sequence of isotropic states $`\varrho (F_n,d_n)`$, such that $`F_n1`$ and $`d_n\mathrm{}`$ we have

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{\mathrm{log}_2d_n}I^X(\varrho (F_n,d_n))1.$$
(15)
Proof. This can be checked by direct calculation.

We note an important property of the isotropic state . Namely, any state $`\sigma `$ acting on $``$, if subjected to $`UU^{}`$ twirling (cf. ), i.e. random unitary transformations of the form $`UU^{}`$, becomes isotropic state $`\varrho (d,F)`$ with $`F=\text{Tr}\left[\sigma P_+()\right]`$, $`d=dim`$.

Now we can state the theorems being the main results of this paper.

Theorem 1. Quantum capacities are bounded from above by CI capacities:

$`Q_C(\mathrm{\Lambda })I_C^X(\mathrm{\Lambda }),`$ (16)
$`D_C(\varrho )I_C^X(\varrho )`$ (17)
for any $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\varrho `$ and $`C\{,,,ø\}`$. Theorem 2. If the hashing inequality

$$D_{}(\varrho )I^B(\varrho )$$
(18)
holds for any bipartite state $`\varrho `$ then the qantum capacities are equal to corresponding CI capacities

$`Q_{}(\mathrm{\Lambda })=I_{}^X(\mathrm{\Lambda }),Q_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{}{()}}(\mathrm{\Lambda })=I_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{}{()}}^{B(A)}(\mathrm{\Lambda }),`$ (19)
$`Q_ø(\mathrm{\Lambda })=I_ø^B(\mathrm{\Lambda }),`$ (20)
$`D_{}(\varrho )=I_{}^X(\varrho ),D_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{}{()}}(\mathrm{\Lambda })=I_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{}{()}}^{B(A)}(\varrho ).`$ (21)
Remarks. (i) If we assumed “dual” hashing inequality $`D_{}I^B`$, we would get the same results modulo change $`AB`$. Our choice of $`D_{}I^B`$ is motivated by investigations of Refs. . (ii) It follows that the hashing inequality implies $`I_{}^A=I_{}^B`$. (iii) Our results apply to other kind of supplementary resurces such as e.g. public bound entanglement.

Proof of Theorem 1. We will prove the “Q” part of the theorem. The proof for “D” part is similar. Let $`\{_C^n\}`$ be the optimal error correction protocol for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Then we have the following estimates

$$I_C^X(\mathrm{\Lambda })\frac{1}{n}I^X(_C^n(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n))\frac{1}{n}I^X(\varrho (d_n,F_n))Q_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }),$$
(22)
where $`\varrho (d_n,F_n)`$ is the twirled state $`\sigma _n=_C^n(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n)`$. The first inequality comes from the very definition of $`I_C^X`$. The second one follows from convexity of $`I^X`$ , and its invariance under product unitary tranformations (as the twirled state is a mixture of product unitary tranformations of the initial one). Finally, since in optimal error correction protocol we have $`F_n1`$, and $`\mathrm{log}d_n/nQ_C`$, we obtain the right-hand-side limit by applying continuity of $`I_X`$ (see lemma).

Proof of Theorem 2. We will also prove only the “Q” part. For $`C\{,,\}`$, consider the following particular error correcting protocol for the channel $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Lambda }^n`$. One applies to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ the operation $`_C`$ that produces the state $`\sigma =_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n)`$ of maximal attainable coherent information. Subsequently, one performs optimal distillation protocol for the state $`\sigma `$. Then we find

$`Q_C(\mathrm{\Lambda })={\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}Q_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n){\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}D_C(_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n))`$ (23)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}I^X(_C(\mathrm{\Lambda }^n))I_C^X(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ (24)
where $`C\{,,\}`$; $`X=A,B`$ for $`C=`$, and $`X=A(B)`$ for $`C=()`$. The equality follows from the very definition of $`Q_C`$. The first inequality comes from the fact, that $`Q_C`$ is supremum over all error correction protocols, so it is no less from the rate obtained in the protocol above. The second inequality follows from the hashing inequality, and from the obvious inequality $`D_{}D_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{}{()}}`$. Finally, the limit is due to the definition of $`I_C^X(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$. The above estimate together with Theorem 1 gives all the desired equalities apart from the one involving $`C=ø`$. That the latter one is also implied by the hashing inequality, it follows immediately from the facts: (a) trivially $`I_ø^BI_{}^B`$; (b) $`Q_{}=Q_ø`$ ; (c) as just proved, the hashing inequality implies $`Q_{}=I_{}^B`$.

Let us now prove yet another important implication of the hashing inequality. Namely, consider the process of discarding information

$$\{p_i,\varrho _i\}\varrho =\underset{i}{}p_i\varrho _i.$$
(25)
In Ref.  it was shown that, for a class of ensembles $`\{p_i,\varrho _i\}`$, the amount of information lost in the process is no less than the loss of distillable entanglement $`D_{}`$, and it was conjectured to hold in general. The loss of information is quantified by average increase of entropy, so that the problem is whether the folowing inequality holds

$$\underset{i}{}p_iD_C(\varrho _i)D_C(\varrho )S(\varrho )\underset{i}{}p_iS(\varrho _i).$$
(26)
Note, that for pure state $`\psi `$, $`D_C(\psi )=S(\varrho ^X)`$, where $`\varrho ^X`$ is either of the reductions of $`\psi `$ . Therefore, for pure states $`\varrho _i`$, the inequality reads

$$D_C(\varrho )\underset{i}{}p_iS(\varrho _i^X)S(\varrho )$$
(27)
Applying convexity of entropy we see that the hashing inequality implies the above one. It is interesting, that it does not seem to imply the inequality for impure $`\varrho _i`$’s.

Let us list that recent results concerning entanglement distillation, implying that it is reasonable to conjecture that the hashing inequality (5) holds. (i) In all cases where one has sufficiently tight lower bounds for $`D_{}`$, the inequality is known to be satisfied. For pure states, and other ones with entanglement of formation equal to entanglement of distillation  we have $`D_{}=I^B`$. For mixtures of two-qubit Bell states we have $`D_{}I^B`$ by hashing protocol . In particular, for some of them there is equality , while for other ones one has $`D_{}>I^B`$ . (ii) If the hashing inequality is true, then any upper bound for $`D_{}`$ should be no less than $`I^X`$. This was shown for entanglement of formation  and, quite recently, for relative entropy of entanglement . We do not know yet, if the inequality holds for the new bound for $`D`$ derived in . (iii) If a state is bound entangled , then we should have $`I^X=0`$. It is indeed the case. According to Ref. , the bound entangled states must satisfy the so called reduction criterion of separability. This implies  that the entropic inequality $`S(\varrho )S(\varrho _X)`$ is also satisfied, hence $`I^X=0`$. Thus we see that there is a strong evidence that the inequality is true. We believe that the present results will stimulate to prove (or disprove) it.

The work is supported by Polish Committee for Scientific Research, contract No. 2 P03B 103 16, and by the IST project EQUIP, contract No. IST-1999-11053.


text:
# The connectedness of the moduli space of maps to homogeneous spaces

## 0. Introduction

Let $`X`$ be a compact algebraic homogeneous space: $`X=𝐆/𝐏`$ where $`𝐆`$ is a connected complex semisimple algebraic group and $`𝐏`$ is a parabolic subgroup. Let $`\beta H_2(X,)`$. The (coarse) moduli space $`\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta )`$ of $`n`$-pointed genus $`g`$ stable maps parameterizes the data

$$[\mu :CX,p_1,\mathrm{},p_n]$$

satisfying:

1. $`C`$ is a complex, projective, connected, reduced, (at worst) nodal curve of arithmetic genus $`g`$.
2. The points $`p_iC`$ are distinct and lie in the nonsingular locus.
3. $`\mu _{}[C]=\beta `$.
4. The pointed map $`\mu `$ has no infinitesimal automorphisms.

Since $`X`$ is convex, the genus 0 moduli space $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(X,\beta )`$ is of pure dimension

$$\text{dim}(X)+_\beta c_1(T_X)+n3.$$

Moreover, $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(X,\beta )`$ is locally the quotient of a nonsingular variety by a finite group. For general $`g`$, the space $`\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta )`$ may have singular components of different dimensions. Stable maps in algebraic geometry were first defined in \[Ko\]. Basic properties of the moduli space $`\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta )`$ can be found in \[BM\], \[FP\], and \[KoM\]. The following connectedness result is proven here.

###### Theorem 1.

$`\overline{M}_{g,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ is a connected variety.

This result may be viewed as analogous to the connectedness of the Hilbert scheme of projective space proven by Hartshorne. As in \[Har\], connectedness is obtained via maximal degenerations.

Since $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(X,\beta )`$ has quotient singularities, connectedness is equivalent to irreducibility.

###### Corollary 1.

$`\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ is an irreducible variety.

Corollary 1 is easy to verify in case $`X`$ is a projective space. When $`X`$ is a Grassmannian, the irreducibility follows from Strømme’s Quot scheme analysis \[S\]. A proof of Corollary 1 can be found in case $`𝐆=\mathrm{𝐒𝐋}`$ in \[MM\]. For the variety of partial flags in $`^n`$, a proof of irreducibility using flag-Quot schemes is established in \[Ki\]. Results of Harder closely related to Corollary 1 appear in \[Ha\]. There is an independent proof by J. Thomsen for the irreducibility of $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ in \[T\].

The moduli space $`\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta )`$ has a natural locally closed decomposition indexed by stable, pointed, modular graphs $`\tau `$ (see \[BM\]). The strata correspond to maps with domain curves of a fixed topological type and a fixed distribution $`\beta _\tau `$ of $`\beta `$. The graph $`\tau `$ determines a complete moduli space of stable maps

$$\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )$$

together with a canonical morphism:

(1)
$$\pi _\tau :\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta ).$$

A closed decomposition is determined by the images of these morphisms (1). Theorem 1 is a special case of the following result.

###### Theorem 2.

$`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ is a connected variety.

Since $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )`$ is normal in the genus 0 case, we obtain the corresponding corollary.

###### Corollary 2.

Let $`g=0`$. $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ is an irreducible variety.

In particular, all the boundary divisors of $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(X,\beta )`$ are irreducible.

Theorem 2 is proven by studying the maximal torus action on $`X`$. The method is to degenerate a general $`𝐆`$-translate of a map $`\mu :CX`$ onto a canonical $`1`$-dimensional configuration of $`^1`$’s in $`X`$ determined by the maximal torus and the Bialynicki-Birula stratification of $`X`$.

In the genus 0 case, we study the Bialynicki-Birula stratification of $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(X,\beta )`$. The following result is then deduced from the rationality of torus fixed components.

###### Theorem 3.

$`\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ is rational.

The fixed component rationality is equivalent to a rationality result for certain quotients of $`\mathrm{𝐒𝐋}_2`$-representations proven by Katsylo and Bogomolov \[Ka\], \[Bog\]. It should be noted that the fixed components will in general be contained in the boundary of the moduli space of maps – the compactifaction by stable maps therefore plays an important role in the proof.

The rationality of the Hilbert schemes of rational curves in projective space (birational to $`\overline{M}_{0,0}(^r,d)`$) is a consequence of Katsylo’s results \[Ka\] and was also studied by Hirschowitz in \[Hi\].

The main part of this paper was written in 1996 at the Mittag-Leffler Institute where the authors benefitted from discussions with many members. Thanks are especially due to I. Ciocan-Fontanine, B. Fantechi, W. Fulton, T. Graber, and B. Totaro. Conversations with F. Bogomolov were also helpful. B. K. was partially supported by KOSEF grant 1999-2-102-003-5 and POSTECH grant 1999. R. P. was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-9801574 and an A. P. Sloan foundation fellowship.

## 1. The torus action on $`𝐆/𝐏`$

Let $`𝐆`$ be a connected complex semisimple algebraic group. Let $`𝐏`$ be a parabolic subgroup. Select a maximal algebraic torus $`𝐓`$ and Borel subgroup $`𝐁`$ of $`𝐆`$ satisfying:

$$𝐓𝐁𝐏𝐆.$$

Let $`(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$ denote the fixed point set of the left $`𝐓`$-action on $`𝐆/𝐏`$. Three special properties of this $`𝐓`$-action will be needed:

1. The $`𝐓`$-action has isolated fixed points.
2. For every point $`p(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$, there exits a $`𝐓`$-invariant open set $`U_p`$ containing $`p`$ which is $`𝐓`$-equivalent to a vector space representation of $`𝐓`$.
3. Let $`^{}𝐓`$ correspond to an interior point of a Weyl chamber. Then, $`(𝐆/𝐏)^{^{}}=(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$, and the Bialynicki-Birula decomposition obtained from the $`^{}`$-action is an affine stratification of $`𝐆/𝐏`$.

A stratification is a decomposition such that the closures of the strata are unions of strata. In general, the Bialynicki-Birula decomposition obtained from a $`^{}`$-action on a nonsingular variety need not be a stratification.

The claims (i)-(iii) are well known. Only a brief summary of the arguments will be presented here. Let $`𝐖`$ be the Weyl group of $`𝐆`$ relative to $`𝐓`$.

###### Lemma 1.

$`|(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓|=|𝐖|`$, and $`𝐖`$ acts transitively on $`(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓`$.

Proof. See, for example, \[Bor\]. ∎

In particular, $`(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓`$ is a finite set.

###### Lemma 2.

The natural map $`(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$ is surjective.

Proof. Let $`p(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$. The invariant fiber (isomorphic to $`𝐏/𝐁`$) over the fixed point $`p`$ is a nonsingular projective variety, and hence contains a $`𝐓`$-fixed point by the Borel fixed point theorem (or, alternatively, this is a Hamiltonian action on a compact manifold). ∎

Therefore, $`𝐖`$ acts transitively on the finite set $`(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$.

A representation $`\psi :𝐓\mathrm{𝐆𝐋}(V)`$ is fully definite if there exists a $`^{}`$-basis of $`𝐓`$ for which all the weights of the representation are positive integers. Equivalently, a fully definite representation can be written

$$\psi (t_1,\mathrm{},t_r)v_j=\underset{i=1}{\overset{r}{}}t_i^{\lambda _{ij}}v_j$$

where $`\lambda _{ij}>0`$ for some choice of $`^{}`$-basis of $`𝐓`$ and $``$-basis $`\{v_j\}`$ of $`V`$.

The point $`1𝐆/𝐁`$ corresponding to the identity element of $`𝐆`$ is a $`𝐓`$-fixed point. The $`𝐓`$-action induces a representation

$$\varphi :𝐓\mathrm{𝐆𝐋}(\text{Tan}_1𝐆/𝐁).$$

###### Lemma 3.

The representation $`\varphi `$ is fully definite.

Proof. The natural quotient map $`q:𝐆𝐆/𝐁`$ is $`𝐓`$-equivariant for the conjugation action on $`𝐆`$ and the left action on $`𝐆/𝐁`$. The differential of $`q`$ yields an isomorphism from the Adjoint representation of $`𝐓`$ on $`\mathrm{Lie}(𝐆)/\mathrm{Lie}(𝐁)`$ to $`\varphi `$. $`\mathrm{Lie}(𝐆)/\mathrm{Lie}(𝐁)`$ is the space of positive roots. This $`𝐓`$-representation space has $`n`$ simple roots (where $`n`$ is the rank of $`𝐆`$). All the 1-dimensional representations in $`\mathrm{Lie}(𝐆)/\mathrm{Lie}(𝐁)`$ are non-negative tensor products of these simple roots. Moreover, the $`n`$ weight vectors of these simple roots are independent in the lattice of 1-dimensional representations of the torus $`𝐓`$. Lemma 3 now follows from Lemma 4 below. ∎

###### Lemma 4.

Let $`\psi :𝐓\mathrm{𝐆𝐋}(^n)`$ be an $`n`$ dimensional representation of a rank $`n`$ torus $`𝐓`$. If the $`n\times n`$ matrix of weights is nonsingular, then the representation is fully definite.

Proof. See \[Bi\]. ∎

###### Lemma 5.

The $`𝐓`$-representation $`\text{Tan}_1𝐆/𝐏`$ is fully definite.

Proof. There is a surjection of $`𝐓`$-modules given by the differential $`\mathrm{Tan}_1𝐆/𝐁\mathrm{Tan}_1𝐆/𝐏`$.

###### Proposition 1.

For every $`p(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$, there exists a $`𝐓`$-invariant Zariski open set $`U_p𝐆/𝐏`$ of $`p`$ which is $`𝐓`$-equivalent to a vector space representation of $`𝐓`$.

Proof. By a theorem of Bialynicki-Birula \[Bi\], it suffices to show the tangent representation of $`𝐓`$ is fully definite at $`p`$. This is a consequence of Lemma 5 and the transitivity of the $`𝐖`$-action on $`(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$. (In fact, only definiteness of the tangent representation is needed in \[Bi\].) ∎

Let $`^{}𝐓`$ correspond to an interior point of a Weyl chamber. By the analysis of the tangent representation $`\varphi `$, every point of $`(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓`$ is an isolated fixed point of $`^{}`$. The equality $`(𝐆/𝐁)^{^{}}=(𝐆/𝐁)^𝐓`$ follows. Since the map $`(𝐆/𝐁)^{^{}}(𝐆/𝐏)^{^{}}`$ is surjective, $`(𝐆/𝐏)^{^{}}=(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$.

For each $`p(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$, let $`A_p`$ be the set of points $`x𝐆/𝐏`$ such that

$$\underset{t0}{lim}tx=p.$$

By Proposition 1, $`A_p`$ is isomorphic to the affine space $`^{r_p}`$ where $`r_p`$ is the number of positive weights in the $`^{}`$-representation $`\text{Tan}_p𝐆/𝐏`$. The set $`\{A_p\}`$ is the Bialynicki-Birula affine decomposition of $`𝐆/𝐏`$. In fact, $`\{A_p\}`$ coincides (up to the Weyl group action) with the (open) Schubert cell stratification of $`𝐆/𝐏`$. This is essentially proven in \[Bor\] for the case $`𝐆/𝐁`$. The general case $`𝐆/𝐏`$ is proven in \[A\]. Therefore, $`\{A_p\}`$ is a stratification.

## 2. The $`^{}`$-flow

Let $`^{}𝐓`$ correspond to an interior point of a Weyl chamber. Let $`s,x_1,\mathrm{},x_l(𝐆/𝐏)^𝐓`$ be the fixed points corresponding to the unique maximal dimensional stratum $`A_s`$ and the complete set of codimension 1 strata, $`A_1,\mathrm{},A_l`$, respectively. The points of $`A_s`$ flow $`(t0)`$ to $`s`$, and the points of $`A_i`$ flow $`(t0)`$ to $`x_i`$. Let $`U=A_sA_1\mathrm{}A_l`$. Since the Bialynicki-Birula decomposition $`\{A_p\}`$ is a stratification, $`U`$ is a Zariski open set with complement of codimension at least 2.

The inverse action of $`^{}`$ on $`𝐆/𝐏`$ is also a torus action on $`𝐆/𝐏`$ with the same fixed point set. Let $`A_s^{},A_1^{},\mathrm{},A_l^{}`$ be the affine strata for the inverse action corresponding to the fixed points $`s,x_1,\mathrm{},x_l`$. Let $`\text{dim}(𝐆/𝐏)=m`$. Since,

$$\text{dim}(A_p)+\text{dim}(A_p^{})=m,$$

$`A_1^{},\mathrm{},A_l^{}`$ are the complete set of $`1`$-dimensional strata for the inverse action. Moreover, the closure $`P_i=\overline{A^{}}_i`$ can contain only the unique $`0`$-dimensional stratum $`A_s^{}=s`$. We have shown the closures $`P_i`$ are contained in $`U`$. Each $`P_i`$ is isomorphic to $`^1`$ (Chevelley \[C\] proves the closed Schubert cells have singularities in codimension at least 2). The intersection pairing

$$P_i\overline{A}_j=\delta (ij)$$

follows from the above analysis. Since the closed strata of the inverse action freely generate the integral homology, the classes

$$[P_1],\mathrm{},[P_l]H_2(𝐆/𝐏,)$$

span an integral basis of $`H_2(𝐆/𝐏,)`$.

Let $`f:C𝐆/𝐏`$ be a non-constant stable map satisfying the following properties:

1. The image $`f(C)`$ lies in $`U`$.
2. $`C`$ intersects (via $`f`$) the divisors $`A_i`$ transversely at nonsingular points of $`C`$.
3. All the markings of $`C`$ have image in $`A_s`$.

If $`[f]`$ represents the class

$$\beta =\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}a_i[P_i]H_2(𝐆/𝐏,),$$

then let $`C`$ meet $`A_i`$ at the $`a_i`$ distinct points

$$\{x_{i,1},\mathrm{},x_{i,a_i}\}.$$

We will study the induced $`^{}`$-action on $`\overline{M}_{g,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ by translation of maps. Let $`F:C_0𝐆/𝐏`$ be the limit in the space of stable maps,

$$F=\underset{t0}{lim}tf$$

where $`t^{}`$.

Define a map $`\stackrel{~}{F}:\stackrel{~}{C}𝐆/𝐏`$ as follows. Let the domain $`\stackrel{~}{C}`$ be:

$$\stackrel{~}{C}=C\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(_{j=1}^{a_i}𝐏_{i,j}^1)$$

where $`𝐏_{i,j}^1`$ is a projective line attached to $`C`$ at the point $`x_{i,j}`$. Let the markings of $`\stackrel{~}{C}`$ coincide with the markings of $`C`$ (note the markings of $`C`$ are disjoint from the set $`\{x_{i,j}\}`$ by condition (ii)). Define $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$ by $`\stackrel{~}{F}(C\stackrel{~}{C})=s`$ and

$$\stackrel{~}{F}|_{𝐏_{i,j}^1}:𝐏_{i,j}^1\stackrel{}{=}P_i$$

for each $`i`$ and $`j`$.

###### Proposition 2.

If $`f`$ satisfies conditions (i-iii), then the $`t0`$ limit $`F`$ equals the stabilization of $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$.

Proof. Let $`^{}`$ be the punctured holomorphic disk at the origin. Let

$$h:C\times ^{}𝐆/𝐏$$

be the map defined by $`h(c,t)=tf(c)`$. The $`^{}`$-action on $`A_s`$ extends to a map

$$\times A_sA_s$$

since the $`^{}`$-action on $`A_s`$ is a vector space representation with positive weights. The map $`h`$ thus extends to a map

$$h:C\times \{x_{i,j}\times 0\}𝐆/𝐏$$

since the $`f`$-image of $`C\{x_{i,j}\}`$ lies in $`A_s`$. Note,

(2)
$$h(C\{x_{i,j}\},0)=s.$$

After a suitable blow-up

$$\gamma :SC\times $$

supported along the isolated nonsingular points $`\{x_{i,j}\times 0\}`$ of $`C\times `$, there is a morphism $`h^{}:S𝐆/𝐏`$.

The limit as $`t0`$ of $`tf(x_{i,j})`$ equals $`x_i`$. Hence, the exceptional divisor $`C_{i,j}`$ of $`\gamma `$ over $`x_{i,j}`$ connects the points $`x_i`$ to $`s`$ under the map $`h^{}`$. The image $`h^{}(C_{i,j})`$ thus represents an effective curve class containing the class $`[P_i]`$. By degree considerations over all the exceptional divisors $`C_{i,j}`$, we conclude $`h^{}(C_{i,j})`$ is of curve class exactly $`[P_i]`$. As $`P_i`$ is the unique $`^{}`$-fixed curve of class $`[P_i]`$ connecting the points $`x_i`$ and $`s`$,

$$h^{}(C_{i,j})=P_i.$$

We may assume $`S`$ to be nonsingular (away from the original nodes of $`C`$) and each $`C_{i,j}`$ to be a normal crossings divisor – possibly after further blow-ups and base changes altering only the special fiber over $`0`$. We then conclude each $`C_{i,j}`$ has a single component which is mapped to $`P_i`$ isomorphically (and the other components of $`C_{i,j}`$ are contracted).

After blowing-down the $`h^{}`$-contracted components of each $`C_{i,j}`$, we obtain a map $`h^{\prime \prime }:S^{\prime \prime }𝐆/𝐏`$ which is a family of nodal maps over $``$. The fiber of $`S^{\prime \prime }`$ over $`t=0`$ is isomorphic to $`\stackrel{~}{C}`$. Moreover, the condition $`\stackrel{~}{F}(C\stackrel{~}{C})=s`$ follows directly from (2).

The limit stable map $`F`$ is then simply obtained by stabilizing the map $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$. We have carried out the stable reduction of the family of maps $`tf`$ (see \[FP\]). ∎

## 3. Connectedness

Let $`[\mu ]`$ denote the point $`[\mu :CX,p_1,\mathrm{},p_n]\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta ).`$ The stable, pointed, modular graph $`\tau `$ with $`H_2(X,)`$-structure canonically associated to $`[\mu ]`$ consists of the following data:

1. The pointed dual graph of $`C`$:

1. The vertices $`V_\tau `$ correspond to the irreducible components of the curve $`C`$.
    2. The edges correspond to the nodes.
    3. The markings correspond to the marked points $`p_i`$.
2. The genus function, $`g_\tau :V_\tau ^0`$, where $`g_\tau (v)`$ is the geometric genus of the corresponding component of $`C`$.
3. The $`H_2(X,)`$-structure, $`\beta _\tau :V_\tau H_2(X,\beta )`$, where $`\beta _\tau (v)`$ equals the $`\mu `$ push-forward of the fundamental class of the corresponding component of $`C`$.

Following \[BM\], define $`M_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )`$ to be the moduli space of maps $`\mu `$ together with an isomorphism of $`\tau _\mu `$ with a fixed stable graph $`\tau `$. The space $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )`$ is the compactification via stable maps where the vertices of $`V_\tau `$ may correspond to nodal curves. Note $`M_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )`$ may not be dense in $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )`$.

There is a canonical morphism

$$\pi _\tau :\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(X,\beta _\tau )\overline{M}_{g,n}(X,\beta ).$$

As $`\tau `$ varies over possible graphs, the images of $`\pi _\tau `$ determine a (closed) decomposition of the moduli space of maps.

Let $`\tau `$ be a stable, pointed, modular graph with $`H_2(𝐆/𝐏,)`$-structure. The connectedness of $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ will now be established.

Proof of Theorem 2. If $`\beta _\tau =0`$, the irreducibility of $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ is a direct consequence of the irreducibility of the corresponding stratum in $`\overline{M}_{g,n}`$ and the irreducibility of $`𝐆/𝐏`$. We may thus assume $`\beta _\tau 0`$.

Fix the $`^{}`$-action on $`𝐆/𝐏`$ as studied in Section 2. Consider an arbitrary point

$$[\mu ]\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau ).$$

By the Kleiman-Bertini Theorem, a general $`𝐆`$-translate $`f`$ of $`\mu `$ satisfies conditions (i-iii) of Section 2. As $`𝐆`$ is connected, $`[\mu ]`$ is connected to its general $`𝐆`$-translate $`[f]`$.

The point $`[f]`$ is connected to the limit:

$$[F]=\text{lim}_{t0}[tf].$$

To prove the connectedness of $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$, it suffices to prove the set of limits $`F`$ lies in a connected locus of the moduli space. We will first construct the required connected locus of $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$.

The pair $`(\tau ,\beta _\tau )`$ canonically determines a family of maps $`\gamma _b`$ with nodal domains over a base $`bB`$. For $`vV_\tau `$, let $`\beta _\tau (v)=_ia_i^v[P_i]`$. Define the base space $`B`$ as follows:

$$B=\underset{vV_\tau }{}\overline{M}_{g(v),\text{val}(v)+_ia_i^v},$$

where $`\text{val}(v)`$ is the valence of $`v`$ in $`\tau `$ (including nodes and markings). The extra $`_ia_i^v`$ markings each correspond to a basis homology element – with $`a_j^v`$ of these markings corresponding to $`[P_j]`$. The degenerate cases $`\overline{M}_{0,1}`$ and $`\overline{M}_{0,2}`$ in the product $`B`$ are taken to be points. $`B`$ is irreducible and hence connected.

For $`b=_v[b_v]B`$, let

$$\gamma _b:D_b𝐆/𝐏$$

be defined as follows:

1. $`D_b`$ is obtained by attaching the curves $`b_v`$ by connecting nodes as specified by $`\tau `$ and further attaching $`^1`$’s to each of the extra points $`_ia_i^v`$.
2. For each subcurve $`b_vD_b`$, $`\gamma _b(b_v)=s`$.
3. For each $`^1`$ corresponding to $`[P_j]`$, $`\gamma _b(^1)\stackrel{}{=}P_j`$.

The family of maps $`\gamma _b`$ over $`B`$ then defines a morphism (via stabilization):

$$ϵ:B\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau ).$$

Certainly the image variety $`ϵ(B)`$ is connected.

By Proposition 2, the limit $`F`$ is simply the stabilization of $`[\stackrel{~}{F}]`$. Since $`\stackrel{~}{F}=\gamma _b`$ for some $`b`$, the set of limits $`F`$ lies in a connected locus of $`\overline{M}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$. This concludes the proof of Theorem 2. ∎

Theorem 1 is a special case of Theorem 2 (where $`\tau `$ has a single vertex). Corollary 2 is a simple consequences of Theorem 2.

Proof of Corollary 2. In the genus 0 case, $`\tau `$ is a tree with genus function identically zero. The moduli stack

(3)
$$\overline{}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )$$

is constructed as a fiber product over the evaluation maps obtained from the edges of $`\tau `$. We will prove $`\overline{}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ is a nonsingular Deligne-Mumford stack by induction on the number of vertices of $`\tau `$.

First, suppose $`\tau `$ has only 1 vertex $`v`$. Then, the moduli stack (3) is $`\overline{}_{0,\text{val}(v)}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau (v))`$ – a nonsingular moduli stack by the convexity of $`𝐆/𝐏`$.

Next, let $`\tau `$ have $`m`$ vertices and let $`v`$ be an extremal vertex ($`v`$ is incident to exactly 1 edge). Let $`p𝐆/𝐏`$ be a point. By the Kleiman-Bertini Theorem,

(4)
$$\text{ev}_1^1(p)\overline{}_{0,\text{val}(v)}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau (v))$$

is a nonsingular Deligne-Mumford stack for the general point $`p`$ (and hence every point $`p`$). Let $`\tau ^{}`$ be the graph obtained by removing $`v`$ from $`\tau `$ and adding an extra marking corresponding to the broken node. The moduli stack (3) is fibered over

(5)
$$\overline{}_{\tau ^{},n^{}+1}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau ^{})$$

with fiber (4). As (5) is nonsingular by induction, the stack (3) is thus nonsingular. This completes the induction step.

Finally, since $`\overline{}_{\tau ,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta _\tau )`$ is a nonsingular and connected Deligne-Mumford stack, it is irreducible. ∎

## 4. Rationality

We first review a basic rationality result proven in a sequence papers by Katsylo and Bogomolov \[Ka\], \[Bog\]. Let $`V=^2`$ be a vector space. Let $`a_1,a_2,\mathrm{},a_n`$ be a sequence of positive integers with $`_ia_i3`$. Then, the quotient

(6)
$$(\text{Sym}^{a_1}V^{})\times \mathrm{}\times (\text{Sym}^{a_n}V^{})//\mathrm{𝐏𝐆𝐋}(V)$$

is a rational variety – we may take any non-empty invariant theory quotient. Geometrically, the quotient (6) is birational to the moduli space quotient

(7)
$$M_{0,_ia_i}/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{a_1}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_{a_2}\times \mathrm{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_{a_n}$$

where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the symmetric group. Essentially, the rationality of (6) is deduced from rationality in case $`n=1`$ \[Ka\]. Proofs in the $`n=1`$ case may be found in \[Ka\], \[Bog\].

We will also need the following simple Lemma.

###### Lemma 6.

Let $`W`$ be any finite dimensional linear representation of $`𝐀`$ where $`𝐀=\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ or $`𝐀=\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$. Then, $`W/𝐀`$ is rational.

Proof. By the complete reducibility of representations and the fact that a $`\mathrm{𝐆𝐋}`$-bundle is locally trivial in the Zariski topology, it suffices to prove the Lemma in case $`W`$ is an irreducible representation. It is then easily checked by hand the two irreducible representation of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ and the three irreducible representations of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$ have rational quotients. ∎

Proof of Theorem 3. Fix the $`^{}`$-action on $`𝐆/𝐏`$ as studied in Section 2. We first consider the moduli space

$$\overline{M}=\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta =\underset{i}{}a_i[P_i])$$

where the property

(8)
$$n+\underset{i}{}a_i4$$

is satisfied.

Let $`\tau `$ be the graph with a single vertex $`v`$ with $`n`$ markings, and let $`\beta _\tau (v)=_ia_i[P_i]`$. Let $`\gamma _b`$ over $`B`$ be the family of maps constructed canonically from $`(\tau ,\beta _\tau )`$ in the proof of Theorem 2. The base $`B`$ is simply:

(9)
$$B=\overline{M}_{0,n+_ia_i}.$$

The map $`\gamma _b`$ over a general point $`bB`$ has no map automorphisms (as $`n+_ia_i4`$). Hence, the image $`ϵ(B)`$ in $`\overline{M}`$ intersects the nonsingular (automorphism-free) locus of the moduli space $`\overline{M}^0\overline{M}`$. Let

$$ϵ(B)^0=ϵ(B)\overline{M}^0,$$

and let $`B^0=ϵ^1(ϵ(B)^0).`$ The map

$$B^0ϵ(B)^0$$

is simply a quotient of $`B^0`$ by the natural $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{a_1}\times \mathrm{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_{a_n}`$ action on (9). By the rationality result (6), $`ϵ(B)^0`$ is rational.

Consider now the $`^{}`$-action on $`\overline{M}^0`$ by translation. As $`\overline{M}^0`$ is a nonsingular, irreducible, quasi-projective variety, we may study the Bialynicki-Birula stratification of $`\overline{M}^0`$. By the proof of Theorem 2, $`ϵ(B)^0`$ is a $`^{}`$-fixed locus which contains the limit,

$$\text{lim}_{t0}t[f],$$

of the general point $`[f]\overline{M}^0`$. By \[Bi\], $`\overline{M}^0`$ is birational to an affine bundle over $`ϵ(B)^0`$. Therefore, $`\overline{M}`$ is rational. The proof of Theorem 3 is complete in case (8) is satisfied.

Next, we will consider the case where the sum (8) is at most 3. In this case, the base $`B`$ is a point. If $`ϵ(B)`$ lies in the automorphism-free locus, the previous argument proving the rationality of $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ is still valid. There are exactly four cases in which the point $`ϵ(B)`$ corresponds to a map with nontrivial automorphisms:

1. $`n=0`$, $`\beta =3[P_i]`$.
2. $`n=0`$, $`\beta =2[P_i]+[P_j]`$, $`ij`$.
3. $`n=0`$, $`\beta =2[P_i]`$.
4. $`n=1`$, $`\beta =2[P_i]`$.

Here, the Deligne-Mumford stack structure of these moduli spaces is important. The automorphism group in case (i) is $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$ and in cases (ii-iv) is $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. In each case, we will show the coarse moduli space $`\overline{M}_{0,n}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$ is birational to a quotient of a linear representation of the corresponding automorphism group.

Consider first the case (i): $`n=0`$, $`\beta =3[P_i]`$. Let $`ϵ(B)=[\gamma ]`$. Let $`[\mu ]`$ denote the unique 3-pointed stable map obtained from $`\gamma `$ by marking each $`^1\stackrel{}{=}P_i`$ by a point lying over $`x_i`$. Certainly, $`[\mu ]\overline{M}_{0,3}^0(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$

We will study:

$$N\overline{M}_{0,3}^0(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )$$

where $`N`$ is the component of the locus of transverse intersection of the three divisors $`\text{ev}_1^1(\overline{A}_i)`$, $`\text{ev}_2^1(\overline{A}_i)`$, and $`\text{ev}_3^1(\overline{A}_i)`$ containing $`[\mu ]`$. The torus $`^{}`$ acts on $`N`$ by translation. By an argument exactly parallel to the flow result of Proposition 2, we deduce

$$\text{lim}_{t0}t[f]=[\mu ]$$

for a general element $`[f]N`$. As $`N`$ is a nonsingular, quasi-projective scheme, Theorem 2.5 of \[Bi\] implies that $`N`$ is $`^{}`$-equivariantly birational to the tangent $`^{}`$-representation at $`[\mu ]`$.

There is a $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$-action on $`N`$ by permutation of the markings. The $`^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$ actions commute. A slightly refined version of Theorem 2.5 of \[Bi\] shows $`N`$ is $`^{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$-equivariantly birational to the tangent $`^{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$-representation at $`[\mu ]`$. Lemma 7 below explains the refinements of the results of \[Bi\] needed here. $`N/\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$ is birational to $`\overline{M}_{0,0}(𝐆/𝐏,\beta )`$. Hence, by Lemma 6, Theorem 3 is proven in case (i).

A similar strategy is used in cases (ii-iv). In each of these cases, let $`ϵ(B)=[\gamma ]`$ and let $`[\mu ]`$ denote the rigidification by adding 2 new markings $`,^{}`$ which lie over $`x_i`$. The locus $`N`$ is chosen as the corresponding transverse intersection locus of $`\text{ev}_{}^1(\overline{A}_i)`$ and $`\text{ev}_{^{}}^2(\overline{A}_i)`$ in the maps space with the new markings. $`N`$ is then $`^{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$-equivariantly birational to the tangent $`^{}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$-representation of $`N`$ at $`[\mu ]`$ by the refined Lemma 7. Theorem 3 is then a consequence of Lemma 6 since $`N/\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ is birational to the moduli space of maps considered in the case. ∎

###### Lemma 7.

Let $`𝐀`$ be a finite group. Let $`S`$ be a nonsingular, irreducible, quasi-projective scheme with a $`^{}\times 𝐀`$-action and a $`^{}\times 𝐀`$-fixed point $`sS`$. Let $`T_s`$ denote the $`^{}\times 𝐀`$-representation on the tangent space at $`s`$. Suppose the $`^{}`$-action is fully definite at $`s`$. Then, there is $`^{}\times 𝐀`$-equivariant isomorphism between an open set of $`(S,s)`$ and $`(T_s,0)`$.

Proof. We note $`^{}\times 𝐀`$ is a linearly reductive group. By Theorem 2.4 of \[Bi\] for linearly reductive group actions, we may find a third nonsingular irreducible pointed space $`(Z,z)`$ with a $`^{}\times 𝐀`$-action and equivariant, étale, morphisms:

$$\pi _1:(Z,z)(S,s),$$

$$\pi _2:(Z,z)(T_s,s).$$

In the proof of Theorem 2.5 of \[Bi\], such morphisms $`\pi _1`$ and $`\pi _2`$ are proven to be open immersions by a study of only the $`^{}`$-action. Hence, the morphisms $`\pi _1`$ and $`\pi _2`$ are open immersions in our case. By the full definiteness of the $`^{}`$-representation on $`T_s`$, the morphism $`\pi _2`$ is then an isomorphism. ∎


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

There is a remarkable difference between the quantum properties of the classically integrable and fully chaotic (ergodic) systems. While in the integrable case the wavefunctions possess an ordered structure, the eigenstates of classically ergodic systems appear random (Berry 1977, Voros 1979) in the semiclassical limit $`\mathrm{}0`$. They can be locally well represented as a superposition of plane waves with equal wavevector magnitude but random phases, leading to the Gaussian distribution of the wavefunction amplitude. The assumption of random phases may, however, break down on dynamical grounds when $`\mathrm{}`$ is not sufficiently small. This leads to the phenomenon of scars, which are the regions of amplified wavefunction amplitude close to the short and weakly unstable classical periodic orbits (Heller 1984).

In the classically mixed systems the energy (hyper)surface is split into both chaotic regions, within which the motion is ergodic, and the regular regions where motion is, as in the fully integrable case, quasiperiodic and confined to invariant tori within the energy surface. We call such systems generic since this is the most general type of Hamiltonian dynamics. The principle of uniform semiclassical condensation (PUSC, see Robnik 1988,1998) states that the quantal phase space distribution of any eigenstate, given by its Wigner function, should be uniformly distributed on a classically invariant object in the phase space when $`\mathrm{}0`$. This object can be either an invariant torus in one of the regular regions in the phase space or a whole chaotic component.

While the PUSC is valid for fully integrable and ergodic systems, its full potential is shown when applied to the generic case. Here it predicts that the eigenstates are separated into regular and irregular ones, depending on whether the classical object onto which their Wigner function condenses is a regular torus or a chaotic component, respectively. This has far reaching consequences leading, for example, to the picture of Berry and Robnik (1984) for the statistics of energy levels, where the regular and chaotic states are assumed to contribute independent level sequences to the total spectrum. This was confirmed by many numerical computations (Prosen and Robnik 1993b, 1994 and 1999, Prosen 1995, 1996 and 1998, Robnik 1998).

In this work we are interested in geometrical and statistical properties of high lying eigenfunctions. It is an extension of previous work done on mixed type systems by Prosen and Robnik (1993c,1994) and by Li and Robnik (1995a,b), but also relates to and further develops the paper by Li and Robnik (1994) concerning the statistical properties of chaotic states, which drastically differ from the properties of regular states in classically integrable systems (Robnik and Veble 1998). The main step forward in the numerical direction was the use of the so-called scaling method, introduced by Vergini and Saraceno (1995), with which we obtained the states with consecutive indices around $`2.510^6`$ and thus it enabled us to go much farther into the semiclassical region. On the other hand, we were able to semiclassically reconstruct the numerically obtained regular states by employing the Einstein-Brillouin-Keller (EBK) torus quantization in section 3.1, where we offer a new approach to this problem, especially on the numerical side. While we were not able to semiclassically reconstruct the chaotic states, we obtained a good prediction of their statistical properties by strictly employing the PUSC (see Robnik 1998) in section 3.2.

## 2 Our catalogues of states

We dealt with a model billiard system obtained by conformally mapping the unit circle with the complex quadratic polynomial, as introduced by Robnik (1983, 1984),

$$zw(z)=z+\lambda z^2,w(z)=x+iy.$$
(1)
The range of $`x`$ at $`y=0`$ inside the billiard is $`x[1+\lambda ,+1+\lambda ]`$. We used the value of $`\lambda =0.15`$, where the classical phase space is roughly equally divided into components of regular and chaotic motion. We chose the Poincaré surface of section (SOS) to lie on the symmetry axis $`y=0`$ with coordinate $`x`$ and the conjugate momentum $`p_x`$ as the parameters of the surface. The intersection of the main chaotic component of our billiard with the SOS is shown in the figure 1. The coordinate $`x`$ is taken relative to the center of the billiard (i.e. it is shifted by $`\lambda `$ w.r.t. $`x=0`$ of equation (1), so that now the range of $`x`$ is $`x[1,+1]`$), while $`p_x`$ is the $`x`$-component of the unit momentum vector.

The quantum mechanics of billiards is described by the Helmholtz equation

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }+k^2)\psi =0,$$
(2)
with the Dirichlet boundary conditions, where $`k^2=2mE/\mathrm{}^2`$. We limited ourselves to the states with even parity with respect to reflection across the symmetry line $`y=0`$.

For each state we calculated the smoothed projection of the Wigner function. The Wigner function of a state $`\psi (𝐪)`$ in the general case of $`N`$ degrees of freedom is defined in the full phase space $`(𝐪,𝐩)`$ as (Berry 1983)

$$W(𝐪,𝐩)=\frac{1}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^N}d^N𝐗\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐗/\mathrm{})\psi ^{}(𝐪𝐗/2)\psi (𝐪+𝐗/2).$$
(3)
In our case the eigenfunctions $`\psi (x,y)`$ generate their Wigner transforms $`W(x,y,p_x,p_y)`$ through (3), where $`N=2`$. In order to compare the Wigner function of a state of our system with the classical SOS plot we took its value on the symmetry line ($`y=0`$) and integrated it over $`p_y`$,

$$\rho _{SOS}(x,p_x)=dp_yW(x,y=0,p_x,p_y).$$
(4)
The result is

$$\rho _{SOS}(x,p_x)=\frac{1}{2\pi \mathrm{}}𝑑X\mathrm{exp}(ip_xX/\mathrm{})\psi ^{}(xX/2,y=0)\psi (x+X/2,y=0).$$
(5)
Here we see the reason for considering the even parity states only, because $`\psi (x,y=0)`$ is exactly zero for odd states, and therefore a different approach must be used to analyze them.

As is well known, the Wigner function is not positive definite but exhibits small oscillations that can blur the overall picture. We chose to smooth the projection of the Wigner function by a suitable Gaussian. It was chosen narrower than the minimum uncertainty Gaussian (in which case the Wigner function becomes the positive definite Husimi distribution) in order not to smooth out too many features, but still wide enough to reduce the oscillations.

The first catalogue of eigenstates and the corresponding smoothed Wigner function projections comprises the first 1000 even states. They were obtained by the conformal mapping diagonalization technique (as described in Robnik 1984). We stress that by this method no levels and eigenstates were lost, as can happen with other approaches such as Heller’s plane wave decomposition method (Heller 1984) and/or the boundary integral method (see e.g. Berry and Wilkinson 1984) etc.

Such a complete catalogue gives us a good picture of the overall behaviour of the system. Many of the states in this low energy region can be associated with the shortest classical periodic orbits. In a mixed type system such as ours, there are both stable orbits that are found within the islands of stability, or unstable ones that lie within one of the chaotic components.

The shortest periodic orbits of our system are shown in figure 2. These are the stable (labeled by 1) and unstable (5) periodic orbit with two bounces, the stable (2) and unstable (6) three bounce periodic orbit and the stable periodic orbit with four bounces (4). As our billiard is convex, there also exists an infinity of stable periodic orbits skipping along the boundary (3) of the billiard, which are associated with and support the whispering gallery modes (Lazutkin 1981,1991, Li and Robnik 1995a).

Examples of the states that correspond to the stable periodic orbits with the indices (1-4) in the figure 2 are shown in the corresponding rows of the figure 3 with the smoothed projections of their Wigner functions shown in the figure 5. Each row shows the states of the same type with increasing energy. The states corresponding to the stable periodic orbits appear consistently and systematically across the catalogue of states. As we will see later, they can be attributed to the quantized tori in the regular regions, and can be found for those tori whose actions satisfy the Einstein-Brillouin-Keller quantization condition (see Robnik 1998). If we compare the Wigner plots of these states with the SOS plot in figure 1, we notice that the areas of greatest intensities of Wigner functions are found within the corresponding islands of stability in the SOS plot.

The states that correspond to the unstable periodic orbits with indices (5) and (6) are shown in the rows of the figure 4 with the corresponding smoothed projections of their Wigner functions given in the figure 6, with their energy again increasing along the rows. The states corresponding to the unstable periodic orbits emerge with varying intensities with respect to the background, and are less frequent with increasing energy. The approximate position of their emergence in the spectrum can be determined by the condition that the classical action along the periodic orbit should be a multiple of Planck’s constant plus the Maslov’s phase corrections due to the caustics formed by nearby trajectories (Robnik 1989). Therefore, in 2-dim billiards, the intervals (either in energy $`E`$ or the cumulative number of states $`𝒩`$) of consecutive re-appearance of the eigenstates of the same type grow as the square root of $`E`$ or $`𝒩`$. Such states with increased intensities of amplitude close to the classically unstable periodic orbits are called scars (Heller 1984, 1986, Bogomolny 1988).

With increasing energy the longer periodic orbits start to manifest themselves in the structure of eigenstates, however, many of the states are becoming increasingly difficult to associate with simple periodic orbits. Two examples of such states are shown in figure 7. The left state is a regular state spanned by a torus in the neighbourhood of the stable periodic orbit with three bounces, characterised by two quantum numbers. It is interesting to note that while the quantum number along the direction of the periodic orbit is quite large (about $`140`$), the transversal quantum number is equal to $`1`$, giving rise to a single nodal line along the direction of the periodic orbit. On the other hand the state on the right can not be associated only with a single unstable periodic orbit, but with a large portion of the chaotic component, this being more prominent in the smoothed projections of the corresponding Wigner function shown in the lower row of the figure 7.

The separation of states into regular and irregular ones becomes fully explicit in our second catalogue of states. The catalogue consists of $`100`$ consecutive states starting at the consecutive index of about $`2.510^6`$. These states were obtained by the scaling method first introduced by Vergini and Saraceno (1995), that enables us to find a few states in the neighbourhood of a chosen wavenumber $`k`$. As this is a diagonalizational method no levels were missed. Almost each level in our small catalogue can be clearly identified as regular or irregular, an idea proposed already by Percival (1973). The only exception in the catalogue is a pair of states lying close together with respect to the mean level spacing, shown in figure 8, where both of the states are superpositions of a regular ($`|\psi _r`$) and irregular ($`|\psi _i`$) state. These two states are close to a degeneracy of two energetically equal but structurally different quantized classical objects.

This mixing is the consequence of the fact that the regular and irregular state are not exact solutions of the Hamiltonian which leads to the matrix element

$$H_{ri}=\psi _r|\widehat{H}|\psi _i$$
(6)
not being equal to $`0`$. When two such states, or, more precisely, their adiabatically corresponding states, are brought close together on the energy scale by varying a parameter of the system (e.g. $`\lambda `$ in our billiard), their eigenenergies do not cross but show a phenomenon of level repulsion (avoided crossing). In the cases when the effect of other levels can be neglected, the smallest energy spacing between the two levels reached is twice the value of the matrix element (6). At this point the eigenstates are exactly the symmetric and antisymmetric superpositions of the well-separated states. If we vary the parameter of the system further, the adiabatic equivalents of the original states will exchange identities.

While the avoided level crossings are typical for irregular states, the regular states do not exhibit the phenomenon of level repulsion amongst themselves (Berry 1983), except possibly on an exponentially small scale (due to the tunneling effects). Furthermore, according to the PUSC, there should be no level repulsion between the regular and irregular states as $`\mathrm{}0`$. As this repulsion is directly connected to the mixing of states, the relative number of mixed states, such as the pair shown in figure 8, is expected to tend to $`0`$ when effective Planck’s constant of the system tends to $`0`$.

More states of both the regular and irregular type from this catalogue with their appropriate analysis will be shown in the next section.

## 3 Analysis of states

The main purpose of our work was to understand to what extent it is possible to describe the structure of individual eigenstates by semiclassical methods. For completely integrable systems there exists the Einstein-Brillouin-Keller method of torus quantization (see for example Berry 1983, Robnik 1998), where each semiclassical eigenstate is spanned by an invariant torus in classical phase space, for which the classical actions are integer multiples of $`\mathrm{}`$ with corrections due to the singularities of projection of the torus onto the configuration space. For fully chaotic systems, and general mixed systems (generic systems), the Gutzwiller periodic orbit theory (Gutzwiller 1990) can in principle be employed to obtain the density of states (the spectrum) and the wavefunctions, to the leading semiclassical approximation.

The semiclassical methods cannot, however, predict individual energy levels within a vanishing fraction of the mean level spacing even in the limit $`\mathrm{}0`$ (Prosen and Robnik 1993a, Robnik and Salasnich 1997). This limits their use in the analysis of statistical properties of spectra. Furthermore, in the chaotic case the levels are also very sensitive to perturbations of the system (Percival 1973). The Gutzwiller approach and method is very useful in the qualitative analysis, and in certain context also quantitative (in describing the collective and statistical properties), but it is still just the leading term in a certain semiclassical expansion, not good enough to resolve the fine structures with sufficient accuracy to make the analysis of individual states and energy levels reliable. Therefore, because of the sensitivity of chaotic eigenstates and the approximating nature of the theory, to some extent the questions about the fine structure of individual chaotic states are irrelevant. It is therefore more appropriate to discuss the statistical properties of chaotic states, which are, however, less sensitive to perturbations.

In a mixed system the phase space is divided into chaotic and regular components. Our work was guided by the principle of uniform semiclassical condensation (PUSC, see Robnik 1998), stating that when $`\mathrm{}`$ tends to $`0`$ the Wigner function of any eigenstate uniformly condenses on an invariant object in phase space. This can be either a torus in the regular region or a whole chaotic component. Each state could thus be labeled as either regular or irregular (chaotic) in the semiclassical limit. By looking at the catalogue of states at high (and to some extent even at low) energies, one can see that this can indeed be done, though there is still the localization phenomenon present due to the still insufficiently low value of the effective Planck’s constant.

### 3.1 Regular states

We start the analysis by considering the regular states. These are the states that can be attributed to quantized tori within the regular regions. For these states we tried to employ the EBK torus quantization. We construct a wavefunction on the torus as a sum of contributions

$$\psi _j(𝐪)=A_j(𝐪)\mathrm{exp}(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}S_j^{cl}(𝐪)+\varphi _j)$$
(7)
of different projections $`j`$ of the torus onto configuration space. $`S_j`$ is the classical action with respect to some point on the torus and $`A_j^2`$ the classical density of trajectories on this projection. The phase of the wavefunction must change by an integer multiple of $`2\pi `$ when going around any closed contour of the torus. This gives us the quantization conditions

$$I_i=\frac{1}{2\pi }_{\gamma _i}𝐩𝑑𝐪=\mathrm{}(n_i+\beta _i/4)$$
(8)
where $`\gamma _i`$ are the irreducible closed contours on the torus and $`n_i`$ the torus quantum numbers. The integers $`\beta _i`$ are Maslov’s corrections and arise due to the changes of phase $`\varphi _j`$ at the singularities of projection of the torus onto configuration space. At each caustic encountered along the contour $`\gamma _i`$ the wavefunction acquires a negative phase shift of $`\pi /2`$, and shifts by $`\pi `$ when reflected from a hard wall222If the contour passes the singularity in the contrary direction to that of the Hamiltonian flow on the torus, the phase shifts are of the opposite sign. From this consideration it follows that $`\beta _i`$ counts the number of caustics plus twice the number of hard walls encountered along the contour.

The main problem arises since, unlike in many completely integrable cases, the transformation to action-angle variables for regular components of mixed type systems is usually not known. The object we are dealing with is only the numerically calculated trajectory, so we must make the best of it.

The task of finding the semiclassical EBK wavefunctions can be divided into two parts. The first one is finding the torus with the desired quantum numbers $`n_i`$, the second one being the construction of its appropriate wavefunction in configuration space.

In our billiard system all the regular tori except the whispering gallery ones wind around a stable periodic orbit with a finite number of bounces $`l_b`$. We choose $`\theta _1`$ to represent the movement of the trajectories along the corresponding periodic orbit while $`\theta _2`$ represents the winding of the trajectories around it. The Maslov index for the contour along $`\theta _2`$ is $`\beta _2=2`$ since there are two singularities of projection (caustics) encountered, while for the contour along $`\theta _1`$ this index is equal to $`\beta _1=2l_b`$. In the case of whispering gallery modes one similarly obtains $`\beta _1=0`$ and $`\beta _2=3`$, if $`\theta _1`$ is taken along the boundary of the billiard and $`\theta _2`$ ’perpendicular’ to it.

We may find the appropriate torus by iteration. We start with a trajectory $`\eta `$ in a regular island on the SOS and follow it sufficiently long until it returns to the desired neighbourhood of the initial point, thus approximately completing $`N_1`$ integer number of cycles in $`\theta _1`$ and $`N_2`$ in $`\theta _2`$ in the time $`T`$. One can obtain the numbers $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$ by knowing the total number of bounces $`N_b`$ and $`N_c`$ of the caustics encountered during the process through the topological properties of the torus. For a torus winding around a periodic orbit, $`N_1=N_b/l_b`$ and $`N_2=N_c/2`$. The winding frequencies on the torus are then given by

$$\omega _i=2\pi N_i/T.$$
(9)
Finding the number of bounces $`N_b`$ along the trajectory is straightforward. The number of caustics $`N_c`$ may be obtained by starting a trajectory $`\eta ^{}`$ near the original trajectory $`\eta `$ on the same torus (more are needed in case of more than two dimensions). Whenever the two trajectories cross there is a singularity of the density of trajectories and hence a caustic.

One could of course use the monodromy matrix to find the caustics. There are two reasons for not doing so. The first one is the numerical simplicity of our approach. The more important reason is, however, that if the trajectories $`\eta `$ and $`\eta ^{}`$ are taken too close together (infinitesimally close together in the monodromy matrix approach) we may observe caustics due to the possible graining of the desired torus into smaller islands of stability, which quantum mechanics is at the given value of effective Planck’s constant still unable to resolve. A good criterion is that the trajectories should be separated by $`1/n_i`$ for each $`\theta _i`$

We still have to calculate the action integrals on the torus. The integral along $`\theta _2`$ can be calculated by the integral

$$I_2=\frac{1}{2\pi }_{\gamma _2}𝐩𝑑𝐪$$
(10)
along the curve $`\gamma _2`$ formed by the crossing points of the trajectory with the SOS. This integral is just $`1/2\pi `$ of the area of the intersection of the torus with the SOS. Another action integral we can calculate is the action along the chosen orbit $`\eta `$,

$$I=\frac{1}{2\pi }_\eta 𝐩𝑑𝐪.$$
(11)
This integral is the sum of $`I=N_1I_1+N_2I_2`$, so the integral along $`\theta _2`$ is equal to

$$I_1=(IN_2I_2)/N_1.$$
(12)
We must iterate this procedure by choosing different starting points until the proper torus fulfilling the conditions (8) has been found. In general there are as many conditions as there are degrees of freedom. For two dimensional billiard systems whose dynamics is independent of energy, all action integrals can be written in the form

$$I_m=G_m\sqrt{E},$$
(13)
where $`G_m`$ is an integral dependent purely upon the geometry of the classical object in question. In order to obtain the correct quantized torus, instead of solving two separate equations, due to this scaling property we need only to find the appropriate ratio of the (geometric) actions

$$\frac{I_1}{I_2}=\frac{n_1+\beta _1/4}{n_2+\beta _2/4}.$$
(14)
We used the robust bisection method to fulfill this condition since the dependence of actions upon initial conditions is not smooth due to the previously mentioned graining of the tori. Note that this procedure yields only the correct geometry of the quantized torus, the energy of which must still be determined by the quantization conditions 8.

The classical action as a function of time can then be written as

$$_{𝐪_0}^{𝐪(t)}L(𝐪,\dot{𝐪})𝑑t=S(t)=(I_1\omega _1+I_2\omega _2)t,$$
(15)
so one immediately obtains the semiclassical energy as

$$E=\frac{S}{t}=I_1\omega _1+I_2\omega _2.$$
(16)
In our case we took the quantized values for $`I_1`$ and $`I_2`$ and taken into account that for billiard systems the angular frequencies are of the form

$$\omega _m=\lambda _m\sqrt{E},$$
(17)
where $`\lambda _m`$ are frequencies dependent again only upon the geometry of the chosen torus.

In principle one could obtain the semiclassical energy without considering the angular frequencies $`\omega _i`$ by simply finding the appropriate torus through the quantization conditions 8 and reading its energy. In a KAM system such as ours, however, these quantization conditions may be only approximately fullfiled due to the fine structure of the phase space. In contrast to the actions $`I_i`$ the frequencies $`\omega _i`$ do not depend as strongly on the initial conditions (close to the main periodic orbit of an island of stability the transversal frequency typically does not vanish but is characteristic of the periodic orbit). So by taking the quantized values for actions $`I_i`$ and the numerical values for $`\omega _i`$ in equation (16) the best estimate of the semiclassical energy is obtained.

Once the proper torus has been found, we proceed to the second step. We need to span the semiclassical wavefunction (7) on this torus. Again we deal only with a trajectory, so we must find means of representing the wavefunction with it. We may write the wavefunction in the form

$$\psi _j(𝐪)=\underset{T\mathrm{}}{lim}1/T_0^Tdt\delta (𝐪_{cl}(t)𝐪)D_j(𝐪_{cl}(t))\mathrm{exp}(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}S_j(𝐪_{cl}(t)+\varphi _j),$$
(18)
where $`𝐪_{cl}(t)`$ is the classical trajectory in configuration space. This definition is appropriate only in the sense of integrals of the wavefunction over configuration space. We can hence determine the function $`D_j`$ by integrating the wavefunction over a small volume $`V^{}`$,

$$_V^{}𝑑V\psi _j=\underset{T\mathrm{}}{lim}D_j(𝐪)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}S_j(𝐪)+\varphi _j\right)\frac{T^{}}{T},$$
(19)
where $`T^{}`$ is the time the trajectory spends in the volume $`V^{}`$. This time is proportional to the density of trajectories $`A_j^2`$ in the volume $`V^{}`$,

$$T^{}=TA_j^2(𝐪)V^{}.$$
(20)
If we want the expression (19) to be consistent with (7),

$$D_j=\frac{1}{A_j}$$
(21)
must hold.

We still have to account for the phase shifts when the trajectory traverses from one projection of the torus onto another. This can be done hand in hand with the estimation of the density of trajectories $`A_j^2`$. Again we start a trajectory $`𝐪_{cl}^{}`$ close to the original one (more trajectories are needed in more than two degrees of freedom). We could again use the monodromy matrix approach, but the same criticism applies here as in the case of finding the appropriate tori. Let us imagine a bundle of trajectories inside a small parallelogram spanned by the three points $`𝐪_{cl}`$, $`𝐪_{cl}^{}`$ and $`𝐪_{cl}+\dot{𝐪}_{cl}\delta t`$, where all three points lie on the given torus. The area of the parallelogram is given by the absolute value of

$$𝐏=\dot{𝐪}_{cl}\times (𝐪_{cl}^{}𝐪_{cl})\delta t.$$
(22)
As we are interested only in the relative sizes of this parallelogram, we may set $`\delta t=1`$. The reciprocal value of this area is proportional to the density of trajectories,

$$A_j^2=\alpha /|P|.$$
(23)
The value of $`\alpha `$ does not change along the trajectory and can be subsequently determined by the normalization of the semiclassical wavefunction. Whenever the value of $`P`$ changes its sign, the trajectory has encountered a caustic and has passed from one projection $`j`$ of the torus to another one $`k`$. At this point the wavefunction acquires a phase shift

$$\varphi _k=\varphi _j\pi /2.$$
(24)
The phase shift is equal to $`\pi `$ if a hard wall is encountered.

The construction (18) is, in its original form, of course unsuitable for numerical computation. We must substitute the $`\delta `$ function in the integral by a function of finite width. The other important reason for doing so is to again smooth the classical behaviour which can have a far more detailed structure than the quantum mechanics can yet resolve. This width may not necessarily need be isotropic. A good estimate for it is again to be of the order of $`1/n_i`$ in coordinates $`\theta _i`$ projected onto configuration space.

We used a Gaussian for the wide delta function. If we adjusted the width and the amplitude of the Gaussian so that it followed the classical density of trajectories, a remarkable similarity of our method with that of Heller’s wavepacket approach was observed (Heller 1991). There are, however, two important differences. The wavepacket approach starts with a wavepacket with the expected value of energy equal to that of the exact wavefunction and then tries to construct its semiclassical approximation. Our approach is independent of the exact eigenstate. All the information we have to supply is the quantum numbers and the geometrical properties of the (projection of the) torus, obtaining from them both the semiclassical energy (16) and the wavefunction. The other important difference is that the wavepacket approach relies on the monodromy matrix of the trajectory, the use of which can be questionable to obtain semiclassical wavefunctions in mixed type systems due to the fine structure of the classical phase space, as was already pointed out before.

We show three examples of the regular states in the figures 9 to 11. For each of the states we present the exact numerical quantum probability density(top left), the probability density of its semiclassical approximation (top right), the classical density of trajectories on the appropriate torus (bottom left) and the smoothed projection of the exact Wigner function (bottom right). The semiclassical wavefunctions shown are remarkable as they possess all of the features of their exact counterparts that are larger than the appropriate wavelength. Note that for each torus there are two characteristic wavelengths since there are two quantum numbers associated with it. As it happens in our case, the two wavelengths can be of different orders of magnitude.

There were, however, some ’regular’ states that we were unable to semiclassically reproduce. The first class of these states can be described as localized chaotic states since their Wigner function clearly shows that they lie in the chaotic region, yet very close to an island of stability, which gives them a regular appearance. The other class are the states whose Wigner transforms lie in the regular regions, but where the primary tori have already been destroyed by the perturbation and now form secondary tori interwoven by small regions of chaotic motion, and even the smoothing of classical dynamics, as described above, fails.

The accuracy of the semiclassical energies that we were indeed able to reproduce may seem remarkable, since the error is approximately $`5`$ units of energy at the energies around $`210^7`$. Such accuracy, however, is still insufficient to perform short range spectral statistics since the mean level spacing in our system is approximately $`8`$ units of energy. This experience is of course in agreement with the proposition and conclusion that the semiclassical methods (to the leading order) cannot resolve the energy spectra within the vanishing fraction of the mean level spacing, and also not the structures of the wavefunctions smaller than de Broglie wavelength (Prosen and Robnik 1993a, Robnik and Salasnich 1997).

### 3.2 Irregular states

While for the regular states it was quite straightforward to find their semiclassical approximations, the nature of irregular states is very much different. The chaotic component of a system does not possess any obvious structure. While Gutzwiller’s approach can yield the properties of a quantum system by a summation over all periodic orbits of its classical counterpart, the relevance of examining individual chaotic states becomes questionable. These states are very sensitive to small perturbations of the system, so in any physical system the individual features of the states are lost when the effective Planck’s constant tends to $`0`$. The features that are insensitive to small perturbations are, however, the statistical properties of spectra and eigenstates.

One measure of statistical properties of the wavefunctions is the wavefunction autocorrelation function,

$$C(𝐪,𝐱)=\frac{\psi ^{}(𝐪^{}𝐱/2)\psi (𝐪^{}+𝐱/2)_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}}{\psi ^{}(𝐪^{})\psi (𝐪^{})_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}}.$$
(25)
The area of averaging $`ϵ(𝐪)`$ close to the point $`𝐪`$ should be taken such that its linear size is many wavelengths across, however small enough that the local properties of classical mechanics within it are largely uniform.

If one takes the Fourier transform of the Wigner function (3), it is easy to show that

$$W(𝐪,𝐩)\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐱/\mathrm{})d^N𝐩=\psi ^{}(𝐪𝐱/2)\psi (𝐪+𝐱/2).$$
(26)
By knowing the Wigner function of an eigenstate, it is then possible to use this result to calculate its autocorrelation function.

According to the principle of uniform semiclassical condensation, the Wigner function of any chaotic state should uniformly condense on the whole chaotic component when the effective $`\mathrm{}`$ tends to $`0`$. Let us limit ourselves only to the cases of the Hamiltonians with an isotropic dependence upon $`𝐩`$. We can write the semiclassical Wigner function in the form of a conditional delta function

$$W_{𝒟_i}(𝐪,𝐩)=\alpha \delta (\{𝐪,𝐩\}𝒟_i;EH(𝐪,p))$$
(27)
where $`𝒟_i`$ denotes a chaotic component and $`\alpha `$ is the normalization constant. The Fourier transform (26) of this Wigner function is

$$W_{𝒟_i}(𝐪,𝐩)p^{N1}\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐱/\mathrm{})𝑑p𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_p=\alpha \frac{p(𝐪)^{N1}}{\frac{H}{p}(𝐪,p(𝐪))}_{\mathrm{\Omega }_p𝒟_i(𝐪)}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_p\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐱/\mathrm{}),$$
(28)
where $`p(𝐪)`$ denotes the absolute value of momentum at the point $`𝐪`$. The integration over the spatial angle $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ is performed along all the directions of momentum that constitute the chaotic component $`𝒟_i`$ at the point $`𝐪`$. The autocorrelation function is then equal to

$$C_{𝒟_i}(𝐪,𝐱)=\frac{_{\mathrm{\Omega }_p𝒟_i(𝐪^{})}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_p\mathrm{exp}(i𝐩𝐱/\mathrm{})_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}}{_{\mathrm{\Omega }_p𝒟_i(𝐪^{})}𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_p_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}}.$$
(29)
The averaging area should again stretch across many wavelengths.

If the chaotic component is equal to the whole energy surface, as is the case in completely ergodic systems, in the case of two degrees of freedom one obtains the well known Berry’s result (Berry 1977)

$$C_{\mathrm{e}rgodic}(𝐱)=J_0(p(𝐪)r/\mathrm{}),r=|𝐱|.$$
(30)
However, when the system is of the mixed type the autocorrelation function ceases to be isotropic and acquires contributions of higher order Bessel functions. We can obtain these contributions by rewriting integrals $`_{\varphi _p𝒟_i}f(\varphi _p)𝑑\varphi _p`$ by integrals of the characteristic function $`\chi _{𝒟_i}(\varphi _p)f(\varphi _p)𝑑\varphi _p`$, where in two degrees of freedom the spatial angle is replaced by a simple angle $`\varphi _p`$ and $`f(\varphi _p)`$ is an arbitrary function of $`\varphi _p`$. If we write the characteristic function as a Fourier series,

$$\chi _{𝒟_i}(𝐪;\varphi _p)=\underset{m=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\kappa _m^{𝒟_i}(𝐪)\mathrm{exp}(im\varphi _p),$$
(31)
it is quite straightforward to show by using the integral representations of the Bessel functions that

$$C_{𝒟_i}(𝐪,𝐱)=\frac{_{m=\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\kappa _m^{𝒟_i}(𝐪^{})i^mJ_m(p(𝐪^{})r/\mathrm{})\mathrm{exp}(im\varphi _x)_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}}{\kappa _0^{𝒟_i}(𝐪^{})_{𝐪^{}ϵ(𝐪)}},$$
(32)
where $`\varphi _x`$ is the polar angle of the vector $`𝐱`$.

As in the case of the regular states, numerically we cannot deal with components of phase space but with trajectories. So we start a trajectory within the chaotic component $`𝒟_i`$ and not the direction of its momentum $`\varphi _p^j(𝐪)`$ at each passage $`j`$ through the neighbourhood of the point $`𝐪`$. The averaged characteristic function for this neighbourhood can then be represented as

$$\chi _{𝒟_i}(𝐪;\varphi _p)/\kappa _0^{𝒟_i}(𝐪)=\frac{_{j=1}^nd_j\delta (\varphi _p\varphi _p^j)}{_{j=1}^nd_j},$$
(33)
where $`d_j`$ are the lengths covered by the particle in the averaging neighbourhood at the passage $`j`$, and $`n`$ is the number of passages. One can check that this method tends to the proper angular distribution $`\chi _{𝒟_i}`$ as $`n\mathrm{}`$ for any shape of the averaging neighbourhood, if one assumes the homogeneity of trajectories at a given angle (which is true for a small enough neighbourhood, over which the classical phase space picture does not vary). For any incident angle $`\varphi `$ the conditional expected value of a contribution to the equation (33) is proportional to $`d_j𝑑x`$, where $`x`$ is the homogeneously distributed impact parameter (the direction perpendicular to the incident angle). This integral gives just the area of the averaging neighbourhood and is clearly the same for all incident angles.

If the area of averaging is large enough so that the variations in the classical phase space picture become important, the above procedure is still valid as long as the value of the momentum does not change appreciably (as is the case in our billiard system, where between the bounces the momentum remains constant). One can then imagine the large averaging area as being cut into smaller ones within which the above assumptions still hold true.

We compared the autocorrelation functions for a few chaotic states with the semiclassical prediction in figures 12 to 14. The averaging area $`ϵ(𝐪)`$ was taken as a circle of radius $`0.2`$ around the point $`(x,y)=(0.65,0)`$ (the coordinates are as defined in equation (1)). It was taken the same for both the semiclassical prediction and for the numerical results. The averaging radius was taken quite large in order to reduce the localization properties of the wavefunctions, which are still apparent at the values of effective $`\mathrm{}`$ that we were able to obtain. But this radius still has to be taken small enough in order not to completely smooth out the classical dynamics. The agreement with the semiclassical prediction is quite good particularly in figure 14. In all cases it clearly deviates from the Berry’s prediction for fully ergodic systems (30), as it must for mixed systems, and tends towards our semiclassical result. Although in some cases there are amplitude deviations from our prediction, in all of the plots the phase of the numerical correlation function matches the phase of its semiclassical prediction and is significantly different from the phase predicted for the fully ergodic case.

## 4 Discussion and conclusion

As already presented by Prosen and Robnik (1993c), the classification of states into regular and irregular ones is well founded when the effective Planck’s constant tends to $`0`$. Its theoretical foundation is the principle of uniform semiclassical condensation of Wigner functions of eigenstates (Robnik 1988, 1998). This separation is not strictly a semiclassical phenomenon since even some of the lowest levels in our catalogue of low lying states can be classified as either regular or irregular. In the high energy catalogue of states each state can easily be classified as either chaotic or regular, with only one notable exception, where two close lying states are a superposition of a regular and an irregular state. These exceptions are expected to disappear with higher energies. While the states can be separated with respect to classical dynamics, the chaotic states in our high energy catalogue still exhibit the phenomenon of dynamical quantal localization. Their Wigner functions are not uniformly extended over the whole chaotic component, but are significant only on a part of it. This localization is expected to disappear at sufficiently small effective $`\mathrm{}`$, when the quantum mechanical break time $`t_{break}=\mathrm{}/\mathrm{\Delta }E`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ is the mean level spacing, becomes longer than the time for a typical trajectory to explore the whole chaotic component (diffusion time).

The most important part of this work is of course the semiclassical analysis of states. We were able to reconstruct both the semiclassical wavefunction and the semiclassical energy of the regular states by using the EBK quantization. Since our system is of a KAM type, most of the resonant tori are destroyed, forming smaller islands of stability interwoven with chaotic components. The classical mechanics thus shows a rich structure that quantum mechanics at a fixed value of $`\mathrm{}`$ is still unable to resolve. In order to obtain the regular semiclassical wavefunctions, we had to appropriately smooth out this fine classical behaviour as explained in the section 3.1.

We were unable to predict the individual properties of chaotic states. We made a step forward, however, in describing their semiclassical statistical properties. We obtained a semiclassical prediction for the autocorrelation function of their wavefunction, which differs from the one for fully ergodic systems as it is not isotropic. The numerical results confirm this prediction, although there are still localization phenomena at the currently attainable effective $`\mathrm{}`$ that cause deviations from it.

One aspect that needs to be investigated further is the localization properties of the chaotic states. As Casati and Prosen (1998) show in the example of a fully chaotic stadium billiard, in the diffusive regime ($`ϵ`$-stadium, having very large ergodic time), the quantum diffusion is stopped by the cantori in phase space leading to localization. How these and similar ideas translate to the case of a mixed type system remains so far an open question.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Tomaž Prosen for assistance and advise with some computer programs. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia and by the Rector’s Fund of the University of Maribor.

## References

Berry M V 1977, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 10 2083
Berry M V 1983 Chaotic Behaviour of Deterministic Systems (Proc. NATO ASI Les Houches Summer School ed G Iooss, R H G Helleman, R Stora (Amsterdam: Elsevier) p 171
Berry M V and Robnik M 1984 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 17 2413
Berry M V and Wilkinson M 1984 Proc. Roy. Soc. London A 392 15
Bogomolny E 1988 Physica 31D 169
Casati G and Prosen T 1999 Phys. Rev. E 59 2516
Gutzwiller M 1990, Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics, Springer New York
Heller E J 1984 Phys. Rev. Lett. 53 1515
Heller E J 1986 Lecture Notes in Physics 263 162
Heller E J 1991 Chaos and Quantum Physics (Proc. NATO ASI Les Houches Summer School ed M-J Giannoni, A Voros and J Zinn-Justin (Amsterdam: Elsevier) p 547
Lazutkin V F 1981 The Convex Billiard and the Eigenfunctions of the Laplace Operator (Leningrad: University Press) (in Russian)
Lazutkin V F 1991 KAM Theory and Semiclassical Approximations to Eigenfunctions (Heidelberg: Springer)
Li Baowen and Robnik M 1994 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 27 5509
Li Baowen and Robnik M 1995a J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 28 2799
Li Baowen and Robnik M 1995b J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 28 4483
Percival I C 1973 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys. 6 L229
Prosen T 1995 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 28 L349
Prosen T 1996 Physica D 91 244
Prosen T 1998 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34 7023
Prosen T and Robnik M 1993a J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 26 L37
Prosen T and Robnik M 1993b J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 26 2371
Prosen T and Robnik M 1993c J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 26 5365
Prosen T and Robnik M 1994 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 27 8059
Prosen T and Robnik M 1999 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 32 1863
Robnik M 1983 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 16 3971
Robnik M 1984 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 17 1049
Robnik M 1988 in Atomic Spectra and Collisions in External Fields Eds. K.T. Taylor, M.H. Nayfeh and C.W. Clark (New York: Plenum Press) pp251-274
Robnik M 1989 Bound-State Eigenfunctions of Classically Ergodic Hamilton Systems: A Theory of Scars Preprint Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, unpublished
Robnik M 1998 Nonlinear Phenomena in Complex Systems 1 1
Robnik M and Salasnich L 1997 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 30 1711
Robnik M and Veble G 1998 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 31 4669
Vergini E and Saraceno M 1995 Phys. Rev. E 52 2204
Voros A 1979 Lecture Notes in Physics 93 326