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# Holographic bound from second law of thermodynamics

## 1. Introduction

The influential holographic principle relates the physical content of a theory defined in a spacetime to that of another theory defined only on the spacetime’s boundary. This principle is viewed as a guideline to the ultimate physical theory. A consistency requirement on it is that the boundary of any system should be able to encode as much information as required to enumerate and describe the quantum states of the bulk system. In view of the correspondence between information and entropy, and the example of black hole entropy, this requirement has been translated into the holographic bound (HB): “the entropy of a system is bounded from above by a quarter of the area of a circumscribing surface measured in units of the squared Planck length, $`\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}G\mathrm{}/c^3`$” (in the sequel we set $`c=G=1`$ and eliminate $`\mathrm{}`$ in favor of $`\mathrm{}_P^2`$; Planck’s mass is also denoted by $`\mathrm{}_P`$).

Independently of the above, the existence of some bound on the entropy of a closed system is always taken for granted in thermodynamics. Since the second law requires the entropy of a closed physical system to increase in most transformations, it is usually inferred that that entropy must eventually reach a maximum. Obviously this inference takes it for granted that the entropy of any closed system is bounded from above. Such bound is not always in evidence; for example, in Newtonian gravity theory there seems to be no upper bound to the entropy of a gravitationally bound system of given mass and energy. Of course, we know that gravitation is better described by general relativity; this is, in fact, what makes a bound on the entropy of a gravitating system feasible. When one turns from a coarse–grained description of matter, as assumed above, to a microscopic one, the entropy of a closed system does not change (Hamiltonian classical evolution or unitary quantum evolution). However, one can still ask whether the quantum entropy here is subject to some bound for given exterior constraints. A generic bound on entropy would have weighty implications; for example, it would restrict the maximum information that could be stored in a system whatever the future technology.

One of the early consequences of the ascription of entropy to black holes, and the formulation of the generalized second law (GSL) for systems containing black holes, was the realization that a universal entropy bound valid for all systems - black hole or not - can be stated solely in terms of the circumscribing radius and proper energy of the system \[see Eq. (8) below\]. The argument was that the second law would be violated if a system violating the universal bound were accreted by a black hole. With the emergence of the HB the closely related question comes up: can one also infer the HB from the GSL ? Susskind has early argued that this is so from a gedanken experiment in which a system violating the HB is forced to collapse into a black hole by the addition of extra entropy–free matter. Susskind interprets the ensuing apparent violation of the GSL as evidence that the envisaged system cannot really exist.

However, Susskind’s argument contains a loophole, even in a clearer reformulation. One imagines the system as a spherically symmetric one of radius $`R`$, energy $`E`$ (with $`R>2E`$, of course) and entropy $`𝒮`$ with $`𝒮>\pi R^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$. A spherically symmetric and concentric shell of mass $`R/2E`$ is dropped on the system; by Birkhoff’s theorem the total mass is now $`R/2`$. If the outermost surface of the shell reaches Schwarzschild radial coordinate $`r=R`$, the system becomes a black hole of radius $`R`$ and entropy $`S_{BH}=\pi R^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$, which is lower than the original entropy $`𝒮`$ ! Wald concludes from this, not that $`𝒮>\pi R^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$ is forbidden (HB is required), but rather that if $`𝒮>\pi R^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$, the outcome of the process is not a black hole, e.g. the shell could bounce. This is in line with his position that the GSL works without regard to entropy bounds on matter. However, as we show below, alternative gedanken experiments (related to the ones introduced in Ref. and the third reference in) allow one to infer, without ambiguity, the HB from the GSL for two broad classes of systems. Thus we generally justify Susskind’s view.

Before starting let us mention that there do exist violations of the HB as here stated. For example, a spherically symmetric mass already inside its own Schwarzschild radius eventually violates it because the enclosing area can get as small as required, while the enclosed entropy can only grow. So does a sufficiently large spherical chunk of a flat Robertson–Walker universe because its enclosing area grows like radius squared while the enclosed entropy does so like radius cubed. Both these examples feature strongly self–gravitating and dynamical systems. The second refers to an unisolated system. Bousso has provided a broader HB–like bound free from such failures (a rather different entropy bound has lately been proposed by Brustein and Veneziano). Bousso’s bound can, however, be intricate to apply in cases which lack high symmetry. Thus the original HB, which is simpler to apply, would still be very valuable if its range of validity could be delineated in a systematic way. Here we use the GSL to show that it can be trusted for generic weakly self–gravitating isolated systems as well as for quiescent, nonrotating, isolated strongly self–gravitating systems which are massive on Planck’s scale.

## 2. Weakly gravitating systems

Consider a weakly self–gravitating system $`𝒰`$ of arbitrary structure and constitution having proper mass–energy $`E`$ and bearing entropy $`𝒮`$. For convenience $`𝒰`$ can be enclosed in an entropy–less snug spherical box of radius $`R`$ concentric with $`𝒰`$’s center of mass; we include its mass in $`E`$. This sphere will be dropped freely from rest and from far away into a Schwarzschild black hole of mass $`M`$ satisfying $`ME`$ and $`2MR`$. $`𝒰`$’s global energy is thus very near $`E`$. Obviously $`𝒰`$ will not be torn up by tidal forces as it approaches the black hole. Also, no reason is known why the black hole should be destroyed when the much smaller and lighter system plunges into it. Hence we conclude that the black hole absorbs $`𝒰`$ and increases its mass by $`E`$ in the process. We are here ignoring energy losses to gravitational radiation, known to be of $`O(E^2/M)`$, as well as losses to Hawking radiation during $`𝒰`$’s infall; we shall justify this last omission presently.

The black hole’s entropy, originally $`S_{BH}=4\pi M^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$, thus increases by $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_{BH}=8\pi ME/\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}+O(E^2)`$. By the GSL $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_{BH}`$ plus the radiation entropies are at least as large as $`𝒮`$. We neglect the radiation entropies of both sorts because the corresponding energies are negligible. We thus have

$$𝒮\frac{8\pi ME}{\mathrm{}_P^2}.$$
(1)
Thus far we have only required $`ME`$ and $`2MR`$. Let us settle on the choice $`M=\frac{1}{8}R^2/E`$. This satisfies both our requirements provided $`2ER`$, i.e., provided $`𝒰`$’s self–gravity is weak. With our choice for $`M`$ Eq. (1) gives

$$𝒮\frac{\pi R^2}{\mathrm{}_P^2},$$
(2)
which is precisely the HB appropriate to $`𝒰`$. We stress it applies to a system of generic structure and composition provided its self–gravity is weak. In the sequel we extend this result to a large class of strongly self–gravitating systems.

Let us now justify the neglect of energy losses to Hawking’s radiance. One can approximate the power emitted by a Schwarzschild black hole by that of a sphere with radius $`2M`$ radiating according to the Stefan–Boltzmann law at the Hawking temperature $`T_H=\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/(8\pi M)`$. Thus

$$\dot{M}\frac{dM}{dt}\frac{N\mathrm{}_P^2}{15360\pi M^2},$$
(3)
where $`N`$ is the effective number of radiated species (photons contribute unity to $`N`$). If $`𝒰`$ was dropped at Schwarzschild time $`t=0`$ when its center of mass was a Schwarzschild radial coordinate $`r=\alpha 2M(\alpha 1)`$, then the bottom of the sphere reaches the horizon $`r=2M`$ (the sphere’s center is at proper height $`R`$ above it), and the infall is finished for all practical purposes, at time

$$t4M\left[\frac{1}{3}\alpha ^{3/2}\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}(R/4M)+O(\alpha ^{1/2})\right].$$
(4)
Eq. (4) is obtained by integrating exactly the radial component of the geodesic equation for $`𝒰`$’s center of mass in the Schwarzschild metric, and dropping subdominant terms.

The energy $``$ emitted during the infall to the black hole of mass $`M=\frac{1}{8}R^2/E`$ is thus

$$=|\dot{M}|\times t\frac{N}{480\pi }\frac{\mathrm{}_P^2}{R^2}\left[\frac{1}{3}\alpha ^{3/2}\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{ln}(2E/R)\right]E,$$
(5)
The very small factor $`\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/(480\pi R^2)`$, $`10^{40}`$ for a proton and much smaller for macroscopic systems, easily outbalances the assumed large $`\alpha ^{3/2}`$ (say $`10^9`$), any reasonable finite $`N`$ (say $`10^4`$), and the logarithmic factor (say for $`2E/R10^{10}`$). Thus $`E`$ and hence it was justified to equate the change in black hole mass with $`E`$. Similarly, since the entropy of the Hawking radiation is $`/T_H`$, it can safely be neglected in comparison with $`\mathrm{\Delta }S_{BH}=E/T_H`$. The fact that $`EM`$ justifies a posteriori our use of the Schwarzschild metric for the black hole’s exterior.

Another effect of Hawking’s radiance that we have neglected so far is radiation pressure on the infalling sphere. One might fear that the consequent change in the postulated geodesic motion might drastically prolong the infall time, or perhaps even prevent $`𝒰`$ from reaching the horizon. We now show that neither of these possibilities materializes. Obviously the momentum flux at radial coordinate $`r`$ is $`|\dot{M}|/(4\pi r^2)`$. The rate at which momentum is received from the radiation by the infalling sphere, in its own rest frame (four velocity $`u^\beta `$), is $`|\dot{M}|/(4\pi r^2)`$ times the sphere’s crossection $`\pi R^2`$, times $`(dt/d\tau )^2`$, where $`\tau `$ is the sphere’s proper time. One factor $`dt/d\tau `$ accounts for the blueshift of momenta of the Hawking quanta perceived in the falling sphere’s frame; the second corrects for the faster arrival of quanta due to the time dilation and gravitational redshift. If the sphere reflects radiation well, one has to multiply this result by a factor between 1 and 2 to account for backscattering, but this is a trivial correction here.

Since the sphere falls from $`r2M`$, we have $`dt/d\tau (12M/r)^1`$. Putting all the factors together with Eq. (3) and dividing by $`E`$, we find the acceleration of the falling sphere measured in its own frame:

$$a\frac{N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}R_{}^{2}}{61440M^2Er^2}\frac{1}{(12M/r)^2}$$
(6)
This is to be compared with $`g=Mr^2(12M/r)^{1/2}`$, the acceleration scalar of a stationary point at radius $`r`$. Then Eq. (6) gives

$$\frac{a}{g}=\frac{N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/E}{7680R}\left[\frac{R}{2M(12M/r)^{1/2}}\right]^3.$$
(7)
Since the Compton length $`\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/E`$ of a system is always smaller (and can be much smaller) than its radius, and $`R2M`$ in our gedanken experiment, we find that the acceleration due to radiation pressure is negligible compared to the natural scale $`g`$ as long as the sphere is not very close to the black hole’s horizon. It is doubtful whether as $`r2M`$, the Hawking radiance continues to be felt in the freely falling frame. At any rate, because $`R2M`$, the factor in square brackets in Eq. (7) only grows to 2 when the bottom of the sphere touches the horizon. Hence the radiation pressure deceleration is totally negligible. We conclude that $`𝒰`$’s center of mass does move accurately on a timelike geodesic throughout its fall, as has been assumed all along. Smallness of $`a/g`$ also means that it is unnecessary to correct for quantum buoyancy effects, as is the case when the system is suspended.

The effects which might have spoiled the derivation of the HB are so utterly negligible that we can improve on that bound by taking $`M`$ smaller than $`\frac{1}{8}R^2/E`$ in the raw bound (1). We obviously have to stop this optimization when $`2M`$ is at least a few times $`R`$, so that the system can fit whole in the black hole. We thus get

$$𝒮\frac{4\zeta \pi ER}{\mathrm{}_P^2},$$
(8)
where $`\zeta =O(1)`$. Eq. (8) is the universal entropy bound. More careful analysis by a different route shows that one can take $`\zeta =\frac{1}{2}`$. In this form the bound applies also to equilibrium black holes: for every Kerr–Newman black hole, the “radius” $`R`$ of the horizon (with $`4\pi R^2`$ equal to the horizon area) is no bigger than twice the black hole’s mass $`E`$, while $`S_{BH}=\pi R^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$. Further, one may obviously derive the HB directly from bound (8) by simply inserting the weak self–gravity condition $`2ER`$. Thus for weakly self–gravitating systems the universal entropy bound is stricter than the HB.

## 3. Strongly gravitating systems

When the system’s self–gravity is no longer weak ($`ER`$), the condition $`M=\frac{1}{8}R^2/E`$ implies that $`E`$ is no longer small compared to $`M`$ (system not a small perturbation on the black hole) and that $`R2M`$ (system cannot fall whole into the black hole). We thus prefer to derive the HB from the GSL by the following alternative argument.

We assume that the system $`𝒱`$ containing entropy $`𝒮`$ is isolated, quiescent (does not significantly change in “time”, e.g. is not collapsing), and nonrotating, and that the spacetime geometry is asymptotically flat. We shall not assume spherical symmetry; however, the strong self–gravity in the absence of rotation should make the system nearly spherical. The quiescence assumption implies that there is an approximate time symmetry in the problem which allows us to define a time coordinate, $`t`$, with the familiar properties and coinciding at infinity with the usual time (this $`t`$ may no be unique except in the exactly stationary case). A tube with topology $`S^2\times R`$ enclosing the system’s world history can be sliced at specific values of $`t`$. The area $`𝒜`$ of a typical slice must substantially exceed $`4\pi (2E)^2`$, where $`E`$ denotes $`𝒱`$’s energy as measured at infinity. For if $`𝒜4\pi (2E)^2`$, the system would be a black hole. On the other hand, there is much evidence that a system whose radius exceeds twice its mass, but not by much, is gravitationally unstable, i.e., not quiescent as here assumed. Thus $`𝒜`$ is substantially larger than $`4\pi (2E)^2`$. On the basis of these remarks and our assumptions, we shall now show from the GSL that $`𝒮<𝒜/(4\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2})`$.

Let us enclose $`𝒱`$ in a robust quasispherical box of radius $`r_010^2\times (2E)`$ (eventually we shall be able to regard it as exactly spherical). The box’s interior is at some redshift with respect to infinity; we measure all energies here in the interior frame. Obviously because $`𝒱`$ is strongly self–gravitating, it is small compared to $`r_0`$ in spatial extent. From near the box’s wall let us drop radially towards the center of mass of $`𝒱`$ a Schwarzschild black hole of mass $`m`$ with $`\mathrm{Max}[10\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/\mu ,10(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}E_{}^{3})^{1/5}]<m<10^1E`$, where $`\mu `$ is the typical mass of the lightest massive elementary constituent of $`𝒱`$, e.g. electron mass for ordinary matter. The inequalities are consistent provided $`\mu E>10^2\mathrm{}_P^2`$ and $`E>10^5N^{1/2}\mathrm{}_P`$. Because the lightest constituents must be light on the Planck scale, our argument obviously applies only to systems which are fairly massive on Planck scale. The Hawking evaporation timescale $`𝒯`$ of the black hole is gotten by integrating Eq. (3): $`𝒯=5120\pi m^3/(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2})`$. In light of the restriction $`m>10(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}E_{}^{3})^{1/5}`$,

$$𝒯>10^9(E/m)^2E.$$
(9)
According to Eq. (4), the hole takes time $`10^3E`$ to fall to $`𝒱`$. It may immediately interact strongly, give up energy and be gravitationally trapped, or it may pass through and out of $`𝒱`$ to rise to near the box wall, fall back, and again pass through $`𝒱`$. During $`(E/m)^2`$ such passes (and time $`10^3(E/m)^2E𝒯`$) the hole’s crossection $`4\pi m^2`$ would have swept a volume $`4\sqrt{\pi E^2𝒜^{1/2}}`$ through $`𝒱`$ which is comparable to that of the whole of $`𝒱`$. We thus expect the black hole to be captured by $`𝒱`$ earlier, and with insignificant loss of $`m`$ to Hawking radiance. Immediately after this the combined system (also denoted $`𝒱`$) has mass a bit smaller than $`E+m`$, principally because of gravitational waves (from the oscillations) which escape from the box;calculations make it clear that the radiated energy is only some fraction of $`m`$.

Since $`𝒱`$ is strongly self–gravitating, the trapped hole will at first move at speed close to that of light traversing $`𝒱`$ in time $`E𝒯`$, but may eventually come to rest at the bottom of the system’s gravitational potential well. At any rate, the hole will swallow structures that approach it which are smaller than itself, while its tidal field will break up the somewhat larger structures into smaller parts, some down to the scale of elementary constituents. Since the Compton lengths of every one of these is smaller than the hole ($`\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/\mu m/10`$), it can swallow anything that comes within its reach. Hawking radiation pressure cannot stop the accretion; Eq. (7) shows that for any structure whose dimension $`R`$ exceeds its Compton length, the hole’s gravitation dominates the pressure force unless $`N`$ is very large. Since a particular elementary constituent interacts only with certain sorts of radiation, the effective $`N`$ that must be used in Eq. (7) is never large. The black hole thus accretes, grows and becomes more effective at accreting while at the same time cooling and emitting Hawking radiation slower. Of course, the accretion will generate heat, and radiation (e.g. electromagnetic but little gravitational because of its poor coupling to matter) will leak out of $`𝒱`$ into the box, supplementing, and perhaps even dominating, the Hawking radiation trapped in it.

The black hole’s mass cannot decrease by Hawking radiance. According to Boltzmann’s formula \[$`\mathrm{energy}\mathrm{density}=N\pi ^2T^4/(15\mathrm{}^3)`$\], the energy of $`N`$ species of thermal radiation filling the box’s volume $`4\pi (210^2E)^3/3`$ (most of the box is nearly Minkowskian) at the Hawking temperature $`T=\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/(8\pi m)`$ would be smaller than $`10^3m`$ for any $`N`$ if indeed $`m>10(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}E_{}^{3})^{1/5}`$. Thus backreaction from the box will prevent the black hole from losing more than a tiny fraction of $`m`$ before accretion has made it gain mass. This also means the black hole will radiatively equilibrate with the box in a time much shorter than $`𝒯`$. There is one exception to this equilibration. Thermal Hawking gravitons emitted by the hole interact too weakly with any matter in the box to be confined by it; they stream out freely. Were the hole not to accrete, it would slowly and inexorably evaporate due to thermal graviton losses; the graviton emission timescale would, of course, be about $`N𝒯`$ (out of $`N`$ species of quanta, one is a graviton). But because of the cooling of the black hole, the true timescale gets progressively longer.

Given enough time $`𝒱`$ will be fully digested by the hole. In the early stages of the process sketched, when the hole is still small, the evolution is slow and $`𝒱`$ remains quiescent, so that it emits little gravitational radiation. The duration $`t_s`$ of this stage should be a function of the important scales $`E`$ and $`m`$. Were $`m`$ comparable with $`E`$, the slow stage would obviously be over in time $`E`$. Thus on dimensional grounds we guess $`t_sE(E/m)^\beta `$. For small $`m/E`$ the accretion effectiveness should scale as the hole’s crossection; hence we deduce that $`\beta =2`$, so for all $`N`$, $`t_s𝒯`$. Towards the end of the digestion $`𝒱`$ is likely to evolve rapidly. Fragments that get ejected from $`𝒱`$ as it is being digested remain trapped in the box, and will eventually fall back onto the hole, be broken up and swallowed. This last stage should last a time $`E`$ because it obviously involves an instability, instabilities grow exponentially, and our two scales $`E`$ and $`m`$ are merging. Overall, the process of conversion of $`𝒱`$ into a big black hole takes a time much shorter than $`𝒯`$.

Towards its end $`𝒱`$ should approach spherical symmetry: because there is no rotation, and the elastic forces that could keep it aspherical will succumb to gravitation as the black hole gnaws its way through it. Thus the mostly devoured system will not emit much in the way of gravitational waves. Finally, as the black hole finishes its meal, it recovers its original Schwarzschild form, and establishes thermodynamic equilibrium with the radiation filling the box. In the presence of a spherically symmetric system inside it, the box can be regarded as perfectly spherical and thus gravitationally irrelevant (apart from the gravitational redshift it induces inside it).

How much entropy in thermal gravitons $`S_g`$ leaks out of the box up to the demise of $`𝒱`$ ? As we saw, very little of the black hole evaporates till equilibration with the box, so in this stage gravitons carry away entropy $`S_{BH}=4\pi m^2/\mathrm{}_P^2`$. Now consider the highly contrived situation that after equilibration, accretion from $`𝒱`$ just balances the energy loss to Hawking gravitons. The hole’s mass $`m`$ then remains unchanged while it emits entropy at a rate $`1/(1920m)`$ \[see Eq. (3) with $`T_H=\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/(8\pi m)`$\]. Were this situation to endure over time $`𝒯=5120\pi m^3/(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2})`$, the entropy in gravitons would be $`m^2/(N\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2})`$. But since $`𝒱`$ transforms into a black hole in time much shorter than $`𝒯`$, and the growth of the hole suppresses graviton emission, we may safely conclude that $`S_g=O(m^2/\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2})`$.

Let $``$ be the equilibrium energy of all the radiation in the box. Then the final mass of the black hole is $`<E+m`$ (spherical symmetry allows us to just add masses). We shall assume (and check presently) that $`E`$; hence the Hawking temperature is $`T_H\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}/(8\pi E)`$. Again using Boltzmann’s formulae to estimate $``$ and the associated radiative entropy $`S_b`$ contained in the mostly flat interior of the box with $`r_0=210^2E`$, we have

$$=\frac{3T_HS_b}{4}\frac{3\mathrm{}_P{}_{}{}^{2}S_{b}^{}}{32\pi E}\frac{10^6N\mathrm{}_P^2}{5760\pi E}$$
(10)
The relative errors in these formulae are $`O(m/E)+O(/E)`$. Because $`E>10^5N^{1/2}\mathrm{}_P`$, we get that for any $`N`$, $`/E<10^8`$, as promised.

The GSL demands that the entropy of the final black hole plus $`S_b`$ plus $`S_g`$ shall be no smaller than $`𝒮`$ plus the entropy of the initial black hole. Thus

$$\frac{4\pi (E+m)^2}{\mathrm{}_P^2}+\frac{32\pi E}{3\mathrm{}_P^2}+S_g>𝒮+\frac{4\pi m^2}{\mathrm{}_P^2}$$
(11)
Hence

$$𝒮<\frac{4\pi E^2}{\mathrm{}_P^2}\times [1+2m/E+O(m^2/E^2)+O(/E)]$$
(12)
The corrections to unity are evidently small (recall that $`m<10^1E`$). We have already remarked that $`𝒜>4\pi (2E)^2`$, where the inequality is not marginal. Hence it is clear that

$$𝒮<\frac{𝒜}{4\mathrm{}_P^2},$$
(13)
which is the promised HB. The universal entropy bound is very similar to the HB for strongly self–gravitating systems, so to the extent that circumscribing radius and proper energy are meaningful, it is also established by this argument.

The derivation just given is appropriate only for strongly self–gravitating systems. A weakly self–gravitating system is much larger than its gravitational radius, and this would necessitate making $`r_0`$ much larger than we have assumed. Because the energy in the box radiation scales as $`r_0^3`$, were we to make $`r_0`$ larger, the energy in the cavity equilibrated with the black hole would rapidly become comparable to $`m`$. Of course we can still treat systems on the borderline between strongly and weakly self–gravitating by the above approach. This allows us to bridge the gap between the present approach and that given earlier for weakly self–gravitating systems. Systems not covered by our arguments are the strongly self–gravitating solitons which have no particle like constituents, e.g. , and complexes of particles not obeying the constraint $`\mu E10^2\mathrm{}_P^2`$. The first exception is not very important: solitons are vacuum solutions, and hence bear no entropy.

I thank Raphael Bousso and Mordehai Milgrom for enlightening comments.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Recently it has been known  that quantum field theory on noncommutative space can arise naturally as a decoupled limit of open string dynamics on D-branes in the background of Neveu-Schwarz two-form field $`B_{NS}`$. In particular, it was shown in  that noncommutative geometry can be successfully applied to the compactification of M(atrix) theory  in a certain background and the low energy effective theory for D-branes in the $`B_{NS}`$ field background, which are specifically described by a gauge theory on noncommutative space .

In their paper , Nekrasov and Schwarz showed that instanton solutions in noncommutative Yang-Mills theory can be obtained by Atiyah-Drinfeld-Hitchin-Manin (ADHM) equation  defined on noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ which is equivalent to adding a Fayet-Iliopoulos term to the usual ADHM equation. The remarkable fact is that the deformation of the ADHM equation has an effect removing the singularity of the instanton moduli space .

In this report, we study $`U(1)`$ and $`U(2)`$ instanton solutions on noncommutative $`𝐑^\mathrm{𝟒}`$ based on the noncommutative version of ADHM equation proposed by Nekrasov and Schwarz. Here it is shown that the anti-self-dual gauge fields on self-dual noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ correctly give integer instanton numbers for all cases we consider. After this paper, in , a method to obtain (anti-)self-dual solutions with integer instanton number was proposed using ’t Hooft ansatz although the resulting field strength is not Hermitian.

The paper is organized as follows. In next section we review the ADHM construction of noncommutative instantons on self-dual noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$. In section 3 we explicitly calculate the anti-self-dual field strengths for simple cases, $`k=1`$ and $`k=2`$ for $`U(1)`$ and $`k=1`$ for $`U(2)`$. We show that these solutions correctly give integer instanton numbers. In section 4 we discuss the completeness relation as an ADHM condition. It is also shown that the completeness relation in the ADHM construction is generally satisfied even for noncommutative spaces. In section 5 we discuss the results obtained and address some issues.

Recently, in their paper , Chu, et al. pointed out that the topological charge of noncommutative instantons by ADHM construction we considered in this paper is correctly an integer. According to their pointing out, we have redone the numerical calculation on the instanton number using Maple. Now we have obtained integer instanton numbers for all solutions previously found in this paper. It turned out that the previous puzzling result had been caused by an error of our numerical calculation.

## 2 Noncommutative Version of ADHM Equation

Noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ is described by algebra generated by $`x^\mu `$ obeying the commutation relation:

$$[x^\mu ,x^\nu ]=i\theta ^{\mu \nu },$$
(1)
where $`\theta ^{\mu \nu }`$ is a non-degenerate matrix of real and constant numbers. Since we are interested in noncommutative instanton backgrounds and the instanton moduli space only depends on the self-dual part $`\theta ^+=1/2(\theta +\theta )`$ , we restrict ourselves to the case where $`\theta ^{\mu \nu }`$ is self-dual and set

$$\theta ^{12}=\theta ^{34}=\frac{\zeta }{4}.$$

Then the algebra in (1), denoted as $`𝒜_\zeta `$, depends only on one parameter $`\zeta `$ where we choose $`\zeta >0`$. We consider an algebra $`𝒜_\zeta `$ consisted of smooth operators $`𝒪`$. The commutation relations (1) have an automorphism of the form $`x^\mu x^\mu +c^\mu `$, where $`c^\mu `$ is a commuting real number, and we denote the Lie algebra of this group by $`\underset{¯}{𝐠}`$. Since the derivative operator $`_\mu `$ can be understood as the action of $`\underset{¯}{𝐠}`$ on $`𝒜_\zeta `$ by translation, the generators of $`\underset{¯}{𝐠}`$ can be defined by unitary operators $`U_c=e^{c^\mu _\mu }`$ where $`_\mu =iB_{\mu \nu }x^\nu `$ with $`B_{\mu \nu }`$, an inverse matrix of $`\theta ^{\mu \nu }`$. Then the derivative for a smooth operator $`𝒪`$ is defined by $`_\mu 𝒪[_\mu ,𝒪]`$. One can check that $`_\mu `$ satisfies following commutation relations

$$[_\mu ,x^\nu ]=\delta _\mu ^\nu ,[_\mu ,_\nu ]=iB_{\mu \nu }.$$

However the action of two derivatives on any operator $`𝒪`$ commutes:

$$_\mu _\nu 𝒪_\nu _\mu 𝒪=[[_\mu ,_\nu ],𝒪]=0.$$

Introduce the generators of noncommutative $`𝐂^2𝐑^4`$ by

$$z_1=x^2+ix^1,z_2=x^4+ix^3.$$
(2)
Their non-vanishing commutation relations reduce to

$$[\overline{z}_1,z_1]=[\overline{z}_2,z_2]=\frac{\zeta }{2}.$$
(3)
The commuatation algebra is that of the annihilation and creation operators for a simple harmonic oscillator (SHO) and so one may use the SHO Hilbert space as a representation of $`𝒜_\zeta `$ as adopted in . Therefore let’s start with the algebra End $``$ with finite norm of operators acting on the Fock space $`=_{(n_1,n_2)𝐙_0^2}𝐂|n_1,n_2>`$, where $`\overline{z},z`$ are represented as annihilation and creation operators:

$`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\zeta }}}\overline{z}_1|n_1,n_2>=\sqrt{n_1}|n_11,n_2>,\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\zeta }}}z_1|n_1,n_2>=\sqrt{n_1+1}|n_1+1,n_2>,`$
$`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\zeta }}}\overline{z}_2|n_1,n_2>=\sqrt{n_2}|n_1,n_21>,\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\zeta }}}z_2|n_1,n_2>=\sqrt{n_2+1}|n_1,n_2+1>.`$ (4)
ADHM construction describes a way for finding anti-self-dual configurations of the gauge field in terms of some quadratic matrix equations on $`𝐑^4`$ . Recently, N. Nekrasov and A. Schwarz made the ADHM construction to be applied to the noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ . In order to describe $`k`$ instantons with gauge group $`U(N)`$, one starts with the following data:
1. A pair of complex hermitian vector spaces $`V=𝐂^k,W=𝐂^N`$.
2. The operators $`B_1,B_2Hom(V,V),IHom(W,V)`$ and $`JHom(V,W)`$ satisfying the equations

$`\mu _r=[B_1,B_1^{}]+[B_2,B_2^{}]+II^{}J^{}J=\zeta ,`$ (5)
$`\mu _c=[B_1,B_2]+IJ=0.`$ (6)
3. Define a Dirac operator $`D^{}:VVWVV`$ by

$$D^{}=\left(\begin{array}{c}\tau _z\\ \sigma _z^{}\end{array}\right)$$
(7)
where

$$\tau _z=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}B_2z_2& B_1z_1& I\end{array}\right),\sigma _z=\left(\begin{array}{c}B_1+z_1\\ B_2z_2\\ J\end{array}\right).$$
(8)
Then the ADHM equations (5) and (6) are equivalent to the set of equations

$$\tau _z\tau _z^{}=\sigma _z^{}\sigma _z,\tau _z\sigma _z=0.$$
(9)
According to the ADHM construction, we can get the gauge field (instanton solution) by the formula

$$A_\mu =\psi ^{}_\mu \psi ,$$
(10)
where $`\psi :WVVW`$ is $`N`$ zero-modes of $`D^{}`$, i.e.,

$$D^{}\psi =0.$$
(11)
For given ADHM data and the zero mode condition (11), the following completeness relation has to be satisfied to construct an (anti-)self-dual field strength from the gauge field (10)

$$D\frac{1}{D^{}D}D^{}+\psi \psi ^{}=1.$$
(12)
We will show in section 4 that this relation is always satisfied even for noncommutative spaces.

Note that the vector bundle over the noncommutative space $`𝒜_\zeta `$ is a finitely generated projective module.111The module $``$ is projective if there exists another module $``$ such that the direct sum $``$ is free, i.e., $`𝒜_\zeta ^N`$ as right $`𝒜_\zeta `$-module. It was pointed out in  that for a noncommutative space there can be a projective module associated with a projection with non-constant rank (so the corresponding bundle has non-constant dimension) and the instanton module is the kind that is related to a projection operator in $`𝒜_\zeta `$ given by

$$p=\psi ^{}\psi .$$
(13)
Just as in the ordinary case, the anti-self-dual field strength $`F_A`$ can be calculated by the following formula

$`F_A`$ $`=`$ $`\psi ^{}\left(d\tau _z^{}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}}d\tau _z+d\sigma _z{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}}d\sigma _z^{}\right)\psi `$ (14)
$`=`$ $`\psi ^{}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}dz_1\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}d\overline{z}_1+d\overline{z}_2\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}dz_2& d\overline{z}_2\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}dz_1dz_1\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}d\overline{z}_2& 0\\ d\overline{z}_1\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}dz_2dz_2\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}d\overline{z}_1& d\overline{z}_1\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}dz_1+dz_2\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_z}d\overline{z}_2& 0\\ 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)\psi ,`$
where $`\mathrm{}_z=\tau _z\tau _z^{}=\sigma _z^{}\sigma _z`$ has no zero-modes so it is invertible . Note that the completeness relation (12) is used to derive the above field strength $`F_A`$ which is anti-self-dual.

## 3 Explicit Calculation of Instanton Charge

In this section, we will perform an explicit calculation on the instanton charge from the solutions obtained by the ADHM construction in the previous section. First, we briefly do it for single $`U(1)`$ instanton solution obtained by Nekrasov and Schwarz  for the purpose of illuminating our calculational method. And then we will do the same calculation for two $`U(1)`$ instantons and single $`U(2)`$ instanton solutions.

It is natural to require that the integration on a quantum, i.e. noncommutative, space, which is the trace over its Hilbert space or more precisely Dixmir trace, has to respect a symmetry $`xx^{}=x^{}(x)`$, that is,

$$\mathrm{Tr}_{}\left(𝒪(x^{})\right)=\mathrm{Tr}_{}\left(𝒪(x)\right).$$

Intuitively, the quantized $`𝐑^4`$ in the basis (2) becomes two dimensional integer lattice $`\{(n_1,n_2)𝐙_0^2\}`$. Thus one can naturally think that the integration on classical $`𝐑^4`$ should be replaced by the sum over the lattice:

$$d^4x𝒪(x)\mathrm{Tr}_{}𝒪(x)\left(\frac{\zeta \pi }{2}\right)^2\underset{(n_1,n_2)}{}n_1,n_2|𝒪(x)|n_1,n_2.$$
(15)
This definition used in  to calculate the instanton number of $`U(1)`$ solution indeed respects the translational symmetry as well as the rotational symmetry since the automorphism $`\underset{¯}{𝐠}`$ of $`𝐑^4`$ such as (3) can be generated by the unitary transformation acting on $``$. If the system preserves rotational symmetry, for example, single instanton solution, we then expect for the case that the sum with respect to $`(n_1,n_2)`$ can be reduced to that with respect to $`N=n_1+n_2`$ corresponding to a radial variable $`r=\sqrt{x_1^2+x_2^2+x_3^2+x_4^2}`$.

### 3.1 Single $`U(1)`$ Instanton

In the ordinary case any regular $`U(1)`$ instanton solution can not exist. However, in the noncommutative case, there are nontrivial $`U(1)`$ instantons for every $`k`$ . Suppose $`(B_1,B_2,I)`$ is a solution to the equations (5) and (6) where one can show $`J=0`$ for $`U(1)`$ . If we write the element of $`VVW`$ as $`\psi =\psi _1\psi _2\xi `$, Eq.(11) is then

$$D^{}\psi =\left(\begin{array}{ccc}B_2z_2& B_1z_1& I\\ B_1^{}+\overline{z}_1& B_2^{}\overline{z}_2& 0\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}\psi _1\\ \psi _2\\ \xi \end{array}\right)=0.$$
(16)
For $`k=1`$ we can first choose $`B_1=B_2=0`$ by translation and we get $`I=\sqrt{\zeta }`$ from the ADHM equation (5). Then Eq.(16) is solved as

$$\psi _1=\overline{z}_2\delta ^1I\xi ,\psi _2=\overline{z}_1\delta ^1I\xi ,$$
(17)
where $`\delta x^2=z_1\overline{z}_1+z_2\overline{z}_2`$ and $`\xi =(1+I^{}\delta ^1I)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$. As emphasized by Furuuchi  and Ho , note that the operator $`\psi `$ annihilates $`|0,0`$ state, so the projective module is normalized as

$$\psi ^{}\psi =p1|0,00,0|.$$
(18)
If $`\overline{z}_1,\overline{z}_2`$ in (17) are ordered to the right of $`\delta ^1I\xi `$ according to the commutation rules

$$\overline{z}_\alpha f(\delta )=f(\delta +\zeta /2)\overline{z}_\alpha ,z_\alpha f(\delta )=f(\delta \zeta /2)z_\alpha ,(\alpha =1,2)$$
(19)
for a function $`f(z,\overline{z})`$, the $`|0,0`$ state is projected out from the Fock space and $`\delta ^1(\delta +\zeta /2)^1`$. So the ADHM solution (17) is well defined for all states in $``$. It is crucial to prove the completeness relation (12) to observe that ADHM always arrange their solutions to be singularity-free.

Now we can calculate the connection $`A=\psi ^{}d\psi `$ in terms of one variable $`\xi `$

$$A=\xi ^1\alpha \xi +\xi ^1d\xi ,$$
(20)
where $`\alpha =\xi ^2_z\xi ^2=\frac{\zeta }{\left(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2}\right)\left(x^2+\zeta \right)}\overline{z}_\alpha dz_\alpha `$ and $`_z=dz_\alpha \frac{}{z_\alpha },\overline{}_{\overline{z}}=d\overline{z}_\alpha \frac{}{\overline{z}_\alpha }(d=_z+\overline{}_{\overline{z}})`$. Then the corresponding field strength $`F_A`$ is obtained from

$`F_A`$ $`=`$ $`dA+A^2,`$ (21)
$`=`$ $`\xi ^1(d\alpha +\alpha ^2)\xi .`$
Even if we deal with the $`U(1)`$ case we have to keep the second term in (21) because of the gauge covariance on noncommutative space. The field strength $`F_A`$ can be obtained from (14) or by direct calculation of (21) with attention to ordering:

$`F_A={\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{x^2\left(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2}\right)\left(x^2+\zeta \right)}}\left(f_3(dz_2d\overline{z}_2dz_1d\overline{z}_1)+f_+d\overline{z}_1dz_2+f_{}d\overline{z}_2dz_1\right),`$ (22)
$`f_3=z_1\overline{z}_1z_2\overline{z}_2,f_+=2z_1\overline{z}_2,f_{}=2z_2\overline{z}_1.`$
Since the “origin”, i.e. $`|0,0`$, is projected out, $`F_A`$ has no singularity. The topological action density is given by

$$\widehat{S}=\frac{1}{8\pi ^2}F_AF_A=\frac{\zeta ^2}{\pi ^2}\frac{1}{x^2\left(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2}\right)^2\left(x^2+\zeta \right)}p,$$
(23)
where we used the fact that $`dz_1d\overline{z}_1dz_2d\overline{z}_2=4(\mathrm{volume}\mathrm{form})`$. Note that $`\widehat{S}`$ for $`k=1`$ depends only on $`x^2`$ due to the rotational symmetry.

The total action over noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ is defined by using the prescription (15) as

$$\mathrm{Tr}_{}\widehat{S}=\left(\frac{\zeta \pi }{2}\right)^2\underset{(n_1,n_2)(0,0)}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\widehat{S}.$$
(24)
Using the facts

$`x^2|n_1,n_2={\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}}(n_1+n_2)|n_1,n_2,`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{(n_1,n_2)(0,0)}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}N|𝒪(x)|N={\displaystyle \underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(N+1)N|𝒪(x)|N,`$ (25)
the instanton number for the solution (20) turns out to be $`1`$, that is,

$$\mathrm{Tr}_{}\widehat{S}=4\underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{N(N+1)(N+2)}=1.$$
(26)
### 3.2 Two $`U(1)`$ Instantons

Next we will perform the same calculation for $`U(1)`$ instanton solution with $`k=2`$. We start with the matrices satisfying the ADHM constraints (5) and (6):

$$B_1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& \sqrt{\zeta }\\ 0& 0\end{array}\right),B_2=0,I=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ \sqrt{2\zeta }\end{array}\right),J=0,$$
(27)
where we have fixed the moduli corresponding to the relative position between two instantons for simplicity (for a general solution with the moduli dependence, see ). With these data we can get the normalized solution of Eq.(11)

$`\psi =\left(\begin{array}{c}\psi _1\\ \psi _2\\ \xi \end{array}\right),`$
$`\psi _1=\sqrt{2\zeta }\left(\begin{array}{c}\sqrt{\zeta }\overline{z}_1\overline{z}_2\\ \overline{z}_2(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})\end{array}\right)Q^1,\psi _2=\sqrt{2\zeta }\left(\begin{array}{c}\sqrt{\zeta }\overline{z}_1\overline{z}_1\\ \overline{z}_1(x^2\frac{\zeta }{2})\end{array}\right)Q^1,`$ (28)
$`\xi =\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+x^2(x^2+\frac{1}{2}\zeta )}{\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})(x^2+2\zeta )}}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}},`$
where

$$Q=\left[\{\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+x^2(x^2+\frac{1}{2}\zeta )\}\{\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})(x^2+2\zeta )\}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}.$$

Note that the states $`|0,0`$ and $`|1,0`$ are annihilated by all components of $`\psi `$  (where the projected states in general depend on the moduli entering in $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$). The operator $`\psi `$ in (3.2) is thus normalized as

$$\psi ^{}\psi =p1|0,00,0||1,01,0|,$$
(29)
so $`Q^1`$ is well-defined.

With this solution, the field strength $`F_A`$ can be calculated with careful ordering from the formula (14)

$`F_A={\displaystyle \frac{2\zeta }{Q}}\left(f_3(dz_2d\overline{z}_2dz_1d\overline{z}_1)+f_+d\overline{z}_1dz_2+f_{}d\overline{z}_2dz_1\right),`$
$`f_3={\displaystyle \frac{G_1}{QP_1}}z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{G_2}{QP_2}}z_2\overline{z}_2,f_+={\displaystyle \frac{2(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})H_1}{Q_1P_1}}z_1\overline{z}_2,f_{}={\displaystyle \frac{2(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})H_2}{Q_2P_2}}z_2\overline{z}_1,`$
$`G_1:=\zeta (3x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})(z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+x^2(x^2{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})^2,`$
$`G_2:=\zeta (3x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}}\zeta )z_1\overline{z}_1+x^2(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})^2,`$
$`H_1:=3\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+x^2(x^2{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}}),`$
$`H_2:=3\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+x^2(x^2{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}}),`$
$`Q_1:=\left[\{\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+x^2(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})\}\{\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})(x^2+2\zeta )\}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}},`$
$`Q_2:=\left[\{\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+x^2(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})\}\{\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})(x^2+2\zeta )\}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}},`$
$`P_1:=\zeta (z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}})+x^2(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\zeta ),`$
$`P_2:=\zeta z_1\overline{z}_1+x^2(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\zeta ).`$ (30)
The $`f_{}`$ component has a singularity coming from $`Q_2`$ at $`|0,1`$ state which is not projected out by $`p`$. However, $`F_A`$ is well-defined since the $`|0,1`$ state is annihilated before it causes any trouble due to the factor $`z_2\overline{z}_1`$ in $`f_{}`$. Notice that, in the case of $`k=2`$ instanton solution with relative separation, we can not expect the spherical symmetry, so the action depends on another coordinates in addition to $`x^2`$.

By straightforward calculation, the instanton charge density $`\widehat{S}`$ can be explicitly calculated using the same normalization that the $`k=1`$ case

$`\widehat{S}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}F_AF_A`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\zeta ^2}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Q^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Q^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{G_1}{P_1}}z_1\overline{z}_1{\displaystyle \frac{G_2}{P_2}}z_2\overline{z}_2\right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{2(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})^2H_1^2}{Q_1^2P_1^2}}z_1\overline{z}_1\overline{z}_2z_2+{\displaystyle \frac{2(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})^2H_2^2}{Q_2^2P_2^2}}\overline{z}_1z_1z_2\overline{z}_2\right]p.`$
Now the instanton charge can be numerically calculated in the SHO basis (2) (where the sum with respect to $`n_1`$ and $`n_2`$ should be separately done since the spherical symmetry is broken). We performed this double infinite sum using Maple over $`40,399`$ points with $`0n_1200,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}n_2200`$ excluding the indicated points $`(0,0),(1,0)`$. The result is

$$\mathrm{Tr}_{}\widehat{S}=\left(\frac{\zeta \pi }{2}\right)^2\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{(n_1,n_2)(0,0)}{(n_1,n_2)(1,0)}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\widehat{S}1.99988772.$$
(32)
Now this result is consistent with . 222In the previous version of this paper, we obtained $`\mathrm{Tr}_{}\widehat{S}=0.932`$ incorrectly due to an error of our numerical calculation. Following the argument in , we believe that the instanton number for $`U(1)`$ solutions is always an integer, independent of the moduli entering in $`B_1,B_2`$. This should be the case since we have already introduced the integer number $`k`$ to specify the ADHM data.

### 3.3 Single $`U(2)`$ Instanton

Now we will seek for $`U(2)`$ solution  following the same steps as the $`U(1)`$ case. From the ADHM equations with $`B_1=B_2=0`$, one can choose $`I`$ and $`J`$ as follows

$`I=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta }& 0\end{array}\right):=\left(\begin{array}{cc}a& 0\end{array}\right),`$
$`J=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ \rho \end{array}\right):=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ b\end{array}\right),`$ (33)
where $`\rho `$ is a non-negative number and parameterizes the classical size of the instanton. Then, from Eq.(11), we get the following solution

$`\psi _1=\overline{z}_2\delta ^1I\xi z_1\mathrm{\Delta }^1J^{}\xi ,`$
$`\psi _2=\overline{z}_1\delta ^1I\xi +z_2\mathrm{\Delta }^1J^{}\xi ,`$ (34)
$`\xi =(1+I^{}\delta ^1I+J\mathrm{\Delta }^1J^{})^{\frac{1}{2}},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\delta +\zeta `$. Using the explicit solution (3.3), $`\xi `$ is expressed as

$`\xi =\left(\begin{array}{cc}\left(\frac{\delta }{\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}& 0\\ 0& \left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\end{array}\right):=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\xi _{}& 0\\ 0& \xi _+\end{array}\right)`$
and the zero-modes $`\psi `$ are

$`\psi _1:=\left(\begin{array}{cc}f_1& g_1\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\overline{z}_2(\frac{1}{\delta }a\xi _{})& z_1(\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }}b\xi _+)\end{array}\right),`$
$`\psi _2:=\left(\begin{array}{cc}f_2& g_2\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\overline{z}_1(\frac{1}{\delta }a\xi _{})& z_2(\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }}b\xi _+)\end{array}\right),`$
$`\psi :=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\psi ^{(1)}& \psi ^{(2)}\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}f_1& g_1\\ f_2& g_2\\ \xi _{}& 0\\ 0& \xi _+\end{array}\right).`$ (35)
From the above expression we see that $`\psi ^{(1)}`$ annihilates the state $`|0,0`$ for any values of $`\rho `$, and normalized in the subspace where $`|0,0`$ is projected out, that is, $`\psi ^{(1)}\psi ^{(1)}=p`$. The zero-mode $`\psi ^{(2)}`$ annihilates no states in $``$ and manifestly nonsingular even if $`\rho =0`$. When $`\rho =0`$, $`g_1=g_2=0`$, and, from (14), we see that $`\psi ^{(2)}`$ does not contribute to the field strength. Therefore the structure of the $`U(2)`$ instanton at $`\rho =0`$ is completely determined by the minimal zero-mode $`\psi ^{(1)}`$ in the $`U(1)`$ subgroup .

The gauge field $`A=\psi ^{}d\psi `$ can be now explicitly calculated and the result is

$`A=\xi ^1\alpha \xi +\xi ^1d\xi ,`$
$`\alpha =K\left(\begin{array}{cc}C_1\overline{z}_\alpha dz_\alpha & C_2(z_1dz_2z_2dz_1)\\ C_2(\overline{z}_2d\overline{z}_1\overline{z}_1d\overline{z}_2)& C_3z_\alpha d\overline{z}_\alpha \end{array}\right),`$ (36)
where

$$K=\frac{1}{(\delta +\frac{\zeta }{2})(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2)},C_1=(\rho ^2+\zeta ),C_2=\rho \sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta },C_3=\rho ^2.$$

If we let $`\zeta =0`$, we can get the ordinary $`SU(2)`$ instanton solution

$$A_\mu =2i\rho ^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }\frac{x_\nu }{x^2(x^2+\rho ^2)},$$
(37)
where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }`$ is the ’t Hooft symbol which is both antisymmetric and self-dual with respect to their indices . On the other hand, if we let $`\rho =0`$, we get

$$\alpha =\frac{\zeta }{\left(x^2+\frac{\zeta }{2}\right)\left(x^2+\zeta \right)}(\overline{z}_1dz_1+\overline{z}_2dz_2),$$
(38)
which is exactly equal to the $`U(1)`$ solution in (20) for the reason explained above.

The field strength $`F_A`$ can be obtained from (14) or by direct calculation with the solution (3.3) if one keeps in mind careful ordering 333Here we are using a shorthand notation where $`(\alpha \alpha )`$ denotes the coordinates $`z_\alpha z_\alpha `$ and $`(\overline{\alpha }\alpha )=\overline{z}_\alpha z_\alpha `$, etc.:

$`F_A=`$ $`d\overline{z}_1dz_1\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2}B_1(2\overline{2}1\overline{1})& B_2(12)\\ B_3(\overline{1}\overline{2})& \frac{1}{2}B_4(1\overline{1}2\overline{2})\end{array}\right)`$ (39)
$`+`$ $`d\overline{z}_2dz_2\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{2}B_1(1\overline{1}2\overline{2})& B_2(12)\\ B_3(\overline{1}\overline{2})& \frac{1}{2}B_4(2\overline{2}1\overline{1})\end{array}\right)`$
$`+`$ $`d\overline{z}_1dz_2\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_1(1\overline{2})& B_2(11)\\ B_3(\overline{2}\overline{2})& B_4(1\overline{2})\end{array}\right)`$
$`+`$ $`dz_1d\overline{z}_2\left(\begin{array}{cc}B_1(\overline{1}2)& B_2(22)\\ B_3(\overline{1}\overline{1})& B_4(\overline{1}2)\end{array}\right),`$
where

$`B_1:={\displaystyle \frac{2C_1}{\delta (\delta +\rho ^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2)}}`$
$`B_2:={\displaystyle \frac{2C_2}{\delta (\delta +\rho ^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2)}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2}{\delta +\rho ^2}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$
$`B_3:={\displaystyle \frac{2C_2}{\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2)(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2+\zeta }}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$
$`B_4:={\displaystyle \frac{2C_3}{\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2)(\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2+\frac{\zeta }{2})}}.`$
One can check that this $`F_A`$ is anti-Hermitian and anti-self-dual $`(F_{\overline{1}1}^A+F_{\overline{2}2}^A=0)`$ using the rule (19). By straightforward calculation, one can determine the instanton charge density which also depends only on $`x^2`$ due to rotational symmetry

$`\widehat{S}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}Tr(F_AF_A)`$ (40)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}\left\{(B_1^2+B_4^2)(1\overline{1}\overline{2}2+\overline{1}12\overline{2})+B_2^2(11\overline{1}\overline{1}+22\overline{2}\overline{2})+B_3^2(\underset{}{\overline{1}\overline{1}11+\overline{2}\overline{2}22})\right\}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi ^2}}\left\{(B_1^2+B_4^2)(1\overline{1}2\overline{2})^2+4B_2^21\overline{1}2\overline{2}+4B_3^2\underset{}{\overline{1}1\overline{2}2}\right\}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi ^2}}\left\{(B_1^2+B_4^2)x^2\left(x^2+\zeta \right)+2B_2^2\left(x^2{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{2}}\right)x^2\right\}p`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}B_3^2\left(x^2+\zeta \right)\left(x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{3\zeta }{2}}\right).`$
In the above expression, the parts except $`\underset{}{(\mathrm{})}`$ project out the state $`|0,0`$, so we explicitly inserted the projection operator $`p=1|0,00,0|`$ in the parts. It can be confirmed again to recover the ordinary $`SU(2)`$ instanton solution in the $`\zeta =0`$ limit where $`B_1=\mathrm{}=B_4`$ and the $`U(1)`$ case for the limit $`\rho =0`$ where only $`B_1`$ term in (40) survives.

Finally we calculate the instanton charge of $`U(2)`$ solution. Note that, since the part involved with $`B_3^2`$ in (40), denoted as $`\widehat{S}_2`$, does not project out any states in $``$, the trace with respect to the part should be performed over the full Hilbert space (2) including the state $`|0,0`$, while that involved with the projection operator $`p`$ in (40), denoted as $`\widehat{S}_1`$, has to exclude the “origin”, $`|0,0`$. Using the relations (3.1), the topological charge can be calculated (where we used Maple)

$`\mathrm{Tr}_{}\widehat{S}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\zeta \pi }{2}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(N+1)\widehat{S}_1(N)+{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(N+1)\widehat{S}_2(N)\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}({\displaystyle \frac{4}{(N+1)(N+2)(N+2a^2)(N+2a^2+1)^2(N+2a^2+2)^2(N+2a^2+3)^2}}\times `$
$`((N^3+6N^2+11N+6)^2+2a^2(N+2)^3(3N^3+16N^2+25N+12)+`$
$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}a^4(3N^6+45N^5+257N^4+714N^3+1028N^2+737N+212)+`$
$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}4}a^6(9N^5+83N^4+301N^3+512N^2+400N+115)+`$
$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}8}a^8(9N^4+55N^3+122N^2+109N+30)+16a^{10}(3N^3+11N^2+12N+3)))`$
$`=`$ $`1,`$
where $`a=\rho /\sqrt{\zeta }`$. Note that the dependence on the instanton modulus $`\rho `$ remarkably dissappears in the final answer. 444Now this result is in agreement with the result in . In the previous version of this paper, it was incorrectly claimed due to a programming error that the instanton number depends on the moduli.

## 4 Completeness Relation

In this section we will show that our solutions we constructed in section 3 exactly satisfy the completeness relation (12). And then it is shown that this completeness relation is a general property satisfied in the ADHM construction.

The completeness relation (12) is actually a canonical decomposition of a vector space $`𝐂^{N+2k}`$ (or a free module $`𝒜^{N+2k}`$ for noncommutative instantons) into the null-space (11) and its orthogonal complement. This decomposition is well-defined  even in the noncommutative space in spite of the nontrivial normalization (13) since the projective module (see footnote 1) corresponding to a vector bundle is also well-defined in this case.

Let’s start with the simplest case, the single $`U(1)`$ instanton in section 3.1. In this case, the matrices $`DfD^{}`$ and $`\psi \psi ^{}`$ where $`f^1=z_1\overline{z}_1+z_2\overline{z}_2+\zeta =\mathrm{\Delta }`$ have the forms

$`DfD^{}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}z_1f\overline{z}_1+\overline{z}_2fz_2& \overline{z}_2fz_1z_1f\overline{z}_2& \sqrt{\zeta }\overline{z}_2f\\ \overline{z}_1fz_2z_2f\overline{z}_1& \overline{z}_1fz_1+z_2f\overline{z}_2& \sqrt{\zeta }\overline{z}_1f\\ \sqrt{\zeta }fz_2& \sqrt{\zeta }fz_1& \zeta f\end{array}\right)`$ (42)
$`\psi \psi ^{}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\overline{z}_2\frac{\zeta }{\delta \mathrm{\Delta }}z_2& \overline{z}_2\frac{\zeta }{\delta \mathrm{\Delta }}z_1& \overline{z}_2\frac{\sqrt{\zeta }}{\mathrm{\Delta }}\\ \overline{z}_1\frac{\zeta }{\delta \mathrm{\Delta }}z_2& \overline{z}_1\frac{\zeta }{\delta \mathrm{\Delta }}z_1& \overline{z}_1\frac{\sqrt{\zeta }}{\mathrm{\Delta }}\\ \frac{\sqrt{\zeta }}{\mathrm{\Delta }}z_2& \frac{\sqrt{\zeta }}{\mathrm{\Delta }}z_1& \frac{\delta }{\mathrm{\Delta }}\end{array}\right)`$ (43)
To check the completeness relation (12) is now a simple straightforward algebra using the formula (19). Similarly one can easily check the completeness relation for the $`U(2)`$ single instanton in section 3.3. For this case,

$`DfD^{}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}z_1f\overline{z}_1+\overline{z}_2fz_2& \overline{z}_2fz_1z_1f\overline{z}_2& \sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta }\overline{z}_2f& \rho z_1f\\ \overline{z}_1fz_2z_2f\overline{z}_1& \overline{z}_1fz_1+z_2f\overline{z}_2& \sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta }\overline{z}_1f& \rho z_2f\\ \sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta }fz_2& \sqrt{\rho ^2+\zeta }fz_1& (\rho ^2+\zeta )f& 0\\ \rho f\overline{z}_1& \rho f\overline{z}_2& 0& \rho ^2f\end{array}\right)`$ (44)
$`\psi \psi ^{}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}f_1f_1^{}+g_1g_1^{}& f_1f_2^{}+g_1g_2^{}& f_1\xi _{}^{}& g_1\xi _+^{}\\ f_2f_1^{}+g_2g_1^{}& f_2f_2^{}+g_2g_2^{}& f_2\xi _{}^{}& g_1\xi _+^{}\\ \xi _{}f_1^{}& \xi _{}f_2^{}& \xi _{}\xi _{}^{}& 0\\ \xi _+g_1^{}& \xi _+g_2^{}& 0& \xi _+\xi _+^{}\end{array}\right)`$ (45)
where $`f^1=z_1\overline{z}_1+z_2\overline{z}_2+\rho ^2+\zeta =\mathrm{\Delta }+\rho ^2`$ and the notations in (45) are coming from (3.3).

Before checking the completeness for the case of the $`U(1)`$ two instantons, let’s argue that the completeness relation (12) in the ADHM construction is a general property satisfied even for noncommutative spaces. For this, it is important to observe the following property

$$\psi p=\psi ,p\psi ^{}=\psi ^{},$$
(46)
where $`p`$ is the projection operator in (13) which is $`p=1|0,00,0|`$ for $`k=1U(1)`$ instanton and $`p=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1|0,00,0|& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)`$ for $`k=1U(2)`$ instanton. Of course the above property is quite general in the ADHM construction for the reason stated below (19). When the null-space condition (11) is given in a vector space $`𝐂^{N+2k}`$ or a free module $`𝒜^{N+2k}`$, one can ask whether the completeness relation (12) is satisfied. If one notices the projection operators in left-hand side of (12) are both well-defined, i.e. non-singular, this relation should be satisfied since operating $`D`$ and $`\psi `$ from the right-hand side or $`D^{}`$ and $`\psi ^{}`$ from the left-hand side the relation is always satisfied due to (11) and (46) respectively. One can check using the explicit expressions (42)-(45) that the relation (12) is satisfied, as it should be, even for the dangerous state $`|0,0`$. This general argument actually can also be extracted from the construction of a projective instanton module given by Ho . We checked this claim for the $`U(1)`$ two instantons in section 3.2 as well although a little but straightforward algebra has been involved.

## 5 Discussion

We studied $`U(1)`$ and $`U(2)`$ instanton solutions on noncommutative $`𝐑^\mathrm{𝟒}`$ based on the noncommutative version of ADHM equation proposed by Nekrasov and Schwarz. It has been shown that the anti-self-dual gauge fields on self-dual noncommutative $`𝐑^4`$ correctly give integer instanton numbers for all cases we consider.

We further showed that the completeness relation in the ADHM construction is a general property satisfied even for noncommutative spaces. To illustrate this claim more concretely, let’s consider the ADHM construction on $`𝐑_{NC}^2\times 𝐑_C^2`$ where $`𝐑_{NC}^2`$ is the noncommutative space but $`𝐑_C^2`$ is the commutative space. This space is represented by the algebra

$$[\overline{z}_1,z_1]=\zeta ,[\overline{z}_2,z_2]=0.$$
(47)
With this convention, one can easily check using the explicit expressions (42)-(45) that the completeness relation is exactly satisfied for this space. (Note that now $`z_2,\overline{z}_2`$ are commutative coordinates, so one should apply the formula (19) only for $`\alpha =1`$ with the change $`\zeta 2\zeta `$.) Our result is different from  by Chu, et al. claiming that the completeness relation can be broken down in this space. Indeed they argued that there is no nonsingular $`U(N)`$ instanton on $`𝐑_{NC}^2\times 𝐑_C^2`$ due to the breakdown of the completeness relation. Our present result may cure their “unexpected” result correctly. We hope to address this problem soon .

We would like to mention some difference on finding an ADHM solution between ours and  although both methods consequently give equivalent results. We have taken the normalization (13) throughout this paper and found the solutions (17), (3.2) and (3.3) satisfying this normalization. Alternatively one can take an another nomalization $`\psi ^{}\psi =1`$ like as . In this case one should find the ADHM solution satisfying this normalization. Explicit solutions of this kind were found in . However, the choice of normalization is not important if and only if the consistent solution could be found according to each normalization. In addition, as shown in section 4, our normalization (13) is completely consistent with the completeness relation due to the property (46) (and more economical on calculational side).

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Pei-Ming Ho for useful discussions and comments and Koji Hashimoto, Eunsang Kim, and Satoshi Watamura for helpful discussions on related matter. We thank C.-S. Chu, V. V. Khoze and G. Travaglini for their critical comments in . We were supported by the Ministry of Education, BK21 Project No. D-0055 and by grant No. 1999-2-112-001-5 from the Interdisciplinary Research Program of the KOSEF. H.S.Y. was also supported in part by Basic Science Research Institute in Sogang University.


text:
# 1 Relativistic transverse velocity profiles from the prolonged analytic solution. The curves are results of a time backward calculation from a conjectured final state at 𝜏=6 fm/c with a radius of 𝑅=7.1 fm. The average portion of the quark matter in the mixed phase is indicated at the respective values of 0, 1/3 and 1.

Generating new solutions for relativistic transverse flow at the softest point

Tamás S. Biró111e-mail: tsbiro@sunserv.kfki.hu ; http://sgi30.rmki.kfki.hu/$`\stackrel{~}{}`$tsbiro/

Reseearch Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics

H-1525 Budapest, P.O.Box 49, HUngary

Abstract: Using the method of prolongation we generate new stationary solutions from a recently obtained simple particular solution for relativistic transverse flow with cylindrical symmetry in 1+3 dimension. This is an extension of the longitudinal Bjorken flow ansatz and can be applied to situations during a first order phase transition in a fast expanding system. The prolongated solution allows us to trace back the flow profile from any transverse flow conjectured at the end of the phase transition.

Introduction

Hydrodynamics often allow for nonrelativistic scaling solutions. Relativistic flow, however, seemed long to be an exception: besides Bjorken’s 1+1 dimensional ansatz and the spherically symmetric relativistic expansion, no analytical solution was known .

In a recent paper  we presented an extension of Bjorken’s ansatz  for longitudinally and transversally relativistic flow patterns with cylindrical symmetry in 1+3 dimensions. It satisfies $`u^\mu _\mu u^\nu =0`$ as well as the original Bjorken ansatz. This analytical solution of the flow equations of a perfect fluid is in particular valid for physical situations when the sound velocity is zero, $`c_s^2=dp/dϵ=0`$, with energy density $`ϵ`$ and pressure $`p(ϵ)`$.

In particular this happens during a first order phase transition, the pressure is constant while the energy density changes (in heavy ion collisons increases and drops again). This should, in principle, be signalled by a vanishing sound velocity. A remnant of this effect in finite size, finite time transitions might be a softest point of the equation of state, where $`c_s^2`$ is minimal. In fact, this has been suggested as a signal of phase transition by Shuryak, and investigated numerically in several recent works .

In this paper we generalize that simple analytic solution further by exploring the symmetries of the nonlinear partial differential equation determining the flow at the softest point (the relativistic Euler’s equation). The method of prolongation ensures us that all possible transformations of dependent and independent variables can be found which comply with the equations to be solved by solving linear partial differential equations only. Then from any simple (or trivial) particular solution of the original nonlinear problem several new classes of solutions can be generated. In this article we present the simple solution published recently, we review the method of prolongation and obtain a general class of transverse flow patterns for the relativistic problem at the softest point. We use this solution for calculating backwards from a conjectured final state at CERN SPS .

Nonrelativistic analytic solution has been also given several times, with respect to heavy ions see .

Simple relativistic transverse flow at the softest point

The 1+1 dimensional Bjorken flow four-velocity is a normalized, timelike vector. It is natural to choose this as the first of our comoving frame basis vectors (vierbein). The three further, spacelike vectors will be constructed orthogonal to this, separating the two transverse directions. This basis fits excellently to a cylindrical symmetry and to longitudinally extreme relativistic flow.

$`e_\mu ^0=({\displaystyle \frac{t}{\tau }},{\displaystyle \frac{z}{\tau }},0,0),`$ $`e_\mu ^1=({\displaystyle \frac{z}{\tau }},{\displaystyle \frac{t}{\tau }},0,0),`$
$`e_\mu ^2=(0,0,{\displaystyle \frac{x}{r}},{\displaystyle \frac{y}{r}},),`$ $`e_\mu ^3=(0,0,{\displaystyle \frac{y}{r}},{\displaystyle \frac{x}{r}},),`$ (1)
with $`t`$ time coordinate and $`z`$ longitudinal (beam-along) coordinate, $`x`$ and $`y`$ transverse, cartesian coordinates. The cylindrical radius is given by, $`r=\sqrt{x^2+y^2}`$, and $`\tau `$ is the longitudinal proper time: $`\tau =\sqrt{t^2z^2}`$.

We consider ideal fluids (“dry water”), where the energy momentum tensor is given by

$$T_{\mu \nu }=(ϵ+p)u_\mu u_\nu pg_{\mu \nu },$$
(2)
and the equation of state is given in the form of $`p(ϵ)`$. The ansatz for an almost boost invariant flow with some transverse, cylindrically symmetric component is then given by

$$u_\mu =\gamma \left(e_\mu ^0+ve_\mu ^2\right),$$
(3)
using the Lorentz factor $`\gamma =(1v^2)^{1/2}`$. This four-velocity is normalized to one:

$$u_\mu u^\mu =\gamma ^2\gamma ^2v^2=1.$$
(4)
In a recent publication we formulated Euler’s equation in terms of this ansatz and coordinates. For a situation with zero comoving gradient of the pressure it has been simplified to a sole partial differential equation for the transverse flow velocity component $`v(\tau ,r)`$:

$$\left(\frac{}{\tau }+v\frac{}{r}\right)v=0.$$
(5)
This equation is valid even for relativistic transverse flow, it is a quasilinear partial differential equation. The separable solution,$`v(r,\tau )=a(r)b(\tau )`$, which is regular at the cylindrical axis $`r=0`$ is given by

$$v=\frac{r}{\tau }.$$
(6)
In a recent paper we then explored consequences of such a linear transverse velocity profile for the time evolution of the energy density at constant pressure, i.e. the quark matter to hadron matter phase conversion.

Our concern now is to construct a more general solution of eq.(5), which is able to fit any flow profile at a given longitudinal time

$$v(\tau _0,r)=v_0(r).$$
(7)
In order to explore the quark matter hadron matter phase conversion we utilize simple bag model equation of state, as was done in . The energy density of $`\chi `$ part quark matter and $`(1\chi )`$ hadron matter is then given by

$$e=\left(\sigma _qT_c^4+B\right)\chi +\sigma _hT_c^4(1\chi ),$$
(8)
at the phase equilibrium temperature $`T_c`$, determined from the equity of quark and hadron pressure. The resulting evolution equation turns to be

$$_\mu (\chi u^\mu )+\nu _\mu u^\mu =0,$$
(9)
with

$$\nu =\frac{4}{3}\frac{\sigma _h}{\sigma _q\sigma _h}.$$
(10)
Here the ratio of Stefan-Boltzmann constants $`\sigma _{q,h}`$ depends only on the relative number of the effective degrees of freedom. By comparing a relativistic pion gas to quark gluon plasma $`\sigma _h=3`$ and $`\sigma _q=37`$ and one obtains $`\nu 0.12.`$

Now using the flow ansatz discussed above and eq.(6) one arrives at

$$\left(\frac{}{\tau }+v\frac{}{r}\right)\chi +(\chi +\nu )\left(\frac{v}{r}+\frac{v}{r}+\frac{1}{\tau }\right)=0.$$
(11)
Furthermore, expressing the quark matter part as

$$\chi (\tau ,r)=\nu +\frac{1}{\tau r}Z(\tau ,r),$$
(12)
we obtain a simpler equation for $`Z`$,

$$\frac{}{\tau }Z+\frac{}{r}(vZ)=0,$$
(13)
which formally resembles a one-dimensional conservation equation with density $`Z`$ and convective current $`vZ`$. It is noteworthy that for any solution $`Z`$ of this equation (13) $`f(v)Z`$ is also a solution with $`f(v)`$ being an arbitrary (but differentiable) function of the transverse velocity $`v`$. This freedom may be used for fitting a quark matter percentage profile at the same time when the transverse velocity profile is known, especially the $`\chi =0`$ (end of phase conversion) situation may be traced back up to a time when somewhere $`\chi =1`$ (full quark matter) is reached.

Eq.(13) is formally a conservation equation, whose solution, $`Z(\tau ,r)`$ satisfies

$$Q(\tau )=_0^{R(\tau )}Z(\tau ,r)𝑑r=Q(\tau _0).$$
(14)
The longitudinal time derivative of this expression vanishes leading to

$$\frac{dQ}{d\tau }=\dot{R}(\tau )Z(\tau ,r)+_0^{R(\tau )}\frac{Z}{\tau }𝑑r=0.$$
(15)
Replacing $`Z/\tau `$ from eq.(13) we arrive at

$$\left[\dot{R}(\tau )v(\tau ,R(\tau ))\right]Z(\tau ,R(\tau ))=0$$
(16)
if we take into account the regularity condition $`v(\tau ,0)=0`$. This is an evolution equation for the transverse radius $`R(\tau )`$ of the phase mixture region where $`Z0`$,

$$\dot{R}(\tau )=v(\tau ,R(\tau )).$$
(17)
It is a first order ordinary differential equation which can be easily solved once $`v(\tau ,r)`$ is known.

The conserved quantity $`Q(\tau )`$ can be related to the spatial average of the phase mixture ratio by using eq.(12):

$$\chi =\frac{2}{R^2}_0^R\chi (\tau ,r)r𝑑r.$$
(18)
Finally we obtain

$$\chi =\nu +\frac{2}{\tau R^2(\tau )}Q(\tau ).$$
(19)
In the followings we turn to a brief presentation of the method of prolongation, which shall be used for generalizing the particular relativistic transverse flow solution presented in .

The method of prolongation

The method of prolongation “prolonges” symmetries of a (system of) nonlinear partial differential equations, to transformations of dependent and independent variables and all partial derivatives of the dependent variables up to a degree less then the rank of the equation itself. For an incomplete list of references about the application of this method in physics see .

Let us generally denote the set of independent variables by $`x`$, the dependent ones by $`v`$, partial derivatives by $`v_x`$, $`v_{xx}`$ etc. The equation(s) to be solved let be given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(x,v,v_x,\mathrm{})=0.$$
(20)
Transformations on $`x`$ and $`v`$ (generating corresponding transformations on the partial derivatives) may let this equation remain valid in the transformed variables as well. These transformations are symmetries of the equation, and they can be viewed as integrals of infinitesimal transformations generated by the vector field (Killing vectors)

$$K=\mathrm{\Phi }(u,x)\frac{}{v}+\xi (v,x)\frac{}{x}.$$
(21)
This relation can be easily understood by inspecting infinitesimal transformations,

$`\stackrel{~}{v}`$ $`=`$ $`v+\epsilon \mathrm{\Phi },`$
$`\stackrel{~}{x}`$ $`=`$ $`x+\epsilon \xi .`$ (22)
In this case the derivative transforms to

$$\frac{d\stackrel{~}{v}}{d\stackrel{~}{x}}=\frac{\frac{dv}{dx}+\epsilon \frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dx}}{1+\epsilon \frac{d\xi }{dx}}=\frac{dv}{dx}+\epsilon \left(\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dx}\frac{d\xi }{dx}\frac{dv}{dx}\right)+𝒪(\epsilon ^2)$$
(23)
The total derivatives are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dx}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_vv_x+\mathrm{\Phi }_x,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\xi }{dx}}`$ $`=`$ $`\xi _vv_x+\xi _x.`$ (24)
The differential equation, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ can be expanded around the original solution

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(\stackrel{~}{v},\stackrel{~}{x},\stackrel{~}{v}_x)=\mathrm{\Delta }(v,x,v_x)+\epsilon \mathrm{\Phi }\frac{}{v}\mathrm{\Delta }+\epsilon \xi \frac{}{x}\mathrm{\Delta }+\epsilon \left(\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dx}\frac{d\xi }{dx}v_x\right)\frac{}{v_x}\mathrm{\Delta }+𝒪(\epsilon ^2).$$
(25)
The second and third term of $`𝒪(\epsilon )`$ in the above expansion resembles $`\widehat{K}\mathrm{\Delta }`$, but all terms to this order constitute a Killing field in the extended (prolongated) space spanned by $`v,x`$ and $`v_x`$. This is the (first) prolongation of the symmetry

$$\mathrm{pr}^{(1)}K=K+\mathrm{\Phi }^x\frac{}{v_x}$$
(26)
with

$$\mathrm{\Phi }^x=\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dx}v_x\frac{d\xi }{dx}=\frac{d}{dx}\left(\mathrm{\Phi }v_x\xi \right)+\xi v_{xx}.$$
(27)
Since both $`v(x)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{v}(\stackrel{~}{x})`$ are solutions, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\stackrel{~}{v},\stackrel{~}{x},\stackrel{~}{v}_x)=0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(v,x,v_x)=0`$ for arbitrary $`\epsilon `$ and we arrive at

$$\mathrm{pr}^{(1)}K(\mathrm{\Delta })|_{\mathrm{\Delta }=0}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.$$
(28)
The requirement of transforming only among solutions leads to a number of linear partial differential equations for the unknown functions $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\xi `$ (which may contain, in general, several components) by equating the coefficients of each monomials in $`v`$, $`v_x`$ etc. with zero. Eq.(28) is a property of the transformation and therefore is fulfilled for any solution of the original equation. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ constraint is important, it reduces the dimensionality of the space of the coefficient functions, usually by expressing one of the highest oder partial derivatives in terms of others. The resulting system of equations in principle can be solved (being linear). The corresponding vector field $`K`$ will then contain in general a number of constants or undetermined functions selecting out classes of transformations which generate new solutions from a given particular solution (20). The method of prolongation ensures us that we have considered all possible transformations.

New solutions

Now we rewrite equation (5) with notations of the method of prolongation:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`=`$ $`v_\tau +vv_r=0,`$
$`K`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }(v,\tau ,r){\displaystyle \frac{}{v}}+T(v,\tau ,r){\displaystyle \frac{}{\tau }}+R(v,\tau ,r){\displaystyle \frac{}{r}},`$
$`\mathrm{pr}^{(1)}K`$ $`=`$ $`K+\mathrm{\Phi }^\tau {\displaystyle \frac{}{v_\tau }}+\mathrm{\Phi }^r{\displaystyle \frac{}{v_r}}.`$ (29)
Applying the prolonged Killing vector field to the nonlinear equation to be solved we get

$$\mathrm{pr}^{(1)}K\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Phi }^\tau +v\mathrm{\Phi }^r+v_r\mathrm{\Phi }=0.$$
(30)
The prolonged coefficients of the Killing vector field are

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^\tau `$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau +v_\tau \mathrm{\Phi }_v)(T_\tau v_\tau +T_vv_\tau ^2)(R_\tau v_r+R_vv_\tau u_r),`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }^r`$ $`=`$ $`(\mathrm{\Phi }_r+v_r\mathrm{\Phi }_v)(T_rv_\tau +T_vv_\tau u_r)(R_rv_r+R_vv_r^2).`$ (31)
Replacing it to the prolongation condition eq.(30), we arrive at

$$\mathrm{pr}^{(1)}K(\mathrm{\Delta })|_{\mathrm{\Delta }=0}=\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau +v\mathrm{\Phi }_r+v_r(\mathrm{\Phi }R_\tau )+vv_r(T_\tau R_r)+v^2v_rT_r=0.$$
(32)
This has to be fulfilled for arbitrary $`v(\tau ,r)`$. In this equation, since we have already used the $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ constraint (the original equation to be solved) for eliminating $`v_\tau =vv_r`$, each coefficient in the polynomial of $`v`$ and $`v_r`$ vanishes separately, leading to a number of linear partial differential equations:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau =0,\mathrm{\Phi }_r=0,\mathrm{\Phi }=R_\tau ,T_\tau =R_r,T_r=0.$$
(33)
To these equations (being linear) a general solution can be given:

$`T(v,\tau ,r)`$ $`=`$ $`b(v)+a(v)\tau ,`$
$`R(v,\tau ,r)`$ $`=`$ $`c(v)+a(v)r+\varphi (v)\tau ,`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }(v,\tau ,r)`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi (v).`$ (34)
There are four undetermined functions in this general solution to the Killing vector problem, hence there are four general classes of transformations leaving the fulfillment of the original equation untouched. The corresponding vector fileds, which generate infinitesimal transformations, are

$`K_1`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi (v)\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{v}}+\tau {\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}\right),`$
$`K_2`$ $`=`$ $`a(v)\left(r{\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}+\tau {\displaystyle \frac{}{\tau }}\right),`$
$`K_3`$ $`=`$ $`b(v){\displaystyle \frac{}{\tau }},`$
$`K_4`$ $`=`$ $`c(v){\displaystyle \frac{}{r}}.`$ (35)
A general finite transformation of any solution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ is given by

$$(\stackrel{~}{v},\stackrel{~}{\tau },\stackrel{~}{r})=\mathrm{exp}\left(ϵ_1K_1+ϵ_2K_2+ϵ_3K_3+ϵ_4K_4\right)(v,\tau ,r).$$
(36)
Three of these transformations are quite trivial: $`K_4`$ generates translation of the variable $`r`$ by $`c(v)`$, $`K_3`$ generates translation of the variable $`\tau `$ by $`b(v)`$, and $`K_2`$ a strecth of both $`r`$ and $`\tau `$ by $`e^{a(v)}.`$ Only $`K_1`$ involves a transformation of $`v`$ as well:

$`\stackrel{~}{v}`$ $`=`$ $`v+\psi (v),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{\tau }`$ $`=`$ $`\tau ,`$
$`\stackrel{~}{r}`$ $`=`$ $`r+\tau \psi (v),`$ (37)
with

$$\psi (v)=\frac{dv}{\mathrm{\Phi }(v)}.$$
(38)
Combination of these transformations generates from the simple particular solution $`v=r/\tau `$ the following (implicit) solution

$$v=\frac{r+A(v)}{\tau +B(v)}.$$
(39)
Fitting this form to an initial transverse velocity profile, leads to

$$v_0=v(0,r)=\frac{r+A(v_0(r))}{B(v_0(r))},$$
(40)
which is equivalent to

$$r=v_0B(v_0)A(v_0)=f(v_0).$$
(41)
Finally we arrive at the general solution

$$rv\tau =f(v),$$
(42)
with $`f(v)`$ being the inverse function of the initial transverse velocity profile $`v_0(r)`$. The general solution is implicitely given by

$$v=v_0(rv\tau ).$$
(43)
It is easy to verify that this implicit form still satisfies the original equation (5).

Finally let us consider some possible initial transverse velocity profiles. For the linear case,

$$v_0(r)=\alpha r,$$
(44)
we obtain

$$v=\alpha (rv\tau )$$
(45)
which can be resolved to the explicit expression

$$v=\frac{\alpha r}{1+\alpha \tau }=\frac{r}{\tau +1/\alpha }.$$
(46)
presented already in . Initial profiles with nonlinear or non-invertable functions can be resolved only numerically, but a solution of implicit equations are usually faster and more stable than algorithms for solving partial differential equations numerically.

Flow at SPS

A particularly interesting enterprise is to start with a transverse flow profile conjectured from experimental data and evolve the flow pattern backwards in (longitudinal) time. For the CERN SPS heavy ion experiments Ster, Csörgő and Lörstad have proposed recently such a profile based on one-particle transverse momentum spectra and HBT correlation measurments . The reconstructed flow in the notations of the present paper can be written as,

$$\gamma v=\mathrm{sinh}\eta _t=u_t\frac{r_t}{R_G}=\alpha r,$$
(47)
at a late time instant $`\tau _0=6`$ fm/c. The fit by Ster et. al. concludes at $`u_t=0.55\pm 0.06`$ and $`R_G=7.1\pm 0.2`$ fm. This gives rise to the following proportionality coefficient: $`\alpha =0.0775\pm 0.01`$. This suggestion has improved on the linear transverse flow assumption, it nowhere exceeds the speed of light.

Fig.1 shows the reconstructed relativistic transverse velocity profiles ending at the one suggested by Ster et.al. It was assumed that in the final stage the phase transition just ended in an overall hadronic phase.

As insertions show the mixed phase should have started then as early as $`\tau =1.14`$ fm/c, but the quark matter part was decreased to $`1/3`$ on the average soon ($`\tau =2.4`$ fm/c). The velocity profiles do not differ from linear qualitatively in the range of interest. It is more pronounced how the radius of the mixed phase expands from $`R_0=5.4`$ fm to the reconstructed final stage with $`R=7.1`$ fm.

Conclusion

With the help of the method of prolongation we explored the symmetries of Euler’s equation for a relativistic transverse flow at the softest point (zero comoving gradient for pressure). We arrived at an implicit solution (43) which presents a correspondence between the initial transverse velocity profile and that at arbitrary longitudinal proper time. Although in a general case an implicit equation can only be solved numerically, it is a more elegant, stable and concise way to solve the flow problem than the numerical integration of partial differential equations.

With this perspective a transverse flow pattern obtained from measurements in heavy ion experiments at CERN SPS, where probably the mixed quark-gluon and hadronic phase has been realized, can also be re-calculated at the beginning of phase conversion (pure quark matter). In turn this might help for obtaining an improved insight into further characteristics (temperature, effective masses) of the quark matter at CERN.

Acknowledgements

This work is part of a collaboration between the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Hungarian Academy of Science (project No. DFG-MTA 101/1998) and has been supported by the Hungarian National Fund for Scientific Research OTKA (project No. T019700 and T029158), as well as by the Joint Hungarian-American Technology Fund TeT-MAKA (no. JF.649).