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# Persistent currents for Coulomb interacting electrons on 2d disordered lattices

## 1 Introduction

The interplay of disorder and interaction in mesoscopic samples has attracted considerable interest in recent years Moriond . A prominent experimental finding in this field is the insulator-metal transition in 2d systems of high mobility kravchenko , occurring when the carrier density is increased. This transition can neither be explained by disorder effects alone nor by interaction effects in clean samples and is the subject of still increasing experimental and theoretical activities (for a review see mit-review  and references therein).

One possible mechanism invokes both, interaction and disorder and associates the insulator–metal transition with the melting of a pinned Wigner crystal when the carrier density increases and therewith $`r_\mathrm{s}`$ (the interaction energy in units of the kinetic energy) decreases, allowing for metallic behavior at intermediate $`r_\mathrm{s}`$. Only at a higher density, when $`r_\mathrm{s}`$ is small, the interaction becomes negligible and the now dominating disorder-induced Anderson localization leads back to insulating behavior. Such a scenario is supported by experiments hamilton  and numerical investigations of few interacting particles in disordered lattice models benenti ; benenti\_mor ; waintal\_ann .

Another important experimental result in mesoscopic physics whose explanation necessitates to invoke disorder and interactions simultaneously is the value of the persistent current in diffusive rings pc\_exp . These persistent currents are much larger than the theoretical prediction for non-interacting electrons in disordered rings pc\_nonint . While the electron-electron interaction seems to play an essential role, the disorder in the sample is also important: Interactions cannot affect the persistent current in clean rotationally invariant 1d rings shastry ; axel , and the non-interacting result is consistent with the experimental one for a clean semiconductor ring in the ballistic regime mailly .

This has generated a large theoretical activity, dealing with the combined effect of interactions and disorder on the enhancement of persistent currents in mesoscopic rings (for an overview see e.g. Moriond ; Imry\_book ; eckern  and references therein). Even though different theoretical approaches suggest an increase of the persistent current in disordered samples due to repulsive Coulomb interactions, a quantitative understanding of the experiments is still lacking.

Within continuous models of fermions in 1d with disorder, repulsive interactions are found to enhance the persistent currents, without axel  and with cohen  spin. On moderately disordered lattices, repulsive interactions are however found to decrease the persistent current for spinless fermions in 1d berko3 ; bouzerar ; kato . It was concluded from analytical considerations gs , using renormalization group arguments, that 1d lattice models exhibit an interaction-induced enhancement of the persistent current only when the spin degree of freedom is taken into account. Nevertheless, a numerical study of small systems abraham  revealed that repulsive interactions can slightly enhance the averaged persistent current even for spinless fermions on a 1d lattice, provided the disorder is very strong.

A recent numerical investigation treating the persistent current for strongly disordered individual 1d chains schmitteckert ; WPSJ  leads to the conclusion that, while Anderson localization is dominating the non-interacting case, the persistent current can be strongly enhanced by repulsive local interactions at sample dependent intermediate values of the interaction strength. This delocalization is accompanied by a reorganization of the ground state structure. At half filling, strong interactions induce a regular charge density in the Mott-insulator regime and decrease the persistent current.

This suppression of the persistent current in the limit of strong repulsive interactions is not limited to 1d models of spinless fermions at half-filling with local interactions. It occurs with long-range interactions berko3  at arbitrary filling and also in 2d lattices benenti , when strong interaction (large $`r_\mathrm{s}`$) leads to the formation of a Wigner crystal pinned by the disorder in the ground state.

In the case of the Hubbard model at half filling stafford  and for spinless fermions in 1d chains without tsiper1  and with disorder WSJP , this suppression of the persistent current at strong interaction has been understood quantitatively from a perturbation theory starting at the Mott insulator limit. In contrast, numerical Hartree-Fock approaches which allow to treat larger systems than the exact diagonalization used in Refs. benenti ; berko3  and which have been used for weakly interacting particles in 1d and 2d bouzerar2 , are, at least in 1d, not able to quantitatively describe the persistent current in the limit of strong interaction piechon .

The sign of the persistent current in the case of spinless particles in strictly 1d rings is independent on the disorder realization and the interaction strength. According to a well-known theorem by Leggett leggett , the sign is given solely by the parity of the particle number $`N`$ (paramagnetic for $`N`$ even and diamagnetic for $`N`$ odd). This general rule is confirmed by an explicit calculation for a Luttinger liquid ring without disorder Loss .

On the other hand, the sign of the persistent current for particles with spin in disordered 1d rings or spinless fermions in disordered 2d systems differs from sample to sample and no general sign rule exists. Only in some special cases, like non-interacting particles with spin in clean 1d rings loss-gold , and for some interacting situations using the Hubbard model fye ; yu , the sign of the persistent current has been determined. The situation is less clear in the presence of long-range interactions and disorder we address in this work. For electrons with spin in 1d rings having a particular disorder consisting of only one barrier, a tendency towards diamagnetic responses, independent of the particle number, was found at strong repulsive interaction haeusler .

For spinless fermions in strongly disordered 2d lattice models, it has been noticed in numerical studies that the sign of the persistent current becomes realization-independent in the limit of strong interaction benenti ; benenti\_mor ; berko1 ; berko2 . Detailed studies of the local current show that the suppression of its transverse component by the interactions is much stronger than the decrease of the longitudinal current. On such a lattice, closed to a torus, the structure of the ground state at strong interaction is a Wigner crystal pinned by the disorder benenti ; benenti\_mor ; berko2 . While the system exhibits Anderson localization at weak interaction, the regime of intermediate interaction shows indications of a new type of correlated metal waintal .

For spinless fermions in 2d lattice models without disorder, the amplitude of the persistent current has recently been studied analytically and numerically at strong interaction tsiper2 . When $`r_s`$ is large, the hopping matrix elements between neighboring lattice sites being much smaller than the interaction strength, the behavior can be understood from a perturbation theory in terms of the hopping matrix elements.

In this paper we report a study of the persistent current in disordered 2d lattice models at very strong Coulomb interaction, using a perturbation theory expansion around the pinned Wigner crystal. While the understanding of this regime cannot directly explain the high persistent currents observed experimentally in diffusive metal rings, it may be relevant for the insulating side at low carrier density of the insulator-metal transition in 2d. We show how the sign of the persistent current at strong interaction follows systematically from the structure of the Wigner crystal and find simple rules for this sign. For the absolute values, power laws similar to the ones found in tsiper2  are obtained also in the disordered case. We shall show how the presence of disorder and spin can influence the prefactors and the exponents of these power laws.

In the following section we introduce the model for interacting fermions on a disordered lattice and the quantities used to characterize its properties. The perturbation theory is developed in section 3 and applied in section 4 to the persistent current in longitudinal and transverse direction before we conclude the paper.

## 2 Model

### 2.1 Hamiltonian

We consider $`N`$ fermions on a disordered square lattice with Coulomb interaction. The corresponding Hamiltonian reads

$$H=H_\mathrm{K}+H_\mathrm{D}+H_\mathrm{I}.$$
(1)
The kinetic energy term is

$$H_\mathrm{K}=t\underset{<i,i^{}>}{}\underset{\sigma }{}c_{i,\sigma }^+c_{i^{},\sigma }^{}$$
(2)
with the hopping matrix element $`t=1`$ setting the energy scale. We concentrate on rectangular 2d lattice structures with $`L_x\times L_y`$ sites $`i`$. The fermionic on-site operators $`c_{i,\sigma }c_{(x_i,y_i),\sigma }`$ destroy a particle with spin $`\sigma `$ located at $`\stackrel{}{r}_i=(x_i,y_i)`$, where the position coordinates $`x_i\{1,2,\mathrm{},L_x\}`$ and $`y_i\{1,2,\mathrm{},L_y\}`$ are measured in units of the lattice spacing $`a`$.

The disordered potential contribution is

$$H_\mathrm{D}=W\underset{i,\sigma }{}v_i\widehat{n}_{i,\sigma },$$
(3)
where $`W`$ is the disorder strength, with the independent random variables $`v_i`$, drawn from a box distribution within the interval $`[1/2;+1/2]`$. The occupation number operators are as usual given by $`\widehat{n}_{i,\sigma }=c_{i,\sigma }^+c_{i,\sigma }^{}`$. The Coulomb interaction is described by the term

$$H_\mathrm{I}=\frac{U}{2}\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i,i^{}}{ii^{}}}{}\underset{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}\frac{\widehat{n}_{i,\sigma }\widehat{n}_{i^{},\sigma ^{}}}{|\stackrel{}{r}_i\stackrel{}{r}_i^{}|}+U\underset{i}{}\frac{\widehat{n}_{i,}\widehat{n}_{i,}}{d},$$
(4)
the interaction strength being parametrized by $`U`$. The sum in $`H_\mathrm{K}`$ runs over all pairs of sites which are next neighbors on the lattice $`<i,i^{}>`$, while the interaction term is composed of a sum over all pairs of different sites. With these definitions, one finds $`r_\mathrm{s}=\frac{U}{2t\sqrt{\pi \nu }}`$, with the electronic density or filling factor $`\nu =N/L_xL_y=1/b^2`$, $`b`$ being the average distance between particles. An additional term takes into account double occupancy of a site by two particles of different spin, $`d(<a)`$ being a measure for the size of the on-site orbitals.

In order to study the persistent current, we close the 2d lattice first to a cylinder by imposing generalized periodic boundary conditions

$$c_{(L_x,y);\sigma }=\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\varphi _x)c_{(0,y);\sigma }$$
(5)
in $`x`$-direction. For $`\varphi _x=0`$, this is equivalent to usual periodic boundary conditions. Finite $`\varphi _x`$ accounts for a magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\varphi _x\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi `$ threading the ring, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ being the flux quantum. We choose the units such that $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi =1`$. In order to reduce finite size effects, we use periodic boundary conditions in $`y`$-direction, and thus obtain a torus topology with the fluxes $`(\varphi _x,\varphi _y)=(\varphi _x,0)`$. In section (4.3) we will use the dependence on the transverse flux $`\varphi _y`$ to study also the transverse current.

### 2.2 Persistent current

The magnetic flux threading the ring can drive a persistent current through the system. At zero temperature, it is given by

$$I(\varphi _x)=\frac{E_0}{\varphi }|_{\varphi =\varphi _x},$$
(6)
where $`E_0`$ is the many-particle ground state energy. Thus, the persistent current at $`T=0`$ is a measure of the dependence of the ground state energy on the magnetic flux. Since the latter can be expressed in the form of a boundary condition, it is at the same time a measure of the ground state sensitivity to the boundary conditions and can be related to the conductance of the sample kohn .

## 3 Theoretical approach

### 3.1 Wigner crystal at strong interaction

In the non-interacting limit, disorder leads to Anderson localization of the one-particle states and the problem can be treated by a perturbative expansion around the on-site localized states in terms of the hopping matrix elements $`t`$ bouch89 . Hopping to distant sites costs disorder energy of the order of $`W`$ such that a series expansion in $`t/W`$ results.

In the many-body case, strong repulsive interaction $`U`$ leads to Wigner crystallization of the ground state with on-site localized charges in the electro-statically most favorable position. One can use a similar perturbative formalism in terms of the hopping $`t`$, but now, the essential cost in energy caused by deplacing one of the many particles is given by the increase of the interaction energy such that one obtains a systematic expansion in terms of $`t/U`$.

We decompose the Hamiltonian (1) as

$$H=H_0+H_\mathrm{K}$$
(7)
with an unperturbed part containing disorder and interaction

$$H_0=H_\mathrm{D}+H_\mathrm{I},$$
(8)
and the perturbation given by the hopping terms of $`H_\mathrm{K}`$.

$`H_0`$ is composed of terms containing only occupation number operators in the one-particle on-site basis. Therefore, its $`N`$-particle eigenstates $`|\psi _\alpha `$ are Slater determinants built from $`N`$ different one-particle functions and are completely characterized by the occupation numbers $`n_{i,\sigma }(\alpha )\{0,1\}`$ of the one-particle states on site $`i`$ with spin $`\sigma `$, fulfilling the condition $`N=_{i,\sigma }n_{i,\sigma }(\alpha )`$. Therewith, the many-body eigenstates of $`H_0`$ can be written in the form

$$|\psi _\alpha =\left(\underset{i,\sigma }{}(c_{i,\sigma }^+)^{n_{i,\sigma }(\alpha )}\right)|0$$
(9)
($`|0`$ is the vacuum state), and the corresponding eigenenergies are given by $`E_\alpha =E_\alpha ^\mathrm{D}+E_\alpha ^\mathrm{I}`$ with

$`E_\alpha ^\mathrm{D}`$ $`=`$ $`W{\displaystyle \underset{i,\sigma }{}}v_in_{i,\sigma }(\alpha )\text{and}`$ (10)
$`E_\alpha ^\mathrm{I}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i,i^{}}{ii^{}}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{n_{i,\sigma }(\alpha )n_{i^{},\sigma ^{}}(\alpha )}{|\stackrel{}{r}_i\stackrel{}{r}_i^{}|}}+U{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{n_{i,}n_{i,}}{d}}.`$ (11)
The ground state $`|\psi _0`$ of this Coulomb glass problem is given by purely classical considerations, minimizing disorder and interaction energy. Its charge configuration depends in general on the specific disorder realization of the sample. At strong enough interaction, when the disorder effects are dominated by the interaction, the structure of $`|\psi _0`$ is the Wigner crystal of minimal interaction energy, independent of the disorder realization. The rigid array of charges can be translated as a whole through the system without changing the interaction energy. Nevertheless, the contribution of the disordered potential to the energy depends on the realization and pins the Wigner crystal in a realization dependent position. It is important to realize that the structure of the Wigner crystal is entirely given by the lattice geometry and the Coulomb interaction of the $`N`$ particles.

In contrast to $`H_0`$, the perturbing part $`H_\mathrm{K}`$ of the Hamiltonian depends on the magnetic flux through the ring since the latter appears in the boundary condition in $`x`$-direction and therefore influences some hopping matrix elements. Writing all the hopping terms explicitly, one obtains

$`H_\mathrm{K}(\varphi _x,\varphi _y)=t{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}({\displaystyle \underset{x=1}{\overset{L_x}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{y=2}{\overset{L_y}{}}}c_{(x,y);\sigma }^+c_{(x,y1);\sigma }^{}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{x=2}{\overset{L_x}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{y=1}{\overset{L_y}{}}}c_{(x,y);\sigma }^+c_{(x1,y);\sigma }^{}+e^{\mathrm{i}\varphi _y}{\displaystyle \underset{x=1}{\overset{L_x}{}}}c_{(x,1);\sigma }^+c_{(x,L_y);\sigma }^{}`$
$`+e^{\mathrm{i}\varphi _x}{\displaystyle \underset{y=1}{\overset{L_y}{}}}c_{(1,y);\sigma }^+c_{(L_x,y);\sigma }^{}+\text{H.C.}).`$ (12)
### 3.2 Perturbation expansion for spinless fermions

For electrons with spin, the unperturbed ground state is $`2^N`$-fold degenerate since all the spin configurations yield the same energy when hopping is suppressed. Further degeneracies appear in the case of clean systems when $`W=0`$ allows for translational symmetry.

For simplicity we first treat the case of completely spin polarized systems (all spins up, equivalent to spinless fermions) with disorder where the ground state of $`H_0`$ is not degenerate and the expansion in $`H_\mathrm{K}`$ is straightforward.

Using standard perturbation theory, the correction to the ground state energy in $`n^{\mathrm{th}}`$ order is given by

$`E_0^{(n)}={\displaystyle \underset{\alpha _1,\alpha _2,\mathrm{},\alpha _{n1}}{}}`$ (13)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _1}\psi _{\alpha _1}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}\psi _{\alpha _{n1}}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _0}{(E_0E_{\alpha _1})(E_0E_{\alpha _2})\mathrm{}(E_0E_{\alpha _{n1}})}},`$
with the sums running over all the eigenstates of $`H_0`$ except the ground state itself.

The numerator of the contributions to the sum of equation (13) contains matrix elements $`\psi _{\alpha _k}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _{k+1}}`$ of the perturbing Hamiltonian. Since $`H_\mathrm{K}`$ consists only of one-particle hopping terms, non-zero matrix elements can arise only if the two states $`|\psi _{\alpha _k}`$ and $`|\psi _{\alpha _{k+1}}`$ differ by nothing else than a single hop of one of the particles. From (13) one sees that a finite contribution to the sum over different sequences of intermediate states $`\alpha `$ is obtained only if the $`n`$ one-particle hops are such that the final configuration has an overlap with the initial one, corresponding to the ground state. The $`n`$ sums over intermediate states $`\alpha _k`$ in equation (13) can then be rewritten as a sum over all the sequences $`S=(\alpha _1,\alpha _2,\mathrm{},\alpha _{n1})`$ which give a nonzero contribution. Denoting the numerator of the terms by $`\mathrm{Num}(S)`$ and the denominator by $`\mathrm{Den}(S)`$, equation (13) takes the form

$$E_0^{(n)}=\underset{S}{}\frac{\mathrm{Num}(S)}{\mathrm{Den}(S)}.$$
(14)
We will now evaluate the numerator and the denominator separately. The numerator $`\mathrm{Num}(S)`$ can be calculated directly from the $`n`$ hopping matrix elements, thereby taking into account the flux dependent phase for hops crossing the boundary. Since we consider fermions, the corresponding operators anti-commute and their order in the products (9) defining the basis states $`|\psi _\alpha `$ is crucial for the sign. When the starting point (the ground state configuration) is re-established after $`n`$ consecutive hopping processes, the order of the operators can be modified. Then, the sign of the permutation $`P_S`$ of the operators, caused by the sequence of one-particle hops $`S`$, must be incorporated in the result. Altogether, one obtains

$$\mathrm{Num}(S)=\mathrm{sign}(P_S)(t)^n\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{i}\varphi _x(h_\mathrm{f}h_\mathrm{b})\right].$$
(15)
$`h_\mathrm{f}`$ and $`h_\mathrm{b}`$ denote the number of hoppings across the boundary between sites $`(L_x,y)`$ and $`(1,y)`$ in forward and backward direction, respectively. Therefore, only the corrections to the ground state energy due to sequences with $`h_\mathrm{f}h_\mathrm{b}0`$ are flux dependent.

Moving particles creates defects in the Wigner crystal. This increases the interaction energy (see equation 11) of the ground state $`E_0^\mathrm{I}`$ by the amount $`Uϵ_\alpha `$, where

$$ϵ_\alpha =\frac{1}{U}\left(E_\alpha ^\mathrm{I}E_0^\mathrm{I}\right)$$
(16)
is non-negative and independent of $`U`$. It accounts for the difference of the inter-particle distances between the configurations of the state $`|\psi _\alpha `$ and the ground state $`|\psi _0`$. We assume always $`UW`$, such that the difference in potential energy can be neglected in a first step except for the case $`ϵ_\alpha =0`$ which occurs for some special sample geometries and particle numbers. Corrections due to the disorder will be considered in Section (4.2).

In the generic case when $`ϵ_\alpha >0`$ for all intermediate states, the energy differences in the denominator $`\mathrm{Den}(S)`$ are dominated by the difference in interaction energy. In the limit of strong interaction, one therefore gets

$$\mathrm{Den}(S)(U)^{n1}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{n1}{}}ϵ_\alpha .$$
(17)
## 4 Persistent current

### 4.1 Longitudinal current

Since the longitudinal persistent current at zero temperature $`I=E_0/\varphi _x`$ is given by the flux dependence of the ground state energy, a perturbative treatment of the latter in terms of the hopping $`t`$ yields a systematic expansion of the persistent current.

Calculating the $`n^{\mathrm{th}}`$ order correction $`E_0^{(n)}(\varphi _x)`$ to the ground state energy, one gets the correction to the persistent current

$$I^{(n)}(\varphi _x)=\frac{E_0^{(n)}}{\varphi _x}$$
(18)
in $`n^{\mathrm{th}}`$ order in the perturbation $`H_\mathrm{K}`$.

#### 4.1.1 Relevant terms of the perturbation theory

When the sequence $`S`$ of $`n`$ hopping elements is chosen such that each of the particles returns to its initial position without completing a tour around the ring, every particle which has crossed the boundary must necessarily cross it a second time in the opposite direction such that $`h_\mathrm{b}=h_\mathrm{f}`$. Therefore the flux dependence of these contributions disappears and they cannot influence the persistent current. The lowest order of the perturbation theory which yields a finite contribution $`I^{(n)}`$ is $`n=L_x`$, corresponding to the sequences in which one particle starting at $`(x_0,y_0)`$ crosses the boundary and returns to its original position after completion of its journey around the ring at constant $`y=y_0`$. If there are more than one particle in the line of the lattice with constant $`y=y_0`$, a contribution of the same order arises from sequences of hops which move each of the particles to the position of its neighbor (see Fig. 1). Since any hopping in $`y`$-direction leads to an increase of the order of the contribution, the lowest order correction to the persistent current is given by the considered processes in which $`y`$ is kept constant and all of the hops are either in forward or in backward direction.

We now address the dependence of the permutation $`P_S`$ corresponding to this kind of process on the number $`N_y`$ of particles in the line at constant $`y`$. If $`N_y=1`$, the particle returns to its initial site, the final configuration is exactly equal to the initial one and $`\mathrm{sign}(P_S)=+1`$. In the general case of arbitrary $`N_y`$, the considered sequences of hops (see Fig. 1) lead to a cyclic rotation of the order of the $`N_y`$ particles and the sign of the corresponding permutation is $`\mathrm{sign}(P_S)=(1)^{N_y1}`$.

This yields the result for the lowest-order $`\varphi _x`$-dependence of the ground state energy

$$E_0^{(L_x)}(\varphi _x)\underset{S}{}\frac{t^{L_x}\mathrm{sign}(P_S)\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{i}\varphi _x(h_\mathrm{f}h_\mathrm{b})\right]}{U^{L_x1}ϵ_{\alpha _1}ϵ_{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}ϵ_{\alpha _3}}.$$
(19)
Each sequence considered in this sum contains either $`L_x`$ forward hops with $`h_\mathrm{f}=1`$; $`h_\mathrm{b}=0`$ or it contains $`L_x`$ backward hops with $`h_\mathrm{f}=0`$; $`h_\mathrm{b}=1`$. Each given backward sequence $`S_\mathrm{b}`$ can now be assigned to the forward sequence $`S_\mathrm{f}`$ with the reversed order of hops whose contribution differs only in the sign of the flux-dependent phase-factor. One can express the result as a sum over the forward hopping sequences

$$E_0^{(L_x)}(\varphi _x)2\frac{t^{L_x}}{U^{L_x1}}\underset{S_\mathrm{f}}{}\frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_S)\mathrm{cos}\varphi _x}{ϵ_{\alpha _1}ϵ_{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}ϵ_{\alpha _{L_x1}}}.$$
(20)
Within the above perturbation theory, when processes corresponding to two loops around the ring (which are at least of order $`2L_x`$) are neglected as compared to the lowest order one-loop processes, the flux dependence of the ground state energy is harmonic and $`2\pi `$-periodic in $`\varphi _x`$.

#### 4.1.2 Lowest order result for the persistent current

From (20), one obtains the persistent current in $`L_x`$-th order perturbation theory

$$I^{(L_x)}(\varphi _x)=\stackrel{~}{I}^{(L_x)}\mathrm{sin}\varphi _x$$
(21)
with the flux–independent amplitude

$$\stackrel{~}{I}^{(L_x)}2\frac{t^{L_x}}{U^{L_x1}}\underset{S_\mathrm{f}}{}\frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_S)}{ϵ_{\alpha _1}ϵ_{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}ϵ_{\alpha _{L_x1}}}.$$
(22)
This result contains several interesting features. First, the absolute value of the persistent current decays proportionally to $`t^{L_x}/U^{L_x1}`$, in the limit of strong interaction. In order to determine the constant prefactor of this power law, it is sufficient to figure out all possible processes which transform the ground state into itself, using $`L_x`$ forward hopping processes, and to calculate the corresponding $`ϵ_\alpha `$ from (16).

Furthermore, the sign of the dominating contributions to the persistent current in the limit of strong interaction is given by $`\mathrm{sign}(P_S)`$, which for spin-polarized electrons is given by $`(1)^{N_y}`$ with the number $`N_y`$ of electrons in the line of the sample at constant $`y`$. This is consistent with the well-known theorem by Leggett for the sign of the persistent current of spinless fermions in 1d leggett  (positive $`\stackrel{~}{I}`$ or paramagnetic response for $`N`$ even and negative or diamagnetic for $`N`$ odd). Only if the unperturbed ground state (Wigner crystal) configuration of the particles is such that the particle numbers $`N_y`$ in different occupied lines $`y`$ have different parity, the prefactors of the corresponding terms have to be considered to determine the sign of the persistent current. For $`N_y`$ particles in a line of length $`L_x`$, the number of hopping sequences $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)`$ going from the ground state to itself is the number of terms contributing to the sum in equation (22). Therewith, the result for the persistent current can be roughly estimated to be

$$\stackrel{~}{I}^{(L_x)}\frac{t^{L_x}}{U^{L_x1}}\underset{y=1}{\overset{L_y}{}}N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)(1)^{N_y}.$$
(23)
In the limit of low filling $`N_y/L_x0`$, $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)`$ is approximatively given by the number of possibilities $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)`$ for $`N_y`$ particles to each make $`L_x/N_y`$ (here we assume for simplicity that $`L_x/N_y`$ is an integer) forward jumps to reach the position of its neighbor, leading to the estimate $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)L_x!/[(L_x/N_y)!]^{N_y}`$. At finite filling, one must consider that the neighbor particle must have left its starting site before the arriving particle can do its last hop. This correlation of the order of the hops of different particles reduces $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)`$. With increasing filling, $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y)`$ starts to exponentially increase with $`N_y`$ and continues to increase more slowly until $`N_y=L_x/2`$ (half filling). For larger filling it decreases, thereby obeying a symmetry with respect to half filling which is a consequence of the symmetry between particles and holes. One can expect that the contribution of the line $`N_y=N_y^{\mathrm{max}}`$ with the largest number $`N_{\mathrm{seq}}(N_y^{\mathrm{max}})`$ of sequences (at low filling this is the one with the maximum number of particles) may dominate over the contributions of the ones with fewer sequences. The sign of the persistent current is then likely to be $`(1)^{N_y^{\mathrm{max}}}`$.

#### 4.1.3 Examples

As an example, we calculate explicitly the lowest order term in $`\frac{1}{U}`$ of the persistent current for 4 spinless fermions on a few small $`L_x\times L_y`$ rectangular lattices, using the formula (22).

##### $`4\times 2`$ sites

We start with the simple case of a $`4\times 2`$ lattice. The electro-statically lowest energy configuration (the Wigner crystal) is shown in Fig. 2.

The number of particles in the two lines at $`y=1`$ and $`y=2`$ of the system is $`N_y=2`$, and the lowest order of the perturbation theory which yields a contribution to the persistent current is $`n=L_x=4`$. From these two ingredients, we can immediately determine the sign ($`\mathrm{sign}(P_S)=1`$ for $`N_y`$ even) and the power law of the decrease of the persistent current at strong interaction strength. The leading term of the amplitude (22) is given by

$$\stackrel{~}{I}^{(4)}2\frac{t^4}{U^3}\underset{S_\mathrm{f}}{}\frac{1}{ϵ_{\alpha _1}ϵ_{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}ϵ_{\alpha _{L_x1}}}.$$
(24)
This result is always positive and $`1/U^3`$. Therefore, the response of the system to the applied flux is always paramagnetic at strong interaction.

For this example, it is an easy exercise to figure out all hopping sequences which contribute in lowest order. For each line $`y=1,2`$, one finds 4 different sequences and can explicitly calculate the interaction energies and $`ϵ_\alpha `$ of the intermediate states. This allows to evaluate the sum over all sequences in (24) with the result

$$\stackrel{~}{I}\stackrel{~}{I}^{(4)}853\frac{t^4}{U^3}\text{for}\frac{t}{U}0.$$
(25)
In the case of 8 spinless fermions on $`4\times 4`$ sites, the same analysis can be carried out except for the fact that now four lines $`y=1,2,3,4`$ must be considered, yielding an additional factor of 2 in (25). In particular, the persistent current is always paramagnetic in the strong interaction limit, as found numerically in Ref. berko2 .

##### $`2\times 4`$ sites

The situation for 4 particles on $`2\times 4`$ sites is even simpler since there are four lines $`y=1,2,3,4`$, each of them containing $`N_y=1`$ particle. Since $`L_x=2`$, the leading order of the perturbation theory at strong interaction is $`n=2`$, and the sequences of hops contain only one intermediate state. The evaluation of (22) yields

$$\stackrel{~}{I}\stackrel{~}{I}^{(2)}15\frac{t^2}{U}\text{for}\frac{t}{U}0,$$
(26)
and the persistent current is diamagnetic at strong interaction.

##### $`6\times 6`$ sites

4 particles on $`6\times 6`$ sites is the situation investigated numerically in Ref. benenti , at strong disorder. As a function of the interaction strength, an increase of the average persistent current at intermediate strength and a decrease at strong interaction was found. An exponential dependence on the interaction strength was fitted to the data for not too strong interaction. Furthermore, it was noticed that, at strong interaction, the persistent current became paramagnetic for all samples, independent of the disorder realization.

The Wigner crystal ground state on such a lattice is of square form, as shown in Fig. 1. Thus, there are two lines with $`N_y=2`$ in which hopping sequences of $`L_x=6`$ hops can contribute to the persistent current. This explains immediately that the response is paramagnetic, since $`N_y`$ is even and $`\mathrm{sign}(P_S)=+1`$. The persistent current decreases in the strong interaction limit as $`t^6/U^5`$. A laborious evaluation of all the 18 sequences for each of the lines with $`N_y=2`$ yields the result

$$\stackrel{~}{I}\stackrel{~}{I}^{(6)}1.808\times 10^6\frac{t^6}{U^5}\text{for}\frac{t}{U}0.$$
(27)
As compared to the previous cases, the prefactor is much larger. This is caused by the bigger number of contributing sequences and, more importantly, the difference in interaction energy between the intermediate states and the unperturbed ground state $`ϵ_\alpha `$. The latter can be very small when the distance between the particles is large.

A numerical investigation by direct diagonalization of the corresponding Hamiltonian matrices SW\_unpub  confirms the signs, the power laws and the numerical prefactors predicted by the above formulas, also for the last case of 4 particles on $`6\times 6`$ sites, where the persistent current is indeed found to follow the power law of (27) at strong interaction. However, it must be noticed that the sign of the persistent current is well established benenti  at interaction values much lower than the ones where the agreement in amplitude with our formula starts to be good. Even though the data always follow the power laws at strong interaction, fitting an exponential interaction dependence, as done in Ref. benenti , is possible at moderately strong interaction, and might allow to extract useful informations in the regime where higher order terms of the perturbation theory are non-negligible.

### 4.2 Disorder effects at strong interaction

The role of the disorder and realization-dependent fluctuations of the persistent current vanish in the limit of strong interaction, when $`W/U0`$. In this section, we treat the lowest order correction in $`W/U`$ to the results presented above.

In addition, we consider the special case of a perfectly clean system $`W=0`$, in which the translational symmetry can considerably influence the interaction dependence of the persistent current.

#### 4.2.1 Disorder corrections to the persistent current

In order to take into account the disorder corrections in the perturbation theory for the longitudinal persistent current, it is not sufficient to consider in the denominator of the expansion terms the $`ϵ_\alpha `$ which completely neglect the disorder energy. Instead, the full energy differences $`E_0E_\alpha =U\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_\alpha `$ with

$$\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_\alpha =\frac{1}{U}\left(E_\alpha ^\mathrm{I}+E_\alpha ^\mathrm{D}E_0^\mathrm{I}E_0^\mathrm{D}\right)$$
(28)
account also for the differences in disorder energy between the intermediate states $`\alpha `$ and the ground state. The difference

$$\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_\alpha ϵ_\alpha =\frac{1}{U}\left(E_\alpha ^\mathrm{D}E_0^\mathrm{D}\right)=\frac{W}{U}\underset{i}{}v_i\left(n_i(\alpha )n_i(0)\right),$$
(29)
is of the order $`W/U`$ and vanishes in the limit $`W/U0`$. With the definition

$$d_\alpha =\underset{i}{}v_i\left(n_i(\alpha )n_i(0)\right)$$
(30)
we can write $`\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_\alpha =ϵ_\alpha +\frac{W}{U}d_\alpha `$ and therewith express the energy difference terms in the denominator of (13) as

$$\frac{1}{E_0E_\alpha }=\frac{1}{U\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_\alpha }=\frac{1}{Uϵ_\alpha \left(1+\frac{W}{Uϵ_\alpha }d_\alpha \right)}.$$
(31)
Taking the lowest order term in $`W/U`$, and averaging over the ensemble yields

$$\frac{1}{E_0E\alpha }\frac{1}{Uϵ_\alpha }\left(1\frac{W}{Uϵ_\alpha }<d_\alpha >\right),$$
(32)
where the brackets $`<\mathrm{}>`$ denote the ensemble average over all disorder realizations. At first glance one could expect that the correction linear in $`W/U`$ vanishes because $`<d_\alpha >=0`$, when the disorder average is taken over all values of $`d_\alpha `$. However, since the ground state is the Wigner crystal pinned at the lowest disorder configuration, $`d_\alpha `$ is more likely positive than negative. The first correction is thus linear in $`W`$, and since $`ϵ_\alpha `$ is always positive, the lowest order correction to the persistent current due to disorder is reducing the contributions of all sequences, the result being

$`I_\mathrm{W}^{(L_x)}`$ $``$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{t^{L_x}}{U^{L_x1}}}{\displaystyle \underset{S_\mathrm{f}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_S)}{ϵ_{\alpha _1}ϵ_{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}ϵ_{\alpha _{L_x1}}}}`$ (33)
$`\times `$ $`\left(1{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ϵ_\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{W<d_\alpha >}{U}}+O[(W/U)^2]\right).`$
#### 4.2.2 The particular case $`W=0`$

At $`W=0`$ we have $`H_0=H_I`$, and the ground state at $`t=0`$ is degenerate because of the translation symmetry. The number $`n_\mathrm{D}`$ of equivalent degenerate Wigner crystal positions and corresponding basis states $`|\psi _0^{(\beta )}`$ depends on the system size and the number of particles. The hopping terms however lead to a coupling of these degenerate basis states, and split the degenerate levels, except for special situations where symmetries persist. The coupling terms themselves can be expressed in terms of a perturbative expansion in $`t`$. The order $`p`$ in which the degeneracy of the ground state is lifted may be different from the lowest order $`n`$ which yields a finite persistent current. We address in the following the three different cases which may occur.

##### $`p>n`$

In this case, the splitting can be ignored as compared to the persistent current at strong interaction. The perturbation theory can be applied as in the disordered case, using one of the degenerate ground state configurations (the result will be the same for arbitrary superpositions of the degenerate basis states).

##### $`p=n`$

When the persistent current is given by terms which are of the same order as the ones which lift the ground state degeneracy, the flux dependent correction to the ground state energy and the persistent current are given by the lowest eigenvalue of the effective coupling matrix $`M`$ between the $`n_\mathrm{D}`$ degenerate basis states. The matrix elements are

$`M_{\beta ,\beta ^{}}={\displaystyle \underset{\alpha _1,\alpha _2,\mathrm{},\alpha _{p1}}{}}`$ (34)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0^{(\beta )}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _1}\psi _{\alpha _1}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}\psi _{\alpha _{p1}}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _0^{(\beta ^{})}}{(E_0E_{\alpha _1})(E_0E_{\alpha _2})\mathrm{}(E_0E_{\alpha _{p1}})}}.`$
Since in this case all matrix elements are $`t^n/U^{n1}`$, the lowest eigenvalue and thus the persistent current will follow such a power law too.

##### $`p<n`$

When the levels are split at an order which is lower than the one which yields contributions to the persistent current, the higher order terms must be calculated using the lowest energy ground state found from the diagonalization of $`M`$. Such a ground state will be a superposition

$$|\psi _0=\underset{\beta =1}{\overset{n_\mathrm{D}}{}}f_\beta |\psi _0^{(\beta )}\text{with}\underset{\beta }{\overset{n_\mathrm{D}}{}}|f_\beta |^2=1$$
(35)
of the different Wigner crystal positions. Plugging this ground state into the general expression for the corrections to the ground state energy (13), one gets

$`E_0^{(n)}(W=0)={\displaystyle \underset{\beta ,\beta ^{}}{}}f_\beta ^{}f_\beta ^{}^{}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha _1,\alpha _2,\mathrm{},\alpha _{n1}}{}}`$ (36)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0^{(\beta )}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _1}\psi _{\alpha _1}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _{\alpha _2}\mathrm{}\psi _{\alpha _{n1}}|H_\mathrm{K}|\psi _0^{(\beta ^{})}}{(E_0E_{\alpha _1})(E_0E_{\alpha _2})\mathrm{}(E_0E_{\alpha _{n1}})}},`$
and realizes that contributions can arise from hopping processes starting at any of the ground state components $`|\psi _0^{(\beta )}`$, and ending at an arbitrary $`|\psi _0^{(\beta ^{})}`$ where $`\beta `$ and $`\beta ^{}`$ can be equal or different. The processes with $`\beta \beta ^{}`$ can in some special cases have a lower power in $`\frac{1}{U}`$ than the processes with $`\beta =\beta ^{}`$, relevant in the disordered case, and therefore dominate in the limit of strong interaction.

The case $`W=0`$ can be qualitatively different from the disordered case $`W0`$, even at very weak disorder. The reason for this is the fact that the unperturbed ground state is a superposition of the degenerate positions of the Wigner crystal. This degeneracy is lifted by the disorder, and the typical energy difference between two positions is of the order $`W\sqrt{N}`$ (this arises from the $`N`$ different random on-site energies, all being of order $`W`$). The coupling between these electro-statically equivalent states is provided by the hopping terms and can itself be estimated from a perturbation theory. The lowest order coupling needs a number of hops which is typically $`p=N`$ since the Wigner crystal must in most cases be translated as a whole and each of the particles must hop at least once. In some cases, a $`p<N`$ can be sufficient, as in the example of 3 particles on $`4\times 2`$ sites (see below).

Then, the coupling decreases at strong interaction as $`t^p/U^{p1}`$ and becomes, in the limit of strong interaction $`U`$, always much smaller than the splitting due to the disorder. This holds at any finite disorder value (provided $`p>1`$), and prevents a mixing of the different Wigner crystal configurations in the ground state. Only for $`W=0`$, the splitting by the disorder vanishes, and an infinitesimal coupling leads to the superposition of the different configurations.

#### 4.2.3 Example for disorder corrections

##### $`4\times 2`$ sites, 4 particles

The disorder dependence of the flux sensitivity is illustrated for the example of 4 particles in $`(L_x,L_y)=(4,2)`$. One expects an $`1/U^3`$ dependence for the leading term of the persistent current (24) and, according to (33), a $`W/U^4`$ dependence for the linear correction in disorder. We have performed numerical calculations at strong interaction SW\_unpub , which are in good agreement with these power laws predicted by the lowest order of the perturbation theory. The persistent current decreases when the strength of the disorder is increased, as predicted by the negative correction in formula (33).

##### Effects of degeneracies at $`W=0`$

The clean case however has a very different amplitude due to the degeneracies in the Wigner crystal. The persistent current can be calculated from (36), and after considering all the possible sequences between the different degenerate configurations, one obtains $`\stackrel{~}{I}^{(4)}(W=0)2.1238\stackrel{~}{I}^{(4)}`$, with $`\stackrel{~}{I}^{(4)}`$ taken from (24). A numerical check SW\_unpub  confirms this result at strong interaction.

##### $`4\times 2`$ sites, 3 particles, $`W=0`$

In order to show that the absence of disorder does not only change the prefactor of the interaction dependence at large $`U`$, but can even influence the power of the $`U`$-dependence, we consider 3 particles in $`(L_x,L_y)=(4,2)`$. The particle which is alone in one line has two possible positions which are degenerate at $`t=W=0`$, and there exists a sequence of only two one-particle hops which links the two degenerate states with each other (see Fig. 3). Since the ground state at $`W=0`$ is a superposition of all possible degenerate configurations, this process leads to a contribution $`t^2/U`$ to the persistent current which dominates at strong interaction. In the disordered case, in contrast, the degeneracy of the ground state configurations is lifted and only sequences consisting of at least four hops can link the ground state to itself. Then, the interaction dependence of the lowest order contribution to the persistent current is $`t^4/(WU^2)`$. Interestingly, in this example, one of the intermediate states touched by a sequence of 4 hops can be a different, but electro-statically equivalent configuration of the Wigner crystal, and $`ϵ_\alpha =0`$, such that even at $`UW`$, the disorder energy cannot be neglected.

A numerical check SW\_unpub  shows that by adding the disorder, the asymptotic dependence indeed follows this prediction and goes from $`U^1`$ to $`U^2`$.

### 4.3 Transverse current

#### 4.3.1 General considerations

Without disorder, the current in $`y`$-direction must vanish because of the symmetry of the problem (no flux is applied in $`y`$-direction). While this remains true in the ensemble average, the presence of disorder breaks this symmetry in individual samples. A finite transverse current can be observed in addition to the longitudinal current driven by the flux $`\varphi _x`$. The transverse current can be calculated from

$$I_t(\varphi _x)=\frac{E_0(\varphi _x,\varphi _y)}{\varphi _y}|_{\varphi _y=0},$$
(37)
such that a theoretical approach to determine $`I_t(\varphi _x)`$ consists in using the perturbative expansion for the ground state energy, as for the longitudinal current, but with a finite $`\varphi _y`$. Then, the derivative with respect to $`\varphi _y`$ at $`\varphi _y=0`$ can be evaluated for the leading contribution in the strong interaction regime. Therefore, only terms in the series (13) which depend on $`\varphi _y`$ can make a finite contribution to the transverse current.

In order to get such contributions, one needs hopping sequences in $`y`$-direction which contain hops crossing the boundary between sites $`(x,L_y)`$ and $`(x,1)`$ with $`h_\mathrm{u}h_\mathrm{d}0`$. $`h_\mathrm{u}`$ and $`h_\mathrm{d}`$ denote the number of such hops from $`y=L_y`$ to $`y=1`$ (’upwards’) and from $`y=1`$ to $`y=L_y`$ (’downwards’).

However, the flux dependence of the energy due to sequences containing $`L_y`$ upward or $`L_y`$ downward hoppings is $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi _y`$, as for the longitudinal processes (20), which are $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi _x`$. As a consequence, the resulting transverse current from these sequences is $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi _y`$, and vanishes when $`\varphi _y=0`$ is taken, just like the longitudinal current (21) at $`\varphi _x=0`$. Therefore, no transverse current can be obtained in the order $`L_y`$ of the perturbation theory.

Nevertheless, higher order sequences exist which do lead to finite contributions. These are due to sequences of hops which cross both, the boundary in $`x`$, and the boundary in $`y`$-direction. The lowest order of the expansion in which transverse currents appear is $`m=L_x+L_y`$, corresponding to sequences which consist of a combination of only forward and downward hops, only backward and upward hops, or vice versa, which complete one round in both spatial dimensions of the system. An example of such a sequence is shown in Fig. 4.

As before, each of the sequences containing only forward and upward hops $`S_{\mathrm{fu}}`$ can be associated with the reverse process consisting of backward and downward hops $`S_{\mathrm{bd}}`$. The contribution of the reverse process differs only in the sign of the flux-dependent phase factors. The correction to the ground state energy (13) of all $`S_{\mathrm{fu}}`$ and $`S_{\mathrm{bd}}`$ sequences together can be written as

$$E_{0,\mathrm{fu}+\mathrm{bd}}^{(m)}=2\frac{t^m}{U^{m1}}\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _x+\varphi _y)\underset{S_{\mathrm{fu}}}{}\frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_{S_{\mathrm{fu}}})}{\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _{m1}}}.$$
(38)
The same association can be made for sequences containing only forward and downward hops $`S_{\mathrm{fd}}`$, which are regrouped with the corresponding reverse processes consisting of backward and upward hops, yielding

$$E_{0,\mathrm{fd}+\mathrm{bu}}^{(m)}=2\frac{t^m}{U^{m1}}\mathrm{cos}(\varphi _x\varphi _y)\underset{S_{\mathrm{fd}}}{}\frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_{S_{\mathrm{fd}}})}{\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _{m1}}}.$$
(39)
#### 4.3.2 Lowest order result for the transverse current

By taking the derivative with respect to $`\varphi _y`$ at $`\varphi _y=0`$, we obtain for the transverse current in $`m`$-th order of the perturbation theory

$`I_t^{(m)}(\varphi _x)=2{\displaystyle \frac{t^m}{U^{m1}}}\mathrm{sin}\varphi _x`$ (40)
$`\times \left({\displaystyle \underset{S_{\mathrm{fu}}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_{S_{\mathrm{fu}}})}{\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _{m1}}}}{\displaystyle \underset{S_{\mathrm{fd}}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sign}(P_{S_{\mathrm{fd}}})}{\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\alpha _{m1}}}}\right),`$
with $`m=L_x+L_y`$ being the lowest order which yields a non-zero contribution. Even when $`UW`$, the disorder energy cannot be neglected as in the lowest order term for the longitudinal current, since the two contributions to the current in (40) cancel each other exactly when the disorder vanishes. It can also be seen that the lowest order result for the transverse current is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi _x`$ and vanishes with the longitudinal current at $`\varphi _x=0`$.

#### 4.3.3 Example

In the case of 4 particles in a lattice of $`6\times 6`$ sites, we have seen above (see equation (27)) that the longitudinal persistent current decreases at strong interaction following the power law $`t^6/U^5`$. The suppression of the transverse current is much more pronounced, since the leading contribution at strong interaction is of the order $`L_x+L_y=12`$, and our theory (40) predicts that it decays $`t^{12}/U^{11}`$. This means that the particle mobility is more and more restricted to the longitudinal direction when the interaction is increased. That the suppression of the transverse current is much stronger than the one of the longitudinal persistent current has been noticed in the numerical study of Ref. benenti . The dominance of the longitudinal current at strong interaction also explains the observation of “plastic flow” in a study of the local persistent currents berko2 . The orientation of the local currents has been proposed as a signature of the insulator-metal transition occurring in interacting 2d systems benenti\_mor .

### 4.4 Persistent current for electrons with spin

In this section we present some examples of the effects of the spin of the electrons on the longitudinal persistent current, showing that our approach is not restricted to spinless fermions, but can also be used for electrons carrying spin.

For finite systems containing $`N`$ particles, it is well known that the spin polarization of the ground state can depend on the magnetic flux due to level crossings between states of different spin symmetry as a function of the flux haeusler . However, without an external magnetic field acting on the electrons in the ring, there is a degeneracy related to the operator $`S_z`$ in the subspace of fixed total spin and one can write $`E(S^2,S_z)=E(S^2)`$.

It is in principle possible (though difficult experimentally) to create a magnetic flux through the ring while the magnetic field remains vanishing at the positions of the electrons in the ring. Such a flux does not lift the spin degeneracy mentioned above. If we now want to follow the dependence of the ground state energy on the flux, we can restrict the study to the subspace of minimum absolute value of $`S_z`$, choosing $`S_z=0`$ for an even number of particles with $`N_{}=N/2`$ spins up and $`N_{}=N/2`$ spins down, or $`S_z=1/2`$ for an odd number of particles with $`N_{}=\frac{N+1}{2}`$ spins up and $`N_{}=\frac{N1}{2}`$ spins down.

#### 4.4.1 One-dimensional systems

In 1d, a general rule exists for the sign of the persistent current in the case of spinless fermions leggett . This rule is valid at arbitrary disorder and interaction. Below, we address the question of the sign of the persistent current for electrons with spin in different parameter regimes.

##### Non-interacting electrons with spin

In the case of non-interacting electrons with spin, one can separately consider the flux dependence of the energy of the particles with up spin and the one of the particles with down spin, and add up their contributions to the persistent current.

If $`N`$ is even, the contribution of the $`N/2`$ up-spins to the persistent current will have the same sign $`(1)^{N/2}`$ as the contribution of the $`N/2`$ down-spins. This determines the sign of the persistent current. For odd $`N`$, the contribution of the $`(N+1)/2`$ up spins will have the sign $`(1)^{(N+1)/2}`$ while the down spins contribute a term with sign $`(1)^{(N1)/2}`$. In this case, to know the sign of the persistent current one must compare the amplitudes of the two contributions and the result will in general depend on the disorder configuration. However, in the zero-disorder case at low filling, the sign of the persistent current around flux $`\varphi =0`$ is known to be paramagnetic for odd $`N>1`$ loss-gold .

##### $`N`$ even, strong interaction

At strong interaction, the charges form a Wigner crystal which is pinned by the disorder. In this limit, the spin degree of freedom can be treated by an effective spin Hamiltonian. The latter turns out to be the anti-ferromagnetic Heisenberg Hamiltonian when $`\varphi =0`$, the positions $`i=i_1,i_2,\mathrm{},i_N`$ of the charges of the Wigner crystal being the spin lattice sites. Thus, the expectation values of the occupation number operators vanish everywhere except on these sites where they satisfy $`<\widehat{n}_{i_k,}+\widehat{n}_{i_k,}>=1`$. For an even number $`N`$ of spins in 1d, according to a theorem by Marshall, the ground state $`|\psi _0`$ of this spin Hamiltonian is a singlet of total spin $`S=0`$ auerbach , and can be expressed in the form

$$|\psi _0=\underset{\beta }{}f_\beta \underset{i=i_1}{\overset{i_N}{}}\left(c_{i,}^+\right)^{n_{i,}(\beta )}\underset{i=i_1}{\overset{i_N}{}}\left(c_{i,}^+\right)^{n_{i,}(\beta )}|0$$
(41)
with real $`f_\beta >0`$ for all spin configurations $`\beta `$ with fixed $`S_z=0`$. Note that in this expression, the ordering of the operators is done firstly according to spin, and secondly according to the position.

As in the case of spinless fermions without disorder, the ground state is a superposition of different basis states and the lowest order contributions to the ground state energy, which are flux dependent, are again of the order $`n=L_x`$. Similar to (36), they can arise from different kinds of sequences. First, only the up spins are moved around the ring, giving rise to a cyclic permutation of the spin up operators in (41), yielding the sign $`(1)^N_{}`$. The sequences involving only down spins give the same result. In addition, a sequence which moves all of the particles to the position of their neighbor can also contribute to the flux dependence since the resulting spin configuration is also contained in the ground state. The sign however is the same as the one of the previous sequences, since only one of the particles crosses the boundary and therefore only the order of the operators for one spin direction has to be restored by the corresponding cyclic permutation, and because the prefactor $`f_\beta ^{}f_\beta ^{}^{}`$, arising from the weights of the different components in the ground state, is always real and positive.

Since all contributions have the same sign, the sign of the persistent current in one-dimensional disordered chains at strong interaction is always given by this sign $`(1)^{N/2}`$, provided the particle number is even, independent of the particle density $`N/L`$. Because the ground state (41) holds only at $`\varphi =0`$, this sign rule is granted only in the vicinity of $`\varphi =0`$.

The resulting sign is the same as the one found in the non-interacting case loss-gold , and for the Hubbard model at half filling fye , but it differs from the result for the Hubbard model at low filling yu ; kotlyar , where the current around $`\varphi =0`$ is found to be diamagnetic for even numbers of particles at strong interaction. This difference may be due to the fact that the Hubbard interaction is local, making the Hubbard model at low filling in the $`U\mathrm{}`$ limit equivalent to spinless fermions. The more realistic long-range Coulomb interactions considered here do not show this artifact and lead to a qualitatively different behavior. The result is also different from the one obtained for Coulomb interacting electrons with spin in a continuous model with one barrier haeusler , which is always found to be diamagnetic at strong interaction. In this case, one may attribute the result to the fact that the interaction could lead to a rigid Wigner crystal which, in a continuous model, would be equivalent to one single heavy particle.

#### 4.4.2 Two-dimensional systems

For two dimensional systems, there is the same degeneracy in the position of the up and the down spins in the minimum $`S_z`$ subspace. In the strong interaction limit, each line of the Wigner crystal should follow the one dimensional law explained above, but the different spin configurations contributing to the ground state in 2d may have different numbers of spin up and spin down electrons in a given line. This yields contributions of different signs to the persistent current which have to be considered explicitly. It seems not to be possible to provide a simple sign rule. However, the power law decay of the persistent current at large interaction strength should have the same exponent as in the spinless case.

### 4.5 Size dependence and limitation of the theory

Here, we address the size dependence of the persistent current and the limitation of our theory which is given by the presence of defects in the Wigner crystal.

#### 4.5.1 Localization length for the Wigner crystal

From the exponential size-dependence of equation (22), one can extract the localization length for the Wigner crystal. A comparison to the exponential size scaling

$$I(L_x)\mathrm{exp}(L_x/\xi )$$
(42)
yields for large $`L_x`$ a localization length

$$\xi =\left(\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{U}{t}\right)\right)^1,$$
(43)
showing the same decrease with increasing interaction strength as the localization length of the Mott insulator appearing in the Hubbard model at strong interaction stafford .

#### 4.5.2 Defects in the Wigner crystal

In the thermodynamic limit, the Wigner crystal is no longer a single domain and the above theory cannot be applied in the present form. At any finite, even very strong interaction, defects and domain walls can arise which allow to gain an amount of potential energy which grows with the size of the domains. The crystal might then prefer to be divided in defect-free domains each being pinned by the disorder. In the weak disorder limit, one can use similar arguments as in Imry  in order to estimate the size of such domains. In the following, we briefly address different types of defects and calculate the associated critical ratio $`\left(\frac{U}{W}\right)_c`$ above which the theory applies.

##### Point defects

In the case of point-like defects, consisting of a single charge of the Wigner crystal being deplaced by one lattice constant $`a`$ with respect to its position in the perfect crystal, the gain in disorder potential energy can be estimated to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{disorder}}^{\mathrm{point}}W`$. On the other hand, the cost in interaction energy is $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{interaction}}^{\mathrm{point}}\frac{Ua^2}{b^3}`$ with $`b`$ being the mean spacing between particles. Since the charge density is given by $`\nu =1/b^2`$, this yields the density depending criterion

$$\frac{U}{W}>\left(\frac{U}{W}\right)_c^{\mathrm{point}}\frac{1}{a^2\nu ^{3/2}}$$
(44)
for the stability of the Wigner crystal against the creation of point defects.

##### Domain walls

The creation of a domain wall costs an interaction energy which is of the order $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{interaction}}^{\mathrm{wall}}\frac{Ua^2}{b^3}L^{\mathrm{wall}}`$ with $`L^{\mathrm{wall}}`$ being the length of the wall. By deplacing a domain of linear size $`R`$ containing $`N_d=R^2\nu `$ particles, one can typically gain an amount $`W\sqrt{N_d}`$ of disorder potential energy. However, the first domain-like defect will appear in the most favorable position. Since the maximally possible gain is the extremely unprobable value $`WN_d`$, one can speculate that the gain in the optimal position is given by an intermediate power $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{disorder}}^{\mathrm{domain}}WN_d^\gamma `$ with $`1/2\gamma <1`$. The length of the corresponding wall around the domain is $`L^{\mathrm{wall}}\sqrt{N_d}`$ such that this results in the stability of the crystal against the creation of domains of size $`R`$ for

$$\frac{U}{W}>\left(\frac{U}{W}\right)_c^{\mathrm{domain}}(R)\frac{R^{2\gamma 1}}{a^2\nu ^{2\gamma }}.$$
(45)
At a fixed W, if $`U>U_c^{\mathrm{domain}}(L)`$, a crystal of size $`L`$ will not be perturbed by domains. Otherwise, one can use $`U=U_c^{\mathrm{domain}}(R_c)`$ to extract the typical domain size $`R_c`$.

In systems larger than $`R_c`$, the electron crystal is divided in many domains of size $`R_c`$. If we neglect the coupling energy between these domains, a rough estimate for the response to a flux $`\varphi _x`$ in $`x`$-direction of a system of size $`(L_x,L_y)`$ is to take the product of the amplitudes of the longitudinally aligned $`L_x/R_c`$ domains and to sum over the responses of the $`L_y/R_c`$ “channels”.

Although we have not addressed all possible kinds of defects, we can assume that there is always a critical threshold $`\left(\frac{U}{W}\right)_c^{\mathrm{defect}}`$ above which our perturbative theory applies.

## 5 Summary

We have presented a systematic perturbative treatment of persistent currents in 2d lattice models for the case of strong Coulomb interaction, when the electronic charge density forms a Wigner crystal. The contribution with the weakest interaction dependence corresponds to sequences of one-particle hops along the shortest paths around the ring. These sequences dominate in the limit of strong interaction and determine the sign of the persistent current. For spinless fermions, this sign follows simple rules which depend only on the structure of the Wigner crystal.

Furthermore, we have shown that, except special cases, the leading term for the persistent current and therewith the sign of the persistent current at strong interaction do not depend on the realization of the disordered potential. Only the complete absence of disorder can qualitatively change the behavior. We considered the disorder corrections systematically and showed that they decay as $`W/U`$ at strong interaction.

In addition, we have shown that transverse currents appearing in individual disordered samples are suppressed much faster than the longitudinal current, thereby establishing an orientation of the local currents in longitudinal direction when the interaction is increased. This explains the numerical observation of the realization-independent sign of the persistent current and of the orientation of the local currents in longitudinal direction reported in Refs. benenti ; benenti\_mor ; berko1 ; berko2 .

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank G. Benenti, W. Häusler, G.-L. Ingold, D. Loss, J.-L. Pichard, P. Schwab, and X. Waintal for useful discussions. Particularly helpful discussions with R. Jalabert are gratefully acknowledged. Partial support from the TMR network “Phase coherent dynamics of hybrid nanostructures” of the EU and from the Procope program of the DAAD/A.P.A.P.E. is gratefully acknowledged.


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# Excitation of resonators by electron beams

## 1 Introduction

The excitation of resonators is described by Maxwell equations in vacuum  \-

$$div\stackrel{}{E}=4\pi \rho (a)rot\stackrel{}{H}=\frac{4\pi }{c}\stackrel{}{J}+\frac{1}{c}\frac{\stackrel{}{E}}{t}(b),$$

$$rot\stackrel{}{E}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{\stackrel{}{H}}{t}(c),div\stackrel{}{H}=0(d).$$
(1)
These equations are a set of two vector and two scalar equations for vectors of electric $`\stackrel{}{E}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ and magnetic $`\stackrel{}{H}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ field strengths or eight equations for six independent components of the electric and magnetic fields. We suppose that the charge density $`\rho (\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ and current density $`\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ are given values. It means that only four components of the electromagnetic field strengths are independent.

The solution of these equations includes transverse electromagnetic field strengths of free electromagnetic waves $`\stackrel{}{E}^{tr}`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}^{tr}`$ and accompanied longitudinal electric field strengths $`\stackrel{}{E}^l`$ of Coulomb fields of the beam crossing the resonator. Transverse electromagnetic field strengths excited by the beam in the resonator comply the condition $`div\stackrel{}{E}^{tr}=div\stackrel{}{H}^{tr}=div\stackrel{}{H}=0`$. Longitudinal electric field strength comply the condition $`rot\stackrel{}{E}^l=0`$, $`div\stackrel{}{E}^l=4\pi \rho `$  \- 111In general case transverse fields are not only free electromagnetic waves. Both a static magnetic field, a magnetic field accompanying a homogeneously moving particle and arbitrary time depended magnetic field are transverse one. A part of the Coulomb electrical field accompanying a relativistic particle is transverse one. The most simple example of the transverse electric field strength is the electric field strength of the homogeneously moving relativistic particle $`\stackrel{}{E}^{tr}=\stackrel{}{E}\stackrel{}{E}^l`$, where $`\stackrel{}{E}=e\stackrel{}{r}/\gamma ^2r^3`$, $`\stackrel{}{E}^l=e\stackrel{}{r}/r^3`$, $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ is the radius vector directed from the particle to the observation point, $`\gamma =\sqrt{1\beta ^2}`$ relativistic factor of the particle, $`R^{}=(xvt)^2+(1\beta ^2)(x^2+y^2)`$, $`\beta =v/c`$, $`v`$ the velocity of the particle , . After a particle beam cross a resonator then only transverse free electromagnetic waves stay at the resonator.. Free electromagnetic fields in resonators are solutions of homogeneous Maxwell equations ($`\stackrel{}{ȷ}=\rho =0`$) with corresponding boundary conditions. These solutions are a sum of eigenmodes of the resonator which include a discrete set of eigenfrequences $`\omega _\lambda `$ and corresponding to them functions $`\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t),\stackrel{}{H}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ for the electric and magnetic field strengths (further we will omit the superscripts $`tr`$ and $`l`$ in the fields). The subscript $`\lambda `$ includes three numbers ($`m,n,q`$) corresponding to transverse and longitudinal directions of the resonator axis. In the case of open resonators the transverse electromagnetic $`TEM_{mnq}`$ modes are excited. When the number $`q`$ is very high then this number is omitted. Usually in the open resonators many longitudinal modes are excited even in the case of free-electron lasers emitting rather monochromatic radiation.

The solution of the problem of excitation of resonators is simplified by introduction of a transverse vector potential $`\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=_\lambda \stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ of free electromagnetic fields in Coulomb gauge $`div\stackrel{}{A}=0`$, where scalar potential $`\phi =0`$ when $`\rho =0`$ (here we omitted the superscripts $`tr`$ and $`l`$ in the vectors $`\stackrel{}{A}^{tr}`$). The corresponding wave equation for this vector can be solved by the method of separation of variables when we suppose $`\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=q_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})`$, where $`q_\lambda (t)`$ is the amplitude of the vector potential and $`\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})`$ is the eigenfunction of the resonator normalized by the condition $`|\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})|^2𝑑V=1`$. In this case the total free electromagnetic field in the resonator is described by the expression $`\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=_\lambda \stackrel{}{q}_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})`$.

The electric and magnetic field strengths of the transverse free fields in resonators can be expressed through the vector potential in the form $`\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=d\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)/dct=\dot{q}_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})/c`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=rot\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=q_\lambda (t)rot\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})`$, where $`\dot{q}_\lambda (t)=dq_\lambda (t)/dt`$. When the charge and current densities are in the resonator then a scalar $`\phi _\sigma `$ and a longitudinal vector potential $`\stackrel{}{A}^l`$ ($`rot\stackrel{}{A}^l=0`$) determine Coulomb fields of the beam in the resonator. We are not interesting them in this paper.

When active and diffractive losses in the open resonator are absent then the vector potential of a free electromagnetic field in the resonator excited by the beam can be presented in the form

$$\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=\underset{\lambda }{}q_{m\lambda }\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})e^{i\omega _\lambda t},$$
(2)
where the coefficient $`q_{m\lambda }`$ is the amplitude of the excited eigenmode.

The electromagnetic fields excited by the electromagnetic beam are determined by the nonhomogeneous Maxwell equations or the corresponding equation for the vector potential

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)}{t^2}=\frac{4\pi }{c}\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t).$$
(3)
The solution of the Eq(3) can be found in the form $`\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=_\lambda q_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda ^{tr}(\stackrel{}{r})+_\sigma q_\sigma (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\sigma ^l(\stackrel{}{r})`$ (here we stayed superscripts $`tr`$ and $`l`$ and used the conditions $`\stackrel{}{A}_{\lambda ,\sigma }(\stackrel{}{r},t)=q_{\lambda ,\sigma }(t)\stackrel{}{A}_{\lambda ,\sigma }(\stackrel{}{r})`$). If we will substitute this expression into equation (3), integrate over the volume of the resonator, use the condition of normalization $`|\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})|^2𝑑V=|\stackrel{}{A}_\sigma (\stackrel{}{r})|^2𝑑V=1`$, $`\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda ^{^{}}(\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V=\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})\stackrel{}{A}_\sigma (\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V=\stackrel{}{A}_\sigma (\stackrel{}{r})\stackrel{}{A}_\sigma ^{^{}}(\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V=0`$ and take into account that the vector $`\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda `$ comply with the condition $`\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda =(\omega _\lambda /c)^2\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda `$ then we will receive the equation for change of the amplitude of the eigenmode $`q_\lambda `$ for free fields in the resonator

$$\ddot{q}_\lambda +\omega _\lambda ^2q_\lambda =\frac{4\pi }{c}_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V.$$
(4)
The expression (4) is the equation of the oscillator of unit mass excited by a force $`f(t)=(4\pi /c)_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V`$. It describes the excitation of both enclosed and open resonators  \- . The same expression for force determine the excitation of waveguides .

The eigenmodes of the rectangular resonators (cavities) were discovered by J.Jeans in 1905 when he studied the low of thermal emission. The equations (4) was used later for quantization of the electromagnetic field in quantum electrodynamics .

## 2 Emission of electromagnetic radiation by electron beams in open resonators

The equation (4) does not take into account the energy losses of the emitted radiation in the resonator. These losses can be introduced through the quality of the resonator $`Q_\lambda `$

$$\ddot{q}_\lambda +\frac{\omega _r}{Q_\lambda }\dot{q}_\lambda +\omega _\lambda ^2q_\lambda =\frac{4\pi }{c}_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V,$$
(5)
where in the case of the open resonator $`\omega _r=2\pi /T`$, $`T=2L/c`$ is the period of oscillations of the light wavepacket between the resonator mirrors when it passes along the axis of the resonator (notice that in general case the frequencies $`\omega _\lambda =\omega _{mnq}`$ depend on $`m,n,q`$ and slightly differ from frequencies $`\omega _rq`$). Here we have introduced a version of a definition of a resonator quality connected with the frequency $`\omega _r`$. Another version of a quality is usually connected with the frequency $`\omega _\lambda `$. Our definition is more convenient for the case of free-electron lasers using open resonators.

Using (5) we can derive the expression for the energy balance in the resonator. For this purpose we can multiply this equation by $`\dot{q}_\lambda `$ and integrate over the volume of the resonator. Then we receive the equation

$$\frac{1}{2}\frac{d}{dt}[\dot{q}_\lambda ^2+\omega _\lambda ^2q_\lambda ^2]+(\frac{\omega _r}{Q_\lambda })^2\dot{q}_\lambda ^2=4\pi _V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)𝑑V.$$
(6)
If we take into account that $`\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=\dot{q}_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})/c`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)=rot\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})`$, $`rot\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda =\omega _\lambda \stackrel{}{A}_\lambda /c`$, $`|\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})|^2𝑑V=1`$ then the energy of the free electromagnetic field in the resonator can be presented in the form $`\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}=[(|\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda |^2+|\stackrel{}{H}_\lambda |^2)/8\pi ]`$ $`dV=[\dot{q}_\lambda ^2+\omega _\lambda ^2q_\lambda ^2]/8\pi c^2`$ and the equation (7) can be presented in the another form

$$\dot{\epsilon }_\lambda ^{em}+(\omega _r/Q_\lambda )\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}=_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)𝑑V.$$
(7)
The equation (5) is the pendulum equation with a friction. It determine the time evolution of the electromagnetic field stored at the resonator, when the time dependence of the beam current $`\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is given. The amplitude $`q_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ according to (5) is determined by the coefficient of expansion of the given current into series of eigenfunctions of the resonator. Notice that the value $`\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda [\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]`$ depends on $`t`$ only through $`\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)`$ and the value $`\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda [t,\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]=\dot{q}_\lambda (t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda [\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]/c`$ depends on $`t`$ directly through $`q_\lambda (t)`$ and through $`\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)`$.

In the case of one particle of a charge ”e” the beam current density $`\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)=e\stackrel{}{v}(t)\delta [\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]`$. In this case the force $`f(t)=e\stackrel{}{v}[\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda [\stackrel{}{r}_e(t)]`$ and the power transferred from the electron beam to the resonator wave mode $`\lambda `$ excited in the resonator $`P_\lambda (t)=_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r},t)𝑑V=e_i\stackrel{}{v}_{ei}(t)\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda [(\stackrel{}{r}_{e,ı}(t),t)]`$. Using these expressions of force and power for all electrons ”i” of the beam we can present the equations (5), (7) in the form

$$\ddot{q}_\lambda +\omega _\lambda ^2q_\lambda =\frac{4\pi e}{c}\underset{i}{}\stackrel{}{v}_{ei}(t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda [\stackrel{}{r}_{ei}(t)],$$
(8)
$$\dot{\epsilon }_\lambda ^{em}+(\omega _r/Q_\lambda )\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}=e\underset{i}{}\stackrel{}{v}_{ei}(t)\stackrel{}{E}_\lambda [(\stackrel{}{r}_{ei}(t),t)].$$
(9)
It follows from (5), (7) and (8), (9) that transverse resonator modes are excited only in the case when the force $`f(t)0`$ and the power $`P_\lambda (t)0`$ that is when the particle trajectory passes through the regions where the corresponding resonator modes have large intensities and when the particle velocity has transverse and/or longitudinal components directed along the direction of the electric field strength. Open resonators on the level with enclosed ones have modes with longitudinal components of electric field strength (see Appendix). It means that open resonators can be excited even in the case when the particle trajectory have no transverse components and its velocity is directed along the axis of the resonator222In this case the transition radiation is emitted by particles when they pass the walls of a resonator. The electromagnetic radiation will be emitted in the form of thin spherical layers at the first and second resonator mirrors . It will be reflected then repeatedly by resonator mirrors. The expansion of the electromagnetic fields of the spherical layers will be described by the series (2).. Using external fields of a single bending magnet can increase the power of the generated radiation. Both in the case of lack of a banding magnet and presence of one bending magnet the broadband radiation is emitted. The experiment confirms this observations . Using external fields of undulators and beams bunched at frequencies of the emitted radiation can lead to emission of rather monochromatic radiation.

In the simplest case when the beam current density $`\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is a periodic function of time then the force can be expanded in the series $`f(t)=_V\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)\stackrel{}{A}_\lambda (\stackrel{}{r})𝑑V=_{\nu =\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f_{\lambda \nu }\mathrm{exp}[i(\nu \omega _bt\phi _{\lambda \nu })]`$, where $`\omega _b=2\pi /T_b`$ and $`T_b`$ are a period and frequency of the current density oscillation accordingly, $`f_{\lambda \nu }=(1/T_b)_{T_b/2}^{T_b/2}f(t)\mathrm{exp}(i\nu \omega _bt)𝑑t`$, are the known coefficients, $`\phi _{\lambda \nu }`$ phase. The value $`f_{\lambda \nu }=f_{\lambda \nu }^{}`$, where $`f_{\lambda \nu }^{}`$ is the complex conjugate of $`f_{\lambda \nu }`$. The solution of the equation (5) for the case of the established oscillations ($`tQ_\lambda T_b`$) is

$$q_\lambda (t)=\underset{\nu =1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}A_{\lambda \nu }\mathrm{exp}[i(\nu \omega _bt\theta _{\lambda \nu })],$$
(10)
where

$$A_{\lambda \nu }=\frac{f_{\lambda \nu }}{\sqrt{(\omega _\lambda ^2\nu ^2\omega _b^2)^2+(\nu \omega _r\omega _b/Q_\lambda )^2}},$$

$$\theta _{\lambda \nu }=\phi _{\lambda \nu }+arctg\frac{\nu \omega _r\omega _b}{Q_\lambda (\omega _\lambda ^2\nu ^2\omega _b^2)}.$$

It follows from the equation (10) that the maximum of the amplitude of the vector potential $`A_{\lambda \nu }=Q_\lambda f_{\lambda \nu }/\omega _r\omega _\lambda ^2`$ takes place at resonance $`\nu \omega _b=\omega _\lambda =\omega _{mnq}\omega _rq`$. Notice that all modes $`\lambda `$ are excited at the same frequency $`\omega _b`$ of the oscillator. In general case $`\omega _b\omega _\lambda `$.

The equation (10) is the first order linear equation of the energy change in the resonator excited by the electron beam. It follows from this equation that after switching off the beam current at some moment $`t_0`$ ($`\stackrel{}{J}(\stackrel{}{r},t)|_{t>t_0}=0`$) the energy in the resonator will be changed by the law $`\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}=\epsilon _{\lambda ,/0}^{em}\mathrm{exp}[(tt_0)/\tau ]`$, where $`\tau =Q_\lambda /\omega _r`$, $`\epsilon _{\lambda \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}}^{em}=\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}|_{t=t_0}`$. On the contrary after switching on the beam current at some moment $`t_0`$ the energy in the resonator will be changed by the law $`\epsilon _\lambda ^{em}=\epsilon _{\lambda m}^{em}(1\mathrm{exp}[(tt_0))/\tau ]`$, where the energy of the electromagnetic field in the resonator $`\epsilon _{\lambda m}^{em}`$ is determined by the parameters of the resonator and the beam.

The considered example describes the emission of an oscillator or a system of oscillators which are in phase with the excited mode and have zero average velocity (trajectory has a form $`r_e=r_{e0}+\stackrel{}{ı}a_0\mathrm{cos}\omega _0t`$, where $`\stackrel{}{ı}`$ is the unite vector directed along the axis $`x`$). More complicated examples of trajectories of particles using for excitation of resonators by electron beams can be considered (the arc of circle, sine- or helical-like trajectories in bending magnets and undulators).

## 3 Vector TEM modes of open resonators

The theory of high quality open resonators does not differ from enclosed ones. But eigenmodes of open resonators have some unique features. The spectrum of the open resonators is rarefied, the operating mode spectrum has maximum selectivity. The dimensions of open resonators are much higher then the excited wavelengths and the dimensions of the enclosed resonators are of the order of excited wavelengths. The quality of open resonators at the same wavelengths is higher then enclosed ones.

There are some methods of calculation of TEM modes in open resonators. Usually scalar wave equations are investigated , . There is a small information in technical publications about distribution of vectors of the electric and magnetic field strengths in such resonators. In this section we search some distributions. In the Appendix the foundations of the excitation of resonators by electron beams are presented .

We will present the result for the Cartesian coordinates. In this case the solution of the scalar wave equation (24) (see Appendix) has a form

$$V_{mn}(x,y,z)=\frac{C}{\sqrt{w_x(z)w_y(z)}}H_m\left(\frac{\sqrt{2}x}{w_x(z)}\right)H_n\left(\frac{\sqrt{2}y}{w_y(z)}\right)$$

$$\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{ik}{2}\left(\frac{x^2}{q_x(z)}+\frac{y^2}{q_y(z)}\right)i(m+\frac{1}{2})arctg\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_{0x}^2}i(n+\frac{1}{2})arctg\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_{0y}^2}\right\}$$
(11)
and for the cylindrical coordinates

$$V(r,\varphi ,z)=C\left(\frac{r}{w(z)}\right)^m\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{sin}m\varphi }{\mathrm{cos}m\varphi }\right)L_n^m\left(\frac{2r^2}{w^2(z)}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{ikr^2}{q(z)}i(m+2n+1)arctg\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_0^2}\right\}w(z)^1,$$
(12)
where $`H_m`$, $`H_n`$ are the Hermittian polynomials, $`L_n^m`$ the Lagerian polynomials, $`\lambda =2\pi c/\omega `$ is the wavelength, C = constant,

$$\frac{1}{q(z)}=\frac{1}{R(z)}+\frac{i\lambda }{\pi w^2(z)},R(z)=z\left[1+\left(\frac{\pi w_0^2}{\lambda z}\right)^2\right],w^2(z)=w_0^2\left[1+\left(\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_0^2}\right)^2\right].$$

In (11), (12) $`R(z)`$ is the radius of the wave front of Gaussian beam, $`w(z)`$ the radius of the beam, $`w_0(z)`$ the radius of the waist of the beam.

At $`m=n=0`$ we have the main mode of the Gaussian beam. If $`w_{0x}=w_{0y}=w_0`$ then the main modes for the Cartesian and cylindrical coordinates are the same

$$U(x,y,z)=\frac{C}{w(z)}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{x^2+y^2}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{2}\frac{x^2+y^2}{R(z)}iarctg\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_0^2}\right\}\mathrm{exp}^{i(kz\omega t)}.$$
(13)
We have the solutions (11), (12) of the scalar wave equation (24) for the space limited beam. Now we can find vectors of the electric and magnetic field strengths using the expressions (23) and possible ways of construction of Hertz vectors. Let us suppose the next compositions with the electric Hertz vector assuming that magnetic Hertz vector is zero:

1) $`\mathrm{\Pi }_x^e=U(x,y,z)`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_y^e=\mathrm{\Pi }_z^e=0`$.

2) $`\mathrm{\Pi }_x^e=0`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_y^e=U(x,y,z)`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_z^e=0`$.

3) $`\mathrm{\Pi }_x^e=0`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_y^e=0`$, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_z^e=U(x,y,z)`$.

In the first case

$`div\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}=\mathrm{\Pi }_x/x=V/x\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$, $`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_x=0`$,

$`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_y=(V/z+ikV)\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$, $`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_z=(V/y)\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$

and

$`E_x^1=^2V/x^2+k^2V`$, $`E_y^1=^2V/xy`$,

$`E_z^1=^2V/xz+ikV/x`$, $`H_x^1=0`$, $`H_y^1=ikV/zk^2V`$, $`H_z^1=ikV/y`$.

The upper superscript shows the first composition of the Hertz vector. A common multiple $`\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$ for all field components is omitted.

The values $`^2V/x_ix_kkV/x_ik^2V`$. That is why in this case $`E_x^1E_y^1,E_z^1`$, $`H_y^1H_z^1`$.

The second case does not differ from the first one. It is necessary to substitute variable $`x`$ by $`y`$ and vise versa.

In the third case

$`div\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}=\mathrm{\Pi }_x/z=V/x\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$, $`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_x=V/y\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$,

$`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_y=V/x\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$, $`(rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }})_z=0`$

and

$`E_x^3=^2V/xz+ikV/x`$, $`E_y^3=^2V/zy+V/y`$,

$`E_z^3=2ikV/z`$, $`H_x^3=ikV/y`$, $`H_y^3=ikV/x`$, $`H_z^3=0`$.

It follows that in the case of the main mode the electric and magnetic field strengths corresponding to the electric Hertz vector have components:

$$E_x^1=k^2U(x,y,z),E_y^10,E_z^1=2ikx\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z),$$

$$H_x^10,H_y^1=k^2U(x,y,z),H_z^1=2iky\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z)$$

$$E_x^2=0,E_y^2=k^2U(x,y,z),E_z^2=2iky[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}]U(x,y,z),$$

$$H_x^2=k^2U(x,y,z),H_y^20,H_z^2=2ikx\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z)$$

$$E_x^3=2ikx\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z),E_y^3=2iky\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z),$$
(14)
$$E_z^3=2ik\left\{\frac{4\lambda (x^2+y^2)z}{(\pi w_0)^2w^3(z)}+\frac{ik(x^2+y^2)}{2R^2(z)}\left[1\left(\frac{\pi w_0^2}{\lambda z}\right)^2\right]\frac{i\lambda }{\pi w_0^2\left[1+\left(\frac{\lambda z}{\pi w_0^2}\right)^2\right]}\right\}U(x,y,z),$$

$$H_x^3=2iky\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z),H_y^3=2iky\left[\frac{1}{w^2(z)}+\frac{ik}{R(z)}\right]U(x,y,z),H_z^3=0.$$

The electric and magnetic field strengths received from magnetic Hertz vector can be received from the fields (14) as well. For this purpose we can take the vector of the electric field strength received from magnetic Hertz vector equal to the negative value of the magnetic field strength received from the electric Hertz vector $`\stackrel{}{E}^{^{}}\stackrel{}{H}`$ and by analogy we can take $`\stackrel{}{H}^{^{}}\stackrel{}{E}`$.

The general solution for the electromagnetic field strength of the main mode of Gaussian beam $`TEM_{00}`$ can be presented in the form

$$\stackrel{}{E}=c_1\stackrel{}{E}^1+c_2\stackrel{}{E}^2+c_3\stackrel{}{E}^3c_4\stackrel{}{H}^1c_5\stackrel{}{H}^2c_6\stackrel{}{H}^3,$$

$$\stackrel{}{H}=c_1\stackrel{}{H}^1+c_2\stackrel{}{H}^2+c_3\stackrel{}{H}^3+c_4\stackrel{}{E}^1+c_5\stackrel{}{E}^2+c_6\stackrel{}{E}^3,$$
(15)
where $`c_i`$ are the arbitrary coefficients determined by the conditions of excitation of the mode by the electron beam. Waves determined by the only coefficient $`c_i`$ (when another ones are equal to zero) can be excited independently.

Higher modes in the open resonator will be described by the expressions (15) and by the expressions similar to (14) for the electromagnetic field strengths of the main mode. They will form orthogonal and full set of fundamental waves. The arbitrary wave may be expanded into these waves. Of cause, real electric and magnetic field strengths are determined by the real part of the expression (15).

In the open resonators the same Gaussian beams are excited. They propagate between mirrors both in $`z`$ and in $`z`$ directions. However the resonators will be excited on discrete set of eigenfrequences (wavelengths) .

We can see that according to (14) all considered waves $`\stackrel{}{E}^i,\stackrel{}{H}^i`$ are transverse. At the same time they have longitudinal components. This is the general property of the convergent and divergent waves , . Such waves have longitudinal components which permit the lines of the electric and magnetic field strengths to be closed.

The fields $`\stackrel{}{E}^1,\stackrel{}{H}^1`$ describe an electromagnetic wave with one direction of polarization and the fields $`\stackrel{}{E}^2,\stackrel{}{H}^2`$ with another one. They have high transverse components of the electric and magnetic field strengths and zero longitudinal components on the axis $`z`$.

Electromagnetic fields $`\stackrel{}{E}^3,\stackrel{}{H}^3`$ are a new kind of fields. They have zero transverse components of the electric and magnetic field strengths and high value longitudinal component of the electric field strength at the axis $`z`$ (similar to the wave $`E_{01}`$ at the axial region of the cylindrical waveguide). It means that in this case the lines of the electric and magnetic field strengths are closed in the directions both at the central part of the beam propagation that is near to the axis $`z`$ and far from the axis that is near to the region of theirs envelopes (caustics)333Notice that usually the divergent waves with high directivity emitted by antennas are described and drawn by the lines of the electric and magnetic field strengths which are closed in the directions far from the axis of the beam propagation near to the region of theirs envelops..

Usually the scalar functions $`V(x,y,z)`$ or $`U(x,y,z)=V(x,y,z)\mathrm{exp}[i(kz\omega t)]`$ are used when the modes in open resonators are investigated , , . It was supposed that the waves are transverse ones and the values of the electromagnetic field strengths are distributed near the same way as the values of the scalar functions. At that some features like the existence of the wave $`\stackrel{}{E}^3,\stackrel{}{H}^3`$ were hidden. Such waves have longitudinal components of the electric field strength and hence can be excited through the transition radiation emitted on the inner sides of the resonator walls by an electron homogeneously moving along the axis $`z`$. Such excitation was observed in the experiments published in .

## 4 Conclusion

Open resonators permit an effective generation of broadband radiation at the main and/or other transverse modes under conditions when many longitudinal modes are excited. The longitudinal modes are limited in the longwavelength region by the diffraction losses and in the short wavelength region by the longitudinal electron beam dimensions (coherence conditions). Open resonators can be excited in the case when the external fields in the resonator are absent and the particle trajectory is directed along the axis of the resonator. Using external fields of a single bending magnet can increase the power of the generated radiation .

Appendix

Generation and propagation of electromagnetic waves in vacuum is described by Maxwell equations (1). We noticed above that these equations are a set of eight equations for six independent components of the electric and magnetic fields. Only four components of the electromagnetic field are independent. These equations added with initial and boundary conditions describe all processes in electrodynamics.

There is no general solution of the system of Maxwell equations with boundary conditions similar to the Lienard-Viechert solution for the fields produced by charged particles moving along some trajectories at a given low in free space. It means that private problems must be solved separately for every concrete case. At that when the boundary conditions exist, interactions of particles with surrounding media and intrabeam interactions of particles are essential then the beam density and beam current can not be given and the dynamical Lorentz equations must be added. Below we will consider the case when the beam density and the density of the beam current (particle trajectories) are given.

One of the possible simplifications of the solution of the Maxwell equations is to transform linear Maxwell equations to the equations of the second order relative to the field strengths or potentials.

First of all the Maxwell equations can be transformed to the equations separately for the electric and magnetic fields. For this purpose we can differentiate equation (1.b) with respect to $`t`$, use equation (1.c) and employ the vector identity $`rotrot\stackrel{}{F}=graddiv\stackrel{}{F}\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{F}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the Laplacian operator. Such a way we will receive the equation for the electric field strength and then by analogy we will receive the equation for the magnetic field strength. They are

$$\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{E}=\frac{4\pi }{c^2}\dot{\stackrel{}{J}}+4\pi grad\rho ,(a)\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{H}=\frac{4\pi }{c}rot\stackrel{}{J}.(b)$$
(16)
where $`\mathrm{}=\mathrm{\Delta }^2/c^2t^2`$ is the d’Alembertian operator, $`\dot{\stackrel{}{J}}=\stackrel{}{J}/t`$.

The equations (16) are the nonhomogeneous linear equations of the second order. We must add the equations (1.a), (1.d) to the system of the equations (16). It means that we have again a system of two vector and two scalar equations (in components they are eight equations) for six unknown components of the electric and magnetic field strengths $`E_i`$, $`H_i`$.

The divergence of the equation (16.a) leads to a more general continuity equation $`(/t)(\rho /`$ $`t`$ $`+div\stackrel{}{J})=0`$ which is valid when the continuity equation $`\rho /t+div\stackrel{}{J}=0`$ is valid.

The solution of the Maxwell equations will be the solution of these second order equations. The second order equations are another equations. Strictly speaking they are not equivalent to Maxwell equations. We must check theirs solutions by substituting these solutions into the linear Maxwell equations to reject unnecessary solutions. This is very difficult problem even for simple cases. A way out can be found by introducing of electromagnetic field potentials. The vector potential $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ and scalar potential $`\phi `$ are introduced by the equations $`\stackrel{}{H}=rot\stackrel{}{A}`$, $`\stackrel{}{E}=grad\phi (1/c)(\stackrel{}{A}/t)`$. In this case both from Maxwell equations and from the equations (16) it follows the equations for vector and scalar potentials

$$\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{A}=\frac{4\pi }{c}\stackrel{}{J}(a),\mathrm{}\phi =4\pi \rho (b)$$
(17)
and additional condition coupling the potentials (Lorentz gauge)

$$div\stackrel{}{A}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{\phi }{t}.$$
(18)
It is convenient to use the electric and magnetic Hertz vectors as well. They permit to simplify the solutions of the problem of propagation of waves in resonators and free space which is described by the homogeneous wave equations ($`\rho =0`$, $`\stackrel{}{J}=0`$). Both the electric and magnetic Hertz vectors $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$ are introduced by the same expressions

$$\stackrel{}{A}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^{e/m}}{t};\phi =div\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^{e/m}.$$
(19)
Such way defined potentials $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ and $`\phi `$ will satisfy the equation (11) simultaneously.

Different superscripts $`e/m`$ in this case are used on the stage of introduction of the connection between electric and magnetic field strengths through Hertz vectors. The electric field strength can be expressed through the electric and magnetic Hertz vector by the equations

$$\stackrel{}{E}=graddiv\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e}{t^2};\stackrel{}{H}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{}{t}rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e,$$
(20)
$$\stackrel{}{E}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{}{t}rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m,\stackrel{}{H}=graddiv\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m}{t^2}.$$
(21)
These manipulations are valid because of both definitions (20) and (21) satisfy Maxwell equations (1) and equations (16). This is because of homogeneous wave equations for electromagnetic fields

$$\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{F}=0$$
(22)
are symmetric relative to fields $`\stackrel{}{E}`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ ($`\stackrel{}{F}=\stackrel{}{E},\stackrel{}{H}`$). If $`\stackrel{}{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ are some solutions of the homogeneous Maxwell equations (1b), (1c) then vectors $`\stackrel{}{E}^{^{}}=\stackrel{}{H}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{H}^{^{}}=\stackrel{}{E}`$ will satisfy these and another Maxwell equations as well.

In general case the problem may be reduced to solving of wave equation if potentials $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$ will be introduced simultaneously in the form

$$\stackrel{}{E}=graddiv\mathrm{\Pi }^e\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e}{t^2}\frac{1}{c}\frac{}{t}rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m,\stackrel{}{H}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{}{t}rot\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e+graddiv\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m\frac{1}{c^2}\frac{^2\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m}{t^2}.$$
(23)
We can be convinced that $`\stackrel{}{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ described by (23) fulfil to Maxwell equations at $`\rho =\stackrel{}{J}=0`$ when vectors $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$ fulfil the wave equation (22) with replaced $`\stackrel{}{F}`$ on $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$.

Equation (22) is valid for each component of vectors $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$. That is why it is possible to use scalar wave equation

$$\mathrm{}U=0$$
(24)
and identify its solution $`U`$ with one of components of vectors $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e`$ or $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m`$ and the rest components of these vectors equate to zero (say we can take $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^e=\stackrel{}{e}_x0+\stackrel{}{e}_y0+\stackrel{}{e}_zU,`$ $`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{\Pi }}^m=0`$). Substituting the constructed such a way vector with one component in (16) we will find the electromagnetic field strengths $`\stackrel{}{E}`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ which satisfy the Maxwell and wave equations. Then we can identify the same solution with another component of the Hertz vector, equate the rest components to zero and calculate another electromagnetic field strengths $`\stackrel{}{E}`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ which satisfy the Maxwell and wave equations as well. After we will go through all compositions with components then we will have a set of six different solutions for field strengths $`\stackrel{}{E}`$, $`\stackrel{}{H}`$. These solutions will be six electromagnetic waves with different structures. Sum of these solutions with some coefficients will be a solution of the Maxwell equations as well. This will be algorithm of electromagnetic field determination through Hertz vector.

Equation (24) has many different solutions. We must find such solutions which will correspond to the problem under consideration to a considerable extent. Below we will deal with monochromatic light beams of the limited diameter related with resonator modes. In general case such beams can be written in the form

$$U(x,y,z)=V(x,y,z)e^{i(kz\omega t)}$$
(25)
where $`V(x,y,z)`$ is a function of coordinate slowly varying in comparison with $`\mathrm{exp}i(kz\omega t)`$. A complex form of values will be used for computations and then we will proceed to a real part of the form.

Substituting (25) into (24) and taking into account the slow variation of $`V(x,y,z)`$ compared with $`\mathrm{exp}i(kz\omega t)`$ that is the condition $`|^2V/z^2|2k|V/z|`$ and the condition $`k=\omega /c`$ we will receive the equation

$$i\frac{V}{z}+\frac{1}{2k}(\frac{^2V}{x^2}+\frac{^2V}{y^2})=0$$
(26)
which describes a space limited beam.

In the general case the limited in the transverse direction wave propagating in free space or in a resonator have rather complicated structure. That is why it is desirable to find full, orthogonal set of fundamental waves with the well known feature of propagation. Then an arbitrary wave may be expanded into series of these waves. Different series of fundamental waves can be found for this problem and the arbitrary wave can be expanded into one or another series. The method of separation of variables is used to solve the wave equation. For example, in the Cartesian coordinates $`V(x,y,z)=X(x,y,z)Y(x,y,z)`$ and in the cylindrical coordinates $`V(x,y,z)=G(u)\mathrm{\Phi }(\phi )\mathrm{exp}[ikr^2/2q(z)]\mathrm{exp}[iS(z)]`$, where $`r`$ and $`\phi `$ are cylindrical coordinates on a plane transverse to $`z`$, $`u=r/w(z)`$. These solutions are considered in .