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# New experimental test of Bell inequalities by the use of a non-maximally entangled photon state

Abstract

We report on the realisation of a new test of Bell inequalities using the superposition of type I parametric down conversion produced in two different non-linear crystals pumped by the same laser, but with different polarisations.

We discuss the advantages and the possible developments of this configuration.

PACS: 03.65.Bz

Keywords: Bell inequalities, non-locality, hidden variable theories

Many experiments have already been devoted to a test of Bell inequalities , leading to a substantial agreement with quantum mechanics and disfavouring realistic local hidden variable theories. However, due to the low total detection efficiency (the so-called ”detection loophole”) no experiment has yet been able to exclude definitively realistic local hidden variable theories, for it is necessary a further additional hypothesis , stating that the observed sample of particles pairs is a faithful subsample of the whole. This problem is known as detection or efficiency loophole. Considering the extreme relevance of a conclusive elimination of local hidden variable theories, the research for new experimental configurations able to overcome the detection loophole is of a great interest.

A very important theoretical step in this direction has been achieved recognising that for non maximally entangled pairs a total efficiency larger than 0.67  (in the limit of no background) is required to obtain an efficiency-loophole free experiment, whilst for maximally entangled pairs this limit rises to 0.81. However, it must be noticed that for non-maximally entangled states the largest discrepancy between quantum mechanics and local hidden variable theories is reduced: thus a compromise between a lower total efficiency and a still sufficiently large value of this difference will be necessary in a realisation of an experiment addressed to overcome the detection loophole.

On the experimental side, in recent years the largest improvements have been obtained by using parametric down conversion (PDC) processes.

This technique has been employed, since its discovery, for generations of ”entangled” photon pairs, i.e. pairs of photons described by a common wave function which by no means can be factored up into the product of two distinct wave functions pertaining to separated photons. It is due essentially to L. Mandel and collaborators  the idea of using such a state of the electromagnetic field to perform tests of quantum mechanics, more specifically to test Bell’s inequalities.

The generation of entangled states by parametric down conversion is alternative to other techniques, such as the radiative decay of atomic excited states, as it was in the celebrated experiment of A. Aspect et al. , and overcomes some former limitations in the direction of propagation of the conjugated photons. In fact the poor angular correlation of atomic cascade photons is at the origin of a small total efficiency of this set up, leading to a selection of a small subsample of the produced photons, which makes impossible to eliminate the detection loophole in this case. On the other hand, a very good angular correlation (better than 1 mrad) of the two photons of the pair is obtained in the PDC process, giving the possibility, at least in principle, to overcome the previous problem.

The entanglement on phase and momentum, which is directly produced in Type I parametric down conversion can be used for a test of Bell inequalities using two spatially separated interferometers , as realised by . The use of beam splitters, however, strongly reduces the total quantum efficiency.

In alternative, one can generate a polarisation entangled state . It appears, however, that the creation of couples of photons entangled from the point of view of polarisation, which is by far the most diffuse case due to the easy experimental implementation, still suffers severe limitations, as it was pointed out recently in the literature. The essence of the problem is that in generating this state, half of the initial photon flux is lost (in most of the used configurations), and one is, of necessity, led to assume that the photon’s population actually involved in the experiment is a faithful sample of the original one, without eliminating the efficiency loophole.

A scheme which allows no postselection of the photons has been realised recently, using Type II PDC, where a polarisation entangled state is directly generated. This scheme has effectively permitted, at the price of delicate compensations for having identical arrival time of the ordinary and extraordinary photon, a much higher total efficiency than the previous ones. It is, however, still far from the value $`0.81`$ for the total efficiency. Also, some recent experiments studying equalities among correlations functions rather than Bell inequalities  are far by solving these problems . A large interest remains therefore for new experiments increasing total quantum efficiency in order to reduce and finally overcome the efficiency loophole.

Our experiment follows and develops  an idea by Hardy  and contemplates the creation of a polarisation (non maximally-) entangled states of the form

$$|\psi =\frac{|H|H+f|V|V}{\sqrt{(1+|f|^2)}}$$
(1)
(where $`H`$ and $`V`$ indicate horizontal and vertical polarisations respectively) via the superposition of the spontaneous fluorescence emitted by two non-linear crystals driven by the same pumping laser. The crystals are put in cascade along the propagation direction of the pumping laser and the superposition is obtained by using an appropriate optics.

We describe more in details the experimental set-up, with reference to the sketch of figure 1 below. The two crystals of LiIO3 (10x10x10 mm) are 250 mm apart, a distance smaller than the coherence length of the pumping laser. This guarantees indistinguishibility in the creation of a couple of photons in the first or in the second crystal. A couple of planoconvex lenses of 120 mm focal length centred in between focalises the spontaneous emission from the first crystal into the second one maintaining exactly, in principle, the angular spread. A hole of 4 mm diameter is drilled into the centre of the lenses in order to allow transmission of the pump radiation without absorption and, even more important, without adding stray-light, because of fluorescence and diffusion of the UV radiation. This configuration, which performs as a so-called ”optical condenser”, was chosen among others as a compromise between minimisation of aberrations (mainly spherical and chromatic) and losses due to the number of optical components. The pumping beam at the exit of the first crystal is displaced from its input direction by birefringence: the small quartz plate (5 x5 x5 mm) in front of the first lens of the condensers compensates this displacement, so that the input conditions are prepared to be the same for the two crystals, apart from alignment errors. Finally, a half-wavelength plate immediately after the condenser rotates the polarisation of the Argon beam and excites in the second crystal a spontaneous emission cross-polarised with respect to the first one. The dimensions and positions of both plates are carefully chosen in order not to intersect the spontaneous emissions at 633 and 789 nm. With a phase matching angle of $`51^o`$ they are emitted at $`3.5^o`$ and $`4^o`$ respectively.

The precise value of $`f`$, which determines how far from a maximally entangled state ($`f=1`$) the produced state is, can be easily tuned by modifying the pump intensity between the two crystals. This is a fundamental property, which could permit to select the most appropriate state for the practical realisation of a detection loophole free experiment.

The alignment (which is of fundamental importance for having a high visibility and in principle constitutes the main problem of such a configuration) has been profitably improved using an optical amplifier scheme, where a solid state laser is injected into the crystals together with the pumping laser, an argon laser at 351 nm wavelength (see fig.1). Such a technique had already proved its validity and it is of great help in the recognition of the directions of propagation of correlated wavelengths photon and applied in our laboratory  for metrological studies.

The proposed scheme is well suited for leading to a further step toward a conclusive experimental test of non-locality in quantum mechanics. The analysis of the experiments realised up to now  shows in fact that visibility of the wanted effect (essentially visibility of interference fringes) and overall quantum efficiency of detection are the main parameters in such experiments. One first advantage of the proposed configuration with respect to most of the previous experimental set-ups is that all the entangled pairs are selected (and not only $`50\%`$ as with beams splitters).

For the moment, the results which we are going to discuss are still far from a definitive solution of the detection loophole; nevertheless, being the first test of Bell inequalities using a non-maximally entangled state, they represents an important step in this direction. Furthermore, this configuration permits to use any pair of correlated frequencies and not only the degenerate ones. We have thus realised this test using for a first time two different wave lengths (at $`633`$ and $`789`$ nm).

A somehow similar set-up has been realised recently in ref. . The main difference between the two experiments is that in  the two crystals are very thin and in contact with orthogonal optical axes: this permits a ”partial” superposition of the two emissions with opposite polarisation. This overlapping is mainly due to the finite dimension of the pump laser beam, which reflects into a finite width of each wavelength emission. We think that the arrangement, described in the present paper is better, in that by fine tuning the crystals’ and optics’ positions a perfect superposition can be obtained for at least a couple of wavelength in PDC emission. Moreover, the parametric amplifier trick allows to approach this ideal situation very closely. Furthermore, in the experiment of ref.  the value of $`f`$ is in principle tunable by rotating the polarisation of the pump laser, however this reduce the power of the pump producing PDC already in the first crystal, while in our case the whole pump power can always be used in the first crystal, tuning the PDC produced in the second one.

As a first check of our apparatus, we have measured the interference fringes, varying the setting of one of the polarisers, leaving the other fixed. We have found a high visibility, $`V=0.973\pm 0.038`$.

Our results are summarised by the value obtained for the Clauser-Horne sum,

$$CH=N(\theta _1,\theta _2)N(\theta _1,\theta _2^{})+N(\theta _1^{},\theta _2)+N(\theta _1^{},\theta _2^{})N(\theta _1^{},\mathrm{})N(\mathrm{},\theta _2)$$
(2)
which is strictly negative for local realistic theory. In (2), $`N(\theta _1,\theta _2)`$ is the number of coincidences between channels 1 and 2 when the two polarisers are rotated to an angle $`\theta _1`$ and $`\theta _2`$ respectively ($`\mathrm{}`$ denotes the absence of selection of polarisation for that channel)

For quantum mechanics $`CH`$ can be larger than zero, e.g. for a maximally entangled state the largest value is obtained for $`\theta _1=67^o.5`$ , $`\theta _2=45^o`$, $`\theta _1^{}=22^o.5`$ , $`\theta _2^{}=0^o`$ and correspond to a ratio

$$R=[N(\theta _1,\theta _2)N(\theta _1,\theta _2^{})+N(\theta _1^{},\theta _2)+N(\theta _1^{},\theta _2^{})]/[N(\theta _1^{},\mathrm{})+N(\mathrm{},\theta _2)]$$
(3)
equal to 1.207.

For non-maximally entangled states the angles for which CH is maximal are somehow different and the largest value smaller. The angles corresponding to the maximum can be evaluated maximising Eq. 2 with

$`\begin{array}{c}N[\theta _1,\theta _2]=[ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{||}(Sin[\theta _1]^2Sin[\theta _2]^2)+\hfill \\ ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{}(Cos[\theta _1]^2Cos[\theta _2]^2)\hfill \\ (ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{||}Sin[\theta _1]^2Cos[\theta _2]^2+ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{}Cos[\theta _1]^2Sin[\theta _2]^2)\hfill \\ +|f|^2(ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{}(Sin[\theta _1]^2Sin[\theta _2]^2)+ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{||}(Cos[\theta _1]^2Cos[\theta _2]^2)+\hfill \\ (ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{}Sin[\theta _1]^2Cos[\theta _2]^2+\hfill \\ ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{||}Cos[\theta _1]^2Sin[\theta _2]^2)\hfill \\ +(f+f^{})((ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{||}+ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{}ϵ_1^{||}ϵ_2^{}ϵ_1^{}ϵ_2^{||})(Sin[\theta _1]Sin[\theta _2]Cos[\theta _1]Cos[\theta _2])]/(1+|f|^2)\hfill \end{array}.`$ (11)
where (for the case of non-ideal polariser) $`ϵ_i^{||}`$ and $`ϵ_i^{}`$ correspond to the transmission when the polariser (on the branch $`i`$) axis is aligned or normal the polarisation axis respectively.

In our case we have a state with $`f0.4`$ which corresponds, for $`\theta _1=72^o.24`$ , $`\theta _2=45^o`$, $`\theta _1^{}=17^o.76`$ and $`\theta _2^{}=0^o`$, to $`R=1.16`$.

Our experimental result is $`CH=512\pm 135`$ coincidences per second, which is almost four standard deviations different from zero and compatible with the theoretical value predicted by quantum mechanics. In terms of the ratio (3), our result is $`1.082\pm 0.031`$.

It must be noticed that results which are by far of many more standard deviations above zero have been obtained. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, this is the first measurement of the Clauser-Horne sum (or other Bell inequalities) using a non-maximally entangled state and thus represents and interesting result as a first step in the direction of eliminating the detection loophole. This is also the first measurement of a polarisation two photon entanglemend state, where the two photons have different wavelengths. Further developments in this sense are the purpose of this collaboration.

Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge support of Italian Space Agency under contract LONO 500172.

Figure caption

Sketch of the source of polarisation entangled photons. CR1 and CR2 are two $`LiIO_3`$ crystals cut at the phase-matching angle of $`51^o`$. L1 and L2 are two identical piano-convex lenses with a hole of 4 mm in the centre. P is a 5 x 5 x 5 mm quartz plate for birefringence compensation and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/2`$ is a first order half wave-length plate at 351 nm. U.V. identifies the pumping radiation at 351 nm. The infrared beam (I.R.) at 789 nm is generated by a diode laser and is used for system alignment only. The parametric amplifier scheme, described in the text, is shown as well. The dashed line identifies the idler radiation at 633 nm. A second half-wave plate on the I.R. beam (not shown in the figure) allows amplified idler emission from the second crystals too. The figure is not in scale.


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# Positive strangeness contribution to the nucleon magnetic moment in a relativistic chiral potential model

## Abstract

The strangeness contribution to the nucleon magnetic moment is calculated at the one-loop level in a relativistic SU(3) chiral potential model and is found to be positive, that is, with an opposite sign to the nucleon strangeness polarization. It is the “Z” diagram that violates the usual relation between spin and magnetic moment. The positive value is due to the contribution from the intermediate excited quark states, while the intermediate ground state gives a negative contribution. Our numerical results agree quite well with the new measurement of the SAMPLE Collaboration.

PACS numbers: 12.39.Ki, 12.39.Fe, 12.39.Pn, 13.88.+e

The new determination of the strangeness magnetic form factor of the nucleon at $`Q^2=0.1`$GeV2 by the SAMPLE collaboration  confirmed its previous result  and indicates a significantly positive value:

$$G_M^s(0.1\mathrm{GeV}^2)=+0.61\pm 0.17\pm 0.21\pm 0.19\mu _N.$$
(1)
This result implies new challenges to our understanding of the nucleon structure since most theoretical calculations typically generate negative values for $`\mu _sG_M^s(Q^2=0)`$ (see  and references therein). A positive value for $`\mu _s`$ is also intuitively difficult to understand with respect to the usual magnetic moment-spin ($`\mu `$-$`s`$) relation, since the strange quark polarization of the nucleon is confirmed to be negative both by experiments  and by lattice QCD calculations . (Note that the negative charge of the strange quark has been extracted in the definition of $`G_M^s`$.)

In a recent paper , by using a relativistic chiral potential model, we have successfully reproduced the experimental result of the strange quark polarization ($`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$) of the nucleon. In this paper we report on the corresponding result for the nucleon strangeness magnetic moment, especially in comparison to the nucleon strangeness polarization.

The nucleon magnetic moment $`\mu _N`$ is defined by its interaction with a static, external magnetic field $`\stackrel{}{B}`$:

$$N|\underset{q}{}iQ_qd^3x\overline{\psi }_q\gamma ^\mu \psi _qA_\mu |N\stackrel{}{\mu }_N\stackrel{}{B},$$
(2)
It can be shown that $`\mu _N`$ is related to the electromagnetic form factor by $`\mu _N=_qQ_qG_M^q(0)`$ , where $`G_M^q(k^2)F_1^q(k^2)+F_2^q(k^2)`$ and $`F_1`$ and $`F_2`$ are defined through

$$N|\overline{\psi }_q\gamma ^\mu \psi _q|N=\overline{u}_N\left(F_1^q\gamma ^\mu +\frac{i}{2M_N}F_2^q\sigma ^{\mu \nu }k_\nu \right)u_N.$$
(3)
The contribution of the quark flavor $`q`$ ($`q=u,d,s`$) to the nucleon magnetic moment is usually defined as $`\mu _qG_M^q(0)`$. Equivalently, $`\mu _q`$ can be evaluated as the expectation value of the magnetic moment operator:

$$\mu _q=N|d^3x\psi _q^{}(\stackrel{}{x}\times \stackrel{}{\alpha })_3\psi _q|N,$$
(4)
which follows directly from Eq. (2) . Eq. (4) is especially suitable for model calculations. In the following we will perform a perturbative calculation of $`\mu _s`$ in a chiral potential model.

Our starting point is the chiral Lagrangian

$``$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }[i/S(r)\gamma ^0V(r)]\psi `$ (7)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2F_\pi }}\overline{\psi }[S(r)(\sigma +i\gamma ^5\lambda ^i\varphi _i)+(\sigma +i\gamma ^5\lambda ^i\varphi _i)S(r)]\psi +`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\mu \sigma )^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\mu \varphi _i)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_\sigma ^2\sigma ^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_{\varphi _i}^2\varphi _i^2.`$
The model Lagrangian is derived from the $`\sigma `$ model in which meson fields are introduced to restore chiral symmetry . The flavor and color indices for the quark field $`\psi `$ are suppressed; the scalar term $`S(r)=cr+m`$ represents the the linear scalar confinement potential $`cr`$ and the quark mass matrix $`m`$; $`V(r)=\alpha /r`$ is the Coulomb type vector potential and $`F_\pi `$=93MeV is the pion decay constant. $`\sigma `$ and $`\varphi _i`$ ($`i`$ runs from $`1`$ to $`8`$) are the scalar and pseudoscalar meson fields, respectively and $`\lambda _i`$ are the Gell-Mann matrices. The quark-meson interaction term of Eq.(7) is symmetrized since the mass matrix $`m`$ does not commute with all $`\lambda _i`$ for different quark masses.

At zeroth order the nucleon is described by the usual SU(6) three-quark ground state of the Hamiltonian

$$H_q=d^3x\psi ^{}[\stackrel{}{\alpha }\frac{1}{i}\stackrel{}{}+\beta S(r)+V(r)]\psi .$$
(8)
The lowest order contribution to $`\mu _s`$ arises from the one-loop diagrams of Fig. 1, which we now evaluate.

The meson propagator, given by the Lagrangian of Eq. (7), is the free propagator. Since the non-perturbative confinement is included in $`H_q`$ the quark propagator has to be obtained numerically, and in practise we have to work with time-ordered perturbation theory. We write the solution of $`H_q`$ as

$$\psi (x)=\underset{\alpha }{}u_\alpha (x)a_\alpha +\underset{\beta }{}v_\beta (x)b_\beta ^{},$$
(9)
where $`u_\alpha (x)=e^{iE_\alpha t}u_\alpha (\stackrel{}{x})\tau _\alpha `$, $`v_\beta (x)=e^{iE_\beta t}v_\beta (\stackrel{}{x})\tau _\beta `$; $`\tau `$ is the flavor wavefunction and the spatial wavefunction is:

$$u_\alpha (\stackrel{}{x})=\left(\begin{array}{c}g_{njl}(r)\\ i\stackrel{}{\sigma }\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}}f_{njl}(r)\end{array}\right)Y_{jl}^m(\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}}),$$
(10)
where $`g`$ and $`f`$ are real functions, $`n`$ is the radial quantum number, and $`Y_{jl}^m(\widehat{\stackrel{}{r}})`$ are the vector spherical harmonics. For computational convenience, we will take the same form for $`v_\beta (\stackrel{}{x})`$.

In correspondence to Eq. (9), the quark propagator is

$`D(x_1,x_2)`$ $``$ $`0|T\{\psi (x_1),\overline{\psi }(x_2)\}|0`$ (11)
$`=`$ $`\theta (t_1t_2){\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}u_\alpha (x_1)\overline{u}_\alpha (x_2)`$ (13)
$`\theta (t_2t_1){\displaystyle \underset{\beta }{}}v_\beta (x_1)\overline{v}_\beta (x_2).`$
Applying the propagators to Fig. 1, we get the contribution for a single quark line (with the initial and final states denoted as $`u_i`$ and $`u_f`$, respectively):

$`\mu _s`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{F_\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle }d^4x_1d^4x_2\overline{u}_f(x_2)S(r_2)\gamma ^5\lambda ^i\times `$ (19)
$`[\theta (t_2t)\theta (tt_1){\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \alpha ^{}}{}}u_\alpha (x_2)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}\overline{u}_\alpha ^{}(x_1)+`$
$`\theta (t_1t)\theta (tt_2){\displaystyle \underset{\beta \beta ^{}}{}}v_\beta (x_2)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \beta ^{}}\overline{v}_\beta ^{}(x_1)`$
$`\theta (t_2t)\theta (t_1t){\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \beta ^{}}{}}u_\alpha (x_2)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta ^{}}\overline{v}_\beta ^{}(x_1)`$
$`\theta (tt_2)\theta (tt_1){\displaystyle \underset{\beta \alpha ^{}}{}}v_\beta (x_2)\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \alpha ^{}}\overline{u}_\alpha ^{}(x_1)]\times `$
$`S(r_1)\gamma ^5\lambda ^iu_i(x_1){\displaystyle \frac{i}{(2\pi )^4}}{\displaystyle d^4k\frac{\delta _{ij}e^{ik(x_1x_2)}}{k^2m_{\varphi _i}^2+iϵ}},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}d^3xu_\alpha ^{}(\stackrel{}{x}\times \stackrel{}{\alpha })_3u_\alpha ^{}`$, and similarly for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \beta ^{}}`$ etc. The four time-ordered terms in Eq.(19) correspond to the time-ordered diagrams of Fig. 2.

We omit here the details for the evaluation of $`\mu _s`$ of Eq. (19). The integrals of Eq. (19) can be reduced analytically to radial integrations at the vertex points ($`r_1`$ and $`r_2`$) and of the loop momentum $`|\stackrel{}{k}|`$. The the remaining integrations are carried out numerically. To obtain $`\mu _s`$ for the whole nucleon, one still has to multiply a spin-isospin factor which can be straightforwardly calculated to be 2.

When calculating $`\mu _s`$ we allow strong variations of the model parameters entering in the Lagrangian fo Eq. (7). Since $`F_\pi =93`$ MeV and $`m_K=495`$ MeV are fixed by experiment, our model contains four free parameters: the two quark masses $`m_{u,d}`$, $`m_s`$ and the two strength constants of the scalar and vector potential denoted by $`c`$ and $`\alpha `$. The parameter $`\alpha `$ is fixed by the long-wavelength, transverse fluctuations of the QCD based static-source flux-tube picture . It was obtained to be $`0.26`$ in  and $`0.30`$ in , while a much larger value of about $`0.52`$ was used by the Cornell group . Recent lattice calculation  got a value around $`0.32`$ in the quenched approximation, and suggested that relaxing the quenched approximation may lead to $`\alpha 0.40`$. Effective quark masses and confinement strength are rather uncertain quantities. We therefore choose in our calculation five different sets of parameters (see Table I), including both current and constituent quark masses.

Fig. 3 gives the numerical results of $`\mu _s`$ in units of $`\mu _N`$. The intermediate quark states are consistently summed up to a given energy. In the last column of Table I we list the contribution of the intermediate ground state. As evident from Fig. 3, for all choices of parameter sets, $`\mu _s`$ turns out to be positive, as long as enough excited quark states are taken into account. However, as already indicated in Table I the intermediate quark ground state always give a negative contribution. This explains why in many calculations at the baryon level, where the quarks are restricted to the ground state and the intermediate baryon is truncated to be the ground state octet or decuplet baryons, a negative value of $`\mu _s`$ is usually obtained.

We see in Fig. 3 that the summation over the quark intermediate states is divergent. This is because in the chiral Lagrangian of Eq. (7), the electromagnetic current of the strange quark is not separately conserved. To obtain a meaningful finite result, we must renormalize the composite, non-conserved magnetic moment operator of the strange quark. Analogous to the lattice renormalization, we cut the quark intermediate states at a certain energy, which should roughly correspond to the inverse of the lattice spacing ($`a^11.7`$GeV) in the lattice QCD calculation of nucleon properties . The cutoff point is indicated in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 shows that a larger quark mass or a stronger confinement (which is effectively a static mass) always reduce the magnetic moment, as expected. However, the variations of the vector potential do not affect $`\mu _s`$ too much.

To analyze how the positive value for $`\mu _s`$ arises, in Fig. 5 we give the separate contributions to $`\mu _s`$ from the time-ordered diagrams of Fig. 2 for the second set of parameters. Correspondingly in Fig. 6 we indicate the separate contributions of the time-ordered diagrams to strange quark polarization $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$ of the nucleon .

The results of Figs. 5 and 6 indicate why $`\mu _s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$ have opposite sign: the intermediate quark states give a contribution of the same sign (both negative) to $`\mu _s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$, which is as expected; the antiquark states contribute a positive amount to $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$, but a negative amount to $`\mu _s`$. This is also reasonable since the antiquark has an opposite charge to the quark. However, one would not expect the usual relation between spin and magnetic moment for the contributions from the “Z” diagrams in which a quark-antiquark pair is created or annihilated; an evident obstacle is that we do not know what sign of the charge we should attribute to these diagrams. Figs. 5 and 6 show that the “Z” diagrams give a negative contribution to the polarization while they generate a positive contribution to magnetic moment. They are also the dominating contributions (note that there are two “Z” diagrams); so eventually we get for the whole nucleon a negative strangeness polarization but a positive strangeness magnetic moment. This agrees well with the experimental results.

In summary, we found by a standard perturbative calculation that the SU(3) chiral potential model predicts a positive nucleon strangeness magnetic moment for a wide range of model parameters. Here the contributions from the intermediate excited states and the “Z” diagrams are most important. If one restricts the intermediate state to the quark ground state an opposite result is obtained. Further investigation of the time-ordered diagrams reveals that the positive-energy and negative-energy states (Figs. 2A and 2B) contribute to polarization and magnetic moment in the usual way that respects the relation between spin and magnetic moment; however this is not true for the “Z” diagrams, whose contribution is found to be dominant and therefore determines the overall sign of $`\mu _s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$ for the nucleon. Since in our calculations both for $`\mu _s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$ we have assumed only one Lagrangian, the success of our calculations can be regarded as a strong support of our approach and the chiral Lagrangian.

This work is supported by the CNSF (19675018), CSED, CSSTC, the DFG (FA67/25-1), and the DAAD.


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# S and P-wave heavy-light mesons in lattice NRQCD

## I INTRODUCTION

Calculations in QCD can be performed numerically on a discrete space-time lattice, provided the lattice spacing is small enough to accommodate all of the revelant physical distance scales. In the presence of a heavy quark the lattice spacing must be small relative to the inverse quark mass, resulting in large computational requirements, unless an appropriate “effective theory” is used. In particular, for the case of a hadron containing exactly one heavy quark, the dynamics can be expanded in powers of the inverse heavy quark mass using the well-established technique of heavy quark effective theory or nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD). With the heavy quark expansion, the lattice spacing can be much coarser and the computational requirements are correspondingly smaller.

In the present work, two issues will be addressed within quenched lattice NRQCD. Firstly, is the charm quark sufficiently heavy to permit the use of lattice NRQCD for charmed meson spectroscopy? Secondly, what are the mass splittings (magnitude and sign) between P-wave mesons containing a single heavy quark?

The first issue is clearly of interest due to the computational efficiency of lattice NRQCD. The heavy quark expansion is known to work well for bottom mesons, but previous research has demonstrated that $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ contributions can be comparable in magnitude for the S-wave spin splitting of charmed mesons. The present work provides an extension of this investigation by considering new simulations that incorporate a number of changes in method. For example, Ref.  used the fourth root of an elementary plaquette to define the tadpole improvement factor, $`U_0`$, whereas the present work uses the mean link in Landau gauge. Since the Landau definition is advantageous in other contexts, including the velocity expansion for the charmonium spectrum of lattice NRQCD, it might be expected to improve the convergence of the heavy quark expansion for the charmed heavy-light spectrum as well. Also, the light quark was described by the Sheikholeslami-Wohlert action in Ref. , but the present work uses a D234 action which has smaller lattice spacing errors classically. The simulations in the present work differ from those of Ref.  in various other ways as well, including Dirichlet versus periodic boundary conditions for light quark propagation, differing discretizations for heavy quark propagation, and the introduction of an anisotropic lattice with a smaller temporal lattice spacing than spatial spacing. Despite these modifications, the present simulations produce a conclusion similar to that of Ref. : the $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ contributions are comparable in magnitude for the S-wave charmed spin splitting; in the present work, each is roughly 20% of the $`O(1/M)`$ result for $`D^{}D`$, though the $`O(1/M^3)`$ contribution is closer to 10% for $`D_s^{}D_s`$.

The second issue under discussion relates to the spectrum of P-wave mesons containing a single heavy quark. The relative orderings of the P-wave bottom mesons have only recently come under direct experimental scrutiny, and the complete picture is not yet clear. Meanwhile theoretical predictions differ from one another even at a qualitative level. The traditional expectation of a hydrogen-like spectrum that arises from a number of model calculations has been questioned long ago by Schnitzer and very recently by Isgur and by Ebert, Galkin and Faustov.

The calculation is difficult within lattice QCD because the P-wave splittings are not large in comparison to the typical scale of nonperturbative QCD, and because of operator mixing for the pair of P-wave states having $`J=1`$. Some previous attempts have been made. Unfortunately, the uncertainties are often substantial, and results are not always as consistent with one another as might have been hoped. The present work represents a further comment on this situation. In particular, the $`D_{s2}^{}D_{s0}^{}`$ mass splitting is found to be positive as in the traditional hydrogen-like ordering, and to be substantially less than 100 MeV, while the $`D_2^{}D_0^{}`$, $`B_{s2}^{}B_{s0}^{}`$ and $`B_2^{}B_0^{}`$ splittings are even smaller. These splittings are consistent with a number of model calculations, but are somewhat smaller than the lattice NRQCD calculation of Ref. .

## II ACTION

The lattice action has three terms: gauge action, light quark action and heavy quark action. The entire action is classically and tadpole-improved with the tadpole factors, $`u_s`$ and $`u_t`$, defined as the mean links in Landau gauge in a spatial and temporal direction, respectively.

The gauge field action is

$`S_G(U)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{5\beta }{3}}[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{u_s^4\xi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{ps}}{}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{ReTr}U_{\mathrm{ps}}){\displaystyle \frac{1}{20u_s^6\xi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{rs}}{}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{ReTr}U_{\mathrm{rs}})`$ (3)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{u_s^2u_t^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{pt}}{}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{ReTr}U_{\mathrm{pt}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{20u_s^4u_t^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{rst}}{}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{ReTr}U_{\mathrm{rst}}\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\xi }{20u_s^2u_t^4}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{rts}}{}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{ReTr}U_{\mathrm{rts}})],`$
where $`\xi a_s/a_t`$. The subscripts “ps” and “rs” denote spatial plaquettes and spatial planar 1$`\times `$2 rectangles respectively. Plaquettes in the temporal-spatial planes are denoted by “pt”, while rectangles with the long side in a spatial(temporal) direction are labeled by “rst”(“rts”). The leading classical errors of this action are quartic in lattice spacing.

For light quarks, a D234 action is used with parameters set to their tadpole-improved classical values. Its leading classical errors are cubic in lattice spacing.

$`S_F(\overline{q},q;U)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\kappa }{3}}{\displaystyle \underset{x,i}{}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{u_s\xi ^2}}D_{1i}(x){\displaystyle \frac{1}{8u_s^2\xi ^2}}D_{2i}(x)\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{4\kappa }{3}}{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{u_t}}D_{1t}(x){\displaystyle \frac{1}{8u_t^2}}D_{2t}(x)\right]`$ (6)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa }{3u_s^4\xi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{x,i<j}{}}\overline{\psi }(x)\sigma _{ij}F_{ij}(x)\psi (x)+{\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa }{3u_s^2u_t^2\xi }}{\displaystyle \underset{x,i}{}}\overline{\psi }(x)\sigma _{0i}F_{0i}(x)\psi (x)`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{x}{}}\overline{\psi }(x)\psi (x),`$
where

$`D_{1i}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x)(1\xi \gamma _i)U_i(x)\psi (x+\widehat{i})+\overline{\psi }(x+\widehat{i})(1+\xi \gamma _i)U_i^{}(x)\psi (x),`$ (7)
$`D_{1t}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x)(1\gamma _4)U_4(x)\psi (x+\widehat{t})+\overline{\psi }(x+\widehat{t})(1+\gamma _4)U_4^{}(x)\psi (x),`$ (8)
$`D_{2i}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x)(1\xi \gamma _i)U_i(x)U_i(x+\widehat{i})\psi (x+2\widehat{i})`$ (9)
$`+`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x+2\widehat{i})(1+\xi \gamma _i)U_i^{}(x+\widehat{i})U_i^{}(x)\psi (x),`$ (10)
$`D_{2t}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x)(1\gamma _4)U_4(x)U_4(x+\widehat{t})\psi (x+2\widehat{t})`$ (11)
$`+`$ $`\overline{\psi }(x+2\widehat{t})(1+\gamma _4)U_4^{}(x+\widehat{t})U_4^{}(x)\psi (x),`$ (12)
$`gF_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2i}}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }(x)\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }^{}(x)\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{Im}\left(\mathrm{Tr}\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }(x)\right),`$ (13)
$`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}[U_\mu (x)U_\nu (x+\widehat{\mu })U_\mu ^{}(x+\widehat{\nu })U_\nu ^{}(x)`$ (17)
$`+U_\nu (x)U_\mu ^{}(x\widehat{\mu }+\widehat{\nu })U_\nu ^{}(x\widehat{\mu })U_\mu (x\widehat{\mu })`$
$`+U_\mu ^{}(x\widehat{\mu })U_\nu ^{}(x\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })U_\mu (x\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })U_\nu (x\widehat{\nu })`$
$`+U_\nu ^{}(x\widehat{\nu })U_\mu (x\widehat{\nu })U_\nu (x+\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })U_\mu ^{}(x)].`$
The heavy quark action is NRQCD, which is discretized to give the following Green’s function propagation:

$`G_{\tau +1}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{a_tH_B}{2}}\right)\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{a_tH_A}{2n}}\right)^n{\displaystyle \frac{U_4^{}}{u_t}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{a_tH_A}{2n}}\right)^n\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{a_tH_B}{2}}\right)G_\tau ,`$ (18)
with $`n=5`$ chosen for this work. Separation of the Hamiltonian into two terms, $`H=H_A+H_B`$, is important for ensuring stability of the discretization. For example, recall the discussion in Ref.  of a large nonzero vacuum expectation value for the term containing $`c_{10}`$ in the Hamiltonian (see Eq. (25)). This issue will be discussed further in Sec. IV.

The following Hamiltonian, written in terms of the bare heavy quark mass $`M`$, is complete to $`O(1/M^3)`$ in the classical continuum limit:

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`H_0+\delta H,`$ (19)
$`H_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)}}{2M}},`$ (20)
$`\delta H`$ $`=`$ $`\delta H^{(1)}+\delta H^{(2)}+\delta H^{(3)}+O(1/M^4)`$ (21)
$`\delta H^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_4}{u_s^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{g}{2M}}𝝈\stackrel{~}{𝐁}+c_5{\displaystyle \frac{a_s^2\mathrm{\Delta }^{(4)}}{24M}},`$ (22)
$`\delta H^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_2}{u_s^2u_t^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{ig}{8M^2}}(\stackrel{~}{𝚫}\stackrel{~}{𝐄}\stackrel{~}{𝐄}\stackrel{~}{𝚫}){\displaystyle \frac{c_3}{u_s^2u_t^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{g}{8M^2}}𝝈(\stackrel{~}{𝚫}\times \stackrel{~}{𝐄}\stackrel{~}{𝐄}\times \stackrel{~}{𝚫})c_6{\displaystyle \frac{a_s(\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)})^2}{16n\xi M^2}},`$ (23)
$`\delta H^{(3)}`$ $`=`$ $`c_1{\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)})^2}{8M^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{c_7}{u_s^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{g}{8M^3}}\{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{(2)},𝝈\stackrel{~}{𝐁}\}{\displaystyle \frac{c_9ig^2}{8M^3}}𝝈\left({\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{𝐄}\times \stackrel{~}{𝐄}}{u_s^4u_t^4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{𝐁}\times \stackrel{~}{𝐁}}{u_s^8}}\right)`$ (25)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{c_{10}g^2}{8M^3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{𝐄}^2}{u_s^4u_t^4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{𝐁}^2}{u_s^8}}\right)c_{11}{\displaystyle \frac{a_s^2(\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)})^3}{192n^2\xi ^2M^3}}.`$
The coefficients of the Hamiltonian are chosen so the dimensionless parameters, $`c_i`$, are unity at the classical level. As will be discussed below, computations have been performed with the $`c_i`$ set to unity or zero in various combinations, including separate computations at $`O(1/M)`$, $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ to allow discussions of convergence for the $`1/M`$ expansion. Throughout this work, $`H_0`$ is always placed in $`H_A`$ of Eq. (18) and all of the remaining terms except the $`c_{10}`$ term are only placed in $`H_B`$. The difference between having the $`c_{10}`$ term in $`H_A`$ or $`H_B`$ will be discussed explicitly, since it has the nonzero vacuum expectation value.

A tilde on any quantity indicates that the leading discretization errors have been removed. In particular,

$`\stackrel{~}{E}_i`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{F}_{4i},`$ (26)
$`\stackrel{~}{B}_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}\stackrel{~}{F}_{jk},`$ (27)
where

$`\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{5}{6}}F_{\mu \nu }(x){\displaystyle \frac{1}{6u_\mu ^2}}U_\mu (x)F_{\mu \nu }(x+\widehat{\mu })U_\mu ^{}(x){\displaystyle \frac{1}{6u_\mu ^2}}U_\mu ^{}(x\widehat{\mu })F_{\mu \nu }(x\widehat{\mu })U_\mu (x\widehat{\mu })`$ (29)
$`(\mu \nu ).`$
The various spatial lattice derivatives are defined as follows:

$`a_s\mathrm{\Delta }_iG(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2u_s}}[U_i(x)G(x+\widehat{ı})U_i^{}(x\widehat{ı})G(x\widehat{ı})],`$ (30)
$`a_s\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{(+)}G(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U_i(x)}{u_s}}G(x+\widehat{ı})G(x),`$ (31)
$`a_s\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{()}G(x)`$ $`=`$ $`G(x){\displaystyle \frac{U_i^{}(x\widehat{ı})}{u_s}}G(x\widehat{ı}),`$ (32)
$`a_s^2\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{(2)}G(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U_i(x)}{u_s}}G(x+\widehat{ı})2G(x)+{\displaystyle \frac{U_i^{}(x\widehat{ı})}{u_s}}G(x\widehat{ı}),`$ (33)
$`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_i`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i{\displaystyle \frac{a_s^2}{6}}\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{(+)}\mathrm{\Delta }_i\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{()},`$ (34)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{(2)},`$ (35)
$`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)}{\displaystyle \frac{a_s^2}{12}}\mathrm{\Delta }^{(4)},`$ (36)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(4)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_i^{(2)}\right)^2.`$ (37)
This NRQCD action has quadratic classical lattice spacing errors.

## III METHOD

The data presented here come from 2000 gauge field configurations on 10$`{}_{}{}^{3}\times `$30 lattices at $`\beta =2.1`$ with a bare aspect ratio of $`\xi a_s/a_t=2`$. Two light quark masses are used, corresponding to $`\kappa =0.23`$ and 0.24. Fixed time boundaries are used for the light quark propagators so they fit naturally into a heavy-light meson, since the NRQCD heavy quark propagator is also not periodic in the temporal direction.

A calculation of the string tension from these gauge field configurations provides a determination of the renormalized anisotropy:

$$\xi a_s/a_t=1.96(2).$$
(38)
Using light quarks only, the lightest pseudoscalar and vector meson masses are easily obtained from local creation operators. By linear interpolation and extrapolation in $`1/\kappa `$, the critical ($`\kappa _c`$) and strange ($`\kappa _s`$) hopping parameters and the temporal lattice spacing are found to be

$`\kappa _c`$ $`=`$ $`0.243025(41),`$ (39)
$`\kappa _s`$ $`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{cc}\text{0.2344(11)}\hfill & \text{from }m_\varphi \text{,}\hfill \\ \text{0.2356(3)}\hfill & \text{from }m_K\text{,}\hfill \end{array}`$ (42)
$`a_t`$ $`=`$ $`0.1075(23)\mathrm{fm}\mathrm{from}m_\rho .`$ (43)
For the hopping parameters used in explicit computations, $`\kappa =0.23`$ and 0.24, the ratio of pseudoscalar to vector meson masses is “$`m_\pi /m_\rho `$” = 0.815(3) and 0.517(8) respectively. No exceptional configurations were encountered at these $`\kappa `$ values. One might expect a systematic uncertainty on $`a_t`$ to account for deviations from the linear relationship between $`a_tm_\rho `$ and $`1/\kappa `$. The uncertainty is presumably a few percent, but cannot be estimated using only the two $`\kappa `$ values studied here.

A heavy-light meson is created by the following operator,

$$\underset{\stackrel{}{x}}{}Q^{}(\stackrel{}{x})\mathrm{\Omega }(\stackrel{}{x})\mathrm{\Gamma }(\stackrel{}{x})q(\stackrel{}{x}),$$
(44)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }(\stackrel{}{x})`$ is given in Table I and the smearing operator is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\stackrel{}{x})=[1+c_s\mathrm{\Delta }^{(2)}(\stackrel{}{x})]^{n_s}.$$
(45)
All plots shown here use $`(c_s,n_s)=(0.15,10)`$ at the source and a local sink. The source is fixed at timestep 4, which is a distance $`3a_t`$ from the lattice boundary.

Because NRQCD is an expansion in the inverse bare heavy quark mass, all meson mass differences can be obtained from correlation functions at $`𝐩=\mathrm{𝟎}`$, but the absolute meson mass itself cannot be obtained directly. One way to determine the mass is to compute the change in energy when a meson is boosted,

$$E_𝐩E_0=\frac{𝐩^\mathrm{𝟐}}{2M_{\mathrm{kin}}}.$$
(46)
This defines the kinetic mass, $`M_{\mathrm{kin}}`$, which is interpreted as the meson’s physical mass. For the present work, $`E_𝐩`$ is computed only for the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ state, with $`𝐩=(0,0,2\pi /L_s)`$ where $`L_s=N_sa_s`$ is the spatial extent of the lattice in physical units. Solving for the kinetic mass gives

$$M_{\mathrm{kin}}=\frac{2\pi ^2}{N_s^2\xi ^2a_t[a_t(E_𝐩E_0)]}.$$
(47)
Some justification for Eq. (46) comes from consideration of the next correction term, giving

$$E_𝐩E_0=\frac{𝐩^\mathrm{𝟐}}{2M_{\mathrm{kin}}}\frac{𝐩^\mathrm{𝟒}}{8M_{\mathrm{kin}}^3}.$$
(48)
We have verified that the extra term shifts the kinetic mass by an amount which is smaller than the uncertainties for every value of $`M_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ reported in this work.

In the case of S-wave mesons, a plateau containing ample timesteps is clearly evident in all effective mass plots; some examples are shown in Fig. 1. A more detailed discussion of the P-wave plateaus is deferred to Sec. V. In this paper, the plateau region for each mass is defined by the maximum value of

$$Q\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(N/21,\chi ^2/2)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(N/21,0)}$$
(49)
where

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(a,x)=_x^{\mathrm{}}dtt^{a1}\mathrm{exp}(t),$$
(50)
and $`N`$ is the number of timesteps in the proposed plateau region. $`\chi ^2`$ is obtained from a single exponential fit to each meson correlation function. A correlated fit is done with the covariance matrix inverted by singular value decomposition. Statistical uncertainties are obtained from the analysis of 5000 bootstrap ensembles. All plateaus are ended at timestep 22(20) for simulations with $`\kappa =0.23(0.24)`$, except for an infinitely-heavy quark due to excessive noise at these larger times. The examples in Table II demonstrate the quality of the fits.

## IV S-WAVE SPECTRUM

Calculations were performed for $`a_sM`$ = 1.2, 1.5, 5, 6 and $`\mathrm{}`$, where $`M`$ represents the bare heavy quark mass in the NRQCD action. Figure 2 shows the simulation energy of the ground state as a function of $`a_sM`$ for $`\kappa =0.24`$. The huge $`O(1/M^3)`$ effect at smaller $`M`$ values is due to the vacuum expectation value of the $`c_{10}`$ term. This large correction to the unphysical simulation energy does not discredit the convergence of NRQCD, but special care must be taken to ensure that the large vacuum value is incorporated into the heavy quark propagation appropriately. In particular, previous work has shown the linear approximation to be insufficient for the $`c_{10}`$ term, which contains the vacuum expectation value, in computations of the S-wave spin splitting in the charm region. Fig. 2 explicitly shows the error introduced by placing the $`c_{10}`$ term in $`H_B`$ rather than $`H_A`$ in Eq. (18).

It will also be noted from Fig. 2 that the simulation energy is negative for $`a_sM=1.2`$ at third order in NRQCD. Of course the absolute energy scale is unphysical in NRQCD due to omission of the large heavy quark mass term from the leading order action, and physical quantities (i.e. mass differences) are independent of the absolute energy scale. If the simulation energy were large and negative, it might signal a poor $`1/M`$ expansion and/or a problem for the discretization of heavy quark propagation, but a small negative result presents no problem.

Table III shows a calculation of the kinetic mass, and indicates that the bottom quark requires $`a_sM5.5`$. The charm quark seems to want $`1.2<a_sM<1.5`$, although the data suggest that the $`1/M`$ expansion might not be converging in this region. It is interesting to notice that the vacuum expectation value does not affect the calculation of this observable significantly.

A stronger statement about convergence comes from the splitting between the spin-singlet and spin-triplet S-wave states, since the uncertainties are smaller. Table IV suggests a nice convergence in the bottom region, but no guarantee of convergence for charm. It will be noted that an incorrect treatment of the vacuum expectation value (i.e. putting the $`c_{10}`$ term into $`H_B`$) can actually lead to a small $`O(1/M^3)`$ contribution, but this is incidental.

Tables III and IV correctly accommodate the vacuum expectation value of the $`c_{10}`$ term by placing it in $`H_A`$. In Ref. , this method was found to give the same numerical results, within statistical uncertainties, for the S-wave kinetic mass and spin splitting as was obtained by computing the vacuum expectation value directly and subtracting it from the Hamiltonian. For the present calculation, a similar check was performed: the vacuum expectation value was computed from 400 of the gauge field configurations, and the S-wave kinetic mass and spin splitting were computed from 200 configurations using the Hamiltonian with the vacuum value explicitly removed. As expected, the results agree within statistics with Tables III and IV when the $`c_{10}`$ term is in $`H_A`$.

Interpolating these data so that $`M_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ is the physical mass of a bottom meson, one finds a spin splitting which is only about 55% of the experimental value. This is typical of quenched lattice calculations (see for eg. Refs. ). Even an unquenched NRQCD calculation did not reproduce the experimental $`B^{}B`$ splitting so perhaps the tadpole-improved classical values, which were used for the coefficients $`c_i`$ in the NRQCD Hamiltonian, account for the residual discrepancy.

The data reported in Ref.  display a $`1/M`$ expansion for charmed mesons in lattice NRQCD in which $`O(1/M^3)`$ terms were as significant as $`O(1/M^2)`$ terms, so convergence of the expansion could not be assured. In that work, it was hoped that a more convergent expansion might be obtained via changes in the lattice method. In particular, replacement of the average plaquette tadpole factor by the mean link in Landau gauge was suggested to hold some promise. The present work has made this modification plus a number of others including: a more aggressively-improved light quark action, asymmetric lattices with temporal spacing reduced by a factor of two, Dirichlet temporal boundaries for light quarks rather than periodic ones, smeared meson sources rather than local sources, and a symmetric dependence on $`H_B`$ in Eq. (18). Despite these changes, convergence of the $`1/M`$ expansion remains uncomfirmed for S-wave charmed mesons. It is possible that a study of terms beyond $`O(1/M^3)`$ would reveal that the series really is well-behaved, but this remains unexplored.

## V P-WAVE SPECTRUM

Each of the four P-wave operators from Table I leads to a visually-identifiable plateau; an example is shown in Fig. 3. The method of maximum $`Q`$, discussed in Sec. III, can be used to define precise plateau boundaries and the resultant $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ splitting is shown in Table V. In contrast to the S-wave splitting discussed in the previous section, the $`1/M`$ corrections to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ splitting are not large relative to the statistical uncertainties, even in the charm region. The splittings given in Table V are consistent with the available experimental data, as will be discussed below.

Tables VI and VII contain lattice results for splittings which involve the other P-wave mesons. In the charm region, the $`\kappa =0.23`$ data produce a $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}`$ meson which is heavier than the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ meson, but at $`\kappa =0.24`$ the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ splitting is consistent with zero. The magnitudes of the splittings decrease in the bottom region, as expected.

A comparison of Tables V, VI and VII plus the effective mass plots in Fig. 4 provide some indication of the systematic uncertainty which arises from the choice of plateau region. In particular, it will be noted that the effective mass plots are monotonically decreasing near the source, so if a plateau region is chosen too near the source, it will produce a mass splitting which is too large. Thus one arrives at an upper bound for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ splitting, as presented in Ref. .

The correlation functions constructed using $`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ operators contain some combination of the physical $`J=1`$ mesons. Both calculations should lead to the same (lighter) physical mass at large Euclidean times if both operators have a substantial overlap with the less massive $`J=1`$ state. In principle, the masses of the physical states can be obtained using the $`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}`$/$`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ operator basis by also calculating the mixing matrix elements, but the effect was too small to be observed in these data. In practice, for Euclidean times which can be used in our lattice simulation, no significant energy difference is observed between the $`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ channels.

Predictions for the physical mesons are displayed alongside experimental data in Table VIII. The $`D_sD`$ and $`B_sB`$ mass differences depend only mildly on $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ terms, and they are close to experiment. In contrast, the S-wave spin splittings are significantly smaller than experiment (as is typical of quenched lattice QCD). Furthermore, the $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ corrections to $`D^{}D`$ are each about 20% of the leading order result. The results in Table VIII use the value of $`\kappa _s`$ determined from $`m_K`$ in Eq. (42). Use of the other determination in Eq. (42) shifts the central values of the $`D_s^{}D_s`$ and $`B_s^{}B_s`$ mass splittings by 1 MeV or less, and shifts the splittings among P-waves ($`D_s^{}`$ and $`B_s^{}`$) by 7 MeV or less.

A detailed comparison of P-wave results would be somewhat premature, since the experimental data are rather incomplete and often rely on theoretical models for input, while the lattice calculation is quenched and lacks a firm connection between the physical mesons and the $`J=1`$ operators. Nevertheless, Table VIII shows a general consistency between the experimental and computed P-wave masses.

It is instructive to compare lattice P-wave masses to the predictions of models, such as quark models, a Bethe-Salpeter study, a chromodynamic potential model, a bag model and a Blankenbecler-Sugar approach. Many of these present results for $`J=1`$ directly in the $`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}/{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ basis which simplifies the comparison to lattice data, and the quark models may in general be more closely related to the quenched approximation than to experiment.

The models of Refs.  predict the traditional hydrogen-like ordering of P-waves, where the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ is the lightest meson, the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}`$ is the heaviest, and the $`P_1`$ states lie in between. The authors of Ref.  find, from lightest to heaviest, $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$, $`P_1(3/2)`$, $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}`$, $`P_1(1/2)`$, where the arguments represent the angular momentum of the light degrees of freedom. Ref.  predicts a dramatic inversion where the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ is heavier than the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}`$ by 100(150) MeV for $`D^{}`$($`B^{}`$) mesons, but the $`P_1`$ states are the absolute lightest and heaviest. Ref.  claims very small splittings (tens of MeV) where the $`P(1/2)`$ and $`P(3/2)`$ doublets overlap to produce different orderings for the $`D`$, $`D_s`$ and $`B`$ systems (the $`B_s`$ is ordered like the $`D`$).

Fig. 5 shows the $`D_2^{}D_0^{}`$ and $`B_2^{}B_0^{}`$ splittings from lattice QCD and from the models just mentioned. Despite the range of model predictions, it is evident that some general consistency exists between our results and a number of the models. Notice in particular that our results are numerically distinct from the large inversion of Ref. .

Fig. 6 compares the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ splittings as obtained from lattice QCD and the models.

Of special importance is the comparison with Ref. , where the spectrum was also computed from quenched lattice NRQCD. The discrepancy between the two lattice calculations is exemplified by Fig. 5. While there are many differences in method between the two computations, it is difficult to identify a compelling reason for the disagreement. Fig. 4 indicates that our data must satisfy $`M(B_2^{})M(B_0^{})<100`$ MeV for any chosen plateau region, and this is not consistent with Ref. . It is hoped that further lattice efforts will improve this situation. Unfortunately, a recent lattice NRQCD study of the heavy-light meson spectrum has statistical uncertainties which are too large to resolve the discrepancy between our results and those of Ref. .

## VI CONCLUSIONS

The masses of S and P-wave heavy-light mesons have been calculated in the quenched approximation, using lattice NRQCD for the heavy quark and a highly-improved action for the light degrees of freedom. Calculations at first, second and third order in the heavy quark mass expansion were used as a test of convergence, and it was concluded that the $`O(1/M^2)`$ and $`O(1/M^3)`$ contributions to the $`D^{}D`$ splitting are both near 20%. The $`D_s^{}D_s`$ splitting receives a 20% correction at $`O(1/M^2)`$ and a 10% correction at $`O(1/M^3)`$. These results might represent a convergent $`1/M`$ expansion if terms beyond $`O(1/M^3)`$ are decreasing appropriately, but convergence cannot be ascertained from the present study. This same conclusion was reached in Ref.  by a computational method which differed from the present one in some details; most notably, Ref.  used the average plaquette tadpole definition whereas the present work uses the mean link in Landau gauge.

No convergence problem is found for P-wave charmed masses, and the P-wave spectrum for both charmed and bottom mesons is predicted. The $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{2}^{}`$ is heavier than the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{0}^{}`$ and $`P_1`$ states in the $`D_s^{}`$ system, with $`M(D_{s2}^{})M(D_{s0}^{})=55\pm 17`$ MeV. For the $`D^{}`$, $`B^{}`$ and $`B_s^{}`$ systems the $`P_2P_0`$ splittings are smaller and consistent with zero. These conclusions agree with a number of model calculations and are compatible with the available experimental data.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors thank Howard Trottier for a critical reading of the manuscript, and R.L. thanks Niranjan Venugopal for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The production of $`10^710^8`$ top quark pairs per year at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will allow to probe the top couplings to both known and new particles involved in possible top decay channels different from the main $`tbW`$. Thanks to the large top mass, there are several decays that can be considered, even involving the presence of on-shell heavy vector bosons or heavy new particles in the final states. On a purely statistical basis, one should be able to detect a particular decay channel whenever its branching ratio (B) is larger than about $`10^610^7`$. In practice, background problems and systematics will lower this potential by a few orders of magnitude, the precise reduction being dependent of course from the particular signature considered. We will see, that the final detection threshold for each channel will not allow the study of many possible final states predicted in the standard model (SM), unless new stronger couplings come into play.

After discussing in section 2 the main top quark rare decay channels predicted by the SM, we review in section 3 the expectations of a large class of possible extensions of the SM, such as the inclusion of a 4th fermion family, the two-Higgs-doublet models, and the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Finally, results of the analysis of the LHC potential in the top rare decays field are reported in section 4.

## 2 Standard Model Decays

In this section, we give an overview of the decay channels of the top quark in the framework of the SM. In the SM the decay $`tbW`$ is by far the dominant one. The top total width is then given by:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_T\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbW)0.17\mathrm{GeV}|V_{tb}|^2\frac{m_t^3}{M_W^3}1.55\mathrm{GeV}.$$

The rates for other decay channels are predicted to be smaller by a few orders of magnitude in the SM. The second most-likely decays are the Cabibbo-Kobajashi-Maskawa (CKM) non-diagonal decays $`tsW`$and $`tdW`$. Assuming $`|V_{ts}|0.04`$ and $`|V_{td}|0.01`$, respectively , one gets;

$$B(tsW)1.6\times 10^3\mathrm{and}B(tdW)1\times 10^4,$$
(1)
in the SM with three families. From now on, $`B(t\mathrm{})`$ for a generic decay channel, stands for the quantity:

$$B(t\mathrm{})=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(t\mathrm{})}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbW)}.$$
(2)
The two-body tree-level decay channels are the only ones that LHC could be able to detect in the framework of the SM. The next less-rare processes indeed turn out to have rates not larger than $`10^6`$.

At tree level, the decay $`tbWZ`$(fig. 1) has some peculiar features, since the process occurs near the kinematical threshold ($`m_tM_W+M_Z+m_b`$). This fact makes crucial the $`W`$ and $`Z`$ finite-width effects in the theoretical prediction of the corresponding width. In  (see also ), an estimate of $`B(tbWZ)`$ was given on the basis of the definition:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbWZ)\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(tb\mu \nu _\mu ee)}{B(W\mu \nu _\mu )B(Zee)}$$
(3)
involving experimentally well-observable decays. This definition involves 14 diagrams contributing to the $`b\mu \nu _\mu ee`$ final state in the SM. The estimate for the corresponding branching ratio is:

$$B_{cut}(tbWZ)6\times 10^7,$$
(4)
for $`m_t=175`$ GeV, assuming a minimum cut of $`0.8M_Z`$ on the $`ee`$-pair invariant mass. This cut tries to cope with the contribution of background graphs where the $`ee`$ pair rises not from a $`Z`$ boson but from a photon. Recently, in , it has been argued that $`B(tbWZ)`$ should be defined by including in the definition in eq. (3) only the three (gauge-invariant) diagrams that correspond to the process where the final state $`b\mu \nu _\mu ee`$ is truly mediated by a $`W`$ and a $`Z`$. Then one obtains, for $`m_t=175`$ GeV:

$$B(tbWZ)=B_{res}(tbWZ)=2\times 10^6.$$
(5)
Such an increase in $`B(tbWZ)`$ is partly due to the negative interference effects with the graphs where a photon replaces the $`Z`$ boson (which are present in the previous estimate of the quantity), and partly to the absence of any kinematical cut (which for the resonant graphs is not needed).

One could also find less ambiguous definitions for $`B(tbWZ)`$ than the one involved in eq. (3). For instance, the new definition:

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(tbWZ)\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(tb\mu \nu _\mu \nu _e\nu _e)}{B(W\mu \nu _\mu )B(Z\nu _e\nu _e)}$$
(6)
would not require any kinematical cut, would involve a negligible background, and would give for $`B(tbWZ)`$ the same result as in eq.(5). Of course, the signature $`b\mu \nu _\mu \nu _e\nu _e`$ would not be practical from an experimental point of view, also because of the tiny rates involved in this decay channel.

Then, the authors in  agree that an experimental measurement of the decay rate of $`tbWZ`$should go through the definition in eq. (3), where the final state $`b\mu \nu _\mu ee`$ includes all the possible backgrounds. They confirm the result in eq. (4) as an experimental effective quantity.

If the Higgs boson is light enough, one could also have the decay $`tbWH`$(fig. 1), although the present limits on $`m_H`$ strongly suppress its rate. For $`m_H>\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}100}`$ GeV, one gets  (see also ):

$$B(tbWH)<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}7}\times 10^8.$$
(7)
Finally, the decay $`tcWW`$is very much suppressed by a GIM factor $`\frac{m_b^2}{M_W^2}`$ in the amplitude. One than gets :

$$B(tcWW)10^{13}.$$
(8)
One can also consider the radiative three-body decays $`tbWg`$and $`tbW\gamma `$. These channels suffer from infrared divergences, and the evaluation of their rate requires a full detector simulation, including for instance the effects of the detector resolution and the jet isolation algorithm. In an idealized situation where the rate is computed in the $`t`$ rest frame with a minimum cut of 10 GeV on the gluon or photon energies, one finds  (see also ):

$`B(tbWg)`$ $``$ $`0.3,`$ (9)
$`B(tbW\gamma )`$ $``$ $`3.5\times 10^3.`$ (10)
The FCNC decays $`tcg`$, $`tc\gamma `$and $`tcZ`$occur at one loop, and are also GIM suppressed by a factor $`\frac{m_b^2}{M_W^2}`$ in the amplitude. Hence, the corresponding rates are very small :

$`B(tcg)`$ $``$ $`5\times 10^{11}`$ (11)
$`B(tc\gamma )`$ $``$ $`5\times 10^{13}`$ (12)
$`B(tcZ)`$ $``$ $`1.3\times 10^{13}`$ (13)
For a light Higgs boson, one can consider also the FCNC decay $`tcH`$(fig. 2). A previous evaluation of its rates  has now been corrected. For $`m_H100(160)`$ GeV, one gets then :

$$B(tcH)0.9\times 10^{13}(4\times 10^{15}).$$
(14)
We conclude this section, by presenting in table 1 a summary of the expected decay rates for the main top decay channels in the SM.

## 3 Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) decays

The fact that a measurement of the top width is not available and the branching ratio $`B(tbW)`$ is a model dependent quantity makes the present experimental constraints on the top BSM decays quite weak. Hence, the large value of $`m_t`$ allows to consider the possibility of $`t`$ decays into new massive states with branching fraction of order $`B(tbW)`$. Apart from the production of new final states with large branching fractions, we will see that new physics could also give rise to a considerable increase in the rates of many decay channels that in the SM framework are under the threshold of observability.

### 3.1 $`4^{th}`$ fermion family

Extending the SM with a $`4^{th}`$ fermion family can alter considerably a few $`t`$ decay channels. First of all, when adding a $`4^{th}`$ family to the CKM matrix the present constraints on the $`|V_{tq}|`$ elements are considerably relaxed. In particular, $`|V_{ts}|`$ and $`|V_{td}|`$ can grow up to about 0.5 and 0.1, respectively . Correspondingly, assuming $`|V_{tb}|1`$ for the sake of normalization, one can have up to :

$$B_4(tsW)0.25\mathrm{and}B_4(tdW)0.01,$$
(15)
to be confronted with the SM expectations in eq. (1).

The presence of a $`4^{th}`$ fermion family could also show up in the $`t`$ direct decay into a heavy $`b^{}`$ quark with a relatively small mass ($`m_b^{}100`$ GeV) . This decay would contribute to the $`tcWW`$channel. The corresponding rate would be:

$`\mathrm{B}(tW^+b^{}(W^{}c))10^3(10^7)\mathrm{at}m_b^{}=100(300)\mathrm{GeV},`$ (16)
to be confronted with the SM prediction in eq. (8).

### 3.2 Two Higgs Doublet models (2HDM’s)

The possibility that the electroweak symmetry breaking involves more than one Higgs doublet is well motivated theoretically. In particular, three classes of two Higgs doublet models have been examined in connection with rare top decays, called model I, II and III. The first two are characterized by an ad hoc discrete symmetry which forbid tree-level FCNC , that are strongly constrained in the lightest quarks sector. In model I and model II, the up-type quarks and down-type quarks couple to the same scalar doublet and to two different doublets, respectively (the Higgs sector of the MSSM is an example of model II). In model III , the above discrete symmetry is dropped and tree-level FCNC are allowed. In particular, a tree-level coupling $`tcH`$ is predicted with a coupling constant $`<\frac{\sqrt{m_tm_c}}{v}`$ (where $`v`$ is the Higgs vacuum expectation value).

Since enlarging the Higgs sector automatically implies the presence of charged Higgs bosons in the spectrum, one major prediction of these new frameworks is the decay $`tbH^+`$, with possibly competitive rates with $`B(tbW)`$ for $`m_{H^+}<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}170}`$ GeV. In the MSSM, one has $`B(tbH^+)1`$, both at small and large values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. If $`m_H<m_tm_b`$, one expects $`H^+\tau ^+\nu `$ (favored for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$) and/or $`H^+c\overline{s}`$ (favored for small $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$) to be the dominant decays. Hence, for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta >1`$ and $`H^+\tau ^+\nu `$ dominant, one can look for the channel $`tbH^+`$ by studying a possible excess in the $`\tau `$ lepton signature from the $`t`$ pair production . On the other hand, if $`\mathrm{tan}\beta <2`$ and $`m_H>130`$ GeV, the large mass (or coupling) of the $`t`$-quark causes $`\mathrm{B}(H^+t^{}\overline{b}W^+b\overline{b})`$ to exceed $`\mathrm{B}(H^+c\overline{s})`$ (see  for details). As a consequence, new interesting signatures at LHC like leptons plus multi-jet channels with four $`b`$-tags, coming from the gluon-gluon fusion process $`ggt\overline{b}H^{}`$, followed by the $`H^{}\overline{t}b`$ decay, have been studied . These processes could provide a viable signature over a limited but interesting range of the parameter space.

One should recall however that both $`B(tbH^+)`$ and $`B(H^+W^+b\overline{b})`$ are very sensitive to higher-order corrections, which are highly model dependent .

In model III, the tree-level FCNC decay $`tch`$ can occur with branching ratios up to 10-2 . In , the rate for the channel $`tchcWW(cZZ,c\gamma \gamma )`$ has been studied. Accordingly, $`B(tcWW)`$ can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude with respect to its SM value. In particular, for an on-shell decay with $`2M_W<m_h<m_t`$, one can have up to $`B(tcWW)10^4`$ from this source. The same process was considered in a wider range of models, where the decay $`tcWW`$can occur not only through a scalar exchange but also through a fermion or vector exchange . In this framework, the fermion exchange too could lead to detectable rates for $`tcWW`$, as in eq. (16).

In 2HDM’s, the prediction for the FCNC decays $`tcg`$, $`tc\gamma `$and $`tcZ`$can also be altered. While in models I and II the corresponding branching fractions can not anyway approach the detectability threshold , in model III values up to $`B(tcg)10^5`$, $`B(tc\gamma )10^7`$ and $`B(tcZ)10^6`$ are predicted .

By further extending the 2HDM’s sector and including Higgs triplets, one can give rise to a vertex $`HWZ`$ at tree level in a consistent way . Accordingly, the $`tbWZ`$decay can be mediated by a charged Higgs (coupled with $`m_t`$) that can enhance the corresponding branching fraction up to $`B(tbWZ)10^2`$. Large enhancements can also be expected in similar models for the channels $`tsWZ`$and $`tdWZ`$.

### 3.3 Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM)

Supersymmetry could affect the $`t`$ decays in different ways \[here, we assume the MSSM framework , with (or without, when specified) $`R`$ parity conservation\].

First of all, two-body decays into squarks and gauginos, such as $`t\stackrel{~}{t}_1\stackrel{~}{g}`$, $`t\stackrel{~}{b}_1\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^+`$, $`t\stackrel{~}{t}_1\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$, could have branching ratios of order $`B(tbW)`$, if allowed by the phase space (see, i.e.,  for references). QCD corrections to the channel $`t\stackrel{~}{t}_1\stackrel{~}{g}`$ have been computed in  and found to increase its width up to values even larger than $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(tbW)`$. Three-body $`t`$ decays in supersymmetric particles were surveyed in .

The presence of light top and bottom squarks, charginos and neutralinos in the MSSM spectrum could also give rise to a $`CP`$ asymmetry of the order $`10^3`$ in the partial widths for the decays $`tbW^+`$ and $`\overline{t}\overline{b}W^{}`$ .

Explicit $`R`$-parity violating interactions  could provide new flavor-changing $`t`$ decays, both at tree-level (as in the channels $`t\stackrel{~}{\tau }b`$ and $`t\tau b\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0`$ ) and at one loop (as in $`tc\stackrel{~}{\nu }`$ ), with observable rates. For instance, $`B(tc\stackrel{~}{\nu })10^410^3`$ in particularly favorable cases.

Another sector where supersymmetric particles could produce crucial changes concerns the one-loop FCNC decays $`tcg`$, $`tc\gamma `$, $`tcZ`$and $`tcH`$, which in the SM are unobservally small. In the MSSM with universal soft breaking the situation is not much affected, while, by relaxing the universality with a large flavor mixing between the 2nd and 3rd family only, one can reach values such as :

$`B_{MSSM}(tcg)`$ $``$ $`10^6`$ (17)
$`B_{MSSM}(tc\gamma )`$ $``$ $`10^8`$ (18)
$`B_{MSSM}(tcZ)`$ $``$ $`10^8,`$ (19)
which anyhow are still not observable. The introduction of $`B`$-violating couplings in broken $`R`$-parity models could on the other hand give large enhancements , and make some of these channels observable. The corresponding upper limits on branching ratios get then:

$`B_{R/}(tcg)`$ $``$ $`10^3`$ (20)
$`B_{R/}(tc\gamma )`$ $``$ $`10^5`$ (21)
$`B_{R/}(tcZ)`$ $``$ $`10^4.`$ (22)
A particularly promising channel is the FCNC decay $`tch`$ in the framework of MSSM, where $`h=h^0,H^0,A^0`$ is any of the supersymmetric neutral Higgs bosons . By including the leading MSSM contributions to these decays (including gluino-mediated FCNC couplings), one could approach the detectability threshold, especially in the case of the light CP-even Higgs boson, for which one can get up to:

$$B_{MSSM}(tch^0)10^4.$$
(23)
## 4 LHC potential for top rare decays

An extensive analysis of the LHC potential for detecting top rare decays has been performed by both the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS . In the framework of the SM, the top rare decays (that is any channel different from $`tqW`$) turn out to be definitely below the threshold for an experimental analysis at LHC. On the other hand, LHC experiments will be able to probe quite a few predictions of possible extensions of the SM.

An extended Higgs sector will be looked for through the tree-level decay $`tbH^+`$. ATLAS estimates its sensitivity to this channel in the MSSM, through an excess in the tau lepton signal, to be around B$`(tH^+b)`$ = 3% (that is almost 4 times better than what expected from Run 2 at the Tevatron). This would allow to probe all values of $`m_{H^\pm }`$ below $`m_t20`$ GeV over most of the $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ range. For low $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the complementary decay mode $`H^\pm cs`$ has been considered. In the mass range 110 $`<H^\pm <`$ 130 GeV, the $`H^\pm `$ peak can be reconstructed and separated from the dominant $`Wjj`$ background.

For CMS, using the tau excess signature, the expected 5$`\sigma `$ discovery range for 10 fb-1 in the MSSM ($`m_A,\mathrm{tan}\beta `$) parameter space is $`m_A<`$ 110 GeV, for all $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ values, and somewhat extended ($`m_A<`$ 140), for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta <`$ 2.

Other interesting signatures like $`H^\pm hW^{}`$, $`H^\pm AW^{}`$ and $`H^\pm bt^{}bbW`$ are very promising in particular parameter ranges, but have not yet been thoroughly investigated.

ATLAS has studied its sensitivity to the radiative decay $`tWbZ`$. This has been found to be at most of the order 10-4, that is insufficient for the study of a SM signal ($`10^6`$), but possibly useful for exploring the predictions of some extended Higgs-sector model, for which B($`tWqZ)<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}^2`$. On the other hand, the radiative Higgs decay $`tWbH`$ seems out of the reach of LHC in any realistic model.

The LHC reach for the FCNC decays $`tqZ`$, $`tq\gamma `$ and $`tqg`$ has also been thoroughly investigated. Apart from the $`tqg`$, which is completely overwhelmed by the hadronic background, both ATLAS and CMS have a sensitivity of about $`2\times 10^4`$ to the $`tqZ`$ channel, while the CMS reach for the $`tq\gamma `$ channel is about $`3.4\times 10^5`$, that is slightly better than the ATLAS sensitivity ($`1.0\times 10^4`$), assuming an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1. These thresholds are too high to test the predictions of the models reviewed here. On the other hand, they could be largely sufficient to detect some manifestation of possible FCNC anomalous couplings in the top sector .


text:
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