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# Charge and spin order in one-dimensional electron systems with long-range Coulomb interactions

## I Introduction

Compounds that are poor electrical conductors or insulators often exhibit charge patterns which differ from the homogeneous charge distribution encountered in ordinary metals. The charge ordering often occurs at a relatively high temperature and is accompanied by a magnetic ordering at a lower temperature. These phenomena are quite generic, as they are observed in a variety of systems. Important examples are the three-dimensional nickelates, the layered cuprates at specific commensurate fillings, layered molecular crystals such as BEDT-TTF radical salts and quasi–one–dimensional systems such as the organic TMTTF and DCNQI compounds. From a theoretical point of view, the full long-ranged Coulomb potential should in principle be included when dealing with any interacting insulating phase, due to the ineffectiveness of screening. Accordingly, it is not surprising to find wide classes of apparently different compounds showing similar behaviours in their insulating phases. In this respect, the possibility that the two phenomena of charge and spin ordering share a common origin is very appealing. Yet, it is not obvious that the two separate energy scales can be described within the same physical mechanism.

This raises the question of determining a set of unambiguous signatures of the long-range Coulomb interactions, to be compared with the experiments. One such signature is of course charge ordering itself, as was first recognised by Wigner in the framework of the three-dimensional electron gas.Wigner  In the low-density limit, the kinetic energy of the electrons becomes negligible and the charges arrange themselves in the form of a Wigner lattice which minimizes the electrostatic energy. However, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the observed charge modulation is induced by long–range forces or by an instability of the Fermi surface. Moreover, even if the main driving mechanism is given by the Coulomb forces, the presence of other effects (elastic, magnetic) in real compounds can strongly modify the predicted ordering pattern.

When applying the idea of Wigner crystallization to electrons in narrow-band solids, we are faced with the additional constraint that the charges must sit on the sites of a discrete lattice (the host lattice of atoms, to be distinguished from the Wigner crystal of electrons). This has been pointed out by Hubbard,Hubbard  who considered the extreme limit of zero bandwidth, a sensible starting point if the dominant energy scale is set by the interactions.

In the present work, we propose a variational treatment which allows to go beyond the classical limit by including the effects of quantum fluctuations. Our results indicate that for small but finite hopping parameters, the charge and spin degrees of freedom are energetically decoupled: charge crystallization, governed by the (large) Coulomb energy, naturally gives rise to antiferromagnetic spin correlations, characterised by a much smaller energy scale. The coexistence of charge and spin ordering at low energies can thus be considered as distinctive of dominant long–range Coulomb interactions, and should therefore be ubiquitous in the insulating phases of strongly interacting systems.

It can be argued that for special fillings, short-range models with one or few interaction parameters (e.g. the Hubbard model for half–filled bands, or the extended Hubbard model for quarter–filled bands) can give a correct description of the system. Although they give the right answer for the ground state charge configuration for special fillings, the strong–coupling analysis presented here shows that these models can no longer be applied as soon as the filling deviates from such special values, since in this case they do not yield the proper classical ground state (a system with purely local interactions is metallic away from half–filling). Therefore, a complete understanding of the behaviour of the insulating phases as a function of the density can only be achieved by taking into account the long range part of the Coulomb potential.

We study a system of fermions in one dimension, interacting via a local repulsion $`U`$ and a long–ranged Coulomb potential $`V_m=V/|m|`$, $`m`$ being the distance between electrons. The corresponding tight–binding Hamiltonian on an L-site ring is

$$\widehat{H}=t\widehat{T}+U\widehat{D}+V\widehat{W}$$
(1)
where we have defined the following dimensionless operators, describing respectively electron hopping, on–site and long–range repulsion,

$`\widehat{T}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n\sigma ,s=\pm 1}{}}c_{n\sigma }^+c_{n+s\sigma },`$ (2)
$`\widehat{D}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}n_in_i,`$ (3)
$`\widehat{W}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{ij\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{n_{i,\sigma }n_{j,\sigma ^{}}}{|ij|}},`$ (4)
$`c_{i,\sigma }^+`$ ($`c_{i,\sigma }`$) creates (destroys) an electron of spin $`\sigma `$ at site $`i`$, $`n_{i,\sigma }=c_{i,\sigma }^+c_{i,\sigma }`$ is the occupation number of this state and $`t`$ is the hopping amplitude between nearest–neighbor sites.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section we introduce our variational wave function, starting from Hubbard’s solution for the classical limit. In Section III, we study the phenomenon of charge ordering at different commensurate fillings by neglecting the magnetic degrees of freedom. These are analysed for a quarter–filled band in Section IV, where contact is also made with experimental results for organic quasi–one–dimensional compounds.

## II Variational wave function for generalized Wigner lattices

The limit studied by HubbardHubbard  is obtained by setting the bandwidth to zero and $`U\mathrm{}`$. In this case the problem is classical (but still non–trivial), and corresponds to minimising the interaction energy by distributing the $`N`$ electrons as homogeneously as possible over the $`L`$ available lattice sites. The difficulty arises from the competition between the different interaction parameters $`V_m`$. If the potential is convex, as in the Coulomb case, a solution can be found for any commensurate filling $`n=N/L=r/s`$ ($`r`$ and $`s`$ integers) in the form of the generalized Wigner lattice (GWL), a periodic sequence of unit cells of size $`s`$, each containing $`r`$ electrons distributed according to a minimum spread of interelectron distances. The charge density on site $`l`$ is either $`1`$ or $`0`$ according to the following formula:Aubry

$$n_l=[lr/s][(l1)r/s]$$
(5)
where $`[\mathrm{}]`$ gives the integer part of the argument.

For finite $`t`$ quantum fluctuations will tend to delocalize the electrons away from the classical configuration. Nevertheless, the classical solution is still a good approximation for small $`t`$ where most of the charge is located on the sites predicted by eq. (5). This argument can be made more precise for simple fillings $`n=1/s`$. Moving a particle away from the classical configuration costs an energy

$$\mathrm{\Delta }=2V\underset{m=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{ms[(ms)^21]}.$$
(6)
A density $`\delta n(t/\mathrm{\Delta })^2`$ will thus be allowed to leak to the nearest unoccupied sites. The charge gap is $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.39V`$ at quarter filling ($`n=1/2`$) and is rapidly reduced at lower fillings, $`\mathrm{\Delta }2.4n^3V`$, since the repulsion that prevents the occupation of “wrong” sites weakens as the inter–electron distance increases. The range of validity of the classical approximation can be estimated by requiring $`\delta n`$ to be smaller than a threshold value $`P`$. This leads to the phenomenological criterion that quantum band motion has negligible effects as long as $`V`$ exceeds the value

$$V_{GWL}\frac{t}{2.4\sqrt{P}n^3}.$$
(7)
Note that $`V_{GWL}n^3`$, so that it is harder to stabilize a classical GWL at low densities, where $`V_{GWL}`$ can be very large. Taking for instance $`P=0.2`$, eq. (7) gives $`V_{GWL}/t8`$ at $`n=1/2`$ and $`V_{GWL}/t500`$ at $`n=1/8`$. 111For more complex fillings such as $`n=r/s`$, the expression for the gap is not as simple as eq. (6). The occupied sites are not all equivalent, and leakage to a wrong site now depends crucially on the local environment. Expression (7) can still be considered as a rough estimate for the general case, although sensible variations can be expected when moving from simple commensurabilities such as $`n=1/2`$ or $`n=1/3`$ to more complex charge patterns.

In order to study the ground state of the full Hamiltonian (1) we now use the variational ansatz

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_B(\eta )=e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}},$$
(8)
introduced previously as the strong coupling counterpart of the Gutzwiller wave function in the context of the Mott–Hubbard transitionBaer . Here $`\eta `$ is a dimensionless variational parameter, $`\widehat{T}`$ is the kinetic energy operator of eq. (2) and $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the ground state for $`t=0`$, i.e. Hubbard’s classical solution. In the same way as the Gutzwiller wave function reduces double occupancy and thus states with high potential energy, the factor $`e^{\eta \widehat{T}}`$ suppresses configurations with high kinetic energy.

It can be demonstrated that the wave function (8) is charge ordered and insulating for any finite $`\eta `$ — its charge stiffness, or equivalently, its Drude weight, vanishes.Dzi  A transition to a metallic state occurs for $`\eta \mathrm{}`$, where only the configuration with the lowest kinetic energy, i.e. the filled Fermi sea, survives. $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_B`$ is expected to provide a fairly accurate description of charge fluctuations in the strong coupling limit, but it can no longer be trusted for weak couplings, although it tends to the correct limit as the interaction vanishes. 222For weak interactions, a better estimate for the ground–state energy can in principle be obtained using
$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_G(\lambda )=e^{\lambda \widehat{W}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_0,$$
where $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$ is the Fermi sea. The operator $`e^{\lambda \widehat{W}}`$ builds up the charge correlations appropriate for the GWL, by enhancing the configurations with low interaction energy. This wave function can be considered as the “dual” of $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_B`$ and is always metallic. Direct comparison of the two complementary approaches is expected to give a good description of charge ordering. However, the calculation of the variational energy $`E_G(\lambda )`$ is not simple when dealing with long–range interactions, and will be left for future work.

Our wave function is easy to handle for $`U\mathrm{}`$ where spin fluctuations are suppressed and the problem becomes equivalent to that of spinless fermions. In this case, our variational procedure can be used straightforwardly to study not only simple fillings such as $`n=1/2`$ but also much more complex GWL ground states such as $`n=11/47`$, and it can readily be generalized to higher dimensions. For finite values of $`U`$, where spin fluctuations have to be taken into account, the problem becomes more complicated. However, in the strong coupling limit $`U,Vt`$ the energy scales for charge and spin degrees of freedom are very different, and the problem of magnetic ordering can be addressed in terms of a low–energy spin Hamiltonian, in fact the simple antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model for the case $`n=1/2`$. This will be discussed in section IV.

## III Spinless fermions

We shall first assume that the on–site repulsion is the dominant energy scale, and take the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$. This eliminates both double occupancy and mixing of different spin configurations. We can therefore suppress the spin index in the Hamiltonian (1)-(4), and ignore the local term (3). Transforming to Fourier space leads to the following simplified model for spinless electrons:

$$\widehat{H}=t\widehat{T}+V\widehat{W}=\underset{k}{}ϵ_kc_k^+c_k+\frac{1}{2L}\underset{q}{}{}_{}{}^{}V(q)\rho _q\rho _q$$
(9)
where the band dispersion relation is $`ϵ_k=2t\mathrm{cos}k`$, $`\rho _q=_kc_{k+q}^+c_k`$ is the density fluctuation operator, and $`V(q)=V\mathrm{log}[2(1\mathrm{cos}q)]`$ (the lattice parameter has been set equal to 1). The $`q`$ sums run over the entire Brillouin zone except $`q=0`$, which ensures charge neutrality. To avoid multiple counting of the interaction energy, we have taken the limit $`L\mathrm{}`$ with the prescription that the range of the interaction potential does not exceed half the length of the ring. 333The distance $`m`$ between sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ is defined as $`m=|ij|`$, the linear distance. Other choices are possible. For instance, taking $`m`$ to be the chord distance on the circle \[G. Fano, F. Ortolani, A. Parola and L. Ziosi, Phys. Rev. B 60, 15654 (1999); Y. Hatsugai, Phys. Rev. B 56, 12183 (1997)\] slightly modifies the function $`V(q)`$ — which can no longer be expressed in closed analytical form — but has the advantage of avoiding multiple counting by construction.  The Coulomb potential has a logarithmic singularity at long wavelengths, characteristic of the one-dimensional case, and an intrinsic cut-off at short wavelengths given by the lattice parameter.

The wave function (8) can be worked out exactly for any filling $`n=r/s`$. We shall present in full detail the formalism for $`n=1/2`$. Results will be given for different fillings as well.

### III.1 Filling $`n=1/2`$

The classical solution in this case corresponds to alternating occupied and empty sites. This can be written in k–space as:

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=\underset{kRBZ}{}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(c_k^++c_{k+\pi }^+)|0$$
(10)
where the product runs over the reduced Brillouin zone $`|k|<\pi /2`$, and $`|0`$ is the vacuum for electrons. The phase correlator $`e^{\eta \widehat{T}}`$ is now diagonal and we can write straightforwardly the (normalized) variational wave function (8) as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_B(\eta )=\underset{kRBZ}{}\frac{1}{N_k}(e^{\eta ϵ_k}c_k^++e^{\eta ϵ_k}c_{k+\pi }^+)|0$$
(11)
where the normalization factor is given by $`N_k^2=2\mathrm{cosh}(2\eta ϵ_k)`$ (we have set $`t=1`$ so that energies are now expressed in units of the hopping parameter). The best variational ground state is obtained by minimising the energy functional

$$E_B(\eta )=\mathrm{\Psi }_B(\eta )|\widehat{H}|\mathrm{\Psi }_B(\eta )$$
(12)
with respect to the variational parameter. The kinetic energy per unit length is readily evaluated

$$\widehat{T}/L=_{RBZ}\frac{dk}{2\pi }ϵ_k\mathrm{tanh}(2\eta ϵ_k).$$
(13)
The potential energy can be expressed in terms of the structure factor $`S(q)=\rho _q\rho _q/L`$,

$$V\widehat{W}/L=\frac{1}{4\pi }𝑑qS(q)V(q).$$
(14)
The structure factor has a regular part

$$S(q)=\frac{1}{4}\frac{1}{4\pi }_{RBZ}𝑑k\frac{1+\mathrm{sinh}(2\eta ϵ_k)\mathrm{sinh}(2\eta ϵ_{kq})}{\mathrm{cosh}(2\eta ϵ_k)\mathrm{cosh}(2\eta ϵ_{kq})}$$
(15)
and a Bragg peak at $`q=\pi `$ corresponding to the periodic ordering of the charges:

$$S(\pi )=L\left[_{RBZ}\frac{dk}{2\pi }\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}(2\eta ϵ_k)}\right]^2.$$
(16)
Writing the average density distribution as $`n(l)=n+\stackrel{~}{n}\mathrm{cos}(\pi l)`$, we see that the intensity of the Bragg peaks in the structure factor is proportional to the square of the order parameter, $`S(\pi )/L=\stackrel{~}{n}^2`$. It is finite for any finite $`\eta `$, so that the wave function $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_B`$ always represents a charge–ordered state.

In the limit $`\eta 0`$ one recovers the classical GWL. The kinetic energy vanishes and the structure factor becomes $`S(q)=(1/4)\delta _{q,\pi }`$, so that equation (12) gives $`E_{cl}=V(\pi )/8=(V/4)\mathrm{log}2`$. The opposite limit $`\eta \mathrm{}`$ yields the Hartree–Fock energy of the liquid phase, which is equivalent to treating the interaction to lowest order in perturbation theory. Equation (15) then gives $`S(q)=|q|/2\pi `$ and one readily evaluates $`E_0(V)=2/\pi cV`$, with $`c=7\zeta (3)/8\pi ^2=0.10657`$ ($`\zeta `$ is the Riemann function). For finite $`\eta `$, one can define the condensation energy as the energy gained through charge ordering, $`E_{cond}=E_BE_0`$. This quantity is shown in figure 1 as a function of $`V`$. The variational result (full line) is very close to the Hartree-Fock result in the broken-symmetry phase (dashed line). The latter is known to be a good approximation in the strong coupling regime, and is surprisingly accurate in the presence of lattice commensurability, which strongly reduces charge fluctuations. imada02

Although no phase transition occurs within our variational approach, there is a crossover between a weak–coupling regime, where the density modulation is small as compared to the average density, and a strong–coupling (or classical) regime, where the order parameter approaches the limiting value of Hubbard’s GWL pattern. Correspondingly, the condensation energy is exponentially small at low $`V`$, behaving like $`E_{cond}0.02V\mathrm{exp}(2\pi /V)`$, while at large $`V`$ it can be expanded in powers of $`t/V`$ as $`E_{cond}0.64t0.067V2.59t^2/V+\mathrm{}`$.

A direct indication on how the charge modulation builds up is given by the evolution of the structure factor, shown in figure 2. At $`V=1`$ (top line) $`S(q)`$ is very close to the structure factor of non–interacting electrons. Upon increasing $`V`$, the regular part is progressively reduced, and some weight is transferred to the Bragg peak (see the inset, full line). Despite a marked onset around $`Vt`$, $`S(\pi )`$ is still far from its classical limit (indicated by an arrow) at values as high as $`V=10t`$. The variational result for a model with only nearest-neighbour interactions (dashed line) shows that for equal values of $`V`$ in the charge–ordered regime, the long–range nature of the Coulomb potential reduces the amplitude of charge ordering, because the energy cost for creating a local charge fluctuation is partly compensated by the interaction parameters $`V_m`$ at distances $`m>1`$. 444 The charge gap in the strong–coupling limit can be evaluated in general for models with $`m`$–neighbor interactions. The largest value is obtained for $`m=1`$ (only n n.
interactions), $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=V`$, and the lowest is for $`m=2`$ (n.n.n. interactions), $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2=0`$. The gap for larger $`m`$ converges to the value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}=0.39`$ given by eq. (6) with an oscillatory behavior. This is in agreement with refs. Capponi , where it is shown that the metallic character of the system is enhanced when going from short (i.e. nearest–neighbor) to long–range interactions.

### III.2 General rational fillings

For generic commensurate fillings of the form $`n=r/s`$, the $`s`$ harmonics needed to reproduce the GWL pattern produce $`s`$ Bragg peaks in the Brillouin zone at multiples of $`2\pi /s`$ (for even $`s`$, the points $`\pm \pi `$ of the Brillouin zone are equivalent). It is straightforward to extend the analysis presented above for $`r=1`$, $`s=2`$ to larger values of $`s`$.

Figure 3 shows the variational results for the average site occupation at a filling $`n=1/8`$, for different values of the interaction strength. Unlike the case $`n=1/2`$, which exhibits a single crossover from weak to strong coupling, three different regimes can now be identified. (I) For $`V/t=0.5`$ (triangles) the modulation of the density is weak. (II) For larger values of the coupling strength ($`V/t=20`$, circles), the charge modulation is strong, and the total wave function is essentially made up of localised one–electron wave functions with virtually no overlap, like in an ordinary Wigner crystal. The GWL (III), where only the sites predicted by Hubbard’s solution are occupied, is achieved only at extremely large $`V`$ ($`V/t=2000`$, squares).

Figure 4 shows the normalised intensities of the peaks in the structure factor at multiples of $`q_{WC}=2\pi n`$, namely $`S(\nu q_{WC})/n^2L`$, as a function of the coupling strength, for $`n=1/2`$ (top), $`1/4`$ (center) and $`1/8`$ (bottom). We see that at fillings $`n<1/2`$, higher harmonics progressively appear in the structure factor when increasing the coupling, in addition to the main peak at $`q_{WC}`$. The system goes progressively from the weak coupling limit (I), where the modulation can be described in terms of a single, exponentially small, Bragg peak, to the GWL (III), where all the harmonics in the structure factor saturate to their classical value. Note that the intermediate region (II) becomes broader as $`n`$ decreases.

### III.3 From the Wigner lattice to the pinned charge–density wave

By construction, our variational wave function exhibits long–range order for any finite positive value of $`\eta `$ (and thus for any positive value of $`V`$ in the case of the long–range Coulomb interaction). The evolution of the charge modulation proceeds smoothly from a $`GWL`$ at very large $`V`$ over an ordinary Wigner crystal at large but not too large $`V`$ to a small–amplitude charge–density wave from intermediate to small values of $`V`$. However, it is obviously not clear whether a trial wave function which is linked to the exact ground state for $`t/V=0`$ can still be trusted in a region where $`V/t<1`$, since in this case it would be more appropriate to start from the filled Fermi sea.

To examine this point, we consider the soluble model of 1D spinless fermions with nearest–neighbor interaction (parameter $`V`$). For an average occupation $`n=1/2`$ this model is equivalent to the $`XXZ`$ Heisenberg chain in zero magnetic field with exchange constants $`J_x/J_z=J_y/J_z=2t/V`$. For $`V>2t`$ (uniaxial regime for the spin chain) there is true long–range order, but not for $`V<2t`$ (planar regime). The absence of long–range order for small values of $`V`$ can also be understood within the Fermi gas model, where the (crystal) lattice generates an Umklapp term; the latter has to exceed a certain critical strength in order to sustain long–range charge order reviewschulz . Our wave function predicts long–range order for $`V>V_c1.3t`$ and a weak first–order transition to a metallic phase for $`V=V_c`$ (see the inset of figure 2). Thus the predictions of our variational ansatz agree qualitatively with the exact phase diagram.

The question of the existence of true long–range order for 1D lattice fermions interacting through the $`1/r`$ Coulomb potential, i.e., for the Hamiltonian (9), is more subtle and still not completely understood. In the absence of a lattice potential, Schulz Schulz  has shown, using bosonization for small $`V`$ and an analysis of quantum fluctuations about the classical Wigner crystal at large $`V`$, that the long–distance behavior of the density–density correlation function is universally given by

$$\rho (x)\rho (0)A\text{cos}(Qx)e^{\text{c}\sqrt{\mathrm{log}(x)}},$$
(17)
where $`Q=2k_F`$ for the spinless model ($`4k_F`$ for model (1) with $`U=\mathrm{}`$) and the constant $`c`$ is independent of $`V`$. Thus Wigner crystallization in the sense of quasi–long–range order exists independently of the interaction strength in one dimension. This is in sharp contrast to three and two space dimensions, where Wigner crystallization is known to take place at finite values of the interaction strength Ceperley , namely at $`r_s100`$ and $`r_s37`$, respectively ($`r_s`$ is defined as the radius of a sphere containing one electron in average, expressed in units of the Bohr radius, and controls the potential/kinetic energy ratio).

One expects that any additional commensurate lattice potential will transform the quasi–long–range order into a true long–range order. This has been confirmed on the basis of exact diagonalization Capponi  for large $`V`$ and $`n=1/3`$. For small $`V`$, estimates of the effects of Umklapp scattering (using bosonization Capponi ) are also in line with the existence of a finite order parameter, although its value and the corresponding lattice pinning energy are expected to be extremely small.

In contrast to bosonization, which cannot provide the amplitude of the density–density correlation function \[the strongly interaction–dependent constant $`A`$ in Eq. (17)\], our variational approach allows us to estimate the order parameter as a function of both the interaction strength $`V`$ and the average site occupation $`n`$. In 1D the dimensionless parameter of the continuum theory is $`r_s=(a/2n)/a_B`$. Within the tight–binding model (9), the dispersion $`ϵ_k`$ close to the band edges can be approximated by a parabola with an effective mass $`m^{}=\mathrm{}^2/(2ta^2)`$. Using the unscreened Coulomb potential for $`V`$ and inserting the band mass $`m^{}`$ into the definition of the Bohr radius, i.e., $`a_B=2ta/V`$, one obtains

$$r_s=\frac{V}{4nt}.$$
(18)
Starting from the Wigner crystal phase (II), where the electron wave functions are well separated (cf. fig. 3), and varying $`V`$, we expect to encounter two crossovers, the first to a weakly pinned charge–density wave upon decreasing $`V`$, the second to a GWL upon increasing $`V`$. The first crossover towards a weakly modulated ground state takes place when the spread $`\sigma `$ of the single–particle wavefunctions equals a given fraction $`\delta `$ of the average inter–particle distance $`d=1/n`$, namely

$$\frac{\sigma }{d}\delta .$$
(19)
In our lattice problem, the spread of the single–particle wave functions can be defined as

$$\sigma ^2=\underset{l=d/2}{\overset{d/2}{}}l^2n_l$$
(20)
(the origin has been chosen to coincide with an occupied site of the GWL). The Lindemann criterion (19) is expected to locate a broad crossover region rather than a true phase transition in the present 1D case. Therefore the choice of $`\delta `$ is somehow arbitrary, and we shall take $`\delta =0.25`$.

We have calculated the crossover $`V_{Lind}`$ predicted by the Lindemann criterion (19) for various fillings $`n=1/32,1/16,1/8,1/4`$ and $`1/2`$. Remarkably, the values obtained at low fillings ($`n<1/4`$) scale linearly with $`n`$, as expected from continuum theory in view of eq. (18), corresponding to a crossover around $`r_s2.5`$. The situation changes at fillings $`n=1/4`$ and $`n=1/2`$, where the increasing influence of lattice effects favors localization of the particles, thus reducing the value of $`r_s`$ at the crossover ($`r_s2`$ at $`n=1/2`$, see also ref.imada02 ). As to the crossover towards the GWL, we may use the criterion (7), i.e. $`V_{GWL}n^3`$.

The resulting phase diagram is shown in figure 5, where the two boundaries represent the two crossover regions for rational fillings $`n=1/s,s`$ integer. Starting from Hubbard’s classical GWL at $`V\mathrm{}`$ (top), the inclusion of quantum fluctuations at a given density $`n`$ gives rise to two successive crossovers. First, around $`V_{GWL}`$ the particles begin to spill over to the neighboring lattice sites, and the ground state becomes similar to the Wigner crystal of the continuum model. Reducing further the interaction strength progressively suppresses the higher harmonics of the density modulation, so that below the second crossover around $`V_{Lind}`$ only a small–amplitude “$`4k_F`$” charge–density wave remains.

These crossover lines have opposite density dependences. $`V_{GWL}n^3`$ decreases with increasing density, since reducing the inter–particle distance makes it easier to confine particles on a single lattice site. $`V_{Lind}n`$ increases with density, since the potential/kinetic energy ratio scales as $`V/(nt)`$ \[eq. (18)\]. At $`n=1/2`$, where lattice effects are most important, $`V_{GWL}V_{Lind}`$ and the two crossovers become indistinguishable: the Wigner crystal phase is wiped out, and the system passes directly from the classical GWL to the weakly modulated phase. Note that in the spinless case presented here, there is full particle–hole symmetry relative to $`n=1/2`$, which allows to deduce the phase diagram for $`1/2<n<1`$.

### III.4 Fluctuations of polarization

An insulator, such as our electronic system with a commensurate charge–ordered ground state, responds to an applied electric field $`E`$ by a macroscopic polarization $`P=\widehat{X}/L`$, where

$$\widehat{X}=\underset{l}{}ln_l$$
(21)
is the dipole operator and we have set the electron charge equal to unity. The dielectric susceptibility is defined as $`\chi =P/E`$ in the limit $`E0`$. The upper bound Aebischer

$$\chi \frac{2}{L\mathrm{\Delta }}\widehat{X}^2$$
(22)
links $`\chi `$ to the mean–square fluctuation of polarization $`\widehat{X}^2`$ (we have taken $`\widehat{X}=0`$ by symmetry) and to the charge gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ (defined here as the minimum excitation energy for which the dipole matrix element does not vanish). In a Wigner solid the electrons are located close to their classical equilibrium positions and each one contributes an amount $`\sigma ^2`$ \[cf. eq. (20)\] to the mean–square deviation of polarization, giving

$$\frac{\widehat{X}^2}{L}n\sigma ^2$$
(23)
According to the discussion of the previous section, the properties of the system in region II (the region of the conventional Wigner crystal) should agree with the predictions of continuum theory. Therefore, when plotted as a function of $`r_s`$, the quantity $`(\sigma /d)^2=n\widehat{X}^2/L`$ evaluated at different fillings should fall on a universal curve. The results at $`n=1/16`$ (asterisks), $`n=1/8`$ (circles), $`n=1/4`$ (squares) and $`n=1/2`$ (triangles) are plotted in fig. 6, showing indeed a scaling behavior up to the value $`V_{GWL}(n)`$, indicated by arrows. On the left side of the figure, the crossover between the Wigner crystal phase (II) and the weakly modulated regime (I) is signaled by a marked upturn of the curve around $`r_s2`$, which is roughly filling independent (except for $`n=1/2`$), and agrees with the phenomenological Lindemann criterion (19).

The scaling behavior breaks down when we enter the GWL region (III), i.e. at $`V_{GWL}`$. The onset depends on the filling, so that the scaling region is progressively reduced as $`n`$ increases, and it completely disappears at $`n=1/2`$, where lattice effects are most important. Note that at this particular filling the fluctuations of polarization are systematically reduced with respect to the universal curve (the reduction is approximately $`30\%`$ around $`r_s2`$), showing that lattice commensurability favors charge localization. Above $`V_{GWL}`$ (on the right side of the figure), where the charges become localized on individual sites, there is a rapid drop in the fluctuations of polarization, and it can be shown following the perturbative arguments of section II that $`(\sigma /d)^21/(46r_s^2n^6)`$.

## IV Magnetic correlations

The assumption of infinite $`U`$ implies for the present one–dimensional case that the different spin configurations do not mix and that the magnetic exchange constant is zero. It follows that from a thermodynamic point of view the spins behave as free magnetic moments giving rise to a Curie–type magnetic susceptibility. In some of the organic materials such a behavior is indeed observed at temperatures where charge ordering sets in, but at lower temperatures antiferromagnetic correlations lead to a substantial reduction of the magnetic susceptibility and finally to a magnetically ordered ground state. In this section we show that our variational approach can be readily generalized to finite values of $`U`$. We limit ourselves to large Coulomb interactions, where the magnetic energy scale turns out to be much smaller than the energies associated with the charge ordering, and treat explicitly the quarter–filled case ($`n=1/2`$), which is relevant for some quasi–one–dimensional compounds such as the TMTTF saltsnad  or the DCNQI materials hiraki  (for a collection of recent results see ref. brazovskii ).

We consider the Hamiltonian (1) for large coupling constants, $`Ut,Vt`$. Since the variational ansatz (8) does not penalize configurations with doubly occupied sites, we use a refined wave function Otsuka ; Dzierzawa

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{BG}=e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}},$$
(24)
where $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ is now a linear superposition of states that can be visualized in real space as

$$\{|\sigma _10\sigma _20\sigma _30\mathrm{}\sigma _N0\}.$$
(25)
($`\sigma _i`$ is the spin of a localized electron and zeroes stand for empty sites). Since the classical ground state is highly ($`2^N`$) degenerate, we do not introduce a priori any special magnetic order (e.g. antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic) but we allow for all possible spin configurations. In the variational wave function (24) the term $`e^{\eta \widehat{T}}`$ again controls the delocalization of charge away from the generalized Wigner lattice (25) and $`e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}`$ reduces the weight of configurations with doubly occupied sites. As there is no prefered spin configuration in the classical GWL, magnetic correlations will be generated exclusively by quantum fluctuations.

The energy of the ground state is obtained by minimizing the expression

$`E_{BG}(\lambda ,\eta )={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_{BG}|\widehat{H}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{BG}}{\mathrm{\Psi }_{BG}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{BG}}}=`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|e^{\eta \widehat{T}}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}(t\widehat{T}+U\widehat{D}+V\widehat{W})e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}}{\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|e^{\eta \widehat{T}}e^{2\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}}}`$
with respect to the two variational parameters $`\lambda `$ and $`\eta `$. Unlike what happens in the spinless case, a closed analytical expression for $`E_{BG}(\lambda ,\eta )`$ has not been found. Instead, we use the expansion $`e^{\eta \widehat{T}}1\eta \widehat{T}+\frac{1}{2}\eta ^2\widehat{T}^2+\mathrm{}`$, which is valid for small $`\eta `$ (i.e. small $`t`$). 555A similar expansion has been successfully used for the Hubbard chain at half filling, where one correctly obtains the Heisenberg antiferromagnet with exchange constant $`J=4t^2/U`$. Baer  Each factor $`\widehat{T}`$ produces hopping to neighboring sites. Therefore, in order to allow for spin exchange, we have to expand at least to fourth order in $`\eta `$. The corresponding hopping processes are illustrated in figure 7.

They lead to an exchange of neighboring spins as shown explicitly in Appendix A, where the expectation values of the hopping term $`\widehat{T}`$, of the number of doubly occupied sites $`\widehat{D}`$ and of the long–range part of the interaction $`\widehat{W}`$ are calculated to fourth order in $`\eta `$. Collecting the results of eqs. (40), (42) and (47), we obtain the total energy

$`E_{BG}(\lambda ,\eta )=L\left[{\displaystyle \frac{V}{4}}\mathrm{log}2+2\eta t+(2\mathrm{log}21)\eta ^2V\right]`$ (27)
$`+J{\displaystyle \underset{ieven}{}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}},`$
where the exchange constant $`J`$ is given by

$`J`$ $`=`$ $`4\eta ^3t(1+3e^\lambda )3\eta ^4Ue^{2\lambda }`$
$`4V\eta ^4\left[2\mathrm{log}21+e^{2\lambda }\left(2\mathrm{log}2{\displaystyle \frac{15}{8}}\right)\right].`$
We see that the variational parameters $`\eta `$ (which controls the delocalization of charge) and $`\lambda `$ (which reduces double occupancy) can be determined independently of the spin configurations contributing to the magnetic ground state, which depends only on the sign of the exchange constant. For antiferromagnetic exchange the ground state energy is given by hulthen

$$\underset{ieven}{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}\frac{1}{4}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{L}{2}\mathrm{log}2.$$
(29)
If the parameter $`\eta `$ is small enough (which is certainly the case in the Wigner crystal phase), it is essentially determined by the minimum of the first term in eq. (IV), i.e.

$$\eta \frac{t}{(2\mathrm{log}21)V}.$$
(30)
On the other hand, $`\lambda `$ is chosen such as to maximize the exchange constant $`J`$, namely

$$e^\lambda =\frac{3t}{2\eta [\frac{3}{4}U+(2\mathrm{log}2\frac{15}{8})V]}.$$
(31)
Inserting these two values into eq. (IV) we obtain

$$J\frac{9t^4}{(2\mathrm{log}21)^2V^2[\frac{3}{4}U+(2\mathrm{log}2\frac{15}{8})V]}.$$
(32)
The resulting ground state energy per site

$$\frac{1}{L}E_{BG}=\frac{V}{4}\mathrm{log}2\frac{t^2}{(2\mathrm{log}21)V}\frac{J}{2}\mathrm{log}2$$
(33)
consists of three terms, the energy of the classical Wigner crystal, the energy gain due to charge delocalization and the magnetic exchange energy.

We see here that the finiteness of $`U`$ leads to an antiferromagnetic coupling between the spins, which is a direct consequence of the quantum fluctuations in the charge–ordered state. Recently it has been shown that the spin correlations in the Heisenberg chain decay like $`(1)^{(ij)}(\mathrm{log}|ij|)^{1/2}/|ij|`$.auerbach  In the framework of our variational approach, the long–range order in the charge sector is therefore accompanied by an algebraic magnetic order. 666Note that, in contrast to spin correlations, which vanish for $`U\mathrm{}`$, density correlations depend only weakly on $`U`$ for small t (and therefore small $`\eta `$). In fact, it is easy to show that up to second order in $`\eta `$ the static structure factor is identical to that of spinless fermions (i.e., to the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$).

The variational analysis presented above for $`n=1/2`$ indicates that in the region where the approach is valid, $`Ut,Vt`$, there is a separation of energy scales between the charge and the spin degrees of freedom. Recently, charge ordering has been observed in the organic chain compounds (TMTTF)2 PF6 and (TMTTF)2 AsF6 at $`T_{CO}=70K`$ and $`100K`$, respectively. No structural transition has been observed so far at $`T_{CO}`$ and the magnetic ordering occurs at much lower temperatures (around $`10K`$). It is tempting to associate the charge ordering, which has been reported on the basis of both $`NMR`$ Chow  and dielectric measurements,Monceau  with the stabilization of a Wigner lattice, although for a detailed comparison with experiments structural effects may have to be taken into account. Previously, experiments on (DI-DCNQI)2Ag have already been interpreted in terms of a Wigner crystal.hiraki

It has become popular to describe organic conductors in terms of the extended Hubbard model, where only on–site and nearest–neighbor Coulomb interactions with coupling constants $`U`$ and $`V_1`$, respectively, are taken into account.Ung ; mila95 ; Seo  Informations about the parameter values can be obtained by exploiting the well–known sum rule relating the optical absorption to the total kinetic energy. For (TMTTF)2PF6 exact diagonalization studies for the kinetic energy reproduce the observed reduction of oscillator strength of 0.73 Jacobsen  (as compared to that of non–interacting electrons) using the parameters $`U=8t`$ and $`V_1=3t`$ or else $`U=6.7t`$ and $`V=3.3t`$ (see Fig. 4a in ref. mila95 ). Our variational approach applied to the same model would give roughly the same values together with an exchange constant $`J_1=6t^2/(UV_1^2)0.08t`$. For long–range Coulomb interactions, which suppress the kinetic energy much less, the situation is quite different. In fact, for $`n=1/2`$ and $`U=2V`$, a reduction factor of 0.73 would require a Coulomb interaction strength of $`V=9t`$. Nevertheless, the exchange constant, given by eq. (IV) would again be of the order of $`0.08t`$.

In addition to the simple case presented here, the study of more complex fillings can be envisaged. For instance, the GWL configuration $`110110\mathrm{}`$ at filling $`n2/3`$, which is relevant to TTF-TCNQ, intrinsically leads to a dimerization of the exchange constants, and could result in qualitatively new physics. Our approach may also shed new light onto the $`4k_F`$ modulations observed in TTF-TCNQ Pouget  and in several 1:2 compounds. Most of the structural data exhibit a single harmonic modulation, so that they could be attributed to region (III) of the “phase diagram” of fig. 5.

## V Conclusion

We have studied a one–dimensional system of electrons interacting through the long–range Coulomb interaction on a discrete lattice. Starting from the charge–ordered classical limit, we have introduced a variational wave function which allows to treat the effects of quantum fluctuations. This wave function is always insulating and charge ordered at any commensurate filling, and is particularly well suited in the limit of strong interactions.

Although no phase transition arises within our treatment, the phase diagram can be clearly divided into three distinct regions separated by crossovers: (I) the classical generalized Wigner lattice in the limit where the band motion is negligible, (II) a Wigner crystal regime at intermediate couplings and (III) a weakly modulated regime at low interaction strengths. Lattice effects appear to be particularly important at simple commensurate fillings, where the charge fluctuations are reduced as compared to those of a continuous system. This general trend agrees with recent results obtained in two space dimensions,imada02  where it was shown that the critical parameter for Wigner crystallization is dramatically reduced from the value $`r_s35`$ in continuous models to $`r_s2`$ in a quarter–filled band.

Concerning the spin degrees of freedom, exchange processes induced by quantum fluctuations were shown to give rise to antiferromagnetic correlations. These develop out of the charge ordered configuration, with a much lower characteristic energy scale than typical Coulomb interaction energies. For the quarter–filled band the spin sector has been mapped onto the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain, which exhibits algebraically decaying spin correlations.

The existence of a charge–ordered ground state, as well as the aforementioned decoupling of magnetic/charge energy scales, are not unique to long–range interactions. However, besides quantitative differences between the genuinely long–ranged and the ad hoc short–ranged models, taking into account the unscreened long–range Coulomb potential appears to be crucial in the quest of a unified view of the insulator–to–metal transition in strongly correlated systems, since it is the only means to span all the possible band fillings. In this spirit, the Mott transition occurring at the “most” commensurate filling $`n=1`$ and the Wigner crystal at $`n0`$ are intimately connected, and can be viewed as two limiting cases of the same general phenomenon.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thank F. Nad and J.-P. Pouget for fruitful discussions. One of us (B.V.) is very grateful to M.A.H Vozmediano for valuable discussions. Financial support from MEC (Spain) through Grant No. PB96/0875 and CAM (Madrid) through Grant No. 07/0045/98 is acknowledged. This work has also been supported by the Swiss National Foundation through grant no. 20-61470.00.

## Appendix A Variational energy at quarter–filling

In this appendix we will detail the computation of the ground–state energy for the quarter–filled case $`n=N/L=1/2`$, using the trial ground state (24). We have to evaluate the three terms

$$E_{BG}(\eta ,\lambda )=t\widehat{T}+U\widehat{D}+V\widehat{W},$$
(34)
where

$$\widehat{O}=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|e^{\eta \widehat{T}}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{O}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}}{\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|e^{\eta \widehat{T}}e^{2\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}}.$$
(35)
Besides the variational parameters $`\eta `$ and $`\lambda `$, the wave function $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ itself is not known a priori, but has also to be determined by minimizing the energy. It will turn out that $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the ground state of the 1D Heisenberg antiferromagnet, with spins located on even (or odd) sites. We use an expansion in powers of $`\eta `$ and therefore have to assume that $`V`$ is large enough to keep the electrons close to their positions in the classical limit. As the analysis is straightforward, we only indicate the main steps. belen

### A.1 Kinetic energy

Expanding to fourth order in $`\eta `$ we obtain for the mean value of the kinetic energy

$`\widehat{T}`$ $`=`$ $`2\eta \mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\eta ^3\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^4|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}+`$ (36)
$`\eta ^3\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2(e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}1)\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}+`$
$`+4\eta ^3(\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}})^2.`$
To proceed we have to compute correlation functions of the type $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^{2m}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ (all contributions with odd exponents vanish). The operator $`\widehat{T}^{2m}`$ can be decomposed using Wick’s theorem. The expectation value of the squared kinetic energy operator ($`m=1`$) is easily computed and gives $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=L`$. The expectation value of the fourth power of the kinetic energy is more involved, but it is easy to see that only terms with two or three contractions contribute. These can be expressed in terms of density operators $`n_i`$ and spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ operators $`\stackrel{}{S}_i`$, giving

$$\frac{1}{3}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^4|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=L^2\underset{ieven}{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(37)
The term $`L^2`$ is cancelled by a corresponding term coming from the denominator of eq. (35), so that only “linked diagrams” contribute to the expectation value of the kinetic energy. In order to calculate the remaining term in eq. (36), we notice that only the first and third processes in fig. 7 contribute. We obtain

$`\left(e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}1\right)\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=`$ (38)
$`(e^\lambda 1)[{\displaystyle \underset{iodd,s\sigma }{}}c_{i\sigma }^+c_{i+s\sigma }c_{i\overline{\sigma }}^+c_{is\overline{\sigma }}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}+`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{ieven,s\sigma }{}}c_{i\sigma }^+c_{i+s\sigma }c_{i+s\sigma }^+c_{i+2s\sigma }|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}].`$
Using again the Wick decomposition and the representation of the remaining fermionic operators in terms of spin and density operators, we find

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2(e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}1)\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=`$ (39)
$`3(e^\lambda 1){\displaystyle \underset{ieven}{}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.`$
Collecting all the terms in Eq. (36) we arrive at

$$\widehat{T}=2\eta L+\eta ^3(1+3e^\lambda )\underset{ieven}{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(40)
### A.2 On–site interaction energy

The expansion in $`\eta `$ of the mean value of the on–site interaction energy gives

$$\widehat{D}=\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2\widehat{D}e^{2\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}\eta ^4+O(\eta ^6)$$
(41)
and can be immediately evaluated by comparison with eq. (39),

$$\widehat{D}=\frac{3}{4}\eta ^4e^{2\lambda }\underset{ieven}{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(42)
### A.3 Long–range potential energy

To compute the expectation value $`\widehat{W}`$ of the long–range potential, we first recall that $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}`$ is an eigenstate of $`\widehat{W}`$, namely (for an overall neutral system)

$$\widehat{W}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{L}{4}\mathrm{log}2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(43)
For $`\widehat{W}^{}=\widehat{W}+(L/4)\mathrm{log}2`$ all the terms where $`\widehat{W^{}}`$ acts directly on the wave function are thus suppressed and we have to evaluate only four terms to order $`\eta ^4`$,

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|e^{\eta \widehat{T}}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{W}^{}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}e^{\eta \widehat{T}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=\eta ^2\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}\widehat{W}^{}\widehat{T}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}+`$ (44)
$`+\eta ^4\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}(\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}\widehat{W}^{}\widehat{T}^3|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}+\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^3\widehat{W}^{}\widehat{T}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}})+`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{W}^{}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}\}+O(\eta ^6).`$
In this case all the three processes in fig. 7 contribute. An additional complication is the long–range nature of the potential which requires the summation of infinite series. The first three terms of the r.h.s. of eq. (44) can be linked to previously calculated expressions in view of the relation

$$\widehat{W}^{}\widehat{T}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=(2\mathrm{log}21)\widehat{T}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.$$
(45)
The last term in eq. (44) is found to be

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|\widehat{T}^2e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{W}^{}e^{\lambda \widehat{D}}\widehat{T}^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}=`$
$`4[(2\mathrm{log}21)L^2+({\displaystyle \frac{11}{2}}10\mathrm{log}2)L]+`$
$`({\displaystyle \frac{15}{2}}8\mathrm{log}2)e^{2\lambda }{\displaystyle \underset{ieven}{}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.`$
Terms proportional to $`L^2`$ are again cancelled by terms from the denominator. Adding the contribution (43) we finally get

$`\widehat{W}={\displaystyle \frac{L}{4}}\mathrm{log}2+L(2\mathrm{log}21)\eta ^2`$ (47)
$`+\left[12\mathrm{log}2+\left({\displaystyle \frac{15}{8}}2\mathrm{log}2\right)e^{2\lambda }\right]\eta ^4`$
$`\times {\displaystyle \underset{ieven}{}}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}|4\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_{i+2}n_in_{i+2}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{}}.`$


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# Effect of gluon-exchange pair-currents on the ratio 𝜇_𝑝𝐺_𝐸^𝑝/𝐺_𝑀^𝑝

## Abstract

The effect of one-gluon-exchange (OGE) pair-currents on the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ for the proton is investigated within a nonrelativistic constituent quark model (CQM) starting from $`SU(6)\times O(3)`$ nucleon wave functions, but with relativistic corrections. We found that the OGE pair-currents are important to reproduce well the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$. With the assumption that the OGE pair-currents are the driving mechanism for the violation of the scaling law we give a prediction for the ratio $`\mu _nG_E^n/G_M^n`$ of the neutron.

preprint: 02-02

Introduction: Recently the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ between the electric $`G_E^p(Q^2)`$ and magnetic $`G_M^p(Q^2)`$ form factors of the proton has been extracted from experimental data on the recoil proton polarization in elastic electron scattering with polarized electrons up to $`Q^2`$5 GeV2 Milbrath1999 ; Jones2000 ; Gayou2001 ; Gayou2002 . These experiments are of importance because they are direct measurements of the form factor ratio, and the present results are in contradiction to previous analyses Milbrath1999 ; Jones2000 ; Gayou2001 ; Gayou2002 ; Brash2002 . Historically, the determination of the electric and magnetic form factors up to several GeV were based on the Rosenbluth separation, and they were found compatible with the scaling laws:

$$G_E^p(Q^2)=G_M^p(Q^2)/\mu _p=G_D(Q^2).$$
(1)
where $`G_D(Q^2)`$ represents the dipole form factor.

The form factors and particularly the ratio give insight to the main features of the dynamical processes and are very useful for a test of the nucleon models Thomas\_book . The remarkable feature of the new experimental data is that they show a decrease of the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ from unity, indicating a significant deviation from this simple scaling law, but also from the simple constituent quark model.

Within different hadronic models the calculations for the proton ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ became available, with Ref. Frank2  presenting one of the earliest. We will restrict this discussion to the most recent calculations which agree reasonably well with the trend of the experimental data and which will allow to make predictions at higher $`Q^2`$ than the present data. In the cloudy bag model (CBM) Thomas , the pion field required by chiral symmetry is quantized and coupled to the MIT bag MIT1 . Addition of the pion cloud improves the MIT bag model results Lu1 , in which the decrease of $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ is an inherent property. It was shown for a CBM formulated on the light cone Miller , that the combination of Poincaré invariance and pion effects is sufficient to describe $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$. Several groups have studied different effects within CQMs. In the Goldstone boson exchange CQM GlozmanRiska  the baryon is considered as a system of three constituent quarks with an effective $`qq`$ hyperfine interaction mediated by the octet of pseudoscalar mesons. This model together with the point-form spectator approximation GlozmanBoffi , which provides a covariant framework, leads to a rather close description of the nucleon form factors and the available $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ data. Calculations of Ref. Cardarelli  performed within CQM and light-front formalism, showed that a suppression of the ratio can be expected in the CQM, if the relativistic effects generated by kinematical $`SU(6)`$ breaking due to the Melosh rotation of the constituent spins are taken into account. Finally, the most recent calculations based on relativistic quark models are from Ref. MillerFrank , where the hadron helicity nonconservation induced by the Melosh transformation was recognised to affect the ratio. The implementation of relativity is an common feature of all these works and all emphasize the necessity of both kinematical and dynamical relativistic corrections for the interpretations of the decrease of the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$.

In the non-relativistic constituent quark model (NRCQM) Isgur , the effective degrees of freedom are the massive quarks moving in a self-consistent potential whose specific form is dictated by considerations of QCD. Other degrees of freedom like Goldstone bosons or gluons are not considered in the original version and effectively absorbed into the constituent quarks.

Theoretically, the explicit introduction of the additional degrees of freedom in the nucleon structure will change its properties compared to expectations based on simple quark models in which the baryon is described as a three-quark state only. Among different improvements to the naive CQM which could be essential for dynamical properties of the nucleons, the most important ones are relativistic kinematical corrections, the introduction of a mesonic cloud via pion-loop corrections, and dynamical corrections due to the interaction currents and to the creation of quark-antiquark ($`q\overline{q}`$) pairs. For low momentum transfer, $`q\overline{q}`$ pairs (sea-quarks) are dominant and the mesonic degrees of freedom become increasingly important. However, in a recent study Geiger  on “un-quenching” the quark model, strong cancellations between the hadronic components of the $`q\overline{q}`$ sea were found which tend to make the nucleon transparent to photons. These studies provide a natural way of understanding the success of the valence quark model even though the $`q\overline{q}`$ sea is very strong. At higher momentum transfer and in the presence of residual $`qq`$ interaction, the e.m. operators must be supplemented by the two-body exchange currents. The inclusion of two-body terms leads beyond the single-quark impulse approximation, and in dependence on the model for the $`qq`$ interaction effectively represents the gluonic or mesonic exchange degrees of freedom in the e.m. current operator. In this sense the physical picture should be similar to nuclear physics, where at low momentum transfer the nucleons are reasonable degrees of freedom, but at higher momentum transfer the meson-exchange currents play a prominent role Kaskulov:2002mc .

In this work we continue our studies Grabmayr1  of the possible role of interaction currents, in particular OGE pair-currents, for the e.m. properties of the nucleon. We use the NRCQM with relativistic corrections, coming from the Lorentz boost of the nucleon wave function, together with gluonic corrections for the calculation of the proton ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ at momentum transfers beyond 1 GeV2, where effects of the soft pionic cloud should be less important. We show that gluonic corrections to the CQM are important, and that the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ is well reproduced by the $`SU(6)\times O(3)`$ wave function of the nonrelativistic quark model.

The nucleon in the NRCQM: In the quark model, baryons are considered as three-quark configurations. The ground state has positive parity with all three quarks in their lowest state, and the total angular momentum (isospin) of baryons is obtained by appropriately combining the quark spins (isospins). In the NRCQM Isgur  a baryon is treated as a non-relativistic three-quark system, and in the simplest case of equal quark masses $`m_q`$ it is described by the Hamiltonian:

$`_{3q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}}\left(m_q+{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩_i^2}{2m_q}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{𝐏^2}{6m_q}}`$ (2)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{\overset{3}{}}}V^{(conf)}(𝐫_i,𝐫_j)+{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{\overset{3}{}}}V^{(res)}(𝐫_i,𝐫_j)`$
where $`𝐫_i`$, $`𝐩_i`$ are the spatial and momentum coordinates of the $`i`$-th quark, respectively, and P is the centre-of-mass momentum. The Hamiltonian $`_{3q}`$ consists of the nonrelativistic kinetic energy, a confinement potential $`V^{(conf)}`$, and a residual interaction $`V^{(res)}`$. Here, we take a two-body harmonic oscillator (h.o.) confinement potential: $`V^{(conf)}(𝐫_i,𝐫_j)\lambda _i\lambda _j(𝐫_i𝐫_j)^2,`$where $`\lambda _i`$ are the Gell-Mann colour matrices of the $`i`$-th quark, with $`\lambda _i\lambda _j=8/3`$ for a $`qq`$ pair in a baryon.

The phenomenological residual interaction $`V^{(res)}`$ can be based on various $`qq`$ potentials GlozmanRiska ; Isgur , which reflect the symmetries and properties of QCD. Up to now, its dynamical origin is rather uncertain. We use a standard OGE interaction, the strength of which is determined by the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$. However, unlike perturbative QCD, where the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$ goes to zero at large inter-quark momenta, we take $`\alpha _s`$ of the NRCQM as an effective momentum independent constant.

We start from the simplest form of the NRCQM, i.e. without configuration mixing, in which the nucleon $`|N`$ is described by the lowest h.o. three quark configurations $`(0s)^3[3]_X`$ in the translationally-invariant shell model (TISM):

$$|N=|(0s)^3[3]_XL=0,ST=\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}[3]_{ST},J^P=\frac{1}{2}^+$$
(3)
where the colour part is omitted. After having removed the centre-of-mass coordinate $`𝐑`$ from the TISM configuration, the ground state eigenfunction depends only on the Jacobi relative coordinates $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$ of the quarks:

$$|(0s)^3(\rho _1,\rho _2)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{4b^2}\rho _1^2\frac{1}{3b^2}\rho _2^2\right)$$
(4)
where the constant $`b`$ determines the average hadronic size of the baryon. Note that the elimination of $`𝐑`$ is crucial for correctly counting the baryonic states. This is one reason why the nonrelativistic approach is so successful in spectroscopy.

The nucleon e.m. Sachs form factors: The nucleon e.m. form factors are functions of the square of the momentum transfer in the scattering process $`Q^2=q^\mu q_\mu `$. The Sachs form factors, $`G_{E(M)}`$, fully characterize the charge and current distributions inside the nucleon Sachs1  and can be written in terms of Dirac and Pauli form factors $`_1`$ and $`_2`$, respectively. The most general form of the nucleon e.m. operator $`J_{em}^\mu (x)`$, which defines $`_1`$ and $`_2`$, satisfies the requirements of relativistic covariance and the condition of gauge invariance; it is of the form

$`N(p^{},s^{})|J_{em}^\mu (0)|N(p,s)`$ $`=`$ (5)
$`\overline{u}(𝐩^{},s^{})[\gamma ^\mu _1(Q^2)`$ $`+`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^{\mu \nu }q_\nu }{2M_N}}_2(Q^2)]u(𝐩,s),`$
with $`q^\nu =p^\nu p^\nu `$. The Breit frame, where the incoming momentum $`𝐩=𝐪/2`$ is scattered to the momentum $`𝐩^{}=𝐪/2`$, is characterized by $`Q^2=𝐪^2`$. In this frame the nucleon electric $`G_E`$ and magnetic $`G_M`$ form factors can be interpreted as Fourier transforms of the distributions of charge and magnetization, respectively:

$`<N_s^{}({\displaystyle \frac{𝐪}{2}})\left|𝐉_{em}(0)\right|N_s({\displaystyle \frac{𝐪}{2}})>`$ $`=`$ $`\chi _s^{}^{}{\displaystyle \frac{i\sigma \times 𝐪}{2M_N}}\chi _sG_M(q^2)`$ (6)
$`<N_s^{}({\displaystyle \frac{𝐪}{2}})\left|J_{em}^0(0)\right|N_s({\displaystyle \frac{𝐪}{2}})>`$ $`=`$ $`\chi _s^{}^{}\chi _sG_E(q^2)`$ (7)
where $`\chi _s^{}^{}`$ and $`\chi _s`$ are Pauli spinors for the initial and final nucleons.

Starting from the rest frame, the spherical nucleon is expected to undergo a Lorentz contraction along the direction of motion. Results of previous studies suggest that the consistent treatment of the form factors should be supplemented by the relativistic boost Wagenbrunn . But a complete solution of a covariant many-body problem is difficult; the use of the light-cone dynamics Chung  for constituent quarks leads to the introduction of additional parameters. Thus, a semiclassical prescription proposed in Ref. Licht  and successfully applied in a CBM Lu1  is used here. Thereby, the relativistic form factors can be derived in the Breit frame from the corresponding nonrelativistic ones by a simple substitution:

$$G_{E(M)}(Q^2)\eta G_{E(M)}(\eta Q^2),$$
(8)
where $`\eta =M_N^2/E_N^2`$ and $`E_N^2=M_N^2+𝐪^2/4`$. The scaling factor $`\eta `$ in the argument of $`G_{E(M)}`$ arises from the coordinate transformation of the struck quark, and the pre-factor in Eq.(8) comes from the reduction of the integral measure of the two spectator quarks in the Breit frame. This simple boost together with the NRCQM nucleon wave function does not addmix configurations with nonzero orbital angular momentum; it leads to the hadron helicity conserving solution. Note, that imposing Poincaré invariance in a relativistic CQM causes substantial violation of the helicity conservation rule MillerFrank , and results in an asymptotic behaviour of form factors which differs from that as expected in pQCD Lepage .

We first consider the nucleon single-quark current $`j_{q_i}^\mu (x)`$ contribution:$`J_{em}^\mu (x)=_{i=1}^3j_{q_i}^\mu (x).`$ In the CQM the e.m. vertex of the internal quarks should be assumed to have a spatially extended structure that may be described by a form factor $`F_q(𝐪^2)`$. The most general form for the covariant e.m. current operator of the constituent quarks is written as Gross :

$$j_{q_i}^\mu (x)=𝒬_i\overline{q}_i(x)\left\{\gamma ^\mu +\left(F_q(𝐪^2)1\right)\left[\gamma ^\mu \frac{\gamma qq^\mu }{q^2}\right]\right\}q_i(x),$$
(9)
where $`q_i(x)`$ is the quark field operator, $`𝒬_i`$ is its charge in units of $`e`$$`𝒬_i=1/2\left[1/3+\tau _i^3\right].`$ This vertex, in which the first term corresponds to pointlike quarks, maintains the requirement of current conservation, as the form factor modification appears only in a purely transverse term. The nonrelativistic reduction of Eq.(9) for pointlike quarks, $`F_q(𝐪^2)=1`$, leads to the standard one-body e.m. current operators: $`\widehat{\rho }_{3q}(𝐪)=_{i=1}^3𝒬_ie^{i𝐪𝐫_𝐢}`$ and $`\widehat{𝐣}_{3q}(𝐪)=\frac{1}{2m_q}_{i=1}^3𝒬_ie^{i𝐪𝐫_𝐢}\left(𝐩_i^{}+𝐩_i+i\sigma _i\times 𝐪\right),`$ where we have retained only the lowest order contributions. This is in spirit of a NRCQM, where the main contribution to the e.m. moments is expected to come from the non-relativistic single quark currents, which by the choice of the effective quark mass already incorporates substantial relativistic corrections Buchmann . It follows that one should not use next-to-leading order relativistic corrections proportional to $`𝐪^2/8m_q^2`$ in the charge operator $`\widehat{\rho }_{3q}(𝐪)`$, for example the Darwin-Foldy term, if one ignores them in the kinetic energy.

The naive CQM results in the following nucleon e.m. form factors $`G_E^{(3q)}`$ and $`G_M^{(3q)}`$:

$`G_E^{(3q)}(𝐪^2)`$ $`=`$ $`e_N\mathrm{exp}\left(𝐪^2b^2/6\right)`$ (10)
$`G_M^{(3q)}(𝐪^2)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{M_N}{m_q}}\mu _N\mathrm{exp}\left(𝐪^2b^2/6\right)`$ (11)
where $`e_N`$ and $`\mu _N`$ are the charge and CQM magnetic moment of the nucleon: $`e_N=\frac{1}{2}N|(1+\tau _3)|N,\mu _N=\frac{1}{6}N|(1+5\tau _3)|N.`$ Due to the same momentum dependence, Eqs.(10) and (11) lead to the scaling law noted in Eq.(1); a ratio of unity is obtained as presented by the long dashed line in Fig. 1. Clearly, the scaling law is in contradiction with the recent proton experiments Jones2000 ; Milbrath1999 ; Gayou2001 ; Gayou2002 .

The OGE pair-current: In the presence of residual OGE interactions between the quarks the total current operator of the hadron cannot simply be a sum of free quark currents, but must be supplemented by two-body currents. These two-body currents are closely related to the $`qq`$ potential from which they can be derived by minimal substitution. Since the effect of the residual $`qq`$ potential is clearly seen in the excited spectra of hadrons, one expects the corresponding two-body currents to play an important role in various e.m. properties of hadrons.

Both, the photon and the gluons interacting with quarks can produce $`q\overline{q}`$ pairs leading to pair-current contributions to e.m. quark current as provided by OGE. The two-body terms we consider are depicted in Fig. 2. The nonrelativistic reduction of these diagrams leads to the following configuration space e.m. current operators Grabmayr1 ; Sanctis :

$`\rho _{3q}^{(OGE)}=i{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{16m_q^3}}{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{}}\lambda _i\lambda _j{\displaystyle \frac{𝒬_i}{r_{ij}^3}}[e^{i𝐪𝐫_i}(𝐪(𝐫_i𝐫_j)`$
$`+[\sigma _i\times 𝐪][\sigma _j\times (𝐫_i𝐫_j)])+(ij)]`$ (12)
$`𝐣_{3q}^{(OGE)}={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{8m_q^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i<j}{}}\lambda _i\lambda _j{\displaystyle \frac{𝒬_i}{r_{ij}^3}}`$
$`\times [e^{i𝐪𝐫_i}[(\sigma _i+\sigma _j)\times (𝐫_i𝐫_j)]+(ij)]`$ (13)
These OGE pair-currents describe a $`q\overline{q}`$ pair creation process induced by the external photon with subsequent annihilation of the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair into a gluon, which is then absorbed by an another quark. These currents are of relativistic origin as reflected in the higher powers of $`1/m_q`$ as compared to the one-body e.m. current operators. Because the gluon does not carry any isospin the OGE pair-current has the same isospin structure as the one-body currents. Eqs.(Effect of gluon-exchange pair-currents on the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$) and (Effect of gluon-exchange pair-currents on the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$) result in the following electric $`G_E^{(OGE)}`$ and magnetic $`G_M^{(OGE)}`$ form factors:

$`\left\{\begin{array}{c}\hfill G_{E_p}^{(OGE)}\\ \hfill G_{E_n}^{(OGE)}\end{array}\right\}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{m_q^3}}qe^{q^2b^2/24}\left\{\begin{array}{c}\hfill 1/3\\ \hfill 2/9\end{array}\right\}𝒦(q)`$ (18)
$`\left\{\begin{array}{c}\hfill G_{M_p}^{(OGE)}\\ \hfill G_{M_n}^{(OGE)}\end{array}\right\}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{m_q^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{M_N}{q}}e^{q^2b^2/24}\left\{\begin{array}{c}\hfill 2/3\\ \hfill 2/9\end{array}\right\}𝒦(q)`$ (23)
The function $`𝒦`$ in the above expressions is:

$$𝒦(q)=4\pi \left(\frac{1}{2\pi b^2}\right)^{3/2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑re^{r^2/(2b^2)}j_1(qr/2)$$
(24)
where $`j_1(qr/2)`$ is the spherical Bessel function. The interaction of the incoming photon with a $`q\overline{q}`$ pair can be considered as a point-like interaction or as being dominated by intermediate vector mesons. The latter leads to an additional dipole form factor, $`F_{\gamma q\overline{q}}(𝐪^2)=\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\gamma q\overline{q}}^2/\left(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\gamma q\overline{q}}^2+𝐪^2\right)`$, reflecting the extended structure of the $`\gamma q\overline{q}`$ vertex. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\gamma q\overline{q}}`$ can be considered as a free parameter or simply can be taken equal to the $`\rho `$-meson mass.

Results: In this work we consider the effect of the OGE pair-current corrections to the NRCQM nucleon e.m. form factors, particularly for the ratio $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$. The ratio is calculated for a quark mass of $`m_q`$=400 MeV and the respective quark core radius of $`b`$=0.5 fm. In Fig. 1 calculations with different $`\alpha _s`$ are shown to indicate the sensitivity. In the insert of Fig. 1 we show results towards higher values of $`Q^2`$ for the best description of the present data by $`\alpha _s`$ = 0.4 with (solid curve) and without Lorentz boost (dashed curve). Our results indicate that the $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ continues to decrease and that it will cross zero at $`Q^2`$8.1 GeV2. From this, a negative value of the ratio must be expected for the planed measurements in JLAB at $`Q^2`$9 GeV2. Deviations could be explained due to an extended $`\gamma q\overline{q}`$ vertex as demonstrated by using a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\gamma q\overline{q}}`$=770 MeV (dotted line). The introduction of such states does not affect very much our results up to $``$10 GeV2, but strongly influences the behaviour of $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$ for higher $`Q^2`$. For quark masses in the range $`m_q313÷400`$ MeV and bag radii of $`b0.4÷0.6`$ fm one can find also a good description of the data with reasonable values for $`\alpha _s0.2÷0.6`$ Sanctis . However, these are not able to reproduce the $`N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ mass splitting in the case of pure OGE. It seems likely that the observed mass splitting is the result of a linear combination of the pion-loop contributions and OGE Thomas\_book . In this sense pionic contributions could produce the desirable effect of reducing the size of the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$, needed for the reproduction of the $`\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p`$.

The ratio $`_2^p/_1^p`$ can be directly derived from $`G_E^p/G_M^p`$. It is predicted in Ref. Miller  to be constant for values of $`Q^2`$ up to 20 GeV2 and it is understood as a result of the Melosh transformation, which reflects relativistic effects. Our results are shown in Fig. 3. The “kinematical” background formed by the naive CQM results (dot-dashed curve), $`_2^p/_1^p=1/(1+\kappa _pQ^2/4M_M^2)`$, underestimates the data and is not affected by the Lorentz boost, a failure which is overcompensated when adding the OGE pair-currents (dashed curve). It is due to the Lorentz boost (solid curve) acting on the OGE currents to reproduce the flattening in $`Q_2^p/_1^p`$. Following Ref. MillerFrank , we also study the high $`Q^2`$-behavior. The ratio falls for asymptotic values of $`Q^2`$ as $`Q_2^p/_1^p1/Q`$, and allows to make a smooth transition to the scaling behavior as expected from pQCD Lepage . In Ref. MillerFrank  the ratio $`Q_2^p/_1^p`$ falls less quickly as in our case and in pQCD, both stated a notion of the hadron helicity conservation. We also confirm the statement of Ref. MillerFrank , that a plateau seen in Fig. 3 is the result of a broad maximum occuring near $`Q^210`$ GeV2.

Recent experimental progress in using polarized nuclear targets will allow to obtain the neutron ratio $`G_E^n/G_M^n`$. As well known in the $`SU(6)`$ limit $`G_E^n(Q^2)`$ is zero IsgurNeutron . We can treat $`G_E^n(Q^2)`$ as a result of the residual OGE-force in the form of gluonic currents and with the assumption that the OGE pair-currents are the driving mechanism of the scaling law violation we can calculate the neutron ratio $`G_E^n/G_M^n`$ using the best results for the proton. The results are shown in Fig. 4. Recombining Eqs. 10, 11, 18 and 23 leads to a simple approximate result in analytic form between $`G_E^n/G_M^n`$ and that of the proton, $`G_E^p/G_M^p`$:

$$\mu _nG_E^n/G_M^n\frac{2}{3}(1\mu _pG_E^p/G_M^p),$$
(25)
which works remarkably well from low up to very high $`Q^2`$, and actually insensitive to the choice of the parameters (insert Fig. 4).

In conclusion, we would like to mention that the internal dynamics of the nucleon are much more complex than we have presented in this work. First of all it is interesting to examine the effect of nonvalence Fock states KG :

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_N=\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Psi }(3q)\\ \mathrm{\Psi }(3q+q\overline{q})\end{array}\right)$$
(26)
reflecting $`q\overline{q}`$ fluctuations of the constituent quarks. This question is closely related to the possible role of the mesonic cloud.

###### Acknowledgements.

Very useful discussions with V.I. Kukulin are gratefully acknowledged. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under contracts Gr1084/3, He2171/3 and GRK683.


text:
# The surprising Far-UV spectrum of the polar BY Camelopardalis This work is based on data obtained from the NASA-CNES-CSA FUSE mission

## 1 Introduction

The hard X-ray source H0538+68/BY Cam was identified as a polar, a cataclysmic binary with a highly magnetized (B $`10^710^8`$ G) accreting white dwarf, after the detection of circularly polarized optical flux by Remillard et al. (1986). It was shown to exhibit a very peculiar UV emission line spectrum, with an emission resonance line ratio NV/CIV, more than ten times larger than what is usually observed in Polars (Bonnet-Bidaud & Mouchet 1987 (BM87)). It has been suggested that this unusual feature could be the result of a chemical evolution of the secondary, or of an unnoticed nova event leading to a CNO redistribution (BM87, Mouchet et al. 1990a). The discovery that the source is slightly desynchronised (Silber et al. 1992) and the identification of a known nova, V1500 Cygni, as a polar which is also desynchronised (Schmidt & Stockman 1991), gave further arguments to the nova hypothesis. However the picture has gradually changed as at least two synchronous polars, V1309 Ori (Szkody & Silber 1996) and MN Hya (Schmidt & Stockman 2001), have now been found to show a large NV/CIV ratio though less extreme than in BY Cam. The origin of these anomalous line strengths among polars is not clear. It might obviously result from non-solar abundances in the accreted matter but could also be due to peculiar ionisation conditions. These effects may strongly affect our understanding of the evolution of these systems and their link to novae.

The FUSE satellite, operating in the range 905-1187Å offers access to the OVI resonance line, a key for evaluating the CNO abundances. We report here on the first observation of BY Cam by this satellite. These observations were simultaneous with RXTE and EUVE observations as well as optical spectroscopy with the 3.5m APO telescope and with the 9m HET, and photometry at the 16” Braeside telescope whose results, including a temporal analysis, will be reported elsewhere.

## 2 FUSE observations and reduction

BY Cam was observed on 2000 January 10 and 16 by the FUSE satellite (Moos et al. 2000, Sahnow et al. 2000). The total wavelength range of 905-1187Å is covered by means of four gratings and mirrors leading to bandpasses of about 200Å, in such a way that the region below $``$ 1000Å is covered by two detectors, the central region by four and the region above $``$ 1100Å by two. During the first observation, the source was badly centered in the aperture and only the Jan. 16 data are presented below. The dataset consists of five exposures in the large aperture (30”x30”), with exposure times ranging from 3.44 to 5.42 ks, resulting in a total 22 ks on-source time. This covers two orbital cycles with only a small orbital phase interval ($``$0.12) not covered. The source was in the satellite continuous viewing zone and observations occurred mainly during ’day’ time, leading to the presence of strong geocoronal lines.

The data have been reduced using the Calfuse 1.7.3 version of the standard pipeline. For each detector the five exposures were co-added with an eventual wavelength shift correction of one pixel. Velocity measurements have been corrected for the error in the heliocentric velocity value present in this calibration pipeline version. As the source is faint, the resulting signal-to-noise ratio per resolution element is quite low (less than 3) so the original (0.005Å) data have been binned into 0.1Å intervals. We report here on the mean phase-averaged spectrum.

## 3 The average spectrum

The average spectrum obtained by combining all detectors and exposures is shown in Fig. 1 where the strongest geocoronal lines have been removed for clarity. Some regions, such as around the NIV/HeII/H and HeII lines, are however possibly still contaminated by airglow and should be treated with care.

The continuum energy distribution is consistent with an extrapolation of the IUE high state spectrum. It can be described with a energy power law F$`{}_{\lambda }{}^{}\lambda ^{1.43}`$ if no reddening is assumed (-2.44 for EB-V = 0.05 (BM87)) with a total luminosity L(910-1185Å) of $`6.3\times 10^{31}`$ erg s-1 ($`12.2\times 10^{31}`$ erg s-1 for EB-V = 0.05), assuming the source at 250 pc (Gänsicke 1997) and a Cardelli extinction law (Cardelli et al. 1989) with a standard AV/EB-V = 3.1 value. Broad emission lines are identified in Fig. 1, with intensities listed in Table 1. Pronounced H2 molecular lines of the Lyman and Werner series are also clearly present (see Sect. 4.1).

Figure 2 shows an enlargement of the OVI line region. The OVI doublet in BY Cam is rather broad and weak, with the OVI $`\lambda `$1038 component affected by strong H2 absorption. For comparison, the phase-averaged ORFEUS spectrum of AM Her (Mauche & Raymond 1998), computed from retrieved archived data, is also shown in Fig. 2. Contrary to AM Her (see also Hutchings et al. 2002), no narrow OVI component is detected in BY Cam.

The OVI broad line intensities have been derived by fitting two gaussians of same widths (FWHM of 1200 km s-1), at the doublet separation, convolved with an absorption with a H2 column density of 3$`\times 10^{19}`$ molecules cm-2 (cf. Sect. 4.1). The results are given in Table 2 and the best fit is shown in Fig. 2 (lower panel). Uncertainties in the doublet flux measurements have been computed by varying the amplitude of each gaussian around the best value. They are given for the 99% confidence level, corresponding to a $`\chi ^2`$ variation of 6.6 for a one parameter-fit. Line intensities corrected for H2 absorption and corresponding errors are $`1.40_{0.12}^{+0.13}`$ and $`1.09_{0.17}^{+0.22}`$ 10-13 erg cm-2 s-1, respectively for $`\lambda `$1032 and $`\lambda `$1038. Some caution should however be taken in interpreting the redward component intensity since it is affected by a strong H2 absorption and its red wing is also contaminated by an OI airglow contribution. For AM Her, the OVI total (broad+narrow) equivalent width is larger than for BY Cam but the equivalent width of the broad component alone is of the same order. The doublet intensity ratio of the broad component is also significantly different with a ratio of $``$1.3 for BY Cam and 1.7 for AM Her. Assuming the source at 250 pc, the OVI broad line luminosity is $`3.4\times 10^{30}`$ erg s-1, after correction for a EB-V = 0.05 interstellar reddening. This can be compared to the dereddened NV($`\lambda `$1240) and CIV($`\lambda `$1549) luminosities of $`1.7\times 10^{31}`$ erg s-1 and $`2.9\times 10^{30}`$ erg s-1 respectively, derived from IUE observations (Zucker et al. 1995, Mouchet et al. 2002). The mean ratios NV/CIV and OVI/CIV are 5.7 and 1.14 for BY Cam, while they are equal to 0.12 and 0.34 for AM Her. For this source, the values are derived from HUT spectra which wavelength range includes the three resonance lines (Greeley et al. 1999) and refer to the broad component only. Note however that for BY Cam the values obtained at different epochs are also affected by a mean intrinsic $``$35% variability (Mouchet et al. 1990b, Zucker et al. 1995).

Contrary to AM Her, no strong narrow OVI line is observed in BY Cam, as shown in Fig. 2, where spectra for both sources are orbitally phase averaged. For BY Cam, the radial velocity amplitude of $``$ 250 km s-1 as derived for the optical narrow components (Mouchet et al. 1997), will introduce a broadening but will not be sufficient to smear out a narrow component (FWHM $``$0.5Å) as intense as in AM Her. The absence of narrow lines in BY Cam may be due to the absence of a strong soft X-ray component in BY Cam. However the polar VV Pup which is a soft X-ray source, does not either show obvious narrow components in the OVI lines (Hoard et al. 2002). Note that no conclusion can be drawn about the presence of a narrow component in the NV and CIV lines of BY Cam due to the lack of high resolution UV spectra.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The column density of molecular hydrogen

Several H2 absorption lines of the Lyman and Werner electronic system bands are clearly detected in the average FUSE spectrum of BY Cam. The spectrum of molecular hydrogen was modelled assuming specific values of the total column density, a temperature of 80K and a b Doppler factor of 10 km s-1. The wavelengths, oscillator strengths and total radiative lifetimes of the upper levels of H2 transitions are given by Abgrall et al. (2000). The signal-to-noise ratio is too low to perform a fitting of the complete spectrum as done in FUSE studies towards translucent interstellar clouds (cf. Ferlet et al. 2000). We have compared the equivalent width measurements of the strongest H2 lines absorbed from the J=0, 1, and 2 levels in the v’-0 Lyman bands with v’ = 0 to 4, with those measured in the models. A best fit value is obtained for a H2 column density N$`_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ of $`3\times 10^{19}`$ molecules cm-2. The model spectra for the Lyman (0,0) and (1,0) bands are displayed in Fig. 3 for 2 different values of the H2 column density of 1 and 3$`\times 10^{19}`$ molecules cm-2 together with the observed spectrum in the relevant spectral windows. The derived H2 column density of $`3\times 10^{19}`$ molecules cm-2 should be correct within a factor of 2. When using the R(0) and R(1) lines only, a model with a lower b value of 3 km s-1 is marginally favoured. The presence of the R(3) component at 1067.6Å and possibly at 1054.0Å seems to indicate a higher excitation temperature, but the quality of the spectra does not allow a reliable determination of its value. The individual spectra are also relatively noisy so that it is not possible to check reliably for possible changes with orbital phase.
From the absorption bump around 2200 Å , an upper limit of E$`{}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{V}}{}^{}`$ 0.05 has been derived for the source (BM87), which corresponds to a neutral H density N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}_1}{}^{}2.6\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Shull & Van Steenberg 1985). This value is also consistent with the equivalent neutral H column density N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}_1}{}^{}(12)\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 derived from the absorption cut-off in the X-ray spectra (Kallman et al. 1993, 1996). Taken at face value, this implies a very high N$`_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$/N$`_{\mathrm{H}_1}`$ ratio in the direction of the source. Assuming a standard interstellar medium, the expected N$`_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ value, consistent with the observed reddening, is only in the range $`5\times 10^{11}5\times 10^{17}`$ cm-2 (Savage et al. 1977). A large N$`_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ value is unexpected for a relatively nearby source. It may result from an inhomogeneous interstellar medium with a molecular cloud in the line of sight but may also be linked with dense matter close to the source, possibly ejected during a prior nova event. Note that such H2 absorption has also being detected in the FUSE spectra of the supersoft binary QR And and has been suggested to come from a circumbinary location (Hutchings et al. 2001). The present FUSE absolute wavelength calibration is not accurate enough to derive precise values of the H2 line velocities and the systemic velocity of BY Cam is also not well known (in the range 1.3 - 141 km s-1, Mason et al. 1989, Silber et al. 1992) so that no direct conclusion can yet be drawn about the possible circumbinary nature of the H2 cloud.

### 4.2 Model of the OVI line and CNO abundances

The broad resonance lines of the highly ionised species of CIV, NV, and OVI (FWHM $``$ 1200 km s-1) are expected to be formed mainly in the accreting column, photoionised by the X-ray flux. Different attempts have been made to reproduce the line ratios using photoionisation models with a simplified geometry (cf. Mauche et al. 1997). We evaluate here the line luminosities computed using the CLOUDY plasma code (Ferland et al. 1998), coupled to a geometrical model of the accretion column. The ionising spectrum was defined as the sum of a 20 keV bremsstrahlung, as observed in the RXTE observations, and of a 50 eV blackbody with a bolometric luminosity of 0.1 times the hard X-ray luminosity (Ramsay et al. 1994). We have modelled the accretion column assuming a dipole geometry and free-fall velocities along the accretion column (cf. Stockman & Schmidt 1996). The density then varies with the distance $`r`$ to the white dwarf, of radius Rwd, as $`nn_0(r/R_{\mathrm{wd}})^{2.5}`$ (Langer et al. 1982). We have set n0, the density at the basis of the column, equal to $`1.2\times 10^{15}`$ cm-3, corresponding to an accretion rate of $`10^{16}`$ g s-1, in agreement with the total X-ray luminosity of 6.6 $`10^{32}`$ erg s-1 for a distance of 250 pc (Ramsay et al. 1994) and assuming a typical value of 1016 cm2 for the polar cap surface, and a 0.8 M white dwarf. The accretion column was approximated by a succession of different slabs of constant densities with a maximum extension chosen so that the density drops by a factor 4 from one slab to the next, up to a maximum extension of 50 times the white dwarf radius, i.e. about 1/4 of the Roche lobe radius (Mouchet et al. 1997). The lateral extension of each region was assumed to follow the dipole geometry with a size varying as (r/Rwd)3/2. The illumination was approximated to be sideways which, taking into account of the bending of the column, is only true for the furthest parts of the column. We have verified however that, in all cases, the lowest slabs of higher densities do not contribute significantly to the total flux of the lines considered (Mouchet et al. 2002).

The luminosities of the three resonance lines CIV($`\lambda `$1549), NV($`\lambda `$1240) and OVI($`\lambda `$1035) were computed with this model, first assuming solar abundances. The results are shown in Fig. 4, where the N/C and O/C ratios are reported. Compared to the observed values, these ratios are significantly underestimated in this case. Changing the backbody temperature from 50 eV to 10 eV reduces significantly the N and O luminosities and does not improve the situation (see Fig. 4). However, a hidden very soft X-ray component, contributing significantly to the ionising flux, could still be present. For a neutral H column density of $`2\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2, it is found that a 10 eV blackbody component with a luminosity similar to that of the bremsstrahlung component, could remain undetected and still be compatible with the flux upper limit at 100 Å of $`6\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1Å-1 derived from the EUVE observations. Though increasing significantly the N and O luminosities, it still falls short of the observed N/C and O/C ratios by factors 10 and 3 respectively. We therefore compute next the exact effect of varying the element abundances. An N abundance 10 times greater than the solar value was first considered. Since parts of the column are optically thick, the N line luminosity is not increased proportionally but only by a factor $``$4, with a corresponding small decrease in the C and O lines but not sufficient to reproduce the observed values (see Fig. 4). Assuming our adopted model to be valid, the observed line ratios require highly non-solar abundances. As the BY Cam line luminosities are somewhat variable, we did not attempt here to obtain an exact fit in the abundances but we show in Fig. 4 a combination where C, N and O are respectively lower by a factor 25, higher by 8 and lower by 2, compared to solar values. With these non-solar abundances, the observed dereddened ratios are well reproduced, within a factor 1.01 and 1.22, respectively for NV/CIV and OVI/CIV. Other combinations may of course be valid and a more detailed modelling will be presented elsewhere (Bonnet-Bidaud et al. 2003, in preparation). These first precise computations of the abundance effects confirm our previous suggestions (BM87, Mouchet et al. 1990a) that the peculiar line intensities in BY Cam may be due to a conjugated overabundance of N with a underabundance of C. The strong line of NIII (990Å) observed here (as NIV (1718Å)), together with the weaknesses of the CIII lines at 977Å and at 1175Å, confirm this. The oxygen abundance deviates only slightly from the solar value.

### 4.3 Origin of the peculiar CNO composition

The explanation of such highly non-solar values for some elements is still pending. The nova hypothesis is tempting as the by-product of the H-burning CNO cycle is a 14N production at the expense of 12C, leading to a CN redistribution. But the recent nova V1500 Cyg does not show abnormal UV line intensities (Schmidt et al. 1995), and the ejecta observed in a large sample of novae show enrichment in all three C, N, O elements (Livio & Truran 1994), indicating dredge-up of matter from the underlying CO core (Starrfield et al. 2000). However multicycle models lead to a rearrangement of CNO abundances by reprocessing a large quantity of carbon and some fraction of oxygen into nitrogen (Kovetz & Prialnik 1997). Enhancement of N and depletion of C can indeed be obtained in the context of evolutionary models of semi-detached systems in which the secondary surface is polluted by re-accretion of material ejected during nova outburts (Marks & Sarna 1998). But the enrichment by a nova-type explosion requires efficient re-accretion of the burnt material as pointed out by Stehle & Ritter (1999).

As about 1/3 of cataclysmic variables might descend from supersoft X-ray binaries (Schenker et al. 2002), the required CNO composition in BY Cam can result from steady nuclear burning phases which occur during this evolutionary stage. Interestingly, one of these sources, XMMU J004319.4+411758, might be a progenitor of a magnetic cataclysmic variable (King et al. 2002). We note that weak thermonuclear runaways can also have occurred in dwarf novae such as U Gem for which the white dwarf spectrum reveals a depletion of carbon (Sion et al. 1998) or such as BZ UMa and EY Cyg whose UV spectra exhibit a strong NV line and a weak CIV line (Sion 2002, Szkody 2002).

Another possibility for the origin of the peculiar composition requires an evolved secondary whose external layers have been stripped off during episodes of mass loss. Computed evolutionary paths of binary systems can produce partially nuclear evolved secondaries prior to contact (Howell 2001), if the donor star is sufficiently massive (Haswell et al. 2002). This might explain the pathological CNO UV line ratios observed in the long period system AE Aqr (Mouchet et al. 2002), as it has been demonstrated by Schenker et al. (2002), but evolutionary models adapted for the orbital parameters of BY Cam have still to be computed.

Stronger constraints on the abundance values should be obtained from the H-like and He-like lines of C,N, and O which are accessible with XMM-Newton and Chandra. Indeed the first XMM-Newton RGS spectra of BY Cam show emission lines tentatively identified with NVI and NVII lines (Ramsay & Cropper 2002). Other hydrogen-like and helium-like lines of C and O are expected in the RGS range. Longer exposed spectra are needed to achieve a detailed model of the X-ray emitted plasma that would provide a good evaluation of the CNO abundance.

Acknowledgments. We are very grateful to Alain Lecavelier des Etangs for his helpful support in FUSE observing preparation and data reduction.