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# Probability of intrinsic time-arrow from information loss

## I Introduction

Both experiment and theory confirm that physical processes are time-reversal invariant in ‘simple’ systems. This invariance may eventually be lost if the system is chaotic, singular, of many degrees of freedom, or not isolated Zeh89 . It seems plausible now that time-reversal asymmetry (irreversibility) is always accompanied by some information loss. Yet, little is known quantitatively. The present work discusses an elementary informatic mechanism of irreversibility. It leads to a simple analytic expression for the asymmetric probability of the two possible directions of time.

Suppose we use *reference-time* $`t`$ to label the order of events but we leave open whether *physical-time* $`st`$ is passing with increasing or decreasing $`t`$, according to the respective *time-arrow* $`s=\pm `$. We make no apriori (extrinsic) assignment for $`s`$. The ambiguity is to be resolved by analyzing irreversible physical processes. We consider informatic irreversibility in a sense that the Shannon information changes by $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ along the process. We call the resulting aposteriori time-arrow *intrinsic*. It belongs to the given irreversible process. It would not exist in ‘empty space’ at all. In the spirit of the second law of thermodynamics, the physical entropy production $`s\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ must be positive, hence the intrinsic time-arrow is unique:

$$s=\mathrm{sign}(\mathrm{\Delta }I).$$
(1)
This assignment is only valid if the magnitude $`|\mathrm{\Delta }I|`$ is macroscopic which means that it is much bigger than $`1`$ bit. If, however, the irreversibility is weak then we have to be contented with a probabilistic intrinsic time-arrow. The main suggestion of our work is that this probabilistic time-arrow is a relevant concept and, furthermore, the probability $`P(s)`$ depends on the Shannon information change $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ at largely general conditions. I will consider the following relationship:

$$P(s)=\frac{1}{1+e^{s\mathrm{\Delta }I}}.$$
(2)
If we change the sign of the reference time $`(tt)`$ then also the sign of the information loss will change $`(\mathrm{\Delta }I\mathrm{\Delta }I)`$. Hence the above expression is *covariant* against time-reversal of the reference frame. Asymptotically it yields the unique thermodynamic arrow (1) if the information loss $`|\mathrm{\Delta }I|`$ is much greater than $`1`$ bit. On the contrary, the two time-arrows become equally probable for a reversible process where $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ is much less than $`1`$ bit bit . The suggested relationship is heuristic and lacks a general proof. It is intimately related to the fluctuation theorem Evaetal93 ; GalCoh95  proved for a particular class of irreversible processes Maeetal00 . On the other hand, it intends to reflect a fundamental meaning of the time-arrow in terms of information flow. I am going to prove that the relationship (2) follow from elementary statistical considerations provided we assume some further conditions to fulfill.

Sec. II presents the mathematical steps of Bayesian statistical inference adapted to the estimation of the time-arrow from the observed data. In Sec. III we discuss the inference from irreversible thermodynamic process, in Sec. IV from microscopic process. The time-arrow is derived from quantum irreversibility in Sec. V. The Appendix offers a short proof of the fluctuation theorem.

## II Bayesian time-arrow

Given a statistical system, let $`X`$ denote a certain random process in a given interval of reference-time $`t`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ denote the time-reversal of $`X`$. Assume that from the principles of statistical physics we can calculate the probability $`𝒫(X)`$ in physical-time! We also introduce the probability distribution $`\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)`$ of the same random process seen from a reference frame with reversed time:

$$\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)𝒫(\stackrel{~}{X}).$$
(3)
The conditional probability distribution of $`X`$ takes this form:

$$P(X|s)=\{\begin{array}{cc}𝒫(X)\hfill & s=+\hfill \\ \stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)\hfill & s=\hfill \end{array},$$
(4)
where $`s`$ is the apriori time-arrow. Prior to the irreversible process $`X`$, the distribution of $`s`$ is symmetric: $`P_0(s)=1/2`$. Hence the joint distribution of $`X`$ and $`s`$ is the following:

$$P(X,s)=P(X|s)P_0(s)=\frac{1}{2}\{\begin{array}{cc}𝒫(X)\hfill & s=+\hfill \\ \stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)\hfill & s=\hfill \end{array}.$$
(5)
According to the Bayes rule, the conditional aposteriori distribution of the time-arrow reads:

$$P(s|X)=\frac{1}{𝒫(X)+\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)}\times \{\begin{array}{cc}𝒫(X)\hfill & s=+\hfill \\ \stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)\hfill & s=\hfill \end{array},$$
(6)
which can be cast into the following covariant form:

$$P(s|X)=\frac{1}{1+e^{sD(X)}},$$
(7)
where:

$$D(X)=\mathrm{log}\frac{\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)}{𝒫(X)}.$$
(8)
This Bayesian estimate means that if 1) we know the apriori distribution $`𝒫(X)`$ of the random process $`X`$ in physical-time but 2) experimentally we observe either $`X`$ or $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ with equal probability since we have no apriori information regarding the relationship of our reference-time to the physical-time then 3) learning $`X`$ in the reference-time will lead us to the Bayesian probabilistic estimate $`P(s)`$ of the times-arrow.

Let us calculate the mean fidelity of the estimated time-arrow: from Eqs. (4-8) we shall obtain the following closed form:

$$F\underset{X}{}P(+|X)P(X|+)=\frac{1}{1+e^{D(X)}}_𝒫.$$
(9)
The expectation value should refer to $`𝒫(X)`$ which is the distribution in the physical frame. We can easily derive an ultimate covariant expression of the average Bayesian estimate:

$$P(s)=\frac{1}{1+e^{sD(X)}},$$
(10)
where the average refers already to the observed statistics and the form is valid in time-reversed reference frames as well.

## III Thermodynamic case

Let $`X`$ be a coarse-grained macroscopic random process in a given statistical system in the period $`[T,+T][t_1,t_2]`$ and let $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ be the same process seen from the time-reversed reference frame:

$`X`$ $`=\{X(t);`$ $`t_1tt_2\},`$
$`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ $`=\{X(t);`$ $`t_1tt_2\}.`$ (11)
Typically, $`X`$ can be an irreversible thermodynamic process $`X(t)`$. Assume that we know the irreversible entropy $`\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)`$ produced by the process $`X`$. Obviously, the time-reversed process ‘produces’ the same entropy with the opposite sign:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I(\stackrel{~}{X})=\mathrm{\Delta }I(X).$$
(12)
Let us introduce the following conditional distributions:

$`P(X|\xi )`$ $`=`$ $`𝒫(X)/P_1(\xi ),`$
$`P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(X)/P_2(\eta ),`$ (13)
where $`P_1(\xi ),P_2(\eta )`$ are the probability distributions of the extreme values $`\xi =X(t_1)`$ and $`\eta =X(t_2)`$, respectively. In the Appendix the reader finds an elementary proof of the fluctuation theorem Evaetal93 ; GalCoh95 ; Maeetal00  encoding the asymmetry of the time-reversal $`X\stackrel{~}{X}`$ into covariant equation:

$$P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta )=e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)}P(X|\xi ).$$
(14)
Accordingly, the violation of the time-reversal symmetry is exponentially increasing with the magnitude $`|\mathrm{\Delta }I|`$ of the irreversible entropy. We are going to show that, via the Bayesian statistics of Sec. II, the relationship (14) reproduces the heuristic probabilities (2) for the thermodynamic time-arrow.

Let us express the r.h.s. of Eq. (8) from Eqs. (III,14):

$$D(X)=\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)\mathrm{log}\frac{P_2(\eta )}{P_1(\xi )}.$$
(15)
For long enough periods, the r.h.s. is dominated by the information loss $`\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)`$, the second (boundary) term can be ignored (c.f.:Maeetal00 ). In this limit we can write the covariant Bayesian estimate (7) into this form:

$$P(s|X)=\frac{1}{1+e^{s\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)}},$$
(16)
which on average leads to the covariant distribution

$$P(s)=\frac{1}{1+e^{s\mathrm{\Delta }I(X)}}.$$
(17)
Finally, this yields the heuristic form (2) provided we can ignore the statistical fluctuations of the entropy production around its expectation value $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=I(X)`$. This is justified for common macroscopically irreversible processes where $`|\mathrm{\Delta }I|1`$.

## IV Microscopic case

Let us consider a statistical ensemble of $`n1`$ independent $`d`$state systems characterized by the probability distribution $`\rho ^i,i=1,2,\mathrm{},d`$. Let $`X`$ be an abstract random process as trivial as the transition from an initial microscopic ensemble state $`\xi `$ into a final one $`\eta `$, the time-reversed process $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ will be the opposite transition:

$`X=(\xi ,\eta ),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{X}=(\eta ,\xi ).`$ (18)
Let $`\rho _1^i`$ and $`\rho _2^i`$ be the systems’ probability distributions within the ensembles $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$, respectively. Then the change of Shannon information along the process $`X`$ reads:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }InI_2nI_1=n\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}\rho _2^i\mathrm{log}\rho _2^i+n\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}\rho _1^i\mathrm{log}\rho _1^i.$$
(19)
The process $`X`$ is irreversible if $`\mathrm{\Delta }I0`$ and we should assign the time-arrow $`s`$ so that $`s\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ be positive (1). The point is that the two samples $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$ may, by chance, not realize the asymmetry especially when the shapes of their probability distributions $`\rho _1^i`$ and $`\rho _2^i`$ do not much differ from each other.

Let us characterize the two constituting configurations of $`X=(\xi ,\eta )`$ by the multiplicities $`n_1^i`$ and $`n_2^i`$:

$`\xi =(n_1^i;i=1,2,\mathrm{},d),`$
$`\eta =(n_2^i;i=1,2,\mathrm{},d),`$ (20)
which follow independent multinomial distributions with the respective mean values

$`n_1^i=n\rho _1^i,`$
$`n_2^i=n\rho _2^i.`$ (21)
For large $`n`$ we can approximate the multinomial distributions by Gaussian functions:

$`𝒫(\xi ,\eta )=C\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[n_1^in\rho _1^i]^2}{2n\rho _1^i}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[n_2^in\rho _2^i]^2}{2n\rho _2^i}}\right),`$
$`𝒫(\eta ,\xi )=C\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[n_2^in\rho _1^i]^2}{2n\rho _1^i}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[n_1^in\rho _2^i]^2}{2n\rho _2^i}}\right).`$ (22)
We substitute these expressions into Eq. (8) to calculate $`D(\xi ,\eta )`$, then we calculate the mean value:

$$D=\frac{n}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}\left((\rho _2^i)^2(\rho _1^i)^2\right)\left(\frac{1}{\rho _2^i}\frac{1}{\rho _1^i}\right).$$
(23)
Suppose that $`D(\xi ,\eta )`$ is, for very large $`n`$, dominated by the mean value $`D`$ and fluctuations will thus be ignored. Hence the average Bayes estimate (10) reads:

$$P(s)=\frac{1}{1+e^{sD}}.$$
(24)
This could become equivalent with our heuristic proposal provided $`D=\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ which is apparently not true in general. I was looking for further conditions at least to achieve the asymptotic equivalence of $`D`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$. I concluded to the following elementary assumptions. First, the shapes $`\rho _1^i`$ and $`\rho _2^i`$ must be close to each other so that the lowest nontrivial order in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^i=\rho _2^i\rho _1^i`$ will be sufficient. Second, the statistics of *either* $`\xi `$ *or* $`\eta `$ must be totally random. This sets the apriori time-arrow for $`s=`$ or $`s=+`$, respectively. For concreteness, I consider the case $`s=+`$ and adopt flat distribution for $`\eta `$ cov :

$$\rho _2^i=\frac{1}{d}.$$
(25)
This second assumption is a necessary one, otherwise $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ contains a linear term in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^i`$ while $`D`$ does not. From Eqs. (19) and (23) the above two assumptions lead to the following results:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I=\frac{nd}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}(\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^i)^2,$$
(26)
and

$$D=nd\underset{i=1}{\overset{d}{}}(\mathrm{\Delta }\rho ^i)^2.$$
(27)
The result is surprising: $`D`$ has come out twice the information loss.

Mathematically, $`D`$ is the Kullback divergence between two neighboring ensembles $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$ and it should asymptotically coincide with the information loss between them. The reason of the anomalous factor $`2`$ is that we happened to use the Kullback divergence between the composite ensembles $`(\xi ,\eta )`$ and $`(\eta ,\xi )`$ instead of $`\xi `$ and $`\eta `$. This gives a hint how the factor $`2`$ would go away. It is interesting to note that the physical resolution has a typical quantum mechanical motivation. In microphysics it is conceptually impossible to observe the full quantity $`X=(\xi ,\eta )`$. If, e.g., the time-arrow is positive $`(s=+)`$ then $`\eta `$ is testable and $`\xi `$ is not because its observation would significantly perturb the initial preparation. And vice versa, when $`s=`$ then $`\eta `$ is testable and $`\xi `$ is not. Accordingly, we are going to change the concept of experimental data. In the concrete case, we forbid the observation of $`\xi `$. In this sense, we have to redefine the distribution of the observed quantities:

$`𝒫(\xi ,\eta )𝒫(\eta ){\displaystyle \underset{\xi }{}}𝒫(\xi ,\eta ),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(\xi ,\eta )\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(\eta ){\displaystyle \underset{\xi }{}}\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(\xi ,\eta ).`$ (28)
Repeating the calculation of the Kullback divergence in the leading order, inserting the flat values (25) for $`\rho _2^i`$, $`D`$ turns out to be half of the previous value (26). Thus in the given approximation we have obtained the identity

$$D=\mathrm{\Delta }I,$$
(29)
and confirmed the heuristic relationship (2).

## V Quantum case

Let us consider the statistical ensemble of $`n1`$ independent $`d`$state quantum systems where each one has the same density matrix $`\widehat{\rho }`$. Let $`X`$ be an abstract random process as trivial as the transition from an initial ensemble $`\widehat{\xi }`$ into a final one $`\widehat{\eta }`$, the time-reversed process $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ will be the opposite transition:

$`X=(\widehat{\xi },\widehat{\eta }),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{X}=(\widehat{\eta },\widehat{\xi }),`$ (30)
where

$`\widehat{\xi }`$ $`=\widehat{\rho }_1\widehat{\rho }_1\mathrm{}\widehat{\rho }_1\widehat{\rho }_1^n,`$
$`\widehat{\eta }`$ $`=\widehat{\rho }_2\widehat{\rho }_2\mathrm{}\widehat{\rho }_2\widehat{\rho }_2^n,`$ (31)
if $`\widehat{\rho }_1`$ and $`\widehat{\rho }_2`$ stand for the systems’ density matrices within the ensembles $`\widehat{\xi }`$ and $`\widehat{\eta }`$, respectively. The change of von Neumann information during the process $`X`$ reads:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }InI_2nI_1=n\mathrm{Tr}\left(\widehat{\rho }_2\mathrm{log}\widehat{\rho }_2\right)+n\mathrm{Tr}\left(\widehat{\rho }_1\mathrm{log}\widehat{\rho }_1\right).$$
(32)
The process $`X`$ is irreversible if $`\mathrm{\Delta }I0`$ and we should assign the time-arrow $`s`$ so that $`s\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ be positive (1). In order to $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ have a definite sign the two ensembles $`\widehat{\xi }`$ and $`\widehat{\eta }`$ should display experimentally significant asymmetry.

Quantum theory says that if the reference-time is the physical time $`(s=+)`$ then we can not test the ensemble $`\widehat{\xi }`$ but the ensemble $`\widehat{\eta }`$. And in the opposite case $`(s=)`$ the ensemble $`\widehat{\xi }`$ is testable and $`\widehat{\eta }`$ is not. We see that the estimation of the time-arrow $`s`$ boils down to the statistical decision whether the actually observed ensemble is $`\widehat{\xi }=\widehat{\rho }_1^n`$ or $`\widehat{\eta }=\widehat{\rho }_2^n`$ whereas both alternatives have equal apriori likelihoods.

We can mechanically follow the Bayes method of the previous chapters. Note, however, the typical quantum informatic arguments: this is the way I approached the issue originally.

The two collective states (V) reside in a Hilbert space of dimension $`d^n`$. According to the quantum counterpart of Shannon’s code theory Sch95 , in the large $`n`$ limit such collective states become asymptotically equivalent with totally random states restricted for given subspaces. Our states (V) become random states in subspaces $`\widehat{E}_1`$ and $`\widehat{E}_2`$:

$`\widehat{\xi }`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{\rho }_1^ne^{nI_1}\widehat{E}_1,`$
$`\widehat{\eta }`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{\rho }_2^ne^{nI_2}\widehat{E}_2,`$ (33)
where $`\widehat{E}_1`$ and $`\widehat{E}_2`$ are Hermitian projectors of dimensions $`e^{nI_1}`$ and $`e^{nI_2}`$, respectively. The dimensions depend on the von Neumann entropies. We are interested in the situations where the experimental distinguishability of the above two ensembles would exclusively depend on the difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }I=nI_2nI_1`$ of the informations. This is obviously not true in general because the distinguishability will depend e.g. on the overlap $`\mathrm{Tr}(\widehat{E}_1\widehat{E}_2)`$. Nonetheless, the asymptotic forms (V) suggest simple conditions to achieve our goal. Suppose that one of the ensembles, say $`\widehat{\eta }`$, is of maximum information:

$$\widehat{\rho }_2=\frac{\widehat{1}}{d},$$
(34)
which means that $`I_2=\mathrm{log}d`$ and $`\widehat{E}_2=\widehat{1}^n`$. The ensemble $`\widehat{\eta }`$ is totally random over the whole collective Hilbert space of dimension $`d^n`$. The overlap between $`\widehat{E}_1`$ and $`\widehat{E}_2`$ becomes trivial. The information loss is always positive and the true time-arrow is thus $`s=+`$. But we have to find it by deciding whether we have tested the ensemble $`\widehat{\xi }`$ or $`\widehat{\eta }`$ which are of equal apriori likelihoods.

Now the experimental distinguishability of $`\widehat{\xi }`$ and $`\widehat{\eta }`$ is already trivial. All we have to do is to define $`\widehat{E}_1`$ as observable and to observe it! If the tested ensemble is $`\widehat{\xi }`$ itself then we get $`1`$ with certainty since $`\mathrm{Tr}(\widehat{E}_1\widehat{\xi })=1`$. If the observed ensemble is the fully random $`\widehat{\eta }`$ then we get $`1`$ with probability $`\mathrm{Tr}(\widehat{E}_1\widehat{\eta })=e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I}`$ and we get $`0`$ with the complementer probability. As we see, the complete experimental statistics is determined by the information loss $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$.

Let us turn to the Bayes method of Sec. II to estimate the time-arrow $`s`$. As we suggested above, the observed data is the value $`E_1=\{0,1\}`$ of the quantum observable $`\widehat{E}_1`$. The probability $`𝒫(E_1)`$ stands for its distribution in the reference time with time-arrow $`s=+`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(E_1)`$ stands for its distribution in the reversed time $`s=`$. In the preceding paragraph we established their values:

$`𝒫(E_1)`$ $`=`$ $`E_1e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I}+(1E_1)(1e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I}),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(E_1)`$ $`=`$ $`E_1.`$ (35)
Applying the steps of Sec. II mechanically, first we write Eq. (8) into this form:

$$e^{D(E_1)}=\frac{\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(E_1)}{𝒫(E_1)},$$
(36)
which is then substituted into the expression (9) of the mean fidelity, yielding:

$$F=\frac{1}{1+\stackrel{~}{𝒫}(E_1)/𝒫(E_1)}_𝒫=\frac{1}{1+e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I}}$$
(37)
We have used Eqs. (V) to calculate the average. The result implies exactly the form (2) for the probability of intrinsic time-arrow in function of the information loss.

## VI Concluding remarks

I proposed a heuristic probability distribution (2) for the time-arrow intrinsic to a given irreversible process. The proposed probability is solely a function of the information loss $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$. The idea itself comes from the the phenomenological fluctuation theorem. Indeed, the concrete form of my proposal can easily be confirmed for the intrinsic time-arrow of standard irreversible processes, at least in the limit of macroscopic entropy production $`\mathrm{\Delta }I1`$. My basic goal, however, was the construction of whatever trivial microscopic process which could underly the proposed dependence on $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$. I analyses the irreversible process of the simplest possible structure in classical and quantum versions. The quantum version confirmed the proposed probabilistic time-arrow. Let me summarize this central result.

1) Suppose we know that (in physical time) a quantum ensemble $`\widehat{\xi }`$ of $`n1`$ identical systems of given (also known to us) state transforms into an ensemble $`\widehat{\eta }`$ of $`n`$ totally random systems. 2) Suppose we do not know at all whether our reference-time is the physical-time or not, and whether the ‘resulting ensemble’ of the above process has been $`\widehat{\eta }`$ or $`\widehat{\xi }`$. 3) We test the ‘resulting ensemble’ and Bayesian inference will give us the time-arrow with fidelity

$$F=\frac{1}{1+e^{|\mathrm{\Delta }I|}}.$$

An infite number of conceptual issues could be raised against the presented ideas. I mention and discuss only two. First, the assignment of a non-trivial intrinsic time-arrow to a local irreversible process is a speculation. Nature might retain the same universal time-arrow for the whole Universe independently of the measure or direction of local information flows. Yet, we do not know if Nature is that conservative indeed. We learned from Einstein that Nature delegates the issues of local geometry to local physical systems. I adopted the hypothesis that this happens with time-arrow as well. Second, the proposed confirmation of the time-arrow probability includes Bayesian inference. Many would say that inference is subjective. The obtained probability is also subjective. Nonetheless, famous arguments using inference have been used earlier to confirm objective statistics of quantized fields BohRos33 . It is, furthermore, a common knowledge that the maximum-likelihood inference of the intensive thermodynamic parameters confirms their true equilibrium fluctuations in Gibbs ensembles.

The present work is an attempt to find universal expressions for the hypothetic intrinsic time-arrow. There is a hint of the information loss to play the key role. This does not mean that we can already claim an experimental significance which should, of course, be inevitable after all. But theory of intrinsic time opens a series of natural questions to study in the future and there is apparently a promise of further analytic results.

## Acknowledgment(s)

I am grateful to Hans-Thomas Elze and to the sponsors of the workshop ”DICE 2002” for the invitation to talk in Piombino and to contribute to this volume. My research was also supported by the Hungarian OTKA Grant No. 032640.

## Appendix

Let $`X(t)`$ denote a thermodynamic variable of equilibrium value $`\overline{X}`$, where $`\lambda `$ is the relaxation rate, and $`\gamma `$ is the Onsager kinetic coefficient. The time-dependent fluctuations of $`X(t)`$ are governed by the phenomenological Langevin equation:

$$\frac{dX(t)}{dt}=\lambda (X(t)\overline{X})+\sqrt{2\gamma }w(t)$$
(38)
with the standard white-noise $`w(t)`$. The expression

$$\frac{dI}{dt}=\frac{\lambda }{\gamma }(\overline{X}X)\frac{dX}{dt}$$
(39)
will be the local rate of irreversible entropy production (information loss) along the process $`X(t)`$ (see, e.g., in Landau-Lifshitz LanLif82 , or in Dioetal96 ). According to Onsager and Machlup OnsMac53 , the conditional probability distribution of the process $`X=\{X(t);TtT\}`$ at fixed initial value $`\xi =X(T)`$ and for equilibrium value $`\overline{X}`$ takes this functional Gaussian form:

$$P(X|\xi ;\overline{X})=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{4\gamma }_T^T\left[\frac{dX(t)}{dt}+\lambda (X(t)\overline{X})\right]^2𝑑t\right).$$
(40)
We shall consider *driven* thermodynamic processes which can be described by the Eqs. (38-40) with time-dependent equilibrium values $`\{\overline{X}(t);TtT\}`$. For convenience of forthcoming calculations let us write down the distribution functional of the driven process:

$$P(X|\xi ;\overline{X})=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{4\gamma }_T^T\left[\frac{dX(t)}{dt}+\lambda (X(t)\overline{X}(t))\right]^2𝑑t\right).$$
(41)
Obviously the above equations assume physical time $`t`$. Let us express the conditional distribution of the time-reversed process $`\stackrel{~}{X}`$ starting from $`\stackrel{~}{X}(T)=\eta `$, driven by the time-reversed function $`\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}}`$. Namely, we replace $`X,\xi ,\overline{X}`$ in Eq. (41) by $`\stackrel{~}{X},\eta ,\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}}`$, respectively:

$$P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta ;\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}})=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{4\gamma }_T^T\left[\frac{d\stackrel{~}{X}(t)}{dt}+\lambda (\stackrel{~}{X}(t)\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}}(t))\right]^2𝑑t\right).$$
(42)
Now we change the variable $`t`$ in the integrand for $`t`$ and insert the relations:

$`\stackrel{~}{X}(t)X(t),`$
$`\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}}(t)\overline{X}(t),`$ (43)
leading to:

$$P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta ;\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}})=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{4\gamma }_T^T\left[\frac{dX(t)}{dt}\lambda (X(t)\overline{X}(t))\right]^2𝑑t\right).$$
(44)
(Recall that this expression would be the conditional distribution of the process had we observed it in the time-reversed frame.) The logarithm of the physical distribution (41) over the time-reversed one (44) will result in a remarkable expression:

$$\mathrm{log}\frac{P(X|\xi ;\overline{X})}{P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta ;\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}})}=\frac{\lambda }{\gamma }_T^T(\overline{X}(t)X(t))𝑑X(t).$$
(45)
It follows from Eq. (39) that the r.h.s. is equal to the total entropy production (information loss) of the driven process:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I(X;\overline{X})=\frac{\lambda }{\gamma }_T^T(\overline{X}(t)X(t))𝑑X(t).$$
(46)
This and the preceding equation yield the fluctuation theorem Evaetal93 -Maeetal00 :

$$P(\stackrel{~}{X}|\eta ;\stackrel{~}{\overline{X}})=e^{\mathrm{\Delta }I(X;\overline{X})}P(X|\xi ;\overline{X}).$$
(47)


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# Untitled Document

hist-ph/0302041

P.A.M. Dirac and the Discovery of Quantum Mechanics

Kurt Gottfried111 Newman Laboratory, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853; kg13@cornell.edu
Cornell Colloquium, January 20, 2003

The occasion for this colloquium is that Dirac was born 100 years ago last August. But why am I giving this talk, you should ask? Well, I took my first quantum mechanics course 51 years ago, and struggled with his great book. And having always been interested in the history of physics, I also browsed through Dirac’s original papers. Ever since I have been in deep awe of Dirac. Recently I was dismayed that no attention was being given to his centenary, except perhaps in the UK. I was therefore both astonished and pleased to receive an invitation from Nature last summer to write a short piece on the occasion.222 Nature 419, 117 (2002) Being a pedant, I then spent a lot of time reading Dirac’s papers and biographical materials. Nature is aimed at a broad scientific audience, and on one page and without equations I could not begin to give an understandable depiction of Dirac’s accomplishments. Last fall the opportunity arose to put what I learned into a physics colloquium. After giving the talk twice (in Helsinki and Copenhagen) I was disatisfied, so this is a modified attempt.

At the outset I want to make a few general remarks. Dirac is, without doubt, one of the great theoretical physicist in the history of our subject; among the founders of “modern” physics his stature is comparable to that of Bohr and Heisenberg, though not Einstein. Dirac had an astounding physical intuition combined with the ability to invent mathematics whenever he needed it to create new physics. His greatest papers are, for long stretches, argued with inexorable logic, but at crucial points there is an illogical jump into entirely new terrain. Among the inventors of quantum mechanics, only deBroglie, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac wrote breakthrough papers that have such illogical and brilliantly successful long jumps. Dirac was also a great stylist. In my view his book belongs to the great literature of the 20th Century; it reminds me of Kafka. When we speak quantum mechanics we use a language that owes a great deal to Dirac’s writings.

First, a few words about Paul Dirac’s life. He was born on August 8, 1902, in Bristol. His father was Swiss and his mother from Cornwall. Dirac’s father was a domestic tyrant: he forced his children to speak to him only in French, forbade most social contacts, and compelled his children to pursue studies in which they were not interested. Paul’s older brother committed suicide and Paul was exceptionally introverted and reclusive even by the standards of theoretical physics. Dirac’s difficult relationship with his father is evident from the fact that he invited only his mother to accompany him to Stockholm when he won the Nobel Prize in 1933.

Dirac graduated in electrical engineering from Bristol at the age of 19. He won a scholarship to Cambridge but could not afford to accept it. He stayed on in his parent’s house, took a second degree in mathematics at Bristol, and then won a better scholarship which allowed him to move to Cambridge in 1923 where he became a research student of R.H. Fowler, a prominent theorist. Dirac was to stay at Cambridge until his retirement in 1969. He then accepted a professor ship at Florida State University, and died in Florida in 1984.

Two recollections by his colleagues will give you some idea of his personality:

* Igor Tamm: He seems to talk only to children, and they have to be under ten.
* Neville Mott: Dirac is rather like one’s idea of Gandhi. He is quite indifferent to cold, discomfort, food, etc. … He is quite incapable of pretending to think anything that he did not really think. In the age of Galileo he would have been a very contented martyr.

When Dirac won the Nobel Prize, he at first wanted to refuse it because he was afraid of the publicity. He changed his mind after Rutherford warned him that turning it down would produce far more publicity.

Although Dirac focused on physics obsessively, he loved to travel and to walk in the mountains, where he displayed exceptional endurance. He travelled around the world three times, first in 1929 together with Heisenberg from Yellowstone to Japan. They were both becoming quite famous by then, and the press wanted an interview when the boat docked in Japan. Heisenberg knowing how shy his colleague was, told the reporters Dirac was unavailable even though he was standing right beside him.

I now turn to physics. Dirac’s most famous work, the Dirac equation discovered in 1928 and the prediction of anti-matter in 1931, are known to all of you. But as I have learned, many physicists are unaware of how crucial Dirac’s earlier contributions were – that he played a key role in the discovery and development of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and all by himself developed quantum electrodynamics. Given the limited time available, I will concentrate on Dirac’s early work. I do, however, want to give you a bird’s eye view of his career, shown on this slide. I’ll comment on most of the entries later.

* November 1925 – reformulation of Heisenberg’s groundbreaking paper: canonical quantization, connection to Poisson brackets – puts him suddenly at the cutting edge of theoretical physics \[overlap with Born, Heisenberg and Jordan\]
* August 1926 – identical particles, symmetric and antisymmetric wave functions (Fermi-Dirac statistics) \[overlap with Fermi and Heisenberg\]
* December 1926 – transformation theory – his favorite paper \[overlap with Jordan\]
* February 1927 – quantum theory of radiation, emission and absorption
* April 1927 – scattering of light
* January 1928 – Dirac equation
* December 1929 – proposes hole theory, proton as hole
* 1930 – 1st edition of Principles of Quantum Mechanics
* September 1931 – anti-matter, in same paper as magnetic monopole
* 1932 – appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (once held by Newton)
* 1933 – Lagrangian in quantum mechanics (forerunner to Feynman path integral)
* 1933 – Nobel Prize – shared with Schrödinger
* 1934 – vacuum polarization, charge renormalization
* 1937-38 – large numbers in cosmology

For the discovery of quantum mechanics, 1925 was the watershed year. At that point the following facts and folklore were well established:

1. The Bohr-Einstein relation between atomic energy levels and the frequency of emitted radiation, $`W_nW_m=\mathrm{}\omega _{nm}`$. From a classical viewpoint this is deeply mysterious because the radiation should have the individual orbital frequencies, not their differences.
2. Bohr’s Correspondence Principle: results from quantum theory reduce to classical physics in limit of large quantum numbers.
3. Einstein’s relations between emission and absorption rates:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{abs}}=|A_{nm}|^2\overline{N}_\omega \mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{em}}=|A_{nm}|^2[\overline{N}_\omega +1]$$

where $`\overline{N}_\omega `$ is the photon spectral density and $`A_{nm}`$ is amplitude of mysterious “virtual oscillators” related to the electronic motions of the initial and final stationary states in $`nm`$. Spontaneous emission was a puzzle until Dirac’s theory of radiation in 1927
4. The Pauli exclusion principle and electron spin
5. Particle-Wave duality: advocated by Einstein for light since 1905 with ever stronger arguments, but controversial until discovery of Compton scattering in 1923. de Broglie’s matter wave hypothesis of 1924 played no role in development of quantum mechanics until Schrödinger’s work in early 1926.

Heisenberg’s fundamental step in June 1925 was to dismiss the classical concepts of kinematics, not just dynamics. Here are excerpts from the opening of his paper:

> “It has become common to characterize \[the\] failure of the quantum-theoretic rules as deviations from classical mechanics .. This has, however, little meaning when one realizes that the Einstein-Bohr frequency condition already represents such a complete departure from classical mechanics … it seems sensible to discard all hope of observing … the position and period of \[atomic\] electrons, and to concede that the partial agreement of the quantum rules with experience is more or less fortuitous. \[We here\] try to establish a theoretical quantum mechanics, analogous to classical mechanics, but in which only relations between observable quantities occur. … We may pose the question in its simplest form: If instead of a classical quantity $`x(t)`$ we have a quantum theoretic quantity, what quantum theoretic quantity will appear in place of $`x(t)]^2`$ ?”

Heisenberg raised this strange question because he had long puzzled how to treat the anharmonic oscillator in quantum theory, which of course involves non-linear expressions in the kinematic variables.

In my previous attempts to tell this story, I spent considerable time on Heisenberg’s first paper, but have decided that this was unwise in a talk about Dirac because this paper is very difficult to follow even in hindsight. van der Waerden, a powerful mathematician who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and published an excellent historical analysis in 1967, admits to not being able to follow at critical points even though he had the benefit of interviews with Heisenberg.

So let me only say that Heisenberg replaced any dynamical variable $`A(t)`$ by an array of complex transition amplitudes

$$A(t)n|A|m\mathrm{exp}[i(E_nE_m)t/\mathrm{}],$$

i.e., he assumed that the time dependence was given by the Bohr-Einstein relation between frequency and energy. (I use the term ‘array’ because Heisenberg did not know about matrices until Born later told him that he was using them!) He then argued that the array for $`AB`$ is

$$n|AB|m=\underset{k}{}n|A|kk|B|mn|BA|m$$

He showed that his scheme led to established results concerning radiative transitions (e.g., the dipole sum rule) and the spectrum of the anharmonic oscillator.

Heisenberg was convinced he had done something very important, but thought this non-commutativity was a flaw that would have to be repaired. He was very aware of having made logical jumps, and in private referred to this work as “fabricating quantum mechanics.”

Heisenberg gave a seminar in Cambridge in July 1925, right after he had done what I’ve just sketched. He did not mention this work, but said something about it to Fowler, who asked him to send proof sheets when they became available. Dirac was absent during Heisenberg’s visit. The proofs arrived at the end of August, and Fowler gave them to Dirac with the question “What do you think of this? I shall be glad to hear” scrawled atop the first page.

At that time the cutting edge work on the quantum theory was being done in Germany and Copenhagen by a small group of superbly gifted people who were in close and continuous contact with each other: Born, Heisenberg, Kramers and Pauli were the leading figures, with Bohr as their father confessor. Although Cambridge was the leading center of experimental physics, England had contributed little to the quantum theory. Thus Dirac was doubly isolated – by his own personality and by not being in the Continental loop. When his first paper on quantum mechanics arrived in Germany it was a total surprise; Max Born later recalled this “as one of the great surprises of my scientific life, for the name Dirac was completely unknown to me. ”

After pondering the Heisenberg proof sheets for two weeks, Dirac decided that its essence was that “that equations of classical mechanics are not in any way at fault but that the mathematical operations by which results are deduced from them require modification.” Quantum mechanics, he proposed, could be inferred from classical mechanics by redefining the canonical variables as q-numbers that obey a non-commutative “quantum algebra,” in contrast to ordinary numbers which he called c-numbers.333The terms q- and c-number appear only in Dirac’s next paper which I do not mention here. Dirac’s most important new result (one that Born & Jordan would not have) was that the commutator of two q-numbers is proportional to the q-number that corresponds to their classical Poisson bracket. He first had this idea while on one of his long weekly Sunday walks, but was unsure that he really remembered what a Poisson bracket is. He then spent a restless night waiting for the library to open. The next morning he knew that he had broken into the safe.

I will only give a very vague impression of what Dirac did in this first paper. He started from

$$\underset{k}{}n|A|kk|B|m$$

By the correspondence principle this should have a classical meaning for large $`n`$ and $`m`$, where nearly diagonal terms should dominate. By Taylor expanding about the diagonal he found

$$(ABBA)i\mathrm{}\underset{i}{}\left(\frac{A}{q_i}\frac{B}{p_i}\frac{B}{q_i}\frac{A}{p_i}\right)$$

Dirac’s basic assumption was that this relation is not just valid in the classical limit, but that the commutator of two q-numbers is rigorously equal to $`i\mathrm{}`$ times the q-number corresponding to their classical Poisson bracket. This then provided a complete method for constructing quantum mechanics. In particular, if $`H`$ is the Hamiltonian then any q-number $`A`$ obeys the equation of motion

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}A(t)=A(t)HHA(t).$$

This is now called Heisenberg’s equation of motion, but it does not appear in Heisenberg first paper. The first appearance is in Dirac’s paper, and in Born & Jordan, though in the latter only in the representation that diagonalized $`H`$. Both papers note that the Bohr-Einstein frequency condition is a consequence.

Dirac submitted this first paper to the Royal Society on Nov. 7, 1925, not knowing that Born and Jordan had submitted a paper whose most important results were identical to his less than two weeks before. Born & Jordan and Dirac both discovered canonical quantization, with which Heisenberg’s rather fragmentary scheme was transformed into a self-contained and consistent theory closely related to classical Hamiltonian mechanics. An amazingly detailed and extensive description of the theory was first given in the very important paper by Born, Heisenberg and Jordan completed in mid-November 1925.

In January 1926, Schrödinger’s papers on wave mechanics started to appear. At first Heisenberg, Dirac et al were hostile to wave mechanics because they thought it gave the misleading impression that the classical concepts of continuity and and visualizability had survived the revolution, whereas they beieved that it was a central virtue of their abstract theory that it did not evoke such delusions. Soon enough – by the summer of 1926 – both Dirac and Heisenberg found that wave functions were invaluable in dealing with many body problems. Their papers were the first to recognize that indistinguishability has profound consequences in quantum mechanics that have no counterpart whatever in classical mechanics.

Heisenberg attacked the two-electron problem, helium, which had totally defeated the Old Quantum Theory. He discovered that the Pauli principle requires the two-electron wave function to be antisymmetric, and that the large splittings between spin triplets and singlets was a purely electrostatic effect due to the correlations imposed on the wave functions by antisymmetry.

Dirac, at the same time, produced a broader analysis. He showed that particles obeying Bose-Einstein statistics must be in symmetric states while those obeying the Pauli principle must be in antisymmetric states. Among other things, the paper has what later became known as a Slater determinant. Unaware of Fermi’s somewhat earlier derivation of the Fermi distribution (which never mentioned wave functions or antisymmetry), Dirac also derived the Fermi distribution.

On February 2, 1927, Dirac submitted to the Royal Society “The Quantum Theory of the Emission and Absorption of Radiation.” This is the birth of quantum electrodynamics – QED. By then about one and a half years had passes since Heisenberg’s first paper. Considering the ability of the pioneers, the speed with which they had advanced, and the centrality of the radiation problem, this was a long wait. In any modern text on quantum mechanics, the theory of the field and of the simplest radiative processes is among the most straightforward chapters. So why did it take so long, and why were Dirac’s brilliant contemporaries so surprised and impressed by this paper?

The reason is that the theoretical machine did not yet have nearly enough horsepower to handle this problem. Those working with Schrödinger’s equation only used the coordinate representation, and the matrix mechanicians only used the representation in which the Hamiltonian is diagonal. No one had a formulation that could handle processes in which the number of degrees of freedom change. A more powerful formalism not so tied to classical mechanics was needed to describe radiation, and Dirac provide this with his transformation theory, sent to publication exactly two months before the radiation paper.

The paper on transformation theory was Dirac’s favorite – he often referred to it as “my darling,” not the sort of word he was in the habit of using. The paper’s title is “The physical interpretation of the quantum dynamics” because its central goal is the generalization of the Born interpretation of the Schrödinger wave function to arbitray scalar products between states, to use today’s terms. As to the paper’s form, the theory had never before this been expressed in so elegant, general, compact and abstract a form – the form with which we are familiar today. It is an easy read for us, but most of Dirac’s contemporaries found it formidably abstract, and the style did not become popular until several decades later. Here also $`\delta (x)`$ is introduced and used to great advantage:

> “…of course, $`\delta (x)`$ is not a proper function of $`x`$, but can be regarded only as the limit of a certain sequence of functions. All the same one can use $`\delta (x)`$ as though it were a proper function for practically all purposes …without getting incorrect results. One can also use \[derivatives\] of $`\delta (x)`$ which are even …less “proper” than $`\delta (x)`$ itself.”

Let’s look at a few of the equations from this paper:444 Dirac did not use abstract vectors in Hilberts space, i.e., bras and kets, until much later.

$$(\alpha |A|\beta )=(\alpha |\xi )𝑑\xi (\xi |A|\eta )𝑑\eta (\eta |\beta )$$

$$(q^{}|p^n|\alpha )=\left(i\mathrm{}\frac{}{q^{}}\right)^n(q^{}|\alpha )$$

$$(q^{}|H|q^{\prime \prime })𝑑q^{\prime \prime }(q^{\prime \prime }|\alpha )=i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}(q^{}|\alpha )$$

Here $`A`$ is any q-number, $`\alpha ,\beta ,\xi ,\eta `$ the eigenvalues of $`any`$ set of compatible observables, whether continuous, discrete or both, and if the system is composed of particles $`q^{},q^{\prime \prime }`$ are coordinate eigenvalues. Among other things, he thus showed that for stationary states Schrödinger’s wave function is the transformation function from the representation in which the energy is diagonal to the one in which coordinates are diagonal. Furthermore, he showed that if a system is in the state represented by the wave function

$$\psi _\alpha (q^{})(q^{}|\alpha )$$

the probability that an arbitrary q-number $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ will display its eigenvalues $`\gamma `$ in some range $`\gamma _1\gamma \gamma _2`$ is

$$P_\psi =_{\gamma _1}^{\gamma _2}d\gamma |(\gamma |\alpha )|^2$$

After hearing Dirac’s first presentation of transformation theory, Heisenberg in a letter to Pauli wrote of Dirac’s “extraordinarily grandiose generalization” of transformation theory.” Jordan, I should say, also developed transformation theory at the very same time. But transformation theory was the last major contribution by Dirac to be discovered simultaneously by someone else. Starting with radiation theory, he led the advance into relativistic quantum mechanics.

Dirac’s 1927 paper on radiation theory contains:

* the first derivation of spontaneous emission from first principles
* the first formulation of second quantization
* the derivation of the Golden Rule of time dependent perturbation theory555 Here Dirac devised the well-known hocus-pocus leading to a rate proportional to time; those who have found this familiar derivation disquieting will be pleased to learn that Heisenberg reported spending considerable effort to understanding the result in his correspondence with Pauli.

The paper consists of long strings of “simple” steps, interrupted by several logical jumps. Again I’ll show some of the crucial equations and comment on them. He starts very innocently with an arbitrary Schrödinger equation in an unspecified representation:

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}\mathrm{\Psi }=(H_0+V)\mathrm{\Psi }$$

$$(H_0E_n)\psi _n=0,\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{n}{}a_n(t)\psi _n$$

$$i\mathrm{}\dot{a}_n=\underset{m}{}V_{nm}a_m(\mathrm{interaction}\mathrm{representation})$$

“Because” the system is composed of $`N`$ indistinguishable partices, he does not normalize $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ to 1 but jumps to

$$\underset{n}{}|a_n|^2=N|a_n|^2=N^{}=0,1,\mathrm{}\text{integers !}$$

Then he define the new Hamiltonian

$$=\underset{nm}{}a_n^{}V_{nm}a_m$$

in which $`a_n`$ and $`i\mathrm{}a_n^{}`$ are canonically conjugate varibales, and still c-numbers! Then he jumps to Second Quantization: define q-numbers

$$b_n=a_n\mathrm{exp}(iE_n/\mathrm{})[b_n,b_m^{}]=\delta _{nm}$$

Then the Schrödinger equation can be written in the representation in which the operators $`b_n^{}b_n`$ are diagonal with integer eigenvalues $`N^{}`$:

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}\mathrm{\Psi }(N_1^{}\mathrm{};t)=\underset{nm}{}V_{nm}\sqrt{N_n^{}}\sqrt{N_m^{}+1}\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{}N_n^{}1\mathrm{}N_m^{}+1\mathrm{};t)$$

The total number of particles is still conserved! Dirac assumes that the $`n=0`$ state where a single particle has energy and momentum zero, and is unobservable per se, has an infinite number of photons in it, all those which have already disappeared in absorption or that are still to appear in emission! This motivates the last jump:

$$N_0^{}\mathrm{}V_{0m}0V_{0m}\sqrt{N_0^{}}v_m(\mathrm{finite})$$

The interaction between the radiation field and matter, he also showed, has the form

$$V=\mathrm{const}.\underset{m}{}\dot{X}_m(b_m+b_m^{}),\mathrm{i}.\mathrm{e}.,V_{nm}=0(n,m0)$$

where $`X`$ is the dipole moment of the source. This is the familiar second-quantized form of the interaction (in the dipole approximation). Use of the Golden Rule then led him to the rates for absorption and emission, and the Einstein relations between them.

Dirac emphasized that his theory displayed the complementarity of the photon and wave descriptions:

> “There is thus complete harmony between the wave and photon description of the interaction. We shall actually build the theory up from the photon point of view, and show that the Hamiltonian transforms naturally into a form which resembles that for waves.”

This is an especially important illustration of Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity, which was only formulated by Bohr later that year and reported at the Como Conference in the fall of 1927.666Dirac wrote this paper in Copenhagen, and it was submitted to the Royal Society by Bohr.

It is remarkable that while Dirac invented the mathematical description of particle creation and destruction, he had not yet accepted the concept:

> “When a light quantum is absorbed it can be considered to jump into the zero state, and when one is emitted it can be considered to jump from the zero state to one in which it is in physical evidence, so that it appears to have been created.”

The idea that the vacuum contains an infinite number of particles would be used by him again in hole theory.

Two months later Dirac published the rather complicated derivation of the Kramers-Heisenberg dispersion formula for scattering of light by extending the theory to second order in the perturbation. And two months after that (i.e., June 1927) a general theory of collisions, including resonance scattering, in which he derives an expression of the Breit-Wigner type, including a shift of the level.

In October 1927, at the age of 25 and just two years after he first appeared on the scene, Dirac was the youngest participant in the famous and highly exclusive Solvay Congress where Bohr and Einstein began their long debate about the foundations of quantum mechanics. After a discussion at the congress with Dirac and Heisenberg of philosophy and religion, in which Dirac expressed his distaste for such ponderings, Pauli, with his famous acerbic whit, concluded that “Dirac’s religion is that there is no God, and Dirac is His Prophet.”

By this time Dirac’s genius was widely recognized and held in awe by his stellar contemporaries. Not only his astonishing originality produced this attitude, but also his reclusive demeanor and the extreme economy with which he communicated.777 In a conversation with Niels Bohr in 1958 (on BCS theory) he told me that “Dirac is the strangest man who ever visited my institute.” When I asked why, Bohr explained that when at some point he once asked Dirac what he was working on, Dirac answered that he was trying to take the square-root of a matrix. Bohr recalled “I wondered why such a brilliant man is working on such a silly problem. And then, somewhat later, the proof sheets arrived, and he had not even told me he was trying to take the square-root of the unit matrix!!” Some examples of comments and recollections from that period by physicists ranging from student to the most famous will illustrate this.

> Christian Moller: “… in those years we \[young students\] looked into each new issue of Proc. Roy. Soc. to see if there was a new paper by Dirac … Often he sat alone in the innermost room of the library in a most uncomfortable position … He could spend a whole day in the same position, writing an entire article, slowly and without ever crossing anything out.”
>
> Schrödinger to Bohr, during a visit to Copenhagen in the winter of 1926-27: “Dirac has a completely original way of thinking, which – precisely for this reason – will yield the most valuable results, hidden to the rest of us. But he has no idea how difficult his papers are for normal human beings.”
>
> Einstein to Ehrenfest, mid-1926: “I have trouble with Dirac, this balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful.”

I will finish by very briefly summarizing Dirac’s most outstanding subsequent contributions to physics which, as you of course know, are more original and famous than those that I have described:888 For a very recent discussion of Dirac’s work on General Relativity, see S. Deser, gr-qc/0301097, 1/23/003.

* The Dirac Equation, January 1928. Before then Klein, Gordon and others had proposed a relativistic wave equation second order in time. Dirac found this unacceptable because transformation theory had convinced him that the quantum state at any given time suffices to specify the subsequent state. This led to him to his first order equation. He demonstrated that it accounted for the electron’s magnetic moment, and shortly afterwards it was shown that the Dirac equation reproduces the Sommerfeld formula for fine structure in hydrogen.
* Hole Theory, December 1929. All relativist equations have negative energy solutions which cannot be removed without unacceptable consequences, as several people proved. Dirac then proposed that his equation describes a many particle system, and that in the ground state all negative energy levels are filled in accordance with the Pauli principle. If a negative energy state is empty, the hole appears as a positively charged object of positive energy, which he identified with the proton. At that time everything was believed to be made of electrons and protons, including nuclei, and inventing new particles was de facto verboten.
* Charge Conjugation. In The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930), pp. 255-56, Dirac proved by the argument we use to this day that the negative energy solutions can be transformed into positive energy solutions of opposite charge and the same mass by a unitary symmetry transformation. He still identifies these with protons, in the hope that interactions between the filled holes would account for the huge mass difference. Oppenheimer showed that the lifetime of hydrogen would be extremely short because of electron-proton annihilation; Weyl proved that the theory must have complete symmetry between $`e`$ and $`e`$, and concluded that the theory is therefore in deep trouble. Finally:
* Anti-Matter September 1931. “A hole, if there were one, would be a new kind of particle, unknown to experimental physics, having the same mass and opposite charge to an electron. We may call such a particle an anti-electron.”
I do not know of any other fundamental (and successful) prediction based purely on faith in theory, for there was not a shred of evidence that called for anti-particles. This paper also predicts anti-protons.
* Magnetic Monopole. In the same paper as anti-matter, Dirac shows that such poles, if they exist, would compel all charges to be integer multiples of a basic unit. This is the first proposal of a quantum states with non-trivial topolgy.

Bibliography

Original Papers and Correspondence

* The Collected Works of P.A.M. Dirac 1924-1948, R.H. Dalitz (ed.), Cambridge (1995)
* W. Pauli, Scientific Correspondence, Vol. 1, A. Hermann, K.v. Meyenn & V. Weisskopf (eds.), Springer (1979)
* Sources of Quantum Mechanics, B.L. van der Waerden, N. Holland (1967), papers by Heisenberg, Dirac, Born & Jordan, (and others), with excellent commentary.

Biographies

* R.H. Dalitz & R.E. Peierls, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 32, 138-185 (1986)
* H. Kragh, DIRAC, A Scientific Biography, Cambridge (1990)

Technical Histories

* S.S. Schweber, QED and The Men Who Made It, Princeton (1994)
* A.I. Miller, Early Quantum Electrodynamics, Cambridge (1994)
* S. Weinberg, Quantum Field Theory, Vol. 1, Cambridge (1995)
* Paul Dirac – the man and his work, P. Goddard (ed.), Cambridge (1998)


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The existence of color superconductivity at very large densities and low temperature is an established consequence of QCD (for general reviews see , and ). Since at lower densities one cannot employ perturbative QCD, a popular approach in this regime is the use of a Nambu-Jona Lasinio (NJL) model. The mathematical procedure consists in solving the mean field gap equation and selecting the solution which minimizes the free energy. At sufficiently high densities, for three massless flavors, the condensation pattern leads to a conserved diagonal subgroup of color plus flavor (color-flavor locked phase, briefly CFL phase ); this phase continues to exist when the strange quark mass is non vanishing, but not too large . An interesting property of the CFL phase, proved by Rajagopal and Wilczek , is its electrical neutrality, which implies that the densities of $`u`$, $`d`$ and $`s`$ quarks are equal. A stable bulk requires not only e.m. neutrality, but also color neutrality. It should also be a color singlet, but according to ref.  in a color neutral macroscopic system imposing this property does not essentially change the free energy. Alford and Rajagopal  have shown that in neutral CFL (with finite strange quark mass) quarks pair with a unique common Fermi momentum. The neutrality result is basic to our calculations below. It allows the use of a well defined approximation of QCD at high density (high density effective theory HDET), see  and, for a review, .

In this letter we address two aspects of CFL for QCD modeled by a NJL four fermion interaction. Even though NJL is only a model, it offers simple expressions that can be helpful in clarifying physical issues; therefore a better understanding of its dynamics is significant. The two aspects concern the role of the ultraviolet cutoff in the NJL interaction and the relevance of the effects due to the strange quark mass. As for the first point, the cutoff is usually fixed once for all and considered among the parameters of the model. However, when working at varying large densities the choice of the appropriate cutoff is rather subtle. It is suggestive to consider, for instance, a solid where there is naturally a maximum frequency, the Debye frequency. One expects that when particles become closer the ultraviolet cutoff extends to larger momenta. The appropriate physical simulation of the real situation would then require a cutoff increasing with the chemical potential, rather than a unique fixed cutoff. Our analysis suggests that, in order to get sensible results from the NJL model, the ultraviolet cutoff should similarly increase with density. The results we obtain for the physical quantities, below in this paper, show unequivocally that this is indeed the case. In the text we will explain in more detail the essential difficulties (such as a decreasing gap for larger densities) in which the theory would run into if taken with a fixed cutoff. We shall propose and apply a convenient procedure to solve the problem in terms of a redefinition of the NJL coupling constant such as to make it cutoff dependent. In Section 2 we discuss this issue in the CFL model with massless quarks and we find the optimal choice for the dependence of the ultraviolet cutoff on the quark chemical potential.

The second aspect we want to discuss is the role played by the non vanishing strange quark mass. We address it in Section 3, where we provide semi-analytical results for the dependence of the various gap parameters on $`m_s`$. CFL with a massive strange quark represents a more realistic case in which our previous discussion can be applied; we include both the triplet and the sextet gaps and perform a perturbative expansion in $`m_s^2/\mu ^2`$, obtaining simple expressions for the first non trivial term in the expansion. We compare this expansion with the numerical results from the complete gap equations and we find that indeed the first perturbative term adequately describes the full dependence. We implement from the very beginning the electrical neutrality for the CFL phase and, as already observed, this allows the use of the HDET already applied for the 2SC case ; for completeness also the simpler massless case is treated by the same formalism. We notice that the gap equation with finite strange quark mass has already been discussed in . Besides the use of HDET, our main contribution in this context is to provide semi-analytical results for the mass dependence of the CFL gaps. We conclude the paper with an Appendix where we list some results and integrals related to the gap equation.

## 2 NJL running coupling constant

When the NJL interaction is used for modelling QCD at vanishing temperature and density, one can fix the UV cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ such as to get realistic quark constituent masses. Typically the cutoff is chosen between 600 and 1000 MeV for masses ranging between 200 and 400 MeV. In any case $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is thought of as fixed once for all. This gives no problems at zero density, however leads to difficulties when one tries to simulate QCD at finite chemical potential. In fact, at finite density one takes as relevant degrees of freedom all the fermions with momenta in a shell around the Fermi surface. The thickness of the shell is measured by a cutoff $`\delta `$, which is the cutoff for momenta measured from the Fermi surface. This cutoff is chosen to be much smaller than the chemical potential $`\mu `$ and much larger than the gap; $`\delta `$ is related to the NJL cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ by the relation $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mu +\delta `$, because $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the greatest momentum allowed by the NJL model. This relation is however problematic when one is interested in the behavior of the theory for varying $`\mu `$. The constraint $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mu +\delta `$ would force $`\delta `$ to vanish for increasing $`\mu `$, starting from $`\mu <\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. In turns this gives rise to a vanishing gap. In fact, we recall from the simplest version of the BCS theory that the gap has a typical behavior $`\mathrm{\Delta }2\delta \mathrm{exp}[2/(G\rho )]`$, where $`\rho `$ is the density of the states at the Fermi surface ($`\rho \mu ^2`$) and $`G`$ is the NJL coupling constant. Therefore decreasing the volume of the shell has the effect of reducing the gap, with a quantitatively different reduction from the state density $`\rho `$ and the thickness $`\delta `$. The decreasing of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with $`\mu `$ does not correspond to the asymptotic ($`\mu \mathrm{}`$) QCD behavior, which is characterized by an increase of the gap with $`\mu `$, though with a vanishing ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }/\mu `$ . The uncorrect behavior of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ arises because the model is taken to be valid only for momenta up to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ which forbids to go to values of $`\mu `$ of the order or higher than $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Clearly this constitutes an obstacle in physical situations where the typical chemical potential is about 400 or 500 MeV (e.g. in compact stellar objects) with a $`\delta `$ of the order 150 or 200 MeV. In fact it turns out difficult, if not impossible, to explore higher values of $`\mu `$ for any reasonable choice of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

In this paper we make a proposal to overcome this situation. We start by noticing that the phenomenology at zero temperature and density222For the sake of discussion we consider here the ideal case of massless quarks, the more realistic case of a massive strange quark will be considered in the following is completely determined by the meson decay coupling constant $`f_\pi `$ and by the constituent quark mass, or equivalently by the chiral condensate. In the NJL model these two quantities are fixed by two equations (see for a review ), one fixing $`f_\pi `$ and the other the chiral gap equation. These equations depend on the cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and on the NJL coupling $`G`$. Our proposal consists in assuming the coupling $`G`$ to be a function of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ in such a way that $`f_\pi `$ assumes its experimental value and that the chiral gap equation is satisfied for any choice of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

To be more explicit, we write the Nambu-Jona Lasinio equations with a three dimensional cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ ; the equation for the $`\pi `$ leptonic decay constant reads :

$$f_\pi ^2=3m^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}\frac{d^3p}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{1}{E_p^3}\theta \left(\mathrm{\Lambda }|\stackrel{}{p}|\right)=\frac{3m^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}}{2\pi ^2}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\sqrt{m^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}}\mathrm{arcsinh}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{m^{}}\right],$$
(1)
where $`m^{}`$ is the constituent mass at $`\mu =0`$ which is determined by the self-consistency condition:

$$m^{}=m_0+\frac{4m^{}}{3\pi ^2}G(\mathrm{\Lambda })_0^\mathrm{\Lambda }\frac{p^2dp}{\sqrt{p^2+m^^2}};$$
(2)
$`m_0`$ is the quark current mass which is assumed in this Section to be zero. $`G(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ is the NJL coupling having dimension mass-2; it could be understood as the effect of a fictitious gluon propagator :

$$iD_{ab}^{\mu \nu }=i\frac{g^{\mu \nu }\delta ^{ab}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2},$$
(3)
and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^2G(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ would take the role of the square of the strong coupling constant. Eq. (1), with $`f_\pi =93`$ MeV, implicitly defines the function $`m^{}=m^{}(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ which we use in eq. (2) to get the function $`G=G(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$. The result of this analysis is in fig. 1.

Our choice implies that a NJL model is defined at any scale by using the appropriate $`G(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$. Whereas in the usual case we have to keep the momenta smaller than the cutoff, now, for any given momenta, we can fix the cutoff in such a way that it is much bigger than the momenta. The phenomenology of the chiral world is clearly unaffected by this procedure; in fact it turns out that the constituent mass acquires a weak dependence on the cutoff, and therefore it can be fixed at the most convenient value. Also the quantity $`G(\mathrm{\Lambda })\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$ decreases weakly with the cutoff. In applying these considerations to the calculations at finite density, we have only to use the appropriate value of the coupling as given by $`G(\mu +\delta )`$, where now $`\mu +\delta `$ has nothing to do with the value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ chosen to fit the chiral world. To give an explicit example we consider the CFL phase with massless quarks. There are two independent gaps $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_9`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_9=2\mathrm{\Delta }`$ if the pairing is only in the antitriplet channel) and the gap equations are :

$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mu ^2G}{6\pi ^2}}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_9\mathrm{arcsinh}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{|\mathrm{\Delta }_9|}}2\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{arcsinh}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{|\mathrm{\Delta }|}}\right),`$ (4)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_9`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\mu ^2G\mathrm{\Delta }}{3\pi ^2}}\mathrm{arcsinh}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{|\mathrm{\Delta }|}}.`$ (5)
If one uses a fixed value for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mu +\delta `$, as for instance in ref. , one gets a non monotonic behavior of the gap, as it can be seen from fig. 2, (dashed line); a similar behavior was found in  (their fig. 1), albeit a different choice of the parameters produces some numerical differences.

On the other hand the solid line shows an increasing behavior of the gap. We see that in this way one reproduces qualitatively the behavior found in QCD for asymptotic chemical potential . This result is obtained by the running NJL coupling $`G(\mu +\delta )`$, with the following choice of the cutoff $`\delta `$:

$$\delta =c\mu $$
(6)
with $`c`$ a fixed constant ($`c=0.35`$ in fig. 2). The reason for this choice is that, as discussed above, when increasing $`\mu `$, we do not want to reduce the ratio of the number of the relevant degrees of freedom to the volume of the Fermi sphere. Requiring the fractional importance to be constant is equivalent to require eq. (6).

In fig. 3, we plot the gap parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ (the results for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_9`$ are similar) as a function of $`c`$ for three different values of the chemical potential. In general there exists a window of values for $`c`$:

$$c=0.35\pm 0.10,$$
(7)
where the gap parameters are less dependent on $`c`$. This is therefore the range of $`c`$ we shall assume below.

It can be also noted that the result for the QCD superconducting model we are considering here has its counterpart in solid state physics, where the analysis of  shows a linear increase of $`\delta `$ with $`\mu `$ similar to eq. (6).

These results, valid for the massless case, are confirmed by a complete numerical analysis including the effect of a strange mass. This will be discussed in the subsequent section.

## 3 Effective lagrangian for gapless quarks

The massive case is considerably more involved, and the simple set of equations (5) has to be substituted by a system of 5 equations  that can be only solved numerically. In  the CFL phase with massive strange quark was also considered. In comparison with  the derivation we present here has the advantage of offering semi-analytical results, thanks to an expansion in powers of $`m_s/\mu `$. We principally differ from ref.  for the different treatment of the cutoff, as discussed in the previous section, and for the inclusion of pairing in both the antitriplet and the sextet color channel. The possibility of a semi-analytical treatment rests on the HDET approximation. This effective lagrangian approach was extended in  to the 2SC phase with massive quarks and here we treat the three flavor case.

In the HDET one introduces effective velocity dependent fields, corresponding to the positive energy solutions of the field equations: $`\psi _{\alpha ,i,\stackrel{}{n}}(x)`$ where $`\alpha ,i`$ are color and flavor indices, $`\stackrel{}{n}=\stackrel{}{v}/|\stackrel{}{v}|`$, and $`\stackrel{}{v}`$ is the quark velocity defined by the equation

$$p^\mu =\mu v^\mu +\mathrm{}^\mu $$
(8)
with $`v^\mu =(0,\stackrel{}{v})`$. The effective fields $`\psi _{\alpha ,i\stackrel{}{n}}(x)`$ are expressed in terms of Fourier-transformed quark fields $`\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{\alpha ,i}(p)`$ as follows

$$\psi _{\alpha ,i\stackrel{}{n}}(x)=𝒫_+\frac{d^4p}{(2\pi )^4}e^{i(p\mu v)x}\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{\alpha ,i}(p).$$
(9)
Here $`𝒫_+`$ is the positive energy projector, defined, together with $`𝒫_{}`$, by the formula

$$𝒫_\pm =\frac{1\pm (\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{v}+x_i\gamma ^0)}{2},$$
(10)
where $`x_i=m_i/\mu `$ and $`m_i`$ is the mass of the quark having flavor $`i`$. We now change the color-flavor basis introducing new fields $`\psi _\stackrel{}{n}^A`$ as follows:

$$\psi _{\alpha ,i,\stackrel{}{n}}(x)=\underset{A=1}{\overset{9}{}}\frac{\lambda _{\alpha i}^A}{\sqrt{2}}\psi _\stackrel{}{n}^A(x),$$
(11)
where $`\lambda _A`$ with $`A=1,\mathrm{},8`$ are the usual Gell-mann matrices and $`\lambda _9=\sqrt{2/3}\lambda _0`$. We also introduce the Nambu-Gor’kov doublet

$$\chi _A=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\psi _\stackrel{}{n}^A\\ C\psi _\stackrel{}{n}^{A,}\end{array}\right).$$
(12)
In the $`\chi _A`$ basis the lagrangian of the quarks, including the quark-gluon interaction and the gap therm can be written in momentum space as follows:

$$=_0+_1+_\mathrm{\Delta }.$$
(13)
$`_0`$ is the kinetic term while $`_1`$ describes the quark-gluon interaction. They are given by:

$`_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{A,B=1}{\overset{9}{}}}\chi _A^{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐕_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}& 0\\ 0& \stackrel{~}{𝐕}_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}\end{array}\right)\chi _B,`$ (16)
$`_1`$ $`=`$ $`ig{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{A,B=1}{\overset{9}{}}}\chi _A^{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐇_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}A& 0\\ 0& \stackrel{~}{𝐇}_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}^{}{}_{}{}^{}A\end{array}\right)\chi _B.`$ (19)
We have introduced the symbols

$`𝐕_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}`$ $`=`$ $`Tr\left[T_AT_B𝒱^\mu \right]\mathrm{}_\mu ,\stackrel{~}{𝐕}_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}=Tr\left[T_AT_B\stackrel{~}{𝒱}^\mu \right]\mathrm{}_\mu `$ (20)
$`𝐇_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}A`$ $`=`$ $`H_{AmB}^\mu A_\mu ^m={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}Tr\left[T_AT_mT_B𝒱^\mu \right]A_\mu ^m,`$ (21)
$`\stackrel{~}{𝐇}_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}A`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{H}_{AmB}^\mu A_\mu ^m={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}Tr\left[T_AT_mT_B\stackrel{~}{𝒱}^\mu \right]A_\mu ^m.`$ (22)
In these equations $`T_A=\lambda _A/\sqrt{2}`$, $`A_\mu ^m`$ is the gluon field, and $`𝒱^\mu `$ denotes the matrix

$$𝒱_{ij}^\mu =\left(\begin{array}{ccc}𝒱_u^\mu & 0& 0\\ 0& 𝒱_d^\mu & 0\\ 0& 0& 𝒱_s^\mu \end{array}\right)$$
(23)
with $`𝒱_i^\mu =(1,\stackrel{}{v}_i)`$ for each flavor $`i`$; a similar definition holds for $`\stackrel{~}{𝒱}_{ij}^\mu `$, with $`\stackrel{~}{𝒱}_i^\mu =(1,\stackrel{}{v}_i)`$. In the limit $`m_u=m_d0`$ one has $`v_u=v_d=1,v_s=\sqrt{1x_s^2}=\sqrt{1m_s^2/\mu _s^2}`$.

Let us now turn to the gap term $`_\mathrm{\Delta }`$. We consider CFL condensation in both the antisymmetric $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}}_A`$ and in the symmetric $`\mathrm{𝟔}_S`$ channels. We assume equal masses (actually zero) for the up and down quarks and neglect quark-antiquark chiral condensates, whose contribution is expected to negligible in the very large $`\mu `$ limit. Also the contribution from the repulsive $`\mathrm{𝟔}_S`$ channel is expected to be small, but we include it because the gap equations are consistent only with condensation in both the $`\mathrm{𝟔}_S`$ and the $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}}_A`$ channels. The condensate we consider is therefore

$$<\psi _{\alpha i}C\gamma _5\psi _{\beta j}>\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}ϵ^{\alpha \beta I}ϵ_{ijI}+G_{ij}(\delta ^{\alpha i}\delta ^{\beta j}+\delta ^{\alpha j}\delta ^{\beta i})\right).$$
(24)
The first term on the r.h.s accounts for the condensation in the $`\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}}_A`$ channel and the second one describes condensation in $`\mathrm{𝟔}_S`$ channel. As we assume $`m_u=m_d`$, we put

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{us}=\mathrm{\Delta }_{ds}\mathrm{\Delta },\mathrm{\Delta }_{ud}\mathrm{\Delta }_{12},$$
(25)
$$G_{uu}=G_{du}=G_{ud}=G_{dd}G_1,G_{us}=G_{ds}G_2,G_{ss}G_3,$$
(26)
which reduces the number of independent gap parameters to five. We stress that we impose electrical and color neutrality, which, as shown in ref. , is indeed satisfied in the color-flavor locked phase of QCD because in this phase the three light quarks number densities are equal $`n_u=n_d=n_s`$, with no need for electrons, i.e. $`n_e=0`$. As a consequence, the Fermi momenta of the three quarks are equal:

$$p_{F,u}=p_{F,d}=p_{F,s}p_F,$$
(27)
which, in terms of the quark chemical potentials and Fermi velocities can be written as

$$\mu _u|\stackrel{}{v}_u|=\mu _d|\stackrel{}{v}_d|=\mu _s|\stackrel{}{v}_s|.$$
(28)
It follows that the wave function of the quark-quark condensate has no dependence on the Fermi energies and the condensation can be described in the mean field approximation by the following lagrangian term containing only the effective fields $`\psi _{\alpha i,\pm }`$:

$$_\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}ϵ^{\alpha \beta I}ϵ_{ijI}+G_{ij}(\delta ^{\alpha i}\delta ^{\beta j}+\delta ^{\alpha j}\delta ^{\beta i})}{2}\underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}\psi _{\alpha i,}^TC\gamma _5\psi _{\beta j,+}+h.c.$$
(29)
Using the Nambu-Gor’kov fields one rewrites (29) as follows:

$$_\mathrm{\Delta }=\underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}\underset{A,B=1}{\overset{9}{}}\chi _A^{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& \gamma _5𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\\ \gamma _5𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}^{}& 0\end{array}\right)\chi _B$$
(30)
where

$$𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}=𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}(\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}})+𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}(\mathrm{𝟔})$$
(31)
and

$$𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}(\overline{\mathrm{𝟑}})=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}I_3& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \mathrm{\Delta }I_4& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& \frac{1}{3}\left(4\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}\right)& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}\right)\\ 0& 0& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}\right)& \frac{2}{3}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}+2\mathrm{\Delta }\right)\end{array}\right)$$
(32)
$$𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}(\mathrm{𝟔})=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}G_1I_3& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& G_2I_4& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& G_1\frac{4}{3}(G_2G_3)& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}(3G_12G_3G_2)\\ 0& 0& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}(3G_12G_3G_2)& \frac{2}{3}(3G_1+2G_2+G_3)\end{array}\right),$$
(33)
where $`I_n`$ stays for the $`n\times n`$ identity matrix. The nine eigenvalues of the matrix $`𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}`$ are reported in the Appendix. From the lagrangian

$$_0+_\mathrm{\Delta }=\underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}\underset{A,B=1}{\overset{9}{}}\chi _A^{}\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐕_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}& \gamma _5𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\\ \gamma _5𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}^{}& \stackrel{~}{𝐕}_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}\mathrm{}\end{array}\right)\chi _B=\underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}\underset{A,B=1}{\overset{9}{}}\chi _A^{}S_{AB}^1(\mathrm{})\chi _B$$
(34)
the fermionic propagator is obtained:

$$S_{AB}(\mathrm{})=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝚫\stackrel{~}{𝐕}\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}𝐕𝐥𝚫^\mathrm{𝟐}}𝚫\stackrel{~}{𝐕}\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}& \frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝚫\stackrel{~}{𝐕}\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}𝐕𝐥𝚫^\mathrm{𝟐}}\gamma _\mathrm{𝟓}𝚫\\ & \\ \frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝚫𝐕\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}\stackrel{~}{𝐕}𝐥𝚫^\mathrm{𝟐}}\gamma _\mathrm{𝟓}𝚫& \frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝚫𝐕\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}\stackrel{~}{𝐕}𝐥𝚫^\mathrm{𝟐}}𝚫𝐕\mathrm{}𝚫^\mathrm{𝟏}\end{array}\right)_{AB}$$

The off-diagonal matrix $`S_{AB}^{12}`$ (1, 2= NG indices) is the anomalous component of the quark propagator, which is what we need to write down the gap equations. In matrix form they are as follows

$$𝚫_{\mathrm{𝐀𝐁}}=\frac{iG(\mu +\delta )p_F^2}{4\pi ^3}H_{AaC}^\mu H_{DbB}^\nu _\delta ^{+\delta }𝑑\mathrm{}_{}_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}𝑑\mathrm{}_0\delta ^{ab}g_{\mu \nu }S_{CD}^{12}(l),$$
(35)
where the color-flavor symbols $`H_{AaB}^\mu `$ have been defined in (22) and the running NJL coupling is computed at $`\mu +\delta `$, according to the previous discussion. In eq. (35) $`\delta =c\mu `$ is the cutoff discussed in section 2. The gap equations can be numerically solved; results for $`m_s=250`$ MeV and $`c=0.35`$ are reported in Fig. 4.

A semi-analytical solution can be found by performing an expansion in the strange quark mass:

$$x_s=\frac{m_s}{\mu _s}\frac{m_s}{\mu }1.$$
(36)
Here $`\mu =\mu _u=\mu _d`$, $`\mu _s=\mu +\delta \mu `$ with $`\delta \mu =𝒪(m_s/\mu )^2`$. We define:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}+G_1\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0+ϵ_1x_s^2,\mathrm{\Delta }_9=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}+4G_1\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0+ϵ_9x_s^2,`$ (37)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0}{6}}\xi _1x_s^2,G_2{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0+\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0}{6}}\xi _2x_s^2,G_3{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0+\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0}{6}}\xi _3x_s^2,`$ (39)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0,\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0`$ are the values for massless quarks and can be obtained from eqns. (5). For $`m_s0`$ the number of gaps increases from 2 to 5, but eqns. (39) give immediately the solutions for any value of $`m_s`$ (with the proviso $`x_s=m_s^2/\mu ^21`$) if one knows the parameters $`\xi =(ϵ_1,ϵ_9,\xi _1,\xi _2,\xi _3)`$. They can be obtained by solving the system of 5 linear algebraic equations

$$𝐀\xi =𝐟.$$
(40)
The matrices $`𝐀`$ and $`f`$ are reported in the appendix. Numerical results for the parameters $`\xi `$ are in Table 1. For a strange mass of $`250`$ MeV we find the rate $`\mathrm{\Delta }_9/\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ equal to $`2.365`$ for $`\mu =500`$ MeV and $`2.33`$ for $`\mu =1000`$ MeV.

From these results we can compute the dependence of the various gaps on $`\mu `$. For $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ it is reported (for two values of the strange quark mass) in fig.5. We stress that the approximation we consider here is indeed very good in the range of parameters we have considered in the present paper, i.e. $`m_s=150250`$ MeV and $`\mu =5001000`$ MeV. As an example, fig. 6 shows the approximate solution for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ (solid line), which differs only by a few percent from the exact solution (dashed line), except in the lower region of $`\mu `$. These results are obtained for a mass of 250 MeV; for smaller values the effect is even less relevant.

## 4 Conclusions

A main point in this work has been to clarify the issue of the dependence on $`\mu `$ of the ultraviolet cutoff in the NJL model and its application to CFL phase of QCD. A convenient procedure consists in re-defining the NJL coupling such as to make it cutoff dependent. The application to the CFL model with $`m_s0`$ leads, in the approximation of the high density effective theory, to an expansion in the parameter $`(m_s/\mu )^2`$, whose numerical validity is very good already at first order. Both triplet and sextet gaps are included. The gap parameters are obtained as functions of the chemical potential and their behavior is consistent with the expected asymptotic limits.

## Appendix

Eigenvalues of the gap matrix

The eigenvalues of the gap matrix for CFL with massive strange quark are as follows: $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=\mathrm{}=\mathrm{\Delta }_5=\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}+G_1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_6=\mathrm{\Delta }_7=\mathrm{\Delta }+G_2`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{8/9}=\frac{1}{2}\left(xz\pm \sqrt{(x+z)^2+4y^2}\right)`$ where $`x,y,z`$ are given by

$`x`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(4\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_{12})+G_1{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}(G_2G_3),`$ (41)
$`y`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}}(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }_{12})+\sqrt{2}\left(G_1{\displaystyle \frac{G_2}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}G_3}{3}}\right),`$ (42)
$`z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}(\mathrm{\Delta }_{12}+2\mathrm{\Delta }){\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}(3G_1+2G_2+G_3).`$ (43)
Matrices $`\xi `$, $`𝐀`$, $`𝐟`$

We write down explicitly the matrices $`\xi `$, $`𝐀`$, $`𝐟`$ defined in the text

$$\xi ^T=\left(ϵ_1ϵ_9\xi _1\xi _2\xi _3\right);$$
(44)
$$𝐀=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}\alpha & \beta & \frac{2}{9}b\left(g_1+2g_9g_{19}\right)& \frac{2}{9}b\left(g_1+2g_9g_{19}\right)& \frac{2}{9}b\left(g_1g_9+2g_{19}\right)\\ \alpha & \beta & 1\frac{b}{9}\left(7g_1+4g_9+g_{19}\right)& 1+\frac{b}{9}\left(g_1+4g_9+g_{19}\right)& \frac{b}{9}\left(4g_1+2g_9+2g_{19}\right)\\ \alpha & \beta & \frac{4}{3}\frac{2b}{9}\left(5g_1+2g_9+g_{19}\right)& \frac{4}{3}\frac{2b}{9}\left(7g_12g_9g_{19}\right)& \frac{4}{3}\frac{2b}{9}\left(g_1+g_9+2g_{19}\right)\\ 0& 0& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}\left(1+\frac{b}{3}\left(5g_1g_{19}\right)\right)& \frac{\sqrt{2}}{3}\left(1\frac{b}{3}\left(g_1g_{19}\right)\right)& \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{3}\left(1+\frac{b}{3}\left(g_1g_{19}\right)\right)\\ \gamma & 1& \frac{4}{3}\frac{2b}{9}4g_1& \frac{4}{3}\frac{16b}{9}g_1& \frac{2}{3}+\frac{4b}{9}g_1\end{array}\right)$$
(45)
where we have defined $`b=G(\mu +\delta )\mu ^2/2\pi ^2`$, $`\alpha =1\frac{2}{3}bh_1`$, $`\beta =\frac{1}{3}bh_9`$, $`\gamma =\frac{8b}{3}h_1`$; finally

$$𝐟=\left(\begin{array}{c}b\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{I}_1^0}{3}+\frac{\stackrel{~}{I}_9^0}{6}\frac{1}{18}(f_1+f_94f_{19})\right)\\ b\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{I}_1^0}{2}+\frac{\stackrel{~}{I}_9^0}{4}\frac{1}{18}(5f_1f_92f_{19})\right)\\ b\left(\frac{5}{18}\left(2\stackrel{~}{I}_1^0+2\stackrel{~}{I}_9^0\right)+\frac{1}{18}(11f_1f_94f_{19})\right)\\ b(\frac{1}{18\sqrt{2}}(7\stackrel{~}{I}_1^0\stackrel{~}{I}_9^0)+\frac{\sqrt{2}}{18}(\frac{17}{2}f_1+f_{19})))\\ b\left(\frac{16}{9}\stackrel{~}{I}_1^0+\frac{10}{18}f_1\right)\end{array}\right).$$
(46)
The values of the parameters $`f_j`$, $`g_j`$, $`\stackrel{~}{I}_j^0`$, $`h_k`$ are listed below.

$`f_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0J^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0),f_9={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0J^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0),f_{19}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0J^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0,\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0),`$ (47)
$`g_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}I^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0),g_9={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}I^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0),g_{19}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}I^\delta (\mathrm{\Delta }_1^0,\mathrm{\Delta }_9^0),`$ (49)
$`\stackrel{~}{I}_j^0`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_j^0\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\mathrm{\Delta }_j^0}}\right|,h_k=\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\mathrm{\Delta }_j^0}}\right|1.`$ (50)
In this expression we use the following parametric integrals:

$`I^\delta (x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _\delta ^\delta }d^2l{\displaystyle \frac{Vl\stackrel{~}{V}l+x^2}{D(x)^2}}=2\pi i\left(\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x}}\right|+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\sqrt{\delta ^2+x^2}}}\right),`$ (51)
$`I^\delta (x_1,x_2)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _\delta ^\delta }d^2l{\displaystyle \frac{Vl\stackrel{~}{V}l+x_1x_2}{D(x_1)D(x_2)}}=`$ (52)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{i}}\left[\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x_2}}\right|+{\displaystyle \frac{x_1(x_1+x_2)}{x_2^2x_1^2}}\left(\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x_2}}\right|\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x_1}}\right|\right)\right],`$
$`J^\delta (x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _\delta ^\delta }d^2l{\displaystyle \frac{l_{}^2}{D(x)^2}}=i\pi \left(\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x}}\right|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\sqrt{\delta ^2+x^2}}}\right),`$ (53)
$`J^\delta (x_1,x_9)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _\delta ^\delta }d^2l{\displaystyle \frac{l_{}^2}{D(x_1)D(x_9)}}={\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{2(x_1^2x_9^2)}}[2\delta (\sqrt{x_1^2+\delta ^2}\sqrt{x_9^2+\delta ^2})`$ (54)
$`+2x_1^2\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x_1}}\right|2x_9^2\mathrm{arcsinh}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{x_9}}\right|].`$
Acknowledgements

We wish to thank M. Mannarelli for useful discussions. One of us, G. N., wishes to thank the CERN theory group for the very kind hospitality.


text:
# On multiplicity and free absorption for free Araki-Woods factors.

(Date: March 15, 2024)

## Abstract.

We show that Ozawa’s recent results on solid von Neumann algebras imply that there are free Araki-Woods factors, which fail to have free absorption. We also show that a free Araki-Woods factors $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ associated to a measure and a multiplicity function $`n`$ may non-trivially depend on the multiplicity function.

This material is based upon work performed for the Clay Mathematics Institute.

In  we have associated to the absolute continuity class of a symmetric measure $`\mu `$ on $``$, $`\mu (X)=\mu (X)`$, and a multiplicity function $`n:\{+\mathrm{}\}`$, $`n(x)=n(x)`$, a von Neumann algebra denoted by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$111Our original notation for this algebra is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(_{},U_t)^{\prime \prime }`$, where $`tU_t`$ is an orthogonal representation of $``$ on a real Hilbert space. This data is of course completely equivalent to specifying the spectral measure $`\mu `$ and multiplicity function $`n`$ of such a representation. It is more convenient to use the notation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ in the present paper.. This construction is the free probability analog of the Araki-Woods construction of hyperfinite type III factors using quasi-free states . The algebras $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ are called free Araki-Woods factors; they are factors of type III if $`\mu `$ is not concentrated on the set $`\{0\}`$. The complete classification of free Araki-Woods factors remains an interesting outstanding problem, and was achieved in  only for atomic measures $`\mu `$. In our recent work  we have introduced new invariants for type III factors, which show that the algebras $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ depend to a large extent on the absolute continuity class of the measure $`\mu `$. On the other hand, it remained completely unknown in general whether the multiplicity function $`n`$ matters at all. In the case that $`\mu `$ is atomic and not concentrated on $`\{0\}`$, we have shown in  that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ is independent of the multiplicity function, leading one to wonder if the same holds in general.

Our construction of a free Araki-Woods factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ produces also a state $`\varphi _{\mu ,n}:\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$, which is the analog of the quasi-free state in the classical Araki-Woods construction. We have shown in  that the reduced free product of free Araki-Woods factors is given by:

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ^{},n^{}),\varphi _{\mu ^{},n^{}})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu +\mu ^{},n+n^{}),\varphi _{\mu +\mu ^{},n+n^{}}),$$

with the isomorphism preserving the indicated states.

Independence of $`n`$ then says in particular that

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)$$

(via an isomorphism that does not necessarily take the free product state to $`\varphi _{\mu ,n}`$).

Another property of free Araki-Woods factors which holds for $`\mu `$ atomic and not concentrated on $`\{0\}`$ is the “free absorption” property:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}}),\tau ),$$

where $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})`$ denotes the von Neumann algebra of a free group on an infinite number of generators.

In this note we rely on the amazing recent result of Ozawa  showing that von Neumann algebras of hyperbolic groups (in particular, of free groups) are “solid”: the relative commutant of any diffuse unital subalgebra is hyperfinite. From this result, we derive the following theorem, which shows that in the case that $`\mu `$ is non-atomic, free absorption and independence of the multiplicity function need not hold.

###### Theorem 1.

Let $`\lambda `$ denote the Lebesgue measure on $``$, and let $`\delta _0`$ denote the delta measure at $`0`$. Then:
(a) $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)\cong ̸\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$. Thus $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,n)`$ depends on $`n`$.
(b) $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)\cong ̸(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1),\varphi _{\lambda ,1})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}}),\tau )`$. Thus free absorption fails.

###### Proof.

It is known that the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)`$ is isomorphic to $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2)`$ (see ). We’ll first show that the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)`$ is isomorphic to $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2)`$.

We have that $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1),\varphi _{\lambda +\delta _0,1})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1),\varphi _{\lambda ,1})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta _0,1),\varphi _{\delta _0,1})`$. Thus by , the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)`$ is isomorphic to the amalgamated free product

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,1}}},E_1)_{L()}(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta _0,1)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\delta _0,1}}},E_2).$$

Here $`E_j`$ are the conditional expectations onto the group von Neumann algebra of $``$ (viewed as a subalgebra of the crossed product), associated to the states $`\varphi _{\lambda ,1}`$ and $`\varphi _{\delta _0,1}`$, respectively.

Since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta _0,1)L^{\mathrm{}}[0,1]`$ by , we have that the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)`$ is isomorphic to

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,1}}},E_1)_{L()}(L()A,\mathrm{id}\tau ),$$

where $`AL^{\mathrm{}}[0,1]`$, and $`\tau `$ is some normal faithful trace on $`A`$.

Let $`\mathrm{Tr}:L()`$ be the semifinite trace associated to integration against Lebesgue measure in the identification $`L()L^{\mathrm{}}()`$. Then by , we have that $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1),E_1)`$ is isomorphic to $`(\mathrm{\Phi }(L(),\mathrm{Tr}),E_{L()})`$ (see  for this notation). In other words, the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)`$, when viewed as a non-commutative probability space over $`L()`$ is generated by $`L()`$ and an operator-valued semicircular variable $`X`$ of covariance $`\eta :L^{\mathrm{}}()L^{\mathrm{}}()`$, where $`\eta `$ is a completely-positive map given by

$$\eta (f)(x)=f(y)\omega (x,y)𝑑y,$$

where $`\omega >0`$ is a certain function on $`^2`$ (i.e., $`\omega (x,y)dxdy`$ and $`dxdy`$ are mutually absolutely continuous).

Since the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)`$ is given as an amalgamated free product, it follows that $`X`$ is free with amalgamation over $`L()`$ from $`AL()`$. Thus by , if we view $`X`$ as an operator-valued random variable with values in $`AL()`$, it is still semicircular and has covariance $`\eta (\mathrm{id}\tau )\mathrm{Tr}(\mathrm{id}\tau ):L()A`$. But $`(L()A,\mathrm{Tr}(\mathrm{id}\tau ))(L(),\mathrm{Tr})`$. Thus the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,1)`$ is isomorphic to $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L(),\mathrm{Tr})L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2)`$ by .

We now prove the non-isomorphisms claimed in (a) and (b). It is sufficient to show that the cores of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ and $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1),\varphi _{\lambda ,1})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}}),\tau )`$ are not isomorphic to $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2)`$.

The core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ is isomorphic, as before, to

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,2)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,2}}},E_3)_{L()}(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta _0,2)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\delta _0,2}}},E_4).$$

But by , $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta _0,2),\varphi _{\delta _0,2})(L(𝔽_2),\tau )`$, and the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ is given by

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,2)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,2}}},E_3)_{L()}(L(𝔽_2)L(),\tau \mathrm{id}).$$

Now choose an abelian diffuse subalgebra $`BL()`$, so that the restriction of the trace on the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ to $`B`$ is finite. Denote by $`p`$ the unit of $`B`$. Then the relative commutant of $`B=pBp`$ inside of $`p(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,2)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,2}}},E_3)_{L()}(L(𝔽_2)L(),\tau \mathrm{id})p`$ contains $`L(𝔽_2)`$ and so is not hyperfinite. Thus $`p(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,2)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,2}}},E_3)_{L()}(L(𝔽_2)L(),\tau \mathrm{id})p`$ is not solid. Thus the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ is not a free group factor, by Ozawa’s result . This proves (a).

The core of $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1),\varphi _{\lambda ,1})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}},\tau ))`$ is, as before, given by

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda ,1)_{\sigma ^{\varphi _{\lambda ,1}}},E_5)_{L()}(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})L(),\tau \mathrm{id}).$$

Using exactly the same argument as before, we find that the core is not $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2)`$. ∎

Note that the core of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\lambda +\delta _0,2)`$ is related to the factor $`L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})(L(𝔽_2)L^{\mathrm{}}[0,1])`$ (the core is, in some loose sense, “$`(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}})B(\mathrm{}^2))(L(𝔽_2)L^{\mathrm{}}())`$”). This explains our interest in this factor (see the remark in ).

There is, however, a situation where free absorbtion holds, and the mutiplicity function does not matter. For a measure $`\nu `$ and a number $`\lambda `$, write $`\nu _\lambda `$ for the translate of $`\nu `$ by $`\lambda `$, and $`\nu ^\lambda `$ for $`\nu _\lambda +\nu _\lambda `$.

###### Theorem 2.

Assume that $`\mu =\mu _c+\mu _a`$, where $`\mu _a`$ is atomic and $`\mu _c`$ has no atoms. Assume that $`\mu _a0`$, and let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\{\gamma _1,\gamma _2,\mathrm{}\}`$ be the subgroup of $``$ generated by its support. Assume that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\{0\}`$. Let $`\nu =_j2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}`$. Then there is a state-preserving isomorphism

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu ,\mathrm{}),\varphi _{\nu ,\mathrm{}}).$$

In particular, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n)`$ does not depend on $`n`$, and free absorbtion holds for $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})`$.

###### Proof.

We first note that the matricial model argument in  implies that if $`\varphi `$ is a normal state on $`B(\mathrm{}^2)`$ given by

$$\theta (T)=\mathrm{Tr}(DT),$$

where $`D`$ is a trace-class diagonal matrix with eigenvalues $`\mathrm{exp}(\lambda _1),\mathrm{exp}(\lambda _2),\mathrm{}`$, with $`\lambda _1,\lambda _2,\mathrm{}`$ non-negative, then for any $`\nu `$ and $`m`$,

$$(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu ,m),\varphi _{\nu ,m})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(2^j\nu ^{\lambda _j},\mathrm{})B(\mathrm{}^2),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\nu ^{\lambda _j}},\mathrm{}}\theta ).$$

Moreover, the isomorphism is state-preserving.

It follows that if the set $`\{0\}\{\pm \lambda _j:j=1,2,\mathrm{}\}`$ is an additive group, then

$`(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle }2^j\nu ^{\lambda _j},\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle 2^j\nu ^{\lambda _j}},\mathrm{})B(\mathrm{}^2),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\nu ^{\lambda _j}},\mathrm{}}\theta )`$
$``$ $`(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\nu ,m),\varphi _{\nu ,m}),`$
via state-preserving isomorphisms.

Returning now to our situation, note that $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu _c,n),\varphi _{\mu _c,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu _a,n),\varphi _{\mu _a,n})`$. By , $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu _a,n),\varphi (\mu _a,n))(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu _a,n),\varphi (\mu _a,n))(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )`$, where $`\theta (T)=\mathrm{Tr}(DT)`$, and $`D`$ is a diagonal operator with eigenvalues $`\{e^{\gamma _j}:\gamma _j<0\}`$. Thus $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )`$. By the argument above, it follows that

$`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})`$ $``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )`$
$``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}})(B(\mathrm{}^2),\theta )`$
$``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}}).`$
Since $`2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}`$ has an atom at zero, it follows that

$`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})`$ $``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}})`$
$``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }({\displaystyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}),\varphi _{{\scriptscriptstyle 2^j\mu ^{\gamma _j}},\mathrm{}})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}}),\tau )`$
$``$ $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mu ,n),\varphi _{\mu ,n})(L(𝔽_{\mathrm{}}),\tau ),`$
so that free absorption holds. ∎