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# Modern Mathematical Physics: what it should be

When somebody asks me, what I do in science, I call myself a specialist in mathematical physics. As I have been there for more than 40 years, I have some definite interpretation of this combination of words: “mathematical physics.” Cynics or purists can insist that this is neither mathematics nor physics, adding comments with a different degree of malice. Naturally, this calls for an answer, and in this short essay I want to explain briefly my understanding of the subject. It can be considered as my contribution to the discussion about the origin and role of mathematical physics and thus to be relevant for this volume.

The matter is complicated by the fact that the term “mathematical physics” (often abbreviated by MP in what follows) is used in different senses and can have rather different content. This content changes with time, place and person.

I did not study properly the history of science; however, it is my impression that, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the term MP was practically equivalent to the concept of theoretical physics. Not only Henri Poincaré, but also Albert Einstein, were called mathematical physicists. Newly established theoretical chairs were called chairs of mathematical physics. It follows from the documents in the archives of the Nobel Committee that MP had a right to appear both in the nominations and discussion of the candidates for the Nobel Prize in physics . Roughly speaking, the concept of MP covered theoretical papers where mathematical formulae were used.

However, during an unprecedented bloom of theoretical physics in the 20s and 30s, an essential separation of the terms “theoretical” and “mathematical” occurred. For many people, MP was reduced to the important but auxiliary course “Methods of Mathematical Physics” including a set of useful mathematical tools. The monograph of P. Morse and H. Feshbach  is a classical example of such a course, addressed to a wide circle of physicists and engineers.

On the other hand, MP in the mathematical interpretation appeared as a theory of partial differential equations and variational calculus. The monographs of R. Courant and D. Hilbert  and S. Sobolev  are outstanding illustrations of this development. The theorems of existence and uniqueness based on the variational principles, a priori estimates, and imbedding theorems for functional spaces comprise the main content of this direction. As a student of O. Ladyzhenskaya, I was immersed in this subject since the 3rd year of my undergraduate studies at the Physics Department of Leningrad University. My fellow student N. Uraltseva now holds the chair of MP exactly in this sense.

MP in this context has as its source mainly geometry and such parts of classical mechanics as hydrodynamics and elasticity theory. Since the 60s a new impetus to MP in this sense was supplied by Quantum Theory. Here the main apparatus is functional analysis, including the spectral theory of operators in Hilbert space, the mathematical theory of scattering and the theory of Lie groups and their representations. The main subject is the Schrödinger operator. Though the methods and concrete content of this part of MP are essentially different from those of its classical counterpart, the methodological attitude is the same. One sees the quest for the rigorous mathematical theorems about results which are understood by physicists in their own way.

I was born as a scientist exactly in this environment. I graduated from the unique chair of Mathematical Physics, established by V.I. Smirnov at the Physics Department of Leningrad University already in the 30s. In his venture V.I. Smirnov got support from V. Fock, the world famous theoretical physicist with very wide mathematical interests. Originally this chair played the auxiliary role of being responsible for the mathematical courses for physics students. However in 1955 it got permission to supervise its own diploma projects, and I belonged to the very first group of students using this opportunity. As I already mentioned, O.A. Ladyzhenskaya was our main professor. Although her own interests were mostly in nonlinear PDE and hydrodynamics, she decided to direct me to quantum theory. During last two years of undergraduate studies I was to read the monograph of K.O. Friedrichs, “Mathematical Aspects of Quantum Field Theory,” and relate it to our group of 5 students and our professor on a special seminar. At the same time my student friends from the chair of Theoretical Physics were absorbed in reading the first monograph on Quantum Electrodynamics by A. Ahieser and V. Berestevsky. The difference in attitudes and language was striking and I was to become accustomed to both.

After my graduation O.A. Ladyzhenskaya remained my tutor but she left me free to choose research topics and literature to read. I read both mathematical papers (i.e. on direct and inverse scattering problems by I.M. Gelfand and B.M. Levitan, V.A. Marchenko, M.G. Krein, A.Ya. Povzner) and “Physical Review” (i.e. on formal scattering theory by M. Gell-Mann, M. Goldberger, J. Schwinger and H. Ekstein) as well. Papers by I. Segal, L. Van-Hove and R. Haag added to my first impressions on Quantum Field Theory taken from K. Friederichs. In the process of this self-education my own understanding of the nature and goals of MP gradually deviated from the prevailing views of the members of the V. Smirnov chair. I decided that it is more challenging to do something which is not known to my colleagues from theoretical physics rather than supply theorems of substantiality. My first work on the inverse scattering problem especially for the many-dimensional Schrödinger operator and that on the three body scattering problem confirm that I really tried to follow this line of thought.

This attitude became even firmer when I began to work on Quantum Field Theory in the middle of the 60s. As a result, my understanding of the goal of MP drastically modified. I consider as the main goal of MP the use of mathematical intuition for the derivation of really new results in the fundamental physics. In this sense, MP and Theoretical Physics are competitors. Their goals in unraveling the laws of the structure of matter coincide. However, the methods and even the estimates of the importance of the results of work may differ quite significally.

Here it is time to say in what sense I use the term “fundamental physics.” The adjective “fundamental” has many possible interpretations when applied to the classification of science. In a wider sense it is used to characterize the research directed to unraveling new properties of physical systems. In the narrow sense it is kept only for the search for the basic laws that govern and explain these properties.

Thus, all chemical properties can be derived from the Schrödinger equation for a system of electrons and nuclei. Alternatively, we can say that the fundamental laws of chemistry in a narrow sense are already known. This, of course, does not deprive chemistry of the right to be called a fundamental science in a wide sense.

The same can be said about classical mechanics and the quantum physics of condensed matter. Whereas the largest part of physical research lies now in the latter, it is clear that all its successes including the theory of superconductivity and superfluidity, Bose-Einstein condensation and quantum Hall effect have a fundamental explanation in the nonrelativistic quantum theory of many body systems.

An unfinished physical fundamental problem in a narrow sense is physics of elementary particles. This puts this part of physics into a special position. And it is here where modern MP has the most probable chances for a breakthrough.

Indeed, until recent time, all physics developed along the traditional circle: experiment — theoretical interpretation — new experiment. So the theory traditionally followed the experiment. This imposes a severe censorship on the theoretical work. Any idea, bright as it is, which is not supplied by the experimental knowledge at the time when it appeared is to be considered wrong and as such must be abandoned. Characteristically the role of censors might be played by theoreticians themselves and the great L. Landau and W. Pauli were, as far as I can judge, the most severe ones. And, of course, they had very good reason.

On the other hand, the development of mathematics, which is also to a great extent influenced by applications, has nevertheless its internal logic. Ideas are judged not by their relevance but more by esthetic criteria. The totalitarianism of theoretical physics gives way to a kind of democracy in mathematics and its inherent intuition. And exactly this freedom could be found useful for particle physics. This part of physics traditionally is based on the progress of accelerator techniques. The very high cost and restricted possibilities of the latter soon will become an uncircumventable obstacle to further development. And it is here that mathematical intuition could give an adequate alternative. This was already stressed by famous theoreticians with mathematical inclinations. Indeed, let me cite a paper  by P. Dirac from the early 30s:

> The steady progress of physics requires for its theoretical formulation a mathematics that gets continually more advanced. This is only natural and to be expected. What, however, was not expected by the scientific workers of the last century was the particular form that the line of advancement of the mathematics would take, namely, it was expected that the mathematics would get more complicated, but would rest on a permanent basis of axioms and definitions, while actually the modern physical developments have required a mathematics that continually shifts its foundations and gets more abstract. Non-euclidean geometry and non-commutative algebra, which were at one time considered to be purely fictions of the mind and pastimes for logical thinkers, have now been found to be very necessary for the description of general facts of the physical world. It seems likely that this process of increasing abstraction will continue in the future and that advance in physics is to be associated with a continual modification and generalization of the axioms at the base of mathematics rather than with logical development of any one mathematical scheme on a fixed foundation.
>
> There are at present fundamental problems in theoretical physics awaiting solution, *e.g.*, the relativistic formulation of quantum mechanics and the nature of atomic nuclei (to be followed by more difficult ones such as the problem of life), the solution of which problems will presumably require a more drastic revision of our fundamental concepts than any that have gone before. Quite likely these changes will be so great that it will be beyond the power of human intelligence to get the necessary new ideas by direct attempts to formulate the experimental data in mathematical terms. The theoretical worker in the future will therefore have to proceed in a more inderect way. The most powerful method of advance that can be suggested at present is to employ all the resources of pure mathematics in attempts to perfect and generalise the mathematical formalism that forms the existing basis of theoretical physics, and *after* each success in this direction, to try to interpret the new mathematical features in terms of physical entities.

Similar views were expressed by C.N. Yang. I did not find a compact citation, but all spirit of his commentaries to his own collection of papers  shows this attitude. Also he used to tell this to me in private discussions.

I believe that the dramatic history of setting the gauge fields as a basic tool in the description of interactions in Quantum Field Theory gives a good illustration of the influence of mathematical intuition on the development of the fundamental physics. Gauge fields, or Yang–Mills fields, were introduced to the wide audience of physicists in 1954 in a short paper by C.N. Yang and R. Mills , dedicated to the generalization of the electromagnetic fields and the corresponding principle of gauge invariance. The geometric sense of this principle for the electromagnetic field was made clear as early as in the late 20s due to the papers of V. Fock  and H. Weyl . They underlined the analogy of the gauge (or gradient in the terminology of V. Fock) invariance of the electrodynamics and the equivalence principle of the Einstein theory of gravitation. The gauge group in electrodynamics is commutative and corresponds to the multiplication of the complex field (or wave function) of the electrically charged particle by a phase factor depending on the space–time coordinates. Einstein’s theory of gravity provides an example of a much more sophisticated gauge group, namely the group of general coordinate transformation. Both H. Weyl and V. Fock were to use the language of the moving frame with spin connection, associated with local Lorentz rotations. Thus the Lorentz group became the first nonabelian gauge group and one can see in  essentially all formulas characteristics of nonabelian gauge fields. However, in contradistinction to the electromagnetic field, the spin connection enters the description of the space-time and not the internal space of electric charge.

In the middle of the 30s, after the discovery of the isotopic spin in nuclear physics, and forming the Yukawa idea of the intermediate boson, O. Klein tried to geometrise these objects. His proposal was based on his 5-dimensional picture. Proton and neutron (as well as electron and neutrino, there were no clear distinction between strong and weak interactions) were put together in an isovector and electromagnetic field and charged vector meson comprised a $`2\times 2`$ matrix. However the noncommutative $`SU(2)`$ gauge group was not mentioned.

Klein’s proposal was not received favorably and N. Borh did not recommend him to publish a paper. So the idea remained only in the form of contribution to proceedings of Warsaw Conference “New Theories in Physics” .

The noncommutative group, acting in the internal space of charges, appeared for the first time in the paper  of C.N. Yang and R. Mills in 1954. There is no wonder that Yang received a cool reaction when he presented his work at Princeton in 1954. The dramatic account of this event can be found in his commentaries . Pauli was in the audience and immediately raised the question about mass. Indeed the gauge invariance forbids the introduction of mass to the vector charged fields and masslessness leads to the long range interaction, which contradicts the experiment. The only known massless particles (and accompaning long range interactions) are photon and graviton. It is evident from Yang’s text, that Pauli was well acquainted with the differential geometry of nonabelian vector fields but his own censorship did not allow him to speak about them. As we know now, the boldness of Yang and his esthetic feeling finally were vindicated. And it can be rightly said, that C.N. Yang proceeded according to mathematical intuition.

In 1954 the paper of Yang and Mills did not move to the forefront of high energy theoretical physics. However, the idea of the charged space with noncommutative symmetry group acquired more and more popularity due to the increasing number of elementary particles and the search for the universal scheme of their classification. And at that time the decisive role in the promotion of the Yang–Mills fields was also played by mathematical intuition.

At the beginning of the 60s, R. Feynman worked on the extension of his own scheme of quantization of the electromagnetic field to the gravitation theory of Einstein. A purely technical difficulty — the abundance of the tensor indices — made his work rather slow. Following the advice of M. Gell-Mann, he exercised first on the simpler case of the Yang–Mills fields. To his surprise, he found that a naive generalization of his diagrammatic rules designed for electrodynamics did not work for the Yang-Mills field. The unitarity of the $`S`$-matrix was broken. Feynman restored the unitarity in one loop by reconstructing the full scattering amplitude from its imaginary part and found that the result can be interpreted as a subtraction of the contribution of some fictitious particle. However his technique became quite cumbersome beyond one loop. His approach was gradually developed by B. De-Witt . It must be stressed that the physical senselessness of the Yang–Mills field did not preclude Feynman from using it for mathematical construction.

The work of Feynman  became one of the starting points for my work in Quantum Field Theory, which I began in the middle of the 60s together with Victor Popov. Another point as important was the mathematical monograph by A. Lichnerowitz , dedicated to the theory of connections in vector bundles. From Lichnerowitz’s book it followed clearly that the Yang–Mills field has a definite geometric interpretation: it defines a connection in the vector bundle, the base being the space-time and the fiber the linear space of the representation of the compact group of charges. Thus, the Yang–Mills field finds its natural place among the fields of geometrical origin between the electromagnetic field (which is its particular example for the one-dimensional charge) and Einstein’s gravitation field, which deals with the tangent bundle of the Riemannian space-time manifold.

It became clear to me that such a possibility cannot be missed and, notwithstanding the unsolved problem of zero mass, one must actively tackle the problem of the correct quantization of the Yang–Mills field.

The geometric origin of the Yang–Mills field gave a natural way to resolve the difficulties with the diagrammatic rules. The formulation of the quantum theory in terms of Feynman’s functional integral happened to be most appropriate from the technical point of view. Indeed, to take into account the gauge equivalence principle one has to integrate over the classes of gauge equivalent fields rather than over every individual configuration. As soon as this idea is understood, the technical realization is rather straightforward. As a result V. Popov and I came out at the end of 1966 with a set of rules valid for all orders of perturbation theory. The fictitious particles appeared as auxiliary variables giving the integral representation for the nontrivial determinant entering the measure over the set of gauge orbits.

Correct diagrammatic rules of quantization of the Yang-Mills field, obtained by V. Popov and me in 1966–1967 , did not attract immediate the attention of physicists. Moreover, the time when our work was done was not favorable for it. Quantum Field Theory was virtually forbidden, especially in the Soviet Union, due to the influence of Landau. “The Hamiltonian is dead” — this phrase from his paper , dedicated to the anniversary of W. Pauli — shows the extreme of Landau’s attitude. The reason was quite solid, it was based not on experiment, but on the investigation of the effects of renormalization, which led Landau and his coworkers to believe that the renormalized physical coupling constant is inevitably zero for all possible local interactions. So there was no way for Victor Popov and me to publish an extended article in a major Soviet journal. We opted for the short communication in “Physics Letters” and were happy to be able to publish the full version in the preprint series of newly opened Kiev Institute of Theoretical Physics. This preprint was finally translated into English by B. Lee as a Fermilab preprint in 1972, and from the preface to the translation it follows that it was known in the West already in 1968.

A decisive role in the successful promotion of our diagrammatic rules into physics was played by the works of G. ’t Hooft , dedicated to the Yang–Mills field interacting with the Higgs field (and which ultimately led to a Nobel Prize for him in 1999) and the discovery of dimensional transmutation (the term of S. Coleman ). The problem of mass was solved in the first case via the spontaneous symmetry breaking. The second development was based on asymptotic freedom. There exists a vast literature dedicated to the history of this dramatic development. I refer to the recent papers of G. ’t Hooft  and D. Gross , where the participants in this story share their impressions of this progress. As a result, the Standard Model of unified interactions got its main technical tool. From the middle of the 70s until our time it remains the fundamental base of high energy physics. For our discourse it is important to stress once again that the paper  based on mathematical intuition preceded the works made in the traditions of theoretical physics.

The Standard Model did not complete the development of fundamental physics in spite of its unexpected and astonishing experimental success. The gravitational interactions, whose geometrical interpretation is slightly different from that of the Yang–Mills theory, is not included in the Standard Model. The unification of quantum principles, Lorentz–Einstein relativity and Einstein gravity has not yet been accomplished. We have every reason to conjecture that the modern MP and its mode of working will play the decisive role in the quest for such a unification.

Indeed, the new generation of theoreticians in high energy physics have received an incomparably higher mathematical education. They are not subject to the pressure of old authorities maintaining the purity of physical thinking and/or terminology. Futhermore, many professional mathematicians, tempted by the beauty of the methods used by physicists, moved to the position of the modern mathematical physics. Let use cite from the manifesto, written by P. MacPherson during the organization of the Quantum Field Theory year at the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton:

> The goal is to create and convey an understanding, in terms congenial to mathematicians, of some fundamental notions of physics, such as quantum field theory. The emphasis will be on developing the intuition stemming from functional integrals.
>
> One way to define the goals of the program is by negation, excluding certain important subjects commonly pursued by mathematicians whose work is motivated by physics. In this spirit, it is not planned to treat except peripherally the magnificient new applications of field theory, such as Seiberg-Witten equations to Donaldson theory. Nor is the plan to consider fundamental new constructions within mathimatics that were inspired by physics, such as quantum groups or vertex operator algebras. Nor is the aim to discuss how to provide mathematical rigor for physical theories. Rather, the goal is to develop the sort of intuition common among physicists for those who are used to thought processes stemming from geometry and algebra.

I propose to call the intuition to which MacPherson refers that of mathematical physics. I also recommend the reader to look at the instructive drawing by P. Dijkgraaf on the dust cover of the volumes of lectures given at the School .

The union of these two groups constitutes an enormous intellectual force. In the next century we will learn if this force is capable of substituting for the traditional experimental base of the development of fundamental physics and pertinent physical intuition.


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# Precise Measurement of Cosmic-Ray Proton and Helium Spectra with the BESS Spectrometer

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The absolute fluxes and spectra of primary cosmic-ray protons and helium nuclei are fundamental information as references in cosmic-ray physics. They are needed to calculate secondary anti-protons, positrons, and diffuse gamma radiation, which in turn provide important knowledge of particle propagation and the matter distribution in interstellar space. Those are also indispensable for studying atmospheric neutrinos. Although measurement of the proton and helium energy spectra has been performed in various experiments, their resultant absolute fluxes show discrepancies up to a factor of two at 50 GeV. This ambiguity causes large uncertainty in calculations of the atmospheric neutrinos, as well as secondary anti-protons, positrons, and diffuse gamma-rays.

We report a new precise measurement of the cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra over the energy ranges of 1 to 120 GeV for protons and 1 to 54 GeV/nucleon for helium nuclei, based on a half of the data from a BESS balloon flight in 1998. The covered energy range is relevant to the atmospheric neutrinos observed as “fully contained events” in Super-Kamiokande. In the BESS–98 flight, a new trigger mode was implemented with a silica-aerogel Cherenkov counter to record all energetic particles instead of sampling the protons at a ratio of 1/60 as done in the previous BESS flights. This drastically improved statistics in the high-energy region above 6 GeV/nucleon, as reported here.

## 2 THE BESS SPECTROMETER

The BESS detector is a high-resolution spectrometer with a large acceptance to perform highly sensitive searches for rare cosmic-ray components, as well as precise measurement of the absolute fluxes of various cosmic-ray particles (Orito, 1987; Yamamoto et al., 1994; Ajima et al., 2000). As shown in Figure 1, all detector components are arranged in a simple cylindrical configuration with a thin superconducting solenoidal magnet. In the central region, the solenoid provides a uniform magnetic field of 1 Tesla ($`\pm 7`$ % in a fiducial volume). The trajectory of an incoming charged particle is measured by using the tracking system which consists of a central JET chamber and two inner drift chambers (IDC’s) in a volume of 0.84 m in diameter and 1 m in length. The magnetic-rigidity ($`Rpc/Ze`$) is reliably determined by a simple circular-fitting of the deflection ($`R^1`$) using up-to 28 hit points each with a spatial resolution of 200 $`\mu `$m . Figure 2 shows the deflection uncertainty for protons evaluated in the track fitting procedure. Since the magnetic field is highly uniform, it has a narrow and sharp peak around 0.005, which corresponds to maximum detectable rigidity (MDR) of 200 GV, and has a small tail. The outermost detector is a set of time-of-flight (TOF) hodoscopes with 2 cm thick plastic scintillators. It provides the velocity ($`\beta v/c`$) and energy loss ($`dE/dx`$) measurements. The time resolution for energetic protons in each counter is 55 ps rms, resulting in a $`\beta ^1`$ resolution of 1.4 %. The data acquisition sequence is initiated by a first-level TOF trigger by a simple coincidence of signals in the top and bottom scintillators, with the threshold level of 1/3 pulse height from minimum ionizing particles (MIP’s). If the pulse height exceeds 2.5 times MIP signal, the TOF trigger is labeled as “helium-trigger,” otherwise “proton-trigger.” The TOF trigger efficiency was evaluated to be $`>99.95`$ % from the muon data taken at sea level; thus, the systematic error caused by the TOF trigger inefficiency is negligibly small. In order to build a sample of unbiased triggers, one of every 60 and 25 “proton-triggered” and “helium-triggered” events, respectively, was recorded irrespective of succeeding online-selections.

The instrument has a threshold-type Cherenkov counter with a silica-aerogel radiator just below the top TOF hodoscope (Asaoka et al., 1998). The radiator was newly developed prior to the BESS–98 flight and it has a refractive index of 1.022. An auxiliary trigger was generated by a signal from the Cherenkov counter to record all of the high energy particles above $``$ 6 GeV without bias nor sampling. The efficiency of the Cherenkov trigger for the energetic particles was determined to be $`92.1\pm 3.0`$ % by using the data sample of unbiased triggers.

The BESS spectrometer was flown 1998 July 29-30 from Lynn Lake, Manitoba, Canada. It floated at an altitude of 37 km (residual atmosphere of $`5\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$) with a cutoff rigidity of 0.5 GV or smaller. The solar activity was close to the minimum.

## 3 DATA ANALYSIS

In the first stage of data reduction, we selected events with a single track fully contained inside a fiducial volume defined by the central four columns out of eight columns in the JET chamber. This definition of the fiducial volume reduced the effective geometrical acceptance down to $`1/3`$ of the full acceptance, but it ensured the longest track-fitting and thus the highest resolution in the rigidity measurement. The single-track selection eliminated rare interacting events. In order to verify the selection, events were scanned randomly in the unbiased trigger sample, and it was confirmed that 995 out of 1,000 visually-identified single-track events passed this selection criteria and interacting events were fully eliminated. Thus, the track reconstruction efficiency was $`99.5\pm 0.2`$ % for a single-track event. In order to assure accuracy of the rigidity measurements, event quality such as $`\chi ^2`$ in the track fitting procedure was imposed on the single-track events. The efficiency of this quality-check was estimated from loose cuts of the flight data to be $`93.8\pm 0.3`$ % and $`93.0\pm 0.9`$ % for protons and helium nuclei, respectively. It was almost constant over the whole energy range.

In the final stage of data reduction, particle identification was performed as shown in Figure 3 by requiring proper $`dE/dx`$ and 1/$`\beta `$ as a function of rigidity. According to a study of another sample of $`5\times 10^5`$ protons and $`4\times 10^4`$ helium nuclei selected by using independent information of energy loss inside the JET chamber, the $`dE/dx`$ selection efficiencies were $`99.3\pm 0.2`$ % for protons and $`98.2\pm 0.7`$ % for helium nuclei, and the contamination probabilities should be less than $`3\times 10^5`$ for protons and $`4\times 10^4`$ for helium nuclei. Since the 1/$`\beta `$ distribution is well described by Gaussian and the half width of 1/$`\beta `$ selection band was set at 3.89 $`\sigma `$, the efficiency is very close to unity (99.99 % for pure Gaussian).

Very clean proton samples were obtained below 3 GV. However, deuterons started to contaminate the proton band around at 3 GV, where the contamination was observed to be 2 %. No subtraction was made for this contamination, because it was as small as the statistical errors and a deuteron-to-proton ratio decreases with energy (Seo et al., 1997) following a decrease in escape path lengths of primary cosmic-ray nuclei (Engelmann et al., 1990). In conformity with previous experiments, all doubly charged particle were treated as 4He. With the data reduction described above, 826,703 protons and 77,325 helium nuclei were finally identified. The combined efficiencies were $`92.7\pm 1.0`$ % for protons and $`90.8\pm 1.5`$ % for helium nuclei.

The geometrical acceptance defined for this analysis was calculated to be $`0.0851\pm 0.0003`$ $`\mathrm{m}^2\mathrm{sr}`$ for energetic particles by using simulation technique (Sullivan, 1971). The simple cylindrical shape and the uniform magnetic field make it trivial to determine the acceptance precisely. The error arises from uncertainty of the detector alignment within 1 mm. The ratio of live data-taking-time was measured exactly to be 86.4 % by counting 1 MHz clock pulses.

The energy of each particle at the top of the atmosphere can be calculated by summing up the ionization energy losses with tracing back the event trajectory. Detection efficiencies were studied by using Monte Carlo (M.C.) simulation. The M.C. code was developed to incorporate detailed description of various interactions of helium nuclei into GEANT (Brun et al., 1994), where the cross-sections and angular-distributions of the nuclear interactions were evaluated by fitting experimental data (Bizard et al., 1977; Abdurakhimov et al., 1981; Gasparyan et al., 1982; Ableev et al., 1985; Grebenjuk et al., 1989; Glagolev et al., 1993; Abdullin et al., 1994) to energy dependent empirical formulas (Bradt & Peters, 1950). The electromagnetic processes, mainly due to $`\delta `$–rays, are also treated properly. They are more significant in helium nuclei interactions, because cross-sections in electromagnetic processes ($`\sigma _{em}`$) behaves as $`Z^2`$ whereas those in hadronic processes ($`\sigma _{had}`$) is approximately proportional to $`(2Z)^{2/3}`$. The M.C. well reproduced the observed event shape. The simulated and observed number of hit-counters in the bottom TOF hodoscope, for instance, were agree within a discrepancy of 0.9 % and 1.8 % for proton and helium, respectively. The systematic errors in the M.C. originate mainly in uncertainties of $`\sigma _{had}`$ and $`\sigma _{em}`$. We attributed relative errors of $`\pm 5`$ % to $`\sigma _{had}(\mathrm{p}+\mathrm{A})`$, $`\pm 5`$ % to $`\sigma _{em}(\mathrm{p}+\mathrm{A})`$, $`\pm 15`$ % to $`\sigma _{had}(\mathrm{He}+\mathrm{A})`$, $`\pm 20`$ % to $`\sigma _{em}(\mathrm{He}+\mathrm{A})`$, and $`\pm 20`$ % to $`\sigma _{had}(\mathrm{CNO}+\mathrm{A})`$. Another source of a systematic error in the M.C. was the uncertainty of the material distribution inside the BESS spectrometer, which was estimated to be $`\pm 10`$ %. The probability that cosmic-ray protons and helium nuclei, respectively, can pass through the whole detector without interaction was $`87.6\pm 2.3`$ % and $`74.5\pm 6.8`$ % at 1 GeV, and $`79.7\pm 2.9`$ % and $`64.6\pm 7.5`$ % at 100 GeV.

According to similar M.C. studies, the probabilities that primary cosmic-rays can penetrate the residual atmosphere of 5 g/cm2 is about 94 % and 90 % for the proton and helium, respectively, over the entire energy range discussed here. Atmospheric secondary protons, which account for about 3.5 % at 1 GeV and less than 1.5 % above 10 GeV of observed protons, were subtracted based on the calculation by Papini et al. (1996). Atmospheric secondary helium above 1 GeV/nucleon is dominated by fragments of heavier cosmic-ray nuclei (mainly Carbon and Oxygen). The flux ratio of atmospheric secondary helium to primary C+O was calculated to be 0.14 at a depth of $`5\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$, based on the total inelastic cross-sections of CNO + Air interactions and the helium multiplicity in $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{C}+\mathrm{CNO}`$ interactions (Ahmad et al., 1989). The total correction of atmospheric secondary helium due to all nuclei with $`Z>2`$ was estimated to be about 2 % over the entire energy range. The ambiguity in this estimation arises from the uncertainties in $`\sigma _{had}(\mathrm{CNO}+\mathrm{A})`$ and in absolute fluxes of heavier cosmic-ray nuclei, to which we attributed relative error of $`\pm 20`$ %. The systematic errors originating in the correction of the residual air effect were estimated to be $`\pm 0.3`$ % for protons and $`\pm 2.0`$ % helium nuclei.

Because of the finite resolution in rigidity measurement, and the very steep spectral shape, the observed spectrum shape may suffer deformation. The effect of finite resolution was estimated by simulation, where the error in rigidity measurement was tuned to reproduce the distribution shown in Figure 2. The effect was found to be smaller than 1 % below 25 GV, but it became visible with increasing rigidity. The observed spectrum gradually gets lower than original spectrum, with a ratio of $`2.5`$ % at 70 GV and then rapidly rises to $`\pm 0`$ % around 120 GV. No correction was made for this deformation, because the effect is as small as the statistical errors over the energy range discussed here.

## 4 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

The proton and helium fluxes at the top of the atmosphere have been obtained from the BESS–98 flight data as summarized in Table 1 and as shown in Figure 4 in comparison with the previous experiments. The first and second errors in Table 1 represent statistical and systematic errors, respectively. The overall errors including both errors are less than $`\pm 5`$ % for protons and $`\pm 10`$ % for helium nuclei. The dotted lines in Figure 4 indicate the spectra assumed in the calculation of atmospheric neutrinos (Honda et al., 1995). Our results, as well as other recent measurements, are favorable to lower fluxes than the ones assumed in the atmospheric neutrino calculation especially above a few tens of GeV. It may suggest an importance of the reconsideration for the atmospheric neutrino flux predictions. Precise measurements of primary cosmic-rays will help to improve the accuracy in the atmospheric neutrino calculations.

The authors would thank NASA and NSBF for the balloon flight operation. This experiment was supported by Grants-in-Aid from Monbusho and Heiwa Nakajima Foundation in Japan and by NASA in the U.S.A. The analysis was performed with the computing facilities at ICEPP, University of Tokyo.


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# A Model Independent Determination of |𝑉_{𝑢𝑏}|

## Abstract

It is shown that measuring the lepton invariant mass spectrum in inclusive semileptonic $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay yields a model independent determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$. Unlike the lepton energy and hadronic invariant mass spectra, nonperturbative effects are only important in the resonance region, and play a parametrically suppressed role when $`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{d}q^2`$ is integrated over $`q^2>(m_Bm_D)^2`$, which is required to eliminate the charm background. Perturbative and nonperturbative corrections are presented to order $`\alpha _s^2\beta _0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2/m_b^2`$, and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^3/m_b^3`$ corrections are used to estimate the uncertainty in our results. The utility of the $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ decay rate above the $`\psi (2S)`$ resonance is discussed.

preprint:   UTPT-00-02 FERMILAB-Pub-00/039-T hep-ph/0002161

A precise and model independent determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element $`V_{ub}`$ is important for testing the Standard Model at $`B`$ factories via the comparison of the angles and the sides of the unitarity triangle. The first extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from experimental data relied on a study of the lepton energy spectrum in inclusive charmless semileptonic $`B`$ decay . Recently $`|V_{ub}|`$ was also measured from exclusive semileptonic $`\overline{B}\rho \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ and $`\overline{B}\pi \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay , and from inclusive decays using the reconstruction of the invariant mass of the hadronic final state .

These determinations suffer from large model dependence. The exclusive $`|V_{ub}|`$ measurements rely on form factor models or quenched lattice calculations at the present time.***A model independent determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from exclusive decays is possible without first order heavy quark symmetry or chiral symmetry breaking corrections , but it requires data on $`\overline{B}K^{}\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$. A model independent extraction is also possible from decays to wrong-sign charm , but this is very challenging experimentally. See also  for a discussion of extracting $`|V_{ub}|`$ from a comparison of photon spectra in $`B`$ and $`D`$ radiative leptonic decays. Inclusive $`B`$ decay rates are currently on a better theoretical footing, since they can be computed model independently in a series in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b`$ and $`\alpha _s(m_b)`$ using an operator product expansion (OPE) . However, the predictions of the OPE are only model independent for sufficiently inclusive observables, while the $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay rate can only be measured by imposing severe cuts on the phase space to eliminate the $`100`$ times larger $`\overline{B}X_c\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ background. For both the charged lepton and hadronic invariant mass spectra, these cuts spoil the convergence of the OPE, and the most singular terms must be resummed into a nonperturbative $`b`$ quark distribution function. While it may be possible to extract this from the photon spectrum in $`BX_s\gamma `$ , it would clearly be simpler to find an observable for which the OPE did not break down in the region of phase space free from charm background. In this Letter we show that this is the situation for the lepton invariant mass spectrum.

At leading order in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b`$ expansion the $`B`$ meson decay rate is equal to the $`b`$ quark decay rate. Nonperturbative effects are suppressed by at least two powers of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b`$. Corrections of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2/m_b^2`$ are characterized by two heavy quark effective theory (HQET) matrix elements , which are defined by

$`\lambda _1`$ $`=`$ $`B(v)|\overline{h}_v^{(b)}(iD)^2h_v^{(b)}|B(v)/2m_B,`$ (1)
$`\lambda _2`$ $`=`$ $`B(v)|{\displaystyle \frac{g_s}{2}}\overline{h}_v^{(b)}\sigma _{\mu \nu }G^{\mu \nu }h_v^{(b)}|B(v)/6m_B.`$ (2)
These matrix elements also occur in the expansion of the $`B`$ and $`B^{}`$ masses in powers of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b`$,

$$m_B=m_b+\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{\lambda _1+3\lambda _2}{2m_b}+\mathrm{},m_B^{}=m_b+\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{\lambda _1\lambda _2}{2m_b}+\mathrm{}.$$
(3)
Similar formulae hold for the $`D`$ and $`D^{}`$ masses. The parameters $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and $`\lambda _1`$ are independent of the heavy $`b`$ quark mass, while there is a weak logarithmic scale dependence in $`\lambda _2`$. The measured $`B^{}B`$ mass splitting fixes $`\lambda _2(m_b)=0.12\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. At $`𝒪(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^3/m_b^3)`$ seven additional parameters arise in the OPE , and varying these parameters is often used to estimate the theoretical uncertainty in the OPE .

In inclusive semileptonic $`B`$ decay, for a particular hadronic final state $`X`$, the maximum lepton energy is $`E_{\mathrm{}}^{(\mathrm{max})}=(m_B^2m_X^2)/2m_B`$ (in the $`B`$ rest frame), so to eliminate charm background one must impose a cut $`E_{\mathrm{}}>(m_B^2m_D^2)/2m_B`$. The maximum lepton energy in semileptonic $`b`$ quark decay is $`m_b/2`$, which is less than the physical endpoint $`m_B/2`$. Their difference, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/2`$, is comparable in size to the endpoint region $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}^{(\mathrm{endpoint})}=m_D^2/2m_B0.33`$GeV. The effects which extend the lepton spectrum beyond its partonic endpoint appear as singular terms in the prediction for $`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{d}E_{\mathrm{}}`$ involving derivatives of delta functions, $`\delta ^{(n)}(12E_{\mathrm{}}/m_b)`$. The lepton spectrum must be smeared over a region of energies $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}`$ near the endpoint before theory can be compared with experiment. If the smearing region $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}`$ is much smaller than $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, then higher dimension operators in the OPE become successively more important and the OPE is not useful for describing the lepton energy spectrum. For $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, higher dimension operators become successively less important and a useful prediction for the lepton spectrum can be made using the first few terms in the OPE. When $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, there is an infinite series of terms in the OPE which are all equally important. Since $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\mathrm{}}^{(\mathrm{endpoint})}`$ is about $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, it seems unlikely that predictions based on a few low dimension operators in the OPE can successfully determine the lepton spectrum in this region.

It was shown in  that the leading singularities in the OPE may be resummed into a nonperturbative light-cone distribution function $`f(k_+)`$ for the heavy quark. To leading order in $`1/m_b`$, the effects of the distribution function may be included by replacing $`m_b`$ by $`m_b^{}m_b+k_+`$, and integrating over the light-cone momentum

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\mathrm{d}E_{\mathrm{}}}=dk_+f(k_+)\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{p}}{\mathrm{d}E_{\mathrm{}}}|_{m_bm_b^{}},$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{p}/\mathrm{d}E_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the parton-level spectrum. Analogous formulae hold for other differential distributions . For purposes of illustration, we will use a simple model for the structure function given by the one-parameter ansatz

$$f(k_+)=\frac{32}{\pi ^2\mathrm{\Lambda }}(1x)^2\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{4}{\pi }(1x)^2\right]\mathrm{\Theta }(1x),x\frac{k_+}{\mathrm{\Lambda }},$$
(5)
taking the model parameter $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.48`$GeV, corresponding to $`m_b=4.8`$GeV.

The charm background can also be eliminated by reconstructing the invariant mass of the hadronic final state, $`m_X`$, since decays with $`m_X<m_D`$ must arise from $`bu`$ transition. While this analysis is challenging experimentally, the $`m_X<m_D`$ cut allows a much larger fraction of $`bu`$ decays than the $`E_{\mathrm{}}>(m_B^2m_D^2)/2m_B`$ constraint. This is expected to result in a reduction of the theoretical uncertainties , although both the lepton endpoint region, $`E_{\mathrm{}}>(m_B^2m_D^2)/2m_B`$, and the low hadronic invariant mass region, $`m_X<m_D`$, receive contributions from the same set of hadronic final states (but with very different weights). However, the same nonperturbative effects which lead to the breakdown of predictive power in the lepton endpoint region also give large uncertainties in the hadron mass spectrum over the range $`m_X^2\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}m_b`$ . In other words, nonperturbative effects yield formally $`𝒪(1)`$ uncertainties in both cases, because numerically $`m_D^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}m_B`$. The situation is illustrated in Fig. 1.

The situation is very different for the lepton invariant mass spectrum. Decays with $`q^2(p_{\mathrm{}}+p_{\overline{\nu }})^2>(m_Bm_D)^2`$ must arise from $`bu`$ transition. Such a cut forbids the hadronic final state from moving fast in the $`B`$ rest frame, and so the light-cone expansion which gives rise to the shape function is not relevant in this region of phase space.The fact that the $`b`$ quark distribution function is not relevant for large $`q^2`$ was pointed out in  in the context of $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ decay and in  for semileptonic $`\overline{B}X_u`$ decay. This is clear from the kinematics: the difference between the partonic and hadronic values of maximum $`q^2`$ is $`m_B^2m_b^22\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}m_b`$, and nonperturbative effects are only important in a region of comparable size. For example, the most singular term in the OPE at order $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b)^3`$ is of order $`\left(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b\right)^3\delta (1q^2/m_b^2)`$. This contribution to the decay rate is not suppressed compared to the lowest order term in the OPE only if the spectrum is integrated over a small region of width $`\mathrm{\Delta }q^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}m_b`$ near the endpoint. This is the resonance region where only hadronic final states with masses $`m_X\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ can contribute, and the OPE is not expected to work anyway. In contrast, nonperturbative effects are important in the $`E_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`m_X^2`$ spectra in a parametrically much larger region where final states with masses $`m_X^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}m_b`$ contribute.Similar arguments also show that the light-cone distribution function is not relevant for small hadron energy, $`E_X`$, but it does enter for $`E_X`$ near $`m_b/2`$. If $`m_b/2m_c\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$, then the constraint $`E_X<m_D`$ in the $`B`$ rest frame would also give a model independent determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$. The better behavior of the $`q^2`$ spectrum than the $`E_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`m_X^2`$ spectra is also reflected in the perturbation series. There are Sudakov double logarithms near the phase space boundaries in the $`E_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`m_X^2`$ spectra, whereas there are only single logarithms in the $`q^2`$ spectrum.

The effect of smearing the $`q^2`$ spectrum with the model distribution function in Eq. (5) is illustrated in Fig. 2. In accord with our previous arguments, it is easily seen to be subleading over the region of interest. Table I compares qualitatively the utility of the lepton energy, the hadronic invariant mass, and the lepton invariant mass spectra for the determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$.

We now proceed to calculate the $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay rate with lepton invariant mass above a given cutoff, working to a fixed order in the OPE (i.e., ignoring the light-cone distribution function which is irrelevant for our analysis). The lepton invariant mass spectrum including the leading perturbative and nonperturbative corrections is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\mathrm{d}\widehat{q}^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _1}{2m_b^2}}\right)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}(1\widehat{q}^2)^2(1+2\widehat{q}^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _2}{m_b^2}}(345\widehat{q}^4+30\widehat{q}^6)`$ (7)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(m_b)}{\pi }}X(\widehat{q}^2)+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(m_b)}{\pi }}\right)^2\beta _0Y(\widehat{q}^2)+\mathrm{},`$
where $`\widehat{q}^2=q^2/m_b^2`$, $`\beta _0=112n_f/3`$, and

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=\frac{G_F^2|V_{ub}|^2m_b^5}{192\pi ^3}$$
(8)
is the tree level $`bu`$ decay rate. The ellipses in Eq. (7) denote terms of order $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/m_b)^3`$ and order $`\alpha _s^2`$ terms not enhanced by $`\beta _0`$. The function $`X(\widehat{q}^2)`$ is given analytically in Ref. , whereas $`Y(\widehat{q}^2)`$ was computed numerically in Ref. . The order $`1/m_b^3`$ nonperturbative corrections were computed in Ref. . The matrix element of the kinetic energy operator, $`\lambda _1`$, only enters the $`\widehat{q}^2`$ spectrum in a very simple form, because the unit operator and the kinetic energy operator are related by reparameterization invariance . Any quantity which can be written independent of the heavy quark velocity $`v`$ must depend only on the combination $`(1+\lambda _1/2m_b^2)`$. The $`\widehat{q}^2`$ spectrum (and the total rate written in terms of $`m_b`$) are invariant under a redefinition of $`v`$, but, for example, the lepton energy spectrum is not since $`E_{\mathrm{}}=vp_e`$. (Equivalently, the $`\lambda _1`$ term is a time-dilation effect, and hence is universal in any quantity that is independent of the rest frame of the $`B`$ meson .)

We shall compute the fraction of $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ events with $`q^2>q_0^2`$, $`F(q_0^2)`$, as the relation between the total $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay rate and $`|V_{ub}|`$ has been extensively discussed in the literature , and is known including the full $`\alpha _s^2`$ corrections . After integrating the spectrum in Eq. (7), we can eliminate the dependence on the $`b`$ quark mass in favor of the spin averaged meson mass $`\overline{m}_B=(m_B+3m_B^{})/45.313`$GeV, following . We find

$`F(q_0^2)=1`$ $``$ $`2Q_0^2+2Q_0^6Q_0^8{\displaystyle \frac{4\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{\overline{m}_B}}\left(Q_0^23Q_0^6+2Q_0^8\right){\displaystyle \frac{6\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2}{\overline{m}_B^2}}\left(Q_0^27Q_0^6+6Q_0^8\right)`$ (9)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\lambda _1}{\overline{m}_B^2}}\left(Q_0^23Q_0^6+2Q_0^8\right){\displaystyle \frac{12\lambda _2}{\overline{m}_B^2}}\left(Q_0^22Q_0^6+Q_0^8\right)`$ (10)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(m_b)}{\pi }}\stackrel{~}{X}(Q_0^2)+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(m_b)}{\pi }}\right)^2\beta _0\stackrel{~}{Y}(Q_0^2)+\mathrm{},`$ (11)
where $`Q_0q_0/\overline{m}_B`$. The functions $`\stackrel{~}{X}(Q_0^2)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{Y}(Q_0^2)`$ can be calculated from $`X(\widehat{q}^2)`$ and $`Y(\widehat{q}^2)`$. Converting to the physical $`B`$ meson mass has introduced a strong dependence on the parameter $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$, the mass of the light degrees of freedom in the $`B`$ meson. For $`q_0^2=(m_Bm_D)^211.6\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, we find $`F(11.6\mathrm{GeV}^2)=0.287+0.027\alpha _s(m_b)0.016\alpha _s^2(m_b)\beta _00.20\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/(1\mathrm{GeV})0.02\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)+0.02\lambda _1/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)0.13\lambda _2/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)+\mathrm{}`$ . The order $`\alpha _s\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ term is negligible and has been omitted. Using $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=0.4`$GeV, $`\lambda _1=0.2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$  and $`\alpha _s(m_b)=0.22`$, we obtain $`F(11.6\mathrm{GeV}^2)=0.186`$. There are several sources of uncertainties in the value for $`F`$. The perturbative uncertainties are negligible, as can be seen from the size of the $`𝒪(\alpha _s^2\beta _0)`$ contributions. At the present time there is a sizable uncertainty since $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is not known accurately. In the future, a $`\pm 50`$MeV error in $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ will result in a $`\pm 5\%`$ uncertainty in $`F`$. Finally, uncertainties from $`1/m_b^3`$ operators can be estimated by varying the matrix elements of the dimension six operators within the range expected by dimensional analysis, as discussed in detail in . This results in an additional $`\pm 4\%`$ uncertainty in $`F`$. We note that this is a somewhat ad hoc procedure, since there is no real way to quantify the theoretical error due to unknown higher order terms. Therefore, these estimates should be treated as nothing more than (hopefully) educated guesses. They do allow, however, for a consistent comparison of the uncertainties in different quantities.

If $`q_0^2`$ has to be chosen larger, then the uncertainties increase. For example, for $`q_0^2=15\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, we obtain $`F(15\mathrm{GeV}^2)=0.158+0.024\alpha _s(m_b)0.012\alpha _s^2(m_b)\beta _00.18\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/(1\mathrm{GeV})+0.01\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)+0.02\lambda _1/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)0.13\lambda _2/(1\mathrm{GeV}^2)+\mathrm{}0.067`$, using the previous values of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and $`\lambda _1`$. The perturbative uncertainties are still negligible, while the uncertainty due to a $`\pm 50`$MeV error in $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and unknown dimension six matrix elements increase to $`\pm 14\%`$ and $`\pm 13\%`$, respectively. (This uncertainty may be reduced using data on the rare decay $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ in the large $`q^2`$ region, as discussed below.)

Another possible method to compute $`F(q_0^2)`$ uses the upsilon expansion . By expressing $`\widehat{q}^2`$ in terms of the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ mass instead of $`\overline{m}_B`$, the dependence of $`F(q_0^2)`$ on $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and $`\lambda _1`$ is eliminated. Instead, the result is sensitive to unknown nonperturbative contributions to $`m_\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$. The uncertainty related to these effects can be systematically taken into account and has been estimated to be small . One finds,

$$|V_{ub}|=(3.04\pm 0.06\pm 0.08)\times 10^3\left(\frac{(\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu })|_{q^2>q_0^2}}{0.001\times F(q_0^2)}\frac{1.6\mathrm{ps}}{\tau _B}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(12)
The errors explicitly shown in Eq. (12) are the estimates of the perturbative and nonperturbative uncertainties in the upsilon expansion, respectively.

For $`q_0^2=(m_Bm_D)^2`$ we find $`F(11.6\mathrm{GeV}^2)=0.168+0.016ϵ+0.014ϵ_{\mathrm{BLM}}^20.17\lambda _2+\mathrm{}0.178`$, where $`ϵ1`$ shows the order in the upsilon expansion. This result is in good agreement with 0.186 obtained from Eq. (9). The uncertainty due to $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is absent in the upsilon expansion, however the size of the perturbative corrections has increased. The uncertainties due to $`1/m_b^3`$ operators is estimated to be $`\pm 7\%`$. For $`q_0^2=15\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, we obtain $`F(15\mathrm{GeV}^2)=0.060+0.011ϵ+0.011ϵ_{\mathrm{BLM}}^20.14\lambda _2+\mathrm{}0.064`$, which is again in good agreement with 0.067 obtained earlier. For this value of $`q_0^2`$, the $`1/m_b^3`$ uncertainties increase to $`\pm 21\%`$. $`F(q_0^2)`$ calculated in the upsilon expansion is plotted in Fig. 3, where the shaded region shows our estimate of the uncertainty due to the $`1/m_b^3`$ corrections.

Concerning experimental considerations, measuring the $`q^2`$ spectrum requires reconstruction of the neutrino four-momentum, just like measuring the hadronic invariant mass spectrum. Imposing a lepton energy cut, which may be required for this technique, is not a problem. The constraint $`q^2>(m_Bm_D)^2`$ automatically implies $`E_{\mathrm{}}>(m_Bm_D)^2/2m_B1.1`$GeV in the $`B`$ rest frame. Even if the $`E_{\mathrm{}}`$ cut has to be slightly larger than this, the utility of our method will not be affected, but a dedicated calculation including the affects of arbitrary $`E_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`q^2`$ cuts may be warranted.

If experimental resolution on the reconstruction of the neutrino momentum necessitates a significantly larger cut than $`q_0^2=(m_Bm_D)^2`$, then the uncertainties in the OPE calculation of $`F(q_0^2)`$ increase. In this case, it may instead be possible to obtain useful model independent information on the $`q^2`$ spectrum in the region $`q^2>m_{\psi (2S)}^213.6\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ from the $`q^2`$ spectrum in the rare decay $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$, which may be measured in the upcoming Tevatron Run-II. There are four contributions to this decay rate, proportional to the combination of Wilson coefficients $`\stackrel{~}{C}_9^2`$, $`C_{10}^2`$, $`C_7\stackrel{~}{C}_9`$, and $`C_7^2`$. $`\stackrel{~}{C}_9`$ is a $`q^2`$-dependent effective coefficient which takes into account the contribution of the four-quark operators. Its $`\widehat{q}^2`$-dependence yields negligible uncertainties if we use a mean $`\stackrel{~}{C}_9`$ obtained by averaging it in the region $`0.5<\widehat{q}^2<1`$ weighted with the $`b`$ quark decay rate $`(1\widehat{q}^2)^2(1+2\widehat{q}^2)`$. The resulting numerical values of the Wilson coefficients are $`\stackrel{~}{C}_9=4.47+0.44i`$, $`C_{10}=4.62`$, and $`C_7=0.31`$, corresponding to the scale $`\mu =m_b`$. In the $`q^2>m_{\psi (2S)}^2`$ region the $`C_7^2`$ contribution is negligible, and the $`C_7\stackrel{~}{C}_9`$ term makes about a 20% contribution to the rate. For the $`\stackrel{~}{C}_9^2+C_{10}^2`$ contributions nonperturbative effects are identical to those which occur in $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay, up to corrections suppressed by $`|\stackrel{~}{C}_9+C_{10}|/|\stackrel{~}{C}_9C_{10}|0.02`$. Therefore, the relation

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu })/\mathrm{d}\widehat{q}^2}{\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{})/\mathrm{d}\widehat{q}^2}=\frac{|V_{ub}|^2}{|V_{ts}V_{tb}|^2}\frac{8\pi ^2}{\alpha ^2}\frac{1}{|\stackrel{~}{C}_9|^2+|C_{10}|^2+12\mathrm{Re}(C_7\stackrel{~}{C}_9)/(1+2\widehat{q}^2)},$$
(13)
is expected to hold to a very good accuracy. There are several sources of corrections to this formula which need to be estimated: i) nonperturbative effects that enter the $`C_7\stackrel{~}{C}_9`$ term differently, ii) mass effects from the strange quark and muon, iii) higher $`c\overline{c}`$ resonance contributions in $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$, and iv) scale dependence. Of these, i) and ii) are expected to be small unless $`q^2`$ is very close to $`m_B^2`$. The effects of iii) have also been estimated to be at the few percent level , although these uncertainties are very hard to quantify and could be comparable to the $`\pm 8\%`$ scale dependence  of the $`\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}`$ rate. Integrating over a large enough range of $`q^2`$, $`q_0^2<q^2<m_B^2`$ with $`m_{\psi (2S)}^2<q_0^217\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, the result implied by Eq. (13),

$$\frac{(\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu })|_{q^2>q_0^2}}{(\overline{B}X_s\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{})|_{q^2>q_0^2}}=\frac{|V_{ub}|^2}{|V_{ts}V_{tb}|^2}\frac{8\pi ^2}{\alpha ^2}\frac{1}{|\stackrel{~}{C}_9|^2+|C_{10}|^2+12\mathrm{Re}(C_7\stackrel{~}{C}_9)B(q_0^2)},$$
(14)
is expected to hold at the $`15\%`$ level. Here $`Q_0q_0/\overline{m}_B`$, and $`B(q_0^2)=2/[3(1+Q_0^2)]4(\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{m}_B)Q_0^2/[3(1+Q_0^2)^2]+\mathrm{}`$ . For $`q_0^2`$ significantly above $`(m_Bm_D)^2`$, this formula may lead to a determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$ with smaller theoretical uncertainty than the one using the OPE calculation of $`F(q_0^2)`$.

In conclusion, we have shown that the $`q^2`$ spectrum in inclusive semileptonic $`\overline{B}X_u\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay gives a model independent determination of $`|V_{ub}|`$ with small theoretical uncertainty. Nonperturbative effects are only important in the resonance region, and play a parametrically suppressed role when $`\mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{d}q^2`$ is integrated over $`q^2>(m_Bm_D)^2`$, which is required to eliminate the charm background. This is a qualitatively better situation than the extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from the endpoint region of the lepton energy spectrum, or from the hadronic invariant mass spectrum.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Craig Burrell for discussions and Adam Falk for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Sloan Foundation. Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., under DOE contract DE-AC02-76CH03000.


text:
# Sonoluminescence as a physical vacuum excitation

## Abstract

It is discussed a physical vacuum excitation as a mechanism of sonoluminescence of gas bubble. This Schwinger’s theory was based on the assumption that the sudden change of the collapse rate of bubble in the water leads to the jump of the dielectric constant of gas. It is shown that the dependence of the dielectric constant on the gas density really leads to the jump of the dielectric constant at the shock-wave propagation in a collapsing gas bubble.

Sonoluminescence is a transformation of sound into the light. The liquid (it can be the distillate water) is incurred to the acoustic waves, and photons are radiated at that. The radiated light energy is comparable with introducing sound energy. The sound energy density is of the order $`10^{11}`$ eV/atom, and as the energy of radiation photons is of the order 10 eV, one can say that the density of the energy is increases in $`10^{12}`$ times. Sonoluminescence is well-known and studied for 60 years. The cavitation nature of the radiation is determined . The dependence of sonoluminescence intensity from chemical structure of liquid and dissolved gas in this liquid, their thermal conductivity coefficients, from temperature, from sound frequency and amplitude is studied. In spite of, that after stable luminescence observation of single gas bubble , the sonoluminescence attracted attention of many investigators \[4-12\], the conclusive explanation of physical mechanism of this effect is not find out now.

The sonoluminescence in Schwinger’s works is considered as a manifestation of nonstationary Casimir effect , which is a result of the change of vacuum properties under different external influences. At the studying of sonoluminescence the gas bubbles (cavities in the water with radius $`r`$, which are filled up by the gas) are putting to compression and expansion in the response to the positive and negative changes of pressure under the acoustic field influence. Schwinger’s theory is based on the assumption that the sudden change of the collapse rate of bubble in the water leads to the jump of its dielectric constant. This is accompanied by the excitation of electromagnetic vacuum and by the photons radiation. In  the probability of the photons creation is calculated and the numeral accounts which are qualitatively explain the part of experiment datas, are doing. The task of this paper is to lead some reasons for the sustention of Schwinger’s idea and to show that the dielectric constant of gas is really jump function of the time at nonadiabatic stage of the bubble collapse.

Well-known Schwinger’s expression for the total number of photons created in the volume V :

$$N=\frac{(\sqrt{\epsilon }1)^2}{4\sqrt{\epsilon }}\frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}V.$$
(1)
can be obtained as solution of an equation, which is described the scalar field of photons . This fact is evidenced about the validity of Schwinger’s idea. For removing the integration divergency in the formula (1) we must to make cut-off wave-number $`k_{max}`$, which corresponds to the minimum wave length $`\lambda _{min}<r_m`$ ( $`r_m`$ is a bubble radius at the moment of photons radiation). Disregarding the dispersion, Schwinger obtained the following expression for the energy $`E`$ emitted in unite volume:

$$\frac{E}{V}=\frac{(\sqrt{\epsilon }1)^2}{4\sqrt{\epsilon }}\stackrel{k_{max}}{}\mathrm{}\omega \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}=2\pi ^2\frac{(\sqrt{\epsilon }1)^2}{4\sqrt{\epsilon }}\frac{\mathrm{}c}{\lambda _{min}^4}.$$
(2)
The expression (2) is in qualitative accordance with the result of Ref , which was obtained at the divergency removal by taking into account the contribution of the surface energy. This is the serious substantiation of the validity for conducted by Shwinger removal of the divergency.

The value $`\epsilon 1`$ for the many gases in normal conditions at adiabatic compression. From formula (2) one can see that the number of photons and the emitting energy are little as $`(\sqrt{\epsilon }1)^2`$. But the value of gas temperature within the bubble ( $`10^5`$ K) which observed in the experiment, compelled to remember the Jarman’s idea  about excitation of gathering shock wave at the nonadiabatic stage of bubble collapse . The numerical solution of Rayleigh-Plesset equation of a bubble surface, of van der Waals equations for the gas inside bubble and of tasks about generation and motion of the shock wave was carried out in a work . At a first stage of a bubble growth it was used an adiabatic approximation: by the time $`16,65\mu s`$, the bubble radius increased from the initial value $`r_0=4,5\mu m`$ to the maximum value $`37,09\mu m`$ and the gas density decreased to the value $`0,0023kgm^3`$. At the second stage of a bubble collapse calculations were done in a nonadiabatic approximation, which leads to the Guderley’s decision for an ideal gas . As it was shown in , at nonadiabatic stage of collapse at the focusing shock wave in the centre of bubble the density of nonideal gas increases in $`10^5`$ times by the time $`3,84\mu s`$, and achieving the maximum value $`\rho \rho _m794kgm^3`$. This conducts by the change of the rate of bubble collapse to $`210^4ms^1`$. Further it will be shown that it leads to the jump of the dielectric constant of gas.

The value $`\epsilon `$ for gas is determined by Clausis-Mossotti formula

$$\epsilon 1=\frac{4\pi p\rho }{w(1\frac{4\pi p\rho }{3w})},$$
(3)
where $`p`$ is the molar polarizability of gas, $`\rho `$ is the gas density and $`w`$ is his molecular weight. The liquid which surrounds the gas bubble (in the experiment this is the water with small addition of glycerin) leads to the additional polarization and to the molar polarizability of gas dependence on the dielectric constant of liquid $`\epsilon _1`$:

$$p=\frac{p_0}{3(1+\frac{\epsilon }{2\epsilon _1})}.$$
(4)
where $`p_0`$ is the molar polarizability of gas in normal conditions. Even taking into account that $`\rho _m\rho `$ at focusing shock wave, the ratio $`\epsilon /\epsilon _1<<1`$, so

$$\epsilon (t)1\frac{4\pi p_0\rho (t)}{3w}.$$
(5)
Such dependence of $`\epsilon (t)`$ on $`\rho (t)`$ leads to the jump of the dielectric constant at the jump of the gas density as shock wave focuses at the centre of bubble. As we can see from (2) this jump accompanies by the vacuum excitation and to the photons radiation, the intensity of which depends from the characteristic time of the jump of the gas density.