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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The measurement of the branching ratio for the decay $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ provides the cleanest way to determine the $`|V_{ub}|`$ element in the CKM mixing matrix. Evidence of the non-zero value of $`|V_{ub}|`$ has been first obtained by both ARGUS and CLEO by observing leptons produced in $`B`$ decays with momentum exceeding the kinematical limit for $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions . The extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from the yield of leptons above the $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ endpoint is subject to large systematical uncertainties. More recently, exclusive $`B\pi \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ and $`B\rho \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays have been observed by CLEO and their rates measured . Still the derivation of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from exclusive semileptonic decays, contrary to the case for $`|V_{cb}|`$ in $`BD^{}\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$, has significant model dependence.

The extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from the shape of the invariant mass of the hadronic system recoiling against the lepton in $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions was proposed several years ago  and it has been recently the subject of new studies . The proposed method starts from the observation that the hadronic system recoiling against the lepton in the decay has invariant mass lower than the charm mass for the majority of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays. The model dependence in predicting the shape of this invariant mass distribution has been claimed to be under control within about $`1015\%`$ if $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays can be distinguished from the $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ ones for masses of the hadronic system up to cut values close enough to the $`D`$ mass . This corresponds to a model uncertainty of 5-7% on the extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$.

The predicted shape of the invariant mass distribution depends mainly on the kinematics of the heavy and spectator quarks inside the $`B`$ hadron and on the quark masses. However from the experimental point of view, the hadronisation process, transforming the $`u\overline{q}`$ system into the observable hadronic final state, represents a significant source of additional model uncertainties.

Several models have been proposed to describe both steps of the decay process. This note summarizes the results of a study performed by developing a dedicated $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay generator, BTOOL. This generator implements different prescriptions for the initial state kinematics and the resonance decomposition of the hadronic final states. Its results are used to define the model dependent systematics in the extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from the hadronic mass spectrum in semileptonic $`B`$ decays.

## 2 The BTOOL Generator

The decay generator provides the four momenta of the stable decay products in $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions. This requires a model for the kinematics of the $`b`$ and spectator $`\overline{q}`$ quarks inside the $`B`$ hadron, the description of the $`Q^2`$ distribution of the virtual $`W`$ and of the kinematics in the $`buW`$ and $`W\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays, and finally a model for the hadronisation of the $`u\overline{q}`$ system. In the following the implementation of the decay in the generator is discussed. In obtain to study model dependences and systematic effects, different prescriptions have been adopted.

### 2.1 ACCMM Model

In the ACCMM model  the $`B`$ hadron consists of the $`b`$ quark and the spectator $`\overline{q}`$ quark moving back-to-back in the $`B`$ rest frame.Their momenta $`p`$ are distributed according to the gaussian distribution:

$`\varphi (p)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{\sqrt{\pi }p_F^3}}e^{\frac{p^2}{p_F^2}}`$ (1)
where the width $`p_F`$ is known as Fermi motion and represents a parameter in the model. The normalisation is chosen such that

$`{\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}𝑑pp^2\varphi (p)=1.`$ (2)
The choice of the $`p_F`$ parameter and of the mass of the spectator quark $`m_q`$ are discussed in details in the next section.

### 2.2 Parton Model

An alternative picture of the $`b`$ quark kinematics has been proposed as an application of the parton model to heavy quark decays . In this model the decay is considered in a frame where the $`B`$ hadron moves with large momentum (infinite momentum frame or Breit frame). In this frame the $`b`$ quark behaves as a free particle carring a fraction $`z`$ of the $`B`$ momentum, $`p_b=zp_B`$. The functional form of $`f(z)`$ can be extracted from the $`b`$ fragmentation function since the probability of finding the $`b`$ quark carrying a fraction $`z`$ of the hadron momentum corresponds to the probability for a $`b`$ quark to produce a $`B`$ hadron with a fraction $`z`$ of its energy. This is usually described by the Peterson fragmentation function  that has the form:

$`f(z)={\displaystyle \frac{Nz(1z)^2}{((1z)^2+ϵ_bz)^2}}`$ (3)
where $`ϵ_b`$ is a free parameter. In this way, the parton model offers an advantage since the kinematics of the $`b`$ quark is described by a function that can be directly related with experimental data on $`b`$ fragmentation.

### 2.3 QCD Universal Structure Function

Recently there has been progress in defining the Fermi motion in the framework of QCD . This has been achieved in terms of a universal structure function describing the distribution of the light-cone residual momentum of the heavy quark inside the hadron. At leading order and in the large $`m_b`$ limit, the light-cone residual momentum $`k_+`$ can be expressed as the difference between the b quark pole mass and its effective mass $`m_b^{}`$ inside the hadron: $`m_b^{}=m_b+k_+`$. As a consequence $`k_+<\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=m_Bm_b`$. An ansatz for the shape of the universal structure function has been suggested  in the form:

$`f(z)=z^a(1cz)e^{cz}`$ (4)
where $`z=1\frac{k_+}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}`$, and the coefficients $`a`$ and $`c`$ depend on the values of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and of the kinetic energy operator as discussed in the next section.

### 2.4 Decay kinematics

The $`b`$ quark decays as $`bWu`$, the $`W`$ and $`u`$ being emitted back to back in the $`b`$ rest frame with an isotropic distribution of their emission angle w.r.t the $`b`$ direction. The virtual $`W`$ is characterized by an effective mass $`Q^2`$. The kinematics of the $`b`$ and $`W`$ decays correspond to that for two body decays. Therefore the model dependence that propagates to the final state kinematics depends on the choice of the values of $`p_F`$ and $`m_q`$ and of the $`Q^2`$ distribution. By defining $`x^2=Q^2/m_b^2`$ the differential decay rate can be expressed as:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Gamma }}{dx}}={\displaystyle \frac{G_F^2m_b^5|V_{ub}|^2}{192\pi ^3}}(F_0(x){\displaystyle \frac{2\alpha _s}{3\pi }}F_1(x))`$ (5)
The functions $`F_0(x)`$ and $`F_1(x)`$ describe the tree-level contribution and the QCD corrections terms. Following Ref. , they can be written, in the limit $`m_u0`$, as:

$`F_0(x)=2(1x^2)^2(1+2x^2)`$ (6)
and

$`F_1(x)=(\pi ^2+2S_{1,1}(x^2)2S_{1,1}(1x^2))+8x^2(1x^22x^4)ln(x)`$ (7)
$`+2(1x^2)^2(5+4x^2)ln(1x^2)(1x^2)(5+9x^26x^4)`$ (8)
where $`S_{1,1}(x)`$ is the Nielsen polylogarithm. The resulting $`Q^2`$ distribution is shown in Figure 1.

The virtual $`W`$ is forced to decay to the lepton-neutrino pair. Due to the spin of the $`W`$, its decay is not isotropic and the angular distribution of the lepton varies as $`1+cos^2\theta `$. In computing the lepton and neutrino momenta in the $`W`$ rest frame the lepton mass is taken into account. After the decay the lepton and neutrino are boosted back to the $`B`$ rest frame. The $`u`$ quark is also boosted to the same system, and at this point the hadronic system is treated.

### 2.5 The hadronic system

The energy and invariant mass of the hadronic system correspond to those of the $`u\overline{q}`$ quark pair. The energy and invariant mass at the parton level can be compared with predictions obtained in QCD and heavy quark expansion. The observable final states are then generated by applying different prescriptions for describing the evolution of the quark fragmentation as discussed in the next section. These include a fully inclusive hadronisation scheme according to the JETSET parton shower model  and exclusive descriptions of the final states in the $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transition.

### 2.6 The JETSET 7.4 interface

The generator can be used to produce individual $`B`$ meson decays for dedicated studies. Timings for the generation of individual decays on different platforms are given in Table 1. BTOOL is also interfaced as an option of the LUDECY subroutine of JETSET to handle $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays in the generation of $`e^+e^{}Z^0/\gamma b\overline{b}`$ events. The BTOOL generator can be activated by setting the MDME(IDC,2) flag in the LUDAT3 common block of JETSET, where IDC refers to the $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay channel.

## 3 Results and Comparisons

The focal interest in the simulation study of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays is to determine the invariant mass spectrum of the hadronic system and its correlation with the lepton energy and then to define the uncertainties of these distributions due to the choice of the model and of its input parameters. Three different models have been applied for the definition of the kinematics of the $`b`$ and spectator $`\overline{q}`$ inside the hadrons and two models for the generation of the hadronic final states. The criteria chosen for the input parameters and their range of variation are discussed in the following subsection. The results for the hadronic system mass and multiplicities are presented in 3.2 and 3.3.

### 3.1 The Choice of Parameters

The ACCMM model introduces two free parameters: i) the Fermi momentum $`p_F`$ and ii) the spectator quark mass $`m_{sp}`$. There have been attempts to extract the values of these parameters from fits to experimental observables such as the momentum spectrum of leptons from $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay , the photon spectrum in $`bs\gamma `$ decay  and the $`J/\psi `$ momentum distribution in $`BJ/\psi X`$ . Most of these determinations point to a value of $`p_F`$ 0.5 GeV/c (Table 2).

However it has been pointed out that the value of $`p_F`$ obtained in a fit to $`bc`$ transitions may be not appropriate in the description of $`bu`$ decays . At the same time it has also been shown that the ACCMM model is consistent with the QCD description of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ and $`bs\gamma `$ transitions and that the corresponding parameters can therefore be related. This is the direction followed in this study.

The effective $`b`$ quark mass $`m_b`$ depends on $`p_F`$ and $`m_{sp}`$ as:

$`m_b^2=m_b^2(p_b)=m_B^2+m_{sp}^22m_B\sqrt{p_b^2+m_{sp}^2}`$ (9)
where $`p_b`$ is the momentum of the heavy quark in the hadron and $`m_B`$ is the $`B`$ hadron mass. The value of $`m_B`$ can be taken as a parameter, tunable such that the ACCMM model corresponding to an average $`b`$ mass $`<m_b>`$ can be compared with theory predictions obtained for a given value of $`m_b`$. Estimated values for the $`b`$ quark pole mass are in the range 4.72 GeV/c2 $`<m_b<`$ 4.92 GeV/c2 .

The value of $`p_F`$ is proportional to the average kinetic energy of the $`b`$ quark in the hadron since:

$`<p_b^2>={\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}𝑑p_bp_b^2(\varphi (p_b)p_b^2)={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}p_F^2`$ (10)
where $`\varphi (p)`$ is given by Eq. (1). Through the two above equations the ACCMM model parameters are related to those of the QCD description of the heavy quark inside the hadron. In this framework $`<p_b^2>`$ corresponds to the value of the expectation value $`\mu _\pi ^2`$ of the kinetic operator. The value $`p_F`$ = 0.5 GeV/c corresponds to $`<p_b^2>`$ = 0.37 GeV2. Estimates of $`<p_b^2>`$ have been obtained both from theory and fits to measured spectra in $`B`$ decays as discussed below.

For the Parton Model, the fragmentation function for $`b`$ quarks has been measured at LEP. Averaging over the ALEPH, DELPHI and OPAL results, the fraction of the $`b`$ quark energy taken by the beauty hadron is $`<x_B>=0.702\pm 0.008`$ . Also the observed shape in the preliminary DELPHI analysis  was compatible with that of the Peterson function. These results point to a value for the $`ϵ_b`$ parameter of $`ϵ_b`$ = 0.0040. In the simulation of decays with the parton model, the spectator quark mass mass $`m_q`$ was set to zero and the $`b`$ quark mass was varied in the range 4.72 GeV/c2 $`<m_b<`$ 4.92 GeV/c2 as for the ACCMM model. It is interesting to point out that, by using the central value for $`ϵ_b`$, the parton model gave $`<p_b^2>=`$ 0.35 GeV2 for $`m_b`$ = 4.72 GeV/c2, consistent with the value obtained in the ACCMM model for $`p_F`$ = 0.5 GeV/c.

The use of the QCD universal structure function $`f(k_+)`$ allows a consistent comparison with the results obtained in the framework of QCD and Heavy Quark expansion. The normalised moments $`a_n=\frac{A_n}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^n}`$ of $`f(k_+)`$, given by

$`a_n={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^n}}{\displaystyle 𝑑k_+k_+^nf(k_+)}`$ (11)
relate the function parameters with that of the theory. In particular the first two moments define the function normalisation and the third is proportional to the expectation value of the kinetic energy operator :

$`a_0=1`$ (12)
$`a_1=0`$ (13)
$`a_2={\displaystyle \frac{3\mu _\pi ^2}{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}^2}}`$ (14)
These relationships define the values of the parameters $`a`$ and $`c`$ in Eq. 4 as a function of the values of $`\mu _\pi ^2`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$. There have been several evaluations of $`\mu _\pi ^2`$ and a selection of recent results is given in Table 3. Results are scheme dependent and, depending on the method used in their derivation, they point to the values of $`\mu _\pi ^2`$ of 0.4 GeV2 or 0.2 GeV2.

The two values of $`\mu _\pi ^2=`$ 0.2 GeV2 and 0.4 GeV2 were chosen while $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ ranged between 0.36 GeV/c2 and 0.56 GeV/c2 for 4.72 GeV/c2 $`<m_b<`$ 4.92 GeV/c2 and $`m_B`$ = 5.28 GeV/c2. The masses of the light quarks, $`u`$ and spectator quark, were set to zero.

### 3.2 The Hadronic System Mass

The precise determination of the fraction of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions yielding an hadronic system with mass $`M_X`$ below a given $`M_{cut}`$ value is crucial in the estimation of $`|V_{ub}|`$.

As discussed above, at the quark level the hadronic mass corresponds to the mass of the $`u\overline{q}`$ system. This depends mainly on the masses and motion of the heavy and spectator quarks in the $`B`$ hadron. On the contrary the experimentally measureable hadronic mass is strongly affected by the resonant decomposition of the hadronic final states. In the simulation the hadronic system is analyzed in two steps.

Firstly, the $`u\overline{q}`$ pair is analyzed. This gives the hadronic mass distribution before resonant states are taken into account (see Figure 2) and can be compared with that computed using QCD and heavy quark expansion .

Results are expressed in terms of the fraction $`F_u(M_{cut})`$ of the $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions resulting in a mass of the $`u\overline{q}`$ pair below a given cut value. The kinematics of the $`b`$ and spectator quark have been defined using the ACCMM model, the QCD universal structure function and the Parton Model. In order to compare the results, parameters have been chosen such that they correspond to $`m_b`$ = 4.80 $`\pm `$ 0.10 GeV/c2 and 0.2 GeV2 $`<<p_b^2><`$ 0.4 GeV2 as discussed above.

Table 4 summarizes the results for different choices of the input parameters. The first observation is that the universal function implemented in BTOOL reproduces the prediction from QCD and heavy quark expansion from . Further it has been found that also the ACCMM model reproduces these results to better than 15$`\%`$, for equivalent values of $`m_b`$ and $`<p_b^2>`$. This study confirms that the sensitivity to the value of the $`b`$ quark mass is significant in the region of low hadronic invariant masses. In this region also the model dependence is more pronounced. In order to estimate the overall uncertainty in the estimate of the fraction of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays with hadronic mass below a given cut value $`M_{cut}`$, the different sources of systematics have been combined. The chosen range of variation of the parameters is $`\pm \sigma (m_b)`$ = $`\pm `$ 0.10 GeV/c2 and $`\pm \sigma (<p_b^2>)`$ = $`\pm `$ 0.1 GeV2. The corresponding realtive systematic errors are summarized in Table 5.

Secondly, the hadronic final states corresponding to a given mass and energy of the $`u\overline{q}`$ pair can be predicted by a variety of methods ranging from the fully inclusive quark fragmentation approach to exclusive models.

At large enough recoil $`u`$ quark energies, the $`u\overline{q}`$ system moves away fast and this picture is similar to that of the evolution of a jet initiated by a light quark $`q`$ in $`e^+e^{}q\overline{q}`$ annihilation. This is simulated by first arranging the $`u\overline{q}`$ system in a string configuration and then making it fragment according to the parton shower model. Exclusive models compute the decay amplitudes from the heavy-to-light form factors and the quark hadronic wave functions. The so-called ISGW2 model  approximates the inclusive $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay width by the sum over resonant final states, taking into account leading corrections to the heavy quark symmetry limit.

The range of applicability of the inclusive and exclusive models is restricted to particular regions of the accessible kinematic configurations. Figure 3 a) shows the physical region in the $`q^2`$ versus $`2m_Bq_0`$ plane where $`q^2`$ is the effective mass of the virtual $`W`$ and $`q_0`$ its energy in the $`B`$ rest frame. In this plot states of equal hadronic invariant mass $`M_X`$ correspond to lines $`M_X^2=m_B^22m_Bq_0+q^2`$. Systems of large invariant mass correspond to low $`q^2`$ and $`q_0`$ values, i.e. large $`u`$ recoil as shown in Figure 3 b). In these cases the $`u`$ quark energy is typically large enough compared with that of the spectator quark that the analogy with jet fragmentation is justifiable. Conversely at low $`u`$ recoil energy, i.e. close to the upper kinematical limit in Figure 3 a), the relative momentum of the $`u\overline{q}`$ pair is small and they are therefore likely to form a bound state.

A satisfactory description of the inclusive $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay must take these characteristics into account. Hybrid models have been proposed for this purpose . The main feature of an hybrid model is to define a kinematical region in which the exclusive model is valid and its complement that can be treated by an inclusive fragmentation model. The two regions must be chosen in order to have well behaved matching conditions for a set of relevant kinematical variables. Further constraints can be derived from the branching ratios for $`B\pi \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ and $`B\rho \mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays measured by CLEO . Since the aim of this study is the definition of the systematic uncertainties in the description of the hadronic mass spectrum, results have been derived for the two extreme cases of fully inclusive and exclusive models. In the inclusive model, the probabilities for generating light vector and axial resonances have been tuned in JETSET in order agree with the measured rates in $`Z^0`$ decays. For the exclusive model the ISGW2 model has been used. The results are presented in Figure 4 in terms of the fraction of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays with the hadronic final state below a given mass value. The comparison of the predictions from the two models shows significant differences in the predicted mass spectra due to the relative importance of resonant and non-resonant final states. For the region of $`M_{cut}>`$ 1.5 GeV/$`c^2`$, the relative difference of the two models correponds to 10 - 15% showing that the hadronic system fragmentation introduces an uncertainty of the same order as that from the $`b`$-quark mass and the heavy hadron kinematics.

### 3.3 The Hadronic System Multiplicity

An additional source of uncertainty in the modelling of the decay arises from the multiplicity of the hadronic system. This is of special relevance since the efficiency for resonstructing the decay depends on this multiplicity. In order to study this uncertainty, the different prescriptions for describing the final states discussed above have been analyzed in terms of the resulting decay multiplicity.

The charged multiplicity of the hadronic system from the $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decay can be compared with one half of that of a $`q\overline{q}`$ event at $`\sqrt{s}=2E_{had}`$. The data on the event charged multiplicity from Adone and Mark II at 2 GeV $`<\sqrt{s}<`$ 8 GeV can be described with a function $`<n_{ch}>=a+blns`$ with $`a=2.67\pm 0.04`$ and $`b=0.48\pm 0.02`$  shown by the long thick line in Figure 5. These data have also been compared with the results of the simulation where a $`u`$ quark of energy $`\sqrt{s}/2`$ is paired with the spectator quark. The quark is either given Fermi motion according to the value of $`p_F`$ but no transverse momentum, or kept at rest (i.e. $`p_F=0`$). The results are shown by the shorter thinner lines in Figure 5. The parton shower model reproduces reasonably well both the multiplicity and its scaling with the quark energy. The best agreement with the data is obtained by imposing $`p_F`$ = 0.2 GeV/c which gives a fit with $`a`$=2.71 and $`b`$=0.44.

Multiplicities in semileptonic $`B`$ decays have also been predicted using the quark-gluon string model (QGSM) which also reproduces fairly precisely the same data on the charged event multiplicity in low energy $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions . The multiplicities obtained by the decay generator using the hybrid model are compared with the predictions from QGSM and IGSW2 in Table 6. The average charged multiplicity in the decay $`<n_{ch}>`$ agrees for the three models within $`\pm `$ 0.16. This multiplicity is also quite close to that measured for $`D`$ meson decays , showing that the reconstruction of the hadronic system may be performed with comparable efficiency in semileptonic $`bu`$ and $`bc`$ decays.

## 4 The Lepton Spectrum

As already mentioned, the lepton spectrum is sensitive to the mass of the quark produced in the semileptonic $`b`$ decay. While the lepton yield in the region of lepton energies above the kinematical limit $`\frac{M_B^2M_D^2}{2M_B}`$ for $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions is subject to significant model dependences, a combined study of the mass of the hadronic system $`M_X`$ and the energy of the lepton in the $`B`$ rest frame $`E_{\mathrm{}}^{}`$ may allow an extraction of the $`|V_{ub}|`$ with good sensitivity and improved control of the systematics.

Figure 6 shows the correlation between the values of $`E_{\mathrm{}}^{}`$ and $`M_X`$ before and after the hadronisation of the $`u\overline{q}`$ system. By selecting decays with low hadronic invariant mass, the lepton spectrum is depleted in its lower end without significantly affecting the region of lepton energies above 1.5 GeV/c that are relevant for separating $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ from $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays.

## 5 Conclusion

A generator for inclusive $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays has been developed and used for studying the invariant mass and resonance decomposition of the hadronic system produced in the decay. These studies are of special relevance for the extraction of $`|V_{ub}|`$ from semileptonic $`B`$ decays at LEP and at the $`B`$ factories. The low invariant mass of the hadronic system emitted in these decays can be used to separate them from the CKM favoured $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ transitions. Different models for defining the kinematics of the heavy quark inside the hadron and the $`u\overline{q}`$ system hadronisation have been compared. Systematic uncertainties in the fraction of decays giving an hadronic system with mass below a given cut arise from the value of the $`b`$ quark pole mass, the momentum distribution of the heavy and spectator quark inside the hadron and modelling of the $`u\overline{q}`$ hadronisation. This analysis confirmed the observation that model dependencies and these systematic uncertainties from the $`b`$-quark mass and the heavy quark kinematics can be kept at the 10% level, or below, if the study of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ is performed including decays with hadronic final state masses up to $``$ 1.6 GeV/c2 or above. A comparable uncertainty arises from the hadronisation model when comparing an inclusive to a fully exclusive model. The combined analysis of the hadronic mass and lepton spectrum spectrum may provide an optimal separation of $`bu\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ from $`bc\mathrm{}\overline{\nu }`$ decays.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank M. Neubert and N. Uraltsev for extensive discussions. I am also grateful to I. Bigi and C.S. Kim for pointing out the relationships between ACCMM and QCD parameters, to D. Lange and A. Ryd for providing me with results from a Monte Carlo implementation of the ISGW2 model, to T. Sjöstrand for his advices on interfacing this generator with JETSET and to W. Venus for his comments to the manuscript.


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# Solving the Coincidence Problem: Tracking Oscillating Energy

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## Abstract

Recent cosmological observations strongly suggest that the universe is dominated by an unknown form of energy with negative pressure. Why is this dark energy density of order the critical density today? We propose that the dark energy has periodically dominated in the past so that its preponderance today is natural. We illustrate this paradigm with a model potential and show that its predictions are consistent with all observations.

\]

Introduction. A variety of evidence accumulated over the last several years points to the existence of an unknown, unclumped form of energy in the Universe. First was an apparent concordance  of different measurements: the age of the Universe; the Hubble constant; the baryon fraction in clusters; and the shape of the galactic power spectrum. Second came the stunning observations  of tens of distant Type Ia Supernovae, which found a distance-redshift relation in accord with a cosmological constant, but in strong disagreement with a matter dominated Universe. Finally, this past year has seen analyses  of the experiments measuring anisotropies in the CMB. Taken together, the CMB experiments plot out a rough shape for the power spectrum, one that is in accord with a flat Universe, but in disagreement with an open Universe. If we believe the estimates of matter density coming from observations of clusters , the only way to get a flat Universe, and hence account for the CMB measurements, is to have an unclumped form of energy density pervading the Universe.

Perhaps the simplest explanation of these data is that the unclumped form of energy density corresponds to a positive cosmological constant. A non-zero but tiny constant vacuum energy density (cosmological constant) could conceivably be explained by some unknown string theory symmetry (that sets the vacuum energy density to zero) being broken by a small amount. However, to explain in this way a constant vacuum energy density of $`2\times 10^{59}\mathrm{TeV}^4`$, which is not only small but is also just the right value that it is just beginning to dominate the energy density of the Universe now, would require an unbelievable coincidence. A different possibility is to give up the dream of finding a mechanism which would set the vacuum energy density to exactly zero and resort to believing that anthropic considerations select amongst $`10^{100}`$ string vacua to find one with a vacuum energy density sufficiently fine-tuned for life. Although this anthropic selection mechanism is logically consistent and even predicts a small but observable cosmological constant, one might think that nature would have found a more efficient mechanism to obtain a sufficiently small cosmological constant than such extreme brute force application of anthropic selection.

An alternative is to assume that the true vacuum energy density is zero, and to work with the idea that the unknown, unclumped energy is due to a scalar field $`\varphi `$ which has not yet reached its ground state. This idea, which is called dynamical lambda or quintessence, has received much attention  over the last several years. However, two problems still remain. First, the field’s mass has to be extremely small, less than or of order the Hubble constant today $`10^{33}\mathrm{eV}`$, to ensure that it is still rolling to its vacuum configuration. This is in general difficult because scalar fields tend to acquire masses greater than or of order the scale of supersymmetry breaking suppressed by at most the Planck scale: $`mF/m_{\mathrm{Pl}}\mathrm{TeV}^2/m_{\mathrm{Pl}}10^3\mathrm{eV}`$. Although difficult, this could be achieved using pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons . Another more speculative way to achieve this would be to use the hypothetical symmetry (perhaps some sort of hidden supersymmetry) that ensures that the true vacuum energy density is zero to also protect the flat directions in scalar field space that would correspond to the very light scalar fields necessary for quintessence. The second, and perhaps even more serious problem is that almost all of these models require that we live in a special epoch today, when the quintessence is just starting to dominate the energy density of the Universe, and furthermore this specialness cannot even be justified by use of anthropic arguments.

In recent years a lot of progress has been made in understanding the behavior of quintessence fields. A broad class of solutions, called tracker solutions , has been discovered in which the final value of the quintessence energy density is insensitive to the initial conditions. For example, potentials like $`V=V_0\varphi ^n`$ or $`V=V_0\mathrm{exp}(1/\varphi )`$ can, for suitable choices of $`V_0`$, catch up with the critical density late in the evolution of the Universe for a wide range of initial conditions and thus provide a natural setting for explaining the current acceleration of the Universe. However, the suitable choice of $`V_0`$ must be of the order of the critical energy density today, i.e., we are back to the problem of living at a special epoch today and not even being able to use anthropic arguments to justify this specialness.

In a subset of these tracking models, which we call the exact tracker solutions , the scalar field energy density is always related to the ambient energy density in the Universe: if the dominant component in the Universe is radiation, then the tracking field’s energy density also falls off as $`a^4`$, where $`a`$ is the scale factor of the Universe. If the dominant component is matter, then the field’s energy density scales as $`a^3`$. This behavior arises from an exponential potential for $`\varphi `$ (regardless of the value of $`V_0`$). Since the energy density in this field is always comparable to the background density, we are not living at a special epoch: any observer in the distant past or future would also see the tracking field’s energy density. However, these tracking solutions run into two problems. First, if their energy density today truly is dominant, then it should also have been dominant at the time of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). Constraints from observations of light element abundances preclude such an additional form of energy density at early times. Second, tracking models have the wrong equation of state at present since the tracking field behaves like matter, with zero pressure, instead of having the necessary negative pressure to accelerate the Universe.

In this letter we ask the question, what if the Universe has been accelerating periodically in the past? Then the fact that the Universe is accelerating today would not be surprising. It would merely reflect that the period is such that the Universe is accelerating today. Of course, if it turned out that to achieve a presently accelerating Universe the period had to be excessively fine-tuned, then this scenario would not be worth considering. However, note that the assumption that there is nothing special about the present time itself argues for the robustness of such a scenario. If the Universe does accelerate periodically, then there is no reason why it should not be accelerating today. If the Universe does accelerate periodically, then it is, in fact, reasonable to expect it to accelerate today.

To judge the merits of this scenario in a concrete manner, we adopt an ad-hoc potential. Though worked out for this specific potential, the predictions outlined here are the generic predictions of a periodically accelerating Universe. The model we adopt for study is a modification of the exponential potential (which leads to the exact tracker solution). The modification to the potential is a sinusoidal modulation, which induces the tracker field to oscillate about the ambient energy density. We show that such a potential can satisfy the the BBN constraints, can produce the right equation of state today and leads to testable features in the CMB and matter power spectra. We call this type of energy Tracking, Oscillating Energy, or TOE.

The potential and the field evolution. Consider a scalar field $`\varphi `$ with potential $`V(\varphi )=V_0\mathrm{exp}(\lambda \varphi \sqrt{8\pi G})`$. It is well-known  that such a potential leads to an attractor solution with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi \rho _\varphi /(\rho _\varphi +\rho _o)=n/\lambda ^2`$ where $`\rho _o`$ is the energy density in the other component of the Universe, which is assumed to scale as $`a^n`$. Thus, no matter what the initial conditions are for $`\varphi `$, it always evolves so that it tracks the rest of the density in the Universe.

Now consider the potential

$$V(\varphi )=V_0\mathrm{exp}\left(\lambda \varphi \sqrt{8\pi G}\right)\left[1+A\mathrm{sin}(\nu \varphi \sqrt{8\pi G})\right].$$
(1)
This potential serves to modulate the tracking behavior. Figure 1 shows the resultant evolution of $`\varphi `$ and its energy density for a particular set of the parameters $`A,\nu `$. (The normalization $`V_0`$ can be set to $`G^2`$ by shifting the initial value of $`\varphi `$.) Also shown is the tracking solution for this particular value of $`\lambda `$ without the modulation. As expected, the sinusoidal term in the potential leads to oscillations about this tracking behavior. One can obtain analytic solutions for the dynamics of the potential in Eq. (1) during radiation ($`n=4`$) or matter ($`n=3`$) domination in the limit that $`A`$ is small by perturbing about the corresponding exact tracker model which has $`\varphi \sqrt{8\pi G}=\frac{n}{\lambda }\mathrm{ln}a`$. The sine in Eq. (1) provides a periodic forcing term with period $`\mathrm{ln}a=\frac{2\pi \lambda }{n\nu }`$, while the natural period of the damped oscillations about the exact tracker solution is $`\mathrm{ln}a=8\pi \lambda /\sqrt{(6n)[3(3n2)\lambda ^28n^2]}`$ with decay $`e`$-life $`\mathrm{ln}a=4/(6n)`$. Although the above results are strictly valid only for small $`A`$, they account remarkably well for the behaviour shown in Figure 1. The forced period corresponds to the longer period of $`5.4`$ units ($`n=4`$) and somehwere between $`5.4`$ units and $`7.1`$ units ($`n=3`$), while the natural period corresponds to the shorter period of $`1.6`$ units ($`n=4,3`$) of the damped oscillations which are presumably excited by the non-linear effects that appear when $`A`$ is not small.

The energy density due to $`\varphi `$ is relatively small at the time of BBN and relatively large today for the parameter set in Figure 1. It is, of course, clear that in order to get the right behavior at BBN and today, one has to pick the “correct” parameter sets. This involves a bit of fine-tuning which, as we argue below, is quite reasonable and natural. If one thinks of the parameter set as being randomly selected, then there is a finite probability that the Universe will be accelerating today and that the energy density of $`\varphi `$ will be sub-dominant at BBN. What is this probability? If one selects $`A`$, $`\nu `$ and $`\lambda `$ randomly, the chance of getting a Universe like ours is of the order of 1 in a 100. The exact number (for this potential) depends on how stringently we define “a Universe like ours”. For example the tight constraints $`0.4<\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi <0.8`$, $`w_\varphi <0.5`$, and $`(\rho _\varphi /\rho _0)_{\mathrm{BBN}}<0.1`$ give a probability of 1 in 450, while the relaxed constraints $`0.1<\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi <0.9`$ and $`w_\varphi <0.25`$ and $`(\rho _\varphi /\rho _0)_{\mathrm{BBN}}<0.2`$ give a probability of 1 in 26. It is also very important to note that whatever the extent of fine-tuning, all of it is in dimensionless numbers. There are no energy scales in this scenario which are to be set by the present expansion rate of the Universe.

Power Spectra. To compare with CMB and large scale structure observations, we compute the power spectra of the perturbations in a TOE model. Perturbations evolve differently in the presence of the scalar field energy density. For example, perturbations typically grow only when the Universe is matter dominated. Therefore, we expect a non-zero $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$ to lead directly to power suppression on the scales inside the horizon, with increased suppression for larger $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$.

The prediction for the CMB angular power spectrum is plotted in Figure 2. The primeval power spectrum is scale-invariant with adiabatic initial conditions. Also plotted for comparison is a model ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) with cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$ today and the rest of the cosmological parameters also being the same. In further discussions we will contrast the results from the TOE model against this $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. A noteworthy feature in Figure 2 is the increase in the heights of the first two peaks compared to that of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. This stems from the fact that the gravitational potential decays more in the presence of the additional quintessence energy density. The decay of the potential at and after recombination (the so-called Integrated Sachs-Wolfe , or ISW, effect) leads to enhanced power on scales $`l\begin{array}{c}<\hfill \\ \hfill \end{array}600`$, after which the potential becomes irrelevant. Note that the increase in the amplitude of both the first and second peak cannot be mimicked by adding more baryons, which raise the odd peaks but lower the even ones.

On smaller scales $`(l\begin{array}{c}>\hfill \\ \hfill \end{array}600)`$, the TOE model has smaller anisotropies. Here there are two competing effects. First, the difference between the TOE and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models (around recombination when $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is insignificant) is the presence of the extra quintessence energy density, which leads to the expansion rate in the two models being related as–

$$H_{\mathrm{TOE}}(a)=H_{\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}}(a)\times \left(1\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi (a)\right)^{1/2}.$$
(2)
Eq. 2 implies that all the relevant scales at recombination (which occurs at $`a_r10^3`$) are smaller in the TOE model by a factor of about $`\sqrt{1\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi (a_r)}`$. In particular, the damping scale is smaller, which increases in the power on small scales for the TOE model relative to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. The second effect is the large scale normalization of the two models , and this second effect more than compensates for the first. COBE normalization is sensitive to scales around $`\mathrm{}=10`$ for which the differences in the two models with regard to the late-ISW effect is important. In particular, since $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ domination occurs very late, the ISW contribution around $`\mathrm{}=10`$ is much larger in the TOE model. This in turn implies that the normalization of the primeval power spectrum is smaller, a fact noticeable in the smaller amplitude of the photon power spectrum for the TOE model at small scales (and also the matter power spectrum, as we will soon see). One last effect that is worth pointing out concerns the difference in the peak positions in the two models (though unlike the peak amplitudes, it is probably not easily discerned). In particular, the TOE model has the acoustic features in its angular power spectrum shifted to smaller scales. This directly traces to the decrease in the angular diameter distance to the last scattering surface, for the TOE model. Of course, there is also the competing effect of the decrease in the size of the sound horizon at last scattering for the TOE model, which minimizes the effect.

The prediction for the matter power spectrum is plotted in Figure 3. The difference in power at the largest scales is due to COBE normalization and the difference in the super-horizon growth factor (which is sensitive to the equation of state of the cosmic fluid) for the perturbation. As one moves to smaller scales, which entered the horizon well before the present, the differences in the evolution of the matter perturbation become more pronounced. The presence of the extra quintessence energy stunts the growth of perturbation once a mode enters the horizon. So, the earlier the mode enters the horizon, the larger the growth suppression relative to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. In other words, smaller modes are monotonically more suppressed (something that may not be noticeable in the log plot) compared to the same modes in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. It might also be surprising that the $`\varphi `$ domination around $`a=10^6`$ does not cause a more appreciable feature (i.e., suppression) in the power spectrum. The reason is that the smallest scales in Figure 3 have just entered the horizon at the time of $`\varphi `$ domination ($`a10^6`$).

The normalization on the small scales is generally quoted in terms of $`\sigma _8`$, the rms mass fluctuation within a $`8h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ sphere. For the parameters in Figure 1, the TOE model has $`\sigma _8=0.4`$. This is several sigma smaller than the preferred value (see e.g. ) of $`0.8`$, but could be rectified by a small blue-shift in the primordial spectrum .

Conclusions. We have constructed a model wherein the energy density tracks the dominant component in the Universe; satisfies the BBN constraints; and has the proper equation of state today. Further, this model makes definite predictions for large scale structure and for the CMB.

Perhaps the greatest drawback of this class of models is the arbitrariness of the potential. In particular we know of no theory which predicts a potential of the form given in Eq. (1). Nonetheless, we feel that the testable predictions of the model and the aesthetic quality it preserves that we do not live in a special epoch are of sufficient interest to warrant further study.

We thank Limin Wang for helpful discussions. The CMB spectra used in this work were generated by an amended version of CMBFAST . This work was supported by the DOE and the NASA grant NAG 5-7092 at Fermilab. EDS acknowledges support by the KOSEF Interdisciplinary Research Program grant 1999-2-111-002-5 and the Brain Korea 21 Project.


text:
# Observations of Faint, Hard-Band X-ray Sources in the Field of CRSS J0030.5+2618 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

## 1 Introduction

About 70% of the extragalactic X-ray background in the soft 0.5–2 keV band has been resolved into discrete sources by pencil-beam surveys with the ROSAT satellite (e.g., Hasinger et al. (1998)). The 0.5–2 keV source counts have reached a surface density of $`1000`$ deg-2 at a discrete source detection limit of $`10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, and simple extrapolations suggest that all of the 0.5–2 keV extragalactic X-ray background will be resolved by a flux limit of $`2\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 at which the surface density will be $`3000`$ deg-2. Optical identification programs (e.g., Schmidt et al. (1998)) have established that type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), such as Seyfert 1 galaxies and Quasi-Stellar Objects (QSOs), are the dominant contributors above a 0.5–2 keV flux of $`5\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. A non-negligible number (about 16%) of type 2 AGN are seen as well.

Largely due to instrumental limitations, the nature of the sources that produce the $`>2`$ keV X-ray background is much less certain at present. It is important to solve this mystery since most of the energy density in the X-ray background is located above the ROSAT band. The best current constraints on the sources of the 2–10 keV X-ray background have come from the ASCA and BeppoSAX satellites. Long observations with these satellites have reached discrete source detection limits of $``$ (3–5)$`\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 and have resolved $`30`$% of the 2–10 keV background into discrete sources (e.g., Ogasaka et al. 1998; Giommi, Fiore & Perri 1999). The integrated number of sources, $`N`$, is consistent with the law $`N(>S)S^{3/2}`$ expected for a uniform distribution of sources in Euclidean space. The deepest 2–10 keV source counts to date have resolved $`60`$ sources deg-2. The faintest 2–10 keV sources appear to have flatter spectra (with energy indices of $`\alpha 0.5\pm 0.2`$) than those of typical unabsorbed AGN (e.g., Ueda et al. 1998), suggesting that a population of sources with spectra similar to that of the integrated X-ray background dominates above 2 keV. The population is thought to be at least partially composed of obscured AGN, and some of these hard sources have indeed been associated with such objects (e.g., Fiore et al. 1999; Akiyama et al. 2000). An important result, however, is that the majority of the hard sources found thus far appear to have counterparts in the soft X-ray band (Giommi, Fiore & Perri 1998). Obscured AGN might still create soft X-ray emission via electron-scattered X-rays or due to non-nuclear X-ray emission (e.g. starburst activity).

The arcsecond imaging quality and high-energy sensitivity of the Chandra X-ray Observatory (Weisskopf, O’Dell & van Speybroeck (1996)) promises to revolutionize our understanding of the X-ray background above 2 keV. The source confusion and misidentification problems that have dogged earlier hard X-ray surveys will be eliminated. In this paper, we use data from Chandra, the 8-m class Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET), and public archives to study a small but well-defined sample of faint X-ray sources in the 2–8 keV band. Our sample contains several of the faintest $`>2`$ keV sources yet detected and identified. We address (1) the number counts at faint hard X-ray fluxes, (2) the nature of the faint hard X-ray sources, and (3) the issue of whether most faint hard X-ray sources have soft X-ray counterparts. Our X-ray sources lie in the PG 0027+260 (an eclipsing cataclysmic variable) field of the Cambridge-Cambridge ROSAT Serendipity Survey (e.g., Boyle, Wilkes & Elvis 1997). This field contains CRSS J0030.5+2618, a $`z=0.516`$ cluster of galaxies, and it was observed by Chandra for 44 ks during its first month of calibration-phase operations. The Galactic column density along this line of sight is $`(3.9\pm 0.4)\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Stark et al. 1992), corresponding to an optical depth of $`\tau <0.02`$ for the 2–8 keV band of primary interest here. In this paper we assume $`H_0=70`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=\frac{1}{2}`$.

## 2 X-ray Observations and Data Analysis

### 2.1 ACIS Observation Details and Image Creation

The field containing CRSS J0030.5+2618 was observed with the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS; Garmire & Nousek 1999a ; Garmire et al. 2000, in preparation) for a total exposure time of 44 ks on 1999 August 17. ACIS consists of ten CCDs designed for efficient X-ray detection and spectroscopy. Four of the CCDs (ACIS-I; CCDs I0–I3) are arranged in a $`2\times 2`$ array with each CCD tipped slightly to approximate the curved focal surface of the Chandra High Resolution Mirror Assembly (HRMA). The remaining six CCDs (ACIS-S; CCDs S0–S5) are set in a linear array and tipped to approximate the Rowland circle of the objective gratings that can be inserted behind the HRMA. The CCD which lies on-axis in ACIS-S (S3) is orthogonal to the HRMA optical axis. It is a back-illuminated CCD that is sensitive for imaging soft X-ray objects. Each CCD subtends an $`8.3^{}\times 8.3^{}`$ square on the sky. The individual pixels of the CCDs subtend $`0.5^{\prime \prime }\times 0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ on the sky. The on-axis image quality of the telescope is approximately $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ (FWHM); this quantity increases to $`1.0^{\prime \prime }`$ (critical sampling on the detector) at an off-axis angle of $`2^{}`$. The image size also has a weak energy dependence, with poorer quality at higher energy.

The observation was performed in two segments (observation ID numbers 1190 and 1226), separated by 1.0 ks. CRSS J0030.5+2618 was placed at the aim point for the ACIS-S array (on CCD S3) during the observation. The aim point position was $`\alpha _{2000}=00^\mathrm{h}30^\mathrm{m}32.5^\mathrm{s}`$, $`\delta _{2000}=+26^{}18^{}13.4^{\prime \prime }`$. The focal plane temperature was $`99.3^{}`$C. Faint mode was used for the event telemetry format, and ASCA grade 7 events were rejected on orbit to prevent telemetry saturation (see §5.7 of the AXAF Observatory Guide for a discussion of grades). Only one 3.3 s frame was ‘dropped’ from the telemetry.

Here we will focus on the data from CCD S3 since it has not shown the charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) increase that has affected the front-illuminated CCDs (see Garmire & Nousek 1999b ). To avoid problems associated with the dither of Chandra (see §4.9.2 of the AXAF Observatory Guide), we also neglect data within $`20^{\prime \prime }`$ of the edge of S3. Our search area thus comprises 63.5 square arcminutes or 92% of S3. The two observation segments were co-added using the event browser software (Broos et al. (1999)). We used the CIAO datamodel software, provided by the Chandra X-ray Center, to create $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ pixel-1 images in the ‘full’ (0.2–8 keV), ‘soft’ (0.2–2 keV), and ‘hard’ (2–8 keV) bands (neglecting the 8–10 keV data improves the signal-to-noise ratio in the hard band; e.g., Baganoff 1999). Our 0.2, 2, and 8 keV band boundaries have uncertainties of 80 eV, 20 eV and 160 eV, respectively. These uncertainties are smaller than or comparable to the S3 spectral resolution, and the 0.2 and 8 keV uncertainties are innocuous due to the small effective area of HRMA/ACIS below 0.3 keV and above 8 keV. The 2 keV band boundary is furthermore convenient because it is close to the energy of the HRMA response drop due to the iridium M-edge.

We have only used events with ACIS grades of 0, 2, 8, 16 and 64. For the background level during this observation, this conservative grade set appears to provide the best overall performance when trying to detect faint, hard sources on S3, although we explore other grade set choices in §2.4. For this 44 ks observation, the average background in the hard band varies across S3 in the range $``$ 0.03–0.05 count pixel-1.

We corrected the Chandra astrometry by comparison with ROSAT HRI, Palomar Optical Sky Survey (POSS), and Isaac Newton Telescope data (see below). The QSO CRSS J0030.6+2620 ($`z=0.493`$) and the Seyfert 2 CRSS J0030.7+2616 ($`z=0.247`$) were particularly useful in this regard (see Boyle et al. 1995 and Boyle et al. 1997).

### 2.2 Source Searching

We used the CIAO wavdetect software (Dobrzycki et al. 1999; Freeman et al. 2000) to search our images for sources. Our primary interest is in 2–8 keV point sources. We used a significance threshold of $`1\times 10^6`$ and computed 5 scaled transforms for wavelet scale sizes of 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 pixels. In our hard band image, we have detected 9 point sources on S3.222We also detect a source at $`\alpha _{2000}=00^\mathrm{h}30^\mathrm{m}57.8^\mathrm{s}`$, $`\delta _{2000}=+26^{}17^{}44.3^{\prime \prime }`$, but this source lies $`19^{\prime \prime }`$ from the edge of S3 and is hence excluded from consideration. These are listed in Table 1 and shown in Figures Observations of Faint, Hard-Band X-ray Sources in the Field of CRSS J0030.5+2618 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope111Based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. and Observations of Faint, Hard-Band X-ray Sources in the Field of CRSS J0030.5+2618 with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope111Based on observations obtained with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, which is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.. We estimate that our absolute positions in the hard band are good to within $`3^{\prime \prime }`$. They are therefore of comparable quality to those used in the ROSAT High-Resolution Imager survey of the Lockman Hole (Hasinger et al. 1998), and they are much better than earlier positions in the hard X-ray band. All of these sources, except source 5, were also detected in the independent soft-band image (usually with a significantly higher number of counts), giving us confidence in their reality. The relative positional agreement between hard-band and soft-band sources was typically better than $`1^{\prime \prime }`$. Given this relative positional agreement, the probability that any given source is a false match is $`0.2`$%. While the background in the soft band has significant spatial structure due to instrumental effects (e.g., node boundaries) and the presence of the cluster, this does not appear to affect our matching of hard and soft sources. Source 7 lies at a position where the soft-band background is elevated by $`25`$% by the central node boundary. This elevated background arises due to cosmic rays interacting with the physically separated frame store regions of the S3 CCD, and it is blurred when the Chandra dither is removed by the pipeline software. The slightly elevated background does not compromise the detection of source 7, but our soft-band photometry may have a small systematic error in addition to the statistical error given in Table 1. In addition, we are confident that none of our sources is due to a ‘hot pixel’ because these would show the characteristic Lissajous dither pattern from the spacecraft aspect. We have compared the angular extents of our sources with the 90% encircled energy radius of the Chandra PSF (see §3.8 of the AXAF Observatory Guide), and although the photon statistics are limited we find no clear evidence for anomalous extent.

We have compared our number counts in the soft band with those of Hasinger et al. (1998) as a rough consistency check. Hasinger et al. (1998) found $`940\pm 170`$ sources deg-2 at a 0.5–2 keV flux level of $`1\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. Our source density in the soft band is $`1500\pm 300`$ sources deg-2 at a 0.2–2 keV flux level of $`6\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1. For plausible bandpass corrections, our number counts are roughly consistent with a simple extrapolation of the Hasinger et al. (1998) $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ relation. We note that there is probably an enhancement in our number counts due to the presence of the cluster CRSS J0030.5+2618 (see §4 for further discussion).

The minimum detectable 2–8 keV flux varies across S3 due to effects such as point spread function (PSF) broadening, vignetting, and spatially dependent CTI. Within $`3.5^{}`$ of the aim point, we estimate our flux limit to be (4–5)$`\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (corresponding to $`6`$ counts), while at larger off-axis angles our flux limit increases fairly quickly (e.g., see Figure 6.5 of the AXAF Proposers’ Guide). While this spatially dependent flux limit should be kept in mind, none of our main results below is sensitive to the precise details of our flux limit. Even at the locations on S3 furthest from the aim point, the observation is $`\stackrel{>}{}5`$ times deeper than previous hard X-ray surveys.

### 2.3 Source Parameterization

wavdetect performs photometry on detected sources, and we have cross checked the wavdetect results with manual aperture photometry. We find good agreement between the two techniques for all sources other than source 2, where the wavdetect photometry clearly has failed (wavdetect finds source 2 but claims it only has 0.9 counts in the hard band). In Table 1 we quote our manual photometry results for source 2 and wavdetect photometry results for all other sources. These have not been corrected for vignetting. We also quote the ‘band ratio’ defined as the ratio of hard-band to soft-band counts. The errors for our band ratio values have been computed following the ‘numerical method’ described in §1.7.3 of Lyons (1991); in the Poisson limit this method is more reliable than the standard approximate variance formula (e.g., see §3.3 of Bevington & Robinson 1992). In Figure 3 we compare our band ratios to power-law models with varying amounts of neutral absorption. Several of our sources appear likely to suffer significant internal X-ray absorption. In addition, wavdetect reports a significance level for each source, defined as the number of source counts divided by the Gehrels (1986) standard deviation of the number of background counts (see Table 1). For source 2 we have calculated the 2–8 keV significance using our manual photometry. We do not report a 0.2–2 keV significance for source 5 because it is not detected in this band.

We have used event browser to create full-band light curves for our sources. We analyzed these for variability using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Most of our sources do not show significant evidence for variability. Source 8 may show variability by a factor of $`2`$ on a timescale of $`10000`$ s. The fact that the photon arrival times for our sources are distributed fairly evenly throughout the observation length is a further argument against some brief, transient effect (e.g., a transient ‘hot pixel’ or a cosmic ray) producing spurious sources. We have also examined the energy and ACIS grade distributions for our sources and find no anomalies that might indicate spurious instrumental effects.

We have calculated vignetting-corrected 0.2–2 keV and 2–8 keV fluxes for our sources using the counts from Table 1, and these are given in Table 2. We assume a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.9`$ power-law model with the Galactic column density, and our fluxes have not been corrected for Galactic or internal absorption. Our 2–8 keV observed fluxes (those of primary scientific interest here) are quite insensitive to the assumed column density for $`N_\mathrm{H}\stackrel{<}{}10^{22}`$ cm-2 (compare with Figure 3). Our 0.2–2 keV fluxes are somewhat more sensitive to the assumed column density; for our sources with large band ratios the 0.2–2 keV fluxes calculated with Galactic absorption are 5–20% lower than those calculated using $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.9`$ and column densities estimated from Figure 3. For our flux calculations, we have used the calibration-phase ACIS redistribution matrix files (rmfs) from the ACIS calibration group (S. Buczkowski & N. Schulz, private communication), and we have also used the calibration-phase ancillary response files (arfs; N. Schulz, private communication). These spectral responses are for a focal plane temperature of $`100^{}`$C, and they assume filtering upon ASCA grades 0, 2, 3, 4 and 6. To correct for our more conservative choice of grades, we have multiplied our 0.2–2 keV fluxes by a factor of $`1.23\pm 0.12`$ and our 2–8 keV fluxes by a factor of $`1.53\pm 0.23`$ (statistical errors only). These factors have been determined by comparing the numbers of events for our sources obtained with the two different grade filtering methods (source 6 is excluded in these comparisons since it would otherwise dominate the results; we compute separate factors for source 6 of $`1.39\pm 0.06`$ and $`1.80\pm 0.16`$). We estimate that our fluxes have calibration uncertainties of $`30`$%, but it is clear that we are detecting 2–8 keV sources much fainter than were detected with ASCA and BeppoSAX.

In addition to the sources described above, we will introduce two new sources below: source AG1 (found on S3 when ASCA grade filtering is used; see §2.4) and source I3 (found on ACIS CCD I3; see §3.2). To compute fluxes for source AG1, we have followed the method of the previous paragraph but have not made the grade correction (since we use ASCA grade filtering for this source). To compute fluxes for source I3, we again followed the method of the previous paragraph. However, ACIS I3 spectral responses are only available at present for a focal plane temperature of $`90^{}`$C. We have used these but recognize that this may introduce systematic error into our flux calculations for source I3. Therefore, we do not use the fluxes for source I3 in any of our subsequent analysis.

### 2.4 Additional Safety Checks

The background level in the S3 CCD shows significant flaring during the observation due to ‘space weather’ (primarily soft electrons interacting with the CCD). We have repeated the analysis above after editing out the 8.0 ks when the background level was highest. We find the same 2–8 keV sources as those listed in Table 1 except that source 4 is not detected in the edited data set. Source 4 is detected in the 0.2–2 keV edited data, and we therefore believe that it is reliably detected in the hard band in the unedited data set (see Figure 2).

We have also performed source searches on images where we relax our grade screening so that we accept ASCA grades 0, 2, 3, 4 and 6. In these searches we detect most of the sources discussed in §2.2, but we fail to detect sources 2, 4 and 5 in the hard band. We thus infer a generally lower source detection efficiency with this grade screening. Our average background across S3 with this grade screening varies from $``$ 0.07–0.09 count pixel-1, a factor of $`2`$ higher than in §2.1 and §2.2. However, we do detect one new hard band source, which we will hereafter refer to as ‘source AG1’ (‘AG’ is for ‘ASCA grade’). We consider this source to be reliable since it is also detected in our independent soft band image, and we give its properties in Tables 1 and 2 (also see Figure 1). This source appears to have been missed by our source searching in §2.2 because several of its counts were rejected by our conservative grade filtering prescription. This highlights that it is difficult to choose a single optimal grade filtering criterion when dealing with sources with few counts; chance fluctuations in source grades can be important in this limit.

We have investigated if our choice of wavdetect wavelet scale sizes affects our results, and we find no evidence for this. We have repeated the searching of §2.2 using wavelet scale sizes of 1, 1.414, 2, 2.828, 4, 5.657, 8, 11.314 and 16 pixels (a ‘$`\sqrt{2}`$ sequence’), and we find the same sources as in §2.2.

We are developing a matched filter code, based on the HRMA PSF, which we have used to check our wavdetect source detections. This preliminary matched filter code finds the same 9 hard-band sources on S3 that we have discussed in §2.1 and §2.2, and, like wavdetect, it finds soft-band counterparts for all sources other than source 5 (see §2.2).

We have also examined the spatial distribution of 2–8 keV sources on S3 to see if we can detect any spatial non-uniformity. We have used a two-dimensional ‘Kolmogorov-Smirnov test’ (see §14.7 of Press et al. 1992), and we have performed Monte-Carlo simulations to compute significance values for small numbers of sources. The 9 hard-band sources of §2.2 are found to be consistent with a uniform distribution. We have also performed the test including source AG1 (see above), and we found this sample of 10 sources to be consistent with a uniform distribution. However, we note that the two-dimensional ‘Kolmogorov-Smirnov test’ has limited statistical power for only 9–10 sources. In fact, we might have expected some spatial nonuniformity due to the fact that our sensitivity decreases away from the aim point; this may partially explain the absence of sources toward the lower-left part of Figure 1.

We have searched for spatial correspondences between our hard-band source positions and instrumental features, and we find none. In particular, we stress that sources 2, 3, 5 and 7 (the four blank-field sources of §3) are not linearly distributed along the dithered central node boundary (see §2.2 for a discussion of the node boundary). Source 7 is the closest of these four to the node boundary, and it is still $`9^{\prime \prime }`$ from it (much larger than the PSF size at this position).

## 3 Optical Observations and Data Analysis

### 3.1 Source Matching and Optical Photometry

We have compared the positions of our 2–8 keV sources with optical sources on the Palomar Optical Sky Survey (POSS) plates and an archival 600 s $`R`$-band image taken with the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) on 19 October 1995 (see Figure 4 and §2.5 of Boyle et al. 1997). The INT image is sensitive down to $`R21.7`$. We take an optical source to be positionally coincident with a Chandra source when its centroid is within $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ of the Chandra position in Table 1. Five of our nine sources from §2.2 are detected on the POSS plates. Two of these are AGN that have been previously identified by Boyle et al. (1997): the QSO CRSS J0030.6+2620 at $`z=0.493`$ (our source 6) and the Seyfert 2 CRSS J0030.7+2616 at $`z=0.247`$ (our source 8). The other four sources are not detected either on the POSS plates or in the deeper INT image, and these are henceforth referred to as ‘blank-field sources.’ The number of blank-field sources we have obtained appears reasonable when compared with an extrapolation to lower hard X-ray fluxes of the $`R`$-magnitude versus 2–10 keV flux relation shown in Figure 3 of Akiyama et al. (2000); we would expect optical counterparts with $`R`$ 18–23.5. It is also generally consistent with the results of deep soft X-ray surveys (compare with Figure 3 of Hasinger et al. 1999). We have used the APM catalog (McMahon & Irwin (1992)) and the INT image to determine $`R`$ magnitudes or $`R`$-magnitude limits for our sources; these are given in Table 2.

Source AG1 from §2.4 is not detected on the POSS plates, but it is coincident with a faint ($`R=21.5`$) object seen in the INT image.

Using the INT image, we find an $`R`$-band source density of 10.3 per square arcminute down to $`R=21.7`$. Given this source density and our $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ error circles, the probability that any given 2–8 keV source has a false optical counterpart is 0.08. However, we note that most of the counterparts have $`R`$ magnitudes that are substantially brighter than the detection limit for the INT image, and their identifications are correspondingly more secure. The HET spectroscopy below combined with the rarity of AGN on the sky supports the correctness of our optical matching (see §4.1 of Schmidt et al. 1998 for details).

We have searched for NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS; Condon et al. 1998) sources coincident with our X-ray sources and find none. This area of sky has not been covered by the VLA FIRST survey (Becker, White & Helfand 1995).

### 3.2 Hobby-Eberly Telescope Spectroscopy

We used the HET to obtain spectra for the three unidentified 2–8 keV sources from §2.2 with optical counterparts on the POSS plates. We also obtained a spectrum of the $`R=19.1`$ optical counterpart to a 2–8 keV source located on ACIS-I CCD I3 (see Table 1 for source details). We have not yet attempted to obtain an optical spectrum for source AG1.

The HET, located at McDonald Observatory, is the first optical/infrared 8-m class telescope to employ a fixed-altitude (Arecibo-type) design (Ramsey et al. (1998)). All spectra were obtained in October 1999 with the Marcario Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS; Hill et al. 1998; Hill et al. 2000; Schneider et al. 2000) mounted at the prime focus of the HET. A $`2.0^{\prime \prime }`$ slit and 300 line mm-1 grism/GG385 blocking filter produced spectra from 4400 Å to 9000 Å at 24 Å resolution. The exposure time per source ranged from 20–30 minutes. The image quality as delivered on the detector was typically $`2.5^{\prime \prime }`$ (FWHM). Wavelength calibration was performed with a fourth-order polynomial fit to a set of Cd/Hg/Ne/Zn lines; the rms of the fit was 0.8 Å. Observations of the spectrophotometric standards of Oke & Gunn (1983) were used to perform the relative flux calibration. Spectra of the four objects are displayed in Figure 5.

Source 1: Source 1 has H$`\alpha `$ and \[O iii\] emission at $`z=0.269`$, with a derived absolute magnitude of $`M_\mathrm{B}=21.9`$. It has a large Balmer decrement with $`H\alpha /H\beta \stackrel{>}{}10`$, and its optical continuum slope is red (for an AGN) with $`\alpha =2.5\pm 0.4`$.333$`F(\nu )\nu ^\alpha `$. Typical ‘blue’ quasars have $`1.3\stackrel{<}{}\alpha \stackrel{<}{}+0.1`$. Optical continuum slopes in this paper are for 5500–8800 Å in the observed frame. The H$`\alpha `$ line is resolved with a FWHM of 1400 km s-1.

Source 4: Source 4 is definitely a $`z=0.247`$ galaxy (H$`\alpha `$, \[O iii\], and \[O ii\] emission, plus a strong Mg b absorption feature) with $`M_\mathrm{B}=21.3`$. Unfortunately, our spectrum did not permit a search for \[Ne v\] emission at 3426 Å (compare with §4 of Schmidt et al. 1998). Its Balmer decrement is $`H\alpha /H\beta \stackrel{>}{}3`$, and its optical continuum slope is $`\alpha =1.8\pm 0.4`$. The optical continuum emission is dominated by star light. The H$`\alpha `$ line is unresolved with a FWHM of $`<900`$ km s-1. With a 2–8 keV flux of $`4.1\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, this is the faintest 2–8 keV source yet identified to our knowledge. Somewhat surprisingly, the redshift of this source is the same as that of CRSS J0030.7+2616 (our source 8), but we do not have any reason to suspect identification problems. A comparison of our HET spectrum (see Figure 5) and the spectrum for CRSS J0030.7+2616 given in Figure 1 of Boyle et al. (1995) shows that the equivalent width of H$`\alpha `$ in CRSS J0030.7+2616 is $`\stackrel{>}{}2`$ times larger than that of source 4.

Source 9: Source 9 is difficult to interpret. The brightest optical source in the X-ray error circle is clearly extended on the INT image (see Figure 4). The optical counterpart is off the X-ray position by $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, which is by far the largest discrepancy of any of the optical identifications shown in Figure 4. The HET spectrum for this source shows one strong narrow line at 7411 Å that is most likely H$`\alpha `$ at $`z=0.129`$. The line is unresolved with a FWHM of $`<900`$ km s-1, and the optical continuum is red with $`\alpha =2.9\pm 0.4`$. The residual ripple in the continuum below 7000 Å is an artifact due to incomplete cancellation of fringing from a pellicle by the flat field. The relatively large difference between the optical and X-ray positions suggests that this may not be the correct identification. Another possibility is that this galaxy is a member of a small group and that the X-ray emission arises from the general environment and not an individual galaxy. However, the hard X-ray spectral shape would be difficult to understand in this case.

Source I3: Source I3 is a strong-lined quasar at $`z=1.665`$ with $`M_\mathrm{B}=24.7`$. The lines shown in Figure 5 have FWHM of $`5000`$ km s-1, and the optical continuum slope of $`\alpha =1.2\pm 0.4`$ is consistent with that of ‘normal’ blue quasars.

Using our HET spectrum, we estimate $`(VR)+0.3`$ for source I3. For the other sources we estimate $`(VR)+0.5`$.

### 3.3 The Blank-Field Sources

We have compared the properties of the blank-field sources to those of the other sources to gain clues to their nature. Examination of Figure 6 shows that the blank-field sources are not the faintest 2–8 keV sources in our sample; we have obtained successful HET identifications for sources with comparable or smaller 2–8 keV fluxes. This is comforting in that it suggests that our blank-field sources are indeed reliable X-ray detections. Figures 6a and 6b also show that the blank-field sources have larger X-ray to $`V`$-band flux ratios than the other sources, as expected. However, these X-ray to $`V`$-band flux ratios are still consistent with those expected for AGN (compare with Figure 1 of Maccacaro et al. 1988). Figure 6c suggests that the blank-field sources may be somewhat harder than the other sources, but we do not consider this result to be statistically significant at present.

If the blank-field X-ray sources are in normal $`L^{}`$ galaxies (Kirshner et al. 1983; Efstathiou, Ellis & Peterson 1988), they must be at moderately high redshifts to explain their nondetections in the INT image (corresponding to $`R>21.7`$). To avoid detection in the INT image, an $`L^{}`$ Scd galaxy must have $`z\stackrel{>}{}0.75`$, and an $`L^{}`$ elliptical, $`z\stackrel{>}{}0.55`$. Typical $`L^{}`$ galaxies would thus need to be at higher redshifts than that of the cluster CRSS J0030.5+2618. The moderately high redshifts required for host galaxies also serve to rule out single extragalactic X-ray binaries and other low-luminosity X-ray sources associated with galaxies from creating the observed X-ray emission (unless the host galaxies have extremely low optical luminosities; we would have detected a host galaxy that is sub-$`L^{}`$ by two magnitudes to $`z=0.2`$). Large hard X-ray luminosities of $`L_{28}\stackrel{>}{}5\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1 are required for $`z\stackrel{>}{}0.2`$. Such hard X-ray luminosities are commonly seen among local AGN. They might also be generated by the most extreme ‘pure’ starburst galaxies, although even the most X-ray luminous starbursts known at present have hard X-ray luminosities $`\stackrel{<}{}3\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1 (e.g., Moran, Lehnert & Helfand 2000). In addition, the X-ray spectra of the blank-field sources are significantly harder than those seen for ‘pure’ starbursts at low redshift.

If the blank-field X-ray sources are ‘bona-fide’ quasars, with $`M_\mathrm{B}<22.3`$ for our adopted cosmology, they would need to have $`z>1.75`$ to avoid detection on the INT image. Quasars with $`z<3`$ and $`M_\mathrm{B}<23.2`$ would have been seen in the INT image, and a quasar as luminous as 3C273 would have been detected at redshifts greater than 4.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

Our results, obtained from a small but well-defined sample of 2–8 keV sources, extend previous X-ray background studies in several ways. First, we have detected and securely identified hard X-ray sources about an order of magnitude fainter than has previously been possible. At our 2–8 keV flux limit of $``$ (4–8)$`\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 (spatially dependent; see §2.2), we find ten sources (including AG1) in our 63.5 arcmin2 search area, corresponding to a 2–8 keV source density of $`570\pm 180`$ deg-2. Even allowing for the possibility of one spurious source detection, this source density is still $`10`$ times larger than previous number counts in this energy band (e.g., Ogasaka et al. 1998; Giommi et al. 1998), and down to $`2\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 our number counts appear consistent with the ASCA fluctuation analyses of Gendreau et al. (1998). However, our source counts may be somewhat enhanced due to the presence of the cluster CRSS J0030.5+2618 (see below). The fact that we detect sources down to $`4\times 10^{15}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 suggests that the number counts versus flux relation departs from the Euclidean form (the X-ray background would be resolved at $`10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 without a break in the $`\mathrm{log}N`$$`\mathrm{log}S`$ slope), although further data are clearly needed to quantify the break parameters.

Four of our five S3 sources with optical spectroscopy have $`z<0.3`$, which clearly exclude them from being associated with the cluster CRSS J0030.5+2618 at $`z=0.516`$. The fifth, the QSO CRSS J0030.6+2620, differs in redshift from the cluster by $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=0.023`$ corresponding to a line-of-sight separation of $`100`$ Mpc. While this QSO is certainly not a bound member of the cluster, it could be associated with the large-scale cosmic structure producing the cluster. As discussed in §3.3, if any of our blank-field sources (or AG1) lie in the cluster, they must be sub-$`L^{}`$ galaxies producing large hard X-ray luminosities of $`L_{28}\stackrel{>}{}4\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1. Even in the most conservative (and unlikely) case, where we allow all objects with unknown $`z`$ to lie in the cluster, our cluster-corrected source density is still a factor of $`4.5`$ times higher than previously attained by ASCA and BeppoSAX. The same statement obtains for possible gravitational lensing effects by the cluster.

We detect nine of our ten 2–8 keV sources in the 0.2–2 keV band. While our statistics are admittedly limited, this result is consistent with the finding by Giommi, Fiore & Perri (1998) that most hard X-ray sources have soft X-ray counterparts, and it extends this result downward in flux by about an order of magnitude (see §1 for discussion). Down to our flux limit, we can show with $`>90`$% confidence that hard-band only sources comprise $`<40`$% of the total hard-band source population. Deeper Chandra observations are needed to determine if a large population of hard-band only sources emerges at still fainter flux levels.

We thank C.S. Crawford and A.C. Fabian for providing the archival INT image, G.M. Hill and M. Shetrone for help with the HET data acquisition, P.S. Broos, A.C. Fabian, E.D. Feigelson and G. Hasinger for helpful discussions, and D.H. Saxe for valuable computer support. We thank all the members of the Chandra team for their enormous efforts. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of NASA grant NAS 8-38252 (GPG, PI), NASA LTSA grant NAG5-8107 (WNB), NASA GSRP grant NGT5-50247 (AEH), and NSF grant AST99-00703 (DPS). The HET is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The HET is named in honor of its principal benefactors, William P. Hobby and Robert E. Eberly. The Marcario LRS is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Instituto de Astronomia de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Stanford University, and the Pennsylvania State University. This research is partially based upon data from the Isaac Newton Group archive.


text:
# A new approach to the parametrization of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix

## Abstract

The CKM-matrix V is written as a linear combination of the unit matrix I and a matrix U which causes intergenerational-mixing. It is shown that such a V results from a class of quark-mass matrices. The matrix U has to be hermitian and unitary and therefore can depend at most on 4 real parameters. The available data on the CKM-matrix including CP-violation can be reproduced by $`V=(I+iU)/\sqrt{2}`$. This is also true for the special case when U depends on only 2 real parameters. There is no CP-violating phase in this parametrization. Also, for such a V the invariant phase $`\mathrm{\Phi }\varphi _{12}+\varphi _{23}\varphi _{13}`$, satisfies a criterion suggested for ‘maximal’ CP-violation.

It is more than twenty-five years since the first explicit parametrization for the six quark case was given  for the so called Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. Since then many diferent parametrizations have been suggested . In this note, we wish to suggest a new approach to parametrizing the unitary CKM matrix V. For this purpose, we write V as a linear combination of the unit matrix $`I`$ and another matrix $`U`$, so that

$$V(\theta )=\mathrm{cos}\theta I+i\mathrm{sin}\theta U$$
(1)
It is clear that for V to be unitary, U has to be both hermitian and unitary. Here $`\theta `$ is a parameter which will be fixed later. In Eq. (1), for the first term the physical (or the quark mass-eigenstate) and the gauge bases are the same. The second term, through U, represents the difference in the two bases. It also causes inter-generational mixing and makes it possible for V to give CP-violating processes. The break-up of V in two parts makes it possible to have a simple parametrization. We now show that knowing $`V(\theta )`$ allows us to construct the quark-mass matrices in terms of the parameters of V and the quark-masses.

Form of the quark-mass matrices. In the gauge-basis, the part of the standard model Lagrangian relevant for us can be written as

$$=\overline{q}_{uL}^{}M_uq_{uR}^{}+\overline{q}_{dL}^{}M_dq_{dR}^{}+\frac{g}{\sqrt{2}}\overline{q}_{uL}^{}\gamma _\mu q_{dL}^{}W_\mu ^++H.c.$$
(2)
where $`q_u^{}=(u^{},c^{},t^{})`$ and $`q_d^{}=(d^{},s^{},b^{})`$. By suitable redefinition of the right-handed quark fields one can make the quark-mass matrices $`M_u`$ and $`M_d`$ hermitian. Let the diagonal forms of the hermitian $`M_u`$ and $`M_d`$ be given by

$$\widehat{M}_u=V_u^{}M_uV_u,\widehat{M}_d=V_d^{}M_dV_d.$$
(3)
In the physical basis, defined by $`q_\alpha =V_\alpha ^{}q_\alpha ^{}`$ ($`\alpha =u`$ or $`d`$), one has

$$=\underset{\alpha =u,d}{}\overline{q}_{\alpha L}\widehat{M}_\alpha q_{\alpha R}+\frac{g}{\sqrt{2}}\overline{q}_{uL}\gamma _\mu Vq_{dL}W_\mu ^++H.c.$$
(4)
where

$$V=V_u^{}V_d$$
(5)
is the CKM-matrix.

For a V given by Eq.(1), one can easily find $`V_u`$ and $`V_d`$ which satisfy Eq. (5) In general,

$$V_u=V(\theta _u)=\mathrm{cos}\theta _uIi\mathrm{sin}\theta _uU$$
(6)
$$V_d=V(\theta _d)=\mathrm{cos}\theta _dI+i\mathrm{sin}\theta _dU$$
(7)
will give $`V(\theta )`$ provided $`\theta _u+\theta _d=\theta `$. This is so since $`V(\theta _1)V(\theta _2)=V(\theta _1+\theta _2)`$ because $`U=U^{}`$ and $`U^2=I`$.

Given these $`V_u`$ and $`V_d`$, Eq.(3) then determines $`M_u`$ and $`M_d`$ in terms of the quark masses and the experimentally accessible parameters of the CKM-matrix. More formally, this means that in the spectral decomposition of $`M_u(M_d)`$ the projectors depend only on the parameters in $`V(\theta )`$ and $`\theta _u(\theta _d)`$. There is a freedom in the choice of the values $`\theta _u`$ and $`\theta _d`$ as only their sum $`\theta _u+\theta _d=\theta `$ is determined from knowing $`V(\theta )`$.

It is clear that our form of $`V(\theta )`$ provides an explicit solution for a class of quark mass matrices.

Form of U in the standard model. To determine the general form of the hermitian and unitary $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`U`$ we start with a general hermitian matrix

$$U=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}u_1& \alpha ^{}& \beta ^{}\\ \alpha & u_2& \gamma ^{}\\ \beta & \gamma & u_3\end{array}\right)$$
(8)
where $`u_i(i=1,2,3)`$ are real and $`\alpha ,\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$ are complex numbers. Requiring $`U`$ to be unitary as well implies that $`U^2=I.`$ Explicitly this gives

$$u_1^2+\left|\alpha \right|^2+\left|\beta \right|^2=1,$$
(9)
$$u_2^2+\left|\alpha \right|^2+\left|\gamma \right|^2=1,$$
(10)
$$u_3^2+\left|\beta \right|^2+\left|\gamma \right|^2=1;$$
(11)
and

$$\left|\alpha \right|\left(u_1+u_2\right)+\left|\beta \gamma \right|\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )=0,$$
(12)
$$\left|\beta \right|\left(u_1+u_3\right)+\left|\alpha \gamma \right|\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )=0,$$
(13)
$$\left|\gamma \right|\left(u_2+u_3\right)+\left|\alpha \beta \right|\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi )=0.$$
(14)
Here $`\varphi \varphi _\alpha \varphi _\beta +\varphi _\gamma `$ while $`\varphi _\alpha ,`$ $`\varphi _\beta `$ and $`\varphi _\gamma `$ are the phases of $`\alpha ,`$ $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma .`$ Eqs. (12-14) immediatly imply that $`\mathrm{sin}\varphi =0`$ or $`\varphi =0`$ or $`\pi .`$ The resulting $`U`$ in the two cases differ by an overall sign . For definiteness we consider the case $`\varphi =0.`$ Eqs. (12-14) determine the diagonal elements in terms of $`\left|\alpha \right|,`$ $`\left|\beta \right|`$ and $`\left|\gamma \right|`$ and substituting these in Eqs. (9-11) gives the constraint

$$\left|\frac{\alpha \beta }{\gamma }\right|+\left|\frac{\alpha \gamma }{\beta }\right|+\left|\frac{\beta \gamma }{\alpha }\right|=2.$$
(15)
Using this one has

$$\begin{array}{ccc}u_1=\left|\frac{\alpha \beta }{\gamma }\right|1,& u_2=\left|\frac{\alpha \gamma }{\beta }\right|1& \text{and }u_3=\left|\frac{\beta \gamma }{\alpha }\right|1.\end{array}$$
(16)
For a more convenient form of $`U,`$ we put

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\alpha =2bc^{},& \beta =2ac,& \text{and }\gamma =2a^{}b.\end{array}$$
(17)
Since, $`\varphi _\alpha =(\varphi _b\varphi _c)+\pi `$ etc., the condition $`\varphi =0`$ translates into

$$\varphi _a\varphi _b+\varphi _c=\frac{\pi }{2},$$
(18)
where $`\varphi _a,`$ $`\varphi _b`$ and $`\varphi _c`$ are the phases of the complex numbers $`a,`$ $`b`$ and $`c.`$ The constraint of Eq. (15) becomes

$$\left|a\right|^2+\left|b\right|^2+\left|c\right|^2=1.$$
(19)
The general expression of the hermitian and unitary $`U`$ in terms of $`a,`$ $`b`$ and $`c`$ is

$$U=I2\left(\begin{array}{ccc}|a|^2+|b|^2& b^{}c& a^{}c^{}\\ bc^{}& |a|^2+|c|^2& ab^{}\\ ac& a^{}b& |b|^2+|c|^2\end{array}\right)$$
(20)
Given the two constraints in Eq. (18) and Eq. (19), we note that a general hermitian and unitary $`3\times 3`$ matrix depends on at most four real parameters. This is the form of $`U`$ we will use .

The Jarslskog invariant  for $`U`$, viz. $`J(U)=Im(U_{11}U_{22}U_{12}^{}U_{21}^{})=0.`$ However, the $`V(\theta )`$ in Eq. (1) does give CP-violation, since

$$J(V(\theta ))=8\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sin}^3\theta |abc|^2=\mathrm{cos}\theta |V_{12}||V_{13}||V_{23}|$$
(21)
In our case, there is no ‘CP-violating phase’ which governs the finitess of $`J`$. One of the off-diagonal elements of $`V(\theta )`$ has to be zero for $`J`$ to vanish. Note, that J is just given in terms of $`|V_{ij}|(ij)`$ unlike usual parametrizations . It is interesting to note, that even when $`a`$,$`b`$,$`c`$ are pure imaginary  so that $`V(\theta )`$ depends on only 3 real parameters, $`J(V(\theta ))`$ is non-zero. In this case, $`U`$ becomes real and symmetric and the only complex number in $`V(\theta )`$ is $`i`$ in Eq.(1) !

Since $`U`$ is hermitian it requires that $`|V_{ij}|=|V_{ji}|`$ for $`V(\theta )`$ in Eq. (1). The experimentally determined CKM-matrix $`V_{EX}`$ given by the Particle Data Group

$$V_{EX}=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0.97450.9760& 0.21700.2240& 0.00180.0045\\ 0.21700.2240& 0.97370.9753& 0.03600.0420\\ 0.00400.0130& 0.03500.0420& 0.99910.9994\end{array}\right)$$
(22)
The entries correspond to the ranges for the moduli of the matrix elements. It is clear that $`|V_{12}|=|V_{21}|`$ and $`|V_{23}|=|V_{32}|`$ are satisfied for the whole range, while the equality $`|V_{13}|=|V_{31}|`$ is suggested by the data. Given the fact that $`|V_{13}|`$ and $`|V_{31}|`$ are the hardest to determine experimentally, it is possible they might turn out to be equal. We adopt a common numerical value viz. $`|V_{13}|=|V_{31}|=0.005825\pm 0.002925.`$ This numerical value is obtained by first converting the range of values in $`V_{EX}`$ into a central value with errors, so that $`|V_{13}|=0.00315\pm 0.00135`$ and $`|V_{31}|=0.0085\pm 0.0045.`$ The average of these two gives the common numerical value above. Ranges for other moduli also are converted into a central value with errors.

To confront $`V(\theta )`$ with experiment we need to specify $`\theta `$. A physically appealing choice is to give equal weight to the generation mixing term $`(U)`$ and the generation diagonal term $`(I)`$ in $`V(\theta )`$, so that $`\theta =\pi /4`$ and the CKM-matrix

$$V(\pi /4)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(I+iU).$$
(23)
We use this for numerical work.

Numerical results Experimentaly, $`|V_{12}|`$ and $`|V_{23}|`$ are well determined. We take their average (or central) value in the range given in Eq. (22) as inputs; that is, $`|V_{12}|=|V_{21}|=0.2205`$ and $`|V_{23}|=|V_{32}|=0.039`$. Given these, one has

$$|a|=|V_{23}|/(2\mathrm{sin}\theta |b|),$$
(24)
$$|c|=|V_{12}|/(2\mathrm{sin}\theta |b|).$$
(25)
The constraint Eq. (19), gives a quadratic equation for $`|b|^2`$ with the solutions,

$$|b|^2=\frac{1}{2}\left[1\pm \sqrt{1(|V_{12}|^2+|V_{23}|^2)\mathrm{csc}^2\theta }\right].$$
(26)
Note, for real $`|b|^2`$, above input implies $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta )0.05014`$ or $`\theta 12.94^{}`$. Since, $`|V_{12}|>|V_{23}|>|V_{13}|`$ it is clear we need the positive sign in Eq. (26) so that $`|b|>|c|>|a|`$. For $`\theta =\pi /4`$, Eqs. (24-26) yield,

$$|a|=0.02794,|b|=0.98705,|c|=0.15796.$$
(27)
The values of the $`|V_{ij}|`$ for $`V(\pi /4)`$ in Eq. (23) are given in Table I. The values in the table should be compared with the average values of $`|V_{ij}|`$ obtained from $`V_{EX}`$. For example, average of $`V_{11}`$ from Eq. (22) is $`\frac{1}{2}(0.9745+0.9760)=0.97525`$. This is given as $`0.97525\pm 0.00075`$. The ‘error’ indicates the range for $`|V_{11}|`$. The experimental $`|V_{ij}|`$ are given in column 2, while the calculated values are given in column 3. The agreement is quite satisfactory suggesting that a CKM-matrix with$`|V_{ij}|=|V_{ji}|`$ may fit the data. We did not attempt a best fit in view of our assumption $`|V_{13}|=|V_{31}|`$ .

The value of $`J`$ for $`V_{EX}`$ and $`V(\pi /4)`$ are also given in the Table. $`J(V_{EX})`$ was calculated using the formula

$$J^2=|V_{11}V_{22}V_{12}V_{21}|^2\frac{1}{4}[1|V_{11}|^2|V_{22}|^2|V_{12}|^2|V_{21}|^2+|V_{11}V_{22}|^2+|V_{12}V_{21}|^2]^2$$
(28)
with the central values of $`|V_{ij}|`$, $`i=1,2`$ and since these four are best measured. The value $`J(V(\pi /4))`$ was calculated using Eq. (21) and is about $`34`$ times smaller. This is reasonable considering the slight differences in values of $`|V_{i,j}|`$ $`i=1,2`$ in the two cases and also since there is a strong numerical cancellation between the two terms on the r.h.s of Eq. (28).

It is important to note that calculated values require only the knowledge of $`|a|`$, $`|b|`$ and $`|c|`$. Thus, the numerical results are valid even when $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ are pure imaginary  and $`V(\pi /4)`$ depends on only 2 real parameters .

Concluding remarks Apart, form providing a good numerical fit with 4 or possibly 2 parameters, the CKM-matrix $`V(\pi /4)`$ has an interesting feature connected with a criterion  for ‘maximal’ CP-violation.

It was noted  that physically the relevant phase for CP-violation in the CKM-matrix $`V`$ is $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\varphi _{12}+\varphi _{23}\varphi _{13}`$, where $`\varphi _{ij}`$ is the phase of the matrix element $`V_{ij}`$. The reason for this is because $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is invariant under re-phasing transformations of $`V`$. So, a value of $`\mathrm{\Phi }|\pi /2|`$ was suggested as corresponding to ‘maximal’ CP-violation. This is so in our case because of the constraint in Eq. (18) since $`\mathrm{\Phi }=2(\varphi _a+\varphi _c\varphi _b)\pi /2`$. So, $`\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$ for $`V(\pi /4)`$. Note that, $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\pi /2`$ is automatic when $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$ are pure imaginary  and in that case $`V(\pi /4)`$ depends on only 2 real parameters.

It is remarkable that $`V(\pi /4)`$ with only 2 real parameters fits the available data. This may be because only the absolute values $`|V_{ij}|`$ are known at present. Future information on the full $`V_{ij}`$ will tell us if the relations  implied by the two parameter parametrization given here are viable or the more general four parameter parametrization would be needed. It would be very interesting if the symmetry relations $`|V_{ij}|=|V_{ji}|(ij)`$ are confirmed experimentally.

Acknowledgments. I am grateful to Dr. A.O. Bouzas for critical comments and discussion. I am thankful to Vicente Antonio Perez, Elena Salazar and Yuri Nahmad for their help in preparing the manuscript.

| Quantity | Experiment | Theory |
| --- | --- | --- |
| $`|V_{12}|=V_{21}`$ | $`0.2205\pm 0.0035`$ | $`0.2205`$ (input) |
| $`|V_{23}|=V_{32}`$ | $`0.0390\pm 0.0030`$ | $`0.039`$ (input) |
| $`|V_{13}|=V_{31}`$ | $`0.005825\pm 0.002925`$ | $`0.00624`$ |
| $`V_{11}`$ | $`0.97525\pm 0.00075`$ | $`0.975367`$ |
| $`V_{22}`$ | $`0.9745\pm 0.0008`$ | $`0.974607`$ |
| $`V_{33}`$ | $`0.99925\pm 0.00015`$ | $`0.99922`$ |
| $`J`$ | $`1.414\times 10^4`$ | $`3.795\times 10^5`$ |

Table I. Numerical values of the moduli of the matrix elements of $`V(\theta )`$ for $`\theta =\pi /4`$. Experimental values are average values obtained from $`V_{EX}`$ in Eq. (13). The ‘errors’ reflect the large of values for $`|V_{ij}|`$. Note, since $`|V_{13}|=0.00315\pm 0.00135`$ and $`|V_{31}|=0.0085\pm 0.0045`$, we grote the average of these in the Table. $`J`$ is the Jarslskog invariant (see text)