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# A POSSIBLE CRYPTO-SUPERCONDUCTING STRUCTURE IN A SUPERCONDUCTING FERROMAGNET

## I INTRODUCTION

It has long been demonstrated  that, while an antiferromagnetic order can coexist with a uniform superconducting order (in a Meissner state), a long-range ferromagnetic order cannot. However, it was later shown  that a non-uniform ferromagnetic order could coexist with superconductivity. This non-uniform ferromagnetic order manifests itself in the form of a spiral structure, or a domain-like structure, that reduces the compound’s effectiveness in suppressing superconductivity. At the same time, it was also shown that superconductivity suppresses the ferromagnetic order. Many ternary compounds, comprised of both superconducting and ferromagnetic sublattices, indeed exhibit these fascinating magnetic structures in the superconducting state. For instance, ErRh4B4  superconducts below its superconducting transition temperature ($`T_s`$) of 8.7 K and orders ferromagnetically below its transition temperature ($`T_m`$) of 0.8 K, before returning to a normal state below a re-entrant temperature ($`T_r`$) of 0.7 K. A spiral ferromagnetic structure was found to coexist with the superconducting state in this compound between $`T_m`$ and $`T_r`$. On the other hand, a domain-like ferromagnetic structure was observed between $`T_m`$ and $`T_r`$ of HoMo6S8  and HoMo6Se8  with ($`T_s`$, $`T_m`$, $`T_r`$) of (1.8 K, 0.7 K, 0.65 K) and (5.5 K, 0.53 K, 0 K), respectively. A spontaneous vortex lattice state was also proposed  for the case in which the internal field of the ferromagnet ($`4\pi M`$) is greater than the lower critical field ($`H_{c1}`$) but lower than the upper critical field ($`H_{c2}`$). The compounds previously studied always have a $`T_s`$ higher than $`T_m`$ and have been known as ferromagnetic superconductors . In these ferromagnetic superconductors, superconductivity is the dominant state and the ferromagnetic state is modified with a non-uniform structure to fit the superconducting state.

Recently, several ruthenate-cuprates have been reported to undergo a transition at $`T_m`$ to a ferromagnetic state that coexists with a superconducting state at a lower transition temperature $`T_s`$. They are RuSr2GdCu2O8 (Ru-1212)  and RuSr2(R0.7Ce0.3)2Cu2O10 (Ru-1222) , in which R = Gd or Eu, with ($`T_m`$, $`T_s`$) of (133 K, 14–47 K) for Ru-1212, (180 K, 42 K) for Ru-1222 when R = Gd, and (122 K, 32 K) for Ru-1222 when R = Eu. They have therefore been called superconducting ferromagnets . The ferromagnetic state below $`T_m`$ has been firmly established  to be bulk and uniform to a scale of $`20`$ Å across the samples, as examined by magnetization, muon-relaxation, and Mössbauer measurements. However, the cited evidence for superconductivity  rests entirely on the zero resistivity ($`\rho `$) observed and a diamagnetic shift of the $`dc`$ magnetic susceptibility ($`\chi _{dc}`$) measured in the zero-field-cooled (ZFC) mode. No diamagnetic shift has been detected in $`\chi _{dc}`$ of these samples when measured in the field-cooled (FC) mode. It is known that a diamagnetic shift in the ZFC-$`\chi _{dc}`$, which is a measure of the superconducting shielding effect and consistent with the zero-$`\rho `$ observed, is not proof for the existence of the Meissner state, a conventional criterion for the existence of bulk superconductivity. To determine the possibility of a nearly perfect pinning in Ru-1212 that reduces the size of the diamagnetic shift in FC-$`\chi _{dc}`$, we have recently determined  the reversible magnetization ($`M_r`$) of the sample as a function of field ($`H`$) . The results showed that a Meissner state exists in no more than a few percent of the bulk sample, if it exists at all. Several possibilities have been proposed  to account for the absence of a bulk Meissner state in Ru-1212: the possible formation of a spontaneous vortex state in the bulk superconducting ferromagnet Ru-1212; the possible presence of a spatially non-uniform superconducting structure in the chemically uniform Ru-1212; and the possible appearance of a filamentary superconductivity associated with a crypto-superconducting fine structure in a chemically uniform superconducting ferromagnet or with an impurity phase in this otherwise non-superconducting ferromagnet. In this paper, we further examine these possibilities proposed for the absence of the bulk Meissner effect in superconducting ferromagnets.

## II EXPERIMENTAL

Ru-1212 samples investigated here were either the same ones previously studied  or freshly prepared by thoroughly reacting a mixture of RuO2, SrCO3, Gd2O3, and CuO, with a cation composition of Ru:Sr:Gd:Cu = 1:2:1:2, following steps previously reported, including the prolonged annealing at 1060 C . The structure was determined by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), using the Rigaku DMAX-IIIB diffractometer; the resistivity by the standard four-lead technique, employing the Linear Research Model LR-700 Bridge; and both the $`dc`$ and $`ac`$ magnetizations by the Quantum Design SQUID magnetometer. Powder samples were prepared by pulverizing the pellets after prolonged annealing and selecting particles of different sizes by using sieves of different meshes.

## III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The samples investigated are pure Ru-1212 within the XRD resolution of a few percent. They display a tetragonal structure with a space group $`P4/mmm`$. The lattice parameters are $`a=3.8375(8)`$ Å and $`c=11.560(2)`$ Å in good agreement with values reported previously . The scanning electron microscope results show grains of 1–5 $`\mu `$m in size and the scanning microprobe data show a uniform composition across the sample to a scale of 1–2 $`\mu `$m.

The temperature dependence of $`\chi _{dc}`$ is shown in Fig. 1 and was measured at 5 Oe during both the ZFC and FC modes. A strong diamagnetic shift at $`25`$ K is detected in the ZFC-$`\chi _{dc}`$, but not in the FC-$`\chi _{dc}`$, similar to previous studies . It should be noted that such a diamagnetic shift in ZFC-$`\chi _{dc}`$ was sometimes absent from some samples that have the same XRD pattern. The temperature dependence of $`\rho `$ is exhibited in Fig. 2. A drastic $`\rho `$-drop starting at $`45`$ K and reaching zero at $`30`$ K ($`T_s`$) is observed. In the presence of a magnetic field, $`T_s`$ is suppressed to $`8`$ K at 7 T, characteristic of a superconducting transition below $`T_s`$.

To determine if the absence of a diamagnetic shift in the FC-$`\chi `$ in the Ru-1212 sample is associated with a possible strong pinning, we determined $`M_r`$  as a function of $`H`$ from negative to positive $`H`$ in very fine $`H`$-steps, especially in the low-$`H`$ region. Since the surface pinning in cuprate superconductors is small, $`M_r`$ can be taken as $`(1/2)(M_++M_{})`$, where $`M_+`$ and $`M_{}`$ are magnetizations measured during the increasing and the decreasing of the field, respectively. The results of $`M_r(H)`$ and $`dM_r(H)/dH`$ are summarized in Fig. 3. $`M_r`$ does not exhibit any clear deviation from the almost linear $`M_r`$-$`H`$ relation; nor does $`dM_r(H)/dH`$ display the large initial increase expected of a Meissner state as $`H`$ passes over $`H_{c1}`$, even for $`H`$ as small as $`\pm 0.25`$ Oe. The results demonstrate unambiguously the absence of a bulk Meissner state in the Ru-1212 samples investigated down to 0 Oe. The slight initial increase in $`dM_r/dH`$ with $`H`$ enables us to estimate that no more than a few percent of the bulk sample is in the true Meissner state, if the state exists at all.

In a superconducting ferromagnet with a $`T_m>T_s`$, a spontaneous magnetization $`M`$ occurs below $`T_m`$. If the internal field associated with the moments $`4\pi M`$ is greater than $`H_{c1}`$ but smaller than $`H_{c2}`$, a spontaneous vortex lattice has been proposed to form below $`T_s`$, similar to that predicted  for a ferromagnetic superconductor where $`T_s>T_m`$. Since $`4\pi M`$ and $`H_{c1}`$ are temperature-dependent, there may exist two scenarios for the superconducting ferromagnet. When its $`4\pi M`$ is always greater than $`H_{c1}`$ below $`T_m`$, the compound will undergo a paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic transition at $`T_m`$ and then enter the spontaneous vortex state at and below $`T_s`$, as shown in Fig. 4a. This was proposed to be a possible case for Ru-1212 . When the growth of $`H_{c1}`$ outpaces that of $`4\pi M`$ below a certain temperature $`T_{so}`$, as shown in Fig. 4b, the compound first undergoes a paramagnetic-to-ferromagnetic transition at $`T_m`$ upon cooling and then enters the spontaneous vortex state at $`T_s`$, before it recovers the Meissner state at $`T_{so}`$. Such a case has been suggested to take place in Ru-1222 , although the Meissner state below $`T_{so}`$ was not evident in their FC-$`\chi _{dc}`$. Another possible scenario is a triplet superconducting pairing, in which $`T_m`$ may coincide with $`T_s`$ . In this scenario, the compound will directly enter the spontaneous state at $`T_s`$ from its paramagnetic state when $`4\pi M>H_{c1}`$ (Fig. 4c) or recover its Meissner state if $`4\pi M`$ becomes smaller than $`H_{c1}`$ below $`T_{so}`$ (Fig. 4d). We conjecture that the superconducting Sr2RuO4 may fall into this third category.

In the above discussions, a bulk superconducting state is assumed to exist in the superconducting ferromagnet below $`T_s`$. Its existence is usually best demonstrated by the detection of a specific heat anomaly ($`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$) at $`T_s`$. A $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$ was indeed reported  in Ru-1212 near $`T_s`$, with a magnitude close to that of an underdoped superconducting cuprate. Unfortunately, it was also reported that while the magnitude of $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$ is suppressed by an externally applied $`H`$, as expected of a bulk superconducting transition, the peak temperature of $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$ increases with $`H`$, in strong contrast to the $`T_s`$-suppression by $`H`$ observed. This suggests that the detected $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$ may be of a magnetic origin. It is known  that Sr2GdRuO6, which forms easily in the Ru-1212 matrix, is an antiferromagnet with a Neel temperature close to $`T_s`$ at $`30`$ K and a transition drastically suppressed by $`H`$ . The presence of a few tenths of a percent of Sr2GdRuO6 as an impurity in Ru-1212 can easily account for the $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$-anomaly detected near $`T_s`$ .

In view of the possible absence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }C_p`$, and thus of bulk superconductivity in Ru-1212, we decided to investigate both the chemical and the electrical uniformity of the Ru-1212 samples. As mentioned earlier, the XRD pattern of our samples shows only the Ru-1212 phase within our experimental resolution of a few percent. The microprobe scan indicates that the sample is chemically uniform to a scale of $``$ 1–2 $`\mu `$m in agreement with previous report . To determine the electrical uniformity of the sample in terms of its superconducting property, we examined the superconducting shielding effect of Ru-1212 powder samples of different particle sizes by measuring the $`ac`$ magnetization ($`M_{ac}`$) as a function of the $`ac`$ field ($`H_{ac}`$) in fine steps to $`10^4`$ Oe in zero $`dc`$ field. Details of the experiment will be published elsewhere . Typical results of the $`ac`$ susceptibility $`\chi _{ac}M_{ac}/H_{ac}`$ for samples of particle sizes down to 20 $`\mu `$m, all pulverized sequentially from the same bulk sample of $`6`$ mm, at 2 K are displayed in Fig. 5. For the 6 mm bulk sample, $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$ varies negligibly with $`H_{ac}<0.1`$ Oe, but decreases rapidly with $`H_{ac}>1`$ Oe. The $`ac`$ superconducting shielding effect as measured by $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$ before the demagnetization factor correction is $`200`$%. As the particle size decreases, $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$ decreases, but remains almost $`H_{ac}`$-independent until $`H_{ac}>1`$ Oe. To assure that the $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$-drop is not caused by the degradation of the samples due to pulverization, we compared the $`M_r`$’s for both the bulk and the powdered sample of a particle-size of 50 $`\mu `$m as shown in the inset in Fig. 1. The same $`M_r`$ was detected for the two samples, suggesting that the powdered samples retain their integrity. For a uniform bulk superconductor, $`\chi _{ac}`$ is expected to be independent of the particle-size, provided that the penetration depth $`\lambda d`$, where $`d`$ is the size of the particle. However, the field $`H_{ac}^{}`$, beyond which $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$ starts to decrease, is determined by $`J_cd`$, where $`J_c`$ is the critical current density of the compound, and is expected to decrease with $`d`$, according to the Bean model. This is borne out by our results for a similar experiment on the uniform bulk and powdered superconducting YBa2Cu3O7 . Therefore, our observation in Ru-1212 is in variance with what is expected of a uniform bulk superconductor in two respects: the $`\chi _{ac}`$-decrease with $`d`$ and the almost $`d`$-independent $`H_{ac}^{}0.5`$ Oe. The $`H_{ac}^{}`$ predicted by the Bean model is also shown in Fig. 5 for comparison. These variances can be explained by assuming that Ru-1212 is a bulk superconductor and has a penetration depth $`\lambda `$ 50 $`\mu `$m. However, the estimated $`\lambda `$ 50 $`\mu `$m seems to be too large for a cuprate superconductor which has a reported $`\lambda `$ value usually about 20–100 times smaller. To explain the large $`\lambda `$, we assume that there may exist a sponge-like superconducting network uniformly distributed across the Ru-1212 sample to a scale of $`<20`$ $`\mu `$m. In other words, the superconducting order may have modified itself with such a non-uniform fine structure (crypto-superconductivity) in order to fit into the ferromagnetic state in the superconducting ferromagnet Ru-1212, in a way very similar to the proposed crypto-ferromagnetism in a ferromagnetic superconductor . For instance, superconductivity may exist between the ferromagnet-domain boundaries where the magnetic field can be smaller than $`H_{c2}`$ and the magnetic scattering is suppressed. The formation of these fine ferromagnet-domains in the chemically uniform itinerant ferromagnet Ru-1212, driven by the electromagnetic interaction, appears to be not unreasonable in view of what has been observed in the closely related highly correlated colossal magnetoresistance manganites . Such a superconducting structure is expected to display a very small condensation energy associated with the superconducting transition at $`T_s`$. This proposed structure is consistent with the zero $`\rho `$ observed and with our preliminary results suggesting a negligible condensation energy determined by the magnetization method .

While the large $`\lambda `$ suggested by our $`\chi _{ac}`$-$`H_{ac}`$ results can be explained in terms of the possible appearance of crypto-superconductivity, we would also like to address the other possible cause, i.e. the presence of a minor superconducting impurity phase in the otherwise non-superconducting ferromagnet Ru-1212. RSr2Cu3O7 (Cu-1212) with R = Y or a rare-earth element is known to form at ambient pressure by slight doping with a high valence element  or under high pressure without doping . For example, the Cu-1212 with its chain-Cu partially replaced by Ru has been reported  to form at ambient pressure and has a $`T_s`$ of $``$ 20–65 K. A small amount of the slightly Ru-doped Cu-1212 present in an otherwise non-superconducting Ru-1212 may thus account for the observation of the large $`\lambda `$, the zero $`\rho `$, and the absence of a bulk Meissner state. However, more than $`10`$% of the minor phase of Ru-doped Cu-1212 is required to be present in order to account for the observed percolative path of zero $`\rho `$ in Ru-1212. Although the similar structures of Ru-1212 and Cu-1212 make the XRD less decisive in differentiating the two phases, the difference between the Cu/Ru-ratios of the two phases (2/1 and 2.7/0.3 for the Ru-1212 and Ru-doped Cu-1212, respectively) can be easily detected by the microprobe for their separate presence. Unless the slightly Ru-doped Cu-1212 or other unknown superconducting impurity phase is finely dispersed to a scale below one micrometer or is deposited in the grain boundaries of the sample, our microprobe data suggest the unlikely presence of such superconducting impurities, in agreement with previous reports .

In conclusion, we have measured the electrical and magnetic properties of both bulk and powdered Ru-1212 of different particle sizes in various $`dc`$ and $`ac`$ fields. The XRD and microprobe data show that the Ru-1212 samples examined are chemically pure to a few percent and uniform to a scale of 1–2 $`\mu `$m. The reversible magnetization as a function of field clearly demonstrates the absence of a bulk Meissner state in Ru-1212. The $`4\pi \chi _{ac}`$ decreases as the particle size decreases and remains constant initially as the $`ac`$ field increases, but decreases rapidly, independent of the particle size, as the $`ac`$ field increases to above $`0.5`$ Oe. Several possible scenarios have been considered and discussed. While a spontaneous vortex state may exist in a bulk superconducting ferromagnet Ru-1212, we also propose that the superconducting state in a superconducting ferromagnet is more likely to have modified itself to a sponge-like non-uniform superconducting fine (crypto-superconducting) structure to fit the ferromagnetic state in the chemically uniform Ru-1212. While the spontaneous vortex lattice shows a reduced condensation energy as the compound undergoes the superconducting transition, the crypto-superconducting structure is expected to display a negligible condensation energy. Further experiments to determine the condensation energy and the spontaneous vortex lattice in superconducting ferromagnets are needed to differentiate the above suggestions.

###### Acknowledgements.

The work in Houston is supported in part by NSF Grant No. DMR-9804325, the T. L. L. Temple Foundation, the John J. and Rebecca Moores Endowment, and the State of Texas through the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston; and at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.


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# Kinematics of Molecular Hydrogen Emission from Planetary and Pre-planetary Nebulae

## 1. Introduction

The presence of molecular hydrogen emission is now recognized as a reliable indicator of bipolar structure in planetary nebulae (Zuckerman & Gatley 1988; Kastner et al. 1994, 1996). While the polar lobes often display H2, the molecular emission is, with few exceptions, brightest toward the waists of bipolar planetaries. These molecule-rich regions of planetary nebulae (PNs) appear to be the remnants of circumstellar disks or tori formed during previous, asymptotic giant branch (AGB) or post-AGB phases of the central stars. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that the onset of H2 emission postdates the AGB stage but precedes the formation of the PN (Weintraub et al. 1998). This onset likely signals the beginning of a high-velocity, collimated, post-AGB wind, which shocks the previously ejected, “slow,” AGB wind and thereby produces the observed H2 emission (Kastner et al. 1999).

These observations make clear that further investigations of H2 emission are important to our understanding of the origin of bipolarity in PNs. It is of particular interest to establish whether the spatially distinct waist and lobe H2 emission regions are kinematically distinct as well and, furthermore, whether the kinematics bear evidence of the presence of circumstellar disks and/or high-velocity polar flows. To this end, we have undertaken a program of spectroscopic mapping of near-infrared H2 emission from planetary and pre-planetary nebulae at high spectral resolution. First results from this program were presented in Weintraub et al. (1998), in which H2 emission was detected from a pair of bipolar pre-planetary nebulae (PPNs), and in Kastner et al. (1999), where we described preliminary results for the seminal PPN RAFGL 2688. Here we present further analysis and interpretation of H2 velocity mapping of RAFGL 2688, as well as H2 velocity mapping results for the PPN RAFGL 618 and the bipolar planetary nebula NGC 2346 (see also Arias & Rosado, in this volume).

## 2. Observations

Data presented here were obtained with the NOAO111National Optical Astronomy Observatories is operated by Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for the National Science Foundation. Phoenix spectrometer on the 2.1 m telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ, in 1997 June (RAFGL 2688) and 1997 December (RAFGL 618, NGC 2346). Phoenix illuminates a $`256\times 1024`$ section of an Aladdin InSb detector array. The spectrograph slit was $`60^{\prime \prime }\times 1.4^{\prime \prime }`$ oriented approximately east-west. The velocity resolution was $`4`$ km s-1 and the spatial resolution $`1.5^{\prime \prime }`$ at the time these spectra were obtained. A spectral image centered near the 2.121831 $`\mu `$m $`S(1)`$, $`v=10`$ transition of H2 was obtained at each of 12 spatial positions as the slit was stepped from south to north across RAFGL 2688. The step size, $`1.0^{\prime \prime }`$, provided coverage of the entire H2 emitting region with spatial sampling approximating the slit height. For RAFGL 618, whose bright H2 emission regions are oriented almost perfectly east-west (Latter et al. 1995), parallel to the Phoenix slit, we obtained a single spectral image centered on the object. For NGC 2346 we obtained spectral images at selected positions near the waist of the nebula. Spectral images were reduced and wavelength calibrated as described in Weintraub et al. (1998). For the RAFGL 2688 data, the reduced spectral images were stacked in declination according to the commanded telescope offsets, to produce a (RA, dec, velocity) data cube of H2 emission.

## 3. Results and Discussion

### 3.1. RAFGL 2688

Kastner et al. (1999) presented selected velocity planes from the RAFGL 2688 Phoenix data cube. The four principal “lobes” of H2 emission seen in direct H2 images (e.g., Sahai et al. 1998) are also apparent in these Phoenix data, with one pair oriented parallel to the polar axis (roughly N-S) and one perpendicular (roughly E-W). Each of these H2 lobe pairs displays a velocity gradient, with the N and E lobes blueshifted by up to $`30`$ km s-1 and the S and W lobes similarly redshifted. However, the N-S and E-W H2 lobe pairs differ in their detailed kinematic signatures (Kastner et al.).

The H2 kinematic data for RAFGL 2688, like velocity maps obtained from radio molecular line emission, can be described in terms of a multipolar system of purely radially directed jets (Cox et al. 1997; Lucas et al., these proceedings). Given the constraints imposed by Phoenix and Hubble Space Telescope data, however, this model would require that the “equatorial” components located east and west of the central star are in fact directed well above and below the equatorial plane, respectively (Kastner et al. 1999). If one postulates instead that the E-W H2 emission lobes are confined to the equatorial plane of the system — a hypothesis that appears to be dictated by certain details of the H2 surface brightness distribution, as well as by simple symmetry arguments — then one must invoke a model combining radial expansion with a component of azimuthal (rotational) velocity along the equatorial plane (Kastner et al.). In a forthcoming paper we will compare these two alternative models in more detail. Here, we describe a specific formulation of the latter (expansion $`+`$ rotation) model that reproduces many of the salient features of the Phoenix data.

To construct this empirical model of the H2 kinematics of RAFGL 2688, we are guided by the basic results described above. That is, the polar lobes are characterized by velocity gradients in which the fastest moving material is found closest to the star, and the slowest moving material is found at the tips of the H2 emission regions. For simplicity, we assume this behavior can be described by an inverse power law relationship between velocity and radius. For the equatorial plane H2 emission, meanwhile, we assume a combination of azimuthal (rotation) and radial (expansion) velocity components, whose magnitudes we denote by $`v_r`$ and $`v_e`$, respectively.

To constrain these model parameters, we compared model velocity field images with a velocity centroid image which we obtained from the Phoenix data cube. For the polar lobes, we find that the exponent of the inverse power law velocity-distance relationship is roughly $`0.7`$ and that the outflow velocities at the tips of the N and S lobes are $`20`$ km s-1. For the equatorial regions, good agreement between model and data is obtained for values of $`v_e`$ and $`v_r`$ that lie in the range $`510`$ km s-1, with the additional constraint $`v_e+v_r15`$ km s-1. An example of the results for a representative model (with $`v_e=5`$ km s-1 and $`v_r=10`$ km s-1) is displayed in Fig. 1. There is clear qualitative agreement between the model and observed velocity images for these parameter values, in the sense that the overall distribution of redshifted and blueshifted emission is captured by the model. Furthermore, this model reproduces specific details of the observed H2 velocity distribution, such as the approximate magnitudes and positions of the velocity extrema in the four H2 lobes. While this model is by no means unique, the comparison of calculated and observed velocity fields provides further support for a component of azimuthal velocity along the equatorial plane of RAFGL 2688, and offers an indication of the magnitude of this “rotational” component relative to the components of radial expansion both parallel and perpendicular to the polar axis of the system.

### 3.2. RAFGL 618

The Phoenix spectral image obtained for RAFGL 618 is displayed in Fig. 2. Bright H2 emission is detected along the entire polar axis of RAFGL 618. These data demonstrate further that very high velocity H2 emission is present in this bipolar outflow. The highest velocity molecular material is found closest to the central star of RAFGL 618. We conclude that the velocity gradients along the polar axes of both RAFGL 2688 and RAFGL 618 trace rapid transitions from the “slow,” spherically symmetric winds of their AGB progenitors to faster, collimated, post-AGB winds (Kastner et al. 1999).

### 3.3. NGC 2346

In Fig. 3 we display an H2 image of NGC 2346 obtained with the NOAO Cryogenic Optical Bench (Kastner et al. 1996) and we illustrate the slit positions used for Phoenix spectroscopic observations. Phoenix spectral images of NGC 2346 obtained at these positions are presented in Fig. 4. These images demonstrate that the H2 emission from the bipolar NGC 2346 forms rings or ellipses in position-velocity space, an observation that reinforces our prior conclusion that ring-like planetaries which display H2 are bipolar in structure (Kastner et al. 1994, 1996).

The position-velocity ellipse represented in the spectral image obtained with the slit at $`0^{\prime \prime }`$ offset (leftmost panels) is noticably tilted, with the largest redshifts found $`15^{\prime \prime }`$ to the east and the largest blueshifts $`15^{\prime \prime }`$ to the west of the central star. It is apparent from Fig. 3 that this tilt is due to the orientation of the Phoenix slit with respect to the object. That is, to the east of the star the slit takes in portions of the rearward-facing (redshifted) south polar lobe of the nebula, whereas to the west the slit samples portions of the forward-facing (blueshifted) north polar lobe.

Furthermore, the position-velocity ellipses in Fig. 4 contain two distinct kinematic components: a central ring associated with lower velocity material in the nebular waist and a pair of rings associated with higher velocity material in the bipolar outflow lobes. The central ring is centered at the systemic velocity of the nebula and is most apparent in the spectral images obtained near the position of the central star (i.e., in the four lefthand panels). The southern ring is primarily redshifted (righthand bottom panels) while the northern ring (righthand top panels) is primarily blueshifted. All three rings are present in the images obtained nearest the position of the central star (lefthand panels), whereas the images obtained further from the central star display emission from only a portion of the central ring and one of the outer rings. Hence Figs. 3 and 4 indicate that the H2 emission from the nebula’s waist produces the inner position-velocity ring, while the outer rings arise from H2 emission from the polar lobes. Because of the tilt of the slit with respect to the waist of the nebula, a given slit position samples both the waist region and one or both polar lobes, resulting in a superposition of these kinematic features in a given spectral image.

In summary, the Phoenix spectral images of NGC 2346 provide strong evidence for distinct kinematic components in this nebula. These components consist of an equatorial ring or disk which is expanding at relatively low velocity ($`15`$ km s-1 projected along our line of sight; Fig. 4, leftmost panels) and polar lobes that are expanding at larger velocities (Fig. 4, rightmost panels). Put differently, the equatorial confinement that is apparent in the morphology of this classical bipolar PN has a direct kinematic counterpart. It is tempting, therefore, to conclude that the pinched waist of NGC 2346 has its roots in processes which we are now beginning to explore in objects such as RAFGL 2688.

#### Acknowledgments.

J.H.K. acknowledges support from a JPL Infrared Space Observatory grant to RIT. LeeAnn Henn (MIT) reduced many of the Phoenix spectral images used in this study.

## References

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Kastner, J.H., Gatley, I., Merrill, K.M., Probst, R.P., & Weintraub, D.A. 1994, ApJ, 421, 600

Kastner, J.H., Weintraub, D.A., Gatley, I., Merrill, K.M., & Probst, R.P. 1996, ApJ, 462, 777

Kastner, J.H., Henn, L., Weintraub, D.A., & Gatley, I. 1999, in IAU Symp. 191, “Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars,” eds. T. LeBertre, A. Lebre, & C. Waelkens, p. 431

Latter, W. B., Kelly, D. M., Hora, J. L., & Deutsch, L. K. 1995, ApJS, 100, 159

Sahai, R., Hines, D., Kastner, J.H., Weintraub, D.A., Trauger, J.T., Rieke, M.J., Thompson, R.I., & Schneider, G. 1998, ApJ, 492, 163L

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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The solar neutrino anomaly is strongly established both from five solar neutrino experiments  and from the theoretical predictions of the Standard Solar Model (SSM)  confirmed by recent helioseismology observations . One of the possible solutions to the SNP is RSFP scenario  based on the presence of a non-zero neutrino transition magnetic moment $`\mu =\mu _{ij},ij`$  is fully consistent with all currently available solar neutrino data.

In the present work we are considering the RSFP solution for various models of regular magnetic fields in the Sun varying three parameters: two fundamental particle physics ones: (i) the neutrino mass difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$, (ii) the neutrino mixing $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta `$ and (iii) the magnetic field parameter $`\mu B_{}(r)`$ scaled by the factor $`\mu `$ with the normalized magnetic moment $`\mu /10^{11}\mu _B=\mu _{11}`$.

In our plots we put $`\mu _{11}=1`$ obeying most known constraints on an active-active neutrino transition magnetic moment including the present laboratory (reactor) bound, $`\mu <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1.8}\times 10^{10}\mu _B`$ . In contrast to the case of a Dirac neutrino, for a Majorana neutrino there is only one more stringent astrophysical constraint coming from the cooling of red giants $`\mu <\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}3}\times 10^{12}\mu _B`$ . Nevertheless, even this exception does not prevent from our analysis of the RSFP scenario for the Sun since one can easily to choose the neighboring allowed $`B_{}`$\- regions with higher values of the magnetic field strength ($`B_{max}`$) if a more stringent bound on the neutrino magnetic moment is accepted.

## 2 Magnetic fields in the Sun

It is very little known about magnetic field in the Sun. The MHD models  do not exclude the presence of a significant magnetic field (a few hundred kilogauss) at the bottom of the convective zone of the Sun. Moreover, modern dynamo theories forbid large scale magnetic fields in the central part of the Sun with the strength more than 30 Gauss . In the most realistic MHD model of regular magnetic fields in the convective zone one finds the well-known toroidal field in both hemispheres of the Sun  which has visible traces in forms of magnetic field loops floating up to active bipolar regions seen on the solar photosphere. The shape and topology of toroidal fields is very complicated and some simplifications of their profile is used for different magnetic field scenarios to solve SNP.

In the present consideration two kinds of magnetic field profiles were used. First one was simple triangle profile of the magnetic field, second - ”smooth” profile (see Fig.1). We have varied magnetic field amplitude from a few kilogauss up to $`300`$ kG . Thus, we suppose that magnetic field has a large scale structure and it can be considered as a regular field fixed during total observation time for all neutrino experiments.

## 3 Master equation

In the case of non-zero vacuum mixing and non-zero transition magnetic moment, the neutrino propagation in the solar medium with a magnetic field can be described by the Schrödinger-like $`4\times 4`$ evolution equation for two neutrino flavors $`\nu _e`$ and $`\nu _\mu `$ with two helicities

$$i\left(\begin{array}{c}\dot{\nu }_{eL}\hfill \\ \dot{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}_{eR}\hfill \\ \dot{\nu }_{\mu L}\hfill \\ \dot{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}_{\mu R}\hfill \end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}V_ec_2\delta & 0& s_2\delta & \mu B_+(t)\\ 0& V_ec_2\delta & \mu B_{}(t)& s_2\delta \\ s_2\delta & \mu B_+(t)& V_\mu +c_2\delta & 0\\ \mu B_{}(t)& s_2\delta & 0& V_\mu +c_2\delta \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _{eL}\\ \stackrel{~}{\nu }_{eR}\\ \nu _{\mu L}\\ \stackrel{~}{\nu }_{\mu R}\end{array}\right),$$
(1)
where $`c_2=\mathrm{cos}2\theta `$, $`s_2=\mathrm{sin}2\theta `$, $`\delta =\mathrm{\Delta }m^2/4E`$ are the neutrino mixing parameters; $`\mu =\mu _{ij}`$, $`ij`$, is the neutrino active-active transition magnetic moment; $`B_\pm =B_x\pm iB_y`$, are the regular magnetic field components which are perpendicular to the neutrino trajectory in the Sun; $`V_e(t)=G_F\sqrt{2}(\rho (t)/m_p)(Y_eY_n/2)`$ and $`V_\mu (t)=G_F\sqrt{2}(\rho (t)/m_p)(Y_n/2)`$ are the neutrino vector potentials for $`\nu _{eL}`$ and $`\nu _{\mu L}`$ in the Sun given by the abundances of the electron ($`Y_e=m_pN_e(t)/\rho (t)`$) and neutron ($`Y_n=m_pN_n(t)/\rho (t)`$) components and the SSM density profile $`\rho (t)=`$ $`250g/cm^3`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(10.54t)`$ .

Using the experimental data and errors one can find common regions for the neutrino mixing and for magnetic field parameters that obey solutions for all experiments. These regions are named ”allowed”. All presented plots except of some cases are made at 95% C.L. ($`2\sigma `$).

## 4 Results and discussion

We have found allowed $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$, $`\mu B_{}`$, $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta `$ – regions in the case of the RSFP solution to the SNP . These results are fitted with total rates (Figures 2-7) of all acting solar neutrino experiments such as Homestake, Kamiokande, SAGE, GALLEX, SuperKamiokande :

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \\ & \\ \text{Experiment}& \text{ratio DATA/BP98}\\ & \\ & \\ \text{Homestake}& 0.33\pm 0.032\\ & \\ \text{GALLEX+SAGE}& 0.568\pm 0.076\\ & \\ \text{SuperKamiokande}& 0.470\pm 0.008\pm 0.013\\ & \end{array}$$

Here BP98 are the theoretical predictions of the SSM .

All allowed regions have squared mass difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2510^9\mathrm{eV}^2210^8\mathrm{eV}^2`$ (Figures 2-5). In this case neutrinos have resonant spin-flavor conversions in the convective zone. If neutrinos would have much bigger mass difference (up to the MSW solution $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{MSW}^210^5\mathrm{eV}^2`$) resonant points are deep in the Sun core (less than $`0.3`$ of the Sun radius), while no significant magnetic fields are expected there .

Allowed regions are some discrete areas in a wide range of magnetic field amplitude values $`B_{max}`$ changing from $`30`$ kG to $`300`$ kG for the fixed neutrino transition magnetic moment $`\mu `$ ($`\mu _{11}=1`$) and for the regular magnetic field profiles considered here. Allowed regions are periodical over the magnetic field amplitude $`B_{max}`$. This result can been explained in the framework of the simplest model: constant magnetic field in the convective zone . In this case the probability of $`\nu _{eL}\nu _{\mu R}`$ conversion is

$$P=\frac{(2\mu B_{})^2}{(V\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{cos}2\theta )^2+(2\mu B_{})^2}\mathrm{sin}^2\left(\sqrt{(V\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{cos}2\theta )^2+(2\mu B_{})^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }r}{2}\right),$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Delta }m^2/2E`$, $`V=V_e+V_\mu `$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r`$ is the effective width of the magnetic field region in the convective zone. As one can see in Fig.1 the effective width of the triangle profile is a little wider than the effective width of ”smooth” profile. Hence both the periodicity of allowed regions (Fig.2 and Fig.3) and their dependence on the magnetic field profile can be explained from Eq.(2) .

Let us emphasize that first allowed regions (minimal values of magnetic fields, $`B_{max}50`$ kG) both for triangle (Fig.2) and ”smooth” (Fig.3) profiles are very similar, because in the case of small magnetic fields the probabilities depend poorly on a shape of the profile.

Allowed solutions depend very significantly on the neutrino mixing angle (Fig.4 and Fig.5). There are two trends. First one is the disappearance of allowed regions with the increase of mixing angle. The upper limit for mixing angle is $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta 0.05`$. One concludes that RSFP solution is possible for small mixing angle cases only . Second trend is the disappearance of allowed regions in the case of non-zero mixing for large magnetic field amplitudes although the small magnetic field case is still alive.

The non-observation of electron antineutrinos in the capture reaction $`\overline{\nu }_ep`$ $``$ $`ne^+`$ in the SuperKamiokande (SK) detector ($`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\overline{\nu }}<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.035}\mathrm{\Phi }_{\nu _B}`$, $`E_\nu >`$ $`8.3\mathrm{MeV}`$ ) gives additional limit on neutrino mixing angles. The antineutrino SK limit  bounds the mixing ($`s_2^2=\mathrm{sin}^22\theta 0.2`$) at 99.9% C.L. ($`\pm 3\sigma `$) (Fig.6). This limit occurs also sensitive to the magnetic field parameter $`\mu B_{}`$. The bound is more stringent for larger magnetic fields than for the small ones.

All above mentioned results are in a good agreement with .

A new allowed region appears if the additional assumption is taken into account that the Homestake data are 1.3 times less than the experimental event rate \[5, (Homestake)\]. In this case ($`f_{Cl}=1.3`$ ) the squared mass difference is $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^210^7\mathrm{eV}^2`$ and the mixing is $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta 0.01`$ (Fig.7).

To conclude the RSFP solution to SNP has a good fit for rates observed in all acting neutrino experiments. This fit is not worse than for other solutions such as MSW  or vacuum oscillation solution . Since a sizable neutrino transition moment is not forbidden and due to the existence of efficient solar magnetic field, the RSFP solution is still one of the possible solutions to SNP.

## Acknowledgments

Authors thank the RFBR grants 97-02-16501, 99-02-26124, T.I.R. and V.B.S. thank the INTAS grant 96-0659.

## Figure captions

Figure 1. Magnetic field profiles.
Figure 2. Ratio DATA/BP98 for all acting experiments (Homestake, SAGE, GALLEX, SuperKamiokande, see Table above) on the plane $`\mathrm{lg}\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ (eV2) and $`B_{max}/100`$ kG for triangle magnetic field profile and zero mixing angle ($`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0`$) at 95% C.L.
Figure 3. Same as Fig.2 for ”smooth” profile and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0`$.
Figure 4. Same as Fig.2 for triangle profile and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0.05`$.
Figure 5. Same as Fig.2 for ”smooth” profile and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0.05`$.
Figure 6. Same as Fig.2 for ”smooth” profile and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0.2`$. Cross-lined zone is the region excluded by the SK antineutrino bound .
Figure 7. Same as Fig.2 for triangle profile and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta =0.01`$ and for the case of the increased Homestake flux $`f_{Cl}=1.3`$.


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# Search and Discovery Tools for Astronomical On-line Resources and Services

## 1 Introduction

How to help the users find their way through the jungle of information services is a question which has been raised since the early development of the WWW (see e.g., Egret jungle (1994)), when it became clear that a big centralized system was not the efficient way to go.

Obviously the World Wide Web is a very powerful medium for the development of distributed resources: on the one hand the WWW provides a common medium for all information providers – the language is flexible enough so that it does not bring unbearable constraints on existing databases – on the other hand the distributed hypertextual approach opens the way to navigation and links between services (provided a minimum of coordination can be achieved). Let us note that it has been already widely demonstrated that coordinating spirit is not out of reach in a small community such as astronomy, largely sheltered from commercial influence.

Searching for a resource (either already visited, or unknown but expected), or browsing lists of existing services in order to discover new tools of interest implies a need for query strategies that cannot generally be managed at the level of a single data provider.

There is a need for road-guides pointing to the most useful resources, or to compilations or databases where information can be found about these resources. Such guides have been made in the past, and are of very practical help for the novice as well as the trained user, for example: Andernach et al. AHM94 (1994), Egret & Heck waw (1995), Egret & Albrecht amp2 (1995), Heck eppa (1997), Grothkopf librarians (1995), Andernach ALDIA (1999).

In the present paper our aim is to address the questions related to the collection, integration and interfacing of the wealth of astronomical Internet resources, and also to describe some strategies that have to be developed for building cooperative tools which will be essential in the research environment of the decade to come.

## 2 Compilations of astronomical Internet resources

At a first level, the user looking for new sources of information can consult compilations of existing resources. Examples of such databases, or yellow-page services are given in this section.

### 2.1 The StarPages

*Star\*s Family* is the generic name for a collection of directories, dictionaries and databases which has been described in details by Heck (1995a ) who has been building up their contents for more than twenty-five years. These very exhaustive data sets are carefully updated and validated, thus constituting a gold mine for professional, amateur astronomers, and more generally all those who are curious of space-related activities, and want to locate existing resources.

The Star\*s Family of products can be queried on-line from the CDS Web site (Strasbourg, France) under the generic name of StarPages111http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/starpages.html. It includes the following databases:

a directory of astronomy, space sciences, and related organizations (Heck et al. starworlds (1994)); it includes URLs of Web sites when available, as well as e-mail addresses; unlike most of the services mentioned in the present paper, it is not restricted to describing on-line resources, but also lists directory entries for organizations which do not provide any on-line information.

individual Web pages essentially of astronomers and related space scientists (Heck 1995b ).

a very comprehensive dictionary of abbreviations, acronyms, contractions, and symbols used in astronomy and space sciences (Heck 1995b ).

All three databases are associated with a query engine based on character string searches. Filters prevent extraction of too large subsets of the database.

### 2.2 AstroWeb

*AstroWeb* (Jackson et al. astroweb (1994)) is a collection of pointers to astronomically relevant information resources available on the Internet. The browse mode of AstroWeb opens a window on the efforts currently developed – in some cases, unfortunately, in a rather disorganized way – for making astronomically related, and hopefully pertinent, information available on-line through the World Wide Web.

AstroWeb is maintained by a small consortium of individuals located at CDS, STScI, MSSSO, NRAO, and Vilspa. The master database is currently hosted at CDS222http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/astroweb.html (after having been for a long time at STScI), and all the above-mentioned places, as well as the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, host a mirror copy with customized presentation of the same data.

Each URL is checked by a robot on a daily basis to ensure aliveness of all referenced resources. The resource descriptions are usually submitted by the person or organization responsible for the resource, but are checked and eventually modified by one of the consortium members. The search engine is a wais search index. The index is constructed from the resource descriptions, and also includes all the words contained in the referenced home page. This latter feature is quite powerful for bringing new names of projects, topics, research groups, very quickly to the index.

Table 1 lists the resources present in the AstroWeb database in December 1999.

## 3 Current status of on-line astronomy resources

Following the classification scheme adopted by AstroWeb, we will outline in this section the current status of the main categories of on-line astronomy resources, pointing to meta-resources (i.e. organized lists of resources) when they are available.

### 3.1 Organizations

Most of the active astronomical organizations (institutes, astronomy departments, etc.) now have home pages on the Internet. StarWorlds333http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/starworlds.html is currently the most comprehensive searchable directory of such resources ; it can be queried by names, keywords, or character strings. For browsing lists sorted by alphabetical order or by country, see AstroWeb (Section 2.2). National or international organizations also maintain useful lists.

### 3.2 Observational projects and missions

It is now difficult to envisage an observational project without a web site. As they are more dynamic and often involve multiple organizations or institutions, the best way to find them may be to use one of the powerful commercial search engines that routinely index millions of web pages on the Internet.

The indexing system of AstroWeb may also be helpful, especially when it is important to limit the investigation domain to astronomy, or to keep track of new emerging projects.

### 3.3 Data and information systems

Astronomy data and information centers are becoming increasingly interconnected, with both explicit links to other relevant resources and automatic cross-links that may be invoked transparently to the end-user. Section 5 describes current efforts to provide interoperability within astrophysics (*Astrobrowse*) and across the space sciences (*ISAIA*).

### 3.4 Bibliographic resources

Here also a virtual network is being organized, as exemplified by the *Urania*444http://www.aas.org/Urania/ initiative, or by the coordinated efforts to create links between ADS and other services (Kurtz et al. ADS (2000)). Note that many of the bibliographical resources are electronic journals for which a subscription may be required.

### 3.5 People-related resources

Some databases (RGO E-mail directory555http://star-www.rl.ac.uk/astrolist/astrosearch.html, StarHeads666http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/starheads.hml) follow the development of electronic mail addresses and personal Web pages. Directories from national or international societies (e.g., AAS, EAS, IAU) are also generally very carefully kept up to date.

The database of meetings and conferences maintained by CFHT777http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/meetings/meetings.html is very complete and well organized. Astronomical societies also maintain their own lists.

### 3.6 Astronomical software

The Astronomical Software and Documentation Service (ASDS888http://asds.stsci.edu/) is a network service that allows users to locate existing astronomical software, associated technical documentation, and information about telescopes and astronomical instrumentation (Payne et al. ASDS96 (1996)). ASDS originated as a service devoted entirely to astronomical software packages and their associated on-line documentation and was originally called the Astronomical Software Directory Service. Much code is rewritten these days, not because anyone has found a fundamentally better way to solve the problem, but because developers simply don’t know who has already done it, whether the code runs on the system they have available, or where to get it if it does. That is the problem that ASDS was intended to solve.

In 1998 the scope of ASDS was expanded to include astronomical observing sites and their associated telescope and instrument manuals, taken from a listing maintained at CFHT. The service was renamed at this point.

### 3.7 Educational resources

Education and public outreach have always been a strong concern in astronomy, but the importance of this activity is growing at a higher rate, with the advent of the World Wide Web.

It is difficult to give general rules for such a wide field, going far beyond the limits of astronomical institutions. Let us just say that we expect to see in the future an increasing rôle of educational institutions (planetariums, or outreach departments of big societies or institutions), for conveying general astronomy knowledge, or news about recent discoveries, to the general public.

The yellow-page services mentioned above do keep lists of the most important education services.

## 4 Towards a global index of astronomical resources

In the following we will focus on Internet resources that actually provide data, of any kind, as opposed to those describing or documenting an institution or a research project, without giving access to any data set or archive.

One main trend is certainly the increase of interconnections between distributed on-line services, the ‘Weaving of the Astronomy Web’ (which was the title of a Conference organized in Strasbourg by Egret & Heck waw (1995)).

More generally, with the development of the Internet, and of a large number of on-line services giving access to data or information, it is clear that tools giving coordinated access to distributed services are needed. This is, for instance, the concern expressed by NASA through the Astrobrowse project (Heikkila et al. astrobrowse-2 (1999)).

In this section we will first describe a tool for managing a “metadata” dictionary of astronomy information services (GLU); then we will show how the existence of such a metadatabase can be used for building efficient search and discovery tools.

### 4.1 The CDS GLU

The CDS (Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg) has recently developed a tool for managing remote links in a context of distributed heterogeneous services (GLU999http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/glu/glu.htx, Générateur de Liens Uniformes, i.e. Uniform Link Generator; Fernique et al. glu (1998)).

First developed for ensuring efficient interoperability of the several services existing at CDS (VizieR, Simbad, Aladin, bibliography, etc.; see Genova et al. CDS (2000)), this tool has also been designed for maintaining addresses (URLs) of distributed services (ADS, NED, etc.).

A key element of the system is the “GLU dictionary” maintained by the data providers contributing to the system, and distributed to all sites of a given domain. This dictionary contains knowledge about the participating services (URLs, syntax and semantics of input fields, descriptions, etc.), so that it is possible to generate automatically a correct query for submission to a remote database.

The service provider (data center, archive manager, or webmaster of an astronomical institute) can use GLU for coding a query, taking benefit of the easy update of the system: knowing which service to call, and which answer to expect from this service, the programmer does not have to worry about the precise address of the remote service at a given time, nor of the detailed syntax of the query (expected format of the equatorial coordinates, etc.).

### 4.2 New search and discovery tools

The example of GLU demonstrates the usefulness of storing into a database the knowledge about information services (their address, purpose, domain of coverage, query syntax, etc.). In a second step, such a database can be queried when the challenge is to provide information about whom is providing what, for a given object, region of the sky, or domain of interest.

Several projects are working toward providing general solutions.

#### 4.2.1 Astrobrowse

*Astrobrowse* is a project that began within the United States astrophysics community, primarily within NASA data centers, for developing a user agent which significantly streamlines the process of locating astronomical data on the web. Several prototype implementations are already available101010http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ab/. With any of these prototypes, a user can already query thousands of resources without having to deal with out-of-date URLs, or spend time figuring out how to use each resource’s unique input formats. Given a user’s selection of web-based astronomical databases and an object name or coordinates, Astrobrowse will send queries to all databases identified as containing potentially relevant data. It provides links to these resources and allows the user to browse results from each query. Astrobrowse does not recognize, however, when a query yields a null result, nor does it integrate query results into a common format to enable intercomparison.

#### 4.2.2 AstroGLU

Consider the following scenario: we have a data item $`I`$ (for example an author’s name, the position or name of an astronomical object, a bibliographical reference, etc.), and we would like to know more about it, but we do not know a priori which service $`S`$ to contact, and what are the different data types $`D`$ which can be requested. This scenario is typical of a scientist exploring new domains as part of a research procedure.

The GLU dictionary can actually be used for helping to solve this question: the dictionary can be considered as a reference directory, storing the knowledge about all services accepting data item $`I`$ as input, for retrieving data $`D_1`$ or $`D_2`$. For example, we can easily obtain from such a dictionary the list of all services accepting an author’s name as input; information which can be accessed, in return, may be an abstract (service ADS), a preprint (LANL/astro- ph), the author’s address (RGO e-mail directory) or personal Web page (StarHeads), etc.

Based on such a system, it becomes possible to create automatically a simple interface guiding the user towards any of the services described in the dictionary.

This idea has been developed as a prototype tool, under the name of AstroGLU111111http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/glu/cgi-bin/astroglu.pl (Egret et al. astroglu (1998)). The aim of this tool is to help the users find their way among several dozens (for the moment) of possible actions or services. A number of compromises have to be taken between providing the user with the full information (which would be too abundant and thus unusable), and preparing digest lists (which implies hiding some amount of auxiliary information and making somewhat subjective selections).

A resulting issue is the fact that the system puts on the same line services which have very different quantitative or qualitative characteristics. AstroGLU has no efficient ways yet to provide the user with a hierarchy of services, as a gastronomic guide would do for restaurants. This might come to be a necessity in the future, as more and more services become (and remain) available.

## 5 Towards an integration of distributed data and information services

To go further, one needs to be able to integrate the result of queries provided by heterogeneous services. This is the aim of the ISAIA (Integrated System for Archival Information Access) project121212http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/isaia/ (Hanisch 2000a , 2000b ).

The key objective of the project is to develop an interdisciplinary data location and integration service for space sciences. Building upon existing data services and communications protocols, this service will allow users to transparently query a large variety of distributed heterogeneous Web-based resources (catalogs, data, computational resources, bibliographic references, etc.) from a single interface. The service will collect responses from various resources and integrate them in a seamless fashion for display and manipulation by the user.

Because the scope of ISAIA is intended to span the space sciences – astrophysics, planetary science, solar physics, and space physics – it is necessary to find a way to standardize the descriptions of data attributes that are needed in order to formulate queries. The ISAIA approach is based on the concept of *profiles*. Profiles map generic concepts and terms onto mission or dataset specific attributes. Users may make general queries across multiple disciplines by using the generic terms of the highest level profile, or make more specific queries within subdisciplines using terms from more detailed subprofiles.

The profiles play three critical and interconnected roles:

1. They identify appropriate resources (catalogs, mission datasets, bibliographic databases): the *resource profile*
2. They enable generic queries to be mapped unambiguously onto resource-specific queries: the *query profile*
3. They enable query responses to be tagged by content type and integrated into a common presentation format: the *response profile*

The resource, query, and response profiles are all aspects of a common database of resource attributes. Current plans call for these profiles to be expressed using XML (eXtensible Markup Language, an emerging standard which allows embedding of logical markup tags within a document) and to be maintained as a distributed database using the CDS GLU facility.

The profile concept is critical to a distributed data service where one cannot expect data providers to modify their internal systems or services to accommodate some externally imposed standard. The profiles act as a thin, lightweight interface between the distributed service and the existing specific services. Ideally the service-specific profile implementations are maintained in a fully distributed fashion, with each data or service provider running a GLU daemon in which that site’s services are fully described and updated as necessary. Static services or services with insufficient staff resources to maintain a local GLU implementation can still be included, however, as long as their profiles are included elsewhere in the distributed resource database. The profile concept is not unique to space science, but would apply equally well to any distributed data service in which a common user interface is desired to locate information in related yet traditionally separate disciplines.

## 6 Information clustering and advanced user interfaces

A major challenge in current information systems research is to find efficient ways for users to be able to visualize the contents and understand the correlations within large databases. The technologies being developed are likely to be applicable to astronomical information systems. For example, information retrieval by means of “semantic road maps” was first detailed in Doyle (doyle (1961)), using a powerful spatial metaphor which lends itself quite well to modern distributed computing environments such as the Web. The Kohonen self-organizing feature map (SOM; Kohonen origk (1982)) method is an effective means towards this end of a visual information retrieval user interface.

### 6.1 Interfacing datasets with a Self-organizing Map

The Kohonen map is, at heart, $`k`$-means clustering with the additional constraint that cluster centers be located on a regular grid (or some other topographic structure) and furthermore their location on the grid be monotonically related to pairwise proximity (Murtagh & Hernández-Pajares mhp (1995)).

A regular grid is quite convenient for an output representation space, as it maps conveniently onto a visual user interface. In a web context, it can easily be made interactive and responsive.

Fig. 1 shows an example of such a visual and interactive user interface map, in the context of a set of journal articles described by their keywords. Color is related to density of document clusters located at regularly spaced nodes of the map, and some of these nodes/clusters are annotated. The map is installed on the Web as a clickable image map, with CGI programs accessing lists of documents and – through further links – in many cases, the full documents. In the example shown, the user has queried a node and results are seen in the right-hand panel. Such maps are maintained for (currently) 12,000 articles from the Astrophysical Journal, 7000 from Astronomy and Astrophysics, over 2000 astronomical catalogs, and other data holdings. More information on the design of this visual interface and user assessment can be found in Poinçot et al. (poin1 (1998, 2000)).

### 6.2 Hyperlink clustering

Guillaume & Murtagh (guill (2000)) have recently developed a Java-based visualization tool for hyperlink-based data, in XML, consisting of astronomers, astronomical object names, article titles, and possibly other objects (images, tables, etc.). Through weighting, the various types of links could be prioritized. An iterative refinement algorithm was developed to map the nodes (objects) to a regular grid of cells, which, as for the Kohonen SOM map, are clickable and provide access to the data represented by the cluster. Fig. 2 shows an example for an astronomer (Prof. Jean Heyvaerts, Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory).

These new cluster-based visual user interfaces are not computationally demanding. In general they cannot be created in real time, but they are scalable in the sense that many tens of thousands of documents or other objects can be easily handled. Document management (see e.g. Cartia131313http://www.cartia.com/) is less the motivation as is instead the interactive user interface.

Further information on these visual user interfaces can be found in Guillaume (guill2 (2000)) and Poinçot (poin3 (1999)).

### 6.3 Future developments for advanced interfaces

Two directions of development are planned in the near future. Firstly, visual user interfaces need to be coupled together. A comprehensive “master” map is one possibility, but this has the disadvantage of centralized control and/or configuration control. Another possibility is to develop a protocol such that a map can refer a user to other maps in appropriate circumstances. Such a protocol was developed a number of years ago in a system called Ingrid141414http://www.ingrid.org/ developed by P. Francis at NTT Software Labs in Tokyo (see Guillaume guill2 (2000)). However this work has been reoriented since then.

Modern middleware tools may offer the following solution. This is to define an information sharing bus, which will connect distributed information maps. It will be interesting to look at the advantages of CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) or, more likely, EJB (Enterprise Java Beans), for ensuring this interoperability infrastructure (Lunney & McCaughey corba (2000)).

A second development path is to note the clustering which is at the core of these visual user interfaces and to ask whether this can be further enhanced to facilitate construction of query and response agents. It is clear to anyone who uses Internet search engines such as AltaVista, Lycos, etc. that clustering of results is very desirable. A good example of such clustering of search results in practice is the Ask Jeeves search engine151515http://www.askjeeves.com/. The query interface, additionally, is a natural language one, another plus.

## 7 Conclusion

The on-line “Virtual Observatory” is currently under construction with on-line archives and services potentially giving access to a huge quantity of scientific information: its services will allow astronomers to select the information of interest for their research, and to access original data, observatory archives and results published in journals. Search and discovery tools currently in development will be of vital importance to make all the observational data and information available to the widest scientific community.

###### Acknowledgements.

CDS acknowledges the support of INSU-CNRS, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and Université Louis Pasteur.


text:
# Does hardcore interaction change absorbing type critical phenomena?

## Abstract

It has been generally believed that hardcore interaction is irrelevant to absorbing type critical phenomena because the particle density is so low near an absorbing phase transition. We study the effect of hardcore interaction on the $`N`$ species branching annihilating random walks with two offspring and report that hardcore interaction drastically changes the absorbing type critical phenomena in a nontrivial way. Through Langevin equation type approach, we predict analytically the values of the scaling exponents, $`\nu _{}=2,z=2,\alpha =1/2,\beta =2`$ in one dimension for all $`N>1`$. Direct numerical simulations confirm our prediction. When the diffusion coefficients for different species are not identical, $`\nu _{}`$ and $`\beta `$ vary continuously with the ratios between the coefficients.

The study of nonequilibrium systems with trapped (absorbing) states has been very active in recent years . Models displaying absorbing phase transitions describe a wide range of phenomena, in particular, epidemic spreading, catalytic chemical reactions, and transport in disordered media. Furthermore, the absorbing transition is one of the simplest and natural extensions of the well-established equilibrium phase transition to non-equilibrium systems, which are still poorly understood.

The concept of universality, which plays a key role in equilibrium critical phenomena, was shown to be applicable also to nonequilibrium absorbing transitions. Critical behavior near an absorbing transition is determined by properties such as dimensionality and symmetry, and is not affected by details of the system. Finding a new universality class is difficult, and only a few classes of absorbing transitions are known .

Hardcore interaction between particles or kinks has been believed to be irrelevant to absorbing type critical phenomena, because the particle density is so low near an absorbing transition that the probability of multiple occupations at a site should be too small to be significant. This conventional belief leads to recent successes of field theoretical techniques using bosonic type operators . However, it is well known that hardcore interaction does changes the asymptotic decay behavior of the particle density in many multi-species diffusion-reaction models near an annihilation fixed point. Since many absorbing transition models can be mapped onto diffusion-reaction ones, it may seem natural to ask a question whether hardcore constraint changes the absorbing type universality classes in multi-species models. Despite recent efforts using fermionic formulation incorporating hardcore interactions , the effect of hardcore interactions is barely understood both analytically and numerically.

In this Letter, we study the $`N`$ species branching annihilating random walks with two offspring ($`N`$-BAW(2)), introduced recently by Cardy and Täuber . The model was solved exactly for all $`N>1`$, using renormalization group techniques in bosonic type formulation which ignores hardcore interactions. We employ Langevin equation type approach incorporating hardcore interactions and obtain analytically the values of critical exponents associated with the absorbing transition. It turns out that hardcore interaction drastically changes the universality class in a nontrivial way and the critical exponents vary continuously with the ratio of diffusion constants of different species. Direct numerical simulations confirm our predictions.

The $`N`$-BAW(2) model is a classical stochastic system consisting of $`N`$ species of particles, $`A_i`$ $`(i=1,\mathrm{},N)`$. Each particle diffuses on a $`d`$-dimensional lattice with two competing dynamic processes: pair annihilation and branching. Pair annihilation is allowed only between identical particles $`(A_i+A_i\mathrm{})`$. In the branching process, a particle $`A_i`$ creates two identical particles in its neighborhood $`(A_iA_i+2A_j)`$, with rate $`\sigma `$ for $`i=j`$ and rate $`\sigma ^{}/(N1)`$ for $`ij`$.

For $`N=1`$, this model exhibits an absorbing transition of directed Ising type ($`Z_2`$ symmetry) at finite branching rate . The $`N`$ species generalization imposes the permutation symmetry $`S_N`$ between species. Like in the Potts type generalization of the absorbing transition models , this model for $`N>1`$ is always active except at the annihilation fixed point of zero branching rate.

Critical properties near the annihilation fixed point have been explored exactly by Cardy and Täuber for $`N>1`$ in the framework of bosonic field theory . The upper critical dimension $`d_c`$ is $`2`$. Using a perturbation expansion, they showed that the branching process associated with $`\sigma `$ is irrelevant. For $`\sigma =0`$, it was found that the models for all $`N>1`$ are active for $`\sigma ^{}0`$ and their scaling behavior near the annihilation fixed point ($`\sigma ^{}=\sigma _c^{}=0`$ ) forms a new universality class independent of $`N`$. For $`d<d_c`$, the critical behavior is characterized by the exponents

$$\nu _{}=1/d,z=2,\alpha =d/2,\beta =1.$$
(1)
Here, the exponents are defined as

$`\xi `$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }^\nu _{},\tau `$ $`\xi ^z,`$ (2)
$`\rho (t)`$ $`t^\alpha ,\rho _s`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }^\beta ,`$ (3)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\sigma ^{}\sigma _c^{}`$, $`\xi `$ is the correlation length, $`\tau `$ the characteristic time, $`\rho (t)`$ the particle density at time $`t`$, and $`\rho _s`$ the steady-state particle density.

Even in the presence of hardcore interaction, the scaling exponents $`\alpha `$ and $`z`$ should follow from the simple random walk exponents; $`z=2`$ and $`\alpha =d/z`$ for $`d<d_c`$ . Near the annihilation fixed point, elementary scaling theory ensures $`\beta =\nu _{}z\alpha `$, which leads to $`\beta =\nu _{}d`$. We determine the value of $`\nu _{}`$ through Langevin equation type approach.

The particle density can change by branching processes and pair annihilation processes. If we start with a configuration of very low particle density, the particle density initially grows by branching processes, $`(A_iA_i+2A_j)`$. In this growth regime, a newly created pair of offspring and its parent are far more likely to annihilate against each other than other particles in the system. Dynamics of such three particle configurations or “triplet” governs the growth behavior of the particle density and the inter-triplet interactions can be ignored. The particle density growth will be finally capped by pair annihilations processes of independent particles and the system reaches a steady state.

We focus on the growth regime dominated by triplet dynamics, from which $`\nu _{}`$ can be evaluated . We only consider the case of $`\sigma =0`$, where a newly created pair is always dissimilar to its parent. The survival probability $`S(t)`$ of the triplet of the same species decays much faster ($`t^{3/2}`$) than that of different species, so the branching process associated with $`\sigma `$ is irrelevant. Near $`\sigma ^{}=0`$, the time evolution of the particle density of $`i`$-th species, $`\rho _i(t)`$, is written as

$$\frac{d\rho _i}{dt}=2\frac{\sigma ^{}}{N1}\underset{ji}{}\left[\rho _j(t)_0^tL_{ij}(tt^{})\rho _j(t^{})𝑑t^{}\right],$$
(4)
where $`L_{ij}(tt^{})dt`$ is the probability that an $`i`$-th species pair created by an $`j`$-th species particle at time $`t^{}`$, annihilates in an interval between $`t`$ and $`t+dt`$. The two terms in the right-hand side represent the creation and annihilation process of a triplet, respectively. Pair annihilation contribution from independent particles is $`𝒪(\rho ^2)`$, which is ignored in the growth regime.

The kernel $`L_{ij}(t)`$ is simply related to the survival probability $`S_{ij}(t)`$ of the triplet $`(A_j+2A_i)`$ as $`L_{ij}(t)=dS_{ij}(t)/dt`$. To keep the lowest order of $`\sigma ^{}`$ in Eq. (4), we evaluate $`S_{ij}(t)`$ at $`\sigma ^{}=0`$. When hardcore interaction is not present, a pair of $`A_i`$’s does not see its parent $`A_j`$, so annihilate each other freely by random walks. In that case, it is well known that $`S(t)=S_{ij}(t)`$ decays asymptotically as $`S(t)t^\delta `$ with $`\delta =1d/2`$ for $`d<2`$ and becomes finite ($`\delta =0`$) for $`d>2`$, irrespective of their diffusion constants . However, with hardcore interaction, the pair annihilation process changes significantly due to an effective bias in their diffusive behavior, generated by their parent particle $`A_j`$. The motion of $`A_i`$ near $`A_j`$ picks up a convective component with velocity proportional to $`t^{1/2}`$, so the convective displacement is of the same order of diffusive displacement $`t^{1/2}`$. In this case, the competition between the convection and diffusion becomes nontrivial and the scaling exponent $`\delta `$ depends continuously on the parameters of the system .

We calculate the survival probability $`S(t)`$ of a triplet in one dimension. With hardcore interaction, $`S(t)`$ depends crucially on where to create two offspring with respect to their parent. When two offspring are divided by their parent (static branching) , they have no chance to meet each other. The survival probability never decays ($`\delta =0`$). When two offspring are placed both to the left or both to the right side of the parent particle with equal probability (dynamic branching) , $`S(t)`$ decays with a nontrivial scaling exponent.

Consider three random walkers on a line, labeled as $`A`$, $`B`$ and $`C`$. $`A`$ is a parent particle that created two offspring, $`B`$ and $`C`$, to the right side of $`A`$. Two offspring $`B`$ and $`C`$ are of the same species, which is different from its parent $`A`$. Hardcore repulsion is present between $`A`$ and $`B`$. $`B`$ and $`C`$ annihilate instantaneously upon collision. The calculation of $`S(t)`$ belongs to the class of problems known as “capture process” .

Let the coordinates of the walkers be $`x_A,x_B`$ and $`x_C`$, and their diffusion coefficients $`D_A,D_B`$ and $`D_C`$, respectively. In our case, $`D_B=D_C`$. It is useful to introduce the scaled coordinates $`y_i=x_i/\sqrt{D_i}`$, where $`i=A,B,C`$. Then we can map this triplet system to a single walker system with isotropic diffusion in three dimensional space $`(y_A,y_B,y_C)`$ . The walker survives inside the wedge bounded by two planes: a reflecting plane $`P_r`$ of $`\sqrt{D_A}y_A=\sqrt{D_B}y_B`$ and an absorbing plane $`P_a`$ of $`\sqrt{D_B}y_B=\sqrt{D_C}y_C`$.

The survival probability $`S(t)`$ of an isotropic random walker in a $`d`$ dimensional cone with absorbing boundary is known . In particular, $`S(t)`$ in a wedge with an opening angle $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ asymptotically decays as $`t^{\pi /2\mathrm{\Theta }}`$ . In our case, one of the boundary planes, $`P_r`$, is not absorbing but reflecting. The probability of the walker at $`P_r`$ is nonzero and there is no net flux across this plane. Using this fact, one can easily show that our system should be equivalent to the system in a wedge bounded by two absorbing planes with twice bigger opening angle.

We find that the survival probability of the triplet decays with the exponent

$$\delta =\frac{\pi }{4\mathrm{\Theta }}=\left[\frac{4}{\pi }\mathrm{cos}^1\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2(1+r)}}\right)\right]^1,$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is an opening angle of the wedge and $`r=D_A/D_B`$. The exponent $`\delta `$ monotonically decreases from 1 to 1/2 as the diffusivity ratio $`r`$ varies from 0 to $`\mathrm{}`$. At $`r=1`$ (the same diffusivity for all walkers), $`\delta =3/4`$.

First, we consider the case that diffusion coefficients are identical for all species. The $`N`$ coupled Langevin equations, Eq. (4), can be simplified in terms of the total particle density, $`\rho (t)=_i\rho _i(t)`$, as

$$\frac{d\rho }{dt}=2\sigma ^{}\rho (t)2\sigma ^{}_0^tL(tt^{})\rho (t^{})𝑑t^{},$$
(6)
where $`L(t)=L_{ij}(t)`$ is independent of $`i`$ and $`j`$. Taking Laplace transformation, we find

$$s\stackrel{~}{\rho }(s)\rho (0)=2\sigma ^{}(1\stackrel{~}{L}(s))\stackrel{~}{\rho }(s)=2\sigma ^{}s\stackrel{~}{S}(s)\stackrel{~}{\rho }(s),$$
(7)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }(s)=_0^{\mathrm{}}\rho (t)e^{st}𝑑t`$, and similarly $`\stackrel{~}{L}(s)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{S}(s)`$ are the Laplace transform of $`L(t)`$ and $`S(t)`$, respectively. With $`S(t)t^\delta `$, one can show that $`\stackrel{~}{S}(s)s^{\delta 1}`$ for $`\delta >0`$.

The function $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }(s)`$ has a pole in the positive real axis at $`s_o\sigma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{1/(1\delta )}`$. When the initial density $`\rho (0)`$ is small, the density $`\rho (t)`$ increases exponentially as $`\mathrm{exp}(s_ot)`$. Using the definition of the characteristic time $`\tau `$ (Eq. (3)), we find

$$\tau =\sigma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\nu _{}z}=1/s_o=\sigma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{1/(1\delta )}.$$
(8)
With $`\delta =3/4`$ for the dynamic branching model, we arrive at $`\nu _{}z=1/(1\delta )=4`$. Therefore we predict that the critical exponents for the dynamic branching $`N`$-BAW(2) model with hardcore interaction in one dimension are

$$\nu _{}=2,z=2,\alpha =1/2,\beta =2,$$
(9)
which should be valid for all $`N>1`$. For the static branching $`N`$-BAW(2) model, $`\delta =0`$ and $`\nu _{}=\beta =1/2`$. Without hardcore interactions, branching methods do not matter and $`\delta =1/2`$, which leads to Eq. (1).

We check the above predictions for the $`N`$-BAW(2) model by direct numerical simulations for $`N=2,3`$ and 4. We start with a pair of particles. With probability $`p`$, a randomly chosen particle ($`A_i`$) creates two offspring ($`2A_j`$) on two nearest neighboring sites (dynamic/static branching). The branching probability $`p`$ is distributed as $`\gamma p`$ for $`i=j`$ and $`(1\gamma )p/(N1)`$ for $`ij`$. Otherwise, the particle hops to a nearest neighboring site. Two particles of the same species at a site annihilate instantaneously. In case of models with hardcore interactions, branching/hopping attempts are rejected when two particles of different species try to occupy the same site. Critical probability $`p_c=0`$ for all models considered here.

We measure the total particle density $`\rho _s`$ in the steady state, averaged over $`5\times 10^25\times 10^4`$ independent samples for several values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }=pp_c`$ ($`0.0010.05`$) and lattice size $`L`$ ($`2^52^{11}`$). We set $`\gamma =1/2`$. Using the finite-size scaling theory

$$\rho _s(\mathrm{\Delta },L)=L^{\beta /\nu _{}}F(\mathrm{\Delta }L^{1/\nu _{}}),$$
(10)
the value of $`\nu _{}`$ is determined by “collapsing” data of $`\rho _s`$ with $`\beta /\nu _{}=1`$ (Fig. 1). Numerical data show that $`\nu _{}`$ does not depend on $`N`$ in all models as expected. We find $`\nu _{}=1.00(5)`$ for models without hardcore interactions, which agrees with the result by Cardy and Täuber . With hardcore interactions, we find $`\nu _{}=1.9(1)`$ for the dynamic branching models and $`\nu _{}=0.50(3)`$ for the static branching models, which confirm our predictions within statistical errors.

When the diffusion coefficients are not identical for different species, $`S_{ij}(t)`$ decays with the exponent $`\delta `$ depending on diffusivity ratio $`r=D_j/D_i`$. Instead of a single Langevin equation, we are then forced to deal with the $`N`$ coupled Langevin equations. The solution of the system of equations is difficult in general, but the equations become quite simple for $`N=2`$.

Laplace-transformed coupled equations for $`N=2`$ become

$`s\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s)\rho _1(0)`$ $`=`$ $`2\sigma ^{}s\stackrel{~}{S}_{12}(s)\stackrel{~}{\rho }_2(s),`$ (11)
$`s\stackrel{~}{\rho }_2(s)\rho _2(0)`$ $`=`$ $`2\sigma ^{}s\stackrel{~}{S}_{21}(s)\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s).`$ (12)
We take $`\rho _2(0)=0`$ as an initial condition and solve the equations for $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s)`$:

$$s\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s)\rho _1(0)=4\sigma _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}s\stackrel{~}{S}_{12}\stackrel{~}{S}_{21}\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s).$$
(13)
Note that $`S_{12}(t)`$ decays with exponent $`\delta (r)`$ with $`r=D_2/D_1`$ and $`S_{21}(t)`$ with $`\delta (1/r)`$, see Eq. (5). From the pole position of $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }_1(s)`$, we arrive at

$$\nu _{}(r)=\frac{1}{2\delta (r)\delta (1/r)}.$$
(14)
The exponent $`\delta (r)`$ ranges from $`1/2`$ to 1, but $`\delta (r)+\delta (1/r)`$ varies only slightly with $`r`$. It ranges from $`3/2`$ to 1.5255, so $`\nu _{}(r)`$ varies only within a few percent. Due to rather large statistical errors ($`10\%`$), we could not confirm numerically the $`r`$ dependence of $`\nu _{}`$. However, it is clear from our derivation that $`\nu _{}`$ should vary continuously with diffusivity ratio. Although we were not able to obtain a similar expression for $`\nu _{}`$ for general $`N`$, we expect that $`\nu _{}`$ varies continuously but only slightly with $`r`$ for all $`N>1`$.

In summary, we showed that hardcore interaction in the $`N`$-BAW(2) model changes its universality class in a nontrivial way. Details of branching methods (static/dynamic branching) and also the diffusivity ratios between different species change drastically the absorbing type critical phenomena. We find that, for all $`N>1`$, the dynamic branching models with hardcore interaction form a new universality class, different from the models without hardcore interaction. Especially, the scaling exponents vary continuously with the diffusivity ratios. The static branching models with hardcore interaction form yet another new universality class. Numerical simulations confirm most of our predictions, but large scale simulations are necessary to measure the diffusivity ratio dependence of the scaling exponents.

The present analytic method to study the effect of hardcore interaction can be applied to a wide range of multi-species diffusion-reaction models near the annihilation fixed point. Our analysis implies that many multi-species models with hardcore interaction may exhibit a nontrivial absorbing phase transition with continuously varying exponents.

We thank the NEST group at Inha University for many useful discussions. This work was supported by the Korea Research Foundation for the 21st Century. J.L. acknowledges support from Creative Research Initiatives of the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology.