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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The soft pion theorem in the inclusive reaction at high energy was formulated by Sakai and Yamada many years ago. Compared with the soft pion theorem in the exclusive reactions, the soft pion limit in the inclusive reaction can not be directly related to the physical processes without an additional assumption except in the neutral pion case. At present the fixed-mass sum rule approach and the perturbative approach are known. The former approach includes a new theoretical ingredient called as the current anticommutation relation on the null plane and has been developed to the modified Gottfried sum rule and its relatives. The latter approach is an attempt to relate the structure function in the semi-inclusive reaction to the total inclusive reaction. By studying the semi-inclusive electroproduction, it was suggested that we can identify the soft pion at high energy as the directly produced pion with the low transverse momentum in the central region in the CM frame. Further, it was shown that the theoretically expected value of the charge asymmetry in this kinematical region is very near to the experimental value. Thus this phenomena may have some relevance to the Gottfried sum. In this talk we explain these facts.

## 2 The current anticommutation relation on the null plane

The connected matrix element of the current anticommutation relation on the null plane in the flavor $`SU(3)\times SU(3)`$ model takes the following form.

$`<p|\{J_a^+(x),J_b^+(0)\}|p>_c|_{x^+=0}`$
$`=<p|\{J_a^{5+}(x),J_b^{5+}(0)\}|p>_c|_{x^+=0}`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}P({\displaystyle \frac{1}{x^{}}})\delta ^2(\stackrel{}{x}^{})[d_{abc}A_c(px,x^2=0)+f_{abc}S_c(px,x^2=0)]p^+.`$
Intuitively we can see that a physical origin of the factor $`P(1/x^{})`$ lies in the quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{(1)}(x)/x^{}`$ at $`x^+=0`$. We can convince this fact very generally by using the Deser-Gilbert-Sudarshan(DGS) representation for the current anticommutation relation which incorporates both the causality and the spectral condition. Then, based on this equation, the modified Gottfried sum rule is derived as

$`{\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x}}\{F_2^{ep}(x,Q^2)F_2^{en}(x,Q^2)\}`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{4f_K^2}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _{m_Km_N}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\nu }{\nu ^2}}\sqrt{\nu ^2(m_Km_N)^2}\{\sigma ^{K^+n}(\nu )\sigma ^{K^+p}(\nu )\}\right).`$
This sum rule explains the NMC deficit in the Gottfried sum almost model independently. It has shown that the deficit is the reflection of the hadronic vacuum originating from the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. In this sense the physics underlining this algebraic approach has a common feature with that of the mesonic models reviewed in Ref.(12). However, in the algebraic approach, importance of the high energy region not only in the theoretical meaning but also in the numerical analysis has been made clear. In fact, it shows that about $`40\%`$ of the NMC deficit comes from the region where the momentum of the kaon in the laboratory frame is above $`4`$GeV. Further the numerical prediction based on this sum rule exactly agrees with the recent experimental value from E866/NuSea collaboration. On the other hand, a typical calculation in the mesonic model based on the $`\pi NN`$ and the $`\pi N\mathrm{\Delta }`$ processes accounts for about a half of the NMC deficit, and also this model fairly well explains the experiment of E866/NuSea collaboration. These facts suggest that there may exist a dynamical mechanism to produce the flavor asymmetry at medium and high energy which we have overlooked as yet, and that it may compensate the above flaw of the mesonic models.

## 3 Soft pions at high energy

Usually, the soft pion theorem has been considered to be applicable only in the low energy regions. However in Ref.(1), it has been found that this theorem can be used in the inclusive reactions at high energy if the Feynman’s scaling hypothesis holds. In the inclusive reaction “$`\pi +p\pi _s(k)+anything`$” with the $`\pi _s`$ being the soft pion, it states that the differential cross-section in the CM frame defined as

$$f(k^3,\stackrel{}{k}^{},p^0)=k^0\frac{d\sigma }{d^3k},$$
(3)
where $`p^0`$ is the CM frame energy, scales as

$$ff^F(\frac{k^3}{p^0},\stackrel{}{k}^{})+\frac{g(k^3,\stackrel{}{k}^{})}{p^0}.$$
(4)
If $`g(k^3,\stackrel{}{k}^{})`$ is not singular at $`k^3=0`$, we obtain

$$\underset{p^0\mathrm{}}{lim}f^F(\frac{k^3}{p^0},\stackrel{}{k}^{}=0)=f^F(0,0)=\underset{p^0\mathrm{}}{lim}f(0,0,p^0).$$
(5)
This means that the $`\pi `$ mesons with the momenta $`k^3<O(p^0)`$ and $`\stackrel{}{k}^{}=0`$ in the CM frame can be interpreted as the soft pion. This fact holds even when the scaling violation effect exists, since we can replace the exact scaling by the approximate one in this discussion. The important point of this soft pion theorem is that the soft-pion limit can not be interchanged with the manipulation to obtain the discontinuity of the reaction “$`a+b+\overline{\pi _s}a+b+\overline{\pi _s}`$”. We must first take the soft pion limit in the reaction “$`a+b\pi _s+anything`$”. This is because the soft pion attached to the nucleon(anti-nucleon) in the final state is missed in the discontinuity of the soft pion limit of the reaction “$`a+b+\overline{\pi _s}a+b+\overline{\pi _s}`$”.

## 4 The charge asymmetry

The hadronic tensor is obtained by squaring the amplitude shown in Fig.1, and hence we have many cross terms. Further in some cases the pole term is inhibited by the charge conservation. Because of this fact, the application of the soft pion theorem in the inclusive reaction to the charged pion case is non-trivial. In many cases the limit can not be related to the known process without an additional assumption. Here we use the light cone current algebra at some $`Q_0^2`$ where the evolution is started. We must take care whether the quantity is singlet piece or non-singlet one and whether the quantity is charge conjugation even or odd. Then the perturbative information can be taken into account through the structure functions related by this way. The usefulness of this method is that we can use the symmetry relations at $`Q^2=Q_0^2`$. Now the method in Ref.(1) had not been checked experimentally, it was done in the soft $`\pi ^{}`$ case. From the experimental data of the Harvard-Cornell group the data satisfying the following condition are selected.

1. The transverse momentum satisfies $`|\stackrel{}{k}^{}|^2m_\pi ^2`$.
2. The change of $`F^{}`$ can be regarded to be small in the small $`x_F`$ region.

The effective cut of $`x_F`$ following the condition (2) is taken about at $`0.2`$. Then the theoretical value is roughly estimated as 10% $``$ 20% of the experimental value. However, in the central region, there are many pions from the decay of the resonances, and about 20% $``$ 30% can be expected to be the pion from the directly produced pion. Hence the theoretical value is the same order with the experimental value. Now to reduce the ambiguity due to the pion from the resonance decay product, the charge asymmetry was calculated. The theoretical value is roughly equal to $`0.150.18`$ with weak $`x_B`$ dependence. While the experimental value with the transverse momentum satisfying the condition (1) is almost constant in the region $`0<x_F<0.1`$ with its value $`0.28\pm 0.05`$, and it gradually decreases above $`x_F=0.1`$. The data depends on $`x_B`$ weakly. Hence the theoretical value is very near to the experimental value.

## 5 The soft pion contribution to the Gottfried sum and its phenomenological implications

The soft pion contribution to the Gottfried sum has been estimated. Adding the contributions from the soft $`\pi _s^+,\pi _s^{},`$ and $`\pi _s^0`$, subtracting the contributions to $`F_2^{en}`$ from those to $`F_2^{ep}`$, and using symmetric sea polarization for simplicity, we obtain

$`(F_2^{ep}F_2^{en})|_{soft}`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{I_\pi }{4f_\pi ^2}}[g_A^2(0)(F_2^{ep}F_2^{en})(3<n>1)16xg_A(0)(g_1^{ep}g_1^{en})],`$
where $`I_\pi `$ is the phase space factor for the soft pion and $`<n>`$ is the sum of the nucleon and anti-nucleon multiplicity. To estimate the magnitude of this asymmetry, we approximate $`F_2^{ep},F_2^{en},g_1^{ep},g_1^{en}`$ on the right-hand side of Eq.(6) by the valence quark distribution functions at $`Q_0^2=4`$ GeV2. As a multiplicity of the nucleon and antinucleon, we set $`<n>=a\mathrm{log}_es+1`$, where $`s=(p+q)^2`$. The parameter $`a`$ is fixed as 0.2 in consideration for the proton and the anti-proton multiplicity in the $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation such that $`\frac{1}{2}a\mathrm{log}_es`$ with $`\sqrt{s}`$ replaced by CM energy of that reaction agrees with it. Following the experimental check of the charge asymmetry in the previous section, the transverse momentum is restricted by the condition (1) and the Feynman scaling variable is cut at $`x_F=0.1`$. By calculating the phase space factor under these conditions and allowing a small change of the parameters to determine the phase space, it is shown that we can expect the magnitude of the contribution to the Gottfried sum from the soft pion is about $`0.040.02`$. The main contribution of the soft pion to this sum comes from the small $`x_B`$ region.
In the phenomenological parton model, we have not yet taken into account the soft pion contribution except when we have a general constraint such as the Adler sum rule. In such a case the soft pion contribution is effectively taken into account in the quark distributions by satisfying the sum rule. However in case of the sea quark distributions, no such sum rule constraint is imposed. We have many sum rules concerning the sea quarks which have a clear physical meaning, and the modified Gottfried sum rule is one example among these sum rules. It gives us information on up and down sea quarks. The mean charge sum rule for the light sea quarks stands on the same theoretical footing as the modified Gottfried sum rule. Unfortunately, all the presently available strange sea quark distribution badly breaks the mean charge sum rule, and here is a soft pion contribution which has not yet been taken into account. In conclusion, combined analysis of the sum rule and the soft pion at high energy gives us an important insight into the sea quark distribution functions or the vacuum structure of the hadron.


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# Light Curves of Rapidly Rotating Neutron Stars

## 1 Introduction

Many neutron star models have thermal surface emission concentrated at magnetic polar caps, which are heated by accretion columns, by precipitating magnetospheric particles, or by anisotropy in the thermal conductivity and heat flow from the interior. A number of authors have computed light curves from such heated polar caps by assuming a stationary dipolar magnetic field and noting that gravitational focusing of the photons can have a substantial effect on the pulse shape (see, e.g. Riffert & Mészáros 1988; Zavlin, Shibanov, & Pavlov 1995). It has also been suggested that resonant scattering on magnetospheric $`e^\pm `$ may modify the thermal light curves (Rajagopal & Romani, 1997; Zhu & Ruderman, 1997). Recently, pulsed X-ray emission, apparently from the stellar surface, has been detected from a number of very short period neutron stars, including the 5.75ms radio pulsar J0437-4715 (Zavlin & Pavlov, 1998) and the 2.49ms LMXB binary J1808.4-3658 (Cui, Morgan, & Titarchuk, 1998; Wijnands & van der Klis, 1998). For such objects, existing static field and metric approximations may be inadequate.

In this paper we model the effects of rapid rotation on the the surface emission from polar caps. The most prominent effects are associated with simple Doppler boosting at the surface (Ford, 1999; Strohmayer et al., 1998). We also model the perturbations associated with the varying time delays of the curved light paths and the pulse distortions resulting from frame-dragging (labeled here as “Kerr”) effects on the space-time metric. Previously, Chen & Shaham (1989) noticed the above effects. They modeled the neutron star as a Kerr black hole, and computed values for the star’s angular momentum while assuming that the neutron star’s surface is stationary in the LNRF (see below). Because of this, they arrive at unphysical values for the angular momentum and only include Doppler shifts due to frame-dragging. We use more realistic values of the frame-dragging angular velocity and include the dominant Doppler boosts caused by the motion of the star’s surface in the LNRF. These effects are subtle, but with the increased X-ray sensitivity of AXAF, XMM, and possibly USA careful observations may uncover signatures of rotational perturbations in high statistics energy-resolved light curves of the shortest-period pulsars. The effects will be even more prominent when emission arises from higher altitudes, as is likely for the non-thermal radio and high energy pulsations found in a number of millisecond pulsars (e.g. PSR B1821-24, PSR J0218+4232). Resonant scattering perturbations can also show much larger Doppler and Kerr effects since the flux is re-directed at several $`R_{}`$ and sent back towards the star. Modeling these sources additionally requires a detailed treatment of the retarded (swept-back) $`B`$ field.

## 2 The Model

We start by emitting photons from heated polar caps, whose boundary is defined by the last “open” field lines. For this paper we adopt the traditional static field, aligned-rotator estimate of the cap size and use units where $`G=c=1`$

$$\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{cap}}=\sqrt{R_{}\mathrm{\Omega }_{}},$$
(1)
where $`\theta _{\mathrm{cap}}`$ is the half-angular size of the polar cap, $`R_{}`$ is the radius of the star, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}`$ is the angular velocity of the star, Our fiducial model has both caps heated and, for the old, cold neutron stars which have been “recycled”, or spun up to short periods, we neglect emission from the rest of the star surface. For a rough approximation, we emit a blackbody spectrum, which will suffer simple interstellar extinction before reaching the observer. The surface emission is assumed to be moderately beamed $`I_\nu (\theta _\mathrm{n})\mathrm{cos}(\theta _\mathrm{n})`$ to mimic the effect of limb darkening. We have also considered more complicated surface temperature distributions. Fits to real data, seeking to find rapid rotation effects in pulsar light curves, will need to propagate emission from a more realistic thermal spectrum including composition effects, accurate limb darkening, and surface $`T`$ variation. The present sums, however, suffice to illustrate the size and characteristic shape of rotation-induced light curve perturbations and will be useful as a guide to when such effects need to be considered.

Formally, our use of Eq. 1 is inconsistent. We have computed the cap distortions induced by the rotational sweep-back of the field lines for a non-aligned dipole (e.g. Deutsch 1955; Romani & Yadigaroglu 1995) including near-surface modifications due to space-time curvature in a Schwarzschild metric (Muslimov & Harding, 1997; Prasanna & Gupta, 1997; Linet, 1975). By generalizing the computation of the field structure of a point dipole in the Schwarzschild metric, we have obtained an expression for a point, rotating dipole in a Schwarzschild space-time that goes to the static Schwarzschild case when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}=0`$, goes to the rotating point dipole solution when $`r`$ gets large, and satisfies Maxwell’s equations in the limits $`M0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}0`$, where $`M`$ is the mass of the pulsar. We can then use this expression to solve for the field lines that are tangent to the light cylinder and define the boundary of the open zone. These lines, when traced back to the surface, result in an irregular shape for the field line foot points and cap boundary. We find that the characteristic cap size is quite close to the simple static estimate for $`P1`$ms. After the inclusion of gravitational focusing, the changed cap shape has negligible effect on the light curve; however, when higher altitude emission or scattering are considered, the structure of the relativistic swept-back field is quite important. We defer discussion of these more complex light curves (T.M. Braje & R.W. Romani, in preparation), focusing here on direct surface emission.

Our computation is a Monte Carlo simulation, using the method developed to model resonant scattering perturbations by Rajagopal & Romani (1997). We have extended the photon propagation code to include frame-dragging effects and have modified the transport to follow multiple energy slices of the emitted spectrum, tracing spectral variation through the pulse. We assume a $`1.4M_{\mathrm{}}`$, $`10`$km ($`4.84\mathrm{GM}/\mathrm{c}^2`$) radius star, and a fiducial spin period $`P=3`$ms which gives a cap size of half-angle $`15\mathrm{°}`$.

### 2.1 Boosts

The initial photon directions are drawn in the surface frame with angle $`\theta _\mathrm{n}`$ distributed relative to the local normal with probability proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}\theta _\mathrm{n}\mathrm{cos}\theta _\mathrm{n}`$, and uniformly distributed in $`\varphi `$. Although magnetic anisotropies in the surface opacity may break the azimuthal symmetry for higher field pulsars (Pavlov et al., 1994; Rajagopal, Romani, & Miller, 1997), this is unlikely to be important for low $`B`$, short period neutron stars. These angles give an initial four-momentum of the photon,

$$p_{\mathrm{init}}^\nu =E_{\mathrm{surf}}(1,\mathrm{sin}\theta _\mathrm{n}\mathrm{cos}\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\theta _\mathrm{n}\mathrm{sin}\varphi ,\mathrm{cos}\theta _\mathrm{n}).$$
(2)
To start the photon trajectories, we must relate a frame co-rotating with the surface of the star, where the photons are emitted with some prescribed spectrum and angular distribution, to a locally Lorentz coordinate frame (Locally Non-Rotating Reference Frame, hereafter the LNRF; e.g., Bardeen, Press, & Teukolsky 1972). The surface velocity of the pulsar, as measured in the LNRF, is

$$v_{\widehat{\varphi }}=(\mathrm{\Omega }_{}\mathrm{\Omega })\left[\frac{g_{\varphi \varphi }}{g_{tt}+\mathrm{\Omega }g_{t\varphi }}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}$$
(3)
where the stellar angular frequency is $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{}`$ and the reference frame rotates at $`\mathrm{\Omega }=g_{t\varphi }/g_{\varphi \varphi }`$. We make a local Lorentz boost to the LNRF

$$p_{\mathrm{final}}^\mu =\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu (v_{\widehat{\varphi }})p_{\mathrm{init}}^\nu ,$$
(4)
choosing the coordinate system so that the y-axis points along the direction of motion, giving

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_\nu ^\mu (v_{\widehat{\varphi }})=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\gamma & 0& \gamma v_{\widehat{\varphi }}& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ \gamma v_{\widehat{\varphi }}& 0& \gamma & 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right).$$
(5)
Finally, we convert the photon four-momentum to Boyer-Lindquist coordinates, using the transformations:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}X^{\widehat{t}}& =& (g_{tt}\mathrm{\Omega }g_{t\varphi })^{1/2}X^t\hfill \\ X^{\widehat{r}}& =& (g_{rr})^{1/2}X^r\hfill \\ X^{\widehat{\theta }}& =& (g_{\theta \theta })^{1/2}X^\theta \hfill \\ X^{\widehat{\varphi }}& =& (g_{\varphi \varphi })^{1/2}[X^\varphi \mathrm{\Omega }X^t]\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where $`X^\mu `$ represents any four-vector, the left-hand quantities are in the orthonormal LNRF and the right-hand quantities are measured in the Boyer-Lindquist frame.

These initial directions are propagated to large radius (8$`R_{}`$). The energy boost factor is used to re-weight the surface spectral distribution in the final photon spectrum. We choose a temperature as measured at the surface of the star of $`1.3\times 10^6`$, so that after the Schwarzschild gravitational redshift, the temperature at infinity is $`10^6`$K.

### 2.2 Time Delay

A proper apportionment of photons among final rotational phase (time) bins must include time delay effects arising from both the variation in the curved path length traveled to “infinity” and from the variation in the gravitational time delays experienced by the null geodesics near the star. In practice, we integrate to a fiducial large radius 8$`R_{}`$ beyond which flat space propagation, and a constant incremental light travel time, takes us to the observer. The net effect is that the phase coordinate on the two-dimensional sky-map of a photon is corrected by

$$\varphi _\gamma \varphi _\gamma \mathrm{\Omega }_{}t$$
(7)
where $`t`$ is the (coordinate) time integrated from the surface to the fiducial radius.

This delay will have its strongest effect at the tails of the light curves, where the photons have both traveled the farthest to reach their final destination and spent the most time near the star, suffering bending and time delay in the gravitational field.

### 2.3 Kerr Propagation

Frame dragging effects around a rotating neutron star will depend on the detailed mass distribution, and hence on the equation of state (EOS) and the spin period. Since neutron stars are moderately centrally condensed and the surface emission starts propagation at $`r3M`$, we can adopt a “Roche approximation”, assuming all mass is near the origin. This allows us to obtain an approximate set of trajectories by using null geodesics of the Kerr metric. For our chosen pulsar period, mass and radius, we estimate appropriate values for $`a(=J/M)`$ using the numerical models calculated by Cook, Shapiro, & Teukolsky (1994). We adopt $`a=0.47/P(\mathrm{ms})`$ measured in units of M as appropriate to their moderately soft “FPS” model at $`M=1.4M_{\mathrm{}}`$ and low $`R_{}`$. We retain, however, the fiducial $`10`$km radius estimates; note that this is conservative in the sense that Doppler effects at the true $`12`$km radius can be even larger. Note also that $`a\mathrm{\Omega }_{}`$ breaks down at $`P<1`$ms as the star is rotationally flattened, giving even larger $`R_{}`$ (Cook, Shapiro, & Teukolsky, 1994).

Because of certain numerical integration advantages, we use the Kerr metric in a slightly modified form (Rauch & Blandford, 1994):

$$\begin{array}{ccc}ds^2& =& dt^2\left(1\frac{2Mu}{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2}\right)+du^2\frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2}{u^4(12Mu+a^2u^2)}+d\mu ^2\frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2}{u^2(1\mu ^2)}\hfill \\ & & \\ & & +d\varphi ^2\frac{(1\mu ^2)(u^2+a^2[\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2+\mu ^2+2Mu(1\mu ^2)])}{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2}2d\varphi dt\frac{2aMu(1\mu ^2)}{\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2}\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
where $`\mu =\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, $`u=r^1`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }^2=1+a^2\mu ^2u^2`$. The equations of motion are

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}p^t& =& \frac{dt}{Ed\lambda }& =& \rho ^2\left[a(a(1\mu ^2)l)+\frac{u^2+a^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u^2+a^2al)\right]\hfill \\ & & & & \\ p^u& =& \frac{du}{Ed\lambda }& =& u_{\mathrm{sgn}}\rho ^2\sqrt{1+(a^2q^2l^2)u^2+2((al)^2+q^2)u^3a^2q^2u^4}\hfill \\ & & & & \\ p^\mu & =& \frac{d\mu }{Ed\lambda }& =& \mu _{\mathrm{sgn}}\rho ^2\sqrt{q^2+(a^2q^2l^2)\mu ^2a^2\mu ^4}\hfill \\ & & & & \\ p^\varphi & =& \frac{d\varphi }{Ed\lambda }& =& \rho ^2\left[a+\frac{l}{1\mu ^2}+\frac{a}{\mathrm{\Delta }}(u^2+a^2al)\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
where $`\rho ^2=u^2+a^2\mu ^2`$; $`\mathrm{\Delta }=u^22Mu^1+a^2`$; and $`u_{\mathrm{sgn}}`$ and $`\mu _{\mathrm{sgn}}`$ are signs that are dependent on the initial direction of the photon. For the initial four-momentum $`p^\nu `$ of our photon in the Boyer-Lindquist frame (Eq. 2), we can compute the constants of motion ($`l`$ is the z component of angular momentum and $`q^2`$ is Carter’s constant, both normalized in units of the energy at infinity, $`E=p_t`$) as

$`l=L/E`$ $`=`$ $`p_\varphi /p_t`$ (10)
$`q^2=𝒬/E^2`$ $`=`$ $`(p_\theta /p_t)^2+\mu ^2[a^2+l^2/(1\mu ^2)]`$ (11)
where, as usual, $`p_\nu =g_{\nu \sigma }p^\sigma `$. In order to speed up the computations, we use an elliptic integral reduction of the geodesics presented in Rauch & Blandford (1994).

## 3 Numerical Results

For our fiducial $`\alpha =60\mathrm{°}`$, $`P=3`$ms case, we have produced high-precision light curves by drawing $`10^8`$ photons and mapping the phase distribution in each of 10 energy bands. The computations use simple Schwarzschild propagations (to match the efforts of earlier authors), as well as progressively adding the Doppler boosts, time delays and frame-dragging propagation effects described in Sec. 2.

The results are displayed as sky-maps (Fig. 1) with the intensity of radiation plotted as a function of viewing angle $`\zeta `$ and pulsar phase $`\varphi `$. We produce light curves from such images by taking a slice along a particular $`\zeta `$.

In Fig. 1, the left panels compare the maps produced by Schwarzschild alone (upper) and the combined rotational effects (lower). Several important differences emerge. In the Schwarzschild map, slightly lighter (fainter) bands border each cap; these are the “shadows” of the opposite pole cast by the star and only partially filled by the facing polar cap. With boosting, time delay and frame dragging, the beam of the cap emission is shifted forward and the simple symmetry around the magnetic axis is broken, so these circular shadows do not appear. The right panels show the variation in the sky-map expected with photon energy. For a $`T_{\mathrm{surf}}=1.3\times 10^6`$K, these maps represent the energy bands (at infinity) $`0.070.10`$ keV (upper) and $`0.81.1`$ keV (lower), respectively. The dramatic enhancement of the hard emission at the leading edge of the pulse is clear, showing the Doppler boost’s dominant contribution to the pulse shift.

Simple light curves show more clearly the relative contributions to the pulse shape distortions. Since an observer will only obtain one light curve ($`\alpha =60\mathrm{°}`$, $`\zeta =80\mathrm{°}`$ in this case), the effects of the different rotational perturbations can only be isolated by looking at shape distortions, not phase shifts. Accordingly, we shift the light curves by the phase of the best-fitting, two-cycle sinusoid (at $`P/2`$) to allow direct comparisons (Fig. 2).

As noted by earlier authors, gravitational bending in the Schwarzschild metric greatly decreases the pulse fraction from hot polar caps, by spreading the beam. Also, for stars with two hot caps and masses and radii similar to the fiducial values chosen here, gravitational focusing causes the pulse from one pole to fall in the shadow of the opposite pole, further decreasing the pulse amplitude. Rotational effects break this degeneracy and increase the pulse fraction even for a symmetric two-pole model by a factor of $`7`$ at $`P=3`$ms.

The lower panel of Fig. 2 indicates the perturbations in the model light curves (after shifting to the best match sinusoid) which result when the propagation time delay effects are ignored. For $`P=3`$ms these produce 8% distortions in the light curve. If “Kerr” propagation effects are ignored the errors are at the 1% level.

The pulse fraction actually decreases in going from the “time delay” case to the “Kerr” case. This effect arises because, in the “Kerr” case, the LNRF has some finite angular velocity with respect to infinity. This angular velocity effectively reduces the initial Doppler boost of the photon from the pulsar’s frame to the LNRF. Of course, there is a metric-induced Doppler shift due to the angular velocity of the LNRF (cf. t component of Eq. 6), as noted by Chen & Shaham (1989), but this is a much smaller effect than the true Doppler shift, reducing the pulse fraction of the “Kerr” light curve.

The period dependencies of the pulse-shape distortions are summarized in Fig. 3 and Table 1. We see that even at modest spin frequencies the pulse fraction increases significantly when Doppler boosts are considered. Note that we have assumed a relatively compact star, and surface velocities and Doppler distortions will be even larger for a stiff EOS. For example, using the more realistic radius of $`12`$km for the FPS EOS will increase Doppler boosts by $`20\%`$. By $`P3`$ms frame dragging and time delay effects are quite substantial. In Table 1 we summarize the pulse fraction (Pulsed counts/Total counts) for Doppler boosted light curves and light curves computed with all rotational effects. These estimates suggest that frame dragging might be measurable below $`P3`$ms. In detail, the pulse fractions depend on the $`\zeta `$ chosen, so we have included them for two different viewing angles.

Of course, by using energy cuts we can obtain different weighting of our single line of sight across the pulsar surface. In Fig. 4 we plot normalized light curves in different energy bands for $`P=3`$ms. The shifts here are inherently observable since we have absolute phase information of each energy band with respect to the others. Notice that the total shift between the lowest and highest bands is on the order of $`15\mathrm{°}`$. In principle, the energy variations allow us to disentangle effects of the Doppler boosting from variations in the underlying star temperature. Sharp spectral features, e.g. absorption lines and edges, will make this task much easier.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

With sufficient count statistics we might hope to isolate the various contributions to the rotational perturbations of the pulsar light curves. To gauge the observational precision required, we simulate data drawn from our model light curves and compare various scenarios. One measure of the significance of the departures is to simulate the data with all rotational effects and to compare with model light curves ignoring either Kerr effects or time delay induced perturbations. For example, for our $`P=3`$ms fiducial light curves, we find that pulse profiles depart significantly (95% confidence K-S statistic) from Doppler-alone models when the energy-summed total light curve contains $`3\times 10^4`$ counts. This does assume a simple model for the surface $`T`$ distribution (although gravitational focusing renders results surprisingly insensitive to the detailed cap shape). To isolate rotational perturbations in the presence of an arbitrary cap shape and $`T`$ profile would require significantly more data. Table 1 summarizes the counts required to see Doppler and time-delay/frame-dragging induced distortions for various $`P`$.

Intra-band comparisons for a single pulsar are even more robust, since cap shape and $`T`$ effects will be correlated at the various energies. We have modeled the energy-dependent shape changes. At $`P=3`$ms we find that a total of $`6\times 10^4`$ counts are required to measure the Doppler induced differences between narrow-band lightcurves (10 bands assumed, logarithmically-spaced in energy). For a nearby millisecond pulsar with $`T_{\mathrm{cap},\mathrm{surf}}=1.3\times 10^6`$K, $`N_H=10^{19.5}`$, we find the most statistically significant differences are typically between the energies (at infinity) less than 0.14 keV and greater than 0.28 keV. These estimates are conservative in that we use only the pulse shape and phase differences. The actual count ratios between energy channels may be used to check the surface $`T`$ dependence or to allow detection with even lower total counts.

We conclude that high precision models of pulsars such as J0437-4715 must include at least Doppler boosting at the surface. For example Zavlin & Pavlov (1998) have published ROSAT PSPC light curves with good statistics in energy bands extending to $`1.12.0`$ keV with $`36\mathrm{°}`$ binning. Using model atmospheres and Schwarzschild photon propagation, they have fit for $`\alpha `$ and $`\zeta `$, cap size and the detailed $`T`$ distribution. Our simulations (Fig. 2) suggest that the model light curves (and the parameter values fit) ignoring rotational effects may be substantially in error. For example, fitted $`M/R_{}`$ ratios must be considered preliminary until the effects of rotation are checked. On the other hand the (formally independent) $`R_{}`$ and $`M`$ dependencies that can be traced to Doppler and gravitational effects suggest that more precise tests of the EOS could be effected with very high quality data and detailed models. High precision XMM and AXAF data, which are expected, should be suitable for such fitting.

A second example is the newly-discovered 2.49ms accretion-powered pulsar J1808-3658. This source displays strong “soft lags” (Wijnands & van der Klis, 1998; Cui, Morgan, & Titarchuk, 1998) in the light curves. Ford (1999) has already suggested that this pulsar, as well as a number of QPO sources, exhibits significant Doppler boosting which causes the high energy pulse to lead the softer emission. Alternative explanations, such as Compton down-scatter in a soft corona have been suggested; however, the energy-dependent pulse shape distortions (Cui, Morgan, & Titarchuk, 1998) appear very similar to those of Fig. 4. Our computations thus provide significant support for the Doppler boosting interpretation. With more careful modeling it may possible to detect the effect of other rotational distortions to the light curves of this source.

Doppler boosting effects are very significant for these short period thermal cap emitters. Time-delay and frame-dragging distortions, although more subtle, have characteristic shapes that may allow detection. Sources with sharp pulse features, such as the radio and magnetospheric X-ray millisecond pulsars, provide other interesting targets. Resonant Compton scattering can also impart sharp light curve features relatively high in the magnetosphere (Rajagopal & Romani, 1997). Doppler effects will, of course, be larger at these altitudes, but significant flux is “lensed” near the star surface in the light curves meaning that the higher-order effects (time-delay and Kerr) may also be significantly enhanced. Modeling of such effects requires detailed treatment of the curved space, swept-back dipole field structure. We will describe such models in a future publication.

This work was supported in part by grants from NASA (NAG 5-3263) and from the Research Corporation. We thank the referee, George Pavlov, for a very careful reading of the manuscript and a number of helpful suggestions.


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# X-ray Sources in the Hubble Deep Field Detected by Chandra

## 1 Introduction

The Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N; Williams et al. 1996, hereafter W96) provides an unprecedented view of the distant Universe, and the incredible amount of work focused on this patch of sky has led to fundamental insights about the formation and evolution of galaxies. Intense follow-up studies have been performed at a variety of wavelengths including the radio, submillimeter, far-infrared, near-infrared, and optical bands; these investigations have discovered a fascinating array of cosmic objects. Notably lacking until now, however, is a deep X-ray survey of this area.666The only previous pointed X-ray observation of the HDF-N was a 21 ks exposure made with the ROSAT High Resolution Imager (HRI). No X-ray sources in the HDF-N were detected due to the limited sensitivity of this observation, and to our knowledge the ROSAT results have never been published. X-ray surveys provide the most direct and unbiased probe of massive black hole accretion activity throughout the Universe. This is particularly true in the hard X-ray band above 2 keV where most of the energy density of the extragalactic X-ray background (XRB) resides. In addition, X-ray surveys allow studies of starburst galaxies, elliptical galaxies, clusters and groups of galaxies, and other objects. Early observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (hereafter Chandra; Weisskopf, O’Dell & van Speybroeck 1996) have resolved much ($`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 60–75%) of the 2–8 keV XRB into point sources (Brandt et al. 2000; Mushotzky et al. 2000); an even higher fraction ($`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 70–80%) of the 0.5–2 keV X-ray background had already been resolved by ROSAT (e.g., Hasinger et al. 1998). The key goals now remaining are to resolve the rest of the XRB and to understand in detail the nature and evolution of the sources creating it.

In this letter, we present first results from a deep X-ray survey of the HDF-N area using the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS; G.P. Garmire et al. 2000, in preparation). We focus on X-ray sources in the HDF-N itself and in its immediate vicinity where substantial follow-up work has already been performed. The Galactic column density along this line of sight is $`(1.6\pm 0.4)\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 (Stark et al. 1992), and $`H_0=70`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$ are adopted.

## 2 Chandra ACIS Observations and Data Analysis

The field containing the HDF-N was observed with the Chandra ACIS for a total exposure time of 166 ks in three segments on 1999 November 13 (50 ks), 1999 November 14 (58 ks), and 1999 November 21 (58 ks). The HDF-N was placed near the aim point for the ACIS-I array on CCD I3 during all three observations. The full ACIS-I field of view is $`16^{}\times 16^{}`$, and the on-axis image quality is $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$ FWHM. The observations were corrected for the radiation damage the CCDs suffered during the first few weeks of the mission (Prigozhin et al. 2000; Hill et al. 2000) following the procedure of Townsley et al. (2000), which corrects simultaneously for both position-dependent gain shifts and event grade changes. The three exposures were then co-added after cross-registration using bright sources near the optical axis; we believe cross-registration to be accurate to within $`0.3^{\prime \prime }`$. Absolute X-ray source positions are accurate to within $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ (see §3.1).

We created images from 0.5–8.0 keV (full band), 0.5–2.0 keV (soft band) and 2–8 keV (hard band) for further study, and we use ASCA event grades 0, 2, 3, 4 and 6 in all analyses. We searched these images with the wavdetect software (Dobrzycki et al. 1999; Freeman et al. 2000) using the same methods and safety checks as Brandt et al. (2000). We have used a probability threshold of $`1\times 10^7`$, and light curve analyses verify that none of the X-ray sources discussed below is affected by a ‘flaring pixel’ problem (Chandra X-ray Center, private communication). All of the sources below are consistent with being pointlike, although the constraints are not tight in most cases due to limited numbers of photons. Even with a 166 ks observation the data are far from being background limited (the full-band background is 0.037 count pixel-1), and within $`3^{}`$ of the aim point the detection limit with our selection criteria is $`7`$ photons in the full, soft and hard bands. For a power-law model with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$ and the Galactic column density, this corresponds to a soft (hard) observed flux detection limit of $`2.3\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 ($`8.8\times 10^{16}`$ erg cm-2 s-1). For the cosmology of §1, at $`z=1`$ the corresponding rest-frame luminosity limits are $`L_{14\mathrm{keV}}=7.3\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1 ($`L_{416\mathrm{keV}}=2.6\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1); even fairly low-luminosity Seyfert galaxies should be detected at this redshift. For an open Universe with $`q_0=0.1`$, these limits become $`L_{14\mathrm{keV}}=1.0\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1 ($`L_{416\mathrm{keV}}=3.7\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1).

## 3 Results for Sources in and near the HDF-N

### 3.1 The X-ray Sources in the HDF-N

We have detected six full-band X-ray sources in the HDF-N (see Table 1 and Figure 1). This number of detections is consistent with plausible extrapolations of the number counts.

Four of the X-ray detections are positionally coincident (to within $`0.8^{\prime \prime }`$) with 8.5 GHz sources from Richards et al. (1998, hereafter R98), giving us confidence in these matches and, more generally, in the X-ray positions. CXOHDFN J123646.4+621404 ($`z=0.960`$) is a red spiral galaxy oriented nearly face-on that hosts an active galactic nucleus (AGN; Phillips et al. 1997). Variable radio and optical emission have been detected (R98; Sarajedini et al. 2000). CXOHDFN J123651.8+621220 is spatially coincident with the remarkable source NICMOS J123651.74+621221.4, the second reddest object in the NICMOS survey of Dickinson et al. (2000). This source is also an 8.5 GHz emitter, and it may have 15 $`\mu `$m and 1.3 mm emission as well (R98; Aussel et al. 1999; Downes et al. 1999). While its continuum is very red, it is detected in $`B_{450}`$, $`V_{606}`$ and $`I_{814}`$ and is thus unlikely to be an extremely high redshift object; photometric redshift estimates indicate $`z=`$ 2.6–2.7, but these have significant uncertainty due to possible reddening by dust (M. Dickinson, private communication). CXOHDFN J123651.8+621220 has the largest hard-band to soft-band count ratio (hereafter ‘band ratio’) of any X-ray source in the HDF-N (see Table 1). Provided the underlying X-ray continuum shape is typical for an AGN with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=`$ 1.7–2.1, the large band ratio suggests substantial internal absorption by a column density $`N_\mathrm{H}\stackrel{>}{}10^{23}`$ cm-2. If the photometric redshift is correct the implied X-ray luminosity is $`\stackrel{>}{}10^{44}`$ erg s-1, and this source would be a good candidate for a type 2 Quasi-Stellar Object.

CXOHDFN J123655.5+621310 ($`z=0.968`$) and CXOHDFN J123657.0+621301 ($`z=0.474`$) are both ellipticals with radio emission. The rather flat radio spectrum ($`\alpha _\mathrm{r}<0.3`$) of the first may suggest AGN activity, although the X-ray luminosity for this object is not unusually high given the large $`B`$-band luminosity \[$`\mathrm{log}(L_\mathrm{B})=44.52`$; compare with Figure 1 of Eskridge, Fabbiano & Kim 1995\]. This source has also been detected in the Hogg et al. (2000) survey of the HDF-N at 3.2 $`\mu `$m. The second source has a steep radio spectrum ($`\alpha _\mathrm{r}=1.0\pm 0.3`$) as well as a possible ISO detection, and its X-ray luminosity is consistent with that expected from hot gas in an elliptical. Neither of these ellipticals is detected in the hard band, although we cannot rule out the presence of hard power-law emission with luminosity comparable to that seen in some nearby ellipticals (Allen, Di Matteo & Fabian 2000).

The two X-ray sources that are not positionally coincident with radio sources are coincident with fairly bright W96 sources. CXOHDFN J123641.9+621131 appears to be matched with a bright ($`V_{606}=20.0`$) foreground spiral galaxy at $`z=0.089`$ lying near the edge of the HDF-N. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the X-ray source position is not consistent with the nucleus of this galaxy. It may be coincident with a bright spot seen clearly in the $`U_{300}`$ image of W96. If the identification with the galaxy is correct, the X-ray source is $`3.5`$ kpc from the nucleus and its 0.5–8 keV luminosity is $`7.2\times 10^{39}`$ erg s-1, low enough that this source might plausibly be an off-nuclear ‘super Eddington’ X-ray binary or ultraluminous supernova remnant (e.g., Fabbiano 1998). The galaxy may also have some 8.5 GHz emission, although this emission is not positionally consistent with the X-ray source (see Table 5 of R98). CXOHDFN J123648.1+621309 ($`z=0.476`$) is another elliptical that has been detected at 3.2 $`\mu `$m by Hogg et al. (2000); its X-ray luminosity is consistent with hot gas emission.

### 3.2 Active Galactic Nucleus Candidates in the HDF-N

X-ray emission is a universal property of AGN. Several surveys for AGN in the HDF-N itself have been performed, and we have searched for X-ray emission from the resulting AGN candidates of Jarvis & MacAlpine (1998), Conti et al. (1999) and Sarajedini et al. (2000). Aside from CXOHDFN J123646.4+621404, the $`z=0.960`$ AGN discussed above, we do not detect any of these candidates, and we place X-ray upper limits as discussed at the end of §2. The physical implications of these upper limits vary depending upon the properties (e.g., optical magnitudes and redshifts) of the individual candidates; given the typical range of X-ray to optical flux for type 1 AGN (e.g., Figure 2 of Schmidt et al. 1998), we should have detected most type 1 AGN to $`V23`$ and might plausibly have detected some to $`V27`$. We also do not formally detect the $`z=1.013`$ strong FR I radio source J123644+621133 (R98), although there is a hint of an X-ray photon excess at its position. Among radio-loud AGN, however, FR I sources are the least X-ray luminous, and a rest-frame X-ray luminosity just below our 2–10 keV upper limit of $`2.2\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1 would still make this source consistent with the 2–10 keV X-ray luminosities of other FR I sources (compare with Table 3 of Sambruna, Eracleous & Mushotzky 1999).

### 3.3 Submillimeter Sources in the HDF-N and its Vicinity

Deep submillimeter surveys have revealed a population of luminous, dusty, star-forming galaxies at moderate to high redshift that make an important contribution to the energy output of the Universe (e.g., Hughes et al. 1998, hereafter H98). However, it has been difficult to determine the relative contributions that AGN and star formation make to powering these objects (e.g., Almaini, Lawrence & Boyle 1999). X-ray observations may clearly discriminate between these possibilities.

H98 have presented 5 submillimeter sources in the HDF-N, and Barger et al. (2000, hereafter B00) have presented an additional 5 sources in the vicinity of the HDF-N (here we consider submillimeter sources detected by B00 at $`3\sigma `$). All 10 of these sources are in the ACIS field, but we do not detect any of them. Two of these sources may show X-ray photon excesses near their positions, but further observations are needed before source detections can be claimed. We have used the Chandra data to place constraints on the primary energy generation mechanism for these 10 sources. We follow the general method described by Fabian et al. (2000, hereafter F00), computing submillimeter (850 $`\mu `$m) to X-ray (2 keV) spectral indices ($`\alpha _{\mathrm{sx}}`$777Note that the ‘s’ in $`\alpha _{\mathrm{sx}}`$ stands for ‘submillimeter’ rather than ‘soft X-ray.’) and comparing these with $`\alpha _{\mathrm{sx}}`$ values for local objects (see Table 2 and Figure 2). Because our Chandra observation is 8–18 times longer than those used by F00, we are able to place tight $`\alpha _{\mathrm{sx}}`$ constraints on a substantially larger number of submillimeter sources.

One straightforward interpretation of Figure 2 is that star formation is the primary energy source for these 10 submillimeter sources. Black hole accretion could only dominate the energy production if it is either (1) intrinsically X-ray weak or (2) obscured by Compton-thick material along the line of sight and there is little electron scattering by a ‘mirror’ in the nuclear environment. These are the tightest X-ray constraints yet on the submillimeter source population, and the first to apply to enough sources to reasonably represent the population. X-ray background synthesis models suggest that $``$ 10–20% of the submillimeter sources could be powered by AGN (Almaini et al. 1999), and optical spectroscopy finds indications of AGN activity in at least $`20`$% of submillimeter sources (Barger et al. 1999). Our 0/10 rate of X-ray detection is uncomfortably small, although it is still statistically consistent with these values at the $`15`$% level. Although the redshifts used in Figure 2 have significant uncertainties (see H98 and B00), our basic results are not very sensitive to redshift.

If we consider less-significant B00 submillimeter sources in the 2.5–3$`\sigma `$ range, there are two additional $`2.8\sigma `$ submillimeter sources: 123616.2+621513 (5.4 mJy, $`z`$ unknown) and 123629.1+621046 (6.1 mJy, $`z=1.013`$). Both of these are positionally coincident with Chandra sources: CXOHDFN J123616.1+621513 (13.5 full-band counts) and CXOHDFN J123629.1+621046 (23.6 full-band counts). The soft-band (hard-band) $`\alpha _{\mathrm{sx}}`$ values for these two sources are $`>1.30`$ ($`=1.22`$) and $`=1.31`$ ($`>1.32`$), respectively. These sources probably have some AGN activity, although such activity must be obscured or weak.

Additional Chandra observations during Cycles 1 and 2 will allow an even deeper (by a factor of 3–6) X-ray survey of this area. Subsequent papers will discuss the X-ray sources detected in the full ACIS field of view and optical follow-up studies.

We thank A. Barger, M. Dickinson, M. Eracleous, A. Fabian, D. Hogg, K. Iwasawa, C. Liu, E. Richards, C. Steidel and R. Williams for helpful discussions and kindly providing data. 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 GSRP grant NGT5-50247 (AEH), NASA LTSA grant NAG5-8107 and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (WNB), and NSF grant AST99-00703 (DPS).


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# Schur’s old determinant proves a brand–new theorem of Garrett–Ismail–Stanton

(Date: April 2, 2000)

## Abstract.

Garrett, Ismail, and Stanton gave a general formula that contains the Rogers–Ramanjuan identities as special cases. We show how easy this is when using a determinant that Schur introduced in 1917.

###### Key words and phrases:

Rogers–Ramanujan identities, Schur’s determinant

In a recent difficult paper  Garrett, Ismail, and Stanton prove, amongst many other things, the following generalization of the celebrated Rogers–Ramanujan identities:

$`\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{q^{n^2+mn}}{(1q)(1q^2)\mathrm{}(1q^n)}}& =(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}E_{m2}{\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1q^{5n+1})(1q^{5n+4})}}\hfill \\ & (1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}D_{m2}{\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1q^{5n+2})(1q^{5n+3})}},\hfill \end{array}`$ (1)
with the Schur polynomials, defined by

$`D_m`$ $`=D_{m1}+q^mD_{m2},`$ $`D_0=1,D_1=1+q,`$
$`E_m`$ $`=E_{m1}+q^mE_{m2},`$ $`E_0=1,E_1=1.`$
(Another proof, based on generalized Engel expansions, can be found in .)

Schur  has computed the limits

$$D_{\mathrm{}}=\underset{n0}{}\frac{1}{(1q^{5n+1})(1q^{5n+4})},E_{\mathrm{}}=\underset{n0}{}\frac{1}{(1q^{5n+2})(1q^{5n+3})}.$$

The aim of this note is to give a simple proof of this result, based on the following determinant of Schur:

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(x):=\left|\begin{array}{cccccc}1& xq^{1+m}& & & & \mathrm{}\\ 1& 1& xq^{2+m}& & & \mathrm{}\\ & 1& 1& xq^{3+m}& & \mathrm{}\\ & & 1& 1& xq^{4+m}& \mathrm{}\\ & & & \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\end{array}\right|.$$

Expanding the determinant with respect to the first column (“top–recursion”) we get

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(x)=\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(xq)+xq^{1+m}\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(xq^2).$$

Setting

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(x)=\underset{n0}{}a_nx^n,$$

we get, upon comparing coefficients,

$$a_n=q^na_n+q^{1+m}q^{2n2}a_{n1},$$

or

$$a_n=\frac{q^{2n1+m}}{1q^n}a_{n1}.$$

Since $`a_0=1`$, iteration leads to

$$a_n=\frac{q^{n^2+mn}}{(1q)(1q^2)\mathrm{}(1q^n)},$$

and thus the left hand side of (1) can be expressed by $`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(1)`$.

On the other hand, $`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(1)`$ is the limit of the finite determinants

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_n:=\left|\begin{array}{cccccc}1& q^{1+m}& & & & \mathrm{}\\ 1& 1& q^{1+m}& & & \mathrm{}\\ & 1& 1& q^{2+m}& & \mathrm{}\\ & & 1& 1& q^{3+m}& \mathrm{}\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ & & & 1& 1& q^{n+m}\\ & & & & 1& 1\end{array}\right|.$$

Expanding this determinant with respect to the last row (“bottom–recursion”) we get

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_n=\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_{n1}+q^{n+m}\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_{n2}.$$

We see that the sequences $`D_{n+m}_n`$ and $`E_{n+m}_n`$ satisfy this recursion, and thus any linear combination; set

$$\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_n=\lambda D_{n+m}+\mu E_{n+m}.$$

We can determine the parameters $`\lambda `$ and $`\mu `$ using the initial conditions $`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_0=1`$, $`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_1=1+q^{1+m}`$, which leads to

$$\lambda =\frac{E_mE_{m1}}{D_{m1}E_mD_mE_{m1}}=\frac{q^mE_{m2}}{D_{m1}E_mD_mE_{m1}}$$

and

$$\mu =\frac{D_mD_{m1}}{D_mE_{m1}D_{m1}E_m}=\frac{q^mD_{m2}}{D_mE_{m1}D_{m1}E_m}.$$

We can find the nicer form

$$\lambda =\frac{q^mE_{m2}}{D_{m1}E_mD_mE_{m1}}=(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}E_{m2},$$

which amounts to prove that

$$D_{m1}E_mD_mE_{m1}=(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m+1}{2}\right)}.$$

This however is an easy induction on $`m`$, the beginning $`m=0`$ being trivial. The induction step goes like this:

$`D_mE_{m+1}D_{m+1}E_m`$ $`=D_m(E_m+q^{m+1}E_{m1})(D_m+q^{m+1}D_{m1})E_m`$
$`=q^{m+1}(D_mE_{m1}D_{m1}E_m)`$
$`=q^{m+1}(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m+1}{2}\right)}=(1)^{m+1}q^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m+2}{2}\right)}.`$
Analogously we obtain

$$\mu =\frac{q^mD_{m2}}{D_mE_{m1}D_{m1}E_m}=(1)^{m+1}q^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}D_{m2}.$$

Hence

$`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}_n=(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}E_{m2}D_{n+m}(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}D_{m2}E_{n+m}.`$
Performing the limit $`n\mathrm{}`$ this turns into

$`\mathrm{𝖲𝖼𝗁𝗎𝗋}(1)=(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}E_{m2}D_{\mathrm{}}(1)^mq^{\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{m}{2}\right)}D_{m2}E_{\mathrm{}},`$
which is (1).


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# Thermal conductivity of Mg-doped CuGeO3 at very low temperatures: Heat conduction by antiferromagnetic magnons

## Abstract

Thermal conductivity $`\kappa `$ is measured at very low temperatures down to 0.28 K for pure and Mg-doped CuGeO3 single crystals. The doped samples carry larger amount of heat than the pure sample at the lowest temperature. This is because antiferromagnetic magnons appear in the doped samples and are responsible for the additional heat conductivity, while $`\kappa `$ of the pure sample represents phonon conductivity at such low temperatures. The maximum energy of the magnon is estimated to be much lower than the spin-Peierls-gap energy. The result presents the first example that $`\kappa `$ at very low temperatures probes the magnon transport in disorder-induced antiferromagnetic phase of spin-gap systems.

Recently, impurity-substitution effect on the spin-singlet ground state has been intensively studied in a variety of low-dimensional spin systems, and the results indicate that only a slight substitution of non-magnetic impurity essentially changes the ground state. When the disorder is introduced by the non-magnetic impurity, antiferromagnetic (AF) ordering immediately appears without destroying the spin-gap feature, commonly in a spin-Peierls (SP) compound CuGeO3,  a ladder compound SrCu2O3, and a newly found Haldane system PbNi2V2O8. Since it was believed that spin-singlet state and antiferromagnetism are mutually exclusive, the case of CuGeO3, in which both the remaining SP ordering and the AF ordering developing with impurity-doping turned out to be long-range order, is remarkable. Fukuyama et al. proposed a theoretical model for this anomalous phase, i.e., dimerized antiferromagnetic (D-AF) phase. In their model, staggered AF moments and lattice dimerization are spatially modulated, keeping the AF and SP long-range correlations; degree of the lattice dimerization is larger in between the impurity sites than around the impurity sites and magnitude of the staggered moments are larger near the impurity sites.

Even though the coexistence of the two long-range orders are established in lightly-doped CuGeO3, it is to be elucidated how low-energy spin excitations of SP state, which holds spin gap, and those of AF state, which is gapless in isotropic systems, compromise with each other in D-AF phase. Recently, Saito and Fukuyama extended the theory of Ref.  and predicted that a “slow” gapless AF-magnon branch shows up in addition to the gapped SP mode when impurity is doped. They predicted that the energy scale of the magnon branch is smaller than the SP gap ($``$ 24 K). Existence of this in-gap magnon branch is observed by neutron scattering for rather highly substituted samples.  (Zn concentration was 3.2% for the sample used in Ref. , for example). However, since recent study using high-quality Mg-doped single crystals, in which impurities distribute more homogeneously than in Zn-doped systems, has revealed disorder-induced first-order transition around the Mg concentration of $`x_c=2.4\%`$, only below which the long-range SP ordering is established,  it is essential to examine the magnetic excitations of samples with impurity concentration less than $`x_c`$. In this work, we have measured thermal conductivity $`\kappa `$ at very low temperatures, using lightly Mg-doped samples. The samples are cooled down to 3He temperatures, in order to study the low-lying excitations. The thermal conductivity of the doped samples exceeds that of the pure sample at the lowest temperature. We will show that the in-gap magnons, which is intrinsic to D-AF phase, indeed exist and are responsible for the excess low-temperature heat transport in the doped samples.

The Cu1-xMgxGeO3 single crystals were grown with a floating-zone method. The Mg-concentration is determined by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). For the thermal conductivity measurement, we use pure, $`x=0.016`$, and $`x=0.0216`$ samples, all of which were already well characterized using dc susceptibility and synchrotron x-ray diffraction measurements.  The transition temperatures are shown in Table I for each sample. SP long-range order is observed at $`T_{\mathrm{SP}}^{\mathrm{LRO}}`$ as a resolution limited FWHM of the x-ray Bragg peak from lattice dimerization. The Néel temperature $`T_N`$ is determined by the magnetic susceptibility.

Thermal conductivity is measured down to 0.28 K with 3He refrigerator using “one heater, two thermometers” technique. Gold wires, which are tightly connected with

a microchip heater and two calibrated RuO sensors, are attached on the samples by GE-varnish. Temperature difference between the two thermometers are typically 3% of the sample temperature. Since we will discuss the thermal conductivity in the low-temperature limit (Casimir’s limit), where heat carriers are scattered dominantly by crystalline boundaries, we paid special attention both to the sample size and to the smoothness of the boundaries. Typical dimension along the $`c`$-axis is around 3 mm and thermal gradient is applied along the $`c`$ axis. As shown in Table I, the geometrical mean widths $`\overline{w}`$ (square root of the cross section), which is proportional to the mean free path in the Casimir’s limit,  of the pure sample (Sample A) and one of the $`x=0.016`$ samples (Sample B) are set identical for direct comparison in $`\kappa `$. The smooth boundaries of the crystal is achieved by cleaving for the b-c surfaces and by cutting with a sharp razor blade for the a-c surfaces. Also, we have measured specific heat $`C`$, in order to derive the mobility of the relevant heat carriers. The specific heat measurement is carried out down to 0.4 K with the commercial PPMS (Quantum Design) heat-capacity probe, using a relaxation method. The mass of the samples is typically 3 mg. The samples used for the specific heat and the thermal conductivity measurements are cut from the same piece of the crystals.

Figure 1(a) shows temperature dependence of $`\kappa `$ for Samples A and B below 1.3 K. In Fig. 1(b), $`\kappa `$ in the temperature range below 0.58 K ($`T^3<0.2`$ K3) is plotted as a function of $`T^3`$. $`\kappa `$ of the pure sample rapidly decreases with decreasing temperature and becomes proportional to $`T^3`$ below 0.58 K. At 1.3 K, $`\kappa `$ of the $`x=0.016`$ sample is smaller than that of the pure sample, so that our previous results in higher temperature range are reproduced.  It is natural that $`\kappa `$ is suppressed in the presence of impurities owing to the scattering by disorders. However, $`\kappa `$ of the $`x=0.016`$ sample exceeds that of the pure sample below 1 K down to the lowest temperature, which is not explained by the above simple picture.

First, let us discuss $`\kappa `$ of the pure sample. Magnetic excitations are negligible in the pure sample below 1.3 K, because the spin-gap energy of CuGeO3 is more than one order of magnitude larger than the temperatures. Therefore, the heat is dominantly carried by phonons there. Assuming kinetic approximation, the phonon thermal conductivity $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is written as

$$\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}=\frac{1}{3}C_{\mathrm{ph}}v_{\mathrm{ph}}l_{\mathrm{ph}},$$
(1)
where $`C_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is specific heat, $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is velocity and $`l_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is mean free path of the phonons. Since $`C_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ also depends on temperature as $`T^3`$ at such low temperatures, $`l_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ should be independent of temperature below 0.58 K. This result means that the phonon conductivity reaches the Casimir limit, where the mean free path is determined simply by the dimension of the crystal.  For a rectangular-shaped crystal $`l_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is given as

$$l_{\mathrm{ph}}=1.12\overline{w},$$
(2)
assumimg isotropic phonons.  We have measured the specific heat independently and examined the validity of Eqs. (1) and (2). First, $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is calculated from $`\kappa `$ and $`C`$ data by Eqs. (1) and (2), as $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}=(3\kappa )/(C1.12\overline{w})`$ 1600 m/s.  On the other hand, $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ can be estimated only from the low-temperature $`C`$ data, assuming the Debye model. Thus obtained value of $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is $``$ 1800 m/s, which is in good agreement with the estimation from the $`\kappa `$ data. The result shows that the relation of Eqs. (1) and (2) is satisfied at the temperatures shown in Fig. 1(b) for the crystal used.

Noting that phonon conductivity governed by the boundary scattering gives the maximum value of $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ (any additional scattering would suppress the conductivity), we can notice that $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ of Sample B cannot exceed $`\kappa `$ of Sample A in Fig. 1(b), using Eqs. (1) and (2), because $`\overline{w}`$ of Sample A and B is identical (Table I) and little $`x`$ dependence is expected for $`C_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ and $`v_{\mathrm{ph}}`$. Therefore, the result of the excess $`\kappa `$ in Sample B requires an additional excitations which can carry heat at low temperatures down to 0.28 K in the Mg-doped sample. Considering the AF ordering in the impurity-doped CuGeO3, it is most likely that antiferromagnetic magnons are responsible for this excess low-temperature heat conductivity in the Mg-doped sample.

In order to examine whether the Mg-doped sample also satisfies the Casimir’s condition, under which more quantitative discussion is possible, we compare low-temperature $`\kappa `$ of Sample B and that of another $`x=0.016`$ sample with different $`\overline{w}`$ (Sample C). The upper inset of Fig. 2 shows that the values of $`\kappa `$ are different between Samples B and C. On the other hand, as shown in the lower inset, the low-temperature $`\kappa /\overline{w}`$ data ($`T^3<0.1`$ K) of the two samples show only 3% difference, which is mainly due to the error in determining the distance between the gold wires connected to the thermometers. Since the result means that $`\kappa `$ differs in proportion to $`\overline{w}`$ at low temperatures, it is strongly suggested that the Casimir’s condition is satisfied for both samples and that both $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ and the magnon heat transport $`\kappa _m`$ are governed by the boundary scattering there, i.e.,

$$\kappa _m=\frac{1}{3}C_mv_m^c1.12\alpha _c\overline{w}$$
(3)
\[$`\alpha _c`$ ($`\sqrt[3]{v_m^av_m^b/v_{m}^{c}{}_{}{}^{2}}\sqrt[3]{|J_aJ_b|/J_c^2}`$) is a factor due to the anisotropy of the magnon velocity  and $`v_m^i`$ is the magnon velocity in the $`i`$-th-axis direction).

Assuming Eq. (3), we can crudely estimate $`v_m^c`$ with the value of $`C_m`$ obtained by the independent specific-heat measurement and examine whether the magnon branch is in the SP gap. The specific heat of Samples A and B is shown in Fig. 2 as a function of $`T^3`$ in the temperature range below $``$ 0.58 K3 ($`T^3<0.2`$ K). Since $`C`$ of the pure sample (diamonds in Fig. 2), which represents $`C_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ in this temperature region, is more than one order of magnitude smaller than that of the Mg-doped samples, we can neglect $`C_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ and assume $`C_mC`$ for the doped sample. $`\kappa _m`$ of the $`x=0.016`$ sample is estimated by subtracting $`\kappa `$ of the pure sample and is plotted together in Fig. 2. The $`\kappa _m(T)`$ data show exactly the same temperature dependence as the $`C(T)`$ data below 0.46 K ($`T^3<0.1`$ K), indicating again that Eq. (3) is satisfied in this temperature range. Assuming $`J_c10J_b100|J_a|`$ and $`\alpha _c0.1`$, $`v_m^c`$ is estimated approximately to be 70 m/s from Eq. (3). The AF-magnon energy is lower than $`q_cv_m^c`$ $`0.12`$ meV \[$`q_c`$ ($`=\pi /4c`$) is the wave number at the center of the Brillouin zone and $`c`$ ($`=2.9`$ Å) is the distance between adjacent Cu atoms along the Cu-O chain\]. Since this value is two orders of magnitude lower than the SP gap ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SP}}2`$ meV), we can conclude that the additional heat transport observed in the Mg-doped CuGeO3 is due to the in-gap AF-magnons.

The magnon velocity can be estimated also for the $`x=0.0216`$ sample (Sample D) in the same manner. In order to subtract $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$, it is convenient to compare $`\kappa /\overline{w}`$ of Sample D to that of Sample A, which represents the phonon contribution. $`\kappa /\overline{w}`$ of Samples A and D is plotted against $`T^3`$ in Fig. 3(a). $`\kappa /\overline{w}`$ of Sample D is larger than that of the pure sample. The difference corresponds to the magnon contribution $`\kappa _m/\overline{w}`$ of Sample D. In Fig. 3(b), $`\kappa _m/\overline{w}`$ and independently obtained $`C`$ data are plotted together. Following the same discussion as that for the $`x=0.016`$ sample, $`v_m^c`$ is estimated approximately to be 140 m/s. The upper limit of the magnon energy $`q_cv_m^c`$ is $`0.23`$ meV, which is twice as high as that of the $`x=0.016`$ sample but is still much lower than the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SP}}`$.

The velocity of AF-magnon for the usual uniform Néel state is given by $`2zJ_cSc`$, where $`z`$ is a factor of order unity, $`J_c`$ is the interaction energy and $`S`$ is the spin in each magnetic site. Even when quantum fluctuations, which diminish the effective value of $`S`$ to 0.2 times smaller, is taken into account, the magnon velocity of as fast as $``$ 1000 m/s is expected, (assuming $`J_c=120`$ K). Since we obtained much smaller $`v_m^c`$, it is shown that effective $`S`$ is significantly suppressed owing to the SP ordering. In the model of Refs.  and , the staggered moment is strongly suppressed in between the impurity sites. As the result, a sort of spatially “averaged” spin, which is directly proportional to the magnon velocity, becomes much smaller than 1/2. Our crude estimation from the low-temperature $`\kappa `$ gives $`v_m^c`$ of the $`x=0.0216`$ sample approximately twice as large as that of the $`x=0.016`$ sample, indicating that $`v_m^c`$ rapidly increases with $`x`$. Such $`x`$ dependence is consistent with the calculation in Ref. . Note that $`v_m^c`$ of around 1300 m/s can be estimated for the Zn-3.2%-doped sample from the neutron data,  which is nearly one order of magnitude larger than the value estimated for our $`x=0.0216`$ sample.

It should be emphasized that the mean free path of the AF-magnon in the SP gap reaches as long as $`1.12\alpha _c\overline{w}`$ 18 $`\mu `$m, according to Eq. (3), i.e., the magnons are mobile to a distance 60,000 times longer than the spin-distance ($`c`$) without being scattered. Such coherent motion of the magnons is only possible with extremely long correlation length of the corresponding magnetic order. Therefore, the mixture of SP and AF ordering in the doped CuGeO3 is certainly a true long-range order.

In summary, we have measured thermal conductivity of pure and Mg-doped CuGeO3 single crystals at very low temperatures, in order to examine the anomalous low-temperature phase in the impurity-doped CuGeO3, where SP and AF order coexists. While the low-temperature thermal conductivity is dominated by $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ in the pure CuGeO3, magnons also carry considerable amount of heat in the Mg-doped samples. Estimating the magnon velocity, we have shown that the AF-magnons are present in the SP gap, as predicted by Saito and Fukuyama. It is demonstrated that thermal conductivity is a powerful tool in elucidating the low-energy magnetic excitations in the disorder-induced AF phase of spin-gap systems. Our next step is to examine the excitations in the uniform AF phase in highly substituted CuGeO3, and to seek differences from that of D-AF phase.

We acknowledge H. Fukuyama, who first suggested this experiment. We also thank M. Saito, M. Nishi and M. Ishikawa for helpful discussions. The work done at the University of Tokyo is supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for COE Research of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture.


text:
# Neutron density distributions for atomic parity nonconservation experiments

## I Introduction

Measurements of parity nonconservation (PNC) effects in intermediate and heavy atomic systems might provide very stringent tests of the Standard model of electroweak interactions. Nuclei and electrons are bound into atoms by electromagnetic interactions that do not violate parity. Parity nonconservation arises from the interference of the $`\gamma `$ and $`Z^0`$ gauge boson exchange between the nucleus and the atomic electrons. The dominant part of the PNC interaction results from the coupling of the axial electronic current to the vector nuclear current, and it allows normally forbidden transitions. The nuclear vector current is conserved and the PNC effects provide a measure of the electroweak coupling of the elementary quarks. An extensive analysis of the sensitivity of a variety of low-energy PNC observables to possible new physics phenomena has been recently reported in Ref. .

The nucleus acts as a source of the weak charge $`Q_W`$. The quantity which is measured in experiments is the electric dipole amplitude between two electronic states which, in the absence of the PNC electron-nucleus interaction, would have the same parity. This observable can be parameterized

$$ϵ_{PNC}=\xi Q_W=\xi \left[Q_W^{St.Mod}+\mathrm{\Delta }Q_W^{np}\right],$$
(1)
where $`\xi `$ is a coefficient that depends on atomic structure, $`Q_W^{St.Mod}`$ is the Standard model prediction for the weak charge, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_W^{np}`$ results from the difference between the neutron and proton density distributions in the nucleus. At tree level

$$Q_W^{St.Mod}=(14\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W)ZN.$$
(2)
Z and N are the numbers of protons and neutrons, respectively, and $`\theta _W`$ is the weak mixing angle. The finite size of the nucleus modifies $`Zq_pZ`$ and $`Nq_nN`$, where

$$q_{n(p)}=f(r)\rho _{n(p)}(r)d^3r.$$
(3)
The function $`f(r)`$ describes the spatial variation of the electron axial transition matrix element over the nucleus. The difference between the neutron $`\rho _n`$ and proton $`\rho _p`$ density distributions modifies the effective weak charge

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Q_W^{np}=N(1q_n/q_p).$$
(4)
The two principal factors, therefore, which limit the precision with which the weak charge $`Q_W`$ can be determined from atomic experiments are: (i) the accuracy of atomic theory calculations ($`\xi `$ in Eq. (1) and the function $`f(r)`$ in Eq. (3)), and (ii) the nuclear structure effects, i.e. the uncertainties in the neutron and proton density distributions. At present, the level of accuracy of atomic structure calculations constitutes the predominant uncertainty in the interpretation of atomic PNC observables . For example, the most accurate experimental result for the weak charge of the Cs nucleus is $`Q_W^{expt}=72.06(28)_{expt}(34)_{theory}`$ . The Standard model value including radiative corrections is $`Q_W^{St.Mod}=73.20(13)`$. It has been suggested  that the measurement of PNC effects along an isotope chain might represent a useful method to circumvent the atomic theory uncertainty. The ratios of the electric dipole amplitudes for different isotopes should not depend on the details of atomic structure. In addition to the obvious N dependence, these ratios will be sensitive to the value of the Weinberg angle and, eventually, to additional parameters of a more general electroweak theory . The shortcoming of this method, however, is that the ratios of PNC observables will also be sensitive to changes in the neutron distribution $`\rho _n`$ along the isotope chain. The PNC interaction is directly proportional to the overlap between electrons and neutrons. And while extremely accurate data on proton distributions in nuclei are obtained from electron scattering experiments, data of comparable precision on neutron density distributions are presently not available. It is much more difficult to measure the distribution of neutrons, though more recently accurate data on differences in radii of the neutron and proton density distributions have been obtained .

A number of studies have been reported on the nuclear structure effects in the interpretation of atomic PNC experiments in Cs and Pb isotope chains. The basic theoretical framework has been analyzed in Ref. , and it was pointed out that the uncertainties in the neutron distributions would have to be significantly reduced, if isotope ratios are to be used in high-precision evaluation of the atomic PNC parameters. On the other hand, it was also emphasized that atomic PNC experiments might provide a model independent tool for studying variations in neutron distributions. In a more extensive analysis of electroweak parameters and nuclear structure effects , a number of relativistic and nonrelativistic nuclear model calculations were performed for the chain of Pb isotopes. The conclusion was that the spread among model predictions for the sizes of nuclear structure effects may preclude using Pb isotope ratios to test the Standard model at better than a 1% level. The theoretical analysis included the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov model with Gogny forces, various Hartree-Fock Skyrme effective interactions, as well as the relativistic mean-field model. The Hartree-Fock Skyrme model, with the inclusion of deformation effects, was used in Ref.  to calculate the proton and neutron densities in the isotope chain 125Cs - 139Cs. The good agreement with the experimental charge radii, binding energies, and ground-state spins, led to the estimate that the uncertainties in the differences of the neutron radii may cause uncertainties in the ratio of weak charges of less than $`10^3`$, safely smaller than the anticipated experimental error. In a detailed analysis of Ref.  it was shown that extremely high-precision measurements of PNC effects in atomic Yb appear possible, and it was suggested that a comparison of PNC observables in the wide range of stable isotopes of Yb may provide a unique test of the Standard model. The recent experimental result for the weak charge of Cs  has prompted the analysis of the effects of neutron spatial distribution on atomic PNC in Cs . Several theoretical models have been used to calculate the modifications to the nuclear weak charge due to small differences between the spatial distributions of neutrons and protons in the Cs nucleus. It has been shown that the nuclear structure uncertainties are smaller than those arising from atomic theory calculations, but are comparable to the present uncertainties in the Standard model prediction. The sensitivity of atomic PNC to nuclear structure effects in single isotopes and isotope chains has also been extensively discussed in Refs.  and .

In the comparison of the theoretical models that have been used in the analysis of nuclear structure effects, it has been pointed out  that relativistic mean field models typically generate significantly larger neutron radii, and thus would predict much larger corrections to the nuclear weak charge. Models of nuclear structure based on relativistic hadrodynamics  have attracted much interest in the last decade. In particular, the relativistic mean-field model has been very successfully applied in the description of a large variety of nuclear structure phenomena in spherical and deformed nuclei . The model has more recently been extended to include both mean-field and pairing correlations in a unified framework: the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model . A unified and self-consistent description of the long range mean-field correlations and the pairing field is especially important for the structure of open shell nuclei further away from the line of $`\beta `$-stability. In addition, in the last few years several new and more accurate parameter sets of meson masses and meson-nucleon coupling constants for the effective mean-field Lagrangian have been derived. These new effective forces have been used not only for a more accurate description of properties of $`\beta `$-stable nuclei, but they have also been applied in studies of isovector properties of exotic nuclei with large isospin values, of the structure of superheavy nuclei, and properties of excited states in the relativistic random-phase approximation and the time-dependent relativistic mean-field model.

In a recent study  we have applied the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model to the description of parity-violating elastic electron scattering (PVES) on neutron-rich Ne, Na, Ni and Sn isotopes. For the elastic scattering of 850 MeV electrons on these nuclei, the parity-violating asymmetry parameters have been calculated using a relativistic optical model with inclusion of Coulomb distortion effects. The asymmetry parameters for chains of isotopes have been compared, and their relation to the Fourier transforms of neutron densities has been studied. The important impact that PVES measurement of neutron densities could have on atomic PNC experiments has been recently discussed in Ref. . Since the sensitivity of the neutron distribution appears to be approximately the same for PVES and atomic PNC, it would of course be ideal if density distributions for PNC experiments were determined from PVES. In the present work we use the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model to calculate ground-state proton and neutron distributions for the isotopic chains that have been suggested for atomic PNC experiments: Cs, Ba, Yb and Pb. Calculated quantities will be compared with available experimental data, as well as with previous analyses of the nuclear structure corrections to the weak charge . In Section II we present an outline of the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model. The neutron densities for atomic PNC experiments are calculated and analyzed in Section III.

## II The Relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model

The relativistic mean field theory is based on simple concepts: nucleons are described as point particles, the theory is fully Lorentz invariant, the nucleons move independently in mean fields which originate from the nucleon-nucleon interaction. Conditions of causality and Lorentz invariance impose that the interaction is mediated by the exchange of point-like effective mesons, which couple to the nucleons at local vertices. The single-nucleon dynamics is described by the Dirac equation

$$\left\{i𝜶\mathbf{}+\beta (m+g_\sigma \sigma )+g_\omega \omega ^0+g_\rho \tau _3\rho _3^0+e\frac{(1\tau _3)}{2}A^0\right\}\psi _i=\epsilon _i\psi _i.$$
(5)
$`\sigma `$, $`\omega `$, and $`\rho `$ are the meson fields, and $`A`$ denotes the electromagnetic potential. $`g_\sigma `$ $`g_\omega `$, and $`g_\rho `$ are the corresponding coupling constants for the mesons to the nucleon. The lowest order of the quantum field theory is the mean-field approximation: the meson field operators are replaced by their expectation values. The sources of the meson fields are defined by the nucleon densities and currents. The ground state of a nucleus is described by the stationary self-consistent solution of the coupled system of the Dirac (5)and Klein-Gordon equations:

$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\sigma ^2\right]\sigma (𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`g_\sigma \rho _s(𝐫)g_2\sigma ^2(𝐫)g_3\sigma ^3(𝐫)`$ (6)
$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\omega ^2\right]\omega ^0(𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`g_\omega \rho _v(𝐫)`$ (7)
$`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }+m_\rho ^2\right]\rho ^0(𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`g_\rho \rho _3(𝐫)`$ (8)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }A^0(𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`e\rho _p(𝐫),`$ (9)
for the sigma meson, omega meson, rho meson and photon field, respectively. Due to charge conservation, only the 3rd-component of the isovector rho meson contributes. The source terms in equations (6) to (9) are sums of bilinear products of baryon amplitudes, and they are calculated in the no-sea approximation, i.e. the Dirac sea of negative energy states does not contribute to the nucleon densities and currents. Due to time reversal invariance, there are no currents in the static solution for an even-even system, and therefore the spatial vector components $`𝝎\mathbf{,}𝝆_\mathrm{𝟑}`$ and $`𝐀`$ of the vector meson fields vanish. The quartic potential

$$U(\sigma )=\frac{1}{2}m_\sigma ^2\sigma ^2+\frac{1}{3}g_2\sigma ^3+\frac{1}{4}g_3\sigma ^4$$
(10)
introduces an effective density dependence. The non-linear self-interaction of the $`\sigma `$ field is essential for a quantitative description of properties of finite nuclei.

In addition to the self-consistent mean-field potential, pairing correlations have to be included in order to describe ground-state properties of open-shell nuclei. For nuclei close to the $`\beta `$-stability line, pairing has been included in the relativistic mean-field model in the form of a simple BCS approximation . For more exotic nuclei further away from the stability line, however, the BCS model presents only a poor approximation. In particular, in order to correctly reproduce density distributions in neutron-rich nuclei, mean-field and pairing correlations have to be described in a unified framework: the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov model or the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov (RHB) model. In the unified framework the ground state of a nucleus $`|\mathrm{\Phi }>`$ is represented by the product of independent single-quasiparticle states. These states are eigenvectors of the generalized single-nucleon Hamiltonian which contains two average potentials: the self-consistent mean-field $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ which encloses all the long range particle-hole (ph) correlations, and a pairing field $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ which sums up the particle-particle (pp) correlations. In the Hartree approximation for the self-consistent mean field, the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov equations read

$`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\widehat{h}_Dm\lambda & \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}\\ \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{}& \widehat{h}_D+m+\lambda \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}U_k(𝐫)\\ V_k(𝐫)\end{array}\right)=E_k\left(\begin{array}{c}U_k(𝐫)\\ V_k(𝐫)\end{array}\right).`$ (11)
where $`\widehat{h}_D`$ is the single-nucleon Dirac Hamiltonian (5), and $`m`$ is the nucleon mass. The chemical potential $`\lambda `$ has to be determined by the particle number subsidiary condition in order that the expectation value of the particle number operator in the ground state equals the number of nucleons. The column vectors denote the quasi-particle spinors and $`E_k`$ are the quasi-particle energies. The pairing field $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ in (11) is defined

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{ab}(𝐫,𝐫^{})=\frac{1}{2}\underset{c,d}{}V_{abcd}(𝐫,𝐫^{})\underset{E_k>0}{}U_{ck}^{}(𝐫)V_{dk}(𝐫^{}),$$
(12)
where $`a,b,c,d`$ denote quantum numbers that specify the Dirac indices of the spinors, $`V_{abcd}(𝐫,𝐫^{})`$ are matrix elements of a general two-body pairing interaction. The RHB equations are solved self-consistently, with potentials determined in the mean-field approximation from solutions of Klein-Gordon equations for the meson fields. The current version of the model  describes axially symmetric deformed shapes. The Dirac-Hartree-Bogoliubov equations and the equations for the meson fields are solved by expanding the nucleon spinors $`U_k(𝐫)`$ and $`V_k(𝐫)`$, and the meson fields in terms of the eigenfunctions of a deformed axially symmetric oscillator potential . The calculations for the present analysis have been performed by an expansion in 12 oscillator shells for the fermion fields, and 20 shells for the boson fields. A simple blocking procedure is used in the calculation of odd-proton and/or odd-neutron systems. The blocking calculations are performed without breaking the time-reversal symmetry.

The input parameters of the RHB model are the coupling constants and the masses for the effective mean-field Lagrangian, and the effective interaction in the pairing channel. In most applications we have used the NL3 effective interaction  for the RMF Lagrangian. Properties calculated with NL3 indicate that this is probably the best effective interaction so far, both for nuclei at and away from the line of $`\beta `$-stability. For the pairing field we employ the pairing part of the Gogny interaction

$$V^{pp}(1,2)=\underset{i=1,2}{}e^{((𝐫_1𝐫_2)/\mu _i)^2}(W_i+B_iP^\sigma H_iP^\tau M_iP^\sigma P^\tau ),$$
(13)
with the set D1S  for the parameters $`\mu _i`$, $`W_i`$, $`B_i`$, $`H_i`$ and $`M_i`$ $`(i=1,2)`$. This force has been very carefully adjusted to the pairing properties of finite nuclei all over the periodic table. In particular, the basic advantage of the Gogny force is the finite range, which automatically guarantees a proper cut-off in momentum space. The RHB model with the NL3+D1S effective interaction has been applied in studies of the neutron halo phenomenon in light nuclei , properties of light nuclei near the neutron-drip line , ground state properties of Ni and Sn isotopes , the deformation and shape coexistence phenomena that result from the suppression of the spherical N=28 shell gap in neutron-rich nuclei , the structure of proton-rich nuclei and the phenomenon of ground state proton emission . In particular, it has been shown that neutron radii, calculated with the RHB NL3+D1S model, are in excellent agreement with experimental data .

## III Neutron densities for atomic PNC experiments

In this section we apply the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov model, with the NL3+D1S effective interaction, in the calculation of ground-state proton and neutron densities of Cs, Ba, Yb and Pb isotopes. These elements have been considered for measurements of isotope ratios of observables in atomic PNC experiments .

Due to the large uncertainties in the experimental data on ground-state isovector properties, most of the effective interactions used in the non-relativistic Hartre-Fock model, and the effective Lagrangians of the relativistic mean-field model, have not been specifically designed to describe neutron density distributions. Only more recently have isovector properties been included in the set of data on which the effective interactions are adjusted. In the relativistic mean-field model, perhaps the most accurate set of meson masses and meson nucleon coupling constants is NL3 . In Ref.  this effective force has been used in the relativistic mean-field + BCS model to calculate the ground-state properties of 1315 even-even nuclei with $`10Z98`$. The calculated quantities include the total binding energies, rms radii, quadrupole and hexadecupole deformations. In order to illustrate the quality of the results that are obtained with the NL3 interaction, in Fig. 1 we display the binding energies and isotope shifts of the charge radii of Pb nuclei. The calculation has been performed with the RHB model, and the theoretical values are compared with the experimental data on binding energies  and charge radii . The agreement between theory and experiment is very good, and we notice in particular that the calculated radii reproduce the anomalous kink in the isotopic shifts at 208Pb . The NL3 effective force has also been used in studies of properties of excited states. By using the time-dependent relativistic mean-field model , and the relativistic random-phase approximation , it has been shown that a self-consistent calculation with the NL3 interaction reproduces the excitation energies of giant resonances in spherical nuclei. Particularly relevant for our present study are isovector giant resonances. In Fig. 2 we show the isovector dipole and monopole strength distributions in 208Pb, calculated with the NL3 effective interaction in the relativistic RPA framework. The calculated peak energy for the dipole resonance $`E_p=12.9`$ MeV has to be compared with the experimental value of the excitation energy $`13.3\pm 0.1`$ MeV . The calculated isovector monopole strength is much more fragmented, but the centroid is also in good agreement with the experimental value for the IV GMR: $`26\pm 3`$ MeV . In Fig 3 we plot the binding energies, quadrupole deformations, and isotope shifts of the charge radii for the Yb, Ba and Cs isotope chains. The results of the self-consistent RHB NL3+D1S calculations are compared with the available experimental data . The overall agreement between the theoretical predictions and experimental data is excellent. The results shown in Figs. 13 demonstrate that the RHB model with the NL3+D1S effective interaction is adequate for the calculation of ground-state neutron densities.

The self-consistent RHB neutron and proton ground-state density distributions for the isotopes 202,208,214Pb are shown in Fig. 4. We will eventually compare the calculated rms radii for 202-214Pb, but here we notice the trend: the neutron radii increase with neutron number, while the neutron densities in the bulk region do not change much, except for some shell effects in the central region. The proton densities on the other hand, decrease in the bulk region as more neutrons are added on the surface. This effect, of course, has its origin in the symmetry energy. Therefore, one also observes an increase of proton radii, but much less pronounced than in the case of neutron densities. The difference in the trend of neutron and proton radii is emphasized in the inserts of Fig. 4, where the densities in the surface region are plotted on the logarithmic scale.

In Ref.  it was suggested that the wide range of stable isotopes of Yb might be used for a comparison of PNC observables. These nuclei are generally deformed and therefore, in order to represent graphically the deformed densities, the density functions are decomposed in multipole moments

$$\rho (𝐫)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{4\pi }}\underset{L}{}\rho _L(r)Y_{L0}(\theta ,\varphi ).$$
(14)
The monopole $`L=0`$, quadrupole $`L=2`$, and hexadecupole $`L=4`$ components of the neutron density in 174Yb are shown in Fig. 5. The deformations correspond to the neutron quadrupole moment $`Q_n=11.02b`$, and the neutron hexadecupole moment $`H_n=0.067b^2`$. Since the hexadecupole deformations are generally small, in the following figures we compare only the monopole and quadrupole components of the ground-state proton and neutron densities. These are shown in Fig. 6 for the even-N Yb isotopes. The deformations generally decrease with increasing the neutron number (see the $`\beta _2`$ values in Fig. 3). The difference between the quadrupole components of the proton and neutron density is small for all Yb nuclei in the sequence $`N=98106`$. The proton and neutron densities differ much more in the spherical part of the distribution, not only on the surface (different radii), but especially in the bulk region. Similar features are observed for the Ba (Fig. 7) and Cs (Fig. 8) isotopes. These nuclei are less deformed, and the spherical approximation for the densities will work better than in the case of the Yb isotopes. Correspondingly, the differences in the quadrupole components of the neutron and proton densities are smaller. The monopole components of these densities, however, display very different behavior both in the bulk and the surface region.

The isotope shifts for the neutron radii of the ground-state density distributions of Cs, Ba, Yb and Pb nuclei are shown in Fig. 9. In all four cases a uniform increase of the neutron radii is observed. The differences between neutron and proton rms radii are plotted in Fig. 10, as function of the number of neutrons. The differences are of the order of $`0.20.3`$ fm and, of course, increase with the neutron number. The increase, however, is not very steep. For the Yb nuclei, for example, $`r_nr_p`$ increases by less than 0.05 fm between $`N=100`$ and $`N=106`$. The ratios $`r_n/r_p`$ are compared in Fig. 11. We notice that while the isotope trend is similar, the actual values of $`r_n/r_p`$ calculated with the RHB NL3+D1S model are considerably larger than those obtained in the Hartre-Fock Skyrme calculations for Pb  and Cs . In particular, for 133Cs we calculate $`r_n/r_p=1.046`$, as compared to the Hartre-Fock values: 1.022 for SkM, and 1.016 for SkIII. An approximate estimate for the nuclear structure correction (4) to the weak charge has been derived in Ref.

$$\mathrm{\Delta }Q_W^{np}N(Z\alpha )^2(.221ϵ)/q_p$$
(15)
where the small parameter $`ϵ`$ is defined by

$$(r_n^2/r_p^2)1+ϵ.$$
(16)
The RHB NL3 value for $`r_n/r_p`$ implies, therefore, that the nuclear structure correction to the weak charge can be more than a factor 2 larger than the estimate given in , bringing the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q_W^{np}`$ close to the uncertainties of atomic theory calculations. On the other hand, the results shown in Figs. 10 and 11 indicate that the changes in the neutron distribution parameters along the isotope chains should not present a limitation on the accuracy with which the Standard model can be tested in measurements of isotope ratios of PNC observables.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work has been supported in part by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung under project 06 TM 979, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and by the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) Darmstadt. We thank Andreas Wandelt for the relativistic RPA calculation of isovector monopole and dipole strength distributions in 208Pb.

Figure Captions