text:
# Untitled Document

hep-th/0004151 RUNHETC-2000-15

String Theory Duals for Mass-deformed $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ $`𝒩=4`$ SYM Theories

Ofer Aharony1 oferah@physics.rutgers.edu and Arvind Rajaraman2 arvindra@physics.rutgers.edu

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08855, USA

Abstract

We generalize the results of Polchinski and Strassler regarding the $`𝒩=1`$-preserving mass deformation of $`𝒩=4`$ $`SU(N)`$ SYM theories and its string theory dual to $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ gauge groups. The string theory duals involve 5-branes wrapped on $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$. In order to match with the field theory classification of vacua, the 3-brane charge carried by such 5-branes must be shifted by a half, and this follows from a conjectured generalization of results of Freed and Witten. Our results provide an elegant physical picture for the classification of classically massive vacua in the mass-deformed $`𝒩=4`$ theories.

1. Introduction

The AdS/CFT correspondence \[1,,2,,3\] (see  for a review) is conjectured to be an exact duality between certain field theories and certain compactifications of string/M theory. In particular, the $`𝒩=4`$ four dimensional SYM theory with $`SU(N)`$ gauge group is dual to type IIB string theory on $`AdS_5\times 𝐒^5`$, and the $`𝒩=4`$ theories with $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ gauge groups are dual to type IIB string theory on $`AdS_5\times \mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5`$ .

The correspondence was originally stated for conformal field theories, but it can easily be generalized also to relevant deformations of the conformal field theories, which are realized as solutions of string/M theory with particular boundary conditions depending on the deformation parameter. Some string theory solutions corresponding to the mass deformation of the $`SU(N)`$ $`𝒩=4`$ theory were recently discussed in 3 Very recently, these results were generalized to deformations of the $`d=3`$ $`𝒩=8`$ SCFTs .. The vacua of the mass-deformed theory were described in terms of configurations including 5-branes of various types wrapped on $`\mathrm{IR}^4\times 𝐒^2`$. In particular, for the mass deformation which preserves $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetry (which was called the $`𝒩=1^{}`$ theory in ), a one-to-one mapping was found between classical vacua of the field theory and configurations involving purely D5-branes (though the supergravity approximation is only good for some of these configurations, and others may be better described in terms of other types of branes).

In this paper we wish to generalize the results of  to the case of the $`𝒩=1^{}`$ $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ gauge theories. We will find that again many of the classical vacua of the field theory have a description in string theory in terms of configurations of D5-branes. In particular, all the classically massive vacua (classified in ) have such a description. This gives a nice physical realization of the mathematical results of  (a different realization of the same results was found in ). The 5-branes in our configurations will be wrapped around $`\mathrm{IR}^4\times \mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$, and in order to match with the classical field theory results we will have to use a conjectured generalization of the results of  concerning charge quantization to orientifolded backgrounds. This leads to a half-integral shift in the 3-brane charge carried by 5-branes wrapped on $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$, such that in the $`USp(2N)`$ case such D5-branes carry integer 3-brane charges, while in the $`SO(N)`$ case the 3-brane charge is an integer plus a half.

The string theory solutions we find are almost identical to those found in , and we will focus here just on the aspects which are different in the $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ theories. One such aspect is the fact that not all the classical vacua may be mapped to D5-brane configurations. It would be interesting to check if the other vacua have a dual description in terms of some other configuration of 5-branes.

2. The Vacua of the Mass-deformed $`𝒩=4`$ SYM Theory

The $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory may be described as an $`𝒩=1`$ gauge theory with three chiral superfields $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i`$ ($`i=1,2,3`$) in the adjoint representation, and a superpotential of the form

$$W=\frac{2\sqrt{2}}{g_{YM}^2}\mathrm{tr}([\mathrm{\Phi }_1,\mathrm{\Phi }_2]\mathrm{\Phi }_3).$$

There is one possible relevant deformation of this theory which preserves $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetry, which is a superpotential of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W=\frac{1}{g_{YM}^2}(m_1\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Phi }_1^2)+m_2\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Phi }_2^2)+m_3\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{\Phi }_3^2)).$$

We will take the masses to be equal, $`m_1=m_2=m_3=m`$. It is straightforward to generalize our results to the case of non-equal masses.

The classical vacua of the mass-deformed $`𝒩=1^{}`$ field theory are solutions to the F-term and D-term equations,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill [\mathrm{\Phi }_i,\mathrm{\Phi }_j]& =\frac{m}{\sqrt{2}}ϵ_{ijk}\mathrm{\Phi }_k\hfill \\ \hfill \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}[\mathrm{\Phi }_i,\mathrm{\Phi }_i^{}]& =0,\hfill \end{array}$$

up to gauge identifications. Setting the D-terms to zero and dividing by the gauge group is the same as dividing by the complexified gauge group $`G_C`$. Up to a constant, the F-terms give precisely the commutation relation of the $`SU(2)`$ Lie algebra. Thus, as discussed in \[11,,12\], the classical vacua are in one to one correspondence with complex conjugacy classes of homomorphisms of the $`SU(2)`$ Lie algebra to that of the gauge group $`G`$. Since such homomorphisms have no infinitesimal deformations, the chiral superfields are all massive in such vacua. The homomorphism generally breaks the gauge group $`G`$ to a subgroup $`H`$, and classically the gauge bosons of $`H`$ will be massless. Classically massive vacua correspond to homomorphisms which break the gauge group $`G`$ completely (or, at most, preserve a discrete subgroup).

For $`G=SU(N)`$, such homomorphisms are equivalent to $`N`$ dimensional representations of $`SU(2)`$. Thus, there is one classical vacuum for every partition of $`N`$, of the form $`N=_{i=1}^rn_i`$ with positive integers $`n_i`$. The $`N\times N`$ matrices corresponding to a particular partition may be written in a block diagonal form, with blocks of size $`n_i\times n_i`$ corresponding to the $`n_i`$-dimensional irreducible representation of $`SU(2)`$. The gauge group is completely broken in the vacuum corresponding to the $`N`$ dimensional representation, while in other vacua there is (classically) an unbroken gauge group. If we denote the number of times the $`d`$-dimensional representation appears in the partition by $`k_d`$, the unbroken gauge group is $`(_{d=1}^NU(k_d))/U(1)`$; the non-Abelian factors in this gauge group rotate blocks which have the same size. Vacua containing unbroken non-Abelian gauge groups are expected to split into several different vacua in the quantum theory. If there are no unbroken Abelian gauge groups such vacua will have a mass gap.

For other gauge groups, we are not aware of a complete classification of the possible homomorphisms. However, the homomorphisms which completely break the gauge group (up to possible discrete factors) were classified in . For $`G=SO(N)`$ one such classically massive vacuum was found for every partition of $`N`$ into distinct odd integers, while for $`G=USp(2N)`$ one such vacuum was found for every partition of $`2N`$ into distinct even integers4 This is related to the fact that the odd-dimensional representations of $`SU(2)`$ are real, while the even-dimensional representations are pseudo-real.. As above, these partitions may also be mapped into a block-diagonal form . Partitions in which the (odd or even) integers are not all distinct may similarly be mapped to field theory vacua corresponding to block-diagonal matrices, in which the gauge group is not completely broken; if there are $`k`$ blocks of the same size, the unbroken gauge group includes an $`SO(k)`$ factor. Again, vacua with unbroken non-Abelian gauge groups will split in the full quantum theory. The vacua of the quantum theory (for any gauge group) may be found by a generalization of the analysis of .

Unlike the $`SU(N)`$ case, it seems that for $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ gauge groups not all the solutions to (2.1) are given by the block-diagonal solutions described above. In the $`USp(2N)`$ case, even the trivial solution $`\mathrm{\Phi }_i=0`$ is not included in our classification above5 As we will see in the next section, this means that it is not dual to a background involving purely D5-branes.. Another example is $`SO(6)SU(4)`$ which has a solution breaking the gauge group to $`SU(2)\times U(1)`$ which is not in our classification. We will not attempt a complete classification of the solutions to (2.1) here.

3. The String Theory Description of the Vacua

The $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory with gauge group $`G=SU(N)`$ is believed to be dual to type IIB string theory compactified on $`AdS_5\times 𝐒^5`$ with $`N`$ units of 5-form flux on the $`𝐒^5`$ \[1,,2,,3\]. Similarly, the theories with gauge groups $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ are believed to be dual to compactifications of type IIB string theory on $`AdS_5\times \mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5`$, in which non-orientable string worldsheets wrapping the non-trivial $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5`$ are allowed. The $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ cases are distinguished by discrete torsion. The RR and NS-NS 3-form fields are twisted by the orientifolding, therefore their cohomology is classified by $`H^3(\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5,\stackrel{~}{\text{ZZ}})=\text{ZZ}_2`$, as explained in . Thus, for each 3-form field there are two choices of the discrete torsion, leading to four different theories. The theory with no torsion is $`SL(2,\text{ZZ})`$ invariant and is dual to the $`SO(2N)`$ gauge theory. The theory with only RR torsion is dual to an $`SO(2N+1)`$ gauge theory, while the two theories with NS-NS torsion are dual to two $`USp(2N)`$ theories which differ in their soliton spectrum .

The AdS/CFT correspondence may be extended to include relevant deformations of the conformal field theory, which are mapped to string theory in asymptotically AdS backgrounds with particular boundary conditions corresponding to the deformation. In particular, the mass deformation we analyzed above (for equal masses) corresponds to a background including 3-form field strengths (as reviewed in section 4.3 of ). We expect to have a string theory solution with the appropriate boundary conditions corresponding to every vacuum of the quantum field theory after the mass deformation.

Recently, Polchinski and Strassler  gave a beautiful physical picture of the vacua of the mass-deformed $`SU(N)`$ theory, in the limit where supergravity is a good approximation. They noted, following , that $`n`$ 3-branes carrying 3 scalar fields whose VEVs are an $`n`$-dimensional representation of $`SU(2)`$ (as described above) may be thought of as a D5-brane wrapped on an $`𝐒^2`$ (in the directions corresponding to the 3 scalar fields), carrying $`n`$ units of D3-brane charge coming from a $`U(1)`$ gauge field carrying $`n`$ units of flux on the $`𝐒^2`$. Thus, they interpreted the classical field theory vacua we described above, corresponding to a partition $`N=_{i=1}^rn_i`$, as being dual to string theory configurations including $`r`$ D5-branes, each carrying $`n_i`$ units of 3-brane charge. The geometry of the 5-branes is $`\mathrm{IR}^4\times 𝐒^2`$, where the $`𝐒^2`$ is an equator in the $`𝐒^5`$ of $`AdS_5\times 𝐒^5`$, and the $`\mathrm{IR}^4`$ corresponds to a constant radial position in $`AdS_5`$ (in Poincaré coordinates).

Polchinski and Strassler constructed approximate string theory solutions corresponding to these vacua , and found that the $`i`$’th D5-brane sits at a radial position in AdS space which is proportional to $`n_i`$. This reproduces elegantly the classically unbroken gauge group described above, which is just the product of the gauge groups on the different D5-branes (which is enhanced to a non-Abelian group when the D5-branes overlap), up to an overall $`U(1)`$ factor which may be gauged away . The supergravity approximation used in  is only valid if all the $`n_i`$ are much bigger than $`\sqrt{g_sN}1`$; if this does not hold there are sometimes alternative descriptions of the same vacua in terms of other types of 5-branes . We will ignore this issue here and assume that in some sense the D5-brane vacua still exist even if the supergravity approximation breaks down.

Most of the results of  apply also to the $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ theories. The supergravity fields on $`AdS_5\times \mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5`$ are a $`\text{ZZ}_2`$ projection of the fields on $`AdS_5\times 𝐒^5`$, and this projection preserves the fields that are excited in the solutions of . Hence, in the supergravity approximation we can find the same solutions involving 5-brane shells as in the $`SU(N)`$ case of . The results of  concerning confinement, screening, baryons, condensates, domain walls, instantons, flux tubes, and so on, have obvious generalizations to the $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ cases. The 5-branes now wrap an $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$ which is an equator of $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5`$ instead of wrapping an $`𝐒^2`$. As discussed in , such a wrapping is consistent with the orientifold projection since it inverts the 3-form field coupling to the 5-brane charge.

The main difference between wrapping 5-branes on $`𝐒^2`$ and on $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$ is in the allowed amounts of 3-brane charge the 5-brane can carry. The 3-brane charge arises from a term in the effective action of the D5-brane, of the form

$$d^6xC^{(4)}(FB_{NS}).$$

Thus, the 3-brane charge is the integral of $`(FB_{NS})`$ over the compact 2-cycle. For an $`𝐒^2`$ in $`AdS_5\times 𝐒^5`$, this integral gives an integer 3-brane charge by the usual quantization condition. However, in general backgrounds an analysis of worldsheet global anomalies can lead to a shift in this quantization . The quantization in orientable backgrounds, for a D-brane worldvolume of the form $`\mathrm{IR}^{p1}\times Q`$ (with a 2-cycle $`Q`$) was found to be

$$_Q\frac{F}{2\pi }=\frac{w_2(Q)}{2}(mod1),$$

where $`w_2(Q)`$ is the second Stiefel-Whitney class, normalized to take values in $`\{0,1\}`$. Thus, if $`Q`$ has a non-trivial $`w_2`$, the contribution from the gauge field to the 3-brane charge will be an integer plus a half. The results of  have not yet been generalized to include non-orientable backgrounds. However, it seems that the formula (3.1) still holds in these backgrounds \[5,,10\], even though $`F`$ has to be generalized to a twisted gauge bundle if $`Q`$ is non-orientable. We will conjecture that this formula holds for $`Q=\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$, and the matching with the gauge theory results described in the previous section will give strong evidence for this.

For our case of a 5-brane on $`\mathrm{IR}^4\times \mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$, the second Stiefel-Whitney class is non-trivial, since for 2-cycles $`w_2(Q)=e(Q)(mod2)`$ where $`e(Q)`$ is the Euler class, which equals one for $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$. Thus, the gauge field contribution to the 3-brane charge is an integer plus one half in this case. An additional contribution can come from the NS-NS 2-form field $`B_{NS}`$, integrated over $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$ ($`B_{NS}`$ is twisted under the orientifolding so we can integrate it over $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$). As discussed in , this integral is exactly the discrete torsion of the NS-NS 3-form field strength, which is classified by $`H^3(\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5,\stackrel{~}{\text{ZZ}})=\text{ZZ}_2`$. As discussed above, for the backgrounds corresponding to $`SO(2N)`$ and $`SO(2N+1)`$ gauge groups, this discrete torsion vanishes, while for $`USp(2N)`$ it gives

$$_{\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2}\frac{B_{NS}}{2\pi }=\frac{1}{2}(mod1).$$

Thus, we find that for $`SO(2N)`$ and $`SO(2N+1)`$ theories, the 5-branes carry 3-brane charges in $`\text{ZZ}+\frac{1}{2}`$, while for $`USp(2N)`$ groups they carry integer 3-brane charges.

In the $`SU(N)`$ case, we mapped the classical field theory vacua to string theory configurations where all of the 3-brane flux was carried by D5-branes, leaving flat space at the origin . In our case, the total 3-brane flux cannot all be carried by D5-branes. One way to see this is from the fact that the total flux is not an integer, or even a half-integer, but rather is given by

$$_{\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^5}\frac{G^{(5)}}{2\pi }=\{\begin{array}{cc}N\frac{1}{4}\hfill & \text{for }SO(2N)\text{,}\hfill \\ \multicolumn{2}{c}{}\\ N+\frac{1}{4}\hfill & \text{for }SO(2N+1)\text{,}\hfill \\ \multicolumn{2}{c}{}\\ N+\frac{1}{4}\hfill & \text{for }USp(2N)\text{;}\hfill \end{array}$$

these charges may be deduced from the charges of D3-branes stuck on orientifold planes before taking the near-horizon limit. Thus, at the origin we always remain with some charge that must be carried by an orientifold. Equivalently, it is clear geometrically that since the transverse space is orientifolded, we must remain with an orientifold at the origin and not just with flat ten dimensional space6 In the $`USp(2N)`$ cases, the D5-branes we added do not change the discrete torsion, so the orientifold we remain with at the origin carries the same discrete torsion as the original background. In the $`SO(N)`$ cases, each D5-brane is actually a domain wall along which the RR discrete torsion changes , so we could end up at the origin with either sign for this discrete torsion. The orientifold with the RR discrete torsion may be viewed as the orientifold without the torsion with a half D3-brane stuck on top of it. It seems that such a half D3-brane may be identified with a one dimensional block in the scalar matrices (recall that for small blocks the description in terms of D5-branes breaks down). With this identification it does not matter which type of orientifold we end up with, and we will assume below that we end up with no discrete torsion..

Now, we can list the string theory vacua where the 3-brane flux is completely carried by D5-branes (except for the contribution of the remaining orientifold), as in the vacua of  described above. For $`SO(N)`$ gauge groups this charge is $`N/2`$, and this should be reproduced as the sum of contributions in $`\text{ZZ}+\frac{1}{2}`$; hence, we find one such vacuum for every partition of $`N`$ into odd integers. For $`USp(2N)`$ gauge groups, this charge is $`N`$, which should arise as the sum of contributions in ZZ; thus, we find one vacuum for every partition of $`N`$.

These results agree precisely with the gauge theory results described above, if a single D5-brane wrapped around $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$ carries no gauge group while multiple D5-branes carry some non-trivial gauge group; then, we would find no remaining gauge groups exactly when the partitions involve distinct integers. This fact is indeed true, because the orientifolding projects out part of the four dimensional gauge fields living on the D5-branes wrapped on $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$, leaving only an $`SO(N)`$ gauge group for $`N`$ D5-branes (instead of the original $`U(N)`$).

Our description (and that of ) of the field theory vacua in terms of supergravity plus D5-branes is only valid when the D3-brane charges $`n_i`$ carried by the D5-branes all satisfy $`n_i\sqrt{g_sN}1`$. However, the matching with the field theory analysis indicates that these vacua make sense in string theory even when this condition is not satisfied. As discussed in , in many cases where supergravity breaks down there is an alternative description involving other types of 5-branes, like NS 5-branes. This will be true also for the $`SO(N)`$ and $`USp(2N)`$ theories. The allowed charges carried by general $`(p,q)`$ 5-branes wrapped on $`\mathrm{𝐑𝐏}^2`$ may be derived by an $`SL(2,\text{ZZ})`$ transformation of the results we described above. For example, a wrapped NS 5-brane will carry an integer 3-brane charge when the RR discrete torsion is non-zero, and the charge will be shifted by a half when there is no RR discrete torsion.

As discussed at the end of section 2, there are also classical field theory vacua which do not correspond to partitions of the type we discussed here, so we cannot map them to vacua including purely D5-branes. It would be interesting to find string theory duals for these vacua.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank D.-E. Diaconescu, M. R. Douglas, G. Moore and M. Strassler for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG02-96ER40559.

References

relax J. M. Maldacena, “The large $`N`$ limit of superconformal field theories and supergravity”, hep-th/9711200, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2 (1998) 231. relax S. S. Gubser, I. R. Klebanov and A. M. Polyakov, “Gauge theory correlators from non-critical string theory”, hep-th/9802109, Phys. Lett. 428B (1998) 105. relax E. Witten, “Anti-de-Sitter space and holography”, hep-th/9802150, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 2 (1998) 253. relax O. Aharony, S. S. Gubser, J. M. Maldacena, H. Ooguri and Y. Oz, “Large $`N`$ field theories, string theory and gravity,” hep-th/9905111, Phys. Rept. 323 (2000) 183. relax E. Witten, “Baryons and branes in anti de Sitter space,” hep-th/9805112, J. High Energy Phys. 9807 (1998) 006. relax J. Polchinski and M. J. Strassler, “The string dual of a confining four-dimensional gauge theory,” hep-th/0003136. relax I. Bena, “The M-theory dual of a 3 dimensional theory with reduced supersymmetry,” hep-th/0004142. relax V. G. Kac and A. V. Smilga, “Normalized vacuum states in $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills quantum mechanics with any gauge group,” hep-th/9908096, Nucl. Phys. B571 (2000) 515. relax A. Hanany, B. Kol and A. Rajaraman, “Orientifold points in M theory,” hep-th/9909028, J. High Energy Phys. 9910 (1999) 027. relax D. S. Freed and E. Witten, “Anomalies in string theory with D-branes,” hep-th/9907189. relax C. Vafa and E. Witten, “A strong coupling test of S duality,” hep-th/9408074, Nucl. Phys. B431 (1994) 3. relax R. Donagi and E. Witten, “Supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and integrable systems,” hep-th/9510101, Nucl. Phys. B460 (1996) 299. relax N. Dorey, “An elliptic superpotential for softly broken $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory,” hep-th/9906011, J. High Energy Phys. 9907 (1999) 021. relax A. Hanany and B. Kol, “On orientifolds, discrete torsion, branes and M theory,” hep-th/0003025. relax R. C. Myers, “Dielectric-branes,” hep-th/9910053, J. High Energy Phys. 9912 (1999) 022.


format: text

text:
# Structures and melting in infinite gold nanowires

## Abstract

The temperature dependence of structural properties for infinitely long gold nanowires is studied. The molecular dynamics simulation method and the embedded-atom potential are used. The wires constructed at $`T=0`$ K with a face-centered cubic structure and oriented along the (111), (110), and (100) directions are investigated. It was found that multiwalled structures form in all these nanowires. The coaxial cylindrical shells are the most pronounced and well-formed for an initial fcc(111) orientation. The shells stabilize with increasing temperature above $`300`$ K. All nanowires melt at $`T<1100`$ K, i.e., well below the bulk melting temperature.

Keywords: A. nanostructures, A. metals, A. surfaces and interfaces, B. nanofabrications, D. phase transitions.

Metallic nanowires are important for applications and for understanding of fundamental properties of materials at nanoscales. Over the past several years investigations on metallic nanowires were devoted mainly to the properties of cylindrical junctions formed between a metallic tip and a metallic substrate . Gold nanostructures whose diameter and length are about $`1`$ $`nm`$ were recently formed in a scanning tunneling microscope and studied by a high-resolution electron microscope . Unusual vertical rows of gold atoms were observed. Therefore, it is important to study the internal structure of gold nanowires. Computer simulations are suitable for these investigations.

An important topic in the cluster science is the melting of nanoparticles . Experimental, theoretical, and computer simulation studies have shown that the melting temperature depends on the cluster size. These studies suggest the dependence of the form:

$$T_m=T_bc/R,$$
(1)
where $`T_m`$ is the melting temperature for the spherical nanoparticle of radius $`R`$, $`T_b`$ is the bulk melting temperature, and $`c`$ is a constant. In recent studies deviations from this law for small sizes are found . Melting of clusters, i.e., spherical nanoparticles, was the subject of several recent experiments . In contrast, melting of nanowires was not studied experimentally. The exception is an early work on mercury filaments with diameters between $`2`$ and $`10`$ $`nm`$ . In this experiment a decrease in the melting temperature was detected from the resistance measurements.

It is well known that the presence of geometric (i.e., atomic) and electronic shells determines various properties of clusters . Electronic shells in finite sodium nanowires were recently found in a jellium model calculation . These shells were also observed in the conductance measurements . The Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation has shown an existence of multishelled finite gold nanowires at room temperature . The cylindrical shells obtained in this simulation resemble geometric shells in clusters. Infinite wires with periodic boundary conditions along the wire axes are more often studied by MD simulations. For example, structures of ultra-thin infinite Pb and Al nanowires at $`T=0`$ K were studied by MD simulation . In comparison with finite nanowires, infinite wires are stable in simulations at high temperatures. The MD method was used to investigate premelting of infinite Pb nanowires with the axes along a (110) direction . The size-dependence of melting properties for cylindrical and spherical geometry was compared. It was found that the $`1/R`$ behavior, as in Eq. (1), approximately holds for a nanowire of radius $`R`$. Melting of platinum and silver infinite (100) oriented nanowires was also studied by the MD method . A decrease in the melting temperature was investigated, as well as a change in energy on melting. In Ref.  finite gold nanowires with length of up to several $`nm`$ and axes initially oriented only along the (111) direction were investigated at $`T=300`$ K. It is also interesting to study infinite gold nanowires. These studies should explain whether multishelled structures appear in infinite wires and starting from other orientations of the axes. Simulations at various temperatures may suggest the optimal method for the fabrication of nanowires. Studies of melting in multiwalled nanowires may also shed light on the role of shells in melting of clusters. In this paper a MD study of the structural and melting properties for infinite gold nanowires is presented. These infinite wires, in comparison with finite gold nanowires in Ref. , resemble longer nanowires fabricated in the laboratories. For example, the electron-beam litography methods nowadays produce metallic nanowires whose length is $`1\mu `$m and more.

Nanowires were simulated using the classical MD method. The embedded-atom potential with proven reliability for modeling properties of gold was employed . Several fcc (111), (100), and (110) oriented gold nanowires were prepared at $`T=0`$ K and then a procedure for a wire preparation from Ref.  was used. Circular cross-sections with maximal radii of $`0.9`$ and $`1.2`$ $`nm`$ were constructed. The periodic boundary conditions were applied along the axis direction. The number of atoms in MD boxes was between $`566`$ and $`1116`$, as shown in Table I. The temperature was controlled by rescaling particle velocities. A time step of $`7.14\times 10^{15}`$ s was used. Structures were analyzed after long equilibration of $`10^510^6`$ time steps. Figures 1-5 show the results obtained after evolution of $`10^5`$ time steps.

Nanowires with initial fcc(111) cross-sections are labeled as $`A`$ and $`B`$ in Table I. Already at low temperatures they form multiwalled structures. A nanowire $`A`$ consists of three cylindrical walls and a thin core. The infinite nanowire $`A`$ at $`300`$ K has a similar structure as a finite nanowire with the same diameter simulated at this temperature and described in Ref. . The same result, i.e., that only minor differences exist between finite and infinite wires, was obtained in the first principles density functional studies of monoatomic gold nanowires . At higher temperatures ($`T<900`$ K) the walls are more homogeneous than at $`T=300`$ K. The structure of the nanowire $`A`$ at $`T=800`$ K is shown in Fig. 1(a). A nanowire $`B`$ at $`300`$ K consists of a large fcc(111) core and an outer cylindrical wall. Above $`600`$ K this core breaks into several shells. Figure 1(b) shows that the nanowire $`B`$ at higher temperatures consists of four cylindrical walls and a thin filled core.

Nanowires with initial fcc(110) cross-sections are labeled as $`C`$ and $`D`$ in Table I. The nanowire $`C`$ consists of three shells shown in Fig. 2(a). The core of the nanowire $`C`$ is square and empty. The multiwalled structure is less pronounced in the nanowire $`D`$. Figure 2(b) shows that for this nanowire the fcc structure of a core remains, although outer coaxial walls are also formed.

Simulation for initial cross-sections with the density and structure of unreconstructed Au(100) surface have shown that a strong torsion of nanowires exists. Then nanowires with the density increase in the top and bottom layers of the MD box were prepared. The density increment in these layers was taken in accordance with the properties of reconstruction on Au(100) . Although the MD box repeats along the wire axis by the periodic boundary conditions, it was found that this density increase is sufficient to stabilize the nanowire. These nanowires with a stable untwisted cylindrical morphology are labeled as $`E`$ and $`F`$ in Table I. The nanowire $`E`$ shown in Fig. 3(a) consists of three shells. The most interior of these shells is empty and square. It is interesting to point out a similarity between nanowires $`C`$ (Fig. 2(a)) and $`E`$ (Fig. 3(a)) at $`T=800`$ K. As already explained, these nanowires evolved from different initial structures at $`T=0`$ K. Figure 3(b) shows that the nanowire $`F`$ at $`T=800`$ K consists of four shells. Its core is empty, interior shells are irregular, and the walls are more disordered than in other nanowires at this temperature. The cylindrical walls in the nanowire $`F`$ are more ordered at $`900`$ K than at $`800`$ K. The structure of this nanowire at $`800`$ K was presented in Fig. 3(b) for a comparison with other nanowires.

The cylindrical shells (such as these shown in Figs. 1-3) represent radial density oscillations in nanowires. A related problem of a fluid in a finite geometry was studied within the one-dimensional lattice gas model . Near the walls the layering effects were found. The inner part of the fluid behaves as a bulk if distances between the walls are large. For small separations of the order of several interatomic distances strong density inhomogeneities appear. These density oscillations were obtained as a result of constructive and destructive interference between ordering induced by the walls. The MD boxes for nanowires consist of cylindrical gold surfaces at small radial separations which produces strong density oscillations. The layering effects are pronounced in gold, as well as in graphite and other materials for which multishelled nanostructures were observed . The intershells spacings in Figs. 1-3 (and in other nanowires not shown here) are inhomogeneous and change between $`0.1`$ and $`0.2`$ $`nm`$.

All nanowires melt in the temperature interval $`(9001100)`$ K, i.e., well below the bulk melting temperature for this potential ($`T_b1350`$ K ). With increasing temperature highly diffusive atoms progressively appear in all cylindrical walls. Therefore, all shells melt simultaneously. The average mean-square displacements for three nanowires are presented in Fig. 4. The graphs for remaining three nanowires are similar. The displacements sharply increase at $`(9001000)`$ K. The diffusion coefficients have a similar temperature dependence. The liquid nanowires up to the bulk melting temperature retain a layered structure with limited interdiffusion.

Internal energy as a function of temperature for different nanowires is shown in Fig. 5. Melting is the first-order phase transition and its typical feature in three-dimensional systems is a jump in the caloric curve. In Fig. 5 the jumps in $`E(T)`$ are less pronounced than in Ref.  for the (110) oriented filled lead nanowires with radii between $`1.3`$ and $`2.5`$ $`nm`$. It is known that strict phase transitions do not exist for one-dimensional systems . However, a possibility for the first-order phase transitions was studied in the one-dimensional model . For this model pseudo-first-order transitions were found for the cylindrical systems with cross sections of $`1020`$ nearest neighbors units. These pseudo-transitions are indistinguishable from real ones. Simulated here multishelled gold nanowires with smaller cross sections are close to one-dimensional systems. Filled lead nanowires with larger cross sections studied in Ref.  are in the regime of the pseudo-first-order transitions and the jumps in $`E(T)`$ are apparent. Approximate finite-size scaling analysis shows that a first-order phase transition at temperature $`T_c`$ in a finite system is broadened over an interval:

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T_c}{T_c}\frac{1}{N\sigma },$$
(2)
where $`\sigma `$ is the latent entropy of the bulk transition and $`N`$ is the number of particles . The latent entropy in the Eq. (2) is the ratio between a latent heat per particle and $`T_c`$, measured in units of the Boltzmann constant. The latent heat of melting for Au is $`12.54`$ kJ/mol . Equation (2) gives that the broadening of the transition for gold nanowires is $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_c/T_c10^3`$. Figure 5 shows that the transition is smeared over larger temperature intervals. Additional contribution to the broadening of the melting transition is given by the decrease of the latent heat with the size. The latent heat of this transition tends to disappear as the size of the system decreases. The melting of multishelled nanowires is also the structure dependent. Therefore, because of the irregularity of the shells the features of the melting transition for multishelled nanowires do not change regularly with the number of atoms.

In conclusion, a MD study of structural and melting properties for infinite gold nanowires within the framework of the embedded-atom method is presented. It was found that in all nanowires coaxial cylindrical walls exist. The shells are the most pronounced for an initial fcc(111) orientation. The walls are the most homogeneous at $`(800900)`$ K. Nanowires melt around $`1000`$ K by simultaneous melting of all shells. This study suggests the optimal temperature and the initial structure for fabrication of multishelled gold nanowires. These nanowires are important for applications in mesoscopic electronic devices. The melting of multiwalled nanowires brings an insight into a specific first-order phase transition in unusual multiwalled quasi one-dimensional structures.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been carried out under the CRO-MZT project 119206-“Dynamical Properties of Surfaces” and the EC Research Action COST P3-“Simulation of Physical Phenomena in Technological Applications”.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1  Introduction

It has already been pointed out that the Tsallis statistical mechanics may be useful for explaining many anomalous systems. Nevertheless it should be said that its fundamental understanding has not been achieved yet, because a lot of crucial problems still remain open.

For example, why extended entropies take the Tsallis form ? What determines its q index ? These topics are certainly a part of the most important questions for the formulation.

On the other hand, we believe, it is also an essential problem whether the second law of the thermodynamics of composite systems with different q indices holds or not. If one of the subsystems takes $`q=1`$, it behaves as an ordinary system and the sub-entropy is just Boltzmann-Gibbs. Then increase of the composite entropy may be worth guaranteeing that the Tsallis form is actually a physically relevant entropy. If one takes a small ordinary subsystem compared to the Tsallis subsystem and interaction between the systems is negligibly weak, we can regard the ordinary part as a thermometer. The setup will enable us to discuss what is an observable temperature of the Tsallis subsystem. Significance of the problem was first, as far as I know, pointed out exhaustively by Rajagopal and a conjecture on the thermal balance for the different q-indices case is discussed by Tsallis.

There exist many other motivations to think composite systems with different q indices. For example, non-neutral electron gas is often argued as a Tsallis system with $`q0.5`$. The plasma electrons possess spin degree of freedom besides the spatial one. Thus if one wants to incorporate the spin thermal fluctuation in the external magnetic field, the composite entropy form with both $`q_{spatial}0.5`$ and $`q_{spin}(q_{spatial})`$ included will be invoked. Statistical aspects of internal degree of freedom (iso-spin, baryon charge, lepton charge and so on) of self-gravitating systems may also require such a composite entropy.

In order to write down explicitly the composite entropy form with different q indices, guiding principles for the entropy should be requested just as symmetries play crucial roles when actions of general relativity and quantum field theories are fixed. However for the nonextensive statistical mechanics any principles are not yet established by physical evidence. Thus we must investigate all possibilities that could appear in Nature, however, this is too high to access.

Therefore, as a strategy, we firstly divide all possible composite forms with two categories, composable and noncomposable and, as a first step, concentrate on the composable entropy category. The second category, noncomposable entropy, looks technically hard to analyze exhaustively, so we keep the non-composable investigation beyond our scope of this report.

Tsallis is the first person who was aware that the composable property is not automatically equipped and emphasized its significance in the context of the same-q case, as follows.
It concerns the non-trivial fact that the entropy $`S(A+B)`$ of a system composed of two independent subsystems $`A`$ and $`B`$ can be calculated from the sub-entropies $`S(A)`$ and $`S(B)`$, without any need of microscopic knowledge about $`A`$ and $`B`$, other than the knowledge of some generic universality class, herein the nonextensive universality class, represented by the entropic index q, i.e., without any knowledge about the microscopic possibilities of $`A`$ and $`B`$ nor their associated probabilities.
Also Joichi and one of the authors demonstrate explicitly powerful ability of composability in determination of generalized entropic forms. For example, uniqueness of the Tsallis entropy has been shown by imposing composability on a rather generic entropy form as

$`S=C+{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\varphi (p_i).`$ (1)
In this paper, we analyze in detail composable composite entropy of two Tsallis subsystems with different q values. We also show its H-theorem nature and thermal balance relation (the zero-th law) in the sense proposed by Abe. This report is based on a recent work . To follow the analysis in more detail, see the original paper.

## 2 Composable Entropy

For the case with the same sub-indices $`q`$, the Tsallis canonical distribution of the composite system is obtained by maximizing the following action .

$`\stackrel{~}{S}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{A+B}\alpha \left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}P_{ij}1\right)`$ (2)
$`\beta \left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}E_{ij}P_{ij}<E>\right),`$
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are Lagrange multipliers and generate the unitary condition:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}P_{ij}=1,`$ (3)
and the total energy constraint:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}E_{ij}P_{ij}={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(E_i^A+E_j^B)P_{ij}=<E>.`$ (4)
Here $`P_{ij}`$ denotes the escort function of the probability $`p_{ij}`$ as

$`P_{ij}={\displaystyle \frac{(p_{ij})^q}{_{k=1}^N_{l=1}^M(p_{kl})^q}},`$ (5)
and the composite entropy $`S_{A+B}`$ is just given as a standard Tsallis form:

$`S_{A+B}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1q}}\left[1{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(p_{ij})^q\right]`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1q}}\left[1\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(P_{ij})^{\frac{1}{q}}\right)^q\right].`$
We extend the above formulation in order to include the cases with different q sub-indices. Treating the escort function $`P_{ij}`$ as the fundamental variable for variational procedures admits keeping the Lagrange-multiplier terms in eqn (2) unchanged, because they do not have explicit q dependence. Thus we modify the composite entropy form so as to depend on two positive sub-indices $`q_A`$ and $`q_B`$.

Here let us impose composability on the composite entropy with two indices:

$`S_{A+B}(P_{ij}=P_i^AP_j^B)=\lambda (S_A,S_B),`$ (7)
where $`\lambda `$ is arbitrary function of $`S_A`$ and $`S_B`$ and

$`S_A={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1q_A}}\left[1\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(P_i^A)^{\frac{1}{q_A}}\right)^{q_A}\right],`$ (8)
$`S_B={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1q_B}}\left[1\left({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(P_j^B)^{\frac{1}{q_B}}\right)^{q_B}\right].`$ (9)
Then it can be proven that the most general form satisfying composability (7) is given as

$`S_{A+B}=\mathrm{\Omega }(X_a,\overline{X}_b;r_A,r_B),`$ (10)
where

$`X_1={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(P_{ij})^{r_A}\right)^{\frac{r_B}{r_A}},`$ (11)
$`X_2={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}P_{ij}\right)^{r_B},`$ (12)
$`X_3={\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}(P_{ij})^{r_A}\right)^{\frac{1}{r_A}},`$ (13)
$`\overline{X}_1={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(P_{ij})^{r_B}\right)^{\frac{r_A}{r_B}},`$ (14)
$`\overline{X}_2={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}P_{ij}\right)^{r_A},`$ (15)
$`\overline{X}_3={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}}(P_{ij})^{r_B}\right)^{\frac{1}{r_B}},`$ (16)
and

$`r_A={\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_A}},`$ (17)
$`r_B={\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_B}}.`$ (18)
Here $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is arbitrary function with permutation symmetry between the sub-systems $`A`$ and $`B`$:

$`\mathrm{\Omega }(\overline{X}_b,X_a;r_B,r_A)=\mathrm{\Omega }(X_a,\overline{X}_b;r_A,r_B).`$ (19)
Moreover we can introduce another composability when one constructs a grand composite system $`(A+B)+(A+B)^{}`$ of two composite systems $`(A+B)`$ and $`(A+B)^{}`$. Let us impose the following property on their entropies.

$`S_{(A+B)+(A+B)^{}}=\mathrm{\Lambda }(S_{(A+B)},S_{(A+B)^{}}),`$ (20)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is an arbitrary function. This implies that the value of the grand entropy is fixed only by information of the composite entropies $`S_{(A+B)}`$ and $`S_{(A+B)^{}}`$. Then bi-composability is defined by realization of both the above two composabilities (7) and (20). Recall here that the Tsallis entropy actually satisfies the bi-composability when the $`q`$ indices of the sub-systems are the same. Here we should also stress that the concept of bi-composability is associated with a set of the two simultaneous equations (7) and (20), thus different notion from the original composability, which implies a single relation as eqn (7), or eqn (20). In fact some composable entropy forms which satisfy eqn (7) or eqn (20) do not show the bi-composability even when the subsystems are statistically independent. Also note that the there is no reason in general that the functional form $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ coincides with the form of $`\lambda `$.

It is possible to write down the most generic form of the bi-composable entropy and the result is as follows.

$`S_{A+B}=F(\mathrm{\Delta };r_A,r_B),`$ (21)
where $`F(x;r_A,r_B)`$ is an arbitrary function and

$`\mathrm{\Delta }={\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{3}{}}}(X_a)^{\nu _a}{\displaystyle \underset{b=1}{\overset{3}{}}}(\overline{X}_b)^{\overline{\nu }_b}>0.`$ (22)
Here the exponents $`\nu _a`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_b`$ are arbitrary constants in this level and supposed to be fixed by dynamical property of the system.

We can propose a simple and attractive toy model for the bi-composable entropy. If one assumes the Tsallis-type nonextensivity:

$`S_{(A+B)+(A+B)^{}}=S_{(A+B)}+S_{(A+B)^{}}+(1Q)S_{(A+B)}S_{(A+B)^{}}`$ (23)
for the grand composite system, it is shown that the entropy must take the following form.

$`S_{A+B}={\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{\Delta }}{1Q}}.`$ (24)
Here $`Q`$ behaves as a grand index of the composite system and is expected to be determined by some dynamical information of the system, just like usual q index. Later we call the simple model (24) Tsallis-type bi-composable entropy.

## 3 H-Theorem

Here we comment on H-theorem for the composable entropy. Unfortunately H-theorem does not hold in a strong sense for all the composable entropies in eqn (10). It is proven analytically that there exists a master equational dynamics in which some probability configurations give negative values of time-derivative of the composite entropies. However this fact may not be so significant for real physical systems, because the fixed-two-subindices picture does not always need to work when the total system is composed of two Tsallis systems with different q indices. Each original subindex is widely believed to be chosen dynamically for each isolated system. Thus it may happen in general that the interaction between the two subsystems drives the q values changed, or the q-deformed statistical picture itself gets broken and should be replaced by more microscopical pictures. Therefore it sounds plausible that the physical situations are somehow limited in which the total system can be regarded as a composite system of two independent q-deformed subsystems. Meanwhile it seems natural, at least, to consider that the picture should work well when the interaction between the subsystems are negligibly weak, or the two subsystems are in near-equilibrium states. Actually H-theorem for such physically relevant cases can be exactly proven for a part of the bi-composable entropies. The Tsallis-type bi-composable entropies (24) which satisfy

$`r_B(r_Br_A)\nu _1+r_B(r_B1)\nu _2(r_A1)\nu _3=0,`$ (25)
$`r_A(r_Ar_B)\overline{\nu }_1+r_A(r_A1)\overline{\nu }_2(r_B1)\overline{\nu }_3=0`$ (26)
and

$`{\displaystyle \frac{r_B(r_A1)\nu _1+r_A(r_B1)\overline{\nu }_1+(r_A1)\nu _3+(r_B1)\overline{\nu }_3}{1Q}}>0`$ (27)
do not decrease in time for the near-microcanonical-equilibrium case:

$`P_{ij}(t)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{NM}}+ϵ_{ij}(t),`$ (28)
where $`ϵ_{ij}`$ is infinitesimal deviation from the equipartition distribution. It is also noticed that for the negligibly-weak interaction case:

$`P_{ij}(t)=P_i^A(t)P_j^B(t),`$ (29)
the Tsallis-type bi-composable entropy satisfying (25),(26) and (27) preserves H-theorem. It is proven that if

$`c_A={\displaystyle \frac{1q_A}{1Q}}\left(r_B\nu _1+r_A\overline{\nu }_1+r_A\overline{\nu }_2+\nu _3\right)>0,`$ (30)
$`c_B={\displaystyle \frac{1q_B}{1Q}}\left(r_B\nu _1+r_A\overline{\nu }_1+r_B\nu _2+\overline{\nu }_3\right)>0`$ (31)
hold, the entropy has non-negative time-derivative for the evolution (29). Using the relations (25) and (26), the conditions (30) and (31) can be rewritten into the same condition and that is just the third relation (27).

It is worth noting that for a rather general bi-composable entropy defined by use of an arbitrary function $`G(x)`$ monotonically increasing as

$`S_{A+B}=G\left({\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{\Delta }}{1Q}}\right),`$ (32)
the H-theorem still holds in the cases (28) and (29) if the relations (25), (26) and (27) are simultaneously satisfied. For the entropy (32), we discuss next Abe’s thermal balance relation , that is, the zero-th law of the thermodynamics.

## 4 Thermal Balance Relation

It turns out that the nonextensivity of the bi-composable entropy (32) is given as follows.

$`S_{A+B}`$ $`=`$ $`G\left({\displaystyle \frac{1\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}}{1Q}}\right),`$
$`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[1+(1q_A)S_A\right]^{r_B\nu _1+\nu _3+r_A\overline{\nu }_1+r_A\overline{\nu }_2}`$ (33)
$`\times \left[1+(1q_B)S_B\right]^{r_A\overline{\nu }_1+\overline{\nu }_3+r_B\nu _1+r_B\nu _2}.`$
Using the H-theorem conditions (25) and (26), the variation of the entropy can be written as

$`\delta S_{A+B}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_B(r_B1)(\nu _1+\nu _2)+r_A(r_A1)(\overline{\nu }_1+\overline{\nu }_2)}{1Q}}\mathrm{\Delta }G^{}`$ (34)
$`\times \left[{\displaystyle \frac{q_A}{1+(1q_A)S_A}}\delta S_A+{\displaystyle \frac{q_B}{1+(1q_B)S_B}}\delta S_B\right].`$
Along Abe’s argument for the same q case, we take $`\delta S_{A+B}=0`$ under the total energy conservation relation:

$`\delta E_A+\delta E_B=0`$ (35)
to get the thermal balance relation. The procedure is expected valid for thermodynamic-limit situations as in the same q case. The result is given as follows, independent from the functional form $`G(x)`$ and the value of $`Q`$.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{q_A}{1+(1q_A)S_A}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_A}{\delta E_A}}={\displaystyle \frac{q_B}{1+(1q_B)S_B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_B}{\delta E_B}}.`$ (36)
Note that this relation includes the Abe’s balance relation  as a special case. Actually when $`q_A=q_B=q`$ is taken

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+(1q)S_A}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_A}{\delta E_A}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+(1q)S_B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_B}{\delta E_B}}`$ (37)
is exactly reproduced. Also eqn (36) is consistent with a guessed relation  by Tsallis for the different q case.

If the system $`A`$ is taken as an ordinary Boltzmann-Gibbs system ($`q_A=1`$), the sub-entropy is reduced into the BG form $`S_{BG:A}`$. Then the relation (36) with $`q_A=1`$ is expressed as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_{BG:A}}{\delta E_A}}={\displaystyle \frac{q_B}{1+(1q_B)S_B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_B}{\delta E_B}}.`$ (38)
Here it is a trivial fact that physical temperature $`T_{phys}`$ can be introduced for the system $`A`$ as follows.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_{phys}}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_{BG:A}}{\delta E_A}}.`$ (39)
Therefore observable temperature $`T_B`$ of the Tsallis system $`B`$ should be defined as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_B}}={\displaystyle \frac{q_B}{1+(1q_B)S_B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta S_B}{\delta E_B}},`$ (40)
so as to preserve the zero-th law of thermodynamics:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_{phys}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_B}}.`$ (41)
Here we should stress that before our analysis no one argues explicitly presence of the numerator $`q_B`$ of the prefactor in the right-hand-side term of eqn (40). Due to the definition (40), the original relation (36), in which $`q_A`$ is not needed to take unit, can be interpreted as a generalized thermal balance as follows.

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_A}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{T_B}}.`$ (42)
The transitivity relation (42) looks quite plausible and attractive, though the derivation remains still heuristic.

## 5 Final Remarks

We discussed Tsallis entropy composition with different q indices in detail and showed several rigid conclusions for the composable entropy class. However we must agree that there still remain open problems. For example, what determines the functional form $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, or $`F`$, and the exponents $`\nu _a`$, $`\overline{\nu }_b`$ for the bi-composable entropy and the grand index $`Q`$ for the Tsallis-type model ? How calculate them ? These questions are perhaps as profound and difficult as the original q index problem of the Tsallis entropy. We just expect that they are determined by dynamical and somewhat microscopical information of physical systems.

However it is possible, as seen below, just to construct a simple and regular model as a special solution of the H-theorem problem.

$`S_{A+B}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_A(r_A1)^2+r_B(r_B1)^2}{(r_A1)(r_B1)(r_A+r_B2)}}`$ (43)
$`\times \left[1\left(X_1^{r_B1}\overline{X}_1^{r_A1}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{X_2}{\overline{X}_2}}\right]^{r_Ar_B}\right)^{\frac{2r_Ar_B}{2\left[r_A(r_A1)^2+r_B(r_B1)^2\right]}}\right].`$
This example succeeds in simplification of the form because it does not depend on $`X_3`$ and $`\overline{X}_3`$, while the H-theorem still holds. Also it has regular limits for both $`r_A1`$ and $`r_B1`$ independently, and no singularities for positive $`q_A`$ and $`q_B`$ region. (The limit $`r_A+r_B2`$ is also regular.) Moreover it is easily confirmed that if one takes $`q_A=q_B`$, the form is reduced into the original Tsallis form. This toy model may be useful for future works to get more deeper intuition about physics of the generalized entropy composition.

Finally we want to comment that our analysis has not included at all the class of noncomposable composite entropy and it may be an interesting open problem to analyze the case.


text:
# Vertical motions in the disk of NGC 5668 as seen with optical Fabry-Perot spectroscopyBased on observations made with the William Herschel Telescope operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

## 1 Introduction

There is now great observational evidence that disk-halo interactions in galaxies as well as the structure of the interstellar medium (ISM) is closely related to star formation processes in the disks of spiral galaxies (see the review by Dahlem 1997). Big shells develop around the brightest star forming regions, induced by the energy input of supernovae and the strong stellar winds produced by high-mass stars. These shells can grow enough to be able to break the disk, allowing large amounts of gas to blow out from the disk along these big chimneys (Norman & Ikeuchi 1989). The very hot gas going out through these chimneys cools as it rises until it eventually recombines and condenses to form clouds of neutral gas that fall back to the plane (Shapiro & Field 1976, Bregman 1980). This fountain model then provides an explanation for the origin of high velocity clouds (HVC’s) that have been observed in our galaxy and a in few external galaxies (with the galaxy studied in this paper being one of those few (Schulman et al. 1996, hereafter S96)), although alternative explanations have been proposed as well (Blitz et al. 1999). Good reviews on this topic can be found in Wakker & van Woerden (1997) and van der Hulst (1996, 1997). On the other side, the expanding shells can induce new star formation (sequential star formation (SSF)) at their edges. This effect has already been observed in some galaxies (see for example Thilker et al. 1998, hereafter T98) and it is also observed to take place in the case of NGC 5668 in our observations.

According to the chimney model, the structure of the ISM, and in particular whether the chimney phenomenon takes place or not, is controlled by the amount of star formation. The study of the properties of these phenomena in a sample of nearby galaxies can greatly help to understand the structure of the ISM and the nature of disk-halo interactions. Observations of the neutral gas and narrow band imaging of the ionized gas have already been extensively used to study these phenomena (see the review by Dahlem 1997). Scanning long-slit $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ spectroscopy has also been used to study these phenomena (Saito et al., 1992; Tomita et al., 1993, 1994). In this work we make a first attempt to use optical Fabry-Perot spectroscopy in a nearly face-on spiral galaxy to directly study these vertical motions. Therefore we have chosen the spiral galaxy NGC 5668 which is already known to have HVC’s and an important rate of star formation. These facts make it a perfect candidate for us to detect important vertical motions in its disk.

In Sect. 2 we describe the general properties of the galaxy NGC 5668, with particular emphasis on the observation of the HVC’s. Sect. 3 deals with the observations and data reduction (including calculation of intensity, velocity and velocity dispersion maps). Sect. 4 is devoted to the calculation of the rotation model for the galaxy from the observed velocity field. Sect. 5 describes how the residual velocity field is used to look for systematic deviations of circular rotation and how comparison of the geometry of the residual velocity field with that of the intensity and velocity dispersion in some regions can be used to detect real shells and/or chimneys. Finally, in Sect. 6 we report the shell candidates found in NGC 5668 and some of their properties.

## 2 NGC 5668: General properties

NGC 5668 is a nearly face-on (inclination $`18^{}`$) late type spiral galaxy (Sc(s) II-III). A wide band optical image of the galaxy can be seen in Fig. 1111 Based on photographic data of the National Geographic Society – Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (NGS-POSS) obtained using the Oschin Telescope on Palomar Mountain. The NGS-POSS was funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society to the California Institute of Technology. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with their permission. The Digitized Sky Survey was produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under US Government grant NAG W-2166.. We will adopt a distance of 22.6 Mpc, consistent with $`H_0=70\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$. Its size (the blue isophote at 25 mag/arcsec is 3.3 arcmin in diameter) makes it an ideal target for observation with TAURUS II (which has a FOV of about 5 arcmin)). The measured radial scale length for NGC 5668 is 27.3 arcsec, which means that our observations reach up to around 4.4 scale lengths. The FIR and $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ luminosities of NGC 5668 (S96) show that it has an important amount of star formation. A summary of its main properties is shown in Table 1.

NGC 5668 was observed in the HI line by means of the Arecibo telescope by Schulman et al. (1994). They detected high velocity wings in the line shape, which were attributed to HVC’s in the galaxy. As the Arecibo observations did not contain information on the spatial distribution of gas, subsequent observations were taken with the VLA telescope by S96. These observations confirmed the existence of the HVC’s. They found that the amount of mass on neutral hydrogen in HVC’s is about $`4\times 10^8M_{}`$. Their observations lacked sufficient spatial resolution (the FWHM of the synthesized beam was $`48^{\prime \prime }\times 41^{\prime \prime }`$) to detect the shells or chimneys in the disk that could be the origin of this large amount of gas in high velocity components. The main purpose of this paper is to try to detect such features by means of Fabry-Perot spectroscopy.

## 3 Observations and data reduction

The observations were taken on March 19, 1997, at the William Herschel Telescope using the TAURUS II Fabry-Perot interferometer at the Cassegrain focus, with the f/2 camera and the 500$`\mu `$ etalon. The detector used was a TEK CCD. With this configuration the pixel size is 0.56 arcsec. We rebinned 2x2 the CCD reading, resulting in a pixel size of 1.12 arcsec (which for an adopted distance to NGC 5668 of 22.6 Mpc results in 123 pc/pixel). The observing conditions were not photometric (therefore we were not able to make photometric calibrations and we will use arbitrary units for intensity throughout this paper). The measured seeing in the final images was 3 arcsec which is still a very good spatial resolution when compared with the previously mentioned kinematical data available for this galaxy. We used the $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ line to trace the distribution and kinematics of the ionized gas. According to the observed velocity of the galaxy (see Table 1) the wavelength for the redshifted $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ line is 6597.5 $`\mathrm{\AA }`$. Therefore we used the 6601/15 filter for order sorting. We scanned the free spectral range (FSR) in 55 steps with an exposure time of 120 seconds per frame. This gave a spectral resolution of 3.61 km/s/pixel. Calibration datacubes illuminating the instrument with a CuNe lamp were taken at the beginning and at the end of the night. Moreover a ring calibration frame was taken before and after the datacube exposure to make the RVT correction. The instrumental width (measured after phase correcting the calibration datacube) was 7.7 km/s. The main properties of the observational setup are summarized in Table 2.

After phase and wavelength calibration the datacube was bias subtracted. The continuum level was calculated by fitting a first order polynomial to the channels where there is no line emission from the galaxy, and the continuum map was then subtracted from the datacube. From the continuum free datacube we calculated the intensity, velocity and velocity dispersion maps. We calculated the maps by two different methods: a moments procedure and a gaussian fitting. The intensity and velocity maps are very similar in both cases and we use the ones calculated by the gaussian fitting procedure. The velocity dispersion maps are substantially different and we use the one calculated by the fitting procedure as well, in order to avoid systematic bias as pointed out by van der Kruit & Shostak (1982). The calculated maps are very noisy. To clean these maps we imposed certain conditions to flag out bad data points. We therefore kept only those pixels which had a velocity dispersion between 7.7 km/s (the instrumental width) and 50 km/s (data points above this level are clearly not valid). We also required the points to have a peak intensity at least 2 times larger than the noise dispersion. Finally some clearly bad data points were excluded interactively by inspection of the resulting maps. As we are interested in the non-thermal velocity dispersion, we corrected the calculated dispersion for the natural width of the line (3 km/s), the insrtumental width (7.7 km/s) and the thermal width (9.1 km/s assuming a temperature of $`10^4`$ K for the ionized gas). The corrected average velocity dispersion calculated for this galaxy is around 16.5 km/s independent of radius. This value is somewhat higher than that measured for other galaxies, which is usually around 10 km/s (see for example Jiménez-Vicente et al. 1999), showing that the ISM of NGC 5668 is more turbulent. The $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ intensity map for NGC 5668 is shown in Fig. 2.

## 4 The velocity field and the rotation curve

The observed velocity field is shown in Fig. 3. The velocity field is well mapped out to 1.5 arcmin from the centre. Outside this radius only a few H II regions are visible and therefore the extracted kinematic information for this region is less reliable. In order to calculate a rotation model for the galaxy, we used the standard procedure of fitting a tilted rings model (see Begeman 1989) to the observed velocity field. In order to minimize the number of free parameters and to simplify the fitting process we used known information from previous observations. Therefore we fixed the position of the kinematic centre at the same position than the optical centre. We fixed the inclination and position angles at $`18^{}`$ and $`145^{}`$ respectively, according to the values reported by S96, which allow us to make a better comparison with their results. These authors have shown that both angles remain constant in the inner 2 arcmin, which is the region for which we have data, and we therefore know that our results are not affected by this assumption. The systemic velocity for the galaxy was also taken from S96 to be 1582 km/s. We have checked that small variations of these parameters do not substantially change the model velocity field. The only free parameter left per ring, namely the rotational velocity, is fitted to the observed velocity field. Finally, to take into account that we have fewer data points in the outer part of the galaxy, we make the rings wider in this region to ensure that a minimum number of data points is included in a ring. This results in the outer rings being 4 times wider than the inner ones. The resulting rotation curve is shown in Fig. 4. It rises continuously out to about 100 arcsec from the centre, where it seems to become flat at a velocity of about 150 km/s. This value is somewhat higher than the rotational velocity reported by S96 of 130 km/s. In fact, the rotation velocities determined at every radius are always higher than those previously reported by S96 by around 20 km/s. It is worth noting than the last two data points in this curve are not fully reliable, as we remarked above that we only have a few H II regions lying outside 1.5 arcmin from the centre (most of them in the receding part of the galaxy) from which kinematical information can be obtained. If a value of 130 km/s is adopted for the rotational velocity in the outer part of the galaxy to match the observations in HI, then all the outermost regions, which trace one of the spiral arms, would have quite high residual velocities. Although this is not unlikely, we have no way to confirm that this is what is happening, and we therefore prefer to use the best fit to our data to calculate the residual velocity field and thus we use the rotation curve shown in Fig. 4. In the inner 1.5 arcmin, where our determination of the rotation curve is reliable, this is the best determination of the rotation curve (in both spatial and spectral resolution) for NGC 5668 up to date.

## 5 The residual velocity field and the shell/chimney candidates (HRVR’s)

The residual velocity field is calculated by subtracting the rotation model from the observed velocity field. Fig. 5 shows the resulting map. Although the map is quite noisy, a close inspection allows us to detect some regions which have a systematic deviation from rotational velocity greater than 10 km/s (which is 1.5 times the dispersion of the residual velocity map). We call these regions high residual velocity regions (HRVR’s). In order to distinguish between HRVR’s with real important vertical motions from regions whose residual could be an effect of noise or random motions in the disk, we also use the size and shape of the region. We therefore label as a HRVR only to those regions with a clear symmetry in the shape and with a mean diameter between 3 (which is our spatial resolution) and 13 arcsec (which corresponds to about 1.5 kpc). The regions have been marked with a circle and named with a letter in Fig. 5. The shape of the HRVR’s (which is in many cases nearly circular) makes it very unlikely that those regions are related to streaming motions. It then seems logical to interpret the residuals as true vertical motions in the disk. This interpretation is strongly reinforced if we look at the intensity map in the locations where the HRVR’s are found. We can see that the regions are clearly associated with regions of star formation which fall in their centres or immediate surroundings. In most cases the structure of the velocity dispersion map in the HRVR’s is also strongly correlated with both intensity and residual velocity (reaching values up to 34 km/s in the centre of the HRVR), which supports the idea of regions of great activity (high temperature or violent motions). These facts strongly support the hypothesis that the HRVR’s are regions with real vertical motions of the ionized gas which are related to star forming processes in the disk. The most straightforward interpretation of these features (although certainly not the only one) is that they are shells or chimneys (depending on their size and age and on whether they have been able to break the disk and to blow gas out of it) formed around highly active star-forming regions by the strong stellar winds or correlated SN explosions of the multiple massive young stars found whithin those regions. This scenario perfectly matches the chimney model proposed by Norman and Ikeuchi (1989) for the ISM and is also supported by observations in other galaxies (see for example T98). The fact that NGC 5668 has a great amount of star formation and that HVC’s of neutral hydrogen have been detected in it (S96) makes the whole scenario fully coherent.

## 6 Some shell/chimney properties

We were able to find eight HRVR’s in NGC 5668. When we look at the positions of the HRVR’s in the intensity and velocity dispersion map, we find that they are always related to regions of active star formation. Whether the star formation regions lie in the centre or the surroundings of the HRVR’s can probably be explained as an age effect. The youngest, yet small expanding shells show the star-forming regions at their centre and are therefore roughly circular in the intensity map. Fig. 6 shows an example of this type. The more evolved stalled chimneys are surrounded by a more or less complete ring-like structure of star-forming regions which are probably formed by sequential star formation (see T98). Fig. 7 shows one of these cases. Both Figs. show clearly that there is a strong correlation between residual velocity, intensity and velocity dispersion in the HRVR’s. In the case of region B (Fig. 6) the peak in the residual velocity perfectly matches the position of a bright HII region and of a minimum in the velocity dispersion. In the case of region A (Fig. 7) the residual velocity peaks roughly at the centre of a ring-like structure formed by HII regions, and the velocity dispersion peaks right in the centre of this ring-like structure in the low intensity part. The structure of the $`H\alpha `$ emission around region A can be seen better in fig. 8 where this region, extracted from the image of NGC 5668 taken with the WFPC/2 of the HST222Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS 5-26555 using the F658N filter is shown. This filter perfectly matches the wavelength of the $`H\alpha `$ line for NGC 5668, and although it also contains the NII line and continuum emision, it mostly traces the ionized gas. Fig. 8 shows that there are not only compact HII regions, but also a large amount of diffuse gas emission around this region. This can also be seen in most of the other HRVR’s detected in NGC 5668 which are visible in the HST image. Although the structure of most of the HRVR’s do not show this aspect (for example many of the ring-like structures are not as complete as the shown example, but show just half a ring or even less), there is always a clear correlation between the structure of residual velocity, intensity and velocity dispersion. Moreover the HST image shows that around these HRVR’s (seven of the eight detected are visible in the HST image) there are not only numerous HII regions, but also a large amount of difuse ionized gas. Table 3 gives some of the properties of the shell/chimneys detected in NGC 5668. It is worth noting that all the HRVR’s (except region G) have an average velocity dispersion above the average of the galaxy (which is around 16.5 km/s throughout the whole disk as shown in Fig. 9). As we noted previously, the HRVR’s are always in or surrounded by regions of high velocity dispersion.

Although it is difficult to make an estimation for the ages of the shells, previous studies (T98) show that they range from a few Myr for the small expanding shells up to some tens of Myr for the largest stalled chimneys.

## 7 Conclusions

We have carefully analyzed the data obtained for NGC 5668 with the Fabry-Perot interferometer TAURUS II at the WHT in order seek a connection between the star formation processes and vertical motions in spiral galaxies. We have found that there is a clear correlation between the morphology of the regions with a high residual velocity (HRVR’s) and the intensity of the $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ emission, showing that the HRVR’s are indeed regions with important vertical motions associated with star formation processes. Although we are not able to calculate the ages and energetics of these features, comparison with observations in other galaxies strongly supports the hypothesis that the structures detected present a wide age range, from young expanding shells in a bright HII region, to evolved chimneys blowing out hot gas to the halo, surrounded by several bright HII regions. The formation of these regions was probably induced by the pressure exerted by the expanding shell/chimney on the ambient gas. An alternative explanation to these features is that they are produced by infall/collision of gas clouds with the disk (e.g. Saito et al., 1992) followed by induced active star formation. Although this scenario explains in a very natural and simple way the fact that the velocity offsets are one-sided, this is also quite normal in expanding shells. If they are formed not exactly in the equator but slightly off-plane, they will grow up mostly in the low density side, therefore showing only one-sided offsets in the velocity structure. In fact, with the present data there is no way to decide whether the HRVR’s are moving into or out of the disk. On the other hand, the different structures found in the HRVR’s (from compact HII regions to rings of HII regions) are fully compatible with an evolutionary pattern in the chimney model. Therefore, although we can not rule out the infalling hipotheses with the present observations, we find the chimney scenario followed by sequential star formation in the shell borders to be a more likely explanation for what is happening in NGC 5668. These observations provide in any case a clear link between the star formation processes in the disk with other observed phenomena in NGC 5668 like high HVC’s of neutral hydrogen. Observations of this kind have been made for other galaxies with a lower star formation rate and without HVC’s, and the residual velocity field is not reported to show these features (see for example Jiménez-Vicente et al. 1999, for a similar study of NGC 3938). This fact seems to suggest that these features and the existence of HVC’s in the disk are closely related. High resolution HI observations of NGC 5668 would be desirable to confirm the connection between those phenomena.


text:
# Remarks on the Boomerang results, the baryon density and the leptonic asymmetry

## I Introduction

The measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies has been driving the attention of cosmologists over the past decade. Very recently, De Bernardis et al.  published the first results of the Boomerang balloon Antarctic flight. With these data, the (recent) story of precision cosmology climbs a new step. For the first time, the anisotropy power spectrum has been measured by a single experiment in a wide range of angular scales, from multipoles $`l50`$ up to $`l600`$, with many independent points, and error bars of order $`\pm `$ 20 percent. The observation of a narrow peak, centered around multipoles $`l200`$, confirms the inflationary picture of an approximately flat Universe with adiabatic fluctuations.

This beautiful result was already suggested by previous CMB experiments (see  for a recent review). On the other hand, the Boomerang anisotropy spectrum exhibits a puzzling behavior on small scales (high multipoles): in the range in which a pronounced secondary peak was expected, the data points are rather low, with an almost flat shape. It seems that the cosmological model most favored during the past year, which is a flat Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model with a large cosmological constant and “standard” parameter values (see below), can hardly account for this feature, unless some new ingredient is added.

After this paper was submitted, a detailed analysis of the data by the Boomerang team was released in ref., followed by another work  including also the new MAXIMA data . We refer the reader to these works for a more exhaustive interpretation of this puzzling small–scale behavior. In the following discussion, we just intend to point out that a particular category of models, which are scarcely taken into account, seem to be in remarkable agreement with the new published data (as can be seen from Fig.1). We therefore believe that they deserve some attention, and should be included in future data analyses.

While this discussion was being completed, a nice paper by White et al.  was put on the preprint database, suggesting many possible explanations of the data, including a large baryon density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$.***In addition, the possibility of explaining the data with a high $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ was confirmed contemporaneously  and soon after  the release of this work. The key point of this rapid communication is to recall that a large $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ is still in agreement with the observed light element abundances, provided that a large neutrino asymmetry is also present . With these two ingredients (large $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ and neutrino asymmetry) the Boomerang data can be nicely fitted in a flat Universe context, especially with a low value of the cosmological constant. Interestingly, this class of models can satisfy some other cosmological requirements, such as the ones coming from the matter power spectrum and from the baryon fraction in clusters.

## II Flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models and Boomerang data

As a starting point, we plot on Fig.1 (solid line) a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with the parameters which were recently the most favored: $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_{tot},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b,h,n)=(1,0.70,0.019,0.68,1)`$, with no tensors and reionization neglected ($`h`$ is the Hubble constant in units of $`100\mathrm{k}m\mathrm{s}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}\mathrm{M}pc^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}`$, $`n`$ stands for the scalar primordial spectrum tilt). This set is in agreement with standard BBN , supernovae , clusters, direct measurements of $`h`$ , constraints on the matter power spectrum , and other observations. However, as we can see from Fig.1, once the Boomerang data are taken into account, the first and second peaks do not have the right shape and location. The problem is not so much with the overall amplitude of the peaks, which can be affected by calibration uncertainties, and which can be adjusted by changing the scalar tilt, the reionization optical depth $`\tau `$ and the tensor amount. Most difficult is to accomplish the location, relative amplitude and shape of the peaks, which depend only slightly on the previous parameters. Rather, we must tune other parameters in order to shift the peaks to the left (smaller multipoles), and flatten the second peak. So, if we remain in the framework of a flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with power–law primordial spectrum, the only way to get closer to the experimental data is by changing $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ or $`h`$.

For instance, by lowering $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$, we could shift the peaks to the left. But a low baryon density would enhance even peaks with respect to odd ones. Clearly, this is not favored by the data: the large ratio between the first and second peak amplitude rather suggests a large baryon fraction. It seems that there are not many solution to this interesting and new situation (at least if we avoid introducing a positive curvature or some “exotic” cosmological parameters): it is necessary, first, to decrease $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and/or increase $`h`$ in order to have the first peak on the right scale, and, second, to take a high baryon density $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$, in order to suppress the second peak amplitude with respect to the first one. Then, the remaining parameters (scalar tilt, overall normalization, tensor amount, reionization) can enter into the game in order to adjust the overall peak amplitude with respect to the Sachs–Wolfe plateau (only in this last stage the uncertainty on Boomerang calibration and on COBE normalization play a role).

So, the Boomerang result is so characteristic (with its low and flat second peak) that even without a precise likelihood analysis, a quick glance brings evidence for a large baryon density $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b>0.02`$, together with $`h>0.7`$ and/or $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }<0.70`$ (again, in the framework of flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models). It is intriguing that previous precise analyses of CMB data, which did not include the new Boomerang results and the related information concerning the shape of the secondary peak, also favored a high baryon density and a low cosmological constant . After this communication was put on the database, the quantitative analyses based on Boomerang  and Boomerang + Maxima  results also pointed towards a high baryon density.

## III Including BBN constraints

The large baryon density suggested by the previous analysis conflicts current estimates from standard BBN, which indicate $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b0.019`$, with an error bar varying between $`\pm 0.001`$ and $`\pm 0.004`$ in the recent literature .

As pointed out for example by Kang and Steigman in 92 , a high value for $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ can still lead to the observed light element abundances, provided there is a large asymmetry between neutrinos and antineutrinos in the primordial plasma (degenerate neutrinos).BBN bounds the number of baryon minus antibaryons to be very small with respect to the number of photons. Since the Universe appears to be electrically neutral, an asymmetry on the charged leptons is equally bounded to be vanishingly small. However, the possibility of a large asymmetry in the neutrino sector cannot be excluded. From a particle physics point of view, a large lepton asymmetry can be generated by an Affleck–Dine mechanism  without producing a large baryon asymmetry (see refs. ), or even by active–sterile neutrino oscillations . In general, the asymmetry is different for each neutrino family. One of the main effects of this asymmetry is to enhance the relativistic energy density, usually parametrized by the number $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$ of effective relativistic neutrino families, with a consequent increase of the expansion rate of the Universe. If $`\mu _i`$ and $`T_i`$ denote, respectively, the chemical potential and the temperature of the $`i`$th neutrino family ($`i=e,\mu ,\tau `$), this effective number is linked to the degeneracy parameters $`\xi _i\mu _i/T_i`$ by:

$$N_{\mathrm{e}ff}=3+\mathrm{\Sigma }_i\left[\frac{15}{7}\left(\frac{\xi _i}{\pi }\right)^4+\frac{30}{7}\left(\frac{\xi _i}{\pi }\right)^2\right].$$
(1)
For what concerns BBN, $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}>3`$ leads to a higher neutron to proton ratio, since $`n`$, $`p`$ decouple earlier from the primordial plasma. On the contrary, the presence of a positive asymmetry for the electronic neutrinos ($`\xi _e>0`$) tends to reduce this ratio, since it “shifts towards the proton direction” the reaction $`n\nu _epe^{}`$ (and the crossed ones). The two effects can compensate each other in a wide region in the ($`\xi _e`$, $`\xi _{\mu ,\tau }`$) parameter space, and the observed abundances of light elements can be achieved with a value of $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ significantly higher than the bound coming from standard BBN ($`\xi _i=0`$).

For a quantitative analysis, one can apply the results of , which associate to any given value of the baryon density a region in the ($`\xi _e`$, $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$) plane where primordial nucleosynthesis is successful. In this work, the lower and upper bounds on $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$ come, respectively, from the requirement that 7Li is not too abundant ($`{}_{}{}^{7}\mathrm{L}i/\mathrm{H}310^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5}}`$) and that enough deuterium is produced (actually $`\left(\mathrm{D}+{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{H}e\right)/\mathrm{H}10^4`$). The most stringent limits on $`\xi _e`$ come instead from the observed 4He abundance (in  the helium$`4`$ mass fraction $`Y`$ is assumed to be in the conservative range $`0.210.25`$). While more recent observations put more severe bounds on this last quantity, the above estimates on lithium–7 and deuterium abundances are in good agreement with the latest ones (see for example  for a review). As a consequence, the allowed region in ($`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b,N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$) given by  remains in good agreement with recent data (see also  for an updated analysis).

Cosmological implications of “degenerate BBN” have been the object of several recent studies. The importance of a large leptonic asymmetry for the formation of large–scale structure (resp. CMB anisotropies) was pointed out by  (resp. ), but the first comparison of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models with both CMB and large–scale structure data was performed in . Another question was addressed by Kinney and Riotto , who calculated the sensitivity of forthcoming CMB satellites to the neutrino degeneracy parameter. The analysis was extended to the degenerate neutrino mass in . We should also stress that ref.  proposed a lepton asymmetry for generating ultra–high energy cosmic rays beyond the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin cut–off.

In ref. , a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with large leptonic asymmetry was compared with the CMB data available at that time, plus a few constraints from large–scale structure, the most restrictive being the matter power spectrum normalization to $`\sigma _8`$ (the variance of mass fluctuations in a sphere of radius $`R=8h^1`$Mpc). The effect of massless degenerate neutrinos is mainly to postpone the time of equality, therefore boosting the first acoustic peak, shifting the peaks to higher multipoles, and suppressing small–scale matter fluctuations. It can be completely modeled with the effective neutrino number $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$ introduced above, in contrast with the case of massive degenerate neutrinos (for which simple modifications to cmbfast  must be performed). It was shown in  that high values of the cosmological constant (such as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.80`$) are hardly compatible with $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}>3`$, while for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.70`$ there are some allowed windows in the space of cosmological parameters, ranging up to very large effective neutrino numbers. An interesting point is that in refs., even with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, an agreement was found with both CMB and large–scale structure constraints.

It is amazing that Boomerang data seems precisely to favor, as one of the simplest possibilities, a high baryon density combined with a low cosmological constant. The high baryon density requires a leptonic asymmetry in order to be compatible with the observed light elements abundances (unless systematic errors have been underestimated in all recent analyses), and following ref. , this large asymmetry is allowed precisely in presence of a low cosmological constant. In Fig.1 we provide some examples of such models (dashed and dotted lines).

## IV Compatibility with large–scale structure and other constraints

There are several independent observations which suggest the presence of a non-vanishing cosmological constant. Very recently, supernovae data  motivated several works in this direction. Also, indications for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m<1`$ (and thus $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$ if the Universe is assumed to be flat) are provided, for example, by the study of matter abundance (baryons $`+`$ cold dark matter) in clusters, by the limits on the age of the Universe, or by constraints on the matter power spectrum (see  for a recent review). It seems to be particularly convincing that most of these observations favor a common result $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.20.3`$. However, at present, none of them can be said to be conclusive if considered separately from the others. Before firmly relying on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.7`$, it is thus legitimate to investigate if some of the arguments listed above can be evaded. For example, the model considered in the previous section, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m>0.3`$, large $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ and neutrino degeneracy, is not excluded by constraints on the observed matter power spectrum and on the fraction of baryonic mass in clusters, which is one of the most robust arguments for a low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$.

As far as the latter is concerned, the cosmological baryon density can be constrained by the ratio of the baryonic mass to the total gravitational mass in clusters . Numerical simulations show that this ratio should be nearly equal (actually slightly lower) to the cosmological average. Thus one can evaluate the ratio in clusters (the baryon fraction in clusters can be deduced from X–ray emission, while the total matter can be extracted from the velocity dispersion curves) and gain a relation between the baryon and matter densities in the Universe. Tytler el al.  report the following bound:

$$h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b\left(0.0250.060\right)h_{70}^{1/2}\mathrm{\Omega }_m,$$
(2)
where $`h_{70}`$ is the Hubble constant in units of $`70\mathrm{k}m\mathrm{s}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}\mathrm{M}pc^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}}`$. One usually assumes $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ to be bounded by the values allowed by standard BBN. As a consequence, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ has to be smaller than one. However, the values for $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ considered in the previous sections are compatible even with a Universe closed by matter alone.

Finally, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models with a low (or vanishing) cosmological constant are known to be hardly compatible with large–scale structure data (what is also known as the “shape parameter” problem). Indeed, once the primordial spectrum has been normalized to COBE, there is an excess of power in small–scale matter fluctuation with respect to the bounds on $`\sigma _8`$. This issue cannot be solved by introducing a large red tilt (then, the shape of the power spectrum contradicts redshift surveys), neither with a large tensor amount (that would suppress the CMB acoustic peaks). On the other hand, it was shown in  that the neutrino degeneracy, by postponing matter domination, and suppressing small–scale matter fluctuations, can reconcile CMB data with large–scale structure constraints, even for a zero cosmological constant (in other words, the “shape parameter” is consistent with current estimates). The proof was made for particular values of the cosmological parameters ($`h`$, the tensor amount and the optical depth to reionization were not allowed to vary), but it indicates clearly that in a systematic analysis, agreement with COBE, Boomerang and other CMB data (including calibration uncertainties) is not exclusive from a correct shape and amplitude for the matter power spectrum.

## V Conclusions

In conclusion, we believe that models with a large neutrino asymmetry deserve to be included in forthcoming precise comparisons with experimental data. In practice, this amounts in including simultaneously higher values of $`N_{\mathrm{e}ff}`$ and $`h^2\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ than the ones usually considered.

Since a high baryon density enhances odd peaks with respect to even ones, a natural outcome of these models is a large amplitude for the third peak. This will be probably the best way to test this scheme in a near future. If the third peak turns out to be also very low, the situation will be even more puzzling, and more complicated models (for instance, with a Broken–Scale–Invariant primordial spectrum  or with topological defects ) may have to enter into the game.

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Sergio Pastor for several useful comments. The CMB power spectra are computed with cmbfast by Seljak and Zaldarriaga . J. L. is supported by INFN and by the TMR network grant ERBFMRXCT960090.