text:
# The Redshift and the ordinary host galaxy of GRB 9702281footnote 11footnote 1Partially based on the observations obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory which is operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a scientific partnership among California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

## 1. Introduction

The gamma-ray burst of 28 February 1997 (hereafter GRB 970228) was a watershed event, especially at optical wavelengths. The afterglow phenomenon, long-lived multiwavelength emission, was discovered following GRB 970228 in the X-rays (Costa et al. 1997) and optical (van Paradijs et al. (1997)). Despite intense observations, no radio transient of GRB 970228 was found (Frail et al. (1998)); the first radio afterglow (Frail et al. 1997) had to await the next BeppoSAX localization of GRB 970508. The basic predictions of the synchrotron shock model for GRB afterglow appeared confirmed by GRB 970228 (e.g.Wijers, Rees & Mészáros (1997)).

Despite intense efforts, early spectroscopy of the afterglow GRB 970228 (e.g.Tonry et al. (1997); Kulkarni et al. (1997)) failed to reveal the redshift. Spectroscopy of the afterglow of GRB 970508 proved more successful (Metzger et al. 1997), revealing that GRB originated from a redshift $`z>0.835`$. Through the preponderance of redshift determinations and the association of GRBs with faint galaxies, it is now widely believed that the majority or all of long duration ($`T>1`$ s) gamma-ray bursts originate from cosmological distances.

Even without a redshift, observations of the afterglow of GRB 970228 in relation to its immediate environment began to shed light on the nature of the progenitors of gamma-ray bursts. Groundbased observations of the afterglow revealed a near coincidence of the GRB with the optical light of a faint galaxy (Metzger et al. (1997); van Paradijs et al. (1997)). Later, deeper groundbased images (Djorgovski et al. (1997)) and high resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) showed the light from the fading transient clearly embedded in a faint galaxy (Sahu et al. (1997)), the putative host of the GRB. Further, these HST images showed a measurable offset between the host galaxy centroid and the afterglow. Though by no means definitive, the offset of GRB 970228 rendered an active galactic nucleus (AGN) origin unlikely (Sahu et al. (1997)).

The two most popular progenitor scenarios—coalescence of binary compact stellar remnants and the explosion of a massive star (“collapsar”)—imply that the gamma-ray burst rate should closely follow the massive star formation rate in the Universe. In both formation scenarios a black hole is created as a byproduct; however, the scenarios differ in two important respects. First, only very massive progenitors ($`M_{\mathrm{ZAMS}}>40M_{}`$; Fryer, Woosley, & Hartmann 1999) will produce GRBs in the single star model whereas the progenitors of neutron star–neutron star binaries need only originate with $`M_{\mathrm{ZAMS}}>8M_{}`$. Second, the scenarios predict a distinct distribution of physical offsets (e.g.Paczyński (1998); Bloom, Sigurdsson & Pols (1999)) in that the coalescence site of merging remnants could occur far from the binary birthplace (owning to substantial systemic velocities acquired during neutron star formation through supernovae) whereas exploding massive stars will naturally occur in star-forming regions. In relation to the predicted offset of GRB 970228, Bloom et al. (1999) further noted the importance of redshift to determine the luminosity (and infer mass) of the host galaxy: massive galaxies more readily retain binary remnant progenitors. Thus the relationship of GRBs to their hosts is most effectively exploited with redshift by setting the physical scale of any observed angular offset and critically constraining the mass (as proxied by host luminosity).

The redshift of GRB 970228 also plays a critical role in the emerging supernova–GRB link. Following the report of an apparent supernova component in the afterglow of GRB 980326 (Bloom et al. 1999), the afterglow light curves of GRB 970228 were reanalyzed: both Reichart (1999) and Galama et al. (2000) found evidence for a supernova component. This interpretation, however, relies critically on the knowledge of the redshift to GRB 970228 to set the restframe wavelength of the apparent broadband break of the SN component.

Finally, knowledge of redshift is essential to derive the physical parameters of the GRB itself, primarily the energy scale. We now know, for instance, that the typical GRB releases about $`10^{52}`$ erg in gamma-rays. The distribution of observed isotropic-equivalent GRB energies is, however, very broad (cf. Kulkarni et al. 2000).

Recognizing these needs we implemented an aggressive spectroscopy campaign on the host of GRB 970228 as detailed in §2. The redshift determination was first reported by Djorgovski et al. (1999) and is described in more detail in §3. We then use this redshift and the spectrum of the host galaxy in §4 to set the physical scale of the observables: energetics, star-formation rates, and offsets. Based on this and photometric imaging from HST we demonstrate in §5 that the host is an underluminous, but otherwise normal galaxy. Lastly, we compare the host with that of the field galaxy population.

## 2. Observations and Reductions

Spectra of the host galaxy were obtained on the W. M. Keck Observatory 10 m telescope (Keck II) atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Observations were conducted over the course of several observing runs: UT 1997 August 13, UT 1997 September 14, UT 1997 November 1 and 28–30, and UT 1998 February 21–24. The observing conditions were variable, from marginal (patchy/thin cirrus or mediocre seeing) to excellent, and on some nights no significant detection of the host was made; such data were excluded from the subsequent analysis. On most nights, multiple exposures (2 to 5) of 1800 sec were obtained, with the object dithered on the spectrograph slit by several arcsec between the exposures. The net total useful on-target exposure was approximately 11 hours from all of the runs combined.

All data were obtained using the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS; Oke et al. (1995)) with 300 lines mm-1 grating and a 1.0 arcsec wide long slit, giving an effective instrumental resolution FWHM $`12`$ Å. Slit position angle was always set to $`87^{}`$, with star S1 (van Paradijs et al. (1997)) always placed on the slit, and used to determine the spectrum trace along the chip; galaxy spectra were then extracted at a position 2.8 arcsec east of the star S1. Efforts were made to observe the target at hour angles so as to make this slit position angle as close to parallactic as possible. Exposures of an internal flat-field lamp and arc lamps were obtained at comparable telescope pointings immediately following the target observations. Exposures of standard stars from Oke & Gunn (1983) and Massey et al. (1998) were obtained and used to measure the instrument response curve, although on some nights the flux zero points were unreliable due to non-photometric conditions.

Wavelength solutions were obtained from arc lamps in the standard manner, and then a second-order correction was determined from the wavelengths of isolated strong night sky lines, and applied to the wavelength solutions. This procedure largely eliminates systematic errors due to the instrument flexure, and is necessary in order to combine the data obtained during separate nights. The final wavelength calibrations have the r.m.s. $`0.20.5`$ Å, as determined from the scatter of the night sky line centers. All spectra were then rebinned to a common wavelength scale with a sampling of 2.5 Å (the original pixel scale is $`2.45`$ Å), using a Gaussian with a $`\sigma =2.5`$ Å as the interpolating/weighting function. This is effectively a very conservative smoothing of the spectrum, since the actual instrumental resolution corresponds to $`\sigma 5`$ Å.

Individual spectra were extracted and combined using a statistical weighting based on the signal-to-noise ratio determined from the data themselves (rather than by the exposure time). Since some of the spectra were obtained in non-photometric conditions, the final spectrum flux zero-point calibration is also unreliable, but the spectrum shape should be unaffected. We use direct photometry of the galaxy to correct this zero-point error (see below).

Our uncorrected spectrum gives a spectroscopic magnitude $`V26.3`$ mag for the galaxy. Direct photometry from the HST data indicates $`V=25.75\pm 0.3`$ (Galama et al. (2000)). Given that some of our spectra were obtained through thin cirrus, this discrepancy is not surprising. Thus, in order to bring our measurements to a consistent system, we multiply our flux values by a constant factor of 1.66, but we thus also inherit the systematic zero-point error of $`30`$% from the HST photometry.

There is some uncertainty regarding the value of the foreground extinction in this direction (see discussion in §4.3). We apply a Galactic extinction correction by assuming $`E_{BV}=0.234`$ mag from Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis (1998). We assume $`R_V=A_V/E_{BV}=3.2`$, and the Galactic extinction curve from Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis (1988) to correct the spectrum. All fluxes and luminosities quoted below incorporate both the flux zero-point and the Galactic extinction corrections.

## 3. The Redshift of GRB 970228

The final combined spectrum of the galaxy is shown in Figure 1. Two strong emission lines are seen, \[O II\] 3727 and \[O III\] 5007, thus confirming the initial redshift interpretation based on the \[O II\] 3727 line alone (Djorgovski et al. (1999)). Unfortunately the instrumental resolution was too coarse to resolve the \[O II\] 3727 doublet. The weighted mean redshift is $`z=0.6950\pm 0.0003`$. A possible weak emission line of \[Ne III\] 3869 is also seen. Unfortunately, the strong night sky OH lines preclude the measurements of the H$`\beta `$ 4861 and \[O III\] 4959 lines, as well as the higher Balmer lines.

The corrected \[O II\] 3727 line flux is $`(2.2\pm 0.1)\times 10^{17}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1, and its observed equivalent width is $`W_\lambda =51\pm 4`$ Å, i.e., $`30\pm 2.4`$ Å in the restframe. This is not unusual for field galaxies in this redshift range (Hogg et al. (1998)). The \[Ne III\] 3869 line, if real, has a flux of at most 10% of the \[O II\] 3727 line, which is reasonable for an actively star forming galaxy. The corrected \[O III\] 5007 line flux is $`(1.55\pm 0.12)\times 10^{17}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1, and its observed equivalent width is $`W_\lambda =30\pm 2`$ Å, i.e., $`17.7\pm 1.2`$ Å in the restframe. For the H$`\beta `$ line, we derive an upper limit of $`<3.4\times 10^{18}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 Hz-1 ($`1\sigma `$), and for its observed equivalent width $`W_\lambda <7`$ Å. We note however that this measurement may be severely affected by the poor night sky subtraction.

The continuum flux at $`\lambda _{obs}=4746`$Å, corresponding to $`\lambda _{rest}=2800`$Å, is $`F_\nu =0.29\mu `$Jy, with our measurement uncertain by $`10`$%. The continuum flux at $`\lambda _{obs}7525`$Å, corresponding to the restframe $`B`$ band, is $`F_\nu =0.77\mu `$Jy, with our measurement uncertain by $`7`$%. Above, we report only the statistical uncertainties of all fluxes; an additional systematic uncertainty of $`30`$% is inherited from the overall flux zero-point uncertainty.

## 4. Implications of the redshift

For the following discussion, we will assume a flat cosmology as suggested by recent results (e.g.de Bernardis et al. (2000)) with $`H_0=65`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_0=0.7`$. For $`z=0.695`$, the luminosity distance is $`1.40\times 10^{28}`$ cm, and 1 arcsec corresponds to 7.65 proper kpc or 13.0 comoving kpc in projection.

### 4.1. Burst Energetics

The gamma-ray fluence (integrated flux over time) is converted from count rates under the assumption of a GRB spectrum, the spectral evolution, and the true duration of the GRB. These quantities are estimated from the GRB data itself but can lead to large uncertainties (a factor of few) in the fluence determination. In table 1 we summarize the fluence of GRB 970228 as observed by all high energy experiments that detected the GRB. We determine the implied energy release (col. 5, table 1) assuming isotropic emission. Further we “standardize” the energetics to the restframe 30–2000 keV in the following manner. We first normalize the observed fluences in a given bandpass (col. 2 and 3) to a bandpass defined by $`30/(1+z)`$ to $`2000/(1+z)`$ keV by a ratio of the integrated spectral shape over these two bandpasses. The implied energy release is then found assuming isotropic emission and using the luminosity distance measure for the assumed cosmology. If no spectral fit is reported we find the median energy implied by assuming the spectral shape is each of the average 54 spectra from Band et al. (1993). The reported errors reflect the uncertainty in the redshift measure, fluence, and spectral shape.

Given the significantly higher gamma-ray spectral and timing resolution of the TGRS instrument relative to the others, we favor the isotropic energy implied by the TGRS analysis: $`E=(6.8\pm 0.5)\times 10^{51}h_{65}^2`$ erg \[30–2000 keV restframe\]. That the implied energy is a factor of $`2`$—3 higher using measurements from BeppoSAX and Ulysses reflects the importance of high signal-to-noise spectroscopy in ascertaining the fluence and hence the energy release. The slow decline and absence of a strong break in the optical light curve (e.g., Galama et al. 1997) suggests that the GRB emission was nearly isotropic (see also Sari, Piran & Halpern (1999)) and so the knowledge of $`E`$ is primarily limited by the accuracy of the fluence measurement.

### 4.2. The offset of the GRB and the host morphology

For the purpose determining the position of the GRB within its host, we examined the HST/STIS observations taken on 4.7 Sept 1997 UT (Fruchter et al. (1999)). The observation consisted of eight 575 s STIS clear (CCD50) exposures paired in to four 1150s to facilitate removal of cosmic rays. We processed these images using the drizzle technique of Fruchter & Hook (1997) to create a final image with a plate scale of 0.0254 arcsec pixel-1. To enhance the low-surface brightness host galaxy we smoothed this image with a Gaussian with $`\sigma =0.043`$ arcsec. The optical transient is well-detected in figure 2 (point source towards the South) and clearly offset from the bulk of the detectable emission of the host.

Two morphological features of the host stand out: a bright knot manifested as an sharp 6-$`\sigma `$ peak near the centroid of the host to north of the transient and an extension from this knot towards the transient. Although, as we demonstrate below, this host is a subluminous galaxy (i.e., not a classic late-type $`L_{}`$ spiral galaxy) we attribute these features to a nucleus and a spiral-arm, respectively. It is not unusual for dwarf galaxies to exhibit these canonical Hubble-diagram structures (S. Odewahn, private communication). These feature have not previously been noted in the literature.

Centroiding the transient and the nucleus components within a 3 pixel aperture radius about their respective peak, we find an angular offset of $`436\pm 14`$ milliarcsec between the nucleus and the optical transient. With our assumed cosmology, this amounts to a projected physical distance of $`3.34\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.11}h_{65}^1`$ kpc.

### 4.3. Physical Parameters of the host galaxy

We found half-light radius of the host galaxy using our final drizzled HST/STIS image: we mask a 3 $`\times `$ 3 pixel region around the position of the optical transient and inspect the curve–of–growth centered on the central bright knot, the supposed nucleus and estimate the half-light radius to be 0.31 arcsec or 2.4 $`h_{65}^1`$ kpc (physical) at a redshift of $`z=0.695`$. The half-light radius visually estimated from curve–of–growth in the WFPC F814W and F606W filters (see Castander & Lamb (1999)) is comparable.

Although there is some debate (at the 0.3 mag level in $`A_V`$) as to the proper level of Galactic extinction toward GRB 970228 (Castander & Lamb (1999); González, Fruchter & Dirsch (1999); Fruchter et al. (1999)) we have chosen to adopt the value $`E(BV)=0.234`$ found from the dust maps of Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis (1998) and a Galactic reddening curve $`R_V=A_V/E(BV)=3.2`$. Using extensive reanalysis of the HST imaging data by Galama et al. 2000 the extinction corrected broadband colors of the host galaxy as $`V=25.0\pm 0.2`$, $`R_c=24.6\pm 0.2`$, $`I_c=24.2\pm 0.2`$. These measures, consistent with those of Castander & Lamb (1999) and Fruchter et al. (1999), are derived from the WFPC2 colors and broadband STIS flux. The errors reflect both the statistical error and the uncertainty in the spectral energy distribution of the host galaxy. We have not included a contribution from the uncertainty in the Galactic extinction. Using the NICMOS measurement from Fruchter et al. (1999) the extinction corrected infrared magnitude is $`H_{\mathrm{AB}}=24.6\pm 0.1`$. Using the zero-points from Fukugita et al. (1996), the extinction-corrected AB-magnitudes of the host galaxy are: $`V_{\mathrm{AB}}=25.0`$, $`R_{\mathrm{AB}}=24.8`$, $`I_{\mathrm{AB}}=24.7`$.

To facilitate comparison with moderate redshift galaxy surveys (§5) we compute the restframe $`B`$-band magnitude of the host galaxy. From the observed continuum in the restframe $`B`$ band, we derive the absolute magnitude $`M_B=18.4\pm 0.4`$ mag \[or $`M_{\mathrm{AB}}(B)=18.6\pm 0.4`$ mag\], i.e., only slightly brighter than the LMC now. For our chosen value of $`H_0`$, an $`L_{}`$ galaxy at $`z0`$ has $`M_B20.9`$ mag, and thus the host at the observed epoch has $`L0.1L_{}`$ today. Its observed morphology from the HST images is also consistent with a dwarf, low-surface brightness galaxy.

### 4.4. Star formation in the host

From the \[O II\] 3727 line flux, we derive the line luminosity $`L_{3727}=5.44\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1 ($`\pm 5`$% random) ($`\pm 30`$% systematic). Using the star formation rate estimator from Kennicutt (1998), we derive the SFR $`0.76M_{}`$ yr-1. Using a 3-$`\sigma `$ limit on the H$`\beta `$ flux, we estimate $`L_{H\beta }<2.5\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1. Assuming the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio of $`2.85\pm 0.2`$ for the Case B recombination and a range of excitation temperatures, we can derive a pseudo-H$`\alpha `$ based estimate of the star formation rate (cf. Kennicutt (1998)), SFR $`<0.6M_{}`$ yr-1, but we consider this to be less reliable than the \[O II\] 3727 measurement. From the UV continuum luminosity at $`\lambda _{rest}=2800`$Å, following Madau, Pozzetti & Dickinson (1998), we derive SFR $`0.54M_{}`$ yr-1.

We note that the net uncertainties for each of these independent SFR estimates are at least 50%, and the overall agreement is encouraging. While we do not know the effective extinction corrections in the host galaxy itself, these are likely to be modest, given its blue colors (cf. §5), and are unlikely to change our results by more than a factor of two. (We hasten to point out that we are completely insensitive to any fully obscured star formation component, if any is present.) On the whole, the galaxy appears to have a rather modest (unobscured) star formation rate, $`0.51M_{}`$ yr-1. Given the relatively normal equivalent width of the \[O II\] 3727 line, even the star formation per unit mass does not seem to be extraordinarily high.

## 5. The Nature of the Host Galaxy

At $`M_{\mathrm{AB}}(B)=18.6`$, the host galaxy of GRB 970228 is a sub-luminous galaxy roughly 2.7 mag below $`L_{}`$ at comparable redshifts (Lilly et al. (1995)). Galama et al. (2000), based on the redshift of GRB 970228, recently found that an Sc galaxy spectral energy distribution reasonably fits the optical–IR photometric fluxes of the host galaxy. This differs from the analysis of Castander & Lamb (1999) which would, now given the redshift of $`z=0.695`$, favor a classification of an “Irregular” galaxy having undergone burst of star-formation over the past few hundred Myr. Clearly it is difficult to precisely determine the galaxy type without more precise photometry and knowledge of the true Galactic extinction, but our identification of a nucleus and possible arm structure (§4.2) supports the idea that the host is a late-type dwarf. Indeed, the host has similar characteristics to that of the Large Magellanic Cloud. We further note that compared with the Simard et al. (1999), the magnitude-size relation of the host galaxy is consistent with that observed for late-type and dwarf-irregular galaxies.

The flat continuum suggests little restframe extinction in this galaxy. We found the isophotal $`(HV)_{\mathrm{AB}}`$ color of galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North (HDF-N) using the published photometry from Thompson et al. (1999) (NICMOS: F160W) and Williams et al. (1996) (WFPC4: F606W filter). All WFPC object identifications within 0.3 arcsec of a NICMOS identification are plotted in figure 3 along with the dereddened color of the host galaxy of GRB 970228. Our field selection essentially biases the color–magnitude relation towards redder objects and would serve to accentuate the locus of the field with a blue galaxy. Even with this bias, there is no indication that the host is substantially more blue than field galaxies at comparable magnitudes.

This conclusion—that the host galaxy of GRB 970228 is not exceptionally blue—is at odds with that of Fruchter et al. (1999) who have claimed that the host galaxy is unusually blue as compared with typical field galaxies. The difference may be due to the fact that the Fruchter et al. (1999) analysis compared the host colors with a significantly more shallow infrared survey than the NICMOS HDF essentially masking the trend for faint galaxies to appear more blue.

Figure 4 shows a section of the median-binned spectrum of the host galaxy. The Balmer break is clearly detected, with an amplitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }m0.55`$ mag, which is typical for the Balmer break selected population of field galaxies at $`z1`$ (K. Adelberger, private communication). For reference we also plot several population synthesis model spectra (Bruzual & Charlot (1993)). The top panel shows model spectra for a galaxy with a uniform star formation rate, which may be a reasonable time-averaged approximation for a normal late-type galaxy. The correspondence is reasonably good and does not depend on the model age. The bottom panel shows models with an instantaneous burst of star formation. In order to match the data, we require fine-tuning of the post-burst age to be $`10^8\times 2^{\pm 1}`$ yr. No attempt was made to optimize the fit or to seek best model parameters and the purpose of this comparison is simply illustrative. Clearly, if there was an ongoing or very recent burst of star formation, the spectrum would be much flatter, with a weaker Balmer break.

## 6. Discussion and conclusion

We have determined the redshift of the host galaxy of GRB 970228 to be $`z=0.695`$ based on \[O II\] 3727 and \[O III\] 5007 line emission. The implied energy release $`(6.8\pm 0.5)\times 10^{51}`$ \[30—2000 keV restframe\] is on the smaller end of, but still comparable to, the handful of other bursts with energy determinations (e.g., Kulkarni et al. 2000). The absence of a detectable break in the afterglow light curve we take to imply that any collimation of emission (i.e., jetting) neglegibly reduces the estimate of total energy release in GRB 970228 (although Frail, Waxman & Kulkarni (2000), using late-time radio data, have found that even without an optical break, GRB 970508 may have been collimated).

Most GRB transients appear spatially coincident with faint host galaxies, disfavoring the merging NS hypothesis (e.g.Paczyński (1998)). The coincidence of GRB 970508 with its host (Fruchter & Pian (1998); Bloom et al. (1998)) is particularly constraining given the excellent spatial coincidence of the GRB with the center of a dwarf galaxy (cf. Bloom et al. (1998)). The transient of GRB 970228 lies $`3.34\pm 0.11h_{65}^1`$ kpc from the center of the galaxy, about 1 kpc in projection outside the half-light radius of the galaxy. From the above analysis we have shown, like GRB 970508, the host is underluminous ($`L0.05L_{}`$), and by assumption, undermassive relative to $`L_{}`$ galaxies. According to Bloom et al. (1999), about 50% of merging neutron binaries should occur beyond 3.5 kpc in projection of such dwarf galaxies. Thus, by itself, the offset of GRB 970228 from its host does not particularly favor a progenitor model.

With a star-formation rate of 0.5–1 $`M_{}`$ yr-1, the host of GRB 970228 is forming stars only at a moderately higher rate than comparable galaxies in the local universe. This result is not surprising given that, on a whole, the universal rate of star-formation increases steeply at least out until redshift $`z1.5`$. If the association of GRBs with massive stars is correct, however, GRB hosts should reveal an increased propensity to form massive stars over and above their counterpart field galaxies. Moreover, the massive star formation rate should be vigorous at the time GRB occurs since massive stars require a negligible time (compared to typical star-formation burst durations) to explode since zero-age main sequence.

In $`R`$-band magnitude the host is near the median of GRB hosts observed to date but in absolute $`B`$-band magnitude the host at the faint end of the distribution. Of the host galaxies detected thus far only GRB 970508 is as comparably faint to the host of GRB 970228. Except in angular extent, the host galaxies of GRB 970228 and GRB 970508 (Bloom et al. (1998)) bear a striking resemblance. Both appear to be sub-luminous ($`L<0.1L_{}`$), compact and blue. Spectroscopy of both reveal the presence of the \[Ne III\] 3869 line, indicative of recent very massive star formation. However, such properties are not shared by all of the GRB hosts studied to date. We note too the rather curious trend that the two GRBs themselves appear to have similar properties in that they decay slowly, are the two least luminous in term of GRB energetics, and do not exhibit evidence of a strong break in the light curve.

The authors thank the generous support of the staff of the W. M. Keck Foundation. This paper has benefited from stimulating conversations with P. van Dokkum and K. Adelberger. We thank M. van Kerkwijk for help during observing and C. Clemens for his use of dark-time observing nights. JSB gratefully acknowledges the fellowship from the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. SGD acknowledges partial funding from the Bressler Foundation. This work was supported in part by grants from the NSF and NASA to SRK.


format: text

text:
# Quantum effects, brane tension and large hierarchy in the brane-world

## Abstract

Semiclassical Einstein’s equation in five-dimension with a negative cosmological constant and conformally invariant bulk matter fields is examined in the brane world scenario with the $`S^1/Z_2`$ compactification. When numbers $`N_{b,f}`$ of bosonic and fermionic fields satisfy $`I<\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<32I`$, we obtain an exact semiclassical solution which has two static branes with positive tension and for which the warp factor can be arbitrarily large. Here, $`\kappa ^2`$ is the five-dimensional gravitational constant, $`l`$ is a length scale determined by the negative five-dimensional cosmological constant, and $`I`$ is a dimensionless positive constant of order unity. However, in order to obtain a large warp factor, fine tuning of brane tensions is required. Hence, in order to solve the hierarchy problem, we need to justify the fine tuning by another new mechanism.

PACS numbers: 04.50.+h; 98.80.Cq; 12.10.-g; 11.25.Mj

Many unified theories require spacetime dimensionality higher than four. For example, superstring theory and M-theory require ten and eleven dimensions, respectively . Since our observed universe is four-dimensional, the spacetime dimensions should be reduced in such theories. One of the methods is called Kaluza-Klein compactification . An alternative method was recently proposed by Randall and Sundrum , and it consists of two similar but distinct scenarios. In the first scenario , they considered a three-brane with negative tension as our universe and showed that the hierarchy problem may be solved by a large redshift factor, which is usually called a warp factor, between our brane and another brane called a hidden brane. In the second scenario , a three-brane with positive tension is considered as our universe and four-dimensional Newton’s law can be realized on the brane. So far, many works were done on various aspects of these brane-world scenarios: effective four-dimensional Einstein’s equation on a positive tension brane , weak gravity , black holes , inflating branes , cosmologies , and so on.

However, the solution of the hierarchy problem was not attempted in the second scenario while four-dimensional Newton’s law was derived in the modified first scenario with radion stabilization . Therefore, it might be concluded that we have to assume that our brane has negative tension in order to obtain large hierarchy. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this may not be necessarily the case if a quantum effect called Casimir effect is taken into account. (Refs.  also discussed Casimir effect in the brane world scenario.) To be precise, we seek an exact semiclassical solution which has two static branes with positive tension and for which the warp factor can be arbitrarily large. (Refs.  also investigated models with two positive tension branes.) In this paper such a solution is found when numbers $`N_{b,f}`$ of bosonic and fermionic fields satisfy $`I<\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<32I`$, where $`\kappa ^2`$ is the five-dimensional gravitational constant, $`l`$ is a length scale determined by the negative five-dimensional cosmological constant, and $`I`$ is a dimensionless constant of order unity. However, in order to obtain a large warp factor, fine tuning of brane tensions is required.

This paper is organized as follows. First, we seek a static solution of semiclassical Einstein’s equation including Casimir effect due to conformally invariant bulk fields. An explicit expression for the warp factor is given. Next, we extend the result to inflating branes and discuss about the cosmological constant problem in this model. Finally, we summarize this paper and discussions are given for the hierarchy problem, extension to general homogeneous, isotropic branes, and stability against perturbations.

To begin with, we consider a five-dimensional metric of the form

$$g_{MN}dx^Mdx^N=e^{2\alpha (w)}\eta _{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu +dw^2,$$
(1)
where $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ represents the four-dimensional Minkowski metric. This is a general five-dimensional metric with the four-dimensional Poincaré invariance. With this metric, we analyze the semiclassical Einstein equation $`G_{MN}+\mathrm{\Lambda }g_{MN}=\kappa ^2T_{MN}`$ to take into account quantum effects, where $`T_{MN}`$ should be understood as an expectation value of energy momentum tensor. Hereafter, we assume that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<0`$ as in refs.  and, for simplicity, we consider quantized conformally invariant fields as fields contributing to $`T_{MN}`$. In this case, since there is no trace anomaly in odd dimension , we have $`T_M^M=0`$ and thus $`R+20l^2=0`$, where $`l`$ is defined by $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=6l^2`$. This equation is written as

$$(\alpha ^{})^2=\frac{2}{5}\alpha ^{\prime \prime }+l^2,$$
(2)
and solved analytically to give

$`e^{5\alpha }`$ $`=`$ $`C_1\mathrm{cosh}^2[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}}l^1(ww_0)],\text{or}`$ (3)
$`e^{5\alpha }`$ $`=`$ $`C_2\mathrm{sinh}^2[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}}l^1(ww_0)],\text{or}`$ (4)
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`\pm l^1(ww_0),`$ (5)
where $`C_{1,2}`$ are positive constants. Correspondingly, energy momentum tensor should be of the following form determined by $`T_{MN}=\kappa ^2(G_{MN}+\mathrm{\Lambda }g_{MN})`$.

$$T_{MN}dx^Mdx^N=\kappa ^2l^2𝒩e^{5\alpha (w)}(e^{2\alpha (w)}\eta _{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu 4dw^2),$$
(6)
where $`𝒩=\frac{3}{2}C_1(>0)`$, $`\frac{3}{2}C_2(<0)`$, and $`0`$ for the solutions (3), (4), and (5), respectively. It is easily seen from (5) that the pure anti-deSitter spacetime used in refs.  is recovered for $`𝒩=0`$.

Now let us compactify the $`w`$-direction by $`S^1/Z_2`$: we adopt the identification $`ww+2L`$, $`ww`$, where $`L`$ is a constant representing the distance between two fixed points of the $`S^1/Z_2`$. This corresponds to a configuration including a $`3`$-brane at $`w=0`$ and another $`3`$-brane at $`w=L`$. By denoting tensions of these branes by $`\lambda `$ and $`\overline{\lambda }`$, respectively, Israel’s junction conditions  at $`w=0`$ and $`w=L`$ are written as

$$\lambda =6\kappa ^2\alpha ^{}(0),\overline{\lambda }=6\kappa ^2\alpha ^{}(L).$$
(7)
For non-zero $`𝒩`$, $`\alpha ^{}`$ for above solutions is independent of the absolute value of the constant $`𝒩`$, and these junction conditions are sufficient to determine the constant $`w_0`$ in (3) or (4) and the distance $`L`$. On the other hand, regarding an actual value of $`𝒩`$, because of the compactness of the $`w`$-direction and the existence of the boundaries, it is expected that $`𝒩0`$ in general. Actually, in ref.  Garriga et.al calculated energy momentum tensor for both bosonic and fermionic fields in the background (1) and showed the form (6) with $`𝒩`$ given by

$$\kappa ^2l^2𝒩=\frac{1}{2}A(N_bN_f)\left[_0^Le^{\alpha (w)}𝑑w\right]^5,$$
(8)
where $`A`$ is a positive constant given by $`A=\pi ^2\zeta _R^{}(4)/32`$ and $`N_{b,f}`$ are numbers of bosonic and fermionic fields, respectively. Although Garriga et.al also discussed the semiclassical Einstein equation, they gave a solution for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ case only, which is not relevant for the purpose of this paper. Since the coefficient $`𝒩`$ depends on $`L`$ and $`w_0`$, the equation (8) introduces a constraint between $`L`$ and $`w_0`$, or between $`\lambda `$ and $`\overline{\lambda }`$ . The constraint should be related to the renormalization condition adopted in ref. . The results are summarized in Table I, in which $`\lambda _0\lambda /6\kappa ^2l^1`$, $`\overline{\lambda }_0\overline{\lambda }/6\kappa ^2l^1`$ and $`𝒜=(5/2)(A/3)^{1/5}=O(1)`$.

The so called warp factor can be defined by $`\varphi e^{\alpha (0)}/e^{\alpha (L)}`$ and is calculated to be

$$\varphi =\left[\frac{(\lambda /6\kappa ^2l^1)^21}{(\overline{\lambda }/6\kappa ^2l^1)^21}\right]^{1/5}$$
(9)
for $`𝒩0`$. (For $`𝒩=0`$, we have $`\varphi =e^{l^1L}`$.) Hereafter, without loss of generality, we can assume that the brane at $`w=0`$ is our world. We call this brane our brane and another brane at $`w=L`$ a hidden brane. From (9), if we accept fine tuning of brane tensions, $`\varphi `$ can be made arbitrarily large. Actually, if $`N_{b,f}`$ satisfy $`I<\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<32I`$, where $`I=𝒜^5[_0^{\mathrm{}}(1y^2)^{4/5}𝑑y]^5`$, then there exists a set of positive $`\lambda `$ and positive $`\overline{\lambda }`$ which satisfies the constraint given in Table I and which gives an arbitrarily large warp factor. If $`\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<I`$ then then there exist a set of negative $`\lambda `$ and positive $`\overline{\lambda }`$ which satisfies the constraint given in Table I and which gives an arbitrarily large warp factor.

We can easily extend the above results to inflating branes by simply replacing the metric $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ of the four-dimensional Minkowski metric with that of the four-dimensional deSitter spacetime $`q_{\mu \nu }`$. The five-dimensional metric and energy momentum tensor are given by (1) and (6) with $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ replaced by $`q_{\mu \nu }`$. For example, in the flat slicing,

$$q_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu =dt^2+e^{2Ht}(dx^2+dy^2+dz^2).$$
(10)
Hence, by using $`R+20l^2=0`$, we can show that

$$(\alpha ^{})^2=\frac{2}{3}l^2𝒩e^{5\alpha }+H^2e^{2\alpha }+l^2.$$
(11)
We shall obtain an expression for the warp factor without solving (11) explicitly. However, before doing it, let us consider the easiest case of $`𝒩=0`$. In this case, it is easy to integrate (11) once more to get

$$e^{2\alpha }=l^2H^2\mathrm{sinh}^2[l^1(ww_0)].$$
(12)
This is the inflating brane solution which was independently found by Nihei and Kaloper . For this solution, the junction conditions at fixed points $`w=0`$ and $`w=L`$ give the following equations for $`w_0`$ and $`L`$.

$$w_0=l\mathrm{tanh}^1\left[\frac{6\kappa ^2l^1}{\lambda }\right],Lw_0=l\mathrm{tanh}^1\left[\frac{6\kappa ^2l^1}{\overline{\lambda }}\right].$$
(13)
We can now calculate the four-dimensional cosmological constants $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_4`$ measured by observers on our brane and the hidden brane, respectively. These are given by

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_43H^2e^{2\alpha (0)},\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_43H^2e^{2\alpha (L)},$$
(14)
since Hubble parameters measured by observers on these branes are $`He^{\alpha (0)}`$ and $`He^{\alpha (L)}`$, respectively. Thence, we obtain the relations $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4=\kappa ^4\lambda ^2/123l^2`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_4=\kappa ^4\overline{\lambda }^2/123l^2`$.

Now let us consider more complicated case of $`𝒩0`$. In this case, one may numerically integrate (11) to obtain a solution. However, without solving it, we can obtain an analogue of the expression (9) for the warp factor. First, since (11) is a first order ordinary differential equation, its solution should have one integration constant, say $`w_0`$. Next, we can determine $`w_0`$ and the distance $`L`$ between two branes by using the junction conditions (7). These are written as

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{6\kappa ^2l^1}}\right)^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}𝒩e^{5\alpha (0)}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathrm{\Lambda }_4l^2+1,`$ (15)
$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{\lambda }}{6\kappa ^2l^1}}\right)^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}𝒩e^{5\alpha (L)}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_4l^2+1,`$ (16)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_4`$ are defined by (14). It is easily seen that for any value of $`H`$ (or $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$) the range of allowed values of brane tensions is essentially the same as that for the flat brane case. On the contrary, an analogue of (8) should give a constraint between $`\lambda `$ and $`\overline{\lambda }`$ which depends on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$. Finally, we can obtain a relation between the four-dimensional cosmological constant on our brane and the warp factor. Actually, since $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_4=\varphi ^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$, from (16) we obtain

$$\varphi =\left[\frac{(\lambda /6\kappa ^2l^1)^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_4l^2/31}{(\overline{\lambda }/6\kappa ^2l^1)^2\varphi ^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_4l^2/31}\right]^{1/5}.$$
(17)
By using this expression, we can discuss the cosmological constant problem in this model. First, we can see that, if we accept a fine tuning of the tension $`\overline{\lambda }`$ of the hidden brane, then it is in principle possible to obtain a small $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ and a large $`\varphi `$ at the same time. However, because of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$-dependent constraint between brane tensions, once $`\overline{\lambda }`$ is fixed, $`\lambda `$ should be determined by $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$. Therefore, in order to obtain a small $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ and a large $`\varphi `$ at the same time, we need fine tuning of tension of both branes.

Throughout this paper, semiclassical Einstein’s equation with a negative cosmological constant and conformally invariant bulk matter fields has been examined in the brane world scenario with the $`S^1/Z_2`$ compactification. When numbers $`N_{b,f}`$ of bosonic and fermionic fields satisfy $`I<\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<32I`$, we obtained an exact semiclassical solution which has two static branes with positive tension and for which the warp factor can be arbitrarily large. When $`\kappa ^2l^3(N_bN_f)<I`$, we have also obtained an exact semiclassical, static solution for which our brane has negative tension, the hidden brane has positive tension and the warp factor can be arbitrarily large. However, in order to obtain a large warp factor, fine tuning of brane tensions is required for both cases.

In order to justify the fine tuning of brane tensions, we need another new mechanism. In this sense, so far, the hierarchy problem has not yet been solved by this model. Besides this issue, we have another issue to be made clear in future. Namely, it is not clear whether the large warp factor is sufficient or insufficient to solve the hierarchy problem, since in this model there appears a peak of the warp factor between our brane and the hidden brane. If the peak is high enough then it may be expected that each of two branes behaves like an isolated single brane . Therefore, more detailed analysis will be required to understand roles of the warp factor in this model.

Extension to general homogeneous, isotropic branes may be an interesting future work. When we set $`T_{MN}=0`$, a system in this category should reduce to the cosmological brane solution which was independently found by several people . Since the geometry is less symmetric than the inflating brane discussed in this paper, we cannot expect the great simplification. On the contrary, since acceleration of branes changes in time, we can expect an interesting phenomenon caused by a quantum effect called a moving mirror effect. It is well known that the moving mirror effect makes energy momentum tensor dependent of higher derivatives of boundary positions in a non-local way . From results in two-dimension, it is expected that corrections due to the moving mirror effect vanish if and only if the boundary is static (the flat brane case) or uniformly accelerating (the inflating or deSitter brane case). Hence, it seems worth while investigating more general cases in detail.

Analysis of the stability against perturbations seems an important future work. In particular, the so called radion stability is worth while investigating. In ref. , Garriga et.al analyzed the radion stability and concluded that the $`N_b>N_f`$ case is unstable while the $`N_b<N_f`$ case is stable, implicitly assuming that the kinetic term of the radion field is given classically and that all quantum effects are included in the potential only. However, as stated above, the moving mirror effect caused by the motion of branes introduces non-local, higher-derivative corrections to the energy momentum tensor. Hence, it is expected that the kinetic term will be corrected significantly by quantum effects and that the dynamics of the radion will become non-local if the moving mirror effect is taken into account. It seems that we need more systematic analysis of the stability.

The author would like to thank Professor W. Israel for continuing encouragement and Dr. T. Shiromizu for useful comments. Part of this work was done during Workshop on String Cosmology in UBC. The author would be grateful to Professors R. Brandenberger and W. G. Unruh for their hospitality. The author is supported by CITA National Fellowship and the NSERC operating research grant.


text:
# Untitled Document

THE NEWTON WONDER IN MECHANICS

By D. Lynden-Bell

Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Application of Newton’s ideas from $`Principia`$ gives many new results in mechanics. Here we explore the question “What form of extra force will maintain the magnitude of a vector constant of the motion while changing its direction?”

Introduction

Shortly after his death I reviewed Chandrasekhar’s last book1 Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader. This fine book introduced me to the whole sweep of Newton’s ideas in mechanics and sent me back to reading $`Principia`$ itself in translation3. Newton’s insight stimulated many new ideas in me of which only the following have been investigated so far.

Revolving orbits

In his theorum on revolving orbits Newton points out that in a central orbit $`r^2d\varphi /dt=h`$ then $`r^2d(\alpha \varphi )/dt=\alpha h`$. So an angular motion with $`\varphi ^{}=\alpha \varphi `$ replacing $`\varphi `$ will still have constant angular momentum. He then asks what extra central force is needed to leave the $`r`$ motion unchanged and deduces that it must balance the extra centrifugal force $`(\alpha ^21)h^2r^3`$. He then deduces that the apses of such orbits rotate at the rate $`(\alpha 1)2\pi /P`$ faster. Here $`P`$ was the mean period in $`\varphi `$ of the original orbit. The new orbit when viewed from axes revolving at the rate $`(\alpha 1)d\varphi /dt`$ is exactly the same as the old one viewed from fixed axes. But $`(\alpha 1)d\varphi /dt`$ is not a steady rotation rate. In reference 4 we explore the weird distorted shapes taken by such orbits when viewed from axes rotating at the mean rate $`(\alpha 1)<d\varphi /dt>`$ where $`<d\varphi /dt>=2\pi /P`$.

Exact general N-body solutions

Few know that Newton solved completely an N body problem for any N for any initial conditions. The force law for which he did this was

$$𝐅_{IJ}=km_Im_J(𝐫_J𝐫_I).$$

The total force on body $`I`$ is then directed at the barycentre at $`\overline{𝐫}`$

$$𝐅_I=𝐅_{IJ}=km_IM(\overline{𝐫}𝐫_𝐈)$$

where $`M`$ is the total mass. Thus each body moves as though attracted to the centre of mass which itself travels uniformly. This force law can be found by differentiation of the total potential energy $`V={\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}kM^2r^2`$ where

$$r^2=\underset{I<}{}\underset{J}{}m_Im_JM^2(𝐫_J𝐫_I)^2.$$

Ruth Lynden-Bell and I have shown5 that this result can be generalised to solve the non-harmonic case in which $`V`$ is replaced by any $`V(r)`$. Some results even extend to $`V`$ of the form

$$V_0(r)+r^2V_2\left(\frac{𝐫_I𝐫_J}{r}\right)$$

where $`V_0`$ is an arbitrary function of $`r`$ and $`V_2`$ is any function of its many scale-free arguments. After some struggles with Einstein-Bose & Fermi-Dirac statistics we solved the $`V(r)`$ problem completely in quantum mechanics6. We have further work in progress on the statistical mechanics and mechanics of these extraordinary N-body problems which can be applied to Bose-Einstein condensates.

Vector constants of the motion

We all know that in the presence of a central force the radius vector from the centre to a body sweeps out equal areas in equal times in a plane. However, although Newton proves it, we are not taught the converse that if from some fixed point $`S`$, the radius vector to a body sweeps out equal areas in equal times in a plane then the force on that body is central to $`S`$. This is Newton’s2 proposition 2, but he follows it with a truly remarkable scholium or rider that no-one seems to have understood. If we have a body subjected to a central force but beside that there is another force which is at each moment perpendicular to the current plane of motion, then the radius vector to the body still sweeps out equal areas in equal times, notwithstanding its non-coplanar motion.

To prove this consider the moment of this extra force about the centre. Since the extra force is parallel to the angular momentum the moment is perpendicular to it. Thus the rate of change of the angular momentum is perpendicular to it, so the magnitude or ‘length’ of the angular momentum vector remains constant. In the surface made up of infinitessimal areas perpendicular to the angular momentum at each instant the rate of sweeping of area $`{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}r^2d\varphi /dt=h/2`$ is therefore constant QED. This is all so obvious to Newton that he does not stoop to prove it - he simply states it!

Analysing what Newton has done here, he takes a vector constant of the motion and asks under what circumstances the magnitude of that vector can be conserved without requiring each component to be separately conserved. But there are three vector conserved quantities in classical mechanics. They are, besides the angular momentum, the linear momentum $`𝐩`$ and $`𝐫𝐯t=𝐫_0`$, the position of the barycentre at $`t=0`$. Can we preserve $`|𝐩|`$ without keeping $`𝐩`$ constant? Yes it requires a force $`d𝐩/dt=m𝐯\times 𝐁`$ that is always perpendicular to $`𝐩`$. Thus we are led to forces of gravo-magnetic type of which Coriolis force is a special example. What forces are needed to preserve the magnitude of $`𝐫𝐯t`$? Evidently $`(𝐫𝐯t)\frac{d}{dt}(𝐫𝐯t)=0`$ so $`\dot{𝐯}t`$ must be of the form $`(𝐫𝐯t)\times 𝐁`$.

Thus the force per unit mass $`𝐅`$ must be of the form

$$𝐅=𝐯\times 𝐁𝐫\times 𝐁/t$$
$`(1)`$
where $`𝐁`$ may be any function of position, time and velocity. Perhaps the simplest example of such a force occurs when a magnetic field is constant in space but varies its strength with time. The associated electric field is $`𝐄={\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{2}}𝐫\times d𝐁/dt`$ so the total electromagnetic force on unit charge with unit mass will be of the form (1) provided $`𝐁=𝐛t^2`$ with $`𝐛`$ a constant. We orient the $`z`$ axis along it so $`𝐛=(0,0,b)`$. Using the fact that $`(𝐫𝐯t)^2=\mathrm{const}=z_0^2+R_0^2`$ the equations of motion may be solved giving

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill x+iy=& t\left(u+we^{ib/t}\right);xv_xt+i(yv_yt)=ibwe^{ib/t}\hfill & \\ \hfill z=& v_zt+z_0\hfill & \end{array}\}$$
$`(2)`$
where $`u`$ and $`w`$ are complex constants and $`v_z\&z_0`$ are real ones. $`|w|=R_0/b`$. Thus Newton’s method of generalising constants of the motion works beautifully for this problem too.

Special relativity

Can the idea be extended to relativity? Here the ten classical integrals combine into the energy-momentum 4-vector, $`𝐏`$ and the anti-symmetric tensor

$$K_{ij}=ϵ_{ijkl}x^kP^l.$$

The invariant scalars are

$$P^2,K_{ij}K^{ij}=4K^2\mathrm{and}ϵ^{ijkl}K_{ij}K_{kl}.$$

Unfortunately $`P^2=m_0^2c^2`$ which is always constant and the epsilon $`KK`$ invariant is zero identically, so only $`K^2`$ is suitable for playing Newton’s game. Differentiating with respect to comoving time $`\tau `$ and remembering that $`md𝐱/d\tau =𝐏`$, we find that $`K^2`$ is constant when the four-force $`𝐅=d𝐏/d\tau `$ is perpendicular to $`𝐱=(ct,x,y,z)`$. However, since $`P^2`$ is constant the four-force is always perpendicular to $`𝐏`$. If $`𝐍`$ is any vector along a third independent direction perpendicular to the four-force, that force takes the form $`F_i=ϵ_{ijkl}x^jP^kN^l`$ so this is the general form of force when $`K^2=(𝐫\times 𝐩)^2E^2c^2(𝐫𝐯t)^2`$ is conserved. Here $`E`$ is the energy. A pretty example is given by taking $`𝐍`$ along the time direction; then reverting to 3-vectors and writing $`N=|𝐍|`$

$$d𝐩/d\tau =N𝐫\times 𝐩.$$
$`(3)`$
Under such forces $`|𝐩|`$ is clearly constant so $`|𝐯|=v`$ is constant too; furthermore writing $`𝐋=𝐫\times 𝐩`$ we see that $`d𝐋/d\tau =N𝐫\times 𝐋\mathrm{so}|𝐋|`$ is constant. From our $`K^2`$ invariant this of course implies $`|𝐫𝐯t|`$ is constant. $`𝐩`$ and $`𝐋`$ are perpendicular and obey the same equation (3) which corresponds to angular rotation at the variable rate $`N𝐫\sqrt{1v^2/c^2}`$. A third vector perpendicular to the other two is given by $`𝐑=𝐩\times 𝐋/p^2`$ which is the component of $`𝐫`$ transverse to $`𝐩`$. It is readily shown that it too obeys $`d𝐑/d\tau =N𝐫\times 𝐑`$, so $`|𝐑|`$ is constant and $`𝐑,𝐩,𝐋`$ form a triply orthogonal triad of rotating vectors of constant length. $`𝐯`$ is along $`𝐩`$ and is also fixed in that rotating frame. Now

$$d(𝐫𝐯)/dt=v^2=\mathrm{const},$$

so

$$𝐫=𝐑+𝐯(t+\alpha )$$
$`(4)`$
since the components of $`𝐫`$ transverse to $`𝐯`$ make up $`𝐑`$. The above equation gives the misleading impression that the particle is travelling uniformly in a straight line. That is indeed true relative to the rotating axes but in absolute axes $`𝐑`$ and $`𝐯`$ are rotating and at a time dependent rate. Notice that $`𝐗=𝐫𝐯t`$ is constant in the rotating axes so $`𝐗`$ moves on a sphere in fixed axes i.e., $`|𝐗|=\mathrm{const}`$. Viewed from the rotating axes in which $`𝐑,𝐩\mathrm{and}𝐋`$ are fixed constant vectors the whole motion is simple and in those axes even their rotation rate takes the simple form,

$$𝛀=(1v^2/c^2)^{\frac{1}{2}}N𝐫=(1v^2/c^2)^{\frac{1}{2}}N\left[𝐑+𝐯(t+\alpha )\right]$$
$`(5)`$
although it varies in magnitude and direction. Of course from the viewpoint of a co-rotating observer the universe rotates at rate $`𝛀`$. The true complication of the motion is only comprehended when one imagines what is seen by an inertial observer to whom the inclined offset straight line, down which the motion occurs uniformly, whirls around a changing axis at a non-uniform rate. So far the reader may have assumed that $`N`$ was a constant but nowhere have we assumed this and indeed the force law can be such that $`N`$ is any scalar function of $`𝐫,𝐯`$ and $`t`$.

In parting we notice that this is but a very special case of the force laws that preserve $`K^2`$. We chose it because the others necessarily involve $`t`$ explicitly but it is peculiar in that $`𝐍`$’s direction is fixed (along the time direction) and not varying as it would in the general case. (3) is in fact a special case of (1) with $`𝐁`$ radial.

The eccentricity vector and magnetic monopoles

To return to where Newton started, his equation of motion for a particle moving under a central force $`V^{}\widehat{𝐫}`$ with an extra force $`N𝐫\times 𝐯`$ reads for unit mass

$$d𝐯/dt=V^{}\widehat{𝐫}+N𝐫\times 𝐯$$
$`(6)`$
with the central force present can we still find some rotating axes in which the motion is especially simple? Letting dots denote rates of change with respect to the moving axes: $`d𝐯/dt=\dot{𝐯}+\mathrm{\Omega }\times 𝐯`$. Evidently we should again take $`𝛀=N𝐫`$. Then $`d𝐫/dt=\dot{𝐫}=𝐯`$ so even when $`N`$ varies

$$\ddot{𝐫}=V^{}\widehat{𝐫}$$
$`(7)`$
so if we take the rotating axes the whole dynamics is the same as if the $`N`$ force were absent and we had fixed axes. Thus in the rotating axes we have $`𝐫\times \dot{𝐫}=𝐡=\mathrm{constant}\mathrm{relative}\mathrm{to}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{rotating}\mathrm{axes}`$ and when $`V=GM/r`$ we write $`\widehat{𝐫}=𝐫/r`$ and obtain

$$\begin{array}{cccc}& 𝐡\times \ddot{𝐫}=\hfill & GM\left(\widehat{𝐫}\times \frac{\dot{𝐫}}{r}\right)\times \widehat{𝐫}=GM\dot{\widehat{𝐫}}\hfill & \\ \mathrm{so}\hfill & & & \\ & 𝐡\times \dot{𝐫}=\hfill & GM(\widehat{𝐫}+𝐞)\hfill & \end{array}\}$$
$`(8)`$
where $`𝐞`$ is a vector constant of integration. $`𝐞`$ is constant in the rotating axes not the fixed ones. Those with no history call it the Runge Lenz Vector111Hamilton7 gave the first coordinate free derivation in 1845 by writing the equations in quaternion form. Bernoulli8, Laplace9 and possibly even Newton got the result earlier. Atomic Physicists learned the result from Runge & Lenz much later. See Goldstein10 but to me it is Hamilton’s eccentricity vector pointing to pericentre with magnitude equal to the eccentricity. Evidently

$$𝐞=\dot{𝐫}\times 𝐡/(GM)\widehat{𝐫}=𝐯\times 𝐡/(GM)\widehat{𝐫}$$
$`(9)`$
again $`𝐞`$ is constant in our rotating axes. $`𝐡`$ is $`\mathrm{𝐧𝐨𝐭}`$ constant in the fixed axes but obeys $`d𝐡/dt=N𝐫\times 𝐡`$.

We are now in a position to ask a question that crossed my mind but which I would not have remembered to investigate had not S Aarseth reminded me. What is the most general force law that leaves $`|𝐞|`$ invariant while letting $`𝐞`$ change?

Evidently the example given above has this property since $`𝐞`$ precesses with the axes at the rate $`𝛀=N𝐫`$ which may well be variable in magnitude as well as direction; however that example does not give the general case. We now revert to fixed inertial axes. Again $`𝐡=𝐫\times 𝐯`$ whether that quantity is constant or not and $`𝐞`$ is defined by (9) with $`𝐯`$ written for $`\dot{𝐫}`$.

Differentiating $`GM𝐞`$ we have from (9)

$$GM\frac{d𝐞}{dt}=\frac{d𝐯}{dt}\times 𝐡+𝐯\times \left(𝐫\times \frac{d𝐯}{dt}\right)GM\frac{d\widehat{𝐫}}{dt}.$$

The extra force per unit mass that causes the change in $`𝐞`$ must be $`𝐅=\frac{d𝐯}{dt}+GMr^2\widehat{𝐫}`$, so

$$GM\frac{d𝐞}{dt}=𝐅\times 𝐡+𝐯\times \left(𝐫\times 𝐅\right)$$
$`(10)`$
We want this extra force to leave $`e^2`$ unchanged so there must be no component of $`d𝐞/dt`$ along $`𝐞`$. This condition may be put in the form

$$𝐅\mathbf{}=0$$
$`(11)`$
where

$$\mathbf{}=𝐡\times 𝐞+(𝐞\times 𝐯)\times 𝐫.$$
$`(12)`$
Thus the general $`𝐅`$ that leaves $`e^2`$ invariant is of the form

$$𝐅=𝐤\times \mathbf{}\text{ }$$
$`(13)`$
and it will cause a change of $`𝐞`$ given by

$$GMd𝐞/dt=(𝐤\times \mathbf{})\times 𝐡+𝐯\times \left(𝐫\times (𝐤\times \mathbf{})\right)$$
$`(14)`$
since the last term of $`\mathbf{}`$ itself involves two cross products we see that the final term above involves five consecutive cross products and it takes some work to sort them out and to re-express the RHS as a cross product with $`𝐞`$ so that

$$d𝐞/dt=𝝎\times 𝐞$$
$`(15)`$
We write

$$𝐂=(𝐤𝐫)𝐞+(𝐤𝐞)𝐫$$

and notice it is in the plane of motion and find

$$GM𝝎=2(𝐤𝐡)𝐡+(𝐯𝐫)(𝐂\times 𝐯)\times 𝐞/e^2$$
$`(16)`$
Thus our result is that the general force is of the form (13) in which $`𝐤`$ is any vector (which may vary with time) while it leaves $`e^2`$ invariant. The angular velocity of $`𝐞`$ is given by (16). The first term causes $`𝐞`$ to swing in the plane of motion while the seconds swings it down through that plane ($`𝐂\times 𝐯`$ is parallel to $`𝐡`$). A useful final check on the complicated derivation is that if any multiple of $`\mathbf{}`$ is added to $`𝐤`$ it must make no difference. Indeed $`𝐂\times 𝐯`$ changes by $`(\mathbf{}𝐫𝐞+\mathbf{}𝐞𝐫)\times 𝐯`$ which is identically zero by (12).

The general case discussed above requires complicated forces of the form given by (12) and (13) but a great simplification occurs if we demand that these forces do no work. The condition $`𝐅𝐯=0`$ leads $`via`$ (12) & (13) to $`𝐤𝐡=0`$ and since we can always take $`𝐤`$ perpendicular to $`\mathbf{}`$ we set $`𝐤=N\mathbf{}\times 𝐡/\mathbf{}^2`$. Then the extra force $`𝐅`$ reverts to Newton’s simple form, $`N𝐫\times 𝐯`$ discussed earlier (6). We may consider this as a magnetic force by endowing our particle with unit charge and writing $`𝐁=cN𝐫.`$ It is then natural to require that $`\mathrm{div}𝐁=0`$ so $`r^2d/dr(Nr^3)=0`$ and therefore $`cNr^3=Q=\mathrm{constant}`$. The resulting field is $`𝐁=Q\widehat{𝐫}/r^2`$ which is clearly the field of a magnetic monopole of strength $`𝐐`$. As Poincaré 11 first found, motion in such fields has a singular beauty. For a particle of mass $`m`$ and charge $`q`$ orbiting a monopole of charge $`Zq`$ and monopole strength $`Q`$

$$m\ddot{𝐫}=\zeta \widehat{𝐫}r^2+\eta \widehat{𝐫}\times 𝐯r^2$$

where $`\zeta =Zq^2`$ and $`\eta =Qq/c`$. Cross multiplying by $`𝐫,d𝐋/dt=\eta 𝐡\times \widehat{𝐫}/r^2=\eta (\widehat{𝐫}\times 𝐯)\times \widehat{𝐫}/r=\eta d\widehat{𝐫}/dt`$ where $`𝐋=m𝐡.`$ It follows that $`L^2`$ is constant and that

$$𝐋\eta 𝐫=𝐉=\mathrm{const}.$$

From which it follows that $`𝐋^2=𝐉𝐋`$ and $`\eta =𝐉\widehat{𝐫}`$ so $`𝐋`$ and $`𝐫`$ precess around $`𝐉`$ on coaxial cones. The orbit is an ellipse that precesses around the $`𝐫`$ cone because of the deficit angle that is missing when the cone is flattened, but I gave the details earlier and solved the quantum mechanics of monopolar hydrogen. The results here can be extended to give the interesting motions of a small spinning sphere both classically and in quantum mechanics 12. Even the Dirac equation has a pretty solution in the field of a charged monopole. In general relativity the equivalent of a monopole is a gravomagnetic monopole and the required generalisation of Schwarzschild’s metric is called, NUT space, it has many weird properties. Although the space has the same properties when viewed from any direction its metric is not spherically symmetric and can not be transformed into spherically symmetric form 12. Thus following a lead from Newton one ends up challenging the concept of spherical symmetry in General Relativity!

Nouri-Zonoz and I have explored the gravitational lensing of gravomagnetic monopoles 13 and he has found the cylindrically symmetrical space corresponding to a line gravomagnetic monopole 14 \- the metric can not be put into a single-valued cylindrically symmetric form!

What we have found so far comes from a tiny fraction of $`Principia`$; we hope that it will encourage others to read Chandrasekhar’s last book and Newton’s great one!

References

(1) S. Chandrasekhar, Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader (Oxford University Press), 1995.

(2) I. Newton, Principia (R.Soc., London), 1687.

(3) F. Cajori, Newton’s Principia, (Motte’s Translation Revised) (University of California Press, Berkeley), 1934.

(4) D. Lynden-Bell & R.M. Lynden-Bell, R. Soc. Notes. & Record, 51, 195.

(5) D. Lynden-Bell & R.M. Lynden-Bell, Proc. R. Soc. A., 455, 475, 1999.

(6) D. Lynden-Bell & R.M. Lynden-Bell, Exact Quantum Solutions to Extraordinary N-body Problems, Proc. R. Soc. A., accepted).

(7) W. R. Hamilton, Proc. R. Irish Acad., III, Appendix p.36, 1845.

(8) J. I. Bernoulli, Hist. Academie Royale, p. 523, 1712.

(9) P. S. Laplace, Traité de méchanique celeste (Vol 1) (Paris Chez J.B.M. Duprat), 1799.

(10) H. Goldstein, Am. J. Phys., 44, 1123, 1976.

(11) H. Poincaré, CR Acad. Sci., 123, 530, 1896.

(12) D. Lynden-Bell, & M. Nouri-Zonoz, Revs. Mod. Phys., 70, 427, 1998.

(13) M. Nouri-Zonoz & D. Lynden-Bell, MNRAS, 292, 714, 1997.

(14) M. Nouri-Zonoz, Class. Quantum Grav., 14, 3123, 1997.


text:
# Using compression to identify acronyms in text

## 1 Introduction

Text mining is about looking for patterns in natural language text, and may be defined as the process of analyzing text to extract information from it for particular purposes. In previous work, we claimed that compression is a key technology for text mining, and backed this up with a study that showed how particular kinds of lexical tokens—names, dates, locations, etc.—can be identified and located in running text, using compression models to provide the leverage necessary to distinguish different token types (Witten et al., 1999).

Identifying acronyms in documents—which is certainly also about looking for patterns in text—presents a rather different kind of problem. Webster defines an “acronym” as

> a word formed from the first (or first few) letters of a series of words, as radar, from radio detecting and ranging.

Acronyms are often defined by preceding (or following) their first use with a textual explanation—as in Webster’s example above. Finding all the acronyms, along with their definitions, in a particular technical document is a problem of text mining that has previously been tackled using ad hoc heuristics. The information desired is relational, comprising both acronyms and their definitions, and this makes it rather different from the token-type problem mentioned above.

It is useful to detect acronyms in an information retrieval or digital library context for several reasons. First, new tools could be built from the data gathered across a document collection—tools such as browsable acronym lists and search-by-acronym indexes. Second, explicit recognition of acronyms could make existing tools like search engines and keyphrase extraction schemes work more effectively by performing in-line substitutions. Third, reading acronym-laden source documents could be enhanced by annotating text with pop-up balloons that recall the definitions of acronyms, or menus that help the user navigate to other documents that contain the acronym. Fourth, spell-checking is often applied as a text cleaning operation after textual data capture using OCR, and acronym detection improves the quality of this process.

It is not immediately obvious how compression can assist in locating relational information such as acronyms and their definitions. Language statistics of acronyms will certainly differ from those of ordinary running text, because acronyms have a higher density of capital letters, and a far higher density of non-initial capital letters. However, other words are also capitalized, and it seems unlikely that acronyms will be recognized reliably on this basis. Moreover, we are interested not just in the occurrence of acronyms, but their definitions too, and these will certainly not be readily distinguished from ordinary language by their letter statistics.

We have experimented with a simple way of coding potential acronyms with respect to the initial letters of neighboring words, and using the compression achieved to signal the occurrence of an acronym and its definition. This seems to form the basis for a reliable acronym finder. The next section discusses acronyms themselves, and distinguishes them from ordinary abbreviations. Following that we examine three existing systems for acronym extraction from text. These rely heavily on heuristics that are provided a priori by the system designer, based on the designer’s experience and skill. In Section 4 we introduce a new algorithm for compression-based acronym identification, and in Section 5.3 we compare this algorithm to existing schemes.

## 2 Acronyms

Abbreviations are contractions of words or phrases that are used in place of their full versions, where their meaning is clear from the context. Acronyms are a type of abbreviation made up of the initial letter or letters of other words. Key differences between acronyms and other abbreviations include the lack of symbols such as apostrophe and period in acronyms, a more standard construction, and the use of capital letters. Can’t and etc. are abbreviations but not acronyms, in the first case both because of the inclusion of other than initial letters and because of the inverted comma, and in the second case because of the use of a period; moreover, both contain lower-case letters.

Very commonly used and easily pronounced acronyms may enter the language as bona fide words, in which case they treated like regular nouns and only capitalized at the beginning of sentences. Laser (for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) and radar  (for RAdio Detection And Ranging) are such words.

Acronyms are a relatively new linguistic feature in the English language, first appearing in the 1940s and 1950s. Early acronyms include AmVets for American Veterans’ Association (1947), MASH for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (1954) and MASER for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (1955). Fertile sources of acronyms have been organizational (UNESCO, VP, CEO), military (MASH, SIGINT, NATO) and scientific jargon (laser, ROM, GIS).

Acronyms may be nested, for example SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) is part of JASA (Joint Airborne SIGINT Architecture) or even recursive as in GNU (GNU’s Not Unix). Recursive acronyms appear to be constructed self-consciously and are limited to a few domains. Although mutually recursive acronyms appear possible, they seem unlikely.

Acronym lists are available from several sources,111e.g. www.geocities.com/~mlshams/acronym/acr.htm and www.ucc.ie/acronyms but these are static—they list acronyms current in some domain at the time of compilation or officially endorsed by an organization. While these may be of use in specific contexts, they are unlikely to be useful for an arbitrary piece of text at some point in the future.

Abbreviations such as acronyms are used in places where either readers are familiar with the concepts and entities they stand for or their meanings are clear from the context of the discussion. Unlike other abbreviations, acronyms are usually introduced in a standard format when used for the first time in a text. This form is: ROM (Read Only Memory) or alternatively Read Only Memory (ROM), the latter being preferred when readers are unlikely to be familiar with the concept. Later instances of the acronym can be given simply as ROM.

Acronyms are not necessarily unique. The Acronym Finder web site222www.mtnds.com/af/ has 27 definitions for CIA, ranging from Central Intelligence Agency and Canadian Institute of Actuaries to Central Idiocy Agency and Chemiluminescence Immunoassay. In normal texts, non-uniqueness does not pose a problem: usually the meaning is clear from the context of the document. However, ambiguity is likely to be an issue if acronyms are extracted from large, broad-based collections. Extracting acronyms from clusters of related documents (grouped using document clustering techniques) is one solution to this problem.

Acronyms are generally three or more characters in length, although two-character acronyms exist (for example AI for Artificial Intelligence). Because of the small number of combinations, two-character acronyms exhibit far greater scope for ambiguity (for instance Artificial Intelligence versus Artificial Insemination). Unless they refer to very widely-known entities (e.g. UN for United Nations or EC for European Community) they are generally restricted to a fairly local scope—within a well-focused conceptual area, for example, or even within a single document.

## 3 Heuristic acronym extraction

We sketch the operation of three automatic acronym detection programs that exemplify different approaches to the problem. One uses a longest common subsequence method, based on the initial letters of neighboring words. This allows approximate matching (because not every letter in the acronym has to originate in an initial letter of the definition) but makes it difficult to incorporate additional letters, other than the first, from words in the definition. The remaining methods identify a source for every letter in the acronym, which allows greater flexibility in determining the source of those letters.

### AFP: Acronym finding program

AFP (Acronym Finding Program) was developed to improve post-processing of text captured using OCR (Taghva and Gilbreth 1995). Acronym candidates are defined as upper-case words from three to ten characters in length. The upper bound is an arbitrary but reasonable assumption, while the lower bound is a compromise between recall (as noted above, there are two-character acronyms) and precision (approximate matching on anything less than three characters is error-prone). Insisting that all acronyms appear in upper case will cause many to be omitted—such as Webster’s radar example above.

Acronym candidates are first tested against a list of “reject words” that commonly appear in upper-case, such as TABLE, FIGURE, and roman numerals. For each candidate that passes this test, AFP constructs two text windows, one containing the words that precede the candidate, the other containing the words that follow. In both cases the number of words in the window is twice the number of characters in the acronym candidate. The sequence of initial letters of these words is matched against the acronym itself, using a standard longest common subsequence algorithm (Cormen et al., 1993).

This can yield several candidates for the acronym definition. For example, in

> management of the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation (ONWI)

the eight-word window contains three matches—two occurrences of “of Nuclear Waste Isolation” and one of “Office Nuclear Waste Isolation.” In order to decide which to return, the algorithm classifies words into stop words, hyphenated words, and normal words, and calculates a heuristic score for each competing definition. The calculation depends on the number of normal words that must be skipped to make the acronym match (for example, using the first of for “of Nuclear Waste Isolation,” the word Office must be skipped to obtain a match), the number of stopwords used in the acronym definition, the number of text words spanned by the acronym definition, and the number of words that separate the acronym definition from the acronym itself. Effectively the shortest, closest candidate with the lowest density of stop words is chosen.

### TLA: Three-letter acronyms

TLA (Three-Letter Acronyms) was developed to provide enhanced browsing facilities in a digital library (Yeates 1999). As with AFP, candidate acronyms and their definitions are selected from a stream of words. All non-alphabetic characters are converted to spaces and any multiple spaces replaced with a single space.

Candidate acronyms are determined by matching the initial letter of each word in the context of a potential acronym against the appropriate letter in the acronym. If the first letter does not match, the word is skipped. Otherwise, the next letter of the same word is tested against the next letter of the acronym, and if it matches the algorithm continues to move along the word. A maximum of six letters are used from each word, and a potential acronym must be entirely upper-case.

In order to determine which candidate acronyms should be output, a machine learning scheme is used. Four attributes are calculated for each candidate:

* the length of the acronym in characters (generally between 2 and 6);
* the length of the acronym’s definition in characters (generally between 10 and 40);
* the length of the acronym’s definition in words (generally between 2 and 6);
* the number of stop words in the acronym’s definition.

These features clearly include redundancy—the fourth is the difference between the third and the first. The machine learning approach is to generate a model using training data in which acronyms have already been marked by hand. The model determines what attributes, and what combinations of attributes, are the important ones for making the decision (Witten and Frank, 2000). We used the naive Bayes learning scheme from the Weka workbench, supplied with training data as described below (Section 5.1). The model produced by Naive Bayes is then used to determine whether to accept a candidate acronym, on the basis of the four features computed from it.

### Perl Acronym Finder

A third algorithm, designed for speed and high recall for a fairly small collection of documents, was also available to us. The documents in this collection were accurately represented and contained very few errors. This algorithm, written in Perl, used the simple method of taking the first letter from each word in a region around each candidate acronym without accounting for any stopwords or errors, and matching the resulting sequence against the candidate.

### Discussion

There are several important differences between the AFP and TLA algorithms.

* AFP only considers the first letter of each word when searching for acronyms. (Acronyms containing characters other than the first letter may be matched, if the longest common subsequence algorithm ends up ignoring some characters of the acronym.) On the other hand, TLA considers the first six letters in each word, which enables it to match acronyms such as MUTEX for MUTual EXclusion.
* AFP parses words with embedded punctuation as single words, whereas TLA parses them as separate words. TLA’s strategy allows matching of U.S. Geographic Service (USGS) but may inhibit matching of other acronyms, although no examples have been encountered so far.
* AFP tolerates errors, which sometimes matches acronyms that TLA misses. For example TLA misses DBMS (DataBase Management System) because the B is embedded within DataBase, whereas AFP will obtain the three-letter longest subsequence match DMS and infer the B.

Overall, TLA explicitly recognizes the need to tailor acronym extraction to the particular problem domain, whereas AFP makes irrevocable decisions early on. TLA seems to be more general than AFP in that a larger number of acronyms fall within its scope. On the other hand, the fact that AFP tolerates error works in the other direction.

## 4 Compression-based acronym extraction

Can compression techniques be used as the basis for a text mining problem such as acronym detection? Our criterion is whether a candidate acronym could be coded more efficiently using a special acronym model than it is using a regular text compression scheme. A word is declared to be an acronym if the ratio between the number of bits required to code it using the acronym model is less than a certain proportion of the number of bits required to code it in context using a general-purpose compressor, and we experimented with different values of the threshold.

We first pre-filter the data by identifying acronym candidates and determining two windows for each, one containing preceding words and the other containing following ones. For our initial work we followed AFP’s strategy of identifying words in upper case as candidate acronyms (though we did not use a reject list). We chose a window containing the 16 preceding words, and a separate window containing the 16 following ones—this covered all the acronym definitions in our test data.

PPM is used as the reference text compression model (Bell et al., 1990), with escape method D (Howard, 1993) and order 5 (order 6 yielded slightly better performance on the training data, but only by a very small margin).

### 4.1 Coding the acronyms

To code an acronym, its characters are represented with respect to the initial letters of words in the window, and a string is produced that determines what words, and what letters, those are. Figure 1 shows examples, with the acronym on the left, the text that defines it in the middle, and the code on the right. The first component of the code is whether the acronym precedes (`+`) or follows (`-`) its definition, and the second is the distance from the acronym to the first word of the definition. The third is a sequence of words in the text, each number giving an offset from the previous word (for example, `1` represents the next word of the text). The fourth gives the number of letters to be taken from each word (for example, `1` indicates just the first letter).

In the first example of Figure 1, the acronym BC is directly preceded by its definition. From the acronym we go back (`-`) two words (`2`) and use that word and the next (`1`), taking one character (namely the first) from each of the two words (`<1,1>`). In the second example, the first character of the second word following the acronym OTC is used, then the first character of the next word, and finally the first character of the following word. Case differences were ignored in these experiments.

As the third example (FG) shows, several words are sometimes interpolated between an acronym and its definition. This also illustrates that there is a fine line between acronyms and variable names, although from the later context of the paper it is clear that FG is being used as an acronym for the Fast Givens transform. The largest distance between an acronym and its definition that we encountered involves a word that is thirteen words away from the acronym, shown as the fourth example CHARME—which is why we use a much larger window than AFP. This is also the first example that takes more than one letter from a word: three letters come from hardware and two from methods. In the next example CDAG, three letters are taken from the second word—which is itself an acronym DAG, nested in the acronym definition. The COMPCOM example shows four characters being taken from a word, which is rare. More than four characters did not occur in our data, and we imposed an upper limit of six on the number of characters that could be taken from a word. The largest acronym that we know has eight letters (WYSINWYG for what you see is not what you get), which can easily be coded since the window is 16 words long and any number of these words can be used to make up the acronym.

In order to operate this coding scheme it is necessary to parse the input into words. Hyphens are included as word boundaries, which determines how words are counted in situations such as PPP in the next line of Figure 1. We also count slashes as boundaries, so that the three acronyms MIT, LCS and TR can be extracted from Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical report. We also delete numbers, which affects the counting of words in the final UW (and the FG) example in the Figure.

Our coding scheme does not permit certain acronyms to be encoded. Some examples from the data we used are shown in Figure 2. We insist that words appear in the correct order, ruling out the encoding of ISO in the first example. The English expansion of foreign language acronyms like NWO often does not include the letters of the acronym. Plural forms cause havoc, whether capitalized (PITS) or not (CVEs). Occasionally an acronym comes in the middle of its definition, as with the SIS example. Sometimes letters are plucked out of the middle of words, as in NEBW and JPTN. Not only does the acronym B8ZS include a digit, but it requires the domain knowledge that the character string “eight” corresponds to the character “8”. All these examples will count as failures of our acronym extraction procedure, although it should be noted that only a few of them satisfy Webster’s definition of an acronym in the strict sense.

### 4.2 Compressing the acronym representation

In order to compress the candidates, we code the acronym encodings exemplified in Figure 1. There are four components: the direction, the first-word offset, the subsequent-word offsets, and the number of characters taken from each word. Different models are used for each, simple zero-order models in each case, formed from the training data. New acronyms are encoded according to these models using arithmetic coding; a standard escape mechanism is used to encode novel numbers appear.

After compressing the acronym candidates with respect to their context, all legal encodings for each acronym are compared and the one that compresses best is selected. (In the event of a tie, both are selected.) We then compress the acronym using the text model, taking the preceding context into account but only calculating the number of bits required to represent the characters in the acronym.

The two compression figures are compared, and the candidate is declared to be an acronym if

$$\frac{\mathrm{bits}_{\mathrm{acronym}\mathrm{model}}}{\mathrm{bits}_{\mathrm{PPM}\mathrm{model}}}t$$

for some predetermined threshold $`t`$. Note that subtracting the number of bits is more easily justified than using the ratio between them, because the difference in bits corresponds to a likelihood ratio. In fact, however, far better results were obtained using the ratio method. While we do not fully understand the reasons for this, it is probably connected with the curious fact that longer acronyms tend to compress into fewer bits using a standard text model than shorter ones. While short acronyms like BC or PPP are often pronounced as letters, long ones like CHARME, COMPCOM and OOPSLA tend to be pronounced as words. This affects the choice of letter sequences that are used: longer acronyms tend to more closely resemble “natural” words.

## 5 Experimental results

To test these ideas, we conducted an experiment on a sizable sample of technical reports.

### 5.1 Data

We used as training and test data 150 reports from the Computer Science Technical Reports collection of the New Zealand Digital Library.333www.nzdl.org These have been extracted automatically from PostScript files, and contain a certain amount of noise that can be attributable to errors in that process. The total size of this corpus is 9.3 Mb, or 1.4 million words. Two-thirds of the documents are used for training and the remainder for testing.

Approximately 1080 acronym definitions have been identified manually in the training and test documents. (In fact, a semi-automated process was used for some, but they have all been checked manually). The acronyms range from two to seven letters in length (single-character abbreviations are not counted as acronyms). Approximately 600 are two-letter acronyms, and there is only a sprinkling of six- and seven-letter acronyms.

Of the 440,000 words that appear in the test documents, 10,200 are upper-case words of two characters or more—and thus candidates for acronym definitions. Of these, only 10.6% are actually acronym definitions.

### 5.2 Evaluation

In order to evaluate acronym identification schemes, we face a standard tradeoff between liberal algorithms that increase the chance that a particular acronym definition is spotted but also increase the number of “false positives,” that is, other segments of text that are erroneously flagged as acronym definitions; and conservative algorithms that reduce the number of false positives but also increase the number of “false negatives,” that is, acronym definitions that are not identified as such by the system. This tradeoff is familiar in information retrieval, where a search engine must decide how long a list of articles to present to the user, balancing the disadvantage of too many false positives (irrelevant documents that are displayed), if the list is too long, against that of too many false negatives (relevant documents that are not displayed), if it is too short.

Following standard usage in information retrieval, we quantify this tradeoff in terms of “recall” and “precision”:

$$\mathrm{recall}=\frac{\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{test}\mathrm{articles}\mathrm{correctly}\mathrm{assigned}\mathrm{to}\mathrm{category}C}{\mathrm{total}\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{test}\mathrm{articles}\mathrm{that}\mathrm{have}\mathrm{category}C}$$

$$\mathrm{precision}=\frac{\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{test}\mathrm{articles}\mathrm{correctly}\mathrm{assigned}\mathrm{to}\mathrm{category}C}{\mathrm{total}\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{test}\mathrm{articles}\mathrm{to}\mathrm{which}\mathrm{category}C\mathrm{is}\mathrm{assigned}}.$$

### 5.3 Results

Acronyms with just two letters are significantly more difficult to extract than longer acronyms, both because there is a greater probability that a random sequence of words will appear by coincidence to be an acronym definition, and because there is more opportunity to pluck the wrong sequence of words out of a legitimate acronym definition. Consequently we look separately at results for acronyms for two or more letters and for ones of three or more letters.

Figure 3 shows recall-precision curves for compression-based acronym detection in the two cases. The curves are generated by varying the threshold $`t`$ that governs the acceptance of an acronym. The lefthand end corresponds to the small value of $`t=0.1`$. Here a candidate acronym is accepted if the acronym model compresses it to less than 10% of the amount achieved by PPM. Very effective compression is a strong indicator of the presence of an acronym, leading to high precision—but, unfortunately, very low recall.

As the threshold increases from $`t=0.1`$, recall steadily improves. There is a long flat section as $`t`$ increases to about $`0.2`$, with a precision that remains constant at 85%–90% for acronyms of three or more letters at recall values up to almost 80% (Figure 3b). When $`t`$ increases beyond about $`0.2`$ (which occurs in Figure 3b at a recall level of about 80%), recall continues to rise but precision begins to tail off, due to the rising probability of naturally occurring sequences that look like acronym definitions but are not. For a sufficiently large value of $`t`$, all candidate acronyms that can be made up of initial letters taken in order from words in the surrounding context are detected. This corresponds to a recall of 1, and a precision of about 60% for three–or-more-letter acronyms and 30% for two-or-more-letter acronyms. Finally, some of the noise in Figure 3a and 3b is caused by multiple occurrences of certain acronyms in some documents—for example, one document defines MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) in its page header, giving a total of 67 occurrences.

The points marked $`+`$ close to the line in Figures 3a and 3b mark the recall–precision point for the TLA heuristic extraction algorithm. The compression-based method is a clear improvement on TLA in both cases. The lone point marked $`\times `$ shown in Figure 3b is the result of the simple Perl heuristic, which performs much more poorly.

The only results reported for AFP are for a corpus with radically different characteristics to ours. Taghva and Gilbreth (1995) used government environmental studies with an average of 27 acronyms per document, whereas we used computer science technical reports with an average of 8.5 acronyms per document. Thus the results are not comparable.

## 6 Conclusions

Compression-based text mining seems to provide a viable basis for extracting acronyms and their definitions from plain text. It gives an advantage over other methods in that it reduces the need to come up with heuristics for deciding when to accept a candidate acronym—although some prior choices must be made when designing the method for coding acronyms with respect to their definitions. It also allows the operator to choose any point on the recall-precision curve.

This work represents an initial foray into compression-based acronym extraction. There are three obvious areas for further improvement. First, case information in acronym definitions, currently ignored, could usefully be exploited. Authors regularly capitalize initial letters that occur in acronym definitions, as in almost all of the examples in Figures 1 and 2, or emphasize them by other means, like italics, as in Webster’s definition with which we began. In many applications, font information such as italics will not be available, but capitalization will be. This information can be accommodated by incorporating a capitalization flag into the encoding scheme. Capitalized letters in the middle of words are also a good indication that they participate in an acronym definition, and should also be incorporated into the encoding.

Second, the appearance of parentheses—or occasionally quotation marks—around either the acronym or its definition (whichever appears last) is another indicator that is presently being ignored. It appears in around two-thirds of the examples in Figures 1 and 2—in every case around the acronym rather than its definition. This could allow us to confirm the presence of an acronym and permit lower-case acronyms, albeit rare, to be spotted. In those occasions where parentheses appear around the definition they could be encoded as begin-definition and end-definition items.

Finally, the compression-based method as currently implemented suffers because it does not accommodate approximate matching of the acronym with its definition. This could be incorporated using standard zero-frequency mechanisms, although that would increase the search space and slow down acronym detection substantially.

### References

* Text compression. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
* Introduction to algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
* “The design and analysis of efficient lossless data compression systems.” Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
* Recognizing acronyms and their definitions. Technical Report Taghva95-03, ISRI ISRI; November.
* “Text mining: a new frontier for lossless compression.” Proc Data Compression Conference, pp. 198–207. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos, CA.
* Data mining: Practical machine learning tools and techniques with Java implementations. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA.
* “Automatic extraction of acronyms from text,” Proc New Zealand Computer Science Research Students’ Conference, pp. 117–124. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.