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# Electron Heating and Cosmic Rays at a Supernova Shock from Chandra X-ray Observations of E0102.2-7219

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are among that rare class of astronomical objects whose dynamical evolution can be probed directly through both radial velocity and proper motion measurements. Together such studies provide important constraints on the evolution of young SNRs and the structure of the ejecta and ambient medium. Furthermore, when its distance is known, measurement of a remnant’s proper motion is equivalent to a measurement of the velocity of the supernova blast wave. This fundamental quantity determines the total energy available to the remnant for partition into bulk kinetic energy of the ambient medium, shock-heated electrons and ions, and relativistic particles, i.e., cosmic rays (see Chevalier 1983; Decourchelle, Ellison, & Ballet 2000). Conservation laws provide some constraints on how the shock energy is divided up into the several forms, but some issues, such as the fraction of shock energy that goes into cosmic rays and the extent of collisionless heating of the electrons, are still theoretically uncertain and need to be determined observationally.

The brightest X-ray supernova remnant (SNR) in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), E0102.2$``$7219, is dominated by line emission from highly ionized atoms of O, Ne, and Mg (Hayashi et al. 1994; Gaetz et al. 2000) and its X-ray morphology is that of a strongly limb-brightened shell, roughly 40′′ in diameter (Hughes 1988). Optical filaments in the remnant are also rich in O and Ne, extend over a diameter of 24′′ (Dopita et al. 1981), and display radial velocities that span a range of 6500 km s-1 (Tuohy & Dopita 1983). At the distance to the SMC (60 kpc, e.g., van den Bergh 2000), the proper motion of the optical filaments should be $`0^{\prime \prime }.011`$ yr-1 or an expansion rate of 0.092% yr-1. Herein we determine the X-ray expansion rate, equivalent to the velocity of the shock, to obtain an estimate of the total shock energy. We then compare this to the electron temperature in the immediate post-shock region, through fits to spectra isolated by Chandra’s superb spatial resolution, to determine the fraction of energy in shock-heated electrons.

## 2 EXPANSION RATE

Prior to the launch of Chandra the highest spatial resolution images of E0102.2$``$7219 were those taken by the Einstein and ROSAT High Resolution Imagers, hereafter EHRI and RHRI. During Orbital Activation and Check-out of Chandra, E0102.2$``$7219 was observed by the back-side illuminated chip (S3) of the ACIS-S instrument (Garmire 1997). A processed event file (id no. 1231 created on 1999-09-07T18:39:11) was obtained from the Chandra X-ray Center and analysis was carried out using standard astronomical software. For spectral analysis (§3) the events were gain-corrected using the appropriate gain map for a focal plane temperature of $``$100 C. Events were time filtered to remove intervals of high background as well as frames with bad or no aspect. Dead and flickering pixels were also removed. An ephemeris of all three observations is given in Table 1.

The EHRI and RHRI each made broad-band X-ray images, but in slightly different spectral bands. The possibility of spectral variations with position has been the main factor limiting the widespread use of EHRI and RHRI images for carrying out precise proper motion studies of X-ray SNRs. Now, however, the Chandra ACIS-S data provide a spectral dimension that can be used to take full advantage of the long time baseline for proper motion studies set by the earlier observations.

In our approach we slice the ACIS-S data into a large number (50–100) of images according to observed photon energy using narrow X-ray spectral bands. These separate images are then multiplied by the ratio of effective area between the EHRI (for example) and the Chandra ACIS-S at the photon energy appropriate to the spectral band of each individual image slice. The final ACIS-S image, corrected to the EHRI band in this case, is then the sum of the image slices. This is done for both of the HRIs. Clearly the accuracy of this procedure depends on how well the various effective area functions are known, an effect we explore below.

The on-orbit 50% encircled energy radius for the Chandra ACIS-S, $`R_{50\%}=0^{\prime \prime }.4`$ (Dewey 1999), is about an order of magnitude smaller than that of the RHRI or EHRI, both of which had $`R_{50\%}4^{\prime \prime }`$ (Giacconi et al. 1979; David et al. 1998). We can therefore ignore the small Chandra point-response-function (PRF) and convolve the band-corrected ACIS-S image with the appropriate EHRI or RHRI PRF models. In our preliminary investigations we found that the parameters of the analytical PRF models (EHRI: Henry & Henriksen 1986; RHRI David et al. 1998) needed to be modified slightly from their published values in order to obtain good fits to the E0102.2$``$7219 data. For both datasets it was the largest spatial scale component of the PRF model that needed adjustment. For the RHRI the best-fit normalization of the $``$30′′-scale exponential component was 33% higher than nominal and for the EHRI the normalization of the $``$13′′-scale power-law component was less than nominal by 22%. E0102.2$``$7219 is small enough that spatial variations in the background, vignetting, or PRF can all be safely neglected.

The final piece of information required for the expansion study is the plate scales of the three instruments. The plate scales of the EHRI and RHRI are $`0^{\prime \prime }.4965\pm 0^{\prime \prime }.0012`$ per pixel and $`0^{\prime \prime }.499\pm 0^{\prime \prime }.001`$ per pixel, respectively (David et al. 1998). For the ACIS-S the plate scale near the center of the field of view is $`0^{\prime \prime }.49115\pm 0^{\prime \prime }.00010`$ per pixel based on Chandra in-flight observations of the star cluster NGC 2516 (M. Markevitch 1999, private communication). This value is within 0.2% of the pre-flight estimate of $`0^{\prime \prime }.4920`$ per pixel.

The approach we follow for determining the expansion rate is that described in Hughes (1999). In brief each HRI image (the “data”) is compared to the appropriate band-corrected ACIS-S image (the “model”) in a fit for parameters using a maximum-likelihood estimator as the figure-of-merit function. The fitted parameters are the relative intensity scale between the two images, the relative pixel position, the fractional amount of expansion or contraction of the spatial scale, and the normalization of the largest-scale PRF component. The difference in background levels (e.g., ACIS-S vs. EHRI or HRI) is fixed at the value determined from source-free portions of the image and is included as a spatially uniform term. In the fitting software the expansion or contraction of the “model” image is done first using a rebinning scheme that conserves flux, then the scaled image is convolved with the appropriate instrumental PRF, and finally the background term is included. The only interesting parameter that we obtain from this comparison is the expansion (or contraction) factor, which tells us the global mean expansion rate of the remnant. This procedure explicitly assumes that the fractional expansion rate is uniform over the entire remnant, both radially and azimuthally.

Figure 1 shows the fitted results. E0102.2$``$7219 has expanded by $`0.74\pm 0.31`$% based on comparing the RHRI and ACIS-S data and it has expanded by $`1.98\pm 0.64`$% based on comparing the EHRI and ACIS-S data. The quoted errors are purely statistical at 1 sigma and include both Poisson error (dominated by the EHRI and RHRI data) as well as the uncertainty in the plate scales. The two points are described best by a uniform expansion rate of $`0.100\pm 0.025`$% yr-1. The null hypothesis that the remnant has remained constant in size can be rejected at the $`4\sigma `$ confidence level.

It is extremely unlikely that systematic effects could account for these results. For example, the Chandra plate scale would have to be incorrect by more than 1%, which is 50 times the statistical uncertainty on the calibration measurement. We investigated systematic errors due to uncertainty in the analytical PRF models and in the effective area functions and the boxes plotted in fig. 1 show an estimate of their likely effect on the expansion measurements. Neither is expected to be a dominant source of error.

## 3 POST-SHOCK ELECTRON TEMPERATURE

The eastern limb of E0102.2$``$7219 in the Chandra image (Blair et al. 2000, Gaetz et al. 2000) displays a smooth, nearly circular, faint rim of X-ray emission. Beyond the edge of the rim the surface brightness drops by more than two orders of magnitude to the average background level over a distance of order 1′′. Herein we identify this jump as the SN shock wave plowing into the ambient medium (hereafter “blast wave”).

We extracted the spectrum of the blast wave region from within a partial annulus of thickness $`1^{\prime \prime }.5`$ and outer radius 21′′ that covered the angular range from $``$30 to 155 (angles measured counterclockwise from north). We ignored the background since it was negligibly small (less than 1%). The spectral data were contained within a single readout node of chip S3, nevertheless the spectrum included data from several detector regions with potentially different intrinsic responses to incident X-rays. Individual response functions (both effective area functions and spectral redistribution matrices) were generated for the several regions covered by the extraction region and then combined, weighting by the number of X-ray events, into a single global response function. The results we obtain are insensitive to this procedure: our fitted parameters are nearly unchanged if we use the response functions from any individual extraction region. Because of the limited statistical precision of our spectrum (which contained only $``$1500 detected events) the uncertainty on derived parameters is dominated by Poisson counting errors rather than calibration uncertainties.

Figure 2 plots the blast wave spectrum and best-fit nonequilibrium ionization model (NEI) (Hughes & Singh 1994). The spectrum shows a well-resolved O VIII Ly$`\alpha `$ line at 0.653 keV, a blend of Ne IX and Ne X K-shell lines in addition to Fe L-shell lines around 1 keV, and the Mg XI He-like 2$``$1 line complex at $``$1.34 keV. The mere presence of these lines suggests a moderately low electron temperature, $`kT1`$ keV, as our detailed fits confirm. Table 2 gives best-fit parameters and 1-sigma statistical errors determined from two classes of NEI models: (1) a “single ionization timescale” model which assumes a single, constant value for both the temperature and ionization timescale in the blast wave region and (2) a “planar shock” model which also assumes a constant temperature, but integrates the emission from spectral components with ionization timescales varying linearly from 0 to $`n_et`$ (the fit parameter) and weighted by equal fractional intervals in $`n_et`$. The first model provides a marginally acceptable fit to the Chandra data (the $`\chi ^2`$ of 57 for 38 degrees of freedom can be rejected at the 97.5% confidence level). The second model, with no additional parameters, yields a much improved, and statistically acceptable, fit.

Elemental abundances were determined only for the species with obvious line emission in the observed spectrum, viz. O, Ne, Mg, and Fe. The abundances of the other astrophysically common species were fixed at values appropriate to interstellar gas in the SMC (Russell & Dopita 1992), an assumption that resulted in a significantly better fit than one where the abundances of the other species were fixed to standard solar abundances. The line-of-sight absorbing column density, $`N_\mathrm{H}`$, was separated into a component with normal solar composition arising from the Galaxy and a component from the SMC with lower abundances. The Galactic component was fixed at an $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ value consistent with reddening estimates and the Galactic H I column to E0102.2$``$7219, while the SMC component was allowed to vary freely.

The abundances from both model fits are nicely consistent with the well-known low metallicity of the gas in the SMC ($``$25% solar), strongly suggesting that the emission we see from the outer rim comes from the shock wave propagating through interstellar gas.111One should be wary of interpreting the fitted abundances much beyond this. In particular, the Fe abundance comes from a complex of L-shell lines that are unresolved at the modest spectral resolution of our data. Current models (including ours) are known to be incomplete as regards the Fe L-shell emission (Brickhouse et al. 2000), which introduces additional uncertainty beyond the statistical errors in the measured value of the Fe-abundance. Further in from the blast wave where the X-ray emission of E0102.2$``$7219 has become quite bright, the spectral character has changed as well. In fig. 2 the spectrum from the bright region in the southeast quadrant is plotted (labeled “ejecta”). The superposed model spectrum, shown for comparison, is the blast wave NEI model scaled in intensity to fit the continuum level of the ejecta spectrum. There are clear differences between the ejecta and blast wave spectra in terms of both thermodynamic state (note, for example, the strength of the O VII He-like 2$``$1 line complex at $``$0.57 keV in the ejecta which is virtually absent in the blast wave) and the elemental abundances (especially of O and Ne). The enhanced abundances and less advanced ionization state of the ejecta are consistent with expectations for emission from the reverse shock propagating into higher density, metal-rich gas.

## 4 DISCUSSION

The X-ray expansion rate of E0102.2$``$7219 is fully consistent with the remnant’s proper motion estimated from the location and radial velocities of the oxygen-rich optical filaments. Specifically our estimate of the remnant’s age assuming free expansion, $`1000_{200}^{+340}`$ yr, agrees with that of Tuohy & Dopita (1983). At the outermost edge of the X-ray emission from E0102.2$``$7219 ($`R22^{\prime \prime }=6.4\mathrm{pc}`$), the inferred velocity is $`6200_{1600}^{+1500}`$ km s-1, which we consider in the following to be the speed of the blast wave. According to the Rankine-Huguniot jump conditions in the absence of cosmic ray acceleration (Landau & Lifshitz 1976), this velocity corresponds to a mean post-shock temperature of $`kT_S=\frac{3}{16}\mu m_pv_S^2=45_{20}^{+25}`$ keV, using a mean mass per particle of $`\mu =0.61`$. Our measurement of the post-shock electron temperature from the Chandra X-ray spectrum, $`kT<\text{ }1`$ keV, is at least 25 times smaller than this estimate.

There are two principle assumptions that go into our estimate for the mean temperature: (1) that the post-shock thermal energy is partitioned equally between electrons and ions, and (2) that only a negligible fraction of the total energy of the shock goes into cosmic rays.

It has been debated whether electron and ion temperatures are quickly equilibrated by plasma processes behind collisionless high Mach number SN shocks (McKee 1974; Cargill & Papadopoulos 1988) or if the electron and ion temperatures initially differ by their mass ratio ($`m_p/m_e=1836`$) and then equilibrate slowly through Coulomb collisions (Shklovskii 1968). For E0102.2$``$7219 we find, ignoring for the moment any Coulombic heating of the electrons downstream, that the ratio of electron thermal energy to upstream kinetic energy, $`E_{\mathrm{e},\mathrm{th}}/E_{\mathrm{kin}}=kT_e/(\frac{1}{2}m_pv_S^2)<\text{ }1\%`$, is much smaller than the value of 12% expected by Cargill & Papadopoulos (1988).

Downstream of the blast wave, electrons and ions (mainly protons) will exchange energy through Coulomb interactions, which provide the minimum level of heating expected in the case of nonequipartition. The electron temperature varies as

$$\frac{dT_e}{dn_et}=0.13\frac{T_pT_e}{T_e^{3/2}}$$

(in cgs units) (Spitzer 1978, p. 22), where we express the temperature variation in terms of $`n_et`$, since we have an observational estimate of this quantity from the X-ray spectral fits (Table 2). This equation predicts that the mean post-shock electron temperature (averaging over $`n_et`$ from 0 to $`4\times 10^{11}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{s}`$) would be between 4.5 keV and 8 keV for proton temperatures corresponding to the measured shock velocity (i.e., $`T_p=40`$–120 keV). Note that the dependence of electron temperature on the actual value of $`n_et`$ up to which the averaging is done is weak. If the lower limit on the measured $`n_et`$ value, $`2\times 10^{11}\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{s}`$, from our spectral fits is used, then the average $`kT_e`$ range becomes 3.5–6 keV. This estimate assumes that the total pressure ($`n_pT_p+n_eT_e`$) remains constant in the post-shock region, when, in fact, some adiabatic decompression should occur as the shocked gas elements expand outward. Estimates of this effect, assuming the post-shock gas acquires a speed of $`3/4v_S`$, indicate that the predicted electron temperatures may be reduced to no lower than $``$2.5 keV, closer to, but still considerably higher than, the measured blast wave electron temperature in E0102.2$``$7219. These simple models suggest that post-shock proton temperatures of 40–120 keV are just too high and that they need to be considerably reduced in order to match the Chandra measurements. This in turn argues that cosmic ray production is not negligible in E0102.2$``$7219 and that the relativistic particles may be absorbing a significant fraction of the SN shock energy.

Recently Decourchelle et al. (2000) have shown that the fraction of energy going into cosmic rays is likely to be high in young SNRs and that this effect has direct consequences for the thermal X-ray emission. In such a situation, the shock jump conditions are modified (e.g., Blandford & Eichler 1987) so that for a given shock velocity the compression ratio increases and the post-shock temperature decreases. Nonlinear models of shock acceleration (Ellison 2000) appear fully consistent with the observed shock parameters of E0102.2$``$7219. In particular, these models predict a mean post-shock temperature of 1 keV (see figure 1 in Ellison 2000) for standard cosmic ray injection efficiencies and a high Mach number shock, i.e., values of 100–300, as appropriate for E0102.2$``$7219. Thus it appears that efficient cosmic ray acceleration alone is sufficient to explain our observations of E0102.2$``$7219, even without the additional influence of nonequipartition of electron and ion temperatures.

Unfortunately, a direct measurement of the post-shock proton temperature in E0102.2$``$7219 is not possible, due to the absence of any H line emission from the remnant. Therefore, constraints on the efficiency of cosmic ray production in E0102.2$``$7219 will need to come from future detailed studies of the compression ratio, the structure of the forward and reverse shocks, and the X-ray line spectrum using NEI hydrodynamical models of SNRs that include cosmic-ray acceleration (e.g., Decourchelle et al. 2000). In addition, studies of other types of remnants, in particular Balmer-dominated ones for which estimates of the proton temperature are available from H$`\alpha `$ line profiles, should prove helpful in further elucidating the physics of collisionless shock fronts.

Helpful discussions with David Burrows, Don Ellison, Maxim Markevitch, Jon Morse, and Wallace Tucker on the scientific content of the article are gratefully acknowledged. We appreciate Monique Arnaud’s support and hospitality during the course of this project. This work was partially supported by NASA Grant NAG5-6420.


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# Observation of the Ω_𝑐⁰ Charmed Baryon at CLEO

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the effort of the CESR staff in providing us with excellent luminosity and running conditions. I.P.J. Shipsey thanks the NYI program of the NSF, M. Selen thanks the PFF program of the NSF, A.H. Mahmood thanks the Texas Advanced Research Program, M. Selen and H. Yamamoto thank the OJI program of DOE, M. Selen and V. Sharma thank the A.P. Sloan Foundation, M. Selen and V. Sharma thank the Research Corporation, F. Blanc thanks the Swiss National Science Foundation, and H. Schwarthoff and E. von Toerne thank the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for support. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.


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# Black Hole Mass Estimates from Reverberation Mapping and from Spatially Resolved Kinematics

## 1. Introduction

Searches for supermassive black holes (BHs) based on spatially resolved kinematics have found $``$ 35 candidates (see Kormendy et al. 2000 for a review). Almost all are in weakly active or inactive galaxies. The reason is that bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) swamp the light from the surrounding stars and gas, and complicate the kinematic observations. In addition, AGNs are rare, so most are distant. Even with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the central kinematics of galaxies are well enough resolved to reveal BHs only in nearby galaxies. The ironic result (Kormendy & Richstone 1995) is that the bright Seyfert nuclei and quasars that motivate the BH search are conspicuously rare in the dynamical BH census.

Reverberation mapping (Blandford & McKee 1982; Netzer & Peterson 1997) avoids this problem. In this technique, time delays between brightness variations in the continuum and in the broad emission lines are interpreted as the light travel time between the BH and the line-emitting region farther out. This provides an estimate of the radius $`r`$ of the broad-line region (BLR). We also have a velocity $`V`$ from the FWHM of the emission lines. Together, these measure a mass $`M_{}V^2r/G`$, where $`G`$ is the gravitational constant. An important advantage is that the BLR is $``$$`10^2`$ times closer to the BH than the stars and gas that are used in HST spectroscopy.

However, several authors have pointed out that reverberation mapping yields smaller BH masses at a given bulge luminosity than do dynamical models of spatially resolved kinematics (e.g., Wandel 1999; Ho 1999). That is, in the observed correlation between BH mass and bulge luminosity $`L_{B,\mathrm{bulge}}`$ (Kormendy 1993; Kormendy & Richstone 1995), $`M_{}`$ values from reverberation mapping are systematically low (see Figure 1a which shows reverberation masses that are as much as a factor of 40 smaller than predicted by the correlation). This discrepancy is overstated when using the $`M_{}`$ – $`L_{B,\mathrm{bulge}}`$ correlation from Magorrian et al. (1998). Those BH masses are based on two-integral models applied to low-resolution data. Comparison with HST data and three-integral models shows that the Magorrian et al. (1998) BH masses are high by about a factor of three, mainly due to radially-biased anisotropy in the stellar orbits (Gebhardt et al. 2000c) that was not modeled in Magorrian et al. (1998) mass estimates. Nevertheless, even using the best kinematic data, Ho (1999) finds that $`M_{}`$ values from reverberation mapping are still low by a factor of $`5`$ compared with masses based on spatially resolved kinematics of different galaxies but similar bulge luminosities. It is important to resolve this discrepancy.

Gebhardt et al. (2000b) and Ferrarese & Merritt (2000) find a new correlation between $`M_{}`$ and the effective velocity dispersion $`\sigma _e`$ of the host galaxy. This relation is significantly tighter than the $`M_{}`$ – $`L_{B,\mathrm{bulge}}`$ correlation, consistent with zero intrinsic scatter. In this Letter, we add reverberation mapping masses to the new correlation and find that the systematic offset between the two mass estimators is no longer significant.

## 2. Reverberation Masses and Velocity Dispersions

Ho (1999) and Wandel, Peterson, & Malkan (1999) measure $`M_{}`$ values for 22 Seyfert 1 galaxies using reverberation mapping. Unfortunately, the absorption-line kinematics of these galaxies are not well studied, so we are unable to obtain velocity dispersions for the whole sample. Only seven galaxies have usable published dispersions. The three sources for these dispersions are Nelson & Whittle (1995), Di Nella et al. (1995), and Smith, Heckman, & Illingworth (1990).

For most of these galaxies, the velocity dispersions are difficult to measure. Some are late-type galaxies, so template matching is difficult because of the presence of young stars. In many cases, dilution of the stellar absorption lines by the nonstellar continuum of the AGN is a problem. Dilution does not alter the velocity dispersion of the lines, but it does make them hard to detect. Ideally, we should use spectral regions that are minimally sensitive to template mismatch and to line dilution. The calcium infrared triplet near 8500 Å is preferable to the traditional Mg b $`\lambda `$5170 region (Dressler 1984). In the present paper, we adopt velocity dispersions derived from the calcium triplet region whenever possible.

The study of Terlevich, Díaz, & Terlevich (1990) contains three galaxies with reverberation masses; however, the dispersions measured for many of their other galaxies do not compare well with those from other groups. For example, their dispersions for M33, M32, and M31 are significantly different than the accepted values in their apertures: 77 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ compared with 21 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Kormendy & McClure 1993) for M33, 56 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ compared with $``$ 80 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (van der Marel et al. 1994) for M32, and 137 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ compared with 195 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (van der Marel et al. 1994) for M31. Therefore we exclude their measurements from our analysis.

For their dispersion estimate, Gebhardt et al. (2000b) use the projected, luminosity-weighted value inside the half-light or effective radius of the bulge, which we call the effective dispersion and denote by $`\sigma _e`$. For the AGN sample, we do not have dispersion profiles and cannot perform the same calculation. Consequently, we must use central dispersions. However, based on their sizes, these galaxies have bulge half-light radii of only a few arcseconds (Kotilainen, Ward, & Williger 1993; Baggett, Baggett, & Anderson 1998). These sizes are similar to the typical seeing and extraction window used ($``$2″). Gebhardt et al. (2000b) find that central aperture dispersions measured at this resolution are similar on average to effective dispersions, with a scatter of at most 10%. Thus, the reported dispersion should be a good approximation to the effective dispersion, although a systematic study using the dispersion profile would be worthwhile. When using central dispersions, the most crucial concern is whether the black hole affects the measured dispersion. Assuming typical stellar mass-to-light ratios, the spheres of influence for these black holes are a few tenths of an arcsecond. They should have little effect on the dispersions.

The effective dispersion used in Gebhardt et al. (2000b) assumes edge-on configuration, and since the projected dispersion varies with orientation we must consider whether it needs correction for inclination. This effect may be more important in AGN disk galaxies, where we might expect significant rotation (a rotating galaxy will have a larger projected dispersion edge-on than face-on). Four of the seven galaxies are inclined greater than 45° and are likely to have corrections smaller than their uncertainties. The three galaxies more face-on than 45° are Mrk 590, NGC 4151, and NGC 4593. Based on systems with large bulge fractions, even these would have corrections less than 10% (Gebhardt et al. 2000b); however, better kinematic data on the bulge rotation profiles for a larger sample of AGNs is needed before we fully understand inclination corrections.

Ho (1999) compiled bulge luminosities and bulge-to-total light ratios ($`B/T`$) from three sources. Kotilainen et al. (1993) provide surface photometry and disk–bulge decompositions for 3C 120, Mrk 590, NGC 3227, NGC 4151, and NGC 4593; Granato et al. (1993) provide disk–bulge decompositions for Mrk 590 and NGC 3516; while Baggett et al. (1998) give profiles and decompositions for NGC 3227, NGC 4051, NGC 4151, and NGC 4593. For the galaxies that overlap among the various groups, we find consistent $`B/T`$ values. However, each study uses a de Vaucouleurs profile for the bulge component. If these bulges are more nearly exponential or if the AGN contributes significant light unaccounted for, then the bulge light will have been overestimated.

Table 1 lists the data we have discussed, and Figure 1 plots $`M_{}`$ versus the bulge luminosity and effective dispersion $`\sigma _e`$. The masses from resolved kinematics and the associated least-squares fits come from Gebhardt et al. (2000b). The relation fitted only to the galaxies with spatially resolved kinematics for the $`M_{}`$ – $`\sigma _e`$ correlation is $`M_{}`$ $`=1.2(\pm 0.2)\times 10^8M_{}(\sigma _e/200\text{ }\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)^{3.75(\pm 0.3)}`$. The reverberation masses lie a factor of 5–10 too low in the luminosity plot (black dots), but are much more consistent with the correlation in the $`\sigma _e`$ plot. In the $`\sigma _e`$ relation, the reverberation mapping masses have an average offset of $`0.21`$ ($`\pm 0.13`$) dex and a dispersion of 0.34 dex relative to that average. The scatter (0.30 dex in log $`M_{}`$ at fixed dispersion) is the same regardless of whether or not we include the reverberation mapping masses in the fit, but the slope changes from 3.75 to 3.90 if we include them.

The average uncertainties in M, $`L_B`$, and $`\sigma _e`$ for the reverberation mapping estimates are shown in the bottom corner in Fig. 1. Unfortunately, the uncertainties in reverberation mapping are dominated by systematics that are uncertain or unknown (Wandel et al. 1999) and can be quite large. Since we have only seven reverberation mapping masses, we do not attempt a rigorous statistical analysis including the measurement uncertainties.

## 3. Discussion

The apparent discrepancy between reverberation mapping and dynamical modeling of spatially resolved kinematics arose from a comparison of $`M_{}`$ with bulge luminosities. Since the reverberation mapping masses are consistent with the $`M_{}`$ – $`\sigma _e`$ correlation and not with the $`M_{}`$ – $`L_{B,\mathrm{bulge}}`$ correlation, the discrepancy in the latter is likely due to problems with the use of bulge luminosities, not with estimation of the BH masses. Velocity dispersions are more difficult to measure in AGNs, but we have little reason to suspect that they have systematic errors.

However, it is important to examine the potential complications of both techniques. Sections 3.1 and 3.2 below suggest that the BH masses from resolved stellar kinematics have only small systematic errors but that the BH masses from reverberation mapping may be biased slightly low.

### 3.1. Complications in the Stellar Dynamical Samples

(1) Model limitations were once a concern but are now under control. The current state of the art is to use Schwarzschild’s method (Schwarzschild 1979; Richstone & Tremaine 1988) to construct three-integral models that include galaxy flattening and velocity anisotropy (van der Marel et al. 1998; Gebhardt et al. 2000a; Richstone et al. 2000). The galaxies with stellar kinematical masses in Figure 1a,b all have three-integral models. When such models are fitted to HST data, the errors in $`M_{}`$ are small. However, there is still some concern about whether non-axisymmetric structure affects the masses, and thorough comparisons of the different modeling codes have not yet been carried out.

(2) Selection effects may be present since early BH searches were biased toward objects with unusually high BH masses (the first HST targets were galaxies that showed high central dispersions at ground-based resolution). This bias still persists in the current overall BH census based on stellar-dynamical measurements, but the present sample is large enough to overcome effects from a few galaxies with high BH masses.

(3) It is possible that galaxies contain central concentrations of ordinary dark matter (e. g., stellar remnants) that are included in most BH mass measurements. This concern is prompted by the fact that the radii that we resolve with HST spectroscopy are $`10^2`$ larger than the BLR that is used in reverberation mapping. However, measurements in our Galaxy (Genzel et al. 1997, 2000; Ghez et al. 1998) and in NGC 4258 (Greenhill et al. 1996) probe a small region comparable to that probed by reverberation mapping in other galaxies, and find no suggestion of any dark mass in addition to a BH.

### 3.2. Complications in the Reverberation Mapping Samples

(1) The geometry and orbital distribution of the BLR are poorly known. If, as is often assumed in the AGN unification model (Antonucci 1993), Seyfert 1 nuclei are viewed preferentially face on and if the BLR and the obscuring tori are roughly coplanar, then the inclination correction for reverberation masses would be significant. However, because the thickness of the BLR disk is unknown, the actual correction is uncertain. Nonetheless, if the corrections are factors around 2, then the comparison of these masses in Fig. 1b will improve.

(2) The measured “lag” in reverberation studies is a peculiar moment over the distribution of distances between the central nucleus and the line-emitting gas, and the measured line width is a different peculiar moment over the velocity distribution. These are affected by the adopted weightings, the shape of the continuum fluctuation power spectrum, and the sampling of the monitoring.

(3) Selection effects restrict the BH masses that are currently measurable by reverberation mapping. The timescales of AGN variability scale with luminosity (e.g., Netzer & Peterson 1997) and presumably with mass for Eddington-limited systems. Ongoing studies of slowly-varying, high-luminosity AGNs (Kaspi et al. 2000) and of rapidly-varying, low-luminosity AGNs (Peterson et al. 2000) should remedy this situation in the future.

(4) It is important to consider non-gravitational effects acting on BLR gas. They include radial motions caused by radiation pressure or by mechanical energy from jets. The resulting mass measurement errors could have either sign, but it is most likely that we would overestimate $`M_{}`$ (Krolik 1997).

The following are additional complications that arise when estimating bulge luminosities.

(5) AGNs are commonly associated with starbursts (e. g., Heckman 1999; Sanders 1999). This may cause $`M_{}`$ to look too small in the $`M_{}`$$`L_{B,\mathrm{bulge}}`$ correlation. Although $`M_{}`$ is plotted against blue luminosity, the physical correlation is presumably with bulge mass, and star formation can easily reduce $`M/L_B`$ by a factor of 2 – 4 compared to its value in bulges that are made of old stars. Then the bulge would look too bright for the given $`M_{}`$.

(6) It is possible that the light from the AGN biases the estimate of the bulge light. First, the AGN makes the center of the galaxy look exceptionally bright in poor-quality images, so there is a tendency to assign a Hubble type that is too early if using qualitative visual inspection. If one then uses the loose correlation between Hubble type and bulge-to-disk ratio (Simien & de Vaucouleurs 1986) to estimate bulge luminosities, they will be overestimated. Second, even if one uses disk/bulge decompositions, unless the AGN is modeled separately, it will likely cause an overestimate of the bulge light as well.

## 4. Conclusion

We have shown that masses derived from reverberation mapping are consistent with the relation between BH mass and galaxy velocity dispersion derived from spatially resolved kinematics. Based on a sample of seven Seyfert galaxies, we find that the systematic and random errors in BH masses determined from reverberation mapping are around 0.21 dex and 0.34 dex, respectively. It is remarkable that, despite the large number of possible systematic biases (especially in reverberation mapping), both methods appear to provide consistent and reliable estimators of BH masses. Peterson & Wandel (2000) provide further support of the reliability for the AGN mass estimates by showing a Keplerian relation between line width and time lag. One could even use the $`M_{}\sigma _e`$ correlation to infer properties of the broad-line region; for example, any differences in the AGN masses compared with the correlation may provide insight into the BLR geometry.

The fact that reverberation mapping successfully delivers BH masses offers tremendous hope of getting BH masses in objects that otherwise would not be accessible, namely bright AGNs, including QSOs (e.g., Kaspi et al. 2000), and high-redshift AGNs. The latter hold some hope of probing the time evolution (growth history) of BH mass (e.g., Wandel 1999). Furthermore, the correlation between photoionization and reverberation models (Wandel et al. 1999) offers the possibility of wholesale AGN mass estimates. Future studies aimed at comparing the two mass estimators on the same galaxies are required to confirm both techniques, but the present results are encouraging.

We are grateful for comments from B. Peterson, A. Wandel, J. Krolik, and the referee, K. Anderson. This work was supported by HST grants to the Nukers, GO–02600.01–87A, G06099, and G07388, and by NASA grant NAG5-8238. A.V.F. acknowledges NASA grant NAG5-3556. K.G. is supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01090.01-97A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of the Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA under contract NAS 5-26555.


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# Exclusion of quantum coherence as the origin of the 2D metallic state in high-mobility silicon inversion layers

## Abstract

The temperature and density dependence of the phase coherence time $`\tau _\phi `$ in high-mobility silicon inversion layers was determined from the magnetoresistivity due to weak localization. The upper temperature limit for single-electron quantum interference effects was delineated by comparing $`\tau _\phi `$ with the momentum relaxation time $`\tau `$. A comparison between the density dependence of the borders for quantum interference effects and the strong resistivity drop reveals that theses effects are not related to each other. As the strong resistivity drop occurs in the Drude regime, the apparent metallic behavior can not be caused by quantum coherent effects.

The apparent “metallic” state in two dimensions (2D)  has attracted much attention as it seems to contradict the one parameter scaling theory of Abrahams et al. . Following the confirmation of the “metallic” behavior in several material systems, the question was raised whether the “metallic” state constitutes a new quantum mechanical ground state, or if the resistivity drop towards lower temperature is based on semiclassical (i.e., noncoherent) effects (see  and references therein).

We answer this question for Si-metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) structures, by excluding quantum interference (QI) effects as the origin of the “metallic” state. This is achieved by determining the phase coherence time $`\tau _\phi `$ from the weak localization (WL) behavior and comparing it with the momentum relaxation time $`\tau `$ at different temperatures $`T`$ and densities $`n`$. For $`\tau _\phi >\tau `$ (low-$`T`$ regime), single-electron quantum interference effects occur, whereas for $`\tau _\phi <\tau `$ (high-$`T`$) they do not, as the coherence time is too short to allow electrons a coherent return to their origin. By comparing the phase coherent regime with the “metallic” regime, we find that they are not correlated with each other and that “metallic” behavior exists even without phase coherence. In addition, we dertermine the temperature where $`k_BT=\mathrm{}/\tau `$, which marks the threshold for coherent electron-electron ($`ee`$) interaction effects. Again, no correlation with the “metallic” regime is found.

The $`T`$ dependence of the phase coherence was already investigated in the early 80’s in Si-MOS structures (see ). But due to the lack of the “metallic” state in these low-mobility samples, no appropriate conclusion could be drawn. In recent studies on high-mobility samples with “metallic” behavior, it was shown that the WL has only small effects on $`\rho `$ for GaAs/AlGaAs  and Si/SiGe . Also for Si-MOS structures in the low $`\rho `$ (high $`n`$) regime, the WL contribution is small and it was shown that spin-orbit coupling is not visible for $`\tau _\phi `$ up to 100 ps . But so far, the borders for phase coherence were not determined systematically on a sample with strong “metallic” behavior in order to decide among the possible underlying mechanisms.

Our investigations were performed on two high-mobility Si-MOS samples Si-15 and Si-43 with peak mobilities of $`\mu =\mathrm{31\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ and 20 000 cm2/Vs, respectively. Resistivity and Hall measurements were performed with a four terminal ac-technique at a frequency of 17.17 Hz.

Figure 1 shows the magnetoresistivity $`\rho (B)`$ of sample Si-15 for temperatures between 280 mK and 1.59 K at $`n`$ = $`3.7\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2. The peak in $`\rho (B)`$ can be fitted by the conductivity corrections arising from single-electron coherent backscattering (weak localization) according to

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{xx}=\frac{\alpha g_\nu e^2}{2\pi ^2\mathrm{}}\left[\mathrm{\Psi }\left(\frac{1}{2}+\frac{a}{\tau }\right)\mathrm{\Psi }\left(\frac{1}{2}+\frac{a}{\tau _\phi }\right)\right],$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is the Digamma function; $`a=\mathrm{}/4eBD`$ with $`B`$ the applied perpendicular magnetic field and $`D`$ the diffusion coefficient. The values for $`D`$ and $`\tau `$ were deduced from our Hall and $`\rho `$ measurements, assuming at first that the linear Drude regime holds (this restriction will be omitted later on). The prefactor $`g_\nu =2`$ describes the valley degeneracy for (100) Si-MOS and $`\alpha `$ depends on the ratio of intra-valley to inter-valley scattering rates and should lie between 0.5 and 1 . We found values between 0.55 and 0.8, i.e., inside the expected range. The solid lines in Fig. 1 are least square fits of Eq. (1) to the data.

For sample Si-15 the WL-peak was followed down to small $`n`$ of about $`1.5\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2, near the “metal-insulator” transition at $`n_c0.8\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2. At still smaller $`n`$, the rising contact resistance decreases the signal-to-noise ratio so that the WL cannot be evaluated any more. Sample Si-43 showed a similar behavior.

The temperature dependence of the phase relaxation time $`\tau _\phi `$ and of the momentum relaxation time $`\tau `$ is depicted for sample Si-15 in Fig. 2 for four different $`n`$ between $`1.93\times 10^{11}`$ and $`1.03\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2. At low $`T`$, $`\tau _\phi `$ exceeds $`\tau `$ by nearly up to two orders of magnitude. But since $`\tau _\phi `$ strongly decays with temperature, $`\tau _\phi `$ and $`\tau `$ cross each other at higher $`T`$. When $`\tau _\phi <\tau `$ the electrons can not return to their origin within the phase coherence time and no single-electron QI is possible. Thus the temperature $`T_q`$ at which $`\tau _\phi =\tau `$ defines an upper limit for single-electron quantum interference. This definition is in agreement with our experimental observation that the WL-peak vanishes just below $`T_q`$. A very similar behavior was found in sample Si-43, where we traced the WL-peak for $`n`$ between $`5.4\times 10^{11}`$ and $`3.5\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2 and up to a maximum $`T`$ of 10.7 K at high $`n`$.

For the determination of $`\tau _\phi `$, we used $`D`$ and $`\tau `$ as calculated from the Hall and $`\rho `$ measurements, assuming the Drude regime to hold. This is *a priori* not justified, because $`\tau `$ might remain at it’s “high”-$`T`$ value and the strong changes in $`\rho (T)`$ may originate from quantum interference effects. Although we know, that weak localization gives only small contributions to $`\rho (T)`$, there might be additional corrections based on quantum interference. In order to test the above results, we have thus evaluated additionally $`T_q`$ and $`\tau `$ directly from the WL-peak without the use of $`D`$, i.e., without assuming the Drude regime to hold. The phase coherence length $`\mathrm{}_\phi =\sqrt{D\tau _\phi }`$ follows directly from a fit of the curvature and width of $`\rho (B)`$ near $`B=0`$, independent of $`D`$ and $`\tau `$.

The mean free path $`\mathrm{}`$ is then obtained from the height of the WL-peak which is proportional to $`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{}_\phi /\mathrm{})`$. From $`\mathrm{}_\phi (T)`$ and $`\mathrm{}(T)`$, we find the crossing point $`T_q`$ at which $`\mathrm{}_\phi =\mathrm{}`$. For $`n=3.7\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 we find, e.g., 2.1 K, which is practically the same as obtained from the crossing of $`\tau _\phi `$ and $`\tau `$, i.e., 2.2 K (see Fig. 2). This shows that the temperature limit $`T_q`$ does not depend on the assumption that the Drude regime is effective and can be deduced solely from the decrease of the WL peak towards higher $`T`$. Knowing $`\mathrm{}`$, we can deduce a value for $`\tau `$ from $`\tau =\mathrm{}/v_F`$, with $`v_F`$ being the Fermi velocity. E.g., for $`n=3.7\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2, we obtain a value between 3 and 5 ps at $`T=0.3`$ K, depending on the prefactor $`\alpha `$. This range for $`\tau `$ is in good agreement with the Drude value of $`\tau =2.85`$ ps as deduced from $`\rho (T)`$ at low $`T`$ ($`<2`$ K) and far away from the “high”-$`T`$ value of 0.45 ps (at $`T40`$ K in Fig. 2). An estimate of $`\tau `$ exclusively from the weak localization thus leads to the same value as it is obtained assuming the Drude relation $`\sigma =ne^2\tau /m^{}`$. This consistency directly proves that the metallic state indeed obeys Drude behavior.

According to theory, the dependence of $`\tau _\phi `$ on conductance and temperature for inelastic $`ee`$ scattering in the limit of small momentum transfer (low $`T`$) can be described by $`\tau _\phi =\mathrm{}g/k_BT\mathrm{ln}(g/2)`$, where g is the dimensionless conductance in units of $`e^2/h`$ . This relation is strictly valid only for $`g1`$. For the case that $`g`$ becomes of the order of 1, the term $`g/\mathrm{ln}(g/2)`$ should be substituted by something of the order of unity . By fitting $`g/\mathrm{ln}(g/2)`$ at $`10g100`$ we obtained the second order polynomial $`f(g)=3.78+0.253g0.00036g^2`$ and used this in the above expression.

We find that the calculated $`\tau _\phi (T)`$ has a smaller slope than the experimentally determined one. In addition, the calculated values are nearly a factor of 10 larger than the experimentally determined ones, even for $`g>10`$. The experimental data can be fitted much better with a $`T^p`$ law (solid lines in Fig. 2). It seems that the electron system is not in the pure inelastic $`ee`$ scattering limit with small momentum transfer. The $`T^p`$ dependence with $`p>1`$ points to a $`T^2`$ contribution resulting from $`ee`$ scattering processes with large momentum transfer (pure metal case) . We find $`p`$ between 1.1 and 1.7, depending on $`n`$, similar to earlier values in Si-MOS (see  and references therein). For our purpose, it is important that the intersection of the extrapolated $`T^p`$ dependence with the momentum relaxation time $`\tau `$ gives a well defined value for the temperature limit $`T_q`$ for single-electron QI (see Fig. 2).

Figure 3 shows the main feature of the “metallic” behavior in Si-MOS structures, i.e., the strong drop in $`\rho (T)`$. The temperature limit $`T_q`$ for single-electron quantum effects is marked in Fig. 3 by asterisks, connected by a curve to guide the eye. Depending on density, $`T_q`$ lies between 2 and 10 K. At high density, $`T_q`$ decreases with decreasing $`n`$, but when $`n`$ drops further $`T_q`$ returns to higher values. This retrograde behavior is the consequence of the strong decrease of $`\tau `$ in the low $`n`$ range, which moves the crossing of $`\tau _\phi `$ and $`\tau `$ to higher $`T`$ as can be seen in Fig. 2 for $`n=1.93\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2.

An important conclusion can be drawn by comparing the overall $`T`$ dependencies in Fig. 3. The strong drop in $`\rho (T)`$ occurs for low $`n`$ between 0.6 and 2 K and shifts with increasing $`n`$ to much higher $`T`$. For the highest $`n`$ of $`3.2\times 10^{12}`$ cm-2 the decrease in $`\rho `$ lies completely above 10 K. This behavior does not correspond to the observed dependence of the QI threshold $`T_q`$ which first decreases and then increases with increasing $`n`$. For $`n>2.2\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 the strong drop in $`\rho (T)`$ takes place entirely above the single-electron QI limit $`T_q`$ and thus must be caused by other effects.

We further indicate the temperature $`T_{ee}`$ in Fig. 3, which is defined by $`\mathrm{}/\tau =k_BT_{ee}`$ and gives an upper limit for the occurrence of QI corrections due to $`ee`$ interaction . Again, the run of the temperature limit $`T_{ee}`$ does not coincide at all with the density and temperature behavior of the strong change in $`\rho (T)`$. We find again that for large $`n`$ the strong drop in resistivity is above the quantum correction border $`T_{ee}`$ and thus the “metallic” state can not be caused by $`ee`$ induced QI effects either.

As there is no room for QI effects at high densities, the strong $`\rho (T)`$ drop has to be generated by semi-classical effects. But even at smaller densities, where the resistivity drop is quite similar, it is not expected that its origin is suddenly changing from non-QI to QI. A strong influence of semi-classical effects should extend even to much lower densities.

On the other hand, negative magnetoresistance due to weak localization was found for $`T<T_q`$ at all densities, demonstrating the existence of small single-electron QI effects at low $`T`$. This behavior is in contradiction to the suggested superconductivity of the “metallic” state , where no single-electron QI is expected.

We also indicate the relations $`E_F=k_BT`$, $`E_F=4k_BT`$, and $`E_F=16k_BT`$ in Fig. 3, which are related to electron degeneracy. It is worth to note that the bulk of the resistivity changes takes place along the $`E_F=4k_BT`$ line for a very large density range which in itself favors a semi-classical explanation for the strong resistivity drop. In addition, we find that the equality $`E_F=16k_BT`$ is relatively close to the low-$`T`$ saturation of $`\rho (T)`$, although small changes persist to even lower $`T`$.

As the strong $`\rho (T)`$ drop at high densities is caused by semi-classical effects, we discuss several mechanisms. For p-Si/SiGe samples, with small changes of about 10% in $`\rho (T)`$, it has been shown that the “metallic” behavior can be explained by temperature dependent screening effects for impurity scattering . But as in the Si-MOS system, the observed changes in $`\rho (T)`$ amount up to a factor 10, the question is how large the contribution of screening can be. Das Sarma and Hwang have calculated numerically that indeed changes by an order of magnitude may occur in $`\rho (T)`$ . Very recent calculations of Gold  indicate that exchange/correlation and multiple scattering effects dominate the screening behavior for small $`n`$ and that the large ratio of up to 10 in $`\rho (B_c)/\rho (B=0)`$ in parallel magnetic field can also be explained, where $`B_c`$ is the field for complete spin polarization . In agreement with the expected screening behavior, a linear $`T`$ dependence in $`\rho (T)`$ has been observed in high mobility Si-MOS samples in the intermediate $`T`$ range at low $`n`$ .

The scattering of electrons at charged hole traps in the oxide layer of Si-MOS is also able to explain a strong $`T`$ and $`B`$ dependence of $`\rho `$ in the frame of semi-classical effects . The filling of hole traps and thus the efficiency of scattering depends strongly on the Fermi energy $`E_F`$ which depends on $`n`$ and $`T`$. The low-$`T`$ saturation of $`\rho `$ in the “‘metallic” regime is in this model an interplay between the neutralization of the charged traps (for $`E_F`$ above trap energy) and the $`T`$-independent scattering at low temperatures by surface roughness and residual impurities. In a recent paper, it was shown that the density of defect states on the Si/SiO2 interface has a large influence on the $`\rho (T)`$ behavior of the system .

As a third mechanism also band splitting may give rise to strong variations in $`\rho (T)`$. In p-GaAs/AlGaAs, temperature dependent interband scattering  and anomalous magneto-oscillations  have been observed in the “metallic” state. These effects are related to the strong spin-orbit interaction together with the inversion asymmetric confinement potential, which induces a splitting of the upper valence band. But spin-orbit interaction is very weak in Si-based structures  and does not lead to large changes in $`\rho (T)`$ in our system. Recently, a small valley splitting at magnetic fields $`B0`$ was extracted from precise Shubnikov-de Haas investigations . It was found that the mobilities in the two valleys are very similar and thus cannot cause large changes in $`\rho (T)`$ either.

For the large range of carrier densities investigated in our Si-MOS structures, we attribute the strong “metallic” decay of $`\rho (T)`$ both to carrier screening and impurity scattering effects. The metallic state is observed over nearly two orders of magnitude in electron density and thus the relative strength of these different mechanisms will vary. Valley splitting is ruled out as the mechanism causing the large drop in $`\rho (T)`$.

In conclusion, we have answered the fundamental question about the origin of the“metallic” state by showing that the strong resistivity drop exists without the presence of quantum effects. The borders for phase coherence were deduced from the temperature dependence of the weak localization at different densities. For densities above $`2.2\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2, the decrease of the resistivity into the “metallic” regime takes place in the absence of phase coherence. Also disorder induced quantum interference effects due to electron-electron interaction cannot be the origin of the “metallic” state as the boundary $`\mathrm{}/\tau =k_BT_{ee}`$ is not related with the resistivity drop either. Thus semi-classical effects are responsible for the low resistivity state over a very large carrier density range in the Si-MOS system, where the temperature dependence of the resistivity is the strongest of all 2D systems.

We thank B. L. Altshuler and A. Gold for stimulating discussions. The work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Project P13439, INTAS (99-1070), RFBR, NATO (PST.CLG.976208, NSF (0077825), Programs ‘Physics of solid state nanostructures’, ‘Statistical physics’ and ‘Integration’


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# Untitled Document

Using Multiple RISC CPUs in Parallel to Study Charm Quarks

by

C. Stoughton

Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois 60510 USA

and

D. J. Summers

Department of Physics and Astronomy

University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS 38677 USA

ABSTRACT

We have integrated a system of 16 RISC CPUs to help reconstruct and analyze a 1.3 Terabyte data set of 400 million high energy physics interactions. These new CPUs provided an affordable means of processing a very large data set. The data was generated using a hadron beam and a fixed target at Fermilab Experiment 769. Signals were recorded on tape from particles created in or decaying near the target and passing though a magnetic spectrometer. Because all the interactions were independent, each CPU could completely reconstruct any interaction without reference to other CPUs. Problems of this sort are ideal for multiple processors. In the offline reconstuction system, we used Exabyte 8mm video tape drives with an I/O capacity of 7 Terabytes per year and a storage capacity of 2.3 Gigabytes per tape. This reduced tape mounts to one or two per day rather than one or two per hour as would be the case with 9-track tapes. The ETHERNETTM network used to link the CPUs and has an I/O capacity of 15 Terabytes per year. The RISC CPUs came in the form of commercially supported workstations with little memory and no graphics to minimize cost. Each 25 MHz MIPS R3000 RISC CPU processed data 20 times faster than 16MHz Motorola 68020 CPUs that were also used. About 8000 hours of processing was needed to reconstruct the data set. A sample of thousands of fully reconstructed particles containing a charm quark has been produced.

I. INTRODUCTION

The computing needs of many experiments in high energy particle physics can be met using multiple CPUs working in parallel. Typical experiments record $`10^6`$ to $`10^{11}`$ independent events. The results of the computation performed on one event do not affect other events. Therefore, it is straight forward to adapt these problems to a parallel processing environment .

Experiment 769  at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) studies the production of particles containing the charm quark. During this experiment, 400 million interactions were recorded at the Tagged Particle Spectrometer  on 9000 nine track tapes. The system of UNIX workstations that we describe here performs two compute intensive tasks on this data set. First, the event reconstruction algorithm, which requires three-fourths of a CPU second per event, reconstructs particle trajectories, momenta, and type. Second, a filtering algorithm inspects each event and retains candidates that could contain charm particles. We could have performed both tasks at once but chose instead to write all of the reconstructed events on serial media during the first pass of the data. Then, we read the reconstructed events and filtered during the second pass.

High energy particle physics is often similar to gold mining. A miner sifts through an enormous amount of rock to find specks of gold. A physicist often has to examine an enormous number of particle interactions to find rare events. In E769, a beam of 250 GeV/c pions, kaons, and protons interacted with 26 metal foils. A 9 month run produced a yield of over 2 billion interactions, of which 400 million were selected and recorded. Out of these interactions, we have been able to reconstruct thousands of particles containing the charm quark . Typical decays include the two modes shown in Figure 1,

$`D^0(c\overline{u})K^{}(s\overline{u})\pi ^+(u\overline{d})`$ and

$`D^+(c\overline{d})K^{}(s\overline{u})\pi ^+(u\overline{d})\pi ^+(u\overline{d})`$.

Charm particles are relatively massive and long lived. We calculated the mass from the measured four-momentum of decay particles. The long charm lifetime leads to a decay length of a few millimeters. The decay length in each event is the difference between two positions: the location of the interaction of the beam particle with the target foil and the location of the decay of the charm particle. If the mass and decay length were calculated as each event happened, it would be easy to select only the few thousand containing charm quarks. However, it is very expensive to calculate these quantities in real time. We found it easier to selectively record 400 million events out of 2 billion interactions with quantities constructed directly from the analog signals of the detector. This selection was based on the amount of energy that is produced transverse to the beam direction, since events containing charm quarks will have more transverse energy than the more frequent events with the lighter up, down, and strange quarks. This selection yielded 1.3 terabytes of event data, which were written on 9,000 nine track tapes with a high bandwidth data acquisition system . We later copied these data to the 8mm format. The rapidly improving price/performance of some types of offline computing allowed us to play back these tapes and completely reconstruct the events.

II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

We wanted to speed the extraction of charm events from this data. To do this a system of Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processors was devised. This supplemented a large number of Fermilab Advanced Computer Program Motorola 68020 microprocessors (ACP-I)  already shared by many Fermilab experiments. The idea was to build a dedicated system for one project which would avoid the delays and expense of a general purpose computer which could support scores of software packages and users.

An in-depth market survey was performed and then vendors were asked to bid on a fully competitive basis. This led to the purchase of one Silicon Graphics (SGI)  4D/240S compute server by the Fermilab Physics Section which was used by E769 and other experiments. Three additional SGI 4D/240S compute servers dedicated to E769 were subsequently purchased. The network architecture of this system of compute servers is shown in Figure 2.

Each SGI 4D/240S utilizes four 25 MHz processors developed by MIPS Computer Systems, the MIPS R3000 RISC CPU and MIPS R3010 Floating Point Unit. The four processors in one of the 4D/240S servers share 16MB of memory. The other three servers each have 8MB of shared local memory. A dedicated bus is used to connect processors and memory within the compute server. We tested the performance of the shared memory by measuring the performance of a task when it is running alone, and then with three other tasks on the compute server. A performance degradation of a few per cent was noticed in the first job run on the 4D/240S when three more jobs ran concurrently. Characteristics of the processor and memory systems are in Table 1. Table 2 compares its performance to Fermilab’s ACP-I Motorola 68020 processors. We had nine key goals. The SGI systems solved our nine goals as follows:

* GOAL. We needed enough CPU power to complete the event reconstruction in a year. Additional delays would dilute the scientific interest in the results of this data set. We needed the processing power of an additional 300 Motorola 68020 CPUs. Our goal was get this processing power and to simultaneously minimize the cost of reconstructing an event.

SOLUTION. The SGI system provided the raw CPU power that we needed to find charm quarks in a timely fashion at a price about 50 times lower than a traditional mainframe, and three times lower than the cost of additional ACP-I systems. Anything that needlessly added cost (e.g. graphics displays or extra memory) was rejected.
* GOAL. Commercial availability: We wanted to minimize designing, building and maintaining the computer hardware and operating system.

SOLUTION. The SGI system was commercially supported and incurred little in the way of engineering and self-maintenance costs. A three year software and hardware maintenance contract was bundled with each compute server.
* GOAL. We needed robust, optimizing FORTRAN and C compilers. It would have been difficult to translate the 58,000 lines of the E769 FORTRAN reconstruction program into assembly code by hand. The assembly code would have been nearly impossible to maintain even if it could be produced. We also wished to avoid debugging a FORTRAN compiler.

SOLUTION. The MIPS corporation took the unusual approach of developing their high level language compilers and hardware in parallel. RISC compilers in general must be able to overlap instructions in order to take advantage of the hardware. For example, during a MIPS floating point divide 11 other instructions can also be executed . MIPS brought out excellent FORTRAN and C compilers at the same time they brought out their RISC chips. SGI provided and supported versions of these compilers. FORTRAN licenses were purchased for the two compute servers that were used for software development.
* GOAL. Data Throughput: Moving 1.3 terabytes of input data and an equal amount of output data to and from processors over a period of a year requires an average I/O rate of 85 kilobytes per second. The data had to be read from the input media, distributed to the processors, collected, and written to the output media.

SOLUTION. The data throughput was provided by Exabyte 8mm tape drives  for the input and output data streams. ETHERNETTM provided a network data path between servers. Small Computer System Interfaces (SCSI) were used to move data to and from the tape drives. The I/O rate of an Exabyte 8mm drive is 210 kByte/sec on the SGI 4D/240S, about a factor of five faster than necessary for an E769 reconstruction input tape. For a comparison of various media characteristics see Table 3. A single ETHERNETTM can move 15 terabytes per year given a rate of 0.5 MB/s. This exceeded our minimal I/O requirement by a factor of six. Typically a CPU processed a 4kb data event for $`\text{“sevenrm3}/\text{“sevenrm4}`$ of a second. During this time no I/O was required.
* GOAL. Convenience: For operational simplicity, we wanted to limit tape mounting to a few short periods per day. This avoids having to run shifts 24 hours per day to load tapes.

SOLUTION. If we had used nine track tapes directly, the system of compute servers would have required over 30 tape mounts per day to process 6,000 input and output tapes over a year. To avoid this bottleneck, we used the Fermilab tape copy facility to transfer data to the 8mm media. Each 8mm tape can hold 2.3 Gigabytes of data, or up to 13 nine track tapes. This decoupled the large number of nine track tape mounts from the continuous data flow required by the compute servers and reduced the media cost for the reconstructed data by a factor of 25. We worked with SGI to adapt the Exabyte 8mm tape drives to the 4D/240S. Our data format has variable length blocks up to 65 kilobytes. Before purchasing the system we copied an E769 nine track data tape to an 8mm cartridge. By reading this tape on an SGI system we verified that the software drivers included in the operating system handle large variable length blocks. We purchased the first tape drive from SGI to ensure system integrity. The remaining drives were supplied by third party vendors.
* GOAL. Software to distribute the events to CPUs and collect results: The compute tasks can be performed in parallel by having a complete copy of the reconstruction or filtering algorithm on each of many parallel CPUs. The data flow, process scheduling, and bookkeeping tasks require careful software design.

SOLUTION. The Fermilab Advanced Computer Program’s Cooperative Process Software (CPS)  was used to distribute events and collect results. This was the first use of CPS in a physics experiment and it was well supported.
* GOAL. Software to communicate with VAX/VMS computers: The Fermilab Physics Section’s Local Area VAX Cluster (LAVC) is an interactive system of VAXstations which supports the general computing needs of physicists at Fermilab. The LAVC is shown in Figure 2. The FORTRAN code for our reconstruction and filtering algorithms was developed and maintained on this cluster.

SOLUTION. The SGI computers support TCP/IP communications. Multinet  software was in use at Fermilab, and this was installed on the VAX/VMS systems that we used, to provide them with TCP/IP communications.
* GOAL. Sufficient memory for efficient CPU use: 1.3 MB of memory was needed per CPU during execution to contain the E769 reconstruction program and required data without paging to disk.

SOLUTION. A total of 8 MB of memory was put on three of the SGI computers and 16 MB on the fourth. The 8MB computers thus had 2 MB per CPU which allowed the 1.3 MB E769 reconstruction program to run without paging, even after the operating system’s memory usage. Excessive memory can add substantially to the cost of a system. To minimize our memory requirements the reconstruction and filtering algorithms were run as separate passes through the data.
* GOAL. We needed about 5 gigabytes of disk to store user programs and intermediate data.

SOLUTION. We wished to try to reserve the bandwidth of the SCSI buses for Exabyte 8mm tape drives. To do this we had SGI put one four-channel Enhanced Small Disk Interface (ESDI) in three of the compute servers and two in the fourth. As shown in Figure 2 all system disks are EDSI as well as seven user disks on the first compute server. Five SCSI disks are also used. All disks are $`5\text{“sevenrm1}/\text{“sevenrm4}^{\prime \prime }`$. Many of the disks included a 5 year warranty. This greatly lowers the life cycle cost of a disk. Network File System (NFSTM) software is used to share disks between the different compute servers.

III. SOFTWARE

The compute servers ran the IRIX operating system, which is the Silicon Graphics implementation of UNIX, based on System V.3 with BSD 4.3 enhancements. IRIX is fully symmetric, allowing each process to run on any of the processors within one of the compute servers. The IRIX operating system managed CPU scheduling automatically.

A good FORTRAN-77 compiler was an essential software tool for our application, since the algorithms contain 58,000 lines of FORTRAN. The MIPS FORTRAN compiler is reliable, and we had little trouble porting our code from the VAX/VMS environment. The three optimization levels are –O0 (no optimization), –O1 (default, basic optimizations), and –O2 (global optimization). In Table 4 we compare the performance of one R3000 processor at these three optimization levels. The source line debugger (dbx) and profiler (pixie) utilities were useful in porting and optimizing this code.

We kept the sixteen processors in this system busy by using the CPS package mentioned above to distribute events among the processors. The structure of one job is shown in Figure 3. Each of the bubbles represents one process on a compute server. There were three different kinds of tasks: input, output, and compute. The input and output tasks were each carried out by a single process. The compute task was either the event reconstruction algorithm or the event filtering algorithm. This compute-intensive part of the application was carried out by sixteen processes distributed among the four compute servers. One additional process, the job manager, synchronized the work of these processes.

The input process read the data stream from tape and sent blocks of events to each compute process. It then waited until one of the compute processes became available. The compute process received the event block, performed the event reconstruction or event filtering algorithm to generate an output event block, sent this block to the output process, and then signaled the input process that it was available. The output process polled the compute processes, received data from each process as it become available, and wrote it to tape or disk.

To keep the system busy full time while we were running the reconstruction algorithm, we used two pairs of tape drives. One pair had the input and output tapes for the active job, and the second pair of drives contained the tapes for the next job. The physicist on shift who determined which data to process and monitored the progress of the event reconstruction needed to attend to the system only two or three times daily. This avoided the costs associated with 24-hour operator coverage, and kept the system utilization above 95%, comparable to batch mainframe utilization. System failures were infrequent and caused no appreciable loss of time.

After the event reconstruction was completed we used the same system to reduce the data sample from 400 million reconstructed events to the few thousand events containing charm quarks. Filtering algorithms select events with charm quarks and reject events that do not contain charm quarks. We performed this filtering in two passes. In the first pass we reduced the data set with a general filter algorithm. It selected events containing a pair of particle tracks intersecting at a point downstream of the primary interaction point. This first stage reduced the number of events by a factor of 15, leaving just under 30 million events for the second filtering pass.

The most significant difference between the event reconstruction task and the filtering task was the number of compute cycles required for each event. The characteristics of the two jobs are summarized in Table 5. For the filtering task, we were not able to keep all sixteen of the processors busy with a single input data stream, since the I/O rate is limited to 210 kByte/sec for a single Exabyte 8mm tape drive. We split the filtering task into two concurrent data streams, using each stream to feed eight processors. The ETHERNETTM connection between servers was able to handle the aggregate bandwidth of 292 kByte/sec during filtering.

A second, and related, difference was with tape mounts. Since each 8mm cartridge was filtered in three hours (instead of the ten hours required for event reconstruction) we used additional tape drives to hold the tapes waiting for execution. With all the tape drives loaded, the system ran the filtering task unattended for over 12 hours. A final difference was with the output data stream. Since the amount of data was reduced by a factor of 15 in the filtering task, we were able to write the output to separate disk files. Once a day, these files were copied to an output tape to free up disk space.

After the first stage of filtering the reduced data set fit on 23 8mm cartridges. The next stage of data filtering used criteria specific to the different charm particles and decay modes that we are studying. We ran different filtering algorithms on the reduced data set to extract the final event samples. For these final filtering stages we have been using an automatic tape loader  which has two Exabyte 8mm tape drives and slots for 54 8mm cartridges in a carousel. These stages of the data filtering algorithms also ran in the CPS environment. The automatic tape mounts allowed us to scan and filter the complete data set without intervention. Different teams of physicists have developed, tested, and run new filtering algorithms on the complete filtered data set in a matter of days.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

One year after the arrival of the 16 RISC CPUs in July 1989, the reconstruction of the 400 million E769 events was completed, and the physics analysis  of thousands of particles with charm quarks was well under way. This was the first time UNIX/RISC computers were used for such a large data set in High Energy Physics. The affordable compute power in workstations could be exploited because our processing can be broken down into tasks which process independent events. The I/O bandwidth of ETHERNETTM was sufficient to distribute events. The operational expense of running shifts 24 hours a day to load tapes was avoided by using Exabytes.

The 58,000 line program used to reconstruct E769 data is now serving as a benchmark to track the rapidly improving cost performance of workstations (see Table 6). Given this rapid progress, it is often prudent to buy a system just in time and bring it on-line quickly.

V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank D. Green, L. Lederman, C. Kastner, S. Bracker, C. Johnstone, M. Isely, J. Pfister, R. Sidwell, L. Lueking, M. Streetman, G. Luste, B. Yeltsin, and P. Karchin for their contributions to this effort. The majority of this work was performed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., under contract DE-AC02-76CHO3000 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This work was also supported by the U. S. Department of Energy (DE-FG05-91ER40622) and the National Research Council of Canada.

REFERENCES

* ETHERNET is a trademark of the Xerox Corporation. NFS is a trademark of SUN Microsystems.
* Pioneering work in the use of multiple processors has been done by the Fermilab ACP group  and also at SLAC (see Paul F. Kunz et al., Experience using the 168/E Microprocessor for Off-line Data Analysis, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{27}`$ (1980) 582).
* E769 Collaborators. CBPF-Rio de Janeiro, Fermilab, Mississippi, Northeastern, Toronto, Tufts, Wisconsin, and Yale.
* B. H. Denby et al. (E516), Inelastic and Elastic Photoproduction of J/$`\psi `$(3097), Phys. Rev. Lett. $`\underset{¯}{52}`$ (1984) 795;

J. R. Raab et al. (E691), Measurement of the $`D^+`$, $`D^0`$, and $`D__\mathrm{S}^+`$ Lifetimes, Phys. Rev. $`\underset{¯}{D37}`$ (1988) 2391;

J. C. Anjos et al. (E691), Measurement of D$`{}_{}{}^{+}{}_{_\mathrm{S}}{}^{}`$ Decays and Cabibbo-Suppressed D+ Decays, Phys. Rev. Lett. $`\underset{¯}{60}`$ (1988) 897;

J. C. Anjos et al. (E691), A Study of $`D^0`$$`\overline{D^0}`$ Mixing from Fermilab E-691, Phys. Rev. Lett. $`\underset{¯}{60}`$ (1988) 1239;

J. C. Anjos et al. (E691), Measurement of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c^+`$ Lifetime, Phys. Rev. Lett. $`\underset{¯}{60}`$ (1988) 1379;

J. C. Anjos et al. (E691), Measurement of the Form-Factors in the Decay, $`D^+\overline{K}^0e^+\nu _e`$, Phys. Rev. Lett. $`\underset{¯}{65}`$ (1990) 2630.
* D. Errede et al., Hadroproduction of Charm at Fermilab E769, $`25^{th}`$ International Conf. on High Energy Physics, Singapore, 2-8 Aug. 1990.
* C. Gay and S. Bracker, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{34}`$ (1987) 870;
R. Vignani et al., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{34}`$ (1987) 756;
S. Hansen et al., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{34}`$ (1987) 1003;
Mark Bernett et al., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{34}`$ (1987) 1047;
R. Hance et al., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. $`\underset{¯}{34}`$ (1987) 878.
* I. Gaines et al., The ACP Multiprocessor System at Fermilab, Proc. of the International Conf. on Computing in High Energy Physics, Asilomar, USA (2–6 Feb. 1987) 323; FERMILAB-Conf-87/21.

J. Biel et al., Software for the ACP Multiprocessor System, Proc. of the International Conf. on Computing in High Energy Physics, Asilomar, USA (2–6 Feb. 1987) 331; FERMILAB-Conf-87/22.
* Silicon Graphics (SGI), 2011 N Shoreline, Mountain View, CA 94039
Digital Equipment (DEC), 146 Main St., Maynard, MA 01754
Sony Microsystems, 645 River Oaks Parkway, San Jose, CA 95134
MIPS Computer Systems, 950 DeGuigne Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Hewlett-Packard/Apollo, 3000 Hanover St., Palo Alto, CA 94304
IBM, Research Park, Suite 106, Starkville, MS 39759
SUN Microsystems, 2550 Garcia Ave., Mountain View, CA 94043
Cray Research, 655 Lone Oak Dr., Eagan, MN 55121
* Gerry Kane, MIPS RISC Architecture, Prentice Hall (1989) 7–12.
* Exabyte Corp., 1745 38th Street, Boulder, CO 80301.
* Joe Biel, Mike Isely, Mark Fishler, Chip Kaliher and Matt Fausey, ACP Cooperative Processes User’s Manual, Fermilab GA0006, 19 Nov. 1990.
* TGV Inc., 603 Mission St., Santa Cruz, CA 95060
* IGM Data Autoloader Division, 4041 Home Rd., Bellingham, WA 98226
* System Performance Evaluation Cooperative (SPEC) c/o Waterside Associates, 39510 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite 350, Fremont, CA 94538.

TABLES

Processor: Central Processor  R3000   FP Processor  R3010   FP Data Format  IEEE 754, 32– and 64–bit formats   Registers  32 CPU, 32 FP (single precision)   Word Length  32 bits   Clock Speed  25 MHz  Cache Memory: Cache Type  Write-back   Cache Size  64 KB instruction     64 KB Data (1st level)     256 KB Data (2nd level)   Write Buffer  4 words deep   Read Buffer  16 words deep   Processor Bus BW  64 MB/sec sustained  CPU Memory: Size  8MB (16 MB on one server)   Maximum allowed  128 MB   Bandwidth  64 MB/sec sustained  Virtual Memory:   2 GB per process  MPLink Bus: Width  32 bit address; 64 bit data   Bandwidth  64 MB/sec sustained    Table 1. Characteristics of Silicon Graphics 4D/240S processors. Each SGI 4D/240S contains four R3000 central processing units and four R3010 floating point units with local caches and shared main memory.
|  | CPU | CPU/FPU | Clock | Instruction | Data | E769 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | Maker |  | MHz | Cache | Cache | sec/event |
| ACP-I | Motorola | 68020/68881 | 16 | 256 bytes | 0 | 18.01 |
| ACP-I | Motorola | 68020/68882 | 16 | 256 bytes | 0 | 15.32 |
| SGI 4D/240S | MIPS | R3000/R3010 | 25 | 64kb | 320kb | 0.76 |

Table 2. A comparison of SGI 4D/240S and Fermilab ACP I computers. The time shown is that required to run the E769 particle reconstruction benchmark on one CPU. The Motorola 68882 is a faster version of the Motorola 68881 floating point chip. Concurrent execution of some floating point instructions are allowed in the 68882 and not allowed in the 68881.

| Tape Type | Length | Capacity | $/tape | $/Terabyte | Tapes/ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  |  |  |  | Terabyte |
| 8mm Video | 106m | 2.3 GB | $4.25 | $ 1848 | 435 |
| 4mm DAT | 60m | 1.2 GB | $7.79 | $ 6492 | 833 |
| IBM 3480 | 165m | 0.22 GB | $4.60 | $20909 | 4545 |
| 9-track | 732m | 0.16 GB | $9.31 | $58188 | 6250 |

Table 3. A Comparison of Storage Media. The 8mm, 9-track, and 3480 tape prices are from the Fermilab stockroom catalog. The 4mm DAT price is from the New York Times, 20 Jan. 1991, page 31.

| Optimization Level: | Time: |
| --- | --- |
| –O0 (no optimization) | 1.45 seconds/E769 event |
| –O1 (default optimization) | 1.09 seconds/E769 event |
| –O2 (global optimization) | 0.76 seconds/E769 event |

Table 4. MIPS R3000 at different optimization levels. The time shown is that required to run the E769 particle reconstruction benchmark on a single CPU of an SGI 4D/240 computer.

| Processing Task | Reconstruction | Filtering |
| --- | --- | --- |
| CPU Time/Event | 0.76 seconds | 0.07 seconds |
| \# Input Events | 400 $`\times 10^6`$ | 400 $`\times 10^6`$ |
| Average Input Event Size | 3.2 kByte | 1.2 kByte |
| \# Processors per Data Stream | 16 | 8 |
| Input Bandwidth | 67 kByte/sec | 137 kByte/sec |
| \# Output Events | 400 $`\times 10^6`$ | 27 $`\times 10^6`$ |
| Average Output Event Size | 1.2 kByte | 1.2 kByte |
| Output Bandwidth | 25 kByte/sec | 9 kByte/sec |
| \# Concurrent Data Streams | 1 | 2 |
| Aggregate Bandwidth | 92 kByte/sec | 292 kByte/sec |

Table 5. Comparison of event reconstruction and filtering tasks. The throughput requirements are more demanding for the filtering task, so we used two independent data streams to keep the entire system efficiently utilized.

|  |  |  | Cache | Write | Main |  |  | E769 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  | CPU | Memory | Through | Memory | SPEC- | E769 | Normal- |
| COMPUTER  | CPU | Clock | I+D+2nd | Buffer | Speed. | marks | sec/ | ized to |
|  | Type | MHz | kByte | Depth | MB/sec |  | event | 25MHz |
| SGI Crimson S | R4000 | 50 | 8+8+1024 | N/A | 400 | 70. |  |  |
| SGI 4D/35S | R3000 | 36 | 64+64 | 11 | 97 | 31. | 0.53 | 0.76 |
| SGI INDIGO | R3000 | 33 | 32+32 | 11 | 91 | 26. | 0.60 | 0.79 |
| SGI 4D/25S | R3000 | 20 | 64+32 | 1 | 7 | 14. | 1.07 | 0.86 |
| SGI 4D/20 | R3000 | 12 | 16+ 8 | 1 | 7 | 8. | 1.94 | 0.93 |
| DEC 3100 | R2000 | 16 | 64+64 | 4 | 13 | 11.7 | 1.10 | 0.73 |
| DEC 5000-200 | R3000 | 25 | 64+64 | 6 | 100 | 23.5 | 0.66 | 0.66 |
| DEC 5000-120 | R3000 | 20 | 64+64 | 1 | 50 | 16.4 | 0.91 | 0.73 |
| DEC 5000-25 | R3000 | 25 | 64+64 | 1 | 50 | 19.1 |  |  |
| Sony 3710 | R3000 | 20 | 64+64 | 1 |  | 12.6 | 1.00 | 0.80 |
| MIPS Magnum | R3000 | 33 | 32+32 | 8 | 133 | 25.1 |  |  |
| HP/Apollo 705 | PA-RISC | 35 | 32+64 | N/A |  | 34. |  |  |
| HP/Apollo 720 | PA-RISC | 50 | 128+256 | N/A | 400 | 59.5 | 0.39 | 0.78 |
| HP/Apollo 730 | PA-RISC | 66 | 128+256 | N/A | 528 | 76.8 |  |  |
| IBM 6000-320 | IBM | 20 | 8+32 | N/A | 160 | 32.8 | 0.82 | 0.66 |
| IBM 6000-320H | IBM | 25 | 8+32 | N/A | 200 | 41.2 |  |  |
| SUN 2 | Sparc | 40 | 64 | N/A | 49 | 24.7 | 0.72 | 1.15 |
| SUN ELC | Sparc | 33 | 64 | N/A | 41 | 20.1 |  |  |
| Cray Y–MP | Cray | 166 | 0 | N/A | 4200 | 142.9 | 0.32 | 2.13 |

Table 6. Comparison of Current Workstations. The Cray figures are for a single CPU. Only the MIPS R2000 and R3000 use a write through cache architecture. The fifth column does not apply to the other CPU types. The last column shows how long it would take to reconstruct an E769 benchmark event if the computer clock speed were scaled to 25 MHz.

FIGURES

Figure 1. Charm Meson Signals. $`D^+(1.869)K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$ and $`D^0(1.865)K^{}\pi ^+`$.

Figure 2. Network Configuration for Compute Servers and LAVC. ETHERNETTM was used to connect four SGI 4D/240S compute servers and a Local Area VAX cluster of VAXstations. The VAXstations have 8-user VAX/VMS licenses.

Figure 3. Structure of a CPS job. Fermilab’s Cooperative Process Software  was used to distribute independent events from tape to CPUs which processed the data. CPS was then used to gather results together.


text:
# A reply to “Quantum Clock Synchronization”

## Abstract

Recently a protocol for Quantum Clock Synchronization (QCS) of remote clocks using quantum entanglement was proposed by Jozsa et al. This method has the goal of eliminating the random noise present in classical synchronization techniques. However, as stated QCS depends on the two members of each entangled pair undergoing the same unitary evolution even while being transported to different locations. This is essentially equivalent to a perfect Eddington Slow Clock Transfer protocol and thus, not an improvement over classical techniques. We will discuss this and suggest ways in which QCS may still be used.

PACS: 03.67.-a, 03.67.Hk, 06.30.Ft, 95.55.Sh

In a preprint entitled, “Quantum Clock Synchronization Based on Shared Prior Entanglement” (hereafter referred to as QCSP) recently posted to the LANL quantum physics archive , the authors outline a technique for using quantum non-locality to synchronize remote clocks without the usual errors inherent in classical time transfer techniques. It is our view that, as stated, this scheme has several fundamental limitations that will prevent it from achieving clock synchronization better than can be accomplished using classical techniques. It is worth noting at the outset that our objections are not based on the fact that these limitations are hard to overcome, but that they are inherently the same limitations found in classical synchronization methods. To overcome them means that the problem is already solved classically, without resorting to quantum mechanical methods.

While the possibility of using quantum non-locality to synchronize clocks is intriguing, it would appear that any such scheme must be independent of how information is transmitted classically. In the case of the protocol outlined in QCSP, information is being transmitted classically in two ways. First, through the usual classical channel that accompanies entanglement experiments and second, the relative phase between two partners in an entangled pair is transmitted with the entangled particles themselves as they are transported from one site to another. Since this phase will necessarily be shifted by the classical transportation process, such a dependence on classical conveyance of this information will make this QCS protocol equivalent to existing classical methods such as the Eddington Slow Clock Transport (ESCT) protocol .

In ESCT two local clocks are synchronized and one of them is moved “slowly” to a remote site where it can remain or where it can transfer the synchronization with the first clock to a third remote clock. “Slowly” is defined as a velocity such that velocity-dependent perturbations to the clock are lower than any other noise in the problem. In clock jargon this is sometimes called a “perfect clock trip”. In comparison, protocols for Quantum Cryptography , which are similar to QCS, are not sensitive to the relative phase of the entangled particles as they are transmitted.

The authors start with a two-level system consisting of states $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ and energy eigenvalues $`E_0`$ and $`E_1`$ with corresponding frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}(E_1E_0)`$. A dual basis $`|pos=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0+|1)`$ and $`|neg=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0|1)`$ is then defined along with the “Hadamard transform”, H, that maps $`|0`$ into $`|pos`$ and $`|1`$ into $`|neg`$. The claim is made that two consecutive applications of H separated by time, t, is equivalent to a Ramsey temporal interferometer. While the time evolution of the states after the first application of H in QCSP eq. 1 is essentially correct (up to an overall time-evolving phase), the expression for the probability of measuring the system in one state or the other in eq. 2 is not correct in the context of the Ramsey method as it is applied to atomic clocks . In a Ramsey interferometer with interrogation on resonance, the probability of measuring the system in state $`|0`$ or $`|1`$ is independent of the time between the two pulses (the “Ramsey time”).

The problem lies in the fact that the authors have not included a key part of the Ramsey interferometer: the relative phase between the interrogation oscillator and the precession of the system. Later this phase ambiguity is addressed and we will come back to it as well.

Even though H may not correspond exactly to a Ramsey interferometer, it is likely that it can be realized and that it would produce the desired result (QCSP eq. 2). Let us assume that this is true and that the result of the measurements described is as stated in eq. 2. The authors then state that two separated observers, Alice and Bob (hereafter referred to as A and B), share an ensemble of singlet states of the form, $`|\psi ^{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0_A|1_B|1_A|0_B)`$. The statement is made that, “…this singlet state …does not evolve in time provided A and B undergo identical unitary evolutions…” (emphasis added). It is not clear from the paper whether the authors intend these unitary transformations to include the transportation of the entangled particles. If transportation is included then the statement that A and B undergo identical unitary evolutions is equivalent to the statement that A and B are able to build perfect clocks and transport them perfectly. Thus, they have effectively solved time synchronization completely and with only classical methods thereby making QCS unnecessary.

On the other hand, if they are not including the transportation process in the unitary transformations, then they still have problems. First, they are ignoring the phase shift introduced by transporting one of the particles in an entangled pair. This phase would usually be caused by Doppler shifts and electromagnetic field perturbations. While these can be minimized, the essential point is that they are of the same type whether one is referring to an entangled pair or an atomic clock. Therefore, the authors seem to be implicitly assuming a perfect ESCT. If one has perfect ESCT, then one doesn’t need QCS, at least to the extent that transporting a clock is no more difficult than transporting ensembles of entangled particles.

The second problem is that A and B almost certainly do not undergo identical unitary evolutions. To do so would mean that they have perfect control over at least their environments and therefore can build perfectly stable clocks. If they have perfect clocks then they have already achieved frequency synchronization without QCS simply by virtue of having built their respective clocks. Even if one assumes that perfect clocks could be built, the resultant frequency synchronization could not be translated, in general, into time synchronization by QCS because of the transport problems already discussed.

The authors next define the QCS protocol: 1) an ensemble of entangled particles called “pre-clocks” is created in the $`|pos,|neg`$ basis; 2) A starts the clocks by measuring her half of the ensemble in that basis, thereby also determining which members in her ensemble are of type $`|pos`$ (type I) and which are of type $`|neg`$ (type II); 3) A communicates type I/II information to B over a classical channel; 4) B selects out type II (in phase with A’s type I) particles and measures them in the $`|pos,|neg`$ basis to establish the synchronization with A.

At this point the authors note that the protocol is incomplete because $`|pos`$ and $`|neg`$ are not uniquely determined. In the case of an atomic clock the $`\pi /2`$ pulse that defines H in that context has a phase relative to the atoms. This is the relative phase between the interrogation oscillator and the precession of the system that prevents QCSP eq. 2 from representing a real atomic clock. Since knowing this phase is equivalent to solving the problem in the first place (as the authors point out), they propose adding a second oscillation frequency and observing the “beat note” between the two frequencies to eliminate the phase ambiguity, $`\delta `$. However for this to work, $`\delta `$ must be the same for both frequencies. In general this would not be true because it must include the phase shift due to the transport process which will usually be frequency dependent. If the two $`\delta `$’s in QCSP eq. 7 are not the same, then the beat envelope is not independent of this additional phase ambiguity and it hasn’t been resolved. For example, if the particles are different isotopes of an atom, then their sensitivities to external perturbations will be different leading to a different accumulated phase. To ignore this is equivalent to once again assuming a perfect ESCT. In addition the two accumulated phases (for each species) are likely to be time-dependent once the trip is complete (imperfect clocks).

Since the arbitrary phase $`\delta `$ is not resolved, time synchronization is not achieved. Even if the rest of QCS were to work, the best one could hope for would be frequency synchronization (“syntonization”) which is a much easier class of problem. However given our objections, as it stands, QCS probably isn’t able to do syntonization without perfect clocks and as has already been pointed out, perfect clocks provide syntonization “for free”. On the other hand, there may be ways to still get useful information. For instance, if the clocks belonging to A and B are known to differ only by a constant rate then A and B could double the size of their ensembles and perform two separate QCS protocols. The difference in results would be the phase accumulated only while the ensembles were in their remote locations, and not due to the transport process (of course this necessarily includes phase errors introduced by imperfect environmental control, but these will be significantly less than those introduced by the transport process). This procedure, together with the assumption of a linear rate would give the frequency offset of the two clocks. They could further increase the size of their ensembles (all transported at the same time) and make additional QCS measurements at later times to retain the frequency information over longer periods. The two clocks will still not be phase-locked, but important error-free information will have been determined about their respective operation at remote sites.

At first, it may seem that a way around the problems of transporting entangled ensembles over large distances may be overcome by using entangled photons which are sent from A to B. The entanglement is then transferred to the system of choice (e.g., atoms) for storage and carrying out of the protocol. Leaving aside the engineering details of accomplishing this on a global scale, one must know the propagation delay of the photons in order to determine the phase of the entanglement that is transferred. We are assuming that the phase of the photon is written onto the phase of the atom during entanglement transfer which is true in most resonant atom-photon interactions. With this assumption, transferring the entanglement with photons is also still equivalent to the classical problem.

In summary we believe that the QCS protocol is an interesting area of study, but that as stated, it will work no better than existing classical methods. We emphasize that our objections are not based on the existence of hard engineering problems (which there are), but that the problems that must be solved for QCS to work (perfect clock trips) appear to be the same as those for classical methods. However, that is not to say that there isn’t some other protocol that will make QCS work.

We gratefully acknowledge helpful discussions with D. Branning, R. Hughes, B. Klipstein, P. Kwiat, S. Lamoreaux, D. Matsakis, A. Migdall, T. Porto and A. White.