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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The advent of next-to-leading order (NLO) calculations for $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ annihilation into quark pairs, which take full account of quark mass effects , has opened up the possibility for further investigations of QCD, such as measurements of the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant  or measurements of the running $`b`$-quark mass at the Z mass scale . The $`b`$-quark mass is one of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model Lagrangian, and can in principle be viewed as a parameter similar to the coupling constant. The renormalization procedure leads to the definition of a running quantity, the renormalized $`b`$-quark mass, which is a function of the renormalization scale. An interpretation as a particle mass is difficult because of the fact that quarks are not asymptotically free states. Nevertheless, a definition of the mass as the pole of the quark propagator is used frequently, which, depending on the size of long-distance QCD effects, can be interpreted as the mass of an (almost) free particle.

Most of the $`b`$-quark mass determinations have been performed at rather low scales . It is therefore interesting to measure this parameter at a large scale. Previous measurements have used the ratio of three-jet rates in $`b`$\- and $`uds`$-quark decays of the Z boson. For a running $`b`$-quark mass of about $`3\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ a 3% deviation from unity is observed in this ratio . This is because the large $`b`$-quark mass suppresses gluon radiation in a similar way to the suppression of bremsstrahlung for muons compared to electrons.

In this analysis a set of event-shape observables has been employed in addition to the three-jet rate in order to study the $`b`$-quark mass dependence of the measured ratios of the observables in $`b`$ and $`uds`$ initiated events. The suppression of gluon radiation by the $`b`$-quark mass affects the event-shape distributions, and these variables have rather different behaviour with respect to the hadronization and next-to-leading order effects. The final result is derived using the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution, which is the least affected by hadronization and next-to-leading order corrections.

In the following section the analysis method is outlined, then a description of the ALEPH detector is given, followed by a summary of the data analysis. In Section 4 the results for the measurements of the ratios of observables in $`b`$ and $`uds`$ events are given, which are then used to determine the $`b`$-quark mass in Section 5. A test of the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant is described in Section 6, and the conclusions are given in Section 7.

## 2 The analysis method

The running $`b`$-quark mass enters into the theoretical prediction for the ratio

$$R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}=\frac{O_b}{O_l},$$
(1)
where $`O_b`$ and $`O_l`$ are infrared and collinear safe observables at the perturbative level (quarks and gluons) for Z decays into $`b`$ and light ($`l=uds`$) quark pairs, respectively. The measured ratio $`R_{bq}^{\mathrm{meas}}`$ of the observables in $`b`$-tagged events and in an all-flavour inclusive sample can be related to the quantities at the parton level via the following formula:

$$R_{bq}^{\mathrm{meas}}=\left(O_bH_bD_bT_b𝒫_b+O_cH_cD_cT_c𝒫_c+O_lH_lD_lT_l𝒫_l\right)/O_q^{\mathrm{meas}}.$$
(2)
Here $`H_x,D_x,T_x`$ are the corrections due to hadronization, detector effects and tagging, respectively, and $`𝒫_x`$ are the purities of the tagged sample, where $`x`$ is the true flavour. The tagging corrections take into account biases introduced by the flavour tag. The denominator $`O_q^{\mathrm{meas}}`$ can be rewritten as

$$O_q^{\mathrm{meas}}=R_bO_bH_bD_b+R_cO_cH_cD_c+(1R_bR_c)O_lH_lD_l,$$
(3)
where $`R_{b(c)}`$ is the ratio of the partial width of the Z to $`b(c)`$ quarks and the total hadronic width. Taking all these ingredients, the relation between the measured ratio $`R_{bq}^{\mathrm{meas}}`$ and the ratio of interest $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ is given by

$$R_{bq}^{\mathrm{meas}}=\frac{R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}H_{b/l}D_{b/l}T_b𝒫_b+R_{cl}^{\mathrm{pert}}H_{c/l}D_{c/l}T_c𝒫_c+T_l𝒫_l}{R_bR_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}H_{b/l}D_{b/l}+R_cR_{cl}^{\mathrm{pert}}H_{c/l}D_{c/l}+(1R_bR_c)},$$
(4)
where $`H_{b/l}=H_b/H_l`$, $`D_{b/l}=D_b/D_l`$, and the ratio $`R_{cl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ is set to 1. A small deviation of this ratio from unity because of the $`c`$-quark mass is considered in the systematic studies. All the correction factors and purities are obtained from Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Because mainly ratios of corrections are involved, some systematic uncertainties cancel.

$`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ is extracted from the relationship (4) and finally corrected for the contribution of anomalous triangle diagrams , in order to relate $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ to $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ for which the perturbative calculations have been performed. The triangle contributions cancel out in the second ratio. However, they give a contribution of the order of $`0.2\%`$ to the first.

The following observables $`O_x`$ have been considered:

* The rate of three-jet events, where the jets are defined by the DURHAM clustering algorithm with the E recombination scheme . As shown in Ref. , the optimal choice of the resolution parameter $`y_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ for the mass determination is $`0.02`$, because it represents a good compromise between the actual size of the mass effect to be measured and the size of backgrounds from other jet topologies.
* The first and second moments of the event-shape variables thrust $`T`$, the $`C`$ parameter, the three-to-two jets transition value $`y_3`$ and the total and wide jet broadening, $`B_T`$ and $`B_W`$. The definitions of the observables can be found, e.g., in  and references therein. Moments have been chosen instead of distributions because of the better statistical accuracy with which the perturbative predictions can be evaluated by MC integration. Even higher moments would give smaller hadronization uncertainties. However, the NLO corrections typically get larger and the overall mass effects fall below the $`3\%`$ level.

A list of the leading (LO) and next-to-leading order (NLO) contributions to $`1R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ is given in Table 1 for all variables, both for the running and the pole mass schemes. They have been evaluated for a $`b`$-quark mass of 3 GeV/$`c^2`$ in the former and 5 GeV/$`c^2`$ in the latter case. The computation of these terms is described in detail in Section 5.1. It is found that for some observables such as the jet broadening variables the mass effect is rather large. However, the NLO corrections can also be sizeable, as in the case of the second moment of thrust and the first moment of the wide jet broadening. For such variables it would definitely be necessary to also compute the NNLO contributions in order to obtain a reliable perturbative prediction. Because of these observations in the following only those variables are considered for which in both schemes the NLO contribution is clearly smaller than the LO term. This requirement selects the three-jet rate ($`R_3`$), the first moments of thrust ($`T_1`$), $`C`$ parameter ($`C_1`$), the three-to-two jets transition value ($`y_{3_1}`$) and the total jet broadening ($`B_{T_1}`$), as well as the second moment of the three-to-two jets transition value ($`y_{3_2}`$) and the wide jet broadening ($`B_{W_2}`$).

## 3 The ALEPH detector

The ALEPH detector is described in detail elsewhere . Here only a description of the tracking detectors is given, being the relevant ones for this analysis. Briefly, at the core of the tracking system is a silicon strip vertex detector (VDET). This has two layers, at average radii of 6.5 and 11.3 cm, each providing measurements in both the $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ and $`r`$-$`z`$ views. The spatial resolution for $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ coordinates is 12 $`\mu `$m for normal incidence and varies between 12 and 22 $`\mu `$m for $`z`$ coordinates, depending on the track polar angle. The angular coverage of the VDET is $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta |<0.85`$ for the inner layer and $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta |<0.69`$ for the outer layer. The VDET lies within a cylindrical drift chamber (ITC), which measures up to eight coordinates per track in the $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ view, with a resolution of 150 $`\mu `$m. The ITC is in turn enclosed in a large time projection chamber (TPC), lying between radii of 30 and 180 cm. The TPC provides up to 21 three-dimensional coordinates per track, with resolutions in the $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ and $`r`$-$`z`$ views of 180 $`\mu `$m and 500 $`\mu `$m, respectively. The three tracking detectors are surrounded by a superconducting solenoid producing a magnetic field of 1.5 T.

For charged tracks with two VDET coordinates, a transverse momentum resolution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }p_T/p_T=6\times 10^4p_T0.005`$ ($`p_T`$ in GeV/$`c`$) is achieved. The three-dimensional impact parameter resolution is $`(25+95/p)\mu `$m ($`p`$ in GeV/$`c`$).

Recently the LEP1 data set has been reprocessed using improved reconstruction algorithms. In particular, a new VDET pattern recognition algorithm allows groups of several nearby tracks, which may share common hits, to be analyzed, in order to find the hit-to-track assignment which minimizes the track fitting $`\chi ^2`$ for the event as a whole. The improvement on the hit association efficiency is more than 2%. Information from the TPC wires, in addition to that obtained from the pads, is used to improve the coordinate resolution by a factor of two in $`z`$, and by 30% in $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ for low momentum tracks.

The tracking system is surrounded by electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, and together they are used to measure the neutral and charged energy flow.

## 4 Data analysis

### 4.1 Event selection

In this analysis data taken at the peak of the Z resonance from 1991 to 1995 are used. A standard hadronic event selection  is applied, which is based on charged particles. A cut $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _T|<0.7`$ is imposed, where $`\theta _T`$ is the polar angle of the thrust axis, computed from all charged and neutral particles as obtained from the energy-flow algorithm . This requirement ensures that the events are well contained within the VDET acceptance. According to the MC simulation the event selection is 61.7% efficient. Non-hadronic background, which is dominated by $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ events, amounts to 0.3% of this sample. After the selection, a sample of 2.3 million hadronic events remains for further analysis.

The analysis also uses 8.8 million simulated hadronic events produced with a generator based on the JETSET 7.4 parton shower model . The production rates, decay modes and lifetimes of heavy hadrons are adjusted to agree with recent measurements, while heavy quarks are fragmented using the Peterson et al. model . Detector effects are simulated using the GEANT package . The MC events are reweighted in order to reproduce the measured values for the gluon splitting rates into $`c\overline{c}`$ and $`b\overline{b}`$ pairs, which are $`g_{c\overline{c}}=0.0319\pm 0.0046`$ and $`g_{b\overline{b}}=0.00251\pm 0.00063`$ .

The observables described in Section 2 are computed using only charged tracks. This choice is preferred over taking both charged and neutral energy-flow objects, as for this analysis it allows the reduction of the detector related systematic uncertainties to below the 1% level, without reducing the statistics.

For the computation of the three-jet rate, an additional cut on the minimum energy of a jet of 5 GeV is applied, which removes about 5% of all three-jet events. The three-jet rates are 17.7% (18.2%) in data (MC) for $`b`$-tagged events, and 19.3% (20.4%) in the inclusive sample. The excess of three-jet events in the MC simulation had been observed previously .

### 4.2 The $`𝒃`$-tag algorithm

The $`b`$-tag algorithm, i.e., the criteria used to select $`b`$ events, follows rather closely the approach described in detail in Ref. . Briefly, the presence of $`b`$ hadrons is detected using a tag based on the long $`b`$ hadron lifetime and the precision of the VDET. In contrast to , where the tag is applied separately to both hemispheres of the event, here the algorithm uses all tracks of the event.

The actual selection of $`b`$ events is obtained from a cut on the distribution of the confidence level $`P_{uds}`$ that all tracks of the event come from the main vertex. This distribution as measured in data and in MC is shown in Fig. 1, together with the expected contributions from different flavours. Very good agreement between data and MC is observed. The requirement $`\mathrm{log}_{10}P_{uds}>2.2`$ selects $`b`$ events with an efficiency of $`ϵ_b=80.5\%`$ and a purity of $`𝒫_b=83.1\%`$. The backgrounds amount to $`𝒫_c=13.5\%`$ and $`𝒫_l=3.4\%`$.

With this selection, about $`\mathrm{488\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ $`b`$-tagged events are found in the data before the three-jet requirement. Out of about $`\mathrm{435\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ three-jet events, $`\mathrm{86\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ are tagged as $`b\overline{b}`$.

### 4.3 Detector and tagging corrections

The observables must be corrected for detector effects, such as acceptance and resolution. This is achieved by computing the observables before and after detector simulation, imposing the same track and event selection cuts as for the data, except for the flavour tag. The ratios of the observables are computed for each true flavour, i.e., the quark flavour of the primary decay products of the Z boson. When computing the observables at the true hadron level before detector simulation, initial state radiation is turned off. In the case of the three-jet rate the detector corrections are $`D_b=0.909`$ and $`D_l=0.843`$, with a statistical uncertainty at the few per mille level.

The flavour tag can introduce a bias on the measured observables. The bias is estimated by computing the observable before and after applying the tag to the MC sample which passed the event selection cuts, for every flavour. As an example, $`T_b=0.894`$ is found for the three-jet rate. Taking the product of ratios of detector corrections, tagging biases and purities the overall detector corrections amount to $`D_{b/l}T_b𝒫_b=0.801`$, $`D_{c/l}T_c𝒫_c=0.112`$ and $`T_l𝒫_l=0.045`$, again within a statistical accuracy of a few per mille.

### 4.4 Hadronization corrections

The perturbative predictions are corrected for hadronization effects by computing the relevant observables at parton and at hadron level, including final state photon radiation off quarks. Several Monte Carlo models based on the parton shower approach plus subsequent string or cluster fragmentation are employed for this purpose. For the nominal analysis, the same generator as for the full simulation is used, which is HVFL . As already mentioned in Section 4.1, this generator is based on the JETSET 7.4 parton shower model plus string fragmentation, and in addition the decay modes and lifetimes of heavy hadrons are adjusted to agree with recent measurements. Heavy quarks are fragmented using the Peterson et al. model. The fragmentation parameters for this generator are determined from a global fit to hadronic Z decay data as described in , using the present knowledge of heavy quark physics. The modelling of heavy quark physics represents an important part of the systematic uncertainty of the result.

In the JETSET parton shower model mass effects are introduced by kinematic constraints to the phase space at each parton branching in the shower evolution as well as by the matching to the leading order matrix element at the first parton branching. The value of $`M_b`$ (pole mass) is set to $`4.75\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$. Thirty million events without detector simulation were generated and analyzed. Such a large sample is necessary in order to reduce the statistical error of the hadronization corrections below the one per mille level. These corrections were computed for each flavour individually.

The ratios of hadronization corrections, $`H_{b/l}`$, are listed in Table 2. The corrections are rather sizeable for almost all the observables; in most cases they are of the same size as or larger than the expected mass effect. Only the three-jet rate and the first two moments of the $`y_3`$ distribution have corrections at the 2% level or below. For all the other event-shape variables the corrections are of the order of 10% or even larger. It has been found that the deviation from unity is almost entirely due to B hadron decays, which change the distributions mainly in the two-jet region. As can be observed from Table 2, the same corrections, computed taking only hadrons which stem directly from the string before any decay, come close to unity within one or two percent. This is in agreement with expectations from recent calculations of nonperturbative power-law corrections to moments of event-shape distributions for massive quarks . The strong dependence on the decays of heavy quarks is taken into account when estimating systematic uncertainties in the following.

### 4.5 Measurement of $`𝑹_{𝒃𝒅}^{\mathrm{𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭}}`$

The correction procedure defined in Eqn. 4 has been carried out individually for every data taking year. The hadronization corrections are taken from the HVFL generator and do not depend on the year. Good agreement between the values of the corrected observable $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ in the different years is found, and therefore the final value is obtained from the average over years, weighted according to the statistical errors. The $`\chi ^2`$ confidence level for the combination is 50%. In order to obtain the final values for $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$, the contributions from anomalous triangle diagrams are first subtracted from the measured ratio $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$, and then the error due to the finite MC statistics for the evaluation of purities and detector and tagging corrections is added to the statistical error of the data. This statistical error from MC is obtained by evaluating the scatter of results when repeating the analysis with a large number of MC subsamples of smaller size, and then extrapolating the standard deviation thus found to the actual size of the original MC sample. The results are listed in Table 2.

The dependence on the resolution parameter $`y_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ of the perturbative ratio $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ for the three-jet rate is indicated in Fig. 2. The data are compared to the predictions of the parton shower models of PYTHIA 6.1, which is based on JETSET, and HERWIG 6.1 . The MC models are in reasonable agreement with the measurement at large $`y_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ values, where the statistical uncertainty is large, however. At intermediate resolution parameters these models predict a lower ratio than observed. In the lowest $`y_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ region, where the resolution parameter approaches the scale of the $`b`$-mass, a turn-over is observed, which might be interpreted as a short-coming of the approximation for mass effects as implemented in these models.

In addition, in Fig. 2 the next-to-leading order perturbative QCD predictions for two different values of the running $`b`$-quark mass in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme are given. The data clearly favour a mass close to 3 GeV/$`c^2`$.

### 4.6 Systematic uncertainties

#### 4.6.1 Detector and physics modelling

Systematic uncertainties can arise from imperfections of the implementation of the physics processes as well as the description of the detector performance. An important physics parameter for the correct description of three-jet rates as well as tagging purities is the gluon splitting rate into heavy quark pairs ($`b\overline{b}`$, $`c\overline{c}`$). The MC was reweighted in order to reproduce the most recent measured values and the experimental uncertainties were propagated to a systematic error on $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$.

The MC predictions for the background efficiencies depend on the mean number of VDET coordinates per track and on the assumed impact parameter resolution. It is observed that in the MC simulation more tracks are accepted for use by the $`b`$-tag algorithm than in the data, and that the resolution function in impact parameter significance is not perfectly modelled. In order to improve the agreement between data and MC, tracks in the MC are deleted randomly, and a smearing algorithm is applied to the impact parameter significance of some of the MC tracks. A detailed description of this procedure is given in Ref. . The systematic uncertainty related to this procedure is estimated by repeating the whole analysis once without the track deletion, and once without any smearing. Half of the observed deviations in the final result are taken as uncorrelated errors and added in quadrature.

In the case of the three-jet rate additional cuts on the jet quality were studied. Removing the cut on the minimum jet energy results in a relative shift of $`0.3\%`$ for $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$. As a further check of the quality of the MC description of jet quantities, the requirement of at least three charged tracks per jet is applied. This causes a relative change in the result of $`0.3\%`$. A relative systematic uncertainty of $`0.3\%`$ related to the modelling of three-jet events is therefore assumed.

The relative uncertainties due to the physics and detector modelling as described above are listed in Table 3. Adding all these uncertainties in quadrature results in a final experimental systematic error (exp) as quoted in Table 4 for all the observables under consideration.

#### 4.6.2 Hadronization

The uncertainties from the modelling of the hadronization are typically evaluated by computing the hadronization corrections with different MC generators. However, if these uncertainties are to be meaningful, it must be verified that the various models give a good overall description of hadronic Z decay data, and in particular of quantities relevant to the analysis.

As has been shown in Section 4.4, the B hadron decays have a large impact on the size of the hadronization corrections. Because in the tuning of the MC hadronic final states are analyzed after all decays, differences in the description of hadron decays can lead to differences in the tuned fragmentation parameters. In fact, comparing the predictions of the standard PYTHIA 6.1 and the HVFL generator, both based on the JETSET parton shower and string fragmentation and tuned to ALEPH data, differences in the fragmentation parameters are found, which translate to a variation in the hadronization corrections, even before considering decays. In order to assess an uncertainty related to the string fragmentation parameters and subsequent decays, the variation in the final result when using HVFL or PYTHIA for the hadronization corrections is taken as a systematic uncertainty.

Another quantity relevant for this analysis is the $`b`$ fragmentation function, which describes the energy fraction transferred to the B hadrons during the fragmentation process. In particular, the lower energy tail of the fragmentation function is important for three-jet events. Recently, new measurements of the $`b`$ fragmentation function have been performed . Both HVFL and PYTHIA use the Peterson model in their standard setup. In order to test the sensitivity to the $`b`$ fragmentation function, the measured distribution  was included in a global tuning of the PYTHIA fragmentation parameters, and a new set of hadronization corrections was computed with those parameters. In Ref.  it is shown that the Lund fragmentation scheme combined with a model by Bowler  gives a good description of the $`b`$ fragmentation function. The PYTHIA MC was therefore tuned to the data again, but now using the Bowler fragmentation scheme instead of the Peterson model, and new hadronization corrections were derived accordingly. The results obtained with the retuned parameter set and the Bowler fragmentation function were then compared to the standard PYTHIA predictions. The maximum deviation is taken as an estimator of the uncertainty related to the $`b`$ fragmentation function.

The HERWIG 6.1 MC generator was used for the study of a fragmentation model different from the string approach. As discussed above, differences in the description of hadron decays can effectively lead to differences in the pure fragmentation parameters, after tuning. In order to reduce the sensitivity to this effect, and to study purely the difference between string and cluster fragmentation, the variation in the hadronization corrections for light quarks ($`uds`$) only has been propagated into an uncertainty on the final result.

The three components of uncertainty from the hadronization process as described above are listed in Table 3. They are then added in quadrature and quoted as the hadronization uncertainty (had) in Table 4. It is the dominant uncertainty for all variables.

#### 4.6.3 Additional systematic checks

A number of additional systematic checks have been performed in order to evaluate the stability of the results. They are listed in Table 3.

In Eqn. 4 the world average values for $`R_b`$ and $`R_c`$ enter. Changing them within their errors has a negligible impact on the results.

An additional factor which contributes to Eqn. 4 is $`R_{cl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$, which is the ratio of the observable at parton level for $`c`$ and light quark events. Because of the smaller $`c`$-quark mass this ratio is set to unity in the default analysis. Considering a $`c`$-quark mass of $`m_c=1.4\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ leads to very small variations. Only in the case of the total jet broadening is the observed shift larger than the statistical uncertainty; in that case the shift is therefore added in quadrature to the experimental uncertainty.

A possible bias from the $`b`$-quark mass in the parton level simulation is estimated by switching off the correction to the massive matrix element for the first branching of a massive quark in the parton shower. For most of the variables, and in particular for the three-jet rate, this results in small variations. As a further cross check, a variant of the JETSET fragmentation model was studied in which the parton shower cutoff parameter $`Q_0`$ is increased to 4 GeV. This setting leads to a parton multiplicity of 4 on average, which is close to the multiplicity used in the analytical next-to-leading order calculations. However, it represents a drastic change in the model, and such large cutoff values do not agree with the basic ideas of the parton shower approach. Nevertheless, recomputing $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ with the hadronization corrections obtained from this model leads to variations that are well within the fragmentation uncertainty quoted above.

In order to check the stability of the result with respect to the chosen $`b`$-tag working point, the cut on the output of the $`b`$-tag algorithm was varied over a wide range, which resulted in changes of the purity $`𝒫_b`$ from 64% to 95%. For most of the variables, in particular the three-jet rate, the observed deviations in the final result are within the tracking uncertainty as described above. However, in those cases where the deviation exceeds this uncertainty, half of the maximum deviation under variation of the $`b`$-tag working point is taken as a systematic uncertainty due to the tracking.

An attempt was made to verify with data the purity $`𝒫_b`$ determined from MC. The approach is based on the double tag method as described in . It is possible to extract the hemisphere tagging efficiencies, which then can be related to a global event tagging efficiency if the hemisphere correlations are known. The same working point as in the nominal analysis was chosen. In a first check, $`R_b`$ and the hemisphere $`b`$-tag efficiency $`ϵ_b^h`$ are measured from the data, whereas all the background efficiencies and the hemisphere correlations are taken from MC. The results are $`R_b=0.2190\pm 0.0013(\mathrm{stat})`$, which is consistent with the world average value, and $`ϵ_b^h=0.5380\pm 0.0024(\mathrm{stat})`$. Next $`R_b`$ is fixed to the world average value, and $`ϵ_b^h`$ as well as the hemisphere correlation $`\rho _b`$ are measured. The result can be translated to the global efficiency by the relation $`ϵ_b=2ϵ_b^h(ϵ_b^h)^2(1+\rho _b)`$, and then the purity is obtained as

$$𝒫_b=\frac{R_bϵ_b}{R_bϵ_b+R_cϵ_c+(1R_bR_c)ϵ_{uds}}.$$
(5)
The result is $`𝒫_b=0.8310\pm 0.0007(\mathrm{stat})`$, which is in very good agreement with the value extracted from the MC, $`𝒫_b^{\mathrm{MC}}=0.8305`$.

In order to test the overall correction method, an independent set of MC events was analyzed in the same way as the data. Within statistical errors, the extracted $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ values are in agreement with the “true” values as found at the parton level of the MC prediction.

Finally, the whole measurement is repeated using the method of Ref. , where $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{meas}}`$ is measured instead of $`R_{bq}^{\mathrm{meas}}`$. Both methods have the same statistical accuracy, but the latter is more simple from the point of view of systematic uncertainties. For the purpose of measuring $`R_{bl}^{\mathrm{meas}}`$ a $`uds`$ tag must also be applied. This is achieved by the requirement $`\mathrm{log}_{10}P_{uds}<0.5`$, which selects light quark events with an efficiency of 66% and a purity of $`𝒫_l=88`$%. The correction procedure and the correction factors needed are different; nevertheless the results obtained differ from the nominal ones by at most $`0.3\%`$.

### 4.7 Results for $`𝑹_{𝒃𝒅}^{\mathrm{𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭}}`$

As stated in Section 4.4, the nominal results are obtained when using HVFL for the hadronization corrections. The results for all observables can be found in Table 4, together with statistical and systematic uncertainties. The result for the three-jet rate is in agreement with that of Ref. . Most of the event-shape variables have a better statistical accuracy than the three-jet rate. However, the hadronization uncertainties are rather large.

For the extraction of the $`b`$-quark mass it is required that the uncertainty on the measured ratio be at the 1% level, and that at the same time the size of the hadronization correction (Table 2) be smaller than the actually measured mass effect, given by the deviation of $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ from unity. These requirements leave only the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution and the three-jet rate for further investigation.

## 5 Determination of the $`𝒃`$-quark mass

### 5.1 Theoretical predictions

The NLO prediction for $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ as a function of the observable $`O`$ and the $`b`$-quark mass can be cast in the following form:

$$R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}(O)=1+r_b(\mu )\left[b_0(r_b(\mu ),O)+\frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{2\pi }b_1(r_b(\mu ),O)\right]=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}+K(r_b(\mu )),$$
(6)
where $`r_b(\mu )=m_b^2(\mu )/M_\mathrm{Z}^2`$, and $`m_b(\mu )`$ is the running $`b`$-quark mass as defined in the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ renormalization scheme at the renormalization scale $`\mu `$. The ratio can also be expressed in terms of the pole mass $`M_b`$,

$$R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}(O)=1+r_b^P\left[b_0^P(r_b^P,O)+\frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{2\pi }b_1^P(r_b^P,O)\right],$$
(7)
with $`r_b^P=M_b^2/M_\mathrm{Z}^2`$. The two predictions are equivalent at this order. The coefficient functions $`b_{0,1}`$ for the two schemes can be related to each other by expressing the pole mass in terms of the running mass, i.e.,

$$r_b^P=r_b(\mu )\left[1+\frac{\alpha _s(\mu )}{2\pi }\left(\frac{16}{3}4\mathrm{ln}r_b(\mu )+4\mathrm{ln}\frac{\mu ^2}{M_\mathrm{Z}^2}\right)\right].$$
(8)
The coefficient functions for the three-jet rate were computed in Ref. . For all the other variables they were obtained using the MC generators ZBB4  and EVENT . ZBB4 allows for the integration of the fully differential NLO matrix elements including mass effects, whereas EVENT contains the massless expressions . The latter has been extensively employed at LEP for the calculations of the NLO predictions of event shapes used for the measurements of the strong coupling constant. The differential cross sections for any infrared and collinear safe observable $`O`$ for either $`b`$ or $`d`$ primary quarks in $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ annihilation can be written as

$$\frac{1}{\sigma _{b,d}^{tot}}\frac{d\sigma _{b,d}}{dO}=\frac{\alpha _s}{2\pi }A_{b,d}(O)+\left(\frac{\alpha _s}{2\pi }\right)^2B_{b,d}(O).$$
(9)
Here $`\sigma _{b,d}^{tot}`$ is the total cross section for either $`b`$ or $`d`$ quark production. The functions $`A_b,B_b`$ are computed with ZBB4 for fixed values of the $`b`$-quark mass in the pole mass scheme, whereas $`A_d`$ and $`B_d`$ are obtained from EVENT. Taking the ratio of the cross sections for $`b`$ and $`d`$ quarks and expanding up to NLO, the following relationships can be found:

$$r_b^Pb_0^P=\frac{A_b}{A_d}1,$$
(10)
$$r_b^Pb_1^P=\frac{B_bA_dB_dA_b}{A_d^2}.$$
(11)
In order to get the functional dependence of $`b_{0,1}^P`$ on the $`b`$-quark mass, the coefficients $`A_b`$ and $`B_b`$ were first computed in very high statistics runs for values of $`M_b=1,2,3,4,5,6\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$. The expressions (10) and (11) were then fitted over the relevant range of 3 to 6 GeV/$`c^2`$ using parametrisations of the type $`c_1+c_2r_b^P+c_3\mathrm{ln}r_b^P`$. This functional form follows closely that used in . It has been checked that different parametrisations lead to very small changes in the extracted mass values.

In Fig. 3 an example of these fits is shown for the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution. With these parametrisations it is possible to estimate the actual quark mass effects in leading order and its next-to-leading order corrections. In Table 1 a list of these LO and NLO contributions is given for all variables for both the running and the pole mass schemes.

Possible evaluations of uncertainties in the mass extraction because of the limited accuracy of the NLO predictions are discussed next. Missing higher order corrections are estimated by extracting firstly the pole mass from the perturbative expression in the pole mass scheme, then translating that result into a running quark mass $`m_b(m_b)`$ at the $`b`$-mass scale, and finally running this mass up to the $`M_\mathrm{Z}`$ scale, using the relation

$$r_b(\mu )=r_b(M_\mathrm{Z})\left(\frac{\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})}{\alpha _s(\mu )}\right)^{4\gamma _0/\beta _0},$$
(12)
where $`\alpha _s(\mu )=\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})/[1+\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})\beta _0\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/M_\mathrm{Z}^2)/(4\pi )]`$, $`\beta _0=112n_f/3`$, $`n_f=5`$ and $`\gamma _0=2`$. The world average value $`\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})=0.119\pm 0.003`$  is used for the strong coupling constant. At NLO the two methods of mass extraction are equivalent. However, the sensitivity to higher order contributions is different for the two schemes, which can then lead to different results. The shift in the mass when using the pole mass scheme is $`0.14\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ and $`0.4\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ for the $`y_3`$ distribution and the three-jet rate, respectively.

In addition, the effects of uncalculated higher order terms can be estimated by a change in the renormalization scale. For the central value $`\mu =M_\mathrm{Z}`$ is employed, and the systematic error is taken to be half of the range of mass values (average of running and pole mass schemes) found when varying $`\mu `$ from $`0.1M_\mathrm{Z}`$ to $`2M_\mathrm{Z}`$. This results in a scale error of $`0.15\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ and $`0.06\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ for the $`y_3`$ distribution and the three-jet rate, respectively. The behaviour of the extracted mass in the two schemes as a function of the renormalization scale $`\mu `$ is illustrated in Fig. 4.

The uncertainty on the world average value for the strong coupling constant has a negligible impact, about $`0.01\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$, on the measured $`b`$-quark mass.

### 5.2 Results for $`𝒎_𝒃\mathbf{(}𝑴_𝐙\mathbf{)}`$

Based on the predictions obtained above, the running $`b`$-quark mass is determined from the measured ratio $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ for two observables, the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution and the three-jet rate. The results are listed in Table 5 together with the statistical and systematic uncertainties, which have been propagated from the corresponding uncertainties on $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$. The statistical correlation between the two measurements is 0.66, while the hadronization uncertainties are almost 100% correlated. A similar difference of measured masses was reported in Ref. , where different clustering algorithms for the three-jet rate were studied. The results obtained for the pole mass by fitting the predictions in the pole mass scheme are also given in Table 5.

As is observed from Table 5, the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution allows for a mass measurement with better statistical and experimental accuracy than the three-jet rate. Furthermore, the hadronization uncertainty is considerably smaller. Therefore the result from this observable is quoted as the final $`b`$-quark mass value. The theoretical uncertainty is estimated as described in Section 5.1 by evaluating the impact of the uncertainty on the strong coupling constant and the renormalization scale variation. Because the pole and the running mass scheme are equivalent at NLO, the average of the values found for the two schemes is quoted as the final result, and half of the difference is taken as an additional theoretical systematic uncertainty due to the scheme ambiguity. This leads to a measurement of the $`b`$-quark mass of

$`m_b(M_\mathrm{Z})=\left[3.27\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.22}(\mathrm{stat})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.22}(\mathrm{exp})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.38}(\mathrm{had})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.16}(\mathrm{theo})\right]\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$.

The result obtained is in agreement with the measurements of DELPHI  and Brandenburg et al. . The world average value from low-energy measurements is $`m_b(m_b)=4.2\pm 0.1\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ . Using a two-loop running equation for the quark mass, this average value can be translated to $`m_b(M_\mathrm{Z})=2.89\pm 0.08\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$, which is also in agreement with the result obtained here. This comparison is illustrated in Fig. 5, together with the other results. The result for the pole mass is

$`M_b=[4.73\pm 0.29(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.29(\mathrm{exp})\pm 0.49(\mathrm{had})\pm 0.18(\mathrm{theo})]\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$.

In this case the theoretical uncertainty is estimated from the renormalization scale variation only.

## 6 Test of the flavour independence of $`𝜶_𝒔`$

All the previous considerations are based on the assumption of flavour independence of the strong coupling constant, which in particular means that the strong coupling is the same for $`b`$ quarks as for light quarks ($`l=uds`$), i.e., $`\alpha _s^b=\alpha _s^l`$. However, the measurement of $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ can also be used as a test of the flavour independence, if the $`b`$-quark mass is known. The ratio of the strong coupling constant for $`b`$ and light quark events can be written up to NLO as

$$\frac{\alpha _s^b}{\alpha _s^l}=\left[R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}K(r_b(M_\mathrm{Z}))\right]+a_1\frac{\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})}{\pi }\left[R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}K(r_b(M_\mathrm{Z}))1\right],$$
(13)
where $`K(r_b(M_\mathrm{Z}))`$ is the mass correction in Eqn. 6 and $`a_1=6.073`$ when using the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution as observable. Equation 13 is derived assuming $`\alpha _s^b=\alpha _s^l(1+\delta ),\delta 1,`$ and neglecting all terms of order $`(\alpha _s^l)^2`$ and $`\alpha _s^l\delta `$, so $`\alpha _s(M_\mathrm{Z})=0.119\pm 0.003`$ can be used for the coefficient of the next-to-leading order term. The coefficient $`a_1`$ was computed with EVENT. Taking an average $`b`$-quark mass of $`m_b(m_b)=4.2\pm 0.1\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ , and taking into account the scale uncertainties and scheme ambiguities as described in Section 5.1, the term $`K(r_b(M_\mathrm{Z}))`$ amounts to $`0.041\pm 0.003`$. Inserting the measured value $`R_{bd}^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ for the observable $`y_{3_1}`$ results in

$`\frac{\alpha _s^b}{\alpha _s^l}=0.997\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.004}(\mathrm{stat})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.004}(\mathrm{exp})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.007}(\mathrm{had})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.003}(\mathrm{theo}),`$

which is a confirmation of the flavour independence at a precision level of 1%. This constitutes an improvement in precision by a factor of two compared to a previous ALEPH analysis . Recently, similar results were obtained by other experiments .

## 7 Conclusions

The effect of the $`b`$-quark mass has been studied on the ratios of observables in $`b`$ and light quark decays of the Z boson in $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ annihilation. Taking the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution, which has the smallest hadronization corrections and systematic uncertainties, a $`b`$-quark mass of

$`m_b(M_\mathrm{Z})=\left[3.27\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.22}(\mathrm{stat})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.22}(\mathrm{exp})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.38}(\mathrm{had})\pm \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0.16}(\mathrm{theo})\right]\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$

is found, which is in agreement with recent measurements by other experiments  and with measurements at lower energies. The three-jet rate defined by the DURHAM algorithm with $`y_{\mathrm{cut}}=0.02`$ turns out to be more sensitive to the details of the hadronization modelling.

The determination of the ratio of the first moment of the $`y_3`$ distribution in $`b`$ and light quark events has alternatively been employed, along with previous measurements of the $`b`$-quark mass, to test the flavour independence of the strong coupling constant with a precision of $`1.0\%`$.

## 8 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank G. Rodrigo and P. Nason for providing us with theoretical input. Furthermore we would like to thank J. Fuster and S. Marti i Garcia for many interesting discussions on the subject.

We wish to thank our colleagues from the accelerator divisions for the successful operation of LEP. It is also a pleasure to thank the technical personnel of the collaborating institutions for their support in constructing and maintaining the ALEPH experiment. Those of the collaboration not from member states thank CERN for its hospitality.


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# Possible violation of Newtonian gravitational law at small distances and constraints on it from the Casimir effect

## I Introduction

It is common knowledge that the gravitational interaction holds a unique position with respect to the other fundamental interactions described by the Standard Model. Up to now, there is no renormalized Quantum Gravity and the obstacles placed on the way to such a theory seem to be insurmountable. Gravitational physics suffers also from a poor experimental test. Even the classical Newtonian gravitational law which is reliably proved at large distances is lacking experimental confirmation at the distances of order 1 mm or less. At the same time it is generally believed to be correct up to the Planck distances $`\sqrt{G\mathrm{}/c^3}10^{35}`$m. Needless to say that it is a far-ranging extrapolation over 33 orders of magnitude.

Corrections to Newtonian gravitational law at small distances are predicted by unified gauge theories, supersymmetry, supergravity, and string theory. They are mediated by light and massless elementary particles like scalar axion, graviphoton, dilaton, arion, and others. The exchange of these particles between atoms leads to an interatomic interaction described by Yukawa- or power-type effective potentials. Constraints for their parameters (interaction constants $`\alpha `$, $`\lambda _n`$, and interaction range $`\lambda `$ in case of a massive particle) is the subject for considerable study (see the monograph  and references therein). The gravitational experiments of Cavendish- and Eötvos-type lead to rather strong constraints over a distanse range $`10^2\text{m}<\lambda <10^6`$km . At submillimeter range the existence of corrections to Newtonian gravity is not excluded experimentally which are in excess of it by many orders.

The only constraints on non-Newtonian gravity at a submillimeter range follow from the measurements of the van der Waals and Casimir force (see, e.g., ). Until recently, they were not enough restrictive in spite of the quick progress in experimental technique and increased accuracy of force measurements. In  the Casimir force between the metallic surfaces of a disk and a spherical lens was measured by the use of torsion pendulum. The obtained experimental results and the extent of their agreement with theory were used in  to obtain stronger constraints on the corrections to Newtonian gravity in a submillimeter range. The strengthening up to 30 times comparing the previously known constraints was obtained within the range $`2.2\times 10^7\text{m}\lambda 1.6\times 10^4`$m (see also ). In  the results of the Casimir force measurements between a metallized disk and a sphere attached to a cantilever of an atomic force microscope were reported and accurately confronted with a theory. They were used in  to constrain the non-Newtonian gravity. The strengthening of constraints up to 560 times comparing the former Casimir force measurements between dielectrics was obtained in the interaction range $`5.9\times 10^9\text{m}\lambda 1.15\times 10^7`$m.

In the present paper we discuss the possible violation of Newtonian gravitational law at small distances and constraints on it following from the Casimir effect. In Sec. 2 the recent impressive ideas are considered that the gravitational and gauge interactions become united at the weak scale (see, e.g., ). These ideas in the context of string theory inevitably lead to the existence of Yukawa-type corrections to the Newtonian gravitational law at moderate distances in addition to the well known arguments in support of such corrections presented above. Extra spatial dimensions cause even more drastic change of gravitational law at small distances. In Sec. 3 the constraints on the parameters of Yukawa-type interactions are discussed which were obtained recently from the Casimir force measurements of papers  between gold and aliminum surfaces. In Sec. 4 the new constraints on the Yukawa interaction are obtained following from the latest Casimir force measurement between gold surfaces by means of an atomic force microscope (these experimental results can be found in ). In Sec. 5 (conclusions and discussion) the importance of the new Casimir force measurements for the elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology is underlined. Also the prospects for further strengthening of constraints on non-Newtonian gravity in the submillimeter range are outlined.

Below we use units in which $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$.

## II The Yukawa-type corrections to Newtonian gravity

As was told in the introduction, the corrections to Newtonian gravitational law are predicted by the unified gauge theories, supersymmetry, supergravity, and string theory. The effective potential of gravitational interaction between two atoms with account of such corrections can be represented in the form

$$V(r_{12})=\frac{GM_1M_2}{r_{12}}\left(1+\alpha _Ge^{r_{12}/\lambda }\right),$$
(1)
where $`M_{1,2}`$ are the masses of the atoms, $`r_{12}`$ is the distance between them, $`G`$ is Newtonian gravitational constant, $`\alpha _G`$ is a dimensionless interaction constant, $`\lambda `$ is the interaction range. In the case that the Yukawa-type interaction is mediated by a light particle of mass $`m`$ the interaction range is described by the Compton wave length of this particle, so that $`\lambda =1/m`$.

According to recent ideas the gravitational and gauge interactions may become united at the weak scale $`F1`$TeV$`=10^3`$GeV, and the weakness of gravity at macroscopic distances is explained by the existence of $`n2`$ compact (but rather large) extra spatial dimensions . The consequence of these ideas is that the gravitational interaction is described by Eq. (1) for the distances much larger than the size of characteristic compactification dimension . One can arrive to potential (1) as follows.

Let $`n`$ extra dimensions be compactified by making a periodic identification with a period $`R`$. If one mass $`M_1`$ is placed at the origin and the test mass $`M_2`$ is at the distance $`r_{12}R`$ from $`M_1`$ the force law of $`N=(4+n)`$-dimensional space-time is

$$F_N(r_{12})=G_N\frac{M_1M_2}{r_{12}^{N2}},$$
(2)
which provides the continuity of force lines in $`(N1)`$-dimensional space. If $`r_{12}R`$ one obtains the usual Newtonian force

$$F(r_{12})=G\frac{M_1M_2}{r_{12}^2},$$
(3)
where the Gauss law can be used to find the connection between the $`N`$-dimensional and the usual Newtonian gravitational constants

$$G=\frac{\pi ^{\frac{N3}{2}}}{2\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{N1}{2}\right)}\frac{G_N}{R^{N4}}.$$
(4)
If there is no extra dimensions ($`n=0`$, $`N=4`$) one finds from (4) $`G=G_N`$ as it should be. Taking into account the connection between the gravitational constants $`G,G_N`$ and the respective Planckean energy scales

$$M_{Pl}^2=\frac{1}{G},M_{Pl,N}^{N2}=\frac{2\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{N1}{2}\right)}{G_N\pi ^{\frac{N3}{2}}},$$
(5)
Eq. (4) turns out to be equivalent to

$$M_{Pl}^2=M_{Pl,N}^{N2}R^{N4}.$$
(6)
This result gives the possibility to estimate the allowed values of the compactification dimension $`R`$ and the required number of extra dimensions. Putting $`N`$-dimensional Planckean scale be equal to the weak scale, i.e. $`M_{Pl,N}=F`$, one obtains from (6)

$$R=\frac{1}{F}\left(\frac{M_{Pl}}{F}\right)^{\frac{2}{N4}}10^{\frac{30}{N4}}\frac{1}{F}10^{\frac{30}{N4}17}\text{cm}$$
(7)
(we remind that $`M_{Pl}2.4\times 10^{18}`$GeV). Evidently, one extra dimension is impermissable because for $`N=5`$ it follows $`R10^{13}`$cm which is in contradiction with the confirmed validity of Newtonian gravitational law at the scales of solar system. But already $`n=2`$ ($`N=6`$) leads to $`R10^2`$cm which is permitted by the results of gravitational measurements.

The above considerations show that the gravitational law may vary from (2) at small, submillimeter distances to the usual form (3) at relatively large distances. The corrections to Eqs. (2), (3) can be found by considering the Newtonian limit of $`N`$-dimensional Einstein gravity . At the distances $`r_{12}R`$ the corrections to Eq. (2) are of power type. The corrections at the distances $`r_{12}R`$ hold the greatest interest because they can be tested experimentally. It is significant that they are of Yukawa-type, so that remote from the compactification scale the gravitational potential is given by Eq. (1). Coefficient $`\alpha _G`$ of Eq. (1) depends on compactification geometry and on the number of extra dimensions. By way of example, if $`n`$ extra dimensions have the topology of $`n`$-torus $`\alpha _G^{(n)}=2n`$, and if they have the topology of $`n`$-sphere $`\alpha _G^{(n)}=n+1`$ .

The above models with $`n=6`$ can be formulated within type I or type IIB string theories  (in the case of M theory $`n=7`$). In so doing, gravitons are described by closed strings and propagate in $`N`$-dimensional bulk. The particles of the Standard Model are described by open strings living on $`(3+1)`$-dimensional wall. This wall should have a thickness of order $`F^110^{17}`$cm in the extra dimensions. Gravity becomes unified with the gauge interactions of Standard Model at the weak scale $`F`$. The usual Newtonian gravitational constant $`G`$ loses its status of a fundamental constant. It is a multidimensional gravitational constant $`G_N`$ which acquires a meaning of the fundamental one. Note that the separated character of gravitons which may propagate freely in extra dimensions, while all ordinary particles cannot do so, is in some analogy with the field theory of gravity  where the gravity to gravity interaction is quite distinct from the interaction of matter to gravity.

The possibility of serious variations of the gravitational law in submillimeter range makes much-needed the performance of new experiments. As was stressed, e.g., in , the Casimir effect may well become a new method for experimental verification of fundamental physical theories. In  the measurements of the Casimir force between plane plates were considered in order to restrict the extra dimensions and string-inspired forces. In the next two sections the recent experiments on measuring the Casimir force between a disk and a spherical lens (sphere) are used for the same purpose and new more strong constraints are obtained.

## III Review of the best constraints on Yukawa-type interaction in submillimeter range

It has been known that the Casimir and van der Waals force measurements between dielectrics (see, e.g, ) lead to the strongest constraints on the constants of Yukawa-type interaction given by the second term of Eq. (1) with a range of action $`10^9\text{m}<\lambda <10^4`$m . In  the Casimir force between two metallized surfaces of a flat disk and a spherical lens was measured with the use of torsion pendulum. The outer metallic layer of gold, covering the test bodies, had the thickness of 0.5 $`\mu `$m. The absolute error of the force measurements in  was $`\mathrm{\Delta }F=10^{11}`$N for the distances $`a`$ between the disk and the lens in the range $`1\mu \text{m}a6\mu `$m. In the limits of this error the theoretical expression for the Casimir force

$$F^{(0)}(a)=\frac{\pi ^3}{360}\frac{R}{a^3}$$
(8)
was confirmed (where $`R`$ is lens curvature radius).

No corrections to Eq. (8) due to surface roughness, finite conductivity of the boundary metal or nonzero temperature was recorded. These corrections, however, may not lie in the limits of the absolute error $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$. By way of example, at $`a1\mu `$m the roughness correction may be around 12% of $`F^{(0)}`$ or even larger , and the finite conductivity correction for the gold surfaces at $`1\mu `$m separation is 10% of $`F^{(0)}`$ . (Remind that $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$ is around 3% of $`F^{(0)}`$ at $`a=1\mu `$m.) As to the temperature correction, it achieves 174% of $`F^{(0)}`$ at the separation $`a=6\mu `$m, where, however, $`\mathrm{\Delta }F`$ is around 700% of $`F^{(0)}`$. By this reason the constraints for Yukawa-type interaction following from the experiment  were found from the inequality

$$|F_{th}(a)F^{(0)}(a)|\mathrm{\Delta }F,$$
(9)
where $`F_{th}`$ is the theoretical force value, including $`F^{(0)}`$, all the corrections to it mentioned above, and also the hypothetical Yukawa-type interaction calculated in  at experimental configuration (remind that the sign of finite conductivity correction is opposite to the signs of other corrections).

The obtained results are shown in Fig. 1 where the regions above the curves are prohibited and below the curves are permitted. Curve 1 represents the constraints following from the Cavendish-type experiment of Ref. , curves 2,a and 2,b are calculated by Eq. (9) for $`\alpha _G>0`$ respectively $`\alpha _G<0`$ . Curve 3 was obtained earlier (see, e.g., ) by the results of Casimir force measurements between dielectrics. The strengthening of constraints given by the curves 2,a and 2,b comparing the curve 3 is up to a factor 30 in the interaction range $`2.2\times 10^7\text{m}\lambda 1.6\times 10^4`$m (a bit different result was obtained later in  where the corrections to the ideal Casimir force (8) were not taken into account).

In  the results of the Casimir force measurements between a flat disk and a sphere by means of an atomic force microscope were presented in comparison with the theory taking into account the finite conductivity and roughness corrections. Temperature corrections are not essential in the interactiuon range $`0.1\mu \text{m}<a<0.9\mu `$m of . The test bodies were covered by the aluminum layer of 300 nm thickness and $`Au/Pd`$ layer of the thickness 20 nm (the latter is transparent for electromagnetic oscillations of characteristic frequency). The absolute error of the force measurements in  was $`\mathrm{\Delta }F=2\times 10^{12}`$N. In the limits of this error the theoretical expression for the Casimir force with corrections to it due to both surface roughness and finite conductivity was confirmed. The theoretical expression for the Yukawa-type interaction in experimental configuration of  was obtained in . The constraints on the parameters $`\alpha _G,\lambda `$ calculated in  from the inequality

$$|F_{Yu}(a)|\mathrm{\Delta }F,$$
(10)
turned out to be the best ones in the interaction range $`5.9\times 10^9\text{m}\lambda 10^7`$m. They are stronger up to 140 times than the previously known ones from the Casimir force measurements between dielectrics (note that here all the corrections were included into the force under measuring; by this reason the constraints on $`|\alpha _G|`$ rather than on $`\alpha _G`$ were obtained).

In  the improved precision measurement of the Casimir force was performed by means of an atomic force microscope. The experimental improvements which include vibration isolation, lower systematic errors, and independent measurement of surface separation gave the possibility to decrease the absolute error of force measurement by a factor 2. Also the smoother $`Al`$ coating with thickness 250 nm was used and thinner external $`Au/Pd`$ layer of the thickness 7.9 nm. The Yukawa-type hypothetical force in the configuration of  was calculated in  where the stronger constraints on $`\alpha _G,\lambda `$ were also obtained using the inequality (10). These constraints are presented in Fig. 1 (curve 4). They turned out to be up to four times stronger than the constraints  obtained from the previous experiment  within a bit wider interaction range $`5.9\times 10^9\text{m}\lambda 1.15\times 10^7`$m. The total strengthening of constraints on the corrections to Newtonian gravitational law from the measurements of the Casimir force by means of atomic force microscope has reached 560 times within the $`\lambda `$-interval mentioned above.

## IV New constraints on the Yukawa-type interaction from the Casimir force measurement between gold surfaces by means of atomic force microscope

Recently one more measurement of the Casimir force was performed using the atomic force microscope . The test bodies (sphere and a disk) were coated by gold instead of aluminum which removes some difficulties connected with the additional thin $`Au/Pd`$ layers used in the previous measurements  to prevent the oxidation processes on $`Al`$ surfaces. The used polystyrene sphere coated by gold layer was of diameter $`2R=191.3\mu `$m and a sapphire disk had a diameter $`2L=1`$cm, and a thickness $`D=1`$mm. The thickness of the gold coating on both test bodies was $`\mathrm{\Delta }=86.6`$nm. This can be considered as an infinitely thick in relation to the Casimir force measurements. The root mean square roughness amplitude of the gold surfaces was decreased until 1 nm which makes roughness corrections negligibly small. The measurements were performed at smaller separations, i.e. $`62\text{nm}a350`$nm. The absolute error of force measurements was, however, $`\mathrm{\Delta }F=3.5\times 10^{12}`$N, i.e., a bit larger than in the previous experiments. The reason is the thinner gold coating used in  which led to poor termal conductivity of the cantilever. At smaller separations of about 65 nm this error is less than 1% of the measured Casimir force.

Now let us calculate the gravitational force acting in experimental configuration due to the potential (1). The Newtonian contribution is found to be negligible. Actually, due to the inequality $`RL`$ each atom of the sphere can be considered as if it would be placed above the center of the disk. Then the vertical component of the Newtonian gravitational force acting between the sphere atom of a mass $`M_1`$ situated at a height $`lL`$ and the disk is

$$f_{N,z}(l)=\frac{}{l}\left[GM_1\rho 2\pi \underset{0}{\overset{L}{}}r𝑑r\underset{l}{\overset{l+D}{}}\frac{dz}{\sqrt{r^2+z^2}}\right]2\pi GM_1\rho D\left[1\frac{D+2l}{2L}\right],$$
(11)
where $`\rho `$ is the disk density, and only the first order terms in $`D/L`$ and $`l/L`$ are retained.

The Newtonian gravitational force acting between the disk and the sphere is obtained from (11) by integration over the sphere volume

$$F_{N,z}\frac{8}{3}\pi ^2G\rho \rho ^{}DR^3\left(1\frac{D}{2L}\frac{R}{L}\right),$$
(12)
where $`\rho ^{}`$ is the density of the sphere material.

Even with sphere and disk made of the vacuo-distilled gold as a whole with $`\rho =\rho ^{}=18.88\times 10^3`$kg/m3 one arrives from (12) to the negligibly small value of $`F_{N,z}6\times 10^{16}\text{N}\mathrm{\Delta }F`$.

The Yukawa-type addition to the Newtonian gravity which is due to the second term of the potential (1) should be calculated with account of true materials of the test bodies (for a polystyrene sphere $`\rho ^{}=1.06\times 10^3`$kg/m3, for a sapphire disk $`\rho =4.0\times 10^3`$kg/m3, and for the gold covering layers $`\rho _1=18.88\times 10^3`$kg/m3). It can be easily obtained using the same procedure which was applied in the case of the Newtonian gravitational force. The result is

$$F_{Yu}(a)=4\pi ^2G\alpha _G\lambda ^3e^{a/\lambda }R\left[\rho _1(\rho _1\rho )e^{\mathrm{\Delta }/\lambda }\right]\left[\rho _1(\rho _1\rho ^{})e^{\mathrm{\Delta }/\lambda }\right].$$
(13)
According to  the theoretical value of the Casimir force was confirmed within the limits of $`\mathrm{\Delta }F=3.5\times 10^{12}`$N and no hypothetical force was observed. In such a situation, the constraints on $`\alpha _G`$ can be obtained from the inequality (10). The strongest constraints follow for the smallest possible values of $`a65`$nm. The computational results are presented by curve 5 in Fig. 1.

As is seen from Fig. 1, the Casimir force measurement between the gold surfaces by means of an atomic force microscope gives the possibility to strengthen the previuosly known constraints (curve 4) up to 19 times within a range $`4.3\times 10^9\text{m}\lambda 1.5\times 10^7`$m. The largest strengthening takes place for $`\lambda =`$(5-10) nm. Comparing the constraints obtained from the Casimir and van der Waals force measurements between dielectrics (curves 3 and 6) the strengthening up to 4500 was achieved by the Casimir force measurement  between gold surfaces using the atomic force microscope.

## V Conclusions and discussion

As indicated above, there is abundant evidence that the gravitational interaction at small distances undergo deviations from the Newtonian law. These deviations can be described by the Yukawa-type potential. They were predicted in the theoretical schemes with the quantum gravity scale both of order $`10^{18}`$GeV and $`10^3`$GeV. In the latter case the problem of experimental search for such deviations takes on great significance. The existence of large extra dimensions can radically alter many concepts of space-time, elementary particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. To cite an example, the highest temperature at which the Universe was born turns out to be $`10^3`$GeV instead of $`10^{18}`$GeV. Although this does not touch the era of big-bang nucleosynthesis which begins at lower temperatures of about 1 MeV the theory of the very early Universe including inflation may be significantly changed .

The Casimir and van der Waals force measurements is the main source of constraints on the Yukawa-type interactions at small distances. In the present paper we have reviewed the latest advances deduced in such a manner in the submillimeter interaction range. The new constraints were obtained also following from the recent Casimir force measurements between gold surfaces by means of an atomic force microscope . They are found to be up to 19 times stronger than the previously reported  and up to 4500 stronger than the well-known constraints obtained from the Casimir and van der Waals force measurements between dielectrics. Although the interaction range where the new constraints are valid was extended, there is yet a gap (shown by curve 3 in Fig. 1) up to the curves 2,a, 2,b obtained from the Casimir force measurement by the use of torsion pendulum .

As it is seen from Fig. 1, much work should be done in order to test experimentally predictions of the models with weak-scale compactification characterized by the value $`\alpha _G10`$ (see Sec. 2). As was shown in  the constraints following from the experiment  can be improved up to four orders of magnitude in the range around $`\lambda =10^4`$m. This is just right to attain the desirable values of $`\alpha _G`$. As to the experiments using the atomic force microscope , where the larger strengthening of the previously known constraints is already achieved (up to 4500 times), there remains almost fifteen orders more needed to achieve the value $`\alpha _G10`$ in the interaction range $`\lambda 10^7`$m. Thus, it is desirable here not only to increase the strength of constraints but also to move the interaction range under examination to larger $`\lambda `$ (e.g., by the increase of a sphere radius and the space separation to the disk). In conclusion it may be said that the compact and relatively cheap laboratory experiments on the measurement of the Casimir force offer important advantages over the commonly used techniques intended for the investigation of fundamental interactions and new elementary particles.

## Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to G. L. Klimchitskaya, D. E. Krause, and U. Mohideen for helpful discussions. V.M.M. is grateful to the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas where the work was performed for kind hospitality. He acknowledges the financial support from FAPERJ. M.N. was partly supported by CNPq.


text:
# Discovery of nearly coherent oscillations with a frequency of ∼567 Hz during type-I X-ray bursts of the X-ray transient and eclipsing binary X 1658–298

## 1 Introduction

Of the more than fifty low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) that exhibit type-I X-ray bursts only in six111After submission of our paper NCOs were also reported in 4U 1916–053 (Galloway et al. 2000), 4U 1608–52 (Chakrabarty et al. 2000), and possibly SAX J1808.4–3658 (in ’t Zand et al. 2000) bringing to ten the number of systems now known to exhibit NCOs. systems have nearly coherent oscillations (NCOs) during X-ray bursts been detected (Strohmayer et al. 1996, 1997b, 1998a; Smith, Morgan, & Bradt 1997; Zhang et al. 1998; Markwardt, Strohmayer, & Swank 1999; these oscillations are also called ’burst oscillations’). Their high coherence (e.g., Strohmayer & Markwardt 1999; Muno et al. 2000), their strength (Strohmayer, Zhang, & Swank 1997a; Strohmayer et al. 1998a), and their frequency stability over many years (Strohmayer et al. 1998b) suggest that they are due to the spin of the neutron star. Their observed frequencies (300–600 Hz) are also consistent with the spin periods of other known rapidly rotating neutron stars, for example, the millisecond radio pulsars, and the 401 Hz accreting X-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4–3658 (Wijnands & van der Klis 1998). Four of the burst oscillation systems are persistent sources and can be studied extensively so that the properties of their bursts (i.e., the NCOs) can be correlated with the overall behavior of the source (i.e., the variations in the mass accretion rate), although this has so far only been done for two systems (Muno et al. 2000; Franco 2000; van Straaten et al. 2000). The other two sources are transients and the NCOs can only be studied when these sources are in outburst. Such outbursts occur infrequently and only a limited number of X-ray bursts from them have been observed. Because of the limited amount of published results, the phenomenology of how the properties of NCOs relate to source state and mass accretion rate are not yet well understood.

The LMXB X 1658–298 is an X-ray transient and was discovered by Lewin, Hoffman, & Doty (1976). They reported type-I X-ray bursts from the system, and thus demonstrated that the compact object is a neutron star. Cominsky & Wood (1984, 1989) found that the source displays deep X-ray dips and eclipses every $``$7.1 hours, which most likely is the orbital period. After an outburst in 1978 the source remained in quiescence until April 1999, when it was again found to be active (in ’t Zand et al. 1999). The RXTE/ASM light curve222The ASM light curve of X 1658–298 can be found at http://xte.mit.edu/ASM\_lc.html shows that as of the time of resubmission of this Letter (15 December 2000) the source is still active. An updated ephemeris for the orbital period was obtained by Wachter, Smale, & Bailyn (2000), using public TOO observations of X 1658–298 performed with the proportional counter array (PCA) on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). We searched the archival RXTE data (public TOO observations and proprietary data which have become publicly available) of X 1658–298 for type-I X-ray bursts and we then searched the bursts we found for the presence of NCOs. Here, we report the discovery of NCOs at a frequency of $``$567 Hz during X-ray bursts from X 1658–298. A preliminary announcement of this discovery was already made by Wijnands, Strohmayer, & Franco (2000a).

## 2 Observations, analysis, and results

Since its reappearance, X 1658–298 has been observed on many occasions with the RXTE/PCA, both as a result of proprietary Cycle 4 observations and also via public TOO observations (Cycle 4 and 5). We searched all the currently public archival data for X-ray bursts using the Standard 1 data mode. Besides this mode and the Standard 2 mode, data were collected using an event mode with a time resolution of 122 $`\mu `$s in 64 energy channels (E\_125us\_64M\_0\_1s; covering the full RXTE/PCA energy range of 2–60 keV). These event mode data were used to search for and study oscillations during the type-I bursts.

We found 14 bursts (Tab. 1), five of which occurred during intervals of dipping activity (bursts 1, 5, 9, 10, and 12) and one occurred during an eclipse (burst 14) and only the end of its decay phase could be studied. Of the bursts which occurred outside the dips, one burst was only about half as bright as the others (burst 6). Only during five bursts (bursts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7) were all five PCA detectors on and for the others only four (eight bursts; bursts 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 14) or three (one burst; burst 10) detectors were active.

We searched the bursts for NCOs by using the $`Z_n^2`$ statistic (i.e., the $`Z_1^2`$ statistic because NCOs are highly sinusoidal) which was first used for analyzing the timing properties of X-ray bursts by Strohmayer & Markwardt (1999). We computed $`Z_1^2`$ throughout the bursts using overlapping 2 s intervals with a new interval defined every 1/4 s. The $`Z_1^2`$ statistic has the same statistical properties as a Leahy normalized power spectrum. Thus, for a purely random Poisson process it is distributed as the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution with 2 degrees of freedom. We searched the frequency range from 100–1200 Hz (for the range 2–22 keV) and discovered that highly significant NCOs were present at a frequency of $``$567 Hz in five bursts (Fig. 3; bursts 2, 3, 4, 8, and 11). In burst 9 the NCOs were also conclusively detected but at a much lower significance level. For a few of the remaining bursts we have indications that the NCOs might also have been present, however, these detections are not significant. We quote 90% confidence upper limits on the strength of possible NCOs in these bursts (Tab. 1).

The strength of the NCOs is typically between 8 % and 20 % rms amplitude in the energy range 2–60 keV (Tab. 1; including the persistent source count rate which varied typically 100–150 counts s-1 PCU-1) and the folded light curves of the oscillations are very sinusoidal (e.g., Fig. 3). For two of these bursts the NCOs were only present during the rising phase of the bursts (e.g., Fig. 3a) and for the other four bursts (including burst 9) in the tail of the bursts (e.g., Fig. 3b). The properties of the method used for the analysis of the NCOs and their transient nature causes the broad distribution in frequency of the contours near the burst rise in Figure 3a. It is still not clear what determines the time or times during the bursts when oscillations are present. We are in the process of analyzing the bursts behavior and the source behavior in detail in order to determine if the properties of the NCOs are correlated with any of the other burst properties (e.g., the burst profile, episodes of photo-spheric radius expansion) or with the properties of the source (e.g., mass accretion rate). In a forthcoming paper we will discuss our results (Wijnands et al. 2000b).

When the NCOs are found in the tail of the bursts, their frequency increases slightly by 0.5–1 Hz (Fig. 3b). However, in one burst we found a very interesting evolution of the oscillation frequency. The frequency during the burst decay phase increased slightly by $``$1 Hz after which the oscillation died away. However about 4 s later the oscillation reappeared but at a frequency of 571.5 Hz (12.3%$`\pm `$1.5% rms amplitude; 2–60 keV; Fig. 3 top panel). These NCOs near 571.5 Hz have similar peak power ($`Z_1^232`$) as the ones earlier on and the single trail probability of detecting such a power by chance is 1.1$`\times 10^7`$. When taking into account a conservative estimate of the number of trials involved (the frequency range searched was 564–574 Hz for a 20 s interval after the burst peak), this probability increases to 2.2$`\times 10^5`$. Including the number of bursts (14) in our sample we find a probability of 3.1$`\times 10^4`$ that the signal is due to chance. However, when taking into account only the six bursts which do show NCOs the probability decreases to 1.3$`\times 10^4`$. We conclude from these numbers that the signal we see at 571.5 Hz is real. Similar oscillations were not present in the other bursts with typical amplitude upper limits of 5%–11% rms (2–60 keV; Tab. 1).

The 5 Hz change in frequency represents the largest increase in any burst oscillation reported to date. To study this behavior further we decided to examine the energy dependence of the oscillations. We found that the oscillations at 571.5 Hz are most clearly visible below 6 keV (Fig. 3 middle panel), whereas when the frequency is close to 567 Hz the oscillations are stronger above 6 keV (Fig. 3 bottom panel). This demonstrates that the oscillation had a different energy dependence at different times during the burst.

## 3 Discussion

We have discovered highly significant nearly coherent oscillations at a frequency of $``$567 Hz during five type I X-ray bursts observed from the X-ray transient and eclipsing binary X 1658–298. This makes this source the seventh source for which highly significant NCOs have been found. The properties of these oscillations (their coherence, their strengths, their long-term stability) make it likely that they are directly related to the spin frequency of the neutron star (or its first overtone as in 4U 1636–53; Miller 1999). In this interpretation, the spin period of the neutron star in X 1658–298 would be $``$1.8 ms. This is well within the range of what has been observed for the other sources which exhibit NCOs.

The frequency of the oscillation in the tail increases slightly by about 1 Hz (see Fig. 3b), similar to what has been observed before (e.g., Strohmayer et al. 1996, 1998a; Markwardt et al. 1999; Muno et al. 2000) in all of the other burst oscillation sources (although in some bursts a frequency decrease has been observed; Strohmayer 1999; Miller 1999; Muno et al. 2000). However, for one burst we observed a frequency increase of $``$5 Hz (Fig. 3 top panel), the largest increase so far observed for any system. During this burst the oscillations have a different energy dependence at different frequencies: the oscillations are considerably harder when the frequency is observed near 567 Hz than when it reached 571.5 Hz. Usually the burst oscillations are hard (e.g., Smith et al. 1997; Strohmayer et al. 1997b; Muno et al. 2000) and the 571.5 Hz signal is the first clear detection for which the burst oscillations are soft. The physical mechanism behind this sudden change in hardness is unclear, although it might be related to the softening of the burst spectrum in the decay phase of the burst.

In the interpretation that the burst oscillations are due to the rotation of the neutron star, the evolution of the frequency of the oscillations (usually an increase of the frequency) observed in the tail of the bursts has been explained by assuming that the bursting layer on the neutron star surface expands by several tens of meters (e.g., Strohmayer et al. 1997; Cumming & Bildsten 2000). This height increase causes the layer to slow down and the frequency of the oscillations to decrease, only to spin up again when the layer settles back on the neutron star surface. To explain the large (5 Hz) increase in frequency we observed for X 1658–298, a simple estimate indicates that the burning layer would have to expand by about 40–45 m. Cumming & Bildsten (2000) recently investigated the amount of hydrostatic expansion expected from bursts over a range of conditions. They find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }z(90\%)`$, the increase in the height of the layer which contains 90 % of the mass, can be as large as about 40 m, so it may be possible to account for such a change in the frequency. However, it is unclear if this ’expanding bursting layer’ model can account for the erratic increase of the frequency during this particular burst. It is possible that the asymptotic frequency, assumed to be very close to the spin frequency, is actually a few Hertz lower than the true spin frequency. This might be the case not only for X 1658–298 but for all the other sources as well. It is however not clear why the large frequency increase is only observed for one burst for X 1658–298 and not for the others bursts in this source or for the bursts in the other sources. In order to study this behavior in more detail additional bursts are needed which show a similar large frequency increase.

Besides the five bursts which exhibit the very significant NCOs, we found a significant detection (although at lower significance) of the NCOs in one other burst (burst 9) but only non-significant indications in the other bursts with rms amplitude upper limits significantly lower than the NCOs strengths (see Tab. 1). Four of the bursts without NCOs occurred during orbital phase interval 0.75–0.02 (as determined using the ephemeris provided by Wachter et al. 2000; including the burst during an eclipse). The absence of NCOs might be due to the fact that during this orbital phase interval the source exhibits strong dipping behavior which is most likely caused by matter coming in to the line of sight. This matter (partly) obscures our view of the inner system and will also attenuate the NCOs. The density of the obscuring matter is highly variable and if the density decreases significantly, it is possible that the NCOs can become undetectable, similar to what we observe.

However, the above simple picture does not hold for all bursts. Three bursts outside the dipping phase (burst 6, 7, and 13; orbital phase of 0.15, 0.61, and 0.42) do not exhibit these oscillations. The reason why these bursts do not show NCOs might be because they behaved differently from the bursts with oscillations in other respects. Burst 6 was only about half as bright as the other bursts indicating that the physical process behind the lower flux of this burst might also have inhibited the oscillations to be produced. The burst profiles of burst 7 and 13 were different from that of the other bursts. Burst 7 exhibited an excess of burst flux several (2 to 4) seconds after the peak of the burst, just when oscillations are expected to be present (as judged from the other bursts which do have NCOs) and the rise phase of burst 13 last 2 to 4 times as long ($``$ 4 seconds) as the rise phases of the bursts showing NCOs (typically 1–2 seconds). The physical processes involved in producing these unusual burst profiles might also have caused the inhibition of the NCO mechanism.

Although the above picture can explain why NCOs might not have been present during all bursts which occur outside the dipping episodes, it cannot explain the two bursts at phase 0.86 (burst 9) and 0.95 (burst 3) which do show NCOs. The NCOs in burst 3 can be explained by assuming that although the source has not entered the eclipsing phase yet, the dipping activity has already subsided and we are able to observe the inner system again. This is consistent with the absence of any clear dipping activity in the persistent emission before and after this burst (but before the eclipse). However, the NCOs in burst 9 cannot be explained in this way. From the light curve it is clear that this burst happened during a period of extremely heavy dipping activity, which should have attenuated the oscillations. Instead the NCOs we observe in the tail of this burst are even stronger than the oscillations in the tail observed for other bursts. If we assume that the oscillations are indeed partly attenuated then these oscillations should have been even stronger. It is unclear what causes these strong oscillations in burst 9 and why they are not strongly attenuated.

X 1658–298 is the first X-ray dipping and eclipsing binary for which NCOs have been discovered and in this system the binary inclination is well constrained ($`i`$ 75–80) compared to the other systems. Because the other systems do not exhibit X-ray dips their inclination is lower than $``$70 and most likely the range of inclination angles for these systems is large (based on statistical grounds). It seems likely that system inclination is an important factor in determining whether a source will show burst oscillations. In order for rotational modulation to be effective the line of sight must not be too close to the spin axis of the neutron star. Since this axis is almost certainly perpendicular to the orbital plane systems with high inclination have the most favorable geometry for producing rotational modulation. The fact that burst oscillations are seen in X 1658–298 is at least consistent with this simple argument. Unfortunately, the inclinations of other burst oscillation sources are not so tightly constrained, so it is not possible at present to state that inclination is the primary factor in burst oscillation observability. Indeed, it may be that other factors are as important as inclination in producing observable burst oscillations. For example, the magnetic field strength may be important in pooling fuel at the magnetic poles, as suggested by Miller (1999) in the context of 4U 1636-53, or the oscillations might only be detectable above certain values of the mass accretion rate as shown for KS 1731–260 (Muno et al. 2000) and 4U 1728–34 (Franco 2000; van Straaten et al. 2000). At the moment, however, it is still unclear why only a few sources exhibit these burst oscillations.

Due to its high inclination and hence the strong constraints on the binary parameters, X 1658–298 could be an excellent source in order to try to determine the X-ray mass function from the burst oscillations as proposed by Strohmayer et al. (1998b). The bursts which exhibit the oscillations during the tail of the bursts (four bursts in our sample of bursts) are the most promising bursts in order to perform such a measurement if one assumed that the asymptotic frequency observed is the neutron star spin frequency. However, the observation of a burst frequency several Hz higher than the asymptotic frequency in the other three bursts casts doubt on the validity of this assumption.

This work was supported by NASA through Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF9-10010 awarded by CXC, which is operated by SAO for NASA under contract NAS8-39073. This research has made use of data obtained through the HEASARC Online Service, provided by the NASA/GSFC.