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# Compact non-left-recursive grammars using the selective left-corner transform and factoring This research was supported by NSF awards 9720368, 9870676 and 9812169. We would like to thank our colleagues in BLLIP (Brown Laboratory for Linguistic Information Processing) and Bob Moore for their helpful comments on this paper.

## 1 Introduction

Top-down parsing techniques are attractive because of their simplicity, and can often achieve good performance in practice . However, with a left-recursive grammar such parsers typically fail to terminate. The left-corner grammar transform converts a left-recursive grammar into a non-left-recursive one: a top-down parser using a left-corner transformed grammar simulates a left-corner parser using the original grammar . However, the left-corner transformed grammar can be significantly larger than the original grammar, causing numerous problems. For example, we show below that a probabilistic context-free grammar (PCFG) estimated from left-corner transformed Penn WSJ tree-bank trees exhibits considerably greater sparse data problems than a PCFG estimated in the usual manner, simply because the left-corner transformed grammar contains approximately 20 times more productions. The transform described in this paper produces a grammar approximately the same size as the input grammar, which is not as adversely affected by sparse data.

Left-corner transforms are particularly useful because they can preserve annotations on productions (more on this below) and are therefore applicable to more complex grammar formalisms as well as CFGs; a property which other approaches to left-recursion elimination typically lack. For example, they apply to left-recursive unification-based grammars \[1983, 1987, 1998a\]. Because the emission probability of a PCFG production can be regarded as an annotation on a CFG production, the left-corner transform can produce a CFG with weighted productions which assigns the same probabilities to strings and transformed trees as the original grammar . However, the transformed grammars can be much larger than the original, which is unacceptable for many applications involving large grammars.

The selective left-corner transform reduces the transformed grammar size because only those productions which appear in a left-recursive cycle need be recognized left-corner in order to remove left-recursion. A top-down parser using a grammar produced by the selective left-corner transform simulates a generalized left-corner parser  which recognizes a user-specified subset of the original productions in a left-corner fashion, and the other productions top-down.

Although we do not investigate it in this paper, the selective left-corner transform should usually have a smaller search space relative to the standard left-corner transform, all else being equal. The partial parses produced during a top-down parse consist of a single connected tree fragment, while the partial parses produced produced during a left-corner parse generally consist of several disconnected tree fragments. Since these fragments are only weakly related (via the “link” constraint described below), the search for each fragment is relatively independent. This may be responsible for the observation that exhaustive left-corner parsing is less efficient than top-down parsing . Informally, because the selective left-corner transform recognizes only a subset of productions in a left-corner fashion, its partial parses contain fewer tree discontiguous fragments and the search may be more efficient.

While this paper focuses on reducing grammar size to minimize sparse data problems in PCFG estimation, the modified left-corner transforms described here are generally applicable wherever the original left-corner transform is. For example, the selective left-corner transform can be used in place of the standard left-corner transform in the construction of finite-state approximations \[1998a\], often reducing the size of the intermediate automata constructed. The selective left-corner transform can be generalized to head-corner parsing , yielding a selective head-corner parser. (This follows from generalizing the selective left-corner transform to Horn clauses).

After this paper was accepted for publication we learnt of Moore , which addresses the issue of grammar size using very similar techniques to those proposed here. The goals of the two papers are slightly different: Moore’s approach is designed to reduce the total grammar size (i.e., the sum of the lengths of the productions), while our approach minimizes the number of productions. Moore  does not address left-corner tree-transforms, or questions of sparse data and parsing accuracy that are covered in section 3.

## 2 The selective left-corner and related transforms

This section introduces the selective left-corner transform and two additional factorization transforms which apply to its output. These transforms are used in the experiments described in the following section. As Moore  observes, in general the transforms produce a non-left-recursive output grammar only if the input grammar $`G`$ does not contain unary cycles, i.e., there is no nonterminal $`A`$ such that $`A_G^+A`$.

### 2.1 The selective left-corner transform

The selective left-corner transform takes as input a CFG $`G=(V,T,P,S)`$ and a set of left-corner productions $`LP`$, which contains no epsilon productions; the non-left-corner productions $`PL`$ are called top-down productions. The standard left-corner transform is obtained by setting $`L`$ to the set of all non-epsilon productions in $`P`$. The selective left-corner transform of $`G`$ with respect to $`L`$ is the CFG $`𝒞_L(G)=(V_1,T,P_1,S)`$, where:

$$V_1=V\{D\text{}X:DV,XVT\}$$

and $`P_1`$ contains all instances of the schemata 2.1. In these schemata, $`DV`$, $`wT`$, and lower case greek letters range over $`(VT)^{}`$. The $`D\text{}X`$ are new nonterminals; informally they encode a parse state in which an $`D`$ is predicted top-down and an $`X`$ has been found left-corner, so $`D\text{}X_{𝒞_L(G)}^{}\gamma `$ only if $`D_G^{}X\gamma `$.

$$\begin{array}{ccc}DwD\text{}w\hfill & & (\text{1a})\hfill \\ D\alpha D\text{}A\hfill & \text{where }A\alpha PL\hfill & (\text{1b})\hfill \\ D\text{}B\beta D\text{}C\hfill & \text{where }CB\beta L\hfill & (\text{1c})\hfill \\ D\text{}Dϵ\hfill & & (\text{1d})\hfill \end{array}$$

The schemata function as follows. The productions introduced by schema 2.1 start a left-corner parse of a predicted nonterminal $`D`$ with its leftmost terminal $`w`$, while those introduced by schema 2.1 start a left-corner parse of $`D`$ with a left-corner $`A`$, which is itself found by the top-down recognition of production $`A\alpha PL`$. Schema 2.1 extends the current left-corner $`B`$ up to a $`C`$ with the left-corner recognition of production $`CB\beta `$. Finally, schema 2.1 matches the top-down prediction with the recognized left-corner category.

Figure 1 schematically depicts the relationship between a chain of left-corner productions in a parse tree generated by $`G`$ and the chain of corresponding instances of schema 2.1. The left-corner recognition of the chain starts with the recognition of $`\alpha `$, the right-hand side of a top-down production $`A\alpha `$, using an instance of schema 2.1. The left-branching chain of left-corner productions corresponds to a right-branching chain of instances of schema 2.1; the left-corner transform in effect converts left recursion into right recursion. Notice that the top-down predicted category $`D`$ is passed down this right-recursive chain, effectively multiplying each left-corner productions by the possible top-down predicted categories. The right recursion terminates with an instance of schema 2.1 when the left-corner and top-down categories match.

Figure 2 shows how top-down productions from $`G`$ are recognized using $`𝒞_L(G)`$. When the selective left-corner transform is followed by a one-step $`ϵ`$-removal transform (i.e., composition or partial evaluation of schema 2.1 with respect to schema 2.1 \[1998a, 1991, 1992\]), each top-down production from $`G`$ appears unchanged in the final grammar. Full $`ϵ`$-removal yields the grammar given by the schemata below.

$$\begin{array}{ccc}DwD\text{}w\hfill & & \\ Dw\hfill & \text{where }D_L^+w\hfill & \\ D\alpha D\text{}A\hfill & \text{where }A\alpha PL\hfill & \\ D\alpha \hfill & \text{where }D_L^{}A,A\alpha PL\hfill & \\ D\text{}B\beta D\text{}C\hfill & \text{where }CB\beta L\hfill & \\ D\text{}B\beta \hfill & \text{where }D_L^{}C,CB\beta L\hfill & \end{array}$$

Moore  introduces a version of the left-corner transform called $`\mathrm{LC}_{\mathrm{𝐿𝑅}}`$, which applies only to productions with left-recursive parent and left child categories. In the context of the other transforms that Moore introduces, it seems to have the same effect in his system as the selective left-corner transform does here.

### 2.2 Selective left-corner tree transforms

There is a 1-to-1 correspondence between the parse trees generated by $`G`$ and $`𝒞_L(G)`$. A tree $`t`$ is generated by $`G`$ iff there is a corresponding $`t^{}`$ generated by $`𝒞_L(G)`$, where each occurrence of a top-down production in the derivation of $`t`$ corresponds to exactly one local tree generated by occurrence of the corresponding instance of schema 2.1 in the derivation of $`t^{}`$, and each occurrence of a left-corner production in $`t`$ corresponds to exactly one occurrence of the corresponding instance of schema 2.1 in $`t^{}`$. It is straightforward to define a 1-to-1 tree transform $`𝒯_L`$ mapping parse trees of $`G`$ into parse trees of $`𝒞_L(G)`$ \[1998a, 1999\]. In the empirical evaluation below, we estimate a PCFG from the trees obtained by applying $`𝒯_L`$ to the trees in the Penn WSJ tree-bank, and compare it to the PCFG estimated from the original tree-bank trees. A stochastic top-down parser using the PCFG estimated from the trees produced by $`𝒯_L`$ simulates a stochastic generalized left-corner parser, which is a generalization of a standard stochastic left-corner parser that permits productions to be recognized top-down as well as left-corner . Thus investigating the properties of PCFG estimated from trees transformed with $`𝒯_L`$ is an easy way of studying stochastic push-down automata performing generalized left-corner parses.

### 2.3 Pruning useless productions

We turn now to the problem of reducing the size of the grammars produced by left-corner transforms. Many of the productions generated by schemata 2.1 are useless, i.e., they never appear in any terminating derivation. While they can be removed by standard methods for deleting useless productions , the relationship between the parse trees of $`G`$ and $`𝒞_L(G)`$ depicted in Figure 1 shows how to determine ahead of time the new nonterminals $`D\text{}X`$ that can appear in useful productions of $`𝒞_L(G)`$. This is known as a link constraint.

For (P)CFGs there is a particularly simple link constraint: $`D\text{}X`$ appears in useful productions of $`𝒞_L(G)`$ only if $`\gamma (VT)^{}.D_L^{}X\gamma `$. If epsilon removal is applied to the resulting grammar, $`D\text{}X`$ appears in useful productions only if $`\gamma (VT)^+.D_L^{}X\gamma `$. Thus one only need generate instances of the left-corner schemata which satisfy the corresponding link constraints.

Moore  suggests an additional constraint on nonterminals $`D\text{}X`$ that can appear in useful productions of $`𝒞_L(G)`$: $`D`$ must either be the start symbol of $`G`$ or else appear in a production $`A\alpha D\beta `$ of $`G`$, for any $`AV`$, $`\alpha \{VT\}^+`$ and $`\beta \{VT\}^{}`$. It is easy to see that the productions that Moore’s constraint prohibits are useless. There is one non-terminal in the tree-bank grammar investigated below that has this property, namely LST. However, in the tree-bank grammar none of the productions expanding LST are left-recursive (in fact, the first child is always a preterminal), so Moore’s constraint does not affect the size of the transformed grammars investigated below.

While these constraints can dramatically reduce both the number of productions and the size of the parsing search space of the transformed grammar, in general the transformed grammar $`𝒞_L(G)`$ can be quadratically larger than $`G`$. There are two causes for the explosion in grammar size. First, $`𝒞_L(G)`$ contains an instance of schema 2.1 for each top-down production $`A\alpha `$ and each $`D`$ such that $`\gamma .D_L^{}A\gamma `$. Second, $`𝒞_L(G)`$ contains an instance of schema 2.1 for each left-corner production $`C\beta `$ and each $`D`$ such that $`\gamma .D_L^{}C\gamma `$. In effect, $`𝒞_L(G)`$ contains one copy of each production for each possible left-corner ancestor. Section 2.5 describes further factorizations of the productions of $`𝒞_L(G)`$ which mitigate these causes.

### 2.4 Optimal choice of $`L`$

Because $`_L^{}`$ increases monotonically with $`_L`$ and hence $`L`$, we typically reduce the size of $`𝒞_L(G)`$ by making the left-corner production set $`L`$ as small as possible. This section shows how to find the unique minimal set of left-corner productions $`L`$ such that $`𝒞_L(G)`$ is not left-recursive.

Assume $`G=(V,T,P,S)`$ is pruned (i.e., $`P`$ contains no useless productions) and that there is no $`AV`$ such that $`A_G^+A`$ (i.e., $`G`$ does not generate recursive unary branching chains). For reasons of space we also assume that $`P`$ contains no $`ϵ`$-productions, but this approach can be extended to deal with them if desired. A production $`AB\beta P`$ is left-recursive iff $`\gamma (VT)^{}.B_P^{}A\gamma `$, i.e., $`P`$ rewrites $`B`$ into a string beginning with $`A`$. Let $`L_0`$ be the set of left-recursive productions in $`G`$. Then we claim (1) that $`𝒞_{L_0}(G)`$ is not left-recursive, and (2) that for all $`LL_0`$, $`𝒞_L(G)`$ is left-recursive.

Claim 1 follows from the fact that if $`A_{L_0}B\gamma `$ then $`A_PB\gamma `$ and the constraints in section 2.3 on useful productions of $`𝒞_{L_0}(G)`$. Claim 2 follows from the fact that if $`LL_0`$ then there is a chain of left-recursive productions that includes a top-down production; a simple induction on the length of the chain shows that $`𝒞_L(G)`$ is left-recursive.

This result justifies the common practice in natural language left-corner parsing of taking the terminals to be the preterminal part-of-speech tags, rather than the lexical items themselves. (We did not attempt to calculate the size of such a left-corner grammar in the empirical evaluation below, but it would be much larger than any of the grammars described there). In fact, if the preterminals are distinct from the other nonterminals (as they are in the tree-bank grammars investigated below) then $`L_0`$ does not include any productions beginning with a preterminal, and $`𝒞_{L_0}(G)`$ contains no instances of schema 2.1 at all. We now turn our attention to the other schemata of the selective left-corner grammar transform.

### 2.5 Factoring the output of $`𝒞_L`$

This section defines two factorizations of the output of the selective left-corner grammar transform that can dramatically reduce its size. These factorizations are most effective if the number of productions is much larger than the number of nonterminals, as is usually the case with tree-bank grammars.

The top-down factorization decomposes schema 2.1 by introducing new nonterminals $`D^{}`$, where $`DV`$, that have the same expansions that $`D`$ does in $`G`$. Using the same interpretation for variables as in schemata 2.1, if $`G=(V,T,P,S)`$ then $`𝒞_L^{(td)}(G)=(V_{td},T,P_{td},S)`$, where:

$$V_{td}=V_1\{D^{}:DV\}$$

and $`P_{td}`$ contains all instances of the schemata 2.1, 2.5, 2.5, 2.1 and 2.1.

$$\begin{array}{ccc}DA^{}D\text{}A\hfill & \text{where }A\alpha PL\hfill & (\text{3a})\hfill \\ A^{}\alpha \hfill & \text{where }A\alpha PL\hfill & (\text{3b})\hfill \end{array}$$

Notice that the number of instances of schema 2.5 is less than the square of the number of nonterminals and that the number of instances of schema 2.5 is the number of top-down productions; the sum of these numbers is usually much less than the number of instances of schema 2.1.

Top-down factoring plays approximately the same role as “non-left-recursion grouping” (NLRG) does in Moore’s  approach. The major difference is that NLRG applies to all productions $`AB\beta `$ in which $`B`$ is not left-recursive, i.e., $`\overline{)}\gamma .B_P^+B\gamma `$, while in our system top-down factorization applies to those productions for which $`\overline{)}\gamma .B_P^{}A\gamma `$, i.e., the productions not directly involved in left recursion.

The left-corner factorization decomposes schema 2.1 in a similar way using new nonterminals $`D\backslash X`$, where $`DV`$ and $`XVT`$. $`𝒞_L^{(lc)}(G)=(V_{lc},T,P_{lc},S)`$, where:

$$V_{lc}=V_1\{D\backslash X:DV,XVT\}$$

and $`P_{lc}`$ contains all instances of the schemata 2.1, 2.1, 2.5, 2.5 and 2.1.

$$\begin{array}{ccc}D\text{}BC\backslash BD\text{}C\hfill & \text{where }CB\beta L\hfill & (\text{4a})\hfill \\ C\backslash B\beta \hfill & \text{where }CB\beta L\hfill & (\text{4b})\hfill \end{array}$$

The number of instances of schema 2.5 is bounded by the number of instances of schema 2.1 and is typically much smaller, while the number of instances of schema 2.5 is precisely the number of left-corner productions $`L`$.

Left-corner factoring seems to correspond to one step of Moore’s  “left factor” (LF) operation. The left factor operation constructs new nonterminals corresponding to common prefixes of arbitrary length, while left-corner factoring effectively only factors the first nonterminal symbol on the right hand side of left-corner productions. While we have not done experiments, Moore’s left factor operation would seem to reduce the total number of symbols in the transformed grammar at the expense of possibly introducing additional productions, while our left-corner factoring reduces the number of productions.

These two factorizations can be used together in the obvious way to define a grammar transform $`𝒞_L^{(td,lc)}`$, whose productions are defined by schemata 2.1, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 and 2.1. There are corresponding tree transforms, which we refer to as $`𝒯_L^{(td)}`$, etc., below. Of course, the pruning constraints described in section 2.3 are applicable with these factorizations, and corresponding invertible tree transforms can be constructed.

## 3 Empirical Results

To examine the effect of the transforms outlined above, we experimented with various PCFGs induced from sections 2–21 of a modified Penn WSJ tree-bank as described in Johnson \[1998b\] (i.e., labels simplified to grammatical categories, root nodes added, empty nodes and vacuous unary branches deleted, and auxiliaries retagged as aux or auxg). We ignored lexical items, and treated the part-of-speech tags as terminals. As Bob Moore pointed out to us, the left-corner transform may produce left-recursive grammars if its input grammar contains unary cycles, so we removed them using the a transform that Moore suggested. Given an initial set of (non-epsilon) productions $`P`$, the transformed grammar contains the following productions, where the $`A^{\mathrm{}}`$ are new non-terminals:

$$\begin{array}{cc}A\alpha \hfill & \text{where }A\alpha P,A\Rightarrow ̸_P^+A\hfill \\ AD^{\mathrm{}}\hfill & \text{where }A_P^{}D_P^+A\hfill \\ A^{\mathrm{}}\alpha \hfill & \text{where }A\alpha P,A_P^+A,\alpha \Rightarrow ̸_P^{}A\hfill \end{array}$$

This transform can be extended to one on PCFGs which preserves derivation probabilities. In this section, we fix $`P`$ to be the productions that result after applying this unary cycle removal transformation to the tree-bank productions, and $`G`$ to be the corresponding grammar.

Tables 1 and 2 give the sizes of selective left-corner grammar transforms of $`G`$ for various values of the left-corner set $`L`$ and factorizations, without and with epsilon-removal respectively. In the tables, $`L_0`$ is the set of left-recursive productions in $`P`$, as defined in section 2.4. $`N`$ is the set of productions in $`P`$ whose left-hand sides do not begin with a part-of-speech (POS) tag; because POS tags are distinct from other nonterminals in the tree-bank, $`N`$ is an easily identified set of productions guaranteed to include $`L_0`$. The tables also gives the sizes of maximum-likelihood PCFGs estimated from the trees resulting from applying the selective left-corner tree transforms $`𝒯`$ to the tree-bank, breaking unary cycles as described above. For the parsing experiments below we always deleted empty nodes in the output of these tree transforms; this corresponds to epsilon removal in the grammar transform.

First, note that $`𝒞_P(G)`$, the result of applying the standard left-corner grammar transform to $`G`$, has approximately 20 times the number of productions that $`G`$ has. However $`𝒞_{L_0}^{(td,lc)}(G)`$, the result of applying the selective left-corner grammar transformation with factorization, has approximately 1.4 times the number of productions that $`G`$ has. Thus the methods described in this paper can in fact dramatically reduce the size of left-corner transformed grammars. Second, note that $`𝒞_N^{(td,lc)}(G)`$ is not much larger than $`𝒞_{L_0}^{(td,lc)}(G)`$. This is because $`N`$ is not much larger than $`L_0`$, which in turn is because most pairs of non-POS nonterminals $`A,B`$ are mutually left-recursive.

Turning now to the PCFGs estimated after applying tree transforms, we notice that grammar size does not increase nearly so dramatically. These PCFGs encode a maximum-likelihood estimate of the state transition probabilities for various stochastic generalized left-corner parsers, since a top-down parser using these grammars simulates a generalized left-corner parser. The fact that $`𝒞_P(G)`$ is 17 times larger than the PCFG inferred after applying $`𝒯_P`$ to the tree-bank means that most of the possible transitions of a standard stochastic left-corner parser are not observed in the tree-bank training data. The state of a left-corner parser does capture some linguistic generalizations , but one might still expect sparse-data problems. Note that $`𝒞_{L_0}^{(td,lc)}`$ is only 1.4 times larger than $`𝒯_{L_0}^{(td,lc)}`$, so we expect less serious sparse data problems with the factored selective left-corner transform.

We quantify these sparse data problems in two ways using a held-out test corpus, viz., all sentences in section 23 of the tree-bank. First, table 3 lists the number of sentences in the test corpus that fail to receive a parse with the various PCFGs mentioned above. This is a relatively crude measure, but correlates roughly with the ratios of grammar sizes, as expected.

Second, table 4 lists the number of productions found in the tree-transformed test corpus that do not appear in the correspondingly transformed trees of sections 2–21. What is striking here is that the number of missing productions after either of the transforms $`𝒯_{L_0}^{(td,lc)}`$ or $`𝒯_N^{(td,lc)}`$ is approximately the same as the number of missing productions using the untransformed trees, indicating that the factored selective left-corner transforms cause little or no additional sparse data problem. (The relationship between local trees in the parse trees of $`G`$ and $`𝒞_L(G)`$ mentioned earlier implies that left-corner tree transformations will not decrease the number of missing productions).

We also investigate the accuracy of the maximum-likelihood parses (MLPs) obtained using the PCFGs estimated from the output of the various left-corner tree transforms.<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1 We did not investigate the grammars produced by the various left-corner grammar transforms. Because a left-corner grammar transform $`𝒞_L`$ preserves production probabilities, the highest scoring parses obtained using the weighted CFG $`𝒞_L(G)`$ should be the highest scoring parses obtained using $`G`$ transformed by $`𝒯_L`$. We searched for these parses using an exhaustive CKY parser. Because the parse trees of these PCFGs are isomorphic to the derivations of the corresponding stochastic generalized left-corner parsers, we are in fact evaluating different kinds of stochastic generalized left-corner parsers inferred from sections 2–21 of the tree-bank. We used the transform-detransform framework described in Johnson \[1998b\] to evaluate the parses, i.e., we applied the appropriate inverse tree transform $`𝒯^1`$ to detransform the parse trees produced using the PCFG estimated from trees transformed by $`𝒯`$. By calculating the labelled precision and recall scores for the detransformed trees in the usual manner, we can systematically compare the parsing accuracy of different kinds of stochastic generalized left-corner parsers.

Table 5 presents the results of this comparison. As reported previously, the standard left-corner grammar embeds sufficient non-local information in its productions to significantly improve the labelled precision and recall of its MLPs with respect to MLPs of the PCFG estimated from the untransformed trees . Parsing accuracy drops off as grammar size decreases, presumably because smaller PCFGs have fewer adjustable parameters with which to describe this non-local information. There are other kinds of non-local information which can be incorporated into a PCFG using a transform-detransform approach that result in an even greater improvement of parsing accuracy \[1998b\]. Ultimately, however, it seems that a more complex approach incorporating back-off and smoothing is necessary in order to achieve the parsing accuracy achieved by Charniak  and Collins .

## 4 Conclusion

This paper presented factored selective left-corner grammar transforms. These transforms preserve the primary benefits of the left-corner grammar transform (i.e., elimination of left-recursion and preservation of annotations on productions) while dramatically ameliorating its principal problems (grammar size and sparse data problems). This should extend the applicability of left-corner techniques to situations involving large grammars. We showed how to identify the minimal set $`L_0`$ of productions of a grammar that must be recognized left-corner in order for the transformed grammar not to be left-recursive. We also proposed two factorizations of the output of the selective left-corner grammar transform which further reduce grammar size, and showed that there is only a minor increase in grammar size when the factored selective left-corner transform is applied to a large tree-bank grammar. Finally, we exploited the tree transforms that correspond to these grammar transforms to formulate and study a class of stochastic generalized left-corner parsers.

This work could be extended in a number of ways. For example, in this paper we assumed that one would always choose a left-corner production set that includes the minimal set $`L_0`$ required to ensure that the transformed grammar is not left-recursive. However, Roark and Johnson  report good performance from a stochastically-guided top-down parser, suggesting that left-recursion is not always fatal. It might be possible to judiciously choose a left-corner production set smaller than $`L_0`$ which eliminates pernicious left-recursion, so that the remaining left-recursive cycles have such low probability that they will effectively never be used and a stochastically-guided top-down parser will never search them.


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# Saddles on the potential energy landscape of a Lennard-Jones liquid Invited talk presented at the Conference Disordered and Complex Systems, King’s College London, July 2000.

## Abstract

By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we study the stationary points of the potential energy in a Lennard-Jones liquid, giving a purely geometric characterization of the energy landscape of the system. We find a linear relation between the degree of instability of the stationary points and their potential energy, and we locate the energy where the instability vanishes. This threshold energy marks the border between saddle-dominated and minima-dominated regions of the energy landscape. The temperature where the potential energy of the Stillinger-Weber minima becomes equal to the threshold energy turns out to be very close to the mode-coupling transition temperature $`T_c`$.

The low temperature dynamics of supercooled liquids and glasses is often put in relation with the geometric properties of the potential energy landscape of these systems. In particular, the presence of a large number of inequivalent glassy minima has stimulated many studies in the past cavagna-gold ; cavagna-sw ; cavagna-jo ; cavagna-nat ; cavagna-kk . More recently, the study of mean-field models of spin-glasses has strengthened the persuasion that the dynamical behaviour of glassy systems is deeply connected to the topology of the energy landscape cavagna-rev . Moreover, it has been shown that spin-glass systems exhibiting one-step replica symmetry breaking (1RSB) have many dynamical properties in common with fragile structural glasses cavagna-kb , suggesting that 1RSB mean-field spin-glasses and fragile glasses may have a similar energy landscape.

In this context, crucial questions are: How to characterize the energy landscape of a glassy system? How to quantify the similarity of the energy landscape of fragile glasses and 1RSB spin-glasses? Although utterly relevant, the structure of minima of the potential energy is not enough: even at low temperatures, when activation is the only mechanism of diffusion in liquids, overcoming a barrier implies crossing a saddle of the potential energy. Furthermore, at higher temperatures the system spends more time around saddles than minima, hence the structure of unstable stationary points is important for understanding the crossover from a non-activated to an activated dynamics upon cooling cavagna-madan ; cavagna-bradipo . The statistical properties of the stationary points of the potential energy are of course independent of the temperature, as also should be a thorough description of the energy landscape itself.

Here we will focus on the purely geometric properties of the energy landscape of a glassy system, by studying the statistical properties of all the stationary points of its potential energy, be they minima or saddles. We classify them according to number of unstable directions, (or index K), potential energy and smallest eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix. We show that in this way it is possible to quantitatively compare the energy landscape of different systems, pointing out similarities and differences. Moreover, we discover a threshold energy below which it is highly unlikely to find saddles and the relaxation requires activation. We thus establish a connection between this threshold energy and the critical temperature $`T_c`$ of mode-coupling theory (MCT) cavagna-mct . Finally, by means of our results, we support some recent speculations on the role of saddles in supercooled liquids cavagna-bradipo .

The system under consideration is a binary mixture of Lennard–Jones (LJ) particles cavagna-ka  (for details see cavagna-sad ). Throughout this study we present results for systems with $`N=60`$ particles. In order to explore the stationary points of the potential energy, we use the following method: We equilibrate a configuration at a given temperature $`T`$ using a standard molecular dynamics (MD) simulation technique. To locate a saddle close to the equilibrium configuration we then perform a quench on a pseudo-potential energy landscape $`W(x)`$ given by the modulus square of the force, $`W(x)=\stackrel{}{}U(x)\stackrel{}{}U(x)`$, where $`U(x)`$ is the original potential energy cavagna-sad ; cavagna-ruocco . All absolute minima of $`W(x)`$ are stationary points of $`U(x)`$, hence every saddle of $`U(x)`$ has a well defined basin of attraction. The local minima of $`W(x)`$, however, do not correspond to zeros of the real force. These points are frequently sampled, but they can easily be distinguished from the absolute minima and are excluded from our analysis. However, this means that the method does not associate to all the configurations a nearby saddle and therefore it cannot be used to build a natural dynamics of the relevant saddles, equivalent to the Stillinger-Weber (SW) one for minima cavagna-sw . Furthermore, the relation between the initial MD equilibrium configuration at temperature $`T`$ and the final stationary point found by this algorithm, is not straightforward. We prefer to perform here a purely geometric analysis of the stationary points, independent of the way we have sampled them cavagna-foot .

Given a stationary point, we compute its index density $`k=K/(3N)`$ and its potential energy density $`u=U/N`$. In Fig.1 we show the results obtained by sampling saddles at two different values of the temperature. This plot clearly suggests that there is an underlying curve $`k(u)`$ independent of the temperature, which encodes a purely geometric feature of the landscape. By sampling stationary points at different values of $`T`$ we are simply exploring different portions of the same geometric curve: temperature acts as a light spot needed to unveil the underlying function $`k(u)`$.

In Fig.2 we show the average index density as a function of the energy density. What is most striking of this plot is how well defined the function $`k(u)`$ is: due to its geometric nature there are no thermal fluctuations. This curve shows that if we cut the potential energy landscape with a plane of constant energy density $`u=u_0`$, the stationary points on this plane (or within a narrow shell around this plane) will be dominated by saddles with index density $`k(u_0)`$. Furthermore, $`k(u)`$ is to a very good approximation a linear function in the explored regime of $`u`$. This implies that the curve extrapolates to zero at a well defined energy, which we call the threshold energy $`u_{th}`$, in analogy with 1RSB spin-glasses. The linear interpolation of all the data and the linear interpolation of the last four points give the same estimate for the threshold, that is $`u_{th}=4.55`$.

The threshold energy marks the border between the saddles-dominated portion of the energy landscape and the minima-dominated one. A crucial point is that $`u_{th}`$ is above the energy of the deepest glassy minima found with the SW method cavagna-sw , that is $`u_0=4.65`$: there is a finite energy density interval, $`u[u_0,u_{th}]`$, where minima are entropically dominant over saddles, as it happens in 1RSB spin-glasses cavagna-us3 . In those systems, however, $`k(u)`$ is $`\mathrm{𝑛𝑜𝑡}`$ a linear function and $`k^{}(u)`$ vanishes at the threshold. This difference may be related to the mean-field nature of 1RSB models as opposed to real liquids. Indeed, in cavagna-bradipo  the slope of $`k(u)`$ has been connected to the energy barriers in the system by the relation $`\mathrm{\Delta }U1/k^{}(u)`$: in the mean-field case we expect barriers among minima to diverge, implying $`k^{}(u_{th})=0`$ (as found in 1RSB models), while this cannot be true in finite dimensional systems.

To further compare the energy landscape of LJ and 1RSB systems, we consider in Fig.3 the lowest eigenvalue $`\lambda _0`$ of the Hessian in a stationary point, as a function of its potential energy density. As expected, $`\lambda _00`$ for $`uu_{th}`$, implying that the potential energy landscape at the threshold has some flat directions, i.e. it is marginal cavagna-rev . What is somewhat surprising is that $`\lambda _0(u)`$ is approximately a linear function of the energy, $`\lambda _0(u_{th}u)`$, exactly as in 1RSB spin-glasses cavagna-vira . We conclude that both, the index density $`k(u)`$ and the smallest eigenvalue $`\lambda _0(u)`$, provide a quantitative measure and allow a direct comparison of the properties of the energy landscape for two very different systems, LJ liquids and 1RSB mean-field spin-glasses.

Our next task is to relate the threshold potential energy $`u_{th}`$ to the dynamical behaviour of the supercooled liquid in the proximity of the glass transition. In Fig.4 we plot the average energy density $`u_{SW}(T)`$ of the SW minima as a function of the temperature of the initial MD trajectory cavagna-jo ; cavagna-nat ; cavagna-kk , in comparison to $`\delta (T)U(x)/N(T)3/2T`$, i.e. the difference between the average potential energy density (from MD simulations) and the vibrational energy in the harmonic approximation. For a harmonic potential $`\delta (T)`$ is just the energy of the minimum of the well. We find that $`\delta (T)u_{SW}(T)`$ for $`T1.2`$ cavagna-sri . This is the range of temperatures which is dominated by the energy landscape and the timescales for the two processes of relaxation - vibrations inside a minimum and hopping between different minima - start to separate. Close to the glass transition (depending on the cooling rate) the system falls out of equilibrium, as indicated by the saturation of both quantities, $`u_{SW}(T)`$ and $`\delta (T)`$. As we can see, the extrapolation of the equilibrium part of these curves reaches the threshold energy at the MCT transition temperature $`T_c`$. The index density vanishes at the threshold, so that below this energy minima are the entropically dominant stationary points. Of course, there are minima also above the threshold, but they are not dominant, while saddles are. The MCT $`T_c`$ therefore corresponds to the temperature below which minima visited by the dynamics become entropically dominant, while saddles become statistically irrelevant.

To conclude, we consider the potential energy barriers between different minima in our system. According to cavagna-bradipo  we can obtain an estimate of the barriers from the slope of $`k(u)`$, as $`\mathrm{\Delta }U=1/[3k^{}(u_{th})]5.0`$, which has the right order of magnitude (see, for example, the data of cavagna-sh ). Following the scenario of cavagna-bradipo , we must locate the geometric crossover temperature $`T_B`$, below which saddles no longer contribute to diffusion: as we have seen above, this temperature must be identified in this system with $`T_c`$, giving $`T_B0.44`$. On the other hand, the other crossover temperature $`T_A`$, ruling activation, is fixed by the barrier size, $`T_A\mathrm{\Delta }U5.0`$. Hence, for this system we have $`T_B<T_A`$: at $`T_B`$ barriers are already quite large as compared to $`T`$, and following cavagna-bradipo  this implies that the system is fragile. This result is consistent with the common classification of LJ liquids as fragile and therefore supports the description of fragile vs strong liquids behaviour given in cavagna-bradipo .


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# References

The First Six Days of the Universe

Moshe Carmeli

Department of Physics, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Email: carmelim@bgumail.bgu.ac.il

## Abstract

The early stage of the Universe is discussed and the time lenghts of its first six days, as well as its age, are given. There seems to be no contradiction with the Bible’s ascertain that the Universe was created in six days.

Scientists have in recent years adopted the picture that the Universe was created in a single event of plasma explosion, called the Big Bang. This approach remarkably conforms with the Bible’s description of the creation of the Universe. However, there are still doubts about the meaning, mentioned in the Bible, that the Universe was created in six days. We actually know from the study of anthropology and cosmology that any development of the kind mentioned in the Bible takes millions or billions of years.

We show in the following that the viewpoint of the Bible is actually compatible with the theory of cosmology – the days of our life now are not equal to the days at the time of the creation of the Universe. In this note we calculate the lengths of days of the early Universe, day by day, from the first day on up to our present time. We find that the first day actually lasted the Hubble time in the limit of zero gravity. If we denote the Hubble time in the zero-gravity limit by $`\tau `$ which equals 11.5 billion years and $`T_n`$ denotes the length of the $`n`$-th day in units of times of the early Universe, then we have a very simple relation

$$T_n=\frac{\tau }{2n1}.$$
$`(1)`$
Hence we obtain for the first six days the following lengths of time:

$$T_1=\tau ,T_2=\frac{\tau }{3},T_3=\frac{\tau }{5},T_4=\frac{\tau }{7},T_5=\frac{\tau }{9},T_6=\frac{\tau }{11}.$$
$`(2)`$
It also follows that the accumulation of time from the first day to the second, third, fourth, …, up to now is just exactly the Hubble time. The Hubble time in the limit of zero gravity is the maximum time allowed in nature. Using Cosmological Special Relativity \[1-4\], the calculation is very simple. We assume that the Big Bang time with respect to us now was $`t_0=\tau `$, the time of the first day after that was $`t_1`$, the time of the second day was $`t_2`$, and so on up to the sixth day $`t_6`$. In this way the time scale is progressing in units of one day (24 hours) in our units of present time. The time difference between $`t_0`$ and $`t_1`$, denoted by $`T_1`$, is the time as measured at the early Universe and is by no means equal to one day of our time. In this way we denote the times elapsed from the Big Bang to the end of the first day $`t_1`$ by $`T_1`$, between the first day $`t_1`$ and the second day $`t_2`$ by $`T_2`$ and so on for the time from the fifth day $`t_5`$ to the sixth day $`t_6`$ by $`T_6`$. According to the rule of the addition of cosmic times one has

$$t_6+1(day)=\frac{t_6+T_6}{1+t_6T_6/\tau ^2}.$$
$`(3)`$
A straightforward calculation then shows that

$$T_6=\frac{\tau ^2}{\tau ^2\left(\tau 6\right)\left(\tau 5\right)}=\frac{\tau ^2}{11\tau 30}.$$
$`(4)`$
In general one finds that

$$T_n=\frac{\tau ^2}{\tau ^2\left(\tau n\right)\left(\tau n+1\right)},$$
$`(5)`$
or

$$T_n=\frac{\tau }{n+\left(n1\right)n\left(n1\right)/\tau }.$$
$`(6)`$
As is seen from the last formula one can neglect the second term in the denominator in the first approximation and we get the simple Eq. (1).

From the above one reaches the conclusion that the age of the Universe exactly equals the Hubble time in vacuum $`\tau `$, i.e. 11.5 billion years, and it is a universal constant. This means that the age of the Universe tomorrow will be the same as it was yesterday or today. But this might not go along with our intuition since we usually deal with short periods of times in our daily life, and the unexperienced person will reject such a conclusion. Physics, however, deals with measurements. In fact we have exactly a similar situation with respect to the speed of light $`c`$. When measured in vacuum, it is 300 thousands kilometers per second. If the person doing the measurement tries to decrease or increase this number by moving with a very high speed in the direction or against the direction of the propagation of light, he will find that this is impossible and he will measure the same number as before. The measurement instruments adjust themselves is such a way that the final result remains the same. In this sense the speed of light in vacuum $`c`$ and the Hubble time in vacuum $`\tau `$ behave the same way and are both universal constants.

The similarity of the behavior of velocities of objects and those of cosmic times can also be demonstrated as follows. Suppose a rocket moves with the speed $`V_1`$ with respect to an observer on the Earth. We would like to increase that speed to $`V_2`$ as measured by the observer on the Earth. In order to achieve this, the rocket has to increase its speed not by the difference $`V_2V_1`$, but by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }V=\frac{V_2V_1}{1V_1V_2/c^2}.$$
$`(7)`$
As can easily be seen $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ is much larger than $`V_2V_1`$ for velocities $`V_1`$ and $`V_2`$ close to that of light $`c`$. This result follows from the rule for the addition of velocities,

$$V_{1+2}=\frac{V_1+V_2}{1+V_1V_2/c^2},$$
$`(8)`$
a consequence of Einstein’s famous Special Relativity Theory . In cosmology, we have the analogous formula

$$T_{1+2}=\frac{T_1+T_2}{1+T_1T_2/\tau ^2}$$
$`(9)`$
for the cosmic times.

In conclusion, the lengths of the first six days were enough to accomodate the activities of the creation mentioned in the Bible. Furthermore, since at that time there were no other reference systems (like the present-day one) to compare with, one concludes that the ascertain of the Bible about the six-day creation of the Universe is scientifically valid.


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# Spectral Signatures of KiloHertz Quasi-Periodic Oscillations from Accreting Neutron Stars

## 1. Introduction

The orbital periods associated with the innermost orbits around solar mass compact objects are in the millisecond range. The millisecond quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) discovered (Strohmayer et al. 1996; van der Klis et al. 1996) with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE; Bradt, Rothschild, & Swank 1993) in the x-ray emission from accreting neutron stars are most likely associated with orbital motion near the neutron star, and, thus, potentially offer a new probe of accretion flows and strong gravitational fields near neutron stars in x-ray binaries (for a brief review, see Kaaret & Ford 1997). The key to exploiting the kHz QPOs as probes of strong gravity is to understand the QPOs at a sufficient level so that those aspects of the QPOs which depend on the properties of the gravitational field can be separated from the aspects which depend on details of the accretion physics. It may not be necessary to construct a full theory of the QPO generation mechanism, just as a binary pulsars are excellent test beds for the study of relativity even in the absence of an adequate theory for the generation of the radio pulses.

Here, I present some initial steps of attempts to understand the key quantitative features of the QPOs, such as the centroid frequency, and their relation to the properties of the accretion flow. I consider several key questions:

1. Is the x-ray spectral state of a source correlated with QPO frequency?
2. Is the QPO frequency related to the geometry of an accretion disk?
3. Is the QPO frequency determined by the mass accretion rate?

In the following, I present and then interpret observational data to attempt to answer these three questions.

If an adequate understanding of the QPOs can be obtained, we can then extend our study to address the properties of the gravitational field surrounding the neutron star. One important question is whether there exists an innermost radius, the marginally stable orbit also referred to as the innermost stable circular orbit, inside of which there exist no stable circular orbits. The lack of stability of circular orbits sufficiently close to a compact object is a key prediction of strong field general relativity (e.g. Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler 1970). The relevance of the existence of the marginally stable orbit to to the physics of accretion around black holes has long been understood (e.g. Shakura & Sunyaev 1973). More recently, it was pointed out by Kluzniak and Wagoner (1985) that, for most of the preferred equations of state of nuclear matter, the marginally stable orbit lies outside the neutron star radius and thus should be dynamically important for the accretion flow on to neutron stars. The kHz QPOs appear to provide an observational means to test these predictions.

## 2. Correlation of QPO frequency with spectral state

We wish to use the kHz QPOs as kinematic probes and, thus, must understand the relation of the QPO parameters, particularly the centroid frequency, to the geometry of the accretion flow. We begin by searching for correlations in the time variations of QPO parameters and x-ray spectral properties.

The most obvious spectral parameter with which to correlate the QPO frequency is the total X-ray flux. In a neutron star system, accreted matter must eventually come to rest on the neutron star surface, and, therefore, the total luminosity, $`L`$, of a neutron star system must be directly proportional to the total mass accretion rate onto the stellar surface $`\dot{M}`$ via $`L=GM\dot{M}/R`$, where $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, and $`M`$ and $`R`$ are the mass and radius of the neutron star. If the emission is isotropic, or, more generally, if the beaming pattern of the emission does not change with time, then the bolometric flux from a source must also be proportional to $`\dot{M}`$. In Fig. 1, we show the relation between QPO frequency and X-ray flux in the 2.5–25 keV band for the neutron star binary 4U 1728-34 (GX 354-0). The figure includes data from observations spanning three years. It is apparent from the figure that, while the QPO frequency and X-ray flux may be correlated for subsets of the data, the overall behavior shows no correlation. The lack of correlation between QPO frequency and X-ray flux may be due to one or more of several different factors: time variable beaming of the X-rays, the contribution of significant flux outside the measurement band, an outflow from the system, or a fundamental lack of physical correlation between QPO frequency and total mass accretion rate.

Spectral shape has long been employed as an indicator of mass accretion rate in neutron star systems. For sources with x-ray spectra which can be adequately described with a simple power law model (often used for black hole candidates and low luminosity neutron star binaries), a natural indicator of spectral state is the power law photon index. Kaaret et al. (1998) showed that the QPO frequency is well correlated with photon index, but not with x-ray flux, in the neutron star x-ray binaries 4U 0614+091 and 4U 1608-52. This suggests that the spectral state and QPO frequency are related to a common physical parameter. Kaaret et al. (1998) suggested that common parameter is the mass accretion rate through the accretion disk.

A more general indicator of spectral state is an x-ray color, defined as the ratio of count rates in two different energy bands. X-ray colors can be applied to any source and do not rely on an assumed spectral model. However, they are strongly instrument dependent, making it difficult to compare colors obtained from different instruments, and they have no direct interpretation in terms of physical parameters of the source. X-ray colors have been used as spectral state indicators both individually and in pairs forming a “color-color” diagram. When their time varying spectral state is plotted on a color-color diagram, each individual neutron star x-ray binary tends to follow a well-defined track, see Fig. 2 where we present a color-color diagram for 4U 1728-34. This collapse of a potentially two dimensional pattern to a one-dimensional track suggests that a single parameter determines the spectral state. This parameter has usually been interpreted as the total mass accretion rate in the system (Hasinger & van der Klis 1989). However, the lack of correlation between total flux and spectral state may indicate that the parameter is not the total mass accretion rate.

Position in the color-color diagram can be parameterized by position along a fiducial track drawn through the diagram (Hasinger et al. 1990; Hertz et al. 1992). In Fig. 3, we show the QPO frequency versus position in the color-color diagram (Fig. 2) for the same observations presented in Fig. 1. The correlation between QPO frequency and position in the color-color diagram appears robust across several years of observations. A robust correlation is found between QPO frequency and x-ray colors, either position in a color-color diagram or simply a hard x-ray color, for most neutron star x-ray binaries (e.g. Mendez 1999).

## 3. QPO frequency and reflection

The robust correlation between QPO centroid frequency and various indicators of spectral state, photon index or x-ray colors, suggest that a single physical parameter determines both spectral state and QPO frequency. To determine the physical nature of this parameter, we performed a detailed analysis of high quality x-ray spectra of 4U 0614+091 obtained with BeppoSAX (Piraino et al. 1999). When fit with a simple power-law model, the spectra showed strong and systematic residuals near 10–30 keV with a shape characteristic of that expected for a reflection component in the spectrum. Addition of reflection to the spectral model greatly improved the quality of the fits and gave residuals with no systematic variations. Thus, there is strong evidence for a reflection component in the spectra of 4U 0614+091. We found that the magnitude of reflection is well correlated with photon index, confirming a relation suggested by Zdziarski et al. (1999).

The reflection component found in the spectra requires the presence of cool matter located close to the primary x-ray source, presumably the neutron star, and subtending a large solid angle as viewed by the primary source. The most natural interpretation is that the reflection occurs in an accretion disk surrounding the neutron star. In this case, the magnitude of reflection should be related to the properties of the disk. In particular, if the disk has a variable inner radius, then higher magnitudes of reflection will result for smaller disk inner radii.

Fig. 4 shows the QPO centroid frequency plotted versus magnitude of reflection for 4U 0614+091. The QPO parameters are from RXTE observations while the magnitude of reflection is from BeppoSAX observations. For the two points with lower frequency, we had simultaneous RXTE and BeppoSAX observations. For the upper two points, we inferred the QPO frequency based on the QPO frequency versus photon index relation from Kaaret et al. (1998) and the photon index measured with BeppoSAX and allowing for a systematic offset in photon indices between BeppoSAX and RXTE measured using simultaneous observations. The large error bars for these two points are due to the uncertainty in this extrapolation. The QPO frequency appears correlated with the magnitude of reflection. The correlation is consistent with that expected if the QPO frequency is determined by the orbital frequency at the inner edge of the disk and the variation in reflection is due to changes in the inner disk radius.

## 4. kHz QPOs and accretion geometry

I suggest the following physical picture to explain the correlations of QPO frequency with spectral state and magnitude of reflection presented in the previous sections. Mass accretion can occur in neutron star x-ray binaries both through the accretion disk and radially (e.g. Ghosh & Lamb 1978). The total mass accretion rate, disk plus radial, determines the total luminosity of the system. The mass accretion rate through the disk determines the radius of the inner edge of the disk and, via the dependence of the overall spectrum on the soft photon flux emitted from the disk, the spectral state of the system. The QPO frequency is determined by the radius of the inner edge of the disk. The data presented above are fully consistent with this picture.

To answer the questions posed earlier:

1. The spectral state of a source is correlated with QPO frequency as demonstrated by the robust correlations found between QPO frequency and photon index or x-ray color.
2. The QPO frequency is related to the geometry of the disk as demonstrated by the correlation between QPO frequency and magnitude of reflection in the x-ray spectrum.
3. The QPO frequency is determined by the mass accretion rate, but the important parameter is the mass accretion rate through the disk and not the total mass accretion rate.

## 5. kHz QPOs and the marginally stable orbit

The existence of the marginally stable orbit will have a strong effect on the configuration of the accretion disk near the neutron star as the lack of stable orbits inwards of the marginally stable orbit implies that a stable disk can not exist in that region. The inner radii of disks around neutron stars appear to be variable. The truncation of the disk may be caused by the neutron star magnetic field, by radiation forces acting on the disk, or by a disk instability. In general, the inner disk radius decreases with increasing mass accretion rate through the disk. The marginally stable orbit will modify this behavior by limiting the minimum possible inner disk radius, see figure 5. Thus, saturation at a minimum disk radius for large mass accretion rates is a signature of the marginally stable orbit (Miller, Lamb, & Psaltis 1998). As described in Kaaret, Ford, & Chen (1997), when the disk reaches the marginally stable orbit, the inner radius will not approach a single value, but instead wander over some range due to the properties of the transonic flow near the marginally stable orbit.

If one is willing to accept the assertions made in the previous section that the QPO frequency is determined by the radius of the inner edge of the accretion disk and that the x-ray spectral state is an indicator of mass accretion rate through the disk, then the relation of QPO frequency versus spectral state can be used to probe the relation of inner disk radius versus mass accretion rate through the disk. Thus, the shape of the QPO versus spectral state diagram, i.e. whether or not the QPO frequency saturates at high mass accretion rates, provides a test for the presence of the marginally stable orbit.

The QPO frequency versus spectral state diagram for 4U 1728–34, Fig. 3, shows no evidence for a saturation of QPO frequency at high mass accretion rates. This is also true for almost all neutron star binary for which kHz QPOs have been detected. There is only one source which does show a clear saturation of QPO frequency at high inferred mass accretion rates: 4U 1820-30. Zhang et al. (1998) demonstrated a saturation of QPO frequency versus x-ray count rate for 4U 1820-30. However, as QPO frequency is poorly correlated with count rate in most sources (the relation tends to look similar to the QPO frequency versus flux relation in Fig. 1), this approach came under significant criticism. Kaaret et al. (1999) showed that the QPO frequency saturates when plotted versus a spectral state indicator derived from a hard x-ray color. As QPO frequency is generally well correlated with hard x-ray color (e.g. Mendez 1999), this result is compelling evidence that the QPO frequency saturates at high disk mass accretion rates. Recently, Bloser et al. (1999) performed a similar analysis using position in a color-color diagram as a spectral state indicator, see Fig. 6, and again find a saturation of QPO frequency.

The fact that only 4U 1820-30 exhibits a saturation of the QPO frequency versus inferred disk mass accretion rate, and thus appears to be the only source for which the disk reaches the marginally stable orbit, merits some consideration. Interestingly, 4U 1820-30 also holds a unique position as the stellar binary system with the shortest known orbital period, see Fig. 7, and is thought to be a double degenerate binary which evolved through a common envelope phase (Rappaport et al. 1987). These unique features of 4U 1820-30 suggest that the neutron star may have accreted more matter and thus is more massive than other neutron stars in x-ray binaries.

For the marginally stable orbit to be dynamically important, it must lie outside the neutron star surface. If there is a boundary layer on the neutron star surface formed by the accretion flow, then to be observed via kHz QPOs, the marginally stable orbit must lie outside the top surface of the boundary layer. Inogamov & Sunyaev (1999) have recently calculated the properties of such boundary layers and found typical equatorial thicknesses near 1 km. This is comparable to the separation between the marginally stable orbit and neutron star surface for a $`1.4M_{}`$ neutron star, rotating at 250–400 Hz, for many of the currently favored equations of state for nuclear matter. The separation increases as the neutron star mass increases since the surface generally moves inward and the marginally stable orbit moves outward. Thus, the signature of the marginally stable orbit is most likely to be observed from the most massive neutron stars.

## 6. Conclusions

Millisecond x-ray timing is a promising probe of accretion flows in x-ray binaries. Robust correlations exist between millisecond timing properties and spectral properties. Study of these correlation may help improve our understanding of the physics and geometry of accretion flows in neutron star x-ray binaries and, perhaps, also of strong field gravity.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Peter Bloser for use of Fig. 6 before publication.

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# Fractal distribution function and fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebras

## Abstract

We consider the concept of fractons, i.e. particles or quasiparticles which obey specific fractal distribution function and for each universal class $`h`$ of particles we obtain a fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebra. This one takes into account the braid group structure of these objects which live in two-dimensional multiply connected space.

The concept of fractons as objects which live in two-dimensional multiply connected space, satisfying fractal distribution function  was introduced in. There and another places, we have exploited these ideas in the contexts of Fractional quantum Hall effect, High-$`T_c`$ superconductivity, Conformal field theories-CFT, Luttinger liquids and Black hole entropy. A beautiful connection between Number Theory and Physics came to out through our discussion of these topics: Farey series of rational numbers, Rogers dilogarithm function, fractal functions, algebraic equations are related, in some sense, to the notion of Hausdorff dimension.

We have defined universal classes $`h`$ of particles or quasiparticles which carry rational or irrational spin quantum number $`s`$. Thus for the fractal parameter or Hausdorff dimension $`h`$ defined into the interval $`1`$$`<`$$`h`$$`<`$$`2`$, each class gets its specific distribution function from a unique expression, the Fractal distribution function

$`n={\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒴[\xi ]h}}`$ (1)
where the function $`𝒴[\xi ]`$ satisfies the equation

$`\xi =\left\{𝒴[\xi ]1\right\}^{h1}\left\{𝒴[\xi ]2\right\}^{2h}.`$ (2)
We also have

$`\xi ^1=\left\{\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]\right\}^{h2}\left\{\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]\right\}^{h1}`$ (3)
where $`\xi =\mathrm{exp}\left\{(ϵ\mu )/KT\right\}`$ has the usual definition and

$`\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]={\displaystyle \frac{𝒴[\xi ]2}{𝒴[\xi ]1}}`$ (4)
is the single-particle partition function. In this way the fermionic ($`h=1`$) and bosonic ($`h=2`$) distributions are generalized naturally. On the other hand, the free energy for particles in a given quantum state is expressed as

$`[h]=KT\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]`$ (5)
such that for fermions

$`[1]=KT\mathrm{ln}\left\{1+\xi ^1\right\}`$ (6)
and for bosons

$`[2]=KT\mathrm{ln}\left\{1\xi ^1\right\}.`$ (7)
Hence we obtain the mean occupation number

$`n[h]`$ $`=`$ $`\xi {\displaystyle \frac{}{\xi }}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{KT}}\xi {\displaystyle \frac{}{\xi }}.`$ (8)
Another aspect of our formulation is that the classes $`h`$ satisfy a duality simmetry defined by $`\stackrel{~}{h}=3h`$, such that bosons and fermions are dual objects, and as a consequence we extract a fractal supersymmetry which defines pairs of particles $`(s,s+\frac{1}{2})`$. This way, the fractal distribution function is understood as a quantum-geometrical description of the statistical laws of Nature, since it encodes the fractal characteristic of the quantum path, which reflects the Heisenberg uncertainty principle .

A fractal index is asssociated with each class and defined by

$$i_f[h]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}(T=0)}^{1(T=\mathrm{})}\frac{d\xi }{\xi }\mathrm{ln}\left\{\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴(\xi )]\right\}$$
(9)
so we obtain for the bosonic class $`i_f[2]=1`$, for the fermionic class $`i_f[1]=\frac{1}{2}`$ and for the universal class $`h=\frac{3}{2}`$, we have $`i_f[\frac{3}{2}]=\frac{3}{5}`$. Thus for the interval of definition $`1`$$``$$`h`$$``$$`2`$, there exists the correspondence $`\frac{1}{2}`$$``$$`i_f[h]`$$``$$`1`$, which signalizes the connection between fractons and CFT-quasiparticles ( edge excitations ), in accordance with the unitary $`c`$$`<`$$`1`$ representations of the central charge ( a dimensionless number which characterizes that two-dimensional field theories ).

The particles of each class are collected taking into account the fractal spectrum

$`h1=1\nu ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}<\nu <1;h1=\nu 1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}<\nu <2;`$ (10)
$`etc.`$ (11)
and the spin-statistics relation $`\nu =2s`$. For example, consider the universal classes with distinct values of spin $`\{\frac{1}{2},\frac{3}{2},\frac{5}{2},\mathrm{}\}_{h=1}`$, $`\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}_{h=2}`$ and $`\{\frac{1}{4},\frac{3}{4},\frac{5}{4},\mathrm{}\}_{h=\frac{3}{2}}`$, then we have the Fermi-Dirac distribution

$`n[1]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi +1}}`$ (12)
the Bose-Einstein distribution

$`n[2]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi 1}}`$ (13)
and the Fractal distribution

$`n\left[{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}+\xi ^2}}}.`$ (14)
Now, we introduce the notion of a fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebra for each universal class $`h`$ of particles, which generalizes the fermionic and bosonic ones. As we noted before, fractons are objects which live in two-dimensional multiply connected space and so, we have a braid group structure behind the process of exchange of any two of these.

The fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebra is obtained of the relation

$`𝐚(x)𝐚^{}(y)f[\pm h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚(x)=\delta (xy),`$ (15)
between creation and annihilation operators. The factor of deformation is defined as

$`f[\pm h]=exp\left(\pm ıh\pi \right),`$ (16)
such that for $`h=1`$ and $`x=y`$, we reobtain the fermionic anticommutation relations $`\{𝐚(x),𝐚^{}(x)\}=1`$, and for $`h=2`$ and $`x=y`$, we reobtain the bosonic commutation relations $`[𝐚(x),𝐚^{}(x)]=1`$. If $`xy`$ and $`1`$$`<`$$`h`$$`<`$$`2`$, we have nonlocal operators for fractons

$`𝐚(x)𝐚^{}(y)=f[\pm h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚(x).`$ (17)
The braiding relations have the hermiticities

$`𝐚(x)𝐚^{}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[+h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚(x)`$ (18)
$`𝐚^{}(x)𝐚(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[+h]𝐚(y)𝐚^{}(x)`$ (19)
$`𝐚(x)𝐚^{}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚(x)`$ (21)
$`𝐚^{}(x)𝐚(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[h]𝐚(y)𝐚^{}(x)`$ (22)
$`𝐚(x)𝐚(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[+h]𝐚(y)𝐚(x)`$ (24)
$`𝐚^{}(x)𝐚^{}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[+h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚^{}(x)`$ (25)
$`𝐚(x)𝐚(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[h]𝐚(y)𝐚(x)`$ (27)
$`𝐚^{}(x)𝐚^{}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`f[h]𝐚^{}(y)𝐚^{}(x),`$ (28)
where $`f[+h]`$ stands for anticlockwise exchange and $`f[h]`$ for clockwise exchange.

The statistics parameter $`\nu `$ for the plus sign has the pattern

$`\{,+,,+,\mathrm{}\}_h`$ (29)
and the minus sign, gives us another one

$`\{+,,+,,\mathrm{}\}_h.`$ (30)
For example, consider the class $`h=\frac{3}{2}`$, then

$`\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}},\pm {\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{5}{2}},\pm {\displaystyle \frac{7}{2}},\mathrm{}\}_{h=\frac{3}{2}},`$ (31)
i.e.

$`f[+h]=e^{ı\frac{1}{2}\pi }=e^{+ı\frac{3}{2}\pi }=e^{ı\frac{5}{2}\pi }=e^{+ı\frac{7}{2}\pi }=\mathrm{}`$ (32)
and

$`f[h]=e^{+ı\frac{1}{2}\pi }=e^{ı\frac{3}{2}\pi }=e^{+ı\frac{5}{2}\pi }=e^{ı\frac{7}{2}\pi }=\mathrm{}.`$ (33)
As we can see, in each class, the particles with different values of statistics parameter ($`\nu =2s`$) have unambiguously distinct braiding properties to obey the fractal distribution function determined by the parameter $`h`$.

The phase of the wave function ( consider two-particle system ) changes by $`+\pi \nu `$ ( anti-clockwise exchange ) and $`\pi \nu `$ ( clockwise exchange ) in response to which way we braid in interchanging $`x`$ and $`y`$. On the one hand, the violation of the discrete symmetries of parity and time reversal is verified for such fractons, i.e.

$`e^{\pm ı\pi \nu }e^{ı\pi \nu }.`$ (34)
To summarize, we have determined the fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebras for universal classes $`h`$ of fractons which obey specific fractal distribution function. This one is just a natural  ( besides its simplicity and elegance ) generalization of the fermionic and bosonic distributions for particles with braiding properties. A next step is to consider the construction of the nonlocal operators for fractons taking into account an angle function as discussed, for example, by Lerda and Sciuto in.


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# Use of optically detected magnetic resonance to correlate germanium electron centers with UV absorption bands in X-ray irradiated germanosilicate glasses

## I Introduction

Germanosilicate glasses and germanium-doped silica fibers have been extensively studied for over a decade, mostly because of their photosensitive properties and utility in producing Bragg gratings and other optical devices. Despite the intense research efforts, however, the precise mechanisms responsible for the photosensitive effect remain unclear. Many researchers have focused on elucidating the defect photochemistry in the glass structure as a possible means of explaining this effect. In the most widely accepted model, photorefractive index changes in Ge-doped SiO2 induced by exposure to ultraviolet light or ionizing radiation are brought about by the presence of germanium oxygen-deficient defect centers (GODCs) in the glass network . Two such defects thought to play significant roles in the photosensitive phenomenon are the neutral oxygen monovacancy (NOMV) and the neutral oxygen divacancy (NODV or Ge+2), both of which have electronic transitions in the vicinity of 5.16 eV . NOMV and NODV are known to be photobleached by UV radiation via one and two-photon effects , respectively, although the exact mechanism by which the NODV bleaching occurs is subject to considerable debate . These photobleaching processes are known to lead to the production of several broad UV absorption bands, the most notable of which are centered at 6.5 eV, 5.8 eV, and 4.5 eV .

Also produced in these processes are a number of paramagnetic point defects which may play a significant role in UV-induced index changes, the most relevant being the two varieties of germanium trapped electron centers (GECs), known as Ge(1) and Ge(2), and the GeE center. Ge(1) is believed to be a substitutional Ge tetrahedron with four silicon atoms as the next nearest neighbors  that has trapped an electron donated by either an NODV or a bridging oxygen . Various experiments have shown that this defect center can be produced by either two-photon absorption of excimer laser light (KrF, XeCl, or ArF) , single photon absorption of light from a KrCl excimer lamp , or by ionizing radiation such as X- or $`\gamma `$-rays . A similar structure has been proposed for the Ge(2) defect (electron trapped at Ge tetrahedron with one Ge and three Si atoms as next nearest neighbors) , although there is significant recent evidence to suggest the Ge(2) is actually an NODV which has trapped a hole . The GeE center, consisting of a threefold coordinated Ge with an unpaired electron, is readily produced by single photon scission of the metal-metal bond of an NOMV ; there is also evidence that GeE can be formed by the photobleaching of GECs .

Assignment of these defects to particular optical absorption features has proven difficult for several reasons. One is the somewhat formless nature of the optical absorption spectrum of irradiated germanosilicate glasses caused by the overlap of the induced absorption bands with the GODCs. This overlap makes accurate spectral separation of absorptions quite difficult. Electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy, often of great use in identifying defects in solids, suffers a similar difficulty when the GECs and the GeE center are simultaneously present, as their spectra are considerably entangled. In an effort to correlate these germanium-related paramagnetic species with induced absorption bands, concomitant measurements of ESR and optical absorption spectra have been conducted as a function of annealing temperature. This technique has been used to attribute the 6.5 eV, 5.8 eV, and 4.5 eV bands to GeE, Ge(2), and Ge(1) , respectively, but it must be noted that it does not provide unambiguous correlation between a given defect’s ESR and absorption spectra, particularly when multiple centers with broad overlapping bands are present.

To correlate these properties in a direct manner for the Ge(1) and Ge(2) centers, we first measured the magnetic circular dichroism absorption (MCDA) spectrum of an X-ray irradiated 7.0 mol$`\%`$ Ge-doped SiO2 sample over the range 2.07-6.21 eV at various temperatures to establish which bands are paramagnetic. This technique also provided spectral separation of the induced paramagnetic bands from those of the GODCs and other diamagnetic defects. We then examined the optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectrum associated with MCDA signal extrema via microwave-induced changes in the MCDA signal. Using this ODMR technique, we were able to establish unequivocal correlations between optical transitions and specific ESR spectra; this has not been accomplished previously. Identification of the defects seen in the ODMR spectra was possible by making comparisons with ESR data taken on a conventional spectrometer.

## II Experiment

### A Sample Preparation

The germanosilicate glass used in the experiment was hewn from a section of 7.0 mol$`\%`$ GeO2, 93.0 mol$`\%`$ SiO2 single-mode fiber preform fabricated using the vapor axial deposition (VAD) method. The preform was first cut into a 10 mm x 5 mm x 2 mm slab and polished on two sides. According to the glass specifications, the germanium concentration varied by less than 1$`\%`$ from the center to the edges of the sample. The sample was then exposed to radiation from a 2.4 kW tungsten anode X-ray tube (50 kV, 48 mA) at room temperature in order to create defects throughout the glass network. The defect concentration was periodically measured through double numerical integration of ESR spectra and comparison to a standard sample containing a known number of Si E centers. Irradiation was halted once the induced spin density of the germanosilicate sample became saturated ( 1017 spins/cm-3).

### B MCDA and ODMR Theory

MCD is an effect common to all matter whereby the application of a static uniform magnetic field to a material induces an asymmetry in the optical densities for right- and left-hand circularly polarized light (hereby referred to as A+ and A-, respectively) propagating parallel or antiparallel to the field. In simplest terms, the MCD phenomenon can be viewed as a sum of three separate manifestations of the Zeeman Effect: (1) unresolved field-induced splitting of a degenerate ground or excited state, (2) mixing of nearby states by the magnetic field, and (3) population differentials between ground state magnetic sublevels . The first two contributions, often grouped into the single term ”diamagnetic effect”, are temperature-independent and linear in field strength; the third term depends strongly upon the temperature and is referred to as the paramagnetic term. It is then possible to write the MCDA signal as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }A=\mathrm{\Delta }A_{para}(B,T)+\mathrm{\Delta }A_{dia}(B),$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Apara is the paramagnetic term, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Adia is the diamagnetic term, B is the magnetic field strength, and T is the temperature . For systems with degenerate ground states, the paramagnetic term tends to dominate the MCDA spectrum, particularly at low temperatures. Use of low temperatures in MCDA spectroscopy is especially advantageous when a system has a complicated optical absorption spectrum consisting of many overlapping bands, and one wishes to differentiate paramagnetic contributions from diamagnetic ones.

The paramagnetic part of the MCDA signal is also useful for the detection of magnetic resonance in the ground state. For S1/2 systems (such as the GECs), the differential absorption may be written as the simple expression

$$\mathrm{\Delta }ATanh\left(\frac{g\mu _BH}{2kT}\right)$$
(2)
where it is assumed that the equilibrium population distribution amongst the ground state Kramers doublet follows Boltzmann statistics, and that the diamagnetic contributions to the MCDA signal may be ignored . Equation (2) indicates that MCDA can be used as a sensitive probe of the spin temperature of a given system’s ground state. Observation of ODMR is then carried out by measuring perturbations in the MCDA signal (and, hence, the spin temperature) brought about by driving spin transitions between ground state sublevels with resonant microwaves of sufficient power to overcome the spin-lattice relaxation rate. This optical method of detecting spin resonance transitions offers several advantages over conventional ESR techniques, the most significant being that optical rather than microwave quanta are used in the detection process (providing up to a $``$104 gain in sensitivity), and that the optical properties of a given defect are unambiguously correlated with its spin resonance spectrum. It should be noted that the selectivity of the ODMR method allows for the disentanglement of the optical and ESR properties of simultaneously present defects provided only that these properties are not identical.

### C Experimental Apparatus and Techniques

MCDA spectra were recorded at temperatures of 4.2 K and 1.6 K. The MCD spectrometer used consisted of a 30 W deuterium lamp focused onto the entrance slit of a single grating 0.25 m monochromator having a bandwidth of less than 3 nm over the range 2.07-6.21 eV. The output light was linearly polarized by a Glan-Taylor polarizing prism and directed through a 42 kHz photoelastic modulator, which alternately produced right- and left-hand circularly polarized light at its fundamental frequency. The sample was mounted in a variable-temperature helium cryostat with four-way optical access outfitted with a superconducting magnet capable of operating at 1.8 T with a homogeneity of 1 part in 104 over 1 cm3. The polarization-modulated light was then focused onto the sample by a set of computer controlled motorized lenses designed to account for chromatic aberration. Light transmitted by the sample was then trained on a photomultiplier tube connected to a feedback circuit which varied the tube voltage in order to keep the DC light signal constant as a function of wavelength. A lock-in amplifier referenced to the modulator frequency measured the differential absorption of the two polarizations of light; the ratio of the lock-in signal to the DC light signal yields a quantity proportional to , the difference in optical densities for right and left circularly polarized light . A computer scanned the spectrometer in 0.5 nm steps and recorded the lock-in voltage, DC light signal, and tube voltage in order to obtain the full MCDA spectrum. A long pass filter was used for the range 3.45-6.21 eV to filter out second order UV light from the monochromator.

Optical absorption spectra in the range 2.26-6.21 eV were measured at room temperature before and after irradiation using a commercial 2-beam spectrophotometer. The spectral bandwidth was kept at 3 nm, and the spectra were adjusted for instrument response by baseline subtraction.

To obtain ODMR spectra below 5.18 eV, the deuterium lamp-monochromator system was replaced by a 150 W high-pressure mercury lamp equipped with a 0.1 m monochromator for improved light throughput. Unmodulated 24.1 GHz (K-band) microwaves from a 600 mW klystron were then coupled into a cylindrical microwave sample cavity using a coaxial antenna. As the magnetic field was scanned, the computer recorded negative changes in the MCDA signal caused by resonant microwave-driven transitions between ground state Zeeman sublevels as a function of field strength. Acquisition of ODMR spectra above 5.18 eV was carried out in much the same manner, the only difference being that a deuterium lamp filtered by a 220 nm interference filter was used as a light source to compensate for the monochromator’s weak light throughput in the deep UV. The bandwidth of the interference filter was 10 nm and transmitted approximately 0.1$`\%`$ of incident light at 5.28 eV and 6.27 eV. All ODMR spectra were acquired at a sample temperature of 1.6 K. For purpose of comparison, ESR spectra were also recorded on a separate commercial unit at 300 K using 9.6 GHz (X-band) microwaves at power level of 13.6 mW and a field modulation of 100 kHz. The signal amplitude and spin density were measured at several different microwave power levels to ensure that the sample was not being saturated. The magnetic field sweeps for both the ESR and ODMR spectrometers were calibrated using diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH, g=2.0036) as a standard.

## III Results and Discussion

### A ESR Results

Prior to X-ray exposure, the Ge-doped glass sample shows no measurable ESR activity. After 15 hours of X-irradiation at 300 K, an ESR signal (shown in figure 1) emerges which closely resembles the spectra of the GECs previously reported in the literature . The spectrum shown in figure 1 contains overlapping ESR contributions from both the Ge(1) and Ge(2) centers. In an effort to resolve the composite irradiated germanosilicate glass ESR spectrum into its individual components, researchers have conducted various isochronal annealing experiments. Several results emerge from these studies: One is the correlation of particular features of the GEC ESR signal with individual defects, such as the local minimum at g=1.9934, attributed to the Ge(1) defect, and the minimum at g=1.9869, related to the Ge(2) center . Another significant finding is that there is some overlap between the Ge(1) and Ge(2) signals above g=2.000  but the two are otherwise spectrally separate. It is interesting to note that the typical ESR pattern of the GeE center  is absent from figure 1, indicating that the X-irradiation did not photochemically produce this defect in any measurable quantity. This finding contrasts with experiments conducted with excimer laser light, where it has been suggested that GECs are produced in the initial stages of irradiation and subsequently transformed to GeE centers with continued exposure .

### B Optical Absorption and MCDA

The optical absorption spectra of the glass sample prior to X-irradiation is shown in figure 2a, with the only notable detail being the strong GODC absorption band centered at 5.16 eV. Also shown in figure 2a is the post-irradiation absorption spectrum. As is evident in the plot, it is difficult to ascertain the precise shape and location of the peaks of the radiation-induced bands due to their considerable overlap with the broad NODV and NOMV optical transitions. The strategy most frequently employed to obtain these quantities in irradiated Ge-doped SiO2 systems is to fit multiple gaussian peaks to the induced absorption spectrum, as is shown in figure 2b. Since no evidence of the GeE center was seen in the ESR data, the induced absorption spectrum was fit with three gaussian functions (representing Ge(1), Ge(2), and the GODCs) rather than the usual four. In this figure, the best fit to the data shows the growth of absorption bands centered around 4.73 eV and 6.06 eV, while the initial 5.16 eV absorption band is depleted; these results are consistent with what is generally found in the literature . While this fitting procedure is useful in that it provides a rough estimate of the optical properties of the induced defects, the process is obviously prone to considerable error, particularly the choice of initial conditions for the fits. One must also account for the possibility that one or more diamagnetic species could be induced in the glass that would obviously be undetectable by ESR spectroscopy; these defects would of course be ignored in the fitting process.

MCDA spectroscopy is uniquely suited to circumvent this difficulty as the Ge(1) and Ge(2) centers provide significant paramagnetic contributions while the NOMV and NODV show only comparably weak diamagnetic signals; thus, the transitions are easily spectrally separated using their respective temperature dependencies. The MCDA spectra of the irradiated and unirradiated (inset) sample measured at 1.6 and 4.2 K with a field strength of 1.8 T are presented in figure 3. The spectra were corrected for diamagnetic signal contributions from the fused quartz cryostat windows as well as for zero-field baseline effects. Prior to irradiation, the MCDA spectrum at 4.2 K is featureless except for a negative-going band peaking at 5.16 eV that is clearly attributable to singlet-singlet GODC transitions. Lowering the temperature to 1.6 K produces no change in the GODC MCDA signal strength, providing further evidence to support the long-standing assumption that the GODCs are diamagnetic in nature. Despite a careful search, no evidence of the singlet-triplet NODV transition believed to occur at 3.8 eV  could be found. This could due to the band’s weak oscillator strength as well as its diamagnetic character. Upon completion of the X-irradiation, growth of an MCDA band peaking at 4.42 eV is observed, as well as a slight decrease in the depth of the GODC signal, indicating that these centers undergo a small degree of photobleaching. It is quite clear upon viewing the spectra that paramagnetic centers are responsible for the 4.42 eV band, as the peak signal strength increases by a factor of approximately 1.8 upon lowering the temperature from 4.2 K to 1.6 K. No other paramagnetic signals were as readily apparent in figure 3, possibly due to the spectrometer’s low light throughput in the deep UV, which required the use of greater photomultiplier tube voltages to produce measurable signals. This effect significantly degraded the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra above 5.50 eV and made it difficult to discern any structure, and may also have obscured weak absorption bands overlapping with the GODCs in this range.

### C ODMR and Tagged MCDA Results

The upper trace of figure 4 shows a plot of the ODMR spectra of the X-irradiated sample measured at 4.42 eV. The technique used for obtaining ODMR spectra involved coupling fixed-frequency CW microwaves into the sample cavity and monitoring the MCDA signal as the field strength was increased; the signal dips in figure 4 indicate where a particular defect’s ground state splitting is resonant with the frequency of the microwave field. The ODMR data shows that a spin resonance signal peaking at g=2.000 is directly associated with the induced absorption band at 4.42 eV, providing conclusive evidence that the GECs are indeed responsible for at least a portion of the induced absorption spectrum at this energy. ODMR was also attempted at 5.65 eV to account for the possibility that a defect with a weak paramagnetic absorption at this energy might be obscured by the high signal noise and thus would not be apparent in the MCDA spectra of figure 3. As was mentioned previously, a 220 nm (5.65 eV) interference filter was employed rather than the monochromator to increase light throughput. The 5.65 eV ODMR signal is shown in the bottom trace of figure 4. It is similar to the 4.42 eV trace in that it has a peak at g=2.000, but also contains additional significant signal contributions below g=1.990; these results indicate that the GECs also absorb in the deep UV range transmitted by the filter. There are several possible explanations for the presence of the g=2.000 signal at 5.65 eV. One is that the 4.42 eV band is broad enough to overlap with the filter transmission range so that it ”leaks” into the 5.65 eV ODMR signal, while another possibility is that the defect responsible for the 4.42 eV band has another separate higher energy transition. Although several reports, including recent studies of defect-free irradiated germanosilicate glasses by Chiodini et al , have supported the latter possibility, the current data does not permit exclusion of either scenario. It seems the most likely explanation for the additional broadness of the 5.65 eV ODMR signal is that a defect unrelated to the 4.42 eV band weakly absorbs in this region. It is impossible to deduce where the peak oscillator strength of this defect lies based on the data presented here, but considering the relative weakness of the MCDA signal in the range 5.0-6.2 eV, it is reasonable to ascribe this defect to one of the broad absorption bands located at higher energies(6.2-7.5 eV) found in deep UV spectroscopy studies . Part of the ODMR signal at 5.65 eV could then be directly related to the ”tail” of one of these bands found at higher energies.

The question of which defect is responsible for these optical transitions can be addressed by comparing the ODMR data to the ESR data of figure 1. Because ODMR directly records the absorption of microwave power as a function of magnetic field strength rather than the corresponding derivative (as in conventional ESR spectroscopy), direct comparisons to the ESR data are tedious unless the latter is first integrated. Figure 5a shows a comparison of the integrated GEC ESR spectrum displayed in figure 1 to the ODMR spectrum measured at 4.42 eV shown in figure 4. The two techniques show excellent agreement, as it is clear from figure 5a that both the ODMR and ESR spectra share a peak at g=2.000 and have similar bandshapes despite the great difference in temperature. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this comparison is the lack of a shoulder in the vicinity of g=1.985 in the ODMR spectrum, suggesting that the Ge(2) center plays no role in the optical transition at 4.42 eV; thus, the Ge(1) defect is solely responsible for the radiation-induced paramagnetic absorption here. The ODMR results also indicate that the composite ESR spectrum of the GECs above g=1.990 is dominated by Ge(1). This assertion is supported by the work of Anoikin et al, who were able to isolate the Ge(1) ESR signal in Ce+3-doped germanosilicate glass; though they did not supply particular g values for the Ge(1) center, the ESR spectrum shown in their work closely resembles the composite GEC spectrum shown in figure 1 . A direct comparison of the 5.65 eV ODMR spectrum and the integrated GEC ESR spectrum is shown in figure 5b. Although the poor signal-to-noise ration precludes rigorous assessment of the features of the ODMR spectrum, intriguing possibilities emerge from the comparison. The signal dip at approximately g=2.000 seems to indicate the presence of the Ge(1) defect; however, the nonzero ODMR signal below g=1.990 invites correlation with the Ge(2) shoulder of the integrated ESR spectrum, a feature undetected in the 4.42 eV ODMR. Unfortunately, lack of a clean ODMR signal prevents definite assignments here, and further studies are clearly necessary to ascertain which defects are present.

The ODMR results may also be used to further elucidate the optical properties of the induced defects. By tuning the magnetic field to a particular spin resonance transition and measuring the MCDA signal as the wavelength is varied, it is possible to trace out an ODMR excitation spectrum for a given defect. This method, known as ”tagged MCDA” , serves a number of purposes. It identifies all optical transitions associated with a paramagnetic defect and effectively isolates its individual MCDA spectrum from the total MCDA, which is particularly useful when separating overlapping bands belonging to different defects . It is also possible to use tagged MCDA to estimate the peak position and width of an absorption band, though it is not necessarily a reliable measure of bandshape . The tagged MCDA spectrum shown in figure 6 was obtained by setting the magnetic field to the peak of the 4.42 eV ODMR band and measuring the MCDA spectrum over the range 3.11-6.00 eV with the microwave power on; the microwave power was sufficiently attenuated so that no sample heating was detectable. This measurement was then repeated with the microwave power off; the difference between the two spectra yielded the tagged MCDA spectrum. No tagging data was available above 6.00 eV due to the extremely high signal-to-noise ratio that resulted after subtraction. The preferred ”digital lock-in” tagging method described by Spaeth , which employs low frequency modulation of the microwave power to induce changes in the MCDA, was ineffective in this case, probably because of the typically long spin-lattice relaxation times found in irradiated glasses . Since the tagging technique effectively removes all diamagnetic signals from the measurement, it allowed the bandshape of the Ge(1) center to be accurately measured without concern of distortion from the GODC absorption. The tagged MCDA spectrum for Ge(1) shows that the band extends from 3.5 eV to approximately 5.3 eV. Furthermore, the close similarity in bandshape between the MCDA of figure 3 and the tagged spectrum indicates that the Ge(1) center is responsible for all the paramagnetic absorption in the range 2.01-5.3 eV; similar claims may not be made for absorption bands above 5.3 eV using the tagging technique due to high signal noise. Attempts to tag the MCDA spectra with the field set to the Ge(2) ESR line were unsuccessful, as the signal noise was simply too great to produce reliable data. Thus, no further information about the nature of the absorption above 5.3 eV could be obtained from these experiments.

An obvious inconsistency with the standard defect model for irradiated germanosilicate glasses emerges from the ODMR and tagged MCDA results. These techniques firmly establish that the Ge(1) center is responsible for a broad absorption in the 4.4-4.7 eV range as had been previously suggested. However, a discrepancy is found regarding the optical properties of the Ge(2) center. Recall that the Ge(2) defect is considered to be correlated with a broad band centered in the 5.7-6.1 eV range, the optical properties of which are determined by a gaussian fitting procedure. The gaussian fit to the optical absorption data shown in figure 2b suggests that the 6.06 eV absorption ascribed to the Ge(2) defect in the standard model has the largest peak oscillator strength in the range measured, yet the MCDA spectrum clearly shows considerably weaker paramagnetic absorption from 5.0-6.2 eV than at 4.42 eV. The lack of a strong paramagnetic signal in this range indicates that the defect or defects responsible for the majority of the optical absorption are likely diamagnetic in nature; therefore, the Ge(2) defect does not correlate well with the optical properties suggested by the standard model. One possible explanation for this is that the simple three-band deconvolution of the induced optical absorption is inadequate, and that one or more induced diamagnetic bands are responsible for the majority of the optical absorption above 5 eV. Further research is currently underway to clarify these assignments, including studies of UV-irradiated germanosilicate glasses; experiments with irradiated hydrogen-loaded germanosilicates are also in progress.

## IV Conclusions

Paramagnetic defects are created in 7.0 mol$`\%`$ Ge-doped SiO2 glass via prolonged X-irradiation along with a number of optical absorption bands in the range 2.01-6.21 eV. ESR data suggests Ge(1) and Ge(2) centers are formed in the greatest quantities, while the GeE defect is experimentally undetectable. MCDA spectra of the irradiated glass measured at 4.2 K and 1.6K show a large paramagnetic band at 4.42 eV, and much weaker paramagnetic absorption above 5.0 eV. Comparison of ODMR and ESR measurements indicate that the 4.42 eV absorption is due to the Ge(1) center, and tagged MCDA was used to positively identify all optical transitions associated with this defect. These results are in accordance with the widely accepted model for Ge(1) in irradiated germanosilicate glasses. Lack of strong paramagnetic absorption above 5.0 eV indicates that diamagnetic defects are responsible for the bulk of the optical density in this region, contradicting the widely accepted notion that the Ge(2) center is the dominant absorbing center here. Comparison of ODMR and ESR data show that the Ge(2) center may in fact absorb at 5.65 eV, which suggests its peak oscillator strength lies in the deeper UV range of the spectrum. This result considered with the MCDA data indicate the simple three-defect model in irradiated Ge-doped SiO2 systems must be augmented.

The authors gratefully acknowledge T. Erdogan and A. Heaney for samples used in these experiments. Work supported by NSF DMR-9612267.