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# Pressure-Induced Interlinking of Carbon Nanotubes

## Abstract

We predict new forms of carbon consisting of one and two dimensional networks of interlinked single wall carbon nanotubes, some of which are energetically more stable than van der Waals packing of the nanotubes on a hexagonal lattice. These interlinked nanotubes are further transformed with higher applied external pressures to more dense and complicated stable structures, in which curvature-induced carbon sp3 re-hybridizations are formed. We also discuss the energetics of the bond formation between nanotubes and the electronic properties of these predicted novel structures.

preprint: To be appear in PRB

Carbon nanotubes, originally discovered as by-products of fullerene synthesis, are now considered to be the building blocks of future nanoscale electronic and mechanical devices. It is therefore desirable to have a good understanding of their electronic and mechanical properties and the interrelations between them. In particular, single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) provide a system where the electronic properties can be controlled by the structure of the nanotubes and by various deformations of their geometries. The physical properties can also be altered by intertube interactions between nanotubes packed in hexagonal lattices, as so called ”nanoropes”.

The intertube interactions in nanoropes can be probed by applying external pressure to vary the intertube distance. For fullerenes, such high pressure studies have yielded many interesting results including new compounds such as the pressure-induced polymeric phases of C60. It is, therefore, of interest to inquire if similar covalent-bonding can occur between the nanotubes in a rope. This could have important consequences for nanoscale device applications and composite materials which require strong mechanical properties since nanoropes consisting of inter-linked SWNT will be significantly stronger than nanoropes composed of van der Waals packed nanotubes.

A recent Raman study on SWNT ropes carried out up to 25.9 GPa showed that the mode intensities and energies are not completely reversible upon pressure cycling, suggesting irreversible pressure-induced changes in the structure. In another high pressure study Chesnokov et al. observed a very large volume reduction and high compressibility, signaling the presence of a microscopic volume-reducing deformation other than van der Waals compression. Some of these pressure-induced effects are tentatively attributed to possible crushing or flattening the nanotube cross section from circular to elliptical or hexagonal. Motivated by these reports, we investigated possible new pressure-induced ground state structures for (n,0) nanotube ropes from first-principles total energy calculations using the pseudopotential method within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). We observed an elliptical distortion of the nanotubes under pressure and subsequent curvature-induced carbon re-hybridization, giving rise to one or two dimensional interlinked networks of nanotubes. This is somewhat reminiscent to the pressure-induced polymerizations of C60.

The first principles total energy and electronic structure calculations were carried out using the pseudopotential plane wave code CASTEP. We used plane waves with an energy cutoff of 500 eV. With this cutoff and using ultra soft pseudopotentials for carbon, the total energy converges within 0.5 meV/atom. For the Brillouin zone integration, we used between 3x3x6 to 5x5x7 k-points according to the Monkhorst-Pack special k–point scheme. This method has already been applied to many carbon systems, including fullerenes and cubane with remarkable success.

In this Letter, we present calculations on nanoropes consisting of (5,0),(6,0), (7,0), (9,0), and (6,6) nanotubes. For simplicity, we model the nanoropes as a hexagonal lattice of nanotubes. We further assume that we have only one nanotube per unit cell. (6,0) nanotubes are perfectly compatible with the hexagonal lattice (i.e. $`\gamma =120^\mathrm{o}`$). However in the optimized structure, hexagonal carbon rings of one nanotube face hexagonal rings from the neighboring tubes (Fig. 1(a)). From studies of fullerenes, we know that the energy can be reduced by rotating every other tube such that their C–C bonds face the center of the hexagonal faces of the neighboring nanotubes. This would double the unit cell for (6,0) nanotubes. We will not pursue this here because we are mainly interested in the potential for covalent bonding between nanotubes.

(9,0) nanotubes are also compatible with hexagonal symmetry. Furthermore the relative orientation of the nanotubes are optimal energetically (i.e. C–C bonds face the center of the hexagonal faces of adjacent nanotubes). (5,0) and (7,0) nanotubes are not compatible with hexagonal symmetry and therefore $`\gamma `$ is expected to deviate from the ideal value of $`120^\mathrm{o}`$. We find that when one bond is along the a-axis, the total energy is minimized when the b–axis is aligned so that it brings the C-C bonds of one nanotube to the center of hexagonal faces of adjacent nanotubes. For (5,0) and (7,0) nanotubes this occurs when $`\gamma =(360/5)\times 1=72.0^\mathrm{o}`$ and $`(360/7)\times 2=102.857^\mathrm{o}`$, respectively. These values are very close to the values, $`\gamma =72.46^\mathrm{o}`$ and $`102.35^\mathrm{o}`$, obtained from the first principles structural optimization.

The pressure dependence of these lattices of nanotubes was determined by calculating the total energy as a function of nanotube separation (i.e. $`a`$ and $`b`$) while the other parameters, including atom positions, $`c`$, and $`\gamma `$ are optimized. We observe that (7,0) nanotubes become elliptically distorted with applied pressure (i.e. decreasing nanotube-nanotube distance). At a critical pressure, we observe a structural phase transformation from the van der Waals nanotube lattice (as shown in Fig. 1 a-b) to a new lattice in which the nanotubes are interlinked along the  direction, where the strain of the nanotube is largest (Fig. 1(c)). The covalent bonding between nanotubes is therefore the result of curvature-induced re-hybridization of the carbon orbitals. The same structural transformation was observed for the other (n,0) nanoropes and the results are summarized in Table 1. The structure of each of these one-dimensionally interlinked nanoropes is orthorhombic (space group Cmcm), with two nanotubes per unit cell. The relationship between the conventional orthorhombic cell and the primitive one is shown in Fig. 2(a).

Figure 2 also shows the local environment of the carbon atoms involved in the interbonding of the nanotubes for (6,0) and (7,0). In the first case, the covalent bonding occurs between carbon atoms on two hexagonal rings (Fig. 2(b)). We believe this process is slightly less favorable than covalent bonding between carbons on a hexagonal ring and those involved in an intratube C–C bond which occurs for the (7,0) case (Fig. 2(c)). In both cases, the bond distances are comparable to those in diamond, indicating sp3 hybridization. The bond angles vary from about 100o to $`120^\mathrm{o}`$, indicating some strain. From Table 1, we see that the energy of the interlinked phase is actually lower than the vdW lattices for (5,0) and (7,0) nanotropes. For (9,0) nanorope, the energy difference is relatively small. Regardless of the energies relative to that of unlinked nanotubes, an interlinked phase is stable once it is formed, because breaking the intertube bonds requires jumping over a significant energy barrier.

To quantitatively study the bonding mechanism, we calculated the total energies of the different phases as a function of the lattice constant (i.e. applied pressure). The result for (7,0) nanotubes is summarized in Fig. 3. The energies of the vdW and the one dimensional interlinked (1DI) phases cross each other at about a = 9.0 Å with an energy barrier of only 46 meV/unitcell (552 K). The pressure required to attain this lattice constant is only about 0.3 GPa for the vdW phase, indicating that polymerization of vdW (7,0) nanoropes could occur at modest pressures and temperatures. Once the interlinked phase is reached, the energy barrier required to break the bonds and obtain free nanotubes is about 0.7 eV (25 meV/atom), which is comparable to that of 1D polymerized C60 molecules (20 meV/atom).

Fig. 3 also shows that another interlinked phase of (7,0) nanotubes becomes the ground state for lattice parameter smaller than 8.0 Å. In this new phase the nanotubes are interlinked along both a– and b– axes (see Fig. 4(a)). This two dimensional interlinked (2DI) structure is about four times stiffer (i.e. $`d^2E/da^2=13.7eV/\AA ^2`$) than the 1D interlinked phase ($`d^2E/da^2=3.3eV/\AA ^2`$) and sixteen times stiffer than the vdW nanoropes ($`d^2E/da^2=0.8eV/\AA ^2`$).

We observe that applying even higher pressures yields more complicated and denser phases for many of the nanoropes studied here (see Fig. 4). For (9,0) nanoropes, we find that the nanotubes are interlinked along three directions forming a hexagonal network. The length of the intertube bond, $`d_{CC}=1.644`$ Å, is significantly elongated for an sp3 C–C bond. The two dimensional interlinked phase of (7,0) nanotubes is further transformed to a denser structure at 30 GPa (Fig.4(c)). By comparison, (6,6) nanotubes do not form an interlinked structure up to a pressure of 60 GPa. Rather the nanotubes are hexagonally distorted such that the local structure of the nanotube faces is similar to that in graphite sheets (Fig.4(c)). Furthermore, releasing the pressure yields the original structure, indicating that the distortion is purely elastic. Similar calculations are currently underway for other (n,m) nanotubes. However, we expect similar results for other types of tubes.

A detailed discussion of the electronic band structure and density of states of the predicted structures will be presented elsewhere, however all the structures reported here (except one in Fig. 4(c)) are found to be metal. The dispersion of the bands near Fermi level in a direction perpendicular to the tube axis is found to be around 0.5 eV, making the vdW nanoropes metallic even though the individual tubes are insulating (such as (7,0) nanotubes) or semiconducting with a small band gap. The structural changes clearly have strong effects on the electronic properties and therefore should be detected in the pressure dependence of various transport properties of nanoropes. From our calculations we expect two effects to be observed. First, on the initial pressure cycle one should observe an irreversible effect in the resistivity due to the polymerization of the nanotubes. Second, the applied pressure will induce a reversible deformation of the circular cross section, which will change the metallic behavior of the nanotubes. For example, the (7x0) nanorope, which is found to be metallic at ambient pressure, transforms to a high density phase as shown in Fig. 4(c) at 30 GP, which is found to be a band insulator with a band gap of 2 eV.

The new pressure–induced, high density phases reported here can also be important host lattices for intercalation and sorption. For instance, the high density phase of (7,0) nanoropes (Fig. 4(c)) has an interesting structure in which some parts of the lattice are very strained containing sp3 bonded square carbon rings, while other parts consist of graphite-like sp2 bonded carbon atoms (28% of all atoms). In this structure, there are still interstitial sites which would accommodate other species such as alkali metals.

In summary, we have presented first-principles calculations of the structures and electronic properties of various nanoropes. We find that small nanotubes in a rope are distorted elliptically with applied pressure and then are covalently bonded to each other at the positions of highest curvature point of nanotubes by sp3 hybridization of the carbon orbitals. For small nanotubes, the resulting one-dimensional chains of elliptic carbon nanotube structure are found to be energetically more stable than the circular van der Waals nanoropes. Higher applied pressures resulted in more dense and complicated structures. Thus pressure induced polymerization of the nanotubes may provide a way of synthesizing novel carbon base materials with interesting physical properties. For example interlinking of the nanotubes may improve the mechanical performance of composites based on these materials. It will be an experimental challenge to confirm the structures predicted here. A difference NMR spectrum of two identical samples; one treated with pressure and the other not, may give some evidence for the new phases. Similar difference measurements by ESR and Raman could be equally valuable.

We thank D. A. Neumann, R. L. Cappelletti, and J. E. Fischer for many fruitful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript. This work is partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. INT97-31014 and TÜBİTAK under Grant No. TBAG-1668(197 T 116).

Table 1  Various structural parameters and the total energies of the optimized structures of (n,0) vdW lattices and one dimensional interlinked (1DI) nanoropes as shown in Fig. 1. The band gaps of all the structures listed here are found to be zero, indicating mettallic behavior.

| Properties | (5,0) | (5,0) (1DI) | (6,0) | (6,0) (1DI) | (7,0) | (7,0) (1DI) | (9,0) | (9,0) (1DI) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Formula | C20 | C20 | C24 | C24 | C28 | C28 | C36 | C36 |
| Space Group | Cmcm | Cmcm | P6/mmm | Cmcm | Cmcm | Cmcm | P63/mcm | Cmcm |
| a = b (Å) | 7.408 | 7.079 | 8.364 | 7.762 | 9.250 | 8.432 | 10.389 | 9.532 |
| c (Å) | 4.208 | 4.190 | 4.212 | 4.223 | 4.218 | 4.205 | 4.219 | 4.209 |
| $`\gamma `$ | 72.46 | 125.39 | 120.00 | 121.96 | 102.35 | 119.15 | 120.00 | 111.97 |
| Density (gr/cm3) | 1.8119 | 2.331 | 1.8713 | 2.2176 | 1.5849 | 2.1415 | 1.8213 | 2.0245 |
| Energy/C (eV) | -155.694 | -155.802 | -155.843 | -155.868 | -155.946 | -155.969 | -156.049 | -156.042 |

Figure 1  Yildirim et al

Figure 2  Yildirim et al

Figure 3  Yildirim et al

Figure 4  Yildirim et al


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# High redshift CO line emission: perspectives

## 1 Introduction

One of the breakthrough due to recent progress on faint galaxies has been the inventory of the amount of star formation at every epoch (e.g. Madau et al. 1996). The comoving star formation rate appears to increase like $`(1+z)^4`$ from $`z=0`$ to $`z=1`$, and then decreases again to the same present value down to $`z=5`$. But this relies on the optical studies, i.e. on the UV-determined star forming rates in the rest-frame. If early starbursts are dusty, this decrease could be changed into a plateau (Guiderdoni et al. 1997; Blain et al. 1999). To tackle this problem, independent information must be combined in a coherent picture, such as that coming from the far-infrared and millimeter domains: the cosmic IR and submm background radiation discovered by COBE (e.g. Puget et al. 1996; Hauser et al. 1998) yields an insight on the global past star-formation of the Universe, and the sources discovered at high redshift in the millimeter continuum and lines yield information on the structure of the past starbursts (Smail et al. 1997; Hughes et al. 1998; Barger et al. 1999; Guilloteau et al. 1999).

This review focus on the molecular content of galaxies, that we can deduce from CO lines. Although the submillimeter continuum is more easy to detect at high redshift, it cannot without ambiguity trace the evolution of star formation as a function of redshift, because of identification problems, unknown redshifts, and unknown contribution of AGN. After summarising the present state of knowledge concerning CO emission lines, perspectives are drawn concerning the future surveys that will be conducted with the next generation of millimeter instruments.

## 2 CO Detections at High Redshift

The detection of highly redshifted millimeter CO lines in the hyperluminous object IRAS 10214+4724 ($`z=2.28`$, Brown & Vanden Bout 1992, Solomon et al. 1992), has opened this new field, to explore the history of star formation, and its efficiency. Although the first enormous derived H2 mass has now been revised (the source is considerably amplified by lensing), it is still surprising to find such huge amounts of CO molecules, especially since the gas is expected to have lower metallicity at high z. But theoretical calculations have shown that in a violent starburst, the metallicity could reach solar values very quickly (Elbaz et al. 1992).

Today, more than a dozen objects have been detected in CO lines at high z: they are often gravitationally amplified, either being multi-imaged by a strong lens, like the Cloverleaf quasar H 1413+117 at $`z=2.558`$ (Barvainis et al. 1994), the lensed radiogalaxy MG0414+0534 at $`z=2.639`$ (Barvainis et al. 1998), or the possibly magnified object BR1202-0725 at $`z=4.69`$ (Ohta et al. 1996, Omont et al. 1996); or they are more weakly amplified by a foreground galaxy cluster, like the submillimeter-selected hyperluminous galaxies SMM02399-0136 at $`z=2.808`$ (Frayer et al. 1998), and SMM 02399-0134at 1.062 (Kneib et al. 2000). Often several high-J CO lines are detected, revealing the high temperature of the gas (typical of a starburst at $``$ 60K). Higher temperatures are rare, as in the magnified BAL quasar APM08279+5255, at $`z=3.911`$, where the gas temperature derived from the CO lines is $``$ 200K, maybe excited by the quasar (Downes et al. 1999). Recently Scoville et al. (1997b) reported the detection of the first non-lensed object at $`z=2.394`$, the weak radio galaxy 53W002, and Guilloteau et al. (1997) the radio-quiet quasar BRI 1335-0417, at $`z=4.407`$, which has no direct indication of lensing. If the non-amplification is confirmed, these objects would contain the largest molecular contents known ($`81010^{10}`$ M with a standard CO/H2 conversion ratio, and even more if the metallicity is low). The derived molecular masses are so high that H2 would constitute between 30 to 80% of the total dynamical mass (cf 4C 60.07, Papadopoulos et al. 2000), if the standard CO/H2 conversion ratio was adopted. The application of this conversion ratio is however doubtful, and it is possible that the involved H2 masses are 3-4 times lower (Solomon et al. 1997).

To search for primeval galaxies, already Elston et al. (1988) had identified extremely red objects that are conspicuous only in the near-infrared (R - K $`>`$ 5). Maybe 10% of the submm sources could be EROs (Smail et al. 1999). A proto-typical ERO at $`z`$=1.44 (Dey et al. 1999) has been detected in submm continuum (Cimatti et al. 1998), and in CO lines (Andreani et al. 2000).

The CO line detections at high $`z`$ up to now are summarized in Table 1, and the molecular masses as a function of redshift are displayed in Fig. 1. It is clear from this figure that only the very strongest objects are detected, and in particular the gravitationally amplified ones. but this will rapidly change with the new millimeter instruments planned over the world (the Green-Bank-100m of NRAO, the LMT-50m of UMass-INAOE, the ALMA (Europe/USA) and the LMSA (Japan) interferometers). It is therefore interesting to predict with simple models the detection capabilities, as a function of redshift, metallicity or physical conditions in the high-z objects.

## 3 Perspectives with Future mm Instruments

If so many sources have been detected now in the submillimeter domain at high redshifts, it is because around 1mm, starbursts have a larger apparent flux at $`z=2`$ or 3 than $`z=1`$. The line emission does not have such a negative K-correction, since in the low frequency domain, the flux of the successive lines increases roughly as $`\nu ^2`$ (optically thick domain), instead of $`\nu ^4`$ for the continuum. Nevertheless the line emission is essential to study the nature of the object (the AGN-starburst connection for instance), and deduce more physics (kinematics, abundances, excitation, etc..). Given the gas and dust temperatures, the maximum flux is always reached at much lower frequencies than in the continuum, since the lines always reflect the energy difference between two levels; this is an advantage, given the largest atmospheric opacity at high frequencies.

### 3.1 Predicted Line and Continuum Fluxes

To model high-redshift starburst objects, let us extrapolate the properties of more local ones: the active region is generally confined to a compact nuclear disk, sub-kpc in size (Scoville et al. 1997a), Solomon et al. 1990, 97). The gas is much denser here than in average over a normal galaxy, of the order of 104 cm-3, with clumps at least of 106 cm-3 to explain the data on high density tracers (HCN, CS..). To schematize, the ISM maybe modelled by two density and temperature components, at 30 and 90K (cf. Combes et al. 1999). The total molecular mass considered will be $`610^{10}`$ M and the average column density N(H2) of 1024 cm-2, typical of the Orion cloud center.

Going towards high redshift ($`z>9`$), the temperature of the cosmic background Tbg becomes of the same order as the interstellar dust temperature, and the excitation of the gas by the background radiation competes with that of gas collisions. It might then appear easier to detect the lines (Silk & Spaans 1997), but this is not the case when every effect is taken into account. To have an idea of the increase of the dust temperature with $`z`$, the simplest assumption is to consider the same heating power due to the starburst. At a stationary state, the dust must then radiate the same energy in the far-infrared that it receives from the stars, and this is proportional to the quantity $`T_{\mathrm{dust}}^6T_{\mathrm{bg}}^6`$, if the dust is optically thin, and its opacity varies in $`\nu ^\beta `$, with $`\beta `$ = 2. Keeping this quantity constant means that the energy re-radiated by the dust, proportional to $`T_{\mathrm{dust}}^6`$, is always equal to the energy it received from the cosmic background, proportional to $`T_{\mathrm{bg}}^6`$, plus the constant energy flux coming from the stars. Since $`\beta `$ can also be equal to 1 or 1.5, or the dust be optically thick, we have also considered the possibility of keeping $`T_{\mathrm{dust}}^4T_{\mathrm{bg}}^4`$ constant; this does not change fundamentally the results.

Computing the populations of the CO rotational levels with an LVG code, and in the case of the two component models described earlier, the predictions of the line and continuum intensities as a function of redshift and frequencies are plotted in Fig. 2.

### 3.2 Source Counts

To predict the number of sources that will become available with the future sensitivity, let us adopt a simple model of starburst formation, in the frame of the hierarchical theory of galaxy formation. The cosmology adopted here is an Einstein-de Sitter model, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ = 1, with no cosmological constant, and $`H_0`$ = 75 km/s/Mpc, $`q_0`$ = 0.5.The number of mergers as a function of redshifts can be easily computed through the Press-Schechter formalism (Press & Schechter 1974), assuming self-similarity for the probability of dark halos merging, and an efficiency of mergers in terms of star-formation peaking at $`z2`$ (i.e. Blain & Longair 1993). Also, the integration over all redshifts of the flux of all sources should agree with the cosmic infrared background detected by COBE. These contribute to reduce the number of free parameters of the modelling. To fit the source counts, however, another parameter must be introduced which measures the rate of energy released in a merger (or the life-time of the event): this rate must increase strongly with redshift (cf. Blain et al. 1999). Once the counts are made compatible with the submm observations, the model indicates what must be the contributions of the various redshift classes to the present counts. It is interesting to note that the intermediate redshifts dominate the continuum source counts ($`2<z<5`$), if we allow the star formation to begin before $`z=6`$. At higher dust temperature, the counts are dominated by the highest redshifts ($`z>5`$).

Once these fits are obtained for the continuum sources, it is possible to derive also the counts for the CO line emission. The spectral energy distribution is now obtained with a comb-like function, representing the rotational ladder, convolved with a Planck distribution of temperature equal to the dust temperature, assuming the lines optically thick. The frequency filling factor is then proportional to the rotational number, and therefore to the redshift, for a given observed frequency. The width of the lines have been assumed to be 300km/s. The derived source numbers are shown in Fig. 3. Note how they are dominated by the high redshift sources. It is not useful to observe at $`\lambda `$ below 1mm for high-$`z`$ protogalaxies, but instead to shift towards $`\lambda `$ = 1cm.

## 4 Conclusion

The search for CO lines in high redshift galaxies is only beginning, there will be a real breakthrough in the next decade, when the sensitivity is increased by more than a factor 10 with the next generation millimeter instruments. CO lines are fundamental for our knowledge of star formation and efficiency at high z, to measure H2 masses, recognize AGN from starbursts, measure the dynamics and total masses of galaxies.

## Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to James Loventhal and David Hughes for the organisation of such an interesting meeting, and to the UMass for their financial help.


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# Life in the Stockmarket - a Realistic Model for Trading

## Abstract

We propose a frustrated and disordered many-body model of a stockmarket in which independent adaptive traders can trade a stock subject to the economic law of supply and demand. We show that the typical scaling properties and the correlated volatility arise as a consequence of the collective behavior of agents: With their interaction they determine a price which in turn affects their future way of investing. We introduce only one type of investors, since they all share the same hope: They *simply* want to maximize the profit minimizing the risk. The best utilization of resources occurs at a critical point characterized by the transition between the excess-demand and the excess-supply phases.

PACS numbers: 05.45.Tp, 05.65.+b, 64.60.-i, 87.23.Ge

Financial prices have been found to exhibit some universal features that resemble the scaling laws characterizing physical systems in which large numbers of units interact . Given that, one challenge is to build up a model which is able to reproduce this behavior and whose parameters have a physical meaning. We propose such a model, belonging to the frustrated and disordered many-body systems. Frustration enters in that not all the individual inclinations can be satisfied simultaneously, whereas the model is disordered because traders have randomly chosen expectations and resources but they share the same strategy. In contrast with previuos works we do introduce only one kind of investor: On our opinion the usual distinction between fundamentalists and noise traders is not necessary. Looking at both strategies, in fact, we note that *fundamentalists* follow the premise of the efficient market hypothesis in that they expect the price to follow the fundamental value of the asset: A fundamentalist trading strategy consists of buying when the actual market price is believed to be below the fundamental value and selling in the opposite case. *Noise traders*, on the other hand, do not believe in an immediate tendency of the price to revert to its underlying fundamental value: They try to identify price trends and consider the behavior of other traders as a source of information. This gives rise to the tendency towards *herding behavior*.

In  a model is introduced where the main building blocks are movements of individuals from one group to another together with the exogenous changes of the fundamental value. We believe that such a requirement is somehow artificial. It is in fact clear that without the fundamentalists the price would follow a trend at infinitum and without the noise traders the price would never excape the range of its fundamental value, as clearly stated in , where a 20% of fundamentalists is enough to confine the price within the range of the rational traders. We want to raise serious doubts on the blind use of the fundamental price, expecially when assumed that the relative changes are Gaussian random variables: Why should agents risk money just believing in a random walk behavior?

A more realistic assumption is based on the following wish: Gaining the maximum, taking the smallest possible risk. Agents make decisions to buy or to sell, adjust prices, and so on according to the information available at the time, as well as individual preferences such as tolerance for risk and time deadlines. We therefore simulate the book for the ask and for the bid. Every trader, when buying a share, has to identify a fair price and then put an order keeping in mind a target price and a stop-loss price. These quantities are the result of the interaction with other agents, the study of past values of the price and the influence of incoming news. The decision to sell some shares is made on the basis of the current price (to be compared with the personal target and stop-loss price) and of the *age* of the shares: After a sufficently long period of time agents start to ask themselves whether it is worth keeping the money invested in that way. The model leads to a *self-organized criticality* which is responsible of the alternation between *laminar* and *turbulent* trading .

TABLE 1. Example of the first five levels of the book. No transaction can take place because the highest buying price is smaller than the cheapest selling order. Entries are ordered according to price and occurrence time in case of equal prices.

We consider $`N`$ traders and one stock with $`M`$ shares on the market. Each trader is characterised through the following information: *(i)* Initial amount of money. *(ii)* Inclination towards investment: Usually traders tend to keep cash a part of their resources, in order to be able to have money to exploit the market at special time. *(iii)* Number of shares owned. *(iv)* List of friends with which he is sharing information, to model the herding effect. *(v)* Invested money, to keep trace of the average buying price. *(vi)* Desired gain. *(vii)* Maximum loss. *(viii)* Threshold: Amount of time after which the trader may start to change idea about his/her investment.

Every order is stored in the corresponding list, according to the type of it (buy or sell), to the requested price and to the time at which it was submitted. A transaction occur whenever the cheapest price among the sell list matches with the most expensive offer in the buyers’ list: This value defines the market price of the stock at that particular instant and it will of course affect the future behavior of the traders.

We provide a mechanism to produce *news*, whose purpose is to let all the agents know some information about the overall behavior of the market, i.e. the unbalance of the two books and the actual volatility. It is very important to note that these signals are endogenous: The information they provide was already present in the system. In this way our model takes into account both a *local and global coupling*, via shared information with neighbours and generation of news and advertisements, respectively.

The simulation consists of two parts. At the beginning we assign all the shares to one trader and we broadcast advertisements to induce people to put a buy order. The purpose of this first step is to simulate the Initial Public Offer (IPO) and the selected trader can be thought as the bank responsible of the initial selling of the stock. This part ends when the number of shares owned by the IPO trader vanishes. We then reset his amount of money and enter the second phase.

At each update step the algorithm performs the following operations: *(i)* Select randomly a trader. *(ii)* If the trader has no pending order and no share then he/she is eventually willing to buy, formulating a limit price, a target price and a stop-loss price and inserting a buying order. *(iii)* In case of owning some shares, the trader may decide to sell, according to the market price and the threshold. *(iv)* If the trader has a pending order, he/she may change some parameter because the conditions that led to that decision may have changed. We suppose that every trader can afford only one pending order. Every time a buyer has got all the desired shares, he/she is immediately asked whether he/she wants to place a selling order.

When formulating the prices, every trader makes the decision in a *deterministic* way, computing a weighted average among the opinion of some acquaintance, the indication of the news and some past values of the stock price. Every time that two complementary orders match, we define the market price for that particular instant: Usually only one of the two orders disappears, namely the one with the smallest amount of shares involved. The other cannot be removed from the corresponding list, since only a part of the desired transaction has taken place.

So the main ingredients of the model are: *(i)* Disorder, since the initial money is distributed according to a Zipf’s law and some parameters characterizing the agents are randomly chosen, but the overall behavior is deterministic, *(ii)* frustration, because not all the individual wishes can be satisfied at the same time, *(iii)* delayed feedback, involving the use of past values of the market price and volatility during the decision formation, *(iv)* phase transition between the excess-demand and the excess-supply phases .

Fig. 1 shows the result of a typical simulation on the market price and the corresponding amount of exchanged shares. The model is able to reproduce all the typical features observed in empirical data. At the beginning the price remains constant due to the *IPO’s phase*, namely the bank offers the shares to the traders at the fixed price, the *IPO price*. After that, one can see the typical pressure made by agents who did not get enough shares during the initial public offer: The volumes are high and the price tends to raise. Then, after a normal settlement, the price starts to oscillate with very low volumes: Traders with shares do not want to sell because they hope to get more money if they wait a little bit more, agents without shares do not buy because the price is too high and there is no evidence of a trend on it. Then oscillations become bigger and bigger and when the volumes are big as well, then a small crash occurs and the price comes back to a more interesting value for potential buyers. As a consequence, volumes remain high and the price follows a so called rally period, followed again by a crash, maybe due to the fact that the bubble phase has been too optimistic.

The model makes use of the following parameters: *(i)* Number of traders N: The number of agents involved in the process of buying and selling shares. *(ii)* Threshold T: The critical age of the shares. After this time the trader may rise some doubts whether it is worth waiting for the events. This value is not constant for all the traders, but ranges among a decade in order to take into account the differences between intraday speculators and long-time agents. *(iii)* Number of shares S and IPO’s price I: Their product defines the initial value of the company. *(iv)* Amount of money M initially distributed among the traders. Inspired by  we have decided to distribute the richness according to a Zipf’s law: the 20 % of the traders posses around the 80 % of M and among the two groups this rule is applied again, recursively. In this way we are able to model the difference between a normal agent and an istitutional investor and the different effect they produce when they decide to enter the market (responsible for the disorder). A minimal value of money m is provided to all the traders and added to the previous distribution. *(v)* Length of the past values’ list MEM: chartists look for trends and patterns in the historical time series of the market price. *(vi)* Unbalance of the book B: This value takes into account how balanced are the sell and the buy list. In case they are out of balance, then news and advertisements are generated.

As shown in Fig. 2, the probability density function of the returns of our simulated stock shows a strong leptokurtic nature. For comparison, the Gaussian with the same measured standard deviation is also reported. The time series of returns exhibits a higher frequency of extreme events and clustering of volatility. This aspect becomes clear thanks to Fig. 3: When considering absolute returns as a measure of volatility, we see that the transformed price data behave differently from their counterpart derived from the Gaussian distribution. The estimation of the self-similarity parameter H (using the approach presented in ) reveals a strong persistence in volatility.

One comment about demand and supply. It had been a common sense in economics for a long time that demand and supply balance automatically, however, it becomes evident that in reality such balances are hardly be realized for most of popular commodities in our daily life . The important point is that demand is essentially a stochastic variable because human action can never be predicted perfectly, hence the balance of demand and supply should also be viewed in a probabilistic way. If demand and supply are balanced on average the probability of finding an arbitrarily chosen commodity on the shelves of a store should be 1/2, namely about half of the shelves should be empty. Contrary to this theoretical estimation shelves in any department store or supermarket is nearly always full of commodities. This clearly demonstrates that supply is much in excess in such stores. In general the stochastic properties of demand and supply can be well characterized by a phase transition view which consists of two phases: The excess-demand and excess-supply phases. It is a general property of a phase transition system that fluctuations are largest at the phase transition point, and this property also holds in this demand-supply system. In the case of markets of ordinary commodities, consumers and providers are independent and the averaged supply and demand are generally not equal. The resulting price fluctuactions are generally slow and small in such market because the system is out of the critical point.

On the contrary in an open market of stocks or foreign exchanges, market is governed by speculative dealers who frequently change their positions between buyers and sellers. It is shown that such speculative actions make demand and supply balance automatically on average by changing the market price, as Fig. 4 clearly shows. Contrary to  we do not need to impose that the number of the shares has to be half of the number of traders in order to get a balance between demand and supply. The three circles in the upper panel indicate the most extreme events taking place in the price evolution: There are corresponding movements in the book and in the volumes, since they are the reason for such a sudden variation. As the system is always at the critical point the resulting price fluctuations are generally quick and large . This result is in agreement with , where the authors present an analogy between large stock market crashes and critical points with log-periodic correction to scaling: Complex systems often reveal more of their structure and organization in highly stressed situations than in equilibrium.

Performing a correlation analysis on our simulations and comparing it to the results presented in , we can associate a temporal scale to our tick by tick time: Since the autocorrelation function vanishes after approximately 20 ticks and the typical correlation length in financial time series is supposed to be around 20 minutes, we can speculate that one of our tick corresponds to one real-life minute.

Therefore the involved time scales are the following: *(i)* Total number of iterations, namely total number of ticks = $`10^6`$ (10 years), *(ii)* threshold = 10000 (1 month), *(iii)* threshold variability in the range $`[0.1,1]`$. This gives a time variable from a minimum of 1 month to a maximum of 1 year to have second thoughts.

To summarize, we have proposed a model for the stockmarket which is able to reproduce the two main characteristics of empirical data, namely the correlated volatility and fat tails of the PDF of returns. We have performed this task avoiding the use of different classes of agents and the artificial introduction of a fundamental price. We just make use of realistic assumptions about the behavior of traders (limited amount of money, limited time to liquidity, desired gain, maximum loss, inclination towards investment) and we tune the parameters through a real-life analysis of the trading activity. Disorder, frustration and the behavior at the critical point do the rest. The model is intrinsecally a minority game in that agents in the minority are rewarded, i.e. they can carry out their investment plan, and those in the majority punished, i.e. they have to wait with a pending order or sell at an unfair price.


text:
# MKPH-T-00-13 Three-body analysis of incoherent 𝜂-photoproduction on the deuteron in the near threshold region *footnote **footnote *Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 443)

## I Introduction

In this letter we would like to present theoretical results for total and differential cross sections of the reaction $`\gamma d\eta np`$ close to the threshold region. The need for an improved theory for describing the low-energy $`\eta `$-production on the lightest nuclei stems from the recent precise measurements of such processes on light nuclei using hadronic and electromagnetic probes. The experimental results are substantially larger than a mere phase-space calculation near threshold . It is reasonable to associate this effect with a rather strong attractive force which governs the dynamical features of the $`\eta NN`$-system in the low-energy regime. In a previous paper  we found that the $`\eta NN`$-dynamics allows the existence of virtual s-wave three-body states near zero energy. The natural extension of these findings would be to investigate to what degree such states may influence the processes considering the $`\eta NN`$-system in different spin-isospin channels. Of particular interest are the reactions of coherent ($`\gamma d\eta d`$) and incoherent ($`\gamma d\eta np`$) $`\eta `$-photoproduction on the deuteron, which recently have become the subject of attention of different experimental collaborations .

As for the coherent process, the investigation of this channel within a three-body approach has been performed in . Unfortunately, due to the smallness of the coherent $`\eta `$-photoproduction cross section resulting in extremely small $`\eta `$-meson yields, only qualitative statements about the size of the experimental cross section of the coherent reaction is available at present.

In this work, we focus our attention exclusively on the incoherent $`\eta `$-photoproduction where the deuteron breaks up. Recent precision measurements of the break-up channel  require a more sophisticated theoretical analysis. Indeed, this reaction has already been considered in a previous paper  within the so-called rescattering model as a first step beyond the simple impulse approximation (IA). In this model, final state interaction is taken into account by including the single rescatterings between two of the final particles as most important correction to the IA. As was shown in , without such rescattering effects a strong suppression of $`\gamma d\eta np`$ cross section was found because the IA requires a large spectator nucleon momenta for producing a low-energy $`\eta `$-meson on the deuteron. For this reason, the inclusion of first order $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-interactions provides a mechanism to distribute the high momentum between two nucleons and thus avoids this suppression. In view of the importance of the first-order rescattering it is natural to ask about the role of higher order rescattering terms. Indeed, in a system of three low-energy particles with rather strong attractive forces, one can expect a considerable overlap of their wave functions. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the contributions from higher order $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-rescatterings will be small. This fact distinguishes the present reaction from those with pions where the smallness of the pion-nucleon scattering length allows one to take into account only the lowest order $`NN`$-interaction in the final state just above threshold . Thus, the rescattering approximation can hardly be considered as a satisfactory method for describing low-energy $`\eta `$-photoproduction on light nuclei. It must also be noted that the successive inclusion of the next higher order terms of the multiple scattering expansion is not well advised, because the corresponding Neumann series is expected to converge very slowly due to the proximity of the virtual three-body poles mentioned above. As a consequence, the inclusion of terms of quite high order will be required rendering such an approach inadequate. These considerations point to the necessity of a three-body approach, where the final state interaction is included to all orders.

In the present paper, the reaction $`\gamma d\eta np`$ is considered as a three-body problem in the hadronic sector. The formalism is based on a separable s-wave approximation for the two-body potentials. This approach may be justified by the fact that in the energy region under consideration the $`\eta N`$-resonance $`S_{11}`$(1535) as well as the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{3}S_{1}^{}`$ poles of the $`NN`$ scattering matrix determine essentially the driving $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-forces. Our primary goal is to investigate the main properties of the incoherent $`\eta `$-photoproduction on the deuteron near threshold. We also compare our results with those predicted by the first order rescattering approximation in order to assess the shortcomings of this method.

In the Sect. II the three-body equations for the $`\gamma d\eta np`$ transition amplitude are derived. In Sect. III we calculate the meson spectrum for a fixed photon energy and compare our results for the total cross section with available experimental data.

## II General formalism

Here we will briefly describe the main points of the formal part, and comment on the most important approximations involved in our calculation. A more detailed and rigorous development of the formalism as well as the method for the numerical solution of the three-particle integral equations will be presented elsewhere. Firstly, we note that the three-body concept of the $`\eta `$-photoproduction on a deuteron possesses in principle a straightforward solution of the three-body multichannel problem where the coupling between the channels $`\gamma NN`$ and $`\eta NN`$ is taken into account. However, since we will restrict ourselves to the first order only in the electromagnetic interaction, it is more appropriate to obtain the dynamical equations of our model starting from the Faddeev formalism for the pure hadronic $`\eta NN`$ system. Our approach with respect to the hadronic part is essentially based on the separable approximation scheme of Alt, Grassberger and Sandhas  with an isobar ansatz for the $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-interactions. As is mentioned above, this ansatz should represent a fair approximation of the real dynamics in the energy region examined here. We use the following notations for the basic three-body channels:

$$\begin{array}{cc}N^{}& \text{ for the }\eta N\text{-isobar plus spectator nucleon},\hfill \\ d& \text{ for the }NN\text{-isobar plus spectator meson}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
and analogous notations for the two-body subsystems. Then the separable input

$$t_i=|f_i\tau _if_i|(i=N^{},d)$$
(2)
allows one to obtain two coupled operator equations for the rearrangement amplitudes

$`X_d`$ $`=`$ $`2Z_{dN^{}}\tau _N^{}X_N^{},`$ (3)
$`X_N^{}`$ $`=`$ $`Z_{N^{}d}+Z_{N^{}d}\tau _dX_d+Z_{N^{}N^{}}\tau _N^{}X_N^{}.`$ (4)
The amplitudes $`X_d`$ and $`X_N^{}`$ determine the transitions from the initial on–energy-shell state $`\eta d`$ to the quasi-two-body final states $`\eta d`$ and $`NN^{}`$, respectively. The potentials $`Z_{ij}`$ have a conventional meaning, namely

$`Z_{ij}=f_i|G_0|f_j,`$ (5)
with $`G_0`$ being the free three-body Greens function.

Turning now to the photoproduction process $`\gamma d\eta np`$, we treat the electromagnetic interaction perturbatively, keeping only the terms up to first order in the e.m. coupling. Therefore, in order to introduce the electromagnetic part, one just has to replace in (3) the $`\eta `$-meson by the photon in the entrance channel. This yields then the coupled equations which are formally similar to (3)

$`X_d`$ $`=`$ $`2Z_{dN^{}}\tau _N^{}X_N^{},`$ (7)
$`X_N^{}`$ $`=`$ $`B_N^{}+Z_{N^{}d}\tau _dX_d+Z_{N^{}N^{}}\tau _N^{}X_N^{}.`$ (8)
Here the “born term” $`B_N^{}`$ is determined as

$$B_N^{}=f_N^{}^{(\gamma )}|G_0^{(\gamma )}|f_d,$$
(9)
where $`G_0^{(\gamma )}`$ is the free propagator in the $`\gamma NN`$-sector and $`|f_N^{}^{(\gamma )}`$ is the electromagnetic vertex function for the transition $`\gamma NN^{}`$. Equations (II) are represented diagrammatically in Fig. 1. Clearly, the impulse approximation is equivalent to the replacements $`X_d0`$ and $`X_N^{}0`$ in the right-hand sides of (II), i.e.,

$`X_d^{\text{IA}}`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (11)
$`X_N^{}^{\text{IA}}`$ $`=`$ $`B_N^{}.`$ (12)
In order to obtain the first-order rescattering approximation, in which only the single $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-scattering terms are retained, one has just to set $`X_d=0`$ and $`X_N^{}=B_N^{}`$. Then one has

$`X_d^{\text{resc}}`$ $`=`$ $`2Z_{dN^{}}\tau _N^{}B_N^{},`$ (14)
$`X_N^{}^{\text{resc}}`$ $`=`$ $`B_N^{}+Z_{N^{}N^{}}\tau _N^{}B_N^{}.`$ (15)
After projecting (II) and correspondingly (9) and (II) onto the $`L=0`$ states, we end up with a system of one-dimensional integral equations in momentum space, which can be solved by matrix inversion. The well known problem of logarithmic singularities by the rearrangement terms $`Z_{N^{}N^{}}`$ and $`Z_{N^{}d}`$ was avoided using the contour deformation method of .

The transition matrix element for the break-up process $`\gamma d\eta np`$ may be expressed in terms of the rearrangement amplitudes (II) as follows

$`\stackrel{}{p}_1,\stackrel{}{p}_2,\stackrel{}{q}|T(W)|\stackrel{}{k}`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{}{p}_{\eta 1}|f_N^{}\tau _N^{}(WE_{p_2}{\displaystyle \frac{p_2^2}{2M_N^{}}})\stackrel{}{p}_2|X_N^{}(W)|\stackrel{}{k}`$ (16)
$`+`$ $`\stackrel{}{p}_{\eta 2}|f_N^{}\tau _N^{}(WE_{p_1}{\displaystyle \frac{p_1^2}{2M_N^{}}})\stackrel{}{p}_1|X_N^{}(W)|\stackrel{}{k}`$ (17)
$`+`$ $`\stackrel{}{p}_{12}|f_d\tau _d(W\omega _\eta {\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{4M_N}})\stackrel{}{q}|X_d(W)|\stackrel{}{k}.`$ (18)
Here, $`W`$ denotes the total three-body c.m. energy and $`\stackrel{}{k}`$ the photon momentum. Furthermore, the three-momenta of the final nucleons and $`\eta `$-meson are denoted by $`\stackrel{}{p}_1`$, $`\stackrel{}{p}_2`$ and $`\stackrel{}{q}`$, and their total energies by $`E_{p_1}`$, $`E_{p_2}`$ and $`\omega _\eta `$, respectively. The propagators $`\tau _N^{}(E_N^{})`$ and $`\tau _d(E_d)`$ depend on the invariant energies of the corresponding two-body subsystems. Their explicit form is given in . The arguments of the vertex functions $`\stackrel{}{p}|f_i`$ are the respective two-body relative momenta, whose nonrelativistic expressions read ($`i=1,2`$)

$$\stackrel{}{p}_{\eta i}=\frac{\stackrel{}{q}M_N\stackrel{}{p}_im_\eta }{M_N+m_\eta },\stackrel{}{p}_{12}=\frac{\stackrel{}{p}_1\stackrel{}{p}_2}{2}.$$
(19)
In the actual calculations, only the s-wave configuration $`(J^\pi ;T)`$=$`(0^{};1)`$ of the $`\eta NN`$-system was taken into account. As was discussed in , due to the spin-isospin selection rules, this state gives the major contribution to the $`\gamma d\eta np`$ cross section. We also use the nonrelativistic kinetic energies for all three final particles, since we restrict ourselves to the near-threshold region where this approximation is well justified. The contribution from pion exchange in the rearrangement potential $`Z_{N^{}N^{}}`$ was ignored in view of its insignificance as was shown in . The parametrization of the hadronic separable $`t`$-matrices (2) is given in detail in . For the s-wave singlet and triplet $`NN`$-states we use the fit of Yamaguchi . The $`N^{}`$ parameters were chosen in such a way that the main hadronic width of the $`S_{11}`$(1535) resonance, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{N^{}\pi N}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{N^{}\eta N}`$ 75 MeV, is reproduced. As for the electromagnetic vertex $`|f_N^{}^{(\gamma )}`$, it is natural to associate it with the $`\gamma NS_{11}(1535)`$ helicity amplitude $`A_{1/2}^{(N)}`$ which is of great experimental importance. Thus one has

$$\stackrel{}{p}|f_N^{}^{(\gamma )}=A_{1/2}^{(N)}\sqrt{\frac{M_N^{}}{M_N^{}+M_N}}.$$
(20)
Since we restrict our consideration to the $`\eta NN`$-state with isospin $`T=1`$, only the dominant isovector part of the $`\gamma NS_{11}(1535)`$ transition has been taken into account. The corresponding amplitude was derived as follows. First we have determined the helicity amplitude in the proton channel $`A_{1/2}^{(p)}`$ by fitting the experimental cross section data for the elementary process $`\gamma p\eta p`$ of . Then the isovector part $`A_{1/2}^{(v)}`$ was extracted as $`A_{1/2}^{(v)}=0.9A_{1/2}^{(p)}`$ which is compatible with different analyses .

Finally, we present here the formula for the exclusive c.m. cross section used in the present calculation

$$d\sigma ^{c.m.}=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^5}\frac{E_d\omega _\eta E_{p_1}E_{p_2}}{W}\frac{1}{2}|\stackrel{}{p}_1,\stackrel{}{p}_2,\stackrel{}{q}|T|\stackrel{}{k}|^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_\eta d\omega _\eta d\varphi _{\eta 1}dE_{p_1},$$
(21)
where $`E_d`$ is the deuteron energy and $`\varphi _{\eta 1}`$ is the azimuthal angle of the nucleon momentum $`\stackrel{}{p}_1`$ counted from the $`\stackrel{}{k}`$-$`\stackrel{}{q}`$ plane in the frame with the z-axis directed along $`\stackrel{}{q}`$. The factor $`\frac{1}{2}`$ appears after summing and averaging over the spin projections. The semi-inclusive cross section $`d\sigma ^{c.m.}/d\omega _\eta `$ and the total cross section $`\sigma _{tot}`$ considered below are obtained from (21) by appropriate integrations.

## III Results and discussion

We would like to beginn our discussion with the $`\eta `$-meson spectrum $`d\sigma ^{c.m.}/d\omega _\eta `$ as function of the $`\eta `$ c.m. energy, shown in Fig. 2 for two different photon energies. Its specific form was discussed already in . A strong s-wave attraction between the two nucleons at very low relative energy shifts visibly a major part of the spectrum towards higher energies, resulting in a rather pronounced peak near the boundary of the phase space at the maximum of the available meson energy, where the relative energy of the two nucleons is close to zero. It is obviously a manifestation of the large $`NN`$ singlet scattering length, i.e., of the antibound $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$-state. As our calculation shows, the first-order rescattering approximation underestimates substantially the complete three-body result just above threshold, but overestimates it at higher energies. Although the form of the spectrum is not changed qualitatively, the peak is much more pronounced in the complete calculation.

The difference between the results of the first-order rescattering and the complete three-body calculation is most apparent in the energy dependence of the total cross section shown in Fig. 3, where we compare it also with the inclusive $`\gamma d\eta X`$ data from . As shown in  and noted in the introduction, rescattering gives a very important contribution in particular just above threshold, where it leads to a strong enhancement of the meson yield. However, truncating the multiple scattering expansion after the first order gives only a qualitative description of this effect. Inclusion of rescattering to all orders within the three-body approach results in a considerably stronger effect in the near threshold region so that the energy dependence of the cross section becomes slightly concave (solid curve “1” in Fig. 3), which is not characteristic for photoproduction reactions with more than two particles in the final state. We associate this effect with the virtual $`\eta NN`$-pole found in  in the $`(J^\pi ;T)=(0^{};1)`$-state which pulls down the essential part of the meson yield to the near-threshold region.

When comparing our results with the experimental data we see, first of all, that the three-body calculation constitutes a very important improvement of the theory which reproduces fairly well the qualitative features of the data in the near threshold region up to about 650 MeV photon energies, in particular with respect to the energy dependence. On the other hand, one notes right at threshold still a substantial underestimation of the data by the theory. One reason for this disagreement might be, of course, a contribution of the coherent channel $`\gamma d\eta d`$ to the experimental inclusive yield. However, to ascribes the whole difference to the coherent process alone would mean to assign a rather large cross section of about 100 nb at $`E_\gamma `$=635 MeV to the coherent process. While such a value is not in conflict with the recent measurements of  it nevertheless overestimates substantially the corresponding PWIA-calculations for the case $`A_{1/2}^{(v)}=0.9A_{1/2}^{(p)}`$ . In order to reach a more definite conclusion one needs, of course, more precise data for the total cross section of the coherent reaction. Finally, with respect to the underestimation of the data at energies above 650 MeV, one should keep in mind that we have included in the calculation only the $`\eta NN`$-state with total orbital momentum $`L`$=0. Thus at higher photon energies, where the higher partial waves are needed to fill the available phase space, our calculation cannot be considered to be realistic.

In order to complete our discussion, we have investigated the sensitivity of the results to the strength of the interaction, i.e., to a variation of the $`N^{}`$-parameters. As is shown in  the $`\eta NN^{}`$ and $`\pi NN^{}`$ coupling constants influence the position of the $`\eta NN`$ $`S`$-matrix poles rather strongly and thus may also affect the cross section value. Indeed, this is proven by a calculation using different sets of the $`\eta NN^{}`$\- and $`\pi NN^{}`$-couplings, the results of which are also shown in Fig 3. In order to illustrate the size of the variation of the interaction strength by varying the model parameters, we quote also the corresponding values of the $`\eta N`$-scattering length $`a_{\eta N}`$ associated with the choice of the coupling constants. This parameter characterizes the low-energy $`\eta N`$-interaction and is quoted in most analyses of the $`\eta N`$-interaction (for a review of the $`a_{\eta N}`$-values see, e.g. ). We conclude from Fig 3 that the results are not very sensitive to the choice of $`a_{\eta N}`$, so that even with a rather large value of $`a_{\eta N}=(0.91+i0.25)`$fm (solid curve “2” in Fig. 3), we cannot describe the data sufficiently well.

## IV Conclusion

We have presented theoretical results for the cross section of the reaction $`\gamma d\eta np`$ in the energy region up to 30 MeV above threshold. The calculation is performed within a three-body formalism with s-wave separable $`\eta N`$\- and $`NN`$-potentials. We found that the first-order rescattering approximation is insufficient, since the full three-body treatment, including the full hadronic final state interaction, enhances significantly at lower energies the $`\eta `$-meson spectrum while at the higher energies a less pronounced but still sizeable decrease appears. These results demonstrate clearly that any ”minimal” realistic model for the $`\eta `$-production near threshold must be based on a three-body description of the $`\eta NN`$-dynamics.

Our calculation explains at least qualitatively the anomalous behaviour of the experimental $`\eta `$-meson yield observed just above threshold. On the other hand, a quantitative agreement with the experimental results is not achieved, even with a rather large $`\eta N`$-scattering length $`a_{\eta N}`$=(0.91+i0.25) lying on the boundary of values allowed by modern analyses. Whether the discrepancy could be explained by the contribution from the coherent channel $`\gamma d\eta d`$ is at present an open question.

In view of our results on the $`\eta `$-meson spectrum as presented in Fig. 2, we would like to emphasize the fact that very useful and interesting information on the mechanism of the low-energy $`\eta `$-photoproduction may be obtained from a measurement of this spectrum. The characteristic feature of the meson spectrum with its sharp, pronounced maximum close to the high energy kinematic limit should make it possible to identify the final state interaction as a major source of an anomalously large cross section of the reaction $`\gamma d\eta np`$ close to the threshold. On the contrary, if there is no simple explanation for the noted shift between the data and the model predictions, then one has to invoke some additional unexplored mechanism in $`\eta `$-photoproduction.