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# Geometric phase related to point-interaction transport on a magnetic Lobachevsky plane

## 1 Introduction

The phenomena arising from a geometric phase called Berry phase \[Ber\] have been put in evidence in many quantum mechanical systems. Recently such a “Berry phase effect” has been observed in some magnetic systems \[LSG, MHK\]. Moreover, it was shown that the geometric phase can emerge even in a time-independent homogeneous magnetic field when a potential well trapping a two-dimensional particle is transported along a closed loop. An example in which the potential is of zero range is worked out in \[EG\], where a formula was proved showing that in the absence of an additional confining potential the acquired phase is proportional to the number of flux quanta through the area encircled by the loop.

This result raises the natural question whether it can be extended to systems with a nontrivial configuration-space geometry. In this letter we address this problem in the framework of a solvable model in which the Euclidean plane is replaced by a Riemannian manifold of a constant negative curvature; we shall show that the analogue of the mentioned “planar” formula is valid here. Among other things, our result illustrates an important difference between two kinds of geometric phases, namely those of Berry and of Aharonov–Anandan. Specifically, the Aharonov–Anandan connection is closely related to the metric connection of the parameter spaces $`𝐂P^N`$ \[Mos\], whereas the Berry connection is completely independent of the Levi–Civita connection in the parameter space.

## 2 The free Hamiltonian

The configuration space of our model is the Lobachevsky plane, i.e. a complete two-dimensional simply connected Riemannian manifold of constant negative curvature $`R,R<0`$. We shall employ the Poincaré realization in which the Lobachevsky plane is identified with the upper complex halfplane

$$_a^2=\{z:\mathrm{}z>0\}$$

endowed with the metric

$$ds^2=\frac{a^2}{y^2}(dx^2+dy^2),$$

where $`x=\mathrm{}z,y=\mathrm{}z`$, and $`a>0`$ is the parameter related to the curvature $`R`$ by $`R=2/a^2`$. Then the geodesic distance on $`_a^2`$ is given by the formula

$$d_a(z,z^{})=a\mathrm{Arcosh}\left[1+\frac{|zz^{}|^2}{2yy^{}}\right]$$

and the area element $`d\mu _a`$ has the form

$$d\mu _a=\frac{a^2}{y^2}dxdy.$$
(2.1)
A constant magnetic field on $`_a^2`$ is given by a 2-form $`𝔹`$ defined as

$$𝔹=\frac{Ba^2}{y^2}dxdy,$$

where $`B`$ is the field intensity. The form $`𝔹`$ is obviously exact and any 1-form $`𝔸`$ such that $`𝔹=d𝔸`$ is called a vector potential related to the field $`𝔹`$. For our purpose it is convenient to choose $`𝔸`$ in the Landau gauge

$$𝔸=\frac{Ba^2}{y}dx.$$

The Schrödinger operator describing a particle of charge $`e`$ and mass $`m_{}`$ which lives on the Lobachevsky plane $`_a^2`$ and interacting with a magnetic field is according to \[Com\] given by

$$H^0=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_{}a^2}\left\{y^2\left(\frac{^2}{x^2}+\frac{^2}{y^2}\right)2iby\frac{}{x}b^2\right\}\frac{\mathrm{}^2\nu }{8m_{}a^2},$$
(2.2)
where we have introduced the dimensionless quantity

$$b=\frac{eBa^2}{\mathrm{}c}$$

which has a simple meaning: if $`\mathrm{\Phi }_e=\frac{2\pi \mathrm{}c}{e}`$ is the magnetic flux quantum relative to the charge $`e`$, then $`b`$ is the doubled number of flux quanta through the degenerate triangle (the area of which is $`\pi a^2`$).

The presence of the last term on the r.h.s. of (2.2) (this term is absent in \[Com\]) can be justified in different ways, e.g. as a “van Vleck correction” \[Gut\], in which case $`\nu =1`$. On the other hand, in one embeds locally the Lobachevsky plane into $`^3`$ and derive the Hamiltonian through a squeezing limit of a saddle-shaped layer \[Tol\] one obtain the last term with $`\nu =4`$. We shall not discuss this difference, however, because it is of no importance for the result we are going to derive in this paper. For the sake of simplicity we put in the following $`e=c=\mathrm{}=2m_{}=1`$.

The spectrum of $`H^0`$ consists of two parts \[Com\], the second one being absent for weak fields, $`2|b|1`$:

(i) an absolutely continuous spectrum in the interval $`[b^2/a^2,\mathrm{})`$,

(ii) a point spectrum consisting of a finite number of infinitely degenerate eigenvalues $`E_n^0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}0}n<|b|\frac{1}{2}`$. These Landau levels are given explicitly:

$$E_n^0=\frac{1}{a^2}\left(b^2\left(|b|n\frac{1}{2}\right)^2\right)=\frac{1}{a^2}\left(|b|(2n+1)\left(n+\frac{1}{2}\right)^2\right).$$
(2.3)
We will need also an explicit expression for the Green’s function $`G^0(z,z^{};\zeta )`$ of $`H^0`$. Let us introduce the quantity

$$\sigma (z,z^{})=\mathrm{cosh}^2\left(\frac{d_a(z,z^{})}{2a}\right).$$
(2.4)
It is easy to see that it is independent of $`a`$ being equal to

$$\sigma (z,z^{})=\frac{|xx^{}|^2+|y+y^{}|^2}{4yy^{}}$$

Given $`\zeta [b^2/a^2,\mathrm{})`$ we put

$$t(\zeta )=\frac{1}{2}+\sqrt{b^2a^2\zeta },$$

where the square root $`\sqrt{z}`$ is defined in the cut plane $`(\mathrm{},0)`$ by the requirement $`\mathrm{}\sqrt{z}0`$. With this notation the integral kernel of $`(H^0\zeta )^1`$ is of the form \[Els\]

$$G^0(z,z^{};\zeta )=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left(\frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}\right)^b\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(t+b)\mathrm{\Gamma }(tb)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(2t)}\sigma ^tF(t+b,tb;2t;\sigma ^1),$$

where $`F(a,b;c;x)`$ is the hypergeometric function.

## 3 Krein’s formula

Now we shall consider a point perturbation – introduced in the usual way \[BF, AGHH\] – of the operator $`H^0`$ supported by a point $`w_a^2,w=u+iv`$. By Krein’s formula \[AGHH, App. A\] the Green’s function of the perturbed operator has the form

$$G(z,z^{};\zeta )=G^0(z,z^{};\zeta )\frac{G^0(z,w;\zeta )G^0(w,z^{};\zeta )}{Q(\zeta )\alpha },$$
(3.1)
where the parameter $`\alpha `$ is related to the scattering length $`\lambda `$ of the point “potential” by the formula

$$\alpha =\frac{m_{}}{\pi \mathrm{}^2}\mathrm{ln}\lambda $$

(or $`2\pi \alpha =\mathrm{ln}\lambda `$ in the rational units). The Krein’s function $`Q(\zeta )`$, defined as the regularized trace of the free-resolvent kernel, was evaluated in \[BG\] to be

$$Q(\zeta )=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left[\psi (t+b)+\psi (tb)+2\gamma 2\mathrm{ln}2a\right],$$

where $`\psi (z)`$ is Euler’s digamma function and $`\gamma =\psi (1)=0.577\mathrm{}`$ is the Euler number. The perturbed Hamiltonian with the Green’s function (3.1) will be denoted as $`H_{w,\alpha }`$.

Using the well-known behaviour of the digamma function \[AS, BE\] we find that the Krein’s function has in our case the following properties:

(a) $`Q(\zeta )`$ is a meromorphic function in the cut plane $`[b^2/a^2,\mathrm{})`$ with the poles at the points $`E_n^0`$ of the discrete spectrum of $`H^0`$ given by (2.3).

(b) $`lim_\zeta \mathrm{}Q(\zeta )=\mathrm{}`$.

(c) At the continuum threshold we have

$$\underset{\zeta b^2/a^2}{lim}Q(\zeta )=\{\begin{array}{ccc}+\mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& |b|\mathrm{half}\mathrm{integer}\hfill \\ q_{a,b}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`q_{a,b}=\frac{1}{4\pi }\left[\psi (\frac{1}{2}+b)+\psi (\frac{1}{2}b)+2\gamma 2\mathrm{ln}2a\right]`$.

(d) $`\frac{Q}{\zeta }>0`$ holds at each point of $`\sigma (H^0)`$.

As usual we employ the symbol $`[x]`$ for the integer part of a number $`x`$. We set $`n_0=lim_{\epsilon 0}\left[|b|\frac{1}{2}\epsilon \right]`$ and consider the following family of intervals

$$(\mathrm{},E_0^0),(E_0^0,E_1^0),\mathrm{},(E_{n_01}^0,E_{n_0}^0),(E_{n_0}^0,b^2/a^2).$$

We also set $`E_1^0=\mathrm{}`$ so for $`n_0=1`$ the family consists of a single interval $`(\mathrm{},b^2/a^2)`$. The last interval having $`b^2/a^2`$ as the right endpoint will be called special, while all the other intervals are dubbed regular.

The listed properties of the function $`Q(\zeta )`$ allow us to make the following conclusions. At each regular interval the equation

$$Q(\zeta )=\alpha $$
(3.2)
has one and only one solution. We denote it by $`E_k(\alpha )`$ where the index refers to the right endpoint of the interval in question. If $`|b|`$ is half-integer the equation (3.2) has at the special interval a solution for any $`\alpha `$, otherwise a solution exists there if and only if the inequality

$$4\pi \alpha <\psi (\frac{1}{2}+b)+\psi (\frac{1}{2}b)+2\gamma 2\mathrm{ln}2a$$

is valid; if the solution at the special interval exists, it is unique and we shall denote it by $`E_{n_0+1}(\alpha )`$.

It follows from (3.1) that the discrete spectrum of $`H_{w,\alpha }`$ consists exactly of all solutions of the equation (3.2) in the interval $`(\mathrm{},b^2/a^2)`$. Any such solution $`E_k(\alpha )`$ is at that a simple eigenvalue; the corresponding normalized eigenfunction $`\mathrm{\Psi }_k(z;w,\alpha )`$ is given by

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_k(z;w,\alpha )=c_kG^0(z;w,E_k(\alpha ))$$

with the normalization factor

$$c_k=\left[\frac{Q}{\zeta }|_{\zeta =E_k(\alpha )}\right]^{1/2}.$$

For our future purpose it is important that $`E_k(\alpha )`$ is independent of $`w`$, and therefore it remains to be a simple isolated eigenvalue as the position of the point perturbation is changed.

## 4 The Berry phase

We shall now realize our aim of finding the Berry phase for an adiabatic evolution of our system in the parameter space $`_a^2w`$. Let us compute the corresponding Berry potential. Since $`\alpha `$ and the level index $`k`$ are kept fixed in the following we drop them from the notations. We first remark that the eigenfunction $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ can be written in the form

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(z;w)=\left(\frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}\right)^b\varphi (\sigma (z,w)),$$
(4.1)
where the function $`\varphi `$ is real-valued. The derivatives of the first factor with respect to $`u=\mathrm{}w`$ and $`v=\mathrm{}w`$ are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{u}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}}\right)^b`$ $`=`$ $`b\left({\displaystyle \frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}}\right)^{b1}{\displaystyle \frac{z\overline{z}+w\overline{w}}{(\overline{z}w)^2}},`$ (4.2)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{v}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}}\right)^b`$ $`=`$ $`bi\left({\displaystyle \frac{z\overline{z}^{}}{\overline{z}z^{}}}\right)^{b1}{\displaystyle \frac{z+\overline{z}(w+\overline{w})}{(\overline{z}w)^2}}.`$ (4.3)
The last relations in combination with (4.1) gives

$`\mathrm{\Psi }|{\displaystyle \frac{}{v}}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ $`=`$ $`2bi{\displaystyle _{_a^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{xu}{(xu)^2+(y+v)^2}}[\varphi (\sigma (z,w))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z)`$ (4.4)
$`+{\displaystyle _{_a^2}}\varphi (\sigma (z,w)){\displaystyle \frac{}{v}}\varphi (\sigma (z,w))𝑑\mu _a(z).`$
Since $`\varphi `$ is real-valued and $`_{_a^2}[\varphi (\sigma (z,w))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z)=1`$ holds for all $`w_a^2`$, the second integral in (4.4) vanishes. Using the substitution $`zuz`$ in the first one, we get the expression

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{v}\mathrm{\Psi }=2bi_{_a^2}\frac{x}{x^2+(y+v)^2}[\varphi (\sigma (z,iv))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z).$$
(4.5)
By (2.4) the function $`\sigma (x,iv)`$ is even with respect to $`x`$, hence the integrated function in (4.5) is odd and

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{v}\mathrm{\Psi }=0.$$

Let us turn to the $`u`$-component of the Berry potential. Since $`\varphi `$ is real-valued, we infer from (4.1) and (4.2)

$`\mathrm{\Psi }|{\displaystyle \frac{}{u}}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ $`=`$ $`2bi{\displaystyle _{_a^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{y+v}{(xu)^2+(y+v)^2}}[\varphi (\sigma (z,w))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z)`$
$`=`$ $`2bi{\displaystyle _{_a^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{y+v}{x^2+(y+v)^2}}[\varphi (\sigma (z,iv))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z).`$
Another substitution, $`zvz`$, yields

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{u}\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{2bi}{v}_{_a^2}\frac{y+1}{x^2+(y+1)^2}[\varphi (\sigma (z,i))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z),$$

and since $`\sigma (z,i)=[x^2+(y+1)^2]/4y`$, we have

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{u}\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{bi}{2v}_{_a^2}\frac{y+1}{y\sigma (z,i)}[\varphi (\sigma (z,i))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z).$$

We have remarked already that $`\sigma `$ is independent of $`a`$; then it follows from (2.1) that

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{u}\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{bia^2}{2v}_{_a^2}\frac{y+1}{y\sigma (z,i)}[\varphi (\sigma (z,i))]^2𝑑\mu _1(z).$$
(4.6)
To evaluate the last integral we pass to the polar coordinate system centered at the point $`i`$ putting $`r=d_1(z,i)`$. Then

$$y^1=\mathrm{cosh}r+\mathrm{sinh}r\mathrm{cos}2\phi ,d\mu _1(z)=\mathrm{sinh}rdrd\phi ,$$

where $`\phi `$ is the polar angle \[Ter\]. Since $`\sigma (z,i)=\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{r}{2}`$ we can rewrite the r.h.s. of (4.6) as

$$\frac{bia^2}{2v}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑r_0^{2\pi }𝑑\phi (1+\mathrm{cosh}r+\mathrm{sinh}r\mathrm{cos}2\phi )\frac{\mathrm{sinh}r}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{r}{2}}\left[\varphi \left(\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{r}{2}\right)\right]^2.$$

Using $`1+\mathrm{cosh}r=2\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{r}{2}`$ and integrating over $`\phi `$ we find

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{u}\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{2\pi bia^2}{v}_0^{\mathrm{}}\left[\varphi \left(\mathrm{cosh}^2\frac{r}{2}\right)\right]^2\mathrm{sinh}rdr.$$

On the other hand,

$`2\pi a^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\left[\varphi \left(\mathrm{cosh}^2{\displaystyle \frac{r}{2}}\right)\right]^2\mathrm{sinh}rdr=a^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑r{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}𝑑\phi \left[\varphi \left(\sigma (z,i)\right)\right]^2\mathrm{sinh}r`$
$`=a^2{\displaystyle _{_1^2}}[\varphi (\sigma (z,i))]^2𝑑\mu _1(z)={\displaystyle _{_a^2}}[\varphi (\sigma (z,i))]^2𝑑\mu _a(z)=\mathrm{\Psi }(;i)^2=1,`$
so finally we arrive at the expression

$$\mathrm{\Psi }|\frac{}{u}\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{ib}{v}.$$

Hence the Berry potential,

$$𝕍(w)=i\mathrm{\Psi }(;w)|_w\mathrm{\Psi }(;w)$$

of our system is of the form

$$𝕍(w)=(\frac{b}{v},0)=(\frac{Ba^2}{v},0)$$

i.e. similarly to the case of the Euclidean plane it coincides with the vector potential $`𝔸`$ if we express $`𝕍`$ as a 1-form $`\frac{Ba^2}{v}du`$.

Let now $`𝒞`$ be a smooth closed contour in the Lobachevsky plane $`_a^2`$, then the Stokes formula yields the sought expression for the Berry phase $`\gamma (𝒞)`$:

$$\gamma (𝒞)=_𝒞\frac{Ba^2}{v}𝑑u=_S\frac{Ba^2}{v}𝑑udv=BS=\frac{2\pi \mathrm{\Phi }_𝒞}{\mathrm{\Phi }_e},$$
(4.7)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_𝒞`$ is the total flux of the field $`𝔹`$ through the area $`S`$ encircled by the loop $`𝒞`$. The relation (4.7) is the main result of this letter.

Notice that in distinction of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian $`H_{w,\alpha }`$ the Berry phase depends neither on the curvature $`R`$ nor on the coupling parameter $`\alpha `$. In particular, $`\gamma (𝒞)`$ is independent of the energy of the considered particle in the zero-range potential well which confines it.

### Acknowledgment

This research has been partially supported by GAAS and Czech Ministry of Education under the contracts 1048801 and ME099. The last named author is also very grateful to the DFG (Grant 436 RUS 113/572/1) and RFFI (Grant No 98-01-03308) for a financial support.


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# 1 Schematic view of the MONOLITH Detector. The arrangement of the magnetic field is also shown.

## 1 Introduction

While the cumulative evidence for neutrino oscillations is very striking, the final proof that the observed anomalies are actually due to neutrino oscillations is still outstanding. In particular, the current observations of atmospheric neutrinos  are all consistent with the hypothesis of maximal $`\nu _\mu `$ oscillations, but do not yet exclude some alternative unconventional explanations . The main physics goal of the MONOLITH experiment  is to establish the occurrence of neutrino oscillations in atmospheric neutrinos through the explicit observation of the full first oscillation swing in $`\nu _\mu `$ disappearance , and to investigate and presumably exclude alternative explanations. This also yields a significantly improved measurement of the oscillation parameters with respect to previous measurements.

The MONOLITH detector will be located at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, and the measurement of the oscillation pattern can be supplemented by measurements in the CERN to Gran Sasso neutrino beam. A proposal is currently in preparation . If approved promptly, a first part of the detector could be operational towards the end of 2004. The physics results described in the following sections correspond to an exposure of 4 years with the full detector.

## 2 The MONOLITH detector

The goals quoted above can be achieved with a high-mass tracking calorimeter with a coarse structure and magnetic field. A large modular structure has been chosen for the detector (figure 1). One module consists in a stack of 120 horizontal 8 cm thick iron planes with a surface area of $`15\times 15\mathrm{m}^2`$, interleaved with 2 cm planes of sensitive elements. The height of the detector is thus 12 meters. Thinner plates, 2 and 4 cm thick, were also considered in the past, however the 8 cm plate thickness resulted to be best compromise between physics result and detector costs. The magnetic field configuration is also shown in figure 1; iron plates are magnetized at a magnetic induction of $`1.3`$ T. The detector consists of two modules. Optionally, the downstream module could be complemented by an end cap of vertical planes to improve the performance for non-contained muons from the CNGS beam. The total mass of the detector exceeds 34 kt. Glass Spark Counters (resistive plate chambers with glass electrodes) have been chosen as active detector elements. They provide two coordinates with a pitch of 3 cm, and a time resolution of 2 ns. Finally, an external veto made of scintillation counters reduces the background from cosmic ray muons.

## 3 Observation of neutrino oscillation pattern

In the two flavour approximation, the survival probability for neutrino oscillations in vacuum can be expressed by the well known formula $`P(L/E)=1\mathrm{sin}^2(2\mathrm{\Theta })\mathrm{sin}^2(1.27\mathrm{\Delta }m^2L/E)`$ where $`L`$ is the distance travelled in km, $`E`$ is the neutrino energy in GeV, $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the neutrino mixing angle, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ is the difference of the mass square eigenvalues expressed in eV2.

However, none of the experiments which have yielded indications for neutrino oscillations have so far succeeded to measure an actual sinusoidal oscillation pattern. Figure 2 shows the $`L/E`$ distribution of Super-Kamiokande  compared to the expectation for neutrino oscillations and to a functional form suggested by a recent neutrino decay model . Once the detector resolution is taken into account, the two hypotheses are essentially indistinguishable . Even though the current evidence is very suggestive of neutrino oscillations, a more precise measurement of the oscillation pattern is the only way to actually prove the oscillation hypothesis for atmospheric neutrinos. The crucial issue here is to prove that muon neutrinos do not only disappear, but actually reappear at some larger L/E.

MONOLITH is explicitly designed to fill this gap. Having a similar mass (26 kt fiducial) as Super-Kamiokande, significantly larger acceptance at high neutrino energies and better $`L/E`$ resolution, the experiment is optimized to observe the full first oscillation swing, including $`\nu _\mu `$ “reappearance”. Therefore, the oscillation hypothesis can be clearly distinguished from other hypothesis which yield a pure disapperance threshold behaviour (Figure 2).

Furthermore, the sensitivity is almost independent of the oscillation parameters (Fig. 3). This is in contrast to MINOS, which can do a similar measurement at the highest allowed $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ if the low energy beam is used , but has a hard time to observe a reappearance signal in the lower $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ range. The good L/E resolution can be used to significantly improve the measurement of the oscillation parameters over the full allowed range (Fig. 4). The systematic error can be reduced by comparing the upward neutrino rate with the corresponding downward rate “mirrored” in L/E (Fig. 3). Finally, if $`\delta m^2`$ is high, measurements of $`\nu _\mu `$ disappearance in the CERN to Gran Sasso beam could complement the atmospheric neutrino measurements (Fig. 4) if the systematic error can be suitably controlled.

## 4 Other physics topics

Provided that the neutrino oscillation hypothesis is confirmed, another goal of the experiment is to further investigate the nature of these oscillations. Depending on the oscillation parameters, oscillations into active ($`\nu _\tau `$) or sterile ($`\nu _s`$) neutrinos can be distinguished through their different effects on the up/down ratio of neutral current (NC)-like events, and/or through the presence or absence of matter effects yielding a distortion of the observed oscillation pattern as a function of energy and/or muon charge.

Even in the absence of sterile neutrinos, matter effects are present in the case of a small contribution from $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ oscillations at the “atmospheric” $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$. The corresponding MSW resonance might be observable  as a localized $`\nu _\mu `$ rate suppression either in $`\nu _\mu `$ or in $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$.

Due to its ability of in situ measurement of the energy of every muon in the multi-TeV range, MONOLITH will also be a unique facility for pioneer investigations of cosmic ray muons in the unexplored 100 TeV energy region. The results of these studies will give information which is relevant for the solution of the problem of the knee in the cosmic ray energy spectrum.

Other potential physics topics include studies of the primary atmospheric neutrino flux, the search for astrophysical point sources, and a search for a neutrino “line” from WIMP annihilation in the center of the earth.

## 5 MONOLITH at a neutrino factory

Neutrino beams from future muon storage rings  (neutrino factories) will be essentially pure beams of either $`\nu _\mu +\overline{\nu }_e`$ or $`\overline{\nu }_\mu +\nu _e`$. The occurence of $`\nu _e\nu _\mu `$ or $`\nu _e\nu _\tau `$ oscillations would therefore manifest itself via the appearance of wrong sign muons. A massive magnetized iron detector like MONOLITH, with good muon charge separation and momentum measurement, could therefore be well suited  for the observation of such oscillations. As pointed out in  this kind of beam will in particular offer the possibility to measure the $`\theta _{13}`$ mixing angle, currently only constrained by the Super-Kamiokande and CHOOZ results, and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ through matter effects. Depending on which of the solar neutrino solutions is correct it might also open the way for the study of CP violation in the neutrino system. Interestingly, the optimization of detectors for the neutrino factory, focusing on wrong sign muon appearance measurements, has yielded a detector  whose basic parameters are very similar to those of MONOLITH. This is true in particular when the source is far enough away to impinge at a sizeable angle from below (horizontal geometry of MONOLITH). For instance, a beam from Fermilab (L=7300 km) would impinge at an angle of 35o, and be almost aligned with the Gran Sasso hall axis, and therefore perpendicular to the magnetic field axis. The results obtained in the physics studies of ref.  concerning the measurements of $`\theta _{13}`$, sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$, and CP violation therefore qualitatively apply to MONOLITH used as a neutrino factory detector. Of course the potential timescale of a neutrino factory is quite different from the one of the current atmospheric neutrino program. Nevertheless, it might be interesting to consider that such a facility might become reality within the lifetime of the MONOLITH project, and that its useful life might be extended accordingly.

## 6 Conclusions

MONOLITH is a 34 kt magnetized iron tracking calorimeter proposed for atmospheric neutrino measurements at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. Its main goal is the proof of the neutrino oscillation hypothesis through the explicit observation of a sinusoidal oscillation pattern ($`\nu _\mu `$ reappearance). Other goals include auxiliary measurements in the CERN to Gran Sasso beam, and the investigation of potential $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ and $`\nu _\mu \nu _s`$ contributions. In the long term, the detector could also be used in a potential neutrino factory beam.


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# Cosmological Microlensing

## 1. What is cosmological microlensing?

### 1.1. Mass, length and time scales

The lensing effects of cosmologically distant compact objects in the mass range

$$10^6m/M_{}10^6$$

on background objects is usually called “cosmological microlensing”. The “source” is typically a background quasar, but in principle other distant source can be microlensed as well, i.e. distant supernovae or gamma-ray bursters. The only “condition” is that the source size is comparable to or smaller than the Einstein radius of the respective lenses.

The microlenses can be ordinary stars, brown dwarfs, planets, black holes, molecular clouds, or other compact mass concentrations (as long as their physical size is smaller than the Einstein radius). In most practical cases, the micro-lenses are part of a galaxy which acts as the main (macro-) lens. However, microlenses could also be located in, say, clusters of galaxies or they could even be imagined “free floating” and filling intergalactic space.

The relevant length scale for microlensing is the Einstein radius of the lens:

$$r_E=\sqrt{\frac{4GM}{c^2}\frac{D_SD_{LS}}{D_L}}4\times 10^{16}\sqrt{M/M_{}}\mathrm{cm},$$

where “typical” lens and source redshifts of $`z_L0.5`$ and $`z_S2.0`$ were assumed for the expression on the right hand side ($`G`$ and $`c`$ are the gravitational constant and the velocity of light, respectively; $`M`$ is the mass of the lens, $`D_L`$, $`D_S`$, and $`D_{LS}`$ are the angular diameter distances between observer – lens, observer – source, and lens – source, respectively).

This length scale translates into an angular scale of

$$\theta _E=r_E/D_S10^6\sqrt{M/M_{}}\mathrm{arcsec}.$$

It is obvious that the image splittings on these angular scales can not be observed directly. What makes microlensing observable anyway is the fact that observer, lens(es) and source move relative to each other. Due to this relative motion, the micro-image configuration changes with time, and so does the total magnification, i.e. the sum of the magnifications of all the micro-images. And this change in magnification over time can be measured: microlensing is a “dynamical” phenomenon.

There are two time scales involved: the standard lensing time scale $`t_E`$ is the time it takes the source to cross the Einstein radius of the lens, i.e.

$$t_E=r_E/v_{}15\sqrt{M/M_{}}v_{600}^1\mathrm{years},$$

where the same typical assumptions are made as above, and the relative transverse velocity $`v_{600}`$ is parametrized in units of 600 km/sec. This time scale results in discouragingly large values for stellar mass objects. However, we can expect fluctations on much shorter time intervals. Due to the fact that the magnification distribution is highly non-linear, the sharp caustic lines separate regions of low and high magnification. So if a source crosses such a caustic line, we will observe a large change in magnification during the time it takes the source to cross its own diameter:

$$t_{cross}=R_{source}/v_{}4R_{15}v_{600}^1\mathrm{months}.$$

Here the quasar size $`R_{15}`$ is parametrized in units of $`10^{15}`$cm. This time scale $`t_{cross}`$ can be significantly shorter than $`t_E`$.

### 1.2. Geometry

The typical geometry of a cosmological microlensing situation is displayed in Figure 1. The main lensing agent is a galaxy, which consists partly of stars (and other compact objects). The “macro”-lensing situation produces two (or more) images of the background quasar, separated by an angle of order one arcsecond. However, because of the graininess of the main lens, each of these macro-images consists of many micro-images, which are separated by angles of order microarcseconds, and hence are unresolvable. However, due to the relative motion between source, lens and observer, the micro-image configuration changes, and so does the total magnification, which is observable.

### 1.3. History

Only a few months after the detection of the first multiply imaged quasar was published by Walsh, Carswell and Weymann (1979), Kyongae Chang and Sjur Refsdal suggested in their paper “Flux variations of QSO 0957+561 A, B and image splitting by stars near the light path”, (Chang & Refsdal 1979):

> “If the double quasar QSO 0957+561 A, B is the result of gravitational lens actions by a massive galaxy, stars in its outer parts and close to the line of paths may cause significant flux changes in one year.”

Only two years later, J. Richard Gott III asked the question: “Are heavy halos made of low mass stars? A gravitational lens test”, Gott (1981). He suggests that a heavy halo made of low mass stars in the range $`4\times 10^4M_{}\mathrm{to}0.1M_{}`$

> “ … should produce fluctuations of order unity in the intensities of the QSO images on time scales of 1-14 years.”

He went on to propose:

> “Observations of QSO 0957+561 A, B and other quasars over time can establish whether the majority of mass in the heavy halo is in the form of low mass stars.”

In a number of further papers, the lensing effect of individual stars on the background quasar was explored; e.g., Young (1981) did some numerical simulations and applied them to the double quasar. In the year 1989, the first observational evidence for quasar microlensing was presented: Irwin et al. (1989) showed that fluctuations in image A of the quadruple quasar Q2237+0305 could not be due to intrinsic variability of the quasar. Such fluctuations could be explained by the lensing action of low-mass main sequence stars and allowed conclusions on the quasar size to be of order a few times $`10^{14}`$ cm (Wambsganss, Paczyński, & Schneider 1990).

### 1.4. Early Promises

Fluctuations in the brightness of a quasar can have two causes: they can be intrinsic to the quasar, or they can be microlens-induced. For a single quasar image, the difference is hard to tell. However, once there are two or more gravitationally lensed (macro-)images of a quasar, we have a relatively good handle to distinguish the two possible causes of variability: any fluctuations due to intrinsic variability of the quasar have to show up in all the quasar images, after a certain time delay. In fact, time delays of quasars are only measurable because quasars are variable intrinsically. (This argument could even be turned around: the measured time delays in multiple quasars are the ultimate proof of the intrinsic variability of quasars.) So once a time delay is measured in a multiply-imaged quasar system, the incoherent fluctuations can be contributed to microlensing.

There is another possibility to distinguish the two causes of fluctuations: even without measuring the time delay, it is possible to tell whether measured fluctuations are intrinsic or not: in some quadruple lens systems, the image arrangement is so symmetrical around the lens, that any possible lens model predicts very short time delays (of order days or shorter), so that fluctuations in individual images that are longer than the (theoretical) time delay and not followed by corresponding fluctuations in the other images, can be safely attributed to microlensing. This is in fact the case of the quadruple system Q2237+0305, see below.

Early on, the papers exploring microlensing made four predictions concerning the possible scientific successes. With microlensing we should be able to

1. determine the effects of compact objects between the observer and the source,
2. determine the size of quasars,
3. determine the two-dimensional brightness profile of quasars,
4. determine the masses of lensing objects.

In Chapter 3 the observational results to date will be discussed in some detail. It can be stated already here that 1) has been achieved. Some limits on the size of quasars have been obtained, so 2) is partly fulfilled. We are still (far) away from solving promise 3), and concerning point 4) it is fair to say that it was shown that the observational results are consistent with masses of the lensing objects corresponding to low-mass stars.

### 1.5. “Local Group” Microlensing versus Extragalactic Microlensing

This contribution deals mainly with quasar microlensing, where in most cases the surface mass density (or optical depth) is of order the critical one. In contrast to that, most other papers at these proceedings are concerned with the “local group” or low optical depth microlensing. Since there are a number of similarities, but as well quite some differences between these two regimes, in Table 1 the various quantities are compared to each other.

## 2. Theoretical Work on Cosmological Microlensing

In the situation of a multiply imaged quasar, the surface mass density (or “optical depth”) at the position of an image is of order unity. If this matter is made of compact objects in the range described above, due to the relative motion of source, lens(es) and observer, microlensing is expected to be going on basically “all the time”. In addition, this means that the lens action is due to a coherent effect of many microlenses, because the action of two or more point lenses whose projected positions is of order their Einstein radii adds in a very non-linear way.

The lens action of more than two point lenses cannot be easily treated analytically any more. Hence numerical techniques were developed in order to simulate the gravitational lens effect of many compact objects. Paczyński (1986) had used a method to look for the extrema in the time delay surface. Kayser, Refsdal, Stabell (1986), Schneider & Weiss (1987) and Wambsganss (1990) had developed and applied an inverse ray-shooting technique that produced a two-dimensional magnification distribution in the source plane. An alternative technique was proposed by Witt (1993) and Lewis et al. (1993). They solved the lens equation along a linear source track. All the recent theoretical work on microlensing is based on either of these techniques.

Fluke & Webster (1999) explored analytically caustic crossing events for a quasar. Lewis & Belle (1998) showed that spectroscopic monitoring of multiple quasars can be used to probe the broad line regions. Wyithe et al. (2000a, 2000b) explored and found limits on the quasar size and on the mass function in Q2237+0305.

Agol & Krolik (1999) and Mineshige & Yonehara (1999) developed techniques to recover the one-dimensional brightness profile of a quasar, based on the earlier work by Grieger et al. (1988, 1991). Agol & Krolik showed that frequent monitoring of a caustic crossing event in many wave bands (they used of order 40 data points in eleven filters over the whole electromagnetic range), one can recover a map of the frequency-dependent brightness distribution of a quasar! Yonehara (1999) in a similar approach explored the effect of microlensing on two different accretion disk models. In another paper, Yonehara et al. (1998) showed that monitoring a microlensing event in X-rays can reveal structure of the quasar accretion disk as small as AU-size.

With numerical simulations and limits obtained from three years of Apache Point monitoring data of Q0957+561, and based on the Schmidt & Wambsganss (1998) analysis, we extend the limits on the masses of “Machos” in the (halo of the) lensing galaxy: the small “difference” between the time-shifted and magnitude-corrected lightcurves of images A and B excludes a halo of the lensing galaxy made of compact objects with masses of $`10^2M_{}`$ (Wambsganss et al. 2000).

## 3. Observational Evidence for Cosmological Microlensing

### 3.1. The Einstein Cross: Quadruple Quasar Q2237+0305

In 1989 the first evidence for cosmological microlensing was found by Irwin et al. (1989) in the quadruple quasar Q2237+0305: one of the components showed fluctuations, whereas the others stayed constant. In the mean time, Q2237+0305 has been monitored by many groups (Corrigan et al. 1991; Østensen et al. 1996; Lewis et al. 1998; Wozniak et al. 1999).

The most recent and most exciting results (Wozniak et al. 1999) show that all four images vary dramatically (but incoherently!), going up and down like a rollercoaster in the last three years:

* $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_A`$ 0.6 mag,
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_B`$ 0.4 mag,
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_C`$ 1.3 mag (and rising?),
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_D`$ 0.6 mag.

This is very encouraging news, and it calls for continuing and expanding monitoring programs for lensed quasars.

### 3.2. The Double Quasar Q0957+561

The microlensing results for the double quasar Q0957+561 are at the moment not quite as exciting as those for Q2237+0305. In the first few years, there appears to be an almost linear change in the (time-shifted) brightness ratio between the two images ($`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{AB}0.25`$ mag over 5 years). But since about 1991, this ratio stayed more or less constant within about 0.05 mag, so not much microlensing was going on in this system recently (Schild 1996; Pelt et al. 1998; Schmidt & Wambsganss 1998; Wambsganss et al. 2000). At his moment, the possibility for some small amplitude rapid microlensing cannot be excluded; however, one needs a very well determined time delay and very accurate photometry, in order to establish that (Colley & Schild 1999).

### 3.3. Other multiple quasars

A number of other multiple quasar systems are being monitored more or less regularly. For some of them microlensing has been suggested (e.g. H1413+117, Østensen et al. 1997; or B0218+357, Jackson et al. 2000) In particular the possiblity for “radio”-microlensing appears very interesting (B1600+434, Koopmans & de Bruyn 2000 and Koopmans, these proceedings), because this was not expected in the first place, due to the presumably larger source size of the radio emission region. This novel aspect of microlensing is definitely worth pursuing in more detail.

## 4. Unconventional Microlensing

### 4.1. Microlensing in individual quasars?

There were a number of papers interpreting the variability of individual quasars as microlensing (Hawkins 1996, 1998; Hawkins & Taylor 1997). Although this is an exciting possibility and it could help us detect a population of cosmologically distributed lenses, it is not entirely clear at this point whether the observed fluctuations can be fully or partly attributed to microlensing. After all, quasars are intrinsically variable (otherwise we could not measure time delays), and the amount of microlensing in single quasars must me smaller than the one in multiply imaged ones, due to the lower surface mass density. Only more observations can help solve this question.

### 4.2. “Astrometric Microlensing” Centroid shifts

An interesting aspect of microlensing was explored by Lewis & Ibata (1998). They looked at centroid shifts of quasar images due to microlensing. At each caustic crossing, a new very bright image pair emerges or disappears, giving rise to sudden changes in the “center of light” positions. The amplitude could be of order 100 microarcseconds or larger, which should be observable with the next generation of astrometric satellites, like SIM.

## 5. Microlensing: Now and Forever?

Monitoring observations of various multiple quasar systems in the last decade have clearly established qualitatively that the phenomenon of “cosmological” microlensing exists. Uncorrelated variations in multiple quasar systems with amplitudes of more than a magnitude have been observed, on time scales of weeks to months to years. However, in order to get close to a really quantitative understanding, much better monitoring programs need to be performed.

On the theoretical side, there are two important questions: what do the lightcurves tell us about the lensing objects, and what can we learn from them about the size and structure of the quasar. As response to the first question, the numerical simulations are able to give a qualitative understanding of the measured lightcurves (detections and non-detections), in general consistent with “conservative” assumptions about the object masses and velocities. But due to the large number of parameters (quasar size, masses of lensing objects, transverse velocity) and due to the large variety of lightcurve shapes possible even for a fixed set of parameters, no “unique” quantitative explanation or even predictions has been achieved so far. The prospects of getting much better sampled lightcurves of multiple quasars, as shown by the OGLE collaboration, should be enough motivation to explore this regime more quantitatively in the future.

The question of the quasar structure deserves much more attention. Here gravitational lensing is in the unique situation to be able to explore an astrophysical field that is unattainable by any other means. Hence much more effort should be put into attacking this problem. This involves much more ambitious observing programs, with the goal to monitor caustic crossing events in many filters over the whole electromagnetic spectrum, and to further develop numerical techniques to obtain useful values for the quasar size and (one-dimensional) profile from unevenly sampled data in (not enough) different filters.

Summarized it can be said that cosmological microlensing – though still a young discipline – has already achieved part of its original goals in attacking the questions of compact (dark) matter and quasar size and structure. But there is still a lot of very interesting astrophysics out there, “in reach”. The field is definitely worthwhile pursuing with more efforts in the future – both theoretically and observationally.

#### Acknowledgments.

It is a pleasure to thank the organisers, Penny Sackett and John Menzies and their colleagues, for their excellent macro- and micro-planning and running of “Microlensing 2000: A New Era of Microlensing Astrophysics”.

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text:
# Frequency dependent hyperpolarizabilities of atoms; calculations using density-functional theory

## I Introduction

Over the past decade, the time dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT)  is being used increasingly to study frequency dependent response properties  and excitation energies  of many-electron systems. The theory found its first application in the calculation of frequency dependent polarizabilities of atoms and photo-absorption cross section of atoms and molecules . However, the existence of TDDFT was not formally proved at that time. It was some years later that Deb and Ghosh , Bartolotti  and Runge and Gross  laid rigorous foundations of TDDFT. Analogous to its stationary counterpart TDDFT is exact in principle but its practical implementation requires approximating the exchange-correlation (XC) energy functional. In most of the applications the adiabatic local density approximation (ALDA)  is used. In this approximation the nonlocal time-dependence of the functional is ignored and the spatial dependence is also treated locally. As such the functional has the same form as the local-density approximation (LDA) of the stationary-state theory . Results for the response properties using the LDA for the unperturbed system and ALDA for perturbation calculations show that with these approximations the polarizability at zero frequency (static polarizability) as well as its frequency dependence are overestimated. Use of LDA+ALDA for the response property calculations introduces errors at two different levels. First, the use of the LDA for calculation of the unperturbed orbitals gives potentials and densities which are asymptotically not correct. In particular the tail of the LDA potential is exponential rather than its correct $`\frac{1}{r}`$ behaviour . Thus the physical propreties that depend on the asymptotic nature of the ground-state orbitals and densities, for example the response properties, are not determined accurately by the LDA orbitals. Secondly, errors in the response property calculations arise beacause: (i) further change in the potential itself is being calculated approximately, and (ii) ALDA is valid only in the limit of zero frequency. There have been attempts to rectify the problem at the first level by employing methods which reproduce the asymptotic behaviour of the potential correctly. Thus Senatore and Subbaswamy  applied the self-interaction correction  method to obtain accurate orbitals with proper asymptotic decay. Later Zong et. al  devised a scissors operator technique and Gisbergen et al.  employed a model potential with the desired asymptotic behaviour to improve the polarizabilities. Gisbergen et al.  also studied frequency dependent polarizabilities of He, Be and Ne by employing exact XC potential for the ground-state of these atoms coupled with ALDA for the XC kernels. Nearly exact ground-state wavefunction along with the ALDA for XC kernels were employed by us  to calculate nonlinear optical coefficients of helium, and to investigate the accuracy of ALDA in predicting the frequency dependence of nonlinear polarizabilities.

All these studies show that the inaccuracy in the response properties arise mainly from the use of the LDA to obtain the unperturbed densities; For perturbative calculations, on the other hand, ALDA appears to be a reasonably accurate approximation, particularly at frequencies in the optical range. One may therefore conclude that if the asymptotic nature of the potential is corrected, the response properties at optical frequencies will come out to be copmparable to the ab-initio or experimental values even with the use of ALDA. However, the conclusions above cannot said to be general since most of the studies have been confined to investigating the linear polarizabilities.

Against this background it then becomes necessary to investigate how does ALDA perform in the calculation of frequency dependent nonlinear optical coefficients of heavier atoms when asymptotically accurate ground-state orbitals are used for this purpose. For the helium atom we could perform such a study with a near exact ground-state orbital  obtained from its Hylleraas wavefunction. However, this is not possible for systems with larger number of electrons. For such systems we generate the ground-state orbitals and potentials by using the model potential introduced by van Leeuwen and Baerends (LB)  as a correction to the LDA XC potential. Recently we have employed this potential to calculate the static nonlinear response properties of several atoms and ions . We found that the orbitals given by this model potential, when used with the LDA for the higher derivatives of XC potential, give reasonably accurate static hyperpolarizabilities for the inert gas atoms. Thus to assess the accuracy of ALDA in predicting the frequency dependence of nonlinear polarizabilities, in this paper we first study dynamic hyperpolarizabilities of these atoms calculated by employing the orbitals generated by the LB potential. In our study  of the static properties, we also found that the hyperpolarizabilities for the alkaline earths show some improvement with the inclusion of the LB correction although their linear polarizabilities remain unaffected. In this paper we study the frequency-dependent polarizabilities of the alkaline earth atoms of Be and Mg also and show that the dynamic polarizabilities of these systems follow the same trend as their static counterparts. In the following, we first briefly describe the LB potential. We follow that with a short description of the variation-perturbation method of calculating the dynamic response properties. We then present our results and conclude the paper with a discussion.

van Leeuwen and Baerends  proposed a correction to the LDA potential primarily to correct its asymptotic behaviour. For this they first noted that the Becke’s correction  to the LDA functional gives the correct exchange-energy density but fails to give the potential correctly. Thus they suggested that a Becke-like correction be added to the potential directly, and found that such a correction brings the approximate potential very close to the exact one. Thus the highest occupied orbital eigenenergy as obtained from this potential is close to the ionization energy of a many-electron system. More recently, it has been shown that the corresponding total energy is also quite accurate  . The effective potential proposed by LB has the form

$$v_{xc}(𝐫)=v_{xc}^{LDA}(𝐫)+v^{LB}(𝐫)$$
(1)
with

$$v^{LB}(𝐫)=\beta \frac{\rho ^{\frac{1}{3}}x^2}{1+3\beta x\mathrm{sinh}^1(x)},$$
(2)
where $`x=\frac{|\rho |}{\rho ^{\frac{4}{3}}}`$ and $`\beta =0.05`$. Note that the extra term $`v^{LB}(𝐫)`$ added to the LDA potential is like the Becke term. It therefore represents the correction to only the exchange component of the potential. Using the potential given by Eq.(1) and (2) we generate the ground-state orbitals and potentials for the above mentioned atoms and then employ these orbitals for the calculation of frequency dependent linear and nonlinear polarizabilities.

We perform calculations of the optical response properties by employing the variation-perturbation method  within the time dependent Kohn-Sham (TDKS) formalism of TDDFT. This method has been used in the past to calculate  polarizabilities correponding to several nonlinear optical phenomena. The method and expressions for various hyperpolarizabilities have been discussed  in our earlier works. Thus we do not describe these in detail here. It is sufficient to mention that the linear polarizability and the coefficient corresponding to the degenerate-four-wave-mixing (DFWM) are obtained directly by minimizing the second-order and fourth-order changes in the quasi-energy with respect to the first and second-order orbitals, respectively. The other nonlinear coefficients are not related directly with the fourth-order energy change. However, expressions for these coefficients in terms of second-order orbitals have been derived  within TDKS theory and it is these expressions which we employ here. To perform our calculations, we represent the radial part of the induced orbitals by a linear combination of the Slater type orbitals (STO). Thus it is given as

$$f(r)=\underset{i}{}C_ir^{n_i}e^{\eta _ir},$$
(3)
where $`n_i`$ and $`\eta _i`$ are the parameters of STO which are fixed and $`C_i`$ are the linear variational parameters. Parameters $`n_i`$ and $`\eta _i`$ are chosen in such a way that the functions correctly represent the excited states. We have optimized these parameters by calculating the static poalrizabilities and hyperpolarizabilities from the LDA ground-state orbitals, and matching the results with the numbers obtained by Stott and Zaremba . For the exchange-correlation energy we have used the Gunnarsson-Lundquist parametrization , which is the same as used by Stott and Zaremba. Thus our results for hyperpolarizabilities are around 10% less than those of Senatore and Subbaswamy  who use the Perdew-Zunger  parametrization.

We now present the results of our calculation. Although our main focus in this paper is on the frequency dependent hyperpolarizabilities, for completeness we first discuss the results for frequency dependent polarizabilities.

In Figs.1-3 we show the ratio $`\frac{\alpha (\omega )}{\alpha (0)}`$ for the inert gas atoms He, Ne and Ar as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ and for comparison also display the corresponding ab-initio results. For helium we compare our results with the results of Bishop and Lam  and for neon and argon the comparison is made with the MP2 results of Rice . Since $`\alpha (0)`$ is already reproduced  quite accurately with the LB orbitals, it is clear from these figures that $`\alpha (\omega )`$ is also accurate and matches quite well with the ab-initio results. For helium the ab-initio results are essentially reproduced by our calculations for frequencies up to 0.5 a.u. (wavelength of about 914 Å). For neon the match with the MP2 results is good till about 0.1 a.u. and for argon good match is obtained up to $`\omega =0.07`$ a.u.. For comparison we also show the corresponding LDA results. It is quite clear that the LDA results are highly inflated in comparison to both the LB corrected and the ab-initio numbers.

In Figs. 4 and 5, we present the results of $`\frac{\alpha (\omega )}{\alpha (0)}`$ for the Be and Mg atoms. The results for these atoms are quite different from those of the inert gas atoms discussed above. Here the LDA and the LB corrected results are essentially the same. This is intriguing since the energies and the highest occupied eigenvalues obtained from the two schemes differ significantly. A possible reason for this could be that since the outer electrons in these systems are less tightly bound, the exchange and correlation effects play a relatively more important role in determining the polarizabilities, and ALDA is not sufficient to represent their effects accurately. Thus although the unperturbed orbitals are improved by inclusion of the LB correction, this alone is not sufficient to get over the inaccuracy of ALDA for these systems.

Having discussed linear polarizabilities, we now proceed on to present the results for the nonlinear coefficients corresponding to third harmonic generation (THG) and DFWM of these atoms. As is the case with polarizabilities, these results are also obtained from the orbitals generated by the LB potential with the use of ALDA for perturbative calculations.

First, we discuss the results for helium. Exact results corresponding to the above mentioned nonlinear optical effects for helium are available over a range of frequencies. In Figs. 6 and 7 we display our results in comparison with the ab-initio results . Plotted in Fig. 6 is the DFWM coefficient $`\frac{\gamma (\omega )}{\gamma (0)}`$, and in Fig. 7 we plot the THG coefficient $`\frac{\gamma (3\omega )}{\gamma (0)}`$ as a function of $`\omega `$. It is evident from the figures that the results for hyperpolarizabilities obtained from the LB orbitals are also highly accurate. The LDA, on the other hand, overestimates the frequency dependence of these quantities by a large amount. A comparative study like this is not possible at all frequencies for neon and argon because of the lack of available data. However, some experimental results are available  at few discrete frequencies for all three atoms. We now compare our results with these experimental numbers.

In Table I we present our results for the THG coefficients of the atoms considered in this paper at two distinct wavelengths, namely, $`\lambda =10550`$Å ($`\omega 0.0433`$ a.u.) and $`\lambda =6943`$Å ($`\omega 0.0658`$ a.u.). We do so because experimental results for THG by helium, neon and argon exist at these wavelengths. For a complete picture, we give the results obtained from both the LDA and the LB orbitals. It is again clear that although the LDA orbitals give a large error in the estimates of these quantities for the noble gas atoms, the LB corrections to the LDA eliminates almost all of this error. Further, the numbers obtained from the LB orbitals lie within the experimental error bounds. For the other two atoms also the LB corrected results for the THG coefficients are less than the LDA numbers. However, there are no experimental numbers available for these systems. Nonetheless, on the basis of their zero frequency results, we expect the LB numbers to be closer to experiments than the LDA numbers. In Table II we present the results of DFWM coeeficients at the same frequencies, although no experimental data exists for this effect. However, we expect these results to be quite accurate for the noble gas atoms, and moderately accurate for the alkaline earths. This is because the maximum deviation from the ab-initio or the experimental results is observed for THG coefficients which have already been shown to be accurate.

To conclude, our study above indicates that when accurate orbitals are employed to calculate response properties, ALDA reproduces the frequency dependence of linear as well as nonlinear response properties of the noble gas atoms quite accurately. On the other hand, for the alkaline earths its behaviour with respect to the linear and nonlinear polarizabilities is quite different. Thus it appears that for systems, such as Be and Mg, where the electrons are loosely bound, ALDA is not a good approximation to calculate the effects of exchange and correlation. In a recent study, it has been shown that ALDA is a major component of the exchange-correlation functional for time-dependent hamiltonians. This has been done by considering two electrons moving in a time-dependent potential. However, our study indicates that this is true only if the electrons are tightly bound.

### A Table Captions

Table I: THG coefficients with and without the LB correction to the LDA along with their experimental values (in atomic units).

Table II: DFWM coefficients with and without the LB correction to the LDA (in atomic units).

### Table I

| Atom | $`\lambda =6943`$Å | | | $`\lambda =10550`$Å | | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | LDA | LDA+LB | Expt.  | LDA | LDA+LB | Expt.  |
| He | 98.46 | 48.35 | 53.6$`\pm 7`$ | 89.12 | 45.11 | 44.07$`\pm 4.8`$ |
|  |  |  | 53.6$`\pm 2.4`$ |  |  |  |
| Ne | 230.30 | 103.68 | 119$`\pm 13`$ | 202.67 | 95.50 | 78.27$`\pm 8.3`$ |
|  |  |  | 96.5$`\pm 4.8`$ |  |  |  |
| Ar | 2532.8 | 1560.3 | 1691$`\pm 167`$ | 1925 | 1275.1 | 1021.3$`\pm 107`$ |
|  |  |  | 786$`\pm 48`$ |  |  |  |
| Be | 6.42$`\times `$ 108 | 1.45$`\times `$ 108 | - | 1.41$`\times `$ 105 | 1.07$`\times `$ 105 | - |
| Mg | no minimum | no minimum | - | 1.88$`\times `$ 1011 | 3.17$`\times `$ 109 | - |

### Table II

| Atom | $`\lambda =6943`$Å | | $`\lambda =10550`$Å | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | LDA | LDA+LB | LDA | LDA+LB |
| He | 87.62 | 44.57 | 84.86 | 43.58 |
| Ne | 198.16 | 94.06 | 190.45 | 91.65 |
| Ar | 1863.0 | 1226.1 | 1725.5 | 1154.8 |
| Be | 9.83$`\times `$ 104 | 7.33$`\times `$ 104 | 6.17$`\times `$ 104 | 4.83$`\times `$ 104 |
| Mg | 4.46$`\times `$ 105 | 1.98$`\times `$ 105 | 2.08$`\times `$ 105 | 1.14$`\times `$ 105 |

### Figure Captions

Fig. 1: Plot of $`\alpha (\omega )/\alpha (0)`$ as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for helium. The squares, open circles and filled circles represent the LDA, the LDA$`+`$LB and ab-initio results , respectively.

Fig. 2: Plot of $`\alpha (\omega )/\alpha (0)`$ as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for neon. The squares, open circles and filled circles represent the LDA, the LDA$`+`$LB and ab-initio results , respectively.

Fig. 3: Plot of $`\alpha (\omega )/\alpha (0)`$ as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for argon. The squares, open circles and filled circles represent the LDA, the LDA$`+`$LB and ab-initio results , respectively.

Fig. 4: Plot of $`\alpha (\omega )/\alpha (0)`$ as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for Be. The squares and filled circles represent the LDA and the LDA$`+`$LB results, respectively.

Fig. 5: Plot of $`\alpha (\omega )/\alpha (0)`$ as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for Mg. The squares and filled circles represent the LDA and the LDA$`+`$LB results, respectively.

Fig. 6: Plot of $`\gamma (3\omega )/\gamma (0)`$ (THG) as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for helium. The squares, open circles and filled circles represent the LDA, the LDA$`+`$LB and ab-initio results , respectively.

Fig. 7: Plot of $`\gamma (\omega )/\gamma (0)`$ (DFWM) as a function of frequency $`\omega `$ for helium. The squares, open circles and filled circles represent the LDA, the LDA$`+`$LB and ab-initio results , respectively.


text:
# Further daemon detection experiments

## 1 Introduction. General ideology and the results of the previous experiment

We reported earlier (Drobyshevski 2000c) on experimentally detecting indications of the existence of a flux of strongly-penetrating, nuclear-active particles moving with a velocity $`10`$ km/s. The experiment supported our expectations aimed at a search for hypothetical DArk Electric Matter Objects, daemons, i.e. elementary Planckian black holes, which carry several (up to $`Z_\mathrm{d}10`$) electronic charges and are part of the DM of the Galactic disk and, possibly, of the Universe as a whole.

Because of their large mass ($`210^5`$ g), daemons possess a giant penetrating ability. Nevertheless, as a result of the decelerating action of the matter they build up inside celestial bodies of the type of the Sun and the planets, as well as in helio- and planetocentric orbits. Due to their large charge, negative daemons are capable of catalyzing the fusion of light nuclei. The daemon-assisted proton fusion supplies apparently most of the Solar energetics and accounts for the electron-capture neutrino deficiency in the Solar flux (Drobyshevski 1996b). Bearing in mind the relativistic nature of the daemon, one could expect that the assumption of possible poisoning of its catalytic properties in the capture of heavy nuclei, similar to that expressed with respect to other particles (quarks etc.) (see, e.g., Salpeter 1970), would not prove to be correct. It could be anticipated that such nuclei (or their components) would either escape under the relativistic horizon of the daemon (Drobyshevski 1996a) or be ejected as a result of the decay of the component nucleons into which the daemon penetrated (Drobyshevski 2000a,b).

As follows from a comparison of the number of daemons captured by the Sun from the Galactic disc with their number required for the catalysis necessary to support the Solar luminosity, the time needed for a daemon to recover its catalytic properties inside the Sun is about $`10^710^6`$ s (Drobyshevski 2000a,b). It remains unclear what is the real mechanism by which the daemon frees itself of a heavy nucleus. One could expect that the situation would become clearer as the experiments are continued in the direction chosen by us.

We assembled (Drobyshevski 2000c) an extremely simple setup for daemon detection based on the above two mechanisms of interaction of negative daemons with light ($`Z_\mathrm{n}Z_\mathrm{d}10`$) and heavy nuclei. It consists essentially of two transparent polystyrene plates, 4 mm thick and $`0.5\times 0.5\mathrm{m}^2`$ in area, coated on the bottom by a relatively thin ($`3.03.5\mathrm{mg}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$) layer of the ZnS(Ag) phosphor (its Ag content is $`0.510^4`$ g atom/mole ZnS). For an average phosphor grain size $`12\mu \mathrm{m}`$, this density provides a close-to-monolayer coverage with certain gaps between the ZnS(Ag) grains. The plates are light-isolated from one another by black paper and are mounted with a 7-cm spacing at the center of a cubic box of tinned sheet with an edge of 52 cm. Each plate is viewed by a PM tube from above and from below. Four identical modules, $`1\mathrm{m}^2`$ in total area and arranged side by side in the same horizontal plane, were built altogether. We readily see that the system is asymmetric with respect to the vertical direction, thus permitting one to judge of the daemon flux direction and to draw conclusions on some properties of the radiations measured.

In the absence of a flux of particles causing scintillations, there should be no correlation between the signals of the PM tubes viewing the top and the bottom plates. In these conditions, the distribution $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ of the fairly rare (noise etc.) signals of the second (bottom) PM tube in the time shift $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ between their beginning and the beginning of the signal from the first (top) PM tube can be approximated with a constant. An exception to this are the cosmic rays producing a strong maximum at $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0`$, with the signals appearing frequently simultaneously in several modules. What we found, however, was a statistically significant maximum at $`\mathrm{\Delta }t2040\mu \mathrm{s}`$, which, while being totally unexpected from the standpoint of standard cosmic-ray physics, is exactly what had motivated the present experiment. It is due to signals from the bottom PM tubes, which arrive after the signals from the top (leading) PM tubes triggering the measurement system. One can infer also an existence of a leading maximum, i.e. a maximum with $`\mathrm{\Delta }t<0`$. It is much less significant and is shifted by $`\mathrm{\Delta }t(4060)\mu \mathrm{s}`$. It is such maxima that were anticipated by us based on the daemon hypothesis.

These observations, besides indicating the existence of a new type of penetrating cosmic radiation, suggested that the velocity of the discovered particles is barely $`510`$ km/s, which should be characteristic of objects captured into geocentric orbits with a perigee inside the Earth. Their flux through the Earth’s surface reaches $`10^810^7\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$.

We are presenting below a description of further experiments, which support our preliminary conclusions of the existence of daemons and shed light on some features of their interaction with matter.

However prior to going over to these results, we shall formulate the main postulates which permit a noncontradictory interpretation of our experimental data within the daemon concept. These postulates have formed to a considerable extent in the course of an analysis of the results themselves made on the basis of fairly general physical ideas.

## 2 Main assumptions concerning the interaction of negative daemons with matter

(a) A slowly-moving ($`V100`$ km/s) daemon impact neither ionizes nor excites the electronic shells of atoms. Therefore it cannot produce scintillations.

(b) In passing through matter, a daemon can capture an atomic nucleus. The ensuing drop of the nucleus to deeper levels in the electric field of the daemon will cause an Auger-type emission of electrons which initially surrounded the atomic nucleus.

(c) As the daemon continues to propagate through matter, it can capture a heavier nucleus while loosing the old one (or its remnant, see below), again with emission of Auger electrons. The capture of a heavier nucleus is similar to the effect of charge exchange of ions moving through a gas, which is well known from the physics of gas discharge. Therefore as a daemon enters ZnS(Ag) from air or polystyrene, one should expect the light nuclei to become replaced by the S, Zn, and Ag nuclei and excitation of a scintillation. In this case the process of ‘charge exchange’ is more efficient for a larger mass difference between the exchanging nuclei.

(d) If the nucleus captured earlier by the daemon has a small mass and $`Z_\mathrm{n}Z_\mathrm{d}`$, interaction of this complex with another light nucleus and the capture of the latter may culminate in nuclear fusion. Because of the internal conversion, the fusion energy has a high probability of becoming converted to the kinetic energy of the compound-nucleus thus formed, which escapes from the daemon. The daemon remains free afterwards for some time.

(e) If the daemon captures a light nucleus in a sufficiently rarefied (noncondensed) medium, for instance, in air, the light nucleus will not be able to shed the excess energy and, thus, may turn out to occupy such a high level as not even to be in contact with the daemon. (Recall that the lowest nucleus-daemon level for $`Z_\mathrm{d}=10`$ lies within the nucleus with $`A2`$, and inside the nucleon for $`Z_\mathrm{n}24/Z_\mathrm{d}`$.)

(f) It appears that the scintillations observed by us are primarily caused by the Auger electrons emitted in the capture of new atomic nuclei. We cannot at present maintain with certainty that what we detect are the nuclei released by the daemon and representing products of the fusion of light nuclei or particles produced in the decay of daemon-containing nucleons (or nuclei), although such events must certainly take place. Therefore we believe that as a daemon passes through a scintillator layer, the scintillation is primarily excited in the capture of a nucleus from the latter by the daemon, and by the resultant emission of Auger electrons. Scintillations are also produced in Auger electron emission and in the capture of a nucleus from outside the scintillator, if part of these electrons reaches the scintillator.

(g) The daemon-containing heavy nucleus decays apparently not in an explosive manner as we believed before (Drobyshevski 2000a,b), but rather step by step, nucleon by nucleon. Because a negative daemon should preferably reside in the protons of a nucleus, the decay most probably occurs in the proton-by-proton manner. The proton-by-proton disintegration should be accompanied by emission of excess neutrons from the nucleus. This gradual ‘digestion’ of the nucleus ends probably either in the decay (absorption?) of the last proton of the remaining tritium (or even of $`{}_{}{}^{4}\mathrm{H}`$) or in a capture of an encountered nucleus which is heavier than the disintegrating residual nucleus. Clearly enough, the nuclear decay time and the recovery by the daemon of its postulated catalytic properties are, on the whole, proportional to the initial nuclear mass; however in the presence of background matter from which another nucleus can be captured (for digestion or fusion with the remainder of the old one) this time depends to some extent on the nuclear properties of the surrounding matter.

While the first postulates are based on the relations known from atomic and nuclear physics, the latter (g) postulate follows already from our experiments.

## 3 Increasing the experiment duration

The discovery of a nuclear-active radiation propagating with a velocity on the km-scale, i.e., of a population captured into particularly geocentric orbits, was somewhat unexpected for us. Therefore the next natural step was to increase the observation time of the signals from the bottom scintillator surface from $`100\mathrm{\Delta }t+100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (Drobyshevski 2000c) to $`250\mathrm{\Delta }t+250\mu \mathrm{s}`$ with respect to the signal from the top scintillator. We hoped that beyond the $`\pm 100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ interval we would enter the zone of purely random signals with a $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)=\mathrm{const}`$ distribution. However this conjecture did not gain a support.

We start our consideration with $`\mathrm{\Delta }t<0`$, i.e., with signals belonging to an upward flux of non-monoenergetic (see Fig. 1) particles. Here, except a taking shape maximum at $`40\mathrm{\Delta }20\mu \mathrm{s}`$, which corresponds to the 7 cm interscintillator distance at the particle normal velocity of $`23`$ km/s, one clearly sees another three maxima, with the first one, fairly diffuse, extending from -220 to -160 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$, the second from -120 to -100 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$, and the third, from -80 to -60 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$. Bearing in mind our assumptions (see Sec.2), the first maximum can be due to the bottom scintillator excited by the Auger electrons, which are emitted in the capture by daemons of air nuclei after getting freed of the Fe and Sn heavy nuclei captured in the traversal of the lower part of the tinned-sheet casing at various angles. The Auger electrons can be emitted also in the capture of Sn from the thin tin coating of the iron sheet. After the participation in all these processes, part of the daemons reach the top luminophor, and it is here that they generate the trigger pulse correlating with the signals of the first diffuse maximum.

The sharper second and third maxima are possibly produced as the daemon captures Ag ($`Z_\mathrm{n}=47`$) and Zn ($`Z_\mathrm{n}=30`$) nuclei, respectively, in traversing the bottom luminophor. Note that the captured S nucleus has a high probability to be shortly lost when it encounters a Zn nucleus, and the probability of capturing Ag is not small despite the low concentration of Ag, because for a velocity of $``$2 km/s the daemon free path until meeting an Ag atom is comparable with the ZnS(Ag) grain size. On traversing at any angle the bottom polystyrene plate into the space before the top luminophor, daemons finish digesting the Ag and Zn nuclei, so that when they capture air atoms, they emit here Auger electrons, which trigger the top luminophor. If our scenarium is true, the time shift between these maxima relative to $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0`$ provides an idea about the time per decay of a daemon-containing proton. It turns out to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}/n_\mathrm{p}=\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}/Z_\mathrm{n}2\mu \mathrm{s}`$, which shows that our estimates of $`\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}`$ based on Solar energetics (Drobyshevski 2000a,b) were clearly underestimates.

The position of the first maximum ($`\mathrm{\Delta }t180200\mu \mathrm{s}`$) yields $``$1.5 km/s for the velocity with which a daemon passes normally the distance of 29 cm from the lower box cover to the upper luminophor layer. Taking into account the random angular distribution of the trajectories, the average velocity increases to $``$3 km/s.

For $`\mathrm{\Delta }t>0`$, the daemons move downward.

The first distinct maximum at $`20<\mathrm{\Delta }t<40\mu \mathrm{s}`$ corresponds apparently to the time needed for a daemon to cross the 7-cm gap separating the scintillator layers. For an arbitrary trajectory inclination, this time, as we saw before (Drobyshevski 2000c), corresponds to a velocity $`35`$ km/s, i.e., to objects in geocentric orbits with a perigee inside the Earth. The interpretation of this maximum, as well as the $`40<\mathrm{\Delta }t<20\mu \mathrm{s}`$ maximum, should be approached with a certain caution, because the fairly slow digestion of nuclei by a daemon could give rise to a certain bias toward inclined trajectories. A daemon poisoned by a poorly digested heavy nucleus is less likely to capture a Zn or Ag nucleus from the next scintillator layer and to initiate a scintillation in it if it propagates by the fastest (direct) path. Another selection arises because of the higher probability of capture of Ag, despite its low content, by a slower-moving daemon (the capture cross section is proportional to $`V^2`$).

Because of the ZnS(Ag) coating being not continuous, daemons with nuclei captured both in the upper scintillator have a fairly high probability of turning up also in the space under the bottom scintillator. Therefore in order to reliably separate and subsequently identify the maxima according to their origin (the end of digestion of a Zn or Ag nucleus captured in the top or bottom scintillator etc.) for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t4060\mu \mathrm{s}`$, the statistics of the events should be much larger than they are presently. Nevertheless, there are grounds to believe that the maximum which is just barely discernible near +100 ms is due to the decay of the Ag captured in the top ZnS(Ag) scintillator, and that the maximum at $`180<\mathrm{\Delta }t<200\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for the daemons propagating downward, has the same origin as the one at $`160>\mathrm{\Delta }t>180\mu \mathrm{s}`$, i.e., interaction of the upward-moving daemons with the tin coating of the lower part of the box (in this case, however, the Auger electrons are certainly emitted from the thin tin layer in the capture of Sn nuclei). There is no Zn maximum in the $`+(4080)\mu \mathrm{s}`$ interval, because most of the captured Zn nuclei disintegrate before entering the second scintillator layer. Recall that we selected in the oscillograms only the events that contained one signal.

## 4 Experiment with Additional Tinned-Iron Sheets

To verify once more that what we detect in these experiments are not artifacts but real reproducible events, we placed into the gap between the top and bottom phosphor layers a 0.25-mm thick sheet of tinned iron in all the four modules. The thickness of the tin layer on each side of the sheet was $`2\mu \mathrm{m}`$. This sheet was placed directly on the black paper providing optical isolation of the scintillator layers from one another, so that it was 5 mm above the bottom scintillator.

The experiment was run for 550 h. It was performed after the experiment with the $`\pm 100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ time interval (Drobyshevski 2000c) and before the one with the $`\pm 250\mu \mathrm{s}`$ interval, which is described in Section 3 and demonstrates also the reproducibility of the main results within the $`\pm 100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ interval.

We expected that the tinned sheet, because of the presence in it of Fe and Sn nuclei, would strongly affect the $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ distribution obtained in the conditions where heavy nuclei are contained only in the ZnS(Ag) layers.

This was exactly what happened. The distribution for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t<0`$ became substantially more monotonic (Fig. 2). It no longer exhibits individual, fairly sharp maxima evident in Fig. 1. One sees actually one, closely filled maximum extending from -160 to 0 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$. If the statistics were larger, there would probably appear traces of the old maxima. As it is, one can only maintain that charge exchange in the thin tin layer of the additional tinned sheet accompanied by a loss of (remnants of) Zn and Ag nuclei and a capture of $`^{119}\mathrm{Sn}`$ heavy nuclei proceeds apparently so efficiently that the upward moving daemons deliver without loss only remnants of these Sn nuclei to the top scintillator. And it is only here that these remnants are replaced by Ag (and Zn) nuclei to initiate the triggering scintillation. Recalling that the distribution for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t<0`$ is filled up to $`\mathrm{\Delta }t0`$, one could conjecture that some (triggering) scintillations in the top ZnS(Ag) layer are caused by the Auger electrons escaping from the thin top tin layer of the sheet when a daemon captures a Sn nucleus in it. We may recall that electrons of energy $`0.11`$ MeV are capable of passing through a 2-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ layer of tin while being stopped by a 0.25-mm layer of iron or by 4 mm of polystyrene.

The part of the $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ distribution for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t>0`$, which characterizes the downward daemon flux also differs from the corresponding distribution in Fig. 1.

Note the dip at $`0<\mathrm{\Delta }t<40\mu \mathrm{s}`$, after which a peak at $`40<\mathrm{\Delta }t<60\mu \mathrm{s}`$ appears. This dip can be readily interpreted as due to screening by the tinned sheet of the bottom ZnS(Ag) scintillator. In passing through the sheet, the daemon becomes poisoned by, say, a Fe nucleus ($`Z_\mathrm{n}=26`$), and therefore does not excite the ZnS(Ag) layer. Only after the traversal of the ZnS(Ag) layer and digestion of the iron nucleus in $`\mathrm{\Delta }t26\times 2\mu \mathrm{s}50\mu \mathrm{s}`$ the daemon captures a nucleus in the air and generates Auger electrons, that excite the bottom scintillator layer. Therefore even in the presence of fast daemons the width of the dip should not depend on specific features of their velocity distribution.

The depth of the dip at $`0<\mathrm{\Delta }t<40\mu \mathrm{s}`$ characterizes apparently the noise level in the given $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ distribution. But then, as follows from the $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ histogram in Fig. 2, the number of events initiated by daemons during the time of observation is 193 (taking into account errors, it could be reduced to $``$one third this figure). This yields for the measured daemon flux $`f_{}(0.31)10^8\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. In view of the fact that the level ($`U_12.5`$ mV) of the triggering pulses is three times that of the second-trace signals $`U_20.8`$ mV we select, and that the frequency of the pulses is proportional to the cube of their amplitude, we obtain for a probable estimate $`f_{}10^7\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$.

Accumulation of larger statistics will hopefully reveal in the $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ dependence (for $`\mathrm{\Delta }t>0`$) maxima corresponding to the decay of Sn, Ag, and Zn, as well as permit determination of the daemon distribution in velocities from the $`N_2(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ plot obtained without iron shields.

## 5 Some Conclusions and Prospects

We have succeeded in developing a nonstandard method of detection of daemons through the understanding of the fact that the fundamental nonrelativistic nature of these particles permits them to recover their catalytic properties in a relatively short time by shedding the captured massive nucleus in a still unknown manner. Using fairly simple, not to say primitive handy means, we revealed definite and largely expected indications of the existence of daemons. Their low velocity was not anticipated, however. It is characteristic of a population captured by the Earth. The flux of this population through the Earth’s surface is $`f_{}10^7\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, possibly.

The results produced by varying the experimental conditions were likewise largely anticipated, which suggests that our ideas concerning the properties of daemons are, on the whole, correct, and that we correctly understand what happens when we change the parameters of the setup and the conditions of observations. A similar experiment repeated months after the preceding one demonstrates a good reproducibility.

A thorough analysis of the data obtained has permitted formulation of a number of fairly obvious postulates governing the behavior of daemons in matter (decay of nucleons and recapture of heavier nuclei, Auger electron emission etc.).

Besides the confirmation of the discovery of daemons itself and of their Earth-bound population, this work has culminated in a fundamental result of an actually direct measurement of the decay time of a daemon-containing proton. It was found to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}2\mu \mathrm{s}`$. This value is larger by at least an order of magnitude than the figure for the average time for the daemon to shed a heavy nucleus ($`\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}10^710^6`$ s), which was obtained by us from an analysis of the Solar energetics (we may recall that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}/Z_\mathrm{n}`$).

Because $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}=\mathrm{const}`$ characterizes the decay time of one proton, we have actually discovered a daemon-associated method of determining $`Z_\mathrm{n}`$ of the substance through which it passes and whose nuclei it captures.

It should be admitted that because of the statistical nature of the results we obtain we just have to work close to the confidence level in order to reach as rich an understanding of the essence of the observed phenomena as possible in a minimum time. It is thus obvious that one has to accumulate as statistically reliable material as possible while simultaneously improving the detection system and varying its parameters. Richer statistics will permit refining this important parameter, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\tau _{\mathrm{ex}}`$, as well as revealing and making more reliable new features in the distribution of events happening between remote scintillation detectors from the corresponding time delays. Some of the conclusions made by us here will possibly have to be modified. As a result, one will be able to determine the daemon distributions in velocity and directions and their long-period variations, as well as to reveal finer details in the interaction of daemons with various components of the material and, more generally, with matter as a whole. To reach the latter goal, one would naturally have to use more sophisticated techniques of nuclear physics than those employed by us thus far. Obviously enough, daemons would themselves serve as a completely new tool to probe processes on both the subnuclear and cosmological scales.

## Acknowledgments

The author is greatly indebted to M.V.Beloborodyy, R.O.Kurakin, V.G.Latypov and K.A.Pelepelin for assistance in experiments.