text:
# The Chemical Compositions of the SRd Variable Stars. III. KK Aquilae, AG Aurigae, Z Aurigae, W Leo Minoris, and WW Tauri

## 1 Introduction

This series of papers presents and discusses determinations of the chemical compositions of the SRd variables. Of this mixed bag, we are analysing the Population II members. In our first paper (Giridhar, Lambert, & Gonzalez 1998a, Paper I), we discussed four stars: XY Aqr, RX Cep, AB Leo, and SV UMa of which AB Leo and SV UMa were demonstrated to have a low metal abundance (\[Fe/H\] $`1.5`$). A second paper (Giridhar, Lambert, & Gonzalez 1999, Paper II) analysed three metal-poor stars - WY And, VW Eri, and UW Lib. Here, we discuss five Population II variables (Table 1) assigned by Joy (1952) to the halo population on the basis of radial velocity measurements.

Our spectroscopic analyses are the first for these stars. The elemental abundances are compared with published results for local metal-poor dwarfs and giants at an evolutionary stage less extreme than that of our SRd variables. Local field dwarfs and giants with very few exceptions show a common \[X/Fe\] at a given \[Fe/H\]. For many elements \[X/Fe\] is independent of \[Fe/H\] over the \[Fe/H\] range of our stars. Sources for the expected \[X/Fe\] are as follows: Barbuy (1988), Carretta, Gratton, & Sneden (2000) and Nissen, Primas, & Asplund (2000) from the \[O i\] lines for O; Pilachowski, Sneden, & Kraft (1996) for Na; Gratton, & Sneden (1988) for Mg; McWilliam (1997) for Al and Eu; Gratton, & Sneden (1991) for Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, and Ni; Gratton & Sneden (1987) and Chen et al. (2000) for K; Gratton (1989) for Mn; Sneden, Gratton, & Crocker (1991) for Cu and Zn; Zhao, & Magain (1991) and Gratton, & Sneden (1994) for Y, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, and Sm. Many of these references review previous literature on the elemental abundances and note the generally close agreement between the referenced results and other results. For many elements, the expected value of \[X/Fe\] should be accurate to about $`\pm `$ 0.1 dex. The lack of scatter in \[X/Fe\] for samples composed of stars now in the solar neighborhood but originating from quite different parts of the Galaxy suggests that a SRd, if its atmosphere is unaffected by evolutionary effects, will have the \[X/Fe\] derived for unevolved stars. A ‘cosmic’ scatter in \[X/Fe\] is seen but only for stars of a lower metallicity, say \[Fe/H\] $`2.5`$.

## 2 Observations and Abundance Analyses

Spectra were obtained at the McDonald Observatory with the 2.7m telescope and the 2dcoudé echelle spectrograph (Tull et al. 1995). In general, each star was observed on more than one occasion and the spectrum least contaminated by TiO bands was selected for analysis. Spectra were reduced and analysed by procedures described in Paper I.

As in previous papers in this series, we employed the 1997 version of the LTE abundance code, MOOG, developed by Sneden (1973). The model atmospheres are from Kurucz (1993) and the MARCS program (Gustafsson et al. 1975); the two sets of models give very similar solutions. Atmospheric parameters (Table 2) were derived from Fe i and Fe ii equivalent widths (EW’s). The effective temperature, Teff, is set by minimizing the correlation between the Fe i line abundances and their lower excitation potentials, $`\chi _l`$. The surface gravity, $`g`$, is determined by forcing ionization equilibrium between Fe i and Fe ii. We also used Ti i, Ti ii and Cr i, Cr ii to cross-check the derived Teff \- $`\mathrm{log}g`$ pair for each spectrum. The microtubulence velocity parameter, $`\xi _t`$, is set by minimizing the correlation between the Fe I abundances and their EW values. Care has been taken to avoid regions affected by molecular bands. However, being metal poor, the stars in the present study have relatively uncrowded spectra, allowing us to measure weak unblended lines. We estimate the measured EW’s to be accurate to within 5 to 10 %. The uncertainties in Teff, $`\mathrm{log}g`$, and $`\xi _t`$ are typically $`\pm 120`$ K, 0.2 dex, and $`\pm 0.2`$ km s-1, respectively.

Our derived abundances are given in Tables 3 – 7 as \[X/H\] = $`\mathrm{log}ϵ`$(X/H) $`\mathrm{log}ϵ_{}`$(X/H) and \[X/Fe\], where the H abundance is on the customary scale, and solar abundances are taken from Grevesse, Noels, & Sauval (1996). The tables gives the standard error of the mean abundance, as calculated from the line-to-line spread of the abundances. The total error in the absolute abundance of a well observed element is generally about $`\pm 0.2`$ dex when the various sources of error (equivalent width, effective temperature, etc.) are considered. This does not include systematic errors arising, for example, from the adoption of LTE. In the comparison with the expected abundances (Table 8), we cite mean values of \[X/Fe\] to $`\pm `$0.1 dex.

## 3 Results and Discussion

### 3.1 KK Aquilae

For this SRd, which is assigned a period of 88.7 days in the GCVS (Kholopov et al. 1985), our radial velocity of -243.2 $`\pm `$ 1.5 km s-1 is in good agreement with Joy’s (1952) mean velocity of -252 km s-1 from 7 observations spanning a range of 50 km s-1. Our analysis shows KK Aql to have \[Fe/H\] = -1.2 (Table 2). Elemental abundances are listed in Table 3. The relative abundances \[X/Fe\] are equal to the expected values to within the errors of measurement for almost all of the elements lighter than Y. An apparent anomaly is Ca for which \[Ca/Fe\] = 0.3 is expected but -0.2 is derived. A similar result was found from our analyses of cool RV Tauri variables (Giridhar, Lambert, & Gonzalez 2000). Potassium has an apparently high abundance: \[K/Fe\] = 0.8 but about 0.4 is expected. An important signature is the modest overabundance of the heavy elements: the mean \[X/Fe\] from Y, Zr, Ce, Pr, Ng, and Sm is 0.6 dex against an average expected of 0.0 dex. These elements to varying degrees are dominated by the $`s`$-process (at solar metallicity). Europium, primarily a product of the $`r`$-process, has \[Eu/Fe\] = 0.5, but this is effectively the expected value. KK Aql is the first SRd in our sample to show evidence of $`s`$-process enrichment, which may be presumed to have resulted from operation of the $`s`$-process in the He-shell of an AGB star. This He-shell may belong to the SRd itself or to a companion star that transferred mass to the SRd, presumably at an earlier stage of evolution.

### 3.2 AG Aurigae

This SRd was observed at a phase when the TiO bands were strong. The radial velocity of -193 $`\pm 1.4`$ km s-1 from atomic lines matches perfectly the mean velocity reported by Joy (1952) from 15 observations spanning 25 km s-1. The Fe abundance corresponds to \[Fe/H\] = -1.8. Relative to the expected \[X/Fe\], there appear to be some anomalies. The most striking are \[Mg/Fe\] = -0.4 from a single line, and \[Ca/Fe\] = -0.3 for which the expected values for both are 0.3. Other light elements – Si, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, and Cu – provide an \[X/Fe\] that is the expected value to within the errors of measurement. The heavy elements — Y to Sm — show a scatter in \[X/Fe\], but the mean from the 7 elements is close to expectation with just a hint of $`s`$-process enrichment. The scatter presumably reflects the difficulty of determining abundances based on measuring just a few lines in a crowded spectrum.

### 3.3 Z Aurigae

Z Aurigae is variously classified as a Mira and a SRd variable. Two studies of the AAVSO magnitude estimates have shown that the period has changed (Lacy 1973; Percy, & Colivas 1999). Percy & Colivas remark that the period changed abruptly around 1929 (JD 2425575). Our measured radial velocity of -174 $`\pm `$ 1.3 km s-1 is consistent with Joy’s (1952) mean velocity of -165 km s-1 from 9 observations covering 35 km s-1. The star has \[Fe/H\] = -1.4 with abundances \[X/Fe\] close to the expected values. Titanium with \[Ti/Fe\] = -0.1 and V with \[V/Fe\] = -0.3 may be slightly anomalous; \[Ti/Fe\] = 0.3 and \[V/Fe\] = 0.0 are expected. Sulphur may be slightly overabundant but the result is based on a single line. Europium shows the expected small enrichment relative to Fe. Other heavy elements have their expected abundances: \[X/Fe\] = 0.0 from five elements; Z Aur is not $`s`$-process enriched.

### 3.4 W Leo Minoris

The abundance analysis is based on the 1999 February 2 spectrum taken at a time when the TiO bands were very weak; the spectrum is that of an early-mid K giant. Other spectra containing TiO bands were examined - see below. A remarkable feature is a strong Li i 6707Å line with a complex profile (Figure 1). This star does not have such an extreme radial velocity as the other stars: we find +51.0 $`\pm `$ 1.2 km s-1 which compares with Joy’s (1952) mean velocity of 60 km s-1 from 10 observations over a range of 55 km s-1. At \[Fe/H\] = -1.1, W LMi is one of two least metal-poor of the five stars. The relative abundances \[X/Fe\] (Table 6) are all close to the expected values for a halo star; lithium is discussed below. Europium with \[Eu/Fe\] = 0.9 appears overabundant by about 0.5 dex, but this result is based on a single line.

The remarkable feature of W LMi’s spectrum is a deep broad absorption feature at 6707Å. This is naturally identified as the Li i resonance doublet. Our spectrum synthesis (Figure 1) clearly shows that absorption is not simply due to photospheric lithium, assumed to be 7Li. Addition of 6Li does not materially alter the predicted line profile. The abundance adopted for the ‘best’ fit is log$`ϵ`$(Li) $``$ 1.9. There is clearly additional absorption present. Although the extra absorption is mainly to the red of the photospheric line, there is a mismatch between the observed and synthetic profiles in the latter’s blue wing; one might question the degree to which photospheric Li is at all a contributor. The observed profile suggests that weak emission may be filling in a single broad line. The excited Li i 6103Å line which is present (at the edge of an order) as a single absorption line with a photospheric profile gives a much higher abundance log$`ϵ`$(Li) $``$ 3.2; the line does not have either the red component or the extended blue wing of the resonance line. (The excited Li i line at 8126Å was not recorded by our spectrum.) Judged by results of non-LTE calculations for giants of a somewhat higher surface gravity (e.g., Balachandran et al. 2000), an LTE analysis of the 6103Å line should return a slightly lower not a higher Li abundance than the 6707Å line. We suppose that the discrepancy here may be due to either a filling in of the 6707Å photospheric absorption line by emission or to the failure of the star’s upper atmosphere to track the theoretical structure used in the synthesis. It seems obvious that lithium must be present in great abundance. The discussion that follows is not greatly dependent on identification of log$`ϵ`$(Li) $`2`$ or 3 as the stellar abundance.

The key issue is that lithium has been added to W LMi’s atmosphere since its birth. W LMi’s initial Li abundance would have been close to that of the Spite plateau, log$`ϵ`$(Li) $`2.2`$, but in evolution from the main sequence to the red giant branch, atmospheric lithium would have been greatly diluted, and, in addition, lithium may have been destroyed on the main sequence. In short, the surface lithium has been replenished, presumably after the initial dilution as a red giant.

Recent observations have shown that lithium enrichment occurs, albeit rarely, in highly evolved low mass metal-poor O-rich stars. Carney, Fry, & Gonzalez (1998) found lithium enrichment in the RV Tauri-like variable V42 in the globular cluster M5. Kraft et al. (1999) and Smith, Shetrone, & Keane (1999) each discovered a Li-rich red giant in a globular cluster. Hill & Pasquini (1999) found a Li-rich giant at a luminosity higher than that of He-core burning clump stars in an open cluster of metallicity \[Fe/H\] = -0.5. We presume that the same unknown mechanism of lithium enrichment that operated in these cluster stars was at work in W LMi.

Our spectra provide a clue to that mechanism - the Li i 6707Å line and other resonance and strong low excitation lines are double with a strong red-shifted absorption component. In the 1999 February 2 spectrum, the Na D, K i 7699Å, and the Ba ii 4554Å resonance lines show a double absorption profile similar to that of the Li i 6707Å line in Figure 1. The separation of the two components is consistent with the 21.5 km s-1 measured for the 6707Å line. The Na D lines also show blue-shifted components at -64 and -89 km s-1, which are presumably interstellar lines. Strong low excitation lines also show the red component, as in the Mg i 8807Å, and the Ba ii lines at 5853, 6141, and 6497Å. A similar broad, likely double, profile was observed by Smith et al. for the Li i 6707Å line, as well as the K i 7699Å line, in the Li-rich giant in the globular cluster NGC362. This cluster star, a SRd with a period of about 100 days, is similar to W LMi being about 400K cooler but of similar metallicity and surface gravity.

Examination of other spectra of W LMi taken at times when the TiO bands were stronger shows that the line doubling is probably present at all phases (Figure 2). The line separation remains about constant, i.e., the red component shifts with the pulsational velocity. This component of the Li i 6707Å line presumably originates in the upper atmosphere in cool gas. One possibility is that we are detecting infalling gas from a circumstellar shell or gas ejected at an earlier pulsation cycle. The velocity of infall of about 20 km s-1 is approximately half the expected free fall velocity. Alternatively, the doubling of the absorption lines may signify the presence of a shock in the upper atmosphere with the shock separating cooler and hotter gas. If the latter scenario is correct, we would expect to see a stronger phase dependence of the strength and separation of the blue and red components. Such prominent line doubling is not unique among SRds to W LMi. Resonance lines, especially the Na D lines, are doubled in Z Aur, AB Leo, and WW Tau. The Na D splitting for AB Leo and Z Aur is about 15 km s-1. Z Aur’s Na D components near zero heliocentric velocity are plausibly attributed to interstellar sodium but appear also split by about 15 km s-1, a presumably fortuitous similarity with the stellar line splitting.

Lithium-enriched giants of near-solar metallicity are known and several proposals for enriching a stellar atmosphere in lithium have been offered (see review by Charbonnel & Balachandran 2000). All but one of the proposals invokes conversion of 3He to 7Li in the interior of the Li-rich star; the exception is lithium enrichment resulting from accretion of a planet, an idea first advocated by Alexander (1967). Accretion of a terrestrial planet will enhance the lithium abundance to levels possibly in excess of the star’s initial abundance. Early accretion of the planet is likely followed by its destruction at the base of the convective envelope; lithium enrichment in this (and most other) scenarios is a passing phase. Terrestrial planets might be expected to orbit close to a star and so be accreted early in a giant’s life with the possibility that lithium is destroyed subsequently. Therefore, the planet scenario seems ill-suited as an explanation for W LMi, a highly evolved red giant. Moreover, terrestrial planets are unlikely to form around metal-poor stars. Accretion of a brown dwarf will not greatly enhance the stellar lithium abundance. (A simpler process of mass transfer from a Li-rich AGB companion star seems improbable too. W LMi does not presently have such an AGB companion or a luminous post-AGB derivative. We cannot exclude a white dwarf descendant but, as accretion of Li-rich material may be continuing, it seems to be necessary to invoke long-term storage of the companion’s ejecta.)

Production, if it is the key to lithium replenishment for W LMi, was most probably by the Cameron-Fowler (1971) mechanism involving the reaction sequence 3He(4He,$`\gamma `$)7Be(e-,$`\nu _e`$)7Li initiated at high temperatures but which to be efficient must occur in a convective or explosive layer such that the 7Be and 7Li are transported rapidly to cool layers and avoid losses due to proton-capture. The 3He is a fruit of incomplete $`pp`$-chain processing of hydrogen. Since the opening reaction of the $`pp`$-chain is controlled by the weak interaction and is, therefore, very slow, the participating 3He nuclei must be survivors of production during the main sequence.

Theory predicts that a very luminous AGB star experiences H-burning at the base of its convective envelope and may enrich the surface in Li via the Cameron-Fowler mechanism (Scalo 1976; Sackmann, & Boothroyd 1992). In the case of metal-poor stars, Lattanzio, Forestini, & Charbonnel (2000) show that the surface ratio of C/O stays below unity for a considerable fraction of the star’s life on the AGB; loss of C to N to H-burning via the CN-cycle is offset by the dredge-up of freshly synthesized 12C in the deeper He-burning shell. These calculations are fully consistent with respect to luminosity and lithium abundance with the observations of Li-rich S stars in the Magellanic Clouds (Smith & Lambert 1989, 1990, Smith et al. 1995).

W LMi is obviously O-rich because the spectrum at the appropriate phases is cluttered with TiO bands and not C2 bands. This tidy explanation of W LMi’s lithium has two serious drawbacks. Present calculations predict Li synthesis to occur only in intermediate mass AGB stars, say $`M4M_{}`$, although calculations for metal-poor AGB stars have not yet been extended to low mass. Nonetheless, it seems likely that a metal-poor star like W LMi is of low mass, say $`M1M_{}`$, will not develop the necessary hot bottomed convective envelope. In addition, the Cameron-Fowler mechanism is not triggered until a star has experienced many He-shell flashes and subsequent third dredge-up of carbon and $`s`$-process elements; the Magellanic Cloud Li-rich giants are recognized as S stars. W LMi, however, is not enriched in the $`s`$-process elements.

Then, one must suppose that the conversion of 3He to 7Li occurs at a different (and earlier) stage of evolution. One is tempted given the location of the Li-rich star in NGC362 to invoke the helium-core flash as the trigger for mixing and production. Of the published conversion mechanisms (mostly, speculative musings), only one imagines mass loss to accompany or closely follow lithium production. de la Reza et al. (1996, 1997) suggested that lithium production was associated with mass ejection; a correlation with infrared excesses arising from circumstellar dust promoted this suggestion. If the infalling gas is associated with an extended envelope or circumstellar shell, W LMi suggests a link between a lithium-rich atmosphere and an external gas reservoir that is also Li-rich. The link, however, may not be directly as imagined by de la Reza and his colleagues because the solar-metallicity Li-rich giants are, as shown by Charbonnel & Balachandran (2000), all found at a similar luminosity but below the luminosity of W LMi. Given that the luminosity of these Li-rich giants is rather tightly defined, it would seem that lithium enrichment is a transitory phase.

### 3.5 WW Tauri

Our measured radial velocity of -114.0 $`\pm `$ 1.1 km s-1 is in good agreement with the -110 km s-1 mean velocity obtained by Joy (1952) from 6 observations over a range of 20 km s-1.

WW Tau has a normal composition for a \[Fe/H\] = -1.1 star. Calcium appears slightly underabundant at \[Ca/Fe\] = 0.0, but a slight apparent underabundance of Ca is common among SRd variables and may indicate a systematic error such as non-LTE effects. Scandium may be slightly overabundant. The heavy elements do not show evidence of enrichment: the mean abundance from five elements each represented by two or more lines is \[X/Fe\] = 0.2.

## 4 Concluding Remarks

Table 8 shows the mean observed and the expected \[X/Fe\] for the five stars. In compiling this table, we have included only elements measured in 4 or 5 stars of this paper, and for the heavy elements we omitted KK Aql ($`s`$-process enriched) and included elements measured in 3 or 4 stars. For the ‘metals’ from Na through the iron-group to Cu and Zn, the stars have the relative abundances expected from studies of metal-poor dwarfs and less evolved giants. In particular, we note the underabundance of Mn and Cu that is seen also in normal stars; \[X/Fe\] for Mn and Cu for normal stars are slightly dependent on \[Fe/H\]. (Luck & Bond (1985) found a remarkable Mn deficiency for TY Vir.) We earlier alluded to the slight discrepany between the observed and expected value of \[Ca/Fe\], and to the similar discrepancy found for cool RV Tauri variables. Adjustments to the atmospheric parameters made to eliminate the Ca underabundance create additional anomalies. An alternative contributing factor may be non-LTE effects on the Ca i lines. Drake (1991) predicted a nearly 0.2 dex increase in the Ca abundance when non-LTE effects were included for a model atmosphere at Teff = 4500 K and $`\mathrm{log}g`$ = 1. We consider it quite unlikely that the Ca underabundance can be taken as indicating that these stars are descendants of the $`\alpha `$-poor subdwarfs discovered by Nissen & Schuster (1987).

These five stars like the metal-poor SRds analysed in Papers I and II are on the AGB or near the tip of the RGB, and as such may be the immediate progenitors of those RV Tauri variables that are intrinsically metal-poor. What seems remarkable is the widespread lack of an $`s`$-process enrichment. A similar surprise was offered by the metal-poor RV Tauri variables (Giridhar et al. 2000). Only KK Aql is clearly enriched out of the sample of 11 SRd stars analysed by us. A couple of stars hint at mild enrichments (\[$`s`$/Fe\] $`0.2`$) but the remainder are resolutely unenriched. This result would seem to imply that SRds evolve off either the RGB or the AGB before thermal pulses have enriched the envelope in $`s`$-process products and carbon from the He-shell. A thorough analysis of the C, N, and O elemental and isotopic abundances for SRds, and, in particular, a detailed comparison of the composition of the $`s`$-process enriched KK Aql with other SRds should be instructive.

An outstanding result is the presence of lithium in and/or near W LMi’s atmosphere. This is the first example of lithium enrichment in our survey of SRds. In common with the Li-rich star in the globular cluster NGC362 (Smith et al. 1999) , the lithium enrichment may be associated with Li-rich circumstellar gas, suggesting that lithium production in the star was followed by ejection of material that is now returning to the star. One hopes that completion of our survey of SRds will reveal additional Li-rich examples (V Pyx is just such a case), and fresh insights into lithium enrichment. Two extreme scenarios may be envisaged: Is the rarity of observed lithium enrichment the result of effective lithium production occurring in very few stars or does production occur in all stars to be followed by rapid destruction?

We thank John Lattanzio, and George Wallerstein for helpful comments, and Suchitra Balachadran for use of her 6103Å line list. This research has been supported in part by the Robert A. Welch Foundation of Houston, Texas and the National Science Foundation (grant AST-9618414).

## Figure Caption


format: text

text:
# The RHIC Zero Degree Calorimeters

## 1 Introduction

High Energy collisions of nuclei usually lead to the emission of evaporation neutrons from both “beam” and “target” nuclei. At the RHIC heavy ion collider with 100GeV/u beam energy, evaporation neutrons diverge by less than $`2`$ milliradians from the beam axis. Neutral beam fragments can be detected downstream of RHIC ion collisions (and a large aperture Accelerator dipole magnet) if $`\theta `$ 4 mr but charged fragments in the same angular range are usually too close to the beam trajectory. In this ’zero degree’ region produced particles and other secondaries deposit negligible energy when compared with that of beam fragmentation neutrons.

The purpose of the RHIC zero degree calorimeters (ZDC’s) is to detect neutrons emitted within this cone along both beam directions and measure their total energy (from which we calculate multiplicity). The ZDC coincidence of the 2 beam directions is a minimal bias selection of heavy ion collisions. This makes it useful as an event trigger and a luminosity monitor and for this reason we built identical detectors for all 4 RHIC experiments. The neutron multiplicity is also known to be correlated with event geometry  and will be used to measure collision centrality in mutual beam interactions.

## 2 Design Goals

The RHIC ZDC’s are hadron calorimeters. Their longitudinal segmentation (2 $`\lambda _I`$, $`50X_0`$) is determined by practical, mechanical considerations. Electro-magnetic energy emission into this region is predicted to be negligible so this measurement is not emphasized in our design. Since the spatial distribution of neutrons emitted in the fragmentation region carries only limited information about the collision, the calorimeters are built without transverse segmentation.

The Forward Energy resolution goal was determined by the need to cleanly resolve the single neutron peak in peripheral nuclear collisions. The natural energy spread of emitted single neutrons being approximately $`10\%`$ a resolution of$`\frac{\sigma _E}{E}20\%`$ at $`E_n`$$`=100`$ GeVappeared reasonable.

The limited available space between the RHIC beams at the ZDC location imposes the most stringent constraint on the calorimeter design. As can be seen from Figure 1, the total width of the calorimeters is only cannot exceed 10 cm (equal to 1 nuclear interaction length ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }_I`$) in tungsten). We designed the ZDC’s to minimize the loss in energy resolution due to shower leakage, which can cause fluctuation in measured shower energy through dependence on position of impact and random fluctuations in shower development.

Finally, the ZDC’s are required to withstand a dose of $`10^5`$ rad., which is the expected exposure during several years of RHIC operation.

## 3 Simulations

We simulated shower development, light production and transport in the optical components using Geant 3.21  for 2 basic sampling calorimeter designs:

1. Pb absorber with scintillator sampling
2. Pb, Cu or $`W`$ absorber, each with undoped fiber optical ribbons in the sampling layer

The ZDC sampling technique which we adopted for this project, is sensitive to Cerenkov light produced by charged shower secondaries in a commercial, PMMA based  communication grade optical fiber with characteristics given in a single free parameter was used to match the (wavelength dependent) optical fiber attenuation coefficient and photomultiplier quantum efficiency to the observed signal from testbeam $`\mu `$ ’s. Hadronic shower simulation is based on Geisha  with a low energy cutoff of 0.5 MeV on electrons and photons and 1 MeV on hadrons.

The fiber sampling layers, in all cases, consist of a single ribbon of 0.5mm diameter fibers as shown in Fig.5. We chose an orientation of $`45^o`$ relative to the incident beam direction which roughly coincides with the Cerenkov angle of $`\beta `$=1 particles in PMMA. PMMA fibers are readily available with a numerical aperture(NA) of 0.5 (defined as the fractional solid angle which is transmitted in the fiber). This aperture corresponds to a maximum angle of $`30^o`$. Quartz fibers generally have a smaller aperture.

In our simulations we studied:

1. the effects of transverse shower leakage
2. energy resolution dependence on sampling frequency and photostatistics
3. dependence on fiber orientation

Figure 2 illustrates the main advantage of the zdc(Cerenkov) vs. scintillator sampling technique. We plot the fraction of the calorimeter signal (photons transported in the scintillator or fiber) produced as a function of radius from 100 GeV protons impacting the calorimeter. A radius of 5 cm (the maximum space allowable at the RHIC location) contains 75% of the shower signal in the case of a Pb/Scintillator calorimeter with 10mm(Pb) and 2.5mm(Scint) layers. The same dimension Pb calorimeter with Cerenkov sampling yields 91% containment. In general the Cerenkov technique with Pb absorber achieves a given level of containment with a factor of 2 smaller radius than with scintillator.

Changing from Pb to $`W`$ absorber yields almost another a factor of 2 reduction in containment radius. On the other hand, reducing the fiber numerical aperture in the sampling layer produces only a negligible change.

### 3.1 Cerenkov light Production and Capture

Because the optical fibers only transport Cerenkov light emitted nearly aligned with the fiber axis, this detector is most sensitive to charged particles which cross at approximately $`45^o`$ to the fiber axis. The lower energy shower component, which is more diffuse, is therefore suppressed.

This filtering effect is reduced by multiple coulomb scattering of electrons and by the increased path length traversed by particles with less than $`45^o`$ angle to the fiber direction.

In Figure 3 we plot the average photoelectron yields for muons and electrons traversing a ribbon of 0.5mm diameter fibers as a function of incidence angle. Comparing Figures 3a and 3b we see that multiple coulomb scattering has a significant effect on the response to low energy electrons. The improved angular filtering that could be obtained with lower NA fibers (see fig. 3c) is largely offset by this effect and the lower light yield which results from small aperture.

Fig. 3d illustrates the effect of “cladding modes” which we suppress by applying an ExtraMural Absorber (latex based black paint) over the cladding layers of our fibers.

### 3.2 Relative response to electrons and hadrons

Figure 4 shows the calculated response of our zdc modules to electrons and protons as a function of beam energy. The response to beam energy (100 GeV) protons is a factor of 2 lower than for electrons of the same energy. In this sense, our design is extremely non-compensating. This lack of compensation is the dominant source of energy resolution of the calorimeter for 100 GeV protons since the response changes with fluctuations in the energy fraction carried by $`\pi ^o`$’s in the hadronic shower.

### 3.3 Linearity

In our application, where the calorimeter is used to count beam energy neutrons, linearity is not a design consideration. It is clear from figure 4 that , while the response to electrons is linear with energy, the hadron response is not. Response to neutrons and protons approaches zero at low energies. Also shown in figure 4 is the response to muons, which is energy independent up to $`100`$ GeV/c at which point radiative energy loss becomes significant. We use cosmic ray and beam muons for detector pre-calibration.

### 3.4 Energy resolution

The role of the main components of the energy resolution is illustrated in Table 3, where we fit simulated calorimeter response to 50–800 GeV proton induced showers to a stochastic plus a constant term. Our results are a poor fit to a quadratic sum.

If we were to increase the sampling frequency from 1/2 to twice our design value of 1 per 5mm tungsten absorber there would be a negligible change in resolution at 100 GeV. This configuration would reduce the stochastic term due to photostatistics from 6 to 3% but leave the dominant resolution term, due to non-compensation, unchanged.

## 4 Module Construction

For 10 cm wide modules with 5mm absorber plates, a convenient longitudinal segmentation is 1 module per 2 nuclear interaction lengths of absorber. The total fiber area matches that of a standard $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ PMT.

For the prototype $`W`$ modules we obtained 2.5 mm thick cast plates from a Russian manufacturer and bonded them in pairs. For the production modules we obtained machined plates of tungsten alloy with threaded mounting holes from a US manufacturer. The thickness uniformity of our plates is $`\pm `$ 0.1mm.

The fiber ribbons were wound on a mandrill and then impregnated with a low viscosity white silicone rubber glue. The glue covers the active region of the fibers (200 mm) and protects the fiber surface in the region of the fiber/absorber sandwich. The light guide section of the remaining fibers is treated with an extramural absorber to suppress cladding modes in the fiber. The fiber ends closest to the PMT are collected into an acrylic compression fitting and impregnated with epoxy (Bicron BC-600) . After the epoxy cured the fiber bundle was polished using a diamond tipped cutting tool on a milling machine.

The far end of the fibers were rough cut and left untreated. Our optical simulations assume no reflection at this end.

We removed 3 fibers at random from the ribbons in each module and coupled them to a single external optical connector for PMT gain monitoring. This allowed for stable optical connections of all modules in the calorimeter stack to a single light flasher and therefore reliable tracking of relative PMT gain.

As illustrated in Fig. 5, the fiber ribbons were trimmed to different lengths depending on their positions along the module. Lengths were adjusted to compensate for the difference in arrival time between the front and back of the module. We kept the length of the acrylic fibers to a minimum because we were concerned about additional light production in fibers outside the absorber region- primarilly due to shower leakage at the top of the calorimeter.

We selected a 12-stage general purpose PMT (Hamamatsu R329-2) and mounted it with a 0.5mm air gap from the fiber bundles. PMT’s were selected for $`<6\%`$ photocathode non-uniformity over the 39mm diameter area corresponding to the fiber bundle size. Linearity of the PMT/ voltage divider combination is also an important criterion for this project since the calorimeters will be used to measure up to 40 or so beam energy neutrons in collisions of gold ions.

## 5 Precalibration

All modules were tested for relative light yield using cosmic muons incident along the beam axis and a standard PMT with calibrated response. Very little variation ($`<10\%`$) was observed among the 24 tungsten modules we eventually installed for this project.

During testbeam operation we also installed trigger counters to select a small contamination of muons which were present in the proton beam. Muons traversing the full calorimeter were used to adjust relative gains of the 4 PMT’s in the prototype calorimeter.

## 6 Testbeam performance

The calorimeters were mounted on a table with remote $`x`$-$`y`$ (transverse to the beam) positioning in the CERN North area, downstream of experiment NA49. The beam size and position was defined to $`\pm 1`$ cm using a 1cm square scintillation counter directly upstream of the table.

The main purpose of the beam test was to study the response and resolution of the calorimeter as a function of position.

The $`100`$ and 160 GeV/c protons were selected using a beam Cerenkov counter. The beam energy spread was typically 1%. PMT current pulses were integrated and digitized using a standard commercial ADC (LRS 2249w).

## 7 Results

Figure 6 shows the measured lineshapes with 100 and 160 GeV incident protons. Our energy scale is normalized using the 100 GeV point. Also shown in Fig. 6 are the expected distributions based on Geant simulation. The distributions are well represented by a gaussian resolution function and the response is linear over this limited energy range.

In Figure 7 we plot the prototype calorimeter response vs. impact position for both $`W`$ and Cu module types. The position scans show essentially uniform response to within 1cm of the calorimeter edge along the horizontal direction -in good agreement with simulation. In the vertical scans there is an abrupt increase in response near the upper edge of the modules. Our simulation reproduces this edge effect. It can be traced to shower leakage into the fibers above the absorber.

In order to improve module uniformity in the “beam region” we increased the height of the module in our final production design from 10 cm to 13.6 cm.

The tungsten calorimeter uniformity and energy resolution were essentially unchanged when the energy deposited in the 4th module was neglected. Typically 1–2% of the energy is seen in this module. The energy resolution at 100 GeV changes from 17.6 to 19% when it is removed.

In Figure 8 we plot the resolution (r.m.s./mean) for both prototypes (using the full 8 $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_I`$) at 100 and 160 GeV and compare them to simulation. Part of the resolution of this calorimeter is due to the unequal response to electrons and photons relative to hadrons. This introduces a limiting resolution due to fluctuations in the shower composition (ie $`\pi ^0`$ vs charged $`\pi `$). Hence the non-zero intercept in Fig. 8.

Our calorimeter is designed to measure beam energy neutrons incident at the front face ($`45^o`$ to the fiber direction). A by-product of the directional response of the calorimeter is that it is relatively insensitive to background particles from “beam halo” and other sources. In order to demonstrate this suppression, we inverted the calorimeter in the testbeam ($`135^o`$ to fiber direction). The expected performance is shown in Fig. 9 together with the measured response in the 2 configurations. The small discrepancy in the $`135^o`$ data could be accounted for by a 10% reflection coefficient at the open ends of the fiber.

### 7.1 Timing Resolution

The ZDC signal formation is intrinsically fast. The main spread in transit time of light emitted in the fibers results from propagation along the fibers and depends on the vertical position of shower particles. A design goal of the calorimeters is to achieve better than 200 psec time-of-flight resolution. Time-of-flight measurement from the interaction to each of the ZDC’s is useful since it can be used to determine the origin of beam interactions (which is proportional to the time difference).

In practice, the arrival time of the shower will be measured by digitizing the time at which 1 or more PMT signals cross a threshold. We corrected the measured time taking into account the signal risetime(2.5 nsec) and the measured amplitude.

Fig. 10a shows a fit to the testbeam data from which we determine the slew correction. In fig. 10b we plot the time difference between signals from modules 1 & 2. In figures 10c,d we plot the time difference of the two module signals compared to the beam defining scintillation counters. The resolution of the beam defining scintillators is no better than that of the zdc but it is plausible , based on figure 10b, that the intrinsic ZDC resolution is $`\sigma _t150ps`$ and it is certainly better than 200 psec. With a 150 psec resolution the interaction point is measured to an error of 3 cms which is perfectly adequate for our application.

### 7.2 Radiation tolerance

PMMA is not a particularly radiation tolerant plastic. It is known to lose transparency more readily than Polystyrene, for example. Earlier measurements on acrylic fibers  showed about a factor of 2 decrease in attenuation length per $`10^4`$ rad of gamma irradiation. Doses at the ZDC location in RHIC have been estimated at 10krad/yr. This is confirmed by dosimetry studies during RHIC commissioning.

We exposed one of our prototype modules to much higher integrated doses at a reactor. Approximately 2/3 of the total dose was due to gamma rays and the remainder was due to neutrons The module light output was measured using cosmic ray muons before and after 3 successive exposures up to a maximum of 700 krad (7000Gy). The results are plotted in fig. 13, from which we conclude that the useful lifetime of the calorimeters will be $`>500`$ krad.

## 8 Production Design Choices

The Copper and Tungsten modules both had adequate performance for our application. The tungsten module yields 1-2% better energy resolution at 100 GeV and slightly better flatness of response over the calorimeter face. We chose to proceed with the Tungsten module design primarily because of the $`2\times \mathrm{\Lambda }_I`$ modularity and other aspects of the mechanical design. Also the modules are more compact, which is an advantage given our limited space. The module height was increased in the production design to reduce shower leakage into the fiber bundles. Also the calorimeter depth was reduced from 8 to $`6\times \lambda _I`$ since the shorter calorimeter gives essentially identical performance.

## 9 Discussion

Studies of the Cerenkov/fiber sampling technique with electrons  and have been reported elsewhere. One device  was built and operated in a fixed target experiment. Here we report first measurements with a $`45^o`$ design hadron calorimeter and the first application of this method at a collider.

During the first colliding beam operation at RHIC, with Gold Ions accelerated to and stored at 65GeV/nucleon beam energy, the ZDC’s have been used for beam tuning and as a trigger by the RHIC experiments. Figure 12 shows an online Energy distribution from one of the calorimeters in the PHENIX experiment. The single neutron peak, which is seen clearly in this distribution, has been used to confirm the energy calibration of the calorimeters.

## 10 Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Phillipe Gorodetzky for many useful discussions throughout this project. We also thank Alice Mignerey and Bill Christie for assistance at various stages. The kind assistance of the NA49 collaboration which allowed us to share their beamline and counting house is also acknowledged. This work has been partially supported under DOE grant #DE-AC02-98CH10886 and DE-FG03-93ER40773 .


text:
# Electroweak baryogenesis in the standard model with strong hypermagnetic fields

\[

## Abstract

We show that in the presence of large scale primordial hypermagnetic fields, it is possible to generate a large amount of $`CP`$ violation to explain the baryon to entropy ratio during the electroweak phase transition within the standard model. The mechanism responsible for the existence of a $`CP`$ violating asymmetry is the chiral nature of the fermion coupling to the background field in the symmetric phase which can be used to construct two-fermion interference processes in analogy to the Bohm-Aharanov effect. We estimate that for strong hypermagnetic fields $`B_Y=(0.30.5)T^2`$ the baryon to entropy ratio can be $`\rho _B/s=(36)\times 10^{11}`$ for slowly expanding bubble walls.

PACS numbers: 12.15.–y, 98.80.Cq

\]

The understanding of the mechanism that generates the observed excess of baryons over antibaryons in the universe represents one of the most challenging problems for particle physics as applied to cosmology. Any theory that aims to explain such excess has to meet the three well know Sakharov conditions, namely: (1) Existence of interactions that violate baryon number; (2) C and CP violation; (3) departure from thermal equilibrium. It is well known that the above conditions are met in the standard model (SM) of electroweak interactions if the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) is of first order. This raised the interesting possibility that the cosmological phase transition responsible for particle mass generation –that took place at temperatures of order $`100`$ GeV– could also explain the generation of baryon number. Consequently, a great deal of effort was devoted to explore such a possibility . Nowadays, the consensus however is that the minimal SM as such, cannot explain the observed baryon number. The reason is that the EWPT turns out to be only too weakly first order which in turn implies that any baryon asymmetry generated at the phase transition was erased by the same mechanism that produced it, i.e. sphaleron induced transitions . Moreover, the amount of $`CP`$ violation coming from the CKM matrix alone cannot account by itself for the observed asymmetry, given that its effect shows up in the coupling of the Higgs with fermions at a high perturbative order , giving rise to a baryon to entropy ratio at least ten orders of magnitude smaller than the observed one.

Nevertheless, it has been recently pointed out that, provided enough CP violation exists, the above scenario could significantly change in the presence of large scale primordial magnetic fields  (see however Ref. ), which can be responsible for a stronger first order EWPT. The situation is similar to a type I superconductor where the presence of an external magnetic field modifies the nature of the superconducting phase transition due to the Meissner effect.

Though the origin and nature of these primordial fields is a subject of current research, its existence prior to the EWPT epoch can certainly not be ruled out . The only constraint on their strength comes from considerations on the measured anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background and on nucleosynthesis calculations .

Recall that for temperatures above the EWPT, the SU(2)$`\times `$U(1)Y symmetry is restored and the propagating, non-screened vector modes that represent a magnetic field correspond to the U(1)Y hypercharge group. Thus, in the unbroken phase, any primordial magnetic fields belong to the hypercharge group instead of to the U(1)em group and are therefore properly called hypermagnetic fields.

In this paper we show that the existence of such primordial hypermagnetic fields also provides a mechanism to produce a large enough amount of CP violation during the EWPT to possibly explain the observed baryon to entropy ratio in the SM. This can happen during the reflection of fermions off the true vacuum bubbles nucleated during the phase transition through an interference process equivalent to the Bohm–Aharanov effect, given that in the unbroken phase, fermions couple chirally to hypermagnetic fields with the hypercharge. The chiral nature of this coupling implies that it is possible to build a CP violating asymmetry dissociated from non-conserving baryon number processes that can then be converted to baryon number in the unbroken phase where sphaleron induced transitions are taking place with a large rate. The existence of such asymmetry provides a bias for baryon over antibaryon production. In the absence of primordial magnetic fields, this mechanism has been proposed and studied in Refs.  in extensions of the SM.

To describe the EWPT, we start by writing the effective, finite temperature Higgs potential which, including all the one-loop effects and ring diagrams, looks like

$`V_{\text{eff}}(\varphi ,T)={\displaystyle \frac{\gamma }{2}}(T^2T_c^2)\varphi ^2\delta T\varphi ^3+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{4}}\varphi ^4,`$ (1)
where $`\varphi =\sqrt{2}(\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\mathrm{\Phi })^{1/2}`$ is the strength of the SU(2) Higgs doublet $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ whose vacuum expectation value $`v`$ is given by

$`\mathrm{\Phi }={\displaystyle \frac{v}{\sqrt{2}}}.`$ (2)
The parameters $`\gamma `$, $`\delta `$ and $`\lambda `$ have been computed perturbatively to one loop and can be expressed in terms of $`v`$, the SU(2) gauge boson masses and the top mass. Their explicit expressions can be found elsewhere (see for example Ref. ). $`\delta `$ is the parameter responsible for the first order nature of the phase transition. It is the parameter that gets enhanced in the presence of hypermagnetic fields. $`T_c`$ is the critical temperature at which spinodal decomposition proceeds.

We can write the effective potential in a more transparent form  by introducing the dimensionless temperature $`\vartheta `$ and the dimensionless Higgs field strength $`\phi `$

$`\vartheta `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \gamma }{\delta ^2}}\left[1\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_c}{T}}\right)^2\right]`$ (3)
$`\phi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{\delta T}}\varphi ,`$ (4)
in terms of which, the effective potential, Eq. (1), becomes

$`V_{\text{eff}}(\phi )=\delta T\left({\displaystyle \frac{\delta T}{\lambda }}\right)^3\left({\displaystyle \frac{\vartheta }{2}}\phi ^2\phi ^3+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\phi ^4\right).`$ (5)
For simplicity, we work in the approximation where the energy densities of both the unbroken and broken phases are degenerate. This happens for a value of $`\vartheta =2`$. In this approximation, the phase transition is described by a one-dimensional solution for the Higgs field, called the kink, which separates the two phases. This is given by

$`\phi (x)=1+\mathrm{tanh}(x),`$ (6)
where the dimensionless position coordinate $`x`$ is

$`x={\displaystyle \frac{\delta T}{\sqrt{2\lambda }}}r.`$ (7)
The parameter $`\sqrt{2\lambda }/(\delta T)`$ represents the width of the domain wall . It can also be checked that this parameter becomes smaller in the presence of hypermagnetic fields.

In terms of the kink solution we can see that $`x=\mathrm{}`$ represents the region outside the bubble, that is the region in the symmetric phase. Conversely, for $`x=+\mathrm{}`$, the system is inside the bubble, that is in the broken phase. The kink wall propagates with a velocity determined by its interactions with the surrounding plasma. This velocity can be anywhere between 0.1–0.9 the speed of light .

Given the above background scalar field, the problem of fermion reflection and transmission through the domain wall in the presence of an external magnetic field can be cast in terms of solving the Dirac equation. In the wall’s rest frame, this can be written as

$`\left(p\overline{)}aA\overline{)}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta T}{\sqrt{2\lambda }}}\xi \phi (x)\right)\mathrm{\Psi }(\text{x})=0,`$ (8)
where $`\xi =2m/m_H`$, $`m`$ and $`m_H`$ being the fermion and Higgs masses at zero temperature, respectively and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ the fermion wave function. Also, $`A^\mu =(0,𝐀)`$ is the four-vector potential related to the external magnetic field by $`𝐁=\times 𝐀`$. In the symmetric phase, $`𝐀=𝐀_Y`$ corresponds to the hypermagnetic field vector potential whereas in the broken phase, where only the Maxwell projection is unscreened , $`𝐀=𝐀_{em}`$ corresponds to the ordinary photon vector potential. $`a`$ is the fermion coupling to the external field; $`a=g^{}𝖸/2`$ in the symmetric phase with $`𝖸`$ the fermion’s hypercharge and $`g^{}`$ the U(1)Y coupling constant; $`a=e`$, the electric charge, in the broken phase.

In the absence of a background magnetic field, the solution to Eq. (8) when considering the bubble wall as a planar interface has been found in Ref. . Let $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_h(\text{x})`$ be a solution with a definite helicity ($`h=L,R`$) to Eq. (8) in the absence of an external magnetic field –since we will be interested in fermion solutions in the symmetric phase where particles are massless, helicity is a good quantum number. It can easily be shown that in the presence of a magnetic field, the solution to Eq. (8) with definite helicity is given by

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_h(\text{x})=\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_h(\text{x})e^{i\frac{g^{}}{2}𝖸_h^\text{x}𝐀_Y𝑑𝐱^{}}`$ (9)
where $`𝖸_h`$ is the hypercharge of the corresponding helicity mode.

Since the presence of the hypermagnetic field shows up as a phase in the fermion wave function, it follows that its effect will dissapear when considering a process that involves the square of a single fermion wave function. However, the effect will be revealed during an interference process. Since this requires that at least two particles be present within a spatial volume of order $`\lambda ^3`$ per unit time, where $`\lambda `$ is the de Broglie fermion wave length, we expect that these processes are supressed with respect to those involving a single particle. We will come back later to estimate the probability for such processes. For the time being, let us consider a situation in which the fermion amplitude at a space point a distance $`l`$ away from the the bubble wall receives contributions from fermions coming from the symmetric phase which are reflected from two points on the bubble wall separated by a distance $`d`$. For simplicity, we take $`dl`$, in this case, we can consider that the fermion propagation is approximately directed along the direction perpendicular to the bubble wall. Since the coupling of the given helicity mode with the hypermagnetic field is chiral, the square of the amplitude representing the interference of left-handed fermions $`|M_L|^2`$ will differ from the square of the amplitude for right-handed interfering antifermions $`|\overline{M}_R|^2`$ and consequently, an axial asymmetry $`𝒜`$ is built in front of the bubble wall. Within the above approximations, it is easy to show that the explcit expression for the axial, $`CP`$ violating asymmetry is given by

$`𝒜`$ $``$ $`|M_L|^2|\overline{M}_R|^2`$ (10)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{sin}(\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_+/2)\mathrm{sin}(\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_{}/2),`$ (11)
where

$`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}_\pm ={\displaystyle \frac{g^{}}{2}}\left(𝖸_R\pm 𝖸_L\right)\mathrm{\Theta }.`$ (12)
$``$ is the fermion reflection coefficient , common to left and right-handed modes and depends on the parameter $`\xi `$ and the fermion energy, being equal to $`1`$ for energies below twice the zero temperature mass of the fermion. $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the hypermagnetic field flux through the area defined by the two trajectories of the interfering fermions. Taking the case of a constant hypermagnetic field perpendicular to this area, $`\mathrm{\Theta }=B_Yld/2`$, with $`B_Y=|𝐁_Y|`$. Form Eq. (11) we see that the asymmetry disappears for a vanishing hypermagnetic field.

We now follow Ref.  and construct the net axial charge flux $``$ in front of the expanding bubble wall in the symmetric phase. This flux receives contributions both from the reflected fermions within the symmetric phase and from those fermions transmitted from the bubble’s interior. From $`CPT`$ conservation, fermion transmission from the broken to the symmetric phase is related to fermion reflection in the symmetric phase. Therefore, the explicit expression for $``$ is given by

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2\gamma }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑p_l{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑p_tp_t`$ (14)
$`\left[f^s(p_l,p_t)f^b(p_l,p_t)\right]𝒜,`$
where the bubble’s wall velocity in the fluid frame is $`u`$ and $`\gamma =1/\sqrt{1u^2}`$ is the Lorentz factor. $`p_l`$, $`p_t`$ are the longitudinal and transverse components of the fermion’s momentum and $`f^s`$, $`f^b`$ are the fermion equilibrium fluxes (neglecting Fermi blocking factors) in the symmetric and broken phases, respectively

$`\begin{array}{cc}f^s=\frac{p_l/E^s}{\mathrm{exp}[\gamma (E^sup_l)/T]+1},& E^s=\sqrt{p_l^2+p_t^2}\hfill \\ f^b=\frac{p_l/E^b}{\mathrm{exp}[\gamma (E^b+up_l)/T]+1},& E^b=\sqrt{p_l^2+p_t^2+m^2}.\hfill \end{array}`$

Since there is no net fermion number flux through the wall, the axial charge $``$ and hypercharge $`_Y`$ fluxes are trivially related by $`_Y=/4`$.

The rate of baryon number density production is given in terms of the rate of baryon number violation per unit volume $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_B`$ and the partial derivative of the free energy with respect to baryon number $`F/B`$ by

$`\dot{\stackrel{~}{\rho }}_B={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_B}{T}}{\displaystyle \frac{F}{B}}.`$ (15)
The quantity $`F/B`$ corresponds to the baryon number chemical potential $`\mu _B`$ and represents the force pushing the universe towards its equilibrium baryon number value. Only those processes which happen fast enough with respect to the time that the reflected fermions in the symmetric phase (or those that passed from the broken to the symmetric phase) spend before being retaken by the expanding wall, will contribute to drive baryon number towards equilibrium. This time is called the transport time $`\tau `$ and estimates show  that it is of order $`\tau 100/T`$. Since the only other interactions, besides SU(3)$`\times `$U(1) gauge boson exchange and family-diagonal SU(2) gauge boson exchange, with a large enough rate are the top quark Yukawa interactions (given the large top Yukawa coupling), then the axial asymmetry must reside basically in the form of top quarks. Enforcing this condition together with that of having initially zero net baryon and lepton numbers one finds

$`\mu _B={\displaystyle \frac{F}{B}}={\displaystyle \frac{4\rho _Y}{(1+2n)T^2}},`$ (16)
where $`\rho _Y`$ is the hypercharge density, $`n`$ is the number of scalar doublets in the theory and the minus sign comes from the assumption that the net axial asymmetry is in the form of a right-handed top number. For the SM, $`n=1`$.

It is now straightforward to integrate Eq. (15) to get the net baryon number density in terms of the axial flux, with the result

$`\stackrel{~}{\rho }_B={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_B}{3T^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{\tau }{u}},`$ (17)
Equation (17) has to be corrected by recalling that the axial asymmetry, Eq. (11), is built from two-fermion interfering processes. We estimate the probability $`\eta `$ of finding a second fermion in the trajectory of the first one by assuming that there is no initial correlation between these two particles. The probability to find the second one is thus given by the ratio of the number of particles per unit area and time that bounce off the bubble wall making an angle $`\theta `$ within a solid angle subtended by a linear dimension on the order of the particles wave length ($`\lambda T^1`$) to the incoming flux. $`\theta `$ is such that

$`\mathrm{cos}\theta ={\displaystyle \frac{l}{\sqrt{l^2+(d/2)^2}}}.`$ (18)
Taking $`p`$, $`dpT`$ and neglecting Fermi blocking factors, $`\eta `$ is given by

$`\eta ={\displaystyle \frac{2}{3\pi \zeta (3)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda ^2ld/2}{[l^2+(d/2)^2]^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+e}},`$ (19)
where $`\zeta `$ is the Riemann zeta function and the last factor comes from a simple Fermi-Dirac distribution evaluated at $`E=T`$.

Notice that in the wall’s rest frame, the interference point cannot be further apart than the particle’s mean free path $`\lambda _{\text{mfp}}((110)/T\text{[14]})`$, since otherwise fermions will rethermalize and no net baryon number could be produced. Accounting for this probability factor, the net baryon to entropy ratio produced during the EWPT can be written as

$`\rho _B/s`$ $`=`$ $`\eta \stackrel{~}{\rho }_B/s`$ (20)
$`=`$ $`\eta {\displaystyle \frac{270\kappa \alpha _\text{w}^4}{12\pi ^2g_{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\tau }{uT^2}},`$ (21)
where we have used that for the EWPT epoch, the entropy density is given by $`s=2\pi ^2g_{}T^3/45`$ with the effective number of degrees of freedom $`g_{}107`$ and that the rate of baryon number violation per unit volume in the symmetric phase is given by

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_B=3\kappa \alpha _\text{w}^4T^4,`$ (22)
with $`\alpha _\text{w}=g^2/4\pi `$, $`g`$ the SU(2) coupling constant and $`\kappa 1`$.

Equation (21) is valid when the rate of baryon number violation is much smaller than the rate at which the fermions are recaught by the expanding wall, which in turn sets a lower limit for the wall’s velocity given by

$`3\kappa \alpha _w^4T\tau u.`$ (23)
For definitiveness, we set $`\kappa =1`$, $`m_h=T=100`$ GeV and $`d=l/2`$. (For the SU(2) and U(1)Y couplings, we use $`g=0.637`$ and $`g^{}=0.344`$, respectively ). We find that for a wall velocity $`u=0.1c`$

$`\rho _B/s=(36)\times 10^{11}`$ (24)
whereas for $`u=0.6c`$

$`\rho _B/s=(0.71.3)\times 10^{11},`$ (25)
for $`l9/T`$ and $`B_Y=(0.30.5)T^2`$. These are large but still not ruled out values for the background field strength , compatible with a Higgs mass of order 100 GeV and a phase transition analog to a type I superconductor . Recall that the experimental value based on nucleosynthesis calculations  is

$`\rho _B/s=(0.11.4)\times 10^{10},`$ (26)
which means that the estimates based on the present analysis are within the experimental limits, at least for slowly expanding bubbles.

In conclusion, we have shown that in the presence of strong, large scale primordial hypermagnetic fields, it is possible to generate a large amount of $`CP`$ violation that combined with a stronger first order EWPT –also produced by the hypermagnetic fields– could account for the observed baryon number to entropy ratio within the SM. The fact that fermions couple chirally to background hypermagnetic fields in the symmetric phase makes it possible to build a $`CP`$ violating asymmetry by considering two fermion interfering processes in an equivalent way to the Bohm-Aharanov effect. This asymmetry is converted into baryon number by sphaleron induced processes in the symmetric phase and preserved when these fermions are recaught by the expanding bubble wall.

Given that some of the parameters describing the dynamics of the EWPT are not very precisely determined, it is clear that work on that direction is necessary and the possibility that baryogenesis could be realized within the SM could certainly stimulate this kind of work.

Support for this work has been received in part by CONACyT-Mexico under grant numbers 32279-E and 29273-E.


text:
# UWThPh-2000-31 Seesaw model with softly broken 𝐿_𝑒-𝐿_𝜇-𝐿_𝜏

## Orders of magnitude

We have not made any assumption concerning the relative orders of magnitude of $`R`$, $`S`$, $`a`$, and $`b`$. The masses $`R`$ and $`S`$ break $`\overline{L}`$ softly by two units, and it is reasonable to expect $`R`$ to be of the same order of magnitude as $`S`$, although this is by no means required. On the other hand, $`a`$ and $`b`$ occur in Dirac mass terms, and it would be reasonable to expect them to be related to the charged-lepton masses; as, however, $`m_e`$ and $`m_\tau `$ differ by three orders of magnitude, this is not a very useful guideline. Even if we assume $`a=b`$ and $`R=S`$, we still have some arbitrariness, since there is a third mass, namely $`M`$, and, of course, the two experimental mass-squared differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{\mathrm{atm}}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2`$ cannot fix the three mass scales in the model. In any case, Eq. (25) tells us that $`R/M10^5`$, if we choose the LOW solution for the solar-neutrino deficit. Furthermore, with the sensible choice $`a=bm_\mu 100\mathrm{MeV}`$, one obtains $`M10^8\mathrm{GeV}`$ and $`R=S10^3\mathrm{GeV}`$. This result has, however, no more than an indicative value as to what might be the orders of magnitude of $`M`$, $`R`$, $`S`$, $`a`$, and $`b`$.

## Bimaximal mixing

In our model, $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{}`$ is almost maximal as a consequence of the almost exact $`\overline{L}`$ symmetry. In order to reproduce the Ansatz known as bimaximal mixing , we would like the $`\nu _\mu `$$`\nu _\tau `$ mixing, responsible for the depletion of atmospheric muon neutrinos , to be maximal too. This would correspond to the massless neutrino, $`\nu _3`$, having equal components along the $`\nu _\mu `$ and $`\nu _\tau `$ directions, i.e., to $`\left|b^{}\right|=\left|b^{\prime \prime }\right|`$. Now, although it is reasonable to expect $`b^{}`$ and $`b^{\prime \prime }`$ to be of the same order of magnitude, forcing them to be equal by means of some symmetry is not trivial. This is because such a symmetry should interchange $`(\nu _{\mu L},\mu _L)`$ and $`(\nu _{\tau L},\tau _L)`$, but then it must be broken in order to obtain $`m_\mu m_\tau `$. We have been unable to find a way of breaking the interchange symmetry, and thereby obtaining $`m_\mu m_\tau `$, while simultaneously keeping $`\left|b^{}\right|=\left|b^{\prime \prime }\right|`$. Thus, it seems impossible to achieve bimaximal mixing naturally in the context of our model.

## Spontaneous breaking of $`\overline{L}`$

Instead of breaking $`\overline{L}`$ softly we may prefer to have it spontaneously broken through the VEV of a complex gauge-group singlet $`\eta `$ with $`\overline{L}=2`$. Denoting that VEV by $`V`$, the Yukawa couplings of $`\eta `$ are

$$\frac{1}{2}\left[R\left(\eta /V\right)\overline{\nu }_{R1}C\overline{\nu }_{R1}^T+S\left(\eta /V\right)^{}\overline{\nu }_{R2}C\overline{\nu }_{R2}^T\right]+\mathrm{H}.\mathrm{c}.,$$
(26)
cf. Eq. (16). The spontaneous breaking of the global symmetry $`\overline{L}`$ leads to a Goldstone boson, usually called Majoron. That massless field is $`\sqrt{2}\mathrm{Im}\eta `$, if we assume $`V`$ to be real. The Majoron is undetectable, as it couples very weakly to matter . In particular, its couplings to the light neutrinos are suppressed by factors $`b^2/M^2`$ or $`a^2/M^2`$, while the couplings to the charged leptons and to the quarks only arise at one-loop order.

In conclusion, we have put forward a simple and economical extension of the Standard Model which partially explains the observed features of the neutrino mass spectrum and of lepton mixing. Our model is based on a $`\overline{L}=L_eL_\mu L_\tau `$ global symmetry and on the seesaw mechanism. The approximate symmetry $`\overline{L}`$ is softly broken by the Majorana mass terms of $`\overline{L}`$-charged right-handed neutrinos, yet all the good predictions of the $`\overline{L}`$-symmetric situation are kept provided the soft-breaking masses are relatively small. Our model is able to sustain the LOW and the “just so” explanations of the solar-neutrino deficit, since it predicts maximal solar-neutrino mixing.


text:
# Energy focusing inside a dynamical cavity

## Abstract

We study the exact classical solutions for a real scalar field inside a cavity with a wall whose motion is self-consistently determined by the pressure of the field itself. We find that, regardless of the system parameters, the long-time solution always becomes nonadiabatic and the field’s energy concentrates into narrow peaks, which we explain by means of a simple mechanical system. We point out implications for the quantized theory.

The dynamics of confined cavity fields interacting with the cavity wall is of great interest for the understanding of a variety of problems such as hadron bag models , sonoluminescence , cavity QED  and black hole radiations . Previous works have mostly approached the problem assuming an externally imposed wall motion, neglecting the effects of the radiation pressure, or used the adiabatic approximation . In this paper we study, without any approximation, the dynamics of a real scalar field inside a cavity, the wall of which moves according to the combined force of a static potential $`V(R)`$ and the field pressure. This system bears important resemblances to more complicated ones, such as the Dirac and electromagnetic fields, since they can be partially or completely cast in the form of a wave equation. Moreover the classical solutions should be a good approximation to the quantized fields at least in the case of a large number of field quanta. As initial condition for the field we always consider a normal mode of the static cavity. This is in fact a common situation in the study of many physical systems.

We find that in general the system evolves nonadiabatically, and the field energy concentrates into narrow peaks. This phenomenon can be understood with the help of a simple classical mechanical system.

In the present work we use natural units and hence the action $`𝒮`$ is dimensionless as are the velocities. This simply means that, although we are dealing with a classical system, for convenience the action is taken in units of $`\mathrm{}`$. In one space dimension and with the field only inside the cavity, the system is defined by the action

$$𝒮=_0^t𝑑t^{}\left\{\frac{1}{2}M\dot{R}^2V(R)+_0^R𝑑x\frac{1}{2}\left[\varphi _t^{}^2\varphi _x^2\right]\right\}.$$
(1)
Imposing $`\delta 𝒮=0`$ under any variation of the dynamical variables that vanishes at $`t^{}=0`$ and $`t^{}=t`$ we obtain:

$$M\ddot{R}+\frac{V(R)}{R}\frac{1}{2}\left[\varphi _t^2\varphi _x^2\right]_{x=R}=0,$$
(2)
$$\varphi _{tt}\varphi _{xx}=00x<R,$$
(3)
$$\begin{array}{cc}\varphi _x=0\hfill & \mathrm{at}x=0,\hfill \\ \varphi _x=\dot{R}\varphi _t\hfill & \mathrm{at}x=R.\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
Notice the dependence on $`\dot{R}`$ of the boundary conditions. If $`\varphi (R)=0`$ is imposed, the total energy, which is conserved for a static cavity, is no longer constant for $`\dot{R}0`$. Eq. 3 is satisfied by $`\varphi (x,t)`$ with

$$\varphi (x,t)=G(tx)+G(t+x)$$
(5)
and the positive sign between the two $`G`$’s ensures that the first boundary condition of Eqs. 4 is met. Substituting Eq. 5 in the second of Eqs. 4 we obtain:

$$G^{}(t+R(t))=\frac{1\dot{R}(t)}{1+\dot{R}(t)}G^{}\left(tR(t)\right).$$
(6)
For prescribed wall motion, $`G(z)`$ for any $`z`$ can be found by using Eq. 6 and the null line method . It is assumed that the cavity is static for $`tt_0`$ with a length $`R(t_0)`$. This is equivalent to saying that there is a static zone $`zz_0=t_0+R(t_0)`$, in which $`G(z)`$ is analytically known. One can find the values of $`G(z>z_0)`$ outside the static zone by first solving the algebraic equation $`z=t_{\mathrm{eqv}}+R(t_{\mathrm{eqv}})`$ for $`t_{\mathrm{eqv}}`$ and then finding $`z_{}t_{\mathrm{eqv}}R(t_{\mathrm{eqv}})`$. This process, which is equivalent to constructing a null line connecting the points $`z`$ and $`z_{}`$, can be repeated many times until a point $`z_s`$ in the static zone is reached. The values of $`G(z)`$ and $`G(z_s)`$ are related through Eq. 6. However in the case under study, we do not have, in general, a static zone, and we need to verify that knowing the initial conditions of the system is enough to implement the above method.

We will show that in order to find $`\varphi (x,t+dt)`$ with $`0xR(t+dt)`$, it is necessary and sufficient to know $`G(z)`$ and $`G^{}(z)`$ for $`tR(t)zt+R(t)`$ and $`R(t^{})`$ for $`tt^{}t+dt`$. That is just what is required in order to have a unique solution of the system of two second order equations (2) and (3).

Since $`\varphi (x,t+dt)=G(t+dtx)+G(t+dt+x)`$, we need to find $`G(z)`$ and $`G^{}(z)`$ for $`t+dtR(t+dt)zt+dt+R(t+dt)`$. Now we have two cases: either $`zt+R(t)`$ or $`z>t+R(t)`$.

In the first case it is also true that

$$zt+dtR(t+dt)tR(t)$$

as long as $`\dot{R}1`$, i.e. in all physical situations, so that we already have the solution.

In the second case we have to solve the equation $`z=t_{\mathrm{eqv}}+R(t_{\mathrm{eqv}})`$, as explained previously. We have

$$t+R(t)t_{\mathrm{eqv}}+R(t_{\mathrm{eqv}})t+dt+R(t+dt),$$

which, with $`\dot{R}1`$, implies

$$tt_{\mathrm{eqv}}t+dt.$$

Having found $`t_{\mathrm{eqv}}`$ we can derive $`G^{}(z)`$ from Eq. 6 because, with $`z_{\mathrm{eqv}}t_{\mathrm{eqv}}R(t_{\mathrm{eqv}})`$,

$$tR(t)z_{\mathrm{eqv}}t+R(t)|\dot{R}|1,$$

so that again we have the necessary information to determine the evolution of the field. $`G(z)`$ can then be obtained by the numerical integration of $`G^{}(z)`$. Note however that while $`\dot{R}=1`$ still admits a solution for the field, $`\dot{R}=1`$ doesn’t, because the boundary condition requires $`G^{}\left(t+dtR(t+dt)\right)=G^{}\left(t+2dtR(t)\right)=0`$, which in general is inconsistent. Evolving backward in time, i.e. with $`dt<0`$, the opposite would be true.

Using the procedure above we have studied the case with $`V(R)=\frac{1}{2}K(RR_0)^2`$, solving, step by step, Eq. 2 numerically by a standard finite difference method.

As initial condition for the field we choose the fundamental mode of the static cavity with Eqs. 4 as the b.c., $`R(t_0)=R_0`$, and $`\dot{R}(t_0)=0`$:

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\varphi =\mathrm{sin}\omega t_0\mathrm{cos}\omega x,\hfill \\ \varphi _t=\omega \mathrm{cos}\omega t_0\mathrm{cos}\omega x,\hfill \end{array}w\frac{\pi }{R_0}.$$
(7)
For convenience we define the dimensionless parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$: $`\alpha M/\omega `$, $`\beta \mathrm{\Omega }/\omega =\sqrt{K/M}/\omega `$, and we set the amplitude of the initial field to be 1. In the case of a wall initially at rest and with a large mass compared to the initial energy of the field, we expect the dynamics not to depart considerably from the adiabatic one, that is, the wall’s motion should be well approximated by the solution of Eq. 2, with the field’s pressure term replaced by its static wall counterpart and the solution of Eq. 3 by

$$\varphi (x,t)=\mathrm{sin}\omega (t)t\mathrm{cos}\omega (t)xw(t)\frac{\pi }{R(t)}.$$
(8)
In order to check the reliability of our numerical implementation of the algorithm, we first considered a large mass of the wall ($`\alpha =1000/\pi `$, $`\beta =1/(10\pi \sqrt{2})`$). We verified that the total energy is very well conserved and the motion of the wall is well reproduced by the solution of Eq. 2 with the static wall solution for the field pressure.

We then used a smaller mass keeping $`K`$ constant, i.e. $`\alpha =100/\pi `$ and $`\beta =1/(\pi \sqrt{20})`$. As shown in Fig. 1, both the wall motion and the field energy density become nontrivial. An interesting feature is the concentration of the energy density, shown in Fig. 1$`c`$. This is confirmed by the plot of the energy density at two instances $`t=349R(t_o)`$ and $`t=697R(t_o)`$ in Fig. 2 compared with the static cavity solution. The two peaks at $`t=697R(t_o)`$ move in opposite directions, and their widths decrease in time. This phenomenon is even more evident with $`\alpha =10/\pi `$ and $`\beta =1/(\pi \sqrt{2})`$ (Fig. 3a), showing a complex distribution of the peak locations and heights. The total energy of the system is the same in all cases.

Even for the case in Fig. 3b ($`\alpha =1000/\pi `$, $`\beta =1/(10\pi \sqrt{2})`$), for which we observed the adiabatic evolution lasting for a long time after $`t_0`$, we can still, letting the system evolve long enough, observe the squeezing of the field energy density in spite of the slow motion of the wall. Keeping $`K`$ constant we found that the time at which the focusing of the energy starts increases roughly linearly with $`M`$. This suggests that, as one takes into account the backreaction of the field on the wall motion, the long-time dynamics always becomes nonadiabatic. We have verified that this remains true also changing the boundary conditions so that the field equals zero at the boundaries.

We believe that the origin of this phenomenon lies in the mechanism of energy exchange between the wall and the field. To explain it we give the following qualitative argument. Let’s consider the interaction between the wave inside the cavity and the wall. At some instance, the peak of the wave will hit the wall, which can be moving either outward or inward. In the former case, there will be a transfer of energy from the field to the wall, and the speed of the wall will increase slightly. The wavefronts following the peak will lose more and more energy to the wall, since the wall moves faster with each successive collision. As a result the spatial width of the energy distribution decreases. When the wall moves inward, the wave gains energy from the wall, and the wavefronts following the peak gain less because the wall moves slower with each successive collision. Again the width of the waveform decreases. After some time, this effect leads to a drastic concentration of energy into narrow peaks.

Our argument depends only on kinematics and should therefore be applicable not only to waves but many other systems, such as a set of particles bouncing back and forth in a dynamical cavity. For simplicity we consider the dynamics of a set of massless non-interacting particles, each having momentum and energy $`p_i`$, $`|p_i|`$ ($`c=1`$). Inside the cavity they move unperturbed at the speed of light. If a particle bounces on the static wall, its momentum changes sign. The movable wall is subjected to a harmonic potential $`V(R)=\frac{1}{2}K\left(RR_0\right)^2`$. The particle momentum $`p_i^{\prime \prime }`$ and the wall velocity $`v^{\prime \prime }`$ after an interaction, which is assumed to be instantaneous, are easily derived from energy and momentum conservation:

$$\begin{array}{c}v^{\prime \prime }=\sqrt{(1+v^{})^2+4p^{}/M}1,\hfill \\ p^{\prime \prime }=p^{}+M\left(v^{}v^{\prime \prime }\right),\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)
where $`v^{}`$ and $`p^{}`$ are the wall velocity and particle momentum before the collision. The above equations are derived assuming that the sign of $`p^{\prime \prime }`$ is always opposite to the sign of $`p^{}`$, which is true as long as the speed of the wall is less than 1 and $`2M(1v^{})>p^{}`$ ($`p^{}>0`$).

We consider first a set of $`1000`$ particles all with the same initial momentum $`p_i=0.01/R(t_0)`$ and a wall initially at rest with $`M=1000/R(t_0)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1/R(t_0)`$. Already after a few interactions with the wall we could observe a regular transfer of energy from the last to the first particles to hit the wall. In Fig. 4a we show the momenta of the particles after a time $`t=3221R(t_0)`$ as a function of their position. For clarity only positive momenta are plotted. It is remarkable that the first particle to hit the wall has gained more than one tenth of the total energy of the system. The above is a very special situation which however demonstrates the process of energy transfer among particles.

We then extend this simple mechanical model to the case of an infinite number of particles labeled with a continuous index $`k`$, each having position $`q(k)`$ and momentum $`p(k)dk`$. In this way we can define an energy density:

$$(x,t)𝑑k|p(k,t)|\delta (q(k,t)x).$$
(10)
Not surprisingly $`(x,t)`$ satisfies the wave equation inside the cavity. We numerically simulate such a system choosing $`2000`$ particles. Initially, we put two particles at each of the 1000 uniformly separated sites, and the pairs have opposite momenta $`p(k)=\pm 10(\pi ^2\mathrm{cos}^2\pi q(k)+1)`$. In Fig. 4b we plot $`(0,t)R^2(t)`$, which is evidently similar to Fig. 1, although the details of the evolution depend on how the particles or the field interact with the wall.

After a long time we observe the formation of many smaller peaks in the energy density. Further work is needed to understand the problem of the $`t\mathrm{}`$ evolution of the system.

For the scalar field an important situation to study is when $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\pi /R_0`$, i.e., when the wall motion is in resonance with the field inside the cavity. We have computed the solutions of Eqs. 2 and 3 for various masses of the wall. In Fig. 5 we plot the wall’s position and the field energy density at $`x=0`$ vs. time in the case of $`\alpha =1000/\pi `$, $`R(t_0)=R_0`$ and $`\dot{R}(t_0)=0.1`$. In this case we choose $`t_0=R_0/2`$ so that $`\dot{\varphi }=0`$ and the initial functions Eq. 7 satisfy the boundary condition Eqs. 4 with $`\dot{R}(t_0)0`$. Besides the beats in the wall motion, two features are important. One is the fact that the wall continues to return to its initial position after a time $`T=R_0`$. This is different from the case of non-resonant wall parameters where the back reaction of the field changes the frequency of the wall motion. Another remarkable effect, as a consequence, is the appearance of narrow peaks typical of a resonantly driven wall motion . This indicates the possibility of transferring a large amount of energy to the field even with an external, non-resonant, driving force. As long as the frequency of the cavity wall is $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\pi /R_0`$, it is enough to push the wall at the instances marked by the arrows in Fig. 5, and this frequency depends on the mass of the wall and can be much smaller than $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$; increasing the mass decreases the frequency of energy exchange between wall and field. This fact might help to by-pass the experimental difficulty of achieving a resonant driving force, i.e. at frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, on a mirror in order to produce high frequency photons .

We have verified that for a small mass, $`\alpha =10/\pi `$, the wall period remains close to $`T=2R_0`$ so that the motion is still resonant .

In Ref.  it has been shown that the method of null lines can also be applied to waves inside an oscillating spherical cavity for any value of the angular momentum. However, when considering a self-consistent wall motion, the spherical symmetry is achieved only in the case of s-waves, for which the radial ($`\varphi `$) and angular parts can be separated. Defining $`\psi r\varphi `$, so that $`\psi `$ satisfies the one-dimensional wave equation, we can apply the null lines method. The boundary condition for $`\varphi `$, derived from the action similarly to Eqs. 4, is:

$$\dot{R}\varphi _t(R(t),t)=\varphi _r(R(t),t),$$
(11)
which however for $`\psi `$ translates to:

$$\dot{R}\psi _t(R(t),t)=\frac{\psi (R(t),t)}{R(t)}\psi _r(R(t),t).$$
(12)
If we want $`\varphi `$ to be finite at $`r=0`$ then we must require $`\psi =0`$ at $`r=0`$, which is satisfied by writing $`\psi =G(tr)G(t+r)`$. Eq. 12 becomes:

$$\begin{array}{cc}& G^{}\left(t+R(t)\right)\eta G\left(t+R(t)\right)\hfill \\ & =\gamma =\frac{1\dot{R}}{1+\dot{R}}G^{}\left(tR(t)\right)\eta G\left(tR(t)\right),\hfill \end{array}$$
(13)
with $`\eta 1/R\left(1+\dot{R}\right)`$. An effective way to solve Eq. 13 numerically for $`G\left(t+R(t)\right)`$ is to define $`z=t+R(t)`$ and to approximate $`\eta `$ and $`\gamma `$ with a constant value between $`z`$ and $`zdz`$ for a small enough $`dz`$. Integrating Eq. 13 between $`z`$ and $`zdz`$ we obtain:

$$G(z)=\left[G(zdz)+\frac{\gamma }{\eta }\right]e^{\eta dz}\frac{\gamma }{\eta },$$
(14)
which turns out to be more accurate than standard numerical integration.

The force of the s-wave field on the wall is $`F_\varphi =2\pi R^2(t)\left[\varphi _t^2\varphi _r^2\right]`$. For $`\dot{R}(t_0)=0`$ we set as initial conditions for the fields:

$$\{\begin{array}{c}\varphi (r,t_0)=\frac{\mathrm{cos}\omega t_0}{R_0^2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}\omega r}{\omega r},\hfill \\ \varphi _t(r,t_0)=\frac{\omega \mathrm{sin}\omega t_0}{R_0^2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}\omega r}{\omega r},\hfill \end{array}$$
(15)
where $`\omega 4.4934/R(t_0)`$ is chosen such that $`\varphi (r,t_0)`$ satisfies Eq. 11 with $`\dot{R}(t)=0`$. As in the 1D case, we observe the formation of high energy density regions, although in 3D, this process is much slower. In Fig. 6 we plot the energy density at $`r=R(t)`$ vs. time for $`\alpha =5/4.4934`$ and $`\beta =\sqrt{8}/4.4934`$. These values of the parameters produce a completely non-adiabatic evolution. For larger $`M`$ or smaller $`K`$ we have to evolve the system for a much longer time in order to observe the formation of high energy peaks. However we have verified that imposing $`\varphi =0`$ at $`r=R(t)`$ the peaks appear much earlier and the dynamics is very similar to the one-dimensional situation. With resonant wall parameters, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\pi /R(t_0)`$, the features observed in 1D remain in 3D. With the b.c. Eq. 11 it is also possible to have resonances with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ equal to the difference between the frequencies of the $`n^{\mathrm{th}}`$ mode and the fundamental mode of the cavity. However such an $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is close to $`n\pi /R(t_0)`$ if $`n`$ is large, and such resonances are not easily distinguishable from the geometric ones .

In summary we have applied the null lines method to study the dynamics of a scalar field inside a cavity whose wall is subjected to a harmonic force and the pressure due to the scalar field. We have found that the long time evolution of the system is always non-adiabatic, regardless of the parameters of the system. In particular there is an interval of time when the field develops narrow packets in energy density that bounce back and forth inside the cavity, which can be understood by means of a simple mechanical analog consisting of a set of massless particles bouncing inside a one-dimensional box with a movable wall. Such a system confirms our hypothesis that the wall motion provides a mechanism of energy transfer from low to high energy regions. We have verified that the focusing of energy is a robust phenomenon, being insensitive to the type of potential for the wall and the presence of an external driving force.

For a quantized field previous works  have shown that in the case of a prescribed slow wall motion no photon production is achieved. Our results strongly suggest that the back-reaction of the field may change significantly the evolution of the system. In particular the second derivative of the wall position, which is one of the quantities that determine the number of quanta , can be much larger than in the adiabatic case, as it can be seen from the slope of $`\dot{R}`$ in Fig.1. If the initial number of fundamental mode quanta is large, the peaks in energy density in the classical solution can imply the production of several high energy quanta.

We have also studied the special situation in which the wall frequency is equal to the fundamental frequency of the static cavity field. Remarkably the frequency of the wall motion does not change due to the field pressure, and thus narrow peaks typical of a resonantly driven wall motion are produced. A large amount of energy may be transferred to the field by providing mechanical energy to the wall when the amplitude of the oscillation reaches its minimum. This fact might help to by-pass the experimental difficulty of achieving a resonant driving force on a mirror in order to produce high frequency photons .

In a further work we would like to address the problem of whether periodical solutions are admitted for this kind of system and for which values of parameters.

We would like to thank Dr. C. K. Law for his interest in the paper and valuable discussions. This work is partially supported by a Hong Kong Research Grants Council grant CUHK 312/96P and a Chinese University Direct Grant (Project ID: 2060093).