text:
# su(2) and su(1,1) displaced number states and their nonclassical properties

## 1 Introduction

Coherent states and their various generalizations play very important roles in many fields of physics . They were first discovered in 1926 by Schrödinger, as an example of non-spreading wave packet . In 1950’s, Senitzky, Plebanski, Husimi and Epstein found other wave packets  , which keep their shape and follow the classical motion, before the modern work of coherent states by Glauber and Sudarshan in 1963 . These wave packets are essentially the displaced number states, $`D(\alpha )|n`$, where $`D(\alpha )\mathrm{exp}(\alpha a^{}\alpha ^{}a)`$ is the displacement operator and $`a^{}`$, $`a`$ are the creation and annihilation operators satisfying $`[a,a^{}]=1`$.

Since Stoler et al. introduced the binomial states (BS) in 1985 , the so-called intermediate states which interpolate between two fundamental quantum optical states have attracted much attention . In a previous paper  Sasaki and one of authors of this paper proposed the the intermediate number-squeezed states. One of these intermediate states is the so-called su(2) displaced number states (DNS)

$$|M,\xi ,nD_2(M,\xi )|n,D_2(M,\xi )\mathrm{exp}(\xi J_M^+\xi ^{}J_M^{}),$$
(1.1)
in which $`|n`$ ($`0nM`$) is the number state and

$$J_M^+=a^{}\sqrt{MN},J_M^{}=\sqrt{MN}a,J_M^0=NM/2$$
(1.2)
are the Holstein-Primakoff (HP) realization of su(2) algebra. It is obvious that $`|M,\xi ,n`$ is a finite superposition of number states $`|n`$ for $`n=0,1,\mathrm{},M`$.

One can also define the non-compact counterpart of the su(2) DNS, the su(1,1) displaced number state

$$M,\zeta ,nD_{11}(M,\zeta )|n,D_{11}(M,\zeta )\mathrm{exp}(\zeta K_M^+\zeta ^{}K_M^{}),$$
(1.3)
where $`K_M^+,K_M^{}`$ and $`K_M^0`$ are generators of su(1,1) Lie algebra via its HP realization

$$K_M^+=a^{}\sqrt{M+N},K_M^{}=\sqrt{M+N}a,K_M^0=N+M/2,$$
(1.4)
and $`M/2`$ ($`M`$ is non-negative integer) is the Bargmann index. This is a natural generalization of the negative binomial states  which correspond to $`n=0`$.

In this paper we shall prove that both su(2) and su(1,1) DNS are eigenstates of density-dependent interaction systems of quantized radiation field with classical current, and that both are intermediate states between the number and the displaced number states and reduce to them in two different limits. We also study their expansion in Fock space and their photon number distributions, statistical properties and their squeezing effect. It is of interest that these states which interpolate between number and displaced number states, neither of which exhibit squeezing, are nevertheless squeezing states.

## 2 Physical interpretation

### 2.1 Physical systems

In this section we shall see that both su(2) and su(1,1) DNS are eigenstates of some interaction systems of quantum radiation field with a classical current. To see this, we first see that the su(2) and su(1,1) DNS satisfy the following eigenvalue equations (writing $`\xi re^{i\theta },\zeta =Re^{i\vartheta }`$)

$$H_2|M,\xi ,n=E_n(2)|M,\xi ,n,H_{11}M,\zeta ,n=E_n(1,1)M,\zeta ,n,$$
(2.1)
where $`H_2`$ and $`H_{11}`$

$`H_2=\omega N{\displaystyle \frac{\omega }{2}}\mathrm{tan}(2r)\left(e^{i\theta }a^{}\sqrt{MN}+e^{i\theta }\sqrt{MN}a\right),`$ (2.2)
$`H_{11}=\omega N{\displaystyle \frac{\omega }{2}}\mathrm{tanh}(2R)\left(e^{i\vartheta }a^{}\sqrt{M+N}+e^{i\vartheta }\sqrt{M+N}a\right),`$ (2.3)
are Hermitian operators and can be cased as the Hamiltonians describing interaction between a single mode radiation field with frequency $`\omega `$ and a classical current and this interaction is density-dependent, and $`E_n(2)`$ and $`E_n(11)`$ are eigenvalues (energy)

$$E_n(2)=\frac{M}{2}+\frac{2nM}{2\mathrm{cos}(2r)},E_n(11)=\frac{M+2n}{2\mathrm{cosh}(2R)}\frac{M}{2}.$$
(2.4)
Requirement of non-negative energy gives

$`\text{For su(2) case: }\mathrm{cos}(2r)>\mathrm{max}(0,12n/M)\text{ or }\mathrm{cos}(2r)<\mathrm{min}(0,12n/M);`$
$`\text{For su(1,1) case: }\mathrm{cosh}(2R)1+{\displaystyle \frac{2n}{M}}.`$
### 2.2 Limiting states

We now prove that both su(2) and su(1,1) DNS are intermediate states interpolating between number and displaced number states of radiation field. For su(2) case, it is easy to see that, in the limit $`M\mathrm{}`$, $`|\xi |0`$ with $`|\xi |^2M=\alpha ^2`$ ($`\alpha `$ real) fixed and $`n`$ finite

$$\xi J_M^+\alpha e^{i\theta }a^{},\xi ^{}J_M^{}\alpha e^{i\theta }a,D_2(M,\xi )D(\alpha e^{i\theta })e^{\alpha (e^{i\theta }a^{}e^{i\theta }a)},$$
(2.5)
and thus the su(2) DNS degenerate to the displaced number state of radiation field

$$|M,\xi ,nD(\alpha e^{i\theta })|n=e^{\alpha (e^{i\theta }a^{}e^{i\theta }a)}|n,$$
(2.6)
while in a different limit $`\xi m\pi e^{i\theta }`$ with $`m`$ integer, we have $`D_2(m\pi e^{i\theta })1`$ and the su(2) DNS degenerates to the number state $`|n`$ of radiation field.

Similarly, the su(1,1) DNS tend to the displaced number states of radiation field in the limit $`M\mathrm{}`$, $`|\zeta |0`$ keeping $`M|\zeta |^2=\alpha ^2`$, and to the number state $`|n`$ in the limit $`\zeta m\pi e^{i\vartheta }`$.

## 3 Photon number distributions

### 3.1 su(2) case

The su(2) DNS can be expanded as a finite linear combination of Fock states

$$D_2(M,\xi )|n=\underset{m=0}{\overset{M}{}}m|D_2(M,\xi )|n|m$$
(3.1)
and what we need to do is to determine the matrix element $`m|D_2(M,\xi )|n`$. Using the disentangling theorem of su(2)

$$D_2(M,\xi )=\mathrm{exp}(\xi J_M^+\xi ^{}J_M^{})=\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma J_M^+)(1+|\varsigma |^2)^{J_M^0}\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma ^{}J_M^{}),$$
(3.2)
where $`\varsigma =e^{i\theta }\mathrm{tan}r`$, the matrix elements can be written as

$$m|D_2(M,\xi )|n=m|\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma J_M^+)(1+|\varsigma |^2)^{J_M^0}\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma ^{}J_M^{})|n.$$
(3.3)
From

$$(J_M^{})^k|n=\{\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{\frac{\left(Mn+k\right)!n!}{\left(Mn\right)!\left(nk\right)!}}|nk,\hfill & kn,\hfill \\ 0,\hfill & k>n,\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.4)
we have

$`\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma ^{}J_M^{})|n`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{n!}{(Mn)!}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(\varsigma ^{})^{(nk)}}{(nk)!}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{(Mk)!}{k!}}}|k,`$ (3.5)
$`m|\mathrm{exp}(\varsigma J_M^+)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{m!}{(Mm)!}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{m}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(\varsigma ^{})^{(mk)}}{(mk)!}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{(Mk)!}{k!}}}k|.`$ (3.6)
Inserting Eqs. (3.5, 3.6) into Eq. (3.3) we finally obtain the desired matrix elements

$$m|D_2(M,\xi )|n=e^{i\theta (mn)}𝒟_m(M,n,|\varsigma |),$$
(3.7)
where

$$𝒟_m(M,n,|\varsigma |)(1)^n|\varsigma |^{m+n}\left[\frac{m!n!}{(Mm)!(Mn)!}\right]^{1/2}F(M,n,m,|\varsigma |^2),$$
(3.8)
and

$$F(M,n,m,|\varsigma |^2)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{min}(m,n)}{}}\frac{(Mk)!(|\varsigma |^2)^k(1+|\varsigma |^2)^{kM/2}}{k!(nk)!(mk)!}$$
(3.9)
is a Hypergeometric function.

The photon distribution is easily obtained as

$$P_m(M,n,|\varsigma |^2)=\frac{m!n!}{(Mm)!(Mn)!}|\varsigma |^{2(M+n)}\left[F(M,n,m,|\varsigma |^2)\right]^2.$$
(3.10)
In the special case $`n=0`$, $`P_m(M,n,|\varsigma |^2)`$ reduces to the binomial distribution

$$P_m(M,0,|\varsigma |^2)=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{M}{n}\right)p^n(1p)^{Mn},p=\frac{|\varsigma |^2}{1+|\varsigma |^2},$$
(3.11)
as we expected.

### 3.2 su(1,1) case

Using the disentangling theorem of su(1,1) (writing $`\lambda =e^{i\vartheta }\mathrm{tanh}R`$)

$$D_{11}(M,\zeta )=\mathrm{exp}(\zeta K_+\zeta ^{}K_{})=\mathrm{exp}(\lambda K_+)(1|\lambda |^2)^{K_0}\mathrm{exp}(\lambda ^{}K_{}),$$
(3.12)
and

$`\mathrm{exp}(\lambda ^{}K_{})|n`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{n!(M+n1)!}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(\lambda ^{})^{nk}}{(nk)!\sqrt{k!(M+k1)!}}}|k,`$
$`m|\mathrm{exp}(\lambda K_+)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{m!(M+m1)!}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{m}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda ^{mk}}{(mk)!\sqrt{k!(M+k1)!}}}k|,`$ (3.13)
we obtain

$$m|D_{11}(M,\zeta )|n=e^{i\vartheta (mn)}𝒢_m(M,n,|\lambda |),$$
(3.14)
where

$$𝒢_m(M,n,|\lambda |)(1)^n|\lambda |^{m+n}\sqrt{m!n!(M+m1)!(M+n1)!}G(M,n,m,|\lambda |^2),$$
(3.15)
and

$$G(M,n,m,|\lambda |^2)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{min}(m,n)}{}}\frac{(|\lambda |^2)^k(1|\lambda |^2)^{k+M/2}}{k!(M+k1)!(nk)!(mk!)},$$
(3.16)
is also a hypergeometric function.

The photon distribution is then obtained as

$$P_{11}(m)=m!n!(M+m1)!(M+n1)!|\lambda |^{2(M+n)}G^2(M,n,m,|\lambda |^2).$$
(3.17)
When $`n=0`$, $`P_{11}(m)`$ reduces to the negative binomial distribution as we expected

$$P_{11}(m)=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{M+m1}{m}\right)|\lambda |^{2m}(1|\lambda |^2)^M.$$
(3.18)
## 4 Photon statistics

### 4.1 su(2) case

Writing $`M,\xi ,n|N|M,\xi ,n=n|D_2^1(M,\xi )J_M^0D_2(M,\xi )|n+M/2,`$ where $`Na^{}a`$, and using

$$D_2^1(M,\xi )J_M^0D_2(M,\xi )=\frac{1}{2}(e^{i\theta }J_M^++e^{i\theta }J_M^{})\mathrm{sin}(2r)+J_M^0\mathrm{cos}(2r),$$
(4.1)
we obtain

$$M,\xi ,n|N|M,\xi ,n=M\mathrm{sin}^2r+n\mathrm{cos}(2r).$$
(4.2)
Similarly we have

$`M,\xi ,n|N^2|M,\xi ,n`$ $`=`$ $`M^2\mathrm{sin}^4r+2Mn\mathrm{sin}^2r\mathrm{cos}(2r)+n^2\mathrm{cos}^2(2r)`$ (4.3)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{sin}^2(2r)[(Mn+1)n+(Mn)(n+1)].`$
So Mandel’s $`Q`$-index  is obtained as

$$Q=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }N^2N}{N}=\frac{A\mathrm{sin}^4r+(AM+2n)\mathrm{sin}^2rn}{(Mn)\mathrm{sin}^2r+n\mathrm{cos}^2r},$$
(4.4)
where

$$A=2Mn2n^2+M=2n(Mn)+M>0.$$
(4.5)
Since the denominator $`(Mn)\mathrm{sin}^2r+n\mathrm{cos}^2r>0`$, we only need to consider the numerator

$$Q^{}A\mathrm{sin}^4r+(AM+2n)\mathrm{sin}^2rn,$$
(4.6)
which is clearly a parabola with respect to $`\mathrm{sin}^2r`$. The $`Q^{}`$ has a maximum at the point

$$\mathrm{sin}^2r_{\text{max}}=\frac{AM+2n}{2A}$$
(4.7)
and the maximum is

$$Q_{\text{max}}^{}=\frac{n^2(Mn)^2n(Mn)}{A}.$$
(4.8)
It is obvious that, in the cases $`n=0,M`$ or in the case $`M=2,n=1`$, $`Q_{\text{max}}^{}=0`$. In those cases, the field is sub-Poissonian except at the points that $`Q^{}`$ takes its maximum, namely at the points $`\mathrm{sin}^2r=0,\mathrm{sin}^2r=1`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2r=1/2`$ respectively.

In any other cases, $`Q_{\mathrm{max}}^{}>0`$ and there exist two $`r`$ values, say $`r_{}`$ and $`r_+`$,

$$\mathrm{sin}^2r_\pm =\frac{n(Mn+1)\pm \sqrt{n^2(Mn)^2n(Mn)}}{2Mn2n^2+M},$$
(4.9)
such that $`Q^{}=0`$. It is easy to see that $`0<\mathrm{sin}^2r_{}<\mathrm{sin}^2r_+<1`$. We illustrate $`Q^{}`$ as a function of $`\mathrm{sin}^2r`$ in Fig. 1(su(2) case), from which we find that

1. When $`0\mathrm{sin}^2r<\mathrm{sin}^2r_{}`$ or $`\mathrm{sin}^2r_+<\mathrm{sin}^2r1`$, the field is sub-Poissonian.
2. When $`\mathrm{sin}^2r_{}<\mathrm{sin}^2r<\mathrm{sin}^2r_+`$, the field is super-Poissonian.
3. When $`\mathrm{sin}^2r=\mathrm{sin}^2r_{}`$ or $`\mathrm{sin}^2r=\mathrm{sin}^2r_+`$, the field is Poissonian.

### 4.2 su(1,1) case

From

$$D_{11}^1(M,\zeta )K_M^0D_{11}(M,\zeta )=\mathrm{cosh}(2R)K_M^0+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{sinh}(2R)\left(e^{i\vartheta }K_M^++e^{i\vartheta }K_M^{}\right),$$
(4.10)
we can easily obtain the Mandel’s $`Q`$-index

$$Q=\frac{(4kn+2n^2+2k)\mathrm{sinh}^4R2n(2k+n1)\mathrm{sinh}^2Rn}{2(k+n)\mathrm{sinh}^2R+n}.$$
(4.11)
Since the denominator $`2(k+n)\mathrm{sinh}^2R+n>0`$, we only need to consider the numerator

$$Q^{}=A\mathrm{sinh}^4R(A2k2n)\mathrm{sinh}^2Rn,$$
(4.12)
which is also a parabola with respect to $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R`$.

The parabola $`Q^{}`$ has a minimum $`Q_{\mathrm{min}}^{}`$ at the point $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R_{\mathrm{min}}`$, where

$`\mathrm{sinh}^2R_{\mathrm{min}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4kn+2n(n1)}{2(4kn+2n^2+2k)}}0,`$
$`Q_{\mathrm{min}}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{(2kn+n^2n)^2}{4kn+2n^2+2k}}+n\right)0.`$ (4.13)
Since $`Q^{}=n0`$ for $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R=0`$, so the parabola has only one point intersecting with the $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R`$-axis. We denote this point by $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+`$ and it is given by

$$\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+=\frac{(4kn+2n^22n)+\sqrt{(4kn+2n^22n)^2+4(4kn+2n^2+2n)n}}{2(4kn+2n^2+2k)}0.$$
(4.14)
We illustrate this parabola in Fig. 1(su(1,1) case). We first note that in the case $`n=0`$ (negative binomial states), $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R_{\mathrm{min}}=\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+=Q_{\mathrm{min}}^{}=0`$, and $`Q^{}>0`$ which means the field is super-Poissonian except the point $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R=0`$ on which $`Q^{}=0`$ and the field is Poissonian.

When $`n1`$, from Fig. 1(su(1,1) case), we find that, (1) when $`0\mathrm{sinh}^2R<\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+`$, the field is sub-Poissonian; (2) when $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R=\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+`$, the field is Poissonian; (3) when $`\mathrm{sinh}^2R_+<\mathrm{sinh}^2R`$, the field is super-Poissonian.

We find that both su(2) and su(1,1) displaced number states exhibit sub-Poissonian ian statistics in some ranges of parameters involved.

## 5 Squeezing effect

Define two quadratures $`x`$ (coordinate) and $`p`$ (momentum)

$$x=(a^{}+a)/\sqrt{2},p=(a^{}a)/\sqrt{2}.$$
(5.1)
Then their variances are

$`(\mathrm{\Delta }x^2)x^2x^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+N+\text{Re}a^22\left(\text{Re}a\right)^2,`$
$`(\mathrm{\Delta }p^2)p^2p^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+N\text{Re}a^22\left(\text{Im}a\right)^2.`$ (5.2)
If $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2<1/2`$ (or $`(\mathrm{\Delta }p)^2<1/2`$), we say that the quadrature $`x`$ (or $`p`$) is squeezed.

For su(2), we have

$`a=e^{i\theta }{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{M1}{}}}\sqrt{m+1}𝒟_m(M,n,|\varsigma |)𝒟_{m+1}(M,n,|\varsigma |),`$
$`\text{Re}a^2=\mathrm{cos}2\theta {\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{M2}{}}}\sqrt{(m+1)(m+2)}𝒟_m(M,n,|\varsigma |)𝒟_{m+2}(M,n,|\varsigma |),`$
$`N={\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{M}{}}}m𝒟_m(M,n,|\varsigma |)^2,`$ (5.3)
and for su(1,1),

$`a=e^{i\vartheta }{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\sqrt{m+1}𝒢_m(M,n,|\lambda |)𝒢_{m+1}(M,n,|\lambda |),`$
$`\text{Re}a^2=\mathrm{cos}2\vartheta {\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\sqrt{(m+1)(m+2)}𝒢_m(M,n,|\lambda |)𝒢_{m+2}(M,n,|\lambda |),`$
$`N={\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}m𝒢_m(M,n,|\lambda |)^2.`$ (5.4)
We first note that $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$ and $`(\mathrm{\Delta }p)^2`$ are related with each other by the following relation

$$(\mathrm{\Delta }x)_\theta ^2=(\mathrm{\Delta }p)_{\theta \pm \pi /2}^2,(\mathrm{\Delta }x)_\vartheta ^2=(\mathrm{\Delta }p)_{\vartheta \pm \pi /2}^2.$$
(5.5)
So hereafter we only consider the quadrature $`x`$. Then, it is easy to see that $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$ is a $`\pi `$-periodic function of $`\theta `$ (or $`\vartheta `$ for su(1,1) case) and it is symmetric with respect to $`\theta =\pi /2`$ (or $`\vartheta =\pi /2`$).

Fig. 2 shows how $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$ of the state $`D_2(M,\xi )|n`$ depends on parameters $`|\varsigma |`$ and $`\theta `$, respectively. From these plots we find that

1. When $`\theta =0`$. In the starting point $`|\varsigma |=0`$ (corresponding to number state $`|n`$) $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2=\frac{1}{2}+n`$ and the quadrature $`x`$ is not squeezed. Then, with the increase of $`|\varsigma |`$, it becomes squeezed drastically until the maximum of squeezing (minimum of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$) is reached. By further increasing $`|\varsigma |`$, the squeezing becomes weaker and weaker until it disappears for a large enough $`|\varsigma |`$. The squeezing range depends on $`n`$: the larger $`n`$, the narrower the squeezing range. For large enough $`n`$, there is no squeezing.

2. Dependence on $`\theta `$. Since $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$ is symmetric with respect to $`\theta _m=\pi /2`$, so we only plot $`0\theta \pi /2`$ part. We see that, with the decrease of $`\theta `$ form $`0`$, the squeezing becomes weaker and weaker and finally disappears for large enough $`\theta `$.

Fig. 3 shows how $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2`$ of the state $`D_{11}(M,\zeta )|n`$ depends on parameters $`|\lambda |`$ and $`\vartheta `$, respectively. From these plots we find that

1. When $`\vartheta =\pi /2`$. In the starting point $`|\lambda |=0`$ (corresponding to number state $`|n`$) $`(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2=\frac{1}{2}+n`$ and the quadrature $`x`$ is not squeezed, as in the su(2) case. Then, with the increase of $`|\lambda |`$, it becomes squeezed. The larger $`|\lambda |`$, the stronger the squeezing. The squeezing range depends on $`n`$: the larger $`n`$, the narrower the squeezing range.

2. Dependence on $`\vartheta `$. We only plot $`0\vartheta \pi /2`$ part. We see that, with the decrease of $`\vartheta `$ form $`\pi /2`$, the squeezing becomes weaker and weaker drastically and finally disappears.

So we find that both su(2) and su(1,1) displaced number states exhibit squeezing effect in some ranges of parameters involved.

## 6 Conclusion

In this paper we have systematically investigated the su(2) and su(1,1) DNS and their various properties. These states are eigenstates of some Hamiltonians describing density-dependent interaction between single mode radiation field and classical current. As intermediate states both su(2) and su(1,1) DNS degenerate to the number and displaced number states in two different limits. We obtain their explicit expansion in the Fock space and photon distributions. We analytically studied their statistical properties and find that these states are sub-Poissonian states in some ranges of parameters involved. It is of interest that these states exhibit strong squeezing effects, although their limiting states, number and displaced number states, do not.

## Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China through Northeast Normal University (19875008) and the State Key Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Jilin University.


format: text

text:
# Extensive air showers with TeV-scale quantum gravity

\[

## Abstract

One of the possible consequences of the existence of extra degrees of freedom beyond the electroweak scale is the increase of neutrino-nucleon cross sections ($`\sigma _{\nu N}`$) beyond Standard Model predictions. At ultra-high energies this may allow the existence of neutrino-initiated extensive air showers. In this paper, we examine the most relevant observables of such showers. Our analysis indicates that the future Pierre Auger Observatory could be potentially powerful in probing models with large compact dimensions.

\]

Recently, it has become evident that a promising route to reconcile high energy particle physics and gravity is to modify the nature of gravitational interactions at distances shorter than a millimeter. Such a modification can be most simply achieved by introducing extra dimensions in the sub-millimeter range . In this approach the fundamental scale of gravity $`M_{}`$ can be lowered all the way to $`𝒪`$ (TeV), and the observed Planck scale turns out to be just an effective scale valid for energies below the mass of Kaluza–Klein (KK) excitations. Clearly, while the gravitational force has not been directly measured below the millimeter range, Standard Model (SM) interactions have been fairly well investigated at this scale; so if large extra dimensions really exist, one needs some mechanism to prevent SM particles from feeling those extra dimensions. Remarkably, there are several possibilities to confine SM fields (and even gravity) to a 4 dimensional subspace (referred to as a 3-brane) within the $`(4+n)`$ dimensional spacetime . The provocative new features of this scenario have sparked a flurry of activity to assess its experimental validity. A brief resumé of current theoretical work devoted to higher dimensional models includes topics addressing fundamental issues of phenomenology , cosmology , astrophysics , and gravity . Moreover, an intense effort to find signatures of extra-dimensions in collider data is currently underway .

Since 1966, a handful of extensive air showers have been observed corresponding to what seem to be single particles carrying over $`10^{20}`$ eV . This, in itself, is remarkable, as it is difficult or even impossible to explain how such energies can be attained by conventional acceleration mechanisms . Deepening the mystery, it was pointed out by Greisen, Zatsepin and Kuz’min  (GZK) that extremely high energy ($`10^{20}`$ eV) cosmic rays, if nucleons and/or nuclei, would lose energy rapidly through interactions with the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This leads to the so-called GZK cutoff, which limits the propagation distance of these particles to roughly 50 Mpc. The difficulty in constructing nearby astrophysical sources that could accelerate particles to such high energies led to the belief that beyond roughly $`10^{20}`$ eV, no cosmic rays would be detected. Adding to the puzzle, the arrival directions of these events are distributed widely over the sky, with no plausible optical counterparts (such as sources in the Galactic plane or in the Local Supercluster). Furthermore, the “super-GZK” data are consistent with an isotropic distribution of sources in sharp contrast to the anisotropic distribution of light within 50 Mpc from Earth . In conclusion, the current picture is very unclear. Thus, it is reasonable to consider whether new physics could be at play.

Of particular interest here, the extraordinarily high center-of-mass (c.m.) energies achieved at the top of the atmosphere are well above those necessary to excite the hypothetical KK modes which would reflect a change in spacetime dimensionality . Hence, a detailed analysis of extensive cosmic ray showers, taking into account this departure from previous fundamental particle theory, is worthwhile .

Interestingly enough, if gravity becomes strong at energies of a few TeV, virtual graviton exchange can produce relatively large effects on the high energy scattering cross section, drastically changing the neutrino-nucleon interaction . Neutrinos can propagate through the CMB essentially uninhibited, breaking the GZK barrier . Unfortunately, within the SM scenario a neutrino incident vertically on the atmosphere would pass through it unihibited as well, never initiating an extensive air shower. It was already noted that within the extra dimensional framework, the neutrino nucleon cross section can approach typical hadronic values at c.m. energies $`s400`$ TeV, allowing earlier development of a vertical neutrino induced shower . One may wonder whether the growth of the cross section carries with it observable deviations from SM predictions. Consistency with current experimental data requires ,

$$\sigma (E)3\times 10^{24}\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\mathrm{cm}^2,$$
(1)
and this bound certainly does not challenge the neutrinos acquiring a hadronic-scale cross section.

A complete theory of massive KK graviton modes is not yet available, making it impossible to know the exact cross section at asymptotic energies. Any air shower analysis would thus depend on reliable guesswork, supplemented with generally acceptable theoretical principles such as duality, unitarity, Regge behavior and parton structure. A simple Born approximation to the elastic $`\nu `$-parton cross section  (which underlies the total $`\nu `$-proton cross section) leads, without modification, to $`\sigma _{\nu p}^{tot}s^2.`$ Unmodified, this behavior by itself eventually violates unitarity. This may be seen either by examining the partial waves of this amplitude, or by noting the high energy Regge behavior of an amplitude with exchange of the graviton spin-2 Regge pole: with intercept $`\alpha (0)=2`$, the elastic cross section

$$\frac{d\sigma _{el}}{dt}\frac{|A_R(s,t)|^2}{s^2}s^{2\alpha (0)2}s^2,$$
(2)
whereas

$$\sigma _{tot}\frac{\mathrm{Im}[A_R(0)]}{s}s^{\alpha (0)1}s,$$
(3)
so that eventually $`\sigma _{el}>\sigma _{tot}.`$ Eikonal unitarization schemes modify these behaviors: in the case of the tree amplitudes  the resulting (unitarized) cross section $`\sigma _{\nu p}^{tot}s,`$ whereas for the single Regge pole exchange amplitude, $`\sigma _{\nu p}^{tot}\mathrm{ln}^2(s/s_0)`$ . However, the Regge picture of graviton exchange is not yet entirely established: both the (apparently) increasing dominance assumed by successive Regge cuts due to multiple Regge pole exchange , as well as the presence of the zero mass graviton can introduce considerable uncertainty in the eventual energy behavior of the cross section. Hereafter, we work within the unitarization framework of Ref.  and adopt as our cross section

$$\sigma _{\nu N}\frac{4\pi s}{M_{}^4}10^{28}\left(\frac{M_{}}{\mathrm{TeV}}\right)^4\left(\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\right)\mathrm{cm}^2.$$
(4)
To simulate the consequences of this for $`\nu `$-induced air showers, we assume that the increase in the cross section is driven by the production of minijets , and we adopt the sibyll package to model the fragmentation region at ultra high energies . In other words, the probability distribution for obtaining $`N`$ jet pairs (with $`P_T^{\mathrm{jet}}>P_T^{\mathrm{min}}`$, where $`P_T^{\mathrm{min}}`$ is a sharp threshold on the transverse momentum above which soft interactions are neglected) in a collision at energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ is computed regarding $`\nu `$-nucleon scattering as a diffractive shadow scattering associated with inelastic processes . Particle production comes after the fragmentation of hypothetical colorless parton-parton chains mimicking that of sibyll hadron-hadron scattering. The reader should keep in mind the crudeness of this approximation. However, the imposed cutoff on the soft processes ensures that the inelasticity in any neutrino-nucleon collision is not much larger than $`y0.15`$ , justifying the use of the sibyll package. As we discuss below, most of the expected qualitative features in the shower can be quite well reproduced. The algorithms of aires (version 2.1.1)  are slightly modified so as to track the particles in the atmosphere. In particular, Eq. (4) is translated into the neutrino mean free path

$$\lambda _\nu =\frac{m_{\mathrm{air}}}{\sigma _{\nu \mathrm{air}}},$$
(5)
via the standard 8 parameter function used in aires,

$$\lambda _\nu =P_1\frac{1+P_2u+P_3u^2+P_4u^3}{1+P_5u+P_6u^2+P_7u^3+P_8u^4}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2.$$
(6)
Here $`m_{\mathrm{air}}`$ \[g\] is the mass of an average atom of air, and $`u=\mathrm{ln}E`$ \[GeV\]. The coefficients $`P_i`$ are listed in Table I for different values $`M_{}`$.

Several sets of neutrinos were injected at 100 km above sea level. The sample was distributed in the energy range of $`10^{20}`$ eV up to $`10^{21}`$ eV, and was uniformly spread in the interval of 0 to 60 zenith angle at the top of the atmosphere. All shower particles with energies above the following thresholds were tracked: 750 keV for gammas, 900 keV for electrons and positrons, 10 MeV for muons, 60 MeV for mesons and 120 MeV for nucleons. The results of these simulations were processed with the help of the aires analysis package.

Figure 1 shows the total number of charged particles versus atmospheric depth averaged over 25 showers for the case of a 300 EeV neutrino at $`M_{}`$=1 TeV. For comparison, proton-induced showers at 60 and 90 EeV are shown on the same figure. As showers initiated by neutrinos typically start later than proton-induced showers, the longitudinal development tends to level off after reaching a maximum, in contrast to a standard air shower which decreases more rapidly after reaching a maximum. The number of charged particles produced in the cascade depends on the amount of energy deposited in the atmosphere by the primary. Neutrinos at the energy and mass scale shown in the figure typically suffer 2 interactions in the atmosphere; any energy remaining after this is undetected. By comparing the neutrino-induced showers to the proton-induced showers shown in the figure, one can roughly estimate the inelasticity to be $`0.1<y<0.15`$. This is consistent with the estimates of reference .***It is important to stress that the maximum number of charged particles produced in a proton-induced shower does not depend on the hadronic interaction model , making the present estimate on the inelasticity quite reliable.

Figure 2 shows the lateral distributions for vertical showers produced by 300 EeV neutrinos, 60 EeV protons, and iron nuclei of 60 EeV. At 50 m from the core, the ratio of the number of charged particles in the neutrino shower to that in the proton shower is $`2`$, whereas it is $`1.5`$ in $`\nu `$/56Fe showers. At about 1 km from the core these ratios reduce to $`1.1`$ and $`0.7`$, respectively. This is significant since experiments which rely on surface detectors to determine shower parameters typically use samples taken on the order of 1 km from the core, and thus would not be able to easily distinguish between these particle species.

Figure 3 shows the radial dependence of the mean arrival time of muons for showers initiated by 300 EeV neutrinos and 60 EeV protons. It can be readily seen from the comparison that the proton-induced showers exhibit larger fluctuations than the neutrino-induced showers. Besides, each profile presents a well defined slope that characterizes the shower front and comprises a signature of the primary species. In particular, a neutrino interacts in the atmosphere only once or twice, and consequently the muons reach the ground with a relatively short time delay.

The simulated neutrino showers discussed so far deposit far less energy in the atmosphere than the most energetic of the observed cosmic ray events. A natural question is then what the shower profile would look like for a neutrino whose energy and mean free path are such that it would deposit roughly the same energy as observed in the highest energy event .

At this stage, it is important to point out that within the SM framework neutrinos are produced at extremely high energies, typically by the weak decay of pions or other hadrons. Thus, one needs protons to be accelerated to energies a few orders of magnitude even higher. In scenarii involving precocious unification , there may be alternatives to decay chains for producing super-GZK neutrinos at the source.

Figure 4 shows the longitudinal development of a 900 EeV neutrino-induced shower with a fundamental mass scale $`M_{}=1.3`$ TeV. We stress that such a scale is above the lower bound for $`M_{}`$ derived from the expected flux of neutrinos and current non-observation of horizontal air showers . The total energy deposited in the atmosphere (after 2 interactions) is of the same order as the Fly’s Eye event, but the shower maximum occurs, as expected, significantly later.

In summary, it has been proposed  that the GZK cutoff can be skirted if the progenitors of the most energetic air showers are neutrinos. Under this hypothesis, the neutrino-nucleon cross section is increased by the presence of extra dimensions, allowing the neutrinos to interact in the atmosphere. Simulations indicate that neutrino-induced showers at energies of a few hundred EeV would exhibit signatures distinct from those of proton (or nucleus) induced showers that deposit a similar amount of energy in the atmosphere. Similarly, if there are neutrinos energetic enough to deposit as much energy in the atmosphere as is observed in the highest energy events, it appears they too may have unique signatures. In fact, any physics beyond the standard model that increases the neutrino-nucleon cross section should affect shower observables like longitudinal profile (measured with fluorescence detectors) and ground particle distributions (measured with surface detectors). This article contains some qualitative discussion of relevant observables of neutrino-induced showers. As far as we are aware, no showers have been observed which are consistent with these features. If candidates are eventually discovered, of course it will be necessary to carry out a much more detailed simulation than the one presented here. We note that future hybrid detectors such as the Pierre Auger Observatory  will be in an exceptional position to search for such phenomena.

Note added: After this paper was written, it was stressed that extremely high energy (300 EeV) neutrinos with larger cross section ($`s^2`$ rise) can create showers that would look like the highest energy event . If this is the case, it should also be stressed that neutrinos of a few tens of EeV could induce vertical air showers with very distinctive profiles. In Fig. 5 we show the longitudinal development of showers initiated by neutrinos of $`E=5\times 10^{19}`$ eV.To compute the simulation we adopt the cross section growth used in Ref.  to reproduce the Fly’s Eye data. For comparison we also show showers induced by gamma rays and protons of $`E=5\times 10^{18}`$ eV. It is easily seen that within this framework a 50 EeV neutrino shower presents its own signature .

The question of whether the interaction cross section of neutrinos with matter could be greatly enhanced (via massive spin-2 exchange) at high energies, is yet undecided. Observation of deeply penetrating showers with $`5\times 10^{18}`$ eV deposited in the atmosphere would give an experimental and definite answer to this question. As an immediate spinoff, we have the converse fact, i.e., that if there were no possible candidate which could be associated with a neutrino shower, then it should be understood as a serious objection to the hypothesis of neutrinos as progenitors of the “super-GZK” events. We strongly recommend that the Fly’s Eye data be re-analyzed searching for evidence of neutrino showers.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Máximo Ave, Analía Cillis, Gabor Domokos, Michael Kachelrieß, Zurab Kakushadze, Susan Kovesi-Domokos, Jeremy Lloyd-Evans, Doug McKay, Michael Plumacher, John Ralston, Lisa Randall, Sergio Sciutto, Robert Shrock, and Ricardo Vázquez for useful discussions/correspondence. This work was partially supported by CONICET (Argentina) and the National Science Foundation.


text:
# The stellar content of the Hamburg/ESO surveyBased on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla and Paranal, Chile.

## 1 Introduction

The Hamburg/ESO survey (HES) is an objective prism survey primarily targeting bright quasars (Wisotzki et al. 1996; Reimers and Wisotzki 1997; Wisotzki et al. 2000). However, because its spectral resolution is typically 15 Å FWHM at H$`\gamma `$, it is also possible to efficiently select a variety of interesting *stellar* objects in the HES. These include, e.g., metal-poor halo stars, carbon stars, cataclysmic variable stars, white dwarfs (WDs), subdwarf B stars (sdBs), subdwarf O stars (sdOs), and field horizontal branch A- and B-type stars (Christlieb 2000). In a series of papers, we will report on the development of quantitative selection procedures for the systematic exploitation of the stellar content of the HES, and their application to the digital HES data base. In this paper, we report on an automatic algorithm for the selection of DA white dwarfs (DAs).

The aim of the DA selection in the HES described in this paper is to test the double-degenerate (DD) scenario for SN Ia progenitors, in which a binary consisting of two WDs of large enough mass, merges and produces a thermonuclear explosion. If this scenario is correct, SN Ia progenitor systems should be present among DDs, the latter being identifiable by radial velocity (RV) variations. Although several double degenerates have been found, none of them is sufficiently massive to qualify as a viable SN Ia progenitor (see Maxted and Marsh 1999). Note however that recently a system consisting of a sdB and a massive white dwarf has been found, the total mass of which exceeds the Chandrasekhar mass (Maxted et al. 2000). In order to increase the sample of DDs, a *Large Programme* was proposed to (and accepted by) the European Southern Observatory (ESO), aiming at observing a large ($`\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}500}`$) sample of WDs with VLT Unit Telescope 2 (UT2), and its high resolution spectrograph UVES, at randomly chosen epochs, dictated by observing conditions. That is, every time the weather is *too bad* to carry out Service Mode observations for other programs, WDs are observed.

A program like this requires a large catalog of targets spread all over the accessible sky in order to be successfull. From the “Catalog of Spectroscopically Identified White Dwarfs” of McCook and Sion (1999) it is evident that the southern sky has not yet been surveyed as extensively for white dwarfs as the northern sky: only 33 % of the objects listed are located at $`\delta <0^{}`$. Therefore, we were aiming at selecting additional targets in the data base of the HES.

White dwarfs have been selected from wide angle surveys in the southern hemisphere before, and also in the HES (see below). “Classical” UV excess surveys, like the Montreal-Cambridge-Tololo survey (MCT; Demers et al. 1986; Lamontagne et al. 2000), or the Edinburgh-Cape survey (EC; Stobie et al. 1997; Kilkenny et al. 1997) can efficiently select complete samples of hot stars, including WDs. However, completeness at the *cool* end is either sacrificed for efficiency, as in the MCT (see Fig. 2), where only objects with $`UB<0.6`$ enter the sample of stars for which follow-up spectroscopy is obtained (Lamontagne et al. 2000), or efficiency is sacrificed for completeness, as in the EC. It has been shown that the EC is 94 % complete for objects of $`UB<0.4`$ down to $`B=16.5`$ (Stobie et al. 1997). However, an intermediate selection step based on photoelectric $`UBV`$ photometry has to be used to eliminate the large fraction ($`30`$ %; see Kilkenny et al. 1997) of “normal” F and G type stars.

In the HES, WDs enter the quasar candidate sample if they have $`UB<0.18`$ (Wisotzki et al. 2000). However, HES quasar candidates are inspected manually at the computer screen, and in this process hot stars, and stars clearly exhibiting stellar absorption lines (like e.g. DA white dwarfs, having strong, broad lines over a wide temperature range; see Fig. 16 in Appendix B) are rejected, and follow-up spectroscopy is not obtained for them in the course of the quasar survey. This results in a very efficient quasar selection: typically 70 % of the objects for which follow-up spectroscopy is obtained *are* quasars (Wisotzki et al. 2000). The remaining 30 % are mainly hot subdwarfs, cool ($`T_{\text{eff}}\mathrm{20\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ K), helium-rich WDs (DBs, DZs; see Friedrich et al. 2000), a couple of interesting peculiar objects, e.g., magnetic DBs (Reimers et al. 1998) and magnetic DAs (Reimers et al. 1994, 1996) have also been discovered in this way.

The selection of white dwarf candidates described in this paper aims at an *efficient* selection; that is, the contamination of the sample with other objects (e.g., hot subdwarfs) shall be as clean as possible, in order not to waste any observing time at the VLT.

## 2 The HES data base

A description of the HES plate material, plate digitisation and data reduction can be found in Wisotzki et al. (2000). In this section we describe some survey properties that are particularily important for stellar work in more detail than it was done in Wisotzki et al. (2000), and we briefly repeat a general description of the HES, for better readability.

The HES is based on IIIa-J plates taken with the 1 m ESO Schmidt telescope and its 4 prism. It covers the magnitude range $`13.0B_J17.5`$ (Wisotzki et al. 2000). The magnitude limits depend on plate quality. Note that the value given for the faint limit is the completeness limit for quasar search, which we define as the magnitude corresponding to average photographic density in the $`B_J`$ band $`>5\sigma `$ above the diffuse plate background, where $`\sigma `$ is the background noise. The detection limit of the HES is approximately one magnitude deeper than the completeness limit. For stellar applications, the survey magnitude range depends on the object type searched for. E.g., in our search for metal-poor stars, we only use spectra that are not affected by saturation effects, which typically start to be noticable at $`B_J14.0`$, and we only include spectra with $`S/N>10`$ (which roughly corresponds to $`B_J16.4`$), because at lower $`S/N`$ an efficient selection of metal-poor stars, by means of a weak or absent Ca K line, is not feasible anymore. However, for most other object types, including DAs, we adopt the $`5\sigma `$ magnitude limit.

The atmospheric cutoff at the blue end, and the sharp sensitivity cutoff of the IIIa-J emulsion (“red edge”) result in a wavelength range of $`3200\text{Å}<\lambda <5300\text{Å}`$ (see Fig. 3). The spectral resolution of the HES is primarily seeing-limited. For plates taken during good seeing conditions, the pixel spacings chosen in the digitization process result in an under-sampling, so that in these cases the spectral resolution is also limited by the sampling.

The definition of the HES survey area makes use of the mean star density and average column density of neutral hydrogen for each ESO/SERC field (Wisotzki et al. 2000). The adopted criteria roughly correspond to galactic latitudes of $`|b|>30^{}`$. The declination range covered by the HES is $`+2.5^{}>\delta >78^{}`$. In result, the survey area consists of 380 fields. Between 1989 and 1998, objective-prism plates were taken for all of these, and the plates were subsequently digitized and reduced at Hamburger Sternwarte. As one ESO Schmidt plate covers approximately $`5\times 5\mathrm{deg}^2`$ on the sky, the nominal survey area is $`\mathrm{9\hspace{0.17em}500}`$ deg2, or the total southern extragalactic sky. Note, however, that the *effective* survey area is $`25`$ % lower, mainly because of overlapping spectra (Wisotzki et al. 2000).

### 2.1 Detection of overlapping spectra

Overlapping spectra (hereafter shortly called overlaps) are detected automatically using the direct plate data of the Digitized Sky Survey I (DSS I). For each spectrum to be extracted, it is looked for objects in the dispersion direction on the direct plate. If there is one, the automatic procedure marks the corresponding spectrum, so that it can later be excluded from further processing, if this is desired. It is desired for stellar work, since the feature detection and object selection algorithms would get confused otherwise, and a lot of “garbage” would enter the candidate samples. The digital HES data base for stellar work consists of $`4`$ million extracted, overlap-free spectra with average $`S/N>5`$ in the $`B_J`$ band.

### 2.2 Photometry

As described in Wisotzki et al. (2000), the calibration of HES $`B_J`$ magnitudes is done plate by plate with individual photometric sequences. The $`B_J`$ band is formally defined by the spectral sensitivity curve of the Kodak IIIa-J emulsion multiplied with the filter curve of a Schott GG395 filter. The overall errors of the HES $`B_J`$ magnitudes, including zero point errors, are less than $`\pm 0.2`$ mag. Note that $`B_J`$ can be converted to $`B`$ using the formula

$$B=B_J+0.28(BV),$$
(1)
which is valid for main sequence stars in the colour range $`0.1<(BV)<1.6`$ (Hewett et al. 1995).

### 2.3 Wavelength calibration

A global dispersion relation for all HES plates was determined by using A-type stars. In HES spectra of these stars the Balmer lines at least up to H10 are resolved (see Fig. 3), so that a dispersion relation can be derived by comparing the $`x`$-positions (scan length in $`\mu `$m) of these lines with the known wavelengths. Borra et al. (1987) used the position of the “red edge” of objective-prism spectra to determine the zero point of the wavelength calibration, but noticed that the position depends on the energy distribution of the object. Therefore, in the HES we decided to use a zero point specified by an astrometric transformation between direct plates and spectral plates. The wavelength calibration is accurate to $`\pm 10\mu `$m. This corresponds to $`\pm 4.5`$ Å at H$`\gamma `$ and $`\pm 2.3`$ Å at $`\lambda =3500`$ Å.

### 2.4 Estimation of the amplitude of pixel-wise noise

Following the approach of Hewett et al. (1985), we determine the amplitude of pixel-wise noise as a function of photographic density $`D`$ plate by plate using A- and F-type stars. A straight line fit is done to the spectral region between H$`\beta `$ and H$`\gamma `$ (see Fig. 3).

The $`1\sigma `$-scatter around this pseudo-continuum fit is taken as noise amplitude. In this approach we assume that the scatter is mainly due to noise, since in early-type stars the spectral region under consideration includes only very few absorption lines at the spectral resolution of the HES. Moreover, it is expected that the population of A- and F-type stars found at high galactic latitudes is dominated by metal-poor stars, so that metal lines are usually very weak. However, we can not exclude that we overestimate the noise by a few percent due to contributions of metal lines to the scatter about the pseudo-continuum fit.

We measure the noise amplitude for all A- and F-type stars present on each HES plate (typically several hundred per plate), and compute the mean density $`D`$ in the fit region. This yields data points $`(D,\text{noise})`$, to which a 2nd order polynomial is fitted, i.e.

$$\text{noise}=a_0+a_1D+a_2D^2.$$
(2)
Note that in the HES, $`D`$ refers to density above diffuse plate background (bgr) in arbitrary units called counts. The relation between counts and photographic densities $`D_{\text{photo}}`$ is

$$D_{\text{photo}}=\frac{D\text{[counts]}+D_{\text{bgr}}\text{[counts]}}{800}.$$
(3)
For the determination of the coefficients $`a_0\mathrm{}a_2`$ we use a robust fit algorithm which minimizes the sum of absolute deviations, taking into account the following set of boundary conditions:

The noise at $`D=0`$ is the noise of the plate background, which is always $`>0`$.

Since $`D0`$, and the noise increases monotonically with $`D`$, $`a_2`$ must be positive (or zero).

From the previous boundary condition follows that the polynomial has a minimum at $`D_{\text{min}}=a_1/(2a_2)`$. Using again the argument that the noise increases monotonically with $`D`$, it follows that $`D_{\text{min}}0`$. Since $`a_20`$, $`a_1`$ must be $`0`$.

An example for a such a fit is shown in Fig. 4.

For simulations of spectra (see Sect. 4) it is very important to know the *form* of the distribution of noise. We investigated this by using 50 spectra of A-type stars from eight plates with high sky background ($`D_{\text{bgr}}>\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}500}`$), and 60 spectra from seven plates with low background ($`D_{\text{bgr}}<700`$). These spectra were chosen by hand from the sample of automatically selected A-type stars, in order to ensure that misclassified spectra, and spectra for which the fit of the continuum between H$`\beta `$ and H$`\gamma `$ by a straight line is not fully adequate, do not confuse the results. Five of the original set of 115 spectra were excluded in the manual selection process.

The deviations from the continuum fits were collected for each spectrum, shifted to a median of zero, and divided by the average of the absolute values of the upper and lower $`50`$ % quartile, so that a comparison of the noise distributions measured in different spectra (with different noise amplitude) is possible. The result is that the distribution of pixel-wise noise is almost perfectly Gaussian, independently of plate background (see Fig. 5).

Fig. 6 shows the relation between average pixel-wise $`S/N`$ in the $`B_J`$ band and $`B_J`$ magnitudes for 589 not saturated point sources from many different HES plates. The large scatter of $`S/N`$ for given $`B_J`$ shown in this plot is due to varying plate background, and seeing.

## 3 Feature detection

### 3.1 Detection of stellar lines

It is critical for all quantitative selection methods to have a set of *reliable* features at hand. The total set of available features should contain as much information of the objects to be classified as possible. Therefore, we implemented a flexible, robust algorithm which allows to detect stellar absorption and/or emission lines in HES spectra. Hewett et al. (1985) used a template matching technique to automatically detect absorption and emission lines in objective-prism spectra. Tests with HES spectra have shown that a fit algorithm involving a couple of boundary conditions (see below) is much more stable and leads to more accurate measurements of equivalent widths than template matching. The algorithm used in the HES consists of the following steps:

1. Determination of continuum by filtering with a wide median filter and narrow Gaussian filter. A similar filtering technique was also used by Hewett et al. (1985) and Borra et al. (1987).
2. Improvement of determination of the wavelength calibration zero point by fitting of 3 sets of stellar lines. The sets contain the strongest stellar absorption lines of early type, solar type, and late type stars, respectively. The individual line depths, and the zero point offset of wavelength calibration are fitted simultaneously. The *relative* positions of the stellar lines are held fixed, and the line *widths* is held fixed at the value of the seeing profile widths, which is measured during spectral extraction. The set of lines giving the strongest signal, i.e. largest average equivalent widths, is selected, and the wavelength calibration zero point determined with that fit is adopted.
3. Improvement of continuum determination:

1. Fitting of *all* stellar lines detectable in HES spectra
    2. Subtraction of fitted lines from the original spectrum
    3. Computation of improved continuum by filtering the line-subtracted spectrum again with a wide median filter and narrow Gaussian filter
    4. Go back to 3a, if $`n_{\text{iter}}<3`$; otherwise compute rectified spectrum with final continuum.
4. Fitting of all stellar lines in the rectified spectrum by Gaussians.

For each spectral line it can be chosen whether it is to be detected in absorption or emission. The output of the fit algorithm are equivalent width, FWHM and $`S/N`$ of the lines, and shift of the wavelength calibration zero point. Any spectral lines not yet considered can easily be included by just adding its wavelength to the list of lines to be fitted. In this work we make use of the equivalent width of H$`\beta `$, H$`\gamma `$ and H$`\delta `$ only, which are summed to the parameter balmsum.

### 3.2 Broad band and intermediate band colours

As already noticed by Hewett et al. (1985), relative colours can be determined quite accurately directly from objective-prism spectra. Hewett et al. (1995) used so-called “half power points (hpps)” to measure relative colours, that is, bisecting points of the photographic density distribution. hpps are equivalent to broad-band colours, but have the advantage of being more robust against noise. Wisotzki et al. (2000) introduced half power points that are computed only for a *part* of the spectrum (see Fig. 7). The half power points x\_hpp1 and x\_hpp2 are well correlated with $`UB`$ and $`BV`$, respectively.

Since it is helpful in many stellar applications to have not only relative, but calibrated $`UB`$ and $`BV`$ colours at hand, we established calibrations of x\_hpp1 and x\_hpp2 versus $`UB`$ and $`BV`$, respectively.

A more precise colour calibration can be achieved when distances dx to a cutoff line in a colour-magnitude diagram (see Fig. 8) is used instead of x values (scan length in $`\mu `$m) for the bisecting point, because plate-to-plate variations of the spectral sensitivity curves are compensated in this way. The cutoff line separates the bulk of “normal” stars from UV-excess objects (or objects with unusually low $`BV`$ in case of dx\_hpp2). The cutoff is determined by a break finding algorithm.

Because the blue end of the HES spectra is sensitive to contamination by overlaps, special care must be taken to exclude such spectra from the calibration of dx\_hpp1. This was done by applying stricter overlap selection criteria. In addition, an iterative $`\kappa \sigma `$-clipping with $`\kappa =3`$ was employed to exclude overlaps unrecognized by the automatic detection. 50 of the 623 spectra in the original data set were rejected, so that the calibration uses spectra of 573 objects (see Fig. 9; a similar plot was shown in Wisotzki et al. 2000).

A potential problem for the $`BV`$ calibration is that the $`V`$ band is not fully covered by the HES wavelength range. Therefore, the calibration for very red objects is inaccurate, or even impossible. As calibrators for red objects, 36 carbon stars were used, for which $`BV`$ photometry was obtained at the ESO 2.2 m telescope in April 1999. Carbon stars with $`BV>2.5`$ were excluded from the fit. For $`BV1.0`$, 778 stars from the HK survey of Beers et al. (1992), 354 FHB and other A-type stars of Wilhelm et al. (1999), and 272 objects from the northern galactic cap fields of the EC survey (Kilkenny et al. 1997) present on HES plates were used. Linear fits in three colour regions were done separately, in order to evaluate the scatter independently, and check consistency. Then, a combined fit to all 1256 unique objects was done (see Fig. 9).

The results of the fits are summarized in Tab. 1. Note that a single fit contains objects from a large fraction of the 329 stellar HES plates, and a wide range of object types, e.g. carbon stars, metal-poor stars, solar metallicity F- and G-type stars, field horizontal branch A-type stars, “normal” A-type stars, DAs, DBs, sdBs and quasars. The achieved accuracies are $`\sigma _{UB}=0.092`$ mag, and $`\sigma _{BV}=0.095`$ mag for the $`BV`$ fit using all calibration objects together. The accuracy in $`BV`$ for red ($`BV1`$) and blue ($`BV0.3`$) objects is a factor of $`2`$ worse ($`\sigma =0.15`$ mag and $`0.12`$ mag, respectively) than for intermediate $`BV`$ objects ($`\sigma =0.074`$ mag).

We obtain Strömgren coefficients $`c_1=(uv)(vb)`$ directly from HES spectra by averaging the density in the Strömgren $`uvb`$ bands, and computing internal coefficients $`c_{1,\text{HES}}`$ from that. $`c_{1,\text{HES}}`$ was calibrated using a total of 79 stars not saturated in the HES, from three different sources. 22 metal-poor stars were taken from Schuster et al. (1996), 43 stars from Beers (2000, priv. comm.), of which 2 were rejected as outliers (see Fig. 10), and 16 hot subdwarfs from an updated version of the catalog of Kilkenny et al. (1988). The $`1\sigma `$ error of the calibration is $`0.15`$ mag. $`c_1`$ can be used as a gravity indicator for early-type stars, since it measures the strength of the Balmer discontinuity.

## 4 Simulation of objective-prism spectra

In many stellar applications of the HES, it is not possible to generate large enough training and test samples from *real* spectra present on HES plates. This is because usually the target objects are very rare. Therefore, we have developed methods to generate *artificial* learning samples by simulations, using either model spectra, or slit spectra. In this paper we will use the simulations for the development of selection criteria. In later papers we will use sets of simulated spectra as learning samples for selection of e.g. metal-poor stars by automatic spectral classification.

The conversion of model spectra, or slit spectra, to objective-prism spectra consists of five steps:

1. Rebinning to the non-equidistant pixel size according to the global dispersion relation for the HES
2. Multiplication with HES spectral sensitivity curve(s)
3. Smoothing with a Gaussian filter, for simulation of seeing
4. Adding of pixel-wise, normally distributed noise
5. Random shift of the simulated spectrum according to the error distribution of the wavelength calibration zero point ($`\pm 10\mu `$m).

Step (4) ensures that objects of any brightness can be simulated. The $`B_J`$ magnitude range corresponding to a given $`S/N`$ can be read from Fig. 6.

### 4.1 HES spectral sensitivity curves

Spectral sensitivity curves (SSCs) for HES plates were determined by comparison of WD *model* spectra, rebinned to the wavelength dependent pixel size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ of the objective-prism spectra, with objective-prism spectra of DAs on HES plates. We do not use the slit spectra directly as reference, because slit losses would produce erroneous results. The theoretical DA spectra, taken from a standard grid of WD model atmospheres (see Finley et al. 1997, for a description), were fitted to the slit spectra with methods described in Finley et al. (1997) and Homeier et al. (1998). The spectra were taken with the Boller & Chivens spectrograph attached to the ESO 1.52 m telescope, and with DFOSC at the ESO-Danish 1.54 m telescope. The atmospheric parameters of the twelve objects used in this investigation are listed in Tab. 2

By comparing SSCs for plates from different plate batches, with different sky background, and generated with objects spanning a wide brightness range (see Tab. 3), but below the saturation threshold, we investigated the possible systematic influence of these characteristics on the shape of the SSCs. By comparing the shapes of the twelve resulting SSCs, we found that there is *no* systematic influence of object brightness, plate batch and sky background on SSC shape. The plate material of the HES is surprisingly homogenous; however, a *slight* variation of SSC shape is present, which hence must be attributed to another parameter. Since it is the blue part of the SSCs that varies, it is very likely that the time span between hypersensitization and development of the plate is responsible for the shape variations.

We grouped the twelve SSCs into four SSC classes of similar shape, and averaged them within these classes (see Fig. 11). When converting model spectra or slit spectra to objective prism spectra, we use an SSC created by averaging the four averaged SSCs with randomly assigned weights.

### 4.2 Adding noise

We add artificial, normally distributed noise to the converted spectra, in order to simulate objective-prism spectra of a desired brightness. We parameterize the $`S/N`$ of a spectrum by the mean $`S/N`$ in the $`B_J`$ band,

$$\overline{\left(\frac{S}{N}\right)}_{B_J}=\frac{1}{n}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{D_i}{a_0+a_1D_i+a_2D_i^2},$$

using the noise model described in Sect. 2.4. Since the noise depends on the density $`D`$, it is important to take care of the density variation throughout the spectrum. We thus scale the simulated spectra with a scaling factor $`c`$ such that the desired mean $`S/N`$ in $`B_J`$ is achieved, when the appropriate amount of pixel-wise Gaussian noise is added. The mean $`S/N`$ of the scaled spectrum is:

$$\overline{\left(\frac{S}{N}\right)}_{\text{new}}=\frac{1}{n}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{cD_i}{a_0+a_1cD_i+a_2c^2D_i^2},$$
(4)
We use one set of typical noise coefficients $`a_0\mathrm{}a_2`$ for our simulations. The appropriate scaling factor $`c`$ is determined numerically from Eq. (4) using the Newton-Raphson method. A comparison of a simulated DA spectrum with a real HES spectrum is shown in Fig. 12.

## 5 Selection of DA white dwarfs

Since we are aiming at a very *efficient* selection of white dwarf candidates, we investigated to what extent different types of hot stars can be distinguished in the HES in a two-colour diagram ($`UB`$ versus $`BV`$), and in the two-dimensional feature space $`c_1`$ versus balmsum. We also explored several other parameter combinations, including e.g. continuum shape parameters determined by principal component analysis, but found them to be less appropriate. Using various catalogs, we identified 521 hot stars in the HES. The catalogs are: (Kilkenny et al. 1997), Wilhelm et al. (1999), an updated version of the Kilkenny et al. (1988) subdwarf catalog, and McCook and Sion (1999). Additionally, 39 HES A-type stars with known stellar parameters were included.

It turned out that high gravity stars (WDs, sdBs, and sdOs) can be distinguished quite reliably from lower gravity stars (main sequence and horizontal branch stars). However, the separation between hot subdwarfs and WDs is much more difficult, since they occupy similar regions in the parameter space (see Fig. 13). The only way to obtain clean white dwarf samples is to sacrifice completeness, as we will see below. Note however that unlike in the EC, it is possible in the HES to compile candidate samples that have *no* contamination with main sequence or horizontal branch stars.

With the spectral features automatically detected in HES spectra up to now, it is not yet possible to select DB white dwarfs; in order to do this, Helium lines would have to be added to the line list. This is currently being done.

As a first step in developing selection criteria for DAs, selection boxes in the $`BV`$ versus $`UB`$ and $`c_1`$ versus Balmer line sum parameter spaces were chosen such that all DAs were included (see Fig. 13). A first set of 47 HES DA candidates (hereafter referred to as the “UVES sample”; see Tab. 5) selected in this way (and 72 additional WDs) were observed with VLT-UT2 and UVES between April 4 and June 6, 2000. This set includes seven re-discovered DAs listed in McCook and Sion (1999). Based on pipeline-reduced spectra, 19 of these were classified as DAs, 26 as hot subdwarfs (e.g., sdB, sdOB, sdO), two as DOs, and *none* as main sequence or horizontal branch star.

In order to decrease the contamination with hot subdwarfs, we examined if “harder” selection criteria could lead to reduced, but acceptable completeness with respect to DA white dwarfs on the one hand, and a cleaner candidate sample on the other hand.

Contamination and completeness in dependence of the cutoff in Balmer line equivalent width sum was evaluated by using the subsample of those 200 stars from the learning sample of 521 stars mentioned above that were located in the selection boxes also applied to the UVES sample. The relative numbers of stars were scaled such that the fraction of hot subdwarfs and WDs did reflect the fractions in the UVES sample. As can be seen from the results displayed in Fig. 14, it is possible to compile a 80 % complete sample of DA white dwarfs, which is contamined by only 8 % hot subdwarfs, if one confines the sample to objects with $`W_\lambda (\text{H}\beta +\text{H}\gamma +\text{H}\delta )>13.5`$ Å.

Selecting only the objects with very strong Balmer lines leads to incompleteness at the *hot* end of the DA sample (see Fig. 15), whereas DAs at $`\mathrm{11\hspace{0.17em}000}\text{K}>T_{\text{eff}}>\mathrm{35\hspace{0.17em}000}\text{K}`$ are very likely to be selected even at faint magnitudes (that is, at low $`S/N`$).

The final criteria,

$`W_\lambda (\text{H}\beta +\text{H}\gamma +\text{H}\delta )`$ $`>`$ $`13.5\text{Å}`$
$`c_1`$ $`<`$ $`0.3`$
$`BV`$ $`<`$ $`0.4`$
$`UB`$ $`<`$ $`0.2,`$
were *a posteriori* applied to the UVES sample for an independent test. The resulting sample consists of 15 DAs only; that is, the completeness is 78.9 %, which is very close to what was predicted. In a sample of 15 objects, 1.2 subdwarfs are expected if the contamination is 8 %, but none was found, which is consistent with the prediction.

We evaluated the *raw candidate* selection by visually inspecting a sample of 675 DA candidates at the computer screen. Visual inspection is a mandatory step in the HES in order to identify plate artifacts, the few overlaps that are not recognized by the automatic detection algorithm, and to reject mis-classified and noisy spectra. The 675 candidates were selected from the 1 789 792 overlap-free spectra with $`S/N>5`$ present on 225 HES plates. We define the *specifity* of a selection as the fraction of candidate spectra ($`N_{\text{can}}`$) drawn from the original set of spectra ($`N_{\text{total}}`$); i.e.,

$$\text{specifity}=\frac{N_{\text{can}}}{N_{\text{total}}}.$$
(5)
We define the *efficiency* of a selection as the fraction of *correct* candidates among the automatically selected candidates, as judged from visual inspection of the objective-prism spectra. The results are listed in Tab. 4.

## 6 Discussion

The selection method described above allows a very efficient selection of DAs, with a high completeness ($`80\%`$). However, this completeness estimate is based on a sample of objects that are part of the current HES data base of spectra. It is expected that a significant fraction of WDs are not part of that data base due to their proper motion (p.m.). This is because the input catalog for extraction of objective-prism spectra is generated by using the DSS I. Large proper motions and/or large epoch differences between HES and DSS I plates (13.5 years on average) currently result in a mis-extraction of spectra of objects having $`\mu _\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }t_{\text{HES-DSS I}}4^{\prime \prime }`$ (i.e., $`3`$ pixels), because the spectrum of the object is looked for at the wrong place. Proper motion in direction of $`\delta `$ leads to an offset of the wavelength calibration zero point, resulting in wrong equivalent width measurements (i.e., the measured widths are too low).

How large the incompleteness due to the epoch-difference problem is can roughly be estimated from a cross-identification of the HES with the catalog of McCook and Sion (1999). It lists 2 187 objects. 1 633 have an available $`V`$ measurement. Of these, 1 295 (or $`79.3`$ %) lie in the HES magnitude range ($`13V17.5`$, assuming an average $`BV`$ of zero). 606 objects are located in the southern hemisphere ($`\delta <2{}_{}{}^{}.5`$), and at high galactic latitude ($`|b|>30^{}`$). Assuming that $`79.3`$ % of these are in the HES magnitude range, we expect $`480`$ WDs to be in the HES area, and detectable in the HES. Taking into account a loss of $`25`$ % due to overlapping spectra, we expect 360 known WDs to be found on all 380 HES plates, and 310 WDs on the 329 plates used so far for the exploitation of the stellar content. However, in a cross-identification procedure using a $`10^{\prime \prime }\times 10^{\prime \prime }`$ search box, to compensate for the sometimes very inaccurate coordinates of McCook and Sion (1999), only 151 WDs ($`50`$ % of the expected 310) were found.

At the chosen search box width a “saturation” of identified objects was reached; by using a larger box, no further WDs were found. However, the experience from an identification of WDs from McCook and Sion (1999) in the northern hemisphere sister project of the HES, the Hamburg Quasar Survey (HQS; Hagen et al. 1995), is that 30–40 % of the objects were identified at positions more than $`10^{\prime \prime }`$ away from the nominal position; in many cases *much* more (up to several arc*minutes*), which explains why the identification saturation sets in already in for a $`10^{\prime \prime }\times 10^{\prime \prime }`$ search box.

Furthermore, we suspect that two effects may lead to an underestimate of the completeness of the present DA selection in the HES: First, many WDs listed in McCook and Sion (1999) were discovered in the course of proper motion surveys. Therefore, the catalog is very likely to be biased towards high p.m. objects, which makes the listed WDs less likely to be detected in the HES than the real population of WDs. Second, the peak of the magnitude distribution of the WDs from McCook and Sion (1999) is more than one magnitude brighter than that of the HES, so that on average *closer* WDs (with on average higher p.m.) are listed in McCook and Sion (1999).

We conclude that the true completeness of our selection is probably higher than indicated by the simple cross-comparison. We conservatively estimate the proper motion-induced losses of DAs in the HES to be not higher than $`20`$ %. Special techniques to recover also high p.m. DAs are currently under development. Such techniques will permit us to construct flux-limited samples of DA white dwarfs with a very high degree of completeness, useful e.g. to determine luminosity functions.

Another problem of WD selection in the HES might currently result from the fact that in the HES stellar feature detection algorithm the width of the absorption lines is held fixed at the measured width of the instrumental profile, in order to make the algorithm more robust. However, unlike in “normal” stars, the absorption lines of WDs are so broad that they are usually resolved in the HES spectra. Therefore, the equivalent widths of their absorption lines are expected to be underestimated. Apart from more accurately measured equivalent widths, adding the line widths to the parameters to be fitted would result in the opportunity to employ a further criterion for the separation between hot subdwarfs and WDs: if the absorption lines in the spectrum of an object are significantly broader than the instrumental profile, the object is very likely to be a WD. A modification of the feature detection algorithm is in progress.

A further improvement of the selection can likely be achieved if instead of straight lines higher-order selection boundaries are used, as is the case e.g. in quadratic discriminant analysis. However, defining such selection boundaries requires *large*, and *well-defined* learning samples. A lack of model spectra for early-type stars (main sequence as well as horizontal branch stars) so far prevented us from using a learning sample of simulated objective-prism spectra for this purpose.

## 7 Conclusions

We described quantitative procedures for the selection of DA white dwarfs in the digital data base of the HES. Algorithms for the detection of stellar emission and absorption lines, broad- and intermediate-band colours were developed. These are not only used for the selection of DAs, but also for a couple of other interesting stars, e.g. metal-poor stars, and carbon stars. Simulation techniques allow us to convert model spectra to HES spectra, which is important for the development of selection criteria, for the compilation of learning samples used for automatic spectral classification, and for the determination of selection functions.

DAs can be selected very efficiently in the HES, as required by a currently ongoing *Large Programme* using VLT-UT2 and UVES, aiming at the detection of *double degenerates*. A first set of 440 DA candidates not listed in the catalog of McCook and Sion (1999) was identified on 225 HES plates (i.e., 59 % of the survey).

We note that the UVES sample includes a double-lined DA$`+`$DA binary, and two further DAs with significant RV variations. The results will be reported elsewhere. Further investigation of these systems is in progress.

For investigations requiring *complete* samples of DAs (or other objects having high proper motions), special extraction techniques have to be employed to take into account the epoch differences between HES plates and the DSS I, since the latter is used for object detection in the HES. Such techniques are currently under development.

###### Acknowledgements.

N.C. and D.H. acknowledge financial support from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grants Re 353/40 and Ko 738/10-3, respectively. We thank V. Beckmann for observing a part of the DAs that were used to determine the HES spectral sensitivity curves. Precise, photoelectric $`UBV`$ and Strömgren $`uvby`$ photometry for HK survey stars was kindly provided by T. Beers before publication. We thank D. O’Donoghue for making EC survey photometry in digital form available to us. G. Pizarro kindly compiled a list of HES plate batches from the notes he made at the ESO Schmidt telescope. We thank the Paranal staff for carrying out the observations for the ESO Large Programme 165.H-0588 in Service Mode at VLT-UT2.

## Appendix A The UVES sample

In Tab. 5 we list coordinates, magnitudes, colours, Balmer line equivalent widths sums and classifications of the UVES sample of 47 DA candidates.

## Appendix B Spectral atlas of DA and DB white dwarfs

In Fig. 16 we display model spectra of DAs and DBs, converted to objective-prism spectra with the method described in Sect. 4. The model spectra were computed by using $`\mathrm{log}g=8.0`$.