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# References

Novel Cholesteric Phase
in Dispersions of Nucleic Acids
due to
Polymeric Chelate Bridges

V.L. Golo, E.I. Kats††, Yu.S. Volkov, V.I. Salyanov†††

and

Yu.M. Yevdokimov†††

Department of Mechanics and Mathematics

Moscow University, Moscow 119899, Russia

†† Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics

Russian Academy of Sciences

Moscow, Russia

and Institute Laue—Langevin,

BP — 156, Grenoble, Cedex — 9, France

††† Institute of Molecular Biology

Russian Academy of Sciences

Moscow, Russia

Abstract

We consider cholesteric liquid-crystalline DNA dispersions, and show that polymeric (Dau-Cu) complexes, the so-called bridges, between pairs of DNA molecules may generate a super liquid-crystalline structure (BR-phase). The latter could have a layered spatial structure and an abnormal optical activity that could have a bearing upon the intense CD-band observed in DNA-dispersions.

1. Introduction

The existence of the liquid-crystalline (LC)-phases of DNA molecules complexed with antibiotics of the anthracycline family opened a new avenue to studying both DNA and solvents. In this respect circular dichroism (CD)-experiments using daunomycin (Dau) are very interesting, , , , owing to the (Dau-DNA) complexes having very specific structural properties and optical activity. It is alleged,, , that Dau-molecules may intercalate between base pairs of the double-stranded DNA fixed in liquid-crystalline dispersion, forming the so-called intercalation complex (I), and generate an additional set of chromophores contained in a DNA-molecule, that is besides the original ones due to nitrogen bases absorbing in the UV region of $`270nm`$, there emerge chromophores, belonging to Dau-molecules, that absorb in the region of $`500nm`$, see , ,  for the detailed analysis of optical phenomenon involved. As the concentration of daunomycin increases, the intensity of the CD-band at $`500nm`$ rises, until it reaches a saturation point. According to  the saturation of the CD-intensity correponds to the ratio of one Dau molecule per five base pairs, see Fig.1. Further adding the daunomycin results only in a larger number of Dau molecules that are not attached to DNA molecules. These free Dau molecules do not produce a coherent effect as regards the CD absorption, and therefore do not have a bearing upon the CD intensity, in agreement with the saturation effect mentioned above. It is worth noting that one can change the sign of both CD bands, , at $`270nm`$ and $`500nm`$ by increasing the concentration of Dau above a certain point. Since the sign of CD band corresponds to the sense of the helical twist, i.e. the left/right one for the negative/positive band, respectively, one may conclude that Dau molecules generate a structural transition of the cholesteric DNA phase.

The conformation of (DNA-Dau) complex is substantially modified, if the dispersion is treated with $`CuCl_2`$, and therefore copper ions, $`Cu^{2+}`$, are added in the system. Then according to the X-ray analysis, , the Dau-saturation discussed above having been reached, there appear Dau-molecules, adsorbed at the surfaces of the DNA-double helices fixed in the cholesteric phase, the so-called external complex II, see Fig. 2 . If the concentration of $`Cu^{2+}`$ is large enough, they result in the formation of chelate complexes. In case the chelate complexes are properly located with respect to the double helices of adjacent DNA molecules, there arise certain planar structures, or bridges, that cross-link pairs of adjacent DNA-molecules, , see Figs. 1 — 3, . It is generally accepted that the bridges have the form of polymeric chelate complexes

$$\left[DNADau(CuDauCu)_nDauDNA\right]$$
(1)
The amplitude of CD-bands increases tens times after the Dau- and the copper concentrations having reached threshold values, , see Fig.4. Here it should be noted that for one thing isolated Dau-molecules, as well as other isotropic aggregates, are not sufficient to produce an abnormal optical acitvity, and for another there are relatively few Dau-molecules that are properly oriented so as to form chelate bridges. Thus, even though according to the arguments given above, the thresholds could correspond to the formation of the chelate bridges, the total effect due to Dau-molecules and their chelate complexes considered separately could be too small. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the observed increase in the CD-bands be due to a cooperative effect related to chelate bridges, and one should look for it in their spatial organization. Even though the anisotropy of the chelate bridges is small, they could acquire an orientational ordering while serving as a kind of linker between DNA-molecules. Thus, we may suggest that cholesteric dispersions of DNA doped with $`Cu^{2+}`$ could be visualized as two LC systems in interaction; the DNA molecules forming the dominant part of them.

2. Double Cholesterical Phase

In what follows we shall not take into account the influence of ambient solvent on DNA molecules and polymeric chelate bridges. We may cast the arguments given in the Introduction in a more quantitative form by employing the familiar macroscopic formalism of the order parameter and assign a unit vector $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ to the cholesteric phase formed by the DNA-molecules, and a unit vector $`\stackrel{}{\nu }`$ to the bridges. Initially, we do not make any assumption about their forming a nematic or cholesteric phase; their orientational ordering is to a large extent determined by the molecules of DNA. Therefore, we assume that the free energy of the compound system formed by DNA and bridges, should contain an interaction term given by the following equation

$$F_I=d^3\stackrel{}{r}\lambda \left(\stackrel{}{\nu }rot\stackrel{}{n}\right)^2$$
(2)
in which the real unit vectors $`\stackrel{}{n}`$, $`\stackrel{}{\nu }`$ are the order parameters for the DNA and the bridges, respectively. It is important that the expression given above is the simplest one for the interaction energy that takes into account the cholesteric twist of the phase due to DNA-molecules, and its possible interaction with bridges. Next, we may write down the part of the free energy related to the DNA-molecules considered as a separate system, and since we aim at deriving only a qualitative model, we may employ one dimensional approximation and write

$$F_{DNA}=\frac{k}{2}\left(\stackrel{}{n}rot\stackrel{}{n}q_0\right)^2𝑑z,$$
(3)
that is the usual form accommodating cholesteric twist.

Again employing the most simple terms, we assume that the bridges have only the orientational energy, proper, the cholesteric effects being due to their interaction with the DNA-molecules; therefore, we write

$$F_{Br}=\frac{\mu }{2}\left(\frac{d}{dz}\stackrel{}{\nu }\right)^2𝑑z$$
(4)
On combining equations (2), (3), and (4), we obtain the equation for the free energy of the whole system

$$F=\left[\frac{k}{2}\left(\stackrel{}{n}rot\stackrel{}{n}q_0\right)^2+\frac{\mu }{2}\left(\frac{d}{dz}\stackrel{}{\nu }\right)^2+\lambda \left(\stackrel{}{\nu }rot\stackrel{}{n}\right)^2\right]𝑑z$$
(5)
in which the z-axis is assumed to be the helical one of the DNA-cholesteric, so that the vector $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ can be cast in the form

$$\stackrel{}{n}=(\mathrm{cos}\varphi ,\mathrm{sin}\varphi ,0)$$
(6)
in which the polar angle $`\varphi `$ is a function of $`z`$ and

$$\frac{d\varphi }{dz}$$

is the twist angle. The vector $`\stackrel{}{\nu }`$ reads

$$\stackrel{}{\nu }=(\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\psi ,\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\psi ,\mathrm{cos}\theta )$$
(7)
The angle $`\theta `$ is, to a certain extent, a joint characteristic of the position of adjacent DNA-molecules and chelate bridges linking them, In fact, let us consider two molecules of DNA which we may visualize as two skew straight lines, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_2`$, at a distance $`d`$ from each other; $`d`$ being equal to the distance between two parallel planes, $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}`$, that contain the lines $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{1,2}`$, respectively, see Fig.5. If the length of a bridge, $`l`$, and the distance $`d`$ are fixed, the angle $`\theta `$ is fixed as well. In real life, there are fluctuations of the positions of the planes $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}`$ that produce a change in $`d`$. Also, the length of bridges may vary, for the structural form given by Eq.(1) may correspond to different values of the number of $`Cu`$-units, $`n`$. According to X-ray analysis , in the absence of the bridges, the change in $`d`$ amounts to 1%. According to a crude and qualitative nature of our model we shall consider only sufficiently small fluctuations of $`d`$, and assume the angle $`\theta `$ fixed.

Thus, let us assume that $`\theta =\theta _0=const`$. Then the equation for the free energy (5) acquires the form

$$F=\left[\frac{k}{2}(\dot{\varphi }q_0)^2+\frac{\mu }{2}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _0\dot{\psi }^2+\lambda \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _0\mathrm{cos}^2(\varphi \psi )\dot{\varphi }^2\right]𝑑z$$
(8)
in which the dot means the differentiation with respect to $`z`$. The minimization of equations for the free energy given by Eq.(8) reads

$`\ddot{\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _0\mathrm{sin}[2(\varphi \psi )]}{k+2\lambda \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _0\mathrm{cos}^2(\varphi \psi )}}(2\dot{\varphi }\dot{\psi }\dot{\varphi }^2)`$ (9)
$`\ddot{\psi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{\mu }}\mathrm{sin}[2(\varphi \psi )]\dot{\varphi }^2`$
If there are no bridges, i.e. $`\mu =\lambda =0`$, we have the usual solution $`\dot{\varphi }=q_0`$ corresponding to the minimum of $`F`$ and giving the cholesteric structure. We assume that the terms related to the bridges are small in comparison with the main cholesteric term

$$\frac{k}{2}(\dot{\varphi }q_0)^2,$$

and measure the constants $`\nu `$ and $`\lambda `$ in units of $`k`$; the latter being of order $`10^6dyn`$. There is no experimental information about the values of $`\mu `$ and $`\lambda `$; our guess is that for one thing $`\mu `$ is much smaller than $`k`$, $`\mu k`$, owing to a small anisotropy of the molecules of bridges, at least in comparison with those of DNA, and for another the magnitude of $`\lambda `$ approaches that of $`k`$, even though being smaller, for the interaction term should be strong enough to drive the bridges along the orientational twist of DNA molecules. In fact, one can visualize a chelate bridge as a planar rectangle with the ratio of the sides about 3 by 10 Å, so that its anisotropy is much smaller than that of DNA-molecules. Therefore, we shall take $`k=1`$ and $`\mu `$ of the order of $`0.01`$ and $`\lambda `$ of $`0.1`$, in the units given above.

As regards functional (8), we do not have the ambition to look for its minimum, but even studying the necessary condition for the latter, provides valuable information about the structure of the system. In fact, there is an exact solution to the minimization equations for (8), but its formulas are not particularly tractable, and it is more practical to employ computer, from the very beginning. For our purpose we need to consider the behaviour of the twist angles, that is $`\dot{\varphi }`$ for the DNA-molecules, and $`\dot{\psi }`$ for the bridges. To understand their possible configuration, let us visualize two adjacent molecules of DNA as two skew straight lines, see Fig.5. It is easy to convince oneself that the locus of points for the middle of the segment AB of a given length $`l`$ is a rather elongated ellipse $``$, see Figs. 6 and 7.

It is worth noting that the ellipse is ”flat” proportionally to the smallness of the twist angle $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ between the skew lines $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{1,2}`$. The z-axis being the rotation axis of the helical structure for the DNA-cholesteric, the straight lines $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{1,2}`$ rotate about $`Oz`$ at the angular velocity $`\dot{\varphi }`$, while an observer moves along $`Oz`$. In the meantime the segment AB, corresponding to a bridge, participates in two motions; that of the straight lines, and a motion of its own along the ellipse $``$. The latter has its own structure as to the sign of the motion along $``$ and characteristic time, or period. Of course, we do not mean the motion in time, our problem is the statical one, and there is no time, but only a change in the charateristic of the system as we move along the helical axis, Oz, which is the rotation axis of the cholesterical structure. It is important that the spatial conformation of the bridges and the DNA-molecules is determined by equilibrium conditions imposed on the system, and is of thermodynamical nature.

Thus, our hypothesis is that the orientational ordering of the bridges could substantially differ from that of the DNA-molecules. The numerical simulation of Eqs.(9) supports the claim.

The behaviour of the twist angles $`\dot{\varphi }`$ and $`\dot{\psi }`$ is illustrated in Fig. 8. We see that they can differ in magnitude several times, and in sign as well. We can visualize the phenomenon with the help of Figs.6 and 7 for the motion of the segement AB, or bridge, round the supporting ellipse $``$. In fact, the comparison of the numerical simulation given in Figs. 8, and Figs.4,5 indicates that the periods during which the twists $`\dot{\varphi }`$ and $`\dot{\psi }`$ are almost identical correspond to the location of the segment AB, or bridge, at the aphelion and the perihelion of the ellipse $``$. On the contrary, the flat regions of the ellipse correspond to the motion of the bridge at its own angular velocity, which is several times larger than that of the twist $`\dot{\varphi }`$. It should be noted that we do not mean an actual motion in time, but only the change in variables as we move along the Oz-axis.

Thus, we may expect that in a dispersion of DNA cross-linked by chelate bridges there is a super helical structure due to the bridges, which is in a way superimposed on the cholesteric one of DNA molecules, see Fig. 9. In fact, the numerical simulation shows that there is a layered orientational structure of bridges that has the property of a cholesteric with a variable twist angle. It admits of the abnormal CD-band discussed in the Introduction. In fact, it is alleged that the absorption strongly depends on the twist angle of the cholesteric structure, and therefore, the cholesteric twist for bridges being several times larger than that for DNA, one may expect that the CD-band could be larger than for the cholesteric phase of DNA in the absence of them.

3. Conclusion: cholesterical BR-phase

We suggest that in dispersions of DNA containing chelate bridges there could exist, besides the cholesterical phase of DNA molecules, another cholesterical phase generated by the bridges, which we shall call the BR-phase, see Fig.9. The latter could be the cause for the abnormal optical activity observed in CD-spectra in the region of $`500nm`$, and should have a layered structure.

It should be noted that, as follows from our crude model, the cholesteric pitch of the DNA dispersion does not change under the influence of the bridges, at least for the values of parameters considered in this paper. The circumstance has an important bearing upon the optical properties of DNA dispersions. In fact, the intensity of the CD band at $`270nm`$, which corresponds to DNA chromophores, should have remained unaltered in the presence of the bridges, but it increased. Therefore, we shall conclude that the intensity of the CD bands depends also on certain factors besides the orientational ordering of the bridges. Perhaps, the chelate bridges could change the coupling of oscillating dipole moments of adjacent DNA molecules so that collective exciation modes should emerge and result in the observed large intensity of the CD bands.

In this respect it is worth noting that the use of ions of different transition metals, e.g. cadmium or nikel, instead of copper, results in different properties of the BR-phase, as regards, at least, its optical activity. The phenomenon could have an important bearing upon the study of DNA-dispersions and serve as a kind of probe into the physics of DNA and solvents. For example, it would be extremely interesting to find compounds capable of changing the sign of CD-absorption band; the picture given above of a chelate bridge ”moving” along the supporting ellipse in the opposite direction with respect to the cholesteric twist of DNA, suggests that it could be possible.


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# Do chemically saturated antihyperon abundancies signal the quark gluon plasma?

## 1 Introduction and Motivation

The prime intention for present and future ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions lies in the possible experimental identification of the quark gluon plasma (QGP). The QGP represents a theoretically hypothesized and from QCD lattice calculations convincingly established new phase of matter, where quarks and gluons are deliberated from the hadronic particles and move freely over an extended, macroscopically large region. Moreover, considering several different observations within the Lead Beam Programme at the CERN-SPS, strong ‘circumstantial evidence’ for the temporal formation of the QGP has been conjectured  very recently. As one particular example, strangeness enhancement has been predicted already a long time ago as one of the much favored diagnostic probes for the short-time existence of a QGP : The main idea is that the strange (and antistrange) quarks are thought to be produced more easily and hence also more abundantly in such a deconfined state as compared to the production via highly threshold suppressed inelastic hadronic collisions. In this respect, especially the antihyperons and also the multistrange baryons were advocated as the appropriate candidates .

In Fig. 1 we depict the intriguing observation from the seminal report article of Koch, Müller and Rafelski: It shows the approach to chemical equilibrium of the various population densities of strange hadronic particles containing at least one antistrange quark as a function of time within a hot and baryonrich hadronic system. Even after 1000 fm/c the antihyperons do not approach by far their chemical equilibrium values! It was argued that within a thermalized fireball environment of hadronic particles the strange antibaryons are dominantly be produced by subsequent binary strangeness exchange reactions with the (maybe) chemically equilibrated kaons like

$$K+\overline{p}\pi +\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }},\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }};K+\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\pi +\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}$$
(1)
with very low cross sections. On the other hand, assuming the existence of a temporarily present phase of QGP and following simple coalescence estimates the abundant (anti-)strange quarks can easily combine with the light (anti-)quarks to form the strange hadrons , which do then, in return, come close to their chemical equilibrium values. (Of course, these predictions can only be regarded as qualitative, yet plausible: A satisfactory theoretical understanding of the dynamics and of the hadronisation of a hypothetical deconfined phase as well as the production of strangeness in this state is at present not really given.)

Indeed, an enhancement of strangeness has been reported, calibrated in relation to p+p or p+A collisions . This is in particular true for the antihyperons (and to a little lesser extent for multistrange baryons). Such an enhancement can certainly not be explained by the above mentioned binary strangeness exchange reactions. On the theoretical side the analysis of measured abundancies of hadronic particles with simple thermal models  strongly supports the idea of having established an equilibrated fireball in some late stage of the reaction, where all hadrons with light and/or strange quark content do exist in number nearly according to their chemical equilibrium values. (The thermodynamical properties found by the various groups can phenomenologically easily be explained in fact by a rapidly hadronizing and disintegrating QGP phase . This has very recently been pursued in trying to extract the critical energy density .) (Nearly perfect) Chemical equilibration is found to be true for the antihyperons. Alas, this all then gives strong support for some new exotic mechanism like, most plausible, the temporary formation of a deconfined and strangeness saturated new state of matter.

Although intriguing, after all this may not be the correct interpretation of the observed antihyperon yields: In the following we elaborate on our recent idea of antihyperon production by multi-mesonic reactions like $`n_1\pi +n_2K\overline{Y}+p`$ corresponding to the inverse of the strong binary baryon-antibaryon annihilation process . The latter process, on the other hand, dictates the timescale of how fast the antihyperon densities do approach local chemical equilibrium with the pions, nucleons and kaons. This timescale is thus to a good approximation proportional to the inverse of the baryon density. Adopting an initial baryon density of approximately 1–2 times normal nuclear matter density $`\rho _0`$ for the initial and thermalized hadronic fireball, the antihyperons will equilibrate on a timescale of 1–3 fm/c! This timescale competes with the expansion timescale of the late hadronic fireball, which is in the same range or larger. In any case it becomes plausibel that these multimesonic, hadronic reactions, contrary to the binary reactions (1), can explain most conveniently a sufficiently fast equilibration before the (so called) chemical freeze-out occurs at the parameters given by the thermal model analyses (, and where the baryon density has dropped to around 0.5 - 0.75 $`\rho _0`$). One can always argue that before this point in time a new state of matter might have occured as the energy density becomes close to or above 1 GeV/fm3 . (This is the value what lattice QCD at present estimates for the critical energy density, where at equilibrium and zero net baryon density the transition to a deconfined state should occur.) Our interpretation does rest on the (conservative) view that before the chemical freeze-out already a hadronic system has established. Whether even before this stage a deconfined state or a non-equilibrium stage of hadronic string-like excitations had existed is then still a matter of debate, but it is not the present issue for explaining the chemical saturation of the antihyperons at chemical freeze-out.

Before we detail this mechanism of antihyperon production and also comment on a few of the necessary assumptions (and potential reservations ), we first want to briefly sketch in the next section a couple of interesting conclusions on overall strangeness production (i.e. the most dominant kaons and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s) and equilibration obtained within a microscopic hadronic transport model .

## 2 Strangeness production and equilibration

As outlined in the introduction the possible strangeness enhancement in heavy ion collisions has been one of the driving motivation for the experimental study of strange particle production. Since a relative enhancement is observed already in hadron-hadron collisions for increasing energy (see Fig. 2), which is certainly not due to any macroscopic or bulk effects, the to be measured strangeness should be compared relative to p+p collisions at the same energy. The arguments for enhanced strangeness production via the QGP should generally apply already for the most dominant strange particles, the kaons, as their chemical equilibration time in a hadronic fireball has been estimated to be $`100`$ fm/c  (see also fig. 1 and fig. 3). On the other hand, it was also argued that a factor of 2-3 enhancement in the $`K/\pi `$-ratio relative to the one obtained in p+p collisons can only be seen as an indirect signal for QGP creation . Moreover, as we will now summarize, nonequilibrium inelastic hadronic reactions can explain to a very good extent the overall strangeness production seen experimentally .

In a recent systematic study we had investigated the properties of $`K^+`$, $`K^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ particles in nuclear reactions from SIS to CERN-SPS energies  within the microscopic hadron-string transport approach HSD (for details describing the transport algorithm see ). An important ingredient has been the implementation of the elementary cross sections for strangeness production in baryon-baryon, baryon-meson and meson-meson channels. An enhancement of the scaled kaon yield due to hadronic rescattering both with increasing system size and energy was found. This is expected within any hadronic model if the kaons and other particles do not feel any attractive potentials. After the primary string fragmentation of intrinsic p-p–collisions the hadronic fireball starts with a $`K^+/\pi ^+`$ ratio still far below chemical equilibrium with $`68\%`$ at AGS to SPS energies before the hadronic rescattering starts. As the average kinetic energy and the particle density increases monotonically with incoming kinetic energy of the projectile while the lifetime of the fireball increases with the system size, a smooth and continous enhancement is expected in a hadronic description by these effects. The outcome for the most dominant strange particles, the $`K^+`$-mesons, is summarized in fig. 2.

We want to emphasize that the secondary (meson-baryon) and ternary (meson-meson) induced string-like interactions do contribute significantly to the total strange particle production, particular for reactions at SPS energies. Via these channels about the same number of strange and anti-strange quarks is produced as in the primary p+p collisions. This then explains the factor 1.75 as the relative enhancement compared to p+p (compare fig. 2). Hence, the major amount of produced strange particles (kaons, antikaons and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s) at SPS-energies can be understood in terms of early and still energetic, non-equilibrium interactions. On the other hand, at the lower AGS energies, the relative enhancement factor of $`3`$ can not be fully explained within the cascade type calculations . This might indicate some new physics involved for the primary $`s\overline{s}`$ production mechanism: Including meson potentials can help to reasonably understand the production of $`K^+`$ and especially $`K^{}`$ mesons at lower SIS energies, yet some smaller, but still significant underestimation at AGS energies does persist .

Only for a system close to thermal equilibrium, as was assumed in the early calculations , the overall strangeness production rates (for kaons and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s) are substantially suppressed due to the high thresholds. As pointed out above and also in a very recent study  this is due to the oversimplified initial conditions. In  ‘infinite’ hadronic matter is simulated within a cubic box, starting with a nonequilbrium initial configuration in momentum space which does somehow resemble the initial or early intermediate situation in a true heavy ion collision. One particular microscopic simulation towards equilibrium is depicted in fig. 3. As one can see really chemical equilibrium for the kaons and antikaons is approached only at $`50`$ fm/c at the given energy and baryon density (which both are higher than the ones calculated from the chemical freeze-out point ). This is in accordance with the early calculations . On the other hand one also sees that eg the $`K^+/\pi ^+`$-ratio $`0.15`$ starts via the decay of the early string excitations already at a quite large value and then stays rather constant in time. As elaborated above, in a simulation of a true heavy ion collision strangeness is produced in the very early stage and these early produced strange/antistrange quarks then suffice to explain the majority of strange particles (kaons, antikaons and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$s) at SPS energies.

In addition, it was also shown in  that local kinetic equilibrium is reached on a sufficient fast timescale by the multiple processes of subsequent string fragmentation. The string excitations do provide a very efficient mechanism to produce transversal energy. In summary, the microscopic transport calculations do support qualitatively the idea that there exists a regime in time during the heavy ion collision where thermal and chemical equilibrium among the various hadronic particles should be (locally) realised.

## 3 Antihyperon production by kaons and pions

We now repeat and detail on our previous idea on antihyperon production : Not subsequent binary hadronic reactions of type (1) but in fact multi-pionic and kaonic interactions in a thermalized hadronic gas lead to a very fast chemical equilibration of the antihyperon degrees of freedom. For this one has to look first on the following annihilation reactions similar to the standard baryon annihilation $`\overline{p}+pn\pi `$, but now involving one antihyperon and then do apply rigorously the concept of detailed balance:

$`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+N`$ $``$ $`n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}\pi +K`$
$`\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}+N`$ $``$ $`n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}}\pi +2K`$
$`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}+N`$ $``$ $`n_{\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}}\pi +3K`$
or, in shorthand notation,

$$\overline{Y}+Nn\pi +n_YK.$$
(2)
$`n_Y`$ counts the number of anti-strange quarks within the antihyperon $`\overline{Y}`$. $`n+n_Y`$ is expected to be around $`57`$. The reactions (2) are all exothermic. It is also plausible to assume that the annihilation cross sections are approximately the same like for $`N\overline{p}`$ at the same relative momenta. Hence, in the relevant regime of a thermal hadronic gas with temperatures of $`T120200`$ MeV one has $`\sigma _{p\overline{Y}n\pi +n_YK}\sigma _{p\overline{p}n\pi }50`$ mb, which is indeed a large cross section.

The above reactions (2) do effectively lead to the following master equation for the respectively considered antihyperon density within a hadronic gas:

$$\frac{d}{dt}\rho _{\overline{Y}}=\sigma _{\overline{Y}N}v_{\overline{Y}N}\left\{\rho _{\overline{Y}}\rho _N\underset{n}{}_{(n,n_Y)}(T,\mu _B,\mu _s)(\rho _\pi )^n(\rho _K)^{n_Y}\right\}.$$
(3)
The ‘back-reactions’ of several effectively coalescing pions and kaons are incorporated by the ‘mass-law’ factor

$$_{(n,n_Y)}(T,\mu _B,\mu _s)=\frac{\rho _{\overline{Y}}^{eq.}\rho _N^{eq.}}{(\rho _\pi ^{eq.})^n(\rho _K^{eq.})^{n_Y}}p_n.$$
(4)
Here $`p_n`$ states the (unknown) relative probability of the reaction (2) to decay into a specific number $`n`$ of pions with $`_np_n=1`$. $``$ has a clear physical origin as it is responsible to assure detailed balance in the competition between the annihilation process and the various contributing multi-mesonic ‘back reactions’. $``$ then depends only on the temperature and the baryon and strange quark chemical potentials. $`\sigma _{\overline{Y}N}v_{\overline{Y}N}`$ denotes the thermally averaged cross section. We take $`N`$ as synonym for any baryonic particle, most dominantly the nucleons and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-excitations. Furthermore, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{Y}}\sigma _{\overline{Y}N}v_{\overline{Y}N}\rho _B`$ gives the effective annihilation rate of the respective antihyperon specie on a baryon. Assuming that the pions, baryons and kaons stay in thermal and chemical equilibrium, the master equation then becomes simply

$$\frac{d}{dt}\rho _{\overline{Y}}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{Y}}\left\{\rho _{\overline{Y}}\rho _{\overline{Y}}^{eq}\right\}.$$
(5)
It should become clear by now that indeed the mean annihilation rate yields the characteristic inverse time to drive the antihyperon densities to their chemical equilibrium values, i.e. it corresponds to the inverse of the characteristic chemical equilibration time. So how large is it?

At the onset of thermalization and chemical equilibration for all other degrees of freedom in the hadronic fireball the baryon density might still be rather large and could exceed two times normal nuclear matter density . In fig. 4 we have depicted the net baryon density as a function of time at a space region for particles at midrapidity obtained within a microscopic transport model . The figure illustrates that a pure hadronic fireball (without any string-like excitations) at two times baryon density has established during the ongoing (longitudinal) expansion. It is interesting to note that the chemical freeze-out ‘point’ with the parameters calculated in  takes place at a value of $`0.50.75\rho _0`$. This would correspond to a time of 8-10 fm/c in fig. 4. Taking now for the average baryon density evolving shortly before the chemical freeze-out point $`<\rho _B>12\rho _0`$ and employing the above estimate for the antihyperon annihilation cross scetion, i.e. $`\sigma _{p\overline{Y}n\pi +n_YK}50`$ mb, one has for the chemical equilibration time of antihyperonic particles the striking number

$$(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{Y}})^{(1)}=\frac{1}{\sigma _{N\overline{Y}n\pi +n_YK}v_{\overline{Y}N}<\rho _B>}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}3\text{fm/c}.$$
(6)
This is a very fast process (!) and lies below the typical fireball lifetime of $`10`$ fm/c. (Indeed, microscopic calculations within (U)RQMD have shown that antibaryon annihilation takes place with considerable rate and that the overall anti-baryon yield can be hardly described within the standard transport approaches exactly because of the large annihilation cross section .) Antihyperons are forced rather immediately to local chemical equilibrium together with the pions, kaons and nucleons by the ‘back reactions’! One has to be a little bit more precise : What actually has to be compared is the timescale of how fast the fireball does expand or, refering to the rate (6), of how fast the baryon density does drop. From fig. 4 one finds that this timescale is 3-4 fm/c. This is a reasonable expectation. Hence, there is no need for any ‘exotic’ explanation (like eg the temporal existence of a potential QGP saturated in strangeness) to account for the thermally and chemically equilibrated particle number of antihyperons observed at the chemical freeze-out point. In fact, beyond that ‘point’ (which, of course, is actually some continous regime where inelastic decoupling occurs) with already a moderately low baryon density (and correspondingly low pion and kaon densities) it will be that the multi-mesonic creation process becomes more and more ineffective. This would then also explain the claer ‘position’ of the chemical freeze-out point for the antihyperons.

To be more quantitative some explicite coupled master eqautions for an expanding system have to be considered. Such work is in progress . In addition one can also study at which point on average the antihyperon degrees of freedom kinetically do decouple (thermal freeze-out). The decoupling does depend probably and most simply on the explicit (and unknown) parametrisation of the elastic cross section of the antihyperons with the pions. This has been pointed out already by Hecke et al  when adressing the fact that the experimentally deduced effective inverse slopes $`\mathrm{`}T_Y^{}`$ of the (anti-)hyperon spectra and especially of the multi-strange $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$-spectrum do not follow the linear increasing trend in mass.

## 4 Summary, conclusions and outlook

To summarize, the multi-mesonic source of production of antihyperons is a consequence of detailed balance and, as the rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\overline{Y}}`$ is indeed very large, this is the by far most dominant source compared to any binary production channel (1). This, as we believe, is a remarkable observation as it clearly demonstrates the importance of hadronic multi-particle channels. At the moment such ‘back-reactions’ cannot be handled within the present transport codes and some clever strategy has to be invented. This could be a nice exercise for the future. Nonetheless, as we have shown, there exists a simple non-exotic mechanism c,d for explaining the $`\overline{Y}`$ abundancies in a purely hadronic scenario.

One might be tempted to ask whether a similar reasoning also applies for the multi-strange hyperons (the $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ and the $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$) for which also some significant enhancement has been reported. The answer is ‘no’. The equilibration rate here would be governed by the density of antibaryons and is thus too low, or putting it differently, the equilibrium density of multi-strange hyperons is much higher than the one of antihyperons. It might be that only more exotic microscopic processes (or potentially only the celebrated deconfined state of matter) can explain the enhancement .

The mechanism to work out for the antihyperonic degrees of freedom is based on two rather moderate assumptions: (I) The thermally averaged annihilation cross section for antihyperons colliding with a nucleon, i.e. $`\overline{Y}+N`$, is roughly as large as the measured one for $`\overline{p}+p`$ or $`\overline{p}+n`$. (II) At the onset for the equilibration of the antihyperons one has to assume a hadronic fireball with still a moderate baryonic density and where the pions together with the nucleons and the kaons are assumed to be nearly in chemical equilibrium. As discussed in the second section, the abundant and early production of kaons and antikaons can reasonably be accounted for by hadronic transport models. If, as presented in some of the thermal models, a strangeness suppression factor $`\gamma _s`$ for each unit of strangeness is introduced , one then finds for the stationary point of the master equation

$$\rho _{\overline{Y}}^{eq}\rho _{\overline{Y}}=(\gamma _s)^{n_Y}\rho _{\overline{Y}}^{eq.},$$
(7)
which is consistent with the employed phenomenological prescription .

There is also a clear hint at AGS energies of enhanced anti-$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ production: On the one hand the E859 Collaboration has measured the $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{p}`$ ratio in Si+Au at 14.6 AGeV and had reported a large value $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\overline{p}=2.9\pm 0.9\pm 0.5`$ for some central rapidity window. On the other hand such a value has also been discovered, albeit for low transverse momentum, by the E864 Collaboration for the most central collisions . According to the thermal models the deduced temperatures at the AGS-energies are lower and the obtained baryon densities are even higher. Our argument should thus perfectly apply. Measurements of antihyperon production could also be done at possible future heavy ion facilities at GSI working then at much higher bombarding energies comparable or exceeding AGS energies. This would be a very interesting opportunity to unreveal the here proposed mechanism.

## Acknowledgements

The work presented had been done in various collaborations with E. Bratkovskaya, W. Cassing, J. Geiss, S. Leupold and U. Mosel. I am in particular indebted to W. Cassing for providing fig. 4 and to S. Leupold, with whome the idea of multimesonic antihyperon production has been developed and further pursued. I also want to thank U. Heinz for the many interesting, albeit controversial discussions and J. Nagle for discussing the status of the $`\overline{Y}`$-production at AGS. This work has been supported by BMBF and GSI Darmstadt.

## Notes

* Invited talk at the Symposium on ‘Fundamental Issues in Elementary Matter’, 241. WE-Heraeus-Seminar, 25-29 September, Bad Honnef, Germany.
* E-mail: Carsten.Greiner@theo.physik.uni-giessen.de
* Our idea has been triggered by a recent work  (but see also next footnote d) which dealt with the question of how antiprotons might maintain nearly perfect chemical equilibrium until so called thermal freezeout at temperatures $`T110`$ MeV much lower than at chemical freeze-out. However, the baryon densities are typically much lower between these two stages of chemical freeze-out to thermal freeze-out ($`\rho _B0.50.05\rho _0`$, compare also fig. 4), so that the multipionic reactions $`n\pi N+\overline{p}`$ becomes less effective while competing against the rather rapid expansion and dilution. Our intention, on the other hand, has been to explain qualitatively via the adressed multihadronic channels the production of antihyperons before and at the so called point of chemical freeze-out.
* The here discussed multi-mesonic channels for producing antihyperons are not considered for the first time: In fact they had been taken into account in the set of master equations for the strange hadronic particle densities by Koch et al . The now mysterious question is then why the authors had not come at that time to our present conclusion? Much to the contrary they put forward the agenda for the antihyperons as a clear signature of a QGP. Looking at Fig. B3 in  they have only considered the annihilation cross section $`\sigma _{p\overline{p}5\pi }10`$ mb, which is a factor of 5 or so smaller than the total annihilation cross section. Still, inspecting fig. 1, their equilibration rate of the antihyperons is even then still two to three orders of magnitude too small!


text:
# How can one understand the lightest scalars, especially the 𝜎

## 1 Introduction

This talk is mainly based on earlier papers  on the light scalars and on a more recent one  on the $`\sigma `$ in charm decay, including a few new comments. First we shall discuss the evidence for the light $`\sigma `$ and explain how one can understand the controversial light scalar mesons with a unitarized quark model, which includes most well established theoretical constraints:

* Adler zeroes as required by chiral symmetry,
* all light two-pseudoscalar (PP) thresholds with flavor symmetric couplings in a coupled channel framework
* physically acceptable analyticity, and
* unitarity.

A unique feature of this model is that it simultaneously describes the whole scalar nonet and one obtains a good representation of a large set of relevant data. Only six parameters, which all have a clear physical interpretation, are needed.

After describing our understanding of the $`q\overline{q}`$ nonet, we discuss the recently measured $`D\sigma \pi 3\pi `$ decay, where the $`\sigma `$ is clearly seen as the dominant peak.

## 2 The problematic scalars and the existence of the $`\sigma `$

The interpretation of the nature of lightest scalar mesons has been controversial for long. There is no general agreement on where are the $`q\overline{q}`$ states, is there a glueball among the light scalars, are some of the scalars multiquark or $`K\overline{K}`$ bound states? As for the $`\sigma `$, authors do not even agree on its existence as a fundamental hadron, although the number of supporters is growing rapidly.

In Fig. 1 we have plotted with filled circles the results of 22 different analyses on the $`\sigma `$ pole position, which are included in the 2000 edition of the Review of Particle Physics  under the entry $`f_0(4001200)`$ or $`\sigma `$. Most of these find a $`\sigma `$ pole position near 500-i250 MeV.

Also, at a recent meeting  devoted to the $`\sigma `$, many groups reported preliminary analyzes, which find the $`\sigma `$ resonance parameters in the same region. These are plotted as triangles in Fig. 1. It was not possible to here distinguish between Breit-Wigner parameters and pole positions, which of course can differ by several 100 MeV for the same data. It must also be noted that many of the triangles in Fig. 1 rely on the same raw data and come from preliminary analyzes not yet published.

We also included in Fig. 1 (with a star) the $`\sigma `$ parameters obtained from the recent E791 Experiment at Fermilab , where 46% of the $`D^+3\pi `$ Dalitz plot is $`\sigma \pi `$. The open circle in the same figure represents the $`\sigma `$ parameters extracted from the CLEO analysis of $`\tau \sigma \pi \nu 3\pi \nu `$ .

## 3 The NJL and the Linear sigma Model

The NJL model is an effective theory which is believed to be related to QCD at low energies, when one has integrated out the gluon fields. It involves a linear realization of chiral symmetry. After bosonization of the NJL model one finds essentially the Linear sigma Model (L$`\sigma `$M) as an approximate effective theory for the scalar and pseudoscalar meson sector.

About 30 years ago Schechter and Ueda  wrote down the $`U3\times U3`$ L$`\sigma `$M for the meson sector involving a scalar and a pseudoscalar nonet. This (renormalizable) theory has only 6 parameters, out of which 5 can be fixed by the pseudoscalar masses and decay constants ($`m_\pi ,m_K,m_\eta ^{},f_\pi ,f_K`$). The sixth parameter for the OZI rule violating 4-point coupling must be small. One can then predict, with no free parameters, the tree level scalar masses , which turn out to be not far from the lightest experimental masses, although the two quantities are not exactly the same thing but can differ for the same model and data by over 100 MeV.

The important thing is that the scalar masses are predicted to be near the lightest experimentally seen scalar masses, and not in the 1500 MeV region where many authors want to put the lightest $`q\overline{q}`$ scalars. The $`\sigma `$ is predicted  at 620 MeV with a very large width ($`600`$ MeV), which well agrees with Fig. 1. The $`a_0(980)`$ is predicted at 1128 MeV, the $`f_0(980)`$ at 1190 MeV, and the $`K_0^{}(1430)`$ at 1120 MeV, which is surprisingly good considering that loop effects are large.

## 4  Understanding the S-waves within a unitarized quark model (UQM)

In Figs. 2-4 we show the obtained fits to the $`K\pi `$, $`\pi \pi `$ S-waves and to the $`a_0(980)`$ resonance peak in $`\pi \eta `$. The Partial Wave Amplitude (PWA) in the case of one $`q\overline{q}`$ resonance, such as the $`a_0(980)`$, can be written as:

$$A(s)=\frac{Im\mathrm{\Pi }_{\pi \eta }(s)}{[m_0^2+Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)s+iIm\mathrm{\Pi }(s)]},$$
(1)
where:

$`Im\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}Im\mathrm{\Pi }_i(s)={\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\gamma _i^2(ss_{A,i}){\displaystyle \frac{k_i}{\sqrt{s}}}e^{k_i^2/k_0^2}\theta (ss_{th,i}),`$
$`Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}\mathrm{P}.\mathrm{V}.{\displaystyle _{s_{th,1}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{Im\mathrm{\Pi }(s)}{s^{}s}}𝑑s^{}.`$
Here the coupling constants $`\gamma _i`$ are related by flavour symmetry and OZI rule, such that there is only one over all parameter $`\gamma `$. The $`s_{A,i}`$ are the positions of the Adler zeroes, which are near $`s=0`$. Eq. (1) can be looked upon as a more general Breit-Wigner form, where the mass parameter is replaced by an $`s`$-dependent function, “the running mass” $`m_0^2+Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$.

In the flavourless channels the situation is a little more complicated than in Eq. (1) since one has both $`u\overline{u}+d\overline{d}`$ and $`s\overline{s}`$ states, requiring a two dimensional mass matrix (see Ref. ). Note that the sum runs over all light PP thresholds, which means three for the $`a_0(980)`$: $`\pi \eta ,K\overline{K},\pi \eta ^{}`$ and three for the $`K_0^{}(1430)`$: $`K\pi ,K\eta ,K\eta ^{}`$, while for the $`f_0`$’s there are five channels: $`\pi \pi ,K\overline{K},\eta \eta ,\eta \eta ^{},\eta ^{}\eta ^{}`$.

In Fig. 5 we show, as an example, the running mass, $`m_0^2+Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$, and the width-like function, $`Im\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$, for the I=1 channel. The crossing point of the running mass with $`s`$ gives the $`90^{}`$ mass of the $`a_0(980)`$. The magnitude of the $`K\overline{K}`$ component in the $`a_0(980)`$ is determined by $`\frac{d}{ds}Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$, which is large in the resonance region just below the $`K\overline{K}`$ threshold. These functions fix the PWA of Eq. (1) and Fig. 3. In Fig. 6 the running mass and width-like function for the strange channel are shown. These fix the shape of the $`K\pi `$ phase shift and absorption parameters in Fig. 1. As can be seen from Figs. 1-3, the model gives a good description of the relevant data.

In Ref.  the $`\sigma `$ was missed because only poles nearest to the physical region were looked for, and the possibility of the resonance doubling phenomenon, discussed below, was overlooked. Only a little later we realized with Roos  that two resonances ($`f_0(980)`$ and $`f_0(1370)`$) can emerge although only one $`s\overline{s}`$ bare state is put in.

In fact, it was pointed out by Morgan and Pennington  that for each $`q\overline{q}`$ state there are, in general, apart from the nearest pole, also image poles, usually located far from the physical region. As explained in more detail in Ref. , some of these can (for a large enough coupling and sufficiently heavy threshold) come so close to the physical region that they make new resonances. And, in fact, there are more than four physical poles with different isospin, in the output spectrum of the UQM model, although only four bare states are put in!. The $`f_0(980)`$ and the $`f_0(1300)`$ of the model thus turn out to be two manifestations of the same $`s\overline{s}`$ state (see  and Fig. 7 for details). There can be two crossings with the running mass $`m_0^2+Re\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$, one near the threshold and another at higher mass, and each one is related to a different pole at the second sheet (or, if the coupling is strong enough, the lower one could even become a bound state pole, below the threshold, on the first sheet).

Similarly the $`a_0(980)`$ and the $`a_0(1450)`$ could be two manifestations of the $`u\overline{d}`$ state. Only after realizing that this resonance doubling is important we looked deeper into the second sheet and found the light and broad $`\sigma `$ .

Another important effect that the model can explain is the large mass difference between the $`a_0`$ and $`K_0^{}`$. Because of this large splitting many authors argue that the $`a_0(980)`$ and $`f_0(980)`$ are not $`q\overline{q}`$ states, since in addition to being very close to the $`K\overline{K}`$ threshold, they are much lighter than the first strange scalar, the $`K_0^{}(1430)`$. Naively one expects a mass difference between the strange and nonstrange meson to be of the order of the strange-nonstrange quark mass difference, or a little over 100 MeV. This is also one of the reasons why some authors want to have a lighter strange meson, the $`\kappa `$, near 800 MeV. Cherry and Pennington  recently have strongly argued against its existence.

Figs. 5 and 6 explain why one can easily understand this large mass splitting as a secondary effect of the large pseudoscalar mass splittings, and because of the large mass shifts coming from the loop diagrams involving the PP thresholds. If one puts Figs. 4 and 5 on top of each other one sees that the 3 thresholds $`\pi \eta ,K\overline{K},\pi \eta `$ all lie relatively close to the $`a_0(980)`$, and all 3 contribute to a large mass shift. On the other hand, for the $`K_0^{}(1430)`$, the $`SU3_f`$ related thresholds ($`K\pi ,K\eta ^{}`$) lie far apart from the $`K_0^{}`$, while the $`K\eta `$ nearly decouples because of the physical value of the pseudoscalar mixing angle.

## 5 $`D\sigma \pi 3\pi `$

The recent experiments studying charm decay to light hadrons are opening up a new experimental window for understanding light meson spectroscopy and especially the controversial scalar mesons, which are copiously produced in these decays.

In particular we refer to the E791 study of the $`D3\pi `$ decay  where it is shown how adding an intermediate scalar resonance with floating mass and width in the Monte Carlo program simulating the Dalitz plot densities, allows for an excellent fit to data provided the mass and the width of this scalar resonance are $`m_\sigma 478`$ MeV and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma 324`$ MeV. This resonance is a very good candidate for the $`\sigma `$. To check this hypothesis we adopt the E791 experimental values for its mass and width and using a Constituent Quark Meson Model (CQM) for heavy-light meson decays  we compute the $`D\sigma \pi `$ non-leptonic process via factorization  and taking the coupling of the $`\sigma `$ to the light quarks from the Linear sigma Model . In such a way one is directly assuming that the scalar state needed in the E791 analysis could be the quantum of the $`\sigma `$ field of the Linear sigma Model. According to the CQM model and to factorization, the amplitude describing the $`D\sigma \pi `$ decay can be written as a product of the semileptonic amplitude $`\sigma |A_{(\overline{d}c)}^\mu (q)|D^+`$, where $`A^\mu `$ is the axial quark current, and $`\pi |A_{\mu (\overline{u}d)}(q)|\mathrm{VAC}`$. The former is parameterized by two form factors, $`F_1(q^2)`$ and $`F_0(q^2)`$, connected by the condition $`F_1(0)=F_0(0)`$, while the latter is governed by the pion decay constant $`f_\pi `$. As far as the product of the two above mentioned amplitudes is concerned, only the form factor $`F_0(q^2)`$ comes into the expression of the $`D\sigma \pi `$ amplitude. Moreover we need to estimate it at $`q^2m_\pi ^2`$, that is the physically realized kinematical situation. CQM offers the possibility to compute this form factor through two quark-meson 1-loop diagrams that we call the direct and the polar contributions to $`F_0(q^2)`$. These quark-meson loops are possible since in the CQM one has effective vertices (heavy quark)-(heavy meson)-(light quark) that allow to compute spectator-like diagrams in which usually the external lines represent incoming or outgoing heavy mesons while the internal lines are the constituent light quark and heavy quark propagators.

In Figs. 8 and 9 we show respectively the direct and the polar diagrams for the semileptonic amplitude $`D\sigma `$, the former being characterized by the axial current directly attached to the constituent quark loop, the latter involving an intermediate $`D(1^+)`$ or $`D(0^{})`$ state. These two diagrams are computed with an analogous technique and one finally obtains a determination of the direct and polar form factors $`F_0^{\mathrm{dir},\mathrm{pol}}(q^2)`$. The extrapolation to $`q^2m_\pi ^20`$ is safe for the direct form factor while is not perfectly under control for the polar form factor since the latter is more reliable at the pole $`q^2m_P^2`$, $`m_P`$ being the mass of the intermediate state in Fig. 9. We take into account the uncertainty introduced by this extrapolation procedure and signaled by the fact that we find $`F_0^{\mathrm{pol}}(0)F_1^{\mathrm{pol}}(0)`$ (computing $`F_0`$ from the polar diagram with $`0^{}`$ intermediate polar state and $`F_1`$ from that with intermediate $`1^+`$ state). Our estimate for $`F_0(0)=F_0^{\mathrm{pol}}(0)+F_0^{\mathrm{dir}}(0)=0.59\pm 0.09`$ is in reasonable agreement with an estimate of $`F_0(m_\pi ^2)=0.79\pm 0.15`$ carried out in  using the E791 data analysis and a Breit-Wigner like approximation for the $`\sigma `$.

This computation indicates that the scalar resonance described in the E791 paper can be consistently understood as the $`\sigma `$ of the Linear sigma Model. Of course a calculation such as the one here described calls for alternative calculations and/or explanations of the E791 data for a valuable and useful comparison of point of views on the $`\sigma `$ nature.

## 6 Concluding remarks

An often raised question is: Why are the mass shifts required by unitarity so much more important for the scalars than, say, for the vector mesons? The answer is very simple, and there are two main reasons apart from chiral symmetry constraints:

* The scalar coupling to two pseudoscalars is very much larger than the corresponding coupling for the vectors, both experimentally and theoretically (e.g., spin counting gives 3 for the ratio of the two squared couplings).
* For the scalars the thresholds are S-waves, giving nonlinear square root cusps in the $`\mathrm{\Pi }(s)`$ function, whereas for the vectors the thresholds are P-waves, giving a smooth $`k^3`$ angular momentum and phase space factor.

One could argue that the two states $`f_0(980)`$ and $`a_0(980)`$ are a kind of $`K\overline{K}`$ bound states (c.f. Ref. ), since these have a large component of virtual $`K\overline{K}`$ in their wave functions. However, the dynamics of these states is quite different from that of normal two-hadron bound states. If one wants to consider them as $`K\overline{K}`$ bound states, it is the $`K\overline{K}s\overline{s}K\overline{K}`$ interaction which creates their binding energy, not the hyperfine interaction as in Ref. . Thus, although they may spend most of their time as $`K\overline{K}`$, they owe their existence to the $`s\overline{s}`$ state. Therefore, it is more natural to consider the $`f_0(980)`$ and $`f_0(1300)`$ as two manifestations of the same $`s\overline{s}`$ state.

The wave function of the $`a_0(980)`$ (and $`f_0(980)`$) can be pictured as a relatively small core of $`q\overline{q}`$ of typical $`q\overline{q}`$ meson size (0.6fm), which is surrounded by a much larger standing S-wave of virtual $`K\overline{K}`$. This picture also gives a physical explanation of the narrow width: in order to decay to $`\pi \eta `$, the $`K\overline{K}`$ component must first virtually annihilate near the origin to $`q\overline{q}`$. Then the $`q\overline{q}`$ can decay to $`\pi \eta `$ as an OZI allowed decay.

## Acknowledgements

NAT and ADP acknowledge support from EU-TMR programme, contract CT98-0169. The authors are also grateful to A. Deandrea, R. Gatto and G. Nardulli for useful discussions.


text:
# Inverse cascade in decaying 3D magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

## I Introduction

Within cosmology, astrophysics or geophysics one often needs to deal with electrically conducting plasmas at high kinematic and magnetic Reynolds numbers where magnetic fields are dynamically important. Indeed, much of the turbulence in the interstellar medium is magnetohydrodynamic in nature.

Hydromagnetic turbulence has been explored extensively in connection with the generation of large scale magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies such as planets, stars, accretion discs and galaxies through dynamo theories. Non-driven, freely decaying turbulence may also be of interest in connection with both the physics of the interstellar medium and cosmology. Our interest was inspired by the cosmology of primordial magnetic fields, which is sometimes considered as a possible source for providing the seed for the galactic dynamo .

There have been various related works on decaying MHD turbulence, by authors interested in different contexts . Most directly comparable to our work, Biskamp and Müller  studied the energy decay in incompressible 3D magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in numerical simulations at relatively high Reynolds number, and in a companion letter  studied the scaling properties of the energy power spectrum.

We are here especially interested in the inverse cascade of magnetic helicity whereby magnetic energy is transferred from small to large scale fluctuations. This is important for a primordial magnetic field to reach a large enough scale with sufficient amplitude to be relevant for seeding the galactic dynamo .

It should be noted that due to the conformal invariance of MHD in the radiation era the MHD equations in an expanding universe can be converted into the relativistic MHD equations in flat spacetime by an appropriate scaling of the variables and by using conformal time . The equations of  differ slightly from the ordinary non-relativistic MHD equations. However, in order to facilitate comparison with earlier work, we use the non-relativistic equations.

We perform 3D simulations both with and without magnetic helicity, starting from statistically homogeneous and isotropic random initial conditions, with power spectra suggested by cosmological applications. We find a strong inverse cascade in the helical case, with equivocal evidence for a weak inverse cascade when only helicity fluctuations are present. In the helical case we also find a self-similar power spectrum with an approximately $`k^{2.5}`$ behavior at high $`k`$. We present energy decay laws which are comparable to those found in the incompressible case by Biskamp and Müller , and in the compressible case by Mac Low et al. .

## II The model

We consider the equations for an isothermal compressible gas with a magnetic field, which is governed by the momentum equation, the continuity equation, and the induction equation, written here in the form

$`{\displaystyle \frac{𝐮}{t}}=𝐮\mathbf{}𝐮c_s^2\mathbf{}\mathrm{ln}\rho +{\displaystyle \frac{𝐉\times 𝐁}{\rho }}`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\rho }}\left(^2𝐮+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\mathbf{}\mathbf{}𝐮\right),`$ (2)
$$\frac{\mathrm{ln}\rho }{t}=𝐮\mathbf{}\mathrm{ln}\rho \mathbf{}𝐮,$$
(3)
$$\frac{𝐀}{t}=𝐮\times 𝐁+\eta ^2𝐀,$$
(4)
where $`𝐁=\times 𝐀`$ is the magnetic field in terms of the magnetic vector potential $`𝐀`$, $`𝐮`$ is the velocity, $`𝐉`$ is the current density, $`\rho `$ is the density, $`\mu `$ is the dynamical viscosity, and $`\eta `$ is the magnetic diffusivity.

The code for solving these equations  uses a variable third order Runge-Kutta timestep and sixth order explicit centered derivatives in space. All our runs are performed on a $`120^3`$ grid, and we use periodic boundary conditions, which means that the average plasma density $`\rho _0=\rho _0`$ is conserved during runs. Here $`\rho _0`$ is the value of the initially uniform density, and the brackets denote volume average.

We adopt nondimensional quantities by measuring $`𝐮`$ in units of $`c`$, where $`c`$ is the speed of light, $`𝐤`$ in units of $`k_1`$, where $`k_1`$ is the smallest wavenumber in the box, which has a size of $`L_{\mathrm{BOX}}=2\pi `$, density in units of $`\rho _0=1`$, and $`𝐁`$ is measured in units of $`\sqrt{\mu _0\rho _0}c`$, where $`\mu _0`$ is the magnetic permeability. This is equivalent to putting $`c=k_1=\rho _0=\mu _0=1`$. In the following we will refer to the mean kinematic viscosity $`\nu `$ which we define as $`\nu \mu /\rho _0`$. The sound speed $`c_s`$ takes the value $`c_s=1/\sqrt{3}`$, as appropriate for a relativistic fluid. With $`c=1`$, the unit of time is such that the light crossing time of the box is $`2\pi `$.

Our equations are similar to those for the relativistic gas in the early universe using scaled variables and conformal time for non-relativistic bulk velocities . We expect our results to change little using the true relativistic equations, as our advection velocity is at most only mildly relativistic, and this only at the beginning of the simulation.

## III On the role of the inverse cascade

The magnetic helicity $`H_\mathrm{M}`$ is given by

$$H_\mathrm{M}=𝐀𝐁d^3x$$
(5)
and characterizes the linkage between magnetic field lines. $`H_\mathrm{M}`$ is conserved in the absence of ohmic dissipation, although it is still possible to have local, small scale helicity fluctuations. Helicity plays an important role in dynamo theory , where turbulence is driven.

In many astrophysical and cosmological situations the magnetic Reynolds number $`Re_\mathrm{M}`$ is very large. We define the magnetic Reynolds number as $`Re_\mathrm{M}=Lv/\eta `$, where $`L`$ and $`v`$ are the typical length scale and velocity of the system under consideration and $`\eta `$ is the resistivity. The magnetic Reynolds number is a measure of the relative importance of flux freezing versus resistive diffusion. In a cosmological context this number can be extraordinarily large: causality imposes the weak limit $`Lct`$ and relativity demands $`v<c`$. With conductivities relevant to the era when the electroweak phase transition took place , one can in principle obtain a magnetic Reynolds number of about $`10^{16}`$. This is often taken to mean that the magnetic field is frozen into the plasma, and the scale length of the field increases only with the expansion of the Universe.

However, this simple picture does not necessarily give a full description of the dynamics because the MHD equations, especially at high Reynolds numbers where nonlinear terms are important, exhibit turbulent behavior, which can lead to a redistribution of magnetic energy over different length scales . Energy in a turbulent magnetic field can undergo an inverse cascade and be transferred from high frequency modes to low frequency modes, increasing the overall comoving correlation length . This process is due to the nonlinear terms giving rise to interactions between many different length scales.

We will take the initial primordial power spectrum as given and address the question of how such a primordial spectrum evolves as a consequence of the nonlinear equations of motion.

## IV Initial conditions

Since one of the aims of the present work is to investigate the role of magnetic helicity in the inverse cascade we describe how the initial conditions for our simulations were set up. We chose our initial condition by setting up magnetic fluctuations with an initial power spectrum $`P_\mathrm{M}(k)𝐁_𝐤^{}𝐁_𝐤k^n`$ in Fourier space (and averaged over shells of constant $`k=|𝐤|`$), for low values of the wavenumber $`k`$, using a exponential cutoff $`k_c`$. \[The shell-averaged power spectrum, $`P_\mathrm{M}(k)`$, is not to be confused with the shell-integrated energy spectrum, $`E_\mathrm{M}=4\pi k^2\times \frac{1}{2}P_\mathrm{M}(k)`$, which is shown in the plots below.\]

The magnetic field fluctuations are drawn from a Gaussian random field distribution fully determined by its power spectrum in Fourier space according to the following procedure. For each grid point we use the corresponding wavenumber to select an amplitude from a Gaussian distribution centered on zero and with the width

$$P_\mathrm{M}(k)=P_{\mathrm{M},0}k^n\mathrm{exp}((k/k_c)^4)$$
(6)
where $`k=|𝐤|`$. We then transform the field back into real space to obtain the field at each grid point. This is done independently for each field component.

There is a requirement in cosmology that $`n2`$, which is set by causality demanding that the correlation function of the magnetic field vanishes at large distances, and the fact that the magnetic field is divergence-free . In the simulations presented we chose the slope of the power spectrum to be $`n=2`$. We also chose $`k_c=30`$, unless specified otherwise, which gives a power spectrum peaked at a relatively large value of $`k`$. Biskamp and Müller  started with a spectrum peaked at $`k_c=4`$, which may account for the different slope in the late-time power spectrum which we observe (see Section V A).

Our velocity power spectrum was chosen in a similar way, but with $`n=0`$ corresponding to white noise at large scales (there is no requirement for incompressibility in the early Universe). The initial magnetic energy was taken equal to the kinetic energy, and had the value $`5\times 10^3`$ in all runs, as the primordial field is thought likely to be weak.

In order to introduce a non-zero average magnetic helicity into the system it is useful to represent the vector potential in terms of its projection onto an orthogonal basis formed by $`\widehat{𝐞}_+`$, $`\widehat{𝐞}_{}`$ and $`\widehat{𝐤}`$. The two basis vectors $`\widehat{𝐞}_+`$ and $`\widehat{𝐞}_{}`$ can be chosen to be the unit vectors for circular polarization, right-handed and left-handed respectively. That is $`\widehat{𝐞}_\pm =\widehat{𝐞}_1\pm i\widehat{𝐞}_2`$ where $`\widehat{𝐞}_1`$ and $`\widehat{𝐞}_2`$ are unit vectors orthogonal to each other and to $`𝐤`$. They are given by $`\widehat{𝐞}_1=𝐤\times \widehat{𝐳}/|𝐤\times (𝐤\times \widehat{𝐳})|`$ and $`\widehat{𝐞}_2=𝐤\times (𝐤\times \widehat{𝐳})/|𝐤\times \widehat{𝐳}|`$ respectively. $`\widehat{𝐳}`$ is a reference direction.

Note that since

$$i\widehat{𝐤}\times \widehat{𝐞}_s=sk\widehat{𝐞}_s$$
(7)
where $`s=\pm 1`$, this corresponds to an expansion of the magnetic vector potential into helical modes.

Using these basis vectors it is easily seen that the magnetic energy spectrum is

$$E_\mathrm{M}(k)=2\pi k^2|𝐁_𝐤|^2$$
(8)
where the amplitude of the magnetic field is given by

$$|𝐁_𝐤|^2=(|A_𝐤^+|^2+|A_𝐤^{}|^2)|𝐤|^2$$
(9)
and the expression for the magnetic helicity spectrum $`H_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ is

$$H_\mathrm{M}(k)=4\pi k^2𝐀_𝐤^{}𝐁_𝐤$$
(10)
where

$$𝐀_𝐤^{}𝐁_𝐤=(|A_𝐤^+|^2|A_𝐤^{}|^2)|𝐤|.$$
(11)
The function $`H_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ is a sensitive measure of the correlation between the vector potential and the magnetic field. $`H_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ may, of course, be positive in one part of Fourier space and negative in another part. It is, however, bounded in magnitude by the inequality

$$|H_\mathrm{M}(k)|2k^1E_\mathrm{M}(k).$$
(12)
A field which saturates the above inequality is maximally helical.

The amplitudes $`A_𝐤^\pm `$ can be chosen independently, provided $`A_𝐤^\pm =A_𝐤^\pm `$, which is just the condition that the vector potential be real. Therefore it is possible to adjust the amplitudes $`|A_𝐤^+|`$ and $`|A_𝐤^{}|`$ freely and in so doing obtaining a magnetic field with arbitrary magnetic helicity. With our method we are able to put statistically random but maximally helical fields in our initial conditions. In our runs with initial helicity we take $`H_\mathrm{M}=H_{\mathrm{max}}`$.

Because we evolve our dynamical fields on a discrete lattice we have to be careful when using derivative operations in Fourier space. In general, the wave vector, which is an eigenvalue of the derivative operator, needs to be replaced by some function $`k_{\mathrm{eff}}(k)`$, which is an eigenvalue of the discrete derivative operator on the lattice. In our case we have, for the sixth order explicit centered derivative

$$k_{\mathrm{eff}}(k)=\frac{1}{30}\left[\mathrm{sin}(3k)9\mathrm{sin}(2k)+45\mathrm{sin}(k)\right].$$
(13)
In order to be consistent with the scheme used in the simulation, we use $`k_{\mathrm{eff}}(k)`$ when calculating the initial condition in Fourier space.

## V Results

In all runs the mean kinematic viscosity $`\nu `$ and the resistivity $`\eta `$ were chosen to be equal with values between $`\nu =\eta =5\times 10^45\times 10^5`$. In our simulations we typically obtain Reynolds numbers of the order of $`100200`$. The Reynolds numbers in our simulations are evaluated using the magnetic Taylor microscale which we calculate here as the ratio of the rms magnetic field and the rms current density, $`L_\mathrm{T}=2\pi B_{\mathrm{rms}}/J_{\mathrm{rms}}`$. The $`2\pi `$ factor is here included so that $`L_\mathrm{T}`$ represents the typical wave length (and not the inverse wavenumber) of structures in the current density.

### A Spectral evolution

The inverse magnetic cascade for decaying MHD turbulence is best visualized in terms of magnetic energy spectra $`E_\mathrm{M}(k)`$ because information on nonlinear interaction between different scales is contained in $`E_\mathrm{M}(k)`$. In Fig. 1 we show a run with initial magnetic helicity.

In Fig. 1 we see evidence for a dual energy transfer both toward higher and lower wavenumbers. The inverse cascade is characterized by the transfer of energy from small scale structures in the magnetic field to larger ones. In Fig. 1 this behavior is clearly seen as indicated by the rise in the energy spectrum at small wavenumbers. Some energy is also being transported to smaller scales where the spectrum is decaying due to diffusive effects. We also note that at wavenumbers above the peak $`k_p(t)`$ the spectrum develops a power law shape. This power law has approximately a $`k^{2.5}`$ slope. This differs from the approximately $`k^{5/3}`$ law found by Müller and Biskamp . We suggest that this is due to finite size effects, which affect the spectrum if the initial scale separation between $`k_p`$ and the smallest wavenumber in the box ($`k=1`$) is insufficient, and if the flow is strongly helical so that its spectrum is governed by inverse cascading. In order to check this we have performed a run with larger initial length scale, $`k_c=5`$. In this case the magnetic energy spectrum develop into an approximate $`k^{5/3}`$ law at late times. However, this occurs only after the peak of the spectrum has left the simulation box, i.e. after finite size effects have begun to play a role.

To check if the magnetic field evolution is self-similar one can make the following ansatz for the energy spectrum

$$E_\mathrm{M}(k,t)=\xi (t)^qg_\mathrm{M}(k\xi ).$$
(14)
Here $`\xi `$ is the characteristic length scale of the magnetic field, taken to be the magnetic Taylor microscale defined above, and $`q`$ is a parameter whose value is some real number. We call $`g_\mathrm{M}(k\xi )`$ the magnetic scaling function.

In Fig. 2 we have plotted $`\xi (t)^qE_\mathrm{M}(k,t)`$ versus the scaled variable $`k\xi (t)`$. The value of the parameter $`q`$ in this run is $`q=0.7`$. It is seen that for each different value of time $`t`$, the data collapses onto a single curve given by the scaling function $`g_\mathrm{M}(k\xi )`$, demonstrating the self-similarity of the magnetic field evolution.

We also performed runs in which the magnetic helicity was zero, in the statistical sense. Magnetic helicity was present due to fluctuations, but was of very small amplitude. In these runs no significant inverse cascade was observed. Fig. 3 shows the energy spectrum for such a run with only small magnetic helicity fluctuations present in the initial conditions. It is seen that only a weak inverse cascade is present at the lowest wavenumbers, much smaller than in the helical case. However, that it seem to be present at all is interesting as the effect could become more pronounced for higher Reynolds numbers. It is possible that this effect is due to the magnetic helicity fluctuations even though they were small. One simulation was performed with identically zero initial magnetic helicity fluctuations. In this case random fluctuations develop rapidly and no differences between the two cases, were observed.

### B Energy decay

In Fig. 4 we show the time evolution of the magnetic energy $`E_\mathrm{M}(t)`$ and the kinetic energy $`E_\mathrm{K}(t)`$ for a run with initial helicity and a $`k^4`$ initial energy spectrum slope.

It is seen that the asymptotic decay rate for $`E_\mathrm{M}(t)`$ is approximately $`t^{0.7}`$. The Reynolds number for this run was around $`Re200`$ at late times. In another run with $`Re100`$ the decay rate was seen to be $`t^{0.8}`$, so there seems to be a dependence of the decay rate of the magnetic field on the Reynolds number and perhaps the resulting slope of the spectrum.

The kinetic energy also decays with a power law behavior at late times. In the case of runs with initial helicity the kinetic energy $`E_\mathrm{K}(t)`$ decays with a different, faster rate than $`E_\mathrm{M}(t)`$. The asymptotic decay rate is close to $`t^{1.1}`$. In runs without initial helicity the decay rates of $`E_\mathrm{M}(t)`$ and $`E_\mathrm{K}(t)`$ are approximately the same, close to $`t^{1.1}`$.

In our runs with $`E_\mathrm{K}=E_\mathrm{M}`$ initially, the kinetic energy spectrum shows no evidence of an inverse cascade at any scale. However, when the initial velocity distribution is zero the kinetic spectrum grows on all scales initially and in the low wavenumber region the energy continues to grow even after the high wavenumber modes start to decay.

### C Coherence length evolution

During the course of the simulations the initially small scale structures gain in size. A convenient length scale is the magnetic Taylor microscale $`L_\mathrm{T}`$, which was defined above. This length scale is mostly characteristic of the small scales but even they grow during the course of the simulations.

In Fig. 5 we show the evolution of $`L_\mathrm{T}`$ for a run with initial helicity.

The asymptotic behavior of the length scale is seen to grow approximately as $`L_\mathrm{T}t^{0.5}`$.

In runs with non-helical initial conditions the growth of the magnetic Taylor microscale is slower than in the case of helical initial conditions. In this case the magnetic Taylor microscale grows approximately as $`L_\mathrm{T}t^{0.4}`$.

The discussion so far has mainly been concerned with the evolution of causally generated magnetic fields using an initial $`k^4`$ slope in the magnetic energy spectrum. Now we briefly comment on the other cases we have looked at. For a white noise initial spectrum $`E_\mathrm{M}(k)k^2`$, the evolution is qualitatively and quantitatively similar to the causal case. For helical fields we observe an inverse cascade, while for non-helical fields a much smaller inverse cascade is present only for the lowest modes.

## VI Discussion

Our simulations show the decay rate of magnetic energy for compressible turbulence being sensitive to the initial helicity of the magnetic field configuration. A similar result was found in  in the case of incompressible turbulence. The fact that magnetic helicity is conserved (except for resistive changes), and the magnetic energy decays slower for helical fields, is connected with the observed inverse cascade in which magnetic energy is transported toward larger scales because of nonlinear dynamics.

The decay of kinetic energy does not seem to depend on the initial helicity and its decay rate $`E_K(t)t^{1.1}`$ is consistent with the earlier work of . Note that in the helical case we observe the kinetic energy decaying more rapidly than the magnetic one; this behavior was also found in .

While these results are not directly applicable to the evolution of primordial magnetic fields in the early universe, they do suggest that nonlinear magnetohydrodynamical effects may play an important role in this case.

In any case, it is interesting to compare our results with the work of other authors interested in the decay properties of cosmological magnetic fields . Ideal MHD has a scale invariance which leads to the scaling law

$$E_M(t,k)=k^{12h}\psi (k^{1h}t),$$
(15)
where $`\psi `$ is an unknown function, related to $`g_\mathrm{M}`$. Assuming it is peaked somewhere, and $`h<0`$, the characteristic scale of the field goes as $`L(t)t^{1/(1h)}`$. It is also often assumed that $`\psi (0)`$ exists and is non-zero: thus $`h`$ is determined by the initial power spectrum. Hence for a magnetic power spectrum of index $`n`$, $`h=(n+3)/2`$ and

$$L(t)t^{2/(n+5)}.$$
(16)
This law can also be recovered by assuming that the characteristic time scale for the decay of turbulence on a scale $`l`$ is the eddy turnover time $`\tau _l=l/v_l`$, where $`v_ll^{(n+3)}`$ is the velocity averaged on a scale $`l`$ . If the characteristic scale of the field is that scale which is just decaying, then $`\tau _Lt`$, and we again find Eq. (16). One should note that these arguments ignore helicity conservation.

We recall that our non-helical runs had $`n=2`$ for the magnetic power spectrum and $`n=0`$ for the velocity power spectrum. The observed growth law for the magnetic Taylor microscale, $`t^{0.4}`$, is not consistent with the predicted power law for $`n=2`$, although it does square with the growth law for $`n=0`$, and it is possible that the growth in the magnetic field length scale is being controlled by the velocity field. Simulations at higher Reynolds numbers seem required to resolve this issue.

One would expect on integrating the helicity power spectrum that $`H_ML_IE_M`$, where $`L_I`$ is the integral scale. We would expect that $`L_IL_T`$, and hence, if magnetic helicity is conserved,

$$E_ML_T^1.$$
(17)
However, magnetic helicity is not conserved exactly: we observe a decrease in $`H_\mathrm{M}`$ by a factor of about 2 in a run with viscosity $`\nu =5\times 10^5`$. Indeed, with $`L_Tt^{0.5}`$ we find a somewhat steeper relation: $`E_Mt^{0.7}L_T^{1.4}`$.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Son’s numerical simulations of decaying turbulence , performed in the Eddy-Damped Quasi-Normal Markovian (EDQNM) approximation, show some evidence of a power law developing at high $`k`$, the slope being close to $`k^{2.5}`$, although there was no net helicity present, and no inverse cascade. Furthermore, Field and Carroll , again using the EDQNM approximation, found that there were self-similar solutions with $`E_Mt^{2/3}L_T^1`$.

## VII Conclusions

We have shown that for an isothermal and compressible magnetized turbulent fluid, when undergoing a process of free decay, a substantial inverse cascade is present for helical magnetic field configurations, which transfer energy from smaller scale magnetic fluctuation to larger scale ones. For non-helical magnetic fields only a weak inverse cascade was observed on the largest scales.

The energy spectrum of the magnetic field shows evidence for a self-similar evolution with a development of a power law of roughly $`k^{2.5}`$ beyond the peak. Decay laws for both the kinematic and magnetic energy were found. The kinetic energy decay was approximately $`t^{1.1}`$ for both helical and non-helical magnetic fields. The decay of the magnetic field energy was found to be strongly dependent on the the initial helicity, decaying roughly as $`t^{0.7}`$ and $`t^{1.1}`$ for helical and non-helical initial conditions respectively. For the helical case, the magnetic energy decay rate showed a dependence on the Reynolds number, with a slower decay rate for larger Reynolds numbers.

We also observed power law behavior in the characteristic length scale of the magnetic field, defined as the Taylor microscale $`L_T`$. In the helical case $`L_Tt^{0.5}`$, whereas for non-helical fields the growth was somewhat slower, $`L_Tt^{0.4}`$, and we ascribe the faster growth rate to the presence of the inverse cascade in the helical case.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was conducted on the Cray T3E and SGI Origin platforms using COSMOS Consortium facilities, funded by HEFCE, PPARC and SGI. We also acknowledge computing support from the Sussex High Performance Computing Initiative.


text:
# A LUMINOSITY SPECTROMETER FOR THE ZEUS EXPERIMENT AT HERA

## 1 Introduction

ZEUS is one of the two colliding beam detectors operating at the HERA electron-proton collider at DESY, Germany. In September 2000, HERA completed an eight year running period which provided measurements of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) physics cross sections over a kinematic regime that spans several orders of magnitude of the DIS parameters, Bjorken $`x`$ and photon virtuality $`Q^2`$ . For the determination of the cross section $`\sigma `$ the accurate knowledge of the luminosity $`L`$ is required since $`\sigma =R/L`$ where $`R`$ is the corrected measured rate of a particular DIS process. In ZEUS experiment the most accurate luminosity measurement achieved is 1.1%.

Currently HERA is undergoing a luminosity upgrade and is scheduled to start the new physics run in August 2001. The goal is to increase the peak luminosity from $`L1.5\times 10^{31}cm^2s^1`$ before the upgrade, to $`L7.5\times 10^{31}cm^2s^1`$ after the upgrade. The required accuracy in the luminosity measurement after the upgrade is $`12\%`$. The current ZEUS luminosity monitoring system has to be modified in order to meet the required accuracy because of two new major problems after the HERA luminosity upgrade:

1. Significant increase in the synchrotron radiation (SR).
2. Increase in the number of overlayed events (pile-up) for the physics process ($`epep\gamma `$) used to measure luminosity, to $`1.31.5`$ per HERA bunch crossing.

The luminosity spectrometer presented in these proceedings is a new method of measuring luminosity at ZEUS which solves the problem of SR and pile-up, meeting the requirements in the luminosity accuracy imposed by the ZEUS physics goals.

## 2 The new ZEUS luminosity monitor

ZEUS has been succesfully measuring luminosity using the Bethe-Heitler (B-H) $`epep\gamma `$ brehmsstrahlung process which is known theoretically within $`0.5\%`$. The photon is radiated with a very small angle with respect to the e-p axis ($`1mrad`$) and in the past, the rate of these photons was measured by a calorimeter positioned in the HERA tunnel 107 meters away from the interaction point. After the luminosity upgrade, $`300500W`$ of SR is expected to hit the photon calorimeter at peak luminosity. Consequently one has to either shield and upgrade the calorimeter or find some other method of measuring the luminosity. ZEUS decided to do both. The proposed and approved new luminosity system for ZEUS is shown in figure 1.

In this figure the photon rate is measured by two independent methods. First the upgraded old method; a combination of two filters and two aerogel cerenkov counters is placed in front of the photon calorimeter in order to block the SR and correct for the photon energy loss in the filter. The calorimeter energy resolution depends on the accuracy of the energy loss correction performed. The photon pile-up problem though is not solved and certain corrections have to be performed in order to reduce the systematic error due to pile-up. The second and new method of measuring luminosity is the luminosity spectrometer which solves both the SR and pile-up problems by placing two small existing Tungsten scintillator calorimeters away from the SR plane. The photon rate is measured indirectly by counting $`e^+e^{}`$ coincidences of photons converted in the photon pipe exit window (about 10%). The spectrometer has small acceptance in coincidences $`3\%`$ and no acceptance in low energy photons, so that the probability of a pile-up photon coincidence is small. The major contribution in the total systematic error of this method is due to the error in the knowledge of the acceptance.

## 3 The Luminosity Spectrometer

The luminosity spectrometer consists of two well understood small ($`12cm\times 12cm\times 24X_0`$) Tungsten scintillator calorimeters which provide the energy and position of the incident electron, and of a dipole magnet to separate the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair. The calorimeter (former ZEUS Beam Pipe Calorimeter BPC) characteristics are listed in table 1.

The spectrometer acceptance $`A`$ is given by the formula:

$$A=A_{geom}A_{conv}A_z$$
(1)
where $`A_{geom}`$ is the acceptance of the photon beam exit window (it is of order 90%), $`A_{conv}`$ is the conversion rate (for the specific exit window this is $`A_{conv}10\%`$), and $`A_z`$ describes the $`z=E_e/E_\gamma `$ dependent part of the acceptance. The spectrometer $`A_z`$ part of the acceptance as a function of the converted photon energy is shown in figure 2. The $`e^+e^{}`$ coincidence acceptance is relatively uniform in the 18-23 GeV photon energy window. All of these accepted coincidences are coming from symmetric conversions i.e. they have $`z=0.5\pm 0.2`$.

In the spectrometer method the acceptance is actually measured using a new small Tungsten scintillating fiber calorimeter, the 6-meter tagger (6mt) placed 5.3 meters away from the IP. The 6mt has 100% acceptance in brehmsstrahlung electrons in an energy window where the spectrometer acceptance is maximized (figure 3). A coincidence between the 6mt and the spectrometer should give a total energy equal to the electron beam energy: $`E_e+E_\gamma =27.5GeV`$.

The expected coincidence rates are high thus providing an online statistically significant luminosity measurement. The converted B-H photon Gaussian profile on the exit window can be reconstructed within a few seconds. The $`e^+e^{}`$ origin Y coordinate $`Y_{hit}`$ is approximated as the energy-weighted position of the two electrons as measured in the BPC’s:

$$Y_{hit}=\frac{E^+BPC^++Y^{}BPC^{}}{E^++E^{}}$$
(2)
where $`E^+,BPC^+`$ and $`E^{},BPC^{}`$ the energies and positions of the $`e^+`$ and $`e^{}`$ as obtained from the BPC’s. The resolution obtained is around 5 mm with a 2 mm accuracy in the mean of a gaussian assumed profile. The photon profile will provide to HERA beam monitoring information.

A list of the most significant systematic errors of the spectrometer method is given in table 2 .

The counting, thermal $`\gamma `$ background and proton-beam background errors are currently expected to be relatively low so they are not taken into account. The theoretical calculation of the cross section error was taken as $`0.5\%`$. The total systematic error is calculated by summing all errors in quadrature. The total systematic error is expected to be below $`1.4\%`$.

## 4 Conclusions

The luminosity spectrometer method for measuring luminosity in the ZEUS experiment at HERA was presented. ZEUS is measuring luminosity by counting photons produced by the Bethe-Heitler $`epep\gamma `$ process. A 10% of these photons are converted in a thin exit window. The spectrometer measures the converted photon rate by counting $`e^+,e^{}`$ coincidences in two small well understood calorimeters. The calorimeters are away from the SR plane and pile-up is a secondary effect. The spectrometer acceptance is measured using an independent device, the 6m e-tagger. The tagger has almost 100% acceptance in B-H electrons in an energy window where the spectrometer acceptance is maximized. The electron and photon energy sum equals the electron beam energy ($`27.5GeV`$). Detailed calculations show that the luminosity spectrometer can measure luminosity with an accuracy better than 1.4% .