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# The Red-Sequence Cluster Survey

## 1. Introduction

####

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe, and as such are markedly important in cosmology and studies of galaxy evolution. Much of the work on clusters done to date at low to intermediate redshifts (typically limited to $`0.8`$ or so) would benefit greatly from extension to higher redshifts. However, the cluster samples required for such studies do not exist. The Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) is designed to rectify this problem. The survey is designed to find galaxy clusters in large numbers out to $`z1.4`$, spread over a wide range of RA and DEC in order to facilitate follow-up.

####

The first observations for the RCS were taken in May 1999, at the CFHT, and at the time of writing we have acquired $`60\%`$ of the 100 square degrees of planned survey data. Data acquisition will be completed by the end of 2001. The survey data consist of 22 survey patches (ten $`2.1\times 2.3`$ deg2 patches from the CFHT, and twelve $`1.8\times 2.4`$ deg2 patches from the CTIO 4m telescope) imaged in the $`R_C`$ and $`z^{}`$ filters to $`5\sigma `$ point source depths of 25.2 and 23.6 mags respectively. This depth has been chosen to facilitate finding $`z1`$ galaxy clusters, which are located in the survey data using an algorithm based on detecting the early-type galaxies in the clusters cores (Gladders & Yee 2000a). The RCS has been described in more detail elsewhere (Gladders & Yee 2000b), and we will not provide a repetition here. The interested reader is referred to the survey homepage, http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/$``$gladders/RCS/, which contains a description of the survey strategy, goals, and other relevant data and publications.

####

The purpose of this paper, rather, is to provide some of the details of the survey design strategy, as these are germane to the topic of this meeting. In addition, we provide some examples of new results coming from the RCS, including a preliminary indication of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$, an example of $`z1`$ galaxy clusters, and some of the secondary science related to the identification of individual early-type galaxies using photometric techniques over an unprecedented volume to $`z1`$.

## 2. RCS Survey Strategy

####

The primary science driver of the RCS is to locate a large sample of high redshift galaxy clusters, suitable both for direct investigations with the survey data and detailed follow-up work. The need for detailed follow-up at these redshifts is mandated by the paucity of known high-redshift galaxy clusters. At a redshift of $`0.8`$ and beyond, we know almost nothing about such structures. We thus chose to complete the survey in a large number of (relatively) small patches spread over a wide range in RA and DEC. This basic design means that the RCS sample will be observable from $`all`$ major observatories at $`all`$ times of year.

####

In considering the survey design, it was also recognized that the primary difficulty in producing such a survey is not the telescope time (the entire survey requires only 25 clear nights, split between two telescopes) but rather the ability of the survey team to handle the data flow. Consider, for example, that the CFHT half of the survey consists of $`150`$ CFH12K images (in two filters), or a total of 150$`\times `$12$`\times `$2=3600 2k$`\times `$4k CCD final science images! This large data flow along with the relatively short exposure times led to the decision to acquire all the data without dithering. This greatly simplifies the construction of final science images, at the expense of some minor loss in area due to inter-chip gaps and cosmetic defects. Cosmic rays, the removal of which is often cited as a reason for dithering, are accounted for in the photometry pipeline. The use of undithered images means that the entire survey can be treated as an assemblage of individual 2k$`\times `$4k images, for which the astrometric and photometric calibration can be performed solely in the final catalog assembly stage.

####

The survey data reduction pipeline works as follows. Individual chips from the mosaic imagers are pre-processed (de-biassed, flat-fielded, de-fringed etc.) using standard techniques. Object finding, photometry and star-galaxy seperation are then done using an updated version of PPP (Yee 1991). For each chip, a preliminary catalog is produced from the object list with no visual checking. A final catalog results once the object finding has been visually checked, an unavoidably time-consuming process which removes the few defects which are impossible to filter out automatically. The catalogs are then stitched together into a patch catalog using astrometric information from the USNO-A2.0 Catalog and photometric standards from Landolt (1992) and Thuan & Gunn (1976). The RCS will eventually be put onto the Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometric system (Fukugita et al. 1996); this calibration awaits analysis of data now in hand, and publication of the SDSS photometric calibration. Internal cross-checks of the photometry using 30′′ overlap regions between each pointing in a patch shows that the preliminary calibration has an internal accuracy of better than 0.05 mags.

## 3. Preliminary Science Results

The results shown below are drawn primarily from the first $`10`$ deg2 of RCS data. The various analyses should be considered preliminary, but are indicative of the overall significance of the survey.

### 3.1. Cosmology

The redshift evolution of the mass spectrum of galaxy clusters, $`N(M,z)`$, provides a strong measure of the cosmological parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and $`\sigma _8`$. Analysis of the RCS in this context will be made, at a later stage, using richness as a measure of mass (Yee & Lopez-Cruz 1999) and photometric redshifts. As a qualitative illustration of the cosmology indicated by the RCS, we have used the RCS selection functions (Gladders & Yee 2000a,c) to integrate out the mass dependence in $`N(M,z)`$ and compared the measure of $`N(z)`$ to predictions from two typical cosmologies. Predictions of $`N(M,z)`$ are made from the standard Press-Schechter formalism, and multiplied by the RCS selection functions (expressed in mass and redshift, assuming a cluster with a typical luminosity function shape, galaxy mixture and cluster shape, concentration and size). These selection functions tail off to zero probability at a lower mass limit which becomes progressively more massive at higher redshift and hence limit the contribution to $`N(M,z)`$ from lower-mass clusters and groups. The result of these computations, as well as the actual counts from a portion of the RCS, are shown in Figure 1. Clearly, and not suprisingly, the low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and high $`\sigma _8`$ model is preferred.

### 3.2. High Redshift Clusters

Example high redshift clusters from the RCS have been shown elsewhere (e.g., Gladders & Yee 2000b), and we will not repeat those illustrations here. Instead, Figure 2 shows one of a new set of clusters found in an analysis of $`20`$ deg2 of preliminary RCS catalogs. The photometric redshift is in the range $`z>1.3`$, and this is the single richest high redshift cluster so far discovered in the RCS.

### 3.3. The 2-Point Correlation Function of Early-Type Galaxies

####

Over the redshift range in which the RCS filter pair straddles the 4000Å break ($`0.4<z<1.2`$), the bright red edge of the color-magnitude diagram for all galaxies must be dominated by early-types. Moreover, the color is a direct measure of the redshift. This is because, at a given color, all lower redshift galaxies appear bluer, all higher redshift early-type galaxies appear redder, and all later-type higher redshift galaxies (which may have the same apparent color) appear fainter. Thus, at the bright red edge, at a given color, the sample is dominated almost exclusively by early-type galaxies at a certain redshift. It is thus possible to isolate a sample of luminous early-type galaxies simply by making a magnitude-color cut which selects the bright red edge of the color-magnitude diagram.

####

We have tested this idea by performing such cuts in the CNOC2 (Yee et al. 2000) database, which provides both redshifts and spectral-energy distributions (a surrogate for morphological classification). Using $`V`$ and $`I_C`$ data from CNOC2, and a passively evolving $`z=3`$ starburst model to predict elliptical galaxy colors and apparent magnitudes, we find that a cut to a depth of $`M^{}+1`$ provides an early-type galaxy sample which is minimally contaminated ($`15\%`$), and for which individual redshifts are estimated to an accuracy of $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=0.05`$.

####

Using this technique, we have isolated a sample of $`10,000`$ early-type galaxies from the RCS in the redshift range $`0.4<z<1.2`$, from an area of $`6`$ deg2. The sample was split into redshift bins, and the angular two-point correlation function of each bin was computed. Several example correlation functions are shown in Figure 3.

The measured angular correlation was then inverted via the Limber transform (e.g., see Giavalisco et al. 1998) to deduce the physical correlation length. Figure 4 shows these derived correlation lengths, in addition to those recently reported from the CNOC2 redshift survey by Shepherd et al. (2000). These measurements, as well as tests of the robustness of the inversion, are presented in detail in a paper now in preparation (Gladders & Yee 2000d). Note in Figure 4 that, according to this analysis, the correlation length for luminous early-type galaxies is unchanged out to at least redshift one.

## References

Fukugita, M., Ichikawa, T., Gunn, J.E., Doi, M., Shimasaku, K., & Schneider, D.P. 1996, AJ, 111, 1748

Giavalisco, M., Steidel, C., Adelberger, K.L., Dickinson, M.E., Pettinin, M., & Kellog, M. 1998, ApJ, 503, 543

Gladders, M.D., & Yee, H.K.C. 2000a, AJ, 120, 2148

Gladders, M.D., & Yee, H.K.C. 2000b, to be published in ASP proceedings of Cosmic Evolution and Galaxy Formation: Structure, Interactions and Feedback, see astro-ph0002340

Gladders, M.D., & Yee, H.K.C. 2000c, to be submitted to AJ

Gladders, M.D., & Yee, H.K.C. 2000d, to be submitted to ApJ

Landolt, A.U. 1992, AJ, 104, 372

Shepherd, C.W. et al. 2000, submitted to ApJ

Thuan, T.X., & Gunn, J.E. 1976, PASP, 88, 543

Yee, H.K.C, & López-Cruz, O. 1999, AJ, 117, 1985

Yee, H.K.C., Morris, S.L., Lin, H., Carlberg, R.G., Hall, P.B., Sawicki, M., Patton, D.R., Wirth, G.D., Ellingson, E., & Shepherd, C.W. 2000, ApJS, 129, 475


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# TAUOLA the library for 𝜏 lepton decay, and KKMC/KORALB/KORALZ/… status report

## 1 Introduction

The TAUOLA package  for the simulation of $`\tau `$ lepton decays and PHOTOS  for the simulation of radiative corrections in decay, are computing projects with a rather long history. Written and maintained by well defined authors, they nonetheless migrated into a wide range of applications where they became ingredients of complicated simulation chains. As a consequence, a large number of different versions are presently in use. From the algorithmic point of view, they often differ only in a few small details, but incorporate a substantial amount of specific results from the distinct $`\tau `$-lepton measurements. Such versions were mainly maintained (and will remain so maintained) by the experiments taking precision data on $`\tau `$ leptons. On the other hand, many new applications were developed recently, often requiring program versions which differ because of interfaces to other packages (eg. the format of the event record had to be adjusted, the organization of the input parameters changed, etc.).

In the last two years, substantial progress for the simulation of $`\tau `$-pair production was achieved. Control of the systematic errors, for the theoretical predictions, at the few permille level was achieved (or, for some centre-fo-mass system energies, is relatively easy to achieve in the near future) for the centre of mass energy from the $`\tau `$-pair production threshold up to the energies of the future linear colliders.

## 2 Versions of TAUOLA Monte Carlo

In ref.  the setup for constructing specific versions of TAUOLA and PHOTOS from the single set of files was prepared and documented. The system was prepared for the software librarians and advanced users interested in updating the packages for the multipurpose environment. The idea was to create a repository which allows one to keep all main options of TAUOLA developed for different purposes in a relatively compact form, without duplications of semi-identical parts. The repository was set to produce the standard FORTRAN files which can be later handled, exactly the same way, as the published versions of the packages.

Motivations for versioning:

1. PHOTOS: Versions of the FORTRAN code are necessary because of the different versions of the HEPEVT common block being in use in the HEP libraries (single/double precision, dimensionality of storage matrices).
2. TAUOLA: Versions of the FORTRAN code are motivated by: (A) different versions of initialization of physics parameters; (B) interfaces to different Monte Carlo generators for production of $`\tau `$-lepton(s); and (C) different versions of the HEPEVT common block:

* (A) Different physics initializations:
    (1) As published in ;
    (2) As initialized by the ALEPH collaboration  (it is suggested to use this version only with the help of the collaboration’s advice);
    (3) As initialized by the CLEO collaboration  (see the printout of this version for details);
    (4) Further coding of some individual decay modes.
    * (B) Different interfaces with MC generators:
    (1) Old demo program as in the published version ;
    (2) Interface to KKMC ;
    (3) New universal interface using HEPEVT common block.
    * (C) Different versions of the HEPEVT common block.
3. TAUOLA and PHOTOS: different versions of random number generators.
4. TAUOLA and PHOTOS: makefiles with different compiler flags.

Standard tools are used in the discussed setup: cpp the C-language pre-compiler: its if, elif and include commands, as well as UNIX logical links and cat command. The aim is to provide full backward compatibility at the level of the FORTRAN source with the published versions, or other versions being in use at present. It is expected that one will use the setup to create her/his version of the TAUOLA and PHOTOS libraries and interfaces (subdirectories tauola/ and photos/) consisting of the plain FORTRAN code. The original subdirectories of the setup can then be erased or stored for future use.

The following directories are created

once the actions of the setup are completed:

1. photos/: Standard directory with the FORTRAN code of the PHOTOS library and its demo.
2. tauola/: Standard directory with the FORTRAN code of the TAUOLA library, its demos and example outputs.

1. tauola/demo-standalone: Demo program for TAUOLA executed in a standalone mode.
    2. tauola/demo-jetset: Demo program for TAUOLA executed with universal interface to physics event generators based on the HEPEVT common block. In this demo HEPEVT is filled from the JETSET74  Monte Carlo generator.
    3. tauola/demo-KK-face: Interface to the KK Monte Carlo .

### 2.1 Options for PHOTOS Monte Carlo

The different options of PHOTOS which can be created111 Executing single command: make xxx-all. correspond solely to the different versions of the HEPEVT common block. The possible options are:

1. KK-all – for KK Monte Carlo
2. 2kD-all – dimension 2000 double precision
3. 4kD-all – dimension 4000 double precision
4. 2kR-all – dimension 2000 single precision
5. 10kD-all – dimension 10000 double precision

### 2.2 Options for TAUOLA Monte Carlo

Basic options for the physics initializations, activated with the single command make, are: cpc; cleo; aleph. The three possible versions of the created tauola directory correspond to form-factors and branching ratios defined respectively as in: (cpc) the published version of TAUOLA; (aleph) the conventions as adopted by the ALEPH collaboration, (cleo) the conventions as adopted by the CLEO collaboration.

$``$ Additional parametrizations for form-factors, which can be useful in some applications, are placed in the separate directory. At present, the code used in refs.  and  is stored there.

$``$ It is often necessary to change some of the TAUOLA input parameters like branching ratios, the mass of the $`\tau `$-lepton, etc. It is convenient to have it done once for all applications i.e. demo-KK-face, demo-jetset and demo-standalone. The special arrangements to do it, in a consistent way, are provided. For details of the initialization routines, which are semi-identical in the three cases, see refs. . Note that special care from the physics point of view is needed. Often, input parameters are inter-related with the actual choice of form factors. The changes should be thus performed simultaneously.

## 3 Universal interface based on HEPEVT common block

The universal interface of TAUOLA for “any” $`\tau `$ production generator is provided. It uses as an input, the HEPEVT common block and operates on its content only. As a demonstration example the interface is combined with the JETSET generator, however it should work in the same manner with the PYTHIA222It was already checked to be the case., HERWIG or ISAJET generators as well.

The interface work in the following way:

* The $`\tau `$-lepton should be forced to be stable in the $`\tau `$ production generator.
* The content of the HEPEVT common block is searched for all $`\tau `$ leptons and neutrinos first.
* It is checked if there are $`\tau `$-flavour pairs (two $`\tau `$-leptons or $`\tau `$-lepton and $`\tau `$-neutrino) originating from the same mother.
* The decays of the $`\tau `$-flavour pairs are performed with TAUOLA. Longitudinal spin effects are generated in the case of the $`\tau `$ produced from decay of: $`W\tau \nu `$, $`Z/\gamma \tau \tau `$, the neutral Higgs boson $`H\tau \tau `$, and the charged Higgs boson $`H^\pm \tau \nu `$. Parallel or anti-parallel spin configurations are generated, before calling on the $`\tau `$ decay, and then the decays of 100 % polarized $`\tau `$’s are executed.
* In the case of the Higgs boson (for the spin correlations to be generated) the identifier of the $`\tau `$ mother must be that of the Higgs.
* In case of the $`W`$ and $`Z/\gamma `$ it is not necessary. If from the same mother as that of the $`\tau `$ there is produced also a $`\nu _\tau `$, the $`W`$ is reconstructed by the interface as the sum of the two. Simmilarily, $`Z/\gamma `$ is reconstructed if from the same mother another $`\tau `$ is produced.
* Let us note that the calculation of the $`\tau `$ polarization created from the $`Z`$ and/or virtual $`\gamma `$ (as function of the direction) represents a rather non-trivial extension. Dedicated study of the production matrix elements of the host generator is necessary. A separate paper  is devoted to this point; let us show however some preliminary results in the next section. At this moment the distribution version of the package, available from the www-page, does not include this possibility. The updated version can be obtained from the authors upon individual requests only.
* Photon radiation in decay is performed with PHOTOS.

## 4 Tau polarization from the $`Z/\gamma `$ mechanism

The best way of calculating spin state of any final state is with the help of the matrix element and the rigorous density matrix treatment. This is however not always possible or necessary. Often, like in the case of the production and decay of particles in the ultra-relativistic limit a simplified approach can be sufficient. Such an approach was developed for KORALZ Monte Carlo program  and its limitations were studied with the help of matrix element calculations of order $`\alpha `$ . In  we study the question of whether a similar approach can not be generalized, and the approximate spin correlation calculated from the information stored in the HEPEVT common block by the typical $`\tau `$ production program:

The approximation consists of calculating/approximating variables and later using the spin correlation of the elementary $`22`$ body process $`e^+e^{}(q\overline{q})\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$, buried inside multi-body production process. Let us stress that such a procedure can never be fully controlled as its uncertainties and even functioning depends on the way the particular production program fills the HEPEVT common block. It will be always responsibility of the user to check if in the particular case the approximation can be useful. Nonetheless our aim is not to replace the matrix element calculations, but rather to provide a method of calculating/estimating spin effects in cases when otherwise spin effects would not be taken care of, at all. Needless to say such an approach is limited for the spin treatment to the approximation not better than the leading-log.

The principle of calculating kinematical variables is simple. The 4-momenta of the $`22`$ body process have to be found. The 4-momenta of the outcoming $`\tau `$’s are used directly. Initial state momenta are constructed from the incoming and outcoming momenta of the particles (or fields) accompanying production of the $`Z/\gamma `$ state333The $`Z/\gamma `$ state does not need to be explicitly coded in the HEPEVT common block. Note that if available, information from the history part of the event, where the 4-momenta of gluons quarks etc. are stored, will be used.. We group them accordingly to fermion number flow, and ambiguous additional particles are grouped (summed) into effective quarks to minimize their virtualities. Such an approach is consistent in the case of emission of photons or gluons with the leading log approximation.

In the following, let us give a few examples of tests we have performed so far on the elements of the calculation, see ref  for more details. In fig. 1 we plot the $`\tau `$ polarization in $`22`$ body scattering as a function of the scattering angle respectively for $`e^{}e^+`$, $`u\overline{u}`$, $`d\overline{d}`$ initial states. In fig. 2 we use the most spin sensitive decay mode $`\tau \nu \pi `$ and we show the $`\pi `$ energy spectrum (in the $`Z`$ rest-frame), and energy-energy correlations between $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$ (also in the $`Z`$ rest-frame). Due to the $`Z`$ interaction the $`\tau `$ leptons are polarized; there is thus a shift toward lower energies in the $`\pi `$ energy spectrum. From the second part of the plot, we see that the configurations where both $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$ have energies bigger or smaller than average are more populous than the mixed configurations, exhibiting the vector nature of the $`Z/\gamma \tau \tau `$ vertex. On the contrary, in the case of the production from the Higgs meson, the opposite would be true, and the mixed fast-slow (slow-fast) configurations would be more common, the energy spectrum of the $`\pi `$ would be flat.

## 5 The $`\tau `$ pair production in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions

Until 1999 the two widely used programs for the $`\tau `$-pair production in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions were KORALB  and KORALZ . The first of the two programs was used mainly at lower energies where its full treatment of spin and $`\tau `$-mass effects was more important than its limited, first-order only, treatment of radiative corrections. KORALZ was more appropriate for the higher energy zone, especially on the peak of the $`Z`$ resonance, where the ultra-relativistic approximation of the spin effects was sufficient, effects of the higher order QED corrections were important, and, thanks to the $`Z`$ life-time, the interference of initial and final state bremsstrahlung was strongly suppressed. This second assumption turned out not to withstand the numerical requirements of the LEP2 physics see eg. . Also, it is not enough for requirements of the future high energy Linear Colliders requirements such as TESLA .

In the recent years, a new Monte Carlo program, based on exponentiation performed at the spin amplitude level, was developed . Thanks to the applied technique, it can provide predictions at the precision level of a few permille, for centre-of-mass energies from $`\tau `$ production threshold up to the energies of the linear collider range. So far, precision tests were performed for the centre-of-mass energies corresponding to LEP2. For other energies, points such as matching virtual pair corrections with simulations of 4-fermion final states , photonic vacuum polarization effects at low energies, Coulomb interactions, mass terms in some virtual corrections, etc. have to be discussed before precision at the permille level can be granted. For more details and comparisons between KKMC, KORALZ and KORALB, see table 1 and ref. .

## 6 Summary and future possibilities

The status of the programs for the production of $`\tau `$ leptons was reviewed. The high precision Monte Carlo program KKMC for $`\tau `$-pair production in $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions was presented. The general purpose interface, with the partial treatment of spin effects, of TAUOLA to any production program was also reviewed. At present, in its full content, it is available from the authors upon individual request only.

Distinct versions of the TAUOLA library for $`\tau `$ lepton decay, and of PHOTOS for radiative corrections in decays, are now in use. The versions differ either due to physics initialization or requirements of the interfaces. We have presented the system for creating the required version of the PHOTOS and TAUOLA packages from the single master copies. The master copies are kept in relatively compact and clear form, without code duplications and with the help of the cpp pre-compiler.

We expect that this organization, on top of the practical goals of the every day applications, may serve also as a step to develop the packages (without loss of their physics content) into new internal architectures. Some additional experience was collected in  in context of OO C++. We have found that the language translation for the given program version is relatively easy. On the contrary, the question of project continuity into further upgrades motivated by the physics needs to be thought over carefully. Matching the programming styles, e.g. of the OO C++ experts, with the strategies of testing the numerical correctness of consecutive versions is a rather crucial issue which has to be addressed. Tools and methods embodied in FORTRAN survive such translations with difficulty.

The successful strategy will probably require simultaneous fluency, at a certain step of the project development, in FORTRAN, OO languages and the physics content of the project, by all involved persons. Platform independent tools for mixing code in FORTRAN and OO languages will be of great help.

Acknowledgements

Author is grateful to ALEPH, CLEO, DELPHI and OPAL collaborations for providing their appropriate versions of the whole or parts of TAUOLA initialization. Useful discussions and suggestions from B. Bloch, S. Jadach, J. H. Kühn, B.F.L Ward and A. Weinstein are acknowledged, as well as contributions from P. Golonka, T. Pierzchala, E. Richter-Was and M. Worek. The warm hospitality of the Zurich ETH L3 group at the final stage of the project completion is also acknowledged.


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# Observational Estimates for the Mass-Loss Rates of 𝛼 Centauri and Proxima Centauri Using HST Ly𝛼 SpectraBased on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Coronal winds analogous to the solar wind have proven to be very difficult to detect around cool main sequence stars like the Sun. This is not surprising given the low density of the solar wind, corresponding to a mass-loss rate of only about $`\dot{M}_{}=2\times 10^{14}`$ M yr-1, and the fact that the wind is fully ionized. These properties mean that such winds cannot be detected spectroscopically like the massive winds of hot stars and evolved cool stars.

Ionized winds would be expected to produce radio emission, and searches for this emission have provided upper limits for the mass-loss rates of many solar-like stars. However, these upper limits are typically 3 or more orders of magnitude higher than the solar mass-loss rate (Brown et al., 1990; Drake, Simon, & Brown, 1993; Lim, White, & Slee, 1996b; Gaidos, Güdel, & Blake, 2000). There have been some claims of high mass-loss rates detected for a few very active stars using observations at millimeter wavelengths and studies of UV absorption features (Mullan et al., 1989, 1992). However, these interpretations of the data remain highly controversial (Lim, White, & Cully, 1996a; Lim & White, 1996). There are theoretical arguments for large mass-loss rates from active stars (Coleman & Worden, 1976; Mullan et al., 1992), but Lim & White (1996) argue that massive ionized winds would completely absorb the coronal radio emission that is commonly observed from these stars.

Fortunately, a new method for indirectly detecting winds around cool main sequence stars has recently become available, using spectroscopic observations of stellar Ly$`\alpha `$ lines made by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Models of the interaction between the solar wind and local interstellar medium (LISM) predict that charge exchange processes should create a population of heated neutral hydrogen gas throughout the heliosphere (Baranov & Malama, 1995; Zank et al., 1996; Zank, 1999b; Müller, Zank, & Lipatov, 2000a). This material produces a detectable absorption signature in the Ly$`\alpha `$ lines of many nearby stars (Gayley et al., 1997; Izmodenov, Lallement, & Malama, 1999; Wood, Müller, & Zank, 2000b). However, not only is heliospheric absorption detected in the data, but analogous “astrospheric” absorption from material surrounding the star is also observed in some cases.

Astrospheric Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption has by now been detected for seven nearby coronal stars, although some of the detections are tentative (Wood, Alexander, & Linsky, 1996; Dring et al., 1997; Gayley et al., 1997; Wood & Linsky, 1998; Wood, Linsky, & Zank, 2000a). This absorption can only be present if a stellar wind is present, and if the star is surrounded by ISM material that is at least partially neutral. A larger stellar mass loss rate will result in a larger astrosphere and more Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption. Müller, Zank, & Wood (2000b) used this fact to estimate mass-loss rates for two stars ($`ϵ`$ Ind and $`\lambda `$ And) based on the amount of observed astrospheric absorption. In this paper, we perform a similar analysis to estimate the mass-loss rate of the $`\alpha `$ Cen binary system (G2 V+K0 V), which has also been observed to have detectable astrospheric Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption (Linsky & Wood, 1996; Gayley et al., 1997).

In addition, we present new HST Ly$`\alpha `$ observations of $`\alpha `$ Cen’s distant companion star Proxima Cen (M5.5 Ve), which can be compared directly with the $`\alpha `$ Cen data to search for differences in astrospheric absorption that would indicate differences in stellar wind properties. Unlike the two $`\alpha `$ Cen stars, which will share the same astrosphere since their orbit has a semimajor axis of only 24 AU (Pourbaix, Neuforge-Verheecke, & Noels, 1999), Proxima Cen will have an astrosphere all to itself. Proxima Cen is about 12,000 AU from $`\alpha `$ Cen, based on its $`2.2^{}`$ separation on the sky and its closer distance of 1.295 pc compared with 1.347 pc for $`\alpha `$ Cen (Perryman et al., 1997). Thus, while the LISM and heliospheric absorption should be identical toward $`\alpha `$ Cen and Proxima Cen, the astrospheric absorption should be different.

## 2 COMPARING THE LY$`\alpha `$ LINES OF $`\alpha `$ CEN AND PROXIMA CEN

Proxima Cen was observed on 2000 May 8 with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument on HST (Woodgate et al., 1998). We observed the $`11501720`$ Å spectral range through the $`0.2^{\prime \prime }\times 0.2^{\prime \prime }`$ aperture with the moderate resolution E140M grating. The total exposure time of the E140M spectrum was 20,580 s. The data were reduced in IDL using the STIS team’s CALSTIS software package (Lindler, 1999). The reduction includes assignment of wavelengths using calibration spectra obtained during the course of the observations, and a correction for scattered light is performed using the `ECHELLE_SCAT` routine in the CALSTIS package. The resulting Ly$`\alpha `$ spectrum is displayed in Figure 1. The stellar emission is contaminated by narrow, weak deuterium (D I) absorption and very broad, saturated hydrogen (H I) absorption. A geocoronal emission feature is apparent at 1215.69 Å, which is removed from the data by fitting a Gaussian to the feature and then subtracting the Gaussian (see Fig. 1).

Both members of the $`\alpha `$ Cen binary system were observed in 1995 May with the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) instrument that preceded STIS on board HST. The observations included high resolution spectra of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line, which were analyzed by Linsky & Wood (1996). The $`\alpha `$ Cen B spectrum is shown in Figure 2, where we have normalized the fluxes using the assumed stellar emission profile. Since a precise LISM H I column density could not be derived for the $`\alpha `$ Cen line of sight, Linsky & Wood (1996) actually presented two possible stellar profiles. We use the one that results in a derived deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio of $`\mathrm{D}/\mathrm{H}=1.5\times 10^5`$, the value that Linsky (1998) finds to be consistent with very nearby ISM material along many lines of sight. The LISM H I column density derived from the $`\alpha `$ Cen B data using this profile is $`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{N}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}}=17.60`$.

We use this column density to estimate the stellar emission line profile for Proxima Cen (see Fig. 1) using the following procedure. By assuming this column density, we can compute a wavelength dependent opacity profile for the H I absorption, $`\tau _\lambda `$. The stellar profile outside the saturated core of the H I absorption is then derived simply by extrapolating upwards from the data, multiplying the spectrum by $`\mathrm{exp}(\tau _\lambda )`$. We then interpolate the profile over the saturated H I absorption core.

The green dashed line in Figure 2 shows the LISM absorption toward $`\alpha `$ Cen, based on a fit in which the H I absorption is forced to have a central velocity and Doppler broadening parameter consistent with D I and other LISM absorption lines (Linsky & Wood, 1996). Excess H I absorption is apparent on both sides of the LISM absorption. Gayley et al. (1997) used hydrodynamic models of the heliosphere to show that heliospheric H I could account for the excess absorption on the red side of the line, but not the blue-side excess. The redshift of the heliospheric absorption relative to the LISM is due to the deceleration of interstellar material as it crosses the bow shock. The blue-side excess is presumably due to analogous “astrospheric” material surrounding the star, which is seen as blueshifted rather than redshifted because we are observing the material from outside the astrosphere rather than inside (Gayley et al., 1997).

The observed Proxima Cen fluxes are normalized to the stellar profile shown in Figure 1, and the result is plotted in Figure 2 for comparison with the $`\alpha `$ Cen B data. We shifted the Proxima Cen spectrum by 2 km s-1 to force its D I absorption feature to line up with that of the $`\alpha `$ Cen spectrum. The Proxima Cen data have a lower spectral resolution than the $`\alpha `$ Cen B data, explaining why the D I line is broader and not as deep. The amount of observed D I absorption toward the two stars is essentially identical, as one would expect.

The Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption profiles of Proxima Cen and $`\alpha `$ Cen agree very well on the red side of the line, implying that the heliospheric absorption responsible for the aforementioned red-side excess is identical toward both stars. We would not expect to see any spatial variations in heliospheric absorption between two stars so nearby in the sky, but the data were taken five years apart and the heliosphere could have conceivably changed in the interim. The 1995 $`\alpha `$ Cen data were taken close to the minimum of the Sun’s activity cycle, while the 2000 Proxima Cen data were taken close to solar maximum. Apparently, the structure of the outer heliosphere does not vary significantly during the solar activity cycle. This result is consistent with the theoretical predictions of Zank (1999a), whose time-dependent heliospheric models predict little variability for global H I properties in the outer heliosphere despite the fact that the solar wind ram pressure near Earth varies by about a factor of two during the solar activity cycle (Lazarus & McNutt, 1990; Richardson, 1997).

Unlike the red side of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line, the Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption profiles of $`\alpha `$ Cen and Proxima Cen do not agree well on the blue side of the line. The blue side of the Proxima Cen Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption agrees well with the estimated ISM absorption, meaning there is no detectable astrospheric absorption toward Proxima Cen, in contrast to $`\alpha `$ Cen. Note that the blue-side excess absorption seen toward $`\alpha `$ Cen and other stars has been interpreted as being due to astrospheres primarily because the properties of the absorption are consistent with theoretical expectations for astrospheric absorption. The difference in absorption between Proxima Cen and $`\alpha `$ Cen seen in Figure 2 represents the strongest purely empirical evidence that the blue-side excess absorption observed toward $`\alpha `$ Cen is indeed due to circumstellar material surrounding $`\alpha `$ Cen, which does not extend as far away as Proxima Cen. This provides particularly strong evidence for the astrospheric interpretation of the excess absorption. Differences in stellar wind properties must be responsible for the difference in astrospheric absorption. In particular, the significantly lower astrospheric H I column density of Proxima Cen suggests a much smaller astrosphere, which in turn suggests that Proxima Cen’s wind is much weaker than that of $`\alpha `$ Cen.

## 3 ESTIMATING MASS-LOSS RATES

In an attempt to estimate mass-loss rates for $`\alpha `$ Cen and Proxima Cen, we compute a series of hydrodynamic models of the astrospheres assuming different loss rates (see Fig. 3). These models are extrapolated from a heliospheric model that correctly predicts the amount of heliospheric absorption for various lines of sight (see Wood et al., 2000b). We assume the same input parameters for the astrospheric models, with the following exceptions. Instead of an ISM temperature of 8000 K appropriate for the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC) around the Sun, we assume a temperature of 5650 K for the ISM surrounding Alpha/Proxima Cen, since these stars are not in the LIC, but are in the cooler “G cloud” (Linsky & Wood, 1996; Wood et al., 2000a). Based on the G cloud flow vector (Lallement & Bertin, 1992) and the known stellar space motion of the Alpha/Proxima Cen system, we find that the stars see a slightly slower ISM wind speed than the Sun: 25 km s-1 compared with 26 km s-1 for the Sun. This slight difference in ISM flow velocity is also taken into account.

The “baseline” heliospheric model we are extrapolating from assumes a proton density for the wind of $`n(H^+)=5.0`$ cm-3 at 1 AU from the Sun. In our astrospheric models, we experiment with different stellar mass-loss rates by changing $`n(H^+)`$. Figure 3 shows the H I density distribution for four models with mass loss rates of $`0.2\dot{M}_{}`$, $`0.5\dot{M}_{}`$, $`1.0\dot{M}_{}`$, and $`2.0\dot{M}_{}`$, illustrating how the size of the astrosphere increases with increasing mass loss. The H I density enhancement shown in red is the “hydrogen wall” between the bow shock and “astropause” (analogous to the “heliopause”), which will be responsible for most of the astrospheric absorption for the line of sight toward the Sun, $`79^{}`$ from the upwind direction.

The models provide tracings of H I temperature, density, and projected flow velocity along the line of sight toward the Sun from which we can compute the astrospheric Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption predicted by each model. The predicted absorption of the four models is shown in Figure 2. The $`2.0\dot{M}_{}`$ model reproduces the $`\alpha `$ Cen data well. This is a very sensible result, because the two $`\alpha `$ Cen stars individually have coronae with solar-like temperatures and X-ray luminosities (Hünsch et al., 1999) but collectively have about twice the surface area of the Sun, assuming radii of 1.20 R and 0.90 R for $`\alpha `$ Cen A and $`\alpha `$ Cen B, respectively (Pourbaix et al., 1999). The $`0.2\dot{M}_{}`$ model is the only model that does not produce too much absorption to be consistent with the Proxima Cen data, and therefore represents an upper limit for Proxima Cen’s mass-loss rate ($`\dot{M}0.2\dot{M}_{}`$). Despite this low value Proxima Cen’s mass loss per unit surface area could still be as much as 8 times larger than the Sun, since Proxima Cen’s radius of 0.16 R (Panagi & Mathioudakis, 1993) implies a surface area about 40 times smaller than that of the Sun.

We should point out that our mass-loss estimates may contain sizable systematic errors since our technique of applying solar wind models with rescaled densities to stellar winds relies on significant assumptions about the applicability of these models to other stars. For example, we assume that the stellar winds have the same velocity as the solar wind at 1 AU ($`v=400`$ km s-1). To first order, the size of an astrosphere and the column density of astrospheric absorption should scale with the square root of the wind ram pressure, $`P_{wind}`$ (Wood & Linsky, 1998). Since $`P_{wind}\dot{M}v`$, our mass loss estimates will vary inversely with the assumed wind speed. For the $`\alpha `$ Cen stars, a wind velocity equivalent to that of the Sun is clearly the best assumption, since these stars and their coronae (where the winds are accelerated) are very solar-like. However, Proxima Cen’s corona has a significantly higher temperature and X-ray surface flux than the Sun (Hünsch et al., 1999), so its wind velocity is more likely to be different.

The low mass-loss rate that we find for Proxima Cen is not surprising in the sense that Proxima Cen is much smaller and dimmer than the $`\alpha `$ Cen stars and the Sun. However, like many M dwarf stars it has a surprisingly active corona that produces large flares, and it has a quiescent X-ray luminosity about equal to that of the Sun and $`\alpha `$ Cen (Hünsch et al., 1999). Since the winds of cool main sequence stars are accelerated in the corona, one might therefore expect that Proxima Cen’s wind might be as strong or stronger than that of $`\alpha `$ Cen and the Sun. Indeed, it has been proposed that the large flares on active M dwarfs like Proxima Cen should induce very large mass loss rates (Coleman & Worden, 1976; Mullan et al., 1992). Our observations suggest that this is not the case. However, general conclusions about the mass-loss rates of active M dwarfs should await observations of additional active M stars, especially since Proxima Cen’s activity level is quite modest compared to many M dwarfs.

Support for this work was provided by NASA grants NAG5-9041 and S-56500-D to the University of Colorado.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Most of the recent studies of low-$`x`$ dynamics relevant for HERA concentrated on the analysis of the inclusive structure function, i.e. on the total cross section for $`\gamma ^{}p`$ scattering  and on diffraction . Because at low $`x`$ photon-gluon fusion is the dominant underlying mechanism, such studies open the possibility of better understanding the so-called unintegrated gluon distributions, the quantity first introduced in .

The jet studies are known to be a good tool to test perturbative QCD effects. It was pointed out already some time ago that dijet production in DIS could be a method to study the onset of BFKL dynamics both in photo-  and electroproduction . Unfortunately in practice, due to unavoidable cuts on transverse momenta of jets, one samples rather large values of the gluon longitudinal momentum fraction $`x_g`$, where it is not completely clear what is the underlying dynamics and in particular what unintegrated gluon distribution should be used. Up to now mostly real photoproduction data were published by ZEUS and H1 collaborations . Recently the H1 collaboration at HERA made available some new results for jet production . However, in all these analyses only rather inclusive observables have been discussed.

In the present note we discuss the jet production beyond the familiar collinear approximation and focus on how more exclusive and more differential jet production observables probe the unintegrated gluon distribution. Based on the unintegrated gluon distributions found recently  from the phenomenological analysis of $`\sigma _{\gamma ^{}p}^{tot}`$ we explore dijet azimuthal decorrelations. In Ref. such decorrelation effects were discussed in a perturbative BFKL approach, and as a consequence only decorrelation effects at some distance from the back-to-back configuration could be analyzed. The extension to the whole azimuthal phase space requires understanding the differential gluon densities in non-perturbative soft region. The modelling of the nonperturbative soft gluon exchange as done in Ref. allows us to extend the region of the azimuthal angle between jets closer to $`\pi `$ and to explore the onset of the hard regime.

## 2 The formalism

Here we collect basic formulae used throughout the present note.

At the parton level the total cross section for quark-antiquark dijet production $`\gamma ^{}+pj_1+j_2+X`$ (see Fig.1) can be written in a compact way as:

$$\sigma _{T/L}^{\gamma ^{}pj_1j_2}(x,Q^2)=𝑑\varphi _{p_{1,,min}^2}𝑑p_{1,}^2_{p_{2,,min}^2}𝑑p_{2,}^2\frac{f_g(x_g,\kappa ^2)}{\kappa ^4}\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_{T/L}(x,Q^2,\stackrel{}{p}_{1,},\stackrel{}{p}_{2,}),$$
(1)
where $`x`$ and $`Q^2`$ are standard kinematical variables. In the formula above $`f_g(x_g,\kappa ^2)`$ is the unintegrated gluon distribution, which will be specified somewhat later, and $`\stackrel{}{\kappa }`$ is the transverse momentum of the exchanged gluon. It is related to the quark/antiquark jet transverse momenta $`\stackrel{}{p}_{1,}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{p}_{2,}`$ as:

$$\stackrel{}{p}_{2,}=\stackrel{}{\kappa }\stackrel{}{p}_{1,},\kappa ^2=p_{1,}^2+p_{2,}^2+2p_{1,}p_{2,}cos\varphi .$$
(2)
We have written explicitly lower cuts on the transverse momenta of jets in (1). The indices $`T`$ and $`L`$ refer to transverse and longitudinal photons, respectively. The auxilliary quantities introduced in (1)

$`\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_T(x,Q^2,\stackrel{}{p}_{1,},\stackrel{}{p}_{2,})={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _{em}}{2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑z\underset{f}{}e_f^2\alpha _s(l^2)}`$
$`\left\{[z^2+(1z)^2]\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{p}_{1,}}{p_{1,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{p}_{2,}}{p_{2,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}}\right|^2+m_f^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{p_{1,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p_{2,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}}\right)^2\right\}`$ (3)
for transverse photons and

$$\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_L(x,Q^2,\stackrel{}{p}_{1,},\stackrel{}{p}_{2,})=\frac{\alpha _{em}}{2}𝑑z\underset{f}{}e_f^2\alpha _s(l^2)\left\{4Q^2z^2(1z)^2\left(\frac{1}{p_{1,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}\frac{1}{p_{2,}^2+\epsilon _f^2}\right)^2\right\}$$
(4)
for longitudinal photons. Above we introduced

$$\epsilon _f^2=z(1z)Q^2+m_f^2.$$
(5)
The unintegrated gluon distribution $`f_g`$ is evaluated at

$$x_g=\frac{M_t^2+Q^2}{W^2+Q^2},$$
(6)
where

$$M_t^2=\frac{p_{1,}^2+m_f^2}{z}+\frac{p_{2,}^2+m_f^2}{1z}$$
(7)
is flavour dependent. It is obvious then that at large transverse momenta of jets one samples larger values of $`x_g`$ than in the case of total cross section. The scale of the running coupling constant in (3) and (4) is taken to be $`l^2=\mathrm{max}(\kappa ^2,\epsilon _f^2+p_j^2)`$, where for small $`l^2`$ the coupling constant is frozen as in .

The gluon momentum $`\kappa `$ is responsible for the jets being not exactly back-to-back in contrast to the conventional collinear approximation to leading order. In the following we limit ourselves to the region of $`x_\gamma `$ 1, where the jets are dominantly produced from the quark box on the very top of the gluonic ladder. In doing so we restrict ourselves to leading order parton calculation and omit jets from the ladder.

The principal issue is how the isolated single jet and dijet production samples the unintegrated gluon distribution and when the azimuthal correlation function will be dominated by hard perturbative gluons. Although in the present note we address this question based on the unintegrated gluon distribution $`f_g(x_g,\kappa ^2)`$ from a recent analysis in  where it was modelled phenomenologically to describe structure function data at low Bjorken-$`x`$ and the total cross section for real $`\gamma +p`$ scattering, we believe that our principal conclusions are to a great extent model-independent. The following simple two-component Ansatz was adopted in

$$f_g(x_g,\kappa ^2)=_{soft}(\kappa ^2)\frac{\kappa _s^2}{\kappa ^2+\kappa _s^2}+_{hard}(x_g,\kappa ^2)\frac{\kappa ^2}{\kappa ^2+\kappa _h^2}.$$
(8)
The parameters $`\kappa _s`$ and $`\kappa _h`$ determine the scale of the transition from the hard to soft gluon region .

The soft nonperturbative component was chosen in the Born form

$$_{soft}(\kappa ^2)=a_{soft}C_FN_c\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }V(\kappa ^2)\frac{\kappa ^4}{(\kappa ^2+\mu _{soft}^2)^2}.$$
(9)
The vertex function $`V(\kappa ^2)`$ is expressed by the single-body isoscalar nucleon form factor

$$V(\kappa ^2)1F(3\kappa ^2).$$
(10)
The standard dipole parametrization for $`F`$ was used.

The hard component was taken in the form

$$_{hard}(x_g,\kappa ^2)=^{(B)}(\kappa ^2)\frac{_{pt}(x_g,Q_c^2)}{^{(B)}(Q_c^2)}\theta (Q_c^2\kappa ^2)+_{pt}(x_g,\kappa ^2)\theta (\kappa ^2Q_c^2),$$
(11)
where $`^{(B)}`$ is of the Born form (see ). The not yet specified $`_{pt}`$ is calculated from known conventional DGLAP parametrizations as

$$_{pt}(x_g,\kappa ^2)=\frac{G_{DGLAP}(x_g,\kappa ^2)}{\mathrm{log}\kappa ^2}.$$
(12)
The results presented in this note were obtained based on a recent MRST98 LO parametrization . As an example in Fig.2 we show the resulting unintegrated gluon distribution as a function of $`\kappa ^2`$ for a few different values of $`x_g`$. The $`x_g`$-independent soft component is shown separately by the dashed line. The model in  is limited to small $`x_g`$ 0.1 only, and should not be applied for $`x_g>`$ 0.03. For other technical details we refer the reader to .

The two-component structure (8) of the unintegrated gluon distribution as displayed in Fig.2 leads to interesting consequences for the dijet azimuthal correlations which will be studied in the following section. The hard/soft decomposition of the gluon distribution found in  is sufficiently generic to believe that our major conclusions on the onset of the hard regime are not strongly model dependent and are relevant also to BFKL driven models.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Dijets

In the present note we shall discuss mainly the effect of azimuthal jet-jet correlations and leave the effect of other correlations for a separate analysis. We shall limit ourselves to study the region of small Bjorken-$`x`$ only. The cross section for the dijet production strongly depends on cuts imposed on kinematical variables. In order to better demonstrate the effect of coexistence of perturbative and nonperturbative effects in the following analysis we shall restrict ourselves to cuts on kinematical variables in the so-called hadronic center of mass (HCM) sytem ($`\gamma ^{}`$-proton center of mass). In the present purposefully simplified analysis we impose the cuts on the parton level and avoid extra cuts in the laboratory frame.

In Fig.3, we present $`d\sigma (\gamma ^{}pj_1j_2)/d\varphi `$ as a function of HCM azimuthal angle between jets for two different values of photon virtuality $`Q^2`$ = 4 GeV2 (left panel) and $`Q^2`$ = 16 GeV2 (right panel) for a series of Bjorken $`x`$. In this calculation, we have restricted the transverse momenta of jets to $`p_{1,}^{HCM},p_{2,}^{HCM}>p_{t,cut}=`$ 4 GeV and summed over light flavours $`u`$, $`d`$ and $`s`$. While in the case of the total cross section the effective mass $`m_f`$ of the quark is responsible for confinement effects, in the dijet production the cross section is in practice independent of the explicit value of $`m_f`$. One can observe a strong dependence of the azimuthal angle decorrelation pattern on Bjorken $`x`$. A closer inspection of both panels simultaneously leads to the conclusion that averaging over a broad range of $`Q^2`$ would to a large extent destroy the effect as it involves automatically averaging over a certain range of $`x_g`$, the most crucial variable for the effect to be observed. A significant part of the effect is due to the interplay of the hard(perturbative) and soft(nonperturbative) components. This is explained better in Fig.4 where the correlation function is decomposed into hard and soft components for two rather different values of Bjorken-$`x`$: $`x`$ = 10-4 (left panel) and $`x`$ = 5 $``$ 10-3 (right panel). In this calculation the virtuality of the photon was fixed to $`Q^2`$ = 8 GeV2. While at $`x`$ = 10-4 the hard component dominates, at larger $`x`$ the soft component becomes equally important. In the region of small $`\varphi `$ and small $`x`$ our results are similar to those from perturbative BFKL dynamics , which is rather a general feature of the $`k_{}`$-factorization approach.

The onset of the hard regime can be best seen in the lower part of Fig.4 where we present averaged value of the gluon transverse momentum $`\kappa `$ (solid line) as sampled at different azimuthal angle $`\varphi `$ between jets. For comparison we also show average transverse momentum of the harder ($`p_{,hard}=\mathrm{max}(p_{1,},p_{2,})`$, long-dashed line) and softer ($`p_{,soft}=\mathrm{min}(p_{1,},p_{2,})`$, short-dashed line) quark(antiquark) jet. The region of small azimuthal angle $`\varphi `$ (same-side jets) samples on average rather large values of gluon transverse momentum $`\kappa `$ where the perturbative component dominates. Here on average gluon transverse momentum is larger than the transverse momentum of each of the two jets. At $`\varphi `$ = 0, $`<\kappa >=<p_{,hard}>+<p_{,soft}>`$. In our case ($`x_\gamma `$ 1) the momentum of the same-side jets $`\stackrel{}{\kappa }`$ is compensated by the transverse momentum of hadrons (minijets) which carry a very small fraction of photon’s momentum. Close to $`\varphi =\pi `$ the average $`\kappa `$ is rather small, smaller than the transverse momentum of each of the jets. In this region, models for the soft component can be tested.

In the case of symmetric cut in a sharp (in $`\kappa ^2`$) transition between soft and hard region, to a crude approximation, the hard region can be estimated as $`\mathrm{cos}\varphi >1+\kappa _0^2/2p_{t,cut}^2`$, where $`\kappa _0`$ is the transition value in the gluon transverse momentum. In the model in , the border is not as well defined and the transition region depends in addition on $`x_g`$. We wish to mention that in general the region of larger $`\varphi `$ ($`|\varphi \pi |`$ 0) is model dependent. In our model, the cross section depends on the treatment of the infra-red region i.e. the formula used for $`\alpha _s`$ and the choice of its argument. We hope that studying this region experimentally could provide new information about genuine nonperturbative effects which are rather poorly known up to now.

The cut on the transverse momentum is usually a tool to define jets. Studying the dependence of the result on the cut may however provide some new information. As an example in Fig.5 we show the dependence of $`d\sigma /d\varphi `$ on the cut on the HCM transverse momenta of jets for fixed value of $`x`$ = 10-3 and $`Q^2`$ = 8 GeV2 and in Fig.6 the corresponding decomposition into soft and hard components for $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 2 GeV (left panel) and $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 6 GeV (right panel). The small $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 2 GeV may be slightly academic but is chosen here to better emphasize the effect. In both cases we observe the dominance of the hard component at small $`\varphi `$ and the soft component near to the back-to-back configuration. In the traditional collinear approximation such a separation of soft and hard component is not possible as they are both lumped together into the integrated gluon density. In the collinear approximation in first order in $`\alpha _s`$, jets are produced back-to-back and only higher order corrections lead to an azimuthal decorrelation. By comparing the two panels in Fig.4 one can observe stronger back-to-back correlations for larger $`p_{t,cut}`$. This is due to the fact that the larger $`p_t`$ region is unavoidably related to larger $`x_g`$, that is to the region of $`f_g`$ in which the soft component is more prominent.

The experimental identification of the effects discussed here requires good statistics in the data sample. Up to now, in practice , one averages rather over broader range of Bjorken $`x`$, photon virtuality and jet transverse momenta. Most of the effects discussed in the present note are then washed out and the information about the small-$`x`$ dynamics is to a large extent lost. It seems rather difficult at present to study the whole correlation function $`w(\varphi )`$ for fixed values of $`x`$ and $`Q^2`$. We suggest that at present, instead of analyzing $`w(\varphi )`$ itself, one could study the ratio:

$$S(x,Q^2)\frac{{\displaystyle _0^{\pi /2}}w(\varphi ;x,Q^2,p_{t,cut})𝑑\varphi }{{\displaystyle _0^\pi }w(\varphi ;x,Q^2,p_{t,cut})𝑑\varphi },$$
(13)
i.e. the percentage of the same-side dijets of all dijets, as a function of Bjorken-$`x`$, photon virtuality $`Q^2`$ and/or the cuts on transverse momenta of jets $`p_{t,cut}`$. In Table 1, we show as an example the predictions of the two-component model  for $`S`$ as a function of Bjorken-$`x`$ and $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 4 GeV. Here the virtuality of the photon was fixed at $`Q^2`$ = 8 GeV2. As seen from the table, the two-component model predicts a significant dependence of the same-side jet fraction $`S`$ on Bjorken-$`x`$ and the value of the lower cut-off on jet transverse momenta in HCM. The larger Bjorken $`x`$, the lower $`S`$ and the smaller $`p_{t,cut}`$, the larger $`S`$. In fact these two effects are at least partially correlated. It should be noticed that the larger $`p_{t,cut}`$ means automatically the larger $`x_g`$ (see Eq.(6)). These strong effects predicted here should be easy to observe experimentally. However, a more detailed comparison with experimental data should include the separation of jets in rapidity/azimuthal angle space 111This is more important for the same-side jets. and/or hadronization effects. The higher-order QCD corrections are expected to increase $`S`$, especially for larger values of $`x`$ and/or larger cuts on transverse momenta, i.e. in the region where it is small.

In the model in Ref. the total (real) photoproduction cross section at energies $`W<`$ 100 GeV is dominated by the soft component. Only at very high, not yet available, energies the hard component would dominate. At ”intermediate” energy available at HERA, the two components coexist and their fraction is a smooth function of initial $`\gamma p`$ energy. In principle, the same stays true for the dijet production and has interesting consequences for the jet azimuthal correlations. In Fig.7, we show the azimuthal correlation for a few different values of $`\gamma p`$ center of mass energy $`W`$ = 50, 100, 200, 500 GeV. We observe strongly rising decorrelation of jets when going from fixed target energies to energies relevant at THERA . Similarly as in the jet electroproduction, the key variable here is the gluon momentum fraction, which is $`<x_g>`$ 5$``$10-2 at W = 50 GeV and $`<x_g>`$ 10-3 at the THERA energy of 500 GeV. We get $`S`$ 0.5% at W = 50 GeV. At the THERA energy of 500 GeV we predict about 3.5% of the same side jets. The rise of the decorrelation with the photon energy in real photoproduction can be traced back to larger values of $`\kappa `$ sampled by the same-side jets than by the opposite-side jets. We note that the rise of the decorrelation with increasing energy obtained here based on the model from , is rather typical of $`k_{}`$-factorization approach in general. Therefore the experimental confirmation of this effect would be a valuable test of this kind of approach.

### 3.2 Isolated jets in the photon hemisphere

There is another interesting prediction of the two-component model which we wish to discuss briefly now. Up to now we have discussed only cases when both jets have transverse momenta larger than a certain cut value $`p_{t,cut}`$. In principle there are also cases (events) with one hard ($`p_{}>p_{t,cut}`$) jet and one soft ($`p_{}<p_{t,cut}`$) ”jet”. In this single jet event $`x_\gamma <`$ 1, because the transverse momentum of the single quark(antiquark) jet is compensated by a transverse momentum of a much softer gluon. 222The dijets quark-gluon and antiquark-gluon can be separated out by cuts on $`x_\gamma `$ and/or cuts on rapidities. In the following we shall call such cases ”one jet” events for simplicity, as opposed to the previous case called here ”two jet” events for brevity. Let us compare the rate of such ”one jet” events to the previously discussed cases of two hard jets in photoproduction. As an example in Fig.8 we compare the cross section for the two cases with the lower cut on transverse momentum $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 4 GeV. Firstly, we observe that the cross section for both cases are of similar order. Furthermore we observe a significantly stronger rise of the cross section for the ”one jet” case than for the ”two jet” case which may be a bit surprising at least at first look. This different energy dependence is related to different $`x_g`$ and $`\kappa `$ sampled in both cases. For example for W = 100 GeV and $`p_{t,cut}`$ = 4 GeV in the ”one jet” case $`<x_g>`$ 0.01 is substantially lower than in the ”two jet” case $`<x_g>`$ 0.02. Both numbers are, however, substantially larger than average $`<x_g>`$ 0.005 sampled in the case of total cross section. The effect of $`\kappa `$ is more complicated as averaged $`\kappa `$ strongly depends on $`\varphi `$ for the ”two jet” case. The interplay of the two effects ($`x_g`$ and $`\kappa `$) causes the unintegrated gluon distributions to be sampled differently in the ”one jet” and ”two jet” cases. This, at least potentially, allows the possibility of a further nontrivial test of unintegrated gluon distributions. It would be valuable to compare the present predictions with the predictions of standard (collinear) NLO approach (see for instance ).

## 4 Conclusions

Based on the recent model determination  of the unintegrated gluon distribution in the proton we have explored the impact of the soft gluon component and the onset of the perturbative regime on the dijet azimuthal correlations. We have predicted a strong dependence of the azimuthal correlation pattern on Bjorken $`x`$, photon virtuality and the cut on the jet transverse momenta. The effects in the electroproduction could be verified now at HERA, provided a careful differential ($`x`$ ,$`Q^2`$, transverse momentum cut) studies of the dijets are made.

In real photoproduction we have predicted the rise of the same-side jet rate with the photon energy. It would be important to compare the results of the model discussed here with the result of the standard collinear approach to understand the potential of such a dijet study to shed more light on the low-$`x`$ dynamics which has been studied up to now in rather inclusive processes. Finally, we have found that the study of the energy dependence of the ”one jet” (defined in the text) cross section would be a new test of unintegrated gluon distributions.

Acknowledgments One of us (A.S.) is indebted to Maciej Przybycień for a discussion of the ZEUS experimental results, Anna Staśto for an exchange of information about some details of their calculation  and Igor Ivanov for assistance in using his routine for $`f_g`$ . This work was partially supported by the German-Polish DLR exchange program, grant number POL-028-98.


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# The Digital Sky Project: Prototyping Virtual Observatory Technologies

## 1. Introduction

The Digital Sky project is an NPACI (National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure, an NSF Computer Science initiative) sponsored program to study the role of advanced computational systems (both processor and network oriented) in the distribution of data from multiple large area, digital sky surveys. This project was originally conceived by Tom Prince, the principal investigator for the project, in 1996 as way to leverage high performance computing to tackle some of the incipient problems involved in federating and mining the large amounts of Astronomical information that were beginning to become available. The project was initially funded in 1997, and has since grown to include a large number of participants from Caltech Astronomy, the Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research, the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the San Diego Center for Supercomputing.

One of the fundamental tenets of the Digital Sky project is the requirement not to develop another analysis tool (which is the last thing needed by the Astronomical community). Instead, we conceived that the project would be able to optimally achieve its goals by serving as a technology demonstrator. Initially, we focused on identifying the set of requirements to create a prototype virtual observatory (i.e., the “Digital Sky”). Afterwards, we researched the core problem of astronomical data federation. Currently, we are exploring the concept of image data mining.

Overall, our approach is designed to employ a minimalist design, that focuses more on integrating existing components in cooperation with community experts (see Figure 1 for an overview). Any knowledge or applications developed in the course of this project have been disseminated to the appropriate experts within the community who are in interested in identifying and attempting to solve the complex problems that arise in federating disparate, large area, digital sky surveys.

## 2. Towards a Virtual Observatory

The first major task we tackled was the identification of the types of issues which needed to be successfully addressed in order to seamlessly federate highly distributed datasets in order to facilitate knowledge discovery (see also, Szalay & Brunner 1998). This highly desirable end-result is now more commonly known as a virtual observatory. Formally, we split our list of identified issues into two categories: basic and advanced, based on the difficulty of successfully implementing the appropriate service.

The basic services listed below often are provided as part of a commercial database system, which most of the major archive centers already utilize.

In order to be fully operable within a virtual observatory framework, a dataset must be able to support, at a minimum, basic query functionality, such as spatial range queries.

In order to develop general purpose tools, as well as simplify the learning process, archives need to implement a standardized format for describing both the data contained within an archive and the services which the archive can perform.

A virtual observatory must be able to support the cross-identification of billions of sources in both a static and dynamic state over thousands of square degrees in a multi-wavelength domain (Radio to X-Ray).

Image data should be able to be selected based on the actual metadata of the images, for example, spatial location, observational date, etc.

Archived image data should be accessible to an end user, even if it is merely served from an FTP site.

Within a virtual observatory, a query could be distributed to multiple archives. As a result certain optimizations can be performed depending on the status of the underlying network topology (e.g., network weather) in order to balance the resulting server load. Optimistically, a learning mechanism can be applied to analyze queries, and using the accumulated knowledge gained from past observations (i.e., artificial intelligence), queries can be rearranged in order to provide further performance enhancements.

The following set of services are more advanced, requiring extra effort, beyond the more common basic services, to be fully implemented. These services often require post-processing of extracted data in order to be performed, and can, therefore, make use of specialized hardware.

Numerous, complex queries will swamp traditional archive topologies. Instead, a virtual observatory should be implemented to minimize network traffic by utilizing advanced computational systems to perform complex analysis (e.g., correlation analysis) on the server side as opposed to the client. This solution can efficiently capitalize on parallel I/O and computing resources, as well as replicated and persistent datasets, in order to simplify the implementation of the following advanced services.

Often, a user will want to post-process an image data request in order to obtain a scientifically useful result. In order to implement this feature, basic image processing operations need to be available on the image server, or close to it, to perform, at a minimum, basic image operations such as mosaicing, sub-setting and registration.

In some cases, a user will be more interested in a particular statistical analysis of a query result than the actual resulting dataset itself (e.g., a histogram, statistical measure, or cluster finding code). In such cases, a user of a virtual observatory should be able to filter the query result using either an available toolkit or else custom developed statistical codes as necessary.

Undoubtedly, a major component of a virtual observatory is the ability to visualize data, which might stem from simple graphical representations of catalog data (as part of a statistical analysis), seamless serving of image data, or virtual explorations of parameter space. In certain scenarios, such as defining a new aggregate class of objects (e.g., clusters) or to aid in the mining of the aggregate data, this process is integrally linked to the actual analysis which is the desired end-goal.

When exploring the forthcoming datasets, especially after they have been federated, traditional techniques will quickly be swamped and rendered hopelessly antiquated. The only efficient technique to explore the vast, newly opened portions of parameter space is to capitalize on the inherent capabilities of the very compute resources which are facilitating the construction of the virtual observatory. These capabilities give rise to the adoption of algorithms which let the computer mine for the priceless nuggets in the mountains of data, and include techniques which can be either supervised (e.g., find everything similar to this particular object) or unsupervised (e.g., find interesting things).

The overriding design principle that we have advocated is to encapsulate the archival services (both in design and implementation) which will simplify the effort required to provide interoperability between different archives (i.e., a plug-n-play model). This approach allows for future growth by providing a blueprint for new archives to follow and thereby capitalize on existing infrastructures via the adoption of community standards. This common service approach, reduces the overall cost to the community by providing a standardized code base, and facilitates interoperability for analysis tool providers.

In order to be successful, a virtual observatory must be able to grow through the incorporation of new surveys and datasets in addition to its original tenants. This requirement necessitates the adoption of archival standards for exchanging not only the actual data, but also both metadata and metaservices between constituent archives. This will allow for different analysis tools to be able to seamlessly work with data extracted from different archives. All of this work will culminate in the creation of a National (and eventually Global) Virtual Observatory, which will eventually enable and empower scientists and students anywhere to do important, cutting-edge research.

## 3. Relationship Generators

Before any advanced data exploration or mining tools can be employed, however, the data of interest must be federated. Indeed, this data federation service is one of the primary requirements for the National Virtual Observatory (NVO). Federating these different datasets, however, is a challenging task. As this project’s initial focus, we researched solutions to the problems inherent in the dynamic, multi-wavelength cross-identification of large numbers of Astronomical sources.

Specifically, we identified the following topics, which we feel must be addressed in order to develop a robust cross-identification service. First, in order to handle the large amounts of dynamic, multi-wavelength information, including custom user datasets, a data federation framework must utilize the forthcoming national computational grid to optimally perform the necessary calculations. These calculations can be quite complex, particularly in the case of multi-wavelength data which has varying positional accuracies (i.e., beam widths) or involves different physical phenomena. As a result, this framework must be able to incorporate not only user defined probabilistic associations within the federation algorithms, but also multiple associations (i.e., binaries and clusters) and previously published results during the cross-identification process. Finally, the newly generated data must be able to remain persistent so that data mining algorithms can be applied to the (potentially computationally expensive) result.

As an initial technology demonstration, we developed a custom data federation service which utilized an optimal data-chunking algorithm allowing it to easily scale with the size of the resulting datasets (see Figure 2 for a demonstration). The majority of these tests focused on data from the 2MASS (2 Micron All Sky Survey, cf. Skrutskie et al. ) and DPOSS (Digitized Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, Djorgovski et al. 1998) projects. As a result of its efficacy, this software was incorporated by the 2MASS survey into its quality assurance pipeline as well as the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) as the core of its data federation service. We also developed probabilistic association techniques, building on some of the pioneering work by Lonsdale et al. (1998) in order to federate the ROSAT bright source catalog (which has relatively large spatial uncertainties) with available optical datasets (e.g., Rutledge et al. 2000). This work is now being extended to provide an unbiased quantification of quasars and their environments (Brunner et al. 2001, in preparation).

## 4. Image Mining Operations

With the success of the ongoing cross-identification work, the project has now refocused on the challenges of exploring image (or pixel) parameter space. Ideally, a virtual observatory should be able to generate seamless views of the universe from any available image dataset. This process, however, is complicated by various observational artifacts (see Figure 3 for a demonstration). In order to simplify the development, we have initially separated the overall task into the generation of scientifically calibrated datasets from the generation of visually clean images (which are ideally suited for public outreach).

As a demonstration of the former, we have mosaiced multiple DPOSS plates in an effort to explore diffuse emission over very large angular scales (see, e.g., Mahabal et al. and Jacob et al. this volume). The latter project has developed into an astronomical equivalent of the popular teraserver project, which provides the ability to pan and zoom around space-based images of Earth. This new project, aptly named virtualsky, is accesible online at http://www.virtualsky.org/ (Williams, R 2000, private communication), allows a user to pan and zoom around various astronomical datasets in an analogous fashion.

### Acknowledgments.

We wish to thank the members of the Digital Sky project, which is funded through the NPACI program (NSF Cooperative Agreement ACI-96-19020), and the many Pasadena area virtual observatory enthusiasts for stimulating discussions.

## References

Djorgovski, S., de Carvalho, R.R., Gal, R.R., Pahre, M.A., Scaramella, R., and Longo, G. 1998, In B. McLean, editors, The Proceedings of the $`179^{th}`$ IAU on New Horizons from Multi-Wavelength Sky Surveys, IAU Symposium No. 179., 424.

Lonsdale, C.J., et al. 1998, In B. McLean, editors, The Proceedings of the $`179^{th}`$ IAU on New Horizons from Multi-Wavelength Sky Surveys, IAU Symposium No. 179., 450.

Rutledge, R., Brunner, R.J., Prince, T., & Lonsdale, C. 2000, ApJS, in press.

Skrutskie, M.F., et al. 1997, In F. Garzon et al. , editors, The Impact of Large Scale Near-IR Sky Surveys, Kluwer, 25.

Szalay, A.S., & Brunner, R.J. 1999, Future Generations of Computer Systems, 16, 63.