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# References

QUARK-GLUON PLASMA SIGNATURES
IN NUCLEUS–NUCLEUS COLLISIONS AT CERN SPS

Mark I. Gorenstein

Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyiv, Ukraine

## Abstract

Two signatures of the quark-gluon plasma – strangeness ‘enhancement’ and $`J/\psi `$ ‘suppression’ – in nucleus–nucleus collisions at the SPS energies are critically discussed.

I. Introduction

A discovery of the quark-gluon (QGP) in nucleus-nucleus (A+A) collisions at CERN SPS was recently announced . The present status of this discovery is still somewhat uncertain and is right now vigorously debated. The data on the transverse energy of secondary particles in central Pb+Pb at 158 A$``$GeV and assumed early stage collision geometry lead to the estimate of the initial energy density $`\epsilon _{in}=3÷4`$ GeV/fm3. The state of matter at this high energy density is expected to consist of the deconfined quarks and gluons. Are there evidences of the transient QGP state in the measured data?

II. Chemical and Thermal Freeze-Out

The yields of different hadron species, $`\pi ^+`$, $`\pi ^{}`$, $`K^+`$, $`K^{}`$, $`p`$, $`\overline{p}`$, … , $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$, have been measured in A+A collisions at the SPS energies. The measured hadron multiplicities are consistent with a simple picture of the statistical hadronization with chemical freeze-out temperature $`T_H=170\pm 10`$ MeV (see Ref.). The temperature $`T_H`$ is close to the expected value for the phase transition between hadron matter and QGP. It suggests a possibility to associate the chemical freeze-out in A+A collisions at the SPS energies with QGP hadronization transition.

The data on hadron transverse momentum spectra in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A$``$GeV exhibit the exponential behavior $`\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{m_i^2+p_{}}/T_i)`$ with approximately linear dependence of the slope $`T_i`$ on particle mass $`m_i`$. The explanation of these data requires a strong transverse collective flow, $`v_{}0.5`$, and low thermal freeze-out temperature $`T_f120`$ MeV (see Ref.).

The data on hadron multiplicities and momentum spectra give no direct information about the QGP existence. These hadron observables are formed after (or during) the QGP hadronization. Any real probe of the QGP must be present in the early stage of the reaction (before hadronization) and retain the signature of the deconfined matter properties throughout the confinement transition and the subsequent hadron matter evolution. Real and virtual photons are emitted at all stages of the system evolution. They leave the medium without strong interactions and therefore reflect the matter properties at the time they were created. Thermal emission of the photons and lepton pairs can be used to determine the matter temperature at different stages of A+A collision. The crucial problem for this probe is however the subtraction of the background effects: the measured spectra are dominated at high photon momenta or dilepton mass by hard primary reactions and at low momenta or masses by hadron decay products. Thermal photons or dileptons emission from the QGP has so far not been identified.

In what follows we discuss to main signals of the QGP: strangeness ‘enhancement’ and $`J/\psi `$ ‘suppression’.

III. Strangeness ‘Enhancement’

The idea of strangeness enhancement as a QGP signal was formulated a long time ago . It was based on the estimate that the strangeness equilibration time in QGP is of the same order ($`10`$ fm/c) as the expected life time of the fireball formated in A+A collisions. Thus in the case of QGP creation the strangeness is expected to approach its equilibrium value in QGP. This equilibrium value is significantly higher than the strangeness production in nucleon–nucleon (N+N) collisions. Strangeness production in secondary hadronic interactions was estimated to be negligible small. Therefore, if QGP is not formed, the strangeness yields would be expected to be much lower than those predicted by equilibrium QGP calculations. Thus at that time a simple and elegant signature of QGP creation appeared: a transition to QGP should be signaled by an increase of the strangeness production to the level of QGP equilibrium value. In an actual study of strangeness production, due to experimental and theoretical reasons, it is convenient to analyze strangeness to pion ratio:

$$E_s=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }+K+\overline{K}}{\pi }.$$
(1)
In the QGP picture the ratio can be estimated from the equilibrium strangeness to entropy ratio using common assumption of isentropic expansion.

The confrontation of these expectation with the data was for the first time possible in 1988 when the preliminary surprising results from S and Si beams at SPS and AGS were presented. The experiment NA35 reported that in central S+S collisions at 200 A$``$GeV the strangeness to pion ratio is 2 times higher than in N+N interactions at the same energy per nucleon. Even larger enhancement (a factor of about 3) was measured by E802 in Si+A collisions at AGS. Recent data on central Au+Au collisions at low AGS energies completed the picture: strangeness enhancement is observed at all energies, it is stronger at lower energies than at the SPS energy. This enhancement goes to infinity at the threshold energy of strange hadron production. Thus the AGS measurements of strangeness enhancement larger than that at SPS showed clearly that the simple concept of strangeness enhancement as a signal of QGP is incorrect.

In fact, for the chemical freeze-out parameters, temperature $`T`$ and baryonic chemical potential $`\mu _b`$, found for the SPS energies the strangeness to entropy ratio is larger in the equilibrium hadron gas (HG) than in the equilibrium QGP. To estimate the strangeness to entropy ratio let us consider the quantity

$$R_s\frac{N_s+N_{\overline{s}}}{S},$$
(2)
where $`N_s`$ and $`N_{\overline{s}}`$ are the numbers of strange quarks and antiquarks, and S is the total entropy of the system. In the QGP we use the ideal gas approximation of massless u-, d-(anti)quarks and gluons, strange (anti)quarks with $`m_s150`$ MeV. For the HG state the values of $`N_s`$ and $`N_{\overline{s}}`$ are calculated as a sum of all $`s`$ and $`\overline{s}`$ inside hadrons, and $`S`$ is the total HG entropy. The behavior of $`R_s`$ (2) for the HG and QGP is shown in Fig. 1 as a function of $`T`$ for $`\mu _B=0`$. At temperatures $`T200`$ MeV one finds in the QGP an almost constant value of $`R_s`$ which is smaller than the corresponding quantity in the HG. The total entropy as well as the total number of strange quarks and antiquarks are expected to be conserved approximately during the hadronization of QGP. This suggests that the value of $`R_s`$ at the HG chemical freeze-out should be close to that in the equilibrium QGP and smaller than in the HG at chemical equilibrium. Therefore, the strangeness suppression in the HG would become a signal for the formation of QGP at the early stage of A+A collision at the CERN SPS energies.

The statistical model of the early stage of A+A collisions  leads to the following predictions for strangeness production (see Fig. 2):
1. A non-monotonic (or kinky) collision energy dependence of the strangeness to pion ratio (1). A creation of the QGP in the energy region between the AGS and SPS would change an initial fast increase of this ratio in equilibrium hadron gas by a decrease to the level expected in equilibrium QGP. New preliminary data in Pb+Pb at 40 A$``$GeV support this conclusion .
2. Very similar strangeness to pion ratio is predicted for SPS, RHIC and LHC energies as strangeness/entropy ratio in the QGP is almost independent of temperature (collision energy).

IV. $`J/\psi `$ ‘Suppression’

A standard picture of $`J/\psi `$ production in hadron and nuclear collisions assumes a two step process: the creation of $`c\overline{c}`$ pair in hard parton collisions at the very early stage of the reaction and the subsequent formation of a bound charmonium state. Matsui and Satz proposed  (see also  and references therein) to use $`J/\psi `$ as a probe for deconfinement in the study of A+A collisions. They argued that in QGP color screening dissolves initially created $`J/\psi `$ mesons into $`c`$ and $`\overline{c}`$ quarks which at hadronization form open charm hadrons. As the initial yield of $`J/\psi `$ is believed to have the same A-dependence as the Drell–Yan lepton pairs, the measurement of a weaker A-dependence of final $`J/\psi `$ yield ($`J/\psi `$ ‘suppression’) would signal charmonium absorption and therefore creation of QGP. The measured A–dependence of $`J/\psi `$ production in p+A is weaker than A1 (approximately A0.9). It was suggested that this $`J/\psi `$ suppression is due to absorption in target nucleus. The data on oxygen and sulphur collisions on nuclei at 200 A$``$GeV also indicated presence of the considerable suppression. To improve a fit of the data a new source of $`J/\psi `$ absorption was introduced: the absorption on hadronic secondaries (‘comovers’). Finally in central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A$``$GeV the measured suppression is significantly stronger than expected in the models including nuclear and comover suppressions. This ‘anomalous’ $`J/\psi `$ suppression is now interpreted as an evidence of QGP creation in Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS.

In Ref.  a mechanism of thermal $`J/\psi `$ production was suggested. The thermal yield of $`J/\psi `$ mesons is given by

$`J/\psi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2j+1)V}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^2dk}{\mathrm{exp}[(k^2+m_\psi ^2)^{1/2}/T_H]1}}`$
$``$ $`(2j+1)V\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_Hm_\psi }{2\pi ^2}}\right)^{3/2}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_\psi }{T_H}}\right),`$
where $`j=1`$ and $`m_\psi 3.1`$ GeV are the spin and mass of the $`J/\psi `$ meson and $`T_H`$ is the hadronization temperature. The total system volume $`V`$ is the sum of the proper volume elements at the hadronization stage. Both $`T_H`$ and $`V`$ parameters are already fitted to the data on hadron yields. Therefore, Eq. (S0.Ex1) introduces no additional free parameter. The ratio $`J/\psi /h^{}`$ is known experimentally as a function of the mean number of nucleons $`N_P`$ participating in the interaction. The data exhibits approximately constant value of the ratio for p+p and A+A interactions including the most recent results on centrality selected Pb+Pb collisions. The $`J/\psi `$ and $`h^{}`$ denote the mean multiplicities of $`J/\psi `$ mesons and negatively charged hadrons (more than 90% are $`\pi ^{}`$ mesons), respectively. A simple assumption of $`J/\psi `$ thermal production at the hadronization stage explains naturally the scaling behavior of $`J/\psi /h^{}`$ ratio and also the absolute number of the produced $`J/\psi `$ mesons for $`T_H180`$ MeV. Within the hard production mechanism the observed independence of the $`J/\psi /h^{}`$ ratio of the collision type results as an accidental cancelation of several large effects: large initial $`J/\psi `$ multiplicity in A+A collisions is reduced by a sequence of absorption processes always (‘accidentally’) to the scaling (constant) value of the $`J/\psi /h^{}`$ ratio.

In the statistical model of Ref. the $`J/\psi `$ yield is independent of the open charm yield. Recently the statistical coalescence model was introduced for the charmonium production in Ref.. Similar to the statistical model , the charmonium states are assumed to be formed at the hadronization stage. However, they are produced as a coalescence of created earlier $`c`$-$`\overline{c}`$ quarks and therefore the multiplicities of open and hidden charm hadrons are connected in that model . The numbers of $`c`$-$`\overline{c}`$ quarks are restricted to the values expected within the pQCD approach. It seemed to be larger than the equilibrium HG result. This requires the introduction of a new parameter in the HG approach  – the charm enhancement factor $`\gamma _c`$ (it was denoted as $`g_c`$ in Ref.). This is analogous to the introduction of strangeness suppression factor $`\gamma _s`$  in the HG model, where the total strangeness observed is smaller than its thermal equilibrium value. Within this approach the open charm hadron yield is enhanced by a factor $`\gamma _c`$ and charmonium yield by a factor $`\gamma _c^2`$ in comparison with the equilibrium HG predictions.

The statistical coalescence model with an exact charm conservation is formulated in Ref.. The canonical ensemble suppression effects are important for the thermal open charm yield even in the most central Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS energies. These suppression effects become crucial when the number of participants $`N_p`$ decreases. From the $`J/\psi `$ multiplicity data in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A$``$GeV the open charm yield is predicted: $`N_{c\overline{c}}^{dir}=0.4÷0.7`$ in the most central collisions. It is surprisingly close to the estimate $`N_{c\overline{c}}^{eq}0.5`$  for the chemical equilibrium value in the quark-gluon plasma before hadronization. The model predicts also the $`N_p`$-dependence of the open charm and the yields of individual open charm states. These predictions of the statistical coalescence model (the open charm yield has not been measured in Pb+Pb) can be tested in the near future (measurements of the open charm are planned at CERN). Such a comparison will require to specify more accurately the $`J/\psi `$ data.

The charm enhancement factor $`\gamma _c`$ found from the $`J/\psi `$ data appears to be not much different from unity. Therefore, both the statistical model of Ref. and the statistical coalescence model  lead to similar results for the $`J/\psi `$ yield. The predictions of these two models will differ greatly at RHIC energies: according to  the $`J/\psi `$ to pion ratio is expected to be approximately equal to its value at the SPS, but according to the statistical coalescence model this ratio should increase very strongly.

V. Conclusions

* The matter with energy density $`\epsilon _{in}=3÷4`$ GeV/fm3 is created at the early stage of central Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS, most probably in the QGP state.
* The hadronization of the QGP leads to the locally equilibrium hadron gas state with temperature parameter $`T_H=170\pm 10`$ MeV.
* The deconfinement phase transition is expected to occur at the collision energies between AGS and SPS where the strangeness to entropy (pion) ratio in the equilibrium confined (hadron) matter is higher than in the QGP. It leads to non-monotonic (or kinky) dependence of the strangeness to pion ratio on collision energy  (see Fig. 2).
* Statistical hadronization of the QGP is probably an important source of $`J/\psi `$ production . This fact would open a new look at $`J/\psi `$ ‘suppression’ signal of the QGP. The assumption of $`J/\psi `$ thermal production at the hadronization stage explains naturally the scaling behavior of $`J/\psi /h^{}`$ ratio and also the absolute number of the produced $`J/\psi `$ mesons.
* The statistical model of Ref. and the statistical coalescence model  lead to similar results for the $`J/\psi `$ yield at the SPS energies. However, the predictions of these two models will differ at RHIC energies: according to  the $`J/\psi `$ to pion ratio is expected to be approximately equal to its value at the SPS, but according to the statistical coalescence model this ratio should increase very strongly.

Acknowledgments. I am thankful to F. Becattini, P. Braun-Munzinger, K.A. Bugaev, M. Gaździcki, L. Gerland, W. Greiner, A.P. Kostyuk, L. McLerran, I.N. Mishustin, G.C. Nayak, K. Redlich, J. Stachel and H. Stöcker for useful comments and discussions. The financial support of DAAD Germany is acknowledged. The research described in this publication was made possible in part by Award # UP1-2119 of the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (CRDF).


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# Computer Simulations of 3d Lorentzian Quantum Gravity

## 1 INTRODUCTION

We still need to find the theory of quantum gravity. In  we have proposed a dynamically triangulated model of two, three and four dimensional quantum gravity with the following properties:
(a) Lorentzian space-time geometries (histories) are obtained by causally gluing sets of Lorentzian building blocks, i.e. $`d`$-dimensional simplices with simple length assignments;
(b) all histories have a preferred discrete notion of proper time $`t`$; $`t`$ counts the number of evolution steps of a transfer matrix between adjacent spatial slices, the latter given by $`(d1)`$-dimensional triangulations of equilateral Euclidean simplices;
(c) each Lorentzian discrete geometry can be “Wick-rotated” to a Euclidean one, defined on the same (topological) triangulation;
(d) at the level of the discretized action, the “Wick rotation” is achieved by an analytic continuation in the dimensionless ratio $`\alpha =l_\mathrm{t}^2/l_\mathrm{s}^2`$ of the squared time- and space-like link length; for $`\alpha =1`$ one obtains the usual Euclidean action of dynamically triangulated gravity;
(e) the extreme phases of degenerate geometries found in the Euclidean models cannot be realized in the Lorentzian case.

A metric space-time is constructed by “filling in” for all $`t`$ the $`d`$-dimensional sandwich between the pair of spatial slices at integer times $`t`$ and $`t+1`$. We only consider regular gluings which lead to simplicial manifolds. In the case of three-dimensional quantum gravity the basic building blocks are three types of Lorentzian tetrahedra, (1): (3,1)-tetrahedra (three vertices contained in slice $`t`$ and one vertex in slice $`t+1`$): they have three space- and three time-like edges; their number in the sandwich $`[t,t+1]`$ will be denoted by $`N_{31}(t)`$; (2): (1,3)-tetrahedra: the same as above, but upside-down; the tip of the tetrahedron is at $`t`$ and its base lies in the slice $`t+1`$; notation $`N_{13}(t)`$; (3): (2,2)-tetrahedra: one edge (and therefore two vertices) at each $`t`$ and $`t+1`$; they have two space- and four time-like edges; notation $`N_{22}(t)`$.

Each of these triangulated space-times carries a causal structure defined by the piecewise flat Lorentzian metric. Each time-like link is given a future-orientation in the positive $`t`$-direction, so that two lattice vertices connected by a sequence of positively oriented links are causally related.

As mentioned in (d) above, after rotating to Euclidean signature and choosing $`\alpha =1`$, the Einstein action becomes identical to the action

$$S_\mathrm{E}(N_0,N_3,T)=k_0N_0+k_3N_3$$
(1)
used in Euclidean dynamical triangulations , where $`N_0`$ and $`N_3`$ denote the total numbers of vertices and tetrahedra in the triangulation. The dimensionless couplings $`k_0`$ and $`k_3`$ have been introduced to conform with the conventions used in 3d Euclidean simplicial quantum gravity. Here $`k_0`$ is proportional to the bare inverse gravitational coupling constant, while $`k_3`$ is a linear combination of the bare cosmological and inverse gravitational constants. In a slight abuse of language, we will still refer to $`k_3`$ as the (bare) cosmological constant. We fix the space-time topology to $`S^1\times S^2`$, where the periodic identification in the $`t`$-direction has been chosen entirely for practical convenience. The total length of the space-time in the compactified $`S^1`$-direction (i.e. the number of proper-time steps) is denoted by $`T`$. The partition function is thus

$$Z(k_0,k_3,T)=\underset{𝒯_T(S^1\times S^2)}{}\text{e}^{S_\mathrm{E}(N_0,N_3,T)},$$
(2)
where the sum is taken over the class $`𝒯_T(S^1\times S^2)`$ of triangulations of $`S^1\times S^2`$ specified earlier, for fixed $`T`$. While (2) is similar in structure to the standard partition function of dynamically triangulated Euclidean gravity, one should bear in mind that the set of triangulations contributing in (2) is quite different.

## 2 THE MONTE CARLO SIMULATION

We explore the phase diagram of the theory defined by the state sum (2) using Monte Carlo simulations. A 3d triangulation in the sum (2) consists of $`t`$ successive 2d triangulations. These spatial slices are glued together by filling the space-time gaps between them with the three types of building blocks described in the introduction.

A local updating algorithm consisting of five basic moves changes one such triangulation into another one, while preserving the constant-time slice structure. A successive application of these moves will take us around in the class of triangulation with fixed $`T`$. The moves are (see  for more details):
(1): consider two neighbouring triangles in the spatial $`t`$-plane such that the two associated pairs of tetrahedra above and below the $`t`$-plane each share one triangle. We can perform a standard “flip” move of the link common to the two triangles in the $`t`$-plane and make a corresponding reassignment of tetrahedra. (2&3): Consider a triangle in the spatial $`t`$-plane and insert a vertex at its centre. In this way the two neighbouring tetrahedra sharing the triangle are replaced by six tetrahedra, three above and three below. There is an obvious inverse move. (4&5): The fourth move is the standard Alexander move performed on a (2,2)-tetrahedron and a (3,1)-tetrahedron sharing a triangle, replacing it by two (2,2)- and one (3,1)-tetrahedra, and the fifth move is its inverse. Obviously the (3,1)-tetrahedron could have been replaced by a (1,3)-tetrahedron in (4&5).

The strategy for the simulations is the usual one from dynamical triangulations: fine-tune the cosmological constant to its critical value $`k_3^c(k_0)`$ (which depends on the bare inverse gravitational coupling constant $`k_0`$) and keep the fluctuations of space-time volume bounded within a certain range. Then measure expectation values of suitable observables for these quantum universes.

## 3 RESULTS

In order to explore the phase diagram of our regularized model we have to identify an order parameter, and explore how it changes with the coupling constant, in this case $`k_0`$. We have found that the ratio $`\tau `$ between the total number $`N_{22}`$ of (2,2)-tetrahedra and the total space-time volume

$$N_3N_{tot}=N_{22}+N_{31}+N_{13}$$

serves as an efficient order parameter. In Fig. 1 we show $`\tau `$ as a function of $`k_0`$. One observes a rapid drop to zero of $`\tau (k_0)`$ around $`k_06.64`$. Increasing $`N_3`$, the drop becomes a jump, typical for a first-order phase transition. A detailed study of the neighbourhood of $`k_0=6.64`$ reveals a hysteresis as one performs a cycle, moving above and below the critical value $`k_0^c`$, again as expected from a first-order transition.

The phase above $`k_0^c`$ is of no interest for continuum 3d quantum gravity since one can show that it is equivalent to an uncorrelated product of 2d Euclidean gravity models .

We now turn to the interesting phase of $`k_0<k_0^c`$. Remarkably, we observe here the emergence of well-defined three-dimensional configurations. In Fig. 2 we present a snapshot of a configuration of 16,000 tetrahedra for $`k_0=5.0`$ and of total proper-time extent $`T=32`$. It shows the 2d spatial volume as a function of the time $`t`$. Following the computer-time history of this extended object, it is clear that although it does indeed fluctuate, the fluctuations take place around a three-dimensional object of a well-defined linear extension. The emergence of a ground state of extended geometry is a very non-trivial property of the model, since we never put in any preferred background geometry by hand. No structures of this kind have ever been observed in dynamically triangulated models of Euclidean quantum gravity. It underscores the fact that the Lorentzian models are genuinely different and affirms our conjecture that in $`d3`$ they are less pathological than their Euclidean counterparts.

Let us denote the typical time-extent of our extended “universe” by $`T_u`$. We will always choose the total proper time $`T`$ sufficiently large, such that $`T_u<T`$ for the range of $`N_3`$ under consideration. Since both the shape of the universe and its location along the $`t`$-direction fluctuate, we have found it convenient to measure the correlation function

$$C(\mathrm{\Delta })=\frac{1}{T^2}\underset{t=1}{\overset{T}{}}N_{2s}(t)N_{2s}(t+\mathrm{\Delta }),$$
(3)
where $`N_{2s}(t)=N_{13}(t)+N_{31}(t)+N_{22}(t)`$, as a function of the displacement $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ to determine the scaling of $`T_u`$ with the space-time volume $`N_3`$. This correlator has the advantage of being translation-invariant in $`t`$ and allows for a precise measurement by averaging over many independent configurations. From the typical shape of the space-time configurations we expect $`C(\mathrm{\Delta })`$ to be of the order of the spatial cut-off if $`\mathrm{\Delta }2T_b`$. Fig. 3 illustrates the result of our measurements of $`C(\mathrm{\Delta })`$, with the dots representing the measured values.

The theoretical curve to which we are fitting corresponds to a sphere $`S^3`$ with the radius as a free parameter. (By $`S^3`$ we mean the 3d geometry of constant positive curvature which is a classical solution of Euclidean gravity with a positive cosmological constant.) In order to “adapt” the $`S^3`$-solution to the topology $`S^1\times S^2`$, we assume that the standard $`S^3`$-solution is valid until the radius $`r`$ of the $`S^2`$-slice reaches the spatial cut-off scale. Beyond this point, the value of $`r`$ is frozen to the cut-off value, which we also take as a free parameter. For this “spherical” geometry we then perform the integral (the sum) in (3), without the average $``$. As is evident from Fig. 3, the volume distribution associated with this fixed geometry gives a rather good fit to our data. This provides some evidence that we can ignore the quantum average implied by $``$, and that our universes behave semi-classically, at least as far as their macroscopic geometric properties are concerned. We should mention that our “$`S^3`$-solution” is not singled out uniquely, since the choice of a Gaussian shape in the $`t`$-direction gives a fit of comparable quality.

For various space-time volumes $`N_3`$ (typically 8, 16, 32 and 64k) we have determined the radius $`R_{S^3}`$ of $`S^3`$ from the fits to the measured $`C(\mathrm{\Delta })`$. From this, we have finally found $`\alpha =0.34\pm 0.02`$ as the best exponent in the scaling relation

$$R_{S^3}(N_3)=N_3^\alpha .$$
(4)
The same value is obtained using other ways to extract $`T_u`$, lending additional support to the genuinely three-dimensional nature of our universes.

Another important result concerns the relation between the geometries of different $`k_0`$, in the phase where $`k_0<k_0^c`$. In the numerical simulations we have observed the following: (i) the distributions as functions of $`t`$ can be made to coincide for different $`k_0`$ by rescaling the time, $`tf_{ti}(k_0)t`$ or $`a_tf_{ti}(k_0)a_t`$, where $`a_t`$ is the link length in time direction. (ii) The distributions measured in the spatial slices from inside the universe can be made to coincide for different $`k_0`$ by rescaling the spatial link distance $`a_sf_{sp}(k_0)a_s`$, where $`a_s`$ is the length of the spatial links. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 for the distributions of 2d volumes $`V(l)`$ of spatial spherical shells of (link) radius $`l`$, measured for various values of $`k_0`$.

(iii) Within the numerical accuracy we find that $`f_{ti}(k_0)=f_{sp}(k_0)`$.

We conclude that apart from the overall length scale of the universe, set by the bare inverse gravitational coupling $`k_0`$, the physics is the same for all values $`k_0`$ below $`k_0^c`$.


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# Quantum generalized constant coupling model for geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets

## I Introduction

In the last several years, geometrically frustrated antiferromagnets (GFAF) have emerged as a new class of magnetic materials with uncommon physical properties, and have received a great deal of attention (see Refs. hfm2000, ; Ramirez1994, ; Schiffer1996a,  and references therein). In these materials, the elementary unit of the magnetic structure is the triangle, which makes it impossible to satisfy all the antiferromagnetic bonds at the same time, with the result of a macroscopically degenerate ground state. Examples of GFAF are the pyrochlore and the *kagomé* lattices. In the former, the magnetic ions occupy the corners of a 3D arrangement of corner sharing tetrahedra; in the later, the magnetic ions occupy the corners of a 2D arrangement of corner sharing triangles (see Fig. 1). In the case of materials which crystallize in the pyrochlore structure, the static magnetic susceptibility follows the Curie–Weiss law down to temperatures well below the Curie–Weiss temperature. At this point, usually one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the Neél point predicted by the standard mean field (MF) theory, some systems exhibit some kind of long range order (LRO), whereas others show a transition to a spin glass state (SG). This is a striking feature for a system with only a marginal amount of disorder. Finally, there are some pyrochlores which do not exhibit any form of order whatsoever, and are usually regarded as spin liquids. In the case of the *kagomé* lattice, even though there are very few real systems where this structure is realized, the magnetic properties fall in two major categories: the vast majority of the compounds studied show a transition to a LRO state with a non collinear configuration of spins, and a few systems exhibit no LRO, but a SG like transition.

For these reasons, it is easy to understand the large amount of attention, both from the experimental and the theoretical points of view, these systems have attracted. From the theoretical point of view, a number of techniques have been used to try to understand the origin of the puzzling properties mentioned above. All the theoretical results seem to indicate that the classical Heisenberg model with only nearest neighbor interactions does not display any long range order for these geometries, in agreement with Monte Carlo (MC) resultsMoessner99 ; Moessner98a ; Moessner98b ; Moessner98 ; Reimers1991 ; Harris92 ; Reimers1992 ; Chalker92a ; Reimers1993 ; Garanin99 .

There are also a relatively few works which have dealt with the quantum effects in these systemsHarris91 ; Canals98 ; Canals00a ; Isoda98 ; CHUBUKOV1992 ; GARCIA-ADEVA2000a ; ELSTNER94 ; ZENG1990 ; NAKAMURA95 , even though the main interest during last years has been on the classical GFAF. However, in a recent workGARCIA-ADEVA2000a , the present authors showed that there are some features of the experimental data for the susceptibility in pyrochlore compounds that can only be understood in a quantum framework, as, for example, the maxima appearing in this quantity at temperatures well below the Curie–Weiss temperature.

In another recent workGARCIA-ADEVA2000b , the present authors developed a generalization of the well known constant coupling methodKASTELEJEIN1956  (CC), which can be applied to frustrated geometries, the so called generalized constant coupling (GCC) method. This technique was applied successfully to the study of the classical Heisenberg Hamiltonian with nearest neighbors (NN) interactions in both the pyrochlore and *kagomé* lattices. In spite of the mathematical simplicity of this technique, the results obtained for the susceptibility are essentially exact when compared with Monte Carlo data in both types of lattices. Moreover, the calculated specific heat is also in very good agreement with Monte Carlo data, even though there are some deviations at very small temperatures, which can be understood in the light of the fact that a MF theory cannot properly describe this property (or, equivalently, the internal energy) at $`T=0`$ K, due to the distinct nature of the excitations which are important in this limit, namely, the spin waves. In any case, the GCC method provides an excellent starting point for studying the magnetic properties of the frustrated systems in the paramagnetic region.

The first question that arises is which features of these magnetic properties are different in a quantum formulation of the GCC method, and that is precisely what we try to answer in this work. However, in contrast with the classical limit, there are no reliable quantum Monte Carlo calculations for these systems, due to well known difficulties that arise in the quantum version of this technique, which makes it very difficult to check the accuracy of the present quantum version of the GCC method. It is tempting to compare the results of this method with experimental data available in the literature. However, here we are considering the most restrictive approach to the problem by focusing on Heisenberg models with NN interactions only, whereas in real systems, as pointed out above, there are always additional effects, so we think such a comparison makes no sense at this point. Therefore, the most we can do is to give the results for the quantum version of the GCC method, and study how they evolve towards the classical results for large values of the individual spin quantum number. If this transition from the quantum to the classical limit is smooth, we can expect the predictions of the model to be, at least, reasonable in the paramagnetic region.

## II The model

The Heisenberg model with only nearest neighbor (NN) interactions in the presence of a magnetic applied field $`H_0`$ is described by the HamiltonianSMART1966

$$H=J\underset{i,j}{}\stackrel{}{s}_i\stackrel{}{s}_jH_0\underset{i}{}s_{z_i},$$
(1)
where $`J`$ is the positive antiferromagnetic coupling, $`\stackrel{}{s}_i`$ and $`\stackrel{}{s}_j`$ represent quantum spins of modulus $`s_0`$ located in a pyrochlore or *kagomé* lattice and $`s_{z_i}`$ the corresponding component along the applied field, and the sum is done over pairs of NN.

The idea of our approximate method is based on the experimental fact that the spin-spin correlations in the GFAF lattices are short rangedMoessner99 . Therefore, it is a reasonable approximation to start by considering isolated units (tetrahedra or triangles, for the pyrochlore and *kagomé* lattices, respectively), and later add the interactions with the surrounding units in an approximate way. Thus, it is important to first study the properties of the individual units. This task has been carried out by García–Adeva and Huber for the quantum caseGARCIA-ADEVA2000a , and we will not repeat the derivation here. It will suffice to say that the susceptibility per spin of an isolated unit with $`p`$ spins ($`p=4`$ for the pyrochlore and $`p=3`$ for the *kagomé*) is given by

$$\chi _p(T)=\frac{S_p^2}{3pT}=\frac{1}{3pT}\frac{_Sg(S)S(S+1)(2S+1)e^{jS(S+1)/2}}{_Sg(S)(2S+1)e^{jS(S+1)/2}},$$
(2)
where $`j=J/T`$, and $`S_p^2`$ represents the average value of the square of the total spin of the unit, and $`g(S)`$ is the number of configurations with total spin $`S`$ (see Table 1).

For some derivations, it is better to express all the thermodynamic quantities in terms of the function

$$\epsilon _p(T)=\frac{S_p^2}{ps_0(s_0+1)}1.$$
(3)
Therefore, the susceptibility of the isolated unit can be expressed as

$$\chi _p(T)=\frac{s_0(s_0+1)\left(1+\epsilon _p(T)\right)}{3T}.$$
(4)
It is important to notice that the only difference from the derivation carried out in Ref. GARCIA-ADEVA2000b,  is in definition of $`S_p^2`$. The rest of the method is essentially the same.

Next, the interaction with neighboring units is introduced as an unknown internal effective field, $`H_1`$, created by the $`(p1)`$ NN ions outside the unit. The CC approximation consists of taking this internal field as $`H_1=(p1)H^{}`$, where $`H^{}`$ is the average internal field acting on a spin due to each of its NN. By comparison, in the case of the standard CW model, the internal effective field is given by $`H_1=2(p1)H^{}`$, as the ions are considered separately, and each has $`2(p1)`$ NN in the corner sharing structures considered in this work (see fig. 1). The internal field is evaluated by imposing the self consistent condition of equating the magnetization per spin in the field with that of a unit in the field. In the paramagnetic region, and small applied field, the susceptibility per spin is then given byGARCIA-ADEVA2000b

$$\chi _p^{gcc}(T)=\frac{s_0(s_0+1)}{3T}\frac{1+\epsilon _p(T)}{1\epsilon _p(T)}.$$
(5)
The corresponding expressions for the internal energy111For comparison, the ground state energy obtained from (6) for the *kagomé* lattice for $`s_0=1/2`$ (in units of $`J`$) is $`1/2`$, whereas the corresponding value for the pyrochlore lattice is $`3/4`$ for the same value of $`s_0`$.and the specific heat per spin are given by

$$u_p(T)=Js_0(s_0+1)\epsilon _p(T)$$
(6)
and

$$c_p(T)=Js_0(s_0+1)\frac{}{T}\epsilon _p(T),$$
(7)
respectively.

## III Results for the susceptibility and the specific heat

In this section, we will present the main results of the model introduced in the previous section. One is tempted to compare them with the available experimental data. However, such a comparison makes no sense at this point because, as stated in the introduction, there are several effects not included in this simplified model such as dipole–dipole interactions, anisotropies, or further neighbor interactions, to cite some examples. Therefore, we will present the results of the present model and study how the quantum case evolves towards the classical limit for relatively large values of the individual spins. If the quantum behavior of the physical quantities of interest (namely, susceptibility and specific heat) is not so different from the classical one for relatively large values of $`s_0`$, we can feel confident that the predictions are essentially correct, at least in the temperature region where deviations from the classical behavior are small, as we know that the GCC model gives an accurate description of these quantities in whole the temperature range. It would be desirable also to compare the predictions of this model with the ones obtained from more sophisticated techniques (quantum Monte Carlo, high temperature series expansions, density matrix renormalization group, exact diagonalization, and son on). However, that comparison is not possible in general, due to the geometrical complexity of GFAF which prevents one from applying any of these techniques to arbitrary values of $`s_0`$, and these kind of calculations have been only carried out for the quantum $`s_0=1/2`$ which, as we will see below, is the case which we expect to have the worst results.

Let us start by considering the results for the susceptibility and specific heat in the pyrochlore lattice, which can be seen in Fig. 2 for some values of $`s_0`$. As we can see from the observation of that figure, the classical susceptibility deviates from the Curie–Weiss behavior below $`\mathrm{\Theta }_{CW}`$. The quantum case is qualitatively similar to the classical behavior, except at very low temperatures, where it passes through a maximum and then falls to zero. However, we can also see that even for relatively small values of $`s_0`$ the quantum behavior is not so different from the classical one down to the maximum. Regarding the predictions for the specific heat, again, the main difference is that it goes through a maximum, and later falls to zero, in contrast with the classical situation, where it goes to a constant value at $`T=0`$ K. Additional information can be gained by studying the dependence of the position of the maxima with the value of $`s_0`$ in Fig. 3. In that figure can be seen how nicely both the maxima in the susceptibility and specific heat go to the zero classical value.

Let us now turn to the *kagomé* lattice. In this case, it is reasonable to expect the model to work less well than in the pyrochlore lattice, as it is well known that the role of long wavelength fluctuations is more important in 2D lattices, which are explicitly neglected in any MF approach. However, from the MC results for the classical limit, it turns out that long wavelength thermal fluctuations are unimportant for GFAF at finite temperatures, which partially explains why the classical limit of our model is essentially exact when compared to MC data for the susceptibility. The quantum case is a more delicate one, as quantum fluctuations can play an important role. However, these fluctuations will be only important at low temperatures, in a region where our model does not apply for other reasons we will explain below.

In order to proceed further, we will split the discussion for the *kagomé* lattice in two cases, corresponding to integer and half integer values of the individual spins.

Let us first analyze the results for integer values of $`s_0`$, which can be seen in Fig. 4. There are no remarkable differences with respect to the discussion for the pyrochlore, except for the fact that the maximum in the susceptibility is present even in the classical limit. The only qualitative difference is the later fall to zero of both the susceptibility and specific heat. Also, we have computed the evolution of the maxima for both the susceptibility and specific heat. Again, both quantities go smoothly to their classical values. It is important to stress that the fact that the susceptibility goes to zero is related to the ground state total spin of the cluster, which, for integer values of the individual spins, is always a singlet. This is not the case for half integer values of $`s_0`$.

For half integer values of $`s_0`$, there are very important differences with respect to the previous cases, as is evident in Fig. 5. The susceptibility goes through a maximum, then reaches a minimum, and diverges as $`T0`$. This is a consequence of the fact that the ground state of the triangular cluster for half integer values of $`s_0`$ is a doublet in our model. However, it is now generally accepted that the real ground state of the *kagomé* lattice is a singlet, and may have a gap in the spectrum so, actually, the susceptibility should either be finite or go to zero as $`T0`$. Obviously, the present breakdown at very low temperatures is not a particular feature of the mean field approach, but it is shared by every model which starts from finite cluster calculations, with an odd number of spins in the elementary cluster. Moreover, the maxima in the specific heat follow a different trend than in the integer $`s_0`$ case, even though, the classical limit is correct (see Fig. 3). Even more striking is the fact that both the susceptibility and specific heat for $`s_0=1/2`$ are qualitatively different from all the previous presented results. The susceptibility does not show a maximum, but diverges as $`1/T`$ as $`T`$ approaches 0. The maximum in the specific heat does not follow the extrapolated behavior for other half integer values of $`s_0`$. These kinds of problems have been already pointed out in the literature for more rigorous methods than ours. A qualitative argument that can help to understand these deviations is the fact that $`s_0=1/2`$ is the “most quantum” case, in which the physical quantities are more sensitive to the discrete structure of the energy levels of the system. Taking in to account that for half integer values of $`s_0`$, the energy level structure of our model is qualitatively incorrect, we should not be surprised by this special behavior.

As commented above, if we want to further check the range of applicability of the model, it would be desirable to compare its predictions with the ones obtained from more sophisticated methods, as exact diagonalization of small clusters or high temperature series expansions. Unfortunately, these calculations have been carried out only for the *kagomé* with $`s_0=1/2`$ELSTNER94 ; ZENG1990  where, as we have argued above, we can expect the model to be least successful. However, even though we do not expect complete agreement, we have carried out such a comparison with results obtained from the aforementioned methods and the results are presented in Fig. 6. In that figure we have also plotted the corresponding curves corresponding to $`s_0=1`$ and $`s_0=3/2`$ for comparison, at a qualitative level. It is important to stress that the curves depicted there do not contain any fitting parameter nor have they been rescaled in any sense. Surprisingly, the susceptibility calculated from our model for $`s_0=1/2`$ is in very good agreement down to $`0.5\mathrm{\Theta }_{CW}`$ with both high temperature series expansions and the diagonalization of a cluster with 18 spins. The corresponding curve for the specific heat is in poor quantitative agreement with the results from high temperature series expansions. However, it describes accurately the position of the maximum. In any case, we can expect the agreement with the specific heat to be worse, as it considers independent units, neglecting the emerging correlations at low temperatures. Moreover, we can see that the calculated susceptibilities for $`s_0=1`$ and $`s_0=3/2`$ reproduce the main qualitative features of the high temperature expansion and finite cluster results. At this point, it is difficult to say if this a fortunate coincidence or an indication of the accuracy of our model for higher values of $`s_0`$. Numerical data for these values of the spins would be necessary to decide between the two cases.

In any case, it is important to notice that some of the qualitative features obtained in this simple model, have been observed in experimental studies. Again, it is difficult to say at this point if those features are due to additional interactions not accounted for in this model. For example, the existence of a maximum in the susceptibility for the pyrochlore lattice has been systematically observed in all the experiments at low enough temperatures. Actually, these maxima where successfully interpreted by the present authors with an even simpler model, in which the interactions with nearest neighbors and next nearest neighbors were taken into accountGARCIA-ADEVA2000a . Moreover, in the work by Wills and coworkersWILLS2000  on iron jarosites, which is one of the few systems where the *kagomé* lattice has an experimental realization, the magnetic susceptibility exhibits the maximum and a later upturn, at a temperature comparable with that predicted by our model. However, in that temperature region, it seems likely that the dilution of the magnetic lattice by non magnetic impurities plays an important role, giving rise to some kind of spin glass behavior, for which it is very difficult to extract any conclusion.

In the light of these results, we think that a prudent estimate of the breakdown of our model is set by the position of the maximum in the specific heat. As we approach this temperature, emerging correlations that cannot be described in the GCC formalism enter into play. For the pyrochlore lattice and the *kagomé* with integer values of $`s_0`$, it is very likely that the present description is qualitatively correct for temperatures well below the peak temperature of the specific heat. However, we think that the description below that temperature for half integer $`s_0`$ in the *kagomé* lattice is incorrect. Probably, there is a maximum and a minimum in the susceptibility, but we expect the susceptibility either vanishes or goes to a finite value at $`T0`$, not to diverge. In any case, it is still a significant improvement with respect to the Curie-Weiss theory and other MF theories. However, more rigorous techniques are needed in order to verify these assertions.

## IV Conclusions

In this work we have presented the quantum version of the generalized constant coupling model, which was shown by the authors to be in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo data for the susceptibility and specific heat in the classical limit, for both the pyrochlore and *kagomé* lattices. There are some important qualitative differences between the classical and quantum behaviors which are important at low temperatures.

The main features of the susceptibility in this model are the presence of maxima in both the susceptibility and specific heat, similar to those found experimentally. The susceptibility for the *kagomé* lattice with half integer values of the individual spins is found to pass through a maximum and then, after a minimum, diverges as $`T0`$. This divergence is due to a non zero value of the total spin of the ground state of the elementary units for these values of the individual spins. There is some experimental evidence for the existence of such an upturn in the susceptibility in the iron jarosite systems. However, the divergence of this quantity in our model, which is due to the finite size cluster with odd number of spins, is incorrect.

The results for the *kagomé* $`1/2`$ are compared with high temperature series expansions and exact diagonalization of small clusters. The susceptibility is found to be in good agreement with those results down to $`T0.5\mathrm{\Theta }_{CW}`$, which is a remarkable fact for so simple a model. Even though the specific heat is not in quantitative agreement at this temperature, the position of the maximum is adequately predicted. Results from the aforementioned techniques for these lattices for higher values of $`s_0`$ would be desirable in order to check the accuracy of the GCC model.

In any case, we feel that the present model provides an adequate description of the nearest-neighbor *kagomé* and pyrochlore systems down to the temperature of the peak in the specific heat.


text:
# XMM-Newton observation of the Lockman Hole Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and the USA (NASA)

## 1 Introduction

Deep X-ray surveys indicate that the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) is largely due to accretion onto supermassive black holes, integrated over cosmic time. In the soft (0.5-2 keV) band 80-90% of the XRB flux has been resolved using ROSAT and recent Chandra surveys (Hasinger et al. 1998a , Mushotzky et al. mushotzky00 (2000), Giacconi et al. giacconi00 (2000)). In the harder (2-10 keV) band 25-30% of the background have been resolved in ASCA and BeppoSAX surveys (Ueda et al. ueda98 (1998), Cagnoni et al. cagnoni98 (1998), Giommi et al. giommi00 (2000)), and more than 60%, when the recent Chandra surveys are included. Surveys in the very hard (5-10 keV) band have been pioneered using BeppoSAX and resolve about 30% of the XRB (Fiore et al. fiore99 (1999)). Those X-ray surveys with a high degree of completeness in optical spectroscopy find predominantly Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) as counterparts of the faint X-ray source population (Bower et al. bower96 (1996), Schmidt et al. schmidt98 (1998), Zamorani et al. zamorani99 (1999), Akiyama et al. akiyama00 (2000)), mainly X-ray and optically unobscured AGN (type-1 Seyferts and QSOs) but also a smaller fraction of obscured AGN (type-2 Seyferts). Spectroscopic identifications of the BeppoSAX and Chandra surveys are still far from complete, however a mixture of obscured and unobscured AGN seems to be the dominant population in these samples, too (Fiore et al. fiore00 (2000), Barger et al. barger00 (2000), Giacconi et al. giacconi00 (2000)). The most recent AGN X-ray luminosity function, derived from the ROSAT surveys, shows evidence for luminosity-dependent density evolution and indicates a constant QSO space density at redshifts $`2<z<4`$ (Hasinger hasi98b (1998), Miyaji et al. miyaji00 (2000)) unlike optical QSO luminosity functions (Schmidt et al. schmidt95 (1995), Fan et al. fan00 (2000)).

The X-ray observations are consistent with population synthesis models based on unified AGN schemes (Setti & Woltjer setti89 (1989), Madau et al. madau94 (1993), Comastri et al. comastri95 (1995), Gilli et al. gilli99 (1999)), which explain the hard spectrum of the X-ray background by a mixture of absorbed and unabsorbed AGN, folded with the corresponding luminosity function and its cosmological evolution. According to these models most AGN spectra are heavily absorbed and about 80% of the light produced by accretion will be absorbed by gas and dust (Fabian et al. fabian98 (1998)). However, these models are not unique and contain a number of hidden parameters, so that their predictive power remains limited (e.g. Hasinger hasi00 (2000)). In particular they require a substantial contribution of high-luminosity obscured X-ray sources (type-2 QSOs), which so far have not been detected in sufficient quantities (see the discussion in Halpern et al. halpern99 (1999)). The large throughput and the unprecedented hard X-ray sensitivity of the telescopes aboard the recently launched XMM-Newton observatory (hereafter XMM; Jansen et al. jansen01 (2001)) will ultimately yield spectra of the faint X-ray sources and constrain the evolution of their physical properties, in particular the X-ray absorption.

Here we present results of the first deep survey taken with XMM in the Lockman Hole, one of the best studied sky areas at all wavelengths. This paper concentrates on the X-ray data analysis. We show combined images from the EPIC pn-CCD (Strüder et al. strueder01 (2001)) and MOS CCD cameras (Turner et al. turner01 (2001)) and the derived source counts in different energy bands. With the help of X-ray colour-colour diagrams and the previously identified sources in this field we show that it is possible to obtain a coarse source classification based on XMM data alone.

## 2 X-ray observations

The Lockman Hole field, centered on the sky position RA 10:52:43, DEC +57:28:48 (2000) was observed with XMM in five separate revolutions (70, 71, 73, 74 and 81) during the period April 27-May 19, 2000 for a total exposure time of 190 ksec. The pointing direction was changed slightly (by about 10$`\mathrm{}`$ in RA and DEC in order to bridge the gaps between the CCD detectors between exposures) and the roll angle varied in the range 48.66 to 54.25 degrees between the different revolutions. The EPIC cameras were operated in the standard full-frame mode. The thin filter was used for the PN camera, while the thin and the thick filter were alternated for the MOS1 and MOS2 cameras in order to obtain diagnostics about the soft proton particle background. Tab. 1 gives a summary of the observations.

The PN and MOS data were preprocessed by the XMM Survey Scientist Consortium (SSC; Watson et al. watson01 (2001)) using the XMM Standard Analysis System (SAS) routines. The attitude and deadtime information was not available for the datasets but can be regarded stable enough to be assumed constant for each revolution. The preprocessed FITS events files were analysed using FTOOLS routines.

A substantial fraction of the observations was affected by high and flaring background fluxes with count rates up to several hundred per second, compared to a quiet count rate of several counts per second per detector. The data were screened for low background intervals, rejecting times with a 0.5-10 keV count rate higher than 8 cts/s for the PN and 3 cts/s for each of the two MOS cameras. The remaining good time intervals added up to about 100 ksec (see Tab. 1). The actual exposure time for the three different detectors, pn-CCD, MOS1 and MOS2 were slightly different due to the varying start and end times of individual observations. A number of hot pixels and hot columns were removed interactively from the events lists by identifying them in images accumulated in detector coordinates and then spatially filtering them out of the datasets. An Al-Kα line at 1.5 keV is present in both detector types. The PN background spectrum shows in addition a strong Cu-Kα line at 8.1 keV, which is not present in the MOS background. PN photons in the energy range 7.9-8.3 keV have therefore been neglected in the further analysis.

## 3 pn-CCD and MOS-CCD images

Images in celestial coordinates with a pixel size of 2 arcsec have been accumulated in the 0.5-7 keV band for all three detectors. Fig. 1 shows a comparison of the image from the PN (left) and the MOS1+MOS2 camera (right). Albeit the variation in pointing direction between different revolutions, the shadows of the inter-CCD gaps appear in the images due to an interference between the variations in pointing direction and roll angles. An exposure map was calculated for the combination of pn-CCD plus MOS1 and MOS2 cameras (Fig. 2a).

The brighter X-ray sources in the images have been already optically identified from the ROSAT data (Schmidt et al. schmidt98 (1998), Lehmann et al. lehmann00 (2000, 2001)). X-ray sources identified with point-like optical objects (i.e. AGN or stars) have been used to check and correct the astrometry of the images. Positions of the brighter X-ray sources were centroided by an elliptical 2D-Gaussian fit. The FWHM of the point spread function in the center of the field was found to be 8.9 and 7.7 arcsec for the PN and MOS images, respectively. The X-ray source centroid sky coordinates calculated from the WCS keywords were offset by 5$`\mathrm{}`$-25$`\mathrm{}`$ from the known optical counterparts. Thus a transversal shift and a rotation angle were fit for each dataset. For the PN, satisfactory fits were achieved by fixing the scale factor of the X-ray image to 1.0, leading to residual systematic errors to $`1\mathrm{}`$. For the MOS’s, introducing different scaling factors along the X- and Y-axes, in addition to the transversal shift and rotation, improved the fits significantly. This reflects the fact that the geometrical layout of the CCD chips in the MOS cameras had not yet been satisfactorily established. The Lockman Hole observations can be used to improve the knowledge of the layout, which then will be incorporated into future pipeline processings. For our current analysis, we use these ad-hoc corrections, which lead to residual systematic position errors of 1-3$`\mathrm{}`$.

## 4 log(N)-log(S)

As the residual systematic errors after the application of these astrometric corrections are below the width of the point-spread function, we could co-add the images of the different cameras. Combined PN+MOS1+MOS2 images were accumulated in the bands 0.2-0.5 keV, 0.5-2 keV, 2-4.5 keV and 4.5-10 keV, respectively. Fig. 2b shows the exposure-corrected image of all cameras combined in an X-ray “real-colour” representation. The red, green and blue colours refer to the 0.5-2, 2-4.5 and 4.5-10 keV images, respectively. A population of green and blue objects is showing up in this image, i.e. obscured faint X-ray sources which have been postulated by the X-ray background population synthesis models. There are several diffuse sources with red colours which are X-ray clusters of galaxies already identified from the ROSAT data (Schmidt et al. schmidt98 (1998), Hasinger et al. 1998b , Thompson et al. thompson00 (2000)).

The SAS source detection algorithms have been applied to the data. These are an improved variant of the ROSAT source detection algorithms described in Hasinger et al. (1998a ) consisting of simple sliding window box detection algorithms, using either a local background estimate (LDETECT) or a background map derived from the images smoothed by a bi-cubic spline function after bright sources have been removed (MDETECT) as well as a multi-ML source detection and parameter estimation task. The main improvement for the XMM data is, that these algorithms are run simultaneously for several independent energy bands, keeping the source positions and extent fixed for all energy bands, while adding the source existence likelihoods from the individual energy bands together. This improved algorithm is both more sensitive and less subject to source confusion and yields source count rates in all energy bands.

Source detections were accepted with likelihood values above 10 (about 4$`\sigma `$) and inside an off-axis angle of 10 arcmin. The resulting detection statistics are given in Tab. 2. The raw source count rates have been converted to X-ray fluxes by applying a correction for vignetting (up to a factor of 2 at an off-axis angle of 10$`\mathrm{}`$) and dead time plus out of time events (assumed to be 8% for the combination of all three detectors) as well as the counts-to-flux conversion factor (ECF) according to Tab. 2. The average energy conversion factors for the whole observation have been computed using the most recent response matrices weighted with the respective exposure times for the three different detectors. The vignetting function has been assumed to depend linearly on off-axis angle, while the azimuthal dependence expected for the MOS cameras has been ignored. Due to the still preliminary status of the current EPIC calibration and the simplifying assumptions made here we have to assume systematic flux errors on the order of 10% in addition to the uncertainty due to the range in possible photon indices (see Tab. 2).

The corresponding cumulative log(N)-log(S) distributions are shown in Fig. 3. In the soft band (0.5-2 keV) the data reach a flux limit about a factor of three deeper than the ROSAT HRI survey (Hasinger et al. 1998a ), and are about 50% less sensitive than the recent Chandra surveys (Mushotzky et al. mushotzky00 (2000); Giacconi et al. giacconi00 (2000)). In the 2-10 keV band the XMM data are as deep as the published Chandra surveys. In the very hard 5-10 keV band, which has been pioneered by the BeppoSAX observations (Fiore et al. fiore99 (1999)), XMM is entering new territory, reaching more than a magnitude deeper than BeppoSAX. As described above, the flux conversion still has to be regarded as uncertain by at least 10%. Also no corrections for confusion or Eddington biases have been made yet (see e.g. discussion in Hasinger et al. 1998a ). Nevertheless, the comparison of the XMM source counts with the Chandra and ROSAT data, in particular in the 0.5-2 keV band, indicates that confusion is not a severe problem for the source counts.

## 5 X-ray colour-colour diagrams

The unprecedented combination of high throughput and wide energy band makes XMM uniquely suited to classify sources based on their X-ray spectra alone. The large number of X-ray sources in the Lockman Hole which already have spectroscopic identifications and redshifts based on the ROSAT surveys can be used as a training set for the classification of the still unidentified XMM sources in the Lockman Hole, but also in other XMM fields.

From the count rates in the four independent energy bands used for source detection (see Sect. 4) we have calculated three statistically independent hardness ratios, HR1, HR2 and HR3, according to the formula $`HR=(HS)/(H+S)`$, where $`H`$ and $`S`$ correspond to the counts in the harder and softer energy bands, respectively (see Tab. 2). Fig. 4 shows two X-ray colour-colour diagrams with different symbols for various source classes superposed on a model grid for absorbed power law spectra. The type-1 AGN known from ROSAT populate a narrow, relatively soft range in both diagrams, consistent with a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$ and typically low apparent absorption column densities ($`\mathrm{log}(N_H)<21.5\mathrm{cm}^2`$). The new XMM sources, together with a number of previously known type-2 ROSAT AGN scatter over a much wider area. Although the new XMM sources are typically fainter than the ROSAT sources and therefore have larger hardness ratio errors, the new population is considerably harder in both diagrams. A comparison of the source colours with the underlying model grids shows, that the hardening is mainly due to apparent absorption column densities of $`\mathrm{log}(N_H)>21.5\mathrm{cm}^2`$ on top of relatively soft spectra and not due to intrinsically hard power law indices. Some sources fall outside the model grid. In one case, a ROSAT Seyfert-2 galaxy which shows the largest HR3, this is probably due to a very soft component on top of a heavily absorbed power law. In some cases the hardness ratios might be affected by source confusion.

## 6 Discussion and Conclusions

We have shown the first log(N)-log(S) relations based on the XMM-Newton observatory. Given the still existing systematic uncertainties, the data is fully consistent with the ROSAT and Chandra source counts in the 0.5-2 keV band. This demonstrates on one hand that the combination of EPIC detectors is not yet confusion limited in a 100 ksec observation, on the other hand that cosmic variance between different fields does not affect the source counts significantly at the currently achieved flux levels, at least not in the soft band. In the 2-10 keV band there is an inconsistency of about 40% between the two recent Chandra datasets by Mushotzky et al. mushotzky00 (2000) and Giacconi et al. giacconi00 (2000), the latter one having a lower normalisation. The new XMM data are consistent with the Giacconi et al. log(N)-log(S), maybe even somewhat flatter, and clearly confirm a break in the slope compared to the quasi-Euclidean behaviour at brighter fluxes. In the 5-10 keV band the XMM data go more than an order of magnitude deeper than the previous BeppoSAX counts (Fiore et al. fiore99 (1999)). There is so far relatively little deviation from a Euclidean slope and the data is fully consistent with the predictions from recent population synthesis models for the X-ray background (Gilli et al. gilli99 (1999)). Adding up the source counts, we resolve about 60% of the 5-10 keV X-ray background.

The diagnostic power of XMM lies in its wide energy band and its unprecedented sensitivity in the hard band. With the help of X-ray colour-colour diagrams and the “training set” of about 60 previously identified ROSAT sources in the same field it is possible to characterise the new XMM sources as typically harder, probably intrinsically absorbed sources. A small number of objects with similar X-ray colours has already been identified in the deepest ROSAT survey (Lehmann et al. lehmann00 (2000)), they are type-2 Seyferts or unidentified objects with extremely red optical/NIR colours ($`RK>5`$). The new XMM source population is therefore very likely dominated by obscured AGN, as predicted by the AGN population synthesis models for the X-ray background.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the whole XMM-Newton team for providing such a wonderful observatory and producing well-calibrated data at an early time in the mission. We thank R. Gilli for providing the model prediction in Fig. 3. We acknowledge very useful coments by the referee, G. Zamorani. Part of this work was supported by the German *Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR* project numbers 50 OX 9801 and 50 OR 9908.


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# 𝑅-matrix for asymmetrical 𝑋𝑋𝑍 spin chain in magnetic field

## Abstract

The $`R`$-matrix for asymmetrical $`XXZ`$ spin chain in magnetic field is presented. It depends non-additively on two spectral parameters.

The following $`R`$-matrix:

$$R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\mu })=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}a(\lambda _1,\mu _1)\mathrm{e}^{\eta (\lambda _2\mu _2)}& & & \\ & \mathrm{sh}\eta & b(\lambda _1,\mu _1)\mathrm{e}^{\eta (\lambda _2+\mu _2)}& \\ & b(\lambda _1,\mu _1)\mathrm{e}^{\eta (\lambda _2+\mu _2)}& \mathrm{sh}\eta & \\ & & & a(\lambda _1,\mu _1)\mathrm{e}^{\eta (\mu _2\lambda _2)}\end{array}\right),$$
(1)
where $`a(x,y)=\mathrm{sh}(xy+\eta )`$ and $`b(x,y)=\mathrm{sh}(xy)`$, satisfies the Yang-Baxter equation :

$$(I_2R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\mu }))(R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\nu })I_2)(I_2R(\widehat{\mu },\widehat{\nu }))=(R(\widehat{\mu },\widehat{\nu })I_2)(I_2R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\nu }))(I_2R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\mu })),$$
(2)
and the initial condition:

$$R(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\lambda })=\mathrm{sh}\eta I_4,$$
(3)
where $`I_4`$ is a $`4\times 4`$ identity matrix. Here in (1)-(3) $`\widehat{\lambda }=(\lambda _1,\lambda _2)`$ is a vector-parameter as well as $`\widehat{\mu }`$ and $`\widehat{\nu }`$.

In the limit $`\eta 0`$ we have:

$$\frac{1}{\mathrm{sh}(\lambda \mu )}\stackrel{~}{R}=I_4+\eta r(\lambda ,\mu )+o(\eta ),$$
(4)
Here $`\stackrel{~}{R}=PR`$ and $`P`$ is the standard permutation operator in the space $`^2^2`$. The classical $`r`$-matrix:

$$r(\lambda ,\mu )=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\mathrm{cth}(\lambda _1\mu _1)+\lambda _2\mu _2& & & \\ & \lambda _2\mu _2& \frac{1}{\mathrm{sh}\left(\lambda _1\mu _1\right)}& \\ & \frac{1}{\mathrm{sh}\left(\lambda _1\mu _1\right)}& \lambda _2+\mu _2& \\ & & & \mathrm{cth}(\lambda _1\mu _1)\lambda _2+\mu _2\end{array}\right),$$
(5)
satisfies the classical Yang-Baxter equation :

$$[r_{12}(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\mu }),r_{13}(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\nu })+r_{23}(\widehat{\mu },\widehat{\nu })]+[r_{13}(\widehat{\lambda },\widehat{\nu }),r_{23}(\widehat{\mu },\widehat{\nu })]=0.$$
(6)
According to general scheme of the Quantum Inverse Scattering Method  the $`R`$-matrix (1) corresponds to asymmetric $`XXZ`$ Heisenberg spin chain in external magnetic field. This model is described by local Hamiltonian $`=_{i=1}^NH_{i,i+1}`$ with the following local Hamiltonian density:

$$H_{i,i+1}=\mathrm{e}^\psi \widehat{\sigma }_i^+\widehat{\sigma }_{i+1}^{}+\mathrm{e}^\psi \widehat{\sigma }_i^{}\widehat{\sigma }_{i+1}^++\frac{\mathrm{ch}\eta }{2}\widehat{\sigma }_i^3\widehat{\sigma }_{i+1}^3+\frac{h}{2}(\widehat{\sigma }_i^3+\widehat{\sigma }_{i+1}^3).$$
(7)
Here $`N`$ is the number of sites of the chain and each $`\widehat{\sigma }_i^k`$ is the Pauli matrix $`\sigma ^k`$ acting nontrivially only in the $`i`$-th space.

In order to connect the $`R`$-matrix (1) with the local Hamiltonian density (7) we shall put $`\widehat{\lambda }=(\lambda ,\frac{\lambda h}{\eta \mathrm{sh}\eta })`$, $`\widehat{\nu }=(\nu ,\frac{\nu h}{\eta \mathrm{sh}\eta })`$ and consider elements of the $`R`$-matrix as functions of two scalar parameters. Then the correspondence between $`R`$ and $`H`$ is given by the formula:

$$H=\mathrm{sh}\eta L^1(\lambda ,\nu )\frac{}{\lambda }L(\lambda ,\nu )|_{\lambda =\nu }\frac{\mathrm{ch}\eta }{2}I_4,$$
(8)
where $`L(\lambda ,\nu )=\stackrel{~}{R}(\lambda ,\nu )`$. The parameter $`\psi `$ may be expressed from $`\nu `$ as follows: $`\psi =2\nu \eta `$. According to the Eq. (2) the matrix $`L(\lambda ,\nu )`$ satisfies the standard relation :

$$R(\lambda ,\mu )L(\lambda ,\nu )L(\mu ,\nu )=L(\mu ,\nu )L(\lambda ,\nu )R(\lambda ,\mu ).$$
(9)
Analysis of the corresponding Bethe ansatz leads to the same formulas as in . However using the $`R`$-matrix (1) inside the relation (9) we are directly taking into account the interaction with magnetic field.


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# Observation of the Askaryan Effect: Coherent Microwave Cherenkov Emission from Charge Asymmetry in High Energy Particle Cascades

## I Introduction

During the development of a high-energy electromagnetic cascade in normal matter, photon and electron scattering processes pull electrons from the surrounding material into the shower. In addition, positrons in the shower annihilate in flight. The combination of these processes should lead to a net 20-30% negative charge excess for the comoving compact body of particles that carry most of the shower energy. G. A. Askaryan first described this effect, and noted that it should lead to strong coherent radio and microwave Cherenkov emission for showers that propagate within a dielectric. The range of wavelengths over which coherence obtains depends on the form factor of the shower bunch—wavelengths shorter than the bunch length suffer from destructive interference and coherence is lost. However, in the fully coherent regime the radiated energy scales quadratically with the net charge of the particle bunch, and at ultra high energies the resulting coherent radio emission may carry off a significant fraction of the total energy in the cascade.

The plausibility of Askaryan’s arguments combined with more recent modeling and analysis has led to a number of experimental searches for high energy neutrinos by exploiting the effect at energies from $`10^{16}`$ eV in Antarctic ice up to $`10^{20}`$ eV or more in the lunar regolith, using large ground-based radio telescopes. Radio frequency pulses have been observed for many years from extensive air showers. However, it has been shown that the most likely source of this emission is a form of Lorentz-boosted dipole radiation from geomagnetic charge separation in the air shower, rather than the Askaryan effect. Thus neither the charge asymmetry nor the resulting coherent Cherenkov radiation has ever been observed.

In a previous paper we have described initial efforts to measure the coherent radio-frequency (RF) emission from electron bunches interacting in a solid dielectric target consisting of 360 kg of silica sand. That study, done with relatively low-energy electrons (15 MeV), demonstrated the presence of coherent radiation in the form of extremely short and intense microwave pulses detectable over a wide frequency range. These results, while useful for understanding the coherent RF emission processes from relativistic charged particles, could not directly test the development of a shower charge excess, as Askaryan predicted. Also, because the particles were charged, passage of the beam through any interface induced strong RF transition radiation (TR), which obscured the presence of Cherenkov radiation (CR).

We report here on measurements made at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in which the use of high-energy photons, rather than low-energy electrons, has enabled us to clearly observe microwave Cherenkov radiation from the Askaryan effect. The electromagnetic showers thus produced in our target yielded strong, coherent, sub-ns RF pulses, consistent in every way observed with the predictions. As we will show here, our results conclusively support the reported sensitivity of the experiments noted above.

## II Experimental setup

A silica sand target and associated antennas were placed in a gamma-ray beamline in the Final Focus Test Beam facility at SLAC in August 2000. The apparatus was placed 30 m downstream of bremsstrahlung radiators that produced a high-energy photon beam from 28.5 GeV electrons. Just downstream of the bremsstrahlung targets, the electron beam was bent down, passed 0.5 m below our sand target within a vacuum pipe, and was dumped 15 m beyond the end of our target. Typical beam currents during the experiment were $`(0.21.0)\times 10^{10}`$ electrons per bunch. The two radiators could be used either separately or in tandem, thereby providing 0%, 1%, 2.7% or 3.7% of a radiation length. Thus the effective shower energy induced by the photons could be varied by a factor of $`18`$, from $`(0.061.1)\times 10^{19}`$ eV per bunch. The size of the photon bunch at the entrance of the silica sand target was less than several mm in all dimensions.

The target was a large container built largely from non-conductive materials such as wood and plastic which we filled with 3200 kg of dry silica sand. As shown in Fig. 1, the sand target was rectangular in cross section perpendicular to the beam axis, but the vertical faces on both sides were angled slightly to facilitate transmission of radiation arriving at the Cherenkov angle (about $`51^{}`$ in silica sand at microwave frequencies). We avoided making sides parallel to the beam since the CR would then suffer total internal reflection at the interface. Both internal (buried) half-wave dipoles and external antennas were used for the pulse measurements. The external antennas were pyramidal “standard gain” microwave horns (1.7–2.6 GHz or 4.4–5.6 GHz). A low-microwave-loss plastic (0.5 inch thick polypropylene) was used for the face viewed by the external antennas.

Details of the trigger system, data acquisition, and polarization and power measurements were similar to those used in our previous experiment. Briefly, time-domain sampling of the antenna voltages using high-bandwidth oscilloscopes allowed us to make direct measurements of the electric field of the pulses as a function of time, with time resolutions of 100 ps (0.2–3 GHz) and 10 ps (4–6 GHz). Because of the strength of the signals no amplification was required. Microwave absorber material was placed wherever possible to minimize reflections, and the geometry was chosen so that, where reflections could not be eliminated, they would arrive well after the expected main pulse envelope. The incident electron beam current was measured using a beam current transformer.

Because the accelerator itself uses S-band (2.9 GHz) RF for the beam generation, we took particular care to measure the background levels of RF with the electron beam on, but no photon radiators in place. We found a weak background RF pulse of about 20 ns duration, in coincidence with the beam, at the level of a few mV r.m.s. However, this background proved to be completely negligible compared to the signal pulses detected with the photon beam directed into the target, typically 10-100 V r.m.s. In addition, during most of the data runs, we used a second S-band horn to monitor any incoming radiation just upstream of the target (see fig. 1). These and numerous other tests eliminated the possibility that stray linac RF or other RF associated with the electron beam contributed to our measurements.

We checked the static magnetic field strength in the vicinity of our sand target and found it to be comparable to ambient geomagnetic levels, of order 0.5 Gauss. This is important since stray static fields present in the accelerator vault could have induced significant charge separation in showers within our target and lead to other possible radiation mechanisms. In a field of strength 0.5 Gauss, the electron gyroradius for the bulk of the shower is $`1`$ km, implying charge separations of $`1`$ cm over the length of a shower, well below the $`4`$ cm Molière radius.

## III Results

As noted above, we observed strong RF pulses correlated in time to the presence of a shower at all of our observed radio frequencies. Having first eliminated the possibility that these were simply due to a background process, the problem of establishing and characterizing their origin remains. We report here on several measurements, each of which provides independent information in determining the source of the observed RF radiation. These are: the pulse properties in the time domain, the correlation of measured pulse field strengths to the expected shower profile, the polarization properties of the pulses, and the spectral and beam current dependence of the pulse field strengths.

### A Time & shower profiles

The inset to fig. 2 shows a typical pulse profile measured with one of the S-band horns aimed near shower maximum. Given that the bandwidth of the horn is 900 MHz, the $`1`$ ns pulse width indicates a bandwidth-limited signal. This behavior is seen at all frequencies observed, with the best upper limit to the intrinsic pulse width, based on the 4.4–5.6 GHz data, being less than 500 ps.

Fig. 2 also shows a set of measured peak field strengths for pulses taken at different points along the shower. In this case the horn was translated parallel to the shower axis, maintaining the same angle (matched to the refracted Cherenkov angle) at each point. The values are plotted at a shower position corresponding to the center of the antenna beam pattern, refracted onto the shower. The half-power beamwidth of the horn is about $`\pm 10^{}`$; thus the antenna would respond to any isotropic shower radiation over a range of $`\pm 2025`$ cm around the plotted positions. For CR, the radiation pattern is expected to have a total beamwidth of several degrees or less, much smaller than the antenna beam pattern.

The plotted curve shows the expected profile of the total number of particles in the shower, based on the Kamata-Nishimura-Greisen (KNG) approximation. Here the field strengths have been scaled in the plot to provide an approximate overlay to the relative shower profile. Clearly the pulse strengths are highly correlated to the particle number profile. Since the excess charge is also expected to closely follow the shower profile, this result is consistent with Askaryan’s hypothesis.

Since CR propagates as a conical bow shock from the shower core, the pulse wavefront traverses any line parallel to the shower axis at the speed of the shower ($`c`$) rather than the local group velocity $`c/n`$. Using our buried dipole array we have confirmed such behavior in the pulses we observed: the arrival times of the pulse at each dipole imply a radiative bow shock at $`v/c=1.0\pm 0.1`$, and are inconsistent with the measured group velocity ($`0.6c`$) in sand.

Additional observations with an external S-band horn at the top interface of the sand show evidence for total internal reflection, via the $`20`$ dB attenuation of the pulse transmitted through the surface, which is approximately parallel to the shower axis. This latter behavior is characteristic of CR, since the Cherenkov angle is the complement of the angle of total internal reflection, and the radiation cannot propagate through a plane surface parallel to the charged particle trajectory.

### B Polarization measurements

Pulse polarization was measured with an S-band horn at a single shower position, corresponding to a shower position of 0.5 m past the expected shower maximum. Field intensities were measured with the horn rotated at angles 0, 45, 90 and 135 degrees from horizontal. Fig. 3(a) shows the pulse profile for both the $`0^{}`$ and $`90^{}`$ (cross-polarized) orientations of the horn. Fig. 3(b) and 3(c) show the derived degree of linear polarization and the angle of the plane of polarization, respectively. In both respects the results are completely consistent with Cherenkov radiation from a source along the shower axis. Since the position was somewhat downstream of shower maximum, reflections from the upper surface of the sand also enter the pulse profile at later times; these are clearly evident in the time series and as a resulting loss of polarization beyond $`2`$ ns.

### C Coherence & radio frequency dependence of field strength

In Fig. 4 we plot the measured dependence of the field strengths as a function of the total energy of the showers and the radio frequency band for different antennas. Fig. 4(a) shows a typical sequence of pulse field strengths, in this case for the external S-band horn, versus the total shower energy, which was varied both by changing the beam current and the thickness of the bremsstrahlung radiators. The dot-dash curve is a least-squares power-law fit to the data, of the form $`|𝐄|(W_T)^\alpha `$ where $`|𝐄|`$ is the electric field strength and $`W_T`$ is the total shower energy. The fit yields $`\alpha =0.96\pm 0.05`$, consistent with complete coherence of the radiation, implying the characteristic quadratic rise in the corresponding pulse power with shower energy.

Fig. 4(b) shows the spectral dependence of the radiation, which is consistent with the linear rise with frequency that is also characteristic of Cherenkov radiation. Fig. 4(b) also plots a curve based on a semi-empirical parameterization . This parameterization is based in part on analytic methods which explicitly treat the distribution of the shower charge excess, and have been verified to yield the proper Frank-Tamm results in limiting cases. This analysis is combined with simulations of radio emission for TeV showers in ice to determine the empirical parameters. Here we adapt these results from ice to silica sand, which has similar RF properties. The resulting field strength can be written in the form :

$$R|𝐄|=A_0Kϵ\left(\frac{W_T}{1\mathrm{TeV}}\right)\frac{\nu }{\nu _0}\left(\frac{1}{1+0.4(\nu /\nu _0)^\delta }\right)(\mathrm{V}\mathrm{m}^1\mathrm{MHz}^1),$$
(1)
where $`R`$ is the distance to the source, $`\nu `$ is the radio frequency, and the decoherence frequency $`\nu _0=2500`$ MHz for silica sand ($`\nu _0`$ scales mainly by radiation length). The leading coefficient is $`A_0=2.53\times 10^7`$, and $`\delta =1.44`$ (both are determined empirically). Here $`W_T=N_e\eta W_e`$ gives the shower energy as the product of the total number of electrons $`N_e`$, the thickness $`\eta `$ of the radiator in radiation lengths, and the electron energy $`W_e`$. The factor $`K=0.47`$ takes into account the difference in radiation lengths and density between ice and silica sand, which reduces the overall tracklength. Finally, $`ϵ0.5`$ accounts for the fact that the limited antenna apertures are only sensitive to $`1/2`$ of the total field strength. There is also additional uncertainty due to near-field effects, which we discuss further below. The uncertainties are estimates of the combined systematic and statistical uncertainty. Note that Fig. 4(b) compares absolute field strength measurements to the predictions and the agreement is very good.

## IV Discussion

We have demonstrated that the radiation we have observed is coherent, and 100% linearly polarized. The plane of polarization coincides with the plane containing the antenna and shower axis. The radiation is pulsed with time durations much shorter than the inverse bandwidth of our antennas. The strength of the pulse is strongly correlated to the size (in particle number) of the shower region that appears to produce it. All of these observed characteristics are consistent with the hypothesis that what we have observed is coherent Cherenkov radiation. Because of the strong correlation with the shower profile, and the physical constraint that a shower with no net excess charge cannot radiate, we conclude that excess charge production along the shower is the source of the propagating charge in the silica dielectric which leads to the CR observed. These conclusions are strengthened by the fact that the pulse strength is consistent with Monte Carlo predictions for such showers.

Our observations are inconsistent with radiation from geomagnetic charge separation as observed in extensive air showers. The most striking evidence for this is the fact that the plane of polarization is clearly aligned with the shower axis rather than the local geomagnetic dip angle ($`62^{}`$). Given the approximate east-west orientation of the shower axis, boosted dipole radiation from geomagnetic charge separation should produce an electric field polarization with significant components orthogonal to what we have observed.

We note that in all cases our measurements are likely to be made in near-field conditions, and we have not attempted to correct for these effects. Recent studies have begun to treat these issues, but are not straightforward to apply in our case. In any case, near field effects should generally decrease the measured field strengths relative to far field measurements.

The total energy of our cascades is as high as $`10^{19}`$ eV, but these showers consist of the superposition of many lower-energy showers. Higher-energy effects that elongate the shower during its development are not present. These effects all tend to increase the total tracklength of the shower, at the expense of a lower instantaneous particle number density. The net effect is that the total radiated power is expected to be approximately conserved, but the angular spectrum can change significantly, with a predicted sharpening of the Cherenkov angular distribution for high energy showers. We have not measured the angular spectrum of the radio pulses, and thus any scaling of our results to high energy showers should consider corrections for these effects, which are likely to increase the peak field strength in far-field measurements.

Since the field strength scales linearly in shower energy and inversely with distance from the source, extrapolations to determine the energy threshold of existing experiments is straightforward, after correcting for the differences in material properties. For Antarctic ice experiments, the use of the existing simulations  appears completely justified. For experiments observing the lunar regolith, silica sand shares many similarities with the lunar surface material, and the expected cascade energy threshold, by direct scaling of our results, is $`2\times 10^{19}`$ eV, and may be somewhat lower depending on the angular intensity effects discussed above.

We conclude that, in combination with our previous measurements of coherent RF transition radiation , these results have established a firm experimental basis for radio-frequency detection of high energy cascades in solid media, either through interaction within a dielectric (for CR), or via passage through dielectric interfaces (for TR). Above cascade energies of $`10^{16}`$ eV, these secondary emission processes become dominant over others (for example, optical Cherenkov or fluorescence emission) in the number of quanta produced. Thus experiments designed to exploit this effect in the detection of ultra-high energy particles can now be pursued with even greater confidence.

## Acknowledgments

We thank D. Besson, R. Rose, L. Skjerve, and M. Spencer for the loan or construction of various antennas used in the experiment. We thank the members of the SLAC accelerator and EF departments for invaluable assistance before, during and after the run. This research was supported in part by by DOE contract DE-FG03-91ER40662 at UCLA and by the A. P. Sloan Foundation. It has been performed in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, with work performed under contract DE-AC03-76SF00515. Argonne support came from the U. S. Department of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics contract W-31-109-ENG-38.


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# A single-electron inverter

## Abstract

A single-electron inverter was fabricated that switches from a high output to a low output when a fraction of an electron is added to the input. For the proper operation of the inverter, the two single-electron transistors that make up the inverter must exhibit voltage gain. Voltage gain was achieved by fabricating a combination of parallel-plate gate capacitors and small tunnel junctions in a two-layer circuit. Voltage gain of 2.6 was attained at 25 mK and remained larger than one for temperatures up to 140 mK. The temperature dependence of the gain agrees with the orthodox theory of single-electron tunneling.

The use of single-electron tunneling devices for computation has been widely discussed because these devices can be made very small and they consume relatively little power.  A variety of single-electron device logic schemes have been put forward but relatively few of the proposed single-electron logic elements have been tested experimentally. Here, measurements on a single-electron inverter are presented. The inverter is a fundamental building block of single-electron transistor logic, which bears considerable resemblance to standard Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) logic.  The logic levels are represented by voltages and a small number of electrons are transported when the inverter switches from the high state to the low state. The logic gates NAND and NOR can be realized by making slight variations on the inverter circuit. With two inverters, a static Random Access Memory (RAM) memory cell can be constructed and a ring oscillator can be made from three inverters. Voltage gain is essential for many of these circuit applications but thus far gain has been achieved in relatively few devices.  The inverter discussed here has voltage gain.

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) photograph of the device and a schematic diagram of the inverter circuit are shown in Fig. 1. The inverter consists of two nominally identical single-electron transistors (SET’s) in series that share a common input gate. Each single-electron transistor used in this inverter contains a small aluminum island with a total capacitance $`C_\mathrm{\Sigma }=1.6`$ fF. The SET’s are outlined with dotted lines in the schematic. The input of the inverter, $`V_i`$, extends under the two islands. The input is electrically isolated from the two islands by an 8 nm thick layer of aluminum oxide. This forms the two input capacitors $`C_{i1}`$ and $`C_{i2}`$. The output $`V_o`$ is connected to ground via an on-chip load capacitor $`C_L`$ of 130 pF to suppress charging effects at the output. The output is also coupled to the two islands via small tunnel junctions. The power lead, $`V_b`$, and the grounded lead are similarly connected to the islands via small tunnel junctions. The two tuning gates, $`V_{g1}`$ and $`V_{g2}`$, are used

to tune the induced charges on the two islands. For inverter operation, the output should be high when the input is low and the output should be low when the input is high. This is achieved by applying a bias voltage of $`V_b=e/C_\mathrm{\Sigma }=100\mu `$V and adjusting the two tuning gates such that when the input voltage is low, the top transistor is conducting and the bottom transistor is in the Coulomb blockade. This effectively connects the output to the supply voltage and makes the output high. The Coulomb blockade prevents a steady current from flowing through the inverter limiting the dissipation in this device. When a high input voltage is applied, this shifts the induced charge on each of the SET’s by a fraction of an electron and puts the top transistor in Coulomb blockade and makes the bottom transistor conducting so that the output is effectively connected to ground. Thus, when the input is high, the output is low.

The device was fabricated on a thermally oxidized silicon substrate using a high-resolution electron beam pattern generator at 100 kV. Each layer of the circuit was defined using a double layer resist and was aligned to prefabricated Pt markers. The bottom layer of the circuit consisted of a 25 nm thick aluminum film that was patterned to form the lower electrodes of the gate capacitors and the load capacitor. To form the dielectric for the capacitors, the sample was heated to 200C and the aluminum was oxidized in an O2 plasma at 100 mTorr for 5 minutes. The resulting AlxOy layer was 8 nm thick. A second aluminum film was then deposited in a pattern that defined the islands and the leads. The four tunnel junctions were defined in this layer by shadow evaporation.

The device was measured in a dilution refrigerator with a base temperature of 25 mK. All leads were equipped with $`\pi `$-filters at room temperature and copper-powder filters at base temperature. Superconductivity was suppressed using a 1 T magnetic field. Measurements on the individual SET’s revealed that the tunnel junctions were all identical with capacitances of $`C_j=280`$ aF and resistances of 1.1 M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The input capacitances were $`C_{i1}=800`$ aF and $`C_{i2}`$=$`810`$ aF, the tuning gate capacitances were $`45`$ aF, and the stray capacitance of each island was estimated to be $`190`$ aF.

Figure 2a shows the dependence of the output voltage on $`V_i`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q`$, the difference between the induced charge on both islands. The induced charge difference can be controlled by adjusting the two tuning gates $`V_{g1}`$ and $`V_{g2}`$. This figure illustrates that the input-output characteristics of the inverter can vary greatly depending on the voltages applied to the tuning gates. In the region around $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q=e`$, the output is a weak function of the input. When the tuning gates are adjusted so that the induced charges are $`e/2`$ out of phase, there are large oscillations of the output voltage as the input voltage is varied.

Increasing both of the tuning gates simultaneously leaves $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q`$ constant but has the same effect as increasing $`V_i`$. Figure 3 shows input-output characteristics at 30 mK for two different values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q`$. The arrows in Fig. 2 indicate where the data for Fig. 3 was extracted. Note that when the input voltage is low, the output voltage is high and when the input voltage is high, the output voltage is low. To achieve this input-output characteristic, the gate voltages were adjusted manually. At this point there is no procedure known for automatically tuning the gate voltages on-chip for the optimal inverter performance. This is probably the largest problem inhibiting the further development of this sort of logic.

The solid lines in Fig. 3 are simulations of the inverter characteristic calculated at 30 mK using the orthodox theory for single-electron tunneling. For the most part, the orthodox theory fits the measurements. The largest deviations occur at $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q=e/2`$ and either minimal or maximal output voltage. At $`\mathrm{\Delta }Q=e/2`$, the maximal observed output voltage swing is 75% of what is expected from orthodox theory. This can be due to external noise coupling in via the leads. The device is most sensitive to external noise at these bias conditions.

An important consideration for the proper operation of an inverter is that the maximum output voltage swing must be greater than the voltage swing necessary at the input to switch the output from low to high. In other words, the inverter must exhibit voltage gain. The maximum voltage gain that can be achieved in a single-electron transistor is the ratio of the input-gate capacitance to the junction capacitance $`g_v=C_i/C_j`$. In this work, overlap capacitors were used to make relatively large input-gate capacitors. The maximum voltage gain of the inverter, which can be determined from the slope of the transitional region in Fig. 3, was $`g_v=2.6`$.

Figure 4 shows the gain of the inverter as a function of temperature. Note that a voltage gain greater than one is attained for temperatures below about 140 mK. This is the highest temperature for which voltage gain in a single-electron transistor has been achieved. While there have been many reports of single-electron transistors operating at room temperature, those transistors typically have a voltage gain much less than one. Gain is difficult to achieve at high temperatures because the gate capacitance must be made larger than the junction capacitance while making the total capacitance small. Fabricating a room-temperature single-electron transistor with voltage gain is challenging because it almost certainly requires control of the fabrication process on a nanometer scale in three dimensions.

The measurements on this single-electron inverter show that it can operate as it was designed to and that the orthodox theory adequately describes the behavior of the circuit. The voltage gain necessary for the operation of this inverter was achieved by using overlap capacitors in a multilayer circuit, yielding a maximum gain of 2.6 at 25 mK.