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# Orbital Comptonization in accretion disks around black holes

## 1 Introduction

The X-ray continuum spectrum of black-hole binaries is characterized by an ultrasoft component and a power-law hard tail. The ultrasoft component is interpreted as coming from an optically thick accretion disk. The temperature of the disk is high ($`1`$ keV) near the black hole and decreases outwards. Thus, the spectrum emitted by the disk is a multi-temperature black-body spectrum. The power-law tail is thought to originate from Comptonization of soft photons scattering off very energetic electrons. The amplitude of this component has been seen to correlate with the $`110`$ keV flux. During the low (also called hard) state, the ultrasoft component is very weak or absent, whereas in the high (soft) state it dominates the spectrum, especially at energies $`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}10`$ keV.

Two types of Comptonization processes have been put forward to explain the power-law component: thermal and bulk-flow Comptonization. Thermal Comptonization requires the presence of a hot and rarefied cloud of electrons or corona (see, e.g., the review by Poutanen 1998 and references therein), where the soft photons get upscattered due to collisions with Maxwellian distributed 50-100 keV electrons. In the bulk-flow Comptonization scenario (see, e.g., the review by Kylafis & Reig 1999 and Papathanassiou & Psaltis 2001), photons gain energy from collisions with radially infalling electrons. Titarchuk et al. (1997) assessed the relative importance of these two processes and concluded that the bulk motion is more efficient in upscattering photons than thermal Comptonization in spherical accretion, provided that the electron temperature in the radial flow is less than a few keV.

Although these Comptonization models have been succesful in describing the spectra of black-hole candidates, there are still a number of unresolved issues. A radial inflow of plasma has been considered for mathematical simplicity, but how this radial inflow is formed is unclear. Since the disk is likely to have a magnetic field generated by the shear flow, it may well have a corona heated by magnetic dissipation (Galeev et al. 1979). Comptonization in this hot corona is one of the currently popular models for the hard spectral components in X-ray binaries, the other being two-temperature flows or ‘ADAFs’. There is little independent evidence for either of these possibilities, however, apart from the interpretation of the X-ray spectrum they offer.

On the other hand, general agreement exists on the presence of the accretion disk itself around a black hole in a mass transfering binary system. In this work we investigate the Comptonization process in a cold accretion disk around a black hole by Monte Carlo simulations. Soft photons produced inside or outside the disk get upscattered by collisions with fast-moving electrons, which follow circular trajectories outside the last stable orbit and ballistic trajectories inside it. We refer to this process by the name ‘orbital Comptonization’. It has been considered before by Hanawa (1990) who applied it to the boundary layer between a disk and a neutron star surface.

### 1.1 Thermal vs. bulk-flow Comptonization

In a geometrically thin disk, the scattering photons escape easily before they have a chance to pick up energy from the orbital motion. Bulk-flow Comptonization is therefore likely to work better in thicker disks. Such disks are also hotter however, so that thermal Comptonization will also take place.

To compare the relative contributions of the two processes, note that the scattering photons drift from their point of origin by random walk. Before they escape through the disk surface, they therefore sample the orbital velocity field over a radial distance which is of the same order as the disk thickness. The typical velocity difference encountered by a scattering photon is thus of the order $`\overline{v}=\mathrm{\Omega }Hc_\mathrm{s}`$, where $`c_\mathrm{s}`$ is the sound speed in the disk and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the angular velocity. In the absence of radiation pressure, $`c_\mathrm{s}(k_\mathrm{B}T/m_\mathrm{p})^{1/2}`$. In thermal equilibrium, the thermal velocity of the scattering electrons is $`c_\mathrm{s}(m_\mathrm{p}/m_\mathrm{e})^{1/2}(m_\mathrm{p}/m_\mathrm{e})^{1/2}\overline{v}\overline{v}`$. It would thus seem that thermal Comptonization wins over bulk-flow Comptonization by the orbital motion. For cool Shakura-Sunyaev disks this would indeed be the case. However, the temperatures in such disks, of the order 1 keV, are not sufficient for significant Comptonization anyway.

More interesting are the geometrically thick accretion flows that are possible in the inner regions of disks. Here the conditions are different from those in standard thin disks. In the optically thin ADAF type flows, thermal equilibrium between protons and electrons does not hold, and the scattering electrons are much colder than expected from the thickness of the disk. The electron temperatures are near 100 keV so that the electron velocities are around $`0.5c`$. This is of the same order as the range of orbital velocities sampled by a photon escaping through a disk of thickness $`H/r1`$ near the last stable orbit. In the optically thin type of ADAF, orbital Comptonization can therefore be as important as thermal Comptonization, though it may not dominate.

Another type of radiatively inefficient accretion flow into a black hole takes place when the optical depth of the flow is large, and the disk is puffed up to aspect ratios $`H/r1`$ by radiation pressure. The temperature in such radiatively supported disks is relatively low, so that thermal Comptonization is not very effective, but the escaping photons will have sampled a large range of orbital velocities. The conditions in optically thick radiation supported flows such as may be present at high accretion rates onto black holes are thus especially relevant for orbital Comptonization.

## 2 The model

### 2.1 Densities and velocity field

In an accretion disk around a non-rotating black hole of mass $`M`$ matter follows nearly circular orbits only up to the last stable orbit at a distance of $`r_{\mathrm{last}}=6r_\mathrm{g}`$, where $`r_\mathrm{g}=GM/c^2`$ is the gravitational radius. At the black hole horizon $`r_\mathrm{h}=2r_\mathrm{g}`$, the speed of the particles is $`c`$.

The details of bulk Comptonization depend on the velocity field of the accretion flow, as well as its optical depth and geometrical thickness as a function of the distance from the hole. For the high accretion rates we have in mind, the flow has a finite thinkness of the order $`r_\mathrm{g}`$, depending on the details of disk viscosity and radiative transfer. Instead of a more detailed quantitative model, we approximate the velocity field by purely circular motion outside the last stable orbit, and a ballistic spiral-in inside $`r=r_{\mathrm{last}}`$, as follows:

For $`rr_{\mathrm{last}}`$, matter in the disk is taken to be in circular motion. In Schwarzschild coordinates, the orbital frequency as seen by a distant inertial observer is then $`\mathrm{\Omega }=(GM/r^3)^{1/2}`$ \[Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler 1973, (hereafter MTW) p671\], the same as in Newtonian gravity. At $`r=r_{\mathrm{last}}`$ and in geometric units, the energy of the particles per unit mass is $`E=\sqrt{8/9}`$ and their angular momentum per unit mass $`L`$ divided by the black-hole mass $`M`$ is $`L/M=\sqrt{12}`$ (MTW p662).

To find the velocity of the gas as a function of $`r`$ as it falls ballistically into the black hole, we use the expressions (Shapiro & Teukolsky 1983 pp341-342)

$`v_\varphi (r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{L}{rE}}\sqrt{1{\displaystyle \frac{2M}{r}}}`$ (1)
$`v_r(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{E}}\sqrt{E^2\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{2M}{r}}\right)\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{L^2}{r^2}}\right)}`$ (2)
We assume that just inside $`r_{\mathrm{last}}`$, $`E=\sqrt{8/9}`$ and $`L/M=\sqrt{12}ϵ`$, where $`ϵ\sqrt{12}`$ is a measure of the radial drift speed in the accretion disk just outside the last stable orbit. The exact value of $`ϵ`$ has no effect on the calculations.

To compute the density and the vertical optical thickness of the flow, we assume a constant thickness $`H=2r_\mathrm{g}`$ (as seen by a distant observer). From the continuity equation and the assumed velocity field, the vertical optical depth can then be computed from the radial velocity (Eq. 2). Outside $`r_{\mathrm{last}}`$, where we have assumed circular orbits, we take a constant density. The resulting vertical optical depth of the disk as a function of distance, $`\tau _z(r)`$, is shown in Fig. 1.

Bulk-flow Comptonization that produces hard X-rays is effective only near the black-hole horizon, where the speed of the electrons is high. Thus, only those photons that find themselves in the inner part of the disk, and manage to escape eventually, will have their energy significantly increased. It is these photons that produce the high-energy power-law spectra.

## 3 Radiative transfer

Photons are generated throughout the flow, diffuse over some distance and leave it at some other point. The radiation leaving the disk at any point of its surface is thus an integral over the contributions from all source positions. In order to highlight the importance of different source positions (in particular, of their distance to the hole), we show here results for fixed source positions. The net spectrum can be obtained from this by integration, if needed. The emission of photons at the source is assumed to be isotropic in a comoving frame, as it would be for photons generated by bremsstrahlung, for example.

As a photon travels in the disk, it experiences Compton scatterings with the orbiting electrons. If the optical depth is small ($`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}1`$), the majority of the input photons escape unscattered. Those that are directed towards the black hole get absorbed. Those that scatter a few times have on average their energy significantly increased. If the optical depth is moderate, then those photons that are not absorbed by the black hole random-walk through the medium prior to escape, and gain energy from the bulk motion of the electrons.

We make some simplifications in dealing with the general relativistic aspects of the problem. The effect of curvature on the path of the photon between scatterings is neglected, that is, we approximate it as a straight-line as seen by a distant observer. Since the distances traveled between scatterings are small, this is not a bad approximation. For a quantification of the small error made with the use of straight-line photon trajectories the reader is referred to Papathanassiou & Psaltis (2001). The effect of curvature on the geometrical distances is also neglected since the actual physical distance between scatterings is not important for the scattering process, only the physical conditions at the scattering centers. Finally, we leave out the self-illumination of the disk surface by other parts of the disk (through gravitational light bending, for example).

We do take into account the important effect of the changing gravitational redshift along the photon trajectory. The energy $`E(r_1)`$ of a photon, as measured by a locally inertial observer at radius $`r_1`$, is related to the energy of the same photon $`E(r_2)`$ at radius $`r_2`$, as measured by a locally inertial observer through the difference in gravitational redshift (MTW p659)

$$E(r_1)\sqrt{12r_\mathrm{g}/r_1}=E(r_2)\sqrt{12r_\mathrm{g}/r_2}$$
(3)
### 3.1 Monte Carlo implementation

The basic principle of the Monte Carlo technique, as it is applied to the Comptonization process (Cashwell & Everett 1959; Pozdnyakov, Sobol, & Sunyaev 1983), consists of following the life histories of a large number of photons from the moment each photon is emitted from a given source until it leaves the scattering medium.

The photon is characterized by 4 parameters (position, direction, energy and weight) which are updated at each scattering, and determine the spectrum of the radiation emerging from the scattering medium. The procedure can be divided into the following steps:

1. The disk is divided into concentric cylindrical zones. Each zone is characterized by a mean velocity and a mean density. The number of zones is chosen so as to have a fine zoning of electron velocities in the inner parts of the disk.
2. We calculate the optical depth to electron scattering $`\tau (r,n,E)`$ from the scattering position $`r`$ to the boundary of the disk along the direction of the photon $`𝐧`$. Then, a portion $`We^\tau `$ of the photon’s weight escapes and it is recorded, while the remaining weight $`W^{}=W(1e^\tau )`$ is scattered between $`r`$ and the boundary.
3. We determine the new scattering position, the energy of the photon after scattering and its new direction.

The process continues with the next scattering until the photon’s weight falls below a certain value ($`10^8`$ in our runs), and it is repeated for $`N`$ photons, where $`N`$ is a large number (typically $`10^7`$).

## 4 Results and discussion

We consider a point source of soft photons in the midplane of the accretion disk. In the local rest frame of the flow, the source emits monochromatic photons of energy $`E_0=1`$ keV isotropically. In the frame of a local inertial observer the distribution of emitted photons is not isotropic but forward peaked (in the direction of the flow) and the initial energy of the photons is Doppler shifted and depends on their initial direction.

The resulting spectral energy distributions $`E^2f(E)`$, where $`f(E)`$ is the photon-number spectrum, are shown in Figs. 24. Figure 2 shows results for three distances of the soft photon source from the hole, $`r/r_\mathrm{g}`$ = 3, 6 and 10, and for five values of the vertical optical depth at the last stable orbit. All five spectra in each panel are normalized so that the integral of $`f(E)`$ from zero to infinity is equal to 1.

The emergent spectra in Fig. 2 consist of a peak, whose width increases as the source of photons approaches the black hole, and a high-energy tail that is approximately a power law with a cut off at 100– 300 keV. The soft peak is formed by those photons that escape unscattered or have had a small energy change before escape. The tail is prominent and extends to high energies even if the optical depth is low. It is formed by those few photons that picked up a lot of energy from the electrons, mainly through head-on collisions.

Since model fits to the observed X-ray spectra in black-hole candidates give blackbody temperatures for the accretion disk in the range $``$ 0.3 – 1 keV (Tanaka & Lewin 1995), we have also considered a source of soft photons in the disk with blackbody emission of temperature $`kT=0.5`$ keV. The pointlike source is again placed at the midplane of the disk. The emergent spectra are shown in Fig. 3. The panels and lines have the same meaning as in Fig. 2.

The amplitude of the high-energy tail and the cutoff photon energy decrease with distance of the photon source from the hole. This is expected since the orbital velocities encountered by the photons decrease with distance. The photon-number spectral index is, however, less dependent on the source position. Within statistical errors, it is also the same for a monochromatic and a black body input spectrum.

Since the scattering photons sample a velocity range that depends on the disk thickness (cf. the discussion in section 1.1), the spectra depend not only on the optical depth, but also on the actual geometric thickness of the disk. This is illustrated in Fig. 4. It shows that the high energy tail is strongly suppressed when the aspect ratio $`H/r`$ drops substantially below unity.

These spectra are reminiscent of the observed spectra in black-hole candidates in the high/soft state. The resemblance is strengthened when the photon-number spectral index and the ratio of the hard to the soft flux are compared with observations.

The photon-number spectral index in the tail varies in the range 2–3 and is, within statistical errors, independent of the position of the source of soft photons. It depends on the vertical optical depth $`\tau _0`$ at $`r=r_{\mathrm{last}}`$; the thicker the medium the softer the spectrum. Figure 5 shows the dependence of the power-law photon-number spectral index on the vertical optical depth $`\tau _0`$. The index was computed from the spectra of Fig. 2, in the energy range between 20 and 100 keV. For low and intermediate optical depths, the photon-number index is $`22.5`$, which is similar to those observed in the high/soft state of black-hole candidates (Tanaka & Shibazaki 1996).

In addition to the slope of the high-energy tail, we can also compare its strength with the observations. We do this in terms of a hard-to soft flux ratio. Observations of soft state spectra (e.g. Miyamoto et al. 1993; Cui et al. 1997), generally give values of 0.01–0.2 for the ratio of power law tail to black body fluxes. In Fig. 6 we have plotted the 20–200 keV to 1–5 keV flux ratio of our models as a function of the vertical optical depth $`\tau _0`$.

In a realistic accretion disk, it is expected that the majority of the photons in the ultrasoft component come from the region of the disk near $`6r_\mathrm{g}`$. Close to the black-hole horizon the vertical optical depth of the disk is relatively small and at $`r6r_\mathrm{g}`$ the temperature and emissivity of the disk are small. Thus, the squares in Fig. 6 are closer to reality than the circles. In other words, the vertical optical depth of the disk at the last stable orbit must be greater than $`3`$ in order for our proposed mechanism to produce spectra similar to the ones observed.

The energy of the photons escaping to infinity is the result of the competition of two processes: the gain of energy due to Compton scattering, which increases towards the horizon, and the loss of energy due to gravitational redshift, which also increases. It can be shown that for a thin disk the escaping photon energy cannot exceed $`m_\mathrm{e}c^2`$. Some of the spectra in Fig. 2 and 3 show a cutoff at energies a bit above this limit. This can be traced back to a simplification made in our assumed velocity field. The rotational velocity was taken the same at all $`z`$ (for the same polar coordinate $`\rho `$). On the other hand, in the gravitational redshift the radial coordinate enters spherically, i.e. $`r=\sqrt{\rho ^2+z^2}`$, which is larger than $`\rho `$. In reality, the rotation speed will decrease in step with the redshift.

In conclusion, we have discussed for the first time the Comptonization by orbital motion in an accretion disk around a Schwarzschild black hole (as opposed to thermal Comptonization in a hot corona or bulk-motion Comptonization by radially-falling electrons) and have shown that high-energy power-law X-ray spectra of the type seen in the soft/high states of black hole accreters.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge partial support from the European Union Training and Mobility of Researchers Network Grant ERBFMRX/CT98/0195.


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# Electron Quasiparticles Drive the Superconductor-to-Insulator Transition in Homogeneously Disordered Thin Films

In an issue honouring the work of Michael Pollak, certain topics such as the Coulomb gap and the interplay between disorder and long-range Coulomb interactions naturally come to mind. Nonetheless, we would like to focus on the insulator-superconductor transition in homogeneously disordered thin films. The impetus for this work is the recent observation (Mason and Kapitulnik 1999, Mason and Kapitulnik 2000) in homogeneously disordered thin films of MoGe that two phase transitions are encountered in the magnetic field-tuned transformation of the superconducting phase into an insulator. We argue here that the two transitions correspond to superconductor to Bose metal in which Cooper pairs lack phase coherence and Bose metal to localized electron insulator as illustrated in the global phase diagram in Fig. (1). The latter interpretation is consistent with the extensive work of Dynes, Valles and co-workers, (Dynes, Garno and Rowell 1978, Dynes et al. 1994, Barber et al. 1994, Valles, Dynes and Garno 1992, Merchant et al. 2001, Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995, Chervenak and Valles 2000, Chervenak and Valles 1999, Valles et al. 2000, Hsu 1995, Chervenak 1998, Kouh 1999) who have argued tirelessly that the insulator-superconductor transition in homogeneously disordered films is driven by amplitude fluctuations or equivalently pair-breaking. While it comes as no surprise that Cooper pairs break apart for sufficiently strong disorder or magnetic fields, it is not widely accepted that this state of affairs obtains generically at the nominal superconductor-insulator transition in homogeneously disordered thin films. That the transport and tunneling data lead necessarily to this conclusion and that loss of phase coherence leads to a Bose metal phase (rather than a Cooper pair insulator) are the two key results of this work. As Michael Pollak’s work has been motivated primarily by experiments on disordered 2D systems, insulator-superconductor transitions (IST) in disordered thin films certainly intersect his work.

From the earliest experiments (Dynes, Garno and Rowell 1978, Dynes et al. 1994, Barber et al. 1994, Valles, Dynes and Garno 1992, Merchant et al. 2001, Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995, Chervenak and Valles 2000, Chervenak and Valles 1999, Valles et al. 2000, Hsu 1995, Hebard and Paalanen 1990, Liu and Goldman 1994, Jaeger et al. 1989, Yazdani and Kapitulnik 1995, Goldman and Markovic 1998) on superconducting thin metal alloy films, a simple picture emerged for the magnetic-field or disorder-tuned transition to the insulating state. Namely, the transition is continuous with a well-defined critical field, $`H_c`$, below which superconductivity occurs and above which an insulator obtains. At the critical field (or the critical film thickness), the resistivity is independent of temperature.

While phase or pair amplitude fluctuations both destroy superconductivity, the dominant model that was used to explain all of the original experiments on the IST was the phase-only 3D XY model or equivalently the charging model for a Josephson junction array (JJA) (Fisher 1990, Fisher, Grinstein and Girvin 1990, Schakel 2000). Superconducting islands with charging energy $`E_C`$ linked together by a Josephson pair current, $`J`$, constitute the JJA model. Such a model is expected to apply to any system, granular or otherwise, in which Cooper pair formation and phase coherence occur at distinct energy scales. As illustrated in Fig. (2), such a model possesses a zero-temperature quantum critical point driven solely by fluctuations of the quantum mechanical phase of the order parameter. On the superconducting side of the transition, Cooper pairs form a phase-coherent state in which the resistivity vanishes. On the insulating side, phase coherence is lost and all excitations become gapped. The energy scale for the gap is set by the inverse correlation length. The excitations are purely bosonic, however, as the pair-amplitude is assumed to remain frozen below some mean-field temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{BCS}}`$. Consequently, electron-like quasiparticles arising from pair amplitude fluctuations are strictly absent from phase-only models. Close to the finite $`T_c`$ line in Fig. (2), the elementary excitations correspond to vortex-antivortex pairs. Such excitations remain bound below $`T_c`$ but unbind above. As a result of the inherent duality between Cooper pairs and vortices, the superconducting state can be thought of as a Cooper pair condensate with localized vortices whereas in the quantum-disordered regime, vortices condense but Cooper pairs remain localized.

In a perpendicular magnetic field, vortices of only one vorticity are possible in the superconducting phase. Such vortices interact logarithmically resulting in the stabilization of an Abrikosov vortex lattice. Finite randomness, however, disrupts the lattice leading to glassy ordering. Thus, at sufficiently weak magnetic fields, vortices are localized by both logarithmic Coulomb repulsions and disorder, implying that superconductivity is preserved at $`T=0`$. At low temperatures and non-zero magnetic fields, an exponentially small resistivity is expected on the superconducting side as a result of thermally assisted quantum tunneling of vortices. In fact, it is the logarithmic Coulomb interaction between vortices in the presence of disorder that conspires to yield the Mott variable-range hopping form for the resistivity $`R(T)\mathrm{exp}C|\mathrm{ln}T|/T`$ (Efros 1976). Experimentally, however, a leveling (Mason and Kapitulnik 1999, Mason and Kapitulnik 2000, Ephron et al. 1996, Geerligs et al. 1989) of the resistivity rather than an exponential attenuation has been observed in finite field. The saturation value of the resistivity is strongly dependent on the magnetic field and implies that a metallic phase intervenes between the superconductor and the eventual insulator at $`H_c`$. More recent experiments (Mason and Kapitulnik 2000) have shown that below a lower value of the magnetic field, $`H_M`$, the resistivity does in fact vanish. For the MoGe films, $`H_M=.18T`$ whereas $`H_c2.5T`$ indicating that the two transitions are driven by fundamentally different physics. The emergence of an intervening metallic phase is not restricted only to the magnetic field-tuned problem. In fact, in the disorder-tuned transition, the resistivity has also been observed (Jaeger et al. 1989) to level at low temperatures for weak to intermediate values of the disorder. The saturation value of the resistivity ranges from $`.001k\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to $`100k\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Hence, the metallic phase is robust.

Within the standard dirty boson picture in which bosons exist on both sides of the transition, two permissible values for the resistivity are anticipated: 1) zero (superconductor) or 2) infinity (insulator). However, we have shown (Dalidovich and Phillips 2000) recently that the anticipated insulating state is actually a metal (see Fig. (2)) with a universal dc conductivity given by $`(2/\pi )4e^2/h`$. While this result is rooted in the noncommutativity (Damle and Sachdev 1997) of the temperature and frequency tending to zero limits of the conductivity, it has a simple physical interpretation. In the quantum-disordered regime, the population of bosons is exponentially suppressed; however, so is the scattering rate between bosons. But because the conductivity is a product of the density and the scattering time, the exponentials cancel, giving rise to a finite conductivity at $`T=0`$. Hence, the observation of a metallic state is not entirely inconsistent with phase-only models as depicted in Fig. (2). In fact, our work establishes that the Bose metal is a generic feature of phase-only models. However, the occurrence of two phase transitions in MoGe (Mason and Kapitulnik 1999, Mason and Kapitulnik 2000) is inconsistent with the phase-only model which possesses only a single critical point signaling the termination of phase coherence. Clearly, both transitions cannot be caused by loss of phase coherence. In addition, experimentally, resistivities at criticality ranging from $`0.1R_Q`$ to $`3R_Q`$ have been observed in homogeneously disordered films (Liu and Goldman 1994), with $`R_Q=h/4e^2`$. At criticality, Cooper pairs on the brink of forming a phase coherent state are expected (Fisher 1990, Fisher, Grinstein and Girvin 1990) to diffuse with the quantum of conductance $`\sigma _Q=4e^2/h`$ for charge $`2e`$ bosons. Hence, such deviations from $`\sigma _Q`$ and the observation of two transitions suggest that physics beyond phase-only models might be relevant for homogeneously disordered films.

Based on an analysis of the transport experiments (Barber et al. 1994, Valles, Dynes and Garno 1992, Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995, Yazdani and Kapitulnik 1995, Goldman and Markovic 1998) we suggest that the transition occurring at $`H_c`$ in MoGe as well as the traditionally-studied IST in homogeneously disordered thin flims involves an insulator populated with electron-like quasiparticles as originally argued by Dynes, Valles, and co-workers (Dynes, Garno and Rowell 1978, Dynes et al. 1994, Barber et al. 1994, Valles, Dynes and Garno 1992, Merchant et al. 2001, Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995, Chervenak and Valles 2000, Chervenak and Valles 1999, Valles et al. 2000, Hsu 1995). A transition driven by Cooper pair breaking lies outside the 3D XY universality class and hence is not constrained to exhibit the unique value of $`h/4e^2`$ at criticality. For granular films, phase-only models appear to be adequate primarily because $`R_ch/4e^2`$ at criticality and the single-particle energy gap (Barber et al. 1994) remains finite and unattenuated from the bulk superconducting value on the insulating side of the transition. We propose that measurements of the superfluid density at both transitions observed recently in MoGe will ultimately determine which is of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (Berezinskii 1971, Kosterlitz and Thouless 1973) form.

To support our central claim that the time-honored IST in homogeneously disordered films is accompanied by a proliferation of electron-like quasiparticles, we compare the value of the resisitivity at criticality with the resistivity in the normal state of the films. Shown in Fig. (3) is such a comparison for Bi and MoGe thin films. The normal state resistance, $`R_N`$, was extracted (Goldman and Markovic 1998, Yazdani and Kapitulnik 1995) from transport measurements at $`T>T_{\mathrm{BCS}}`$. Hence, only electron-like excitations abound in this temperature range. The critical resistance, $`R_c`$, is extracted much below $`T_{\mathrm{BCS}}`$ and represents the limiting value of the resistance at the single crossing point of $`R(T)`$ vs tuning parameter as $`T0`$. In both the Bi and MoGe thin films, an applied magnetic field induces the IST. As is evident from the data shown, for both Bi and MoGe, $`R_cR_N`$. Unless a transition to the normal ground state occurs at $`R_c`$, there is no reason to expect that $`R_cR_N`$. We conclude then that because $`R_N`$ is associated with high temperature physics in which no Cooper pairs exist, the fact that $`R_cR_N`$ signifies that the insulating state must have electron-like quasiparticles in homogeneously disdordered thin films. Further, in all cases, $`R_c`$ slightly exceeds $`R_N`$ and ranges between $`900\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`8000\mathrm{\Omega }`$. In contrast, granular films (Hebard and Paalanen 1990) display a critical resistance that is in accordance with the prediction of phase-only models as the dashed line in Fig. (3) attests. Consequently, the non-universal value of $`R_c`$ in homogeneously disordered films implies that physics beyond phase-only models must be at work.

Further corroborating data on the homogeneously disordered Bi/Sb and PbBi/Ge films are shown in Fig. (4). The error bars represent the inherent error in extracting $`R_c`$. For the disorder-tuned transition, the error bars are naturally larger than in the field-tuned case as a result of the uncertainties in measuring the thickness of the sample. For the field-tuned transition, the correlation between $`R_c`$ and $`R_N`$ is striking and systematic. Further, $`R_c`$ is not well approximated by $`R_Q`$. These facts are highly suggestive that the insulating state in PbBi/Ge contains unpaired electrons as in the normal state of the films. However, the data which clinch this scenario are the tunneling measurements which probe the single particle energy gap. The emergence of electronic excitations on the insulating side would imply that the Cooper pair amplitude should vanish at the IST. Within such a scenario, the critical magnetic field is expected to be equal to $`H_{c2}`$ and as a consequence should scale linearly with the gap in the single particle spectrum. Data (Hsu 1995) showing clearly that the gap in the single particle spectrum inferred from tunneling scales linearly with the critical field, $`H_c`$, are shown in Fig. (5). Such a correspondence is expected within BCS theory (Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer 1957), provided that $`H_c`$ corresponds to $`H_{c2}`$. Hence, the linear relationship found here provides direct evidence that amplitude fluctuations drive the transition to the insulating state as has been noted previously by Valles and his co-workers (Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995, Valles et al. 2000, Hsu 1995). In fact, Valles and co-workers (Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995) have determined that at $`H_c`$, the density of states at the Fermi energy is 80$`\%`$ of its value in the normal state. Consequently, a large fraction of the sample contains no Cooper pairs. This observation is also consistent with the series of experiments by Dynes and co-workers (Valles, Dynes and Garno 1992), in which the energy gap has been observed to vanish at the nominal critical field, $`H_c`$. While the average gap might vanish at the transition, pairs can still exist as a result of fluctuations of the pair amplitude. Consequently, above $`T_c`$, Aslamazov-Larkin paraconductivity is anticipated (on the conducting side) and in fact observed experimentally in PbBi/Ge films (Hsu, Chervenak and Valles 1995).

For the MoGe thin films, Yazdani and Kapitulnik (Yazdani and Kapitulnik 1995) have also noted the surprising correlation between $`H_c`$ and $`H_{c2}`$. In light of this, and the similar trends in other homogeneously disordered films, we conclude that the transition at $`H_c`$ leads to a proliferation of electronic excitations. We interpret the insulator above $`H_c`$ as a localized electron insulator rather than a Mott insulator of Cooper pairs. We argue that it is at the lower field, $`H_M`$, that phase coherence is lost and a Bose metal phase obtains as has been discussed previously (Dalidovich and Phillips 2000, Das and Doniach 1999). Consequently, we are led to the global phase diagram shown in Fig. (1) for the destruction of superconductivity in homogeneously disordered thin films. The presence of the Bose metal phase (which results directly from finite temperature relaxation between Cooper pairs (Dalidovich and Phillips 2000)) represents direct evidence that the phase and amplitude degrees of freedom are destroyed at different energy scales. In the case of pair breaking, gapless electronic excitations exist on the insulating side of the transition. Consequently, the universality class of the transition is fundamentally different (Fradkin 2001) than in the phase-only model. As the universality class is no longer the 3D XY model, a critical resistance of $`R_Q=h/4e^2`$ and a correlation length exponent of $`\nu =2/3`$ (for the clean system) need no longer hold. This change in universality class could explain the lack of a unique value for the critical resistance in homogeneously disordered thin films and the scatter in the experimental values for the product of the dynamical and correlation length exponents (Liu and Goldman 1994, Seidler, Rosenbaum and Veal 1992, Markovic, Christiansen and Goldman 1998). Progress in including normal electrons into the IST could be made along the lines pursued recently by Feigelman and Larkin (Feigelman and Larkin 1998). Finally, if our argument is correct that phase coherence is lost at $`H_M`$, then the superfluid density should exhibit the characteristic drop-off (Berezinskii 1971, Kosterlitz and Thouless 1973) to zero at $`H_M`$. Experiments which probe the penetration depth, though extremely difficult on thin films, are essential for these unanswered questions to be laid to rest.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was funded by the DMR of the NSF grant No. DMR98-96134. We would especially like to acknowledge the invaluable advice and encouragement of Ali Yazdani, R. Dynes and J. Valles. J. Valles also provided us with his unpublished data (Figs. 3 and 4). We would also like to thank N. Markovic for the data points which led to Figure (2) and Eduardo Fradkin for clarifying discussions on the universality class of the pair-breaking transition. We have also benefitted from conversations with A. Kapitulnik, A. Goldman, A. Bezryadin, M. Tinkham, A. Schakel, S. Kivelson, and A. Hebard.  References  Barber, R. P., Merchant, L. M., La Porta, A., and Dynes, R. C., 1994, Phys. Rev. B 49, 3409. Bardeen, J., Cooper, L. N., and Schrieffer, J. R., 1957, Phys. Rev. 106, 162; 108, 1175. Berezinskii, V. L., 1971, Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 61, 1144 \[Sov. Phys. JETP 34, 610\]. Chervenak, J. A., 1998, Ph. D. Thesis Brown University. Chervenak, J. A., and Valles, J. M., 1999, Phys. Rev. B 59, 11209. Chervenak, J. A., and Valles, J. M., 2000, Phys. Rev. B, R9245. Dalidovich, D., and Phillips, P., 2000, “Interaction-induced Bose Metal,” cond-mat/0005119. Damle, K., and Sachdev, S., 1997, Phys. Rev. B 56, 8714. Das, D., and Doniach, S., 1999, Phys. Rev. B 60 1261. Dynes, R. C., Garno, J. P., and Rowell, J. M., 1978, Phys. Rev. Lett. 40, 479. Dynes, R. C., et al., 1994, ”Ordering Disorder: Prospect and Retrospect in Condensed Matter Physics” edited by V. Srivastava, A. K. Bhatnager and D. G. Naugle, AIP Conf Proc. No. 286 (AIP, New York) pp. 96-108. Efros, A. L., 1976, J. Phys. C 9, 2021. Ephron, D., Yazdani, A., Kapitulnik, A., and Beasley, M. R., 1996, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 1529. Feigelman, M. V., and Larkin, A. I., 1998, Chem. Phys. 235, 107. Fisher, M. P. A., 1990, Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 923. Fisher, M. P. A., Grinstein, G., and Girvin, S. M., 1990, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 587. Fradkin, E., 2001, private communication. Geerligs, L. J., et. al., 1989, Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 326. Goldman, A. M., and Markovic, N., 1998, Physics Today 51 (11) 39-44. Hebard, A. F., and Paalanen, M. A., 1990, Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 927. Hsu, S. Y., 1995, Ph D. Thesis, Brown University. Hsu, S. Y., Chervenak, J. A., and Valles, J. M., 1995, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 132. Jaeger, H. M., et. al., 1989, Phys. Rev. B 40, 182. Kosterlitz, J. M., and Thouless, D. J., 1973, J. Phys. C 6, 1181. Kouh, T.,1999, unpublished. Liu, Y., and Goldman, A. M., 1994, Mod. Phys. Lett. 8, 277. Markovic, N., Christiansen, C., and Goldman, A. M., 1998, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5217. Mason, N., and Kapitulnik, A.,1999, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 5341. Mason, N., and Kapitulnik, A., 2000, cond-mat/0006138. Merchant, L., Ostrick, J., Barber, R. P., and Dynes, R. C., 2001, Phys. Rev. B 63, 134508. Schakel, A. M. J., 2000, Acta Phys. Pol. B 31, 2899. Seidler, G. T., Rosenbaum, T. V., and Veal, B. W., 1992, Phys. Rev. B 45, 10162. Valles, J. M., Dynes, R. C., and Garno, J. P., 1992, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 3567. Valles, J. M., Chervenak, J. A., Hsu, S. Y., and Kouh, T. J., 2000, “Fluctuation Effects in High Sheet Resistance Superconducting Films,” cond-mat/0010114. Yazdani, A., and Kapitulnik, A., 1995, Phys. Rev. Lett.74, 3037.