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# Discovery of a Galaxy Cluster via Weak Lensing

## 1. Introduction

Clusters of galaxies are essential tools for developing our understanding of structure formation and for probing cosmological parameters. In particular, the redshift evolution of the cluster mass function is a sensitive diagnostic of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$, sufficiently sensitive that the existence of even one or two massive clusters at $`z0.8`$ favors a low-density universe (Donahue et al. 1998, Ebeling et al. 2000). This argument assumes Gaussianity in the primordial fluctuations; clusters are equally useful at constraining primordial non-Gaussianity given an independent measure of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ (Robinson, Gawiser & Silk 1999). Precise estimates of either quantity will require large, unbiased samples of clusters at a range of redshifts. Locally, unbiased samples are crucial for measuring $`\sigma _8`$ and for estimates of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ that rely on the fair sample hypothesis, i.e. that the composition of clusters in terms of baryon fraction or mass-to-light ratio is representative of the rest of the universe (Evrard 1997, Carlberg et al. 1996). Finally, the evolution of the numbers of cluster-sized masses as a function of redshift constrains the cosmological constant and the dark energy equation of state (Tegmark 2001).

If clusters are to serve as measures of the clumping of mass, we must identify them directly from observations of the mass distribution. This is difficult, however, because the vast majority of their matter is dark. The traditional methods of discovering clusters rely on optical emission from galaxies (e.g. Abell, Corwin & Olowin 1989; Zaritsky, et al. 1997) or X-ray emission from a hot intracluster plasma (e.g. Boehringer et al. 2000). Clusters with a lower mass-to-light ratio or more baryons may well be overrepresented in these samples. Radiation from baryons is a complicated proxy for mass, and hydrodynamic baryon-CDM models have been proposed to study bias in clusters (Blanton et al. 1999).

The development of weak gravitational lensing techniques (see Mellier 1999 and Bartelmann & Schneider 2001 for reviews) suggests a different approach: shear selection (Schneider 1996). Because all types of matter participate in lensing, deep, wide-field imaging will reveal in its shear pattern all mass concentrations regardless of mass-to-light ratio or baryon fraction. Of course, no single technique will be completely unbiased. For example, shear selection, like optical selection and the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (Joy & Carlstrom 2001), will tend to be more sensitive to line-of-sight superpositions of unrelated structures, to which X-ray selection, with its dependence on the square of the density, is less vulnerable. With X-ray and (until now) shear selection, optical followup is still necessary to provide a redshift. Comparison of differently selected samples will always be necessary. Still, the baryon and photon independence provided by shear selection are powerful features which may produce surprising new samples.

Two “dark” mass concentrations, found through weak lensing analyses of apparently unrelated previously known clusters, have been reported (Erben et al. 2000; Umetsu & Futamase 2000). Due to the absence of associated galaxies, the redshift and therefore masses of those clumps remain unknown. We report here the first spectroscopically confirmed shear-selected cluster. We also introduce photometric redshift techniques into the selection of sources for the weak lensing analysis. The recent development of these techniques (see Connolly et al. 1995; Hogg et al. 1998) greatly improves the promise of shear selection, as source galaxies may be divided into redshift bins to tune the sensitivity to lensing mass concentrations through a series of lens redshifts (mass tomography). In this paper, we use photometric redshifts to demonstrate that the shear-selected mass concentration is at roughly the same redshift as the cluster galaxies. This has always been an assumption in lensing analyses of clusters, but this measurement implies that mass tomography is feasible.

## 2. Imaging Observations and Lensing Detection

We took $`B_jVRI`$ images of a “blank” field (containing no known cluster) centered at 23:47:46 +00:57:42 (J2000) using the Big Throughput Camera (BTC, Wittman et al. 1998) in photometric conditions at the Blanco 4-m telescope of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in 1997 and 1998. Details of the data reduction, galaxy catalogs and seeing correction may be found in Wittman et al. (2000, W00); here we give only the basic parameters. The final images are roughly 40 square with 0.43′′ sampling and 1.3′′ FWHM after point-spread function corrections, with object counts peaking at $`Bj=26.4`$, $`V=26.1`$, $`R=25.6`$, and $`I=24.4`$ (isophotal magnitudes). In the final catalog, each object’s shape is a weighted mean of the shapes measured in the different filters, as described in W00.

In addition to the W00 magnitude cut of $`23<R<26`$, we imposed a color cut of $`B_jR<1.5`$ to emphasize blue field galaxies at higher redshift, a tactic often used in weak lensing analyses of known clusters (Tyson, Wenk & Valdes 1990). Using the method of Fischer & Tyson (1997), we constructed a mass map from the remaining 31,000 galaxies (Figure 1). A mass concentration stands out near the southwest corner; its peak is significant at the 4.5$`\sigma `$ level, based on mass maps of bootstrap resampled catalogs. The mass concentration disappeared, as it should, under two null tests: rotating each galaxy in the catalog by 45, and assigning the shape of a random different galaxy to each galaxy position. To check for any bias casued by proximity to the field edge, we simulated a field of the same size and plate scale filled with random galaxies, distorted the image as if lensed by a cluster of moderate ($`800`$ km s-1) velocity dispersion, convolved and added noise to match the seeing and noise of the observations, cataloged, selected sources, and made mass maps as for the observations. Repeating this for a series of ten center-to-corner cluster positions, we found that the bias was small ($`<10\%`$ in peak density) and in the sense of reducing, not enhancing, our sensitivity to mass concentrations near the corner.

We then made a color composite image from the $`B_j`$ and $`R`$ images (Figure 1.5, separate jpeg). A concentration of reddish elliptical galaxies appears near the position of the density peak (23:46:23.85 +00:45:00.8 for the brightest cluster galaxy versus 23:46:24.0 +00:43:58.8 for the density peak, a displacement of just over 1). Nothing appears at that position in the ROSAT database, and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database contains only one object in the area, a large spiral which appears to be a foreground field galaxy. We concluded that this candidate cluster was worthy of spectroscopic followup.

## 3. Spectroscopic Followup

We designed a single slitmask containing 26 objects believed to be cluster members, selected by avoiding blue objects and choosing suitably bright yellow/red galaxies in the color composite image in the area around the putative cluster. This slitmask was used with the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (Oke et al. 1995) on the Keck Telescope on the night of Nov. 23, 2000. A single 1200 sec exposure with the 300 l/mm grating was obtained; the spectral resolution was 10 Å with a 1 arc-sec wide slit, and the region from 4000 to 8000 Å was covered for each object. Two of the objects proved to be Galactic M dwarfs, while 17 are members or near outliers of a cluster at z=0.276. One is a foreground galaxy, and six are background galaxies. We assume an instrumental contribution to the velocity dispersion of 100 km/sec in the rest frame. While there are two outliers among the 17 possible cluster members, both sigma-clipping and the biweight estimator of Beers, Flynn & Gebhardt (1990) yield a velocity dispersion estimate (in the rest frame) of $`\sigma _v=615\pm 150`$ km s-1.

## 4. Lens Redshift and Mass Estimates Using Photometric Redshifts

With the cluster redshift in hand, we need only the redshift distribution of the lensed sources to derive the cluster mass from the shear. In the past it has been difficult enough to estimate the mean of this distribution, but photometric redshifts can provide a detailed distribution, in principle even an appropriate weight for each source galaxy. In this paper, we use tangential shear as a function of source photometric redshift to estimate the lens redshift $`z_l`$ in a way independent of the spectroscopy. We demonstrate that the mass causing the shear signal is at roughly the same redshift as the cluster.

For each galaxy observed in all four filters, we used the HyperZ package (Bolzonella, Miralles & Pelló 2000) to compute a redshift probability density function (PDF). We multiplied this by another PDF computed from the galaxy’s apparent magnitude, assuming that a Schechter (1976) luminosity function with $`M_{B_j}^{}=19.73`$ and $`\alpha =1.28`$ (Folkes et al. 1999) holds at each redshift (we assume $`H_0=70`$ km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ throughout). The latter PDF is quite broad, but serves a valuable purpose by suppressing high-redshift peaks which often appear in the former PDF. The first and second moments of the final PDF product provide the estimated redshift and its statistical error. Henceforth, we use a catalog of 26,000 galaxies which is defined not by the magnitude and color cuts that went into Figure 1, but by the requirement of detection in each of four filters leading to a photometric redshift. Of these 26,000 galaxies, 13,000 were also in the initial catalog. The median $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$ in this catalog is 0.58.

We verified the accuracy of the photometric redshifts by comparison with spectroscopic redshifts of 31 galaxies in the range $`0.23<z_{\mathrm{spec}}<0.83`$. This sample was composed of 19 galaxies with redshifts described in Section 3 (the ones detected in all four filters), plus another 12 galaxies ($`0.24<z<0.83`$) in a different region of the 40 field, kindly provided by R. Guhathakurta. We find little bias, with $`(z_{\mathrm{spec}}z_{\mathrm{phot}})/(1+z_{\mathrm{spec}})=0.027`$ on average, and an rms of only 0.059 in the same quantity. A detailed analysis of this photometric redshift method and its application to larger datasets is in preparation (Margoniner et al. 2001).

Before examining the dependence of the shear on source redshift, we must first account for the equally large dependence on projected position relative to the lens. We are not interested in a detailed reconstruction of the lens; rather, for a given $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$ we would like to collapse information from all sources at a wide range of projected radii into a single number characterizing the lensing signal at that source redshift. Hence at a given $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$ we fit a very simple model, a singular isothermal sphere (SIS), to the radial dependence of the tangential shear (centered on the peak in the mass map), and use the fitted amplitude and its uncertainty. The assumption of a particular profile should not introduce any bias as a function of $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$. To test this, we also considered NFW (Navarro, Frenk & White 1997) profiles. Although our data cannot constrain the scale radius $`r_s`$, for fixed $`r_s`$ (225 kpc, Bartelmann, King & Schneider 2001), the results do not change significantly from the SIS case. We therefore choose the SIS for simplicity. For an SIS, the tangential shear $`\gamma _t(r)=\mathrm{\Sigma }(r)/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(r)r^1`$ is the projected mass density, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{crit}}=(c^2/4\pi G)(D_s/D_{ls}D_l)`$ is the critical density, and $`D_s`$, $`D_{ls}`$, and $`D_l`$ are the angular diameter distances from observer to source, lens to source, and observer to lens, respectively. Since only $`D_s`$ and $`D_{ls}`$ are changing with source redshift, the amplitude of an $`r^1`$ fit to the tangential shear should grow with the distance ratio $`D_s/D_{ls}`$.

Figure 2 shows the fitted tangential shear (at a fiducial radius of 1 Mpc) as a function of $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$. It is consistent with zero for $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}0.3`$ and increases monotonically for $`0.3<z_{\mathrm{phot}}<1.3`$ (the upper limit is to avoid extrapolating too far beyond the range of spectroscopic verification of $`z_{\mathrm{phot}}`$). The dotted line illustrates the shear expected from a lens at $`z_l=0.276`$, with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ fit to the points. This is a good fit ($`\chi _\nu ^21`$). We explore the range of $`z_l`$ allowed by the shear data by stepping $`z_l`$ through the range $`0.025z_l1.3`$ in steps of 0.025, and refitting at each step. The probabilities corresponding to $`\chi ^2`$ at each step are plotted in Figure 3. The median and mode of this distribution are at $`z_l=0.31`$ and 0.30 respectively, with a 68% confidence interval $`0.225<z_l<0.375`$ (these numbers change by less than 0.01 when an NFW profile is used). The fit for $`z_l=0.3`$ is also shown in Figure 2 (dashed line). Thus the lens roughly coincides with the cluster of galaxies in redshift as well as in right ascension and declination. This method can be used to estimate the redshift of any newly discovered lensing mass from the lensing data alone. Such a procedure may well become a standard part of shear-selected cluster surveys.

Finally, we estimate the mass and mass-to-light (M/L) ratio using the best-fit projected mass. Still assuming an isothermal sphere, the projected mass inside of 250 kpc (where it is convenient to measure the light) is $`2.8\pm 0.6\times 10^{14}M_{}`$, assuming $`z_l=0.276`$. For the range of $`z_l`$ allowed by the $`\gamma _t(z_{\mathrm{phot}})`$ curve, $`M_{\mathrm{proj}}(<250\mathrm{kpc})`$ ranges from $`1.83.7\times 10^{14}M_{}`$. The velocity dispersion implies $`M_{\mathrm{proj}}(<250\mathrm{kpc})=0.7\pm 0.3\times 10^{14}M_{}`$ under the SIS assumption. The discrepancy may be due to the SIS assumption: Unlike the redshift estimate, the mass estimate is sensitive to the profile assumed. Converting from observed $`I`$ band to rest-frame $`R`$ using the approach of Fischer & Tyson (1997), we find $`M/L_R=(560\pm 200)h`$ in this region. Compared to other clusters (Mellier 1999), this is high but not exceptional.

## 5. Discussion

Baryon-unbiased samples of mass concentrations over a wide range of redshift will be of critical importance in constraining cosmological parameters. To realize the potential of this technique, weak lensing observations must have the sensitivity to discover clusters over a broad part of the cluster mass function. For example, constraints on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ from the mass function at high redshift currently involve only a few very massive clusters, and such extreme clusters lie far out on the tail of the mass distribution, which may not be Gaussian. Weak lensing surveys can probe clusters an order of magnitude less massive. Unlike X-ray and optical selection, a shear signal does not diminish as the square of the luminosity distance, so that low-mass clusters should be detectable even at high redshift as long as the photometric redshifts are accurate in eliminating foreground sources.

We have demonstrated the serendipitous discovery, with high signal-to-noise, of a rather modest cluster via a weak lensing analysis of a single 40 field. The cluster was spectroscopically confirmed at $`z=0.276`$, with a velocity dispersion of 615 km sec-1. The tangential shear follows source (photometric) redshift in a manner which requires the lens to lie at or near the cluster redshift. Thus, all the ingredients are in place for a truly shear-selected sample of clusters, in which any putative mass clump can be confirmed, and its redshift estimated, from the multi-color imaging data alone. This technique is also capable of answering the question of the existence of any truly dark clumps. The redshift (and therefore mass, and mass-to-light ratio lower limit) of any such clumps can only be derived from the shear versus source redshift curve.

This further suggests that the promise of three-dimensional mass tomography (Tyson 1995, 2000) over cosmologically significant volumes can be realized in wide-field deep imaging surveys. Note that such a cluster is not unexpected in the volume probed by this data (Rahman & Shandarin 2001). Ongoing cosmic shear surveys covering tens of square degrees (e.g. the Deep Lens Survey111http://dls.bell-labs.com, DESCART222http://terapix.iap.fr/Descart) should discover significant samples of shear-selected clusters (Kruse & Schneider 1999) and begin to constrain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and dark energy through the redshift evolution of the cluster mass function.

We thank P. Guhathakurta for providing spectroscopic redshifts outside the cluster, and the CTIO staff for their help with the BTC project and for their upgrading and maintenance of the delivered image quality of the Blanco telescope. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is a division of National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. BTC construction was partially funded by the NSF.


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# Scale-free networks are not robust under neutral evolution

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## Abstract

Recently it has been shown that a large variety of different networks have power-law (scale-free) distributions of connectivities. We investigate the robustness of such a distribution in discrete threshold networks under neutral evolution. The guiding principle for this is robustness in the resulting phenotype. The numerical results show that a power-law distribution is not stable under such an evolution, and the network approaches a homogeneous form where the overall distribution of connectivities is given by a Poisson distribution.

\]

There are many different areas of contemporary science where the concept of networks are of special importance. Recently, the amazing result that such diverse networks as the World Wide Web , collaborations of movie actors , the electrical power grid of western USA , citation patterns of scientific publications  and metabolic networks , all have distributions of connectivities that are scale-free, i.e., obey some power-law. One reason for this quite general behaviour seems to be that the networks are grown by addition of new nodes and that each such new node preferentially attaches to other nodes with high number of connections . These networks are also more robust against unintelligent attacks than homogeneous networks, where each node has approximately the same number of connections . For the case of genetic regulatory networks, mutation is an example of such an “unintelligent attack”, and it is perhaps not surprising that the same type of scale-free distributions are found in the metabolic networks of so far 43 different organisms from all three domains of life (bacteria, eukarya, and archaea) .

The evolution of life is a random process with selection , although all details about how this occur with interactions among genotypes, phenotypes, and environment are not totally clear. Neutral evolution is the hypothesis that evolution mainly proceeds as a random walk which does not affect the phenotypes . Experimentally, it is supported on the microlevel by the fact that most of the important macromolecules of life have forms which are functionally identical variants. If this idea of neutrality is correct also on a higher level, it means that the usefulness of fitness landscapes for describing the evolution of life as a hill climbing process is limited.

Here we explore the idea of neutral evolution and how the distribution of connectivities in a genetic regulatory network changes under mutations that are phenotypically silent. The fundamental constituents in our model are the genes of the organism, represented by the nodes of the network. It has been suggested that such a system can be well approximated by a Boolean network , because of the “on-off” nature of the biochemical switches. The exploration is performed by simulating evolution in discrete threshold networks with robustness as the guiding principle for when a mutation will survive to future generations. We find by numerical simulations that the scale-free distribution cannot be maintained under neutral evolution in such networks. Instead, the networks evolve towards a Poisson distribution, regardless of the actual realization of the initial scale-free distribution.

The discrete threshold network is composed of $`N`$ nodes, $`\sigma _i`$, which are connected by a square matrix with elements $`w_{ij}`$. The values of the nodes are $`\sigma _i\{1,1\}`$, representing the corresponding gene to be expressed $`(+1)`$ or not $`(1)`$. The coupling matrix takes values $`w_{ij}\{1,0,1\}`$, with $`+1`$ if gene $`j`$ is an activator of gene $`i`$, $`1`$ if it is a repressor, and $`0`$ if no connection exist. The dynamics of the network is described by the updating rule

$$\sigma _i(t+1)=\text{sgn}\left(\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_{ij}\sigma _j(t)\right),$$
(1)
where the sign-function is defined as $`1`$ for all negative arguments, and $`+1`$ otherwise (including zero). Of special importance is the mean number of connections to each node, $`\overline{K}`$, which is calculated as

$$\overline{K}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}|w_{ij}|,$$
(2)
that is, we make no distinction between repressors and activators, and it has the same value for both ingoing and outgoing connections.

This is a special case of Boolean networks, with similar structural and statistical properties . These properties include both transients and limit cycles (attractors), as well as phase transitions for a specific critical connectivity, $`\overline{K}=K_c`$. An analytical approach is limited due to the non-Hamiltonian character of the system, but results within the so-called *annealed approximation* show, for Boolean networks, that for $`\overline{K}`$ below the critical connectivity $`K_c=2`$, there are many disconnected regions, while above $`K_c`$ most of the nodes are connected and the limit cycle period increases exponentially with the number of nodes. Also, at least in some intervals above $`K_c`$, the size of the attractors diverges almost exponentially with increasing connectivity . Note here that we use a form where the number of ingoing connections might differ from the number of outgoing, i.e., the matrix does not have to be symmetric, and that we do not impose the restriction that the number of connections should be the same for all nodes .

If every two nodes in a network are connected with the same probability $`p`$, we have the Erdős-Rényi model for random graphs , sometimes referred to as a *homogeneous* network. It is well known that in such networks, the number of connections to each node follows a Poisson distribution (with exponential decaying tails), and hence there will hardly be any nodes with a large number of connections. Loosely speaking, this is the most common form of a random graph.

To simulate neutral evolution, we start by generating a network with elements $`w_{ij}`$ by the procedure described in , i.e., we start from a small random network, and add new nodes by preferential attachment. The result is a scale-free network with a probability for a given node to have $`K`$ links (either ingoing or outgoing) proportional to $`K^\gamma `$ for $`K2`$, with, in our case, $`\gamma 1.63`$ (solid line in Fig. 1). We use consequently in this paper $`N=1024`$, which results in an average connectivity value initially slightly below the critical value $`K_c=2`$. Interestingly, a recent letter showed that another form for evolving a discrete threshold network (adding links to quiet nodes, removing links from active) leads to an average connectivity of 2.55 for this size of network . The sign of a specific connection specifies if we have an activator (positive value) or a repressor (negative value). These signs are here chosen randomly with equal probabilities.

The evolution now proceeds by the following procedure: The network is mutated by either

1. One non-zero element is put to zero (connection removed)
2. One zero element is turned into $`\pm 1`$ (with equal probability) (connection added)
3. Both of the above, i.e., one connection is added and another removed

These three alternatives (in the order given) occur with the probabilities $`0.300:0.333:0.367`$, forming a new, mutated network. The values of these probabilities were chosen to obtain a network with a relatively constant mean number of connections also for the comparatively small number of generations and the initially low number of mean connectivity we consider. However, also other values have been tried, and the results do not depend critically on their exact magnitudes. To either reject or accept the new, mutated network, we use robustness as the guiding principle. This is achieved by picking by random an initial state, $`\{\sigma _i\}`$, with equal probability for each single node $`\sigma _i`$ being either positive or negative. This state is iterated in both the original and the mutated network until we either enter into the same limit cycle in both networks, or the two iterants cease to coincide. In the former case we accept the mutated network, and replace the original one with the mutated version. This is then an evolutionary step within the neutral evolution. In the latter case, we reject the new, mutated network, since the effect of the mutation were not silent. Finally, we return to the mutation step and repeat the procedure. Notice this introduces two different time scales in the evolution. The one corresponding to the iteration of states $`\{\sigma _i\}`$ relates to a single generation, while the much slower process of accepting or rejecting new networks, i.e., the rewiring of connections $`w_{ij}`$, corresponds to the evolution over generations.

This way of simulating neutral evolution has earlier been explored by Bornholdt and Sneppen, both by truly Boolean networks  and by discrete threshold networks . They studied, however, the phenomenon of punctuated equilibrium and distribution of waiting times, and ignored the distribution of connections. Their study clarified that this model exhibit many of the known properties of evolution, such as $`1/f`$ power spectra  and $`1/t^2`$ stability distribution , in accordance with similar scalings found in the statistics of birth and death in the evolutionary record.

In Fig. 1 we show the initial distributions of connections and the distribution after 30 000 generations in one evolutionary run for the number of connections leading *into* the nodes. The result for connections leading *out* from them are quite similar, and are for clarity not shown. Although the limited number of nodes (due to computational constraints) makes the statistics somewhat fuzzy, it is still clear that the distribution changes from a power-law to an approximately Poisson distribution. To get a better picture, we have used the well-established technique of binning the values for the initial distribution. The solid and dotted lines are a power-law and a Poisson distribution, respectively. The exponent of the straight line $`P(K)K^\gamma `$ is found by a least squares fit to be $`\gamma 1.63`$. This should be compared to the theoretical value given in  for a fully directed graph of infinite size, which is $`\gamma =2`$. Although the number of nodes we use is small compared to the networks considered there, the correspondence seems acceptable. The Poisson distribution drawn is for the expectation value estimated by the mean value of connectivities, $`\overline{K}`$, at the actual generation. This means that in the general Poisson distribution function

$$P(K)=\frac{\mu ^K}{K!}\mathrm{exp}(\mu ),$$
(3)
we estimate the parameter $`\mu `$ with the mean connectivity $`\overline{K}`$. No curve fitting is used this time, but nevertheless the correspondence is quite striking.

In Fig. 2, we show the variation of mean connectivity, $`\overline{K}`$, for the first 30 000 generations. Because of the definition (2), this is the same value both for outgoing and ingoing connections. The curve shows that the mean number of connections remains fairly constant, although the detailed dynamics is non-trivial (with punctuated equilibria, etc., as discussed in ). It also shows that we in this run constantly are below the critical value of $`K_c=2`$. This is, however, not a critical aspect of the simulation, which other runs (not shown) have indicated. Hence any change in distribution among these connections cannot be due to changes in the mean connectivity. Nevertheless, there is according to Fig. 1 a real change in distribution from the start of the simulated evolution to the end of our calculations. To shed some further light onto the transition from a scale-free network with a power-law distribution to a homogeneous network with a Poisson distribution, we calculate the weighted mean square deviation

$$d^2=\frac{1}{N}\underset{K=1}{\overset{N}{}}K|n(K)NP(K)|^2,$$
(4)
where $`n(K)`$ is the number of nodes with $`K`$ connections and $`P(K)`$ is the Poisson distribution (3). For each comparison, we use the actual value of $`\overline{K}`$ as estimate for the expectation value $`\mu `$, but no other fitting is performed. Because the tail of the distribution function is the most critical, we give higher weight to larger number of connections by multiplying each term with the actual number of connections. The results are shown in Fig. 3. Although the exact details for the ingoing and outgoing connections differ, and it is clearly seen that the distributions eventually approach the Poisson distribution, regardless of which measure we consider.

The lengths of the limit cycles for the accepted networks in this evolutionary scenario vary between 1 and 20, with an average of approximately 6. The transients have lengths between 10 and 35 steps. Both these results indicate that we are in the regime of many, small, disconnected attractors, which is fully consistent with the mean connectivity $`\overline{K}`$ being less than the critical value $`K_c=2`$.

Better statistics, i.e., less fuzzy distributions, are obtained if we change the mutation rule above somewhat. Instead of having the possibility to separately add or remove a connection, we stick solely to alternative three, which means that the *number* of connections, and hence $`\overline{K}`$, remains constant. This is clearly a less realistic scenario than before from a biological point of view, but can help to see what distributions we really have. In Fig. 4, we show the mean values of the distributions for all generations between number 200 000 and 300 000, when we start with the same initial scale-free network used to obtain the results of Fig. 1. The dotted line is the theoretical Poisson distribution for the actual mean connectivity $`(\overline{K}=1.9678)`$. The weighted mean square deviations from this theoretical value are $`1.18`$ for the ingoing connections and $`0.06`$ for the outgoing, respectively. To the prize of having incorporated an unrealistic restriction, we have obtained distributions which are considerably closer to the theory.

To check the robustness of these results, we have repeated the calculations many times with different forms of initial network in the construction of the original scale-free network, as well as checked many different realizations. We have also started with networks with a power-law distributed number of connections obtained directly from a random number generator, i.e., without the process described in . In all these cases, our results do not change, i.e., the systems always end up with a Poisson distribution consistent with the random graph theory.

In conclusion, we have studied the evolution of initially scale-free networks, i.e., networks where the distribution of the number of connections to each node follows a power-law. The networks are evolved under the hypothesis of neutral evolution, which is implemented as a robustness criterium for the limit cycles in discrete threshold networks. The result is that the scale-free distribution is not robust under such an evolution, but instead all networks end up in a homogeneous form, with a Poisson distribution of connectivities. This result is surprising, since it has been shown that a scale-free network is more robust towards random attacks than an exponential network . Although one should be very careful with infering any definite statements with respect to biology from such simple models as the one presented here, we can speculate and draw the tentative conclusion that the addition of new nodes with preferential attachment seems to be a force that manages to repress the changes due to neutral evolution. Future studies might shed some light on the presumably different time-scales that are active here.

The author would like to thank Kim Sneppen for useful discussions on discrete threshold networks, Ingve Simonsen for careful reading of the manuscript, and Mattias Wahde for pointing out the results on scale-free networks. Financial support from The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education , STINT, is also gratefully acknowledged.


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# Improved characterization of elastic scattering near a Feshbach resonance in 85Rb

## Abstract

We report extensions and corrections to the measurement of the Feshbach resonance in 85Rb cold atom collisions reported earlier \[J. L. Roberts et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5109 (1998)\]. In addition to a better determination of the position of the resonance peak (154.9(4) gauss) and its width (11.0(4) gauss), improvements in our techniques now allow the measurement of the absolute size of the elastic scattering rate. This provides a new measure of the s-wave scattering length as a function of magnetic field near the Feshbach resonance and constrains the Rb-Rb interaction potential.

The presence of a Feshbach resonance in cold atomic collisions allows the elastic and inelastic collision properties to be dramatically altered as an external field is changed . In particular, the s-wave scattering length ($`a`$), which completely characterizes elastic scattering in ultracold collisions, can be tuned over a large range. In 1998, several groups reported the observation of external-magnetic-field Feshbach resonances in ultracold collisions in 85Rb  and in 23Na . These tunable interactions have been used to study the stability  and dynamics  of 85Rb BECs with attractive interactions. Interpreting the results of these recent studies and other future studies in 85Rb requires a more accurate knowledge of $`a`$ as a function of magnetic field ($`B`$) near the Feshbach resonance than that obtained in Ref. . In order to improve the accuracy of the determination of $`a`$ versus $`B`$, we extended and improved the measurements performed in Ref. .

The cold collision Rb-Rb interatomic potential and hence the s-wave scattering length vs. magnetic field is characterized primarily by three parameters: the triplet scattering length, $`a_T`$; the singlet scattering length, $`a_S`$; and the $`C_6`$ van der Waals coefficient . In our previous work, we measured two characteristics of the prominent Feshbach resonance in 85Rb: the magnetic field at which the magnitude of the s-wave scattering length was maximum ($`B_{peak}`$) and the magnetic field at which the s-wave scattering length was zero ($`B_{zero}`$). This was done by measuring the relative elastic scattering cross section as the magnetic field was changed. This tightly constrained two of the three parameters, $`a_T`$ and $`a_S`$, for a given $`C_6`$. However, $`C_6`$ was much less constrained, even when combined with the results from another experiment . At the time, the temperature of the trapped atom clouds was too hot to allow the determination of the absolute value of the scattering length .

We have now been able to improve the measurements made in Ref.  in two ways. First, the measurement of the stability of BECs with attractive atom-atom interactions (negative $`a`$) has allowed a much more precise measurement of $`B_{zero}`$. This more precise determination showed the presence of some small errors in the previous measurement. Second, we now have a far greater range of density and temperature of the magnetically trapped atom clouds available, and much better control over those quantities. The reproducibility and calibration were also improved. The absolute value of the scattering length could now be accurately determined. This additional constraint allows us to completely characterize $`a`$ vs. $`B`$ near the Feshbach resonance.

The more precise measurement of the position of $`B_{zero}`$ was a natural outgrowth of our work determining the stability of magnetically trapped BECs with attractive atom-atom interactions . When large enough attractive interactions (defined by $`Na`$) are present, the BECs will become unstable and collapse. The collapse criterion is given by the relation $`N_{cr}|a|=\beta `$, where $`N_{cr}`$ is the number of atoms in the condensate and $`\beta =1.41\mu m`$ for our magnetic trap. In Ref. , $`N_{cr}`$ was determined as a function of magnetic field down to very small $`a`$. A simple extrapolation to the point where $`N_{cr}=\mathrm{}`$ determined the position of $`B_{zero}`$. The value of $`B_{zero}`$ determined in this way is 165.85(5) gauss ($`G`$), a factor of six more precise than before. This increase in precision occurs both because the stability measurement is more sensitive and it avoids temperature-dependent shifts.

The new determination of $`B_{zero}`$ disagrees with the previous measurement  $`B_{zero}`$=166.8(3)$`G`$ by more than the stated errors. A small error in the magnetic field calibration in Ref.  is reponsible for 0.3$`G`$ of the difference. The remainder of the difference is likely due to temperature shifts of the elastic cross section and the temperature-dependent asymmetry in the cross section versus magnetic field near $`B_{zero}`$  that were not adequately included in Ref. . The new magnetic field calibration also shifts the measured position of $`B_{peak}`$ to 154.9(4)$`G`$.

The absolute value of the scattering length was determined at several values of the magnetic field, using “cross-dimensional mixing” measurements as in Ref. . In this technique, a cloud of cold atoms, created by evaporative cooling as in Ref. , is perturbed from its equilibrium energy distribution. The time for the cloud to equilibrate by elastic collisions is then measured. In the zero-temperature limit, the elastic collision cross section ($`\sigma `$) is $`\sigma =8\pi a^2`$.

Once the atom cloud had been cooled sufficiently, the bias magnetic field in the trap was ramped to near $`B_{zero}`$ to drastically reduce the elastic collision rate. By cutting faster with the rf-“knife” used for evaporative cooling than the cloud could equilibrate, it was possible to remove energy in just the radial direction of the axially symmetric magnetic trap . The width of the cloud in the radial direction was decreased until the radial energy had been reduced to 0.6 of the axial direction, and then the bias magnetic field was ramped adiabatically to a selected value and the cloud was allowed to equilibrate for a fixed time. The size, number, and shape of the cloud were measured using on-resonance destructive absorption imaging. This procedure was repeated for different equilibration times and the rate of the relaxation of the aspect ratio of the clouds (the ratio of the axial width to the radial width) to equilibrium was recorded.

The rate of flow of energy out of any particular direction, axial or radial, is proportional to the difference between the average energy in that direction and the equilibrium value multiplied by the factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{2}{\kappa }n\sigma v`$ (i.e. $`\frac{dE_i}{dt}=\mathrm{\Gamma }(E_iE_{avg})`$, i=x,y,z). In the factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, $`n`$ is the average density defined by $`\frac{{\scriptscriptstyle n(\stackrel{}{x})^2d^3x}}{{\scriptscriptstyle n(\stackrel{}{x})d^3x}}`$, $`v`$ is the root-mean-square relative speed $`\sqrt{\frac{16k_BT}{\pi m}}`$, $`\sigma =8\pi a^2`$ is the elastic collision cross section, and $`\kappa `$ is a numerical factor. The parameter $`\kappa `$ is weakly dependent on the difference between radial and axial energy but is always within 2% of the value 2.50. It is calculated using classical transport theory  with the assumption that the velocity and density distributions can be described in each direction by a single parameter, an effective temperature that is equal to the average energy divided by the Boltzmann constant $`k_B`$. A Monte-Carlo simulation agrees with this classical calculation at the 4% level .

The relaxation of the aspect ratio was fit appropriately to determine $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and hence $`a`$. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is not strictly constant as a function of equilibration time since the density and temperature of an atom cloud varied during equilibration due to loss, heating, and change in shape. These small ($`<5\%`$) variations were included in the fits to the data. The density and temperature of the atom cloud was measured directly along with the aspect ratio in the absorption imaging. The density was maintained near $`2.5\times 10^{10}`$cm-3 and the temperature was kept near 130 nK. For these cold clouds, the energy dependence of the average elastic cross section is expected to be less than 5%, and the fits to the data included the energy dependence due to the unitarity limit .

Data were taken at $`B`$=168.0, 169.7, and 251.0 $`G`$. The magnetic field was calibrated in the same way as Ref. : the rf frequency that resonantly drove spin flip transitions for atoms at the center of the cloud was measured and the Breit-Rabi equation was used to determine the magnetic field. Colder clouds were used, improving the precision. The spread of the magnetic field across the clouds was $`0.2G`$ FWHM. Figure 1 shows a set of aspect ratio equilibration data and the corresponding fit. Across the range of magnetic fields measured, the equilibration times varied by about a factor of 30. The distance from $`B_{peak}`$ ensures that the spread in $`a`$ due to the spread in $`B`$ across the cloud was not significant and that the precise location of $`B_{peak}`$ is also not a limiting factor in analyzing the results.

The uncertainty in the determination of $`a`$ is dominated by the determination of number and the fit to obtain $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. The number determination relies on the calibration of our absorption imaging system, which was performed while taking into account the frequency and intensity of our probe laser, optical pumping effects, and the small Doppler shift arising from scattering multiple photons. We estimate the uncertainty to be 10%, which results in a 5% uncertainty in each determination of $`a`$. The uncertainty in the fit to obtain $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is primarily caused by small oscillations in the aspect ratio due to the vertical and horizontal radial directions not being perfectly degenerate. Although this limited the accuracy of the fit, the size of this imbalance was varied and no significant shifts in the results were observed. Also, the period of the oscillations does not depend on the value of $`a`$ and so the agreement between data sets of very different equilibration times also indicates that this effect is not distorting the results significantly. The measured value (in atomic units) of $`a`$ is -342(10), -97(6), and -60(4) at $`B`$ = 251.0, 169.7, and 168.0$`G`$, respectively. The listed uncertainty does not include the common uncertainty due to the atom number determination.

Near the Feshbach resonance, the change in $`a`$ with $`B`$ can be well approximated by the relation $`a=a_{bg}(1\frac{B_{zero}B_{peak}}{BB_{peak}})`$ . Using this, we can determine $`a_{bg}`$ for each measured value of $`a`$ (Fig. 2). The weighted average of all of these data gives $`a_{bg}=380(21)`$ where the uncertainty is dominated by the determination of number.

Our measurement now constrains all three parameters needed to describe the Rb-Rb potential for ultracold collisions. Using the same methods presented in Ref. , the Rb-Rb Born-Oppenheimer potentials are adjusted until the theoretically predicted $`B_{zero}`$, $`B_{peak}`$, and $`a_{bg}`$ match the observed values. The calculation of $`a`$ vs. $`B`$ is performed using a quantum defect method . Matching the Rb-Rb potential to the observed scattering lengths implies $`a_T`$(85Rb) = $`332\pm 18`$, $`a_S`$(85Rb)=$`3650_{670}^{+1500}`$ , and $`C_6=4660\pm 20`$, where all of the values are listed in atomic units . This value of the $`C_6`$ coefficient is consistent both with an ab initio calculation  and a recent photoassociation measurement .

As a result of improvements in our experimental techniques and the measurement of 85Rb BEC stability in the presence of attractive interactions, we have been able to improve our characterization of the prominent Feshbach resonance in 85Rb.

This work has been supported by the ONR and NSF. We are pleased to acknowledge helpful discussions with Brian DeMarco and Murray Holland. One of us (S. L. Cornish) acknowledges the support of the Lindemann Foundation.