text:
# 1 Upper limit on the combination 𝐶_{𝜏𝜇}=(𝑌^†"ln"(𝑀_𝑈/𝑀_𝑅)𝑌)_{𝜏𝜇} from the present bound 𝐵𝑅(𝜏→𝜇𝛾)<1.1×10⁻⁶. The numbers in brackets correspond to an improvement by a factor 10³ in the upper bound. Here "tan"𝛽=10, 𝐴₀=0 and sign(𝜇)=+. The solid and dashed curves in light grey represent respectively the 1𝜎 and 2𝜎 contours allowed for the supersymmetric contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment. The dark gray region is excluded because the lighter stau would here be the LSP. The region below the dash-dotted line could be explored by searching for the LFV decay 𝜒̃⁰₂→𝜒̃⁰₁𝜇𝜏 at the LHC [].

SACLAY-T01/066

$`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$ as probes of neutrino mass models

Stéphane Lavignac, Isabella Masina and Carlos A. Savoy 111E-mails: lavignac@spht.saclay.cea.fr, masina@spht.saclay.cea.fr, savoy@spht.saclay.cea.fr.

Service de Physique Théorique 222Laboratoire de la Direction des Sciences de la Matière du Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique et Unité de Recherche Associée au CNRS (URA 2306)., CEA-Saclay

F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of discriminating between different supersymmetric see-saw models by improving the experimental sensitivity to charged lepton flavour violating processes. Assuming a hierarchical neutrino mass spectrum, we classify see-saw models according to how the hierarchy $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ is generated, and study the predictions of each class for the branching ratios of $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$. The process $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ is found to be a particularly promising tool to probe the fundamental see-saw parameters, and especially to identify the origin of the large atmospheric mixing angle. Predictions for $`\mu e\gamma `$ are more model-dependent. We point out that, even with an improvement of the experimental sensitivities by three orders of magnitude, both $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$ could escape detection in models where $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ is determined by one of the lightest right-handed neutrinos.

The smallness of neutrino masses with respect to charged fermion masses and the by now robust observation of at least one large mixing in the leptonic sector  suggest that the mechanism responsible for the generation of neutrino masses is different from the one at work for charged fermions. Presumably neutrinos are Majorana particles and their mass is linked to lepton number violation. The see-saw mechanism  emerges as the most elegant explanation of the smallness of neutrino masses. At least in the supersymmetric case, it is also very suggestive as the scale of lepton number violation appears to be near the gauge coupling unification scale.

With three right-handed neutrinos the light neutrino effective mass matrix then reads 333We adopt the convention of writing Dirac mass terms as $`\overline{R}m_DL`$. CP violating phases will be neglected.

$`_\nu `$ $`=`$ $`Y^TM_R^1Yv_u^2`$ (1)
$`=`$ $`U^{}\text{diag}(m_1,m_2,m_3)U^{},`$
where $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ are $`3\times 3`$ matrices in flavour space representing respectively the neutrino Dirac Yukawa couplings and the Majorana right-handed mass matrix, $`v_u`$ is the appropriate Higgs vacuum expectation value and $`U`$ is the neutrino mixing matrix. Unless otherwise stated we always work in the flavour space basis where the mass matrix of charged leptons and $`M_R`$ are both diagonal, so that $`M_R=\text{diag}(M_1,M_2,M_3)`$ with $`|M_1|<|M_2|<|M_3|.`$

It is clear that, even if we precisely knew $`_\nu `$ by measuring $`U`$ and the light neutrino masses, it would not be possible to disentangle from it the structure of the Dirac and Majorana mass matrices 444 A detailed discussion of these ambiguities is presented in . . For instance, the knowledge of $`U`$ does not provide direct access to the mixings which are present in $`Y`$. With $`Y=V_R\text{diag}(Y_1,Y_2,Y_3)V_L^{}`$, the identification $`V_L=U`$ holds in a very special case, namely, if $`YY^{}`$ and $`M_R`$ can be simultaneously diagonalised. Even for small right-mixings in $`V_R`$ and/or a small hierarchy among right-handed Majorana masses, $`U`$ can be significantly different from $`V_L`$. So, contrary to what happens in the quark sector, neutrino masses do not provide direct access to the left-mixings in the Yukawa couplings. Nevertheless, as discussed later, one can already identify phenomenologically acceptable patterns for $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ from the data on $`_\nu `$.

The aim of this letter is to investigate which additional information could be extracted from improving the bounds on - or measuring - the branching ratios of the charged lepton flavour violating (LFV) processes $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$, in the framework of supersymmetric models. At present these bounds are $`BR(\tau \mu \gamma )<1.1\times 10^6`$  and $`BR(\mu e\gamma )<1.2\times 10^{11}`$ . In the Standard Model, such flavour violating processes in the charged lepton sector are predicted to be much below the experimental bounds and negligible with respect to the analogous ones occurring in the quark sector, due to the smallness of neutrino masses . On the other hand, one of the major open problems of low-energy supersymmetry is to justify the fact that flavour violating processes have not already been found at a rate substantially larger than predicted by the Standard Model. Indeed, some amount of flavour dependence is generically expected in the soft mass terms. Then loops containing sleptons give rise to LFV because of lepton flavour mixing in the slepton mass matrices . These non-diagonal mass matrix elements are in turn strongly bounded by the experimental limits on LFV transitions.

It has been pointed out  that if right-handed neutrinos are present, LFV processes might get drastically enhanced with respect to the SM – even in the case of universality of soft SUSY breaking terms at the scale $`M_UM_{Pl}`$. Indeed, the running of the slepton masses from $`M_U`$ to the scale where right-handed neutrinos decouple, due to loop corrections involving the Yukawa coupling matrix $`Y,`$ induces flavour non-diagonal terms. These terms are associated with a different combination of $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ than the one occurring in the see-saw, namely with the non-diagonal entries of the matrix

$$C=Y^{}\mathrm{ln}\left(M_U/M_R\right)Y.$$
(2)
Thus one immediately realizes that LFV effects arising from these loops potentially contain additional information on $`Y`$ and $`M_R.`$

In this context it has been shown recently that, also in connection with the MSSM parameter space preferred by the present data on the muon anomalous magnetic moment , some particularly simple realizations of the see-saw mechanism predict the decay of $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$ at a rate which could be at hand of future experimental sensitivity . In particular, it turns out that non-observation of $`\mu e\gamma `$ already excludes some of those models in sizeable regions of the supersymmetric parameter space , while at present $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ is less constraining.

Here we take a different approach to analyse the information on the mechanism generating neutrino masses that could be obtained by improving the experimental sensitivity on those branching ratios. Indeed, we adopt a “bottom-up” approach, i.e. we do not assume any particular model or flavour structure for the seesaw parameters. Firstly we obtain the upper bounds on the matrix elements of (2) from the upper bounds on $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma ,`$ respectively. Notice that the discovery and measurement of these branching ratios would only provide upper bounds on these one-loop corrections. Indeed, there could be other sources of LFV in the slepton mass matrices, like flavour-dependent soft terms at tree level mentioned above, or radiative corrections in the context of grand unification555For instance it is well known that in $`SU(5)`$ an additional source of LFV are the Yukawa couplings of the colored triplet . and other possible contributions from unknown physics between $`M_{GUT}`$ and $`M_{Pl}`$. As usual we assume that these effects do not conspire to cancel each other since they seem to have different origins, so that each one is constrained by the experimental bounds.

Secondly we divide the $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ matrices consistent with light neutrino data into three classes which are shown to have different patterns for (2), hence different predictions for LFV processes. Then it is straightforward to see whether the planned future searches of LFV will be sensitive enough to test such predictions. We find that in almost all of the mSUGRA parameter space below the TeV region $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ appears to be a clear tool to learn whether $`Y`$ possesses a small $`\mu \tau `$ mixing, analogous to the quark mixing, or a large one as the light neutrinos. This distinction is far from being academic because, depending on it, the mechanism generating neutrino masses has completely different characteristics which can in turn give useful hints on the underlying flavour symmetries. In particular, the $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ branching ratio is suppressed if the atmospheric neutrino oscilation mass scale is not linked to the heaviest right-handed neutrino, as in models where the lepton analog of the CKM angles are small. On the contrary, even if perfectly measured, the process $`\mu e\gamma `$ alone could not achieve this task, though it would be useful to obtain further informations on the structure of $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ in special situations  .

In the MSSM with right-handed neutrinos, the amplitude for the process $`l_il_j\gamma `$ has been completely calculated in . Its dominant contribution, which scales as $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ for large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta ,`$ arises from loops where charginos and sneutrinos circulate, in analogy with the supersymmetric contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, but with an insertion of the off-diagonal element of the sneutrino mass matrix $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}^{2}{}_{ij}{}^{}`$ (always in the basis where charged leptons and right-handed Majorana neutrinos are diagonal). The size of this amplitude crucially depends on the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. In order to pick out the effect induced by the neutrino Yukawas $`Y`$, let us assume universality among soft scalar masses at $`M_UM_{Pl}`$, like in mSUGRA. Then the dominant contribution can be written as a function of $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}`$ and $`M_2`$, which are respectively the (mean) sneutrino and charged gaugino masses, $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ and the corresponding insertion $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}^{2}{}_{ij}{}^{}`$. Below $`M_1`$ the off-diagonal element $`(ij)`$ of the sneutrino mass matrix is approximately given by

$$m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}^{}{}_{ij}{}^{2}\frac{1}{8\pi ^2}(3m_0^2+A_0^2)Y_{ki}^{}\text{ln}\left(\frac{M_U}{M_k}\right)Y_{kj},$$
(3)
$`m_0`$ and $`A_0`$ being respectively the universal soft scalar mass and trilinear coupling at $`M_U`$.

An experimental upper limit on $`\text{BR}(l_il_j\gamma )`$ gives an upper limit on the $`C_{ij}`$ defined in (2) for each point in the plane $`(m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }},M_2).`$ In figs. 1 and 2 we show the upper limits on $`C_{\tau \mu }`$ and $`C_{\mu e}`$ as inferred from the present bounds on the branching ratios for $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ and $`\mu e\gamma `$ respectively. We also give in brackets the limits corresponding to an improvement by three orders of magnitude in the sensitivity to these branching ratios. Such an improvement is indeed expected for $`\mu e\gamma `$ . Prospects for $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ are currently less optimistic, but searches for the LFV decay $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_2^0\stackrel{~}{\chi }_1^0\mu \tau `$ at future colliders could provide limits on $`C_{\tau \mu }`$ of that order of magnitude in the region of the $`(m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }},M_2)`$ plane indicated on figs. 1 and 2 .

The results in the figures are displayed in the plane $`(m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }},M_2)`$, the variables which they are mostly sensitive to. They have been determined in the framework of the universality assumption of the mSUGRA model, where the MSSM parameter $`\mu `$ basically depends on the gaugino mass universality, while the insertions $`m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}^{}{}_{ij}{}^{2}`$ as given by (3) depend more on the universality assumption within the slepton and Higgs sector. It is then easy to estimate the change in the results for reasonable departures from these assumptions.

In these figures we put $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$ but, since for large $`\text{tan}\beta `$ the bounds on the $`C_{ij}`$ scale as the inverse of $`\text{tan}\beta `$, the upper bounds for other $`\text{tan}\beta `$ values are obtained upon multiplication by $`(10/\mathrm{tan}\beta )`$.

As stressed before, since light neutrinos and LFV processes provide us with complementary information on the fundamental see-saw parameters, it is interesting to understand which level of improvement in the experimental sensitivity to LFV processes would make it possible to discriminate between different classes of models and to shed some light on the underlying flavour theory. It is therefore a useful task to classify realistic see-saw models of neutrino masses according to their predictions for the branching ratios of LFV processes - or more exactly, given our ignorance of the supersymmetric mass spectrum, for the quantities $`C_{ij}`$.

Neutrino oscillation experiments provide data on $`U`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2=m_3^2m_2^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2=m_2^2m_1^2.`$ In the absence of a direct mass measurement, three possibilities are still open for the light neutrino spectrum: (A) $`|m_3||m_2||m_1|`$, (B) $`|m_1||m_2||m_3|`$ and (C) $`|m_1||m_2||m_3|`$. A hierarchical pattern with a dominant third family is the case for up quarks, down quarks and charged leptons. The almost perfect degeneracy of squared masses required by (B) and (C) could only result from a conspiracy between the Dirac and the Majorana mass matrices. Moreover, a precise degeneracy at the unification scale would be stabilized against radiative corrections down to low energies only if it were protected by a symmetry .

In the following we thus focus on case (A), namely a hierarchical spectrum for light neutrinos. We make the following assumptions about the neutrino mass spectrum: the atmospheric neutrino anomaly is mainly due to $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations with a large mixing angle, as suggested by the Super-Kamiokande  and CHOOZ  data; the solar neutrino deficit  is accounted for by one of the allowed solutions: MSW-SMA, MSW-LMA, LOW 666 At the time when this letter was completed, no analysis of solar neutrino oscillations including the SNO result had been published yet. The VO solution ($`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2\text{a few}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{10}eV^2`$) was disfavoured by 3-flavour global analyses of all neutrino data . The 2-flavour analyses of solar neutrino data that appeared just after the SNO result also disfavour the SMA solution .. There is no oscillation explanation of the (still controversial ) LSND result . Note that due to the hierarchy of masses, the only remaining constraint from terrestrial experiments is the CHOOZ limit on $`|U_{e3}|^2`$. Then $`m_3^2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2=(1.46.1)\times 10^3\text{eV}^2,`$ $`|U_{\mu 3}|/|U_{\tau 3}|1,`$ and $`|U_{e3}|<.2.`$ . Concerning $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2`$ and the solar angle, given by $`\mathrm{tan}\theta _{12}=|U_{e2}|/|U_{e1}|`$, one has to keep in mind all possible solar solutions.

This strongly constrains the effective neutrino mass matrix $`_\nu `$. In particular its entries must be such that the two heaviest eigenstates are strongly mixed while being well separated in mass. Without any further assumption, $`_\nu `$ can be written in terms of the parameter $`ϵm_2/m_3`$:

$$_\nu =m_3\left(U_{\tau 3}^2\left(\begin{array}{ccc}b^2& ab& b\\ ab& a^2& a\\ b& a& 1\end{array}\right)+𝒪(ϵ)\right),$$
(4)
where $`aU_{\mu 3}/U_{\tau 3}`$, $`bU_{e3}/U_{\tau 3}`$ and the symbol $`𝒪(ϵ)`$ stands for a matrix whose elements are at most of order $`ϵ`$ and whose structure is linked to the solar neutrino angle. As discussed above, $`|U_{\tau 3}|=0.71\pm 0.15,|a|1,|b|<.28,`$ and the central values for $`ϵ`$ are $`0.1,0.04`$ and $`0.006`$ for the LMA, SMA and LOW solutions, respectively , for $`m_1^2m_2^2`$.

The expected branching ratios for LFV processes crucially depend on how the structure (4) is realized in terms of $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$. In order to be able to classify the various possibilities, let us have a closer look at the lower right $`2\times 2`$ submatrix in $`_\nu `$, henceforth denoted by $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}.`$ Clearly the structure (4) corresponds to the relations:

$$x\frac{det_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}}{\left(\text{Tr}_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}\right)^2}𝒪(ϵ),(_\nu )_{\mu \tau }(_\nu )_{\tau \tau }.$$
(5)
This is automatically satisfied if one of the three right-handed neutrinos, say $`N_k`$, gives the dominant contribution to each entry in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$ ,

$$_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}=v_u^2\underset{k=1}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{Y_{k\mu }^2}{M_k}& \frac{Y_{k\mu }Y_{k\tau }}{M_k}\\ \frac{Y_{k\mu }Y_{k\tau }}{M_k}& \frac{Y_{k\tau }^2}{M_k}\end{array}\right),$$
(6)
and if $`Y_{k\mu }Y_{k\tau }`$. If this is not the case, some amount of cancellation among the entries of $`Y`$ is needed in order to fulfil the first condition in (5).

We shall refer to the situation where the contributions of the other eigenstates of $`M_R`$ are at most $`𝒪(ϵ)`$ with respect to those of $`N_k`$ as “dominance of $`N_k`$”. According to this definition, we divide the see-saw models leading to the structure (4) into three different classes that we turn to discuss in connection with their implications for radiative LFV decays. A few typical examples for each class, chosen among the many models in the literature, are aimed to illustrate its general features.

\[Class 1:\] None of the three right-handed neutrinos dominates in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$.

This case arises when all $`\frac{Y_{k\mu }^2}{M_k}`$ and $`\frac{Y_{k\tau }^2}{M_k}`$ are of the same order of magnitude or, for at most one value of $`k`$, are smaller by at least a factor $`ϵ`$. Since $`Y_{k\mu }Y_{k\tau }`$, the atmospheric mixing is automatically large. This, together with the hierarchy condition in (5), requires a tuning of these $`Y`$ couplings. Depending on the solar neutrino solution this tuning may be mild (LMA) or more severe (LOW). Generically one expects a large $`\mu \tau `$ mixing in $`Y`$, $`(V_L)_{\mu \tau }=𝒪(1)`$ – in contrast to the analogous mixing in the quark sector – unless there is a strong hierarchy in $`M_R`$, $`M_3M_2/ϵ`$ .

This class of models leads to 777This is only a lower limit because if the heaviest right-handed neutrino $`N_3`$ is not dominant in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$, its contribution to $`|C_{\tau \mu }|`$ may increase the result in (7) by a factor at most $`𝒪(ϵM_3/M_2)`$.

$`|C_{\tau \mu }||Y_{k\tau }|^2\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_U}{M_k}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2}}{v_u^2}}M_k\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_U}{M_k}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_k}{5\times 10^{14}\text{GeV}}}\right)\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{M_U}{M_k}}\right),`$ (7)
where $`M_k`$ is the largest $`M_R`$ eigenvalue corresponding to a dominant contribution. For $`Y_{k\tau }𝒪(1),`$ so that $`M_k5\times 10^{14}\text{GeV},`$ $`|C_{\tau \mu }|7.`$ We can therefore conclude that, for $`Y_{k\tau }^2\mathrm{tan}\beta 30`$ and $`M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}1`$ TeV, $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ should be observed provided that the experimental sensitivity improves by three orders of magnitude (see fig. 1). For $`Y_{k\tau }^2\mathrm{tan}\beta <30`$ there remains a narrow band at large values of $`M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}`$, corresponding to the cosmologically preferred region of mSUGRA , where $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ could escape detection.

The predictions for $`\mu e\gamma `$ and $`\tau e\gamma `$ are more model-dependent. If the heaviest eigenstate $`N_3`$ gives one of the dominant contributions in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$, then $`|C_{\tau e}||C_{\mu e}||Y_{3e}C_{\tau \mu }/Y_{3\tau }|.`$ In this case an upper bound of $`10^{14}`$ in $`\mu e\gamma `$ would imply $`Y_{3e}10^2`$ (see fig. 2).

Models based on Abelian flavour symmetries  fall into class 1, unless the charges are chosen in such a way that texture zeros due to the holomorphy of the superpotential, appear in suitable entries of $`Y`$, as in examples 2 and 3 below.

Example 1. Consider an Abelian horizontal (or flavour) symmetry $`U(1)_X`$ broken by a single MSSM singlet field $`\theta `$ 888The conclusions are identical with any number of Abelian symmetries and an equal number of “flavons”.. The charges of the leptons are denoted by $`l_i`$, $`e_i`$ and $`n_i`$ for the doublet leptons $`L_i`$, right-handed charged leptons $`E_i`$ and right-handed neutrinos $`N_i`$ respectively. The charges of the Higgses are denoted by $`h_u`$ and $`h_d`$. If thee are no supersymmetry zeros, the $`n_i`$ factorize out in the see-saw mechanism implying that all right-handed neutrinos contribute to $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$ so that these models belong to class 1. The large atmospheric mixing angle requires $`l_2=l_3`$, and one ends up with a light neutrino mass matrix of the form  :

$$_\nu \frac{v_u^2\lambda ^{2(l_3+h_u)}}{M}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^{2(l_1l_3)}& \lambda ^{l_1l_3}& \lambda ^{l_1l_3}\\ \lambda ^{l_1l_3}& d& e\\ \lambda ^{l_1l_3}& e& f\end{array}\right),$$
(8)
where the scale $`M`$ is related to the breaking of lepton number, $`\lambda =\theta /M,`$and the coefficients $`d`$, $`e`$, $`f`$ in $`^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$ are $`O(1).`$ The condition (5) requires a tuning of $`x=\frac{dfe^2}{(d+f)^2}`$ to $`𝒪(ϵ)`$. If $`x\lambda ^{l_1l_3}`$, one finds $`m_2\lambda ^{l_1l_3}m_3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2/\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2\text{max}(x\lambda ^{l_1l_3},\lambda ^{3(l_1l_3)})`$, and a mixing matrix $`U`$ with all elements of $`𝒪(1)`$ with the exception of $`U_{e3}\lambda ^{l_1l_3}.`$ We thus obtain a large solar mixing angle. In principle this allows us to reproduce either the large angle MSW solution for typical values $`x\lambda ^{l_1l_3}0.1`$ (with $`|U_{e3}|`$ close to its present upper bound) or the LOW solution. However the latter option requires a strong tuning, $`x\lambda ^{l_1l_3}5\times 10^3`$. At the price of an even stronger tuning larger values of $`U_{e3}\lambda ^{l_1l_3}`$ are in principle possible.

We have in this kind of example, $`|C_{\tau \mu }||Y_{3\tau }|^2\mathrm{ln}\left(M_U/M_3\right)`$ and $`|C_{\mu e}|/|C_{\tau \mu }|\lambda ^{l_1l_3}.`$ Thus, for $`Y_{3\tau }1`$, $`|C_{\tau \mu }|7`$ and $`|C_{\mu e}|0.7,0.04`$ for LMA and LOW respectively. We conclude that $`\mu e\gamma `$ will allow us to test or exclude this model if the solution of the solar neutrino problem is LMA. For LOW the analysis is less conclusive if $`Y_{3\tau }^2\mathrm{tan}\beta <30`$. These conclusions agree with those obtained in previous studies . However they are related to the absence of texture zeros in $`Y`$ and/or $`M_R`$ and are not general amongst the class 1 models.

\[Class 2:\] The heaviest right-handed neutrino $`N_3`$ dominates in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$.

This is realised when the hierarchy in $`YY^T`$ for the $`(\mu ,\tau )`$ sector is stronger than the one in $`M_R`$ by at least $`𝒪(ϵ^1).`$ A mass hierarchy is naturally obtained in this case and $`Y_{3\mu }Y_{3\tau }`$ is needed in order to have a large mixing; hence the large mixing must be already present in $`Y`$, that is $`(V_L)_{\mu \tau }=𝒪(1)`$. In this case the coefficient of the $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ amplitude is

$$|C_{\tau \mu }||Y_{3\tau }|^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{M_U}{M_3}\right)\left(\frac{M_3}{5\times 10^{14}\text{GeV}}\right)\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{M_U}{M_3}\right),$$
(9)
so that this class of models always predicts a sizeable branching ratio for $`\tau \mu \gamma `$. In particular $`|C_{\tau \mu }|7`$ if $`Y_{3\tau }𝒪(1)`$. The branching ratio for $`\mu e\gamma `$ is more model-dependent as it depends on the hierarchy between the $`Y_{ke}`$ couplings. More precisely there is a lower bound $`|C_{\mu e}/C_{\tau \mu }||Y_{3e}/Y_{3\tau }|,`$ while $`|Y_{3e}/Y_{3\tau }|\text{max}(b,ϵ).`$

In order to ensure the stronger hierarchy in $`Y`$, a richer flavour structure than for class 1 has to be at work .

Example 2. As an example of dominance of $`N_3`$, let us consider an Abelian flavour symmetry with the following charge assigment 999This charge assignement corresponds to a slight change in the model of Ref. , which has a small value of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$.: $`(l_1,l_2,l_3)=(2,0,0)`$, $`(n_1,n_2,n_3)=(1,1,0)`$, $`(e_1,e_2,e_3)=(3,2,0)`$, $`h_d=1`$ and $`h_u=0.`$ The small symmetry breaking parameter is taken to be the Cabibbo angle, $`\lambda 0.22`$. The characteristic of the model with respect to the previous example is the existence of supersymmetric zeros in $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ in the basis of the Abelian charge eigenvalues. One then obtains, in the basis of charged lepton and right-handed neutrino mass eigenstates:

$$Y\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda & \lambda & \lambda \\ \lambda & \lambda & \lambda \\ \lambda ^2& 1& 1\end{array}\right),M_RM\text{diag}(1,1,1),_\nu \frac{v_u^2}{M}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^4& \lambda ^2& \lambda ^2\\ \lambda ^2& 1& 1\\ \lambda ^2& 1& 1\end{array}\right).$$
(10)
The $`1`$ in $`\text{diag}(1,1,1)`$ indicates that $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$ are quasi degenerate in mass, with opposite $`CP`$ parities. As discussed above, the large mixing in the atmospheric neutrino sector originates from $`Y_{32}Y_{33}`$, and the right mass scale is obtained for $`M5\times 10^{14}`$ GeV. One can check that $`N_3`$ dominates in the $`\mu \tau `$ sector, naturally suppressing the ratio $`m_2/m_3`$. Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2`$ is further suppressed relative to $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ by the fact that $`m_1`$ and $`m_2`$ are almost degenerate, giving rise to the LOW solution. As for LFV processes, from the structure of $`Y`$ in (10) one immediately realises that the contribution of $`N_3`$ is dominant in $`\tau \mu \gamma `$, while all three right-handed neutrinos give a contribution of similar size to $`\mu e\gamma `$: $`|C_{\tau \mu }|7`$ and $`|C_{\mu e}|\lambda ^2\mathrm{ln}(M_U/M_3)0.4.`$ We conclude that an improvement of the experimental limit on $`\mu e\gamma `$ by three orders of magnitude will test this model for $`M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}1\text{TeV}.`$ Notice that the same model with $`h_d=0`$, corresponding to $`\mathrm{tan}\beta 50`$, is almost excluded by the present bounds on $`\mu e\gamma .`$

\[Class 3:\] One of the two lightest right-handed neutrinos dominates in $`_\nu ^{(\mu ,\tau )}`$.

This is realised when the hierarchy in $`YY^T`$ for the $`(\mu ,\tau )`$ sector is weaker than the one in $`M_R`$ by at least $`𝒪(ϵ^1).`$ Like in class 2 models, a mass hierarchy is naturally obtained, and the condition for a large mixing is $`Y_{k\mu }Y_{k\tau }`$, where $`N_k`$ is the dominant right-handed neutrino. Unlike class 2 models and the major part of class 1 models this is not incompatible with a hierarchical structure of the Dirac mass matrix. Hence the large $`\mu \tau `$ mixing does not require a large $`V_{L}^{}{}_{\mu \tau }{}^{}`$. Since $`m_3v_u^2Y_{k\tau }^2/M_k`$ corresponds to the atmospheric neutrino scale, the dominance of $`N_k`$ implies $`M_3ϵ^1M_kY_{3\tau }^2/Y_{k\tau }^2(5\times 10^{14}\text{GeV})Y_{3\tau }^2/ϵ`$, suggesting a high scale for the breaking of lepton number. Indeed, in explicit models $`M_3`$ is generally larger than the GUT scale.

Smaller branching ratios for LFV processes can be expected for two reasons: first, since $`Y`$ does not necessarily contain a large $`\mu \tau `$ mixing, $`Y_{3\mu }`$ can be smaller than $`Y_{3\tau }`$; second, since $`N_3`$ is not the dominant right-handed neutrino, $`Y_{3\mu }`$ and $`Y_{3\tau }`$ can be both significantly smaller than 1 without requiring a small $`M_3`$. Then $`N_3`$ does not necessarily provide the dominant contribution to $`C_{\tau \mu }`$, unlike class 2 and the major part of class 1.

In order to ensure the weaker hierarchy in $`Y`$, a richer flavour structure than for class 1 has to be at work .

Example 3. As a first example, consider another variant of the $`SU(5)`$ model of Ref. , namely an Abelian horizontal symmetry with charges $`(l_1,l_2,l_3)=(2,0,0)`$, $`(n_1,n_2,n_3)=(3,1,0)`$, $`(e_1,e_2,e_3)=(4,3,1)`$, $`h_d=1`$ and $`h_u=2`$. These charges imply a different texture of supersymmetric zeros in $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ with respect to the previous example. One then obtains, in the basis of charged lepton and right-handed neutrino mass eigenstates:

$$Y\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^3& \lambda & \lambda \\ \lambda & \lambda ^3& \lambda ^3\\ 1& \lambda ^2& \lambda ^2\end{array}\right),M_RM\text{diag}(\lambda ^6,\lambda ^2,1),_\nu \frac{v_u^2}{M\lambda ^4}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^4& \lambda ^2& \lambda ^2\\ \lambda ^2& 1& 1\\ \lambda ^2& 1& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(11)
where again $`\lambda 0.22`$. As can be easily checked, $`N_1`$ dominates in all entries of $`_\nu `$ but $`(_\nu )_{11}`$. The large mixing in the $`\mu \tau `$ sector is due to $`Y_{12}Y_{13},`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ yields $`MM_32\times 10^{17}\text{GeV}`$, well above the GUT scale. The LOW solution is naturally obtained. As for LFV processes, one immediately sees that $`N_1`$ gives the largest contribution to $`\tau \mu \gamma `$, while the most important contribution to $`\mu e\gamma `$ is provided by $`N_3`$: $`|C_{\tau \mu }|\lambda ^2\mathrm{ln}(M_U/M_1)0.5`$ and $`|C_{\mu e}|\lambda ^2\mathrm{ln}(M_U/M_3)0.1.`$ Thus in this model $`\text{BR}(\mu e\gamma )`$ lies within the expected experimental sensitivity for $`M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }}1`$ TeV, while even with an improvement of the experimental sensitivity by three orders of magnitude, $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ should remain unobserved in a large region of the $`(M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }})`$ plane. For $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$, this region lies to the right of the curve labelled by the numbers $`10(0.3)`$ in fig. 1.

Example 4. As a second example, let us consider a model  based on a $`U(2)`$ flavour symmetry. In order to explain the hierarchy of fermion masses, a sequential breaking of the flavour group, involving several flavon fields, is required: $`U(2)\stackrel{ϵ}{}U(1)\stackrel{ϵ^{}}{}1`$, with $`ϵ^{}ϵ`$. After supplementing the model with a vertical $`SO(10)`$ structure, a good account of the known quark and charged lepton properties is obtained for $`ϵ2\times 10^2`$ and $`ϵ^{}4\times 10^3`$ . In the basis where charged leptons and heavy Majorana masses are diagonal, one obtains for this model:

$$Y\left(\begin{array}{ccc}s_Eϵ^{}& ϵ^{}& ϵ^{}\\ ϵ^{}& ϵ& 1\\ ϵ^{}& ϵ& 1\end{array}\right),M_RMϵ\text{diag}(ϵϵ^2,1,1),_\nu \frac{v_u^2}{Mϵ^2}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}s_E^2& s_E& s_E\\ s_E& 1& 1\\ s_E& 1& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(12)
where $`s_E=\sqrt{m_e/m_\mu }0.07`$. In this example, $`M_1`$ dominates in all entries of $`_\nu `$. The large atmospheric angle is due to $`Y_{12}Y_{13}`$ and the fit of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ yields $`M_33\times 10^{16}\text{GeV}`$ (and $`M10^{18}\text{GeV}`$). The presently disfavoured SMA solution is achieved.

For LFV processes, both $`M_2`$ and $`M_3`$ contribute to $`C_{\tau \mu }`$ and $`C_{\mu e}`$ at leading order, yielding $`C_{\tau \mu }ϵ\mathrm{ln}(M_U/M_3)0.1`$ and $`C_{\mu e}ϵϵ^{}\mathrm{ln}(M_U/M_3)3\times 10^4.`$ Thus in this model, even with an improvement of the experimental sensitivity by three orders of magnitude, both $`\mu e\gamma `$ and $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ should remain unobserved in a large region of the $`(M_2,m_{\stackrel{~}{\nu }})`$ plane. For $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =10`$, this region lies to the right of the curves labelled by the numbers $`3(0.1)`$ and $`0.01(3\times 10^4)`$ in figs. 1 and 2.

Let us now compare our analysis with previous studies of LFV decays. Most of them (see e.g. Ref. ) adopt a “top-down” approach, i.e. they consider specific models in which the structure of $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ is more or less fixed. As a matter of fact, these generally fall into our class 1. Recently Casas and Ibarra  have undertaken a detailed analysis of $`\mu e\gamma `$ based on a “bottom-up” approach with the neutrino oscillation experiments as input. In practice however, they were led to make simplifying assumptions in order to reduce the number of arbitrary parameters in the $`C_{ij}`$, thus missing some interesting physical possibilities such as the dominance of one of the two lightest right-handed neutrinos, like in our class 3. By contrast our analysis, which uses the “bottom-up” approach as well, aims at classifying models of hierarchical neutrino masses according to the typical size of their predictions for LFV decays, stressing the relative model-independence, within a given class, of the forcast for $`BR(\tau \mu \gamma )`$.

Finally we should mention Ref. , which discusses the different problems one would confront in trying to reconstruct the fundamental seesaw parameters $`Y`$ and $`M_R`$ from weak-scale precision measurements including neutrino masses and mixings, the rates of LFV processes and an accurate determination of the sparticle mass spectrum.

In this letter, we have addressed the issue whether, depending on the pattern of the fundamental see-saw parameters, lepton flavour violating decays may lie within the reach of the prospective experiments or not. Classifying the see-saw models according to the mechanism which generates the physical parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{}^2/\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ and large mixing for the atmospheric neutrino, allows to characterize each class through physically meaningful properties such as the size of the flavour mixing in the Dirac mass matrix and the scale of right-handed neutrino masses. Most importantly, the proposed experiments on LFV decays could discriminate among these classes if supersymmetric particles exist below the TeV region. This analysis is summarized in Table 1. It is worth stressing that models where smaller LFV effects are predicted from the mechanism discussed in this paper, cannot be excluded from the discovery of these decays since there are many alternative sources of flavour mixing in the supersymmetric theories.

As a general trend, if the $`\tau \mu \gamma `$ branching ratio turns out to be below $`10^9`$ – or equivalent constraints are obtained through LFV in sparticle decays – models where the heaviest right-handed neutrino only marginally contributes to $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2`$ are favoured. This class of models allows for small mixings in the left-handed neutrino sector, so that leptons would behave quite the same as quarks, as expected in a grand-unified scenario. The heaviest right-handed neutrino also tends to be close or above the GUT scale in this class of models. On the contrary, predictions for $`\mu e\gamma `$ are very model-dependent.

Acknowledgements: this work has been supported in part by the RTN European Program HPRN-CT-2000-00148.


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# Far-infrared dust opacity and visible extinction in the Polaris Flare

## 1 Introduction

The infrared sky images provided by the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) have considerably improved our knowledge of interstellar dust and of the spatial distribution of interstellar gas at high Galactic latitude. With the IRAS data it became clear that interstellar dust comprises small particles stochastically heated by the absorption of photons to temperatures higher than the equilibrium temperature of large grains (Désert et al., 1990). Far from heating sources, these small particles make the 12, 25 and a significant fraction of the 60 $`\mu `$m IRAS emission. Only the 100 $`\mu `$m emission comes from large grains emitting at the equilibrium temperature sets by the balance between heating and cooling. COBE extended the IRAS observations to the far–infrared/sub–millimeter emission. These data have been used to measure large grain properties (temperature and emissivity) and trace the distribution of interstellar matter (Wright et al., 1991; Reach et al., 1995; Boulanger et al., 1996; Lagache et al., 1998; Arendt et al., 1998; Schlegel et al., 1998; Finkbeiner et al., 1999). In particular, Schlegel et al. (1998) (hereafter SFD98) combined the angular resolution of IRAS 100 $`\mu `$m data and the wavelength coverage of DIRBE to make a map of the dust far–infrared (FIR) opacity. They have shown that, in regions of low extinction ($`A_V0.3`$) at high Galactic latitude, the FIR dust optical depth, $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}`$, is tightly correlated with visible extinction. By extrapolating this correlation to the whole sky they produced an all-sky map of visible extinction which is being used for a wide range of purposes.

The IRAS and COBE observations show that the spectral energy distribution of dust emission varies in the ISM and in particular from the diffuse atomic medium to molecular clouds (e.g. Laureijs et al., 1991; Abergel et al., 1994; Lagache et al., 1998). These variations have been interpreted in terms of changes in dust composition, in particular variations in the abundance of small grains. What is still a matter of debate is whether they also imply changes in the properties of large grains. In this paper we address this question by looking for variations in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio. In a first part of the paper, we compare the SFD98 extinction map with an independent estimate of $`\mathrm{A}_\mathrm{V}`$ derived from star counts over the Polaris Flare, a high latitude cirrus with CO emission and an extinction around 1 mag (Heithausen & Thaddeus, 1990; Bernard et al., 1999). We find that the SFD98 extinction is on average twice that estimated from star counts. In the second part, we investigate various explanations of the extinction discrepancy and propose to relate it to a difference in $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ between dust in low extinction cirrus and the colder dust associated with the Polaris Flare.

## 2 Extinction in the Polaris Flare

### 2.1 Extinction map from star counts

We have used the USNO-PMM (Monet, 1996) $`B`$ photometry and the method described in Cambrésy (1999) to build a visual extinction map (assuming $`R_V=3.1`$) of the Polaris cirrus cloud (Fig. 1). The method consists of star counts with variable resolution in which the local stellar density is estimated with the 20 nearest stars of each position. The extinction is derived from the star density (D) as follows:

$`A_B`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}\mathrm{log}{\displaystyle \frac{D_{\mathrm{ref}}(b)}{D}}`$ (1)
$`A_V`$ $`=`$ $`A_B\times {\displaystyle \frac{A_V}{A_B}}=A_B\times {\displaystyle \frac{R_V}{1+R_V}}`$ (2)
where $`a`$ is the slope of the $`B`$ luminosity function and $`D_{\mathrm{ref}}`$ the reference stellar density in the absence of extinction. The high galactic latitude of the Polaris Flare ($`b27\mathrm{°}`$) prevents the contamination by other clouds on the same line of sight. The upper limit to its distance of about 240 pc (Heithausen et al., 1993) ensures that the cloud is close enough to derive the extinction from star counts without significant contamination by foreground stars.

The extinction map (Fig. 1) is obtained by taking for $`\mathrm{log}D_{\mathrm{ref}}(b)`$ the value derived from the linear fit of $`\mathrm{log}D`$ versus the galactic latitude $`b`$ outside the Polaris Flare, i.e. $`\mathrm{log}D_{\mathrm{ref}}=\beta +\alpha \times b`$. This corrects the stellar density variations due to variations in the length of the line of sight through the stellar disk, but ignores extinction from diffuse interstellar matter outside the Polaris cloud. To account for this diffuse uniform or slowly varying extinction which is not seen by star counts, we measured the SFD98 map variations with respect to the galactic latitude for regions with ($`A_V<0.2`$). For $`b`$ ranging from $`25^{}`$ to $`34^{}`$ and $`l`$ ranging from $`105^{}`$ to $`143^{}`$ we find that $`A_V(\mathrm{SFD98})A_V(\mathrm{starcount})0.20\mathrm{7.3\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\times b`$. We have used this relation to correct the star count extinction values in order to make the comparison with the SFD98 map; the absolute value of the resulting correction is lower than 0.05 mag. After this correction, both our extinction map and the SFD98 map measure the total extinction. This is necessary to compare each map together and with DIRBE far–infrared data. Extinction values outside the Polaris cloud (where $`A_V0.2`$) match those of the SFD98 map. For $`17<b<25`$ the linear relation we measured is no longer valid and it becomes hard to make such a correction because of the lack of areas with low extinction in the SFD98 map. Since we are interested only in directions represented by white crosses which are all at $`b>25`$ in Fig. 1, there is no need to try to include diffuse extinction for $`b<25`$. The star count Polaris extinction map agrees with extinction values derived from color excesses based on CCD images of a 1 deg2 section of Polaris (Zagury et al., 1999).

The resolution of the resulting map is about 8′. Statistical uncertainties in the determination of the extinction come from star counts. The distribution of stars follows a Poisson law with a sigma equal to $`\sqrt{N}`$, where $`N`$ is the number of counted stars. For $`N=20`$ we obtain $`\mathrm{\Delta }A_V=\pm _{0.23}^{0.29}`$. Moreover, the $`R_V`$ parameter introduces a systematic uncertainty. In the absence of any measurement, we have assumed $`R_V=3.1`$ which corresponds to the average value in the diffuse interstellar medium. A higher value of 5.5, that is common but not systematic in dense cores, would multiply our extinction values by a factor 1.12.

### 2.2 Comparison with SFD98

In Fig. 2, the ratio between SFD98 and star count extinction values is plotted against the dust temperature as derived by SFD98. For this we have smoothed both extinction maps to the DIRBE resolution. The DIRBE pixels used for this comparison are marked with white crosses in Fig. 1. The SFD98 $`A_V`$ values are systematically higher than those derived from star counts. The extinction ratio decreases for increasing dust temperatures. The mean ratio between the SFD98 and star count extinction values is 2.1. Fig. 3 shows the spatial distribution of the difference between SFD98 and our extinction map.

The Polaris star counts raise a question about the validity of the SFD98 extinction map in regions of higher extinction that in those where they calibrated their conversion from FIR dust opacity to $`A_V`$. Previous studies have already pointed out similar discrepancies. Szomoru & Guhathakurta (1999) have presented a study of cirrus clouds with $`UBVRI`$ photometries and have compared their extinction derived from star counts, color excess, $`UBV`$ color–color diagrams and $`BVI`$ color–color diagrams. They found for their highest extinction cirrus, in Corona Australis, a discrepancy with the SFD98 map comparable to that found here for the Polaris Flare. Arce & Goodman (1999) have compared the extinction toward the Taurus cloud using four different techniques and they also concluded that the SFD98 map overestimates the extinction by a factor of 1.3-1.5. These results are confirmed by von Braun & Mateo (2001) who compared a color study of the globular cluster NGC 3201 ($`b=8.6^{}`$) with the SFD98 extinction map for this line of sight. They concluded their analysis on a reddening overestimation in the SFD98 map.

### 2.3 Discussion

The extinction data presented in this paper together with similar data on other molecular clouds all lead to the same conclusion: the SFD98 extinctions are larger than the values derived from star counts in molecular clouds where $`A_V1`$ .

Cloud structure on angular scales smaller than the resolution of the star counts can make the measured $`A_V`$ smaller than the mean value of $`A_V`$. The relation between the mean extinction and the stellar density is not linear but logarithmic (Eq. 1) whereas the FIR integration over a cell is linear. This could thus explain the extinction discrepancy. Rossano (1980) has quantified this effect. Using his results, we found that a difference of a factor 2 for a visual extinction of 2 magnitudes would require a surface filling factor lower than 0.1. Such a low surface filling factor is incompatible with studies of the clumpiness of dust extinction which conclude on a smooth distribution of the dust in molecular clouds (Thoraval et al., 1997; Lada et al., 1999).

Another plausible explanation would be a shortcoming in the SFD98 dust temperature determination in molecular clouds which ignores temperature variation. This should be considered due to the coarse resolution of the SFD98 temperature map ($`1^{}`$) compared to the clumpiness of the brightest structures in cirrus clouds. For example, for a given FIR brightness, an underestimation of the dust temperature translates into an overestimation of the dust opacity. Observations of molecular clouds at higher angular resolution than DIRBE do show temperatures locally lower than those of SFD98. For example, PRONAOS observations of a piece of the Polaris cirrus gave a dust temperature of 13.5 K (Bernard et al., 1999), significantly lower than the value of 16 K at the same position in the SFD98 temperature map. This example clearly shows that the SFD98 temperature is an effective temperature which represents a mean intensity value weighted over the dust seen within the solid angle of their study. The impact of the beam (and line-of-sight) averaging on the SFD98 temperatures and opacities can be discussed on the basis of a simple model where we assume that the emission comes from a mixture of two distinct components. In this calculation, we assume an emissivity law ($`\nu ^2`$) and fit a single black body to a combination of two black bodies at different temperatures. The effective optical depth is always smaller than the sum of the optical depth for the two temperatures. Thus if the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ is the same for both dust components, our simple model shows that the SFD98 method always lead to an underestimation of $`A_V`$, the reverse of the discrepancy observed with star counts (Fig. 4). More generally, when a range of temperatures is present within the beam, the effective FIR dust opacity that is measured by SFD98 is always smaller than the mean opacity. Temperature variations within the beam thus cannot explain the extinction discrepancy between SFD98 and star counts.

The SFD98 map is a $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ map and not an $`A_V`$ map. To go from one to the other one needs to know the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio. We propose to explain the extinction discrepancy by variations in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio between the low extinction regions used for the calibration of the $`A_V`$ and the Polaris molecular cirrus. Variations in the $`R_V`$ ratio from diffuse to dense clouds are interpreted as evidence for variations in the optical properties of large dust grains in molecular clouds (Cardelli et al., 1989). In our interpretation, the extinction discrepancy would thus be an additional signature of the evolution of dust from diffuse to dense clouds.

## 3 Warm and cold dust components

### 3.1 Evidence for distinct emission components

The IRAS data have shown that no emission from aromatic hydrocarbons and very small grains at 12, 25 and 60 $`\mu `$m is seen towards the dense gas traced by the millimeter transitions of 13CO (Laureijs et al., 1991; Abergel et al., 1994). In practice, the molecular emission from this dense gas is observed to be well correlated with the difference between the 100 and 60 $`\mu `$m IRAS brightnesses. Lagache et al. (1998) combined the FIR DIRBE bands to the 60 $`\mu `$m data to separate along each line of sight the emission associated with the diffuse ISM and dense gas where both are present. With the long wavelength bands of DIRBE (100, 140 and 240 $`\mu `$m), they were able to determine a dust temperature for each of these two emission components. Their results show that the dust associated with the dense gas, as traced by the difference between the 100 and 60 $`\mu `$m brightness, is systematically colder ($`T15`$ K) than dust in the diffuse atomic interstellar medium ($`T17.5`$ K). We refer to these two emission components as cold and warm. The distinction between cold and warm emission components characterized by different dust temperatures and the abundance of small grains emission is corroborated by sub-mm observations at higher angular resolution for which the spatial separation of the infrared emission from diffuse and dense gas is easier to distinguish than with the DIRBE data (Bernard et al., 1999; Stepnik et al., 2001; Laureijs et al., 1996).

We propose to relate the extinction discrepancy to a variation in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio between the cold and warm dust components. In their analysis of the DIRBE data, SFD98 did not consider the possible presence of distinct emission components with different dust temperature along the line of sight. They assume that large grain properties are everywhere the same and consequently that the temperature variations are exclusively due to changes in dust heating. In the Lagache et al. (1998) description of the data, the observed variations in the dust effective emission temperature are to a large extent due to various degrees of mixing between the warm and cold components. In a second paper, Finkbeiner et al. (1999), the same authors as SFD98, showed the necessity of including a very cold emission component with $`\mathrm{T}9\mathrm{K}`$ in their analysis to improve the fitting of the FIRAS data at long wavelengths. However, this very cold component and the cold component of Lagache et al. (1998) are distinct (Note that they are not mutually exclusive and that both may be required to correctly describe the data). The cold component, derived from DIRBE data, is spatially correlated with known molecular clouds; the very cold component, deduced from FIRAS long-wavelength spectra is, on the contrary, present in all directions. For the subject of this paper the key difference between both components is that in the Finkbeiner et al. (1999) analysis the very cold component accounts for a fixed fraction of the emission, independent of sky position (fixed opacity ratios between the very cold and warm components, with temperature given by a power law) while in the Lagache et al. (1998) analysis the cold fraction varies spatially and is zero in the high latitude regions used by SFD98 for the calibration of the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio. Due to this spatial dependence, a difference in dust properties between the cold and warm emission components, namely in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio, will limit the domain of the SFD98 conversion of $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ into $`A_V`$ and could account for the observed discrepancy with star counts. This statement is quantified in the following sections.

### 3.2 Separation of the warm and cold components

A separation of the warm  and cold contributions to the infrared brightness is necessary in order to derive a temperature and FIR opacity for each component. To do this, we apply a method similar to that of Lagache et al. (1998) to DIRBE images of the Polaris Flare. Let $`I(\lambda )`$ ($`\lambda `$=100, 140, 240 $`\mu `$m) be the DIRBE emission at 100, 140 and 240 $`\mu `$m respectively, and $`R(\lambda ,60)`$ the $`I_\nu (\lambda )/I_\nu (60)`$ flux ratio observed in cirrus clouds. The cold maps are computed at each wavelength according to the relationship: $`I(\lambda )_\mathrm{c}=I(\lambda )R(\lambda ,60)\times I(60)`$.

We first determine $`R(100,60)`$ using the correlation diagram of the diffuse cirrus emission around the Polaris cloud. We obtain $`R(100,60)=4.0\pm 0.3`$. At 140 and 240 $`\mu `$m the correlation diagrams are much more noisy. Therefore we prefer to compute $`R(140,60)`$ and $`R(240,60)`$ using $`R(100,60)`$ and assuming a large grain temperature of 17.5$`\pm `$0.5 K. We thus obtain: $`R(140,60)=7.9\pm 1.1`$ and $`R(240,60)=6.4\pm 1.4`$.

The produced cold maps have non-zero emission at a large scale due to 1) zodiacal residual emission (mainly coming from the 60 $`\mu `$m map) and 2) non-correction of the Cosmic Infrared Background. Therefore, under the assumption that the cold dust is distributed with limited angular extent in molecular clouds, we remove the low frequency structures using a $`18\mathrm{°}\times 18\mathrm{°}`$ median filter. We thus obtain, at the end, maps of cold dust emission at 100, 140, and 240 $`\mu `$m which are clumped on scales smaller than our filter size.

Map of statistical uncertainties for the cold emission are computed using the DIRBE release error maps:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{sta}}I_\nu (\lambda )_\mathrm{c}=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\lambda )^2+R(\lambda ,60)^2\times \mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (60)^2}$$
(3)
Systematic uncertainties are derived following:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{sys}}I_\nu (\lambda )_\mathrm{c}=\mathrm{\Delta }R(\lambda ,60)\times I_\nu (60)$$
(4)
Temperatures and optical depths are derived only for pixels containing significant cold emission (see Fig. 1), i.e. cold intensities at 100, 140 and 240 $`\mu `$m greater than 3$`\sigma `$, $`\sigma `$ being estimated at each wavelength using the width of the histograms of the cold emission maps.

Statistical and systematic uncertainties on the cold dust temperature and optical depth are computed using the statistical and systematic 100, 140 and 240 $`\mu `$m error maps of cold emission, respectively. Temperatures and optical depths are derived using the $`\chi ^2`$ fitting and assuming a FIR dust emissivity index of 2. Uncertainties given by the $`\chi ^2`$ fitting correspond to the 68.3% confidence level.

To determine the warm optical depth, we adopt the following method. We first remove to the 100 $`\mu `$m map the cold 100 $`\mu `$m emission and the cosmic FIR background value from Lagache et al. (2000). We then assume that the warm component has a temperature of 17.5$`\pm `$0.5 K with a FIR dust emissivity index of 2. Optical depth is thus directly proportional to the 100 $`\mu `$m warm emission.

The error on the warm emission, including both the systematic and statistical errors, is:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (100)_\mathrm{w}=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (100)^2+\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (100)_\mathrm{c}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (100)_{\mathrm{CIB}}^2}$$
(5)
Optical depth uncertainties correspond to the minimum and maximum optical depth value allowed by the combination of $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (100)_\mathrm{w}`$ and the 0.5 K error on the assumed dust temperature.

### 3.3 From far–infrared optical depth to visible extinction

Within the two components model, the total extinction can be written as the sum of the extinction in the warm and in the cold components:

$$A_V=A_V^\mathrm{w}+A_V^\mathrm{c}$$
(6)
and we have:

$`A_V^\mathrm{w}=\tau _{100}^\mathrm{w}\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}}\right)_\mathrm{w}^1`$ (7)
$`A_V^\mathrm{c}=\tau _{100}^\mathrm{c}\times \left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}}\right)_\mathrm{c}^1`$ (8)
where the ratio $`(\tau _{100}/A_V)_{\mathrm{w},\mathrm{c}}`$ are the emissivities of the dust at 100 $`\mu `$m for the warm and cold components, respectively. We take for the FIR-to-visible opacity ratio of the warm component, $`(\tau _{100}/A_V)_\mathrm{w}`$, the ratio measured by SFD98 in low extinction regions. Then, we can derive $`A_V^\mathrm{w}`$ using Eq. 7 and the emissivity of the cold component is:

$$\left(\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}\right)_\mathrm{c}=\frac{\tau _{100}^\mathrm{c}}{A_VA_V^\mathrm{w}}$$
(9)
### 3.4 Far–infrared emissivity of the warm component

The dust emissivity for the warm component is taken from SFD98. In their paper, they provide the value of $`p=E_{BV}/I_{100}=0.0184`$, where $`I_{100}`$ is the 100 $`\mu `$m brightness expressed in MJy sr-1 corrected from the zodiacal emission and scaled with the measured dust opacity from the pixel dependent dust temperature to a fixed temperature of 18.2 K. With this scaling, the conversion from $`I_{100}`$ to FIR opacity becomes pixel independent. We have:

$$\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}=\frac{I_{100}}{A_V\times _{100}(T)}=\frac{1}{R_Vp_{100}(18.2\mathrm{K})}$$
(10)
For the mean Solar Neighborhood extinction law we have $`R_V=A_V/E_{BV}=3.1`$. Moreover, a color correction should be applied to the optical depth because FIR fluxes are expressed for the effective filter wavelength assuming a $`\nu ^1`$ law. The correction consists of dividing the infrared flux by a color factor $`𝒦`$ defined in the DIRBE explanatory supplement as follow:

$$𝒦=\frac{{\displaystyle _\nu }\left(\frac{I_\nu }{I_{\nu _0}}\right)_{\mathrm{real}}W_\nu 𝑑\nu }{{\displaystyle _\nu }\left(\frac{I_\nu }{I_{\nu _0}}\right)_{\mathrm{eff}}W_\nu 𝑑\nu }$$
(11)
where $`W_\nu `$ is the filter profile. The value given in the explanatory supplement is $`𝒦_{100}(18.2K)=0.91125`$.

Finally, the emissivity for the warm component is:

$$\left(\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}\right)_\mathrm{w}=\frac{𝒦_{100}(18.2\text{K})}{R_Vp_{100}(18.2\text{K})}=\mathrm{1.31\hspace{0.17em}10}^7$$
(12)
### 3.5 Far–infrared emissivity of the cold component

#### 3.5.1 Result

Following the procedure described in Sect. 3.2 and 3.3 we use the extinction map (Fig. 1) and the decomposition of the FIR flux in two components. We use the DIRBE resolution (the extinction map has been convolved by the DIRBE beam) and only pixels with high signal-to-noise ratio for both components.

Fig. 5 show the temperature and the optical depth normalized to $`1\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m}^1`$ for the two components. The temperature in the Polaris Flare varies from 13 K to 15.5 K.

Using Eq. 9 we obtain the values of the emissivity of the cold component, $`\left(\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}\right)_\mathrm{c}`$, presented in the Fig. 6. These values are all above the SFD98 value for the warm component (filled square in Fig. 6). The median value for the cold component emissivity at 100 $`\mu `$m is:

$$\left(\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}\right)_\mathrm{c}=\mathrm{5.3\hspace{0.17em}10}^7$$
(13)
This is 4.0 times larger than the SFD98 value for the warm component.

#### 3.5.2 Uncertainties

In this sub-section, we compare uncertainties on the dust parameters with the dispersion of the points in Fig. 6. For the warm component, we are not able to separate the systematic from the statistical errors (see Eq. 5). Since these errors are small compared to those on the cold component parameters (by a factor of $`3`$) we focus on this last contribution to the observed scatter in Fig. 6.

##### Systematic errors.

In Sect. 3.2 we describe errors associated with the separation of the FIR flux in two components. Systematic errors on $`\tau _{100}/A_V`$ are dominated by uncertainties on $`R(\lambda ,60)`$ which are used to derive the emission of the cold dust. These systematic errors would shift the whole set of data points. In Fig. 6 we give the direction and amplitude of these shifts for the median value. Extreme values for $`\left(\frac{\tau _{100}}{A_V}\right)_\mathrm{c}`$ are $`\mathrm{3.6\hspace{0.17em}10}^7`$ and $`\mathrm{7.9\hspace{0.17em}10}^7`$ and correspond to 2.7 and 6.0 respectively for the ratio of the emissivity between the two components. For $`R_V=5.5`$, we have already mentioned that star count extinction is multiplied by 1.12; the resulting median emissivity ratio would then be 3.1 (rather than 4.0).

##### Statistical errors.

The dispersion of the values represented in Fig. 6 suggests an increase of the FIR emissivity of the dust when the temperature decreases. However we examine the possibility of this trend being linked with statistical errors. In Fig. 6 the statistical errors are represented by error bars in the upper right corner. Since the optical depth is related to the FIR emission by the relation $`\tau _{100}=I_{100}/_{100}(T)`$, errors on the temperature and on the optical depth are correlated: temperature overestimation implies optical depth underestimation. This effect contributes to the observed dispersion in Fig. 6 but cannot fully explain its amplitude. We believe therefore that an intrinsic dispersion of the $`\tau _{100}/A_V`$ exists and that it may be related to an evolution of the emissivity with the temperature.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Dust evolution from warm to cold component

The submillimeter analysis of the Polaris Flare by Bernard et al. (1999) has revealed an unexpected low temperature in this cirrus. They have used the extinction map of Fig. 1 to model the effect of the attenuation of the interstellar ultraviolet and visible radiation field on the dust temperature. They concluded that this cannot explain the observed temperature difference between Polaris and warm cirrus clouds. They thus suggest that the temperature difference is related to a change in optical dust properties. For a larger FIR to visible/UV extinction ratio, grains are able to radiate more efficiently the energy absorbed and thus their equilibrium temperature is reduced. Thereby, our interpretation of the extinction data is in agreement with Bernard et al. (1999) conclusions. A similar conclusion about the FIR dust emissivity is reached by the modeling of PRONAOS FIR/sub-mm observations of a molecular filament in Taurus (Stepnik et al., 2001). In this modeling, a change in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio between the cold dust within the filament and the warm dust outside by a factor 3.4 is required to reproduce the brightness profiles across the filament at the various wavelengths. This study, unlike, ours does not rely on the empirical separation of warm and cold components.

The most straightforward explanation for the change in dust FIR emissivity between diffuse and molecular clouds is grain growth through grain-grain coagulation and accretion of gas species (e.g. Draine, 1985). These two processes should lead to composite grains with significant porosity. The effect of the formation of composite fluffy grains on the dust opacity is well explained by Dwek (1997). Two effects contribute to an increase in the dust opacity per unit dust mass. (1) The first contribution results from an increase in the effective grain sizes. For spherical grains of size $`a`$: $`\tau _{\mathrm{ext}}=\pi a^2Q_{\mathrm{ext}}N_d`$ where $`N_\mathrm{d}`$ is the dust column density and $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ the extinction efficiency, and $`M_\mathrm{d}=4/3\pi a^3\rho N_\mathrm{d}`$, where $`\rho `$ is the grain density. Within the Rayleigh limit ($`2\pi a\lambda `$), $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}/a`$ is independent of the grain size. For particles large relative to the wavelength ($`2\pi a\lambda `$), it is $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}`$ which is roughly size-independent. In practice, the Rayleigh limit applies to all grains in the FIR while the second limiting case applies to large interstellar grains ($`a0.1\mu `$m) in the UV. Within these limiting cases, one finds that $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ scales as $`1/\rho `$ while $`\tau _{\mathrm{UV}}`$ scales as $`1/a\rho `$. For increasing grain porosity, the effective grain density $`\rho `$ decreases and $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ increases. Thus, the ratio $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/\tau _{\mathrm{UV}}`$ scales as the grain size $`a`$. Qualitatively this also applies to the ratio $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$. (2) The second, more subtle, effect is that the optical properties of the composite grains differ from the optical properties of their constituents: grain properties depend not only on their size but also on their composition and structure. In particular, the wavelength dependence of $`Q_{\mathrm{ext}}/a`$ changes with grain composition. For the specific case of composite carbon-silicate grains, this leads to a significant enhancement of the opacity in the FIR relative to that in the visible (Dwek, 1997). Dust properties of porous composite grains have also been quantified numerically (e.g. Bazell & Dwek, 1990; Mathis & Whiffen, 1989). In their work, Mathis & Whiffen (1989) show that it is possible to fit the extinction curve and its variations with $`R_V`$ with a size distribution of composite porous carbon+silicate grains. Their calculations show that enhancements of the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio by a factor of at least 3 can be obtained within the constraints set by the UV to near–infrared extinction curve.

The proposed interpretation of the variations in FIR dust emissivity implies that grain coagulation would be effective even within cirrus clouds and not only in dark clouds and proto-stellar condensations. Observed variations in the $`R_V`$ ratio have also been interpreted as evidence for grain growth from diffuse to dense clouds (e.g. Kim & Martin, 1996). It will thus be interesting to look for a plausible correlation between the changes in $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ and variations in the visible extinction curve. Note however that these two signatures of dust evolution from the diffuse ISM to molecular clouds are not necessarily correlated because $`R_V`$ and $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ do not share the same dependence on the dust porosity and size distribution (Mathis & Whiffen, 1989).

In the absence of multiband visible photometric data, we have no estimate of $`R_V`$ in the Polaris cloud and one can only make rather qualitative comments. Cardelli et al. (1989) have shown that the variations in the extinction curve from the UV to the near-UV, to a good approximation, can be related to one single parameter, $`R_V`$. The $`R_V`$-dependent extinction curves all converge in the near-IR but the change in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio proposed to explain the extinction data is larger that one would expect from the simple extrapolation of this convergence to the FIR. For the Cardelli et al. relation, the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ varies by a factor 1.2 for a large change in $`R_V`$ from 3.1 to 5.5. If we add the effect of such an $`R_V`$ change on the star count $`A_V`$ estimates (which needs to be multiplied by a factor 1.12 due to the fact that our star counts are based on a $`B`$ image, see section 2.1), the extinction discrepancy between SFD98 and star counts, a factor of about 2, is reduced by only a factor 1.34. This paper thus suggests that the $`R_V`$-dependent extinction curves should separate again in the FIR.

### 4.2 Validity of the SFD98 extinction map

We chose the Polaris Flare for its brightness in the cold emission map presented in Fig. 7. The white regions in this figure are the regions with cold emission, outside the Galactic plane, where the present work questions the validity of the SFD98.

As mentioned in Sect. 2.2, additional studies similar to the present work support our results (Szomoru & Guhathakurta, 1999; Arce & Goodman, 1999; von Braun & Mateo, 2001) for pieces of the Corona Australis and Taurus clouds. Both regions have an important cold emission in Fig. 7. Since the Szomoru & Guhathakurta (1999) work is a prelude to what can be done systematically with the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey (SDSS), it is crucial for further works to be aware that the dust emissivity varies in the FIR, even for cirrus cloud. Arce & Goodman (1999) suggest that the discrepancy results from a calibration bias. In the present paper we show that there is no general calibration that could be used in all directions. Optical properties of grains vary and the conversion from FIR fluxes to opacity cannot be limited to a single scaling factor.

For low galactic latitude ($`|b|<10\mathrm{°}`$) it is obvious that the SFD98 map has to be used with caution since very different physical environments are mixed along the line of sight. Chen et al. (1999) propose a 3-dimensional extinction model to constrain the galactic structure based on the SFD98 map used toward globular clusters as close as 3° to the Galactic center. They found a recalibration was better to fit their data and they used the new calibration for the whole sky. The Galactic plane and even more, the Galactic center, are very complicated regions: the presence along the line of sight of massive stars which heat the interstellar dust and molecular clouds with cold dust makes impossible the separation of the different components which contribute to the FIR flux. It is not clear how their empirical calibration of the FIR emissivity can be related to those determined for the nearby interstellar medium.

Bianchi et al. (1999) have derived the FIR dust emissivity using wavelength dependences derived from FIR spectra of galactic emission and the SFD98 extinction map to normalize the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio. The authors admit that two components of temperature could exist at low galactic latitude but they omit that dust properties could also vary.

The knowledge of the extinction close to the Galactic plane is required to estimate precisely the properties of some objects, like the RR Lyrae type stars, used as a distance indicator. Stutz et al. (1999) used the SFD98 map to deredden RR Lyrae type stars in Baade’s window, i.e. 3° from the Galactic center.

## 5 Conclusion

We have presented an extinction map of the Polaris high latitude cloud derived from star counts. This extinction map is compared with that produced by SFD98 based on the IRAS and DIRBE FIR sky maps. Within the Polaris cirrus cloud, the SFD98 extinction value is found to be a factor 2 to 3 higher than the star count values.

We propose to relate the extinction discrepancy to variations in the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ of interstellar dust from the warm  and cold emission components introduced by Lagache et al. (1998) on the basis of the observed difference in small grain abundance and large grain temperature between the diffuse ISM and dense molecular gas. Within this interpretation, we find that the FIR emissivity of dust grains in the cold component is on average about 4.0 times (from 2.7 to 6.0) larger than it is in the warm component. There is a slight evidence that the evolution of the grain properties are gradual, in the sense that the $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio increases when the cold dust temperature decreases. The increase in the FIR opacity could be tracing a growth of dust grains by coagulation. Our work is thus suggesting that the size/porosity of the large dust grains evolve within low opacity molecular cloud, such as the Polaris Flare.

SFD98 have converted the FIR opacity in extinction assuming a single emission temperature for each line of sight and $`\tau _{\mathrm{FIR}}/A_V`$ ratio. Our work questions the validity of this assumption in all regions with significant cold emission (Fig. 7). A few independent studies in other molecular clouds support this statement. The SFD98 extinction could be overestimating the true extinction in regions with cold emission that are found even at high Galactic latitude and for extinction as low as $`A_V0.5`$. Variations in the dust emissivity preclude the conversion from FIR optical depth to $`A_V`$ with one single factor valid over the whole sky. Low latitude regions ($`b<10^{}`$) and a small fraction of the high latitude sky require special attention.

###### Acknowledgements.

L. Cambrésy acknowledges partial support from the Lavoisier grant of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.


text:
# Introduction to Spin & Lattice Models in the Social Sciences

## 1 The Common Law as an Evolutionary System

Almost two centuries ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote “The life of the law has not been knowledge: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, … avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men \[are\] governed.” Likewise, the German legal scholar Friedrich Karl von Savigny wrote that “All law… is first developed by custom and \[conventional morality\], next by jurisprudence,—everywhere, therefore, by internal silently-operating powers, not by the arbitrary will of a law-giver.”

Holmes’ “felt necessities” and von Savigny’s “internal silently-operating powers” have not gone unnoticed by modern scholars. Modern legal scholars, ranging from Grant Gilmore to Lawrence Friedman, have observed that changes in law at various times are “rapid and violent,” “clean and swift,” and “highly fluctuating” (Yee 2001). In current events, a growing branch of intellectual property, “cyberspace law,” has emerged almost overnight in response to technological innovations and business needs. Moreover, capital markets anticipate such changes in a rational way (Yee 2005, 2006).

Hence, it comes as no surprise that Holmes’ “felt necessities” and von Savigny’s “internal silently-operating powers” drive the basis of an evolutionary framework for understanding the developement the common law (Priest 1977; Rubin 1977). The idea is based on Darwinian natural selection: efficient legal rules survive while inefficient rules are culled out by litigation. In the long run, the common law contains only rules that survive legal and political challenges. While this paradigm is appealing, it has not yielded empirically refutable predictions which would seriously test the model.

This article introduces a dynamical model of common law evolution originally described in Yee (2001). According to this model, evolution leaves an inevitable trail of paleontological footprints which may be sitting in the Westlaw dunes awaiting empirical identification by legal excavators.

Biological evolution starts with a collection of genes (random degrees of freedom) created by chance chemistry in the earth’s primordial atmosphere. These early genes competed against each other to survive and replicate. Ultimately, the biological structures we see today, including their inorganic byproducts such as computer software or the price of wheat futures emerged from this competition. Emergence is not imposed exogenously. Rather, structures emerge inevitably from natural selection, which in turn is an inherent consequence of competitive interactions and selective reproduction.

Natural selection and evolution does not only occur in a biological setting. Any system is evolutionary if it has the following four ingredients: set of degrees of freedom or individuals, each ranked by a quality or behavior-based fitness criterion, a selection process based on the fitness ranking, and a mechanism for introducing (usually random) mutations to periodically interject diversity into the reproductive process.

The common law has these four ingredients. As depicted in Figure 2, precedents of the common law are the “individuals” undergoing Darwinian evolution. A precedent’s “economic efficiency” is the degree to which it balances between legal and political forces. Economic efficiency plays the role of Darwinian fitness. The fitness-preferring selection process is provided by the premise that inefficient precedents are subject to more challenges (either in the courts or in the legislature) and hence are more subject to alteration than efficient ones. Mutations are introduced by the volatile nature of litigation or legislation.

As pointed out by many authors, notably Priest (1977) and Rubin (1977), common law precedents tend to evolve towards economic efficiency because inefficient precedents are selectively challenged and ultimately culled away as judges eventually hit on more efficient and hence less-challenged doctrines even if only by random trial and error. In this view, the common law is a market of doctrines, and a law suit is a bid on a specific doctrine. Intensive litigation moves this market towards efficiency whether or not judges consciously choose efficiency because inefficient doctrines will be intensively relitigated until they are efficient.

While this market view is a compelling premise, it is not all there is to the story. Evolution is more than a push towards improvement. Biological evolution has provided a rich history of paleontological footprints: punctuated equilibria, Zipf’s Law, and path-dependency. Accordingly, taking the evolutionary paradigm seriously requires considering its dynamical properties—the paleontological footprints. In Yee (2001) I propose a dynamical model (“CLM”) of common law evolution. Cast as parsimoniously as possible, CLM in its simplest guise is mathematically isomorphic to the Bak-Sneppen models (Bak and Sneppen 1993; see also Yee 1993) and yields interesting paleontology. As discussed, CLM exhibits punctuated equilibrium, Zipf’s Law, path dependency, and a stochastic (but statistically robust) form of efficiency I shall refer to as “smeared” economic efficiency.

## 2 The Common Law Model (“CLM”)

Economic efficiency of a precedent can change either because ($`\alpha `$) the precedent is altered as a result of a court decision or legislation; or its ($`\beta `$) legal environment or ($`\gamma `$) social context changes while the precedent itself remains constant. ($`\beta `$) recognizes that changes in related laws may induce a change in the economic efficiency of an unaltered precedent. For instance, a modification of traffic laws may distort the economic efficiency of a prevailing “reasonable man” standard in torts without any direct change to the standard itself. Likewise, ($`\gamma `$) says that social or cultural changes, perhaps driven by technological innovations, may induce the economic efficiency of a law to change without any changes to the law itself. In this Introduction, I shall assume that changes in economic efficiency are due entirely to ($`\alpha `$) and ($`\beta `$), not ($`\gamma `$).

With this caveat in mind, my CLM has just two ingredients:

* a set of $`N3`$ precedents labeled by integers $`iI\{1,2,\mathrm{},N\}`$;
* a real-valued economic fitness measure $`e:I[0,1]`$ where $`e=0`$ represents the worst and $`e=1`$ the best possible economic efficiency level.

CLM evolves in time according to the following three rules:

* (I) the precedent $`i`$ litigated at each time step is the one with the smallest efficiency value $`e(i)`$;
* (II) litigation of precedent $`i`$ results in a court ruling which potentially alters not only $`i`$ but also $`i`$’s neighboring precedents111I assume that precedent space $`I`$ wraps around so that $`i=N`$ and $`i=1`$ are next door neighbors. This wrap-around assumption has negligible effect on my results when $`N`$ is sufficiently large (e.g. if $`N>>10`$). In real life, the common law arguably has thousands of precedents. $`i+1`$ and $`i1`$;
* (III) litigation outcomes are random in efficiency $`e`$, that is courts don’t strive to optimize efficiency. In view of Rule (II), this means a litigation of precedent $`i`$ results in $`e(i)`$, $`e(i1)`$, and $`e(i+1)`$ each being assigned a new random value in the unit interval.

These three rules drive CLM. As I shall describe, this minimalistic set of rules yield a wealth of interesting evolutionary implications for common law behavior. Rule (I) represents the Rubin-Priest conjecture of selective litigation of the most inefficient laws. Rule (II) is motivated by ($`\beta `$), that is precedents do not reign in a vacuum but are interpreted within its legal context at each point in time. A precedent’s meaning and application—and accordingly its economic efficiency—depends on the meaning and application of its cousins in legal logic and, ultimately, on the entire common law. In Rule (II), the multifaceted web of legal relationships between different precedents is represented by the bold simplification that changes in precedent $`i`$ directly influences only its next-door neighbors.

Rule (III) assumes that litigation results are entirely random with respect to economic efficiency. While this assumption was selected for its minimalistic nature, it is not as detached from real life as some practitioners are apt to believe. In addition to the everchanging mix of judicial philosophies and idiosyncrasies flowing in and out of the judicial system, judges also make their share of mistakes. As it is, even the Supreme Court’s decisions are demonstrably random in some contexts, such as in at least one area of securities regulation.

A simplified toy model helps elucidate CLM. For the toy model, assume efficiency of each precedent can take on only three values High, Medium, and Low, and litigation of one precedent bears no consequences for its neighbors. While these assumptions ignore critical elements of CLM—notably Rule II, the interprecedent interaction rule, it serves as a starting point to develop intuition. In the earlier rounds of the toy model, one third of the precedents will be Low, and they will be litigated first. In each trial, two times out of three the judge will replace the Low precedent with one of a higher score. After enough rounds of litigation, all the Low precedents will be eliminated, if only for one round. When all the Low precedents are eliminated, a random Medium precedent will be litigated in the subsequent time step. There are three possible outcomes. If the judge offers a High result, lawyers will move on to litigate other Medium precedents. If the judge offers a Medium ruling, the common law has not deteriorated. If the judge offers a Low ruling, the Low precedent will be immediately relitigated, again and again if necessary, until it is restored to a Medium or High efficiency. Repeated, instantaneous relitigation of a Low precedent generates a “litigation cluster” in the toy model.

In the toy model, the trend is clear: Low precedents are relitigated relentlessly until they become extinct. Subsequently, Medium precedents are culled until only High precedents remain. Except for short-lived litigation clusters,222When all the other precedents are High, a litigated precedent has a two thirds chance of being immediately relitigated. only High precedents survive in the long run. Therefore, the long run equilibrium state of the toy model is perfectly efficient (except for small litigation clusters). In equilibrium, High pecedents live at the “edge” of litigation; that is, as the only surviving precedents, they are randomly exposed to litigation and, when litigated, are relentlessly rehashed until restored to High efficiency.

The critical difference between the toy model and CLM is due to Rule II. Rule II, interprecedent interactions, in CLM is responsible for a rich variety of effects in CLM. Because of interprecedent interactions, High precedents are as vulnerable to litigation as their Low or Medium neighbors are. In CLM, High neighbors of a Low precedent are subject to being pulled into the litigation undertow whenever the Low neighbor is litigated. Since the undertow consists of up to three precedents, and only one precedent can be litigated at each step, the efficiency distribution does not collapse into a flat $`e=1`$ peak. Instead, litigation of a Low or Medium precedent creates a lasting wave of litigation in the whole surrounding neighborhood. This enhances litigation clusters, creates valleys of inefficient litigation, and smears out the efficiency distribution.

Real life precedents, like in CLM and contrary to the toy model, do not act independently of the remaining body of law. Precedents depend on or complement and reinforce one another in a dynamic Charlotte’s web of legal and logical entanglements. It is precisely the presence of interprecedent entanglements springing from Rule II333While one can extend Rule II by introducing next-to-nearest neighbor interprecedent couplings, in keeping with minimalism I shall focus exclusively on nearest-neighbor couplings. With only nearest-neighbor couplings, CLM is similar to a physics model (Bak and Sneppen 1993). that differentiates CLM from CK. And, as shown in Yee (2001), it is precisely the dynamics of these entanglements which leave the paleontological footprints of punctuated equilibria, Zipf’s Law, path dependency, and smeared economic efficiency.

For instance, as depicted in Figure 3, a law exhibits rapid violent change interspersed with long periods of quiet. This feature occurs endogenously. In CLM, spurts of intense litigation for each precedent are interspersed with irregular periods of inactivity. Figure 3 depicts the efficiency of a typical precedent as a function of time.