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# First Detection of Ammonia in M 82

## 1 Introduction

The physical properties of molecular clouds are important parameters which are believed to influence largely the rate at which stars can form by gravitational collapse of cloud fragments. The nearby starburst galaxy M 82 is known to host a large amount of molecular gas ($`M(\mathrm{H}_2)1\times 10^8\mathrm{M}_{}`$, e.g. Wild et al. wild (1992)) and is currently undergoing a phase of intense star formation. Therefore it has been a prime target to determine the physical conditions of the molecular phase of its ISM in order to increase our understanding of the relevant physical processes connected with violent star formation activity.
Most of these studies use CO emission lines to derive the physical properties of the molecular gas (e.g. Harris et al. harris (1991); Wild et al. wild (1992), and more recently Mao et al. mao (2000); Petitpas & Wilson petitpas (2000); Weiß et al. weiss (2001)). Yet the interpretation of CO emission lines requires the application of radiative transfer models which use simplifying assumptions about the structure and kinematics of molecular clouds. Therefore it is desirable to observe other molecules which directly trace the physical conditions and thus allow a test of conclusions gained from CO observations. Ammonia ($`\mathrm{NH}_3`$) is such a molecule: the relative population of its meta–stable inversion lines is sensitive to the kinetic gas temperature (e.g. Walmsley & Ungerechts walmsley (1983)). Therefore observations of ammonia inversion lines can be used as a molecular cloud thermometer. Here we report the first detection of ammonia towards the most prominent molecular source in M 82, the south–western molecular lobe. We compare our interpretation of the ammonia lines to conclusions deduced from CO observations.

## 2 Observations

The (J,K) = (1,1), (2,2), (3,3) and (4,4) inversion lines of ammonia were observed towards the south–western (SW) molecular lobe in M 82 ($`\alpha _{2000}=09^h55^m49.06^s`$, $`\delta _{2000}=69^{}40^{}41^{\prime \prime }.2`$) using the Effelsberg 100 m telescope of the MPIfR equipped with a dual channel K–band HEMT receiver. The system temperature was 180–200 K on a main beam brightness temperature ($`T_{\mathrm{mb}}`$) scale. The observations were carried out in May 2000 and Feb. 2001. The beam size of the 100-m telescope at 23 GHz is $`40^{\prime \prime }`$. The data were recorded using an autocorrelator with $`8\times 512`$ channels and a bandwidth of 40 MHz for each backend, leading to a channel spacing of 1 km s-1. The eight backends were configured such that all four ammonia lines were observed simultaneously. Each pair of backends centered on a given ammonia line was used to sample both linear polarizations independently. To avoid a contamination of the data by low–level baseline instabilities we shifted the center velocity of the backends (May 2000) and permuted the backends (Feb. 2001) every 90 minutes.
The measurements were carried out in dual–beam switching mode, with a switching frequency of 1Hz and a beam throw of $`2^{}`$ in azimuth. Flux calibration was obtained by observing both the continuum and the ammonia lines of W3(OH) before each observing run (for fluxes see Mauersberger, Wilson, & Henkel mauer88 (1988) and Ott et al. ott (1994)). Pointing was checked every 1.5 hours on the nearby continuum source 0836+71 and was found to be stable to within $`510^{\prime \prime }`$. A linear baseline was removed from each spectrum and intensities were converted to a $`T_{\mathrm{mb}}`$ scale. The summed spectra were smoothed to a velocity resolution of 16 km s-1. We estimate the flux calibration of the final reduced spectra to be accurate within $`\pm 20`$% (10% error of the flux calibration and 10% uncertainty due to low–level baseline instabilities).

## 3 Results

The observed spectra of the ammonia lines are shown in Fig. 1. The (J,K) = (1,1)–(3,3) lines are detected with a S/N ratio better than 4. The (4,4) line is not detected. The (1,1) and (2,2) lines peak at $`v_{lsr}=100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (C100) and show a weaker component at $`v_{lsr}=160\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (C160). Both velocity components are also detected in low– and mid–J CO emission lines (see e.g. Harris et al. harris (1991); Wild et al. wild (1992); Mao et al. mao (2000); Petitpas & Wilson petitpas (2000)). At $`40^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution the intensity of the low–J CO transitions from C160 is stronger than that from C100. To emphasize this point we show the line profile of the $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=10)`$ transition at $`40^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution in the top panel of Fig. 1.
Beam averaged column densities for individual inversion states were calculated using

$$N(J,K)=\frac{7.7710^{13}}{\nu }\frac{J(J+1)}{K^2}T_{mb}𝑑v$$

(e.g. Henkel et al. henkel2000 (2000)). The column density $`N`$, the frequency $`\nu `$ and the integrated line intensity are in units of cm-2, GHz and K km s-1, respectively. Line parameters and column densities are summarized in Tab. 1. Note that this approximation assumes optically thin emission and the contribution of the 2.7 K background to be negligible ($`\mathrm{T}_{ex}2.7\mathrm{K}`$). Following the analysis described by Henkel et al. (henkel2000 (2000)) the rotation temperature ($`T_{rot}`$) between levels J and J’ can be determined from the slope of a linear fit in the rotation diagram (normalized column density vs. energy above the ground state expressed in E/k) by

$$T_{rot}=\frac{\mathrm{log}(\mathrm{e})}{a}=\frac{0.434}{a}$$
(1)
where $`a`$ is the slope of the linear fit.
The rotation diagram for the observed ammonia lines is shown in Fig. 2. The rotation temperature between the (1,1) and (2,2) inversion levels of para–ammonia is $`T_{rot}=29\mathrm{K}`$ (thick solid line). The uncertainty, derived from the extrema of the slope including the (4,4) level as an upper limit, is $`\pm 5\mathrm{K}`$ (dotted lines). The (J,K) = (3,3) line is not included in the fit because it belongs to ortho–ammonia, thus to a different ammonia species. Nevertheless, it nicely fits to the rotation temperature derived from the two lowest inversion levels of para–ammonia.
In addition to the analysis of the integrated line intensities we have decomposed the (J,K) = (1,1) and (2,2) spectra into two Gaussian components with fixed center velocities of $`v_{lsr}=100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (C100) and 160 km s-1(C160). The Gaussian decomposition is shown together with the observed line profile in the two top panels of Fig. 1. A separate analysis of the rotation temperatures between the (1,1) and (2,2) inversion levels for both components yields $`T_{rot,100}=24_6^{+12},\mathrm{K}`$ and $`T_{rot,160}=31_{10}^{+22}\mathrm{K}`$ for C100 and C160, respectively. For the errors we have assumed 30% uncertainty from the Gaussian decomposition. Note that the observed upper limit for the (J,K) = (4,4) line intensity is still consistent with the shallow slope derived for the emission arising from the 160 km s-1 component (C160).

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ emitting volume

High–spatial resolution CO observations show that the emission at $`v_{lsr}100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ is mainly associated with the SW molecular lobe. The emission at $`v_{lsr}160\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ arises from regions closer to the nucleus , i.e. from the central molecular peak and the inner CO outflow region. Thus C160 covers the regions of the western mid infrared peak close to the central molecular peak (Telesco & Gezari telesco92 (1992)), and the region where an expanding molecular superbubble was identified (Weiß et al. weiss99 (1999)). Therefore C160 represents a more active region than the outer molecular lobe itself. An overlay of the two regions at high spatial resolution ($`2^{\prime \prime }`$) as observed in the $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=21)`$ transition (Weiß et al. weiss (2001)) is shown in Fig. 3.

### 4.2 Comparison with temperature determinations from other line observations

Radiative transfer calculations (e.g. Walmsley & Ungerechts walmsley (1983)) of $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ show that rotation temperatures determined from meta–stable levels only reflect the kinetic gas temperature for low ($`T<15`$K) temperatures. For larger temperatures the rotation temperature largely underestimates the kinetic gas temperature due to depopulation mechanisms. Correcting our results for these effects, our mean rotation temperature of 29 K corresponds to a mean kinetic temperature of $`T_{kin}60`$K. Using the Gaussian decomposition we find $`T_{kin}45`$K for the temperature in the SW molecular lobe (C100), and $`T_{kin}80`$K for the regions closer to the nucleus (C160).
These values are in good agreement with recent high–resolution kinetic temperature estimates using radiative transfer calculations based on CO observations by Weiß et al. (weiss (2001)). They derive $`T_{kin}55`$K for the SW molecular lobe, and an average of $`T_{kin}110`$K over the region which corresponds to C160 in our study. The simultaneous observations of two \[C I\] fine structure lines towards the SW lobe allowed Stutzki et al. (stutzki1997 (1997)) to derive a lower limit for the kinetic temperature of the \[C I\] emitting gas in C100 of 50 K which is consistent with the temperature derived above from the $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ lines. Similar values ($`T_{kin}=50`$K) have been found by Seaquist & Frayer (seaquist (2000)) using HCO+ and HCN emission lines.
Note, however, that the uncertainty of the kinetic temperature estimates from the Gaussian decomposition of the $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ spectra is quite large. Nevertheless, the results are in line with the general picture that the kinetic temperature rises from the outer parts of the SW molecular lobe towards the active regions closer to the nucleus of M 82.
In comparison with rotation temperatures determined from $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ in IC 342 ($`T_{rot}50\mathrm{K}`$; Martin & Ho martin (1986)) and Maffei 2 ($`T_{rot}85\mathrm{K}`$; Henkel et al. henkel2000 (2000)) the values determined here for M 82 are very low. Thus the temperature of the dense molecular gas in M 82 is obviously much lower than in other galaxies with large nuclear concentrations of molecular gas. This explains the apparent underabundance of molecules like SiO, CH3OH, HNCO, and CH3CN in M 82 which only form in a dense and warmer environment (see e.g. Mauersberger & Henkel mauer93 (1993)).

### 4.3 $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundance

Using eq. A15 of Ungerechts, Walmsley, & Winnewisser (ung1986 (1986)) we have estimated a total beam–averaged $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ column density of $`N(\mathrm{NH}_3)1\times 10^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The beam–averaged H2 column density was estimated to be $`N(\mathrm{H}_2)1.9\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ using the CO spectrum shown in Fig. 1 and a conversion factor of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}=5\times 10^{19}\mathrm{cm}^2(\mathrm{K}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1)^1`$, which corresponds to the average value of the conversion factors derived by Weiß et al. (weiss (2001)) in the region covered by 100–180 km s-1 emission. This yields a relative abundance of ammonia of $`X(\mathrm{NH}_3)5\times 10^{10}`$, which is an extremely low value. In nearby dark clouds the fractional $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundance is of order $`X(\mathrm{NH}_3)10^7`$ (e.g. Benson & Myers benson (1983)) and in hot cores $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ is even more abundant ($`X(\mathrm{NH}_3)10^{5\mathrm{}6}`$; e.g. Mauersberger, Henkel & Wilson mauer87 (1987)). In a recent work on Maffei 2 Henkel et al. (henkel2000 (2000)) found $`X(\mathrm{NH}_3)10^8`$.
A closer look at the (J,K) = (1,1) and the $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=10)`$ spectra displayed in Fig. 1 (top) reveals another interesting aspect regarding the spatial variation of the $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundance: the line temperature ratio $`T(\mathrm{NH}_3(1,1))/T({}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=10))`$ decreases with increasing velocity for $`v_{lsr}>100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The solid–body rotation in the inner part of M 82 allows one to associate velocities lower than the systemic velocity of $`v_{lsr}=230\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ with a specific distance from the nucleus (e.g. Neininger et al. nico (1998)). Therefore, $`T(\mathrm{NH}_3(1,1))`$ per velocity interval traces the ammonia column density in a region much smaller than the spatial resolution, while $`T({}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}(J=10))`$ traces the H2 column density. Note that conversion from I(CO) to $`N`$(H2) changes across the major axis of M 82 and therefore for each velocity interval (Weiß et al. weiss (2001)). Fig. 4 shows a histogram with $`X(\mathrm{NH}_3)`$ versus radial velocity and galactocentric radius, accounting for variations of $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ as determined by Weiß et al. (weiss (2001)). The $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundance is found to decrease towards the center of M 82. We believe that this finding reflects a real change of the ammonia abundance, because a constant $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundance would imply that $`X_{\mathrm{CO}}`$ changes by a factor of more than 40 on a linear scale of 300 pc which is not consistent with radiative transfer models. Due to its low energy threshold for photodissociation ($`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4.1}`$ eV, Suto & Lee suto (1983)), $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ should be destroyed rapidly in PDRs (Güsten & Fiebig g+f (1988)). This process should be even more efficient when the bulk of the gas is distributed in a diffuse phase with low H2 column densities as it seems to be true for the central regions in M 82 (Mao et al. mao (2000), Weiß et al. weiss (2001)). In such an environment shielding against the strong UV radiation is ineffective which leads to low $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundances towards the central star forming regions. Note, that $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ abundances are not always small in a warm environment. Efficient release of $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ into the gas phase by evaporation of dust grain mantles is known to occur in galactic ‘hot cores’. This process, however, becomes efficient at slightly higher temperatures than those obtained by us for NH3 in Sect. 4.2.
We therefore interpret the abundance gradient as a result of ammonia being almost completely dissociated in the harsh environment close to M 82’s nucleus, whereas it can still partially survive, with low abundance, in the cooler, denser, and thus better shielded, clouds of the SW lobe.

This research project was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant SFB 494.


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# On the Formation of Degenerate Heavy Neutrino Stars

## Abstract

The dynamics of a self-gravitating cold Fermi gas is described using the analogy with an interacting self-gravitating Bose condensate having the same Thomas-Fermi limit. The dissipationless formation of a heavy neutrino star through gravitational collapse and ejection of matter is demonstrated numerically. Such neutrino stars offer an alternative to black holes for the supermassive compact dark objects at the centers of galaxies.

, , , thanks: Permanent address: Rudjer Bošković Institute, P.O. Box 180, 10002 Zagreb, Croatia; Email: bilic@thphys.irb.hr thanks: Permanent address: School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville 3209, South Africa; Email: lindebaumr@nu.ac.za thanks: Corresponding author; Email: viollier@physci.uct.ac.za

Supermassive neutrino stars, in which self-gravity is balanced by the degeneracy pressure of the cold fermions, have been a subject of speculation for more than three decades . Originally, these objects were proposed as models for dark matter in galactic halos and clusters of galaxies, with neutrino masses in the $``$ eV range. More recently, however, degenerate superstars composed of weakly interacting fermions in the $``$ 10 keV range, have been suggested as an alternative to the supermassive black holes that are purported to exist at the centers of galaxies . In fact, it has been shown  that such degenerate fermion stars could explain the whole range of supermassive compact dark objects which have been observed so far, with masses ranging from $`10^6`$ to $`3\times 10^9`$$`M_{}`$, merely assuming that a weakly interacting quasi-stable fermion of mass $`m_f`$ 15 keV exists in nature.

As an example, the most massive compact dark object ever observed, is located at the center of M87, with a mass $`M3.2\times 10^9M_{}`$ . Interpreting this object as a relativistic fermion star at the Oppenheimer-Volkoff  limit, yields a fermion mass of $`m_f15`$ keV and a fermion star radius of $`R=4.45R_\mathrm{S}1.5`$ light-days , where $`R_\mathrm{S}`$ is the Schwarzschild radius. In this case there is little difference between the fermion star and black hole scenarios, because the radius of the last stable orbit around a Schwarzschild black hole is $`R=3R_\mathrm{S}`$ anyway.

Extrapolating this down to the compact dark object at the center of our galaxy , which, having a mass $`M2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$, is at the lower limit of the mass range of the observed compact dark objects, we obtain, using the same fermion mass, a radius $`R20`$ light-days $`5\times 10^4R_\mathrm{S}`$ . As the potential inside such a nonrelativistic fermion star is shallow, the spectrum of radiation emitted by accreting baryonic matter is cut off for frequencies larger than $`10^{13}`$ Hz , as is actually observed in the spectrum of the enigmatic radio source Sgr A at the galactic center . A fermion star with radius $`R`$ $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 20 light-days and mass $`M2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$ is also consistent  with the observed motion of stars within a projected distance of 6 to 30 light-days from Sgr A .

Of course, it is well-known that 15 keV lies squarely in the cosmologically forbidden mass range for stable active neutrinos $`\nu `$ . The existence of such a massive active neutrino is also disfavoured by the Super-Kamiokande data . However, as shown by Shi and Fuller  for an initial lepton asymmetry of $`10^3`$, a sterile neutrino $`\nu _s`$ of mass $`m_s10`$ keV may be resonantly produced in the early universe with near closure density, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Omega }1`$. The resulting energy spectrum is not thermal but rather cut off so that it approximates a degenerate Fermi gas. Sterile neutrinos in this mass range are also constrained by astrophysical bounds on the radiative decay $`\nu _s\nu \gamma `$ . However, the allowed parameter space includes $`m_s15`$ keV, contributing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_s0.3`$ to the critical density, as favoured by the BOOMERANG data .

The statics of degenerate fermion stars is well understood, being the Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation in the relativistic case , or the Lané-Emden equation with polytropic index $`n=3/2`$ in the nonrelativistic limit . Alternatively, one may understand these as the Thomas-Fermi theory applied to self-gravitating fermion systems. The extension of the Thomas-Fermi theory to finite temperature  has been used to show that, at a certain critical temperature, weakly interacting massive fermionic matter undergoes a first-order gravitational phase transition from a diffuse to a clustered state, i.e. a nearly degenerate fermion star. However, such studies do not bear on the crucial dynamical question of whether the fermion star can form through gravitational collapse of density fluctuations in an orthodox cosmological setting. Indeed, since collisional damping is negligible, one would expect that only a virialized cloud results .

$`N`$-body simulations of the collisionless Boltzmann or Vlasov equation evidence a rather different picture: the collapse is followed by a series of bounces, with matter expelled at each bounce, leaving behind a condensed object . By Liouville’s theorem, the Vlasov equation describes an incompressible fluid in phase-space so that it respects a form of the exclusion principle. Hence, these $`N`$-body simulations are effectively fermion simulations. What transpires is that gravity, being attractive, self-organises the phase-space fluid into a high-density/momentum core at the expense of other low-density/momentum regions as seen in the evolution of the spherical Vlasov equation .

Much the same behaviour is observed in the formation of mini-boson stars through so-called gravitational cooling . Such a boson star is stable by balancing the uncertainty and gravitational pressures. A similar mechanism works in the presence of a quartic self-interaction , which dominates over uncertainty pressure, resulting in an equilibrium radius $`R1/m`$, where $`m`$ is the boson mass . Hence, we have a universal description of the physics underlying the formation process: once the collapse proceeds far enough, uncertainty, interaction or degeneracy pressure results in a bounce, in which the outgoing shock wave carries away the binding energy. The virial counter argument mentioned above is bypassed, because the ejected matter invalidates its assumption that there is no flow through the boundary.

The purpose of this letter is to verify this picture for the formation of a fermion star from a cold gravitationally unstable configuration. The dynamical Thomas-Fermi theory, developed long ago by Bloch for the electron gas , amounts to Euler’s equations for irrotational flow, subject to an equation of state $`P=P(\rho )`$. The problem is that, due to the presence of shocks and instabilities, a naive integration of the Bloch equations is precluded in the gravitational case. The usual remedy is to introduce some small numerical viscosity. However, it seems imprudent to draw conclusions based on introducing an ad-hoc dissipation into what is fundamentally a dissipationless system. Here we take another, literally conservative approach.

We base our approach on the equivalence of a degenerate non-interacting fermion star with a certain type of self-interacting cold boson star. We shall demonstrate this equivalence using scaling arguments which are similar in spirit to the analysis of self-interacting boson stars by Colpi, Shapiro and Wassermann . Consider a complex scalar field $`\psi `$ with a repulsive Lagrangean interaction term $`U(|\psi |^2)`$. For simplicity, we use the Newtonian approximation, but our analysis may be easily extended in a general relativistic context. In the Newtonian limit, a self-interacting boson star is governed by the Gross-Pitaevskii-like equations

$$i\frac{\psi }{t}=\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2m}+\frac{1}{m}\frac{U}{|\psi |^2}+m\phi \right]\psi ,$$
(1)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }\phi =4\pi G\rho ,$$
(2)
$$\rho =m^2|\psi |^2.$$
(3)
The pressure tensor is given by

$$P_{ij}=\mathrm{Re}\frac{\psi }{x_i}\frac{\psi ^{}}{x_j}+\delta _{ij}\left(|\psi |^2\frac{U}{|\psi |^2}U\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }|\psi |^2}{4}\right).$$
(4)
Following Colpi et al. , we introduce a dimensionless parameter $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and define

$$R_{}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{m}\lambda \frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{m^2};M_{}=R_{}m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2,$$
(5)
as the length and mass scales, respectively. Here $`m_{\mathrm{Pl}}1/\sqrt{G}`$ denotes the Planck mass and the arbitrary constant $`\lambda `$ will be fixed later using physical arguments. The substitution

$$\psi =\frac{m}{\sqrt{4\pi }\lambda }\mathrm{\Psi }$$
(6)
yields the coupled dimensionless equations

$$\frac{i}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }}{t}=\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}+\phi +V(|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2)\right]\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(7)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }\phi =|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2,$$
(8)
where we have introduced the dimensionless potential

$$V(|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2)=\frac{4\pi \lambda ^2}{m^4}\frac{U}{|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2}.$$
(9)
The pressure tensor (4), written in terms of dimensionless variables, reads

$$P_{ij}=\frac{m^4}{4\pi \lambda ^2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\left(\mathrm{Re}\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }}{x_i}\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }^{}}{x_j}\delta _{ij}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2}{4}\right)+\delta _{ij}\left(|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2\frac{U}{|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2}U\right).$$
(10)
A static, spherically symmetric solution, usually referred to as boson star, is obtained by the ansatz

$$\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{}^{\mathrm{i}ϵR_{}t}\mathrm{\Phi }(r),$$
(11)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }(r)`$ is a real function. It is clear from the definition (5) that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }1`$, as long as $`m/m_{\mathrm{Pl}}\lambda `$ which is a reasonable assumption. Hence, for sufficiently large $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, Eq. (7) with (11) degenerates to

$$\frac{ϵ}{m}\phi V(\mathrm{\Phi }^2)=0.$$
(12)
This equation is exact in the limit $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{}`$, which is just the Thomas-Fermi limit . In this limit the derivative terms in Eq. (10) vanish so that the pressure tensor becomes diagonal, with all the components equal to $`PP_{ii}`$. We obtain an effective equation of state given by

$$\rho =\frac{m^4}{4\pi \lambda ^2}\mathrm{\Phi }^2,$$
(13)
$$P=\rho VU.$$
(14)
It may be easily shown that the last equation combined with (12) yields the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium

$$\frac{dP}{\rho }=d\phi .$$
(15)
For a particular $`U(|\psi |^2)`$, the equation of state in the form $`P=P(\rho )`$ is obtained by eliminating $`\mathrm{\Phi }^2`$ from (13) and (14). On the other hand, if the equation of state, e.g., of the polytropic type, is given, we can determine the potential $`U`$ and its derivative $`V`$ by integrating (15). For a general polytropic equation of state

$$P(\rho )=K\rho ^{1+1/n},$$
(16)
Eq. (14) yields

$$V=(n+1)K\rho ^{1/n}.$$
(17)
This, together with Eq. (13), gives the potential in terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }^2`$. As we still have the freedom to choose the parameter $`\lambda `$ conveniently, we fix $`\lambda `$ so that the potential $`V`$ in (7) takes a simple form

$$V=|\mathrm{\Psi }|^{2/n}.$$
(18)
The polytropic equation of state with $`n=3/2`$, together with the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium (15) and Poisson’s equation (2), describes a degenerate fermion star. Hence, we have demonstrated that a degenerate fermion star is equivalent to a self-interacting boson star in the limit $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{}`$. Moreover, it may be shown numerically that, even for moderate values of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ of the order of 10 to 20, the static solutions are almost degenerate and are quite well approximated by the static solution for an infinite $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. This has been demonstrated for a quartic self-interaction  (note that our $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ corresponds to $`\sqrt{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ in reference ).

Next we proceed to solving Eqs. (7), (8) and (18) numerically for large, but finite value of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. For weakly interacting degenerate fermions with the polytropic index $`n=3/2`$, the length and mass scales are given by

$$R_{}=\left(\frac{9\pi ^2}{32g_f^2}\right)^{1/4}\frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{m_f^2}=0.2325\left(\frac{\text{keV}}{m_f}\right)^2\sqrt{\frac{2}{g_f}}\mathrm{lyr},$$
(19)
$$M_{}=1.489\left(\frac{\mathrm{keV}}{m_f}\right)^2\sqrt{\frac{2}{g_f}}\times 10^{12}M_{},$$
(20)
where $`g_f`$ is the spin degeneracy and $`m_f`$ the mass of the fermion. As $`M_{}`$ is of the order of the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, the validity of the Newtonian approximation in the static case requires

$$M=(4\pi )^1^3r|\mathrm{\Psi }|^21.$$
(21)
By construction, once the overall scale is specified, a large but finite $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ allows us to simulate the fermionic problem as a bosonic one, as long as their Thomas-Fermi limits coincide, while providing an explicitly energy conserving way of controlling the shocks and instabilities. The basic regulating mechanism is the kinetic part of (7) which penalises density spikes. Of course, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ must be so large that this term does not change the static scaling relationship

$$MR^{\left(\frac{3n}{n1}\right)}=C_n,$$
(22)
arising from the polytropic equation of state. Our criterion is that the ratio of kinetic and pressure contributions to the static energy functional should be small. In particular for a Gaussian $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left[(r/\beta )^2\right]`$ we find

$$\frac{1}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}\frac{^3r|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2}{^3r|\mathrm{\Psi }|^{2+2/n}}=\left(1+\frac{1}{n}\right)^{3/2}\frac{3}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2\beta ^2\alpha ^{2/n}}.$$
(23)
For $`n=3/2`$ this is independent of the size of $`\beta `$ for a given mass, yielding the weak condition $`M0.91\mathrm{\Lambda }^3`$. When the mass violates this inequality the self-interaction $`V`$ becomes irrelevant and there is a crossover to mini-boson star behaviour $`MR=`$ const.

In Fig. 1 we display the evolution of $`|r\mathrm{\Psi }|^2`$ for the spherical collapse of a mass $`M=0.008`$, initially in the form of the above Gaussian with $`\beta =100=\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. A fairly coarse sampling is used to make this contour plot, as this allows one to see the basic features of matter ejection without the complicated fine detail hiding it. Eqs. (7) and (8) are first written in terms of $`\eta =r\mathrm{\Psi }`$, and then solved assuming spherical symmetry using the method of lines  for $`r=0`$ to 1000. The region is divided into 4000 intervals, and a fourth order polynomial is fitted in each interval, with the function continuous up to its second derivatives across each interval. The time step is adjusted dynamically to achieve the desired accuracy of $`10^6`$. The boundary conditions at $`r=0`$ and $`r=1000`$ are reflective. To prevent matter from being artificially reflected by the boundary at $`r=1000`$, we have introduced an $`r`$-dependent imaginary part to the potential, or ‘sponge’ , from $`r=`$ 700 to 1000, which removes the ejected fermionic matter. The mass in the region remains constant to within the numerical integration error until $`t=5\times 10^4`$, which is a quarter of the simulation period, when the first ejected matter reaches the ‘sponge’. The expected features of bounce and ejection, leaving a condensed core, are evident. We obtain identical results using the Crank-Nicholson method.

A pertinent question is whether the Thomas-Fermi approximation is satisfied during the ejection process. Similar to WKB, the Thomas-Fermi limit is obtained when the scale of variation of density is small compared to that of the potential $`V`$, i.e.,

$$\xi ^2\frac{|\rho |^2}{\rho ^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}8}U/|\psi |^2}=\frac{||\mathrm{\Psi }||^2}{2\mathrm{\Lambda }|\mathrm{\Psi }|^{2+2/n}}1.$$
(24)
In Fig. 2 we exhibit $`|r\mathrm{\Psi }|^2`$ and $`\xi `$ versus $`r`$ at time $`1.22\times 10^4`$, where ejecta first develop. Evidently, the Thomas-Fermi condition, is well satisfied, except near sharp density minima. This is expected since in a pure Thomas-Fermi system evolving under Bloch’s equations, the sharp density gradient would evolve into a shock, which violates the Thomas-Fermi condition.

In Fig. 3 we show $`|r\mathrm{\Psi }|^2`$ on the time slice $`t=2\times 10^5`$ of our $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=100`$ simulation. The core mass $`M=0.0057`$ and radius $`R=28`$ are roughly commensurate with (22) and  $`C_{3/2}=132.3843`$. Of course, at this point there is still evolution and oscillation of the core, similar to the mini-boson star case , with $`R`$ varying between about 25 and 31. In general one can expect a persistent seismology with a period $`T`$ of the order of the radius divided by the average speed of sound, $`T51/M`$, which agrees with the simulations. The seismology includes higher-order modes as well.

In summary, using a bosonic representation of the dynamical Thomas-Fermi theory for a self-gravitating gas, we have shown that nonrelativistic, degenerate and weakly interacting fermionic matter will form supermassive fermion stars through gravitational collapse accompanied by ejection. For a fermion mass of $`m_f15`$ keV, and a final mass $`M2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$ such a superstar is consistent with the observations of the compact dark object at the center of our galaxy. A similar demonstration for the formation of such a star near the Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, and the question of cosmology with degenerate dark matter, requires a general relativistic extension which is under development and will be reported elsewhere.

The authors wish to thank Duncan Elliott ($``$) for many useful discussions regarding the simulations. This research is in part supported by the Foundation of Fundamental Research (FFR) grant number PHY99-01241 and the Research Committee of the University of Cape Town. The work of N.B. is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia under Contract No. 00980102.


text:
# The Fate of an Accelerating Universe

## 1 Introduction

The accelerating expansion of the present universe was suggested by the type Ia supernova (SN Ia) distance measurements  in 1998 and reinforced recently by updated SN Ia data  and WMAP measurement  of cosmic microwave background (CMB). One general conclusion from these measurements and other CMB observations in recent years  is that the universe has the critical density, consisting of $`27\%`$ pressureless matter and $`73\%`$ dark energy with a negative pressure  (such that $`p/\rho <0.78`$ ).

The most promising candidates to account for dark energy include (i) a cosmological constant , (ii) a slowly evolving scalar field called “quintessence” , (iii) the presence of extra dimensions on top of the well-known $`3+1`$ space-time , and (iv) the modification of gravity . The existence of a positive cosmological constant is the simplest candidate for dark energy. The cosmological constant may be provided by various kinds of matter/energy, such as the vacuum energy of quantum fields and the potential energy of classical fields, and could also be originated in the intrinsic geometry. Nevertheless, Shapiro and Sola  show that the scaling behavior of such cosmological constant, when embedded in the framework of the standard model of elementary particle physics, inevitably leads to a cosmological constant of right size but opposite in sign. As to other dark energy candidates, quintessence is usually realized by a slowly evolving mode (or coherent state) of a real scalar field while the possibility of realizing quintessence by a complex scalar field was also pointed out in . Quintessence provides dynamical negative pressure and could in principle avoid the fine tuning problem. For example, the“tracker fields” proposed by Zlatev *et al.* entail solutions which will join a common cosmic evolutionary path, regardless of a wide range of initial conditions . We shall leave the discussions on the possibility of understanding the accelerating universe via extra dimensions to other papers of ours .

Another general consensus is that the present universe is thus already dominated by dark energy and, in light of general relativity and cosmological principle, there is no way to overrun the dominance of dark energy over the other familiar form of matter or energy. It is therefore of fundamental interest to examine the possibilities resulting an eternally accelerating universe . If the expansion of the universe keeps accelerating forever, the universe will have to exhibit an event horizon, raising the issue about the viability of the current description of string theory: The existence of the event horizon brings challenges to string theory, such as the construction of suitable observables to displace the problematic conventional S-matrix in the universe with an event horizon .

However, there is a pitfall in the chain of the arguments leading to an eternally accelerating universe. That is, there might be competitive components in our universe and at present only one such form, say quintessence of some kind, has assumed its control. For example, it is perfectly justified to assume that a negative cosmological constant, whose existence may be a natural occurrence as suggested in , could be present but yet to exert its control in the distant future. The existence of a negative cosmological constant is more compatible with string theory . The possibility of an accelerating universe with a negative cosmological constant has been considered in  for the renormalization-group running of the cosmological constant (vacuum energy) and in  for quintessence.

Thus, after introducing the basics in cosmology in the next section, we study several simple examples in Sec. 3 for demonstrating various possible fates of the presently accelerating universe which are swayed by a cosmological constant, in particular, its sign. In Sec. 4 we investigate how negative, confronting the constraints from various astronomical observations, a cosmological constant is allowed to be, and propose a phenomenological discriminator of the sign of the cosmological constant. A summary follows in Sec. 5.

## 2 Basics

In standard cosmology, the universe at large scales is described by the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) metric,

$$ds^2=dt^2a^2(t)\left(\frac{dr^2}{1kr^2}+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2\right),$$
(1)
which respects from the cosmological principle, i.e., homogeneity and isotropy. In Eq. (1), $`a(t)`$ is the (cosmic) scale factor, and $`k`$ can be chosen to be $`+1`$, $`1`$, or $`0`$, corresponding to a closed, open, or flat universe, respectively. Provided that the matter content of the universe is taken to be a perfect fluid, the Einstein equations yield

$$\left(\frac{\dot{a}}{a}\right)^2+\frac{k}{a^2}=\frac{8\pi G}{3}\stackrel{~}{\rho }=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{3}+\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho ,$$
(2)
$$\frac{\ddot{a}}{a}=\frac{4\pi G}{3}(\stackrel{~}{\rho }+3\stackrel{~}{p})=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{3}\frac{4\pi G}{3}(\rho +3p),$$
(3)
and also imply the energy-momentum conservation,

$$d(\stackrel{~}{\rho }a^3)=\stackrel{~}{p}d(a^3),$$
(4)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$ are effective energy density and pressure of the perfect fluid including the contributions from a cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and other matter contents. As indicated in Eq. (3), the expansion of the universe is accelerating if the pressure $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$ is so negative that

$$\stackrel{~}{p}<\frac{1}{3}\stackrel{~}{\rho }<0,\text{provided }\stackrel{~}{\rho }>0.$$
(5)
The universe is usually considered to be composed of various kinds of perfect fluids with different types of equations of state:

$$p_i=w_i\rho _i,$$
(6)
where $`\rho _i`$ and $`p_i`$ are energy density and pressure of the $`i`$-th component, and the equation-of-state factor $`w_i`$ in general may depend on energy density $`\rho _i`$ and time. Assuming that each (fluid) component evolves independently and each $`w_i`$ is constant, we obtain, from Eq. (4), a relation between the energy density $`\rho _i`$ and the scale factor $`a(t)`$:

$$\rho _ia^{3(1+w_i)}.$$
(7)
This relation implies that the energy density of the component with a smaller equation-of-state factor $`w`$ drops more slowly along with the expansion of the universe. As a result, eventually the universe will be dominated by the component with the smallest equation-of-state factor $`w`$ as long as the universe keeps expanding at all times.

## 3 Examples

As one prominent candidate of dark energy, quintessence may play a crucial role in swaying the fate of the universe. In addition, the cosmological constant, which entails the smallest equation-of-state factor ($`w=1`$) among “non-phantom” ($`w1`$) dark energy sources, may take over to dominate the universe eventually. Therefore, in this section we will explore how these two kinds of energy sources will affect the ultimate fate of the presently accelerating universe.

### Quintessence

We consider a Lagrangian density of a scalar field for the quintessence as follows:

$$=\sqrt{|g|}\left[\frac{1}{2}g^{\mu \nu }(_\mu \varphi )(_\nu \varphi )V(\varphi )\right].$$
(8)
For simplicity, here we consider a universe which at large scales is homogeneous, isotropic, and spatially flat, and accordingly can be described by the flat FRW metric ($`k=0`$) in Eq. (1). Although we focus on this highly symmetric space at large scales, the small-scale behavior of the field $`\varphi `$ in general does make contributions to the stress energy of $`\varphi `$, and accordingly is involved in the calculation of the energy-momentum tensor. More precisely, when we invoke the cosmological principle and the Einstein equations of large scales (corresponding to the FRW metric), the energy-momentum tensor contributed by a field is the spatially averaged stress energy of the field (to which the small-scale spatial variations do make contributions), but not the stress energy of the spatially averaged field. Thus, regarding the calculation of the large-scale energy-momentum tensor contributed by a field, in general we should take the possible small-scale variations of the field into consideration, instead of ignoring them simply through the requirement of homogeneity and isotropy of the universe at large scales. However, in order for the quintessence field $`\varphi `$ to generate accelerating expansion, the weak spatial dependence of the field is requisite, as to be explained in the following.

To describe the small-scale behavior and to calculate the stress energy of a field, in general we should consider a more general metric instead of the FRW metric. Here, for simplicity, we assume that the deviation from the background FRW metric is insignificant, and accordingly we ignore the metric perturbations. In this case the field equation of the scalar field $`\varphi `$ is

$$\frac{^2\varphi }{t^2}+3H\frac{\varphi }{t}\frac{1}{a^2}^2\varphi +V^{}(\varphi )=0,$$
(9)
and the energy density and pressure of the quintessence are given by

$`\rho _\text{q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}\right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2a^2}}\left(\varphi \right)^2+V(\varphi ),`$ (10)
$`p_\text{q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6a^2}}\left(\varphi \right)^2V(\varphi ).`$ (11)
In Eq. (9), the Hubble expansion rate $`H`$ is defined as $`H\dot{a}/a`$, and $`3H(\varphi /t)`$ can be regarded as a damping term caused by the expansion of the universe. Eqs. (10) and (11) imply that the equation-of-state factor $`w_\text{q}`$ (i.e. $`p_\text{q}/\rho _\text{q}`$) of the quintessence ranges from $`1`$ to $`1`$. As mentioned above, in the Einstein equations corresponding to the FRW metric which describes the universe at large scales, the energy-momentum tensor involves the spatial average of the above energy density and pressure. These spatially averaged (over large enough scales) quantities should be independent of the spatial coordinates for the requirement of homogeneity and isotropy. Furthermore, as indicated by Eqs. (9)–(11), the spatial variation of $`\varphi `$ (that provides vanishing $`\rho _\text{q}+3p_\text{q}`$) in general can induce the time variation of $`\varphi `$ that provides positive pressure. Thus, in order to generate negative enough pressure and the accelerating expansion, both the weak spatial dependence and the slow evolution of the quintessence field $`\varphi `$ are requisite.

As summarized in , there are various kinds of quintessence models leading to a perpetually accelerating universe and accordingly exhibiting an event horizon. For example, for the potential proposed by Ratra and Peebles,

$$V(\varphi )\mathrm{exp}\left(\sqrt{\frac{3}{2}(\kappa +1)}\varphi \right),$$
(12)
with $`\kappa <1/3`$, we have solutions which will approach to the equation of state $`p=\kappa \rho `$ eventually . Consequently this class of potentials with $`\kappa <1/3`$ will generate a perpetually accelerating universe. In addition, for the potential (originally studied in )

$$V(\varphi )=\frac{M^{4+n}}{\varphi ^n},$$
(13)
we have “tracker solutions” which approach to an equation of state $`p=\rho `$ asymptotically, insuring the eternal acceleration . The potential in Eq. (13) can be classified to a wider class of potentials referred to as “runaway scalar fields”, in which $`V`$, $`V^{}`$, $`V^{\prime \prime }`$, $`V^{}/V`$, and $`V^{\prime \prime }/V`$ all approach $`0`$ as $`\varphi \mathrm{}`$ . Steinhardt claimed that the runaway scalar field will guarantee the eventual acceleration of the universe. Nevertheless, there are other possible quintessence models providing alternative results . For example, for a potential which drops to a minimum at $`\varphi _0`$ and then becomes flat for $`\varphi >\varphi _0`$, the universe will be dominated by the kinetic energy after the scalar field passes the minimum, and then become decelerating with an equation of state $`p=\rho `$.

There are two more points which should be added. Firstly, the existence of a nonzero minimum of the quintessence potential bounded by below can make a contribution to the cosmological constant. We will categorize the possibly nonzero minimum of the potential as a part of the cosmological constant, and accordingly set this minimum to be zero after introducing the cosmological constant. Secondly, we note that the kinetic energy and potential energy of the quintessence are transferred to each other along with the evolution of the quintessence field. In addition, the kinetic energy is dissipated, accompanying the expansion of the universe, due to the damping term $`3H(\varphi /t)`$ in Eq. (9). As a result, in general the energy density of the quintessence will be dissipated as the universe expands, and the equation-of-state factor $`w_\text{q}`$ can only skim over or approach $`1`$ (rather than halting at that point) and hence should be always larger than that of a cosmological constant.

### The Cosmological Constant

Provided that there is no “phantom” energy with the equation of state $`w<1`$ , the cosmological constant, with the smallest equation-of-state factor ($`w=1`$), will eventually dominate the universe as long as the universe keeps on expanding at all times. In the following, using Eqs. (2) and (3), we will see how a positive and a negative cosmological constant will affect the fate of the universe profoundly in totally different ways.

#### (i) $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$

In both the open ($`k=1`$) and the flat ($`k=0`$) case, the universe will expand forever, and the cosmological constant will take over eventually such that the expansion will eternally accelerate thereafter, consequently exhibiting an event horizon. For a closed ($`k=1`$) universe, the situation is more complicated. It involves a competition between three terms in the Friedmann equation (2): the curvature term $`k/a^2`$, the cosmological constant term $`\mathrm{\Lambda }/3`$, and the energy density term $`\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho `$ from the matter contents other than the cosmological constant. Roughly speaking, if the cosmological constant has already become predominant before the moment when the curvature term is comparable to the matter density term, the universe will then expand forever in an accelerating manner and exhibit an event horizon. Conversely, if the cosmological constant is still comparatively small at that moment, the universe will collapse eventually (a big crunch).

#### (ii) $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<0`$

In the case of the negative cosmological constant the universe will always collapse eventually  (see also ). We can see, from Eq. (2), that the universe will start to collapse at the moment when

$$\frac{k}{a^2}=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{3}+\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho ,$$
(14)
no matter the universe is open, flat, or closed and how close to zero the negative cosmological constant might be.

For a concrete demonstration, we analyze numerically the evolution of the universe which is composed of a negative cosmological constant (with energy density $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }`$) and a quintessence field $`\varphi `$ with the potential

$$V(\varphi )=\frac{M^6}{\varphi ^2}.$$
(15)
We use the unit system in which $`c=8\pi G/3=H_0=1`$ (where $`H_0`$ is the present Hubble expansion rate). With this unit system, the constant $`M`$ in Eq. (15) is chosen to be unity, i.e., $`M=(3H_0/8\pi G)^{1/3}c=1`$. The results are presented in Figs. 1 and 2. These two figures sketch the evolution of the scale factor $`a(t)`$ and the Hubble expansion rate $`H(t)\dot{a}/a`$ of two universes, where the time $`t`$ is in unit of the present Hubble time $`H_0^1`$ and $`t=0`$ denotes the present time. The solid line is for the case of $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{1}{50}\rho _\text{q}(0)`$, where $`\rho _\text{q}(0)`$ is the present energy density of the quintessence, and the dash line sketches an accelerating, nearly exponential expansion of the universe in the case of $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ as a reference. As shown in these two figures, the universe with a negative cosmological constant will collapse (i.e. $`\mathrm{ln}[a(t)/a_0]`$ drops and $`H(t)`$ becomes negative) eventually, in contrast to the case of $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, even though the energy density from the cosmological constant only accounts for 2 percent of that from the quintessence initially.

We note that the collapse takes place and proceeds in a violent manner since the original “damping” term $`3H(\varphi /t)`$ in Eq. (9) turns to an “amplifying” term when the universe is collapsing, i.e., $`H<0`$. In this collapsing epoch, the kinetic energy $`\frac{1}{2}(\varphi /t)^2`$ of the quintessence becomes more and more dominant due to this amplifying effect. After the universe is dominated by the kinetic energy, it takes a finite time comparable to or even shorter than the present Hubble time $`H_0^1`$ for the universe to collapse to the singularity. This can be shown by the following formulae for a quintessential-kinetic-energy-dominated collapsing universe:

$`\left|H\right|`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G}{3}}\rho _\text{q}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi G}{3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\varphi }{t}}\right)^2}`$ (16)
$`>`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G}{3}}\left|\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }\right|}H_0/\sqrt{50},`$
$`\left|H\right|`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3(At)}}\text{(}A\text{ : a constant)}.`$ (17)
Equation (17) is straightforwardly obtained by solving Eqs. (2) and (9) with the assumption of the dominance of the kinetic energy.

The above studies reveal a fact that the ultimate fate of the universe is determined by the cosmological constant (if there is no “phantom” energy). In particular, the future evolution pattern of our presently accelerating universe under the control of quintessence can be totally changed by the presence of a negative cosmological constant, which is part of the dark energy but may be yet too small to be detected. Consequently, it is impossible to predict the ultimate fate of our universe without knowing the detailed nature of the dark energy content therein.

In the following section we shall explore the possibility of the existence of a negative cosmological constant, confronting the constraints obtained from various astronomical observations. We shall see that the negative cosmological constant may not be tiny; instead, a model with a significant, negative cosmological constant is consistent with the current observational data.

## 4 Phenomenology

For simplicity, we consider a flat universe dominated by three components: (i) non-relativistic matter, including (cold) dark matter, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.27`$ , (ii) a cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and (iii) a smoothly distributed energy source X that possesses positive energy density and a constant, negative equation-of-state factor $`w_\text{x}`$ and is responsible for the present accelerating expansion. For X to be different from a cosmological constant, we require $`w_\text{x}1`$. In this model, dark energy consists of two components, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and X; its energy density, pressure, and the equation-of-state factor are as follows: $`\rho _{\text{de}}=\rho _\text{x}+\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`p_{\text{de}}=p_\text{x}+p_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and

$$w_{\text{de}}=\frac{p_\text{x}+p_\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\rho _\text{x}+\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }}=\frac{w_\text{x}\rho _\text{x}\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\rho _\text{x}+\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }}.$$
(18)
In this model there are two free parameters: $`w_\text{x}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (or $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }`$). We can obtain information about these two parameters by invoking the constraints from observations on various physical quantities. In the following, we shall invoke the constraints obtained by Wang and Tegmark in , using SN Ia (in particular, the “gold” set ), CMB , and galaxy clustering  data. These constraints are respectively on the dark energy density $`\rho _{\text{de}}`$ as a function of redshift $`z`$ and on the parameters $`w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ and $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$, where ‘0’ denotes the present time (i.e., $`z=0`$), and $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)dw_{\text{de}}/dz(z=0)`$.

Introducing $`\xi \rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }(0)/\rho _\text{x}(0)=\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }/\mathrm{\Omega }_\text{x}`$, we write the formulae for $`\rho _{\text{de}}(z)`$, $`w_{\text{de}}`$ and $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ as follows:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _{\text{de}}(z)}{\rho _{\text{de}}(0)}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1+z)^{3(1+w_\text{x})}+\xi }{1+\xi }},`$ (19)
$`w_{\text{de}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{w_\text{x}(1+z)^{3(1+w_\text{x})}\xi }{(1+z)^{3(1+w_\text{x})}+\xi }},`$ (20)
$`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+w_\text{x}}{1+\xi }},`$ (21)
$`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3(1+w_\text{x})^2\xi }{(1+\xi )^2}}=3\left[1+w_{\text{de}}(0)\right]^2\xi .`$ (22)
We require $`\xi >1`$ for insuring that the dark energy density is positive. According to Eq. (21), if $`\xi >1`$, $`w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ and $`w_\text{x}`$ are simultaneously larger or smaller than $`1`$. Accordingly the sign of $`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ can tell us whether the dark energy component X is “phantom” ($`w_\text{x}<1`$) or not. In addition, as shown in Eq. (22), the sign of $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$, i.e., whether the equation-of-state factor of dark energy is increasing or decreasing, is determined by the sign of the cosmological constant. As a result, in our model the sign of $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ can be a discriminator of the sign of the cosmological constant phenomenologically. In particular, currently increasing (i.e., decreasing with $`z`$) $`w_{\text{de}}`$ indicates the existence of a negative cosmological constant.

In Fig. 3, we demonstrate how well this model with a negative cosmological constant satisfies the constraint on the evolution of the dark energy density. The grey region shows the $`1\sigma `$ constraint on $`\rho _{\text{de}}(z)`$, which is obtained in  by using the parametrization of the 3-parameter spline. The solid curves present the behavior of $`\rho _{\text{de}}(z)`$ predicted in models with various values of $`w_\text{x}`$ and $`\xi `$ which satisfy the $`1\sigma `$ constraint. These plots show that the existence of a significant, negative cosmological constant is allowed. For example, for the case $`w_\text{x}=0.9`$, $`\xi `$ is allowed to be as large as $`0.6`$, that is, at present the magnitude of the energy density of the cosmological constant is allowed to be larger than one half of that of the dark energy component X, and accordingly is larger than the dark energy density.<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1Here we consider only $`w_\text{x}>1`$ and, in addition, show only curves corresponding to negative $`\xi `$. Note that models with larger (positive) $`\xi `$ are more similar to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model that is consistent with all the current data, and, roughly speaking, are easier to survive the constraints from observations. Apparently, when $`\xi `$ goes to infinity, we obtain the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with $`\rho _{\text{de}}(z)/\rho _{\text{de}}(0)=1`$.

In Figs. 4 and 5, we demonstrate how well this model with a negative cosmological constant satisfies the constraint on $`w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ and $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$. The grey region is ruled out by SN Ia data, with the prior $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.27\pm 0.04`$, at 95% confidence . In Fig. 4, the black area represents the models with the parameters in the range $`\left\{1.2<w_\text{x}<0.65,\xi >0.5\right\}`$, which are within the allowed (white) region. We note that $`\xi =0.5`$ corresponds to $`|\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }|=\mathrm{\Omega }_{\text{de}}=\mathrm{\Omega }_\text{x}/2`$ and therefore indicates a significant, negative cosmological constant. For more details, in Fig. 5 we illustrate the allowed range of $`\xi `$ for various values of $`w_\text{x}`$. From the left to the right side, the solid curves correspond to theoretical models $`\{w_\text{x},\xi >\xi _m\}`$ with different values of $`w_\text{x}`$ and $`\xi _m`$, as listed in the following:

| $`w_\text{x}`$ | $`1.4`$ | $`1.3`$ | $`1.2`$ | $`1.1`$ | $`1.01`$ | $`0.99`$ | $`0.9`$ | $`0.8`$ | $`0.7`$ | $`0.6`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\xi _m`$ | $`0.12`$ | $`0.3`$ | $`0.5`$ | $`0.74`$ | $`0.97`$ | $`0.99`$ | $`0.9`$ | $`0.8`$ | $`0.6`$ | $`0.3`$ |

These plots show that, confronting the current constraints from observations, the existence of a significant, negative cosmological constant is allowed. For example, $`\xi `$ is allowed to be as large as 0.9 for the case $`w_\text{x}=0.9`$, and 0.5 for $`w_\text{x}=1.2`$. Even for the case $`w_\text{x}=0.6`$ that is not consistent with the $`1\sigma `$ constraint in Fig. 3, $`\xi `$ is still allowed to as large as $`0.3`$. Thus, the existence of a negative cosmological constant is fairly consistent with the current observational data. For the case $`w_\text{x}>1`$, the existence of a negative cosmological constant dictates a big crunch as the fate of the presently accelerating universe, while a positive cosmological constant dictates eternal acceleration. For $`w_\text{x}<1`$, the “phantom” dark energy component X dictates a singular fate in a finite time, so-called “Big Rip” (i.e., with the scale factor $`a`$ blowing up), before which the expansion of the universe keeps accelerating .

As mentioned above, in this simple model where the dark energy component X possesses a constant equation-of-state factor $`w_\text{x}`$, the signs of $`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ and $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ (which hopefully can be obtained from future observations) respectively can tell us the signs of $`1+w_\text{x}`$ and $`\xi `$, i.e., whether the dark energy component X is “phantom” or not and whether the cosmological constant is positive or negative. This feature and the relation between the fate of the presently accelerating universe and the parameters $`w_\text{x}`$ and $`\xi `$ are summarized in the following table.

| $`w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ and $`w_\text{x}`$ | $`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ | Fate |
| --- | --- | --- |
| $`>1`$ | $`+`$ | accelerating forever |
| $`>1`$ | $``$ | Big Crunch |
| $`<1`$ | $`+`$ | accelerating until Big Rip |
| $`<1`$ | $``$ | accelerating until Big Rip |

For a more general model where $`w_\text{x}(z)`$ is not a constant, the generalized version of Eqs. (21) and (22) is as follows:

$`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+w_\text{x}(0)}{1+\xi }},`$ (23)
$`w_{\text{de}}^{}(0)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{w_\text{x}^{}(0)}{1+\xi }}+{\displaystyle \frac{3\left[1+w_\text{x}(0)\right]^2\xi }{(1+\xi )^2}}`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{w_\text{x}^{}(0)}{1+\xi }}+3\left[1+w_{\text{de}}(0)\right]^2\xi .`$
In this case, the information about the sign of $`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ obtained from observations can still tell us whether the dark energy component X is “phantom” or not. As to the sign of the cosmological constant, the situation is more complicated. If $`w_\text{x}(z)`$ is an arbitrary function, there is no hope to extract information about $`\xi `$ or $`\rho _\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ because phenomenologically it is redundant to introduce a cosmological constant in this case. Nevertheless, for each category of theoretical models where $`w_\text{x}(z)`$ is further specified by some theoretical requirements, obtaining information about the cosmological constant from observations is feasible in principle. For example, for theoretical models where $`w_\text{x}(z)`$ is determined by $`n`$ parameters, the information about the cosmological constant can be extracted from the observational constraints on $`w_\text{x}(0)`$, $`w_\text{x}^{}(0)`$, $`w_\text{x}^{\prime \prime }(0)`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ , $`w_\text{x}^{(n)}(0)`$ where the superscript ‘$`(n)`$’ denotes the $`n`$-th derivative of $`w_\text{x}`$ with respect to redshift $`z`$. In particular, for models where $`w_\text{x}`$ at the present epoch is barely dynamical and satisfies $`w_\text{x}^{}(0)3\left[w_\text{x}(0)+1\right]^2`$, the sign of $`w_{\text{de}}^{}`$ can still reflect the sign of the cosmological constant in the same way as that in the case of constant $`w_\text{x}`$.

## 5 Summary

To sum up, we have demonstrated, through simple examples, how the current accelerating phase as well as the fate of the universe can be swayed by a negative cosmological constant. A negative cosmological constant may in fact be a natural occurrence, as suggested in . We have shown that the existence of a significant, negative cosmological constant is consistent with the current observational data, if the present accelerating expansion is generated by another dark energy component. As a result, the present accelerating situation does not guarantee the existence of an event horizon in conflict with the current description of string theory.

We have pointed out that phenomenologically a measure of the dynamical behavior of the equation-of-state factor of dark energy ($`w_{\text{de}}`$) may be a good discriminator of the sign of the cosmological constant: positive (negative) $`dw_{\text{de}}/dz(0)`$ corresponds to a positive (negative) cosmological constant. In addition, the measure of the sign of $`1+w_{\text{de}}(0)`$ can tell us whether the dark energy component (if exists) other than a cosmological constant is “phantom” or not. These two discriminators work in the cases where the equation-of-state factor of the dark energy component X barely changes with time and the cosmological constant is exactly a constant. In some other cases they may not work. For example, in the dark-energy model invoking the renormalization-group running of the cosmological constant , the variable cosmological constant with $`w=1`$ can effectively behave as normal quintessence ($`w>1`$) or phantom dark energy ($`w<1`$) in different situations , and therefore does not fit the above requirements for the validity of these discriminators.

So far the observational data are not good enough to tell us the tendency of the evolution of the dark energy equation of state. Accordingly both the case of a positive cosmological constant (alone) and the case of a negative cosmological constant (together with another dark energy component which provides anti-gravity and generates the present accelerating expansion) are consistent with the current data. Hopefully future data (e.g., data from Supernova Acceleration Probe (SNAP)  and Joint Efficient Dark-energy Investigation (JEDI) ) will provide much more detailed information about the evolution of the dark energy equation of state, and thereby indicate the sign of the cosmological constant and the fate of the presently accelerating universe.

## Acknowledgements

This work is supported in part by the National Science Council, Taiwan, R.O.C. (NSC 93-2811-M-002-056, NSC 93-2112-M-002-047, and NSC 94-2112-M-002-029) and by the CosPA project of the Ministry of Education (MOE 89-N-FA01-1-4-3).


text:
# Exposing and harvesting metadata using the OAI metadata harvesting protocol: A tutorial

## 1 Introduction

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI)  announced the OAI metadata harvesting protocol (OAIMH) v1.0  on 21 January 2001 after a period of pre-release testing. It is intended that the protocol will not be changed until 12-18 months have elapsed from the initial release. This period of stability is designed to allow time for thorough evaluation without the cost of multiple rewrites for early implementers.

The OAIMH protocol was designed as a simple, low-barrier way to achieve interoperability through metadata harvesting. It is still an open question as to exactly how useful metadata sharing will be. However, there is certainly considerable interest in OAI and experience with early OAIMH implementations is encouraging.

This tutorial is organized in four main sections. In section 2, I hope to clear up some common misconceptions about what OAIMH is. In section 3, I review some of the concepts and assumptions that underly the OAIMH protocol. Then, in the remaining two sections, sections 4 and 5, I consider implementation of the data-provider and service-provider sides of the OAIMH protocol. Perl code examples are given to implement bare-bones versions of these two interfaces.

It is not my intention to offer a complete description of the OAIMH protocol but instead to describe its use in very practical terms, and to highlight common practice among implementers. A copy of the OAIMH protocol specification  should be at hand while reading this tutorial. I will refer to sections within the protocol specification as §2.1 (for section 2.1).

## 2 What OAIMH is not

The most common misconception of OAIMH, as it currently stands, is that it provides mechanisms to expose and harvest full-content (documents, images, …). This is not true, OAIMH is a protocol for the exchange of metadata only. However, it may be that a future OAI protocol will provide facilities for the exchange of full-content.

OAIMH is not about direct interoperability between archives. It is based on a model which puts a very clean divide between data-providers (entities which expose metadata) and service-providers (entities which harvest metadata, presumably with the intention of providing some service).

While the model has a clear divide between data-providers and service-providers, there is nothing to say that one entity cannot be both; Cite Base  is one example. The model has an obvious scalability problem if every service-provider is expected to harvest data from every data-provider. It may be that is is not an issue if service-providers are specific to a particular community and thus harvest only from a subset of data-providers. We may also see the creation of aggregators which harvest from a number of data-providers and the re-export this data.

OAIMH is not limited to Dublin Core (DC)  metadata. However, since OAI aims to promote interoperability, DC metadata has been adopted as a lowest common-denominator metadata format which all data-providers should support. It is not intended that the requirement to export DC metadata should preclude the use of other metadata sets that may be more appropriate within particular communities. The OAI encourages the development of community specific standards that provide the functionalities required by specific communities.

## 3 OAIMH concepts

### 3.1 Pull-only interaction via HTTP using XML

Service-providers make requests to data-providers; there is no support for data-provider driven interaction. All requests and replies occur using the HTTP protocol . Requests may be made using either the HTTP GET or POST methods. All successful replies are encoded in XML , and all exception and flow-control replies are indicated by HTTP status codes.

### 3.2 Verbs

OAIMH protocol requests are made using one of six verbs: Identify, GetRecord, ListIdentifiers, ListRecords, ListSets, and ListMetadataFormats. Some of these verbs accept or require additional parameters to completely specify the request. The verb and any parameters are specified as key=value pairs §3.1.1 either in the URL (if the GET method is used), or in the body of the message (if the POST method is used).

### 3.3 Items, records and identifiers

The OAIMH protocol is based on a model of repositories that hold metadata about items §2. The nature of the items is outside the scope of the protocol; they might be electronic documents, artifacts in a museum, people, or almost anything else. The requirement for OAI compliance is that the repository be able to disseminate metadata for these items in one or more formats including Dublin Core (DC).

Metadata is disseminated via the GetRecord and ListRecords verbs. These requests result in zero or more records being returned. A record consists of 2 or 3 parts: a $`<`$header$`>`$ container, a $`<`$metadata$`>`$ container, and possibly an $`<`$about$`>`$ container §2.2.

The metadata for each item has a unique identifier which, when combined with the metadataPrefix, acts as a key to extract a metadata record. Note that although all metadata types for an item share the same identifier, the identifier is explicitly not an identifier for the item §2.3. Identifiers may be any valid URI  but an optional OAI identifier syntax §A2 has been adopted widely. The OAI identifier syntax divides the identifier into three parts separated by colons (:), e.g. oai:arXiv:hep-lat/0008015 where ‘oai’ is the scheme, ‘arXiv’ identifies the repository, and ‘hep-lat/0008015’ is the identifier within the particular repository.

### 3.4 Datestamps

The metadata for an item (considered as a whole, not as individual formats) has a datestamp which is the date of last modification. The purpose of the datestamp is to support date-selective harvesting and incremental harvesting in particular. Datestamps are returned in the records returned by a data-provider and may be used as optional arguments to the ListIdentifiers and ListRecords requests.

The datestamps have the granularity of a day, they are in YYYY-MM-DD format and no time is specified. This simple date format actually creates some additional complexity because the service-provider and data-provider may not be in the same time-zones. This is considered further in section 5.2.

Typically, a service-provider would initially harvest all metadata records from a repository by issuing a ListRecords request without from or until restrictions. Subsequently, the service-provider would issue ListRecords requests with a from parameter equal to the date of the last harvest.

### 3.5 Sets

Sets are provided as an optional construct for grouping items to support selective harvesting §2.5. It is not intended that they should provide a mechanism by which a search is implemented, and there is no controlled vocabulary for set names so automated interpretation of set structure is not supported. It should be noted that sets are optional both from the point of view of the data-provider — which may or may not implement sets; and the service-provider — which may ignore any set structure that is exposed. It is not clear whether sets will be widely used and I shall not consider them further in this tutorial.

### 3.6 Metadata formats

The OAIMH protocol supports multiple parallel metadata formats. Dublin Core (DC) is mandated for lowest common denominator interoperability. The use of other formats within particular communities or for special purposes is encouraged. Within a particular repository, metadata formats are identified by a metadataPrefix. Each metadataPrefix is associated with the URL of the schema which may be used to validate the metadata records; the URL has cross repository scope. The only globally meaningful metadataPrefix is oai\_dc (for DC), which is associated with the schema at http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/dc.xsd.

The ListMetadataFormats request will return the metadataPrefix, schema, and optionally a metadataNamespace, for either a particular record or for the whole repository (if no identifier is specified). In the case of the whole repository, all metadata formats supported by the repository are returned. It is not implied that all records are available in all formats.

### 3.7 Exception conditions

The OAIMH protocol has very simple exception handling: syntax errors result in HTTP status code 400 replies, and parameters that are invalid or have values that do not match records in the repository result in empty replies. For example, a ListRecords request for a date range when there were no changes, or for a metadata format not supported, will result in a reply with header information but no $`<`$record$`>`$ elements.

### 3.8 Flow control, load balancing and redirection

Flow control is supported with the HTTP retry-after status code 503. This allows a server (data-provider) to tell the harvesting agent (service-provider) to try the request again after some interval. It is left entirely up to the server implementer to determine the conditions under which such a response will be given. The server could base the response on current machine load or limit the frequency requests will be serviced from any given IP address. The retry-after response may also be used to handle temporary outages without simple taking the server off-line.

In an environment where one of a set of servers may handle a request, the server may dynamically redirect a request using the HTTP 302 response. To date this has been implemented only by the NACA repository .

## 4 Exposing metadata

To expose metadata within the OAI, one must implement the data-provider site of the OAIMH protocol. This provides a small set of functions which can be used to extract information about and metadata from the underlying repository.

### 4.1 Minimal server implementation

The Perl files oai1.pl, OAIServer.pm and Database.pm implement a bare-bones data-provider interface. The file oai1.pl handles HTTP requests and must be associated with a URL in the web server configuration file; for the Apache  web server, the configuration line is ScriptAlias /oai1 /some/directory/oai1.pl if the code is in /some/directory. It is also possible to run oai1.pl from the command line, the request is specified with the -r flag, e.g. ./oai1.pl -r ’verb=Identify’.

The algorithm for oai1.pl is simply:

```
read GET, POST or command line request
check syntax of request
if syntax correct
  return XML reply to request
else
  return HTTP 400 error code and message

```

An example of an invalid request is:

```
simeon@fff>./oai1.pl -r ’bad-request’
Status: 400 Malformed request
Content-Type: text/plain

No verb specified!

```

OAIServer.pm exports two subroutines, one (OAICheckRequest) to check the request against a grammar stored in a data structure, and another (OAISatisfyRequest) which calls the appropriate routine to implement the required OAI verb. I will consider each verb in turn.

Database.pm is a dummy database interface with a ‘database’ of three records: record1, record2 and record3. Metadata for record1 and record2 is available in DC format; metadata for record1 is also available in another format with the metadataPrefixwibble’; and record3 is a ‘deleted’ record so no metadata is available.

### 4.2 Identify

This verb takes no arguments and returns information about a repository §4.2. The example code implements Identify by simply writing out information from configuration variables. The protocol allows for additional $`<`$description$`>`$ blocks which may contain community-specific information. Examples include $`<`$oai-identifier$`>`$ which specifies a particular identifier syntax, and $`<`$eprints$`>`$ which includes additional information appropriate for the e-print community §A2.

### 4.3 ListSets

This verb takes no arguments and returns the set structure of the repository §4.6. The example code does not implement any sets so the response is an empty list.

### 4.4 ListMetadataFormats

This verb may be used either with a identifier argument or without any arguments §4.4. If an identifier is specified then the verb returns the metadata formats available for that record. In many cases a repository may be able to disseminate metadata for all records in the same format or formats. In this case the response will be the same if there is no identifier argument or if the identifier argument specifies any record that exists. The example code implements the general case by calling a routine in the Database.pm module to ask what formats are available, and then formats the reply appropriately. For each metadata format, the reply must include a $`<`$metadataPrefix$`>`$ (used to specify that format in other requests), and a $`<`$schema$`>`$ URL. A $`<`$metadataNamespace$`>`$ element may optionally be returned but is not implemented in the example code.

An example request and response is:

```
simeon@fff>./oai1.pl -r ’verb=ListMetadataFormats&identifier=record1’
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ListMetadataFormats xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/OAI_ListMetadataFormats"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_ListMetadataFormats
                        http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_ListMetadataFormats.xsd">
 <responseDate>2001-05-05T12:27:36-06:00</responseDate>
 <requestURL>http://localhost/oai1?verb=ListMetadataFormats&
             identifier=record1&verb=ListMetadataFormats</requestURL>
 <metadataFormat>
  <metadataPrefix>wibble</metadataPrefix>
  <schema>http://wibble.org/wibble.xsd</schema>
 </metadataFormat>
 <metadataFormat>
  <metadataPrefix>oai_dc</metadataPrefix>
  <schema>http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/dc.xsd</schema>
 </metadataFormat>
</ListMetadataFormats>

```

The response indicates that the record record1 may be disseminated in either oai\_dc or wibble formats.

### 4.5 GetRecord

This verb requests metadata for a particular record in a particular format §4.1. The example code implements this as a call to a subroutine disseminate (shared with ListRecords) after checking that the record exists.

The record returned consists of two parts if the record is not deleted; a $`<`$header$`>`$ block which contains the identifier and the datestamp (the information required for harvesting) and a $`<`$metadata$`>`$ block which contains the XML metadata record in the requested format. The $`<`$metadata$`>`$ block will be missing if the record is deleted or if the requested metadata format is not available.

For example, a request for oai\_dc for record2 would be:

```
simeon@fff>./oai1.pl -r ’verb=GetRecord&identifier=record2&metadataPrefix=oai_dc’
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<GetRecord xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/OAI_GetRecord"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_GetRecord
                      http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_GetRecord.xsd">
 <responseDate>2001-05-05T12:50:23-06:00</responseDate>
 <requestURL>http://localhost/oai1?verb=GetRecord&identifier=record2&
             metadataPrefix=oai_dc&verb=GetRecord</requestURL>
 <record>
  <header>
   <identifier>record2</identifier>
   <datestamp>1999-02-12</datestamp>
  </header>
  <metadata>
   <oai_dc xsi:schemaLocation="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
                               http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/dc.xsd"
Ψ   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance"
Ψ   xmlns="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <title>Item 2</title>
    <creator>A N Other</creator>
   </oai_dc>
  </metadata>
 </record>
</GetRecord>

```

but a request for the unavailable format wibble would be:

```
simeon@fff>./oai1.pl -r ’verb=GetRecord&identifier=record2&metadataPrefix=wibble’
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<GetRecord xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/OAI_GetRecord"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_GetRecord
                     http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_GetRecord.xsd">
 <responseDate>2001-05-05T12:52:13-06:00</responseDate>
 <requestURL>http://localhost/oai1?verb=GetRecord&
   identifier=record2&metadataPrefix=wibble&verb=GetRecord</requestURL>
 <record>
  <header>
   <identifier>record2</identifier>
   <datestamp>1999-02-12</datestamp>
  </header>
 </record>
</GetRecord>

```

which includes a $`<`$header$`>`$ block but no $`<`$metadata$`>`$ block.

The protocol also permits the addition of an $`<`$about$`>`$ container §2.2 for each record This is provided as a hook for additional information such as rights or terms information. It is not currently used by any of the registered OAI data-providers and is not implemented in the example code.

### 4.6 ListIdentifiers and ListRecords

ListIdentifiers §4.3 and ListRecords §4.5 both implement a search by date, the difference is whether they return a list of identifiers or complete metadata records in the specified format. The example code implements both of these verbs using the subroutine listEither which calls a search by date (getIdsByDate) in Database.pm.

In the case of ListIdentifiers the output consists of $`<`$identifier$`>`$ elements which may include the attribute status=”deleted” if the record is deleted. An example request without date restriction is:

```
simeon@fff>./oai1.pl -r ’verb=ListIdentifiers’
Content-Type: text/xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ListIdentifiers xmlns="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/OAI_ListIdentifiers"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_ListIdentifiers
                      http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/OAI_ListIdentifiers.xsd">
 <responseDate>2001-05-05T12:59:30-06:00</responseDate>
 <requestURL>http://localhost/oai1?verb=ListIdentifiers&verb=ListIdentifiers</requestURL>
 <identifier>record1</identifier>
 <identifier>record2</identifier>
 <identifier status="deleted">record3</identifier>
</ListIdentifiers>

```

The response lists the identifiers of the three records in the repository and indicates that record3 is deleted. If the parameter until=2000-01-01 were added then only the first two identifiers would be returned since the datestamp of record3 is 2000-03-13.

In the case of ListRecords the output consists of $`<`$record$`>`$ blocks similar to those obtained from GetRecord requests. ListRecords requests must include a metadataPrefix parameter.

### 4.7 Partial responses

The OAIMH protocol allows for partial responses §3.4 for all of the list verbs (ListIdentifiers, ListSets, ListMetadataFormats and ListRecords). This feature has been implemented by most of the larger registered OAI repositories for the ListIdentifiers and ListRecords verbs. The example code does not implement this feature.

## 5 Harvesting metadata

To harvest metadata within the OAI, one must implement the service-provider site of the OAIMH protocol. I will consider the implementation of a harvester that performs two functions: firstly, harvest all metadata in a particular format, and secondly, harvest all metadata in a particular format that has changed since a given date. These functions are the basis of a system that can create and maintain an up to date copy of the metadata from an OAI compliant repository.

As one of the maintainers of a heavily used archive I am painfully aware of the importance of avoiding inadvertent denial-of-service attacks created by badly written harvesting software. Automated agents should always include a useful user-agent string and a valid e-mail contact address in their HTTP requests. The flow-control elements of the protocol must be respected and careful testing is essential.

### 5.1 Detecting changes that require manual intervention

I will assume that the goal is to create software which will run on some schedule so that the local copy of metadata from some set of repositories is kept updated without manual intervention. However, it would be reckless to assume that the details of repositories will not change over time. In order to avoid the need for manual polling to detect such changes, we should ask how they can be detected automatically.

To detect changes other than the addition and deletion of records which are part of normal repository operation, one can compare the response to OAI requests that describe the repository between successive harvests. These requests are Identify and probably ListSets and ListMetadataFormats (for the whole repository as opposed to any single record). For all of the requests we expect the $`<`$responseDate$`>`$ to change with each request but for these requests we expect the rest of the response to be unchanged. Note that to do the test correctly one should compare the XML data in such a way that valid transformations, say re-ordering elements, are ignored. However, in practice it is likely to be sufficient (if over sensitive) to do a string comparison of the responses so long as changes in the $`<`$responseDate$`>`$ are ignored.

In the example harvester I have included the facility to specify a file containing the Identify response from the previous harvest. This is used both to extract the date of the last harvest and to check for changes in that response. I have not implemented a test for changes in the ListSets and ListMetadataFormats responses.

### 5.2 Incremental harvesting

The OAIMH protocol was designed to facilitate incremental harvesting. The idea is that a service-provider will maintain an up to date copy of the metadata from a repository by periodically harvesting ‘changed’ records. This is why all records have a datestamp, the date of last modification, associated with them.

The 1 day granularity of the datestamp and the possibility of data-providers and service-providers being in different time zones means that there must be some overlap between the date ranges of successive requests . If the service-provider and data-provider share the same time-zone then a 1 day overlap is sufficient to ensure that updates are not missed; records might be updated after the harvest on the day of the last harvest, but provided records that have changed on that day are reharvested then no changes will be missed. To cope with different time zones it is necessary to extend this to a 2 day overlap if the harvester works with dates local to itself. An alternative strategy, which I prefer, is to use only the dates returned by the repository and thus, by working in the local time zone of the repository, reduce the required overlap to 1 day.

In the example harvester I implement this last strategy by taking the date of the last harvest from the $`<`$responseDate$`>`$ of the stored Identity response (the $`<`$responseDate$`>`$ must be specified in the local time zone of the repository §3.1.2.1. This date may then be used as the from date (inclusive) for the next ListRecords or ListIdentifiers request.

### 5.3 Flow control and redirection

The module OAIGet.pm examines the HTTP reply for status codes 302 (redirect) and 503 (retry-after). Both replies are handled automatically, a default retry period is assumed if the 503 response does not specify a time (though this is an error on the part of the data-provider). Messages are printed if the verbose option is selected.

### 5.4 Parsing replies

OAIMH protocol replies are designed to be self contained, in part to allow off-line processing thereby separating the harvesting and database-update processes. However, in order to deal with partial responses the harvesting software must be able to parse the responses to all the list requests (ListIdentifiers, ListSets, ListMetadataFormats and ListRecords) sufficiently to extract any resumptionToken §3.4. To date, none of the registered OAI compliant repositories give partial responses for ListSets and ListMetadataFormats requests, but several do for ListIdentifiers and ListRecords requests.

Perhaps the neatest way to implement a harvester would be to have it recombine partial responses into a complete reply. The example code does not do this but does parse all list requests to look for a $`<`$resumptionToken$`>`$ so that further requests can be used to complete the original request.

### 5.5 An example harvester

The files oaiharvest.pl, OAIGet.pm and OAIParser.pm implement a simple harvester that illustrates the points mentioned above. oaiharvest.pl is the executable and accepts a variety of flags, these can be displayed by executing oaiharvest.pl -h. The algorithm is:

```
read command line arguments
check options and parameters
issue Identify request
compare response with previous Identify response if given
extract ‘from’ date from command line, previous Identify response or do complete harvest
LOOP:
  issue ListRecords or ListIdentifiers request
  check for resumptionToken, LOOP if present

```

The subroutine OAIGet in OAIGet.pm is used to issue the OAIMH requests and this handles any retry-after or redirect replies. XML parsing is handled by the OAIParser.pm module which extends XML-Parser, which itself is based on the expat parser.

Let us take as an example, harvesting metadata from the example data-provider code which has be set up at the URL http://localhost/oai1. First we would issue a harvest command without any time restriction (to harvest all records). In the examples, I harvest just the identifiers using ListIdentifiers requests, the flags -r and -m metadataPrefix can be used to instruct oaiharvest.pl to issue ListRecords requests and to specify a metadataPrefix other than oai\_dc.

```
simeon@fff>mkdir harvest1
simeon@fff>./oaiharvest.pl -d harvest1 http://localhost/oai1

oaiharvest.pl: Harvest from http://localhost/oai1 using POST
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: verb=Identify
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (479bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Doing complete harvest.
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (537bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 3 identifiers (running total: 3)
oaiharvest.pl: No resumptionToken, request complete.
oaiharvest.pl: Done.

simeon@fff>ls harvest1
Identify  ListIdentifiers.1

```

If we then do an incremental harvest specifying the file name of the last Identify response, harvest1/Identify, the harvester checks against this response for changes (none except date) and extracts the date of the last harvest (2001-06-05) to be used as the from date for the new harvest.

```
simeon@fff>mkdir harvest2
simeon@fff>./oaiharvest.pl -d harvest2 -i harvest1/Identify  http://localhost/oai1

oaiharvest.pl: Harvest from http://localhost/oai1 using POST
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: verb=Identify
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (479bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Identify response unchanged from reference (except date)
oaiharvest.pl: Reading harvest1/Identify to get from date
oaiharvest.pl: Incremental harvest from 2001-06-05 (from harvest1/Identify)
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: from=2001-06-05&verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (444bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 0 identifiers (running total: 0)
oaiharvest.pl: No resumptionToken, request complete.
oaiharvest.pl: Done.

```

Since there have been no changes in the database this harvest results in no identifiers being returned.

To extend this example, I then edited the database (Database.pm) to add a new record (record4) with datestamp 2001-06-05 which simulates the addition of a record after the last harvest but on the same day. I then ran another harvest command.

```
simeon@fff>diff Database.pm~ Database.pm
24c24,26
<   ’record3’ => [ ’2000-03-13’, undef ]  #deleted
---
>   ’record3’ => [ ’2000-03-13’, undef ],  #deleted
>   ’record4’ => [ ’2001-06-05’, {
>     ’oai_dc’ => [’title’,’Item 4’, ’creator’,’Someone Else’] } ]

simeon@fff>mkdir harvest3
simeon@fff>./oaiharvest.pl -d harvest3 -i harvest2/Identify http://localhost/oai1

oaiharvest.pl: Harvest from http://localhost/oai1 using POST
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: verb=Identify
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (479bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Identify response unchanged from reference (except date)
oaiharvest.pl: Reading harvest2/Identify to get from date
oaiharvest.pl: Incremental harvest from 2001-06-05 (from harvest2/Identify)
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://localhost/oai1 args: from=2001-06-05&verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (478bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 1 identifiers (running total: 1)
oaiharvest.pl: No resumptionToken, request complete.
oaiharvest.pl: Done.

```

This harvest results in one additional identifier, record4, being returned as expected.

Below are two excerpts from harvests from real repositories which illustrate the flow-control features of the protocol. The first is from arXiv which uses 503 retry-after replies to enforce a delay between requests. The second if from NACA which uses 302 redirect replies to demonstrate a load-sharing scheme.

```
...
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://arXiv.org/oai1 args: verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 503, sleeping for 60 seconds...
OAIGet: Woken again, retrying...
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (27398bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 502 identifiers (running total: 502)
oaiharvest.pl: Got resumptionToken: ‘1997-02-10___’
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://arXiv.org/oai1 args: resumptionToken=1997-02-10___&verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 503, sleeping for 60 seconds...
OAIGet: Woken again, retrying...
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (28330bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 520 identifiers (running total: 1022)
oaiharvest.pl: Got resumptionToken: ‘1997-03-06___’
...

...
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/oai/ args: verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 302, redirecting to http://buckets.dsi.internet2.edu/naca/oai/?...
OAIGet: Doing POST to http://buckets.dsi.internet2.edu/naca/oai/ args: verb=ListIdentifiers
OAIGet: Got 200 OK (336705bytes)
oaiharvest.pl: Got 6352 identifiers (running total: 6352)
...

```

I hope the examples above provide a useful demonstration of some of the features of the OAIMH metadata harvesting. Be sure to exercise caution and restraint when running tests against registered repositories. There is some cost in associated with answering OAIMH requests, and recklessly downloading large amounts of data for no good reason is not helpful.

## 6 Conclusions

The OAIMH protocol has been public for 5 months now and experience shows that it is adequate for its intended purpose. There are now 30 registered repositories which together expose over 600,000 metadata records. While there are currently just two registered service providers, ‘arc’  and the Repository Explorer , there is an increasing number of tools and libraries available to assist in the development of harvesting applications. Publicly available tools and libraries are listed on the OAI web site . This includes Tim Brody’s  Perl library which is considerably more extensive than the examples presented here.

The uptake of OAI is very encouraging and it is feedback from the current implementers which will shape the next version of the OAIMH protocol. Anyone implementing, or interested in implementing, either side of the OAIMH protocol should subscribe to the oai-implementers  mailing list. It is a helpful and friendly forum.

## Appendix: Example programs

The example programs are:

* oai1.pl and OAIServer.pm for the server; and
* oaiharvest.pl, OAIGet.pm and OAIParser.pm for the harvester.

These files are included with this paper, please download the source.

In order to run the example programs, you will require Perl 5.004 or later and the following modules (the precise version I used is given in parenthesis). For the the server:

* XML-Writer (XML-Writer-0.4)

and for the harvester:

* MIME-Base64 (MIME-Base64-2.11)
* URI (URI-1.09)
* HTML-Tagset (HTML-Tagset-3.02)
* HTML-Parser (HTML-Parser-3.11)
* libnet (libnet-1.0703)
* Digest::MD5 (Digest-MD5-2.11)
* LWP (libwww-perl-5.48)
* expat library (expat-1.95.1)
* XML-Parser (XML-Parser-2.30)

All of the above except for expat are available from CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/) and can be installed with the standard perl Makefile.PL; make; make test; make install sequence. There should not be any dependency problems if the modules are installed in the order listed. The expat XML parsing library upon which XML-Parser relies, is available from Source Forge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/).

Before running oaiharvest.pl you should first edit the line that defines the variable $contact and insert your e-mail address. This will then be specified as the contact address for all HTTP requests and will enable the server maintainer to contact you if there are problems. The example code has been tested only on a Linux system and with the Apache server. While I hope that it will work on other systems this has not been verified.

## About the author

Simeon Warner is one of the maintainers and developers of the arXiv e-print archive. He has been actively involved with the development and implementation of the OAI since its inception.

address: T-8, Los Alamos National Lab., Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
e-mail: simeon@lanl.gov