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# YITP-01-53UTCCP-P-108RCNP-Th01017 Numerical study of 𝑂(𝑎) improved Wilson quark action on anisotropic lattice

## 1 Introduction

The anisotropic lattice is drawing more attention as a useful technique of the lattice QCD simulation in various physics such as the spectroscopy of exotic states, finite temperature QCD and the heavy quark physics. However, the advantage of having a fine lattice spacing in the temporal direction is obtained at the sacrifice of manifest temporal-spatial axis-interchange symmetry. Therefore improper use of the anisotropic lattice could lead to an unphysical result due to the lack of Lorentz symmetry in the continuum limit. This can be a serious problem for those physics in which the precision of the results is crucial.

One way to avoid this problem is to tune the anisotropy parameters of the action by imposing the conditions with which the Lorentz invariance is satisfied for some physical observables. In the Wilson plaquette gauge action there is only one anisotropic parameter in the action . Wilson loops are used to obtain the relation between the anisotropic parameter and the physical ratio of the lattice spacings in temporal and spatial directions, $`\xi =a_\sigma /a_\tau `$, where $`a_\sigma `$ and $`a_\tau `$ are the spatial and the temporal lattice spacings . On the other hand, not much is known about the quark action. This is because the previous works with the quark action on the anisotropic lattice have been devoted to the charmonium systems . In order to apply the anisotropic lattice to the systems containing the light quarks, one has to study how one can tune the parameter of light quark action in practical simulations.

In this paper we study the $`O(a)`$ improved Wilson action on the anisotropic lattice using the quenched lattices with three lattice spacings, at fixed renormalized anisotropy, $`\xi =4`$. These scales covers the range of the spatial lattice cutoff $`a_\sigma ^1=`$1–2 GeV. We first tune the bare anisotropy in the quark action numerically so that the renormalized fermionic anisotropy is equal to that of the gauge field by imposing the relativistic dispersion relation of mesons. This calibration is performed to the level of 1 % statistical accuracy in whole quark mass region below the charm quark mass. The extrapolation of tuned bare anisotropy to the chiral limit is performed by fitting to presumable forms, and causes additional systematic uncertainty of 1 % at the chiral limit. The systematic uncertainty in the calibration from the lattice artifact is estimated by comparing the results from different types of dispersion relations. It results in 3 % on our coarsest lattice, and tends to vanish in the continuum limit. Using the result of the calibration we compute the light hadron spectrum on anisotropic lattices, and examine how the uncertainty in the calibration affect the spectrum at the parameters of physical interest. It is found that the uncertainty of 2 % in calibration induces systematic error of 1 % in the spectrum. Thus the systematic uncertainty on the anisotropic lattice is under control, as well as the statistical one. We also show that the anisotropic lattices produce consistent results with those on the isotropic lattices, and that the Lorentz invariance of the simple matrix element is satisfied within errors.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the $`O(a)`$ improved Wilson quark action, which has been discussed in . The calibration procedures are discussed in Section 3. In Section 4, we perform the calibration of the bare anisotropy in the quark action. The systematic uncertainty induced by this tuning is fully examined. In Section 5 we apply the anisotropic lattice to the light hadron spectroscopy. In the last part of this section, the systematic uncertainty due to the anisotropy is again investigated in terms of the effect on hadron spectrum. The last section is devoted to our conclusions.

## 2 Quark action on the anisotropic lattice

### 2.1 Quark field action

We employ the $`O(a)`$ improved quark action on the anisotropic lattice. The form of action has been discussed in Ref. , which is the same as the Fermilab action  but defined on the anisotropic lattice. In this section we summarize the result which will be necessary in the following calculations.

The quark action is represented in the hopping parameter form as

$$S_F=\underset{x,y}{}\overline{\psi }(x)K(x,y)\psi (y),$$
(2.1)
$`K(x,y)`$ $`=`$ $`\delta _{x,y}\kappa _\tau \left[(1\gamma _4)U_4(x)\delta _{x+\widehat{4},y}+(1+\gamma _4)U_4^{}(x\widehat{4})\delta _{x\widehat{4},y}\right]`$ (2.2)
$`\kappa _\sigma {\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\left[(r\gamma _i)U_i(x)\delta _{x+\widehat{i},y}+(r+\gamma _i)U_i^{}(x\widehat{i})\delta _{x\widehat{i},y}\right]`$
$`\kappa _\sigma c_E{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\sigma _{4i}F_{4i}(x)\delta _{x,y}r\kappa _\sigma c_B{\displaystyle \underset{i>j}{}}\sigma _{ij}F_{ij}(x)\delta _{x,y},`$
where $`\kappa _\sigma `$ and $`\kappa _\tau `$ are the spatial and the temporal hopping parameters, $`r`$ is the Wilson parameter and $`c_E`$ and $`c_B`$ are the clover coefficients. In principle for a given $`\kappa _\sigma `$, the four parameters $`\kappa _\sigma /\kappa _\tau `$, $`r`$, $`c_E`$ and $`c_B`$ should be tuned so that Lorentz symmetry holds up to discretization errors of $`O(a^2)`$.

On the anisotropic lattice, the mean-filed values of the spatial link variable $`u_\sigma `$ and the temporal one $`u_\tau `$ are different from each other. The tadpole-improvement  is achieved by rescaling the link variable as $`U_i(x)U_i(x)/u_\sigma `$ and $`U_4(x)U_4(x)/u_\tau `$. This is equivalent to redefine the hopping parameters with the tadpole-improved ones (with tilde) through $`\kappa _\sigma =\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\sigma /u_\sigma `$ and $`\kappa _\tau =\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\tau /u_\tau `$. We define the anisotropy parameter $`\gamma _F`$ as

$$\gamma _F\frac{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\tau }{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\sigma }.$$
(2.3)
At the tadpole-improved tree-level, and for sufficiently small quark mass, the anisotropy $`\gamma _F`$ coincides with the cutoff anisotropy $`\xi =a_\sigma /a_\tau `$.

In this work, we set the coefficients of the spatial part of the Wilson term and the clover coefficients as the tadpole-improved tree-level values, namely,

$$r=\frac{1}{\xi },c_E=\frac{1}{u_\sigma u_\tau ^2},c_B=\frac{1}{u_\sigma ^3}$$
(2.4)
and perform a nonperturbative calibration only for $`\gamma _F`$ with the meson dispersion relation.

It is useful to define $`\kappa `$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_\sigma }}2(\gamma _F+3r4)`$ (2.5)
so that the bare quark mass in the spatial lattice unit, $`m_{0\sigma }`$, is expressed as

$`m_{0\sigma }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}8\right),`$ (2.6)
which is analogous to the case of the isotropic lattice.

### 2.2 Dispersion relation of free quark

In this subsection, we examine the dispersion relation of the free quark on the anisotropic lattice. First the tree-level relation of bare anisotropy with $`\xi `$ is derived from the condition that the rest mass and the kinetic mass coincide. Then, we discuss how the dispersion relation is distorted at the edge of Brillouin zone due to our choice, $`r=1/\xi `$ .

From the action (2.2), the free quark propagator satisfies the dispersion relation

$$\mathrm{cosh}E(𝒑)=1+\frac{\overline{𝒑}^2+(m_0+\frac{1}{2}\frac{r}{\gamma _F}\widehat{𝒑}^2)^2}{2(1+m_0+\frac{1}{2}\frac{r}{\gamma _F}\widehat{𝒑}^2)},$$
(2.7)
where $`\overline{p}_i=\frac{1}{\gamma _F}\mathrm{sin}p_i`$, $`\widehat{p}_i=2\mathrm{sin}(p_i/2)`$ and $`m_0=m_{0\sigma }/\gamma _F`$ is the bare quark mass in the temporal lattice unit. Setting $`𝒑=0`$, Eq. (2.7) gives the rest mass

$$M_1E(\mathrm{𝟎})=\mathrm{ln}(1+m_0).$$
(2.8)
On the other hand, the kinetic mass is defined and obtained as

$$\frac{1}{M_2}\xi ^2\frac{d^2E}{dp_i^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}}|_{𝒑=0}=\xi ^2\left(\frac{\frac{r}{\gamma _F}}{m_0+1}+\frac{\frac{2}{\gamma _F^2}}{m_0(m_0+2)}\right).$$
(2.9)
Generally the rest mass (2.8) and the kinetic mass (2.9) are different. One can tune the bare anisotropy parameter $`\gamma _F`$ so that it gives the same values for the rest and the kinetic masses . Putting the rest and the kinetic masses equal, the anisotropy parameter $`\gamma _F`$ is represented with $`m_0`$ and $`r`$ as

$$\frac{1}{\gamma _F}=\sqrt{\left(\frac{rm_0(m_0+2)}{4(m_0+1)}\right)^2+\frac{m_0(m_0+2)}{2\xi ^2\mathrm{ln}(1+m_0)}}\frac{rm_0(m_0+2)}{4(m_0+1)}.$$
(2.10)
For small $`m_0`$, $`\gamma _F`$ is expanded in $`m_0`$ as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma _F}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi }}\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1r\xi )m_0+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}(1+6r\xi +3r^2\xi ^2)m_0^2\right]`$ (2.11)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi }}\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}m_0^2\right](r=1/\xi ).`$
The $`m_0`$ dependence starts with the quadratic term for $`r=1/\xi `$, therefore the dependence on the quark mass is small for sufficiently small $`m_0`$. For example, let us consider the case of $`a_\tau =4`$ GeV, which corresponds to our coarsest lattice in the simulation. The charm quark mass corresponds to $`m_00.3`$ and at this value $`\gamma _F`$ is different from $`\xi `$ only 3 %. Up to this quark mass region, one can expect that the difference of $`\gamma _F`$ from $`\xi `$ is also small in the numerical simulation. This is examined in Section 4.

With our choice of Wilson parameter, $`r=1/\xi `$, the action (2.2) leads the smaller spatial Wilson term for the larger cutoff anisotropy $`\xi `$. The question is how the contribution of the doubler eliminated by the Wilson term becomes significant for practical value of $`\xi `$. In the following argument on this subject, we only treat the case $`\gamma _F`$ almost equal to $`\xi `$, i.e. the region of $`m_0`$ sufficiently smaller than unity. Figure 1 shows the dispersion relation (2.7) for several values of $`m_0`$ in the case of $`\xi =4`$, which we use in the numerical simulation.

Let us examine the practical case, $`a_\sigma ^11.0`$ GeV, which corresponds to the lowest spatial cutoff of our three lattices. For the light quark mass region, $`m_0=0.02`$$`0.05`$ corresponds to 80–200 MeV, and roughly covers the mass region which we use in the hadron spectroscopy in Section 5. $`E(𝒑)E(0)`$ rapidly decrease at the edge of the Brillouin zone, and the height at $`z=a/\pi `$ is around 400 MeV. For two quarks with momenta $`p=\pm a/\pi `$, additional energy of doublers is $`800`$ MeV, and is expected to affect not severely on the spectrum and other observables. For higher lattice cutoff, the situation becomes better. Then we regard the doubler contribution is sufficiently small on the lattice we use in the simulation. $`m_0=0.3`$ roughly corresponds to the charm quark mass with $`a_\sigma ^11`$ GeV. In the case of heavy-light hadrons, such as $`D`$ mesons and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c`$ baryon, the scale of momentum transfered inside hadrons is of the order of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$, and the same argument for light quark case holds. On the other hand, for the heavy quarkonium, the typical energy and momentum exchanged inside the meson are in the order of $`mv^2`$ and $`mv`$ respectively . For the charmonium, $`v^20.3`$, then typical scale of the kinetic energy is around $`500`$ MeV. It seems not sufficiently smaller than the two doublers’ contribution, and hence one need to choose larger lattice cutoff in the calculation of heavy quarkonium.

## 3 Calibration procedures

On anisotropic lattice, one must tune the parameters so that the anisotropy of quark field, $`\xi _F`$, equals to that of the gauge field, $`\xi _G`$:

$$\xi _F(\beta ,\gamma _G;\kappa ,\gamma _F)=\xi _G(\beta ,\gamma _G;\kappa ,\gamma _F)=\xi $$
(3.1)
Since $`\xi _G`$ and $`\xi _F`$ are in general functions of both of gauge parameters ($`\beta `$, $`\gamma _G`$) and quark parameters, ($`\kappa `$, $`\gamma _F`$), the simulation with dynamical quarks requires to tune these bare parameters simultaneously. In the quenched case, however, this tuning is rather easy to be performed, since $`\xi _G`$ can be determined independently of $`\gamma _F`$. After the determination of $`\xi `$, one can tune $`\gamma _F`$ so that a certain observable satisfies the condition (3.1). In this work, we use the relativistic dispersion relation of meson,

$$E^2(𝒑)=m^2+\frac{𝒑^2}{\xi _F^2}+O(𝒑^4),$$
(3.2)
as our main calibration procedure. The energy and the mass of meson, $`E`$ and $`m`$, are in the temporal lattice unit while the momentum is in the spatial lattice unit. The $`\xi _F`$ appears to convert the momentum in the spatial lattice unit into the temporal lattice unit, and considered as the fermionic anisotropy defined through this relation. With the condition $`\xi _F=\xi `$, this condition satisfies that the rest mass and the kinetic mass equal to each other. For finite lattice spacings, above dispersion relation only holds up to the $`O((𝒑^2)^2)`$ correction term. In the continuum limit, this higher order term in $`a`$ would vanish and the relativistic dispersion relation would be restored.

In the numerical simulation, we fit $`E^2`$ to the form Eq. (3.2) and obtain the value of $`\xi _F`$ for each input value of bare anisotropy $`\gamma _F`$. Then we linearly interpolate $`\xi _F`$ in terms of $`\gamma _F`$ and find out $`\gamma _F^{}`$, the value of $`\gamma _F`$ with which $`\xi _F=\xi `$ holds.

In order to estimate the systematic errors we also use the dispersion relation which corresponds to the lattice Klein-Gordon action ,

$$\mathrm{cosh}E(𝒑)\mathrm{cosh}E(𝒑=0)=1+\frac{1}{2\xi _{KG}^2}\widehat{𝒑}^2.$$
(3.3)
Thus the comparison of these two calibration conditions typically shows the size of the lattice discretization errors.

Expanding this expression in $`a`$, $`\xi _{KG}`$ is related to $`\xi _F`$ as

$$\xi _{KG}=\xi _F\left(1\frac{m^2}{12}+O(a^4)\right).$$
(3.4)
The same input $`\gamma _F`$ gives smaller value for $`\xi _{KG}`$ than $`\xi _F`$, and therefore the tuned bare anisotropy $`\gamma _F^{}`$ results in larger value in the former case.

## 4 Numerical Results of Calibration

The goal of this section is to determine the tuned bare anisotropy of quark field, $`\gamma _F^{}`$, at each fixed quark mass in the region from strange to charm quark masses. The reason for this choice of the quark mass range is that the simulation is easier which saves the amount of work in the exhaustive study for calibrations. Fitting the result as a function of the quark mass, we obtain $`\gamma _F^{}`$ to the statistical accuracy of 1 % level for the whole quark mass region below the charm quark mass including the chiral limit.

Then we estimate the systematic uncertainties of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ which are mainly due to $`O(\alpha a)`$ and $`O(a^2)`$ lattice artifacts. We also investigate how these systematic errors as well as the statistical error affect the meson masses, in the region $`m_s<m_q<m_c`$. The response of hadron masses with respect to $`\gamma _F`$ in the light quark mass region, $`m_q<m_s`$, needs additional care, and is the subject of next section. At the end of this section, we summarize the result of calibration.

### 4.1 Simulation Parameters for the Calibration

In this work, we use three lattices with $`\beta =5.75`$, $`5.95`$ and $`6.10`$ and the renormalized anisotropy $`\xi =4`$. The value of $`\gamma _G`$ corresponding to the desired value of $`\xi `$ has been studied in detail by Klassen , and we can use his relation of $`\gamma _G`$ and $`\xi `$ which is obtained in one percent accuracy. The statistical uncertainties are, otherwise noted, estimated by the single elimination Jackknife method with appropriate binning. The configurations are separated by 2000 (1000) pseudo-heat-bath sweeps, after 20000 (10000) thermalization sweeps at $`\beta `$=5.95 and 6.10 (5.75). The configurations are fixed to the Coulomb gauge, which is particularly useful for the smearing of hadron operators.

The lattice cutoffs and the mean-field values of link variables are determined on the smaller lattices with half size in temporal extent for $`\beta =5.75`$, $`5.95`$, and otherwise with the same parameters, while at $`\beta =6.10`$ the lattice size is $`16^3\times 64`$. To obtain the lattice cutoffs, the static quark potential is measured with standard procedure. We adopt the hadronic radius $`r_0`$ proposed by Sommer  to set the scale. Following the method in Ref. , we determine the force between static quark and antiquark, as a function of $`r_I`$, the interquark distance improved with the lattice one-gluon exchange potential form. Then we fit the values of force, containing the off-axis data, to the form $`\sigma +A/r_I^2`$ in the fitting region roughly $`0.5r_0<r_I<2r_0`$. The parameters $`\sigma `$ and $`A`$ would be identified as the string tension and the Coulomb coefficient. The systematic uncertainty due to the choice of fit range is small, and at most the same size as the statistical error. Table 1 shows the value of $`r_0`$ and the $`a_\sigma ^1`$ determined by setting the physical value of $`r_0`$ as $`r_0^1=395`$ MeV ($`r_00.5`$ fm). The quoted error represent only the statistical uncertainty.

The mean-field values, $`u_\sigma `$ and $`u_\tau `$, are obtained as the average of the link variables in the Landau gauge, where the mean-field values are used self-consistently in the fixing condition . The results are also listed in Table 1. The mean-field value of the temporal gauge field has small error, and close to unity. $`\eta _{MF}=u_\tau /u_\sigma `$, the mean-field estimate of $`\eta =\xi /\gamma _G`$, is close to the value of $`\eta `$ determined nonperturbatively by Klassen. This suggest that the tadpole-improvement works well also on the anisotropic lattice.

### 4.2 Quark field calibration

As described in Section 3, we use the relativistic dispersion relation in the calibration of parameters in the quark action. Since the gauge field calibration is in the accuracy of one percent, we aim to tune the quark parameters to a similar level.

For convenience, we choose $`\kappa `$ and $`\gamma _F`$ as the input parameters and determine $`\kappa _\sigma `$ and $`\kappa _\tau `$ along eq. (2.5). Fixing $`\kappa `$ corresponds to fixing the bare quark mass in the spatial lattice unit. For each values of $`(\kappa ,\gamma _F)`$, the pseudoscalar and vector meson correlators are obtained with zero and finite momenta. The fermionic anisotropy $`\xi _F`$ is defined through the relativistic dispersion relation, eq. (3.2). We assume the linear dependence of $`\xi _F`$ on $`\gamma _F`$ in the vicinity of $`\xi _F\xi `$. We use linear interpolation to obtain $`\gamma _F^{}`$, the value of $`\gamma _F`$ with which the relation $`\xi _F=\xi `$ holds.

#### Result of the dispersion relation.

The parameters $`(\kappa ,\gamma _F)`$ used in the calibration are listed in Table 2, 3 and 4 for $`\beta =5.75`$, $`5.95`$ and $`6.10`$, respectively. As the meson operators at the source, we adopt the smeared operators with appropriate smearing functions. For the light quark region, the Gaussian function is used as the smearing function, with the width of $`0.20.4`$ fm. In the charm quark mass region, we also use the measured wave function for the smearing function. We measure the two point functions for momenta $`𝒑=𝒏(2\pi /L)`$, where $`L`$ is spatial lattice extent and $`𝒏=(0,0,0)`$, $`(1,0,0)`$, $`(1,1,0)`$, $`(1,1,1)`$ and $`(2,0,0)`$. All rotationally equivalent $`𝒏`$’s are averaged. The standard procedure is used in extracting the energy at each momentum.

The energies are then fitted to the linear or quadratic forms in $`𝒑^2`$ to extract the fermionic anisotropy $`\xi _F`$ in each channel. In the case of linear fit, we use only three lowest momentum states, $`𝒏=(0,0,0)`$, $`(1,0,0)`$ and $`(1,1,0)`$. We assume the linear dependence of $`\xi _F(\gamma _F)`$ in $`\gamma _F`$, and this is indeed verified in several examples.

Figure 2 shows typical effective mass plots for pseudoscalar and the vector mesons. The energies of finite momentum states are successfully extracted from the region in which the correlator shows plateaus except the lightest quark region, $`\kappa 0.120`$, which severely suffer from the statistical fluctuation.

The dispersion relation for $`\kappa =0.105`$ at $`\beta =5.75`$ is shown in the left figure of Figure 3. Because of rather large lattice artifact, the fit to the quadratic form in $`𝒑^2`$ with the energy of $`𝒏=(2,0,0)`$ state is not a good description of data. We therefore use only four lowest energy states in the quadratic fit. On the other hand, the results of the linear fit (with lowest three states) and the quadratic fit coincides with good accuracy. For a few largest hopping parameters, higher momentum states suffers so large statistical fluctuations that we inevitably adopt the linear fit. Since at other values of $`\kappa `$ the resultant $`\xi _F`$ coincides with quadratic fit, we adopt the linear fit for all values of $`\kappa `$ at this $`\beta `$. Since the same method as $`\beta =5.75`$ case is adopted at $`\beta =5.95`$, we do not repeat the explanation for the fitting procedure.

The right figure of Figure 3 shows the dispersion relation of mesons at $`\beta =6.10`$ and $`\kappa =0.115`$, which corresponds to a similar quark mass as $`\kappa =0.105`$ at $`\beta =5.75`$. The dispersion relation is much improved, and the quadratic fit is successfully applied including $`𝒏=(2,0,0)`$ state. Although the difference between the linear fit is small, as is shown in the figure, we adopt the result of quadratic fit to determine $`\xi _F`$ except for most light quark region. For these three largest $`\kappa `$, correlators with $`𝒏=(2,0,0)`$, and occasionally $`(1,1,1)`$, suffer from so large statistical fluctuations that the energy of the states cannot be reliably extracted. In these cases, we fit the energy to the linear form.

#### Calibration of $`\gamma _F`$ for each quark mass.

In the left figure of Figure 4, $`\xi _F`$ is plotted as the function of $`\gamma _F`$ for $`\kappa =0.105`$ at $`\beta =5.75`$. It is clear that $`\xi _F`$ depends linearly on $`\gamma _F`$. The results at $`\kappa =0.101`$, $`0.110`$ and $`0.112`$ also show similar behavior. We therefore assume the linear dependence also for other values of $`\kappa `$, and interpolate $`\xi _F`$ to find out $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in each channel. The numerical results of $`\gamma _F^{(PS)}`$, $`\gamma _F^{(V)}`$ and $`\gamma _F^{}`$ as the average over PS and V mesons are listed in Table 24 for each $`\beta `$. These tables also show the interpolated masses of PS and V mesons. We find a tendency that $`\gamma _F^{(PS)}`$ is slightly larger than $`\gamma _F^{(V)}`$ in whole $`\kappa `$ region. This deviation seems to become smaller for larger $`\beta `$. The reason for the discrepancy is understood as the systematic errors of $`O(\alpha a)`$, which will be examined in the next subsection in detail.

We also plot the $`\gamma _F`$ dependence of meson masses at $`\kappa =0.105`$ and $`\beta =5.75`$ in the right figure of Figure 4. This shows that the meson mass is linear in $`\gamma _F`$ in this range, and linear interpolation is successfully applicable to determine the meson masses at $`\gamma _F^{}`$. Although the $`\gamma _F`$ dependence of meson mass is in general unknown for other region of $`\kappa `$, we expect that the linear interpolation would work in good accuracy. The meson masses at $`\gamma _F^{}`$ are also listed in Table 24 for each $`\beta `$. How the uncertainty in $`\gamma _F^{}`$ affect on the spectrum is an important problem, which will be examined in the next subsection.

#### Fit of $`\gamma _F^{}`$.

To represent $`\gamma _F^{}`$ as the function of $`\kappa `$, we introduce the quark mass as

$$m_q=\frac{1}{2\xi }\left(\frac{1}{\kappa }\frac{1}{\kappa _c}\right).$$
(4.1)
This is similar relation as $`m_0`$, the bare quark mass in the temporal lattice unit, while the present form is independent of $`\gamma _F`$. $`\kappa _c`$ is determined from massless point of the pseudoscalar meson mass. We extrapolate $`m_{PS}^2`$ linearly in $`1/\kappa `$ using two largest values of $`\kappa `$, and find as $`\kappa _c=`$ 0.12640(5) at $`\beta =5.75`$, 0.12592(6) at $`\beta =5.95`$ and 0.12558(4) at $`\beta =6.10`$.

In the calibration at each $`\kappa `$, we found that the value of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is easily determined precisely (to the level of 1 %), while it become difficult with increasing $`\kappa `$ toward $`\kappa _c`$. However, it is expected $`\gamma _F^{}`$ smoothly approaches to certain definite value in the limit of $`m_q0`$, since in this limit our form of action is simply a direct generalization of clover quark action on the anisotropic lattice. In fact, as shown in Subsection 2.2, $`\gamma _F^{}`$ linearly depends on $`m_0^2`$ at the tree level. In taking the limit of $`m_q0`$ for $`\gamma _F^{}`$, the precise values of mean-filed values do not matter, since in the definition of $`\gamma _F`$, tadpole-improvement is applied as a multiplicative factor, $`\eta _{MF}=u_\tau /u_\sigma `$. Therefore the most reliable way to determine the value of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in the light quark region is a global fit of $`\gamma _F^{}`$, assuming appropriate form of $`m_q`$ dependence.

We fit the result of $`1/\gamma _F^{}`$ to the linear form in $`m_q^2`$ and the quadratic form in $`m_q`$. The result of fit is listed in Table 5 and also shown in Figures 5 as the solid and the dashed curves. Since the obtained points for $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is with different number of configurations, these points correlate in not obvious way. We quote the errors and $`\chi ^2`$ of uncorrelated fit in Table 5. As shown in these table and figures, the linear fit in $`m_q^2`$ well represents the data. The values of $`\zeta _0`$, which is the $`1/\gamma _F^{}`$ in the chiral limit, is close to the tree level result $`1/\xi =1/4`$, which implies that the tadpole-improvement works well. Apart from the lightest quark mass region, $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is determined within 1 % accuracy, and there the curves of two fits are consistent with each other. In approaching the chiral limit, there is a systematic error concerning the fit form, as well as the statistical error. We estimate the latter by the error of fit in $`\zeta _0`$ (from the quadratic fit in $`m_q^2`$), and as about 1 %. This relatively small statistical error is due to the global fit of $`1/\gamma _F^{}`$ with assumed form of $`m_q`$ dependence. The systematic error in adopting specific form of fit is estimated by the difference between these two fits, and also results in 1 % level. Adopting the linear form in $`m_q^2`$, we conclude that the $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is determined under the assumed dispersion relation within 1 % statistical accuracy in the whole quark mass region less than around the charm quark mass, while in the chiral limit there is additional 1 % systematic uncertainty concerning the form of fit.

### 4.3 Uncertainties in calibration

In the last subsection, we determined $`\gamma _F^{}`$ as a global function of $`m_q`$. This expression inevitably suffer from systematic uncertainties as well as the statistical uncertainty:

$$\gamma _F^{}=\gamma _F^{(prop)}+\delta \gamma _F^{(stat)}+\delta \gamma _F^{(O(\alpha a))}+\delta \gamma _F^{(O(a^2))}(+\delta \gamma _F^{(chiral)}).$$
(4.2)
$`\gamma _F^{(prop)}`$ represent the proper value of the bare anisotropy. $`\delta \gamma _F^{(stat)}`$ is the statistical error in determination of $`\gamma _F^{}`$, and at 1 % level. The last two terms are main sources of systematic errors due to finite lattice artifact. The first one, $`\delta \gamma _F^{(O(\alpha a))}`$, is from the tree-level approximation of clover coefficients. We estimate the size of this error by the difference between the values of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ determined with PS and V mesons. The second systematic error, $`\delta \gamma _F^{(O(a^2))}`$, is estimated by comparing the results of calibration from two different forms of dispersion relations which differ by $`O(a^2)`$. In addition to these systematic uncertainties, in the chiral limit there is also a systematic error concerning the form of fit of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in $`m_q`$.

Another important subject is to estimate how the observables are affected by the uncertainty in $`\gamma _F^{}`$. We study the response of meson masses with respect to the change of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ at each $`\kappa `$, from which the effect of $`\gamma _F`$ on meson masses for given quark mass is approximately estimated. Strictly speaking, changing $`\gamma _F`$ for a fixed $`\kappa `$ induces a slight change in the quark mass, hence the above analysis is adequate for relatively heavier quark mass region, such as $`m_s<m_q`$. We postpone the study of the effect on the light hadron spectrum to the end of next section.

#### Difference between $`\gamma _F^{(PS)}`$ and $`\gamma _F^{(V)}`$.

Since we use the $`O(a)`$ improved quark action, the main contribution from the $`O(a)`$ lattice artifact is absent. However, since the clover coefficients are not tuned beyond the tree-level, $`O(\alpha a)`$ error still remains, although the tadpole-improvement would partially removes this effect. An appropriate probe of this systematic effect on the calibration is the difference between $`\gamma _F^{}`$’s of the pseudoscalar and the vector mesons. Figure 6 shows $`\delta \gamma _F^{}\gamma _F^{(PS)}\gamma _F^{(V)}`$. At $`\beta =5.75`$, there is a systematic difference of $`\delta \gamma _F^{}`$ from zero except the small quark mass region, where the statistical error is dominant. At $`\beta =5.95`$, $`\delta \gamma _F^{}`$ is consistent with zero in whole $`\kappa `$ region. This implies that the $`O(\alpha a)`$ error in the calibration is sufficiently reduced at this $`\beta `$. In the case of $`\beta =6.10`$, $`\delta \gamma _F^{}`$ is also consistent with zero except the lightest quark region. In this region, precise determination of energy at finite momentum states is difficult due to the statistical fluctuation and hence the resultant $`\gamma _F`$ contains large uncertainty. We regard that the $`O(\alpha a)`$ effect in the calibration is also small at this $`\beta `$.

#### $`O(a^2)`$ systematic uncertainty.

Although we employed the continuum dispersion relation, this introduces a systematic error of $`O(a^2)`$ to the calibration of $`\gamma _F`$. In order to estimate the typical size of this error, we compare $`\gamma _F^{}`$ determined above with $`\gamma _{F(KG)}^{}`$, the result obtained using the dispersion relation from the lattice Klein-Gordon action, (3.3). Figure 7 shows this comparison at $`\beta =5.75`$ and $`6.10`$. In extracting $`\xi _{KG}`$ from the Klein-Gordon dispersion relation, we fit $`\mathrm{cosh}E(𝒑)`$ to the linear form in $`_i\mathrm{sin}^2(p_i/2)`$ using lowest three momentum states. As explained in Section 3, expected difference of $`\xi _F`$ and $`\xi _{KG}`$ is $`O(m^2)`$, where $`m`$ is the meson mass. Although the explicit relation between $`\gamma _{F(KG)}^{}`$ and $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is unknown, one can expect that the difference of them is also in $`O(m^2)`$, and hence increase with increasing quark mass. This behavior is clearly observed in Figure 7. Table 6 is the result of fit of $`\gamma _{F(KG)}^{}`$ to the linear form in $`m_q^2`$.

We find small difference between the results with relativistic and Klein-Gordon dispersion relations in the small quark mass region. This difference decreases as increasing $`\beta `$, and seems to be sufficiently reduced at $`\beta =6.10`$. The typical size of difference in $`\gamma _F^{}`$’s at the chiral limit is less than 3, 2, 1 % at $`\beta =5.75`$, 5.95 and 6.10, respectively. The important feature is that two procedures tend to coincide with each other with increasing $`\beta `$. We also observe that the difference between $`\gamma _F^{}`$ and $`\gamma _{F(KG)}^{}`$ increases in the large quark mass region, $`m_q>0.2a_\tau ^1`$. This is consistent behavior, since there the Klein-Gordon dispersion relation fails to incorporate the quark mass dependence properly, and $`\gamma _{F(KG)}^{}`$ is expected to be larger than $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in $`O(m^2)`$. Therefore we conclude that the uncertainty due to the assumed form of the meson dispersion relation is under control and smoothly disappears in approaching the continuum limit.

#### Uncertainty in meson mass due to calibration error.

Another important issue on the systematic errors is how the uncertainty in $`\gamma _F`$ is transmitted to the observables. As an important example, here we focus on the effect on the meson masses.

Since we linearly interpolate the meson masses in $`\gamma _F`$, we obtain $`dm/d\gamma _F`$ at $`\gamma _F=\gamma _F^{}`$ from the slope of the linear fit. In Figure 8, we show $`dm/d\gamma _F`$, the response of meson mass to the bare anisotropy, at $`\beta =6.10`$ in two ways. Similar feature is found in the results at $`\beta =5.75`$ and $`\beta =5.95`$. In the left figure $`dm/d\gamma _F`$ is shown as the function of $`1/\kappa `$. In the case of vector meson, it seems to decrease linearly in quark mass from zero at the massless limit. On the other hand, for the pseudoscalar meson, $`dm/d\gamma _F`$ slightly positive in the vicinity of $`1/\kappa _c`$. This behavior may be due to the uncertainty in the definition of $`\kappa `$, because if $`\kappa `$ is properly related to the fixed quark mass, increasing $`\gamma _F`$ implies to increase the propagation in temporal direction, hence it corresponds to decreasing quark mass. Therefore, the present analysis may not be adequate for estimating the response of masses with respect to $`\gamma _F`$ in the vicinity of the chiral limit. Observing Figure 8, one can find that the range of quark mass larger than the strange quark mass do not suffer from the ambiguity in the definition of $`\kappa `$.

We have no clear explanation for that $`dm/d\gamma _F`$ seems to be proportional to the quark mass. Practically, it is a good feature that the ambiguity of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ has only little effects on the meson mass in the small but nonzero quark mass region, since there relative change of mass is significant. Except the lightest quark mass region, the determination of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is directly performed with 1 % accuracy, which means the uncertainty of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is around 0.04. The right figure in Figure 8 implies that the uncertainty in the meson mass is less than 1 %. This uncertainty is most severe in the heavy quark region, and become milder as quark mass decreases.

While we find that the meson masses at certain $`\kappa `$ is not so sensitive to the uncertainty of $`\gamma _F^{}`$, the same argument does not hold for the chiral limit. Since the pseudoscalar meson mass becomes zero in the chiral limit, the relative uncertainties $`\delta m_{PS}/m_{PS}`$ for a fixed $`\kappa `$ near the chiral limit is of course very large. However, this is not the correct way to estimate the uncertainties in the mass spectrum in the chiral limit. What one is really interested in for the chiral limit is not the change the hadron masses including the pion mass for a fixed $`\kappa `$ but the change of hadron masses except the pion mass at the point where the pion becomes massless. Since the critical hopping parameter $`\kappa _c`$ is affected by the change in $`\gamma _F`$, one need to treat the chiral limit carefully. In the next section, we discuss the uncertainties of the hadron spectrum in the chiral limit based on the extrapolation in terms of the pseudoscalar meson mass squared instead of $`1/\kappa `$.

### 4.4 Summary of calibration

In this section, we have implemented the anisotropic $`O(a)`$ improved Wilson action in the region of quark mass up to around the charm quark mass, at three values of $`\beta `$ at $`\xi =4.0`$. The fermionic anisotropy $`\xi _F`$ is extracted from the meson dispersion relation. Then we find the value of bare anisotropy parameter, $`\gamma _F^{}`$, at which $`\xi _F=\xi `$ holds. The value of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in the massless limit is obtained by extrapolating the data by fitting to the linear form in $`m_q^2`$, where $`m_q`$ is naively defined quark mass. This is the most reliable way to determine $`\gamma _F^{}`$ for small quark mass region, since there the statistical fluctuation in finite momentum states is severely large. The fit of $`1/\gamma _F^{}`$ to the linear form in $`m_q^2`$ seems quite successful, and $`\gamma _F^{}`$ at the chiral limit is close to the tree-level value, $`\xi `$. The statistical uncertainty in $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is estimated as in the order of 1 % in whole explored quark mass region. In the chiral limit, there is also 1 % systematic uncertainty concerning the form of fit. Here we summarize the main result of calibration, the expression of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ for a given $`\kappa `$:

$$\frac{1}{\gamma _F^{}}(m_q)=\zeta _0+\zeta _2m_q^2,m_q=\frac{1}{2\xi }\left(\frac{1}{\kappa }\frac{1}{\kappa _c}\right),$$
(4.3)
$`\beta =5.75:`$ $`\zeta _0=0.2558(9),\zeta _2=0.230(12),\kappa _c=0.12640(5)`$ (4.4)
$`\beta =5.95:`$ $`\zeta _0=0.2490(8),\zeta _2=0.189(15),\kappa _c=0.12592(6)`$ (4.5)
$`\beta =6.10:`$ $`\zeta _0=0.2479(9),\zeta _2=0.143(14),\kappa _c=0.12558(4).`$ (4.6)
To examine the uncertainty in the calibration, we have also carried out the following analysis. (i). The difference between $`\gamma _F^{}`$ for the pseudoscalar and vector mesons, which signals the $`O(\alpha a)`$ systematic error. We observed that this difference decreases as decreasing lattice spacing, and already consistent with zero at $`\beta =5.95`$. (ii). Comparison of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ with the continuum and the Klein-Gordon dispersion relations. This is for a estimate of the size of $`O(a^2)`$ systematic uncertainty. The results with two dispersion relations tends to coincide with each other in decreasing the lattice spacing. The behavior in the large quark mass region is consistent with the expected behavior. (iii). Response of meson masses to the change of $`\gamma _F`$. The effect of uncertainty of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ on the meson masses is less than 1 %, if $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is determine at this accuracy. This result is applicable to the relatively heavier quark mass region, such as $`m_s<m_q`$, and therefore in the region, the errors in the calibration is under control.

## 5 Light hadron spectroscopy

In this section, we apply the result of the last section to the calculation of light hadron spectrum. Our analysis is performed in two steps:

(i) By taking the central value of $`\gamma _F=\gamma _F^{}`$ we obtain the light hadron masses in the strange quark mass region $`m_s<m_q<2m_s`$. By extrapolating masses in $`m_{PS}^2`$, the hadron spectrum at the physical light quark masses are determined. We compare our result with the result by UKQCD Collaboration , which has been obtained on the isotropic lattice with $`O(a)`$ improved quark action.

(ii) We study the response of the light hadron spectrum to the change of the anisotropic parameter $`\gamma _F^{}\gamma _F^{}+\delta \gamma _F`$. The extrapolation in $`m_{PS}^2`$ is significant to circumvent the uncertainty in the definition of $`\kappa `$.

### 5.1 Calculation of hadron spectrum

The spectroscopy of light hadrons are performed on the same lattices used in the calibration, while with smaller numbers of configurations. The parameters are listed in Table 7. At each $`\beta `$, we use four values of $`\kappa `$ corresponding to the quark mass of $`m_s`$$`2m_s`$. In this region, we regard that $`m_q`$ is sufficiently small so that we can adopt the value of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ in the massless limit. Therefore the bare anisotropy is set to the central value of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ at $`m_q=0`$, which is determined in the calibration as the linear form in $`m_q^2`$.

We use the standard hadron operators and procedure to extract the hadron masses. The quark propagators are smeared at the source with Gaussian smearing function with the deviation $`0.4`$ fm, in the Coulomb gauge. The periodic boundary condition is adopted in all four directions for the quark field. For baryons, two of quarks are treated as they has degenerate masses. Then the quark content of baryons is specified by two $`\kappa `$’s, $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$, for a pair of quarks and the other quark, respectively. Figure 9 shows the effective mass plot for octet and decuplet baryons with degenerate quark mass case, $`\kappa _1=\kappa _2`$. The meson correlators are fitted to the single hyperbolic cosine form. For baryons, we apply the single exponential fit in the region in which there is negligible contribution of the negative parity baron from the other temporal boundary. The result of fit is listed in Tables 810. For mesons, since the order of $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$ is unimportant, the masses at the exchanged set of ($`\kappa _1`$, $`\kappa _2`$) are omitted. The masses of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type octet baryon at degenerate ($`\kappa _1`$, $`\kappa _2`$) are also omitted, since they are identical to the masses of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$-type.

### 5.2 Extrapolation to the chiral limit

In order to avoid the ambiguities in the definition of the quark mass, we extrapolate the hadron masses to the chiral limit in terms of the pseudoscalar meson mass squared, instead of $`1/\kappa `$. We assume the relation

$$m_{PS}^2(m_1,m_2)=B(m_1+m_2),$$
(5.1)
then for the degenerate quark masses, $`m_1=m_2`$, $`m_{PS}^2=2Bm_1`$ holds. Then instead of $`m_i`$ (i=1,2), one can use $`m_{PS}(m_i,m_i)^2`$ as the variable in the chiral extrapolation. For other hadrons, vector meson and octet and decuplet baryons, we also use the linear relations:

$`m_V(m_1,m_2)`$ $`=`$ $`m_V(0,0)+B_V(m_1+m_2),`$ (5.2)
$`m_{oct}(m_1,m_2,m_3)`$ $`=`$ $`m_{oct}(0,0,0)+B_{oct}(m_1+m_2+m_3),`$ (5.3)
$`m_{dec}(m_1,m_2,m_3)`$ $`=`$ $`m_{dec}(0,0,0)+B_{dec}(m_1+m_2+m_3).`$ (5.4)
The hadron spectrum and the result of fit are shown in Figure 10. The vertical axis is the averaged pseudoscalar meson mass squared,

$$m_{PS}^2(m_i)=\frac{1}{N_q}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_q}{}}m_{PS}^2(m_i,m_i)=\frac{1}{N_q}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_q}{}}2Bm_i$$
(5.5)
with $`N_q=2`$ for mesons and $`N_q=3`$ for baryons. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type baryon is not shown in the figure to avoid that the figure become too messy. The linear fit seems to be successful.

### 5.3 Spectrum at physical quark masses

To determine the hadron masses at the physical $`u`$, $`d`$ and $`s`$ quark mass, one need to set the scale of lattice. We do not distinguish the $`u`$ and $`d`$ quark masses, and express their mass as $`m_n`$. We adopt two definitions, through the hadronic radius $`r_0`$, and through the $`K^{}`$ meson mass. These two methods are also adopted by UKQCD Collaboration in , and convenient for comparison of our data with theirs. In , they employed the values of clover coefficient determined in two ways: with nonperturbative renormalization technique (NP) , and tadpole-improvement (TAD) . Then they extrapolate the masses to the continuum limit by simultaneous fit of these two types of data to the linear form in $`a^2`$ for NP and quadratic form in $`a`$ for TAD. We compare our hadron spectrum at the physical quark masses with the result in the continuum limit of , although we ourselves do not perform the continuum extrapolation because of lacks of sufficient number of $`\beta `$ as well as the statistical accuracy.

#### Scale set by $`r_0`$.

The hadronic radius $`r_0`$ has been already obtained in Section 4. The corresponding values of spatial lattice cutoff are found in Table 1. The PS meson masses squared correspond to $`m_n`$ and $`m_s`$ are then defined with $`m_\pi ^\pm =139.6`$ MeV and $`m_K=495.7`$ MeV (isospin averaged), respectively. These definitions are in accord with . The hadron masses extrapolated or interpolated to the physical points are shown in Figure 10 and listed in Table 11. For comparison with the result in , we also list the hadron masses multiplied by $`r_0\xi `$ in Table 11. In the latter case, $`\xi `$ appears to multiply the quantity in the spatial lattice unit ($`r_0`$) to ones in the temporal lattice unit (masses). In our data, differences between the results at $`\beta =6.10`$ and $`5.95`$ rather large compared with the difference between $`\beta =5.95`$ and $`5.75`$. This would be partially due to the different $`a`$ dependence of $`O(\alpha a)`$ and $`O(a^2)`$ lattice artifact, and also due to the statistical fluctuation. Our results of the meson masses seem to approach towards the continuum results by UKQCD Collaboration on the isotropic lattices .

#### Scale set by $`m_K^{}`$.

In the second case, $`m_K^{}=893.9`$ MeV (isospin averaged) is used to set the lattice scale. First we interpolate the vector meson mass to the point that the ratio of PS and V meson masses is equal to the physical value of $`K^{}`$ and $`K`$ mesons. Then this vector meson mass defines the lattice scale. This results in the spatial lattice cutoffs 1.053(13), 1.525(27) and 1.817(22) GeV at $`\beta =5.75`$, $`5.95`$ and $`6.10`$, respectively. Then the values of $`m_{PS}^2`$’s correspond to the ($`u`$,$`d`$) and $`s`$ quark masses are determined with experimental $`K`$ and $`\pi `$ meson masses. The hadron masses at physical quark masses are listed in Table 12. We observe similar tendency to the case of the scale set by $`r_0`$. No signal of inconsistency with the result on isotropic lattice is found.

### 5.4 $`J`$-parameter

The parameter $`J`$ was introduce to probe the quenching effect in , and defined as

$$J=m_V\frac{dm_V}{dm_{PS}^2}|_{m_V/m_{PS}=m_K^{}/m_K}.$$
(5.6)
It is known that the quenched lattice simulation does not reproduce the experimental value, $`J=0.48(2)`$, and gives about 20 % smaller value. We show our result of $`J`$ in Figure 11, as the function of lattice spacing determined by $`r_0`$. We find that our results are consistent to those by UKQCD on the isotropic lattices in the quenched approximation.

### 5.5 Covariance of correlators

Let us consider the pseudoscalar correlator:

$`C_{PS}(𝒑,t)`$ $`=`$ $`O_{PS}(x)O_{PS}^{}(0)`$ (5.7)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Z^2(𝒑)}{2E(𝒑)}}\mathrm{exp}(E(𝒑)t)(\text{large }t)`$
with $`Z(𝒑)=0|O(x)|PS(𝒑)`$. Here we employ the covariant normalization. For the local pseudoscalar density operator $`O(x)=\overline{q}(x)\gamma _5q(x)`$, if the Lorentz covariance is sufficiently restored, $`Z(𝒑)`$ does not depend on the momentum $`𝒑`$. Then

$$R(𝒑)=\frac{E(𝒑)Z(𝒑)^2}{m_{PS}Z(0)^2}$$
(5.8)
probes the restoration of covariance as the deviation from unity. In figure 12, we show the momentum dependence of $`R(𝒑)`$ measured on $`\beta =5.95`$ and $`6.10`$. At each $`\beta `$, the quark mass is the largest one used in the light hadron spectroscopy. We find that $`R(𝒑)`$ at finite momentum is consistent with $`R(𝒑=0)`$, while higher momentum states suffer from large statistical fluctuation. This feature is particularly important in the calculation of form factors, in which the finite momentum states play an essential role.

### 5.6 Systematic errors of the spectrum from calibration

To estimate the systematic effect due to the uncertainty of calibration, we obtain the spectrum at the same $`\kappa `$’s with slightly shifted bare anisotropy, $`\gamma _F^{}=\gamma _F^{}+\delta \gamma _F`$. We set $`\delta \gamma _F=0.1`$, which implies about 2.5 % shift of bare anisotropy. Figure 13 shows the result for shifted $`\gamma _F`$ together with the result for $`\gamma _F^{}`$, for $`\beta =5.75`$ and $`6.10`$. There are small systematic downward shifts in the fitted lines. The spectrum at the physical quark masses are listed in Table 13 as the dimensionless combination, $`m\xi r_0`$ and $`m/m_K^{}`$. The difference between the masses with $`\gamma _F^{}`$ and $`\gamma _F^{}`$ is slightly amplified toward the chiral limit. Even for the lightest mass in each species, the difference is at most around 1 %. This implies that the uncertainty of hadron masses at the physical ($`u`$,$`d`$) and $`s`$ quark mass are about half of uncertainty in $`\gamma _F`$. With the relativistic dispersion relation, $`\gamma _F^{}`$ at $`m_q=0`$ has been determined at each $`\beta `$ within about 2 % ambiguity: the statistical error of 1 % and the systematic error of 1 % in the form of fit. Therefore there is 1 % level uncertainty in the hadron spectrum due to the uncertainty in calibration. This feature would make the anisotropic lattice promising for future physical applications.

## 6 Conclusion

In this paper, we studied the $`O(a)`$ improved quark action on the anisotropic lattice with anisotropy $`\xi =a_\sigma /a_\tau =4`$. The bare anisotropy $`\gamma _F^{}`$, with which $`\xi _F=\xi `$ holds, is determined for the whole quark mass region below the charm quark mass, including the chiral limit in 1 % statistical accuracy. In the massless limit, there is also about 1 % systematic uncertainty in extrapolating $`\gamma _F^{}`$ to $`m_q=0`$.

The uncertainties in the calibration due to the discretization errors are studied by changing the physical inputs or conditions. (i) We have shown that the dispersion relations for the pseudoscalar and the vector mesons give values of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ which differ by 1% at $`\beta =5.75`$, while they show no difference at $`\beta =5.95`$ and $`6.10`$. (ii) Two different choices of the lattice dispersion relations, namely the naive continuum form and the Klein-Gordon form, also lead to the results which differ by 3% for $`\beta =5.75`$, but we found no difference at $`\beta =6.1`$ with $`m_q<0.2a_\tau ^1`$. These systematic uncertainties tend to vanish toward the continuum limit.

The light hadron spectrum was studied using the central value of tuned bare anisotropy, $`\gamma _F^{}(m_q=0)`$. We found that it is consistent with the result on the isotropic lattice by UKQCD Collaboration. It was found that a change of $`\gamma _F^{}`$ by 2 % would lead to a change of the spectrum by 1 % for the physical quark masses. We also investigated the Lorentz invariance of the matrix element of the pseudoscalar operator as a consistency check.

The main disadvantage in using the anisotropic lattice would lie in the additional systematic uncertainty caused by the calibration. There are two types of errors in $`\gamma _F^{}`$. The first type consists of the statistical error and the error in the chiral extrapolation, which was estimated to be 2 % level. The second type consists of $`O(\alpha a)`$ and $`O(a^2)`$ systematic uncertainties, which was estimated to be 4% at $`\beta =5.75`$ and smaller for larger $`\beta `$. In total, there is 6 % ambiguity at $`\beta =5.75`$, which corresponds to our coarsest lattice, and 2–3 % ambiguities at $`\beta =6.10`$. The relative errors in hadron spectrum are half of those in $`\gamma _F^{}`$. Since the contribution from the second types of error vanishes in the continuum limit, we expect to obtain the hadron spectrum to 1 % accuracy in the continuum limit. This result is encouraging for further applications. The anisotropic lattice would already be applicable to quantitative studies which requires a few percent accuracy. To achieve higher accuracy, nonperturbative tuning of the clover coefficients are required.

Since the range of quark masses where the systematic errors are under control covers the charm quark region, it is also important to apply the present anisotropic lattice simulation to the charmonium and D meson systems.

## Acknowledgments

We thank J. Harada, A.S. Kronfeld, O. Miyamura, N. Nakajima, Y. Nemoto, H. Suganuma and T.T. Takahashi for useful discussions. The simulation has been done on NEC SX-5 at Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University and Hitachi SR8000 at KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization). H. M. is supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists. H. M. was also supported in the early stage of this work by the center-of-excellence (COE) program at RCNP, Osaka University. T. O. is supported by the Grant-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education No. 12640279. T. U. is supported by the center-of-excellence (COE) program at CCP, Tsukuba University.


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# Spectra of binaries classified as 𝜆 Boo stars Based on data from ESO, Observatoire du Pic du Midi, IUE Final Archive and on observations obtained with the Hipparcos satellite.

## 1 Introduction

Metal underabundances are not common among young A-type stars; following the description of the $`\lambda `$ Boo spectrum by Morgan et al (1943), Burbidge & Burbidge (1956) made a first abundance analysis of other metal-weak stars which are now known to belong to both $`\lambda `$ Boo and field HB classes. Sargent (1965a and 1965b) was the first to list the criteria to select the Population I early A-type $`\lambda `$ Boo stars. Later on, Slettebak et al (1968) gave a more detailed spectroscopic definition as well as the criteria to distinguish $`\lambda `$ Boo stars from other metal weak stars. One of the specified characteristics is the moderately large rotational velocity (usually 100-150 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) which clearly represented a difficulty for abundance analyses performed with the curve of growth method and based on photographically recorded spectra. In fact, the only detailed study of the abundance peculiarities before the advent of modern detectors is that by Baschek & Searle (1969).

Systematic spectroscopic and photometric search for new members of the class have been performed mainly in the past two decades. The spectroscopic characteristics in classification dispersion covering the optical range are extensively described by Gray (1997) who gave a new definition and more detailed classification criteria to select these objects.

The comparison of the Gray’s definition with the earlier ones shows that the new definition includes also later spectral types up to early F-type and stars with low $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ values.

Modern detailed abundance analyses are still scanty and concern a very limited number of objects (e.g. Venn & Lambert, 1990; Stürenburg, 1993), but sufficient to note that the metal deficiency is widely variable from star to star with a large scatter of pattern behaviour. All the abundance analyses (with the exception of that on HD 84948, see below) are based on the hypothesis that $`\lambda `$ Boo stars are single objects. In this paper we investigate spectroscopic criteria to detect duplicity among these stars.

In the meantime theories to explain the $`\lambda `$ Boo phenomenon have been proposed, but none is definitely accepted. In fact, the $`\lambda `$ Boo phenomenon is complicated; for example several stars show one or more of the following peculiarities: an IR excess, photometric variability, short term pulsation or narrow absorption lines, indicating the presence of a shell. Some stars instead show none of the above.

Faraggiana & Bonifacio (1997) proposed a new interpretation of these objects; they analyzed the combined list of $`\lambda `$ Boo candidates extracted from three different and recent sources and noticed that a considerable number of these $`\lambda `$ Boo candidates are detected or suspected binaries. In the present paper we discuss how it is possible to recognize a composite spectrum of a moderately high rotating star ($`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ up to about 100 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) through the comparison of observed and computed spectra. In fact high resolution combined with low noise spectra are quite easily obtainable with modern equipment and allow one to detect a number of previously unsuspected binaries.

A search for spectral features which can be used as duplicity criteria for A-F stars can find application on a much wider field than that of stars more or less questionably classified as $`\lambda `$ Boo .

The stars used to select spectroscopic signs of duplicity are chosen among those found to be SB2 spectroscopic binaries or binaries with a separation less than 1 arcsec measured by speckle interferometry and/or extracted from the Hipparcos Catalogue (ESA, 1997) and a magnitude difference of less than 1.5 mag. The spectra of 5 binaries, 4 of which classified as $`\lambda `$ Boo stars (HD 38545, HD 47152, HD 84948 and HD 153808) by at least one author and one (HD 18622) classified as normal star, are discussed and the spectroscopic criteria that reveal their duplicity investigated.

A first application to HD 111786, classified as $`\lambda `$ Boo by Gray (1988), is given in this paper; Faraggiana et al (1997) have discovered a companion through the presence of the narrow lines previously interpreted as originating from a shell around a single rapidly rotating object. The present analysis of the O I triplet at 7774 Å in particular demonstrates that in reality HD 111786 is formed by a clump of stars with similar luminosity and therefore any classification and abundance analysis of this object must be considered unreliable.

## 2  Classification and duplicity data for the selected sample of binaries

The five already known binary stars which have been selected for the search of duplicity signatures in their spectrum are listed in Table 1. The V magnitudes and the spectral types are taken from the Bright Star Catalogue (Hoffleit & Warren, 1994); the parallaxes and errors, measured in milliarcsec (mas) and the Hipparcos magnitudes (Hp) are from the Hipparcos Catalogue (ESA, 1997). The angular separations are from the same source for all but the last star; the value for HD 153808 is that given in the Washington Visual Double Star (WDS) catalogue (Worley & Douglass, 1997).

The sources of information for the spectroscopic binaries are Corbally (1984) for HD 18622, Paunzen et al (1998) for HD 84948, and Petrie (1939) for HD 153808.

HD 18622 Non peculiar star, classified A3 V (Bright Star Catalogue, 1964 ed), A4 III (CDS) or A5 IV (Gray & Garrison 1989). This star belongs to the catalog of $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ standard stars by Slettebak et al (1975) and to the list of standard stars for Hα photometry by Strauss and Ducati (1981). The star has a visual companion, HD 18623, at 8.3 arcsec with a $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$m=1.1; so it is an example of a spectroscopic binary with a more distant visual companion. The only references to its SB2 nature we aware of are in the Bright Star Catalogue (since the 1982 ed.), and in Corbally (1984).

HD 38545 Classified $`\lambda `$ Boo by Gray & Garrison (1987); the presence of shell lines has been noted first by Stürenburg (1993) and since then studied both in the visual (Bohlender & Walker, 1994; Andrillat et al, 1995; Hauck et al, 1995 and 1998; Holweger & Rentzsch-Holm, 1995; Holweger et al, 1999; Hauck and Jaschek, 2000) and in the UV range (Grady et al, 1996). The binary nature of this object has been discovered by McAlister et al (1993) and confirmed by Hipparcos (ESA, 1997) and new speckle data (Marchetti et al, 2001).

According to the Bright Star Catalogue (since its 1982 ed.), this star has a variable radial velocity whose origin has never been studied.

HD 47152 Classified either Ap of Hg,4077 type (Osawa, 1965) or $`\lambda `$ Boo (Abt & Morrell, 1995), but excluded from the $`\lambda `$ Boo class by Hauck et al (1998) who recall the agreement of the Osawa classification with the Geneva $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(V1-G) parameter. In spite of the numerous speckle observations since 1982 indicating the presence of a companion (McAlister & Hendry, 1982; Bonneau et al 1984; etc.), the duplicity is ignored in all the spectroscopic studies of its peculiarities.

The values of the angular separation and the magnitude difference given by Hipparcos, are such that only a composite spectrum can be observed; so the star cannot be safely assigned either to the Ap class or to that of $`\lambda `$ Boo stars by neglecting its duplicity.

HD 84948 The classification as possible $`\lambda `$ Boo is due to Abt (1984); Andrillat et al (1995) on the basis of near-IR spectra classified it as $`\lambda `$ Boo with shell; Paunzen and Gray (1997) note the similarity with HD 84123 spectrum and suggest that both are perhaps field HB stars; Paunzen et al (1998) performed an abundance analysis based on an echelle spectrum of this resolved SB2 object (range 4000-5700 Å), extended to Na through unquoted observational data.

HD 153808 Intriguing object for which there are discordant results on its duplicity as a visual binary. Hipparcos did not detect any sign of duplicity nor is its duplicity mentioned in the Hipparcos Input Catalogue (Turon et al, 1993). Controversial visual binary detections are reported in the literature, the two values of the separation 0.24 and 0.97 arcsec measured by Isobe et al (1990 and 1992), being not confirmed by other authors.

As a spectroscopic binary this object has been studied in the past; the period, P=4.0235 d as well as the other orbital elements are given in the Batten et al (1989) catalogue, but are based only on the measures by Luyten (1936). The double-lined spectrum is discussed by Petrie (1939) who classified the two components A0 and A2 and computed a magnitude difference of 1.5.

It is classified also as Mn star (e.g. Wolff & Preston, 1978), or normal A0IV+ by Gray & Garrison (1987) and quoted as SB2 by Wolff (1978).

The values of the projected rotational velocity vary considerably from author to author: 38 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Lambert et al, 1986); 50 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Abt & Morrell, 1995); 80 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Wolff & Preston 1978); 90 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Slettebak, 1954).

It is included in the Tokovinin (1997) catalogue of triple systems; this author considers doubtful the binary detection of the visual AB system since it is not confirmed by the Hipparcos data, but retains the spectroscopic duplicity Aab.

## 3 Observations

The optical spectra have been collected at the Echelec (ESO), Musicos (Observatoire du Pic du Midi) and FEROS (ESO) spectrographs which have a nominal resolution of about 28000, 38000 and 48000 respectively; the wavelength range of each of them is broad enough to include at least one Balmer line. The journal of observations is given in Table 2.

### 3.1 Echelec data

The Echelec spectrograph was mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the ESO 1.52 m telescope at La Silla; our spectra cover the 4200-4500 Å spectral range; the S/N ratio is not constant and highly variable between the centre and the edges of each echelle order. The spectra have been reduced with the package written by Burnage & Gerbaldi (1990 and 1992) and running under MIDAS.

### 3.2 FEROS data

The HD 111786 spectrum has been taken with the new high resolution spectrograph FEROS (Kaufer et al. 1999) installed at the Coudé focus of the ESO 1.5m telescope at La Silla. This spectrograph is a bench-mounted fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. It is installed in a thermally stabilized, humidity controlled room. The spectra are spread over 39 orders. The on-line DRS package running under MIDAS performed the bias subtraction, the flatfielding, the wavelength calibration, the optimal extraction of the orders and the merging of the orders.

### 3.3 Musicos data

The Musicos spectrograph is mounted at the 2.2m Telescope Bernard Lyot of the Observatoire du Pic du Midi ; this echelle spectrograph has a fiber entrance corresponding to 2.1 arcsec on the sky. Through two different prisms it may cover the full optical range in two exposures covering the blue and red spectral ranges respectively, each containing 46 orders. We have only used the setting covering the 5150-8890 Å region. The photometric and wavelength reduction have been done directly at the telescope site by using ESpRIT (Echelle Spectra Reduction: an Interactive Tool), a computer code for on-line processing developed by Donati et al (1997) and made available at the telescope.

### 3.4 IUE data

We inspected also IUE low and high resolution spectra extracted from the INES Archive. We used the low-resolution and the high-resolution rebinned images for the study of the flux distribution. The high-resolution spectra have been examined only for the echelle orders where shell lines are expected.

## 4 The spectra and their interpretation

The aim of this work is not to make any abundance analysis of these binaries, but only to detect and interpret the differences between the observed spectra and those computed with the hypothesis that these objects are single. The features more sensitive to these differences will be selected to be used to search other binaries among the $`\lambda `$ Boo candidates.

The whole available spectral range for each star has been examined since the features most sensitive to duplicity are not necessarily the same for all objects; they depend on the atmospheric parameters and the magnitude difference of the binary system components. However, the wavelength regions that revealed a peculiar behaviour in most stars are the Balmer line cores, the O I 7774 triplet and the Na I 5890-5896 doublet.

We shall describe in detail for each of the 5 chosen binaries the signs of duplicity we have detected in the spectra at our disposal.

### 4.1 Chosen atmospheric parameters for the computed spectra

The determination of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and log g is obtained from the visual photometric colour indices by using the calibrations of Moon and Dworetsky (1985 (MD)) and Künzli et al (1997) of the uvby$`\beta `$ and Geneva photometric colour indices respectively and by assuming the unrealistic hypothesis that the observed spectrum is produced by a single source.

The MD calibration is made for normal stars, but is valid for Ap stars too as discussed by Hubrig et al (2000, Appendix A); however, the extension to the low-blanketed spectra of $`\lambda `$ Boo stars make sometimes doubtful the assignement to the groups defined in this calibration program. For example, Stürenburg (1993) \[St93\] chose the group 5 for all the stars of his sample, giving the priority to the spectral type A0-A3 of the stars he analyzed. On the contrary, we give the highest priority to the $`\beta `$ index which is expected to be less sensitive to metallic lines; in fact the spectral classification can easily assign a too early spectral type to A stars with weak metal lines. Other criteria adopted by us are: the lowest resulting colour excess and the agreement with the parameters derived by other methods.

The Künzli et al (1997) calibration is used in the hypothesis that the colour excess is negligible as indicated by the Moon (1985) program results.

The parameters so derived are given in Table 3; the reddening is computed with the Moon (1985) program UVBYBETA and the $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ values are taken from the literature.

The synthetic spectra are computed with Kurucz program SYNTHE and by using his line-blanketed LTE models Kurucz (1993). The composite spectra have been computed either with the Kurucz BINARY program or by combining the single synthetic spectra within MIDAS. Broadening velocities are adopted in order to fit the observed line widths.

### 4.2 HD 18622

This SB2 binary is chosen as an example of a ”normal” star; its spectral variations are displayed in Fig. 1 and illustrate how a single spectrum may be not sufficient to exclude the duplicity of a star. For this star, the very similar parameters of the two components make almost single the spectrum at the phase in which the lines are not resolved (see Fig. 2). This Figure shows the comparison between this observed spectrum and that computed with the parameters given in Table 3, but with $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=75 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, value slightly higher than that given by Slettebak et al (1975). Even in this phase, where the star looks single, we note that several metal lines are stronger in the synthetic spectrum, so simulating globally a slightly weak-line star; in particular it must be noted that in the Hγ profile, the core is flatter than that computed, contrarily to what is expected and observed in single stars. The core of the Balmer lines is very sensitive to NLTE effect. When computed in LTE, using the Kurucz code, it should be less deep than the observed one, contrary to what is observed in Fig. 2.

The case of the normal HD 18622 demonstrates that it may be impossible, at certain phases, to detect the duplicity of an object without a careful comparison of observed with computed Balmer line profiles

### 4.3 HD 38545

The two spectra we examined are characterized by narrow components of several strong lines, in particular of Hα, of the Na I doublet and of several lines of Fe II.

The absence of narrow components on Mg II 4481 (see figure 11 in St93) and on the high excitation Fe II lines indicates that the narrow lines are due to a shell, not to a companion star, which would have affected these lines too.

The presence of these shell components prevents us from performing a detailed comparison between the observed spectrum and the two we have computed, one adopting the parameters chosen by us and listed in Table 3 and solar abundances, and the other with the St93 parameters and the metal abundances derived by this author. The two Hα profiles computed as for a single star, either by using the parameters given in Table 3 or with those adopted by St93 ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =8970 K, log g=3.960, $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=200 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) do not reproduce well the observed one (Fig. 3), however it is impossible to decide to what extent this is due to the duplicity and to what extent this is due to the presence of the shell.

The triplet structure of the O I 7772-7775 is washed out by the high $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ of this composite spectrum; it appears as a single absorption feature; a simple abundance change in each of the two models would be sufficient to reproduce observations; so this OI 7772-7775 triplet is not a useful criterium to detect duplicity when its structure is masked by a high broadening.

This rapidly rotating star represents the class of objects for which the spectroscopic approach alone is not sufficient to prove the stellar duplicity. The comparison with synthetic spectra can only provide more or less convincing indications on duplicity from the inconsistencies between observations and computations.

### 4.4 HD 47152

HD 47152 (53 Aur) has been classified $`\lambda `$ Boo by Abt & Morrell (1995), while it has been studied in the past as Ap of type Hg-Eu-Cr. The Catalano & Renson (1998) catalogue of Ap and Bp stars reports a photometric period of 2.80 d and Adelman & Pyper (1993) assign this star to the group of those with moderate to no spectral variations. The detection of the duplicity goes back to 1982 (McAlister & Hendry, 1982) and has been followed by 15 other papers on speckle measurements. However, the effect of the companion on the observed spectrum has never been taken into account in all the studies of this star, probably because these speckle data do not give information on the magnitude difference between the components of the binary system. The Hipparcos Catalogue data, giving a magnitude difference of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Hp=0.77, clearly indicate that the observed spectrum must be affected by the presence of the companion star.

The two spectra we have taken show that the star is a spectroscopic variable; the Mg I triplet, plotted in Fig. 4, for example, is weaker on the second spectrum taken 1 day after the first one.

The spectral lines are narrow, so confirming the $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ measured by Abt & Morrell (1995), however they are not fitted by the synthetic spectrum computed with the parameters given in Table 3 (but with $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=30 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) and by assuming solar abundances. The wings of the Hα profile are reasonably well fitted by the computed spectrum ( Fig. 5), but we note that the observed core is considerably less deep than that of the computed profile, contrary to what expected from NLTE effects which are not accounted for in our computations. The metal lines appear not to be weaker than expected for a star with these values of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and log g so the $`\lambda `$ Boo classification appears not to be justified for this star, at least at the phases of our observations. In the contrary, the high number of stronger than computed and of unidentified lines are in favour of the classification as Ap; however we remark some anomalies compared to classical Ap stars. The OI triplet at 7774 A is a very broad feature (Fig. 6) which may be fitted by a spectrum computed with $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=300 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$; we recall that the only previous mention of such a high $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ is in Palmer et al (1968) where a value of 325 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ is given for this star. Moreover this feature does not indicate the oxygen underabundance characteristic of Ap stars (see also Gerbaldi et al (1989) systematic study of this feature in Ap stars). We are not aware of any paper on Ap stars pointing out the discovery of non identified lines in the OI 7774 region.

The Na I doublet is very weak for the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ of 10000 K, the HeI 5876 is absent and the Fe I and Fe II lines would suggest a lower $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ , not coherent with the Hα profile. In fact several Fe II lines appear very weak compared with predictions (e.g. 5166.033, 5197.577, 5316.615 Å), while the Fe I lines are systematically stronger than the computed ones. So several contradictory results obtained from the optical spectrum appearance suggest that HD 47152 is not a single object. We can also add that in the UV the h and k lines of Mg II and the strong Fe II lines in the range 2500-2600 Å have a broad profile, not coherent with most line profiles in the optical range.

Considering the high inclination (i=119.5o) and the relatively long period (P=38.90 yrs) given in the IAU Inf Circ. Comm 26, No.142, 2000, it is likely that radial velocity variations may appear over a span of several years.

### 4.5 HD 84948

Moderate underabundances have been found by Paunzen et al (1998) for both components of this SB2 system. We adopted the same atmospheric parameters used by these authors to reproduce the spectrum at our disposal, i.e. $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =6600 and 6800 K, log g=3.3 and 3.7, $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=45 and 55 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for each component respectively. The corresponding models have been computed by adopting the metal abundances derived by these authors and we computed the synthetic spectra with the same quoted value of the microturbulence (vturb=3.5 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ for both components) and adopting the hypothesis of these authors that the two stars have almost the same luminosity. The observed Hα line is used to derive the relative radial velocity of the components at the epoch of our observation: the values we found are -77 and +70 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$respectively. The resulting combined synthetic spectrum is displayed in Fig. 7 superimposed on the observed one. We note that while the redshifted component is well fitted, the reverse is true for the other component; any small change in the luminosity ratio will worsen the fit of the redshifted component and does not produce more convincing results for metal line profiles. The fit of the NaI doublet (Fig. 8) and of the OI 7774 triplet (Fig. 9) confirm that the parameters for the higher rotating star do not reproduce the observations; they may even suggest that this component is indeed a double star. Also the other metal lines are not fitted by this computed spectrum, so that we cannot confirm the abundance values reported in the above quoted paper.

This object shows that it is not easy to produce a combined spectrum of an SB2 star that matches the observed one because many free parameters have to be taken into account and so it may happen that in a narrow wavelength range the observed spectrum is roughly fitted by a computed one, even if the adopted parameters are not the real ones.

Moreover this kind of analysis does not have any sense if made on one or few spectra; in fact a careful check that the combined spectrum is not variable with the period is necessary to exclude the partial eclipse possibility.

The bad fit with the combination proposed by Paunzen et al (1998) may be interpreted either as due to a choice of parameters that must be revised, as it can be expected from the inconsistency of the difference in log g of the two components and the adopted almost equal luminosities, or as sign of variable spectrum.

### 4.6 HD 153808

The two spectra at our disposal, even if the one taken on October 4th has a lower S/N and is affected by strong H2O telluric bands, clearly confirm that the star is an SB2; a more subtle check of the March 18th spectrum made through the comparison with a synthetic spectrum computed from the model with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and log g given in Table 3, but with a lower value of the broadening (30 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$), reveals that the Hα profile (Fig. 10) of the blue-shifted component is distorted, suggesting that it is probably due to two sources. This duplicity is supported by the complex structure of the O I triplet at 7774 A (Fig. 12) and more evident in Fig. 11 where the region of the Na I doublet and He I 5876 is compared with the same computed spectrum.

The cooler component is responsible for the strong and red-shifted component of the NaI doublet and for the FeI 5914 line, but does not contribute to the He I 5876 absorption. The hotter blue-shifted (on the plotted spectrum) component of the NaI doublet presents a double absorption which has the same profile and separation as that of the HeI 5876 line. These profiles are interpreted as a signature (together with the Hα core profile) of duplicity of the hotter component of this system.

The considerable difference in the atmospheric parameters makes the star brighter in the red that appears fainter in the photographic blue range examined by Petrie (1939) and the high resolution of Musicos allowed us to detect the presence of a third component.

Lambert et al (1986) by adopting $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =9700 K, log g=4.00 and $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ =38 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ derived log$`ϵ(C)`$=7.68 from lines at $`\lambda `$=9000 Å; this extreme C deficiency is discussed in detail by these authors and the possibility of a companion examined.

The present study clarifies that this object is a triple spectroscopic system and not a $`\lambda `$ Boo star.

This star is an example of spectroscopic triple system with a too small angular separation of the components to be detected by Hipparcos (ESA, 1997) or by speckle interferometry (Marchetti et al, 2001). This example demonstrates that a single most efficient approach to detect all the $`\lambda `$ Boo binaries does not exist, since we cannot make a priori any guess on the angular separation of the possible components.

## 5 Binary detection criteria from spectrum inspection

The fact that newly detected binaries have been found among stars already well studied indicates that the two components of these systems have similar parameters; this fact combined with the quite high value of $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$, characteristic of A-type stars (not belonging to the Ap-Am classes) stars, makes it very delicate to detect the duplicity and an abundance analysis based on the average atmospheric parameters may be done by lowering metal abundances in order to compensate the veiling effect. If the two components of a binary system are similar, the average spectrum is expected to be similar to that of each component; this is the case of HD 38545 for which only mild underabundances have been derived (St93). A larger difference of the two sources is expected to produce larger apparent abundance peculiarities as in the case of HD 47152, classified either Ap or $`\lambda `$ Boo .

We have shown that even a triple system can be confused with a single peculiar star when the anomalous line intensities are attributed only to abundance anomalies, as in the case of HD 153808.

If one allows all the abundances to be fitting parameters, spectral synthesis will provide a reasonable fit to the data in almost all cases, even though the fitting abundances are totally unphysical. In the previous section we have shown that a very careful inspection of any observed spectrum is mandatory before starting any abundance analysis of an object that has a mean-high $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ value. We have shown that this is not an easy task and we have selected the spectral features that are the more promising for A-type stars and that may be different for different binaries.

The example of HD 18622 has been given to underline the importance to have more than a single spectrum; an SB2 may not be detectable at certain phases.

From the inspection of the other spectra we learned that for rapidly rotating stars, most of the absorption lines are in fact blends and the less contaminated features of species present over a large interval of stellar $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ are the best suited for such detection. We have selected in this way the O I 7774 triplet as the most helpful reference for stars with a moderate value of $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$: see figures 6, 9 and 12 .

The absorption core of the Balmer lines which is broadened mainly by Doppler effect is expected to be deeper than that computed in the LTE approach while it is flatter in composite spectra. But the intrinsic difficulty to trace a very accurate continuum in the region of Balmer lines for dwarf A-type stars spectra must not be neglected, due to the fact that the maximum extension of the wings of these lines appear in the $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ range around 8500 K.

The detection of unidentified lines must be carefully checked with some reference star spectrum; in fact that may simply indicate a displaced absorption by a companion star; the presence of these lines is easier to detect at long wavelength where the line crowding is less important.

The period of spectroscopic binaries is usually short; so more than 1 spectrum taken during an observing run should be sufficient to detect not very rapidly rotating SB2 stars.

It should be noted that we have not discussed in detail the comparison between the observed and the computed flux distribution; in principle this can be a further criterion to recognize binaries if the two components have not equal $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ . In practice, this comparison is rarely efficient because based, for most stars, on photometric magnitudes and the calibration of these values are affected by uncertainties of the same order that the differences we are looking for.

The discrepancies we have found in making these comparisons could be explained either by the duplicity or for the above reasons and therefore we consider this approach a valid method only if relative comparisons are made between objects observed with the same photometric filters for visual and IR.

When this comparison is restricted to the UV range covered by IUE spectra the main sources of uncertainty are represented by the accuracy of the computed line blanketing and by the rôle of the NLTE on the metal b-f discontinuities. The comparison in this range requires accurate computations of the heavy line blanketing and of the b-f transitions. In fact these can be significantly different in real metal deficient stars as the $`\lambda `$ Boo are supposed to be and in stars with solar abundances.

So, in general, only complementary information can be obtained for suspected complex objects when peculiarities are found in the UV range not coherent with what is expected from the visual range analysis. This is the case with HD 38545 whose UV flux suggests a lower $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ or a higher blanketing than the optical spectral analysis and of HD 111786 (the star we shall discuss in the next Section) whose high UV flux suggests a higher $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ or a lower blanketing than that indicated by the optical spectrum.

## 6 Application to the case of HD 111786: a complex object, not a $`\lambda `$ Boo star

HD 111786 (HR 4881) has been assigned to $`\lambda `$ Boo class by Andersen and Nordström (1977) and since then accepted by all the following authors. The Hipparcos Catalogue (ESA, 1997) gives its parallax (16.62 $`\pm `$ 0.72 mas), and no sign of duplicity is mentioned.

Faraggiana et al (1997) discovered the duplicity of this ”$`\lambda `$ Boo star” on the basis of the double core of the Hγ profile and of the set of narrow lines superimposed on the broad features in the examined optical spectrum (covering the limited wavelength range of 300 Å from 4200 to 4500 Å). They showed also that a combination of two theoretical spectra both computed with solar abundances, $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ = 7500 K, log g = 4.0, but with different $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ (10 and 150 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) simulates qualitatively the observed spectrum. Moreover the high UV flux and the absence of the narrow line components at wavelength shorter than 2000 Å suggested that the broad component was slightly hotter than the other.

On the basis of these indications, we made many attempts to reproduce the observed composite spectrum by combining two theoretical spectra; a rough, but not good fit was obtained for the spectrum covering the 4200-4500 Å range, by combining two spectra computed from Kurucz models with solar abundances, log g=4 for both components, $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =7750 and 7200 K, $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$=250 and 20 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, relative luminosities=0.7 and 0.3 and a radial velocity difference of 50 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. A real good fit has never been achieved by introducing slightly different parameters and various differences in the luminosity ratio of the two components and we were left with the doubt that the system is more complex than a simple binary.

The experience gained by the analysis of the binaries discussed in previous sections suggested to examine a spectrum taken with higher resolution and covering a much broader wavelength domain than that previously used.

Contrary to HD 38545, in HD 111786 the narrow lines cannot be due to the presence of a shell; in fact all the spectral lines present the narrow components, not only those characteristic of stellar shells (i.e. the resonance or low excitation lines and those arising from a metastable level from which the atom cannot cascade to a lower level in a permitted transition); even Mg II 4481 (lower E.P.=8.83 eV) presents the complex profile corresponding to broad and narrow components. The broad line component is the predominant one and that on which the abundance analysis by Stürenburg (1993) is based; see also Fig 12 of his paper. The complex and variable profiles of the narrow lines denote their complex origin which is due to more than one low rotating source (Fig. 13).

All the Balmer lines present a splitting of the core, but if a simple duplicity could have been derived from the Hδ double core, the more complex multiplicity of this object appears from Hα whose profile shows the contribution of several components. The increasing contribution of cooler components of this system appears also from the increasing complexity of metal lines features toward long wavelength. The profile of the O I triplet 7772-7775 which lies in a spectral region not contaminated by other lines contribution is plotted in Fig. 15 together with the same region observed in the low rotating A0 V HD 53191. The complex feature observed in HD 111786 is composed by a broad blend due to a high rotating star ($`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ at least 150 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) (in the not proved hypothesis that this profile component is due to a single source) and by 4 or more other narrow sources, one of which is slightly brighter than the others. We have produced the computed spectrum plotted in Fig. 16 by combining a synthetic spectrum computed with the model $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =7250 K with three others with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ =7750 K shifted by -157.0, -118.5, +46.0 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$with respect to the first one; all these spectra have been computed by assuming a broadening of 20 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and therefore the dominant broad-lined component is not included. We do not claim that this combination is a faithful reproduction of the observed spectrum, but we only want to demonstrate how such a complex morphology may indeed arise due to stellar multiplicity.

The two examples in figures 15 and 16 show the complexity of this system and the existence of multiple distinct solutions. So, the analysis of the profile of the OI 7774 triplet in particular, clarified the problem of the high multiplicity of this star.

HD 111786 appears to be formed by a clump of at least 5 stars and therefore we cannot hope to make any reliable abundance analysis of this object revealing possible abundance anomalies. If we accept the definition of $`\lambda `$ Boo stars as single objects with peculiar atmospheric abundances then the classification of this complex object as a $`\lambda `$ Boo star must be definitely rejected.

## 7 Conclusion

Faraggiana & Bonifacio (1999) suggested that binaries can be easily confused with $`\lambda `$ Boo stars when their classification is based only on classification dispersion spectra. The detection of binaries with the spectrum affected by a companion, i.e. of objects producing a composite spectrum, is the fundamental first step before making any abundance analysis on which more or less elaborated theories to explain these stars will be based. However, the detection of binaries among these stars is subtle; the systems already detected show that the components of each system have a slight difference in stellar parameters so that an abundance analysis based on the average value of the atmospheric parameters does not produce absurd results.

Most of the double systems that have been already recognized as such have an angular separation lower than 1 arcsec, i.e. below the limit of most spectrographs entrance aperture. Most $`\lambda `$ Boo stars have mean-high $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ and the detection of duplicity on the basis of spectra only remains often doubtful.

As a consequence several complementary approaches must be considered; the most promising techniques are speckle, adaptive optics and interferometry, but still a large gap in the angular separation is expected to remain between the limits of interferometric and spectroscopic detection.

In the present paper we used the last approach and presented the results of search for criteria that can reveal the stellar duplicity from the inspection of high quality spectra covering a large wavelength range. Isolated features, as the OI 7774 triplet, the NaI doublet, the core of the Balmer lines, and the general fit between observed and computed profiles appear to fulfill our purpose.

This study allowed us to recognize that HD 153808 is a triple spectroscopic system.

The application of these selected criteria to a $`\lambda `$ Boo candidate, HD 111786, revealed the complex nature of this object, which is not a single peculiar star surrounded by a shell as presented in the literature, but a clump of at least 5 components.

###### Acknowledgements.

Use was made of the SIMBAD data base, operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France. RF acknowledges grants from MURST 40$`\%`$ and 60$`\%`$ and from the University of Trieste.