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# Confining membranes and dimensional reduction

## 1 Introduction

It is known that in 4D there exists a confining medium which, contrary to the 4D compact QED, possesses the property of confinement at arbitrary values of the electric coupling . Such a medium is a gas of point-like magnetically charged objects with a finite action. The lattice expression for the part of the partition function describing magnetic objects reads :

$$𝒵_m=\underset{\{q_x\}}{}\mathrm{exp}\left[2\pi ^2g_m^2\underset{x,x^{}}{}q_x\mathrm{\Delta }_{xx^{}}^1q_x^{}\right].$$
(1)
Here, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the 4D lattice Laplacian, $`q_x`$’s are the magnetic fluxes produced by these objects through 3D hypercubes, and $`g_m`$ is the magnetic coupling constant of dimensionality $`(\mathrm{mass})^1`$. This model can be viewed as an analogue of compact QED, where the rôle of the vector potential is played by the antisymmetric tensor field (the so-called Kalb-Ramond  field). Clearly, such a field can couple only to a surface, rather than to a line as the ordinary vector potential does. Owing to this fact, Wilson’s criterion of confinement in the theory (1) should be formulated not for the usual Wilson loop, but for its analogue defined at some closed 2D surface. The latter one can naturally be identified with a world sheet of a closed electric string, in the same way as the contour of the conventional Wilson loop is nothing, but a trajectory of an electrically charged point-like particle. Thus, confinement in the model (1) is the confinement of closed electric strings, and its criterion is the volume law for the above-mentioned analogue of the Wilson loop. Such a volume law is a natural generalization to the case of strings of the area law for the usual Wilson loops which correspond to point-like particles (see e.g. ).

In the present paper, we shall make these ideas quantitative for the continuum version of the model (1). Our first aim, which will be realized in the next Section, will be the construction of a generalization of the theory of confining strings , which confine electric charges, to the case of membranes. The resulting theory of confining membranes will be a theory which confines closed electric strings in the sense that the world volume of such a membrane is nothing, but a 3D hypersurface bounded by the world sheet of an electric string. Also, in the next Section, we shall generalize this theory to the $`SU(3)`$-inspired case. In Section 3, we shall consider one concrete example of the model where closed electric strings exist, namely dual Abelian Higgs model in the London limit. In particular, we shall explore there a possible dimensional reduction of a combined theory, which confines both electric strings and point-like charges, from 4D to 2D. Finally, the main results of the paper will be summarized in the Conclusions.

## 2 Confining membranes

The initial action of the model which describes the free Kalb-Ramond field and a plasma of point-like magnetic objects reads 111From now on, all the investigations will be performed in the Euclidean space-time.

$$S=\frac{1}{12}d^4x\left(H_{\mu \nu \lambda }+H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m\right)^2.$$
(2)
Here, $`H_{\mu \nu \lambda }=_\mu h_{\nu \lambda }+_\lambda h_{\mu \nu }+_\nu h_{\lambda \mu }`$ is the field strength tensor of the Kalb-Ramond field $`h_{\mu \nu }`$, $`\left[h_{\mu \nu }\right]=(\mathrm{mass})`$, satisfying the analogue of the Bianchi identity, $`\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }_\mu H_{\nu \lambda \rho }=0`$. Next, $`H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m`$ is the analogue of the monopole field strength tensor in compact QED, obeying the equation

$$\frac{1}{6}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }_\mu H_{\nu \lambda \rho }^m=2\pi g_m\rho _{\mathrm{gas}}.$$
(3)
Here, $`\rho _{\mathrm{gas}}(x)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}q_a\delta (xz_a)`$ is the density of point-like objects, carrying magnetic charges $`q_a`$’s (in the units of $`g_m`$) and located at the points $`z_a`$’s.

The dualization of the theory (2) with the subsequent summation over the grand canonical ensemble of magnetic objects with $`q_a=\pm 1`$ yields the action of the 4D sine-Gordon theory:

$$S_{\mathrm{SG}}=d^4x\left[\frac{1}{2}(_\mu \phi )^22\zeta \mathrm{cos}\left(2\pi g_m\phi \right)\right].$$
(4)
Here, $`\zeta \mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{const}g_m^2\right)`$ is the fugacity of a single magnetic object, $`[\zeta ]=(\mathrm{mass})^4`$, and the Debye mass of the dual Kalb-Ramond field $`\phi `$, stemming from the expansion of the cosine, reads $`m=2\pi g_m\sqrt{2\zeta }`$.

One can further define in the theory (2) an analogue of the Wilson loop at the free Kalb-Ramond fields:

$$W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }h_{\mu \nu }\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{ig}{2}\underset{S}{}𝑑S_{\mu \nu \lambda }H_{\mu \nu \lambda }\right).$$
(5)
Here, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the world sheet of a certain closed electric string, and the integration in the last integral on the R.H.S. of Eq. (5) is performed over some hypersurface $`S`$ enclosed by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Also, in Eq. (5), $`g`$ denotes the electric coupling constant, so that with $`2\pi `$ extracted explicitly on the R.H.S. of Eq. (3), it obeys the following analogue of the Dirac quantization condition: $`gg_m=n/3`$. Here $`n`$ is a certain integer, and in what follows we shall for simplicity restrict ourselves to the case $`n=1`$. Next, setting in Eq. (2) for a while $`H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m=0`$, we get

$$W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\mathrm{exp}\left[g^2\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(x)\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(y)D_0(xy)\right],$$
(6)
where $`D_0(x)\left(4\pi ^2x^2\right)^1`$ is the massless propagator. The contribution of magnetic objects to the analogue of the Wilson loop is defined by virtue of the last equality on the R.H.S. of Eq. (5) as follows:

$$W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{ig}{2}\underset{S}{}𝑑S_{\mu \nu \lambda }H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m\right)_{\mathrm{gas}},$$
(7)
Owing to Eq. (3), it can be rewritten as $`\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{3igg_m}{\pi }q_a\eta (z_a)\right]`$, where

$$\eta (x)=2\pi ^2_\mu ^x\underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (y)D_0(xy)$$
(8)
with $`dS_\mu (1/6)\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }dS_{\nu \lambda \rho }`$ is the solid angle under which the hypersurface $`S`$ is seen by an observer located at the point $`x`$. As it has already been mentioned, this hypersurface is nothing, but the world volume of the confining membrane. In particular for a closed hypersurface, $`\eta (x)=2\pi ^2`$, and because of the Dirac quantization condition, $`W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ becomes equal to unity. This fact proves that $`W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ is independent of $`S`$, provided that the Dirac quantization condition holds. Indeed, suppose that this is not the case and consider the ratio of two $`W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$’s, defined at different hypersurfaces, $`S_1`$ and $`S_2`$. Then, the result has the form of the R.H.S. of Eq. (7) with the integration performed over the closed hypersurface with the boundary $`S_1S_2`$. Therefore, such a ratio is equal to unity, which proves the desired hypersurface independence of $`W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$. Clearly, such a consideration is analogous to the proof  of the fact that in compact QED with monopoles quantized according to the Dirac quantization condition, the monopole part of the Wilson loop does not depend on the shape of a surface bounded by the contour of the loop.

To construct the theory of confining membranes, it is useful to represent the statistical weight corresponding to the kinetic term in the action (4) as follows 222 We omit inessential normalization constants implying that those are included in the respective integration measures.:

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}d^4x(_\mu \phi )^2\right]=𝒟\rho \mathrm{exp}\left[2\pi ^2g_m^2d^4xd^4y\rho (x)D_0(xy)\rho (y)2\pi g_mid^4x\phi \rho \right].$$

One can see that upon such a substitution, the field $`\phi `$ starts playing the rôle of the Lagrange multiplier, which is used for the exponentiation of the $`\delta `$-function in the expression $`1=𝒟\rho \delta (\rho \rho _{\mathrm{gas}})`$. Such a unity, being inserted into the summation over the grand canonical partition function, represents the Legendre transformation from the dual Kalb-Ramond field $`\phi `$ to the dynamical density of magnetic objects, $`\rho `$. Once the kinetic term of the field $`\phi `$ is removed by the above substitution, this field can further be integrated out in the saddle-point approximation. This yields the representation for the partition function $`𝒵=𝒟\phi \mathrm{exp}\left(S_{\mathrm{SG}}\right)`$ in terms of dynamical densities: $`𝒵=𝒟\rho \mathrm{exp}\left(S[\rho ]\right)`$. The action $`S[\rho ]`$ contains the Coulomb interaction of magnetic objects and their potential:

$$S[\rho ]=2\pi ^2g_m^2d^4xd^4y\rho (x)D_0(xy)\rho (y)+V[\rho ].$$
(9)
Here, the potential reads

$$V[\rho ]=d^4x\left[\rho \mathrm{arcsinh}\varrho 2\zeta \sqrt{1+\varrho ^2}\right]$$
(10)
and $`\varrho \rho /(2\zeta )`$. In the dilute-gas approximation, $`|\rho |\zeta `$, $`V[\rho ]\zeta d^4x\varrho ^2`$, and the integration over densities becomes Gaussian. This leads to the following expression for the generating functional of $`\rho `$’s in this limit:

$$𝒵[j]=\mathrm{exp}\left[\zeta d^4xd^4yj(x)j(y)^2D_m(xy)\right].$$
(11)
Here, $`D_m(x)mK_1(m|x|)/(4\pi ^2|x|)`$ is the massive propagator with $`K_1`$ standing for the modified Bessel function. To get the expression for the contribution of magnetic objects to the analogue of the Wilson loop,

$$W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })=𝒵\left[\frac{i\eta }{\pi }\right],$$
(12)
it is useful to employ the formula

$$_\mu \eta (x)=\pi ^2\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }\left[\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\nu \lambda }(y)_\rho ^xD_0(xy)\frac{1}{3}\underset{S}{}𝑑S_{\nu \lambda \rho }(y)\delta (xy)\right].$$

Introducing the analogue of the full Wilson loop, $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })=W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$, we obtain the following membrane action:

$$\mathrm{ln}W(\mathrm{\Sigma })=$$

$$=4\pi ^2\zeta \underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (x)\underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (y)D_m(xy)+\frac{g^2}{4}\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(x)\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(y)\left[9D_m(xy)5D_0(xy)\right].$$
(13)
As it was proved after Eq. (8), $`W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ is independent of $`S`$. Analogously to the theory of confining strings, the $`S`$-dependence of the R.H.S. of Eq. (13), which appears in the dilute gas approximation, becomes eliminated upon the summation over branches of the arcsinh-function standing in the full potential (10). This is the essence of correspondence between fields and membranes in the model under study.

Note that all the above considerations can be performed in terms of the field $`_{\mu \nu \lambda }`$, $`\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }_\mu _{\nu \lambda \rho }\rho `$. Being rewritten through this field, the membrane representation of $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$, given by Eq. (12) with the generating functional defined w.r.t. the full action (9)-(10), is nothing, but a direct generalization of the theory of confining strings. Indeed, the latter one describes the string representation of the Wilson loop in 3D compact QED in the language of the Kalb-Ramond field $`h_{\mu \nu }`$, $`\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda }_\mu h_{\nu \lambda }\rho `$, where $`\rho `$ is the dynamical monopole density.

Next, we see that the first term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (13) is responsible for confinement of closed strings. One can parametrize the world volume of the membrane, $`S`$, by the vector $`x_\mu (\xi )`$, $`\xi =(\xi ^1,\xi ^2,\xi ^3)`$, and expand the above-mentioned term in powers of the derivatives $`_a/\xi ^a`$ supplied with the appropriate powers of $`m`$ in the denominator. Such an expansion is similar to the analogous expansion of non-local string effective actions , and its first three leading terms have the following form:

$$\zeta \underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (x)\underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (y)D_m(xy)\sigma d^3\xi \sqrt{\widehat{g}}+\alpha d^3\xi \sqrt{\widehat{g}}\left(K_a^{ia}\right)^2+\beta d^3\xi \sqrt{\widehat{g}}.$$
(14)
Here, $`\widehat{g}^{ab}(\xi )=(^ax_\mu (\xi ))(^bx_\mu (\xi ))`$ is the induced metric tensor on $`S`$, $`\widehat{g}det\widehat{g}^{ab}`$, and $`K_b^{ia}`$ is the second fundamental form of $`S`$ defined according to the Gauss-Weingarten formula:

$$D_aD_bx_\mu (\xi )=\left(_a_b\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ab}^c_c\right)x_\mu (\xi )=K_{ab}^in_\mu ^i.$$

Here, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ab}^c`$ denotes the Christoffel symbol corresponding to the metric $`\widehat{g}^{ab}(\xi )`$, and $`n_\mu ^i`$’s, $`i=1,2,3`$, are the unit normal vectors to $`S`$: $`n_\mu ^i_ax_\mu (\xi )=0`$, $`n_\mu ^in_\mu ^j=\delta ^{ij}`$. Also in Eq. (14), $``$ stands the scalar curvature corresponding to the metric $`\widehat{g}^{ab}(\xi )`$, which is related to the second fundamental form as $`=\left(K_a^{ia}\right)^2K_b^{ia}K_a^{ib}`$. As far as the coupling constants on the R.H.S. of Eq. (14) are concerned, those up to certain constant factors have the form:

$$\sigma \frac{\zeta }{m^3}d^3zD_m\left(z^2\right)\frac{\zeta }{m},\alpha \beta \frac{\zeta }{m^5}d^3zz^2D_m\left(z^2\right)\frac{\zeta }{m^3},$$

where $`D_m\left(z^2\right)m^2K_1(|z|)/(4\pi ^2|z|)`$. The first term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (14) is the standard membrane action . It is analogous to the Nambu-Goto term in the action of confining strings and expresses confinement of a closed electric string in the sense of the volume law. As it has already been mentioned in the Introduction, the latter is nothing, but a generalization of the Wilson area law for point-like particles to the case of strings. The second term in the expansion (14) describes the rigidity of a membrane . Note also that contrary to the case of confining strings, the last term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (14) is not a full derivative, since the membrane action is three-dimensional.

The second term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (13) is analogous to the perimeter term for the Wilson loop in 3D compact QED. However, the difference between the two theories is that in the model (2), contrary to compact QED, the contribution of the free Kalb-Ramond fields (6) does not exactly cancel out with the respective massless contribution to $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ stemming from the magnetic objects. However, we see that for small enough $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$’s, namely for those whose typical sizes do not exceed $`1/m`$, $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$, as it should be. In the opposite case of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$’s whose sizes are much larger than $`1/m`$, the first term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (13) dominates over the second one, and the regime of the system under study becomes purely confining.

The above presented considerations can straightforwardly be translated to the $`SU(3)`$-inspired case along with the lines of Ref. . At this point, the following remark is in order. The $`SU(3)`$-inspired generalization of 3D compact QED  can be viewed as a $`[U(1)]^2`$ gauge theory with monopoles, stemming from the 3D $`SU(3)`$ Georgi-Glashow model. However, even in 3D, there does not exist a clear way to extend the usual $`SU(2)`$ Georgi-Glashow model to a certain $`SU(2)`$-theory, which might lead to the continuous action (2). Therefore, the action (2) should be understood only as a theory yielding upon the dualization a continuous description of the lattice Coulomb gas (1). In the same sense, the $`SU(3)`$-inspired theory, we are going to discuss below, describes a continuous formulation of the $`SU(3)`$-version of the lattice model (1).

In the model under consideration, the charges of magnetic objects are distributed over the respective root lattice defined by the vectors

$$\stackrel{}{q}_1=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}),\stackrel{}{q}_2=(1,0),\stackrel{}{q}_3=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}),\stackrel{}{q}_i=\stackrel{}{q}_i.$$

The density $`\rho _{\mathrm{gas}}`$ becomes modified to $`\stackrel{}{\rho }_{\mathrm{gas}}(x)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}\stackrel{}{q}_{i_a}\delta (xz_a)`$, and accordingly the fields $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ (as well as its field strength tensor), $`H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m`$, and $`\phi `$ become two-component vectors. The action (4) takes the form

$$S_{\mathrm{SG}}^{SU(3)}=d^4x\left[\frac{1}{2}\left(_\mu \stackrel{}{\phi }\right)^22\zeta \underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{cos}\left(2\pi g_m\stackrel{}{q}_i\stackrel{}{\phi }\right)\right],$$
(15)
which yields the Debye mass $`m_{SU(3)}=2\pi g_m\sqrt{3\zeta }`$. With the replacement $`\rho \stackrel{}{\rho }`$, the representation of the action in terms of densities of magnetic objects, Eq. (9), keeps its form, where now

$$V[\stackrel{}{\rho }]\underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}V\left[\rho _i\right].$$

In the latter formula, $`V\left[\rho _i\right]`$ is defined by Eq. (10) with $`\rho _i`$’s related to the components $`\rho ^1`$ and $`\rho ^2`$ of the vector $`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$ as follows (see Ref.  for details): $`\rho _1\left(\rho ^1/\sqrt{3}+\rho ^2\right)/\sqrt{3}`$, $`\rho _22\rho ^1/3`$, $`\rho _3\left(\rho ^1/\sqrt{3}\rho ^2\right)/\sqrt{3}`$. In the dilute gas approximation, $`|\stackrel{}{\rho }|\zeta `$, the potential $`V[\stackrel{}{\rho }]`$ becomes quadratic, $`V[\stackrel{}{\rho }][1/(6\zeta )]d^4x\stackrel{}{\rho }^2`$. This yields for the generating functional $`𝒵`$ of correlators of $`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$’s an expression of the form (11) with the replacements $`j\stackrel{}{j}`$, $`\zeta 3\zeta /2`$, and $`mm_{SU(3)}`$.

The free part of the analogue of the Wilson loop is defined as follows \[cf. Eq. (5)\]:

$$W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })\frac{1}{3}\mathrm{tr}\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }\stackrel{}{h}_{\mu \nu }\frac{\stackrel{}{\lambda }}{2}\right)=\frac{1}{3}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(ig\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha \underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }\stackrel{}{h}_{\mu \nu }\right)=$$

$$=\frac{1}{3}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{ig\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha }{2}\underset{S}{}𝑑S_{\mu \nu \lambda }\stackrel{}{H}_{\mu \nu \lambda }\right).$$
(16)
In this equation, $`\stackrel{}{\lambda }=(\lambda ^3,\lambda ^8)`$ are the diagonal Gell-Mann matrices, and $`\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha `$’s stand for the weight vectors of the group $`SU(3)`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mu }_1=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2\sqrt{3}})`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mu }_2=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2\sqrt{3}})`$, $`\stackrel{}{\mu }_3=(0,\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}})`$. Averaging Eq. (16) over the free Kalb-Ramond field $`\stackrel{}{h}_{\mu \nu }`$ we arrive at Eq. (6) with the replacement $`g^2g^2/6`$.

Similarly to Eq. (7), by virtue of the last equality in Eq. (16) one can define the contribution of magnetic objects to the analogue of the Wilson loop:

$$W_m(\mathrm{\Sigma })\frac{1}{3}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{ig\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha }{2}\underset{S}{}𝑑S_{\mu \nu \lambda }\stackrel{}{H}_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m\right)_{\mathrm{gas}}=\frac{1}{3}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{3}{}}\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{2i}{\pi }\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha \stackrel{}{q}_{i_a}\eta (z_a)\right].$$

In the last equality, we have imposed the modified, $`SU(3)`$-one, Dirac quantization condition $`gg_m=2n/3`$, where $`n`$ is again some integer which we have set for simplicity equal to unity. Next, since for any $`\alpha `$ and $`i_a`$, the scalar product $`\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha \stackrel{}{q}_{i_a}`$ is equal either to $`0`$ or to $`\pm 1/2`$, $`W_m(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ for a closed hypersurface $`S`$ is equal to unity. This again proves that $`W_m(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ is independent of the choice of $`S`$ \[cf. the discussion after Eq. (8)\]. The $`SU(3)`$-version of the theory of confining membranes is then given by the following expression for $`W_m(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$:

$$W_m(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\frac{1}{3}\underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{3}{}}𝒵\left[\frac{2i\stackrel{}{\mu }_\alpha }{\pi }\eta \right].$$

Here, the average in $`𝒵`$’s is performed over the full action written in terms of $`\stackrel{}{\rho }`$’s, which was defined after Eq. (15). Similarly to the $`SU(2)`$-inspired case, we obtain in the dilute gas approximation the nonlocal membrane action from the analogue of the full Wilson loop, $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })=W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })W_\mathrm{m}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$. It reads

$$\mathrm{ln}W(\mathrm{\Sigma })=8\pi ^2\zeta \underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (x)\underset{S}{}𝑑S_\mu (y)D_{m_{SU(3)}}(xy)+$$

$$+\frac{g^2}{4}\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(x)\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(y)\left[3D_{m_{SU(3)}}(xy)\frac{7}{3}D_0(xy)\right].$$
(17)
Apparently, one can perform the same derivative expansion of the first term on the R.H.S. of Eq. (17) as the one performed in the $`SU(2)`$-inspired case, and the result for the leading terms of such an expansion has the form of the R.H.S. of Eq. (14). Notice also that as it should be, for small $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$’s, whose typical sizes do not exceed $`1/m_{SU(3)}`$, $`W(\mathrm{\Sigma })W_{\mathrm{free}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$.

## 3 Dimensional reduction in the theory which confines closed strings and point-like charges

As a concrete example of the theory with closed electric strings let us consider dual Abelian Higgs model 333Below we consider for simplicity the $`SU(2)`$-inspired theory of confining membranes., where those are nothing, but the dual Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen strings . This is also an example of the model which confines external point-like electric charges if there inserted any, just upon the formation of dual strings between those. Let us consider this model in the London limit, i.e. the limit of infinitely heavy dual Higgs field, which means that the strings have infinitely thin cores. In this limit, the action of the model reads

$$S_{\mathrm{DAHM}}=d^4x\left[\frac{1}{4}F_{\mu \nu }^2+\frac{\eta ^2}{2}(_\mu \theta 2\overline{g}_mB_\mu )^2\right].$$
(18)
Here, $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ is the field strength tensor of the dual vector potential $`B_\mu `$, $`\eta `$ is the v.e.v. of the dual Higgs field, and $`\overline{g}_m`$ is the dimensionless magnetic coupling constant. 444The doubled magnetic charge of the dual Higgs field in Eq. (18) is inspired by the analogy with the 3D (dual) Landau-Ginzburg superconductor. In the latter case, this is nothing but the charge of the (magnetic) Cooper pair. The phase of the dual Higgs field, $`\theta `$, can be decomposed into the sum of a single- and multivalued parts. The latter one is unambiguously related to the vorticity tensor current $`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{\mu \nu }(x)\underset{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{}𝑑\sigma _{\mu \nu }(x(\sigma ))\delta (xx(\sigma ))`$ of the closed dual strings. In this formula, the vector $`x_\mu (\sigma )`$, $`\sigma (\sigma ^1,\sigma ^2)`$, parametrizes the string world sheet $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The relation between the multivalued part of $`\theta `$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{\mu \nu }`$ can be expressed by means of the following equation obeyed by $`\theta `$:

$$(_\mu _\nu _\nu _\mu )\theta =\pi \epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{\lambda \rho }.$$
(19)
This correspondence enables one to derive the string representation (see e.g. Ref. ) of the dual Abelian Higgs model. Namely, one can transform the action (18) into the form

$$S_{\mathrm{DAHM}}=(\pi \eta )^2d^4xd^4y\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{\mu \nu }(x)D_{m_B}(xy)\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{\mu \nu }(y),$$
(20)
where $`m_B=2\overline{g}_m\eta `$ is the mass of the dual vector field, acquired by it due to the Higgs mechanism.

In the representation (20), dual strings are considered as individual ones, and to construct the partition function one should supply this action with a certain prescription of the summation over string world sheets. One concrete example of such a prescription stems from the known fact  that at low temperatures, closed dual strings with minimal opposite winding numbers couple to each other and form virtual bound states, the so-called vortex loops. Since these objects are virtual and therefore small-sized, they can naturally be treated in the dilute-gas approximation. Being rewritten in terms of dynamical densities $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }`$’s of these loops, the partition function of the dual Abelian Higgs model takes the following form :

$$𝒵_{\mathrm{DAHM}}=𝒟\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{exp}\left\{\left[(\pi \eta )^2d^4xd^4y\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }(x)D_{m_B}(xy)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }(y)+V\left[\mathrm{\Lambda }^2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }^2}\right]\right]\right\}.$$
(21)
In this formula, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\sqrt{L/a^3}`$ is an UV momentum cutoff, where $`a`$ and $`L`$ denote respectively typical sizes of vortex loops and characteristic distances between them in the gas. In the dilute gas approximation under study, $`aL`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }a^1`$. Next, in Eq. (21), the potential of vortex loops, $`V`$, is given by Eq. (10) with the replacement $`\zeta \overline{\zeta }`$. Here, $`\overline{\zeta }\mathrm{e}^{S_0}`$ denotes the fugacity of a single vortex loop, $`\left[\overline{\zeta }\right]=(\mathrm{mass})^4`$, where $`S_0`$ is the action of a single loop estimated in Ref. . In the dilute gas approximation under study, $`\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }^2}\overline{\zeta }/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$, the potential again becomes a quadratic functional: $`V\left[\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/(4\overline{\zeta })\right]d^4x\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }^2`$.

The bilocal correlator of densities of the vortex loops can then be calculated by the evaluation of the respective Gaussian integral \[cf. the generating functional (11)\] and in addition by taking explicitly into account the closeness of these objects with the use of the Hodge decomposition theorem (see the last Ref. of  for details). In what follows, we shall be interested in the limit when the v.e.v. of the dual Higgs field, $`\eta `$, is very large. In that limit, the action of the grand canonical ensemble of vortex loops standing in the exponent on the R.H.S. of Eq. (21) becomes local and takes the form: $`cd^4x\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }^2`$, where $`c\left(\pi ^2/\overline{g}_m^2+\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/\overline{\zeta }\right)/4`$555Note that the term $`(\pi /2\overline{g}_m)^2d^4x\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }^2`$ in this action, which does not depend on the particular properties of the ensemble of vortex loops, can be obtained directly from the initial action (18) by taking in it the limit $`\eta \mathrm{}`$. Indeed, one has:
$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\eta ^2}{2}d^4x\left(_\mu \theta 2\overline{g}_mB_\mu \right)^2\right]=$$

$$=𝒟\lambda _\mu \mathrm{exp}\left\{d^4x\left[\frac{1}{2\eta ^2}\lambda _\mu ^2+i\lambda _\mu \left(_\mu \theta 2\overline{g}_mB_\mu \right)\right]\right\}\stackrel{\eta \mathrm{}}{}\delta \left(_\mu \theta 2\overline{g}_mB_\mu \right).$$
Integrating further in the partition function over the $`B_\mu `$-field, one gets for the action (18) at $`\eta \mathrm{}`$: $`(4\overline{g}_m)^2d^4x\left[(_\mu _\nu _\nu _\mu )\theta \right]^2`$. By virtue of Eq. (19) this yields the announced result. The above-mentioned bilocal correlator of densities of the vortex loops corresponding to this action reads:

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }(x)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\lambda \rho }(0)=\frac{1}{4c}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }\epsilon _{\lambda \rho \gamma \beta }_\alpha _\gamma D_0(x).$$
(22)
Clearly, it respects the closeness of vortex loops, $`_\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }=0`$. The higher $`2n`$-point correlators of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }`$’s can be obtained from the bilocal one by means of the Wick’s theorem.

For our further purposes, we find it convenient to pass from the correlator (22) to the bilocal correlator of “hypersurfaces” “enclosed” by the density of vortex loops, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }(x)`$. The quotation marks here clearly mean that these “hypersurfaces” are some fields, $`S_\mu `$’s, corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mu \nu }`$’s according to the law \[cf. the remark after Eq. (26) below\]

$$\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\lambda \rho }_\mu S_\nu .$$
(23)
The bilocal correlator of such fields is then very simple and reads

$$S_\mu (x)S_\nu (0)=\frac{1}{4c}\delta _{\mu \nu }D_0(x).$$
(24)
Let us now consider the model, described by the sum of the actions (4) and (18) at $`\eta \mathrm{}`$, which confines both point-like electric charges and closed dual strings. The interaction of vortex loops with $`H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^m`$, described by Eq. (7), can be rewritten in terms of the field $`\phi `$ by virtue of the correspondence

$$H_{\mu \nu \lambda }^mi\epsilon _{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }_\rho \phi .$$
(25)
This yields for the partition function of such a model the following expression:

$$𝒵=𝒟\phi \mathrm{exp}\left[S_{\mathrm{SG}}\frac{g}{2\pi ^2}d^4x\phi ^2\eta \right].$$

Here, the average is performed over the grand canonical ensemble of vortex loops, and $`\eta (x)`$ is the “solid angle” of the vortex loop, i.e. the field related to $`S_\mu `$ by the equation

$$_\mu \eta =2\pi ^2S_\mu .$$
(26)
Note that the proof of Eq. (26) becomes straightforward by acting on both sides of this equation with the operator $`_\mu `$ and further by performing for a while the inverse Legendre transformation from the dynamical “hypersurfaces” $`S_\mu `$’s to the real ones, corresponding to the gas of vortex loops. The latter read $`S_\mu ^{\mathrm{gas}}(x)=\underset{a=1}{\overset{N}{}}n_a𝑑S_\mu (x_a(\xi ))\delta (xx_a(\xi ))`$, where $`n_a=\pm 1`$ denote the winding numbers of vortex loops. The desired proof then stems from the definition of the solid angle (8). Clearly, the correspondences (23) and (25) can be proved by means of the same inverse Legendre transformation.

Introducing further the notation $`g(2\pi ^2)^1^2\eta h`$ we get from Eqs. (24) and (26) the bilocal correlator of $`h`$’s: $`h(x)h(0)=A\delta (x)`$, where $`Ag^2/(4c)`$. Finally, rescaling the fields as $`\phi ^{\mathrm{new}}=\phi /\sqrt{A}`$, $`h^{\mathrm{new}}=h/\sqrt{A}`$, we arrive at the following expression for the partition function of our model (we skip further for brevity the superscription “new”):

$$𝒵=𝒟\phi \mathrm{exp}\left\{Ad^4x\left[\frac{1}{2}(_\mu \phi )^22\zeta A^1\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\pi \phi }{\sqrt{c}}\right)+h\phi \right]\right\}_{\frac{1}{2}{\scriptscriptstyle d^4xh^2}}.$$
(27)
One can now (as it further be argued, naively) see that owing to the coupling of the dual Kalb-Ramond field $`\phi `$ to the stochastic Gaussian field $`h`$ (analogous to the random external magnetic field in the case of Ising model), the model (27) undergoes the dimensional reduction to two dimensions. The proof of this statement is similar to that of Ref. . The only difference of the case under study from the one considered in Ref.  is that our potential of the field $`\phi `$ has the form

$$𝒱=2\zeta A^1\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\pi \phi }{\sqrt{c}}\right),$$
(28)
rather than that of the massive $`\phi ^4`$-theory. However, this difference is not crucial. Indeed, one can consider for instance the bilocal correlator of the mean field $`\phi _h`$, a solution to the classical equation of motion in the theory (27),

$$^2\phi _h𝒱^{}(\phi _h)=h,$$
(29)
which minimizes the action. It reads (see Ref.  for details):

$$\phi _h(x_1)\phi _h(x_2)_{\frac{1}{2}{\scriptscriptstyle d^4xh^2}}=𝒟\phi 𝒟\alpha 𝒟\overline{\psi }𝒟\psi \mathrm{exp}\left(d^4x\right)\phi (x_1)\phi (x_2).$$
(30)
Here,

$$=\overline{\psi }\left[^2+𝒱^{\prime \prime }(\phi )\right]\psi +\alpha \left[^2\phi +𝒱^{}(\phi )\right]\frac{1}{2}\alpha ^2$$
(31)
and $`\psi `$, $`\overline{\psi }`$ are the fermionic fields which represent the Jacobian $`det|\delta h/\delta \phi |`$. Note that the proof of Eqs. (30)-(31) is straightforward upon the introduction into the average on the L.H.S. of Eq. (30) of the following unity:

$$1=𝒟h\delta \left[h\left(^2\phi 𝒱^{}(\phi )\right)\right]=$$

$$=𝒟\phi 𝒟\overline{\psi }𝒟\psi \mathrm{exp}\left[d^4x\overline{\psi }\left(^2+𝒱^{\prime \prime }(\phi )\right)\psi \right]\delta \left[h\left(^2\phi 𝒱^{}(\phi )\right)\right].$$

Next, similarly to the case of the potential of the massive $`\phi ^4`$-theory, it is straightforward to prove that the Lagrangian (31) with the potential $`𝒱`$ of the general form

$$𝒱=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}c_n\phi ^{2n}$$
(32)
\[and thus, in particular, with our potential (28)\] is invariant under the following supersymmetry transformation:

$$\delta \phi =\epsilon _\mu x_\mu \psi ,\delta \alpha =2\epsilon _\mu _\mu \psi ,\delta \psi =0,\delta \overline{\psi }=\epsilon _\mu x_\mu \alpha +2\epsilon _\mu _\mu \phi ,$$
(33)
where $`\epsilon _\mu `$ stands for an infinitesimal anticommuting vector. Also, similarly to Ref. , one can introduce a superfield

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(x,\theta ,\overline{\theta })=\phi +\overline{\theta }\psi +\overline{\psi }\theta +\theta \overline{\theta }\alpha ,$$

where the integration over the anticommuting variables $`\theta `$ and $`\overline{\theta }`$ is defined as $`𝑑\overline{\theta }𝑑\theta \theta \overline{\theta }=1`$. Furthermore, one can introduce the superspace Laplacian $`D^2=^2+^2/(\overline{\theta }\theta )`$, where derivatives act on the left. With these definitions, it is possible to prove the following equality

$$d^4x=d^4x𝑑\overline{\theta }𝑑\theta \left[\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Phi }D^2\mathrm{\Phi }+𝒱(\mathrm{\Phi })\right],$$
(34)
valid for an arbitrary potential of the form (32). Such a proof becomes straightforward with the use of the known formula

$$\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{5}{}}a_i\right)^n=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k_1+\mathrm{}+k_5=n}{k_i0}}{}\frac{n!}{k_1!\mathrm{}k_5!}a_1^{k_1}\mathrm{}a_5^{k_5},$$

where $`a_i`$’s represent the terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }^2`$,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }^2=\phi ^2+2\overline{\theta }\psi \phi +2\overline{\psi }\theta \phi +2\theta \overline{\theta }\phi \alpha +2\theta \overline{\theta }\overline{\psi }\psi .$$

After that, one should only pick up the terms surviving the integration over $`\overline{\theta }`$, $`\theta `$.

Once the supersymmetric formulation of the action, Eq. (34), is found, further proof of the dimensional reduction is identical to that of Ref. . Indeed, the action (34) is manifestly invariant under rotations in superspace, which is alternatively expressed by the invariance of the Lagrangian (31)-(32) under the supersymmetry transformations (33). Such rotations leave the interval in superspace, $`\left(x^2+\theta \overline{\theta }\right)`$, invariant. The desired proof then completes by noting that for any supersymmetrically invariant function, $`f=f\left(x^2+\theta \overline{\theta }\right)`$, the following equality holds:

$$d^4x𝑑\overline{\theta }𝑑\theta f\left(x^2+\theta \overline{\theta }\right)=\pi d^2xf\left(x^2\right).$$

The considerations presented above can straightforwardly be translated to an arbitrary $`2n`$-point correlator of $`\phi _h`$’s. Thus, we conclude that all $`2n`$-point correlators of the field $`\phi _h`$ in the theory (27) are equal to the respective correlators of the field $`\phi `$ computed in the same theory without the stochastic field $`h`$ and in two dimensions lower. This means that our 4D model confining point-like charges and closed dual strings should be described by the 2D sine-Gordon theory of the scalar field. The latter one is known as an example of the completely integrable field theory (see e.g. Ref.  and references therein). In particular, at a certain critical temperature, the 2D Coulomb gas described by this theory undergoes the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition from the molecular to the plasma phase . Such a phase transition occurs when the mean squared separation between two objects forming a molecule becomes infinite. This corresponds to the divergency of the integral

$$r^2d^2x|x|^2\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{ln}(\mu |x|)}{2\pi T}\frac{\pi ^2}{c}\right]\stackrel{\mathrm{}}{}d|x||x|^{3\frac{\pi }{2cT}},$$

where $`\mu `$ denotes the IR cutoff. The respective critical temperature (which is clearly dimensionless, as it should be in 2D ), above which the integral diverges at the upper limit, reads

$$T_{\mathrm{cr}}=\frac{\pi }{8c}=\frac{\pi }{2}\left(\frac{\pi ^2}{\overline{g}_m}+\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{\overline{\zeta }}\right)^1.$$
(35)
Note that this temperature is clearly much smaller than unity, since the UV cutoff $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is large. (Another reason for the smallness of $`T_{\mathrm{cr}}`$ can occur if we consider the case when $`\overline{g}_m1`$. Such a situation apparently parallels the London limit of the dual Abelian Higgs model considered.)

However, there unfortunately exist indications that the above-discussed dimensional reduction to the full 2D sine-Gordon theory is rather naive. The point is that the above-presented considerations are strictly speaking valid only provided that there exists the unique solution to the saddle-point equation (29) minimizing the respective action . Otherwise, a constraint, which is necessary to be inserted into the functional integral in order to eliminate other solutions, leads to the violation of Eq. (30). For our action with the potential (28), the uniqueness of the saddle point can take place only under some approximation. Indeed, once such a solution is found, there apparently exists an infinite set of solutions following from that one upon the translations of it by $`2\sqrt{c}n`$, where $`n=\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}`$. Moreover, within half a period from a given solution there always exists another one. The above-mentioned approximation then would mean the restriction of the range where $`\phi `$ is defined, from the whole real axis to the one half of the period, $`(\sqrt{c}/2,\sqrt{c}/2)`$. Such a restriction which obviously eliminates the above-discussed extra saddle points is a good approximation, since $`c1`$ \[cf. the discussion after Eq. (35)\]. However, even this approximation does not guarantee us the uniqueness of the desired saddle-point solution, since even in such a range, the 4D sine-Gordon equation may have many solutions.

The only rigorous statement concerning dimensional reduction in our case can be done if we approximate the sine-Gordon theory by the free bosonic one, i.e. set

$$𝒱\frac{\pi ^2\zeta }{Ac}\phi ^2=\frac{4\pi ^2\zeta }{g^2}\phi ^2.$$

This approximation is valid when $`g`$ is large enough, i.e. in the strong coupling limit of the theory (2). Clearly, in such a case the saddle-point equation (29) has the unique solution. Therefore, no additional constraints should be inserted into the integral over the $`\phi `$-field, and the whole above discussion concerning dimensional reduction is valid. We thus conclude that the theory (2) in the strong coupling limit, being coupled to the ensemble of vortex loops, undergoes the dimensional reduction to the 2D free bosonic theory.

## 4 Conclusions

In the present paper, we have considered the 4D model, which confines closed electric strings. This model is a natural generalization of 3D compact QED to a certain 4D theory. Such a theory describes the free Kalb-Ramond field and a Coulomb gas of point-like magnetically charged objects with a finite action. We have defined in that theory an analogue of the Wilson loop and constructed for it the respective generalization of confining strings to confining membranes. From the so-obtained theory of confining membranes we have in particular deduced confinement of closed electric strings, which is expressed in terms of the volume law for the analogue of the Wilson loop. We have also presented the generalization of this analysis to the $`SU(3)`$-inspired case.

Next, we have considered one concrete example of the theory possessing closed electric strings, namely the dual Abelian Higgs model in the London limit. We have explored the combined theory, which confines both electric strings (due to the medium of point-like magnetic objects) and electric charges (due to the condensation of the dual Higgs field) in the limit when the v.e.v. of the dual Higgs field is infinitely large. In that case, the electric vortex loops of the dual Abelian Higgs model play for the dual Kalb-Ramond field the same rôle as the random external Gaussian magnetic field plays for the mean field in the Ising model. Owing to this fact, the system naively undergoes the dimensional reduction and becomes described by the 2D sine-Gordon theory. The latter one is known to be a completely integrable field theory, and many of its properties, such as the semiclassical spectrum, are known exactly. Besides that, this theory describes a 2D Coulomb gas, which at a certain critical temperature passes through the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition from the molecular to the plasma phase. The critical temperature of this transition is expressed in terms of the parameters of the dual Abelian Higgs model and turns out to be much smaller than unity. However, it is finally argued that the dimensional reduction is strictly speaking valid only in the case when the original theory of point-like magnetic objects is considered in the strong coupling limit. In that limit, the dimensional reduction transforms the above-mentioned combined theory to a simple 2D free bosonic one.

## Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Prof. A. Di Giacomo for many useful discussions and cordial hospitality, and to Prof. P. Menotti for a valuable discussion. He is also greatful to the whole staff of the Quantum Field Theory Division of the University of Pisa for kind hospitality and to INFN for the financial support.


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# Oscillating Fracture in Rubber

## Abstract

We have found an oscillating instability of fast-running cracks in thin rubber sheets. A well-defined transition from straight to oscillating cracks occurs as the amount of biaxial strain increases. Measurements of the amplitude and wavelength of the oscillation near the onset of this instability indicate that the instability is a Hopf bifurcation.

When a balloon is pierced, a crack races around the circumference of the balloon, slicing the material into fragments. Surprisingly, instead of running straight the crack wiggles, leaving a wavy pattern on the fractured edges of the fragments. This effect has likely been observed many times, but we found only one documented case . We have constructed an experiment to study this phenomenon.

Elastomers fill an important technological need, and understanding their properties is of commensurate importance. Aside from practical concerns, the oscillations of cracks in rubber may shed light on the broader issue of crack path selection. The field of dynamic fracture was spawned by theoretical attempts to understand the onset of crack branching in brittle materials , an instability marked by the bifurcation of a straight-running crack. Despite the great advances in the understanding of dynamic fracture since then , the crack path selection problem remains unsolved. The oscillation of cracks in rubber may provide a new avenue to address this issue, as this is the first case we know where a rapidly moving crack spontaneously chooses a wavy path in a homogeneous setting.

There is a vast literature on the fracture of elastomers dating back a half century . The applicability of the principles of fracture mechanics to elastomers has been established , the time-dependent characteristics of elastomer fracture have been examined , and crack speeds under varying degrees of biaxial strain have been investigated . None of these studies, however, has explored the transition from a straight to a wavy crack path. Our aim here is to characterize this instability.

Inflating a balloon introduces biaxial strain into the material and a pressure drop across the surface. The pressure difference plays no role so it is sufficient to experiment with flat sheets in biaxial tension. Our apparatus, inspired by a similar technique developed by Treloar , is shown Fig. 1. Most of our rubber samples were taken from a single roll of 0.18 mm thick natural latex sheet. Tabs were prepared on 32.5 cm $`\times `$ 12.7 cm sheets by cutting 1.2 cm long slots, perpendicular to the edge, 2.5 cm apart (Fig. 1(a)). The tips of these incisions were rounded by melting them with a soldering iron to prevent cracks from initiating at these points during loading of the sample.

The experiment proceeds by gripping the tabs and incrementally increasing the load simultaneously in both $`x`$\- and $`y`$-directions, until the desired strain level is reached. The applied strain is on the order of 200%, uniform within 5%, and always chosen so that the strain in the $`y`$-direction, $`ϵ_y`$, is greater than the strain in the $`x`$-direction, $`ϵ_x`$. Strain is measured from the dilation of the grid; deviations from uniform strain are identified from the distortion of the grid and minimized by individually adjusting each clamp. Once the desired strain level is attained, the rubber sheet is sandwiched between a pair of 10 cm $`\times `$ 66 cm rectangular steel frames (Fig. 1(b)). The loading is then maintained entirely by the frames.

Each run is initiated by pricking the sheet with a pin at the point marked $`\times `$ in Fig. 1(b). The crack tip that forms is sharp and wedge-shaped, as shown in Fig. 2. The crack travels down the centerline, the midpoint between upper and lower edge of the frame. Depending on the initial strain conditions, the crack runs straight or oscillates about the centerline. The inner frame makes steady states possible because the energy stored per unit length inside the framed sample is constant ahead of the crack and also constant in its wake. So as the crack tip advances it consumes a fixed amount of energy per unit length of advancement. Indeed, we observe that after an initial transient period, an oscillating crack propagates with a wavelength and amplitude that are constant to within $`10\%`$.

Examples of the paths of a straight and a wavy crack are shown in Fig. 3. These curves were obtained by scanning the cracked sheet with a flatbed scanner and applying an edge-finding algorithm to the resulting image. Transients typically dominate the first $`15\%`$ of the crack length. During this transient regime a wavy crack’s oscillations grow to saturation and a straight crack recovers from any off-centerline starts, as shown in the inset of Fig. 3(a).

Rubber sheets with many different initial strain states were fractured, and the crack path was found to undergo a transition from straight to wavy with increasing biaxial strain. Since the applied forces are purely tensile, the strain state is fully described by $`ϵ_x`$ and $`ϵ_y`$. The results of these runs are shown in the phase diagram in Fig. 4. The control parameter range was limited by experimental difficulties found at the highest and the lowest values of $`ϵ_y`$. For $`ϵ_y>2.6`$ it became impossible to complete a run because cracks would spontaneously form at the high stress point between the tabs. For $`ϵ_y<1.4`$ it became impossible to distinguish between straight and wavy cracks because the wavelength became comparable to the length of the sample, as indicated by the trend in the inset of Fig. 4. Ambiguous points $``$ appear in Fig. 4(a) at high values of $`ϵ_y`$ because different runs with the same initial conditions produced both straight and wavy cracks; ambiguous points at low values of $`ϵ_y`$ result from the difficulty in discriminating between straight and wavy cracks.

We measured the average wavelength $`\lambda `$ and the average amplitude $`A`$ of the wavy edge while holding $`ϵ_y=2.4`$ fixed and varying $`ϵ_x`$ from 1.2 to 2.0. From the digitized curves we extracted the wavelength as the peak-to-peak distance in the $`x`$-direction and the amplitude as half the peak-to-valley distance in the $`y`$-direction, and averaged these quantities over multiple runs with identical initial conditions. These data are plotted in Fig. 5.

The amplitude grows as the square root of the control parameter with a critical value of $`x`$-strain, $`ϵ_x=1.36`$. Furthermore, if we assume that the crack travels with a constant velocity $`v_c`$ in the $`x`$-direction, then the wavelength is equal to $`2\pi v_c/\omega `$, where $`\omega `$ is the frequency at which the crack tip oscillates in the $`y`$-direction. Since at onset of the instability the wavelength is nonzero, the frequency at onset is nonzero. Hence, we conclude that the instability is a Hopf bifurcation.

The waveform of the crack path is nearly sinusoidal over a wide range of amplitudes (0.03 cm to 0.39 cm) and wavelengths (0.56 cm to 5.0 cm). Fig. 6 illustrates this point with two waveforms taken from the runs used to construct Fig. 5. These curves correspond to the first data point after the transition and the last data point in Fig. 5. The waveform near the transition is almost a perfect sinusoid, consistent with the transition being a Hopf bifurcation. The waveform far from the transition shows sizeable deviations from a sinusoid and it is skewed in the direction of propagation.

In addition to our quantitative results, we explored the possibility that the oscillation arises from out-of-plane vibrations, strain crystallization, and interaction of the crack tip with waves reflected from the boundary. In one experiment we reduced out-of-plane motion by sandwiching the rubber sheet snugly between two glass plates after the sheet was stretched to the loaded state. In another experiment we loaded the sheet as usual and then forced a cylindrical surface into the sheet so that the sheet was everywhere pressed into contact with the surface; thus the only out-of-plane motion possible is away from the surface. Neither experiment stopped the crack from oscillating; hence out-of-plane motion is not the source of crack oscillations.

We also considered the effect of the known propensity of polymer chains in latex rubber to align when strained predominately in one direction . Measurements of the elastic response of our rubber samples indicate that the initial strains in our experiments were well below the threshold at which strain crystallization and finite chain length effects are significant . Furthermore, by increasing the strain in both the $`x`$\- and $`y`$-direction simultaneously so that the strain is never much larger in one direction than the other, we avoided the conditions leading to strain crystallization. We further considered the possibility that the high stress around the crack tip could locally crystallize the material as the tip passed through. However, the kinetics of the process is too slow. Assume that stresses are sufficiently large to crystallize the rubber out to some radius $`R`$ from the crack tip. This region is traveling with a velocity $`v_c`$ and so the maximum time available for crystallization to occur is $`R/v_c`$. The value of $`R`$ must be less than the half-width of the frame, 5 cm, and the lowest crack velocity we measured was 40 m/s. This places an upper bound of 1.3 ms on time available for the rubber to crystallize. Comparing this result with the measured nucleation time of 60 ms for rubber at high strains , we find that there is insufficient time for the material around the crack tip to crystallize. A similar conclusion was reached by Lake and coworkers after finding similar crack growth rates for both a crystallizing and non-crystallizing natural rubber during high-speed fracture .

In brittle materials, waves originating from the crack tip and reflecting from the boundaries are known to produce periodic markings such as those identified as Wallner lines . If such a mechanism were active in rubber, one would expect an oscillatory wavelength $`\lambda =(2hv_c/c)/\sqrt{1v_c^2/c^2}`$ where $`h`$ is the distance to the boundary. Given that the vertical boundary is 5 cm from the crack and that our measurements show $`v_c/c<0.5`$, it follows that $`\lambda >5.7`$ cm. Yet, the smallest wavelength observed was 0.85 cm (in the strained state). Thus waves reflecting from the boundary cannot account for the oscillations of the crack.

In conclusion, we have found a well-defined instability in the propagation direction of a crack in rubber sheets with biaxial strain. This is an unexpected result given the homogenous elastic field in which the crack propagates. We have shown that this instability can be characterized as a Hopf bifurcation. We have ruled out strain crystallization, out-of-plane motion and wave reflections from the boundary as possible mechanisms for the oscillation.

We are grateful to Stefan Luding for introducing us to this phenomenon. We thank Eric Gerde, Matt Lane, W.D. McCormick, L. Mahadevan, and Eran Sharon for discussions and suggestions, the National Science Foundation for support under DMR-9802562, and the Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin for an exploratory grant.


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# FLAIR-II spectroscopy of two DENIS J-band galaxy samples

## 1 Introduction

The recent advances in detector technology in the near-infrared (hereafter NIR) domain have brought much enthusiasm to the field of large-scale structure of the Universe. Indeed, NIR light has the strong advantage of being much less affected by extinction from dust grains, than is optical light, and as such, near-infrared galaxy images show spiral galaxies in a much simpler light, traced by their old stellar populations, with little dust obscuration in spiral arms and in the galaxy centres (Zaritsky, Rix & Rieke 1993; Héraudeau, Simien & Mamon 1996). Moreover, NIR emission is less affected by recent bursts of star formation within a galaxy, that can result in relatively small numbers of new hot OB stars contributing a substantial fraction of the optical light of the entire galaxy. Finally, the transparency of dust grains to NIR photons means that our own Galaxy will not obscure the view of external galaxies imaged in the NIR. However, within a few degrees from the Galactic Plane, confusion from stars sets in and prevents reliable star/galaxy separation (e.g. Jarrett et al. 2000b).

For these reasons, tracing the distribution of mass in the Universe with galaxies becomes much more meaningful if the galaxies are selected in the NIR domain. Two very large NIR digital imaging surveys, DENIS (e.g. Epchtein et al. 1999) and 2MASS (e.g. Jarrett et al. 2000a), are producing galaxy catalogues that are essential for such cosmological studies in two dimensions. Moreover, there is much science to be gained by using redshifts to give a third dimension. With this in mind, we have approval to use the soon to be commissioned 6dF robotic multi-fibre spectroscope (Parker, Watson & Miziarski 1998; Watson et al. 2000) on the UKST to undertake the massive 6dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (hereafter 6dFGRS, e.g. Mamon 1998, 1999; see also http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~colless/6dF) of roughly $`\mathrm{120\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ galaxies selected from 2MASS and DENIS. This large survey is scheduled to begin in the southern autumn of 2001.

In a pilot study of 6dFGRS, we tested the feasibility of measuring redshifts with optical spectroscopy of NIR-selected galaxy samples. For this, we observed two Schmidt-plate sized fields of galaxies, selected in the $`J`$ (1.25$`\mu `$m) band with early DENIS observations. The spectroscopy was performed at the UKST with the FLAIR II multi-fibre instrument (e.g. Parker & Watson 1995), which has now been decommissioned pending the introduction of the automated 6dF. The results of this pilot study are reported in the present paper.

## 2 Sample selection

Galaxies were selected from preliminary DENIS extractions performed during February 1998, with a galaxy pipeline, based upon SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996) and a simple preliminary star/galaxy separation algorithm based upon a threshold of the ratio of peak intensity to isophotal area ($`I/A`$), which, to first order, does not depend on magnitude (Mamon et al. 1998). This star/galaxy separation is performed in the DENIS-$`I`$ band, which is much more sensitive and has better spatial resolution than the DENIS-$`J`$ or $`K`$ bands. The target galaxy samples were taken from the contiguous DENIS strips that overlap regions of UKST standard survey fields F787 (12h00, $`5^{}`$) at high galactic latitude ($`b=55^{}`$), and F20 (12h00, $`80^{}`$) at low galactic latitude ($`b=17^{}`$).

All objects in DENIS *strips* of 180 consecutive images at constant RA crossing these fields, with $`J13.9`$, and below *or slightly above* the star/galaxy separation ($`I/A`$) threshold (which depends on the DENIS strip) were selected. The $`J`$ photometry is based upon the Kron (1980) estimator of the total flux of galaxies. The internal photometric errors, based upon multiple observations of single objects, are $`\mathrm{\Delta }J0.10`$ at $`J=13.7`$ (Mamon et al. 1998). We made use of an early photometric calibration that is estimated to be accurate to better than $`0.2\mathrm{mag}`$.

Note that our samples do not provide full coverage of the two UKST fields, as only a fraction of DENIS strips (11 out of 30 for field F787 and 5 out of 27 for field F20) had been observed at the time of the observations. We ended up with 87 candidate objects in field F787, of which 84 were below the star/galaxy separation threshold. Field F20 turned out to be heavily obscured by the Chameleon cloud, and only 33 objects were extracted, all above the star/galaxy separation threshold (i.e. as galaxies according to DENIS).

We did not target objects that were obvious stars, as well as objects that lied close to others, because of constraints on the minimum fibre separation, leaving us with 78 targeted objects in field F787 and 32 objects in field F20.

For all objects, $`B`$ magnitudes were extracted from the ROE/NRL UKST COSMOS Catalog (hereafter COSMOS). 111See http://xip.nrl.navy.mil/www\_rsearch/RS\_form.html The cross-identification was performed with a $`6^{\prime \prime }`$ search radius for galaxies in astrometrically calibrated DENIS strips (strip number greater than 5000), and with a $`30^{\prime \prime }`$ search radius otherwise. In nearly all cases, the DENIS and COSMOS astrometries matched to within $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ (even among the non-calibrated DENIS images). All cases with no matches within $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ were inspected visually on DENIS and Digitized Sky Survey (hereafter, DSS) images. In field F787, 6 objects had astrometric matches within $`5^{\prime \prime }`$ to $`12^{\prime \prime }`$. In field F20, one object with no astrometric match turned out to be a false DENIS detection, caused by a nearby very bright and saturated star. 3 objects had COSMOS counterparts within $`5^{\prime \prime }`$ to $`10^{\prime \prime }`$ and one object had its COSMOS counterpart at $`69^{\prime \prime }`$. Comparison with the DSS showed that the astrometric offsets were caused by the lack of calibration of many of the DENIS images. In particular, the mismatch of $`69^{\prime \prime }`$ was caused by the poor telescope pointing caused by a large camera flexure at the end of a polar DENIS strip, with the telescope operating at large zenith angle.

## 3 Observations and data reduction

The spectroscopic observations were performed with the FLAIR II 92-fibre spectrograph at the UKST Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring. The telescope has $`1.24\mathrm{m}`$ diameter aperture, and uses $`6.^{\prime \prime }7`$ fibres. We made use of the low spectral resolution 250B grating, with a spectral resolution of $`6.14\mathrm{\AA }/\mathrm{pixel}`$, observing in the spectral range $`4180\mathrm{\AA }7726\mathrm{\AA }`$. The spectrograph is described in detail in Parker & Watson (1995).

The fibres of the plate-holders were configured, off telescope, during day-time, with about 11 fibres reserved for sky-background measures to facilitate sky-subtraction.

Out of the seven allocated nights, we were only able to observe two fields with the FLAIR II spectrograph because of intermittent cloud cover. The details of the observations are given in Table 1. For field F787, we measured the radial velocities on data taken in a batch of $`4200\mathrm{s}`$ and in a longer batch of $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}400}\mathrm{s}`$ including the previous one222Visual inspection of the spectra suggests that the two batches have signal-to-noise ratios proportional to the square root of their respective exposure times, to within 10–20%., while for field F20, we only attempted redshift measurements on a long batch of $`\mathrm{44\hspace{0.17em}200}\mathrm{s}`$. Sky-subtracted, spectrally calibrated spectra were obtained by reducing the data as in Ratcliffe et al. (1998), using the dofibers package in IRAF (Tody 1993). In particular, dome and twilight flats were used. Spectral calibration was performed with HgCd arcs. Glitches were removed. After some experimentation, we combined different exposures by scaling to their exposure times.

The redshifts were obtained as follows. For absorption-featured spectra, redshifts were obtained using the cross-correlation task XCSAO in the RVSAO package (Kurtz & Mink 1998) within IRAF, using a series of template spectra from stars, absorption-line and emission-line galaxies. We decided to adopt as the absorption velocity the one associated with the minimum error from the cross-correlation against the templates. In the great majority of cases, this coincided also with the maximum $`R`$ parameter of Tonry & Davis (1979). The redshifts for the emission line objects were determined using the EMSAO task in RVSAO. EMSAO finds emission lines automatically, computes redshifts for each identified line and combines them into a single radial velocity with error. Spectra showing both absorption and emission features were generally measured with the two tasks XCSAO and EMSAO and the result with the lower error used.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Redshifts

We measured velocities successfully for 70 objects in field F787 and 13 objects in field F20. One object in field F787 at $`v=500\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ looks like an M star from apparent TiO absorption bands, and one object in field F20 was also a star ($`v=6\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). The results for the 81 spectroscopically confirmed galaxies are presented in Tables 2 and 3 for fields F787 and F20, respectively.

For the 20 galaxies of field F787 that have spectroscopic redshifts available in the NED database, we have

$$v_{\mathrm{FLAIR}}=v_{\mathrm{NED}}49\pm 74\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1.$$

Unsurprisingly, there are no redshifts in the low galactic latitude field F20 present in the NED database.

### 4.2 Reliability of the preliminary DENIS galaxy pipeline

Among the 87 objects extracted by DENIS in field F787, all but two appeared as galaxies upon visual inspection of the UKST photographic plate, while two appeared star-like. These two stellar objects were classified as stars by DENIS. Note that the third object classified as a star by DENIS turned out to be a galaxy upon visual inspection of the UKST plate. Hence, from visual inspection, the DENIS galaxy extraction was 100% reliable, but incomplete. Among the 85 visually classified galaxies, 78 were targeted with FLAIR. The resultant spectra produced 69 galaxy redshifts, one stellar spectrum and 8 spectra for which no redshift could be determined. In particular, all three galaxies that DENIS found to be very close to the star/galaxy separation threshold were targeted and spectroscopically confirmed as galaxies.

In any event, the reliability of the DENIS galaxy extraction for the high latitude field F787 is between $`69/78=88\%`$ and $`68/69=99\%`$, with a preference for the higher value, given the visual classifications.

In comparison, 4 of the 84 DENIS candidate galaxies of field F787, as well as the galaxy (from visual inspection) that was classified as stellar by DENIS were associated with stars according to COSMOS. Each of these 5 COSMOS “stars” appeared like galaxies upon visual inspection of the photographic plate, and subsequent checks with DENIS and DSS images. 3 of these 5 COSMOS “stars” were spectroscopically confirmed as galaxies (objects F787–21, F787–33, F787–60), while one did not produce a redshift and one was not targeted. All 5 of these COSMOS “stars” visually identified as galaxies had very bright COSMOS magnitudes ($`b_J<15`$), given their $`J`$ magnitudes, i.e. appeared very blue. Systematic flux overestimates and stellar classifications of bright galaxies by the ROE/NRL UKST COSMOS Catalog have been already noted in a systematic comparison with DENIS (Mamon 2000).

Among the 33 objects extracted by DENIS in the low galactic latitude field F20, inspection of the UKST photographic plate indicated that 2 were stars,333The current DENIS pipeline would reject these objects for being too close to one of the edges of their image. one was too faint to classify, and one had no counterpart (see end of Sec. 2). Finally one object had poor astrometry (see end of Sec. 2) and turned out to be the same galaxy as another. This yields a visually estimated reliability of $`28/31=90\%`$. All but one of the 30 objects that did not appear as stars nor the ghost were targeted with FLAIR II. Among the 29 spectra, 12 were spectroscopically classified as galaxies, 1 as a star, and 17 produced no redshift. Thus, the reliability of the DENIS galaxy extraction for the low latitude field F20 is between $`12/29=41\%`$ and $`12/13=92\%`$, again with a preference for the higher value, based upon visual classification.

In comparison, COSMOS classified as stars 3 of the 33 galaxies, among which the two visually classified stars that were not targeted with FLAIR II. The remaining COSMOS “star” produced no redshift.

Note that the two objects with stellar spectra (one in field F787 and one in field F20) were both classified as galaxies by DENIS, COSMOS and appeared as galaxies by visual inspection of the UKST plate and the DENIS image, and we suspect that the stellar spectra were caused by incorrect fibre configurations.

### 4.3 Efficiency of FLAIR II

For field F787, among the nominal 92 FLAIR II fibres, 11 were targeted on the sky, while 3 were broken, leaving a total of 78 object fibres. For our long batch of $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{s}`$ of FLAIR II observations, we successfully measured 70 redshifts out of 78 candidates, among which 69 were galaxies. Among the 8 failures, we suspect that one or two fibres were improperly configured.

Table 4 summarises the numbers and fractions of successful redshift measurements for $`4000\mathrm{s}`$ and $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{s}`$ exposures in the high latitude F787 field. At the limiting magnitude of our survey ($`J13.9`$), we obtained redshifts for 2/3 of our galaxy sample for $`4\mathrm{ks}`$ exposures and for 90% of our sample for $`17\mathrm{ks}`$ exposures.

Figure 1 illustrates the success and failure of redshift measurements in field F787, using $`4000\mathrm{s}`$ and $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{s}`$ exposures. The galaxies close to the $`J`$-band limiting magnitude are much redder than average, but still allow for redshift measurements. In fact, we successfully obtained galaxy redshifts in the $`17.5<b_J<18`$ magnitude interval, usually not studied with FLAIR II. The failures for $`17\mathrm{ks}`$ exposures are not concentrated in the high $`b_J`$ region. This can be caused by either poor $`b_J`$ photometry, as strongly suggested by the failure (cross at \[13.7,14.2\] in Fig. 1) for a galaxy that is bright in $`b_J`$ but faint in $`J`$.

Figure 2 provides another look at the success rate of redshift determinations, by plotting the maximum continuum versus the $`J`$ magnitude.

The redshift failures are restricted to low continua except for a few galaxies that are faint in $`J`$ (and in $`B`$) with moderate continua.

The large fraction of redshift failures may reflect the strong non-uniformity in the fibre transmissions seen during this run. Indeed, as illustrated in Figure 3, our dome flats indicated fibre transmissions that differed by factors of close to 4 in the worse cases. Among the 8 cases of redshift failure for the $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{s}`$ exposures, 7 were with fibres that had transmissions less half of the best fibre, and the transmission of the remaining one was lower than 60% of that of the best one. Similarly, for our 18 additional failures for exposures as short as $`4000\mathrm{s}`$ all involved fibres whose transmission was less than 65% of that of the best fibre. In other words, all fibres with transmissions above 65% of the nominal (best) value produced 100% redshift success in field F787.

Figure 4 shows the absolute magnitudes in $`B`$ and $`J`$ versus radial velocity. The figure highlights two galaxies with overestimated fluxes in the $`B`$ band, the more luminous one representing, at face value, a $`40L_{}`$ galaxy, classified as a star in the COSMOS, thus confirming the misclassifications and flux overestimation of bright galaxies in the ROE/NRL UKST COSMOS Catalog (see Sec. 4.2 above).444The spectrum of this object, F787–33, was of good quality, as attested by its large $`R`$ and small $`\delta v`$ in Table 2.

The rate of overall successful redshift measurement obtained for field F787 from a $`2\times 2000\mathrm{s}`$ combined integration was a modest 70% to $`b_J<17.5`$ increasing to 90% with a combined field dwell time of $`\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{s}`$.

This compares with up to 95% redshift success reported in the FLAIR manual (Parker 1995; Parker & Watson 1995) for a COSMOS $`B`$ selected sample to $`b_J<17.5`$ in $`2000\mathrm{s}`$, admittedly obtained immediately after the system had been overhauled and cleaned. The $`4000\mathrm{s}`$ integration times are about what is envisaged for the 6dFGRS to achieve the expected survey productivity and completeness. Note that the NIR selection did not degrade the rate of redshift success. Indeed, Table 4 indicates a rate of success at $`J13.813.9`$ similar to that of the comparable depth $`b_J17.5`$ (the median $`b_JJ`$ for our high latitude F787 sample with $`J13.9`$ is 3.51).

The efficiency of redshift measurements was much worse for the galaxies in the low galactic latitude F20 field. For field F20, among 33 candidate galaxies, only 30 were fibred, while two objects were bright stars (as seen from inspection of the UKST plate) and one had a detached fibre. Among the 30 spectra, 13 yielded redshifts, one of which turned out to be a star. As shown in Table 5, at all limiting magnitudes, less than half of the targets yielded galaxy redshifts for observations as long as $`44\mathrm{ks}`$. This low efficiency is partly due to the increased extinction in the field. Indeed, the median $`b_JJ`$ is 4.22 for the 29 candidate galaxies, in comparison with a median of 3.51 for the 69 galaxies targeted in field F787, suggesting $`E(b_JJ)=0.7`$, which translates into $`A_V0.75`$.

Figure 5 illustrates the efficiency of FLAIR II for the F20 field. The figure indicates that most (but not all) failures of redshift measurements are among red, optically faint ($`b_J>17.5`$) galaxies that suffer from high extinction. All the counterexamples (except one at $`b_J=17.5`$) have transmissions lower than 55% of the maximum of the fibres of field F787, so that redshift failures in field F20 appear to be a combination of extinction and poor fibre transmission.

The lower than expected performance of FLAIR II overall can be partially explained by the generally poor seeing and intermittent cloud during the observation nights adversely affecting the signal-to-noise ratio. However, Figure 3 strongly suggests that the main culprit was a general decrease in the fibre responses. The patchy degradation of the overall fibre transmissions and the observed wide range in fibre-fibre transmission variations compared to what has been previously reported for FLAIR II is a known effect associated with the gradual degradation in the transmission of the optical cement used to bond prism to fibre caused by the continual high UV illumination of the fibre-cement-prism interface when gluing the fibres in position over the target objects (Lee, 1995, AAO internal report). These data were taken at the end of the refurbishment cycle and shortly after these data were taken, FLAIR II was converted to an intermediate magnetic button system as a preliminary test-bed for 6dF and all ferrules had their prism-cement-fibre interfaces cleaned and re-done. Significantly improved fibre-fibre transmission consistency was obtained together with a recovery in overall fibre transmission. These improvements bode well for 6dF. Nevertheless, high extinction low galactic latitude fields will require considerably longer exposure times, and the factor of $`\mathrm{44\hspace{0.17em}200}/\mathrm{17\hspace{0.17em}400}=2.5`$ is clearly insufficient.

### 4.4 Emission-line galaxies

An interesting aspect of near-IR selected galaxy samples is that they are not biased to star forming emission line galaxies (hereafter, ELGs). It is therefore interesting to know what fraction of a near-IR selected sample is composed of ELGs.

Figure 1 shows that the ELGs in the high galactic latitude F787 field, represented with vertical bars, are more frequent in brighter galaxies in the $`b_J`$ band, but more spread out in $`J`$ magnitude. The different trend between optical and NIR bands simply reflects the blue colours of emission-line galaxies. This is illustrated in Figure 6, which shows that ELGs are roughly 0.5 magnitude bluer than galaxies that with no emission lines (hereafter, NELGs) of the same absolute magnitude.

Table 6 shows the resulting fractions of ELGs in various $`J`$-magnitude limited subsamples of field F787. For our largest complete magnitude-limited sample at $`J13.9`$, we have $`37\pm 6\%`$ of emission-line spectra among our galaxies with measured redshifts. This fraction can be compared to the 30% of emission-line spectra in a spectroscopic followup of 2MASS galaxies, selected at $`K12.2`$ (Huchra, private communication). In comparison, over 60% of galaxies selected from two optical samples of comparable depth (the $`b_J<17.0`$ Durham-UKST and the $`b_J<17.5`$ Stromlo-APM galaxy catalogues) display H$`\alpha `$ in emission (Ratcliffe et al. 1998; Tresse et al. 1999).

In the low galactic latitude F20 field, one may expect that selection effects caused by extinction would lead to a different fraction of ELGs. However, the fraction of ELGs in field F20 is $`42\pm 14\%`$, consistent with that in the high galactic latitude field F787.

Figure 4 shows how the ELGs are distributed in absolute magnitude and redshift for field F787. There is a clear trend towards a larger fraction of ELGs for less luminous galaxies. This is quantified in Table 7.

Figure 7 shows the distribution of absolute $`J`$ magnitudes in field F787. A Wilcoxon rank-sum test indicates over 97% probability that the $`J`$-band luminosities of ELGs are, on average, lower than those of NELGs.

A qualitatively similar trend of increasing fraction of ELGs with decreasing luminosity has been reported by Tresse et al. (1999) for the optically selected Stromlo-APM sample. Compared to the optical, one expects a stronger trend of ELG fraction versus absolute magnitude in the near-infrared, because ELGs are intrinsically blue (see Fig. 6).

### 4.5 Luminosity function

We have attempted to evaluate the $`J`$-band galaxy luminosity function for the 63 galaxies with $`J13.9`$ of the high galactic latitude field F787, using the simplest methods given in Willmer (1997). Because of the small number of galaxies, we restrain ourselves to the STY (Sandage, Tammann & Yahil 1979) parametric, maximum likelihood estimator, assuming a Schechter (1976) luminosity function $`\varphi (L)=\varphi _{}/L_{}(L/L_{})^\alpha \mathrm{exp}(L/L_{})`$.

Neglecting magnitude and redshift errors, as well as galactic extinction and the $`k`$ terms (indeed, $`|k_J|0.1`$ for $`z0.2`$ as in our sample, see Poggianti 1997; Mannucci et al. 2001) and assuming $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ (for the luminosity distances required to convert apparent to absolute magnitudes), we derive reasonable maximum likelihood parameters:

$$\alpha =1.1\pm 0.4M_J^{}=22.6\pm 0.5+5\mathrm{log}h,$$
(1)
where the errors are 68% confidence constant likelihood contours equal to the maximum likelihood value offset by the usual $`0.5f_{\chi ^2}(2)`$.555C. Willmer kindly checked for us our luminosity function, and furthermore ran Monte-Carlo simulations of magnitude-limited galaxy distributions with 63 members, derived from a parent Schechter luminosity function to check that the uncertainty in the STY estimate of the parameters was of the order of the error bars quoted in equation (1).

We evaluated the normalisation of the luminosity function using the relation (e.g. Willmer 1997, sec. 3) $`\varphi _{}=\overline{n}/_{M_{\mathrm{bright}}}^{M_{\mathrm{faint}}}\varphi (M)𝑑M`$, where $`\overline{n}`$ is the number density of galaxies (corrected for the selection function, see Willmer 1997, eq. ), evaluated in 10 velocity bins out to $`\mathrm{35\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (beyond which our data is too sparse). We obtain

$$\varphi _{}=0.010_{0.0035}^{+0.0052}h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3,$$
(2)
where the uncertainty is estimated from the uncertainty of $`\overline{n}`$ (thus neglecting the uncertainties in $`\alpha `$ and $`M_J^{}`$).

Our luminosity function parameters (eqs.  and ) match well those of Cole et al. (2001), and our slope $`\alpha `$ and normalisation $`\varphi _{}`$ also match very well that of the optical Stromlo-APM survey (Loveday et al. 1992).

### 4.6 Large-scale structure

Figure 8 shows the resulting wedge diagrams for field F787. Note that these wedges are incomplete, as only 11 out of 35 possible DENIS strips covered the UKST F787 field. One notices galaxy concentrations at radial velocities near 20 000 and $`\mathrm{38\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, the first of which includes a galaxy that lies within $`42^{\prime \prime }`$ of the Abell 1434 cluster, whose redshift is not yet known.

Our measurement based upon a single, possibly interloping object gives a tentative $`z=0.0686`$ for Abell 1434. If Abell 1434 lies at that distance, an angle of $`42^{\prime \prime }`$ corresponds to a physical separation of $`42h^1\mathrm{kpc}`$, which would place object F787–37 at the core of the cluster.

Inspection of Figure 8 indicates that the concentration at $`\mathrm{38\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ is for a fairly constant Dec and a range of RAs, corresponding to a comoving scale of $`11h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$, indicative of a supercluster.

Figure 9 show the resulting wedge diagrams for field F20. Concentrations are apparent at $`cz=\mathrm{12\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ and $`\mathrm{22\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$.

## 5 Conclusions

This pilot study for the forthcoming 6dFGRS has provided useful information on various aspects of the survey. First, it has shown that the preliminary galaxy extraction from DENIS images was highly reliable, even at low galactic latitudes ($`b=17^{}`$), where the reliability, based upon subsequent visual inspection of photographic plates was 93%, despite confusion with double stars and extinction. Second, it pointed to a degraded fibre transmission, which has been attended to since. Also a newly commissioned 1K EEV CCD for 6dF is expected to significantly improve the instrument throughput. Third, it proved that optical spectroscopy of high-latitude, NIR-based, samples is feasible with similar rates of successful redshift measurement as in optically-selected galaxy samples. Fourth, it indicated that redshifts can be obtained at low galactic latitude, although with much less success than at high galactic latitude.

There are therefore good reasons to have full confidence in the success of the 6dFGRS in obtaining a highly complete redshift followup of galaxies selected in the NIR by 2MASS and DENIS, although this success may be limited to high galactic latitudes. Note that the primary sample of 6dFGRS will be the longer wavelength $`K_s`$ band at $`2.15\mu `$m, and there is expected to be a larger fraction of galaxies with only absorption lines, for which redshifts are generally harder to measure.

Moreover, our study has provided a first estimate on the fraction of emission-line galaxies in a $`J`$-band selected galaxy sample and its variation with galaxy $`J`$-band luminosity, as well as an estimate of the $`J`$-band galaxy luminosity function. Serendipitous results include a tentative redshift for the Abell 1434 cluster as well as the establishment of various concentrations of galaxies, including a potential supercluster at $`380h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

## Acknowledgements

We warmly thank Malcolm Hartley for operating the UKST telescope, Paul Cass for fibering one of the plates, and Matthew Colless and Brian Boyle for useful discussions and encouragement. We are very grateful to Chris Willmer who checked our luminosity functions and ran Monte-Carlo simulations to check the error estimates. We also thank Santiago Arribas and a second anonymous referee for useful comments on the manuscript. These observations were based upon images taken by the DENIS near-infrared imaging survey, which is supported, in France by the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers, the Education Ministry and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, in Germany by the State of Baden-Würtemberg, in Spain by the DG1CYT, in Italy by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, in Austria by the Fonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung und Bundesministerium für Wissenshaft und Forschung. We are grateful to the DENIS staff, and in particular Jean Borsenberger for flat-fielding the DENIS images, and Emmanuel Bertin for help with the SExtractor source extraction package. GAM acknowledges a travel grant from the Coopération France-Australie. We made use of the ROE/NRL COSMOS UKST Southern Sky Object Catalog, the Digitized Sky Survey, produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under US Government grant NAG W-2166, and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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