text:
# Particles and Fields in Radio Galaxies: A Summary

## 1. Introduction

This meeting, which was planned as a specialist discussion on the details of emission mechanisms in extragalactic radio sources, was held at a propitious time. The first X-ray images of jets and their associated lobes from Chandra X-ray Observatory had just been released and, just as was the case when linked and very long baseline radio interferometry became possible and when we learned of the prodigious $`\gamma `$-ray powers of blazars, a whole new chapter in the eighty year old study of jets is being started. The study of extragalactic radio sources has also changing in a quite different sense because the jet phenomenon is turning out to be far more common in its astronomical expression than extragalactic astronomers ever expected, as it is now known to be a common accompaniment to young stellar objects and an occasional by-product of accretion onto compact stars.

Nevertheless, the main topics of discussion at this meeting mostly centred around the radio study of extragalactic jets and I have chosen to organise this somewhat impressionistic summary using a series of general questions that have been around for a while and where, although we don’t yet have answers, we are making progress. I will use the convention of referring to contributors using \[ \] and defer to these authors for original references.

## 2. Jets

### 2.1. Why do Accreting Sources Form Jets?

If I follow the logic of the theorist as opposed to that of the observer, this is the first question to ask and it is one that was implicit in many of the theoretical papers. A somewhat non-standard answer is that when sources accrete, the gas that they collect almost certainly possesses far more specific angular momentum than the accreting object and almost all of this must be off-loaded. Now, ever since the first discussion of disks in binary and proto- stars, we have been acutely aware that there has to be a strong torque that accomplishes this task and we now know that this torque is almost always hydromagnetic in character. The gas forms a disk flow and the differential rotation drives the exponential growth of magnetic field on a dynamical time, until it, too, is dynamically important. As matter flows in, angular momentum flows out; at least that is what has been conventionally assumed. However, it need not all flow out. Disks have a lot of surface area and there may be an appreciable divergence in the angular momentum flux due to surface magnetic torque. After all, the sun, a very slow rotator by the standards of an accretion disk, has managed to lose a significant fraction of its initial angular momentum though the solar wind in this manner. Although we do not understand how much of the disk angular momentum escapes through this channel, a jet, or more generally, a bipolar outflow, may be simply Nature’s way of removing unwanted angular momentum.

The torque, $`G`$, must also do work at a rate $`G\mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the angular velocity. Not only is angular momentum transported outward through the flow, so is energy. In fact, if the gas is gravitationally bound, there must be a divergence of this flow of energy. In a traditional accretion disk, this is the source of the radiant energy and this explains why the energy release in simple models is three times the locally liberated binding energy. However, not all flows will radiate efficiently and if they don’t we have a second possible answer to the question. Jets (or, more generally, outflows) are the next best way to remove the energy from the disk when radiation is not up to the job.

Disks are not the only possible sources of power and the central object can contribute significantly. In the case of massive black holes in AGN, the rotational energy of the hole – surely ample to re-supply the most profligate of radio lobes – can be extracted with modest efficiency using electromagnetic field. This can be directly released in a jet core in the form of Poynting flux \[Meier, van Putten, Begelman\] or, alternatively, transmitted to the inner disk. In the former case the energy released is likely to have a low baryon fraction and be in an ideal state to power ultrarelativistic jets. Even if the central object is very slowly rotating, as appears to be true of protostars and many neutron stars, there is still as much orbital kinetic energy to tap from the innermost disk orbit as has been released in the form of binding energy up to this point.

Given these different options, the question becomes “How much energy flows along each of these channels under different circumstances?”. We know that hydromagnetic jets do not always remove all the angular momentum and energy, despite the fact that there is no dynamical objection to this happening. After all disks are prodigiously luminous as quasars and binary X-ray sources. Perhaps, all disks lose some angular momentum and energy in this manner but that it is only those that need to get rid of energy – specifically those whose central masses are so large as to render the mass supply rate sub-critical and thermal electron heating ineffectual– that produce the most efficient disk outflows. In addition, perhaps it is only those sources where the central hole (or star) spins fast that create high speed flows and that both factors are neccesary to form high power ultra-fast jets.

### 2.2. How do Accreting Sources Make Jets?

Following this theoretical tack, there has been much progress, some of it reported at the meeting \[Begelman, Meier, Trussoni, Hughes\] towards developing an understanding of the global behaviour of disk magnetic fields. The issue is really that the sort of investigations that are possible analytically are usually artifically limited to assumptions like high symmetry and self-similarity and these can be quite misleading. Furthermore, even if we acknowledge that some simple solution of the equations of MHD is formally unstable, this may be misleading because nonlinear saturation can limit its importance. Magnetic field is famously slippery and any time we have been able to observe it in action – in the heliosphere or the plasma laboratory – it has demonstrated far more imagination than us. For this reason, the widepread use of three dimensional MHD codes (in some cases, general relativistic) is a great advance. True, they have to leave out a lot of the physics like reconnection, radiation, Alfvén wave damping and so on, but still they allow us to perform quite novel experiments which sharpen our intuition as to what is possible.

If one accepts, as most now do, that jets and outflows are fundamentally relativistic and hydromagnetic, there are still several options. (An important exception may be BALQ and even Seyfert outflows which are sub-relativistic and appear to be associated with objects radiating near to the Eddington limit \[Wilson\].) Jets can be powered by the disk or the hole, or both. Jets may be launched centrifugally or through pressure, magnetic, radiative or gas. They may be collimated by an organised toroidal field, as is found in the solar wind, or by a much more disorganised assembly of twisted field loops. All of these models have had enthusiastic proponents and simulations are sharpening the debate. As observations of nearby jets reach down to smaller radii, $`100m`$ in the case of M87 \[Sparks\].

New phenomena, like magnetic switching \[Meier\] have been discovered. Perhaps we are learning that hydromagnetic jets are intrinsically episodic and that we have been leaving out a key ingredient when we have taken the easy way out, at least in analytical modelling, by seeking stationary solutions to the flow equations. Surely the observations – of QPOs in GRS1915+105, of superluminal expansion in compact quasars and of Herbig Haro objects – support this interpretation.

A key concern is “Can a disk maintain a large scale, poloidal magnetic field or will this field migrate outward under resistive diffusion faster than it is convected inward under flux-freezing?”. Another fundamental physics concern is what happens to the energy that is dissipated in a disk at a rate $`G\mathrm{\Omega }`$? Does it all feed a hydromagnetic wave turbulent cascade being damped at small length scale through wave-particle interaction? Alternatively, does it get converted into heat through magnetic reconnection? Should we introduce a second parameter $`\alpha ^{}`$, that takes account of the dissipation? These considerations are also directly relevant to the jet flows themselves where linear velocity gradients take the place of differential rotation.

This leads me to the admission, that every theorist who has worked in this field must make, which is that the study of jets is an empirical, observational business at least when we try to go much beyond fundamental conservation laws. (Not all astrophysics is likely this!) There is a level of detail in the radio maps which we can try to describe but which we would not have predicted from first principles. If this proposition needs defense, and in a meeting attended mainly by observers I doubt if it does, then the recent Chandra images of the X-ray nebulae surrounding the Crab and Vela pulsars should surely make the point. In both cases, isolated, spinning, magnetised neutron stars are, quite unexpectedly, able to create apparently well-focused outflowing jets presumably without the aid of a disk. They also show evidence for large scale, transverse shocks and equatorial ring structures. Magnetic fields are again the best way to try to explain the observations. (The equatorial ring-like structure might be attributable to a current sheet formed in an outflowing wind, analogous to what happens with the solar wind.) However, we do not yet know how this happens.

As we cannot answer any of these basic MHD questions through theory alone and so we must turn to the laboratory. The sophistication of the diagnostics of the terrestrial magnetosphere and, especially, the solar corona, through the YOHKOH, SOHO and most recently TRACE spacecraft, is truly impressive. There is a wealth of data, publicly available, that is large ignored that ought to contain answers to some of these questions. Let me give two examples. It appears that most of the reconnection in the solar flares takes place on the small scale, in nanoflares, rather than in the giant flares that disrupt communications and so on \[Beckert\]. If the same is true of an accretion disk corona then this has serious implications for our view of how a disk corona is heated. If we look at the solar wind, we find that it emerges from a gas whose temperature does not exceed 2 million degrees and yet it can achieve outflows speeds in excess of 800 km s<sup>-1</sup>. It is launched neither thermally or centrifugally. Perhaps it is sent on its way by acquiring the momentum of outflowing hydromagnetic waves. Observations are starting to settle these matters in some generality.

### 2.3. How do we “see” Jets?

A jet is an expanding outflow and as such the natural synchroton emissivity should decline rapidly with radius. The rate is model-dependent, of course, but is generally much faster than observed \[Giovannini\]. For this reason, it has been assumed that there is in situ particle acceleration along the jet. This fits in well with the notion that jets are naturally episodic, perhaps on account of instabilities that develop near their sources. These instabilites will naturally develop into internal shocks as the flows are hypersonic. They will also be responsible for an overall deceleration of the flow as deduced on spectral grounds \[Laing\]. In addition, the termination shocks are associated with hot spots \[Brunetti, Hardcastle\].

Now non-relativistic shocks appear to be responsible for transmitting a power law distribution of relativistic ions and electrons in supernova remanants through diffusive Fermi acceleration. According to the basic theory of this process, the efficiency is high and the back pressure associated with the reflected ions may provide a negative feedback on the process. However, we still do not have a good theory of the magnetic turbulence that can explain how particles are back-scattered \[Chandran\]. (It may soon be possible to run hybrid particle-fluid simulations that will address this problem directly. In addition, the observational front, the failure to detect TeV $`\gamma `$-rays from some young supernova remnants has been interpreted as implying that many remnants do not conform to the theory of shock acceleration and that extra factors are required to account for the overall spectrum of Galactic cosmic rays.

A central theoretical problem with shock acceleration is that we do not have a generally accepted understanding of particle injection. We do observe that electrons appear to be injected into the acceleration process at a slower rate than ions. Undoubtedly the plasma physics is quite complicated and Bernstein modes provide a plausible way to control this process \[Dendy\].

It appears that most of the compact sources that we observe, as well as a good fraction of the type II extended radio sources, are energised by relativistic shocks. The standard theory of Fermi acceleration \[Quenby\] cannot apply here because the energy changes in a single shock passage are not small. Nonetheless the problem can be well-posed if sufficiently stringent assumptions are made about the transport. This problem has recently been solved by several groups and a logarithmic slope of 2.23 derived for the particle energy spectrum \[Kirk\]. It is not clear how relevant this is when the shock normal speed exceeds $`c\mathrm{cot}\theta `$ and it is not possible to transform away the electric field. However it certainly represents an important advance and provides a basis for addressing the next problem which concerns the effect of the back reaction on the accelerated particles mediating the shock structure.

It is no less important to understand how magnetic field is amplified at a shock front. We fully expect that there will be adiabatic compression at a non-relativistic shock so that the rms field shock strength will increase by a factor $`(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta +r^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta )^{1/2}`$, where $`r`$ is the compression ratio and $`\theta `$ is the angle between the magnetic field direction and the shock normal. ($`r=4`$ for a non-relativistic strong shock in ionised gas.) However, it has commonly been assumed, for example in studies of gamma ray bursts, that the post-shock field rapidly builds up to a significant fraction of the equipartition value \[Birkinshaw\]. This can orders of magnitude larger than the compression value. I do not think that there is any good understanding of what to use in any of these environments. Although there have been suggestions of post-shock turbulence in studies of supernova remnants, it has more commonly been assumed that field amplification occurs around the generalised contact discontinuity where the shock interstellar medium interact directly with the ejecta from the supernova explosion. The fact that we find it so hard to locate the bounding shock fronts around supernova remnants, whereas we commonly observe the non-thermal synchrotron emission in the form of a diffuse, expanding ring, supports this view. Perhaps relativistic shocks are different. Pulsar nebulae, containing ultrarelativistic, hydromagnetic shocks are the best laboratories that we have to study, in situ particle acceleration in an environment believed to be similar to that in extragalactic, relativistic jets and gamma ray bursts.

The global evolution of the magnetic field is also highly relevant. There is increasing evidence for helical field structure in the observed jets \[Laing, Gabuzda\], though it is quite unlikely that this field can be unidirectional. The total magnetic flux that would be necessary to make this happen is far larger than could ever be confined in the vicinity of the central black hole. Again, our understanding is very primitive.

The new images of X-ray jets presented and discussed here \[Harris, Wilson, Worrall, Sparks\] are full of surprises. Most encouragingly, they appear to be quite common and some patterns are starting to emerge \[Birkinshaw\]. In addition, Pictor A is strikingly well-collimated and it was particularly reasssuring to see the jets and lobes of Cygnus A revealed in this manner.

However, the interpetations were quite varied. The case is well made that there is no simple common explanation for the emission. Synchrotron radiation (requiring the accleration of 100 TeV electrons) \[Harris\], inverse Compton emission (of local synchrotron photons, the ambient, external radiation field \[Brunetti\] and the microwave background radiation\[Tashino\]) and, perhaps even in a few cases, bremsstrahlung or proton synchrotron radiation \[Protheroe\] can all occur under different conditions. Most importantly, there is a working, synchrotron-inverse Compton model of the integrated spectrum that makes a lot of sense in relation to what we know about radio jets \[Celotti\].

In retrospect this should not be a surprise. After all, we directly observe jets on scales from milli- to Megaparsecs and over a wide range of physical conditions when different emission mechanisms can dominate. As the cooling times of the relativistic electrons are generally quite short compared with the dynamical times, the X-rays provide an invaluable probe of the conditions within these sources. The effects of relativistic Doppler boosting, which we now take for granted, are also turning out to be quite subtle \[Celotti\]. This is also not surprising because it is easy to highlight a dynamically insignificant part of the source when it is directed towards us \[Hardcastle\]. These are early days in the study of X-ray jets.

We have recently had cause to question the assumption that the radio emission from compact radio sources is due to the synchrotron process. The measured “variability” brightness temperatures can be nine orders of magnitude above the standard inverse Compton limit. Although we are no longer intimidated by the large bulk Lorentz factors that are implied ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }>10^3`$) - gamma ray bursts have released us from our inhibitions - the derived radiative efficiency is likely to be impossibly low. For this reason, there has been considerable attention paid to the influence of refractive scintillation on variability. There have been some exquisite observational investigations \[Dennett-Thorpe, Jauncey, Wagner\] which have demonstrated that the observed variations are “sins of transmission”. However the source brightness temperatures still have to be challengingly large ($`>4\times 10^{13}`$ K corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }>30`$ in the best studied case and probably much larger in other cases). The motivation for considering alternatives to synchrotron emission remains and shock fronts, which we know can lead to ring-like particle distribution functions that are far from equilibrium together with high energy densities of plasma wave modes, are natural sites for non-linear conversion to electromagnetic modes and maser emission \[Bingham\]. These possibilities deserve further study.

### 2.4. What are Jets?

It is a matter of considerable embarassment that we still cannot identify the working substance in the jets. This material is surely not immutable. Just as we are confident is the case in the Crab Nebula, the energy is probably changed from an electromagnetic form to a pair plasma to an ion plasma and (at least partially along the way into photons). We expect that this also happens in jets. However we do not have a good understanding of where the transitions occur and, in particular, what we are observing using EGRET, VLBI, MERLIN and the VLA!

The reason why something like this must happen at small radius is that radiation drag is catastrophic unless there is an alternative carrier of momentum to pair plasmas. The only two plausible candidates are protons \[Protheroe\] and Poynting flux \[Meier, Begelman\]. The former has always seemed rather problematic because it is not at all clear how to get the high energy protons in the first place (shocks only randomise the energy that is already present), without invoking an even greater energy density in electromagnetic field. This field may also have to be invoked to collimate the outflow. If electromagnetic field is present the electric fields are likely to be so strong that relatively small inductive effects will create a non-zero $`\stackrel{}{E}\stackrel{}{B}`$ which will break down the vacuum by creating copious electron-positron pairs, just as is envisaged in a pulsar magnetosphere.

The final conversion to an ionic plasma seems equally inevitable because a jet must have an outer radius and it seems very hard to prevent some measure of entrainment of the surrounding plasma along its length, even if it is protected by a cocoon of backflowing plasma \[Laing, Simkin\].

There are three more direct, observational arguments that have been advanced in favour of pair plasmas being present in the radio emission regions. Firstly, the presence of circular polarisation now in over twenty sources like 3C279, where the the Faraday rotation appears not to be too large \[Wardle\] is very difficult to explain without appealing to a pair plasma. (It is difficult to rule out synchrotron emission completely as the cause but the frequency-dependence is not as predicted.) The second argument is dynamical \[Celotti, Harris\]. The estimated jet powers are excessive if the relativistic electrons that have to be invoked to carry the emission carry protonic, as opposed to electronic, baggage. The third argument is quite ingenious and comes from the analysis of narrow emission lines formed when jets impact interstellar clouds. The line ratios are not as predicted by conventional ionising agents and may indicate that relativistic particles are at least partly responsible. It may be possible to distinguish positrons and protons by following this approach. However, none of these arguments is, as yet, watertight, though there is every reason to be optimistic that they will strengthen with more X-ray and, ultimately, $`\gamma `$-ray observations.

Of course if the presence of pair plasma can be demonstrated, this very much strengthens the argument that jets are powered by spinning black holes.

## 3. Lobes

### 3.1. What is a Lobe?

The short answer to this question has been known since the early 1970s. A lobe is the repository for all the energy that is left over after the momentum of a jet has been exhausted pushing away the intergalactic medium. It is the fact that the speed of the jet is much greater than the speed of advance of the lobe that leads to this surplus.

We are now able to study lobe morphology in considerable detail and able to address much more sophisticated questions. The key to understanding the overall energetics of radio sources is to measure the pressures within and around the lobes. This can be done using X-ray observations. However, it appears that the total energy density in the lobes can significantly exceed the absolute minimum energy density required to account for the measured synchrotron radio emission; the difference probably being made up with high energy electrons \[Leahy, Blundell\].

### 3.2. Lobe Energetics

Radio sources do have a pronounced effect on the overall appearance of many clusters and large “holes” can be seen in the X-ray maps that correspond to the location of the radio lobes \[Fabian\]. The characteristic shapes of prominent radio lobes, like those associated with Cygnus A, may be a straightforward consequence of the jet dynamics and reflect the overall stability of the jet \[Eilek, Rudnick\]. The sharply-defined boundaries that are seen are important because they set an empirical upper bound on the rate at which relativistic and thermal plasma can mix \[Owen, Rudnick, Reynolds\]. Unfortunately, many of these X-ray maps are turning out ot be very complex and, as we do not know the three dimensional distribution of the gas, it is going to be quite hard, in practice to interpret the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich maps with much precision.

A recent development is the advent of hybrid codes that are not only able to trace the hydrodynamical evolution of a jet, together with its associated lobe, but can also follow the passive transport of magnetic flux and relativistic particles accelerated in shock fronts \[Tregellis, Jones, Marcowith\]. Large scale magnetic field amplification and turbulence evolution can also occur \[De Young\]. Although the models will never correspond in detail to individual sources, there is some optimism that we will be able to understand the rules by which particle energisation and transport and field amplification take place under relativistic conditions. As is the case with jets, not all of the particle acceleration appears to be associated with strong shock fronts. Ongoing particle acceleration at sites other than strong shock fronts, is often required because the radiative loss timescales can be shorter than the source lifetimes and backflow times \[Laing\]. Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, perhaps associated with noise from the supersonic jet provides a very plausible source of the long wavelength waves that can energise the particles in the lobes. Adiabatic compression can contribute to the re-energisation under some circumstances \[Ennslin\].

### 3.3. When did Lobes Form?

The ability to trace the lobes to very low surface brightness is starting to allow us to understand the “archaeology” of double radio sources. In sources like M87, it is, in principle, possible to trace the history of nuclear activity for the past Gyr \[Begelman\]. The large scale, low radio frequency structure of this source is actually reminiscent of a “mushroom cloud” and could arise for essentially the same reason \[Kaiser\]. This is particularly interesting because, in this example, we know, from the mass of the central black hole ($`3\times 10^9`$ M), that the source was almost certainly once a quasar, although probably not recently. At the very least, the source behaviour has been quite variable \[Binney\]. It is likely that the lobe will rise in the cluster gravitational field under buoyancy, until it finds a static equilibrium state.

Spectral aging studies of radio lobes are becoming increasingly sophisticated \[Blundell, Rudnick\]. Although particle and field injection is controlled by the hot spots, whose power declines with time, there is much more going on. Again, the validity of equipartition \[Leahy, Hardcastle\] and the possibility that the emitting plasma have a small filling factor \[Manolakou\] is again under debate. At the very least, the dangers of interpreting inadequately resolved radio maps are now quite clear.

## 4. What is the Environmental Impact?

The Chandra observations of clusters appear to corroborate the view that, in many rich clusters, the central cooling times are short compared with the age of the universe. What happens next remains controversial. The most natural consequence is that gas rains down upon the galactic nucleus. However, in several cases, we are not seeing the evidence for cooler gas. There have been several suggestions as to how to prevent this from happening. The gas may be reheated by intergalactic supernovae (although these are not observed) or low energy cosmic rays. Alternatively, there may be a large turbulent, magnetic or cosmic ray pressure.

This last possibility seems particularly interesting and has broader implications. The hot gas that we observe in clusters, groups and elliptical galaxies has presumably been heated by passing through a shock front; there really is no alternative. This is generally supposed to be an accretion shock located at the cluster periphery. However it could be that there is also a dense network of intergalactic shock waves and that most gas is heated there. These intergalactic shocks are quite likely to arise because the sound speed in the ionised (Ly$`\alpha `$ cloud) intergalactic medium is $`10`$ km s<sup>-1</sup>, whereas the chaaracteristic random motion of field galaxies (including our own) is several hundred km s<sup>-1</sup>. The ionised gas that we observe at high redshift seems to disappear and it is unlikely that it forms stars and galaxies with extreme efficiency. A far more plausible fate is that it is rendered effectively invisible by heating to a million degrees. (Although it is possible that FUSE or XMM-Newton may find most of the local intergalactic medium, we will probably have to wait until the next generation of X-ray telescopes is launched). The intergalactic medium may be just as active and as interesting as the interstellar medium has been shown to be. Now if Galactic supernova remants are any guide, then the transmited partial pressure in GeV ions by these shocks may be compable to the pressure of thermal gas \[Jones\]. This will alter our estimates of the total static pressures in clusters and, consequently, radio source energetics. More interestingly and importantly, it is possible that these cosmic rays will inhibit inflow after cluster gas starts to cool.

## 5. How Important are Extragalactic Radio Sources?

Although the study of extragalactic radio sources retains its intrinsic interest, it is (or should be) attracting the attention of a much larger community. The most timely connection is to the study of gamma ray bursts. These are now commonly (though still not securely) modeled as ultrarelativistic beamed outflows - jets. Many of the principles that were debated and discussed twenty years ago in the present context are being recapitulated in connection with gamma ray bursts \[Rees\]. There are, however, some important differences. Firstly, burst powers (typically estimated to be $`10^{44}`$ W sterad<sup>-1</sup>) are many orders of magnitude larger than the strongest quasar jets (up to $`10^{40}`$ W sterad<sup>-1</sup>). Secondly the power is generally impulsive and so, although quasars are increasingly regarded as episodic, there is usually a pre-existing channel for them to propagate along. This difference is responsible for the observation of discrete afterglows associated with bursts, which overlap in the case of jets. Thirdly, the variability times observed in gamma ray bursts are very much shorter than in their AGN counterparts and this implies that GRB sources are much more compact. This implies much larger initial Thomson and pair production optical depths which, in turn, are responsible for the larger terminal Lorentz factors. However, the difference appears to be only one of degree.

Most tantalising of all, though, are the reports of considerable iron line emission \[Rees\]. If true, this is probably a big clue to the identity of the underlying sources. Otherwise, the similarities in and debates about the source models energy pathways and emission mechanisms are quite strong and there is a convergence between the two research fields which should be exploited. For example, now that attention has settled on jet models of gamma ray bursts, it probably becoems necessary to consider oblique relativistic shocks as the emitting elements. This will have a significant impact on the kinematics. Conversely, if we are really observing jets with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }300`$ in bursts, then this should help us decide if really are observing flows with comparable speeds in AGN.

Another overlap, surprisingly not represented at this meeting, is the study of the Galactic superluminal sources into which some gamma ray bursters may eventually evolve. So far, the best Galactic cases have only exhibited modest superluminal expansion speeds, though this could be a selection effect. Perhaps we have to explore other galaxies to find micro-3C273’s. The advantage of studying such, sources, if they do exist, is that they vary and cycle on timescales that are six to eight orders of magnitude shorter than their quasar counterparts and obsevers would get far more immediate gratification if they could observe such sources. For example, we are awash with data on QPOs in the best studied case, GRS1915+105, whereas it has proved very hard to identify corresponding phenomena despite thirty five years of quasar monitoring. The same may happen witr relativistic jets.

A further possible point of contact that was discussed \[Watson\], is the origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays - protons, presumably, with Lorentz factors up to $`3\times 10^{11}`$ and energies of 50 J, comparable with that of the shot with which I was caught out in the cricket match. These particles have lifetimes against photo-pion production in teh microwave background of only a hundred million years. This tells immediately that their luminosity density is quite large, in fact comparable with the average cosmological luminosity density of $``$ GeV cosmic rays.

There are two classes of explanation – that they are left over from the decay of much higher energy particles, almost certainly formed cosmologically, or that they are accelerated from lower energy, just like all the other cosmic rays. The former explanation is surely the more exciting. However, there appears to be a serious objection to it. It is very hard to avoid producing gamma rays in far greater profusion than protons and these can be distinguished statistically by their zenith angle distribution. They are not seen. Furthermore, the same electromagnetic channel is likely make a much larger TeV gamma background than is measured (Coppi, private communication). For this reason interest has returned to “conventional” astrophysical models. Most of these models require potential differences $`\mathrm{\Phi }>3\times 10^{20}`$ V in order to accelerate the very highest energy particles and have associated powers $`L>\mathrm{\Phi }^2/Z_03\times 10^{38}`$ W, where $`Z_0377\mathrm{\Omega }`$, is the impedance of free space. One of the few source candidates we have that satisfies the proximity and power requirements is the powerful extended radio galaxies. (Black holes and compact jets are capable of accelerating ultra high energy cosmic rays but have too large an ambient radiation energy density to allow them to escape.)

My final example of the new relevance of extragalactic radio sources brings me back to the start of this summary. Outflows from active galactic nuclei may also provide a feedback that strongly influences, limits or even initiates galaxy formation. Perhaps relativistic jets can deposit enough energy or momentum in the surrounding gas to prevent disk formation in elliptical galaxies and in cooling flows in the centres of clusters. Now radio sources themselves may not be quite up to this job. In fact it has been shown that the gas surrounding the radio lobes in at least one clusters is actually cool not hot \[Fabian, Reynolds\]. However, hydromagnetic disk winds and, especially broad absorption line outflows could be more powerful and have a major impact. After all the nuclei of most powerful radio sources and central dominant galaxies in clusters almost surely passed through one or more quasar phases in the past and we expect that most of the energy that was released will be during a hyperactive, quasar phase.

This general idea has been rather controversial, mainly because of its subversive implications for the current standard model of galaxy formation. However, it is still worth exploring with numerical simulation. Perhaps the real “purpose” of outflows from accreting sources is to limit their gas supply to a a manageable rate.

## 6. Peter Scheuer 19??-2001

While completing this summary, I learned of the passing of Peter Scheuer. Through his own major research contributions, his gentle yet incisive questioning and his selfless encouragement of others, Peter had a lasting influence on every aspect of this meeting and on most of the contributors. This article is dedicated to his memory.

## Acknowledgements

I am indebted to the National Science Foundation and NASA for support under grants AST 99-00866 and 5-2837 respectively. I thank the organisers for arranging an enjoyable workshop and their gracious hospitality.


format: text

text:
# Self Organization of Edge and Internal Pedestals in a Sandpile

## Abstract

The temperature profiles of magnetically confined plasmas can display distinctive longlived pedestals at the edge and internally. Here we show that such structures can arise naturally through avalanching transport in a sandpile model. A single control parameter that is constant across the sandpile determines the occurrence and regularity of these effects, as well as the entrainment of global confinement to edge pedestal dynamics. The system dynamics indicate that the pedestals are a consequence of an inverse cascade in real space, and that self organization is necessary for their occurrence.

preprint: HEP/123-qed

A distinctive feature of magnetically confined plasmas is that they can sustain local regions having very steep (indeed, almost discontinuous) temperature gradients. Pedestals in the edge temperature are a key feature of the good confinement regimes of tokamaks (“H-modes”); for a recent review see Ref.. Additionally, advanced operating regimes for tokamaks have now been accessed, which involve the creation of “internal transport barriers” (ITBs) – steplike features in the temperature profiles internal to the plasma, see for example Refs.-. The occurence of such structures in externally heated plasma systems that are diffuse, high temperature, and turbulent is surprising, and is a striking instance of their capacity for macroscopic self organization. Here we shall identify how similar structures arise spontaneously in the sandpile model of Ref.. Because of the simplicity of this model, it is possible to formally characterize and explain the mechanisms underlying pedestal formation, and to identify links to tokamak plasma behavior. This approach is complementary to studies that employ largescale numerical simulation of tokamak plasmas, which have had some success in illuminating the subtle interplay between turbulence and bulk flows that may give rise to ITBs.

The essential ingredients of the sandpile algorithm of Ref. are: (i)randomized critical gradients which must be exceeded locally before any transport can take place; (ii)central fuelling, so that sand can only leave the system by means of systemwide avalanches; and (iii)its only distinctive feature, namely a characteristic lengthscale $`L_f`$ for fast redistribution which may be considered a proxy for turbulent transport, as discussed in Ref.. Evidence for avalanche-type transport from tokamak experiments and numerical simulations provides growing support for the applicability in some circumstances of the sandpile paradigm introduced into fusion plasma physics in recent years-. Particularly relevant to the present study are observations and analysis of edge plasma turbulence in a range of magnetically confined plasmas. These suggest that edge plasma turbulence – the environment in which H-mode edge pedestals form, which then coexist with the turbulence – self organizes into a critical state, independent of the size and plasma characteristics of the devices considered. It is known that, depending on the value of the control parameter $`L_f`$, the statistical behavior of the sandpile model of Ref. displays features reminiscent of enhanced confinement phenomenology in tokamaks. These include the time averaged height profiles, which possess edge pedestals in the good confinement regime; furthermore the frequency of systemwide avalanches resulting in mass loss scales with stored sandpile energy in the same way as the frequency of edge localized modes (ELMs) scales with stored energy in tokamaks, see Fig.6 of Ref.. We emphasize that $`L_f`$ is kept constant across the sandpile in any given computational run, so that the critical gradient and redistribution rules are identical at every cell of our sandpile, apart from the initial and final cells. It follows that where pedestals arise, they represent a true emergent phenomenon. In this respect our approach differs essentially from that of Refs., where a local transport barrier is specified at the outset, by declaring the critical gradient and redistribution rules to be different for a specific local group of cells.

The three dimensional plot of Fig.1 shows sandpile height as a function of position as time evolves, for the good confinement regime with $`L_f=50`$ in a 512 cell system. It displays two distinct phases. First, there is a relaxation phase where the sandpile profile is smooth down to the self organized edge pedestal, except within a distance $`L_f`$ of the core where fueling has a continual local effect. During the relaxation phase mass loss occurs via many systemwide avalanches closely spaced in time, which carry sand over the sandpile boundary. The relaxation phase terminates with a final systemwide avalanche, after which the growth phase begins. The growth phase is characterized by a stationary edge pedestal which resides at the outermost cell of the sandpile. As time progresses, additional pedestals (localized regions of steep gradient just below critical) form successively at positions increasingly close to the core of the sandpile, with average separation $`L_f`$. Each of these is generated at positions where (outward propagating) major internal avalanches have come to rest. The location of the most recently formed (and therefore innermost) internal pedestal propagates inward during the growth phase.

Figure 2 is motivated by simultaneous multichannel measurements of tokamak temperature profiles in the presence of ITBs; see for example Fig.3 of Ref. and Fig.1 of Ref., and also the results of numerical simulations shown in Fig.2 of Ref.. Figure 2 shows sandpile height at different positions from the edge to the centre. Just over two growth and relaxation phases are shown. The successive formation of internal pedestals is reflected in a stepwise increase in height at any given point during the growth phases. Using this diagnostic, evidence for stepwise increments is clearest in the region of the sandpile that lies between the core and the edge. Since the internal pedestals form at locations increasingly close to the core as the growth phase proceeds, the points within the sandpile that are most affected by the formation of these pedestals are those that are closer to the core of the sandpile. Points nearer the edge are only affected by the formation of the first few internal pedestals during the early growth phase. The results shown in Fig.2, which bear some resemblance to the experimental and numerical results of Refs., emerge naturally from the dynamics of the sandpile during the growth phase of its good confinement regime. Central to this structure is the unexpected capacity of this sandpile to organize persistent steep pedestals both at the edge and internally.

The role of these internal pedestals and their relationship to the edge pedestal is highlighted in Fig.3: here all cells at which the gradient exceeds $`z_c/2`$ are marked by black points, while all other cells are left blank. Figure 3(a) ($`L_f=50`$) follows five of the growth and relaxation cycles shown in Fig.2. The edge pedestal is visible close to the sandpile boundary in both the relaxation and the growth phases. Its time behaviour is essentially regular and, as we shall see, orders the structure internal to the sandpile. For any $`L_f<N/4`$, the location of each internal pedestal is fixed during a given growth phase, so that they persist as distinguishable features of the time averaged phenomenology of the sandpile. In contrast, Fig.3(b) shows the behavior for the poor confinement regime with $`L_f=250>N/4`$. This regime corresponds to a self organized critical (SOC) state, see Ref. and below. Although the sandpile sucessively fills and empties, it does so in an irregular manner. Pedestals can be seen both at the edge and internal to the sandpile, but these are no longer organized in a coherent pattern.

A resilient edge pedestal arises for all $`L_f`$; the pedestal is steep, indeed unresolved, in that the entire change in height occurs between neighboring cells. The location of the edge pedestal is strongly time dependent for large $`L_f`$, whereas for small $`L_f`$ it is confined to a region close to the outermost cell of the sandpile. The time averaged profile in the edge region therefore depends strongly on $`L_f`$, and the steadiest edge pedestal corresponds to small $`L_f`$ and good confinement. Following each avalanche, in our algorithm the value of the critical gradient $`z_c`$ is randomised about a mean value at all cells that participated in the avalanche. Nevertheless the gradient at the edge pedestal remains always close to, but just below, the critical value $`z_c`$ as shown in Fig.4. Elsewhere in the sandpile (for example at its midpoint, see Fig.4), except where internal pedestals arise, the gradient is well below $`z_c`$. The internal pedestals appear as barriers to transport: despite their apparent fragility against avalanching (gradient $`z`$ close to $`z_c`$), no sand passes through either the edge or the internal pedestals until the final avalanche that terminates the growth phase.

The physical mechanisms and principles underlying the self organization of the edge pedestal and multiple internal pedestals that arise in the sandpile model of Refs. are therefore of considerable interest. As a first step, we confirm the hypothesis of Ref. that the good confinement regime (small $`L_f`$) corresponds to low dimensional behavior. In Fig.5 the position of the last occupied cell at time $`t`$ is plotted against that at time $`t+\tau `$, where $`\tau =50`$, for runs with $`L_f=(a)50`$, $`(b)150`$ and $`(c)250`$ in a 512 cell system. This is an example of phase space reconstruction, achieved here by embedding. Figure 5(a) shows low dimensional system dynamics that repeatedly follow a simple limit cycle (attractor) around a restricted region of the reconstructed phase space. This implies that the large number of cells in the sandpile have self organized: their collective dynamics are encapsulated by a small number of dynamical variables. Once $`L_f`$ is increased to $`150`$ (Fig.5(b)), the simple limit cycle seen in Fig.5(a) bifurcates, and more stochastic behavior is seen in Fig.5(c) ($`L_f=250`$). Thus increasing complexity of the phase space portrait correlates with deterioration of confinement. The lowest confinement regime corresponds to selfsimilar avalanche statistics. This is associated with a nontrivial fixed point in the space of the parameter used  to perform rescaling under the renormalization group procedure, corresponding to behavior that is both self organized and critical. Importantly, global relaxation of the sandpile is ultimately achieved by large (systemwide) avalanches for all values of $`L_f`$. When $`L_f`$ is of order the system size $`N`$, systemwide avalanches are straightforwardly propagated: because $`L_fN`$, no characteristic scale is imposed by the redistribution process and the dynamics are selfsimilar and in SOC. Conversely, when $`L_f`$ is significantly distinct from the system size (found empirically to be $`L_f<N/4`$), there is scale breaking. This leads to broken power law avalanche statistics, and the system is no longer in SOC. By separating the characteristic lengthscales we also effectively separate the longterm growth-relaxation timescale from the time interval between systemwide avalanches. In the SOC regime, such a distinction is not possible. Thus, in the good confinement regime (when $`L_f<N/4`$) the requirement for self organization is satisfied. The feature evolving on the slow timescale, namely the position of the edge pedestal, is sufficient to determine the details of the internal dynamics. It organizes the sequence of events leading to the sucessive formation of internal edge pedestals and the time variation of total energy (sand) in the system: in short, the sandpile is entrained to its edge. The characteristic signature of the onset of self organization is low dimensional dynamics, seen in Figs.4($`L_f=50`$ traces) and 5(a), as opposed to the irregular time evolution and selfsimilar statistical properties of the system when self organised and critical (Figs.4($`L_f=250`$ traces) and 5(c)).

The confinement physics of our sandpile model offers a robust framework in which a distinctive structure of edge and internal pedestals (previously known only from tokamak plasmas) arises naturally. There is only one control parameter, $`L_f/N`$, which can be considered as a proxy for the lengthscale of turbulent transport, normalized to system size. Provided that this lengthscale is sufficiently short, the underlying inverse cascade in real space gives rise to persistent, marginally subcritical profile steps whose formation point propagates inwards in the growth phase. Furthermore the self organized edge pedestal is continuously present in all phases of the sandpile evolution, and positions itself exactly at the sandpile boundary throughout the growth phase. These results are sufficient to indicate that some of the distinctive edge and internal pedestal phenomenology seen in tokamak plasmas can also arise in a simpler idealized confinement system, and that they may be linked to the observed avalanching transport phenomena. This suggests that quantitative studies to elucidate the balance between diffusive transport and avalanching transport in tokamaks would be fruitful. The results further suggest a test of the depth of the physical analogy that we have found, as follows. If the analogy is deep, there will exist one or a few dimensionless control parameters, linked to the properties of the turbulent transport, that entirely determine the key features of the confinement phenomenology – regular or irregular – of tokamak plasmas that we have cited here. For example, these parameters would control the extent to which global confinement is entrained to edge pedestal dynamics. The search for such parameters, for example by further application of the techniques of nonlinear time series analysis to edge plasma measurements as initiated in Refs., is potentially highly rewarding.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to George Rowlands and Jack Connor for comments and suggestions. SCC was supported by a PPARC lecturer fellowship, ROD by Euratom and the UK DTI, and BH by HEFCE.

Captions

FIG 1: Three dimensional view of the sandpile height profile for $`L_f=50`$. Time evolves along the partially hidden axis. One relaxation phase and one subsequent growth phase are shown.

FIG 2: Local height of sand as a function of time at different locations in the sandpile relative to the centre cell $`n=1`$: (a) n=20, (b) n=65, (c) n=100, (d) n=125, (e) n=150 and (f) n=300. System size $`N=512`$, control parameter $`L_f=50`$.

FIG 3: Location of cells where the value of the local gradient exceeds $`z_c/2`$ for (a)$`L_f=50`$ and (b)$`L_f=250`$. Zero corresponds to the apex where fueling occurs. The edge pedestal is visible as the uppermost trace.

FIG 4: Local gradient normalized to the local value of $`z_c`$ for cells at the edge ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_e`$, upper traces, value close to unity) and halfway into the sandpile ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_{mid}`$, lower traces, value close to zero), for $`L_f=`$ (top) 250, (centre) 150, (bottom) 50.

FIG 5: Phase space reconstruction of the dynamics of the edge position $`ep(t)`$. Plotted are coordinates $`ep(t)`$ versus $`ep(t+\tau )`$ for $`\tau =50`$ and $`L_f=(a)50`$, $`(b)150`$ and $`(c)250`$. The system dynamics explore a larger region of the phase space with increasing values of $`L_f`$. The topology shown is insensitive to the value of $`\tau `$ in the range of interest.


text:
# NORDITA-2001-46 HE TTP01-28 hep-ph/0110297 23 October 2001 Duality in Semi-Exclusive Processes

## Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to acknowledge helpful discussions with Stan Brodsky, Carl Carlson, Markus Diehl, Jean-Marc Laget, Stephane Peigné and Mark Strikman. This work has been supported in part by the European Commission under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00130 (PE and PH). A.K. acknowledges the support of STINT (Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) during his visit to the Department of Theoretical Physics, Lund University, and the support of BMBF (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung).


text:
# Irreversibility line of the MgB2 superconductor

## Abstract

Magneto-resistivity of a $`c`$-axis oriented MgB2 thin film was studied in perpendicular and parallel magnetic fields up to $``$23 T with temperatures down to 0.38 K. Resistive critical magnetic fields were determined. Large separations between irreversibility lines and upper critical magnetic fields are observed. An effective quantum parameter as a function of temperature is proposed to explain the separations under the theoretical framework of quantum fluctuations, in good agreement with our experimental and previously published experimental data.

The discovery of superconductivity in MgB2 Nagamatsu  has stimulated enormous activity in the study of this material as it is certainly promising for future applications. One of the interesting phenomena is that the irreversibility line $`H_{irr}(T0)`$ of MgB2 does not show an upward curvature as observed in the studies of high $`T_c`$ superconductors (HTSCs) Cohen ; Ando . $`H_{irr}(T)`$ is defined as the critical field beyond which persistent supercurrent can not be sustained and energy dissipation is present in the superconductor. For a HTSC, thermal fluctuations are much greater, which lead to easier flux line motion near the upper critical magnetic field $`H_{c2}`$, thus resulting in a large separation between $`H_{irr}(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}(T)`$ at sufficiently high temperatures. However, at low temperatures for HTSCs Cohen ; Ando , a steep rise of $`H_{irr}(T)`$ leading to a drastic reduction of the separation from $`H_{c2}(T)`$ is widely observed. For MgB2, it is known that the separation between the two fields Eom ; Kim ; Wen ; Wen2 ; Patnaik ; Buzea  increases with decreasing temperature. However, $`H_{irr}(T)`$ measurements at very low temperatures ($`T<1.6`$ K) are still missing. In this paper, the results of a $`c`$-axis oriented MgB2 thin film Wang  are reported in magnetic fields up to 23 T and temperatures down to 0 .38 K. Experimental data show that the different values of the resistive determined $`H_{irr}(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}(T)`$ are nearly constant for $`T<1.5`$ K. Based on these data and previously published experimental data Wen , the temperature dependence of an effective quantum parameter is proposed to explain the $`H_{irr}(T)`$ anomaly within the theoretical framework of quantum fluctuations Blatter .

A boron thin film was first deposited on (0001) oriented Al2O3 single crystal substrate and then followed by an ex situ annealing in Mg vapor at $`900^{}`$ C for one hour Wang . Such a film of thickness around $``$500 nm can reach a superconducting transition temperature of 39 K. This film is highly $`c`$-axis oriented with the full width at half maximum of the (002) rocking curve being $`1.8^{}`$. AC-susceptibility measurements show that the film studied in this experiment has a transition temperature $`T_c33`$ K. For magneto-resistivity measurements, a bridge geometry was patterned on the film with dimensions of 0.2 $`\times `$ 2 mm2. A four-probe AC technique was used with a current modulation at 91.05 Hz (magnitude 4.0 $`\mu `$A). Perpendicular and parallel magnetic fields to the thin film plane were sequentially applied with the current always perpendicular to the field directions. Magnetoresistivity data were collected with a field sweeping rate 3.0 x10-2 T/s at fixed temperatures.

Figures 1(a) and 1(b) show the magnetoresistivity curves in perpendicular and parallel fields, respectively. Using a constant resistivity value $`\rho _N`$ in the normal state, we determine transition fields $`H_i(T)`$ for different fractions $`i=\rho (T,H_i)/\rho _N`$ of the normal state resistivity. Fig. 2(a) and 2(b) represent the experimental data $`H_i^{}(T)`$ and $`H_i^{}(T)`$ for the perpendicular and parallel fields, respectively. Here, we simply define $`H_{c2}(T)=H_{90\%}(T)`$, $`H_{irr}(T)=H_{0.1\%}(T)`$ (a small dissipation criterion), and characterize the magnetic field difference by the normalized parameter $`\delta h=[H_{c2}H_{irr}]/H_{irr}`$.

The inset of Fig. 2(a) shows $`H_i^{}(T)`$ curves in a log-linear scale. It is remarkable that each $`H_i^{}(T)`$ curve shows an approximately constant value for temperatures below 1.5 K, which corresponds to the lowest temperature curves in Fig. 1(a) where all the curves roughly fall onto the same line for $`T<1.5`$ K. By extrapolating to $`T=0`$ K, we obtain $`\mu _0H_{irr}^{}(0)=8.7\pm 0.5`$ T, $`\mu _0H_{c2}^{}=\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi \xi _{ab}^2(0)=18.9\pm 1.0`$ T with the in-plane coherence length $`\xi _{ab}(0)4.2`$ nm. Note that $`\delta h(0)=[H_{c2}^{}(0)H_{irr}^{}(0)]/H_{irr}^{}(0)1.2`$ derived here is very close to those of previous reports, but the $`\rho _N`$ is about 2 orders larger than that of MgB2 bulk materials ($`T_c39`$ K) Eom ; Kim ; Wen ; Wen2 ; Patnaik ; Buzea .

From Fig. 2(b), by extrapolation, we obtain $`\mu _0H_{irr}^{}(0)=17.5\pm 1.0`$ T. Note the $`\mu _0H_{c2}^{}(0)`$ is extrapolated from the data above 4.6 K due to the available data within the magnetic field limit. The value for $`\mu _0H_{c2}^{}(0)=\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi \xi _{ab}(0)\xi _c(0)`$ is then $`27.5\pm 2.5`$ T with the out-plane coherence length $`\xi _c(0)2.8`$ nm. A rough estimate for the anisotropy factor is $`\gamma =H_{c2}^{}(0)/H_{c2}^{}(0)1.5`$.

According to Blatter and Ivlev Blatter , the vortex motion may not only be related to thermal effects, but also to quantum effects Brandt ; Ivlev ; Smith ; Blatter1 . The vortex displacement amplitude relation for superconductors under the influence of both thermal and quantum fluctuations is given by

$$\frac{}{a_0^2}\left(\frac{G}{\beta _{th}}\right)^{1/2}\frac{\sqrt{b}}{1tb}\left[t+q\sqrt{b}\left(1\frac{b}{1t}\right)\right],$$
(1)
where $`a_0`$ is the vortex lattice constant, $`<u^2>`$ the mean square displacement, $`b=B/H_{c2}(0)`$, $`t=T/T_c`$, $`q`$ the quantum parameter characterizing the quantum fluctuations, $`\beta _{th}2.5`$ the numerical parameter, and $`G`$ the Ginzburg number characterizing the thermal fluctuations. Using this relation, we have two simple approaches for two limits. First, supposing $`q`$ is large enough (strong quantum fluctuations) for $`t0`$, we have $`<u^2>/a_0^2qb(G/\beta _{th})^{1/2}`$, thus the vortex displacement amplitude being only related to the applied magnetic field in absence of thermally induced hopping. Second, supposing $`q=0`$ (no quantum effects), we find $`<u^2>/a_0^20`$ for $`t0`$. Note that the term $`<u^2>/a_0^2`$ can be used to describe the Lindemann criterion (with a value between $`0.10.3`$) for the vortex lattice melting. Therefore, we can conclude that in this limit there is no vortex lattice melting transition at $`T=0`$ even by increasing the magnetic field to $`H_{c2}(0)`$. This second limit, $`q=0`$, implies that the vortex melting line $`H_m(T0)`$ approaches $`H_{c2}(0)`$, and this should also be the case for $`H_i(T0)`$s \[$`H_i(T0)H_m(T0)`$\]. In the first limit, one expects a weak temperature dependence of $`H_i(T0)`$ in accordance with our result. In the second limit, $`H_i(T0)`$ should approach $`H_{c2}(T0)`$, rather different from the large separation of $`H_{irr}`$ and $`H_{c2}`$ we observed.

Applying the Lindemann criterion $`<u^2>/a_0^2=c_L^2`$ to Eq. (1), where $`0.1c_L0.3`$, Blatter and Ivlev Blatter  obtained the approximate solution for the melting line

$$H_m4\theta ^2H_{c2}(0)/(1+\sqrt{1+4S\theta /t})^2,$$
(2)
with the temperature variable $`\theta =c_L^2(\beta _{th}/G)^{1/2}(1/t1)`$, and the suppression parameter $`S=q+c_L^2(\beta th/G)^{1/2}`$. From the theory:

$$q=2\tau _rcQ\sqrt{\beta _{th}/G}/\pi ^3\lambda 2\nu \sqrt{\beta _{th}/G}/\pi ^3K_F\xi ,$$
(3)
where $`Q=e^2\rho _N/\mathrm{}d`$ is the quantum sheet resistance, $`\rho _N=m/e^2n\tau _r`$, $`d`$ the layer spacing, $`m`$ the effective mass, $`\tau _r`$ the relaxation time, $`n`$ the carrier density, $`\lambda `$ the penetration depth, $`\nu `$ the free parameter, and $`K_F`$ the Fermi wavenumber nearly constant at low temperature.

Taking $`H_{irr}H_m`$ Blatter1 ; Suenaga ; Schmidt ; Blatter2 ; Houghton , from Eqs. (2) and (3), one can find

$$\delta h(0)q(0)\sqrt{G/\beta _{th}}/c_L^2=2c\tau _rQ/\pi ^3\lambda (0)c_L^2$$
(4)
that means $`\delta h(0)\tau _rQ\tau _r\rho _Nm/n`$. Note that no great $`\delta h(0)`$ change has been observed for two orders of the magnitude change of the MgB2 resistivity, leading to the conclusion that the products of $`\tau _r\rho _N`$ and $`mn^1`$ of MgB2 are roughly constant. Note that, besides the strong difference: $`n10^{21}`$ cm-3 for HTSCs and $`n10^{23}`$ cm-3 for MgB2 Buzea , steep upward curvatures of $`H_{irr}(T)`$s of HTSCs were observed at low temperatures Cohen ; Ando , resulting in relatively small $`\delta h(0)`$s as compared to that of MgB2. These $`\delta h(0)`$ and $`n`$ features lead to a conclusion that the $`\tau _r`$ and the $`m`$ of a HTSC are much smaller than that of MgB2. These conclusions rely on the assumption of a single relaxation time $`\tau _r`$, independent of the vortex state; failures of this assumption shall modify the $`\delta h(0)`$ relation by a numerical factor accounting for the characteristics.

Using a temperature dependence of the coherence length, $`\xi \xi (0)/(1t)^{1/2}`$, we have: $`q(t)2\nu \sqrt{\beta _{th}/G}/\pi ^3K_F\xi q_0(1t)^{1/2}`$ with $`q_0`$ the quantum parameter at 0 K. Hence, we have two free parameters: $`q_0`$, and $`c_f=c_L^2(\beta _{th}/G)^{1/2}`$. With $`T_c=33`$ K, $`H_{c2}^{}(0)=18.9`$ T and $`H_{c2}^{}(0)=27.5`$ T, we present in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) the fitting lines (dotted lines) for $`H_{irr}^{}(T)`$ (circles) and $`H_{irr}^{}(T)`$ data (circles), respectively, with the parameters $`c_f^{}=4.3`$, $`q_0^{}=5.0`$, $`c_f^{}=3.4`$ and $`q_0^{}=2.0`$.

The discrepancy between the data and the fits led us to review the assumption of Blatter and Ivlev model Blatter , concerning the equal weights of the quantum and thermal effects. As can be expected from the change of the magnetic structure along the irreversibility line (parameters in $`q`$ for reality), affected by the crystallographic structure, defects, inhomogeneities, and compositional deviations, we take a temperature dependent weight function $`w(t)`$, representing the relative importance of the thermal and quantum effects. Introducing this weight function, we use the following expression (for both orientations) for an effective quantum parameter $`q(t)`$:

$$q(t)=w(t)q_0(1t)^{1/2}=q_0(1t)^p,$$
(5)
where $`w`$ is the weight function with $`w(0)=1`$ (no thermal effects at $`T=0`$) and $`w(1)=0`$ (no quantum effects above $`T_c`$), and $`p`$ an adjustable free parameter.

The solid lines in Fig. 3(a) and 3(b) represent the corresponding fits , in good agreement with the experimental data, with $`c_f^{}=4.3`$, $`q_0^{}=5.0`$, $`c_f^{}=3.4`$ and $`q_0^{}=2.0`$ the same values as before. The solid lines in the insets of Fig. 3(a) and 3(b) represent the corresponding temperature dependence of the effective quantum parameters together with the corresponding $`p`$ values. Note that $`p=1/2`$ corresponds to equal weights \[$`w(t)1`$\] of the thermal and quantum effects. The differences between the curves with and without the temperature dependence $`w(t)`$ suggest that the quantum effects are reduced with a large $`p`$ value when $`0<t<1`$, but still contribute substantially to the vortex motion and affect the irreversibility line. From the fitting, we determine $`\mu _0H_{irr}^{}(0)=8.74`$ T and $`\mu _0H_{irr}^{}(0)=17.3`$ T, values similar to our previous estimations. With $`c_L^{}=0.25`$, we have $`G^{}5.3\times 10^4`$. As $`G^{}/G^{}\gamma ^2`$, we determine $`G^{}1.2\times 10^3`$ and $`c_L^{}0.27`$. One will notice that changing the $`c_L^{}`$ value will affect the values of $`c_L^{}`$, $`G^{}`$, and $`G^{}`$; the lower the $`c_L^{}`$ value, the lower the $`c_L^{}`$, $`G^{}`$, and $`G^{}`$ values.

Figure 4 represents fits of irreversibility lines of several other MgB2 samples \[one thin film ($`T_c38`$ K) and two MgB2 bulk materials ($`T_c39`$ K)\] using a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) Wen , in good agreement with the experimental data. The inset table presents the corresponding fitting parameters. The following differences have to be considered when comparing the data as their crystallographic structures and defects are rather different. Both thin films, having relatively large $`p`$ values when comparing with bulk samples, are mainly $`c`$-axis oriented with textured structures. The bulk samples are non-oriented polycrystals with $`T_c`$ 39 K, a typical value for MgB2. All the VSM tested samples with relatively high $`T_c`$s show relatively small $`q_0`$ and $`c_f`$ values (large $`G`$ values).

Based on the study of quantum effects at low temperatures in HTSCs, Ivlev, Ovchinnikov, and Thompson proposed a crossover temperature $`T_0`$ ($`0<T_0<T_c`$) to separate thermal and quantum regimes Ivlev ; Smith , where $`T_0`$ can be much smaller than $`T_c`$ in HTSCs Zhang ; Yeshurun ; Nowak ; Monier ; Hoekstra ; Stein . Our study, however, suggests that in MgB2 superconductor $`T_0T_c`$. This difference between HTSCs and MgB2 implies that the form of $`w(t)`$ in the study is not universal for all superconductors, but is superconductor dependent, and thus may account for the $`H_{irr}(T)`$ curvature difference between HTSCs and MgB2.

To summarize, a $`c`$-axis oriented MgB2 thin film is studied in perpendicular and parallel fields up to 23 T yielding resistive $`H_{irr}`$ and $`H_{c2}`$ in both directions. The anisotropy factor is determined to be around 1.5 by extrapolating the $`H_{c2}^{}(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}^{}`$ curves to $`T=0`$. At low temperatures, $`H_i^{}(T)`$ and $`H_{irr}^{}(T)`$ are nearly temperature independent, and large differences between the values for $`H_{irr}(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}(T)`$ are observed. The analysis concludes that the critical field data are related to quantum fluctuations of the vortex matter in this new superconductor. We propose the effective quantum parameter $`q(t)`$ under the framework of quantum fluctuations. The relative contributions of quantum and thermal effects are evaluated for the irreversibility line. Due to the dependence of the vortex parameters on magnetic field and temperature, the relative weights of the two contributions are temperature dependent. Complementary studies of $`H_{irr}(T)`$ data of other MgB2 samples Wen  give a strong support to the analysis.

This work has been financially supported by the National Science Foundation of China, PAI 4/10 (Belgium), Communaute Francaise de Belgique, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and National Science Foundation of USA.


text:
# Mesoscopic Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics of Single Macromolecules and Dynamic Entropy-Energy Compensation

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Marty Cooksey, Bernard Deconinck, Shoudan Liang, Christian Maes, and Kyung Kim for many helpful discussions.


text:
# Thermodynamics with 3 and 2+1 Flavors of Improved Staggered Quarks Preprint FSU-CSIT-01-52. Talk given by U.M. Heller at Lattice 2001, August 19–24, Berlin, Germany.

## Abstract

We present preliminary results  from exploring the phase diagram of finite temperature QCD with three degenerate flavors and with two light flavors and the mass of the third held approximately at the strange quark mass. We use an order $`\alpha _s^2a^2,a^4`$ Symanzik improved gauge action and an order $`\alpha _sa^2,a^4`$ improved staggered quark action. The improved staggered action leads to a dispersion relation with diminished lattice artifacts, and hence better thermodynamic properties. It decreases the flavor symmetry breaking of staggered quarks substantially, and we estimate that at the transition temperature for an $`N_t=8`$ to $`N_t=10`$ lattice all pions will be lighter than the lightest kaon. Preliminary results on lattices with $`N_t=4`$, 6 and 8 are presented.

With the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) now producing data, it has become even more important to understand the phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature, and to determine properties of the high temperature quark-gluon-plasma phase with confidence, i.e. with controlled lattice spacing errors.

It is fairly well established that QCD with two flavors of massless quarks has a second order finite temperature, chiral symmetry restoring phase transition. This transition is washed out as soon as the quarks become massive. QCD with three flavors of massless quarks has a first order finite temperature, chiral symmetry restoring phase transition, which is stable for small quark masses. Not well known is how large the quark masses can be until the phase transition turns second order and then into a crossover, both for degenerate quarks and especially for the physically relevant case of two light and one heavier strange quark.

In previous studies, the second question is particularly badly answered due to the flavor symmetry breaking in Kogut-Susskind quarks, usually used for this purpose: how can one study the influence of the strange quark when most of the (non-Goldstone) pions are heavier than the (Goldstone) kaon?

Adding a few terms to the conventional Kogut-Susskind action, namely three-link, five-link and seven-link staples and a third-neighbor coupling, removes all tree-level $`𝒪(a^2)`$ errors . This “Asqtad” action shows improved flavor and rotational symmetry , and, at least in quenched QCD, good scaling properties .

Based on our zero temperature simulations  and the estimate of $`T_c150170`$ MeV  we deduce that for $`N_t=810`$ the kaon will be heavier than the heaviest non-Goldstone pion at the finite temperature transition.

We have zero temperature results, in particular, the value of the (bare) strange quark mass, at fixed lattice spacing $`a0.13`$ fm and $`a0.2`$ fm. Since we want to keep the physical quark masses approximately constant when we vary the temperature (which, at fixed $`N_t=1/(aT)`$, means varying the gauge coupling $`\beta `$), we interpolated (extrapolated) between the values at the two lattice spacings.

We show in Fig. 1 the real part of the Polyakov line and in Fig. 2 the condensate as function of the temperature for our simulations with three degenerate quarks of mass $`m_qm_s`$. To set the scale we used the distance $`r_1`$, defined in terms of the static $`\mathrm{Q}\overline{\mathrm{Q}}`$ potential by $`r_1^2F_{\mathrm{Q}\overline{\mathrm{Q}}\mathrm{static}}(r_1)=1`$, i.e. $`r_10.35`$ fm  and interpolated $`a/r_1`$, with the form advocated by Allton , between the two lattice spacings $`a0.13`$ fm and $`a0.2`$ fm.

The Polyakov line shows a crossover behavior, but the condensate appears to decrease, with increasing temperature, rather smoothly. However, the chiral susceptibility, shown in Fig. 4 for $`N_t=6`$ and in Fig. 4 for $`N_t=8`$, exhibits a peak. The peak height appears to be independent of the spatial volume, indicative of a smooth crossover.

Our other results look similar . Fig. 6 shows the real part of the Polyakov line for our three-flavor simulations with $`m_q0.6m_s`$, and Fig. 6 for our 2+1 flavor simulations with $`m_{u,d}=0.6m_s`$ and $`0.4m_s`$.

For the masses considered so far, we have not seen any sign of a genuine phase transition. This result is compatible with other recent simulations  which found phase transitions only at quark masses lighter than those studied by us so far. The temperature at the crossover, with the scale set by $`r_1`$, $`T_c190`$ – 200 MeV, is a little higher than expected from previous determinations . This is presumably also due to our quark masses still being rather high.

This work is supported by the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and used computer resources at Florida State University (SP), NERSC, NPACI, FNAL, and the University of Utah (CHPC).