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# The Optical Counterpart of the Accreting Millisecond Pulsar SAX J1808.4–3658 in Outburst: Constraints on the Binary Inclination

## 1 INTRODUCTION

It is generally believed that millisecond radio pulsars are formed during sustained mass transfer onto neutron stars in X-ray binaries (e.g., Bhattacharya & van den Heuvel 1991). Only one example of a presumed progenitor, an accretion-powered millisecond X-ray pulsar, is currently known. The X-ray transient SAX J1808.4–3658 ($`l=355.4^{}`$, $`b=8.1^{}`$) was discovered in 1996 September by the BeppoSAX Wide Field Cameras during a $``$20 day transient outburst (in’t Zand et al. 1998). Based on the detection of Eddington-limited thermonuclear X-ray bursts during these observations, the source distance is estimated to be 2.5 kpc (in ’t Zand et al. 2001). A second source outburst was detected with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) in 1998 April (Marshall 1998). Timing analysis of the 2–30 keV RXTE data revealed the presence of a 401 Hz pulsar in a 2-hr binary with a low-mass companion (Wijnands & van der Klis 1998; Chakrabarty & Morgan 1998).

Shortly after the initial RXTE detection of the 1998 X-ray outburst, we observed a $`V16`$ star located 19 arcsec from the center of the BeppoSAX error circle; this star was not present on the Digitized Sky Survey image of the field to a limiting magnitude of $`V19`$, leading to its identification as the optical counterpart of SAX J1808.4–3658 (Roche et al. 1998). The optical intensity of this source faded as the X-ray source declined, and a 2-hr orbital modulation was marginally detected in the optical flux (Giles, Hill, & Greenhill 1999). This 2-hr optical modulation was subsequently confirmed in observations during quiescence (Homer et al. 2001). The optical counterpart has been designated V4580 Sagittarii (Kazarovets, Samus, & Durlevich 2000). In this Letter, we report on optical/IR photometry obtained during the 1998 outburst.

## 2 OBSERVATIONS AND RESULTS

We obtained multiband optical photometry of the SAX J1808.4–3658 field at several epochs during the 1998 X-ray outburst using the $`f/15`$ Cassegrain CCD imager on the 1-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. Additional optical observations were obtained at various epochs during the outburst using the Keck 10-m telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii; the 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, Chile; and the 1.9-m telescope at the South African Astronomical Observatory. Infrared photometry was also obtained at several epochs using the 3.8-m United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT). A summary of these observations is given in Table 1. For completeness, we have also included the photometry obtained by other groups as well (Giles et al. 1999; Percival et al. 1998; Homer et al. 2001).

The $`V`$-band flux history is shown in Figure 1, along with the X-ray flux history measured by the RXTE Proportional Counter Array (PCA; Gilfanov et al. 1998). On both plots, we have also indicated the quiescent flux levels measured well after outburst (Wijnands et al. al. 2001; Homer et al. 2001). It is interesting to compare the behavior of the X-ray and optical light curves. In the X-ray band, the intensity shows a steady exponential decay ($`\tau =10.9`$ d) until about MJD 50929, when there is a sharp break to a steeper decay ($`\tau =2.2`$ d), as shown previously by Gilfanov et al. (1998). The optical $`V`$-band light curve also shows an initially exponential decay in intensity ($`\tau =8.4`$ d) until MJD 50936, when it abruptly reaches a plateau lasting at least 30 d. Despite the fact that the optical light curve appears to roughly follow the X-ray light curve early in the outburst, the breaks from the initial decay are spaced by a week, and the behavior after the break is quite different in the two bands.

The broadband optical/IR spectrum is shown in Figure 2 for several epochs during the outburst, as well as a quiescent measurement. The shape of the BVRI spectrum during the outburst remains roughly constant, and we show below that this shape is easily consistent with an X-ray heated disk model. There is an obvious infrared excess on MJD 50921, with the JHK points lying well above an extrapolation of the BVRI spectrum. By contrast, the $`K`$ point for MJD 50938 is consistent with the extrapolated optical spectrum. Since the origin of the IR excess early in the outburst is unclear, we restrict our accretion disk fitting in the next section to the optical BVRI bands, which (along with the ultraviolet and soft X-ray) is where most of the disk emission from an LMXB accretion disk is expected.

One point of concern is the discrepancy between optical intensities measured at different observatories a short time apart. This is particularly evident in the JKT and Mt. Canopus observations on MJD 50921, which were spaced by half a day but differ by 0.2 magnitudes in $`V`$ and $`I`$. One possible contribution to this discrepancy is the 2-hr orbital flux modulation reported by Giles et al. (1999), with amplitude of $`0.07`$ magnitudes. To account for this in our fits, we added a systematic uncertainty of this size in quadrature to the statistical uncertainties quoted in Table 1. However, even this systematic uncertainty is insufficient to explain the discrepancy, which we conclude largely arises from further systematic errors due to calibration uncertainties in the JKT data. In particular, several of the JKT service observations suffered from limited or insufficient calibration measurements. We therefore adopt a systematic uncertainty of 0.2 magnitudes for all the JKT measurements in our model fitting.

## 3 SPECTRAL FITTING

The optical data during outburst are well fitted by an X-ray–heated accretion disk model (see Vrtilek et al. 1990, Chakrabarty 1998, and references therein). We summarize this model here. The observed flux from the accretion disk at frequency $`\nu `$ can be written as

$$F_\nu =\frac{4\pi h\nu ^3e^{A_\nu /1.086}\mathrm{cos}i}{c^2D^2}_{r_{\mathrm{in}}}^{r_{\mathrm{out}}}\frac{rdr}{\mathrm{exp}[h\nu /kT(r)]1},$$
(1)
where $`D`$ is the source distance, $`A_\nu `$ is the (frequency-dependent) interstellar extinction in magnitudes, $`r`$ is the mid-plane disk radius coordinate, $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{out}}`$ are the inner and outer radii of the disk, and the disk’s surface temperature profile $`T(r)`$ is given by

$$T^4(r)=\frac{3GM_\mathrm{x}\dot{M}}{8\pi \sigma r^3}+\frac{L_\mathrm{x}(1\eta _\mathrm{d})}{4\pi \sigma r^2}\left(\frac{dH}{dr}\frac{H}{r}\right).$$
(2)
Here, $`M_\mathrm{x}`$ is the neutron star mass, $`\dot{M}`$ is the mass transfer rate through the disk, $`L_\mathrm{x}`$ is the X-ray luminosity of the neutron star, $`\eta _\mathrm{d}`$ is the X-ray albedo of the disk, and $`H`$ is the disk’s scale height. $`H(r)`$ may be determined from the condition of hydrostatic equilibrium, as in a standard Shakura-Sunyaev disk model (see, e.g., Frank, King, & Raine 1992). The first term in equation (2) is due to internal viscous heating in the disk, and the second term is due to X-ray heating.

For SAX J1808.4–3658, many of these model parameters are well-constrained. We may adopt the distance $`D=2.5`$ kpc inferred from radius-expansion X-ray bursts (in ’t Zand et al. 2001). Since this is a disk-accreting pulsar, we may assume that the inner disk is truncated by the pulsar’s magnetosphere at a radius $`r_{\mathrm{in}}`$ of order the corotation radius $`r_{\mathrm{co}}=(GM_\mathrm{x}P_{\mathrm{spin}}^2/4\pi ^2)^{1/3}30`$ km (Psaltis & Chakrabarty 1999); in fact, the optical spectrum is not very sensitive to the exact value of this parameter, since the optical emission primarily arises from radii in excess

of $`10^8`$ cm. The outer disk will be cut off sharply near the neutron star’s tidal radius, $`R_{\mathrm{Roche}}`$ (Frank et al. 1992), which will in turn depend upon the mass ratio and thus the binary inclination (Eggleton 1983). We may infer the X-ray luminosity from the X-ray flux through $`L_\mathrm{x}=4\pi D^2F_\mathrm{x}`$, and hence deduce the mass transfer rate $`\dot{M}`$. Finally, for the X-ray albedo of the disk, we use the results of previous studies of X-ray reprocessing in LMXBs which found that $`\eta _\mathrm{d}0.90`$, indicating that only a small fraction of the incident X-ray flux is absorbed by the accretion disk and reprocessed into the optical band (Kallman, Raymond, & Vrtilek 1991; de Jong, van Paradijs, & Augusteijn 1996).

With the model parameters set as described above, we fit the heated disk model to the observed photometry with two free parameters, $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ and the optical $`V`$-band extinction $`A_V`$. We computed our model fits on a grid with 99 values of $`\mathrm{cos}i`$ in the range 0.01–0.99 and 501 values of $`A_V`$ in the range 0.00–5.00. We computed the extinction in the other bands using the interstellar reddening law of Rieke & Lebofsky (1985). For each $`(A_V,\mathrm{cos}i)`$ grid point, we fit the data for 10 different values of $`\eta _\mathrm{d}`$ in the range 0.90–0.99 and used only the best-fit value for that grid point. In order to ensure that we were working in the regime where X-ray heating is important (and the X-ray flux is well determined), we confined our fitting to the optical data prior to the break in the X-ray light curve at MJD 50929. The

fitting was performed simultaneously to all the BVRI data in Table 1 prior to that date.

Our simple disk model was able to provide a good simultaneous solution to these data. The best-fit parameters were $`A_V=0.68_{0.28}^{+0.37}`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.65_{0.38}^{+0.23}`$, with reduced $`\chi ^2=0.81`$ (9 degrees of freedom), where the uncertainties are quoted at the 90%-confidence level. The spectral model for two epochs is shown by the solid curves in Figure 2, and a contour plot of the allowed parameter space is shown in Figure 3. The confidence levels indicated by the contours in Figure 3 are determined as described by Lampton, Margon, & Bowyer (1976). The hashed regions in Figure 3 reflect the additional lower limit of $`A_V>0.53`$ set by the measured Galactic dust extinction through the Galactic disk along the line of sight (Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis 1998), and the additional lower limit of $`\mathrm{cos}i>0.15`$ set by the absence of a deep X-ray eclipse of the source (Chakrabarty & Morgan 1998). (We note that the system must lie outside the Galactic disk, given its distance and Galactic latitude.) Accounting for these additional independent limits, the best-fit parameter values are $`A_V=0.68_{0.15}^{+0.37}`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.65_{0.33}^{+0.23}`$. The allowed parameter space is relatively narrow in $`A_V`$ with a central value only slightly larger than the Galactic value.

To investigate how sensitive our conclusions are to the adopted source distance $`D=2.5`$ kpc, we refit the data for distances of 2 kpc and 3 kpc as well. For the larger distance, the confidence contours in Figure 3 were slightly displaced upward and to the right, with best-fit parameter values $`A_V=0.74_{0.34}^{+0.39}`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.80_{0.38}^{+0.14}`$ with reduced $`\chi ^2=0.80`$. For the smaller distance, the contours were more elongated and displaced downward and to the left, with best-fit parameter values $`A_V=0.63_{0.22}^{+0.31}`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}i=0.39\pm 0.35`$ with reduced $`\chi ^2=0.85`$.

In both cases, the fit values are quoted without accounting for the addition independent limits discussed above. The assumed distance clearly plays a significant role in determining the fit parameters, although the qualitative results of an extinction value slightly greater than Galactic and an intermediate inclination are robust.

## 4 DISCUSSION

We have shown that the optical spectrum of SAX J1808.4$``$3658 during its 1998 outburst is well fit by an X-ray–heated accretion disk model. The derived inclination range for the binary requires that the companion mass is 0.05–0.10 $`M_{}`$ (Chakrabarty & Morgan 1998). This is consistent with the low companion mass deduced from the long-term average $`\dot{M}`$ for gravitational-radiation–driven mass transfer (Chakrabarty & Morgan 1998) and thus supports the recent prediction that the mass donor is a low-mass brown dwarf (Bildsten & Chakrabarty 2001). This inclination range is also consistent with the orbital-phase flux variability observed from the source in both the X-ray (Chakrabarty & Morgan 1998; Lee, Psaltis, & Chakrabarty 2001, in preparation) and optical (Giles et al. 1999; Homer et al. 2001) bands.

The strong infrared excess measured on MJD 50921 is clearly inconsistent with emission from the X-ray heated disk (see Figure 2). It is also orders of magnitude too bright to be due to the companion; even X-ray heating does not mitigate this, due to the small solid angle subtended by the star. On the other hand, the infrared emission on MJD 50938 is consistent with disk emission, indicating that the cause of the earlier IR excess is transient in nature. It is interesting to note that the flux density of the IR excess is comparable to the radio flux density measured from the source a week later (Gaensler, Stappers, & Getts 1999). Radio/IR emission due to synchrotron processes have been previously detected from some X-ray binaries during outburst (see, e.g., Fender 2001). The possibility of a synchrotron origin for the IR excess on MJD 50921 (as well as the radio emission) will be explored in detail elsewhere (Chakrabarty, Gaensler, & Stappers 2001, in preparation).

We thank Phil Blanco, William Heindl, and Fred Hammann of UCSD for obtaining and sharing their Keck observation with us, and Sonja Vrielmann for obtaining the SAAO observation during outburst. We also thank Rob Fender, Bryan Gaensler, Dimitrios Psaltis, Krzysztof Stanek, and Ben Stappers for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by NASA under grant NAG5-9184 and contract NAS8-38249.


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# Revised analysis of the supersoft X-ray phase, helium enrichment, and turn-off time in the 2000 outburst of the recurrent nova CI Aquilae

## 1. Light Curve Analysis of CI Aql and Turn-off Time

The second recorded outburst of CI Aquilae was discovered in 2000 April by Takamizawa since the first recorded outburst in 1917. After optical brightness reached its maximum, $`m_V9`$, in early May of 2000, it rapidly decreased to $`m_V13`$ in about 50 days. A plateau phase follows; the brightness leveled off at $`m_V13.5`$. Once it rapidly decayed to $`m_V14.5`$ at the end of November of 2000, it stayed at $`m_V14.5`$ until March of 2001. CI Aql has entered the final decline phase toward its quiescent level from May of 2001 as shown in Fig. 1

We have modeled the system consisting of a massive white dwarf (WD) and a lobe-filling main-sequence (MS) star. Irradiation effects of the accretion disk (ACDK) and the MS companion by the WD are included into the light curve calculation. The numerical method has been described in Hachisu & Kato (2001b). We are able to reproduce the light curve by adopting model parameters similar to those of U Sco (Hachisu et al. 2000). The model parameters including those for the ACDK are shown in Fig. 1 (see also Hachisu & Kato 2001a).

After the paper of Hachisu & Kato (2001a) has been published, we have new data on the final decay phase of the 2000 outburst (Schaefer 2001, private communication) and, now, are able to determine the turn-off time, the helium content of the envelope, and the duration of luminous supersoft X-ray phase as shown in Fig. 1. We have also revised the physical parameters: the unheated surface temperatures are $`T_{\mathrm{ph},\mathrm{MS}}=7100`$ K of the MS companion, $`T_{\mathrm{ph},\mathrm{disk}}=6600`$ K of the disk rim, the apparent distance modulus $`(mM)_V=13.4`$, the color excess $`E(BV)=1.0`$, the absorption $`A_V=3.1`$, and the distance to CI Aql $`d=1.1`$ kpc.

## References

Hachisu, I., & Kato, M. 2001a, ApJ, 553, L161

Hachisu, I., & Kato, M. 2001b, ApJ, 558, 323

Hachisu, I., Kato, M., Kato, T, & Matsumoto, K. 2000, ApJ, 528, L97


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# Strong Gravitational Lensing and Dark Energy

## 1 Introduction

A number of observational data sets strongly suggest that the cosmological energy density includes a component that is not associated with matter, either baryonic or dark. For example, measurements of the acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectrum point to a nearly spatially-flat cosmology (Pryke et al. 2001; Netterfield et al. 2001 and references therein). However, the matter density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ inferred from cluster baryon fractions (e.g., David, Jones & Forman 1995) and galaxy redshift surveys (Percival et al. 2001 and references therein) falls far short of the critical value. Type Ia supernovae studies offer independent evidence of a negative-pressure component of the energy density (Riess et al. 1998, 2001; Perlmutter et al. 1999). This energy component is described by the equation of state $`p=\omega \rho `$ with $`\omega <0`$. The value of $`\omega `$ is $`1`$ for the spatially homogeneous cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and $`\omega `$ can be larger than $`1`$ for other types of fields such as the quintessence (e.g., Frieman et al. 1995; Turner & White 1997; Caldwell et al. 1998). The latter clusters spatially on large scales, thereby modifying both the matter density fluctuation power spectrum and the CMB anisotropy (Ma et al. 1999). Large-scale structure and supernova observations currently favor $`1\omega 0.6`$ (Perlmutter, Turner & White 1999; Wang et al. 2000). The constraint can be improved with ongoing and future surveys based on, for example, the classical method of measuring the luminosity distance or the differential volume element as a function of redshift (e.g., Newman & Davis 2000).

In this Letter we focus on strong gravitational lensing and examine the effect of the equation of state $`\omega `$ on the probabilities of producing multiply lensed systems. The number of expected lenses as a function of image separation provides a potential means of constraining $`\omega `$ because it is determined by factors such as the angular diameter distances to the lens and the source, the lensing cross sections, and the number density of the lenses, each of which depends on $`\omega `$. This type of study is timely in view of the completion of the Jodrell-VLA Astrometric Survey (JVAS; e.g., Patnaik et al. 1992; King et al. 1999) and the Cosmic Lens All-Sky Survey (CLASS; e.g., Myers et al. 1999, 2001), which together provide the largest uniformly selected sample of radio lens systems and have yielded 18 new lenses thus far. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) will further increase the source population by one to two orders of magnitude.

Since lensing probes the mass and not the light distribution, we model the lenses as a population of dark matter halos with an improved version of the Press-Schechter (1974) mass function. For galaxy-size lenses, we follow the tradition in lensing studies and use the singular isothermal spheres (SIS) as the mass profile (e.g., Turner et al. 1984; Narayan & White 1988; Kochanek 1996). The SIS ensures flat rotation curves and is consistent with constraints on the inner mass profiles of elliptical galaxies (e.g., Rusin & Ma 2001; Rix et al. 1997; Kochanek 1995; Cohn et al. 2001). For cluster-size lenses, however, the mass profile is mostly determined by the dark matter. For this, we take advantage of the recent progress in high resolution $`N`$-body simulations and model the lenses with the phenomenological profile of Navarro et al. (NFW, 1997). This approach allows us to calculate both small-separation (galaxy-based) and wide-separation (dark matter-based) lensing phenomena concurrently. It also enables us to relate the lensing probabilities directly to cosmological parameters through the mass power spectrum that governs the number density of lenses, and the lensing cross sections. Approximating lenses with a mixture of SIS and dark matter profiles is supported by simple baryon cooling models (Keeton 1998; Kochanek & White 2001) and has been used recently to study the link between strong lensing and distant supernovae (Porciani & Madau 2000), halo density profiles (Keeton & Madau 2001; Takahashi & Chiba 2001; Wyithe et al. 2001), and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (Li & Ostriker 2001). These studies, however, have assumed $`\omega =1`$. As we will show, relaxing the $`\omega =1`$ assumption can have a significant effect on the lensing probabilities, in particular at wide angular separations.

## 2 Lensing Probabilities and JVAS/CLASS Data

In this Letter we consider cosmological models with a present-day density parameter of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.35`$ in matter (with 0.05 in baryons and 0.3 in cold dark matter (CDM)), $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega =0.65`$ in dark energy, and Hubble parameter $`h=0.65`$. For the dark energy component, we analyze the standard cosmological constant ($`w=1`$) and models with $`w<1/3`$. This set of parameters is chosen to lie well inside the concordance region given by large scale structure observations (see Wang et al. 2000). Taking into account the current observational uncertainties in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`h`$ changes our constraints on $`\omega `$ by up to $``$ 10% (see § 3).

The probability for lensing with an image separation greater than $`\theta `$ is given by (e.g., Turner et al. 1984; Narayan & White 1988)

$$P(>\theta )=𝑑z_s𝒫(z_s)_0^{z_s}𝑑z_l\frac{dr}{dz_l}_{M_{min}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑M\frac{dn}{dM}(M,z_l)\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}(M,z_l)B(M,z_l,z_s),$$
(1)
where $`n(M,z_l)`$ is the physical number density of dark halos at the lens redshift $`z_l`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}(M,z_l)`$ is the lensing cross section of a halo of mass $`M`$ at $`z_l`$, $`B`$ is the magnification bias (see below), and $`r`$ is the proper cosmological distance to the lens, with $`dr/dz=cH_0^1(1+z)^1[\mathrm{\Omega }_m(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega (1+z)^{3(1+\omega )}]^{1/2}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m+\mathrm{\Omega }_\omega =1`$. The parameter $`M_{min}`$ is the mass needed for a halo at $`z_l`$ to create an angular separation $`\theta `$ between the outermost images of a source at $`z_s`$. By integrating over $`z_l`$ from $`0`$ to $`z_s`$, we obtain the probability of lensing a source at $`z_s`$. The last integral is over the redshift distribution $`𝒫(z_s)`$ of the sources (see below).

For the halo number density, we use the recently calibrated expression $`dn/d\mathrm{ln}M=0.315(1+z)^3(\overline{\rho }/M)(d\mathrm{ln}\delta _{\mathrm{rms}}^1/d\mathrm{ln}M)\mathrm{exp}(|\mathrm{ln}\delta _{\mathrm{rms}}^1+0.61|^{3.8})`$ by Jenkins et al. (2001), where $`\overline{\rho }`$ is the mean mass density of the universe and $`\delta _{\mathrm{rms}}`$ is the rms mass density fluctuation. This formula gives an improved match to the halo abundance found in numerical simulations compared with the classic Press & Schechter (1974) formula, which tends to overestimate the abundance of typical $`M_{}`$ halos and underestimate massive halos. In the calculation of $`\delta _{\mathrm{rms}}`$, we use the COBE normalized mass power spectrum of Ma et al. (1999) for the $`w>1`$ models. The mass is taken to be the virial mass $`M=4\pi \mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}\overline{\rho }R_{vir}^3/3`$, where $`R_{vir}`$ is the virial radius within which the average density is $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}\overline{\rho }`$. For the standard CDM model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}`$ is given by the familiar value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}=18\pi ^2178`$; for flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}`$ models, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}`$ can be approximated by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}(18\pi ^2+82x39x^2)/\mathrm{\Omega }_m(z)`$ with $`x=\mathrm{\Omega }_m(z)1`$ (Bryan & Norman 1998). Jenkins et al. has specifically stated that their formula gives better fits to $`dn/dM`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}=178`$ regardless of the cosmological model, so we followed this instruction.

The lensing cross section $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}`$ in eq. (1) depends on the mass profile of the lenses. Since our interest is to predict the lensing probability over a wide range of image separations, we consider both galaxy-size halos that are responsible for lens systems of a few arcseconds, and cluster-size halos for larger $`\theta `$. In the former case, we approximate the galaxy mass distribution as an SIS with a density profile $`\rho (r)=\sigma _v^2/(2\pi Gr^2)`$, where $`\sigma _v`$ is the 1-d velocity dispersion. An SIS lens produces an image separation of $`2\theta _E`$, where $`\theta _E=4\pi (\sigma _v/c)^2D_{ls}/D_s`$ is the Einstein radius, and the cross section is $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}=\pi (\theta _ED_l)^2=16\pi ^3(\sigma _v/c)^4(D_lD_{ls}/D_s)^2`$ (e.g., Schneider et al. 1992), where $`D_s,D_l`$, and $`D_{ls}`$ are the angular diameter distances to the source, to the lens, and between the lens and the source, respectively. Using $`\sigma _v=(\pi G^3M^2\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}\overline{\rho }/6)^{1/6}`$, we can then relate $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}`$ to the halo mass which is needed for eq. (1).

For lensing by cluster-size halos, we approximate the cluster mass distribution by the density profile determined from halos in numerical simulations (Navarro et al. 1997): $`\rho (r)=\overline{\rho }\overline{\delta }u(r/r_s)`$, where $`u(x)=1/[x(1+x)^2]`$. This profile is shallower than the SIS for the inner parts of a virialized halo but is steeper at large radii. Other than the virial mass, this profile is described by a concentration parameter $`cR_{vir}/r_s`$, where $`R_{vir}`$ is the virial radius of the halo discussed earlier, and $`r_s`$ is a scale radius. For $`c`$, we take into account both the mass and redshift dependence and use the relation of Bullock et al. (2001): $`c(M,z)=9(1+z)^1(M/M_{})^{0.13}`$, where $`M_{}=1.5\times 10^{13}h^1M_{}`$. The density amplitude $`\overline{\delta }`$ is related to $`c`$ by $`\overline{\delta }=\mathrm{\Delta }_{vir}c^3[\mathrm{ln}(1+c)c/(1+c)]^1/3`$. The lensing cross section for NFW halos is determined by the parameter $`\kappa _0=\overline{\rho }\overline{\delta }r_s/\mathrm{\Sigma }_{cr}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{cr}=(c^2/4\pi G)(D_s/D_lD_{ls})`$ is the critical surface mass density. An NFW halo will have multiple images if the source is within the radial caustic of angular size $`\beta _{rad}`$ from the halo center. We compute $`\beta _{rad}`$ as a function of halo mass, lens redshift, and source redshift by solving $`d\beta /d\theta =0`$, where $`\beta `$ and $`\theta `$ are the positions of the source and the image, respectively. The cross section for lensing by an NFW halo is then $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}=\pi (\beta _{rad}D_l)^2`$. We also need to determine the halo mass $`M_{min}`$ in eq. (1). Here we use the fact that the angular separation of the outermost images is insensitive to the value of $`\beta `$ (Schneider et al. 1992) and simplify the calculations by using $`\beta =0`$ for a perfectly aligned source-lens configuration. We assume a “cooling mass” of $`M_c1.510^{13}h^1M_{}`$, above which the lenses are assigned the NFW profile and below which the lenses are SIS. Uncertainties introduced by $`M_c`$ on the lensing probability are discussed in § 3.

To compare the predicted lensing probabilities with observational results, we use the combined data from JVAS and CLASS, which offer the largest uniformly selected sample of gravitational lens systems. These surveys have discovered 18 lenses among a sample of $``$ 12000 flat-spectrum radio sources (Browne & Myers 2000; Browne et al. 2001; Myers et al. 2001). A robust statistical analysis requires that careful cuts be made to the above sample, and this will be discussed in detail by Browne et al. However, because preliminary estimates indicate that the lensing rate will not differ much from the $`1/600`$ value derived here, we will assume a sample of 18 lenses and 12000 sources in the present analysis.

Raw optical depths must be corrected to account for the magnification bias, which leads to an over-representation of lensed sources in any flux-limited sample (e.g., Turner et al. 1984; Maoz & Rix 1993). Magnification bias enhances the lensing probability of sources in a bin of total flux density ($`S`$) by the factor $`B(S)=\varphi ^1(S)𝑑\mu \mu ^1P(\mu )\varphi (S/\mu )`$, where $`\varphi (S)`$ is the source luminosity function and $`P(\mu )`$ is the distribution of total magnifications ($`\mu =_i|\mu _i|`$, where the magnification of the $`i`$th image is $`\mu _i`$) produced by the lens. The sources probed by CLASS are well-represented by a power-law luminosity function, $`\varphi (S)=dn/dSS^\eta `$, with $`\eta 2.1`$ (Rusin & Tegmark 2001). The bias thus reduces to a simple form that is independent of flux density: $`B=<\mu ^{\eta 1}>`$. An SIS lens produces total magnifications described by the probability distribution $`P(\mu )=8\mu ^3`$; so if $`\eta =2.1`$, $`B_{SIS}=4.76`$. The cross sections of all SIS lenses are enhanced by this factor. The situation is more complicated for the NFW profile as its lensing properties depend on $`\kappa _0`$, which in turn depends on the halo mass and the angular distances to the halo and the source. We compute numerically the magnifications produced by NFW halos for $`0.1<\kappa _0<10`$ and use this to tabulate $`B_{NFW}(\kappa _0)`$.

For the sources in the JVAS/CLASS survey, the redshift distribution is still poorly understood but the mean redshift is estimated to be $`<z_s>=1.27`$ (Marlow et al. 2000). Since the lower flux source distribution of the JVAS/CLASS survey is indistinguishable from the complete, brighter source distribution of the Caltech-Jodrell Bank VLBI sample (Henstock et al. 1997), we assume the latter quasar distribution for $`𝒫(z_s)`$ in eq. (1).

## 3 Results and Discussion

Fig. 1 compares the JVAS/CLASS data with the predicted lensing probabilities $`P(>\theta )`$ calculated from eq. (1) for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}`$ model and models with $`\omega =2/3,1/2,1/3`$. The probability at $`\theta 4^{\prime \prime }`$ decreases rapidly as $`\omega `$ increases towards 0. The most important systematics that affect wide separation lensing are due to the halo concentration parameter $`c(M,z)`$. In Fig. 2a we quantify the dependence of $`P(>4^{\prime \prime })`$ on both $`\omega `$ and the coefficient of $`c(M,z)`$, $`c_{}c(M_{},z=0)`$. It shows that models with larger $`\omega `$ can tolerate a higher halo concentration due to the lower lensing rates in these models. JVAS/CLASS thus far has detected no lens systems with $`\theta >4^{\prime \prime }`$ (Phillips et al. 2000). This excludes the highly concentrated halos in $`\omega 0.7`$ models as indicated by the $`1\sigma `$, 90%, and 95% confidence contours in Fig. 2a. We also plot the $`1\sigma `$ confidence levels that would be imposed if one wide separation lens system were discovered. We interpret the result as indicating that higher large separation lensing rates would lead to more refined constraints in the $`\omega c(M)`$ plane.

We can also compare the total number of lenses predicted by the models with the 18 systems found among $`12000`$ sources in JVAS/CLASS. We find the expected number of lenses with $`\theta >0.3^{\prime \prime }`$ (the approximate angular resolution of JVAS/CLASS) to be $`20.7`$, $`18.2`$, $`15.5`$ and $`9.6`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}`$, $`\omega =2/3`$, $`1/2`$, and $`1/3`$ models shown in Fig. 1, respectively. Because the SIS lensing cross section is several orders of magnitude higher than that of the NFW, the expected number of lenses is not sensitive to the concentration $`c(M)`$. Instead, it depends more strongly on the cooling mass $`M_c`$ because a larger $`M_c`$ allows more halos to be modeled as SIS. In Fig. 2b we quantify the dependence of the total lensing rate on $`M_c`$ and $`\omega `$ by plotting the relative likelihood curves $`L(\omega )p(\omega )^{N_l}(1p(\omega ))^{NN_l}`$ for detecting $`N_l=18`$ lenses from $`N=12000`$ sources, where $`p(\omega )`$ is the model-predicted lensing rate for a given $`\omega `$. The range of $`M_c`$ is similar to that discussed in Kochanek & White (2001), with the upper and lower limits close to the cooling masses used by Porciani & Madau (2000) and Li & Ostriker (2001). The $`2\sigma `$ confidence level in Fig. 2b suggests that the constraint on the equation of state is not sensitive to moderate alterations to the cooling mass. Models with $`\omega 0.4`$ are disfavored in all three cases.

Note that our calculations implicitly assume that each halo below $`M_c`$ harbors sufficient baryons to give an SIS profile for the total mass. It is likely, however, that lower mass halos be devoid of baryons and therefore retain a shallower profile (e.g., NFW). Because an SIS lens has a much larger cross section than an NFW lens of the same mass, modeling all low-mass halos as SIS would overestimate the total lensing rate. Constraints on $`\omega `$ derived under our assumptions are therefore conservative – if low-mass halos actually contribute smaller cross sections than our calculations predict, more negative $`\omega `$ would be needed to reproduce the observed lensing rate.

Both large separation lensing probabilities and the total predicted number of lenses are affected by the cosmological parameters $`h`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$. Our investigations show that varying these parameters within the $`1\sigma `$ error limits given in Netterfield et al. (2001) leads to almost parallel shifts in the contour lines and likelihood curves in Fig. 2 by $`0.075`$ or less in $`\omega `$, therefore not affecting the generality of our results.

As the figures show, the predicted lensing probability decreases as $`w`$ changes from $`1`$ towards 0. The effect is particularly strong for lenses with $`\theta 4^{\prime \prime }`$, where the probability decreases by more than two orders of magnitude when $`\omega `$ is varied from $`1`$ to $`1/3`$. The dependence on $`\omega `$ enters in two ways in our calculations: one through the mass power spectrum upon which the halo density $`dn/dM`$ depends; the other through kinematic factors such as the angular diameter distances which are functions of $`\omega `$. For the power spectrum, different $`\omega `$ gives different linear growth rate for the density field. Specifically, for a fixed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_w`$, the growth becomes slower as $`\omega `$ increases towards zero because the energy density in quintessence-type of fields dominates over that in matter at earlier times, resulting in earlier cessation of the gravitational collapse (Ma et al. 1999). The amplitude of the COBE-normalized power spectrum is generally lower for larger $`\omega `$, resulting in a smaller halo density and hence a lower lensing probability. Besides the power spectrum, the dependence of the lensing probabilities on $`\omega `$ also enters through the effective lensing volume element $`(D_lD_{ls}/D_s)^2(dr/dz)`$, where the first factor comes from the lensing cross section $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lens}}`$ and the second factor is the distance to the lens in eq. (1). These effects are illustrated in Fig. 3.

It is interesting to compare gravitational lensing studied in this Letter with classical cosmological tests for constraining the equation of state. Ongoing efforts such as high redshift supernova searches and deep galaxy surveys offer promising ways to constrain $`\omega `$ by determining the luminosity distance $`d_L`$ and the cosmological volume element $`dV/dzd\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (e.g., Newman & Davis 2000; Turner 2001). In Fig. 3 we compare the luminosity distance and the volume element with the probability $`P(>4^{\prime \prime })`$ for large separation lensing. As we can see, $`P(>4^{\prime \prime })`$ depends more strongly on $`\omega `$ than the other quantities. Gravitational lensing statistics from ongoing and future surveys with $`10^510^6`$ sources (e.g., the SDSS; see Cooray & Huterer 1999) may offer an independent probe of $`\omega `$, provided that systematics associated with input source redshift distributions and halo concentration parameters can be minimized.

This paper would not have been possible without the hard work of everyone in the JVAS/CLASS team. We thank Mike Turner for useful comments. C.-P. M. acknowledges support of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Cottrell Scholars Award from the Research Corporation, a Penn Research Foundation Award, and NSF grant AST 9973461.


text:
# Phase separation due to quantum mechanical correlations

\[

## Abstract

Can phase separation be induced by strong electron correlations? We present a theorem that affirmatively answers this question in the Falicov-Kimball model away from half-filling, for any dimension. In the ground state the itinerant electrons are spatially separated from the classical particles.

\]

The Falicov-Kimball (FK) model  can be viewed as a modification of the Hubbard (H) model  in which one species of electrons (say spin down) has infinite mass. As such, its relation to the latter is similar to the relation of the Ising model to the quantum Heisenberg model . Alternatively, it can be viewed as a model of itinerant electrons and immobile ions. It possesses long range order at low temperature in two or more dimensions at half filling, and this checkerboard state (and higher-period generalizations ) remain to-date as the only examples of crystallization into a perfectly ordered structure whose periodicity is not that of the underlying lattice.

In this paper, we report a theorem on the existence of phase separation in the ground state of the FK model, away from half-filling and for large repulsion between the particles. ‘Phase separation’, or ‘segregation’, means that the system splits into two large domains, one being occupied by the classical particles, and the other by the quantum particles. In the language of the H model, this would mean segregation of spin up particles from spin down particles — resulting in a ferromagnetic state. The question of whether strong interactions can drive quantum (electronic) systems to phase separate was posed over ten years ago for the FK model  and the H model . This work is a rigorous proof of this long-standing conjecture for the FK model. Further discussion of the relation between the FK and the H model is given later.

Phase separation is not new in classical lattice models. It is present in the Ising model, and in many other classical models. It also occurs in the FK model at half-filling for some densities, as was proved in . In these examples it is mainly a local phenomenon — interactions (or ‘effective interactions’ in the case of FK) tend to dislike boundaries, and the state with minimum boundary is phase separated.

Away from half-filling, the electrons of the FK model are in delocalized wave functions, and their energy cannot be written as a sum of local terms. While we prove that the ground state energy is roughly proportional to the boundary between occupied and empty sites, the mechanism is nonlocal and genuinely quantum mechanical.

The FK Hamiltonian  is

$$H=\underset{𝐱,𝐲\mathrm{\Omega }}{}t(𝐱𝐲)c_𝐱^{}c_𝐲+U\underset{𝐱\mathrm{\Omega }}{}c_𝐱^{}c_𝐱w_𝐱.$$
(1)
Here, $`t(𝐱𝐲)`$ is the hopping coefficient between sites $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐲`$; it is translation invariant, but may depend on the direction (this allows consideration of general Bravais lattices). $`c_𝐱^{}`$ and $`c_𝐱`$ are creation and annihilation operators for a spinless electron at site $`𝐱`$, and $`w_𝐱=1`$ or 0 is a classical variable that denotes the presence or the absence of an ion at $`𝐱`$. (Spin degrees of freedom have trivial behavior and are left aside here.) $`\mathrm{\Omega }^d`$ is a finite $`d`$-dimensional lattice, and $`U`$ is the on-site repulsion between the two species of particles. For any given configuration $`w=\{w_𝐱\}`$ of classical particles, the ground state for $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ electrons is determined by diagonalizing a one-body operator given by the above Hamiltonian, and filling in the lowest $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ states. The main question is to find which configuration $`w`$, with a given number of classical particles $`N_\mathrm{c}=_𝐱w_𝐱`$, minimizes the energy of the electrons.

Our theorem states upper and lower bounds for the energy of $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ electrons, for a given configuration $`w`$ of the classical particles. For orientation, let us consider first a configuration where the sites devoid of classical particles form a large, ‘compact’ region. The expected energy of the electrons is a bulk term that scales like the volume of this region, and a correction that scales like its boundary. Our main result is a proof of this conjecture for all configurations, not only ‘nice’ ones.

We need some notation. Let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\{𝐱\mathrm{\Omega }:w_𝐱=0\}`$ denote the set of empty sites for the configuration $`w`$, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ its boundary, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\{𝐱\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{dist}(𝐱,\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Lambda })=1\}`$. Their respective number of sites are $`|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$. We write $`E(N_\mathrm{e},w)`$ for the ground state energy of $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ electrons in the configuration $`w`$. An important quantity is $`n=n_\mathrm{e}/(1n_\mathrm{c})`$, where $`n_\mathrm{e}=N_\mathrm{e}/|\mathrm{\Omega }|`$ and $`n_\mathrm{c}=_𝐱w_𝐱/|\mathrm{\Omega }|`$ are the densities for quantum and classical particles respectively. It represents the electronic density that would exist inside $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, if all electrons live inside the domain devoid of classical particles. Let $`e(n)`$ be the usual kinetic energy per site for noninteracting electrons with density $`n`$ in the thermodynamic limit (its expression is recalled below, see Eq. (3)).

Theorem. For all $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ we have upper and lower bounds, $`e(n)|\mathrm{\Lambda }|+\alpha ^{}(n)|\mathrm{\Lambda }|E(N_e,w)e(n)|\mathrm{\Lambda }|+\alpha (n,U)|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$.

Here, $`\alpha ^{}(n)`$ and $`\alpha (n,U)`$ are explicitly given positive functions. For nearest-neighbor hoppings (i.e., $`t(𝐱)0`$ if $`|𝐱|=1`$, $`t(𝐱)=0`$ otherwise), $`\alpha (n,U)=\alpha (n)\gamma (U)`$, where $`\alpha (n)=\alpha (1n)`$ is strictly positive for $`0<n<1`$, and $`\gamma (U)`$ satisfies $`lim_U\mathrm{}U\gamma (U)=8d^2`$.

The theorem clearly leads to segregation because low-energy configurations must have a small boundary, i.e. there is a relatively small number of empty sites that are neighbors of the classical particles. Furthermore, due to the large repulsion, electrons are essentially located in the empty domain. The boundary of the configuration of classical particles that minimizes the energy is smaller than the minimum possible boundary times the ratio between the upper and lower bounds (which is a large constant).

Phase separation in the FK model for large $`U`$ was conjectured in  and is in stark contrast to the situation at $`n_\mathrm{c}=n_\mathrm{e}=\frac{1}{2}`$, where long-range order of checkerboard type occurs, as was established in . The theorem is proved in , and extends results for $`d=1`$  and $`d=\mathrm{}`$  to all dimensions, in particular to the dimensions 2 and 3 that are of great physical relevance. Its proof relies on a result of Li and Yau for the Laplace operator in the continuum  (see also , Theorem 12.3). We explain this elegant proof below in the case of a lattice, thereby proving the lower bound for $`U=\mathrm{}`$ without the boundary correction. To include this boundary correction requires considerably more effort, and we refer to  for further details.

Proof with $`\alpha (n)=0`$ and $`U=\mathrm{}`$: The ground-state energy $`e(n)`$ for noninteracting electrons with density $`n`$ is found in the usual fashion: (i) define a Fermi energy $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}`$ via

$$\frac{1}{(2\pi )^d}_{ϵ(𝐤)\epsilon _\mathrm{F}}\mathrm{d}^dk=n,$$
(2)
with the band structure $`ϵ(𝐤)=_𝐱t(𝐱)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐱)`$ and (ii) do the integration

$$\frac{1}{(2\pi )^d}_{ϵ(𝐤)\epsilon _\mathrm{F}}ϵ(𝐤)\mathrm{d}^dk=e(n).$$
(3)
The electrons are forbidden to lie on any site occupied by the classical particles. Then the eigenfunctions for a given configuration $`w`$ are found by diagonalizing the projection of the hopping matrix onto $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Let $`\varphi _\beta (𝐲;w)`$ denote the orthonormal eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian indexed by $`\beta =1,\mathrm{},|\mathrm{\Omega }|N_\mathrm{c}`$ for the configuration $`w`$ with eigenvalues $`ϵ_\beta (w)`$. We choose the ordering of the labels such that $`ϵ_1(w)ϵ_2(w)\mathrm{}ϵ_{|\mathrm{\Omega }|N_\mathrm{c}}(w)`$. We also extend the definition of the eigenvectors to all of $`^d`$ setting $`\varphi _\beta (𝐲;w)=0`$ for all $`𝐲\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The ground state energy for $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ electrons and $`N_\mathrm{c}`$ classical particles in the configuration $`w`$ is

$$E(N_\mathrm{e},w)=\underset{\beta =1}{\overset{N_\mathrm{e}}{}}ϵ_\beta (w),$$
(4)
and the ground-state energy $`E_{\mathrm{g}.\mathrm{s}.}(N_\mathrm{e},N_\mathrm{c})`$ is the minimum of Eq. (4) over all configurations that contain $`N_\mathrm{c}`$ classical particles.

Using the definition of the eigenvectors allows us to write the ground state energy as

$$E(N_\mathrm{e},w)=\underset{\beta =1}{\overset{N_\mathrm{e}}{}}\underset{𝐲,𝐳^d}{}\varphi _\beta ^{}(𝐲;w)[t(𝐲𝐳)]\varphi _\beta (𝐳;w).$$
(5)
Now, we define the Fourier transform of the eigenfunctions by

$$f_\beta (𝐤;w)=\underset{𝐲^d}{}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐲}\varphi _\beta (𝐲;w),$$
(6)
for every wave vector k in the Brillouin zone $`[0,2\pi ]^d`$. It is well-known that the energy can be expressed as

$$E(N_\mathrm{e},w)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^d}\mathrm{d}^dkϵ(𝐤)\rho (𝐤;w);$$
(7)
here and in the following the integral is over $`[0,2\pi ]^d`$ and we introduced the density function

$$\rho (𝐤;w)=\underset{\beta =1}{\overset{N_\mathrm{e}}{}}|f_\beta (𝐤;w)|^2.$$
(8)
The density function is obviously positive and is bounded above by $`|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$. Indeed, we can write

$$\rho (𝐤;w)=\underset{\beta =1}{\overset{N_\mathrm{e}}{}}\underset{𝐲,𝐳^d}{}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐳}\varphi _\beta ^{}(z;w)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐲}\varphi _\beta (y;w);$$
(9)
this can be rewritten as

$$\rho (𝐤;w)=\underset{𝐲,𝐳\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐳}\rho (𝐳,𝐲;w)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐲}$$
(10)
with $`\rho (𝐳,𝐲;w)=_{\beta =1}^{N_\mathrm{e}}\varphi _\beta ^{}(𝐳;w)\varphi _\beta (𝐲;w)`$. The matrix $`\rho `$ is a positive semidefinite matrix bounded by 1 (it is the projector onto the lowest $`N_\mathrm{e}`$ eigenvectors). Hence,

$$\rho (𝐤;w)\underset{𝐲\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}|\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤𝐲}|^2=|\mathrm{\Lambda }|.$$
(11)
Furthermore, the density function satisfies a sum rule

$$\frac{1}{(2\pi )^d}\mathrm{d}^dk\rho (𝐤;w)=\underset{𝐲\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}\rho (𝐲,𝐲;w)=N_\mathrm{e}.$$
(12)
One gets a lower bound for $`E(N_\mathrm{e},w)`$ by minimizing the right side of (7) over all functions $`\rho `$ satisfying $`0\rho |\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$ and whose integral is $`N_\mathrm{e}`$. This is the ‘bathtub principle’, see , Theorem 1.14; the minimizer is $`\rho (𝐤)=|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$ for $`\{𝐤:ϵ(𝐤)\epsilon _\mathrm{F}\}`$ and $`\rho (𝐤)=0`$ otherwise, with $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}`$ defined by Eq. (3). This amounts to filling the lowest eigenvalues of the infinite-lattice.

The proof of the upper bound for the energy proceeds by forming an ‘average’ Hamiltonian by translating and rotating the original configuration $`w`$ over a large but finite subset of $`^d`$ (with periodic boundary conditions). Then on a bipartite lattice, one can show by concavity of the sum of the lowest $`N`$ eigenvalues of a matrix, that the averaged Hamiltonian provides an upper bound to the ground state energy. But the magnitude of the averaged hopping is determined by the size of the boundary, which eventually yields the desired upper bound. Extending the proof above to provide the lower bound is much more complicated and relies on a detailed technical examination of the influence of the boundary sites on the minimal density function for a given configuration of classical particles. It is done in the isotropic case (that is, a hypercubic Bravais lattice with equal hoppings in all directions) in ; the extension to the anisotropic case is straightforward, but numerous details are modified, and have been verified.

The results of the theorem have a number of implications for the FK model. It establishes that the segregation principle holds in all dimensions (at $`T=0`$ and $`U=\mathrm{}`$) illustrating the fact that the existence of periodic ground states requires a subtle reduction in energy relative to the segregated phase as the interaction strength is made finite. Since the electronic wave functions will be exponentially localized within $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the results shown here can be extended to the case of finite interaction strength, as long as $`U`$ is large enough. At positive temperature it is so far impossible to claim rigorous results, except the following weaker one: the electronic free energy (for a fixed configuration of classical particles) can be shown to be equal to the bulk free energy plus a correction term that is proportional to the size of the boundary. We expect that the coexistence of two phases occurs at finite temperature for $`d2`$ as happens in the Ising model.

It may be instructive to consider the $`U=\mathrm{}`$ results for the FK model as a guide for possible behavior in the H model. To do this, we must first find a way to interpolate between the two models. The simplest way is to consider an asymmetric-hopping H model where the hopping for the spin-up and the spin-down particles is different. Then the H model results when $`t_{}=t_{}`$ and the FK model when $`t_{}=0`$. Our rigorous results only hold for $`t_{}=0`$. When $`t_{}`$ is increased the classical particles should still be packed, due to the pressure of the electrons. When $`t_{}`$ keeps increasing however, the classical particles should be in a phase with density strictly less than 1. The central issue is whether the reduction of the down-spin kinetic energy can be made large enough, so that the phase separation disappears at a critical value of $`t_{}`$. If this occurs for all electron densities, there is no (saturated) ferromagnetism in the $`U=\mathrm{}`$ H model on the given lattice; however, one has a saturated ferromagnetic ground state if the phase separation survives (note the $`SU(2)`$-imposed degeneracy of the ferromagnetic multiplet will occur precisely at $`t_{}=t_{}`$). It is well known that ferromagnetism depends strongly on the geometry of the lattice , so the occurrence of a critical value of $`t_{}`$ must also depend strongly on the geometry of the lattice. We are unable to make any rigorous statements about ferromagnetism in the H model here — actually, we do not even know how to study the case with nonzero, but small $`t_{}`$.

A major question is what happens to the chessboard phase when doped away from half filling? Consider the line $`n_\mathrm{e}=n_\mathrm{c}`$; the chessboard phase is present when these densities are equal to $`\frac{1}{2}`$, and segregation takes place when they differ significantly from $`\frac{1}{2}`$ (depending on $`U`$). It is not clear what to expect for intermediate values. Two possible scenarios are (i) the coexistence between chessboard and segregated phases or (ii) the coexistence between other periodic and segregated phases. Both scenarios could be of physical relevance to stripe physics.

We conclude this letter by a summary of our knowledge of the phase diagram for zero temperature and $`d2`$. Recall that the particle-hole symmetry implies that the phase diagram is symmetric under the transformation $`(n_\mathrm{e},n_\mathrm{c})(1n_\mathrm{e},1n_\mathrm{c})`$ . In the sequel we describe the situation for $`n_\mathrm{e}+n_\mathrm{c}1`$, which is enough.

In two dimensions, the ground states are periodic

* when $`(n_\mathrm{e},n_\mathrm{c})=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2})`$ (they are of the chessboard type). This was proved for all $`U`$ in ;
* when $`n_\mathrm{c}=1n_\mathrm{e}`$ (i.e. at half-filling), and $`n_\mathrm{e}=\frac{2}{5},\frac{1}{3},\frac{1}{4},\frac{2}{9},\frac{1}{5},\frac{2}{11},\frac{1}{6}`$; also, $`n_\mathrm{e}=\frac{1}{n^2+(n+1)^2}`$ with integers $`n`$. This holds for $`U`$ large enough (depending on $`n_\mathrm{e}`$), and follows from ;
* when $`n_\mathrm{c}=1n_\mathrm{e}`$, and the electronic density $`n_\mathrm{e}`$ is a rational number between $`\frac{1}{3}`$ and $`\frac{2}{5}`$. $`U`$ must be larger than a value that depends on the denominator of $`n_\mathrm{e}`$ .

There is coexistence of two periodic phases

* when $`n_\mathrm{c}=1n_\mathrm{e}`$ and $`n_\mathrm{e}(\frac{1}{6},\frac{2}{11})(\frac{1}{5},\frac{2}{9})(\frac{2}{9},\frac{1}{4})`$, for $`U`$ large .

And the ground states display segregation

* for $`\frac{\mathrm{const}}{U}(1n_\mathrm{c})<n_\mathrm{e}<(1\frac{\mathrm{const}}{U})(1n_\mathrm{c})`$; this is described here, and proved in .

These results are illustrated in Fig. 1.

The domain $`\frac{\mathrm{const}}{U}(1n_\mathrm{c})>n_\mathrm{e}`$ should also be segregated. The central band that includes the line $`n_\mathrm{e}+n_\mathrm{c}=1`$ should be the host of numerous periodic phases and various coexistences between periodic phases and empty or full phases. This is supported by numerical simulations in 2D .

In one dimension, the ground states are periodic

* when $`(n_\mathrm{e},n_\mathrm{c})=(\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2})`$ ;
* when $`n_\mathrm{c}=1n_\mathrm{e}`$ (half-filling) and $`n_\mathrm{c}=p/q`$ is a rational number (in an irreducible fraction). The periodicity is $`q`$ for $`U`$ sufficiently large (depending on $`q`$) .

For finite $`U`$, there is numerical evidence for coexistence of two periodic phases and free electrons

* when $`n_\mathrm{c}=1n_\mathrm{e}`$, $`p/q<n_\mathrm{c}<p^{}/q^{}`$, and the periodic phases with period $`q`$ and $`q^{}`$ are the only stable phases within the above interval .

And the ground states display segregation

* when $`n_\mathrm{e}1n_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`U`$ is sufficiently large .

The canonical phase diagram for small $`U`$ is even richer but our knowledge of it is very limited.

In conclusion, we have proved that the FK model is phase separated whenever $`N_\mathrm{e}<|\mathrm{\Lambda }|`$ and $`U\mathrm{}`$. This shows how strong correlations can lead to phase separation.

J.K.F. acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research under grant N00014-99-1-0328. E.H.L. and D.U. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation under grant PHY-98-20650. J.K.F. would like to thank the hospitality of the Department of Physics at Princeton University where the majority of this work was completed. We thank S. Kivelson, R. Lemański and M. Loss for helpful discussions.


text:
# ”

## 1

An apsidal motion (an advance of periastron) of close binary stars is a result of their non-keplerian moving. It originates from a non-spherical form of stars. The last has been produced by a rotation of stars or their mutual tidal effects. The traditional approach to the estimation of a value of this effect needs to suppose some redistribution of mass inside stars to reach an accordance between the measured data and calculations. Usually it is necessary to assume that the density of a substance at the central region of a star is hundred times greater than a mean density of a star , .

On the face of it, the model of constant parameter ,, where density inside a star core is constant, is in direct contradiction with the data of observation of an apsidal motion in close binary systems . However, the traditional solution of the task about an apsidal motion is obtained for electrically non-charged matter. It is obvious that for electrically charged matter this solution must be reconsidered.

Let us estimate a contribution of inherent rotation of stars in an apsidal motion. According to -, the ratio of $`\omega `$ the angular velocity of an apsidal motion and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ the angular velocity of rotation of a star about its axis is

$$\frac{\omega }{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{3}{2}\frac{(I_AI_C)}{Ma^2},$$
(1)
where $`I_A`$ and $`I_C`$ are momenta of inertia relative to principal axes of the ellipsoid:

$$I_AI_C=\frac{M}{5}(a^2c^2),$$
(2)
where $`a`$ and $`c`$ are polar and equatorial radii of stars.

Thus

$$\frac{\omega }{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{3}{10}\frac{(a^2c^2)}{a^2}.$$
(3)
It is correct when an angular velocity on the ellipse coincides with $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ an angular velocity of rotation of a star about its axis .

In the absence of rotation, the equilibrium equation of plasma inside a star is :

$$\gamma g_G+\rho _GE_G=0$$
(4)
where $`g_G`$, $`\rho _G`$ and $`E_G`$ are acceleration of gravitation, gravity-induced density of charge and intensity of gravity-induced electric field. ($`divg_G=4\pi G\gamma `$, $`divE_G=4\pi \rho _G`$ and $`\rho _G=\sqrt{G}\gamma `$).

## 2

One can suppose that at rotation, an additional electric charge with density $`\rho _\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and electric field $`E_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ can arise under action of a rotational acceleration $`g_\mathrm{\Omega }`$, and the equilibrium equation takes the form:

$$(\gamma _G+\gamma _\mathrm{\Omega })(g_G+g_\mathrm{\Omega })=(\rho _G+\rho _\mathrm{\Omega })(E_G+E_\mathrm{\Omega }),$$
(5)
where

$$div(E_G+E_\mathrm{\Omega })=4\pi (\rho _G+\rho _\mathrm{\Omega })$$
(6)
or

$$divE_\mathrm{\Omega }=4\pi \rho _\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(7)
We can seek a solution for electric potential as an expansion on spherical functions. Assuming that an eccentricity is small, we can limit by a second term of the expansion:

$$\phi =C_\mathrm{\Omega }r^2(3cos^2\theta 1)$$
(8)
or in Cartesian coordinates

$$\phi =C_\mathrm{\Omega }(3z^2x^2y^2z^2),$$
(9)
where $`C_\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a constant.

Thus

$$E_x=2C_\mathrm{\Omega }x,E_y=2C_\mathrm{\Omega }y,E_z=4C_\mathrm{\Omega }z$$
(10)
and

$$divE_\mathrm{\Omega }=0$$
(11)
we obtain important equations:

$$\rho _\mathrm{\Omega }=0;$$
(12)
$$\gamma g_\mathrm{\Omega }=\rho E_\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(13)
Since a centrifugal force must be counterbalanced by the electric force

$$\gamma \mathrm{\Omega }^2x=\rho 2C_\mathrm{\Omega }x$$
(14)
the constant is

$$C_\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{\gamma \mathrm{\Omega }^2}{2\rho }=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}{2\sqrt{G}}$$
(15)
The potential of a positively uniformly charged ball is

$$\phi (r)=\frac{Q}{R}\left(\frac{3}{2}\frac{r^2}{2R^2}\right)$$
(16)
A negative surface charge induces inside the sphere an electric potential

$$\phi (R)=\frac{Q}{R},$$
(17)
where according to  $`Q=\sqrt{G}M`$, $`M`$ is the mass of a star.

Thus, the total potential inside the star under consideration is

$$\phi _\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{\sqrt{G}M}{2R}\left(1\frac{r^2}{R^2}\right)+\frac{\gamma \mathrm{\Omega }^2}{2\rho _G}r^2(3cos^2\theta 1)$$
(18)
The electric potential must be equal to zero on the surface of a star, since at $`\phi _\mathrm{\Sigma }=0`$ and at $`r=R`$ we obtain

$$R^2R_0^2=\frac{\gamma \mathrm{\Omega }^2}{\frac{4\pi }{3}\rho ^2},$$
(19)
where $`R_0`$ is the radius of a star without rotation. This equation describes the form of a rotating star. From this equation

$$a^2c^2=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}{G\gamma }\frac{9}{4\pi }.$$
(20)
and Eq.(3) gives

$$\frac{\omega }{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{27}{40\pi }\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}{G\gamma }.$$
(21)
When both stars of a close pair induce an apsidal motion, this equation transforms to

$$\frac{\omega }{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{27}{40\pi }\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }^2}{G}\left(\frac{1}{\gamma _1}+\frac{1}{\gamma _2}\right),$$
(22)
where $`\gamma _1`$ and $`\gamma _2`$ are densities of stars.

## 3

A density of non-degenerate non-relativistic plasma can be determined in the following way. At high density and temperature an electron gas is almost ideal  and the ideal gas law will serve as its equation of state in first approximation. It needs to take to account two corrections to describe electron gas properties more exactly - a correction for identity of electrons and a correction for a presence of positively charged nuclei. The first of them is positive, it increases the incompressibility of electron gas. The second correction decreases its incompressibility and it is negative. These correction are known ,and that is why with allowance for both corrections the free energy of electron gas takes the form

$$F=F_{ideal}+N\frac{\pi ^{3/2}e^3a_0^{3/2}}{4(kT)^{1/2}}nN\frac{2e^3Z^3}{3}\frac{\pi ^{1/2}}{(kT)^{1/2}}n^{1/2},$$
(23)
where $`Z`$ is the nucleus charge,$`a_0=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{me^w2}`$ is the Bohr radius.

At a constant full number of particles in the system and at constant temperature, the free energy minimum equation is

$$\left(\frac{F}{n}\right)_{N,T}=0,$$
(24)
what allows one to obtain the steady-state value of density of particles of hot non-relativistic plasma

$$n_0=\frac{16Z^6}{9\pi ^2a_0^3}210^{24}Z^6cm^3.$$
(25)
Thus, the equilibrium density of a star is

$$\gamma =\frac{16Am_pZ^5}{9\pi ^2a_0^3}$$
(26)
where $`A`$ is the mass number, $`m_p`$ is proton mass.

## 4

If we introduce $`P=\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ the period of ellipsoidal rotation and $`U=\frac{2\pi }{\omega }`$ the period of the apsidal motion, we obtain from Eq.(22) the main equation of our theory:

$$\frac{P^3}{U}\xi =\left(\frac{1}{A_1Z_1^5}+\frac{1}{A_2Z_2^5}\right),$$
(27)
where the constant

$$\xi =\frac{243\pi ^3a_0^3}{160Gm_p}sec^2.$$
(28)
For hydrogen the value $`1/AZ^5`$ is equal to 1, for deuterium 0.5, for helium 1/128. Thus, for two stars both consisting of hydrogen the right part of Eq.(27) is equal to 2. For pairs consisting of hydrogen-deuterium it is 1.5. For D-D pairs and H-He pairs it equals to 1. For D-He pairs 0.5, and for He-He pairs 1/64.

Thus, for pairs of a star consisting of hydrogen, deuterium and helium

$$\frac{1}{64}<\frac{P^3}{U}\xi <2.$$
(29)
The periods $`U`$ and $`P`$ are measured for few tens of stars  and we can compare our calculation with the data of these measurements. The distribution of binary stars by the value of $`P^3\xi /U`$ is shown on Fig.1 in logarithmic scale. On upper abscissa the value of $`log\left(\frac{1}{A_1Z_1^5}+\frac{1}{A_2Z_2^5}\right)`$ is shown. The lines mark the values of parameters for different pairs of binary stars.

It can be seen that all measured data (with the exception of few pairs only) are limited by factors 1 and 1/64. This argues for adequate interpretation and satisfactory accuracy of our estimations of the effect of the apsidal motion.

The interesting result can be obtained if we additionally take in to account the measured data on mass of rotating pairs. Accordingly , the star mass is determined by the $`A/Z`$ ratio:

$$\frac{A}{Z}=\sqrt{\frac{12M_{}}{M_{}}}$$
(30)
and from Eq.26

$$AZ^5=\frac{\gamma _{}9\pi ^2a_0^3}{16m_p}$$
(31)
At solution of this equations with using of data observation of $`M_{}`$ and $`\gamma _{}`$ from the apsidal motion we can obtain a distribution of stars on $`Z`$ and $`A`$ separately (Fig.2). As the periods of the apsidal motion of stars consisting of nuclei heavier than helium are more than $`10^5`$ years and rather are immeasurable, this distribution is cut off on $`1<Z<2`$ and $`1<A<3`$. This distribution rather does not give a new astrophysical information, but it illustrates an efficiency and a cardinal utility of developed consideration.


text:
# Observation of Plasma Focusing of a 28.5 GeV Positron Beam*footnote **footnote *Work supported by U.S. Department of Energy contract DE–AC03–76SF00515.

## Abstract

The observation of plasma focusing of a 28.5 GeV positron beam is reported. The plasma was formed by ionizing a nitrogen jet only 3 mm thick. Simultaneous focusing in both transverse dimensions was observed with effective focusing strengths of order Tesla per micron. The minimum area of the beam spot was reduced by a factor of $`2.0\pm 0.3`$ by the plasma. The longitudinal beam envelope was measured and compared with numerical calculations.

preprint: SLAC-PUB-8975

Submitted to Physical Review Letters

The plasma lens has been proposed as a final focusing element to improve the luminosity of future high energy electron-positron colliders . In this letter we report the observation, at the FFTB facility  at SLAC, of the focusing of a 28.5 GeV positron beam by a nitrogen plasma lens.

The focusing mechanism for bunched relativistic beams, of either charge, is the collective reaction of the plasma electrons to the relativistically foreshortened electromagnetic field of the bunch. Even in the time scale of a few picoseconds, plasma electrons are able to migrate towards a balance between the superimposed beam field and the collective field caused by separating the charges of the plasma. The primary effect is a partial neutralization of the electric field of the bunch. Whereas, in free space, the radial electric and toroidal magnetic fields of the bunch apply equal but opposite forces on the beam particles — so that there is no net focusing or defocusing — this balance is lost in plasma and self-focusing occurs .

The collective motion of plasma electrons is characterized by the plasma wavelength, $`\lambda _p=\sqrt{\pi /r_en_p}`$, $`r_e`$ being the classical electron radius and $`n_p`$ the plasma density. Although this plasma current tends to cancel the beam’s toroidal magnetic field, its characteristic dimensions do not necessarily allow that to happen efficiently. For interesting cases, the beam spot is smaller than the plasma wavelength so that the beam toroidal field is spatially more concentrated than the plasma current and self-pinches the beam. As plasma density rises further and its wavelength shortens, the fields overlap more completely and the pinch is again suppressed.

Focusing by plasma has been verified in previous experiments  for low energy (3.8 - 50 MeV) electron beams several mm in transverse size, and with relatively low density plasmas ($`10^{14}`$ ions per cc). Plasma focusing of positrons had not previously been demonstrated, and this was the primary goal of the present work. We also sought to extend the beam energy into the multi-GeV range, using plasma densities three orders of magnitude higher than before, and beam spot cross-sectional areas six orders of magnitude smaller than before. (The experiment was limited in principle by the carbon fibers of the measuring system, which would be destroyed by spots of area less than $`15\mu \mathrm{m}^2`$ for beam pulses of $`1.5\times 10^{10}`$ positrons .)

The plasma lens was created by the ionization of molecules in a pulsed gas jet. An $`800\mu \mathrm{s}`$ jet of nitrogen gas was released at 2 Hz into the vacuum chamber by a fast acting solenoid valve, timed so that the gas flow had stabilized when the positron beam passed through. The nozzle diameter was 3 mm, the inlet pressure was 1000 psi for this experiment, and the gas jet opening angle was $`3^{}`$. The local beam line pressure bump was minimized by differentially pumping short sections between sets of 2 mm aperture thin-foil irises. A gas density value of $`(6.5\pm 2.5)\times 10^{18}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ was obtained as an average of measurements made by Michelson interferometry and from Bremsstrahlung observed during data taking.

As the positron beam passed through, ionization of the jet occurred by the normal energy loss process , enhanced by avalanche collisions during acceleration by the beam field. We have found that an improved focusing effect could be obtained by irradiating the gas with focused, pulsed laser light. A commercially available Q-switched Nd:YAG laser delivered 10 Hz of 10 ns pulses at wavelength 1064 nm and pulse energies near 1.2 J. For comparison, the positron pulse width was 4 ps FWHM. The light, incident on the gas jet at right angles to the positron beam direction, was line focused astigmatically to a spot of $`50\mu `$m vertically by $`330\mu `$m horizontally FWHM. It is estimated that about 0.1$`\%`$ of the laser energy was absorbed through collisional ionization seeded by multiphoton absorption. The superheated gas expanded in a shock-wave shell, and thus a wide range of available plasma densities evolved over time. The time between the laser pulse and the beam was optimized (at about 400 ns) by observing the strength of the synchrotron radiation from the focusing. At this time the ionization caused by the positron beam was much stronger than that remaining from the laser, which had largely recombined and been spatially diluted. However, this process requires further investigation and will not be discussed here.

The layout of the experiment around the plasma lens is shown in Figure 1. The direction of the positron beam defines the z-axis of the right-handed coordinate system, and y is vertical. The beam energy was set to 28.5 GeV, with 0.6 mm long bunches, normalized emittances of $`5\times 10^5`$ m-rad (x) and $`5\times 10^6`$ m-rad (y), and $`1.5\times 10^{10}`$ particles per bunch.

Conventional magnets were set to focus the positrons near the plasma lens, where the beam size was measured using a wires canner system. A carbon fiber of 7 $`\mu `$m diameter was moved to a known position between 8 and 32 mm downstream of the entrance to the gas jet. In an automated procedure, the positron beam was steered orthogonally across the fiber in 1 $`\mu `$m steps (whose scale was calibrated to better than $`\pm 5\%`$). Bremsstrahlung from the carbon traveled 33 m downstream, escaped the vacuum pipe, showered in a 4 radiation length stack of polyethylene plates, and was detected by an air Cherenkov counter . The correlation between steering and the Bremsstrahlung signal gave the beam profile. We found that the elliptical beam spot size at the lens was typically 11.5 $`\mu `$m by 2.5 $`\mu `$m. The beam density within the $`2\sigma `$ contour was $`2\times 10^{16}\mathrm{cm}^3`$.

Interleaved among the plates were planar ion chambers used to monitor the several-MeV critical energy of the synchrotron radiation emitted from the plasma lens (the Synchrotron Radiation Monitor or SRM). The ion chambers also detected the Bremsstrahlung and were used as a check on the spot size measurement.

As a way of reducing the effects of drifts, measurements of plasma-on and plasma-off beam spot profiles were interleaved within the scan. At each scan step of the beam, signals from four pulses were recorded with the gas jet off, and averaged, and one was taken with the jet firing. These were plotted, as in Figure 2, against the scan position.

There are several other systematic effects in the beam size measurement process. First of all, the carbon fiber diameter contributes 1.7 $`\mu `$m in quadrature to the RMS beam size; this is corrected for. Since it takes many beam pulses to make a profile measurement, shot-to-shot fluctuations in the beam centroid position also contribute to the measured beam size. By measuring the RMS fluctuation at a fixed fiber location and fixed beam steering, this contribution by itself is estimated to be 25$`\%`$ of the measured width, and when subtracted in quadrature, it reduces the apparent beam width by 3$`\%`$. For the data being reported here, the elliptical positron beam spot also had a roll angle of 13 with respect to the x direction, and this was accounted for.

An important correction was necessary because the strong focusing of the plasma increased the beam divergence at the wire scanner. As the focused beam was scanned, a portion of the Bremsstrahlung photon cone was occluded by a downstream fixed aperture. The total photon flux, as given by the area under the scan profile curve, was reduced by 30%. The systematic effect was to make the scan profile asymmetric because of the correlation between the positron angle and position at the fiber. A check with the beam toroids confirmed that there was no loss in the charged beam flux as it passed through the lens to the dump.

To account for this effect, the measured beam profiles have been fitted to a Gaussian function with different widths allowed on either side of the peak. The larger width parameter was taken as the estimate of the unoccluded width. A first order polynomial took account of the background accompanying the beam, the synchrotron radiation, and beam-gas Bremsstrahlung from the jet.

The accuracy of this procedure for determining the beam width has been estimated using a ray-tracing simulation of the experiment. The incoming beam envelope was parameterized with the help of upstream wire scanners, as well as jet-off local measurements at a range of z-locations. These parameters were reproduced in the linear optics in the simulation. A model for the beam-plasma collective focusing field was then constructed . This accounted for the spatial variation of the plasma focusing strength within the bunch. The focused positrons were followed to the carbon fiber, and the Bremsstrahlung photons traced from there to occluding apertures downstream. The geometric parameters were adjusted to reproduce the observed loss in the photon transmission. Using the same asymmetric Gaussian fit procedure as for the real data, the simulation showed some variations over the z-range that lead us to assign an uncertainty of $`\pm 5\%`$ for data without the plasma, and $`\pm 15\%`$ for the heavily occluded cases with plasma. These are taken as systematic uncertainties in the beam size measurements.

The plasma focusing was studied by making multiple measurements of the x- and y-profiles of the beam envelope at several values of z within the accessible range. Data at the same settings were averaged. The plasma-on data are compared with the simultaneous plasma-off envelope in Figure 3. The pinch is quite striking as seen in the y direction. From the y divergence angles, the lens quadrupole strength may be estimated to be 4 T/$`\mu `$m, and from the fitted waist positions the effective focal length is 1.6 mm. The values in the x direction are 0.7 T/$`\mu `$m and 34 mm.

Numerical integration over the expected transverse field profile of an ideal plasma lens shows that these values of quadrupole strength would yield synchrotron radiation with effective Critical Energies Ec  of 4.6 and 3.4 MeV respectively. As a test of this, for a few representative scans we have examined the signals from the SRM chambers as a function of depth in the polyethylene. A simple simulation, based on the electromagnetic shower code EGS4 , was made of the response of the detectors to synchrotron radiation. The depth profile led to a value $`\mathrm{E}_\mathrm{c}=4.4\pm 0.3`$ MeV, in satisfactory agreement with the range of expected values.

Luminosity depends on the inverse of the minimum cross-sectional area of the beam, and this was reduced by a factor of 2.0 $`\pm `$ 0.3 by the plasma lens. However, the beam time available was inadequate for tuning the x- and y-focal spots to the same z-location, either for the plasma on or off, and so we cannot report directly the reduction of spots as they would be optimized for luminosity. Also, aberrations are expected in plasma lenses from imperfect charge distributions , and tuning the beam optics to minimize their effects was not practical in this run.

A three-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) electromagnetic simulation code is being developed to describe the focusing process in this experiment for both positrons and electrons. In particular it will allow for the $`\sigma _x/\sigma _y=4.8`$ aspect ratio and the beam-induced ionization. At present, results are available from a simplified two-dimensional PIC simulation. Plasma focusing in the x- and y-planes was simulated separately using a round beam configuration where the size was selected to be $`\sigma _x`$ or $`\sigma _y`$ as appropriate. In order to maintain the same focusing strength, the number of beam particles was scaled by the aspect ratio between the two cases. A uniform plasma was used, 3 mm thick with a density of $`5\times 10^{17}`$ cm-3. Since this density was greater than that of the beam, the focusing effect was in the self-limiting range and insensitive to the exact density assumed. Considering the simplifications that have been made, the results, shown as lines in Figure 3, agree reasonably with the data, indicating that more complete simulations will have predictive power.

In summary, we have reported the observation of focusing of high energy positron beams by a thin lens of dense plasma. Simultaneous reduction of the beam spot in both dimensions was observed. Future work toward applying the technique to linear colliders will, however, require improvements to the available simulation codes and to the understanding of plasma production processes.

We wish to thank the support staff at the various institutions for their hard work in the design and construction of the apparatus, in particular G. Collet, K. Krauter, G. Mazaheri, R. Rogers, Y. Sung and W. Kaminskas (deceased) and his staff. The experiment would not have been possible without the dedicated efforts of the SLAC accelerator operations staff. This work is supported in part by the Department of Energy under contracts DE-AC02-76CH03000, DE-AC03-76SF00515, DE-FG03-92ER40695, and DE-FG05-91ER40627, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory through the Institute for Laser Science and Applications, under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48; and by the US-Japan Program for Cooperation in High Energy Physics.


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# New Class of Compact Stars at High DensityPresented at the International Conference on Statistical QCD, Bielefeld, Germany, 26-30 Aug 2001.

## Abstract

We discuss the equation of state for cold, dense quark matter in perturbation theory, and how it might match onto that of hadronic matter. Certain choices of the renormalization scale correspond to a strongly first order chiral transition, and may generate a new class of small and very dense quark stars. The results for the mass-radius relation are compatible with the recent determination of the mass and the radius of an isolated neutron star by Pons et al.

The investigation of the structure of the phase diagram for strongly interacting matter is a fascinating subject. Moreover, the study of regions of the diagram associated with extreme conditions in temperature and density can reveal new phenomena, and provide a better understanding of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Nevertheless, in spite of the increasing interest this field has attracted during the last decade, the mapping of the QCD phase diagram is still in its infancy, and most of its regions remain mystifying and challenging. An exception is given by the region of nonzero temperature and very small densities. There, guidance is given by lattice simulations  and experiments in heavy ion collisions . On the other hand, an increasing amount of precise astrophysical data provides a new resource to probe QCD at large density. The natural candidates to study are neutron stars, whose interior might be dense enough to allow for the presence of chirally symmetric quark matter . Concretely, certain combinations of observables, such as the mass-radius relation, may be useful to constrain the equation of state for strongly interacting matter.

Neutron star models predict a maximum mass in the range $`1.4`$$`2.0M_{}`$, with a radius $`10`$$`15`$ km. The values for the maximum mass are consistent with the pulsar data . The conventional theoretical approach used to describe a hybrid star, a neutron star with quark matter in the core, or a strange star is the bag model, with at best a correction $`\alpha _s`$ from perturbative QCD . If the bag constant is fit from hadronic phenomenology, then the gross features of those stars are very similar to those expected for neutron stars, especially in the region of mass compatible with the pulsar observations. Through the years, the study of compact hybrid stars has produced a myriad of different models, with all sorts of possible layers and condensates, but with numbers very similar to the ones presented above . Nevertheless, recent astrophysical results for the mass-radius diagram seem to point in a direction unforeseen by traditional models .

In  we considered cold, dense quark matter in perturbation theory to $`\alpha _s^2`$ , analyzing its implications for the physics of quark stars. We used perturbation theory not because it is a good approximation, but simply to model the possible nonideality in the equation of state of cold, dense QCD. Here we extend this discussion, and consider as well how to match this “perturbative” equation of state onto that of hadrons. We emphasize especially the comparison between the pressure of the hadronic and quark phases. While our results are admittedly similar to other theoretical approaches , we try to place these results in a more general context, in terms of the QCD phase diagram. Lastly, most intriguing is the recent determination of the mass and the radius of an isolated neutron star, which suggests an “implausible” equation of state .

Assume that the chiral phase transition occurs at a chemical potential $`\mu _\chi `$. Our perturbative equation of state applies in the chirally symmetric phase, when the quark chemical potential $`\mu >\mu _\chi `$. In this phase, the effects of a strange quark mass, $`m_s100`$ MeV , are small relative to the quark chemical potentials, $`\mu >300`$ MeV. Thus we take three flavors of massless quarks with equal chemical potentials . How the equation of state for quarks matches onto that of hadrons is discussed later.

The thermodynamic potential of a plasma of massless quarks and gluons was calculated perturbatively to $`\alpha _s^2`$ by Freedman and McLerran  and by Baluni , using the momentum-space subtraction (MOM) scheme. The MOM coupling is related to that in the modified minimal subtraction scheme, $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$, as

$$\frac{\alpha _s^{\mathrm{MOM}}}{\pi }=\frac{\alpha _s^{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}}{\pi }\left[1+𝒜\frac{\alpha _s^{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}}{\pi }\right];$$
(1)
$`\alpha _s=g^2/(4\pi )`$, with $`g`$ the QCD coupling constant, and $`𝒜=151/48(5/18)N_f`$, with $`N_f`$ the number of massless flavors. In the $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme, to $`\alpha _s^2`$ the thermodynamic potential is

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(\mu )=\frac{N_f\mu ^4}{4\pi ^2}\left\{12\left(\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\right)\left[G+N_f\mathrm{ln}\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }+\left(11\frac{2}{3}N_f\right)\mathrm{ln}\frac{\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{\mu }\right]\left(\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\right)^2\right\},$$
(2)
where $`G=G_00.536N_f+N_f\mathrm{ln}N_f`$, $`G_0=10.374\pm .13`$, and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is the renormalization subtraction point. We take the scale dependence of the strong coupling constant, $`\alpha _s\alpha _s(\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }})`$ to three loop order . In $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ scheme, the thermodynamic potential is manifestly gauge invariant. However, there remains a dependence on $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mu `$ that, in principle, can be freely chosen. Although the results are significantly sensitive to the particular value of this free parameter, this choice is tightly constrained by the physics. (It is not especially sensitive to what order in the loop expansion one used for the running of the coupling constant, or for the pressure.)

With this “perturbative” equation of state — used far outside the region of validity for perturbation theory — reasonable values turn out to be in the range $`2\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mu 3`$. This comes about from the most elementary considerations of how to match the quark and hadronic equations of state.

In Fig. 2 we show the pressure for some illustrative choices of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}/\mu =1,2,3`$. In each case, the pressure vanishes at some $`\mu =\mu _c`$. As the chemical potential of any field must be greater than the mass, and as the chemical potential of quarks is one third that of baryons, the hadronic pressure vanishes at $`\mu _{min}=939/3=313`$ MeV (This neglects the small effects of nuclear binding, which contribute at most $`15/3=5`$ MeV). Then $`\mu _c`$ must be greater than $`\mu _{min}`$; from Fig. 2, this requires that $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ is less than $`3\mu `$. Conversely, $`\mu _c`$ cannot be too large. Dense hadrons exert pressure, so before the quark pressure goes negative, a transition to massive quarks and hadronic matter occurs. For example, when $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=\mu `$, one can show that hadronic matter must persist to very high densities, maybe thirty times nuclear matter density. This is unlikely; indeed, below we see that the worry is not how small the hadronic pressure is, but how big.

Thus, reasonable values of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ are in the range of $`\mu 3\mu `$. Choosing the value $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=2\mu `$, we can get an idea of how well perturbation theory works for large chemical potential. At $`\mu =1`$ GeV, where $`\alpha _s=0.31`$, the perturbative corrections to ideality are $`30\%`$ ; at $`\mu =100`$ GeV, where $`\alpha _s=0.095`$, they are still $`7\%`$. Even so, as we argued in Ref. , the perturbative series at $`T=0`$ and $`\mu 0`$ may be much better behaved than at $`T0`$ and $`\mu =0`$ . While for $`T0`$, $`\mu =0`$ we have an expansion in $`\sqrt{\alpha _s}`$, for $`T=0`$, $`\mu 0`$ it is a perturbative series in $`\alpha _s`$ and $`\alpha _s\mathrm{log}(\alpha _s)`$. Besides, at nonzero density (and $`T=0`$), the $`\alpha _s`$, and $`\alpha _s^2`$ corrections both act to lower the pressure. It is encouraging that the $`\alpha _s^2`$ corrections are smaller than those at $`\alpha _s`$ down to $`\mu =0.54`$ GeV. In contrast, at nonzero temperature (and $`\mu =0`$), terms oscillate in sign, and the naive perturbative series is not well behaved until extremely high temperatures, $`10^7`$ GeV.

Of course a much better estimate of the quark pressure could be obtained if the terms $`\alpha _s^3(\mathrm{log}^2(\alpha _s),\mathrm{log}(\alpha _s),1)`$ were computed. Unlike nonzero temperature — where only the $`\alpha _s^3(\mathrm{log}^2(\alpha _s),\mathrm{log}(\alpha _s))`$ are sensible to compute, for dense QCD all terms in the perturbative expansion of the thermodynamic potential are well defined.

This does not imply that a given value of $`\alpha _s`$, which is adequate to compute the thermodynamic potential, works equally well for all other quantities. In particular, the gaps for color superconductivity are nonperturbative, $`\varphi \mathrm{exp}(1/\sqrt{\alpha _s})`$ , and much smaller values of $`\alpha _s`$ appear to be required to reliably compute them . Perturbative results, unjustly extrapolated down to $`\mu 400`$ MeV, suggest that these gaps are $`30`$ MeV . As the relative change in the thermodynamic potential is only $`(\varphi /\mu )^2`$, then, for the equation of state in QCD, color superconductivity is a negligible effect.

The structure of a quark star is determined by the solution to the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov (TOV) equations . Given the equation of state $`p=p(ϵ)`$, one can integrate the TOV equations from the origin until the pressure vanishes at the edge of the star, obtaining a characteristic curve in the mass-radius diagram. In matching the pressure of quarks onto that of hadrons, there are two possible scenarios. In the first, the pressure of hadrons rise quickly, smoothly matching onto that of quarks. Since the pressure of the hadronic and quark phases are similar, so are the densities (as the slopes of the pressure); then the chiral phase transition is either weakly first order, or just crossover. In the second case, the hadronic pressure is assumed to always remain small. This gives a strongly first order chiral transition, as one goes abruptly from a phase of dilute hadrons to one of dense quarks . A sketch of both cases is depicted in Fig. 4, where the equation of state for massless quarks is taken to be the one with $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=2\mu `$.

Figure 4 shows the mass-radius diagram for these two cases. A weakly first order chiral transition is illustrated by the choice of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=3\mu `$. The quark pressure vanishes at $`\mu _c=\mu _{min}`$, so that the pressure of dense hadrons grows immediately, and becomes equivalent to the pressure of dense quarks. The numerical solution of the TOV equations for such an equation of state generates hybrid stars with maximum masses and radii compatible with those from conventional neutron star models, $`M2M_{}`$ and $`R12`$ km.

For a strongly first order chiral transition, as with $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=2\mu `$, there is a branch along which stars are predominantly composed of dilute hadrons, with small pressure. These look like ordinary neutron stars. In addition, there is a new branch in the mass-radius diagram. These are predominantly composed of very dense quarks with a thin hadronic mantle. The pressure is like that of QCD with a larger bag constant ($`\mu _{min}`$ is larger). Working out how the maximum mass and radius scale with an (effective) bag constant, one finds maximum masses $`M1M_{}`$ and radii $`R6`$ km. The new branch was suggested previously by several groups .

Since we have no plausible hadronic equation of state with small pressure, we simply ignore it, and take the quark equation of state down to the point where it vanishes. In comparison, in Figure 4 we also show the mass-radius relation for a hadronic equation of state (a mean-field equation of state with parameter set TM1, including hyperons ). Matching the hadronic equation of state onto the one for the quark phase is done by fixing a critical density. For critical densities about twice that of nuclear matter, we find a new branch appears, characterized by a second bump in the mass-radius curve.

Experimentally, Pons et al  find that for an isolated, nearby neutron star, the masses and radii are exactly what one expects for a new branch of quark stars, with $`M.9M_{}`$ and $`R6`$ km.

The difficulty is really in understanding how hadrons can have a small pressure . Akmal, Pandharipande, and Ravenhall  have found that to a very good approximation, in pure neutron matter the energy per baryon (minus its rest mass) is approximately linear in the baryon density, $`n`$:

$$\frac{E}{A}m=\frac{ϵ}{n}m=15\mathrm{MeV}\left(\frac{n}{n_0}\right).$$
(3)
where $`ϵ`$ is the energy density and $`n_0.16`$ baryons/fm3 is the saturation density for nuclear matter. These authors used a wide variety of different models for the nucleon-nucleon interaction, and find that up to $`nn_0`$, all models are in close agreement. Even at such “low” densities, this behavior itself is already signs of a highly nonideal Fermi liquid, since free fermions give $`ϵ/nmn^{2/3}`$, not $`n`$. By two times nuclear matter density, the discrepancies between different models is already $`50`$%, and grow sharply with density.

The energy on the right hand side of (3), $`15`$ MeV, is very small on hadronic scales. It is much smaller than the pion decay constant, which one might expect is the natural scale. What is remarkable about the results of Akmal et al.  is that the energies are small not only for nuclear matter, which has a nonzero binding energy, but even for pure neutron matter, which is unbound. This suggests to us that the smallness of the right hand side of eq. (3) is a generic property of baryons interacting with pions, etc., and is not due to any special tuning. Using this result, however, we can reliably compute the pressure of pure neutron matter at nuclear matter density:

$$p_{hadron}=n^2\frac{}{n}\left(\frac{ϵ}{n}\right)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}15}\mathrm{MeV}\frac{n^2}{n_0}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}.04}p_{free}\left(\frac{n}{n_0}\right)^2$$
(4)
Here $`p_{free}`$ is the pressure for three flavors of massless quarks; for the purposes of discussion, in $`p_{free}`$ we have taken $`\mu =313`$ MeV. Thus at nuclear matter density, the pressure is $`4`$% that for ideal quarks, which is comfortably small. For the hadronic pressure to remain small relative to the quark pressure, the transition must occur at remarkably low densities, maybe twice that of nuclear matter.

We do not have a good reason for why the hadronic pressure should remain small to the chiral transition. But since we don’t understand why it is small in nuclear matter, we feel free to extrapolate; maybe the hadronic pressure is suppressed in the limit of a large number of colors. Such “implausible” equations of state, with a small hadronic pressure, can be constructed mathematically .

If small and dense quark stars occur, then their production is probably different from those of ordinary neutron stars. Models of supernova collapses suggest that the mass of a proto-neutron star formed by the collapse of the iron core is in excess of 1$`M_{}`$ as the initial mass of the iron core is well above 1$`M_{}`$. Neutron stars can not collapse to quark stars, as they have to expel most of their mass to achieve a stable quark star. White dwarfs do not collapse to more compact objects in type Ia supernova as the explosion destroys the whole star. In the early universe, blobs of strange quark matter formed during the quark-hadron phase transition can not be larger than $`10^9M_{}`$ due to the horizon at $`t=10^6`$s after the big-bang .

Nevertheless, there might be some exotic ways to produce quark stars. If white dwarfs can develop an iron core by some (so far not established) reason, the collapse of this core can form a low-mass quark star. Alternately, if inflation occurs at the quark-hadron phase transition, then larger strange quark stars, with $`M=0.0110M_{}`$, can be formed .

The existence of a new class of small and dense compact stars is an exciting possibility. While superconducting condensates do not matter for the pressure, they do dominate their electromagnetic response. Whatever the magnitude of the gaps for color superconductivity, versus those for hadrons, there should be a multitude of ways in which stars composed of color-flavor locked quarks differ from those of superconducting (and superfluid) baryons. After all, in this scenario the stars are never really hybrids, but either mainly hadronic, or mainly quark.

We thank G. Baym, J. Beacom, H.-T. Janka, A. Olinto, A. Peshier, K. Rajagopal, D. Rischke, and especially L. McLerran for fruitful discussions. We thank the U.S. Department of Energy for their support under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886; E.S.F., for the support of CNPq (Brazil); and J.S.B., for the support of RIKEN and BNL.