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# PROBING DUST IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF BROWN DWARFS THROUGH POLARIZATION

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The synthetic continuum spectra of the brown dwarf Gliese 229B has been obtained by several authors. Marley et al. (1996), Griffith, Yelle & Marley (1998), Saumon et al (2000), obtained an overall good fit of the observed spectra of Gliese 229B over a wide range of wavelengths and attributed the very rapid decline of the observed continuum flux in the optical region to the dust particulates in its atmosphere. On the other hand, Tinney et al. (1998); Kirkpatrick et al. (1999); Tsuji, Ohnaka, & Aoki (1999), Burrows, Marley, & Sharp (2000) argued that the pressure broadened red wing of the 0.77 $`\mu m`$ K I doublet and the 0.5891, 0.5897 $`\mu m`$ Na I D could account for the observed features of the continuum flux shortward of 1.1 $`\mu m`$ (for a recent review, see Burrows, Hubbard, Lunine & Liebert 2001). The first optical spectrum of a T Dwarf SDSS 1624+0029 favors the latter explanation(Liebert et al. 2000) and at present there is enough evidence that dust particulates cannot exist in the visible atmospheres of comparatively cool T dwarf such as Gl 229B. However, dust can be present at the visible height of the atmosphere of warmer brown dwarfs and L dwarfs with effective temperature greater than 1300 K.

Very recently, Allard et al. (2001) have presented a detail theoretical investigation on the effects of dust in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs by considering two limiting cases: (a) inefficient gravitational settling of the dust grains and (b) efficient gravitational settling. In the former case the dust is distributed according to the chemical equilibrium predictions and provides the maximum impact upon the atmosphere while in the latter case the dust forms and depletes refractory elements from the gas yielding a minimal effect on the brown dwarf atmosphere. When the effective temperature of the object is bellow 1300 K complete gravitational settling of dust grains should occur whereas gravitational settling cannot occur when the effective temperature is above 1800 K. In the intermediate case ($`T_{eff}=1400`$ K) an optically thick dust cloud forms in the visible atmosphere (Marley and Ackerman 2001).

In this letter, we show that significant polarization can arise due to dust scattering in the atmosphere of relatively warmer brown dwarfs where dust grains have not been settled completely. In the presence of dust particulates of small size, the continuum flux in the near optical region could be polarized significantly while non-zero polarization can occur in the infra-red if the particle size is large. Hence observation of polarized radiation from brown dwarfs could be a potential probe for the properties of dust grains.

## 2 NONSPHERICITY OF RAPIDLY ROTATING BROWN DWARFS AND INTRINSIC POLARIZATION BY DUST SCATTERING

Polarization of radiation due to scattering in stellar atmospheres or envelopes has been considered by many authors. Numerous polarimetric data and their interpretation have been presented by Gehrels (1974). Since noticeable deviation from sphericity are to be expected from rapidly rotating stars, much attention has been paid to calculations of intrinsic polarization of Be stars. Degree of polarization varying from 0.1 % in the visible region to 2% in the far infra-red has been observed in Be stars by Rucinski (1970), Collins (1970), Harrington and Collins (1968), Haisch and Cassinelli (1978). Extensive observational data for polarization from cool stars are given by Serkowskii (1967, 1968). It has been established by many observations that the intrinsic polarization of radiation is a common behavior for most young stars (see for example Menard & Bastien 1992, Yudin & Evans 1998 and references therein).

Observation of non-zero polarization from unresolved objects indicates non-sphericity of the stars. The non-sphericity of an object, which leads to incomplete cancellation of the polarization of radiation from different areas of the surface, may result from several causes. The rotation of a stellar object imparts to it the shape of an oblate ellipsoid. This is evident in the outer solar planets as well. The eccentricities of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are 0.35, 0.43, 0.21 respectively at 1 bar pressure level. Tidal interaction with the companion in a binary system imposes an ellipsoidal shape extended towards the companion.

Spectroscopic studies by Basri (1999) indicate rapid rotation of brown dwarfs along their axis. A general trend to higher velocities as one looks to objects of lower luminosity is found in this study. The brown dwarf Kelu 1 is found to be the fastest rotator having the projected angular velocity $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ as high as 80 km/s corresponding to an angular velocity of $`1.16\times 10^3s^1`$. The surface gravity of brown dwarf varies from $`10^5cms^2`$ to $`3\times 10^5cms^2`$ implying a mass range from 36 $`M_J`$ to 73 $`M_J`$ (Marley et al 1996). As a consequence, a fast rotating brown dwarf will have significant departure from sphericity.

The maximum possible oblateness of a stable rotating fluid body having polytropic equation of state with different indices has been derived by Chandrasekhar (1933). The relation between the eccentricity $`e`$ and the rotational velocity $`\omega `$ for a rigidly rotating body (Maclaurine spheroid) with uniform density is given by :

$$\omega =\left[2\pi G\rho \left\{\frac{(1e^2)^{1/2}}{e^3}(32e^2)\mathrm{sin}^1e\frac{3}{e^2}(1e^2)\right\}\right]^{1/2},$$
(1)
where $`\rho `$ is the density of the fluid. Here the eccentricity is defined as $`e=(1r_p^2/r_e^2)^{1/2}`$ where $`r_p`$ and $`r_e`$ are the polar and the equatorial radius respectively. The eccentricity ‘e’ and the oblateness ‘q’ are related by the expression $`e^2=1(1q)^2`$.

Adopting the empirical relationship given in Marley et al. (1996) for mass and radius of brown dwarf, the mean density of a brown dwarf with $`g=10^5cms^2`$ and $`T_{eff}=1500K`$ would be $`51gmcm^3`$. For $`\omega =1.16\times 10^3s^1`$, the above formula yields $`e=0.48`$. However, in reality the density is not uniform and the above formula yields slightly higher value of e compared to the same for non-uniform density distribution as can be verified by applying to the case of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Nevertheless, the rapid rotation of brown dwarfs would certainly impose deviation from sphericity in its shape and hence the disc integrated polarization will not be cancelled out.

The dependence of polarization due to single scattering by grains on the oblateness of an object has been discussed by Dolginov, Gnedin & Silant’ev (1995) and by Simmons (1982). Following Simmons (1982), the analytical expression (first order approximation) for the degree of polarization due to single scattering from a spheroid with uniform density can be written as :

$$p=\lambda ^2(R_1R_2)n_0K_2(\frac{5}{96\pi })^{1/2}P_2^2\mathrm{cos}(i)\mathrm{exp}(2i\varphi )F_{22}$$
(2)
where $`F_{22}`$ depends on the scattering phase function, $`R_1`$ and $`R_2`$ are the outer and the inner equatorial axis lengths, $`n_0`$ is the particle number density, $`P_2^2`$ is the associated Legendre polynomial of order 2 and $`\lambda `$ is the wavelength. The expression for $`K_2`$ depends on the density distribution and hence on the eccentricity of the spheroid. The values of $`F_{22}`$ for different values of $`x=2\pi a/\lambda `$, $`a`$ being the radius of the scattering particle, as well as the expression for $`K_2`$ are given in Simmons (1982). The first order approximation is valid when $`x2`$. We have calculated the degree of polarization as a function of eccentricity $`e`$ by considering Mie scattering. Figure 1 presents the degree of polarization as a function of eccentricity viewed edge on i.e., when $`i=\pi /2`$ and $`\varphi =0`$.

Figure 1 shows that the qualitative feature of polarization does not change with the change in the eccentricity. This is found by Simmons (1982) as well. Polarization increases with the increase in the eccentricity. For $`x2`$ the change in the degree of polarization is small. For all the values of $`x`$ the variation in polarization is not too high when $`e`$ varies from 0.2 to 0.4. In our calculation we have taken $`n_0a^2=100`$. The choice is arbitrary as the main purpose of Figure 1 is to show the effect of eccentricity on the degree of polarization. In the realistic case, the density must be non-uniform and the polarization would occur due to multiple scattering. Therefore one has to solve the equations for the transfer of polarized radiation with the incorporation of Mie theory of scattering.

## 3 TRANSFER EQUATIONS FOR POLARIZED RADIATION

The Stokes parameters representing a linearly polarized beam are given by $`I=I_l+I_r`$ and $`Q=I_lI_r`$ where $`I_l`$ and $`I_r`$ represent two mutually orthogonal states of linear polarization. The degree of polarization is given by $`p=Q/I`$.

For a plane parallel atmosphere the equation of transfer can be written as (Chandrasekhar 1960) :

$$\mu \frac{d𝐈(\tau ,\mu )}{d\tau }=𝐈(\tau ,\mu )\frac{\omega _0}{2}_1^1𝐏(\mu ,\mu ^{})𝐈(\tau ,\mu ^{})𝐝\mu ^{},$$
(3)
where

$$𝐈(\tau ,\mu )=\left(\begin{array}{c}𝐈_𝐥(\tau ,\mu )\\ 𝐈_𝐫(\tau ,\mu )\end{array}\right),$$

$`\mu `$ is the cosine of the angle made by the ray to the normal, $`\tau `$ is the optical depth, $`\omega _0`$ is the albedo for single scattering and $`𝐏(\mu ,\mu ^{})`$ is the azimuth-independent phase matrix.

## 4 THE ATMOSPHERE MODEL

The values of the effective temperature $`T_{eff}`$ and the surface gravity $`g`$ of brown dwarf are constrained by the bolometric luminosity and the evolutionary sequence of the object (Saumon et al 1996). In the present letter, we have adopted a model atmosphere with $`T_{eff}=1500K`$, $`log(g)=5.0`$ and $`[M/H]=0.3`$ (K band). The temperature-pressure profile for model with $`log(g)=5.0`$ and $`T_{eff}=1030K`$ has kindly been provided by M. Marley (private communication) and the opacity data by D. Saumon. Using an iterative process for temperature correction we have obtained the temperature profile for $`T_{eff}=1500K`$. In this process we have used the temperature profile for $`T_{eff}=1030K`$ as the initial temperature profile. We have ignored any change in the density profile with the increase in the temperature. We have incorporated the dust opacity by using the Mie theory of scattering. Following Griffith, Yelle and Marley (1998), and Marley & Ackerman (2001) we have considered a lognormal spherical particle size distribution. The mean radius of the silicate grain (real part of the refractive index 1.65) has been considered as $`0.1\mu m`$ and $`1.0\mu m`$. Although it is difficult to infer the grain sizes by direct observation, atmospheres of the outer solar planets indicate that the mean radius of the grains is expected to be as high as $`10\mu m`$ to $`100\mu m`$ Marley & Ackerman 2001). However in the present investigation we have considered smaller particles as the effect of particle size on the degree of polarization can well be visualized without going for larger particle size.

## 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We solve the transfer equations for the polarized radiation by using discretization method. The numerical procedure is described in detail by Sengupta (1993).

In the absence of a magnetic field, a radiation field could be polarized only by scattering. The extent of scattering is determined by the albedo $`\omega _0`$ and the angular distribution of the scattered photon is governed by the phase function. The albedo for single scattering is defined as $`\omega _0=(\sigma _R+\sigma _M)/\chi _\nu `$ where $`\sigma _R`$ and $`\sigma _M`$ are the cross-section for the Rayleigh and the Mie scattering respectively and $`\chi _\nu `$ is the total extinction co-efficient. While the Rayleigh phase function is symmetric in the sense that the amount of backward and forward scattering are the same, the Mie phase function is asymmetric. The larger the size of the dust particulate, the greater the effect of the Mie scattering.

When there are dust clouds at or above the photosphere, the albedo is high. Conversely, when clouds are absent, the albedo in the mostly absorbing atmosphere is low (Burrows et al. 2001). As a consequence, in the atmosphere of cool brown dwarf such as Gl229B, contribution of scattering is negligible and so there will be no polarization. If the mean particle size is small, say $`0.1\mu m`$, the albedo beyond near infra-red is zero as the Mie scattering cross section goes over to that of the Rayleigh and the scattering cross section of various molecules present in the atmosphere is negligibly small or zero. Therefore scattering polarization can arise only up to the optical and near infra-red region where the contribution of scattering cross section to the total extinction co-efficient is significant. It should be mentioned that grains with small size cannot contribute significantly to the opacities in the near-infrared where water bands still dominate the spectra of brown dwarf from J to K band.

On the other hand if we consider larger particle size, then scattering will contribute to the far infra-red region as well.

The degree of polarization due to multiple scattering is presented in figure 2. Here we notice that the degree of polarization is almost zero at $`1.34\mu m`$ and onwards when the mean particle size is $`0.1\mu m`$.. Shortwards of $`1.3\mu m`$ the degree of polarization increases. This is because of the fact that scattering is negligible at wavelengths greater than $`1.3\mu m`$. As the wavelength decreases, the effect of dust scattering increases. As a consequence the radiation field gets polarized due to scattering and the degree of polarization increases with the decrease in the wavelength. The degree of polarization always remains negative.

If we consider dust particles with larger mean radius, say $`1\mu m`$, then most of the flux get blocked in the optical region. As a result the degree of polarization decreases significantly in the optical region. However, when the size of the particle is comparable to the wavelength, degree of polarization increases significantly. Figure 2 shows that the degree of polarization decreases in the optical region if the the particle size is comparatively large. In the infra-red and far infra-red, degree of polarization increases if the grain size is increased. It’s worth mentioning that multiple scattering decreases the degree of polarization as compared to that with single scattering.

## 6 CONCLUSION

The important message that is conveyed in this letter is that the continuum radiation from the atmosphere of relatively warm brown dwarfs where the dust particulates are not gravitationally settled should be polarized and the polarized radiation could provide a lot of information on the properties of dust particulates. Since, no polarization will occur in the absence of dust grains, observation of polarized radiation will also help in deciding if a particular brown dwarf contains dust in its atmosphere. Rapid rotation would impose non-sphericity in the shape of brown dwarfs. As a result, a net non-zero polarization integrated over the stellar disc should be obtained. The results strongly suggest that the polarimetric observations posses a great diagnostic potential for the understanding of the properties of dust particulates. Furthermore, if no polarization is observed from any particular brown dwarf then that will indicate the absence of dust in its atmosphere.

We thank M. Marley for kindly providing the temperature-pressure profile and D. Saumon for the continuum opacity data. We are indebed to A. B. Ravindran for many valuable discussions and to the referee for constructive comments, suggestions and criticisms. Thanks are due to N. K. Rao, P. Bhattacharya, H. C. Bhatt and T. P. Prabhu.


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# X-ray temperature and morphology of z>0.8 clusters of galaxies

## 1. Introduction

Our sample of $`z>0.8`$ clusters of galaxies is part of the ROSAT Distant Cluster Survey (RDCS; Rosati et al. 1998). The RDCS contains 137 clusters of galaxies covering 50 deg2 to an X-ray flux limit of $`1\times 10^{14}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{cm}^2`$ in the 0.5-2.0 keV band. This includes the highest redshift, X-ray selected clusters galaxies known to date, with ten clusters at $`0.8z1.3`$. The luminosity and redshift distribution of our high redshift sample is plotted in Figure 1, along with that distribution for the Bright SHARC sample (Romer et al. 2000) and the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Sample of clusters of galaxies (Henry et al. 1992; Gioia & Luppino 1995) for comparison.

We have targeted this sample for follow-up with the two premier X-ray observatories, Chandra and XMM-Newton. To date, we have Chandra observations for four clusters in that sample, with the details listed in Table 1. The X-ray data for two of the clusters discussed here, RX J0848+4453 and RX J0849+4452, are presented in Stanford et al. 2001. For the rest of this work we will assume $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ and $`\mathrm{H}_{}=65\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$.

## 2. Morphology

Quantitative morphology for clusters of galaxies usually means fitting a $`\beta `$ model. We fit two-dimensional models to the 0.5-2.0 keV photon distributions for the four clusters of galaxies in our sample, after excluding point sources. The model included a constant term for the background in addition to the cluster model. These results are shown in Figure 2 and in Table 2.

Two things are striking. First, two of the models are quite round. The deviations from a circular model are at less than 5% for both. This is in contrast with, say, MS 1054-0321 or RX J0152.7-1357, which show greatly disturbed, asymmetric morphologies. Second, for these round clusters, the best fitting core radii and values of $`\beta `$ are normal for low redshift clusters of galaxies. These two clusters are also have the largest number of net counts. For RX J0910+5429, in the 0.5-2.0 keV band we measured a total of 500 counts, including the background, within two core radii. We expected 137.4 counts from the background in the same bandpass. With RX J0849+4452, we found 469 counts in the 0.5-2.0 keV band within two core radii while expecting 142.8 from the background. In contrast, RX J0848+4453 has only 259 counts with 104.6 background counts expected and RX J1317+2911 has 217 events with 54.7 expected. Therefore, we may only be resolving the cores of these systems, and missing a smooth outer region because of the lack of events. Nonetheless, both have strange morphologies not well described with a $`\beta `$ model. Because of the poorer statistics and the strange morphologies for these clusters, we quote no error bars on our measured parameters for the $`\beta `$ model. RX J0848+4453 is also strongly contaminated by point sources, see Figure 2. Two of these point sources are potential cluster members, based on photometric redshifts, and are likely to be active galactic nuclei based on their hardness ratios. After excluding these sources, the flux we measured for RX J0848+4453 was significantly lower than what we measured in the original RDCS.

For the two clusters with well constrained morphologies, RX J0849+4452 and RX J0910+5429, we used an aperture of twice the core radius to measure the temperature and flux. We than use the best fitting $`\beta `$ model to compute the total flux. In Table 1, we quote the best fitting temperatures and luminosities. For the two remaining clusters, we used a curve of growth analysis to pick a total flux aperture. We used that aperture to measure the temperature as well. These results are also included in Table 1.

## 3. Luminosity-Temperature Relation

We plot, in Figure 3, the luminosities and temperatures for our data and a number of other high redshift clusters. For comparison, we also plot the relation for low redshift clusters of galaxies as measured by Markevitch (1998) and the low redshift group data of Helsdon & Ponman (2000). When our data are combined with the other high redshift clusters of galaxies, it appears that there is minimal or no evolution in the luminosity-temperature relation.

As a rough test for evolution, we fit the relation $`L_{Bol}T^\alpha `$ to the high redshift data, including the four clusters in our sample, the two $`z>0.8`$ clusters (RX J1716.6+6708, and RX J0152.7-1357) from della Ceca et al. (2000), three clusters (MS1137.5+6625, 1WGAJ1226.9, & CDFS-CL1) summarized in Borgani et al. (2001) and the results for MS1054.4-0321 from Jeltema et al. (2001) (see also these proceedings). We fit the relation using the method of Akritas and Bershady (1996) which accounts for errors in both the temperature and luminosity. For our sample of ten clusters and groups, we found the best fit slope to be $`\alpha =3.0\pm 0.5`$ (90% confidence limits) at our median redshift of $`z=0.83`$. Our measured slope differs by slightly more than one standard deviation from $`\alpha =2.63\pm 0.27`$ (90% confidence limits), the relation of Markevitch (1998). Our result is in good agreement with the slope of $`\alpha =3.1\pm 0.6`$ from Allen & Fabian (1998). We note here that we fit only isothermal models to all of the clusters in our sample. Therefore, we compare our results with the Model A from Allen & Fabian (1998), which used similar assumptions.

## 4. A Potential Source of Intracluster Heating?

In Figure 4, we plot a color magnitude diagram for the 4 clusters in our sample. We have shifted the colors and magnitudes to the median redshift for our sample of 1.18. We circle in X-ray point sources that are within one standard deviation of the mean color-magnitude relation and within 2 of the cluster center. So, each of these galaxies are possible cluster members and they appear to have X-ray emission. The number of these objects in entirely consistent with the results of Barger et al. (2001) who find 4% of $`L_{}`$ or bright galaxies are X-ray emitters and 7% of their entire sample. As the potential sources of the X-ray emission are active galactic nuclei or a very hot interstellar medium, these objects could be important sources of entropy for the intracluster medium (ICM), e.g., Bower (1997) or Ponman, Cannon & Navarro (1999). In Figure 5, we show a hard X-ray image of RX J0910+5429 along with the same soft image shown in Figure 2. There is an obvious hard excesses to the south of the core of the cluster. The hard excess is statistically significant at the 99% confidence limit when compared with both the central region of the cluster (within an equal area centered slightly to the north of the centroid) and when compared with the background. One explanation is we are observing a merger event and the resulting shock. Another is the circled X-ray source in the southeast of the cluster, one of the candidates in Figure 4, is heating the ICM.

Therefore, if we understand these hard X-ray sources and, most importantly, learn how much energy and over what range redshifts they are adding to the ICM, we can directly test the idea of AGN heating of the ICM (see Valageas & Silk 1999; Wu, Fabian & Nulsen 2000) and answer the question of the origin of the ICM pre-heating.

## 5. Summary

We have observed with the Chandra telescope four clusters of galaxies in our sample of ten at $`z>0.8`$. Two of these four are relaxed looking clusters with values for $`\beta `$ and the core radius entirely consistent with low redshift clusters. The other two, however, have elongated morphologies and, in one case, an extreme value for $`\beta `$ and the core radius.

Despite the wide range of morphologies, all of our clusters agree with the low redshift luminosity temperature relation. Including other results, we can see that the L-T relation has little evolution over almost one order of magnitude in temperature out to a $`z_{median}=0.83`$.

Finally, we identify a potential source of cluster members for the additional entropy needed to explain the L-T relation. Further investigation into these objects could shed light on the origin and evolution of the intracluster medium.

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# Non-trivial phase structure of 𝑁_𝑓=3 QCD with 𝑂(𝑎)-improved Wilson fermion at zero temperature Presented by M. Okawa.

## 1 Introduction

Including the dynamical quark loop effects in large-scale QCD simulations is one of the most important and urgent problem. While in the real world there are three light quarks, most of recent studies have concentrated on the case of two flavors of Wilson-type fermions because these systems can be simulated by the exact Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm. Recently, however, a major progress has been made in the exact fermion algorithm applicable to odd number of flavors as reviewed in Ref. . In particular, we have succeeded in developing an efficient algorithm for $`N_f=3`$ QCD with the $`O(a)`$-improved Wilson fermion action in the framework of the HMC algorithm. Leaving algorithmic details to a separate report , we present here the first result toward realistic $`N_f=3`$ QCD simulations with the $`O(a)`$-improved Wilson fermion. We found that this theory has an unexpected first-order phase transition at zero-temperature, which gives a strong constraint on the form of lattice actions suitable for large-scale simulations.

## 2 Phase structure for plaquette gauge action

The partition function we study is defined by

$$𝒵=𝒟U(det[D_{ud}])^2(det[D_s])e^{S_g(U)}.$$
(1)
Here $`S_g(U)`$ is the gluon action

$$S_g(U)=\frac{\beta }{6}\left[c_0W_{1\times 1}+c_1W_{1\times 2}\right],$$
(2)
where $`c_0=18c_1`$ and $`W_{1\times 1}`$ and $`W_{1\times 2}`$ are the plaquette and rectangular Wilson loops, respectively, and $`(det[D_{ud}])^2`$ represents the contribution from degenerate $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks whereas $`s`$ quark effect is given by $`(det[D_s])`$ with $`D_q(q=ud,s)`$ the $`O(a)`$-improved Wilson-Dirac operator.

We start our analysis employing the plaquette gauge action ($`c_1=0`$), determining the clover coefficient $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ by tadpole-improved one-loop perturbation theory;

$$c_{\mathrm{sw}}=\frac{1}{P^{\frac{3}{4}}}\left(1+0.0159\frac{6/\beta }{P}\right),$$
(3)
with $`P`$ evaluated in the quenched approximation at the corresponding value of $`\beta `$.

Given the lattice action, we have three tunable parameters, the gauge coupling $`\beta `$, the hopping parameter $`\kappa _{ud}`$ for $`ud`$ quarks and $`\kappa _s`$ for $`s`$ quark. For simplicity we set $`\kappa _{ud}=\kappa _s\kappa `$ in this work. To see the global phase structure in the ($`\beta ,\kappa `$) plane, we perform rapid thermal cycles on $`4^3\times 16`$ and $`8^3\times 16`$ lattices. Fixing $`\beta `$ we increase $`\kappa `$ from $`\kappa =0`$ in steps of 0.01 until the algorithm fails to converge and then decrease $`\kappa `$ to 0. The procedure is repeated for several values of $`\beta `$. In this analysis, we omit the noisy Metropolis test for the correction factor $`det[W_{oo}]`$  and fix the order of the Chebyshev polynomial to $`n=100`$.

The result of the thermal cycle on an $`8^3\times 16`$ lattice is shown in Fig. 1. We clearly observe hysteresis loops at $`\beta =4.95`$ and $`5.0`$. On a $`4^3\times 16`$ lattice, the hysteresis loop is seen in a wider range of $`\beta `$ at $`4.8\beta 5.1`$. To understand the nature of the hysteresis in more detail, we perform simulations starting from both ordered and disorder configurations with fixed values of $`\beta `$ and $`\kappa `$ on $`8^3\times 16`$ and $`12^3\times 32`$ lattices. Some examples are shown in Fig. 2. Here we make simulations exact by including the correction factor $`det[W_{oo}]`$.

We observe clear two state signals for several sets of parameters, which demonstrates that the hysteresis in the thermal cycles is caused by a first-order phase transition.

In Fig. 3 we plot the location of the observed phase transition line ($`\kappa =\kappa _X(\beta )`$) on the ($`\beta `$, $`\kappa `$) plane for $`8^3\times 16`$(filled circles) and $`12^3\times 32`$ (open upper-triangles) lattices. Also shown in Fig. 3 are the location of the hysteresis observed on $`4^3\times 16`$ and $`8^3\times 16`$ lattices (open squares and circles). The position of the phase transition line significantly moves from $`4^3\times 16`$ to $`8^3\times 16`$. However, it stays in the same place when the lattice size increases from $`8^3\times 16`$ to $`12^3\times 32`$.

In Fig. 4, we plot the plaquette values in the two phases at the phase transition line as functions of $`\beta `$ for $`8^3\times 16`$ and $`12^3\times 32`$ lattices. The gap in the plaquette is almost independent of the lattice size. These findings strongly suggests that the first-order transition line persists in infinite lattice volume and zero temperature.

Figure 4 also shows that the gap in the plaquette decreases almost linearly in $`\beta `$ and vanishes at around $`\beta =5.0`$. Since no signs of transitions are observed at $`\beta >5.0`$ in Fig. 1, we do not think that this point corresponds to a tricritical point where a first-order phase transition line changes to a second-order one which then extends toward weaker couplings. Rather, the observed first-order transition must be a lattice artifact restricted to strong coupling regions.

## 3 Phase structure for improved gauge action

To confirm this possibility, we repeat thermal cycle simulations employing the improved gauge action with $`c_1=0.331`$ (RG action ) and $`c_1=1/(12P^{\frac{1}{2}})`$ (tadpole-improved Symanzik action ). Here $`c_{\mathrm{sw}}`$ is again determined by tadpole-improved one-loop perturbation theory.

Figure 5 shows the result of thermal cycles for the RG action on an $`8^3\times 16`$ lattice. No signs of hysteresis loops are seen, and hence non-trivial phase structure is absent with this gauge action. Hysteresis is also not seen for the tadpole-improved Symanzik gauge action. We conclude that the first-order phase transition observed for the plaquette gauge action has the nature of a lattice artifact.

## 4 Implications

It has been known  that pure $`\mathrm{𝑆𝑈}(3)`$ gauge theory with fundamental and adjoint couplings has a first-order transition for positive values of the adjoint coupling. It is an interesting possibility that the clover term produces a positive adjoint coupling in an effective theory after integrating out the fermion degrees of freedom, which eventually causes the first-order phase transition observed in this work. In fact we have checked that there are no sign of phase transitions in thermal cycles made with the unimproved Wilson fermion action ($`c_{\mathrm{sw}}=0`$) and plaquette gauge action ($`c_1=0`$) on a $`8^3\times 16`$ lattice, which supports our interpretation.

Our finding poses a serious practical problem whether realistic simulations with reasonable values of the lattice spacing $`a`$ are possible with the $`O(a)`$-improved Wilson fermion and the plaquette gauge action. To study this problem, we evaluate the lattice spacing from static quark potential at $`\beta =5.0`$. Our results are $`a^1=1.53(2)`$ GeV $`(\kappa =0.1320)`$, $`2.06(5)`$ GeV $`(\kappa =0.1330)`$ and $`2.58(4)`$ GeV $`(\kappa =0.1338)`$. Continuum extrapolations using lattices with $`a^1`$ starting at 2.58 GeV is not practical. Our natural choice, then, is to use improved gauge actions for realistic $`N_f=3`$ QCD simulations with the $`O(a)`$-improved Wilson fermion.

This work is supported by the Supercomputer Project No. 66 (FY2001) of High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), and also in part by the Grant-in-Aid of the Ministry of Education (Nos. 10640246, 11640294, 12014202, 12640253, 12640279, 12740133, 13640260 and 13740169). K-I.I. and N.Y. are supported by the JSPS Research Fellowship.