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# Infrared Light Curves of Mira Variable Stars from COBE DIRBE Data

## 1 Introduction

Current theories of stellar evolution indicate that low mass ($``$8 M) stars pass through the pulsating Mira star phase at the end of their time as Asymptotic Giant Branch stars (Wood, 1997; Olofsson, 1999). Although the time that stars spend as Mira variables is relatively short ($``$6 $`\times `$ 104 years; Wood (1990)), this stage is very important because these stars have very high rates of mass loss (up to 10-4 M yr-1; Knapp $`\&`$ Morris (1985)). This means that they return large quantities of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen-enriched gas to the interstellar medium (Sedlmayr, 1994). At present, the mass loss process, the properties of the circumstellar envelopes of these stars, and how these relate to the variability of the star are still not very well-understood.

To better understand these processes, detailed studies of Mira variables at infrared wavelengths are helpful. In the near-infrared, photospheric emission dominates, while at wavelengths longer than $``$$`\mu `$m emission from dust in the circumstellar envelope becomes important (Woolf $`\&`$ Ney, 1969). Infrared observations have been used to constrain models of the circumstellar envelopes of Mira variables and to estimate mass loss rates from these stars (Jura, 1986; Bedijn, 1987; Onaka et al., 1989a, b; Anandarao et al., 1993; Le Bertre $`\&`$ Winters, 1998). These studies, however, are based on time-averaged broadband fluxes from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) (Jura, 1986; Bedijn, 1987; Anandarao et al., 1993; Le Bertre $`\&`$ Winters, 1998) or time-averaged 8 $``$ 23 $`\mu `$m IRAS Low Resolution Spectrometer (LRS) spectra (Onaka et al., 1989a, b), and have not investigated mid- or far-infrared variability of these stars.

To better understand mass loss in these stars, infrared monitoring is helpful. Such studies have revealed variations in the infrared spectral energy distributions of Miras with time. Broadband infrared observations indicate that the amplitude of variation tends to decrease with wavelength from the optical through the mid-infrared (Lockwood $`\&`$ Wing, 1971; Harvey et al., 1974; Catchpole et al., 1979; Barthes, Chenevez, $`\&`$ Mattei, 1996; Le Bertre, 1992, 1993; Little-Marenin et al., 1996). Spectroscopic observations with IRAS (Little-Marenin $`\&`$ Stencel, 1992; Hron $`\&`$ Aringer, 1994; Little-Marenin et al., 1996), ground-based telescopes (Creech-Eakman et al., 1997; Monnier et al., 1998), and the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) (Onaka et al., 1997) showed that at least for some Miras the silicate features tend to decrease in flux from light curve maximum to minimum. There is also evidence from IRAS data for far-infrared variations of Miras (Little-Marenin $`\&`$ Stencel, 1992; Little-Marenin et al., 1996; Spear et al., 1993), however, the IRAS light curves are poorly-sampled, so variations at these wavelengths are not well-studied.

Infrared monitoring of Mira variables has also revealed wavelength-dependent phase lags. The maxima at 1 $`\mu `$m (Petit $`\&`$ Nicholson, 1933; Lockwood $`\&`$ Wing, 1971; Barnes, 1973) and 2.7 $`\mu `$m (Maran et al., 1977) typically lag those at V by about 0.1 phase, while no lags are seen in the minima. At present, phase lags at longer wavelengths are not well-determined. There have also been a few reported observations of large-amplitude (0.5 $``$ 1 magnitudes) very short-term (hours to days) variations in the visual (Maffei $`\&`$ Tosti, 1995; de Laverny et al., 1998) and near-infrared (Smak $`\&`$ Wing, 1979b; Guenter $`\&`$ Henson, 2001) light curves of Mira variables, but such variations have not yet been reported at longer wavelengths.

The previously-cited studies generally provide long-wavelength infrared light curves for only a relatively small sample of stars, and generally sample only a fraction of the light curve of these stars. To obtain more complete infrared light curves for a larger sample of Mira stars, we have used data from the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) instrument (Hauser et al., 1998) on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft (Boggess et al., 1992). To date, little research has been done on infrared variability of stars using DIRBE data, in spite of its suitability for such studies.

The COBE satellite was launched in November 1989, and the DIRBE instrument functioned at cryogenic temperatures from 11 December 1989 until 21 September 1990. This 10 month timescale is suitable for searching for variations in long period variables. In the course of a week, a typical point on the sky was observed 10-15 times by DIRBE, and over the course of the cryogenic mission, it was observed about 200 times (Hauser et al., 1998). The temporal coverage of DIRBE varies with sky position. Some parts of the sky had relatively complete coverage; for other regions, there were gaps in the coverage of several months (Hauser et al., 1998). DIRBE operated at 10 infrared wavelengths (1.25, 2.2, 3.5, 4.9, 12, 25, 60, 100, 140, and 240 $`\mu `$m), providing a nearly complete infrared spectrum. This allows us to tie stellar phenomena, as seen in the visual and near-infrared, to circumstellar emission, seen at longer wavelengths. The beam size of the DIRBE instrument, 0.7 degrees, although large, is still sufficiently small that individual infrared-bright stars can be discerned.

We have used DIRBE data to extract 1.25 $`\mu `$m $``$ 240 $`\mu `$m light curves for 38 Mira variables and compared them to available optical data. We have investigated the shapes of the light curves, amplitude variations, and phase lags, and have compared these results to recent models of circumstellar dust emission from Miras.

## 2 Sample Selection and Infrared Light Curve Derivation

Our stars were selected from the 12 $`\mu `$m flux-limited sample of variable stars described by Sloan $`\&`$ Price (1998) and Sloan et al. (1998). This sample was obtained by cross-referencing the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (Kholopov et al., 1985-1988) with the IRAS Point Source Catalog (1988). We selected a subset of this sample, with an IRAS 12 $`\mu `$m flux density cutoff of 235 Jy and classification as Mira stars. A total of 38 stars are included in our set (Tables 1 and 2). Eight of these are classified as carbon-rich Mira variables (Table 1), while 30 are oxygen-rich (Table 2). In Tables 1 and 2, we provide the positions, the period of variability, the IRAS 12 $`\mu `$m magnitude, the optical spectral type, and the dust spectral type (based on the IRAS LRS spectra). The positions are from the SIMBAD database; the rest of the information is from Sloan $`\&`$ Price (1998) or Sloan et al. (1998).

Infrared light curves were derived for these stars from the DIRBE data using two methods. We first extracted light curves from the COBE DIRBE Weekly Sky Maps. These are weekly-averaged intensity maps of the sky in the ten DIRBE wavelength bands. The stellar photometry was determined by multiplying the surface brightess of the Weekly Sky Maps at the stellar position by the DIRBE beam solid angle, after sky subtraction. For sky values, we used the average of the fluxes at four positions 2 N, S, E, and W in equatorial coordinates. Flux uncertainties were obtained by using the quoted DIRBE photometric uncertainties combined in quadrature with the dispersion in the four sky measurements. At 1.25 $`\mu `$m $``$ 240 $`\mu `$m, respectively, the average noise levels in these light curves are 35 Jy, 40 Jy, 35 Jy, 20 Jy, 120 Jy, 155 Jy, 140 Jy, 460 Jy, 2850 Jy, and 1250 Jy.

The second method of obtaining light curves used the DIRBE Calibrated Individual Observations (CIO) data files. The CIO database contains the calibrated individual 1/8th second samples taken in science-survey mode during each day of the cryogenic mission. For all scans that passed within 0.3 of the target position, a linear baseline was fit to the sections $`\pm `$1.35 $``$ 2.25 from the point of closest approach. The point source photometry was obtained by subtraction of this baseline and correcting for DIRBE beam response. The uncertainties in the point source photometry are calculated as the quadrature sum of the rms noise of the baseline, an error due to positional uncertainties of 1 in both the in-scan and cross-scan directions, an error due to short-term detector gain variations, and signal-dependent detector noise. For the light curves derived from the CIO data, average noise levels per datapoint are 25 Jy, 20 Jy, 20 Jy, 10 Jy, 30 Jy, 55 Jy, 320 Jy, 765 Jy, 4800 Jy, and 2750 Jy for the DIRBE 1.25 $``$ 240 $`\mu `$m filters, respectively.

Datapoints with large uncertainties (greater than three times the average uncertainty) were eliminated from the dataset, since anomalously large errorbars were likely caused by cosmic ray hits or the presence of a nearby companion in the DIRBE scan. Careful comparison of individual DIRBE scan locations with the IRAS Point Source Catalog (1988) and the all-sky near-infrared catalog developed by Smith (1995) for position reconstruction for the Infrared Telescope in Space (IRTS) mission (Murakami et al., 1996; Wheaton et al., 1997) shows that when an infrared-bright companion was present in the baseline portion of the scan, the derived stellar photometry was sometimes discrepant with large uncertainties.

These two methods provided consistent light curves, with flux densities that agree within 15$`\%`$, 4$`\%`$, 12$`\%`$, 2$`\%`$, 6$`\%`$, 3$`\%`$, and 12$`\%`$, for the 1.25 $`\mu `$m - 60 $`\mu `$m bands, respectively, when averaged over our light curves. As noted in the DIRBE Explanatory Supplement (Hauser et al., 1998), point source photometry from the Weekly Sky Maps may suffer a small systematic offset when compared to the CIO data. The CIO data are believed to be more accurate for point source photometry (Hauser et al., 1998), so for the following analysis we focus on the CIO light curves. Note that for the six shortest wavelengths, the uncertainties in the CIO light curves are less than those of the photometry derived from the Weekly Sky Maps, in spite of the shorter time coverage per data point. This provides a second reason for using the CIO light curves rather than the light curves from the Weekly Sky Maps.

Note that the uncertainties used in this paper do not include absolute flux calibration errors, and that color corrections were not made to the DIRBE flux densities. The color corrections are typically quite small, particularly at the shorter DIRBE wavelengths. For the stars in our sample, the color correction tables in Hauser et al. (1998) give estimated color correction factors (Fobserved/Ftrue) that range from 0.99 $``$ 1.03 at 1.25 $`\mu `$m, 0.99 $``$ 1.03 at 2.2 $`\mu `$m, 0.98 $``$ 1.01 at 3.5 $`\mu `$m, 0.99 $``$ 1.01 at 4.9 $`\mu `$m, 0.89 $``$ 1.1 at 12 $`\mu `$m, and 0.5 $``$ 2.8 at 25 $`\mu `$m. The range quoted for each wavelength reflects the uncertainty associated with the shape of the emissivity law ($`ϵ\nu ^{12}`$), the fact that the spectral energy distribution of each star is variable in time, and the fact that each star has a slightly different spectral energy distribution.

## 3 Optical Data

For the period of the COBE mission, 23 out of our 38 stars have well-sampled visual (V) light curves available from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) dataset (Mattei, 2000). These stars are identified in the last column of Tables 1 and 2. These optical light curves are plotted along with the infrared data in Figures 1 and 2.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Overview of the Light Curves

In Figure 1 we present plots of flux density vs. time for the six shortest wavelength DIRBE bands for six stars with relatively complete DIRBE light curves. In Figure 1, we also include the visual light curves when available, as well as the 2.2 $`\mu `$m to 12 $`\mu `$m flux ratio as a function of time. For RW Vel, which does not have optical data available, we also plot F$`_{4.9\mu m}`$/F$`_{2.2\mu m}`$ vs. time. In Figure 2, we provide 4.9 $`\mu `$m light curves for the remaining 31 stars in our sample, along with optical light curves when available. These same data are displayed in a different manner in Figure 3, where we plot the optical-infrared spectral energy distributions for all 38 stars at one or more times during the COBE mission vs. wavelength.

In general, the 3.5 $`\mu `$m and 4.9 $`\mu `$m light curves have the best S/N. At 3.5 $`\mu `$m and 4.9 $`\mu `$m, respectively, on average the stars have 18.0 and 17.1 5$`\sigma `$ weekly-averaged flux measurements from the Weekly Sky Maps (out of a total possible of 41 weeks). In the CIO light curves, at 3.5 $`\mu `$m, the average number of datapoints is 490, and at 4.9 $`\mu `$m, 500 points are available on average. Almost complete 4.9 $`\mu `$m light curves ($``$30 weeks of 5$`\sigma `$ data) are available for five stars in the sample, while 31 stars (82$`\%`$ of the sample) have at least 10 5$`\sigma `$ datapoints available. Beyond 4.9 $`\mu `$m, the S/N drops with increasing wavelength. At 12 $`\mu `$m, for example, out of the 38 sample stars only 14 (37$`\%`$) have more than ten datapoints detected at the 5$`\sigma `$ level or better in the Weekly Maps. By 25 $`\mu `$m, this number is down to nine stars (24$`\%`$), and at the four longest DIRBE wavelengths, no stars have more than ten 5$`\sigma `$ weekly datapoints in their Weekly Map light curves.

The stars in our sample are expected to be among the brightest in the infrared, so these statistics show the limitations of DIRBE data in studying infrared variability of unresolved sources. At 60 $`\mu `$m and longer wavelengths, the signal-to-noise ratio is too poor to obtain light curves using DIRBE data. At 25 $`\mu `$m, good light curves (20 weeks at 5$`\sigma `$) are available for only four out of our 38 stars (11$`\%`$).

### 4.2 Infrared Variability of our Sample Stars from DIRBE

In many of the light curves shown in Figures 1 and 2, variations are clearly apparent in the DIRBE data. Variations are also clearly evident in the spectral energy distributions plotted in Figure 3. The best wavelengths at which to observe variability are 3.5 $`\mu `$m and 4.9 $`\mu `$m, where 30 and 31 stars, respectively, show $``$3$`\sigma `$ variability in the Weekly Maps. At 25 $`\mu `$m, only 3 stars vary more than 3$`\sigma `$ in the weekly data.

As an approximation based on the general appearance of the light curves in Figure 1, when possible we fit the infrared light curves (in magnitude units) to sine functions to estimate amplitudes and dates of maxima (Table 3). Such fits were only possible for three stars in our sample: R Hor (Figure 1a), RW Vel (Figure 1b), and R Cas (Figure 1c). The rest of the light curves were too incomplete or too peculiar to be accurately fit to a sine function. Even for R Hor, RW Vel, and R Cas, these fits should be taken as approximations, since the light curves are not perfect sine functions. These fits, however, provide useful estimates of the amplitudes of variation and the JD dates of maxima as a function of wavelength (Table 3). Since we have less than a full pulsation cycle of infrared data for these stars, we were unable to obtain a good fit for the period of variability from the DIRBE data alone. We therefore fixed the period to be equal to that in the optical, and fit the DIRBE data for the amplitude and time of maximum. For R Hor and R Cas, we obtained the optical period by fitting the AAVSO data for JD = 2447500 $``$ 2448700 ($``$3 pulsation cycles) to sine functions. We found periods of 416.5 days and 439.7 days for R Hor and R Cas, respectively, close to the values given in Sloan $`\&`$ Price (1998) (Table 2). For RW Vel, which does not have AAVSO data available for this time period, we simply used the period given in Sloan $`\&`$ Price (1998) of 443.1 days (Table 2).

The stars in our sample with almost complete DIRBE light curves (Figure 1) can be divided into two groups: those with approximately sinusoidal infrared light curves (R Hor, R Cas, and RW Vel), and those which show a plateau, or inflection point, in the rising portion of their light curves (R Car, T Cep, and S Cep). Note that all three of the stars with sinusoidal light curves are oxygen-rich stars, while two stars with inflection points are oxygen-rich (R Car and T Cep) and one (S Cep) is a carbon star.

The best example of a secondary maximum is seen in the light curves of R Car (Figure 1b) at JD $``$ 2448045 (phase $``$ 0.75), where it is visible at all wavelengths between 1.25 $`\mu `$m and 12 $`\mu `$m, and maybe at 25 $`\mu `$m as well, with a duration of $``$ 40 days (Figure 1). These secondary maxima show an increase in brightness of $``$15 $``$ 40$`\%`$ relative to that expected from a sinusoidal light curve. This inflection point is also visible in the optical light curve, at a similar level ($``$0.4 magnitudes).

The lower S/N light curves of T Cep (Figure 1c) show weak inflection points at JD $``$ 2448020 at 1.25 $`\mu `$m, 2.2 $`\mu `$m, 3.5 $`\mu `$m, and 4.9 $`\mu `$m, with a duration of $``$ 90 days. S Cep (Figure 1a) has possible inflection points between JD $``$ 2447980$``$2448020 in the four shortest wavelength DIRBE bands. In both cases, optical counterparts are indicated by the AAVSO data, with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(V) $``$ 0.4.

We also searched the CIO light curves for large amplitude, short-term (2 hours to 10 days) variations in brightness, but found no conclusive detections greater than 0.2 magnitudes at the 3$`\sigma `$ level. A handful of datapoints with very discrepant fluxes were noted in the CIO light curves, however, these were always individual isolated points, with discrepant fluxes at only one wavelength, thus their anomalous fluxes are likely due to cosmic ray hits rather than stellar variations. We note that in the CIO data, the typical time between successive observations of the same star is $``$9 hours, so these data are not particularly sensitive to extremely short variations.

### 4.3 Wavelength-Dependent Phase Lags

We used our light curves to search for phase lags of the maxima as a function of wavelength. Five of our stars (R Hor, R Cas, R Cen, R Aql, and R Aqr), all of which are oxygen-rich, have both optical and infrared data available near maximum light. All five stars show hints of an infrared delay relative to V.

The best example is R Hor (Figure 1a), which clearly shows a delay of the infrared relative to V at 1.25 $`\mu `$m, 2.2 $`\mu `$m, 3.5 $`\mu `$m, and 4.9 $`\mu `$m, and perhaps at 12 $`\mu `$m and 25 $`\mu `$m as well. The optical light curve peaks at JD $``$ 2447930, while the infrared light curves are still rising until at least JD $``$ 2447960, after which there are gaps in the DIRBE data until JD $``$ 2447990. These gaps are followed by a decrease in the infrared brightness. This phase lag can also be seen in Figure 3d, the spectral energy distribution plots. The optical flux was brighter in the JD 2447897 spectrum than in the JD 2447950 spectrum, while the infrared fluxes were brighter at JD 2447950.

The existence of this lag is supported by our sinusoidal fits to the light curves (Table 3), which show that the 1.25 $`\mu `$m maximum followed that at V by $``$53 days (0.13 phase) and the 2.2 $`\mu `$m maximum lagged V by $``$65 days (0.16 phase). In Figure 4a, for the three stars for which we obtained sinusoidal fits to the light curves, we plot the phase lag relative to V as a function of wavelength. For RW Vel, for which we have no optical data, we assumed a 1.25 $`\mu `$m lag relative to V of 0.1 phase.

R Cas also shows evidence for an infrared to V time lag (Figure 1c; Figure 4). In the visible, R Cas was brightest at JD $``$ 2447930, while the 1.25 $`\mu `$m $``$ 25 $`\mu `$m emission was still increasing 10 days later, at JD $``$ 2447940 (phase $``$ 0.02), after which there is a gap in the DIRBE coverage. The best-fit sine curves (Table 3) show a 1.25 $`\mu `$m lag relative to V of 38 days (0.09 phase) and a 2.2 $`\mu `$m lag relative to V of 47 days (0.11 phase).

Our data suggest not just offsets between optical to infrared maxima, but also offsets between the DIRBE wavelengths. For two of our stars with relatively complete, high S/N DIRBE light curves, R Hor and R Cas, the shapes of the observed light curves differ from wavelength to wavelength. In particular, comparison of the 2.2 $`\mu `$m, 4.9 $`\mu `$m, and 12 $`\mu `$m light curves hint that the 4.9 $`\mu `$m and 12 $`\mu `$m maxima for these stars may have occurred before the 2.2 $`\mu `$m peaks (but after the optical maxima). The existence of these offsets is supported by our sinusoidal fits to the data (Table 3; Figure 4). For R Hor, the best fit maxima at 1.25 $`\mu `$m to 3.5 $`\mu `$m are at JD = 2447993 $`\pm `$ 6 days (0.13 $``$ 0.16 phase), while those at 4.9 $`\mu `$m to 25 $`\mu `$m were 30 $``$ 50 days earlier (0.06 $``$ 0.12 phase). For R Cas, the maxima at 1.25 $`\mu `$m to 3.5 $`\mu `$m occurred at JD = 2447999 $`\pm `$ 6 ($``$0.10 phase), while the 4.9 $`\mu `$m to 25 $`\mu `$m peak is at JD = 2447979 $`\pm `$ 3, 20 days earlier ($``$0.05 phase).

Of the stars with no optical data available, the most complete infrared light curves are available for RW Vel (Figure 1b). For this star, the maxima at 1.25 $`\mu `$m, 2.2 $`\mu `$m, and 3.5 $`\mu `$m occurred at JD = 2448023 $`\pm `$ 9, while the 4.9 $`\mu `$m maximum happened 40 days earlier (0.09 phase) (Table 3). This is also visible in the F$`_{4.9\mu m}`$/F$`_{2.2\mu m}`$ time plot (Figure 1b). Other stars with possible phase lags include R Cen, R Aqr, and R Aql, whose 1.25 $`\mu `$m maxima appear to lag those at V by $``$30 days (0.05 $``$ 0.1 phase). These are uncertain, however, because of incompleteness in the light curves.

In addition to a mid-infrared/near-infrared phase shift, there may be smaller offsets between the three near-infrared bands. In particular, note that for the three stars with sinusoidal fits to their light curves (Table 3; Figure 4), the 2.2 $`\mu `$m lags are always larger than those at 1.25 $`\mu `$m and 3.5 $`\mu `$m. This result, however, is uncertain because these light curves are not perfect sine curves.

For six stars in our sample, there are both optical and infrared data available for a minimum in the light curve: R Cen, V Cyg, T Cep, R Lep, R Aqr, and R Car. In all of these cases, there is no evidence for a wavelength-dependent time delay. Of the six, the highest S/N data are those of R Car (Figure 1b), which provides a 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to the time lag relative to V for 1.25 $`\mu `$m $``$ 25 $`\mu `$m of $``$50 days (phase $``$ 0.16). The data for R Lep (Figure 2a) provide a 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to a possible 4.9 $`\mu `$m to V time lag of 20 days (phase $``$ 0.05), however, strong limits are not available for the other DIRBE wavelengths.

### 4.4 Amplitude Variations with Wavelength

Except for the phase lags noted above, in general the DIRBE light curves trace the optical light curves, but with smaller amplitudes of variation. For example, the optical brightness of R Hor dropped 4.5 magnitudes between JD = 2448000 and 2448160 (a factor of 63 in flux density), while the 1.25 micron flux density decreased by only a factor of 2.4 during this time (0.6 magnitudes). In general, the amplitude decreases with increasing wavelength. This is shown in Figure 4b, where the fitted amplitudes for the three stars in Table 3 are plotted as a function of wavelength.

As noted earlier, it was not possible to fit the light curves for most of our stars to an assumed sinusoidal variation, due to the incompleteness and peculiarities of the light curves. To investigate amplitude variations in a larger sample of stars, for the stars with near-continuous high S/N time coverage for at least 10 weeks in both the optical and DIRBE data, in Figure 5a we plot the observed change in the V magnitude vs. the observed change in the 1.25 $`\mu `$m magnitude over the time period for which we have near-continuous data. We emphasize that these magnitude changes generally do not represent the full range of variation for these stars: they only represent time ranges for which we have full sets of data. We have excluded time periods during which a maximum or minimum was occuring because of the possibility of phase lags. In Figure 5b, we plot $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(V) against $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m), using the same criteria.

In Figures 5c $``$ 5g, we plot $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(1.25 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(2.2 $`\mu `$m), $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(2.2 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(3.5 $`\mu `$m), $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(3.5 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m), $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(12 $`\mu `$m), and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(12 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(25 $`\mu `$m). The data plotted in these figures is for all stars in our sample, regardless of whether optical data are available, excluding only stars with less than 10 weeks of high S/N data. The magnitude changes were measured between the observed maxima and minima of the light curves, ignoring time periods during which no data were available. As with the Figures 5a and 5b, these magnitude changes do not necessarily represent the full range of variation for these stars; they are merely the magnitude changes observed in the DIRBE data.

Figures 5a and 5b show that, although the V magnitudes of these stars may vary by several magnitudes during the plotted time intervals, the 1.25 $`\mu `$m magnitudes typically only change by $``$0.5 magnitudes, and the 4.9 $`\mu `$m typical vary by only $``$0.25 magnitudes. On average, for every magnitude of variation in V, the 1.25 $`\mu `$m brightness varies by 0.20 $`\pm `$ 0.01 magnitudes and the 4.9 $`\mu `$m brightness varies by 0.14 $`\pm `$ 0.01 magnitudes. There is a slight correlation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(1.25 $`\mu `$m) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$V, and no observed correlation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(4.9 $`\mu `$m) with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$V.

In all of the infrared-infrared plots (Figures 5c-5g), with the exception of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(25 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(12 $`\mu `$m), clear correlations are visible. The slopes of the best-fit lines are all less than one, indicating decreasing amplitude, on average, with increasing wavelength. For each magnitude change at 1.25 $`\mu `$m, on average, the 2.2 $`\mu `$m flux changes by only 0.69 $`\pm `$0.01 magnitudes. The slope of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(2.2 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(3.5 $`\mu `$m) plot is 0.83 $`\pm `$ 0.01, while the best-fit $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(3.5 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m) line has a slope of 0.96 $`\pm `$ 0.01. The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(12 $`\mu `$m) best-fit line has a slope of 0.93 $`\pm `$ 0.04, and the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(12 $`\mu `$m) vs. $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(25 $`\mu `$m) slope is 0.92 $`\pm `$ 0.10. Thus the decrement of the amplitude with wavelength is smaller in the mid-infrared than in the near-infrared.

In these plots, the slopes for oxygen-rich and carbon-rich stars are similar, except that oxygen-rich stars have somewhat larger $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(2.2 $`\mu `$m)/$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(1.25 $`\mu `$m) ratios on average (0.69 $`\pm `$ 0.01) than the carbon-rich stars (0.39 $`\pm `$ 0.04), and somewhat smaller $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m)/$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(3.5 $`\mu `$m) ratios (0.94 $`\pm `$ 0.01 vs. 1.26 $`\pm `$ 0.05). There are no significant differences between the slopes of long period ($``$ 400 days) and short period stars, or between early-type (M4 $``$ M6.5) and late-type (M7 $``$ M10) oxygen-rich stars. The slopes for stars with dust spectral types of SE1 $``$ SE4 are consistent with those for stars with types SE5 $``$ SE7 (Table 2), with the exception of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(12 $`\mu `$m)/$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mag(4.9 $`\mu `$m) ratio, which is higher in SE5 $``$ SE7 stars (1.02 $`\pm `$ 0.02 vs. 0.71 $`\pm `$ 0.05). Spectral types SE5 $``$ SE7 have narrower, more pronounced 9.7 $`\mu `$m silicate emission features than types SE1 $``$ SE4 (Sloan $`\&`$ Price, 1998). As noted earlier, a number of multi-epoch infrared spectroscopic studies show that, at least for some Miras, as the star increases in brightness, the strength of the silicate feature tends to increase (Little-Marenin $`\&`$ Stencel, 1992; Hron $`\&`$ Aringer, 1994; Little-Marenin et al., 1996; Creech-Eakman et al., 1997; Onaka et al., 1997; Monnier et al., 1998). Thus, over a pulsation period, for stars with strong silicate emission features (dust types SE5 $``$ SE7), this effect may cause a larger change in F$`_{12\mu m}`$/F$`_{4.9\mu m}`$ than in other stars, enhancing the 12 $`\mu `$m/4.9 $`\mu `$m amplitude ratios for these stars compared to stars with dust types SE1 $``$ SE4.

Amplitude decrements with wavelength are also visible in some of the spectral energy distribution plots (Figure 3). In particular, note the variations in the spectral energy distributions of o Cet and IK Tau with time (Figures 3c and 3d). At a given wavelength, the separation between data points obtained at different times tends to get smaller as the wavelength increases.

### 4.5 General Remarks about the Optical-Infrared Spectra

Figure 3 shows that the variation in the spectral energy distribution of a given star over a pulsation period is much less than star-to-star differences in spectral shape. The majority of the stars in our sample have spectral energy distributions that peak at 2.2 $`\mu `$m, but several are brightest at 1.25 $`\mu `$m (for example, X Oph and R Aql; Figure 3h), and a number of stars peak at 3.5 $`\mu `$m (for example, R For and V Cyg; Figure 3a). Three stars, LP And (Figure 3b), V384 Per (Figure 3a), and WX Psc (Figure 3c), have very red spectral energy distributions, peaking at 4.9 $`\mu `$m. Figure 3 shows that there is a clear statistical difference in the infrared-optical spectral energy distributions of carbon and oxygen-rich Miras, with carbon stars tending to have redder spectral energy distributions. Six of the 8 carbon stars peak at 3.5 $`\mu `$m or 4.9 $`\mu `$m, but only two of the 30 oxygen stars.

We note that WX Psc, the only oxygen-rich star in our sample to peak at 4.9 $`\mu `$m (Figure 3c), is also the only star in our sample with an IRAS dust spectral type of ‘silicate self-absorbed emission’ (SB) (Table 2; see Sloan $`\&`$ Price (1998)). The rest of the stars have silicate emission spectra (dust class SE). With the exception of WX Psc, within the oxygen-rich class there is no strong correlation of the IRAS dust spectral type (Table 2) with the peak of the infrared-optical spectral energy distribution as seen in the DIRBE data (Figure 3). There is a weak correlation between optical spectral type (Table 2) and the wavelength of the peak of the optical-infrared spectrum (Figure 3), in that the two oxygen-rich stars with infrared spectral energy distributions that peak at 3.5 $`\mu `$m (IW Hya; Figure 3f) and 4.9 $`\mu `$m (WX Psc; Figure 3c) have very late optical spectral types (M9 and M8, respectively).

For the carbon-rich stars, all but two have IRAS dust spectral types of SiC, i.e., with the 11.2 $`\mu `$m SiC feature (Table 1, see Sloan et al. (1998)). One star (S Cep) has an IRAS spectral type of SiC+ (the 11.2 $`\mu `$m feature plus a secondary feature at 8.5 $``$$`\mu `$m). The last carbon star in our sample, LP And, has an IRAS classification of ‘red’, meaning that, in addition to the 11.2 $`\mu `$m feature, in the IRAS 8 $``$ 23 $`\mu `$m spectrum the star shows a strong infrared continuum increasing with increasing wavelengths. LP And is one of the two carbon stars in our sample with a very red DIRBE spectrum, peaking at 4.9 $`\mu `$m (Figure 3b). LP And is also the carbon star with the latest optical spectral type in our sample, C8. For the rest of the carbon stars, excluding LP And, there is no strong correlation of optical spectral type (Table 1) with DIRBE spectral peak (Figure 3).

## 5 Discussion

Our data show that the amplitude of variation for our sample stars decreases with increasing wavelength, from the optical out to 25 $`\mu `$m. The amount of decrease with wavelength is consistent with the ground-based results of Le Bertre (1992, 1993). If, at a particular time during the pulsation cycle, one approximates the ratio of the fluxes in two adjacent wavelength bands by an attenuated blackbody spectrum, the observed amplitude decrease with increasing wavelength means that the temperature of this blackbody increases as the star becomes brighter.

The observed amplitude decrement with wavelength of a particular carbon-rich Mira, R For, was successfully modeled by Le Bertre (1988). In this model, the dust condensation temperature is fixed, which causes the radius of condensation to move in and out in phase with the luminosity of the star. The stellar spectrum was approximated by a blackbody, and a $`\lambda `$-1.3 dust opacity law was used. At a given radius, the dust temperature is highest at highest stellar luminosity. Averaged over all the dust in the shell, the effective dust temperature is highest at maximum, consistent with the observations.

More general, and more complex, models for carbon-rich long period variables were developed by Winters et al. (1994b, 2000), using time-dependent hydrodynamics and a detailed treatment of the formation, growth, and evaporation of carbon grains. In these models, the pulsation of the underlying star is simulated by a sinusoidal variation of the velocity in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, and isothermal shocks and complete dust-grain momentum coupling are assumed. New layers of dust are formed periodically in the circumstellar envelope, and radiation pressure pushes this dust, and its swept-up gas, outwards. Dust formation and growth are triggered by compression of the gas due to the pulsation, and grain nucleation, growth, and evaporation are calculated according to the relations in Gail, Keller $`\&`$ Sedlmayr (1984), Gail $`\&`$ Sedlmayr (1988), and Gauger et al. (1990). The frequency-dependent radiative transfer equation in spherical geometry is solved as in Winters, Dominik, $`\&`$ Sedlmayr (1994a), using gray absorption and thermal emission of the gas and frequency-dependent absorption and thermal emission of the dust. In the calculation of the dust opacity, the particles are assumed to be spherical and small compared to the relevant wavelength of the radiation field.

Using this model, Winters et al. (1994b) calculated light curves for a 1 M, 104 L star with an assumed stellar temperature of 2600K, a period of 650 days, and a velocity amplitude of 2 km s-1. They find amplitudes of 8 magnitudes at 0.55 $`\mu `$m, 2.8 magnitudes at 0.9 $`\mu `$m, 1 magnitude at 1.65 $`\mu `$m, 0.7 magnitudes at 2.2 $`\mu `$m, 0.35 magnitudes at 4.8 $`\mu `$m, and 0.2 magnitudes at 25 $`\mu `$m. These amplitude ratios are within a factor of two of our average values for carbon stars, with the exception of the 25 $`\mu `$m amplitude, which is low by a factor of four.

By comparing the DIRBE data with light curves from the AAVSO, we found evidence for time lags in the near-infrared maxima (1.25 $``$ 3.5 $`\mu `$m) relative to the optical for six stars, with phase shifts between $``$0.05 $``$ 0.13. This confirms that the stellar luminosity maximum occurs after visual maximum, and the V light curve does not trace the bolometric luminosity. We also found possible lags between the near-infrared and mid-infrared maxima (4.9 $``$ 12 $`\mu `$m) for three stars, with the mid-infrared flux peaking before the near-infrared but after visual maximum. The mid-infrared to near-infrared relative phase shifts are between $``$ 0.05 $``$ 0.12.

At present, there are no theoretical models of Miras that predict both of these lags. The well-known 1.04 $`\mu `$m phase lag in Miras relative to V (Lockwood $`\&`$ Wing, 1971; Barnes, 1973) has been successfully modeled by Alvarez $`\&`$ Plez (1998) as a consequence of the propagation of perturbations through the atmosphere. These perturbations cause time lags in the strength of the vanadium oxide absorption relative to titanium oxide, because these species are formed at different depths in the atmosphere. The V magnitudes of M stars are strongly attenuated by TiO absorption (Smak $`\&`$ Wing, 1979a).

Another factor that may contribute to phase lags is variations in the optical depth of the circumstellar shell, which may periodically attenuate the visual light more than the near- and mid-infrared. Extinction-induced infrared-optical offsets in the maxima are seen in the models of Winters et al. (1994b), however, in these models, optical maximum occurs after infrared maximum, while in our observations, the infrared maximum lags that in the optical. We note that the Winters et al. (1994b) models do not include the effect of molecular line opacity, while the models of Alvarez $`\&`$ Plez (1998) do not include dust absorption, so neither set of models do a complete analysis of phase lags. It is possible that, for some stars, dust extinction can be neglected, for example, Lobel et al. (2000) model variations in the spectral energy distribution of o Cet using the DUSTY radiative transfer code (Ivezić, Nenkova, $`\&`$ Elitzur, 1996), and find that the circumnuclear shell of this star is optically thin. They conclude that the observed visual-to-near-infrared phase lag of Mira cannot be due to modulation of the optical by circumstellar extinction, but instead must originate in the stellar atmosphere itself.

In Section 3.2, we noted that some of our light curves are asymmetric, with secondary maxima or plateaus in the rising portion of the light curve. These two types of light curves were previously noted by Le Bertre (1992). Similar features appear in the models of Winters et al. (1994b, 1995), where they are due to the formation of a new dust layer and subsequent excess infrared dust emission. Alternative explanations for such inflection points are dissipation of shock wave energy in the inner part of the atmosphere (Feuchtinger et al., 1993) or formation of secondary shocks in the inner-most dust-free region (Bowen et al., 1990; Willson et al., 1994). The fact that matching optical excesses are present in the AAVSO data supports the hypothesis that these features are due to shocks rather than dust, since the dust models predict that extinction by the newly-formed dust layer will cause concurrent depressions (rather than enhancements) of the optical light curves.

## 6 Conclusions

Using data from the DIRBE instrument on COBE, we have obtained 1.25 $`\mu `$m $``$ 25 $`\mu `$m light curves for 38 infrared-bright Mira variables and compared with AAVSO optical data. We have found decreasing amplitudes of variation with increasing wavelength, with magnitudes consistent with recent theoretical models of circumstellar dust shells around Mira stars. For the oxygen-rich Miras R Car and T Cep and the carbon star S Cep, we see secondary maxima in the rising part of the DIRBE light curves. These features are also present in the optical data from the AAVSO, suggesting that they are due to shocks rather than to dust formation.

We have detected near-infrared-to-optical time delays of the maxima of six stars with phases $``$ 0.05 to 0.12. We also find possible offsets of the mid-infrared maxima relative to those in the near-infrared for three stars, in that the mid-infrared peaks occurs after optical maximum but before that in the near-infrared. These lags may be caused by variations in the amount of molecular absorption over a pulsation period, in combination with variations in dust opacity. More detailed modeling is needed to disentangle these two effects.

We find no evidence for large magnitude ($``$0.2 magnitudes) short-term (hours to days) variations in the near- or mid-infrared in our stars. With typical time resolution of 9 hours, however, the COBE data are not particularly sensitive to bursts of a few hours in duration.

We thank the COBE team for making this project possible. We are especially grateful to Nils Odegard, who helped developed the DIRBE CIO Point Source Photometry Research Tool, a service provided by the Astrophysics Data Facility at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with funding from the NSSDC. We also thank Edward Wright, whose colloquium at the University of Colorado in 1999 on the COBE mission inspired this project. We also thank two ETSU students, Mike Houchins and Randy Keeling, for help with the data acquisition. In this research, we have used, and acknowledge with thanks, data from the AAVSO International Database, based on observations submitted to the AAVSO by variable star observers worldwide. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research was funded in part by NSF POWRE grant AST-0073853.


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# Crystal Collimation Experiment on 70-GeV Proton Accelerator

## 1 Introduction

Bent-crystal technique is well established for extracting high energy beams from accelerators. It was successfully applied at the energies up to 900 GeV, and simulations were able to predict the results correctly. Recent experiments at IHEP Protvino have demonstrated that this technique can be quite efficient: 50-70% of the beam have been extracted using a thin (3-5 mm) Si channeling crystal with bending of 0.5-1.5 mrad, with intensity of the extracted 70-GeV beam up to 6$`\times `$1011 protons per spill. At this intensity, no cooling measures were taken and no reduction in the efficiency observed. At IHEP Protvino this technique has been routinely used since 1987 to deliver a 70 GeV beam to particle physics experiments. One of the IHEP crystals did extract 70 GeV protons over 10 years since 1989 without replacement and without any degradation seen! It was shown in the experiments at BNL AGS and at CERN SPS that radiation damage in channeling crystals is sizable only at over (2-4)$`\times `$1020 proton/cm2.

The theory of crystal extraction is based mainly on detailed Monte Carlo simulations tracking the particles through a curved crystal lattice and the accelerator environment in a multipass mode. Our code CATCH was successfully tested in the extraction experiments at CERN, FNAL, and IHEP in 1992-99. Monte Carlo predictions, suggesting a ”multipass” mode of crystal extraction where efficiency is dominated by the multiplicity of particle encounters with a short crystal, have lead to the breakthrough in the extraction efficiency demonstrated at IHEP Protvino.

Crystal can channel a charged particle if it comes within so-called critical angle $`\theta _c`$, about $`\pm `$150 $`\mu `$rad/$`\sqrt{pv(GeV)}`$ in silicon. This restricts crystal efficiency in divergent beams. However, if a crystal is installed in a circulating beam, particle may scatter in inefficient encounters and have new chances on later turns. To benefit from the ”multi-pass” channeling, the crystal must be short enough to reduce beam losses in multiple encounters with it.

It should be promising to apply this bent-crystal technique for a beam halo scraping in accelerators and storage rings. A bent crystal, serving as a primary element, should bend halo particles onto a secondary collimator. A demonstration experiment of this kind was performed at IHEP where for the first time a significant reduction in the accelerator background was obtained with a bent crystal incorporated into beam cleaning system.

A crystal collimation system for a gold ion beam is now being installed at RHIC in collaboration with IHEP, and –upon success– it will serve there on permanent basis.

## 2 Crystal Deflector

Bending a short crystal to be installed in the accelerator vacuum chamber is not easy. The first crystal used in the course of our experiment of 1997-1999 was of Si(111) type and performed as a short plate of a big height, 0.5$`\times `$40$`\times `$7 mm3 (thickness, height, and length along the beam direction, respectively). It was bent transversally with a metal holder which had a hole of 20 mm size for beam passage, and gave the channeled protons a deflection of 1.7 mrad. Despite an angular distortion (a ”twist”) in that design, encouraging results on beam extraction were obtained in our first run in December 1997, Figure 1. The peak extraction efficiency reached about 20% and the extracted beam intensity was up to 1.9$`\times `$1011 . Here and later on in the paper, the extraction efficiency is defined as the ratio of the extracted beam intensity as measured in the external beamline to all the beam loss in the accelerator.

To further increase the extraction efficiency, further crystals (without twist) were made from a monolithic Si piece in a shape of ”O” at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, as described in Ref. . The crystals Si(110) used in our recent runs had the length along the beam direction of only 5 mm. The bent part of the crystal was just 3 mm long, and the straight ends were 1 mm each.

Such a crystal, with bending angle of 1.5 mrad, was successfully tested in March 1998 and has shown extraction efficiencies over 40% . In the mean time we have changed the crystal location in order to use another septum magnet (with partition thickness of 2.5 mm instead of 8 mm as in the old scheme) where a smaller bending angle is required from a crystal. This change was also motivated by the intention to test even shorter crystals (two of them, 2.5 and 3.0 mm long, are already undergoing tests). The crystal used in this location was new, but of the same design and dimensions as earlier described. The bending angle used in this run was 0.65 mrad.

## 3 Study of Crystal Work in Slow-Extraction Mode

Experiments on crystal-assisted slow extraction and scraping are very similar on the part of crystal component, the only difference being the target of the channeled deflected beam — is it an external beamline or beam absorber. This is why we were able to study the crystal work first in the conditions of slow extraction where we could measure the amount and characteristics of the channeled beam more easiely.

The general schematics of beam extraction by a crystal is shown in Ref.. As the small angles of deflection are insufficient for a direct extraction of the beam from the accelerator, a crystal served as a primary element in the existing scheme of slow extraction. Crystal was placed in straight section 106 of the accelerator upstream of a septum-magnet of slow-extraction system. The accuracy of the crystal horizontal and angular translations was 0.1 mm and 13.5 $`\mu `$rad, respectively. The horizontal emittance of the circulating proton beam was about 2$`\pi `$ mm$`\times `$mrad, and the beam divergence at the crystal location was 0.6 mrad. A local distortion of the orbit by means of bump windings in magnets moved the beam slowly toward the crystal. To obtain a uniform rate of the beam at crystal, a monitor for close loop operation based on a photomultiplier with scintillator was used to automatically adjust the orbit distortion. We used also function generator to control current in bump windings.

The beam deflection to the septum and its transmission through the beam line of extraction were supervised with a complex system of beam diagnostics, including TV system, loss monitors, profilometers, intensity monitors. All the diagnostics devices were firstly tested in fast-extraction mode and calibrated with beam transformers. The background conditions were periodically measured with and without crystal. According to the measurements, the fraction of background particles (e.g. elastically scattered protons) together with the apparatus noise did not exceed 4% of the useful signal level. This background was subtracted from the efficiency figures shown in the paper. The fraction of the beam directed to the crystal was defined as the difference between the measurements of the circulating beam intensity done with beam transformers before and after the beam extraction, with the systematic error of 1%. The extraction efficiency was evaluated in every cycle of acceleration.

## 4 Crystal Efficiency

The accelerator beam intensity during the experiment was about 1.3$`\times `$1012 protons per cycle. The fraction of the circulating beam incident on the crystal $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$I was varied from 20 to 90%. The spill duration of the channeled beam in the feedback regime was on the order of 0.5 s. The plateau of the IHEP U-70 accelerator magnet cycle is 2 s long while the overall cycle of the machine is 9.6 s. Figure 1 shows the efficiency of extraction averaged over the spill, as measured in our three experiments of 1997-98. In the last one, the efficiency was about 50% even when all the accelerator beam was directed onto the crystal. The spill-averaged efficiency figures were reproducible with 1% accuracy from run to run. The dependence of the extracted beam intensity on orientation of the crystal was about the same as in Ref. and not shown here. The highest intensity of the extracted beam, for 1.15$`\times `$1012 protons incident at the crystal in a cycle, was equal to 5.2$`\times `$1011.

As the beam moves radially toward the crystal, the proton incidence angle drifts at the crystal. For this reason the extraction efficiency varies in time during the spill, especially for a large beam fraction used. The peak extraction efficiency in a spill was always greater than 60%. The absolute extraction efficiency as obtained in our Monte Carlo simulations agree with the measurements to accuracy of about 5% for spill-averaged figures.

## 5 Crystal Collimation Experiment

Bent crystal, situated in the halo of a circulating beam, can be the primary element in a scraping system, thus serving as an ’active’ collimator. In this case, the only difference from extraction is that channeled particles are bent onto a secondary collimator instead of the extraction beamline. The bent particles are then intercepted (with sufficiently big impact parameter) at the secondary element and absorbed there.

We have performed the first demonstration experiment on crystal-assisted collimation. A bent crystal, with the same dimensions as the extraction crystals described above and with bending angle of 1 mrad, was positioned upstream of a secondary collimator (stainless steel absorber 4 cm wide, 18 cm high, 250 cm long) ”FEP” and closer to the beam in the horizontal plane. As the horizontal betatron tune is 9.73 in our accelerator, it was most convenient to intercept the bent beam at FEP not immediately on the first turn, but after 3 turns in the accelerator. In this case the deflection angle of 1 mrad transforms into more than 20 mm horizontal offset, and so the bent beam enters the FEP collimator at some $``$15 mm from the FEP edge. The optimal horizontal position of the crystal w.r.t. the FEP edge was found to be $``$10 mm.

Radiation levels were monitored at three places along the ring in the vicinity of FEP, from $``$2 to $``$10 meters downstream of the backward edge of the collimator. Several different cases have been studied.

* The whole accelerator beam was kicked into the middle of the FEP face by a kicker magnet. That’s an ideal case for a beam interception and absorption, so the resulting radiation levels (nonzero due to escape of some primary and secondary particles from the FEP body) can be considered as a kind of pedestal for the results obtained then with several actual scraping methods. These lowest levels are shown in Figure 2 by ($``$) marks.
* When FEP was a primary element scraping the beam halo continously, the halo particles were entering FEP very close to its edge (at sub-micron depths) so the escape of particles from FEP body because of outscattering was very important. This resulted in higher radiation levels ($``$) as shown in Figure 2.
* A bent silicon crystal was introduced then about 60 cm upstream of the forward edge of FEP. Crystal served as a primary element of the scraping system, being closer to the circulating beam than FEP, with the offset of about 5-15 mm in the radial plane. When the crystal was misaligned, it was acting as an amorphous target scattering particles. The collimator downstream could intercept some of the scattered particles. The radiation levels measured ($``$) in this setting were not so different from the preceding case of direct (by FEP) scraping of the beam halo.
* When the crystal was aligned to the best angle w.r.t. the incident beam, a substantial number of halo particles was channeled and deflected into the depth of FEP for best absorption. The monitored radiation levels with aligned crystal serving as primary element are shown ($``$) in Figure 2. One can conclude that about one half of the halo was extracted and forwarded to a safe place (i.e. the middle of FEP face) for absorption, reducing the radiation background in the ring correspondingly.
* Finally, another case studied was a silicon target (amorphous) positioned downstream of FEP as a primary element. In this case the machine was not protected from the scattered particles originating in the target, so the radiation levels achieved ($``$) were the highest.

Figure 3 shows how the radiation level depends on the angular alignment of the crystal. At the best crystal angle, preferable for channeling, the radiation levels decrease by up to factor of $``$two in the places of monitoring. This is explained by the fact that $``$50% of the incident beam is channeled by the crystal and deflected to the depth of FEP where absorbed. In the case when crystal was out and the beam was scraped directly by FEP, the radiation at the monitors was at about the same level as in the case of disaligned crystal.

We were able to check the crystal efficiency figure by alternative means, measuring the profile and intensity of the particles incident at the FEP entry face. The channeled beam had a narrow profile and was well distanced from the FEP edge, as shows Figure 4 where this profile is shown in comparison with the profile of the accelerator beam deflected onto FEP by a kicker magnet. From comparison of the two profiles, from crystal and from kicker, we again derived the crystal efficiency, which was found to be about 50%, in agreement with the radiation monitoring figures and with the earlier shown figures of extraction efficiency with crystal in straight section 106.

## 6 Conclusions

The crystal-assisted method of beam steering (for scraping or slow extraction) demonstrates peak efficiencies in the order of 60-70% and shows reliable, reproducible and predictable work. Crystal can channel at least 5-6$`\times `$1011 ppp with no cooling measures taken and no degradation seen.

In our experiment this technique was for the first time demonstrated for scraping of the beam halo. Such application has been studied by computer simulation for several machines, notably RHIC  and Tevatron . We have shown that radiation levels in accelerator can be significantly decreased by means of channeling crystal incorporated into beam cleaning system as a primary element.

We continue tests with crystals as short as down to 1 mm, where Monte Carlo predicts 80-90% efficiency of steering. We study different techniques to prepare bent crystal lattices with required size, one of the most interesting approaches is described in Ref..

## 7 Acknowledgements

The author thanks very much the conference Organizers, Nikolai Mokhov and Weiren Chou, for kind hospitality and support.


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# Gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars

## 1 Introduction

Broadly speaking, gravitational wave emission from rotating neutron stars can be divided into two classes: emission due to the normal modes of oscillation of the fluid core, and emission due to some non-fluid agent deforming the star, such as the crust or an internal magnetic field. As a perusal of journal archives readily reveals, most research into gravitational wave emission from rotating stars falls into the first class. The main reason for this is that fluid oscillations can undergo the Chandrasekhar-Friedman-Schutz (CFS) instability (Friedman & Schutz 1978a,b), where gravitational radiation reaction amplifies a mode that propagates forward with respect to the inertial frame, but backward with respect to the rotating star. Whether or not such a mode grows to large amplitude is then determined by the strength of dissipative processes that tend to sap its energy, such as viscosity of the stellar fluid (see Lindblom’s article in this volume for a review of one such gravitationally unstable mode - the r-mode).

In this review will concentrate entirely on the relatively neglected second class of emission, i.e. that due to the neutron star not being a simple fluid, but instead being able to support some sort of strain. Such a star could then be triaxial (i.e. support some sort of ‘mountain’), and radiate gravitationally at twice its rotation rate. There is no gravitational wave instability for such a star, but equally there will be no viscous processes within it, allowing a perfectly efficient conversion of kinetic into gravitational wave energy. Traditionally, the two candidates for producing triaxiality have been strains within the crystal lattice of the crust, and a deformation due to a strong internal magnetic field. In section (2) we will describe some recent developments in modelling these effects, and also describe some new possibilities for producing deformations, which make use of the pinned component of the neutron star fluid predicted by glitch modellers.

In addition to triaxiality, a deformed neutron star can radiate gravitationally by undergoing free precession (sometimes referred to simply as ‘wobble’). Such a motion is in the rather unfortunate position of not being susceptible to the gravitational wave instability of the fluid modes, and yet still suffering from viscous dissipation within the star. Perhaps because of this, very little work has been done to investigate the detectability of freely precessing stars. In section (3), we will summarise some recent work on this problem, and comment on the recent hypothesis of Middleditch et al(2000a,b) that a gravitationally spinning down freely precessing pulsar exists in the remnant of supernova 1987A.

## 2 Triaxial neutron stars

### 2.1 Crustal strain

The most obvious way of deforming the shape of a neutron star from that of the equivalent rotating fluid is to suppose there is a strain in its solid crust. Indeed, very soon after glitches were first observed, a crust-quake model was proposed (Baym & Pines 1971, Pines & Shaham 1972). The key idea was that the crust first solidified when the star was spinning very rapidly, and was therefore very oblate. As the spin rate gradually decreased, so did the oblateness, straining the crust until some critical breaking strain was reached, whereupon the crust cracked. The consequent decrease in moment of inertia of the star resulted in the small fractional increase in spin rate observed as a glitch.

This model soon went out of favour when it was found that not all glitching pulsars could be described by this model, as the amount of elastic energy that needed to be stored far exceeded that likely to be available (Lyne & Graham-Smith 1998). Nevertheless, the machinery developed to describe glitches can be used to estimate how large a non-axisymmetry the crust can support. For convenience, we will consider a non-rotating star, with an axisymmetric deformation whose size we will characterise by the dimensionless small number $`ϵ`$ (this might be the change in radius along some direction divided by the average radius). Suppose the crust would be entirely unstrained if $`ϵ`$ took some particular value $`ϵ_0`$. The energy of such a star can be written as:

$$E(ϵ)=E_{\mathrm{spherical}}+Aϵ^2+B(ϵϵ_0)^2,$$
(1)
where $`E_{\mathrm{spherical}}`$ is the energy the star would have if it were spherical, $`Aϵ^2`$ is the increase in gravitational potential energy due to the non-sphericity, and $`B(ϵϵ_0)^2`$ is the strain energy stored in the crust. Note that the constant $`A`$ is of order the total gravitational binding energy of the star, while the constant $`B`$ is of the order of the total electrostatic binding energy of the crust.

The actual shape of the star will minimise this energy, so that:

$$ϵ=\frac{B}{A+B}ϵ_0.$$
(2)
This is the estimate of crustal deformation we required. (Strictly, we are interested in the case where a small strain of the above size is superimposed upon the shape of a rapidly rotating star, but including the effects of rotation in our analysis would not change the key result, i.e. equation 2). Fortunately, estimates of $`B`$ and $`A`$ are readily available (see Jones & Andersson 2001). The coefficient $`B`$ is a property of the crust, and so depends mainly on the rather well known low-density equation of state. For a canonical $`M=1.4M_{}`$ $`R=10^6`$ cm neutron star, a value of around $`10^{47}`$ ergs is found. The value will be higher for lower mass stars, as they have thicker crusts. The coefficient $`A`$, being of order of the gravitational binding energy of the whole star, is found to be rather insensitive to the total mass, taking a value of around $`10^{52}`$ ergs. We therefore find:

$$ϵ10^5ϵ_0.$$
(3)
for a canonical neutron star. In words, the electromagnetic forces are very much weaker than the gravitational ones, so that the deformation induced by the crust is five orders of magnitude smaller than the ‘zero strain’ shape of the crust.

This mismatch between the actual shape of the star and its zero strain shape results in a strain in the crust, of dimensionless size $`|ϵϵ_0||ϵ_0|`$. This strain cannot exceed the crustal breaking strain, $`u_{\mathrm{break}}`$, and so we obtain for the upper bound on the triaxiality:

$$ϵ<\frac{B}{A+B}u_{\mathrm{break}}.$$
(4)
Unfortunately, the breaking strain is rather uncertain. By extrapolation of breaking strains of terrestrial materials Ruderman (1992) estimates this to lie in range $`10^210^4`$. Combining with the estimates of $`A`$ and $`B`$ we finally obtain:

$$ϵ_{\mathrm{max}}10^710^9.$$
(5)
In words, we can expect the non-axisymmetric deformations to correspond to mountains of height in the range $`10^110^3`$ cm.

So much for the bound placed on triaxiality by neutron star structure. The question remains: Why would a non-axisymmetry be formed in the first place? Very little work has been done on this problem. One possibility would be that when very young, a hot, entirely fluid neutron star undergoes a CFS-type instability, resulting in large violent motions of the fluid near the surface. As the star cools, the crust begins to solidify. If this solidification occurs while the mode is still active, an ‘imprint’ of the mode might remain in the zero-stress shape of the crust, leaving a mountain whose structure reflects that of the mode that created it.

Another rather subtle way of producing a non-axisymmetry was proposed recently by Bildsten (1998), motivated by the possibility that the low-mass X-ray binary stars (LMXBs, see Van der Klis 2000) might have their spins limited by gravitational wave emission. Bildsten proposed that, providing a slight non-axisymmetry in the temperature was present, the compression-induced burning of accreted nuclei will occur in a non-axisymmetric way, thereby building up an asymmetry in the mass quadrupole. This idea was investigated in detail by Ushomirsky, Cutler & Bildsten (2000), who solved the combined equations of elasticity and heat flux for an accreting star. They found that it was indeed possible to build up a sufficiently large mass quadrupole for the gravitational spin-down torque to balance the spin-up accretion torque, provided that temperature asymmetries at the $`5\%`$ level were present, and that the crustal breaking strain is as large as $`10^2`$, i.e. at the upper end of the range estimated by Ruderman.

This is a very exciting result for gravitational wave physicists, as one LMXB in particular, Sco X-1, might be visible to first generation interferometer detectors, providing sufficiently accurate search templates are available. We will discuss gravitational wave detectability of triaxial stars in section (2.4).

### 2.2 Magnetic strain

The second of the two standard mechanisms for producing triaxiality concerns neutron star magnetic fields. Indeed, most of our observational data on neutron stars comes from the pulsars, whose defining characteristic is a non-axisymmetry in their magnetic field structure. The standard formula for estimating this deformation comes from balancing the total magnetostatic energy stored by a uniform field $`B_{\mathrm{mag}}`$ within the star to the gravitational binding energy:

$$ϵ\frac{B_{\mathrm{mag}}^2R^3}{GM^2/R}10^{12}\left(\frac{B_{\mathrm{mag}}}{10^{12}\mathrm{G}}\right)^2$$
(6)
for a canonical pulsar. For typical magnetic fields of order $`10^{12}`$ G this is several orders of magnitude smaller than the sorts of deformation that crustal strain can produce. However, the size and geometry of the magnetic field within a neutron star is highly uncertain. As discussed by Bonazzola & Gourgoulhon (1996), if the interior fluid is a type I superconductor, the magnetic field will be expelled from the core fluid, and confined to the crustal region. Such a confinement will result in internal magnetic fields much larger than the external polar magnetic field, and can produce deformations several orders larger than formula (6) would suggest.

### 2.3 Magnus strain

The two forms of deformation considered above have both made use of electrostatic forces. However, in the course of attempting to explain glitches, theorists have realised that other sorts of force may play an important role in neutron stars. If the core is a superfluid, it rotates by forming an array is vortices, with the number per unit area being proportional to the rotation rate. About $`1\%`$ of the core fluid penetrates the solid crust. The vortices in this region are predicted to ‘pin’ to nuclei in the solid lattice, so that the rotation rate of this fluid is fixed, even when the crust is spun-up or spun-down. This creates an angular velocity difference between the fluid and the vortices, which in turn results in a Magnus force on the vortices. This force is transferred, via the pinning sites, to the crust itself.

The effect of this Magnus force on the crust has been considered by Ruderman (1976, 1991, see also Ruderman et al1998), who has shown that, provided that the vortex pinning does not break first, the Magnus force can crack the crust. Indeed, Ruderman has used this force to construct a theory of pulsar magnetic dipole evolution, where the dipole, frozen into the highly conducting crust, migrates with the fracturing crustal plates toward the rotational equator of a spinning down star. A simple estimate of the size of deformation the Magnus force can produce is straightforward. Following Ruderman (1991), the force per unit volume on the crystal lattice is:

$$\mathrm{F}\mathbf{=}2𝝎\mathbf{\times }\mathbf{(}\mathrm{\Omega }\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{r}\mathbf{)}𝝆_𝐧\mathrm{f}_{\mathrm{𝐩𝐢𝐧}}$$
(7)
where $`𝝎`$ is the angular velocity difference between the superfluid and the lattice, $`𝛀`$ the angular velocity of the star, $`\rho _\mathrm{n}`$ the superfluid neutron density and $`f_{\mathrm{pin}}`$ a geometric factor likely to be of order unity. The total force on the crust is then of order the crustal volume $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ time this. The deformation is of the order of this force divided by the gravitational force at the surface $`GM^2/R^2`$, giving

$$ϵ\frac{2\omega \mathrm{\Omega }R^3\mathrm{\Delta }M}{GM^2},$$
(8)
where the crust mass $`\mathrm{\Delta }M\rho _\mathrm{n}\mathrm{\Delta }V`$. Parameterising:

$$ϵ5\times 10^7\left(\frac{\omega }{1\mathrm{Hz}}\right)\left(\frac{f}{\mathrm{kHz}}\right)\left(\frac{R}{10^6\mathrm{cm}}\right)^3\left(\frac{\delta M}{0.01M_{}}\right)\left(\frac{1.4M_{}}{M}\right)^2\left(\frac{f_{\mathrm{pin}}}{1}\right).$$
(9)
This is larger than the deformations due to conventional crustal strain, and so is clearly of interest.

For a spinning-down star (such as a pulsar) $`𝝎`$ is parallel to $`𝛀`$, and equation (7) shows that the Magnus force is directed away from the rotation axis, making the crust more oblate than its rotational equilibrium shape. Conversely, for a spinning-up star (such as a LMXB before the compact has has reached spin equilibrium) the Magnus force tends to make the crust less oblate. (There must be an equal and opposite force on the fluid, so the actual change in shape of the star is not obvious). However, we are not interested in axi-symmetric deformations. We would like to know how the Magnus force might induce triaxiality. This question has not, as far as we are aware, been addressed previously, and is clearly of great interest for gravitational wave emission. One (speculative) mechanism would apply if the Bildsten type asymmetries occur in an accreting system: Any asymmetry in the atomic number or temperature of nuclei would result in different pinning strengths. Certain areas of crust might then pin nuclei perfectly, thereby feeling the full Magnus force. Other area might pin nuclei relatively weakly. The slippage of the vortices through these areas would then lead to a somewhat weaker Magnus force being transmitted to the lattice. Whether or not this could lead to a significant triaxiality is clearly a problem of interest.

### 2.4 Gravitational waves

Having reviewed the physics behind triaxiality, we now reach our intended destination: a discussion of gravitational wave detection. Figure 1 is a modern version of the classic ‘upper bound on the gravitational wave amplitude’ diagram. In the figure we plot gravitational wave amplitudes and detector noises verses frequency. Each black dot represents a pulsar of known period and period derivative. These two pieces of data, together with an estimate of the distance from Earth and the star’s moment of inertia (assumed to be $`10^{45}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ for all) allows an estimate of the gravitational wave amplitude,  *assuming all of the spin-down energy is converted to gravitational wave energy*. A similar diagram could have been drawn at any point over the last twenty years.

However, the crosses represent a rather recent development—the LMXB systems. As described by Papaloziou & Pringle (1978), and calculated for the new LMXB data by Bildsten (1998), a measurement of the distance, electromagnetic luminosity, and spin rate of an accreting star allows a calculation of a gravitational wave amplitude. The key assumption here is that the accreting plasma exerts a torque at the stellar surface appropriate to it being in a Keplerian orbit just prior to accretion. (Note that there is some uncertainty in the exact spin rates of these objects, connected with the interpretation of quasi-periodic oscillations in their electromagnetic fluxes—see van der Klis 2000).

Clearly, the wave amplitudes in the figure represent upper bounds, probably rather optimistic ones in the case of the pulsars, whose spin-down energy budget probably involves electromagnetic energy losses in addition to gravitational ones. Nevertheless, we should be ready, in the event of a successful gravitational wave detection, to try and draw conclusions regarding neutron star structure.

The first thing to note is that there are two separate groups of stars in the figure that lie above or close to the first-generation noise curves. At the low frequency end we have the young pulsars (e.g. the Crab and Vela), while at the high frequency end we have the old millisecond pulsars and the LMXBs. A successful detection of a triaxial star would lead to very different conclusions being drawn, depending upon whether it is a low or high frequency source that is observed.

Working backwards, the degree of triaxiality required to explain the gravitational wave spin-down of a typical young pulsar in the diagram is of order $`10^3`$, approximately four orders of magnitude larger than the largest triaxialities discussed previously. If such a gravitational wave signal were to be observed, we would be forced to conclude that our picture of neutron star interiors is seriously lacking. If magnetic fields were responsible, an internal field in excess of $`10^{16}`$ G would be required (equation 6), around four orders of magnitude larger than the external polar field. Magnus forces are certainly too weak to produce such a triaxiality. The remaining possibility might be that our knowledge of the high density equation of state is poor, and that a solid, highly rigid core exists within the star, capable of supporting a much larger triaxiality than the relatively low density crust. Such a result would be very exciting, and full-fill the promise that gravitational wave astronomy can probe deeper into neutron star interiors than electromagnetic observations.

Observation of a gravitational wave signal at or close to the strengths indicated from one of the high frequency sources would lead to very different conclusions. The degree of triaxiality required to explain this strength of emission is around $`10^8`$, comfortably within the range of $`ϵ`$ values discussed previously. In terms of our theoretical expectations, these high frequency sources seem much better bets than the low frequency ones, an expectation that may guide gravitational wave data analysts in their searches. However, this creates a new problem: If such a source were to be observed, how could we decide which of the three deformation mechanisms described above (if any) is producing the deformation?

One partial solution suggests itself, based on the fact that if it is a strong magnetic field that is producing the triaxiality, the quadrupole moment (and therefore the gravitational wave phase and amplitude) should not be significantly affected by a glitch, whereas if either crustal strain or Magnus forces are responsible, the gravitational wave amplitude and possibly the phase should both change abruptly. However, in over 30 years of observation, a millisecond pulsar has not yet been observed to glitch (Lyne & Graham-Smith 1998), while the spin rates of the LMXBs are not known accurately or monitored frequently (van der Klis 2000), so further distinguishing features need be found. Clearly, this is a tricky problem, and one which seems not to have been investigated previously. Nevertheless, its resolution is required if we are to ever to fulfil our promise of using gravitational wave data to learn about the interiors of these stars.

## 3 Free precession

Free precession is the most general motion of a rigid body (Landau & Lifshitz 1976). For an axisymmetric rigid body, the motion consists of the symmetry axis moving in a cone of half-angle $`\theta `$ (known sometimes as the ‘wobble angle’) about the fixed angular momentum vector $`𝐉`$. The angular velocity vector $`𝛀`$ lies in this plane also, as illustrated in figure 2. The whole plane rotates around $`𝐉`$ at a rate that we will call $`\dot{\varphi }`$. In addition to this rotation, there is a superimposed slow rotation of the star about $`𝐧`$, at a rate $`\dot{\psi }`$ known as the body-frame precession frequency. The two rotation rates are related by:

$$\dot{\psi }=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }I}{I_0}\dot{\varphi }$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ is the non-spherical piece of the moment of inertia tensor symmetric about $`𝐧`$, and $`I_0`$ is the total moment of inertia along this axis. Free precession was first discussed as a source of gravitational radiation by Zimmermann (1978) and Zimmerman & Szedenits (1979), who showed that mass quadrupole gravitational radiation was produced at the frequencies $`\dot{\varphi }`$ and $`2\dot{\varphi }`$. If the star radiates electromagnetically as a pulsar, the pulsation rate is given by a rather complicated time-varying combination of $`\dot{\varphi }`$ and $`\dot{\psi }`$ (Jones & Andersson 2000).

Of course real neutron stars are not rigid—they consist of a thin elastic shell containing a superfluid core, possibly with part of the fluid pinned to the crust. With the obvious exception of the superfluidity and pinning, the Earth itself has a similar structure, so the machinery that geophysicists have evolved to describe the Earth’s free precession (known as the ‘Chandler wobble’) can be used to begin to describe neutron stars (Pines & Shaham 1972). One important point is that, because the crust is elastic, during the course of one free precession period its shape changes, corresponding to the movement of the ‘centrifugal bulge’, symmetric about $`𝛀`$, in a cone around $`𝐧`$. This places a limit on the wobble angle given by:

$$\theta _{\mathrm{max}}\frac{u_{\mathrm{break}}}{ϵ_{\mathrm{rotation}}}0.45\left(\frac{100\mathrm{Hz}}{f}\right)^2\frac{u_{\mathrm{break}}}{10^3}.$$
(11)
where $`ϵ_{\mathrm{rotation}}\mathrm{\Omega }^2R^3/GM`$, is the (dimensionless) size of the centrifugal deformation. The effects of pinning can be added relatively straightforwardly (Shaham 1977). The final picture that emerges is that the basic geometry described above applies even to realistic neutron stars, although the free precession timescale depends upon the internal structure in a complicated way (Jones & Andersson 2000).

Gravitational wave emission from realistic precessing stars was examined by Alpar & Pines (1985), who pointed out that for a long-lived freely precessing star to exist, some mechanism must be found to continually excite the wobble motion, as dissipative processes within the star tend to damp the motion. The magnitude of the internal dissipation was estimated by Alpar & Sauls (1988), who found that, in the absence of any excitation mechanism, free precession is damped in between $`400`$ and $`10^4`$ free precession periods.

There have been three very recent developments in this field. First of all, Stairs, Lyne & Shemar (2000) have reported evidence of a freely precessing pulsar, identified by careful analysis of the electromagnetic pulse timing data. This pulsar spins very slowly, and so is not of gravitational wave interest, except inasmuch as it allows us to test our understanding of the physics of precession. As noted by Jones & Andersson (2000), the timing data were consistent with theoretical expectations, *provided that none (or virtually none) of the superfluid is pinned to the crust*, seemingly in conflict with the standard glitch model of pulsar behaviour. A resolution to this seeming paradox was supplied by Link & Cutler(2001), who showed that the Magnus forces induced by the precessional motion might be sufficient to break the vortex pinning, provided that the pinning is sufficiently weak. In this way, the standard pulsar model could continue to explain glitches in non-precessing pulsars, while still accounting for the observations of Stairs et al.

Secondly, and of most interest to us, Jones & Andersson (2001) have recently undertaken a systematic study of the likely free precession gravitational wave amplitudes likely to exist in Nature (see also Jones 2001). The problem is one of finding sufficiently strong wobble-pumping mechanisms to counteract the dissipation of precessional energy within the star. In this study, many different pumping mechanisms were considered, including accretion torques, electromagnetic torques on pulsars, wobble induced by the violent birth of a neutron star in a supernova, and near collisions between a neutron star and another star. In all cases it was found that the dissipation of precessional energy within the neutron star limited the gravitational wave amplitude to a level undetectable even by a second generation laser interferometer. These conclusions were reached assumed that no superfluid was pinned to the crust, is agreement with the Stairs et al (2000) observation and the Link & Cutler (2001) pinning model. If a pinned component is included, the internal dissipation rate is even higher, reinforcing this pessimistic conclusion: freely precessing neutron stars don’t seem to be good sources of gravitational radiation.

However, the third recent development in this field is a possible observational of a *gravitationally spinning-down pulsar*, reported by Middleditch et al(2000a,b). The pulsar in question was found in the remnant of supernova 1987A, and was observed only intermittently between 1992 and 1997, with no reported sightings since. The free precession period $`2\pi /\dot{\psi }`$ seemed to vary, spanning a range of 935s to 1430s.

The main piece of evidence Middleditch et al. cite to support the gravitational wave spin-down hypothesis is that the frequency derivative $`\dot{f}`$ correlates rather well with the inverse square of the long modulation period $`P_{\mathrm{fp}}`$, with $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$ varying by a factor of $`4`$, while $`P_{\mathrm{fp}}`$ varies by a factor of 2. The spin-down rate of a precessing pulsar is given by (Cutler & Jones 2000):

$$\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}=\frac{32G}{5c^5}\mathrm{\Omega }^5\frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }I)^2}{I_{\mathrm{star}}}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta (\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +16\mathrm{sin}^2\theta )$$
(12)
Combining equations (10) and (12) we see that just such a correlation is to be expected, *provided that the wobble angle remains roughly constant*. However, this is a somewhat curious state of affairs: it is difficult to imagine how the deformation in the moment of inertia tensor $`\mathrm{\Delta }I`$ varies by a factor of two, while maintaining a roughly constant orientation with respect to the angular momentum vector.

The hypothesis of gravitational wave spin-down via free precession can be tested further. Note that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}`$, the ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/I_0`$ can all be extracted from the observational data, while $`I_0`$ estimated as $`10^{43}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ if just the crust participates in the free precession, and $`I_{\mathrm{star}}10^{45}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. Then equation (12) can be inverted to give $`\theta =25^{}`$. Using equation (11) we see that this requires a crustal breaking strain of approximately $`2\times 10^2`$, higher then even the most optimistic estimate of Ruderman (1992). This difficulty is relieved somewhat if the whole star is assumed to participate in the free precession; then equation (12) gives $`\theta =9^{}`$, and equation (11) gives a crustal breaking strain of $`8\times 10^3`$, a somewhat more plausible value. In summary, if this pulsar really is spinning-down due to gravitational wave energy loss, the breaking strain of the crust must be very high, particularly if only the crust is participating in the free precession. By coincidence(?), the breaking strain required, approximately $`10^2`$, is close to the value required by Ushomisrsky, Cutler & Bildsten (2000)to support the triaxiality of the LMXBs.

To sum up, if gravitational wave observations were to confirm the free precession hypothesis for this pulsar, we will have learnt three important facts about neutron stars. Firstly, their deformations can vary significantly over rather short timescales (of order a few years); their crusts are rather strong, with breaking strains at the upper end of theoretical estimates; and finally that they can be set into free precession during, or soon after, birth. Clearly, when the laser interferometers reach the necessary sensitivity, a search for this precession candidate will be of great interest.

## 4 Conclusions

In this review we have examined our current understanding of the dynamics and gravitational wave detectability of rotating strained neutron stars. We divided our discussion into two halves: triaxial stars, and precessing stars. Both fields, having been rather quiet for some years, have enjoyed an injection of interest recently: The observations of spin frequencies in the LMXBs exciting interest into the triaxial problem, and observations from Stairs et al(2000) and Middleditch et al(2000a,b) exciting interest in the free precession case.

For triaxial stars we noted that, for first generation gravitational wave detectors at least, an observation of gravitational wave spin-down from one of the young pulsars would require us to profoundly rethink our picture of neutron star interiors. A successful detection of gravitational waves from a millisecond pulsar or LMXB would be less spectacular, as this level of emission is consistent with current theories of stellar deformation. However, the problem of deciding just what was the mechanism responsible for the deformation has not yet been addressed, and stands in the way of our fulfilling our promise of using gravitational wave observations to probe neutron star interiors. To complicate the issue further, we have speculated that, in addition to the traditional crustal strain and magnetic field-induced deformation, triaxiality might be produced by the Magnus force on superfluid vortices pinned to the crust. A study of how such a force might set up a non-axisymmetry in a pulsar is clearly of great interest.

For freely precessing stars, the recent study of Jones & Andersson (2001) suggests that precessing stars do not seem to be a promising source of gravitational radiation. The reason for this is that dissipative forces within the stellar interior rapidly damp the precessional motion. However, Middleditch et al(2000a,b) have recently presented evidence of a pulsar within the remnant of supernova 1987A, and have suggested that it is spinning-down due to gravitational waves generated by free precession. We have investigated this hypothesis, and found that if correct we would learn a number of surprising things about neutron stars, not least that their deformations can vary in size significantly on a timescale of a few years.

To sum up, after having been rather quiet for sometime, the field of gravitational wave emission from strained neutron stars has heated up. Although still a poor cousin of the unstable fluid modes and binary inspiral, the types of source considered here will be high on the target lists of gravitational wave data analysts. As we hope this review makes clear, much could be learnt from a successful detection, but more work still need to be done to turn observations into constrains on the physics, and thereby turn gravitational wave astronomy into gravitational wave astrophysics.

I would like to thank the organisers for arranging an excellent conference. This work was supported by PPARC grant PPA/G/1998/00606.

## References