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# References

IFT 2001/39

Heavy Quark Production at the TESLA Collider and its Sensitivity to the Gluon Content in Photon
P. Jankowski and M. Krawczyk
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Warsaw University
ul. Hoża 69, 00-681 Warsaw, Poland
A. De Roeck
CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland

## Abstract

Heavy quark production is studied at the high energy linear $`e^+e^{}`$ collider (LC) TESLA both in its nominal and Photon Collider (PC) mode. Leading order cross-sections are calculated for the production of heavy quarks, $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}Q(\overline{Q})X`$, at high transverse momenta. The sensitivity of this process to the gluon content in the photon is studied.

An $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider with a centre of mass system (CMS) energy in the range of 500 to 1000 GeV is the prime candidate for the next high energy accelerator project after the LHC. Recently TESLA  has completed a Technical Design Report for such a collider. For the study of a future electron-positron Linear Collider (LC) it is important to examine the physics potential of its main and possible additional options. Such an option is the Photon (or Compton) Collider (PC) in which high energy real photons can be obtained by backscattering photons from a laser beam on the electron or positron beam . This way an excellent tool for the study of $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions at high energies can be provided.

In high energy $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions the hadronic final state is predominantly produced in $`\gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}`$ interactions where the virtual photons ($`\gamma ^{}`$) are almost on mass shell. Their scattering can be effectively described with the interaction of real photons with energy spectra given by the Weizsäcker-Williams (WW) approximation . Such a spectrum is generally quite soft, as shown in Fig. 1. In contrast, a Photon Collider, based on Compton scattering, provides beams of real photons which are much harder than those from a WW distribution (see Fig. 1). Furthermore these photons can be produced in a definite polarization state. While the energy spectrum of the PC at the high energy end can be well calculated based on a few parameters of the laser and incident electron beam, the lower energy end depends much more on the details of machine and operation. Therefore we limit ourself to study only the high energy peak of $`0.6<y=E_\gamma /E_e<0.83`$ . The spectra used in this paper are described in the Appendix.

The main goal of this study is to compare the LC and PC potential for probing the gluon distribution in the photon via heavy quark production. This analysis does not make use of polarization. The measurement of the process $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}Q(\overline{Q})X`$ is an important test of QCD. It is well known that this process is promising for probing the structure of the photon, see e.g.  and , where a related topic is considered. Heavy quarks can be produced in $`\gamma \gamma `$ collisions through three mechanisms. Direct (DD) production occurs when both photons couple directly to a $`Q\overline{Q}`$ pair. In single resolved photoproduction processes (DR) one of photons interacts via its partons with the second photon. When both photons split into a flux of quarks and gluons, the process is labelled a double resolved photon (RR) process.

There are various schemes proposed for calculating cross-sections for processes involving heavy quarks, for the latest overview see ref . Two standard schemes will be used in this analysis 111a recent attempt to construct a new composite scheme can be found in . They differ by the number of quark flavours which correspond to partons of the photon (active quarks). In the case of the massive quark scenario, the so called Fixed Flavour Number Scheme (FFNS), the photon “consists” only of light quarks and gluons, which may interact, and massive heavy quarks can be only created in a hard process e.g. via gluon-gluon fusion. The massless quark scheme, Zero-mass Variable Flavour Number Scheme (ZVFNS), considers apart from the gluons and $`u,d`$ and $`s`$ quarks also heavy quarks as active quarks, which are all treated massless. All the partonic reactions in both schemes contributing in the LO calculation to heavy quark production are shown in table 1. Present available data on charm quark production in $`\gamma \gamma `$ processes is still not precise enough to allow to discriminate between the predictions of these two production schemes. Besides, these theoretical approaches are expected to be in turn appropriate for describing different ranges of the hard scale ($`\mu `$) of the process: The massive and massless schemes should be applied below ($`\mu m_Q`$) and above ($`\mu m_Q`$) the mass scale, respectively. For the charm quark and for transverse momentum $`p_T`$ of the partons larger than e.g. 10 GeV, we expect to be closer to the region of applicability of the ZVFNS scheme than the FFNS scheme. For completeness we performed the calculation in both schemes which can be treated as an estimate of the theoretical uncertainty.

We calculate the LO QCD cross-sections for $`c`$ and $`b`$ quarks produced with large $`p_T`$ at the $`e^+e^{}`$ LC colliders at energies of 300, 500 and 800 GeV, respectively, and at the PC based on the corresponding ($`e^+e^{}`$) LC with these energies. For comparison we study also the corresponding cross-sections for the LEP collider at 180 GeV. To test the sensitivity of the considered processes to the gluonic content of the photon we use two different parton parametrizations for the real photon: GRV  and SaS1d . We choose the GRV(’92) parametrization because in its construction heavy quarks are treated as massless above the heavy quark threshold region ($`W2m_Q`$), and moreover recent experimental results  indicate that GRV gluon distribution is close to the data. The choice of the SaS1d parametrization is motivated by the fact that it provides results in agreement with expectations of Gribov factorization and the QCD sum rule for the structure of the photon . Both these parametrizations are based on QCD fits to photon structure function data measured in $`e\gamma `$ collisions at $`e^+e^{}`$ experiments . They have different assumptions for the gluon content, which is only weakly constrained by the data. The GRV and SAS1d distributions both start the evolution from a small scale, $`\mu _0^2=0.25`$ GeV 2 and 0.36 GeV2, respectively, and consequently both parton densities predict a rise of the gluon density at small $`x`$. Different treatment of valence quark distributions in the vector mesons leads to a larger gluon component at small-$`x_\gamma `$ of the photon for the GRV set compared to the SAS1d one.

As was mentioned above, in the massive (FFNS) calculations the number of active flavours ($`N_f`$) is taken to be 3. In the massless (ZVFNS) scheme it varies from 3 to 5 depending on the value of the hard (factorization, renormalization) scale $`\mu `$. The $`c`$ ($`b`$) quarks are included in the computation provided that $`\mu >m_c`$ ($`m_b`$) with $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV ($`m_b=4.5`$ GeV). When charm quark production is calculated in the ZVFNS scheme the bottom quarks are always excluded, hence $`N_f=3`$ or $`N_f=4`$. Also the QCD energy scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$, which appears in the one loop formula for the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$, depends on the number of active flavours. We take this scale, denoted as $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^{N_f}`$, to be:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^3=232\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^4=200\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^5=153\mathrm{MeV}$$
(1)
as in . The hard scale in the calculation of the cross-section $`\mu `$ is taken to be the transverse mass of the produced heavy quark $`m_T=\sqrt{m_Q^2+p_T^2}`$.

In the calculation we include direct (DD), single (DR) and double resolved (RR) photon processes. We study $`\frac{d^2\sigma }{dp_T^2d\eta }`$, with $`\eta =`$$`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{Ep_L}{E+p_L}`$ the rapidity of the produced heavy quark and $`p_T`$ its transverse momentum. The results for the charm quark production presented in Figs. 2 and 3 were obtained in the ZVFNS scheme for both types of initial photon spectra. The calculation was performed using the GRV parton parametrization. In Fig. 2 a fixed energy $`\sqrt{s}`$=500 GeV and a $`p_T`$ =10 GeV for the charm quark was assumed. Both resolved photon contributions, DR and RR, to the process $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}Q(\overline{Q})X`$ are dominated by reactions initiated by gluons, especially for a PC at high $`\eta `$ values. The dominance of the gluon initiated over the quark initiated processes is larger for the PC spectrum; it is also larger in the FFNS scheme (not shown) compared to the ZVFNS one.

Fig. 3 shows a comparison of the direct (DD), single resolved (DR), double resolved (RR) contributions and their sum for WW and LASER spectra for various CMS energies of the $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders, for charm quarks with a $`p_T`$ of 10 GeV. An interesting pattern is observed. In the case of an $`e^+e^{}`$ LC with a WW photon spectrum either the direct production of $`c`$ dominates, or resolved and direct photon contributions are found to be of the same size. The DR and RR contributions increase with increasing CMS energy of LC. Nevertheless in the considered range of the LC energies, they do not play a dominant role for heavy quark 222A similar effect is observed for $`b`$ quark production (not shown) production in the $`e^+e^{}`$ mode. The contrary is observed for a PC: charm quark production is always dominated by resolved photon interactions. The direct contribution is limited to high absolute values of the rapidity distribution. For a $`p_T=10`$ GeV this rapidity region is outside the range of $`|\eta |<2`$ which could be covered by a typical detector. Lowering the $`p_T`$ of the observed charm quarks amplifies the contribution of the resolved process to the total cross-section. The direct contribution becomes even less important with increasing CMS energy. Thus the charm production cross-section is much more sensitive to the parton distribution of the photon for a PC compared to a LC. Since for the PC option the resolved photon contributions are dominated by the processes involving gluons (Fig. 2) this offers an excellent tool for measuring the gluonic content of the photon. We note here also that an extention of the experimental reach to observe charm quarks at rapidities beyond $`|\eta |=2`$ would allow to access a kinematic range where the gluon contribution dominates most strongly over other resolved photon contributions.

For the ZVFNS scheme and the PC option we find that the processes initiated by $`c`$ quarks constitute about 52-67% of the total cross-sections presented in Fig. 3, and about 99% of the contribution which arises due to the processes initiated by quarks (not shown). Since the heavy quark content of the photon is closely related to the gluon density in the photon, the heavy quark production discussed in the paper exhibits also sensitivity to the gluonic density via the heavy quark content of the photon . Since for the LC option the cross-section has a large contribution from the direct process, this effect should be most visible in data from a PC, which are dominated by the resolved photon processes instead.

An important feature of the results for cross-section seen in Fig. 3 is the increase of the resolved photon process contributions, and consequently also an growing sensitivity to gluons, with increasing CMS energy. This arises from the fact that at higher energies we probe regions of small Bjorken-$`x_\gamma `$ values. The minimal $`x_\gamma `$ value that could be reached in LC for $`p_T=10`$ GeV varies from $`0.004`$ for $`\sqrt{s}=300`$ GeV to $`0.0006`$ for $`\sqrt{s}=800`$ GeV ($`0.01`$ in LEP). The detector cut $`|\eta |<2`$ applied in this analysis increases those values to $`0.006`$ and $`0.0018`$, respectively. An extra cut on the LASER photon spectrum ($`0.6<y<0.83`$) in the PC mode shrinks the $`x_\gamma `$ accesible range even further. The numbers read then: $`0.008`$ for $`\sqrt{s}=300`$ GeV and $`0.0023`$ for $`\sqrt{s}=800`$ GeV. Therefore the RR contribution grows weaker with the CMS energy in the PC case comparing to the LC case. For the DR case in the PC mode the $`0.6<y<0.83`$ cut puts an additional, kinematic constraint. Since one of the photons interacts directly with $`E_\gamma >0.6E_e`$ the energy of the produced heavy quarks must grow with $`E_e`$. If we choose them to have relatively small $`p_T`$ equal to 10 GeV it is more difficult to produce them in the central $`\eta `$ region where $`Ep_T`$. Hence instead of the increase with the energy we see a slight decrease of the DR contribution around $`\eta =0`$. Due to the same kinematic effect DD events cannot be produced close to $`\eta =0`$. We note as above that reaching in experiment values of rapidity higher than $`|\eta |>2`$ would be of high importance. We then could explore kinematic region of strongest resolved contributions to the cross-sections.

The results discussed so far are not significantly affected by the choice of scheme for the heavy quark calculation as is shown in Fig. 4 for the $`c`$-quark rapidity distribution: for both the FFNS and ZVFNS scheme the cross-section is much larger for the PC than for the LC case.

More details of the comparison of the FFNS and ZVFNS scheme results can be found in Figs. 5-9. The importance of the low $`x_\gamma `$ contributions is demonstrated in Fig. 5, presenting the $`\frac{d\sigma }{dx_\gamma }`$ distributions of the charm production at a PC with $`\sqrt{s_{ee}}=500`$ GeV (for the GRV parton parametrization), on a linear and logarithmic $`x_\gamma `$ scale. The cross-section has been integrated over the region $`p_T>10`$ GeV and $`|\eta |<2`$, realistic for a possible detector at a PC. The direct contribution is included into the bin with the highest $`x_\gamma `$. The double resolved part is counted for twice, once for each $`x_\gamma `$ value. The DR contributions are peaked at small $`x_\gamma `$, while the RR ones have a flatter distribution. The expected differences between both schemes used in the calculation are visible: the ZVFNS scheme gives a larger contribution of DR and RR processes, especially for $`x_\gamma >`$0.2. The maximum in the DR distribution occurs at $`x_\gamma `$ close to 0.01, independently on the scheme. The RR process have a broad distribution between $`x_\gamma 0.030.05`$ and 1.0, and the ZVFNS scheme result is larger by more than one order of magnitude compared to the FFNS one in this whole region.

The sensitivity of the charm quark production process to the gluon distribution is studied further by comparing the predictions obtained using two different parton parametrizations for the photon. In Fig. 6 (7) the ratio of the relative difference of the cross-sections $`\frac{d^2\sigma }{dp_T^2d\eta }`$ is presented, obtained using the GRV and SaS1d parton parametrizations in the ZVFNS (FFNS) scheme. As expected the cross-section obtained using the PC photon spectrum (LASER) leads to a larger sensitivity than the WW spectrum for a given energy of the $`e^+e^{}`$ collider: the difference between results of these two parametrizations shown is 5-20% for a WW and 30-50% for LASER photon spectrum. Hence a PC collider has a larger sensitivity for testing the photon structure and especially its gluon density. It is worth mention that these results indicate however that an initial study of the partonic structure of real photon can be already made with an $`e^+e^{}`$ LC itself.

Next we show some detailed characteristics of charm quark production at a PC. Fig. 8 and 9 show the relative difference of $`x_\gamma `$ distribution calculated with the GRV and SaS1d parametrizations, for the $`\frac{d\sigma }{dx_\gamma }`$ cross-sections introduced before, for $`|\eta |<2`$. Results for $`p_T>10`$ GeV are shown in Fig. 8 (for both linear (A) and logarithmic (B) scale) and for $`p_T>5`$ GeV in Fig. 9 (linear scale only).

Table 2 shows in detail how the gluon initiated resolved processes dominate the charm quark production. For the case of $`\sqrt{s}=800`$ GeV they contribute 76% and 98% of the integrated cross-section calculated in the FFNS and ZVFNS scheme respectively. Further details on contributions of the gluon and charm quark initiated processes can be found in Table 3.

Up to now we presented only the results for $`c`$ quark production. The corresponding $`b`$ quark production has all the features listed above though the difference between a PC and a LC was found to be smaller. All calculated cross-sections for bottom production are found to be even more sensitive to the shape of gluonic content of the photon than the corresponding ones for charm quark production, but the cross-sections are smaller.

Next we calculate the number of events with heavy quarks, $`c`$ and $`b`$, assuming an $`e^+e^{}`$ integrated luminosity of 300 fb-1, which could be achieved at a high luminosity LC with one year of running. The corresponding luminosity of the PC for the region $`0.6<y<0.83`$ is about a factor 3 to 4 lower . In the FFNS scheme the event rates for charm quark production at a LC for the different CMS energies 300-800 GeV amount to $`1410^6`$ events for $`p_T>`$ 10 GeV; the corresponding numbers at a PC are $`92510^6`$ events. Hence these calculations predict a high number of the heavy quarks, $`c`$ and $`b`$, produced at the considered CMS energies of the $`e^+e^{}`$ collider of 300, 500 and 800 GeV for both the LC and PC options.

In practice, charm quarks with a $`p_T>5`$ GeV produced e.g. via $`D^{}`$ decays can be detected in a generic LC detector without dedicated detectors in the rapidity range of $`|\eta |<1.52`$. This restricts the lowest reachable $`x_\gamma `$ values to 0.0011 and 0.0023 for a minimum $`p_T`$ of 5 and 10 GeV, respectively, for a PC collider at 800 GeV. The cross-sections for $`c`$ and $`b`$ production in this phase space region are presented in Table 4. The corresponding event rates (for FFNS scheme leading to smaller rates) are given in Table 5. It shows that the event rate at a PC is still larger than the one at a LC, but the difference is reduced to a factor 2 to 4. Hence some of the advantage of the PC over the LC is lost due to the charm quark production at large $`\eta `$ in case of the PC (see Fig. 4), which will go undetected with the presently planned detectors.

To measure the charm content of the photon e.g. $`D^{}`$ mesons can be selected to reconstruct the kinematics of the scattering process. The efficiency including fragmentation fraction and branching ratios, is typically around a few times 10-3 . Hence the number of reconstructed events per year with charm quark with $`p_T>10`$ GeV will be approximately a few thousand for the LC and about ten thousand events for the PC. The numbers are about 5 times larger for a reduced cut of $`p_T>5`$ GeV. These data will clearly allow for precision measurements of charm quark production and further on the gluon distribution in the photon. The statistical precision of the measurements of $`\frac{d^2\sigma }{dp_T^2d\eta }`$ with e.g. ten bins will be approximately 5% at the LC and a few % at the PC. The event rates in the ZVFNS scheme can be larger by a factor 3, compared to the FFNS scheme.

In conclusion, the calculated cross-sections for heavy quarks ($`c`$ and $`b`$) production in two photon collisions show a higher sensitivity to the parton distributions of the photon in case of a Photon Collider compared to a $`e^+e^{}`$ Linear Collider. This does not depend on the particular scheme used to calculate the heavy quark cross-sections. Since the resolved photon contribution is to a large extent dominated by gluon induced processes, especially for a high energy PC, we conclude that heavy quark production provides indeed a sensitive probe of the gluon content of the photon. Combining the above features with the larger cross-sections achieved at energies of the $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions at a PC favours this option for future photon structure research. A high luminosity $`e^+e^{}`$ collider which drives the PC collider will however be essential.

Appendix

The following formula of the Equivalent Photon Approximation is used:

$`f_\gamma (y)={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{2\pi }}({\displaystyle \frac{(1+(1y)^2)}{y}}\mathrm{log}({\displaystyle \frac{Q_{max}^2}{Q_{min}^2}}){\displaystyle \frac{2(1y)}{y}}(1{\displaystyle \frac{Q_{min}^2}{Q_{max}^2}}))`$
$`Q_{min}^2={\displaystyle \frac{m_e^2y^2}{1y}}`$ (2)
$`Q_{max}^2=1\text{G}eV^2`$
where $`y=\frac{E_\gamma }{E_e}`$ and $`m_e`$ is the mass of the electron.

In case of the PC mode we use the original energy spectrum of unpolarized photons :

$`f_\gamma (y)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma _c^{np}}}[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1y}}+1y4r(1r)],`$
$`\sigma _c^{np}=(1{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{8}{\kappa ^2}})\mathrm{ln}(\kappa +1)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{8}{\kappa }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(\kappa +1)^2}},`$ (3)
$`r={\displaystyle \frac{y}{\kappa (1y)}},`$
where $`\kappa `$ is a parameter giving the restriction of $`y`$ value: $`y`$$`<\frac{\kappa }{1+\kappa }`$. It is argued  that the optimal value of $`\kappa `$ is 4.83, which gives a cut of $`y`$, $`y_{max}=0.83`$. We have chosen these values for this analysis. Because the part of the spectrum with $`y<0.6`$ is very sensitive to the technical parameters of the PC such as the size of the beam we used only its high energy peak of $`0.6<y<0.83`$ .

Acknowledgment

M.K. has been partly supported by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research 5 P03B12120 (2001) and European Commission 5th framework contract HPRN-CT-2000-00149


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# The Static Baryon Potential

## 1 Introduction

Due to the important role which the $`q\overline{q}`$ potential plays in our understanding of the structure of mesons, there exist numerous studies of this quantity on the lattice. For a review see ref. . The three quark potential plays an equally important role in the understanding of baryon structure. Mass relations between baryons and mesons can be made more exact if the form of the baryonic potential is known . However, very few lattice studies have been made of the baryonic potential. Moreover, two such recent studies  have reached different conclusions for the area law behaviour of the baryonic Wilson loop: they give support to two different Ansätze, called $`Y`$\- and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-law. Since the maximal difference between these is a mere 15% for $`SU(3)`$, a reliable extraction of the ground state as well as noise reduction techniques are essential in order to resolve the dominant area law behaviour .

In this work, employing state of the art lattice techniques, we are able to reach sufficient accuracy to distinguish between the two Ansätze up to distances of $`1.2`$ fm. At the same time, we compare our lattice results directly to the sum of $`q\overline{q}`$ potentials measured on the same lattices, thus avoiding any model assumptions. We also compare our procedure and results with those of ref.  in order to understand the different conclusions reached.

The issue of the dominant area law behaviour arises for any gauge group $`SU(N)`$. Therefore it is also interesting to study $`SU(4)`$ and test whether the SU(4) results corroborate the conclusions reached in SU(3). As for $`SU(3)`$, we choose lattice geometries which maximize the difference between the two Ansätze which for $`SU(4)`$ is at the 20% level.

As yet a further check, we evaluate the gauge-invariant nucleon wave function, using a density insertion for each quark line, and examine whether it is better described according to the $`Y`$\- or $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$\- law .

## 2 Baryon Wilson loop

For the static $`q\overline{q}`$ potential the appropriate operator is the standard Wilson loop. For the static baryon potential in $`SU(N)`$, the corresponding operator is constructed by creating a gauge invariant $`N`$ quark state at time $`t=0`$ which is annihilated at a later time $`T`$. Explicitly for $`SU(3)`$, the baryon Wilson loop, $`W_{3q}`$, shown in Fig. 1, is given by

$$\frac{1}{3!}ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{a^{}b^{}c^{}}U(𝐱,𝐲,1)^{aa^{}}U(𝐱,𝐲,2)^{bb^{}}U(𝐱,𝐲,3)^{cc^{}}$$
(1)
where

$$U(x,y,j)=P\mathrm{exp}\left[ig_{\mathrm{\Gamma }(j)}𝑑x^\mu A_\mu (x)\right],$$
(2)
$`P`$ denotes path ordering and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(j)`$ is the path from $`x`$ to $`y`$ for quark line $`j`$.

The $`N`$-quark potential is then extracted from the long time behaviour of the Wilson loop:

$$V_{Nq}=\underset{T\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{T}\mathrm{ln}W_{Nq}.$$
(3)
## 3 Geometries in $`SU(3)`$ and $`SU(4)`$

Two Ansätze exist in the literature regarding the area law behaviour of the baryon Wilson loop:

* The $`Y`$-Ansatz:
In the strong coupling limit, minimization of the static energy amounts to giving the shortest length, $`L_Y`$, to the flux tubes joining the quarks. For $`SU(3)`$, this is realized in general if the three flux tubes meet at an interior point , known as the Steiner point, where their mutual angles are $`120^0`$. \[If one of the angles of the triangle formed by the three quarks exceeds $`120^0`$, the flux tube coming from that summit has length zero, and the other two flux tubes meet there.\] Time evolution of this state in the general case produces a three-bladed area similar to Fig.1, known as the $`Y`$\- area law.

For $`SU(4)`$ we have more possibilities. Minimization of the static energy leads to the two stationary solutions shown in Fig. 2, namely one configuration with a single Steiner point ($`X`$-Ansatz), and one with two Steiner points A and B ($`Y`$-Ansatz). The double string between the two Steiner points has tension 1.357(29) times greater than the other four, single strings. If we neglect this difference for simplicity, then the $`Y`$-Ansatz always has lower energy than the $`X`$-Ansatz. Here, we make no attempt to distinguish between the $`Y`$\- and $`X`$\- Ansätze, and we assume that the double string has the same tension as the single strings. Since this assumption has the effect of reducing the potential of the $`Y`$-Ansatz, which is itself lower than in the $`X`$-Ansatz, it turns out to have no bearing on our conclusions. In contrast to $`SU(3)`$ where for any given location of the three quarks, the Steiner point and therefore the $`Y`$-Ansatz energy can be computed analytically, in $`SU(4)`$, the two Steiner points in the $`Y`$-Ansatz are obtained by an iterative numerical procedure.
* The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-Ansatz:
The second possibility for the relevant area dependence of the baryonic Wilson loop, proposed in ref. , is that it is given by the sum of the minimal areas $`A_{ij}`$ spanning quark lines $`i`$ and $`j`$. Because of its shape in $`SU(3)`$, this Ansatz is known as the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$\- area law. Therefore, we denote by $`L_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ the total length of all interquark distances.

For $`SU(3)`$ the maximal difference of 15% between the two proposed area laws is obtained when the 3 quarks form an equilateral triangle.

For $`SU(4)`$ it turns out that this relative difference is maximal also for the configuration of maximal symmetry among the four quarks. In this situation, where the quarks form a regular tetrahedron, it reaches $`21.96\%`$. For programming convenience, we study instead the highly symmetric geometries shown in Fig. 3, which all give a relative difference of $`20\%`$.

We compare our lattice results with the two expected forms of the baryonic potential which in $`SU(N)`$ are

$$V_{Nq}=\frac{N}{2}V_0\frac{1}{N1}\underset{j<k}{}\frac{g^2C_F}{4\pi r_{jk}}+\sigma \left\{\begin{array}{c}\frac{L_\mathrm{\Delta }}{N1}\\ L_Y\end{array}\right\}$$
(4)
with $`C_F=(N^21)/2N`$ and $`\sigma `$ the string tension of the $`q\overline{q}`$ potential. Note that in contrast to ref.  we do not allow $`\sigma `$ to vary. The factor of $`1/(N1)`$ in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ Ansatz makes $`L_\mathrm{\Delta }/(N1)<L_Y`$ always. In addition, we directly compare the three- or four-quark potential with the sum of two-body potentials measured on the same gauge configurations, with no adjustable parameters.

## 4 Lattice techniques

I.Multi-hit procedure: We carried out a comparison between the multi-hit procedure and hypercubic-blocking, as proposed in ref. , for the time links. In brief, hypercubic blocking smears the link using staples which all belong to the $`2^4`$ hypercube surrounding it. Compared with the multi-hit procedure, we find that hypercubic blocking tends to give larger errors, especially for the large Wilson loops. Since accuracy at large distances is our objective, we have adopted the multi-hit procedure. Moreover, for $`SU(3)`$ the group integral needed to obtain the mean value of the link can be computed exactly . We note that the reduction factor in the statistical error from applying the multi-hit procedure to Wilson loops of time extent $`t`$ grows exponentially with $`t`$, and that the exponent is further multiplied by $`3/2`$ in the case of baryonic loops.

II.Smearing Correlation matrix: We use a variational method to extract the groundstate potential. For each quark configuration, we consider $`M`$ different levels of APE smearing, optimized as in ref. , and construct an $`M\times M`$ correlation matrix $`C(t)`$ of Wilson loops of time extent $`t`$. We then solve the generalized eigenvalue problem

$$C(t)v_k(t)=\lambda _k(t)C(t_0)v_k(t)$$
(5)
taking $`t_0/a=1`$. We use two different methods to extract the groundstate energy:
1. In the first variant the potential is extracted via

$$aV_k=\mathrm{lim}_t\mathrm{}\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\lambda _k(t+a)}{\lambda _k(t)}\right)$$
(6)
by fitting to the plateau. Note that with this method we also estimate the energy of the first excited state.
2. In the second variant we consider the projected Wilson loops

$$W_P(t)=v_0^T(t_0)C(t)v_0(t_0)$$
(7)
and fit to the plateau value of $`\mathrm{ln}\left(W_P(t+1)/W_P(t)\right)`$. Both procedures gave consistent results. The energy of the first excited state was used as a check in the extraction of the ground state, ensuring that the contamination is less than $`e^2`$ in the values considered for the plateau.

## 5 Results

For the baryonic loop in $`SU(3)`$ we used 220 configurations at $`\beta =5.8`$ and 200 at $`\beta =6.0`$ for a lattice of size $`16^3\times 32`$ from the NERSC archive. For $`SU(4)`$ we generated 100 configurations at $`\beta =10.9`$ which gives a similar string tension $`\sigma a^2`$ as for $`SU(3)`$ at $`\beta =6.0`$.

The results at $`\beta =5.8`$ and $`6.0`$ show reasonable scaling and are completely consistent with the sum of $`q\overline{q}`$ potentials extracted from measurements on the same lattices, i.e. we find $`V_{3q}3/2V_{q\overline{q}}`$, in agreement with ref. .

In Fig. 6 we compare our results with those obtained in ref. . As it can be seen the two sets of data are in agreement for small loops which correspond to the bulk of the data of ref. . For larger loops, the few results of ref.  tend to lie above ours. The statistical errors on these data are not quoted but we expect them to be larger than ours, especially since the multi-hit procedure was not used. The analysis of ref.  differs from ours in that we do not allow the string tension to vary but take it from the fit to the $`q\overline{q}`$ potential. So in our approach having fixed the $`q\overline{q}`$ potential there are no adjustable parameters that enter in the two Ansätze.

Additional support for the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-Ansatz is provided by preliminary results on the gauge-invariant nucleon wave function, obtained by inserting three density operators at an intermediate time $`t`$ along the three quark lines of a baryon propagator. In Fig. 7 we plot the wave function versus $`L_Y`$ and $`Ł_\mathrm{\Delta }/2`$. We observe a larger scatter when $`L_Y`$ is used as compared to $`L_\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The nucleon wave function plotted versus $`L_\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is displayed together with a fit to the form $`\mathrm{exp}(cL_\mathrm{\Delta }^{3/2})`$, expected if the underlying potential is $`L_\mathrm{\Delta }`$. As can be seen, this simple asymptotic form provides a remarkably good description of the nucleon wave function.

Finally we display the results obtained in $`SU(4)`$ for geometry 3. They give yet more support to the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-area law for the baryon Wilson loop. The other two geometries show the same behaviour.

## 6 Conclusions

Our results for the static three- and four-quark potential in $`SU(3)`$ and $`SU(4)`$ are consistent with the sum of two-body potentials and inconsistent with the $`Y`$ Ansatz up to an interquark distance of about $`0.8`$ fm. For larger distances, where our statistical and systematic errors both become appreciable, there appears to be a small enhancement which could be assigned to the admixture of a many-body component. Nevertheless, for the distances up to 1.2 fm that we were able to probe in this work, the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-area law gives the closest description of our data. More refined noise-reduction techniques for the large loops will be needed in order to clarify or rule out a many-body component at larger distances. Preliminary results on the nucleon wavefunction also support a potential in accord with the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-Ansatz.


text:
# Site-centered impurities in quantum spin chains

## I introduction

The study of the magnetic properties of low dimensional antiferromagnets has received much renewed attention during the last years. One particular issue that captured both experimental and theoretical efforts is the appearance of magnetization plateaux in spin chains and ladders systems. In general, those plateaux appear for pure spin systems at rational magnetization values . Some experiments have indeed confirmed these theoretical predictions in a few particular cases .

More recently, the effect of the presence of impurities on such magnetic behavior was also investigated. From the theoretical point of view, the properties at zero magnetic field have largely been elucidated , and recent analysis explored also the robustness of the rational plateaux for small amplitude of the disorder . A very interesting phenomenon recently discovered was also that, for bond-disorder with discrete probability distributions, plateaux at non-rational values of the magnetization are present . Moreover, the position of such plateaux in the curve is related in a simple way to the concentration of impure bonds in the system. Since this kind of disorder is a good candidate for modelling concrete experimental situations, this result opens new perspectives in the interpretation of experimental curves. In order to make closer contact with experiments, one has to take into account all the effects that can be produced by non-magnetic impurities, and provide a wide range of possibilities for implementing the presence of such impurities in realistic models.

In this paper we analyze a simple model where different kinds of diagonal and off-diagonal disorder are present. The techniques used are based on a decimation procedure , as well as standard quantum mechanics tools and numerical calculations for $`XX`$ chains of sizes ranging from 50 000 to 100 000 sites. Despite the simplicity of our model, we find that a huge number of families of cases is present, each of them presenting its own hierarchy of magnetization plateaux. Moreover, we show how a simple tuning of the microscopic parameters can drive our system from one family to another. We also argue that this simple example serves as a good laboratory for understanding and classifying the wide variety of cases one can encounter in experimental curves of antiferromagnetic systems with impurities.

## II The model

The model we are going to study is a spin-1/2 chain whose Hamiltonian is given by:

$$H=\underset{i}{}\left[J_i\left(S_i^xS_{i+1}^x+S_i^yS_{i+1}^y+\mathrm{\Delta }S_i^zS_{i+1}^z\right)+h_iS_i^z\right].$$
(1)
The randomness is implemented by considering $`J_i`$ and $`h_i`$ as random variables. Specifically, bond randomness will be obtained by assigning to all the variables $`h_i`$ the same value fixed at $`h`$, and by giving a probability distribution to the set of variables $`\{J_i\}`$. The probability distribution can, of course, be chosen in such a way to give, on average, a periodicity of $`q`$ to the bond variables. It is important to say that realistic distributions relevant for many possible experimental situations are discrete. In this sense, a binary distribution captures the essential characteristics of the phenomena we want to describe here, the generalization to more complicated discrete distributions being straightforward. In , a distribution of the form:

$$P(J_i)=p\delta (J_iJ^{})+(1p)\delta (J_iJ\gamma _iJ),$$
(2)
was considered, where $`\gamma _i\gamma ,(\gamma )`$ if $`i=qn,`$ ($`iqn`$). In order to match the behavior of a disorder originating from a site impurity, a most appropriate distribution can be given by the following algorithm: distribute first regular values for the bonds $`J_i`$ with the desired periodicity $`q`$, and parameter $`\gamma `$, then, to each site of the chain assign a probability $`1p`$ to be an ”original” site, and $`p`$ to be an ”impure” site. Finally, for each site $`i`$ which turned out to be impure, change the values of the surrounding bonds $`J_i`$ and $`J_{i1}`$ to $`J^{}`$. We are, as in , concerned with three different values for the bond strength, $`J\pm \gamma J`$ and $`J^{}`$, but now with a correlated probability distribution.

For site-centered disorder, we are going to consider two different cases. The first is just obtained by writing $`h_i`$ as $`h+h_i^{}`$ where $`h_i^{}`$ is a random variable taking values of $`0`$ with probability $`p`$ and $`h^{}`$ with probability $`1p`$. This case can be considered as academic, since it violates the symmetry $`hh`$, but it will nevertheless provide useful insight for more realistic disorders. The second and more realistic case is the $`hh`$ symmetry preserving case where $`h_i=h(1+\alpha _i)`$, with values for $`\alpha _i`$ being binary distributed among $`0`$ and $`\alpha `$ with probability $`p`$ and $`1p`$, and $`\alpha 1`$ (the limiting case of $`\alpha =1`$ corresponding to an impurity which does not couple to the magnetic field).

In the case of $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$, the model can be mapped, via the well known Jordan-Wigner transformation, to a problem of free fermions, whose first quantized Schrödinger-like equation is:

$$J_{i1}c_{i1}+J_ic_{i+1}=h_ic_i.$$
(3)
The magnetization is simply related to the number of states occupied and the $`z`$ component of the susceptibility is just proportional to the density of states. For a given energy, the number of states can be simply obtained by the node counting method , related to the number of positive ”self-energy” variables:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_i=c_{i1}J_{i1}/c_i.$$
(4)
The recursive formula for these variables is:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{i+1}=J_i^2/(h_i\mathrm{\Delta }_i)$$
(5)
which, for the case of bond and $`hh`$ symmetry preserving site disorder can be written as:

$$D_{i+1}=W_i^2/(hD_i)$$
(6)
where $`D_i=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_i}{1+\alpha _i}`$ and $`W_i^2=\frac{J_i^2}{(1+\alpha _i)(1+\alpha _{i+1})}`$. Note that $`D_i`$ has the same sign as $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$, then the node counting can be done in the $`D`$ variables. This remark will be very useful when discussing the presence of plateaux and the behavior of the magnetization curve close to $`h=0`$.

## III Off-diagonal disorder

As mentioned above, this case corresponds to a generalization for bond-disorder considered in . In this case each time a site is considered as an impurity, it must be surrounded by bonds with lower values. The decimation procedure used in  is again well adapted for identifying the location of magnetization plateaux. However, some care has to be taken in counting the number of bonds for each decimation step, particularly in the case of two impurities sitting in neighboring sites. We refer to the reference mentioned above for the details of this reasoning and present here the result for a dimerised chain which is the most relevant case for experimental situations, the generalization to generic periodicity of the lattice being straightforward. The principal plateau is located at:

$$M=2pp^2$$
(7)
coming from the decimation of the bonds with the highest value. The second step of the decimation gives a secondary plateau at:

$$M=2p2p^2+2p^3p^4.$$
(8)
These plateaux are well observed in the numerical curves of figure (1), where we show the result for an $`XX`$ chain.

The behavior of the magnetization for small magnetic fields can also be obtained as a generalization of the normal off-diagonal disorder. For example, for the $`XX`$ case, a mapping to a random walk in the self-energy variables shows, as for a standard dimerised chain with random bonds , a power law behavior for the magnetic susceptibility for even periodicity of the lattice:

$$\chi _zH^{\lambda 1}$$
(9)
where the exponent can be easily obtained from the mean and variance of $`\mathrm{ln}(J)`$ (see for example ). Using the same method, a logarithmic behavior for the susceptibility is obtained for odd periodicity of the lattice:

$$\chi _z\frac{1}{H[\mathrm{ln}(H^2)]^3}.$$
(10)
## IV Diagonal disorder

We first concentrate on the naive diagonal disorder one can introduce in a dimerised chain, by supposing that a supplementary magnetic field $`h^{}`$ at each impurity is present. While for low $`h^{}`$ no noticeable changes at the curve occur, for strong enough values of $`h^{}`$, we see in figure (2) the appearance of new plateaux. A simple way to understand such plateaux is by considering the strong coupling case $`\gamma 1`$. The order zero in powers of $`(1\gamma )`$ is just given by a combination of dimers which can contain two, one or zero impurities with probability $`(1p)^2/2`$, $`p(1p)`$ and $`p^2/2`$ respectively. It is then easy to draw the magnetization curve for each case (a three step stair like curve) and then superpose the curves with the appropriate weight. The result is compared to the numerical data in figure (3). The positions of the plateaux predicted at this order are located at:

$$M=1+p^2,(1p)^2,0,p^2,2pp^2.$$
(11)
Note in passing the lack of $`MM`$ symmetry in the magnetization curve due to the very nature of the disorder. Comparing with the numerical result, one sees that some plateaux are softened due to the presence of non-zero coupling which was neglected in our procedure. The next step is as usual to turn on a non-zero value for $`\gamma `$ and use standard quantum mechanics perturbation theory (see for example  for a similar treatment). The result is a smoothing of the jumps between the plateaux and a correction to their width which can be calculated in powers of $`(1\gamma )`$. Since we are concerned with more realistic kinds of disorder these computations are beyond the scope of this work. We just mention the fact that this case leaves the $`M=0`$ plateau present, a result which can be also obtained for the $`XX`$ case by the random walk argument. We refer to  for the details of this mapping, and just mention here that it is easy to study the cycles of $`+`$ self energy variables for low energies. One can indeed show that, in the equivalent first quantized Schrödinger picture, and for small enough but non-zero values of the energy, these cycles are infinite indicating that the number of states remains constant in a finite interval of energy, which translate in the magnetic language into a zero magnetization plateau.

The second case is obtained by assuming that each impurity couples to the magnetic field with a factor of $`(1+\alpha )`$. It gives a symmetric magnetization curve by the change $`hh`$. It is sufficient to study only the case $`\alpha <0`$. Indeed, the case of positive $`\alpha `$ is obtained by a simple re-scaling of the magnetic field and the change $`p1p`$. In the case of $`XX`$ chains, we can make use of the change of variables defined in (6). We have then the equivalence between the model we are considering and a system with constant magnetic field, but with a wide hierarchy of values for the bonds. The decimation procedure can then be used to predict the presence of plateaux. We have however to identify different cases corresponding to each hierarchic structure of the bonds, and these are given by the values of $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ we are considering. As already stated before, the decimation procedure is implemented by eliminating the strongest bonds, and their relative weight in the system gives the position of the corresponding plateau in magnetization. We omit the details of the combinatorics and present the results for the position of the principal plateaux for each case in table (I). Figure (4) shows also the magnetization curve obtained for one of these cases, showing a fair agreement with the decimation predictions.

Let us now analyze the behavior of the system at low magnetic fields. By using again the mapping to a random walk of the generalized Riccati variables, one could naively say that equation (6) gives rise to a behavior similar to the one obtained for an off-diagonal disorder. An important difference is however that the noise in this case is cancelled step by step, giving rise to a regular and non-random walk at large times (this can be easily seen by inspecting the form of the variables $`W_i`$). Then, at low magnetic fields, the behavior of our systems is asymptotically equivalent to the one of a pure chain, and for an even periodicity of the bonds shares in particular the presence of a plateau at zero magnetization. Strictly speaking, these results are valid for $`XX`$ chains only, since we have used the change of variables (6). We conjecture however that the qualitative behavior for the curve, and in particular, the position of the magnetization plateaux remains valid for generic $`XXZ`$ chains.

## V Mixed disorder

This last case can be considered as the combination of both kinds of disorder studied before. It is important to notice that the equivalence between positive and negative $`\alpha `$ is not valid anymore due to the extra presence of bond disorder. For the $`XX`$ case, it is however easy to see by means of (6) and the subsequent decimation procedure, that the case $`\alpha >0`$ has the same plateaux as for the off-diagonal disorder discussed above. This is still the case for negative but small values of $`\alpha `$, since the hierarchy of coupling in the effective system is unchanged. The situation is however radically changed when $`\alpha `$ goes below the critical value:

$$\alpha _c=\frac{J^{}}{J+\gamma J}1$$
(12)
where the hierarchy of values for the bonds is completely changed. Figure (5) shows that crossing the critical value of $`\alpha `$ indeed changes completely the nature of the magnetization curve and the position of the plateaux in the curve. In that case, the strongest bonds have the values $`J^{}/(1+\alpha )`$ and can be found in arbitrary long chains of impurities. This fact invalidates the standard decimation procedure for locating the position of the plateaux. However, one can proceed by noticing that, for values of $`\alpha `$ close enough to $`1`$, the inter-impurities bonds in the effective model are much larger than the others. One can then use a kind of strong-coupling treatment in which the zeroth order system is obtained by equating the value of the remaining bonds to zero. We are then left with a collection of decoupled spin chains with arbitrary length. For an array containing $`n`$ spins, the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian are simply given by the roots of second order Chebyshev polynomials

$$E_p=J_{eff}cos(\frac{p\pi }{n+1});p=1\mathrm{}n$$
(13)
and $`J_{eff}`$ is the value of the coupling between the spins. The magnetization curve for such a finite chain can also be easily obtained. To draw the magnetization curve for the total system one just has to superpose the curves for all possible values of $`n`$ with the corresponding probability of appearance $`(1p)^2p^n`$. The result is shown in figure (6) where we compare the numerical result with the strong coupling computation performed up to 11th order in $`p`$. The appearance of a hierarchy of plateaux close to saturation predicted by the theory is clearly observable in the numerical data.

The plateau at low values of the magnetization and the jump in the magnetization at zero field is an artifact of the zeroth order approximation. This can be cured now by turning on the remaining coupling to non-zero values and treating them in perturbation theory. On what concerns the jump at $`M=0`$, there is however a much simpler way of studying the shape of the curve close to $`M=0`$. This is achieved again by the mapping to the random walk problem. One recovers in this way the power law or logarithmic behavior as in (9)-(10) depending on the periodicity of the bonds.

## VI conclusion

To summarize, we have shown that the magnetization curve of spin chains with different kinds of impurities exhibits a rich variety of plateaux. While the phenomenon of non-rational plateaux was already observed in a disordered case , we have shown in this paper with simple examples that the position of such plateaux strongly depends on the particular values of the microscopic parameters. While one can speak of a sort of universality for the position of the plateaux, depending only on the concentration of impurities and periodicity of the averaged bonds, we have clearly seen that different families of disorder produce qualitatively different magnetization curves. Moreover, within the same kind of disorder (the mixed disorder case in particular) a simple tuning of the microscopic parameters can switch the system from one ”universality class” to another. This scenario teaches us that the characterization of spin chains with impurities is better understood in terms of families of disorder, at least to understand the behavior of the magnetization curve. While some results in this paper have been obtained for the $`XX`$ case only, it is reasonable to think that such a characterization in terms of families of disordered chains remains valid for generic $`XXZ`$ chains. Of particular interest is the mixed case, for which we believe the case $`\alpha 1`$ should represent the magnetization curve for materials such as CuGeO3 doped with Si . We trust this work provides the necessary tools for predicting the shape of the magnetization curve in future experimental situations, where higher periodicities than $`2`$ are also conceivable .

We acknowledge B. Dujardin for fruitful discussions and D. C. Cabra and A. Honecker for constructive comments and a careful reading of the manuscript.


text:
# The quantum algorithm of Kieu does not solve the Hilbert’s tenth problem

## 1 The algorithm of Kieu

Obtaining the ground state of a Hamiltonian could be treated as a basic operation (feasible by definition), but such an algorithm should be called algorithm with a ground-state oracle rather than quantum algorithm. By the quantum algorithm of Kieu I mean the method described in Sect. “Adiabatic evolution” of .111Though, he did not specify the initial Hamiltonian $`H_I`$. We’ll see that his algorithm fails for every $`H_I`$.

Here is the relevant portion of the algorithm. In order to find the ground state $`|g`$ of a given Hamiltonian $`H_P`$, one uses the adiabatic evolution from the known ground state $`|g_I`$ of an initial Hamiltonian $`H_I`$:

$$|g=\underset{T\mathrm{}}{lim}𝒯\mathrm{exp}\left(i_0^T(t)𝑑t\right)|g_I$$

up to a phase; that is, a state vector $`|g(t)`$ evolves by the Schrödinger equation

$$\frac{d}{dt}|g(t)=i(t)|g(t)\text{for }0tT,$$

$$|g(0)=|g_I,$$

where

$$(t)=\left(1\frac{t}{T}\right)H_I+\frac{t}{T}H_P\text{for }0tT,$$

$$(0)=H_I,(T)=H_P,$$

giving $`|g(T)|g`$ (up to a phase) provided that $`T`$ is large enough.

## 2 The goal of the algorithm

The quantum algorithm of Kieu is intended for finding the global minimum of a function222Kieu considers only polynomials $`P`$, which is essential when implementing the Hamiltonian $`H_P`$, but irrelevant when finding the minimum by adiabatic evolution. $`P(x,y,z)`$ of, say, three variables $`x,y,z`$ each running over nonnegative integers $`\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}`$.333For example, the function $`P(x,y,z)=\left((x+1)^3+(y+1)^3(z+1)^3\right)^2`$ is evidently related to the Fermat’s last theorem. To this end, the adiabatic evolution finds the ground state of the Hamiltonian $`H_P`$ whose eigenvalues are the numbers $`P(x,y,z)`$.

Let us use a single-variable function $`P(x)`$, just for simplifying notation. Our Hilbert space is spanned by basis vectors $`|x`$ for $`x\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}`$, and $`H_P`$ is a diagonal operator,

$$H_P|x=P(x)|x\text{for }x\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}.$$

The user of the algorithm has no upper bound for the minimizer $`x_{\text{min}}`$ of the function $`P`$. You see, if an upper bound is known, then the global minimum can be found classically, just by computing and comparing a finite number of values $`P(x)`$. The goal of the algorithm is finding the global minimum

$$P(x_{\text{min}})=\underset{x\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}}{\mathrm{min}}P(x)$$

and the minimizer $`x_{\text{min}}`$, during a time $`T`$ that does not depend on $`P`$. That is crucial: *the whole infinite domain $`\{0,1,2,\mathrm{}\}`$ must be effectively examined during the finite time $`T`$.* According to Kieu, that is possible due to infinite dimension of the Hilbert space.

If $`H_I`$ is also diagonal in the given basis $`\left(|x\right)_{x=0,1,\mathrm{}}`$, then clearly $`|g=|g_I`$ (up to a phase); nothing happens. This is why operators $`H_I`$ and $`H_P`$ must be non-commutative, which is noted by Kieu, Sect. “Gap estimation” of . Matrix elements of $`H_I`$ must connect basis vectors. However, they cannot effectively connect first basis vectors with remote basis vectors $`|x`$ for arbitrarily large $`x`$, as one could guess. That is the obstacle. See the next section for a proof.

## 3 The goal is not achieved

Consider such a function $`P()`$:444Kieu considers only nonnegative functions. Well, my argument works also for the nonnegative function $`P(x)+1`$.

$$P(x)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{if }x=x_{\text{min}},\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}.\hfill \end{array}$$

In order to disclose its minimum at $`x_{\text{min}}`$ (unknown to the user), the adiabatic evolution is harnessed:

$$\frac{d}{dt}|g(t)=i(t)|g(t)\text{for }0tT,$$

$$|g(0)=|g_I,$$

$$(t)=\left(1\frac{t}{T}\right)H_I+\frac{t}{T}H_P.$$

Compare $`|g()`$ with the solution $`|g_0()`$ of a simpler equation

$$\frac{d}{dt}|g_0(t)=i_0(t)|g_0(t),|g_0(0)=|g_I,$$

$$_0(t)=\left(1\frac{t}{T}\right)H_I.$$

Note that $`|g_0(t)=|g_I`$ up to a phase (varying in time), since $`|g_I`$ is an eigenvector for $`H_I`$, therefore for $`_0(t)`$. We have

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}|g(t)g_0(t)=i(t)|g(t)g_0(t)+i{\displaystyle \frac{t}{T}}H_P|g_0(t);`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}|g(t)g_0(t)^2=2\mathrm{Re}g^{}(t)g_0^{}(t)|g(t)g_0(t)=`$
$`=2\mathrm{Im}\frac{t}{T}H_Pg_0(t)|g(t)g_0(t)2H_P|g_0(t)|g(t)g_0(t);`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}|g(t)g_0(t)H_P|g_0(t)=H_P|g_I;`$
$`|g(t)|g_0(t)TH_Pg_I.`$
The arbitrary parameter $`x_{\text{min}}`$, unknown to the user, does not influence $`T`$, $`H_I`$ and $`g_I`$. However,

$$H_P|g_I=\left|x_{\text{min}}|g_I\right|\underset{x_{\text{min}}\mathrm{}}{\overset{}{}}0.$$

For large $`x_{\text{min}}`$ we see that $`|g(T)`$ is close to $`|g_0(T)`$; the latter, being equal to $`|g_I`$ up to a phase, cannot be close to $`|x_{\text{min}}`$. The adiabatic evolution fails to disclose the minimum.

School of Mathematics, Tel Aviv Univ., Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

tsirel@tau.ac.il

http://www.math.tau.ac.il/$``$tsirel/


text:
# Intrinsic Variability of the Vela Pulsar: Lognormal Statistics and Theoretical Implications

## 1 Introduction

Pulsars are highly magnetized neutron stars whose rotation causes highly nonthermal beams of radiation to be swept across the Earth (Manchester & Taylor, 1977), similar to the periodic viewing of a lighthouse beam. Most likely the radio emission is produced over the star’s (magnetic) polar caps (Manchester & Taylor, 1977; Melrose, 1996; Asseo, 1996). Since their discovery in 1967 it has been recognized that only suitably long time averaging leads to a stable intensity profile versus pulsar phase. While this average profile is unique, individual pulses vary widely in intensity, often by a factor of $`5`$ or more, from one phase to another in a given pulse and from one pulse to the next at a given phase, as in Fig. 1. This variability (Manchester & Taylor, 1977; Hankins, 1996) includes phenomena known as drifting sub-pulses (Drake & Craft, 1968), microstructure (Craft et al., 1968), giant pulses (Cognard et al., 1996) and giant micropulses (Johnston et al., 2001). Sub-pulses are features which drift in time across the pulse window whereas microstructure are concentrated features superposed on a subpulse that are sometimes quasiperiodic. Giant pulses and micropulses are very rare pulses with fluxes $`\stackrel{>}{}10`$ times the average flux (Cognard et al., 1996; Johnston et al., 2001). No accepted explanation exists for these forms of variability or, indeed, for the mechanism(s) producing pulsar radio emission (Manchester & Taylor, 1977; Melrose, 1996; Asseo, 1996; Hankins, 1996).

The high brightness temperatures of pulsars require coherent emission processes such as plasma microinstabilities or nonlinear processes. Linear mechanisms include (Melrose, 1996; Asseo, 1996; Luo & Melrose, 1995):(1) linear acceleration and maser curvature emission, in which electrons radiate coherently while accelerating in an oscillating large-scale field or on curved magnetic field lines, respectively, and (2) relativistic plasma emission, in which a streaming instability either directly generates escaping radiation near harmonics of the electron plasma frequency $`f_{pe}`$ or else drives localized (non-escaping) waves near $`f_{pe}`$ that are converted into escaping harmonic radiation by linear mode conversion or nonlinear processes. Nonlinear mechanisms can produce radiation by wave coalescence and scattering processes or as intense localized wavepackets, perhaps driven near $`f_{pe}`$ by a streaming instability, undergo modulational instabilities and strong turbulence wave collapse (Asseo et al., 1990; Asseo, 1996; Weatherall, 1998). Since existing analyses suggest that many mechanisms are viable, in part due to large uncertainties in the plasma properties and location of the emitting regions (e.g., above the polar cap or near the light cylinder), new approaches are necessary.

Analyses of intensity scintillations and angular broadening, corresponding primarily to Fourier analyses of data, are standard for astrophysical and solar system radiation sources (Rickett, 1990). In contrast, distributions of electric field strengths or intensities were rarely analyzed until recently, perhaps because their strong theoretical motivations and benefits were not clear before the advent of stochastic growth theory (SGT) (Robinson, 1992; Robinson et al., 1993; Cairns and Robinson, 1999; Cairns et al., 2000; Robinson and Cairns, 2001) and other theories like self-organized criticality (SOC) (Bak et al., 1987). However, recent analyses of 7 different solar system wave phenomena show that all have well-defined field distributions that agree very well with the predictions of SGT (Robinson et al., 1993; Cairns and Robinson, 1999; Cairns et al., 2000; Robinson and Cairns, 2001), resolving longstanding theoretical problems pertaining to the burstyness, widely varying fields, and persistence of the waves. Similarly, the giant pulses of some pulsars have power-law flux distributions (Cognard et al., 1996), sometimes interpreted qualitatively in terms of SOC (Young & Kenny, 1996). With the advent of rapid time resolution, coherently de-dispersed data for Vela and other pulsars (Johnston et al., 2001) the time is ripe for analyzing pulsar variability and its statistics in terms of SGT, SOC and other theories.

This paper directly addresses pulsar variability and emission mechanisms by analysing the radiation’s statistics near the peak of the Vela pulsar’s average profile and interpreting the results in terms of the theoretical predictions and formalism of SGT. After summarizing the predictions of SGT and other theories for wave growth (Section 2), Section 3 shows that Vela’s intrinsic variability near the peak of the average pulse profile corresponds to lognormal statistics in the electric field (or intensity), not Gaussian or power-law statistics in the intensity. Pulse variability is thus a direct manifestation of an SGT state. The consistency with the SGT prediction then strongly constrains the emission mechanism and source plasma (Section 4), with nonlinear emission mechanisms being non-viable in the phase range analysed. Preliminary results at other phases of Vela’s pulse profile and for other pulsars are then briefly discussed (Section 5). This analysis provides a first demonstration that radiation statistics for astrophysical sources are a powerful and potentially widely applicable tool for strongly constraining emission mechanisms and source plasmas.

## 2 Theories for Wave Statistics

Wave-particle interactions are expected to drive natural plasmas towards marginal stability, where wave emission and damping (as well as total energy inflow and outflow) are balanced. SGT treats systems in which an unstable particle distribution interacts self-consistently with its driven waves in an inhomogeneous plasma background and evolves to a state in which (i) the particle distribution is close to time- and volume-averaged marginal stability but with stochastic fluctuations that (ii) cause the wave gain $`G`$ to be a stochastic variable (Robinson, 1992; Robinson et al., 1993; Cairns and Robinson, 1999; Cairns et al., 2000; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). Here $`G(t)`$ is related to the wave growth rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(t)`$ by $`G(t)=_{\mathrm{}}^t𝑑t^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }(t^{})`$ and to the time-varying wave electric field $`E(t)`$ and a reference field $`E_0`$ by $`E^2(t)=E_0^2\mathrm{exp}G(t)`$. Rewriting this time integral as a summation over fluctuations $`\mathrm{\Delta }G_i=\mathrm{\Gamma }_i\mathrm{\Delta }t_i`$ then, provided only that sufficiently many fluctuations in $`\mathrm{\Delta }G_i`$ occur in some characteristic time, the Central Limit Theorem requires that $`G(t)`$ is a Gaussian random variable irrespective of the detailed distribution of $`\mathrm{\Delta }G_i`$. Hypotheses (i) and (ii) thus have simple and natural physical justifications. The hypothesized random walk in $`G\mathrm{ln}E`$ then implies that the waves should be bursty and widely varying in amplitude, while the closeness to marginal stability implies that the waves and driving distribution should persist far from the latter’s source. These characteristics are very attractive for pulsars, given the existence of intrinsic variability and the radiation’s broad bandwidth (and so large radial extension of the source inferred therefrom), as well for many other astrophysical and space phenomena.

Due to $`G`$ being a Gaussian random variable, pure SGT predicts that the probability distributions of wave field and intensity are lognormal (Robinson et al., 1993; Cairns and Robinson, 1999; Robinson and Cairns, 2001); i.e.,

$$P(\mathrm{log}E)=(\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma )^1\mathrm{exp}((\mathrm{log}E\mu )^2/2\sigma ^2),$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{log}`$ means to the base $`10`$, $`\mu `$ and $`\sigma `$ are the average and standard deviation of $`\mathrm{log}E`$, respectively, and $`d(\mathrm{log}E)P(\mathrm{log}E)=1`$. Nonlinear 3-wave processes active at high $`E`$ above a threshold $`E_c`$, which remove energy from the waves, reduce the $`P(\mathrm{log}E)`$ distribution below the prediction (1) near and above $`E_c`$ with known analytic form (Robinson et al., 1993; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). Processes like wave collapse and modulational instability cause a power-law tail with $`P(E)E^\alpha `$, with $`\alpha `$ ranging from $`4`$ to $`6`$, to develop above $`E_c`$ (Robinson, 1997; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). Waves driven from thermal levels by an instability, and which retain memory of their thermal past, also develop a power-law tail, but usually with a smaller index (Cairns et al., 2000; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). Finally, SOC should produce a power-law distribution with index close to $`1`$ (Bak et al., 1987) and the usual model for wave growth in plasmas (uniform secular growth with constant growth rate) should produce a uniform distribution at fields below $`E_c`$ (Robinson et al., 1993; Cairns and Robinson, 1999; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). In contrast, scattering by density turbulence or radiation from multiple incoherently superposed sources is expected to produce Gaussian intensity distributions (Rickett, 1990). Rigorous testing of theories for wave growth is thus possible using the observed field statistics, as already demonstrated in multiple space contexts referenced above.

## 3 Statistics of Vela’s intrinsic variability

The data set consists of 20085 contiguous pulses (30 minutes) of the Vela pulsar, measured at 1413 MHz by the Parkes radio telescope and processed using coherent dedispersion and other techniques by Johnston et al. (2001). There are 2048 phase (time) bins per pulse period, each of $`44\mu `$s length (comparable to the scatter broadening time). Vela’s average intensity (over many pulses) is restored by adding $`I_0=1250`$ mJy to each sample. Fig. 1 shows the average pulse profile for relevant phase bins in mJy, together with $`3`$ superposed pulses which illustrate the variability. Note that the noise level is very low compared with earlier analyses, allowing detailed investigation of the intrinsic field statistics.

Analysis of data in the off-pulse phase bins lead to Gaussian statistics in the intensity $`I`$, as expected for instrumental and background noise. For instance, fitting the $`P(I)`$ distribution for phases 391-399 to a Gaussian, by using the Amoeba algorithm to minimize $`\chi ^2`$ (Press et al., 1986), yields $`I=1215`$ mJy (agreeing with $`I_0`$ to within less than the $`100`$ mJy bin width), $`\sigma _I=1420`$ mJy, $`\chi ^2=66`$ for $`N_{DF}=46`$ degrees of freedom, and a significance probability $`P(\chi ^2)=0.03`$. (Fitting is restricted to intensity bins with $`100`$ pulse samples). This fit has good statistical significance.

Fig. 2 shows the $`P(I)`$ distribution and its best Gaussian fit for phase bin 490, close to the peak in Vela’s average profile. The fit clearly fails at both low and high $`I`$, entirely missing the long tail at large $`I`$, as confirmed by it having $`\chi ^2=301`$ for $`N_{DF}=53`$ and $`P(\chi ^2)<10^{36}`$. The variability at this phase is thus not described by Gaussian intensity statistics.

In contrast, defining the electric field $`E=I(\mathrm{mJy})^{1/2}`$, Fig. 3 shows that the $`P(\mathrm{log}E)`$ distribution for phase 490 is well fitted by the SGT prediction (1): for bins with $`100`$ pulse samples and $`E10^2`$ units (intensities above $`10^4`$ mJy, which is $`6\sigma _I`$ above the noise), $`\mu =2.3`$, $`\sigma =0.096`$, $`\chi ^2=27`$ for $`N_{DF}=19`$, and $`P(\chi ^2)=0.12`$. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Press et al., 1986) yields a significance probability of $`47\%`$. This fit is strongly statistically significant, clearly demonstrating that pulsar variability at this phase is lognormally distributed and quantitatively consistent with the theoretical form predicted by simple SGT. The fit matches the data well even outside the fitted range of fields (dotted line), although the effects of the noise background become increasingly evident at fields $`80`$ units.

Results similar to Fig. 3 are found for phases 485 - 540, for which the average pulsar intensity is well above the noise level, although the statistical significance varies. Rather than showing more results for individual phases, Fig. 4 shows the $`P(X)`$ distribution observed for phases 485 - 500 simultaneously, where $`X=(\mathrm{log}E\mu (\varphi ))/\sigma (\varphi )`$ is the field variable resulting from detrending variations in $`\mu `$ and $`\sigma `$ with phase $`\varphi `$. Comparison with (1) shows that SGT predicts the $`P(X)`$ distribution to be Gaussian with zero mean and unit standard deviation (solid curve) (Cairns and Robinson, 1999). The agreement is very good, with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test yielding a significance probability of $`0.1\%`$.

## 4 Theoretical Implications for Vela

For phases 485 - 540, where Vela’s average pulse profile is well above the noise, the field distributions do not have power-law tails or nonlinear cutoffs. Instead, the data have lognormal statistics and the variability is a direct manifestation of a simple SGT state, with no evidence for nonlinear processes, SOC, or uniform secular growth. This absence of a power-law tail or cutoff in the $`P(\mathrm{log}E)`$ distributions for these phases rules out pulsar emission mechanisms based on nonlinear processes (Asseo et al., 1990; Asseo, 1996; Weatherall, 1998) such as wave collapse, modulational instability, and three-wave processes. Instead, the observed consistency with simple (linear) SGT means that only linear emission mechanisms are viable, meaning that a plasma instability in a SGT state either directly generates the radiation or else generates non-escaping waves that are tranformed into escaping radiation by linear processes (e.g., mode conversion) alone.

From the definitions of $`\mu `$ and $`\sigma `$ and the intensity decreasing with distance $`R`$ as $`R^2`$, it is easy to show that $`\sigma (R)`$ is constant and that $`\mu (R)=\mu (R_0)\mathrm{log}(R/R_0)`$, where $`\mu (R_0)`$ is the value at the source’s edge ($`R=R_0`$). Taking the values $`\mu =2.0`$ and $`\sigma =0.1`$ to be representative of these phases, the distance $`R=350`$ pc for Vela, and the value $`R_0=30`$ m, yields $`\mu (R_0)20`$. The value $`R_0=30`$ m results from assuming that the overall source is annular, with radius equal to the neutron star radius $`10`$ km, and dividing by the $`2048`$ phase bins used for Vela. Accordingly, the ratio $`\mu _0/\sigma 200`$ in the source. The values $`\mu _0`$ and $`\sigma `$ will constrain future theoretical models for why SGT applies.

## 5  Discussion and Conclusions

The foregoing analyses are the first applications of SGT to propagating EM radiation and, simultaneously, to extra-solar system sources. Their success implies that radiation statistics are an underappreciated and potentially very powerful tool in astrophysics (and space physics), and suggests that SGT may well be widely applicable to coherent astrophysical sources. As to whether the Vela results are representative of other pulsars, analyses are ongoing. Our results to date for pulsar PSR 1641-45, see also Johnston & Romani (2001), suggest that the variability near the peak of the average profile also corresponds to lognormal statistics, thereby being consistent with SGT and the Vela results above.

Of course, SGT is not likely applicable to all sources or indeed to all components of pulsar emissions. For instance, Jovian “S bursts” have a power-law flux distribution with index $`2.0\pm 0.5`$ (Queinnec & Zarka, 2001) and the peak flux distribution of solar microwave spikes can be fitted with an exponential or perhaps a lognormal form (Isliker & Benz, 2001). Moreover, this richness in possible wave statistics also appears in phase bins away from the peak in Vela’s average profile and for pulsars with giant pulses, where the observed $`P(\mathrm{log}E)`$ distributions are often approximately power-law. Detailed interpretations will be described in detail elsewhere. For now, we mention only that indices $`4.5\pm 1.0`$ are likely too high for SOC but are instead probably due to either driven thermal waves (Cairns et al., 2000) and/or due to strongly nonlinear processes like modulational instability and wave collapse (Robinson, 1997; Robinson and Cairns, 2001). The latter idea complements earlier suggestions (Asseo et al., 1990; Weatherall, 1998) and appears particularly attractive for giant pulses and giant micropulses.

In conclusion, analysis of rapidly-sampled, coherently de-dispersed data near the peak of the Vela pulsar’s average intensity-phase profile show that the field statistics are lognormal and quantitatively consistent with SGT’s prediction for a purely linear system near marginal stability. The variability is thus a direct manifestation of an SGT state and only linear emission mechanisms (either direct or indirect) are viable. Observations for other pulsars and at other phases for Vela yield both similar and different results, hinting at a possible richness of wave statistics and emission mechanisms. Analysis of field statistics is thus a powerful tool for understanding source variability and constraining the emission mechanisms and source characteristics that may be widely useful for coherent astrophysical and solar system radio emissions, as already found for plasma waves in space.

The Australian Research Council and University of Sydney funded this work. We thank P.A. Robinson, Q. Luo, D.B. Melrose, B.J. Rickett, and R. Romani for helpful discussions.


text:
# The cosmic microwave background radiation temperature at 𝑧_abs= 3.025 toward QSO 0347–3819Based on public data released from UVES Commissioning at the VLT Kueyen telescope, ESO, Paranal, Chile

## 1 Introduction

In the standard Big Bang model (SBB) the temperature of the relic radiation from the hot phase of the Universe is predicted to increase linearly with redshift: $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(z)`$ = $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(0)(1+z)`$ (e.g., Peebles 1993). At the present epoch direct measurements show that $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$(0) = $`2.725\pm 0.001`$ K ($`1\sigma `$ c.l.), and that the relic radiation follows a Planck spectrum with very high precision (Mather et al. 1999).

As pointed out by Bachall & Wolf (1968) the CMBR temperatures at earlier epochs can be measured from the analysis of quasar absorption line spectra which show atomic and/or ionic fine-structure levels excited by the photo-absorption of the CMBR. Among the species with fine structure levels the C i and C ii show an energy separation, from 23.6 K up to 91.3 K, which make them sensitive to the CMBR, in particular as the redshift increases. However, C i is generally fully ionized and rarely detected, while the C ii ground-state transitions are strongly saturated, thus making column densities rather uncertain. In addition, non cosmological sources (such as particle collisions, pumping by UV radiation, IR dust emission and by other sources) may compete with the CMBR to populate the excited fine-structure levels. Only independent knowledge of ambient radiation field and of particle densities allows to disentangle the contribution of the background radiation from that of other mechanisms. For these reasons previous measurements place upper limits to $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$rather than real measurements, albeit quite stringent ones (Meyer et al. 1986; Songaila et al. 1994; Lu et al. 1996; Ge, Bechtold & Black 1997; Roth & Bauer 1999; Ge, Betchold & Kulkarni 2001).

Recently, Srianand, Petitjean & Ledoux (2000) from the H$`_2`$analysis in the DLA at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 2.3371 toward the quasar Q1232+0815 were able to infer the UV radiation field in the absorber. Then by means of C i, C i, C i∗∗, C ii and C ii they obtained a $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$= $`10\pm 4`$ K, while SBB predicts $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$= $`9.09`$ K. However, the H2 abundance measurement at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 2.3371 by Srianand et al. (2000) is in contradiction with their recent estimation of the deuterated molecular hydrogen abundance (Varshalovich et al. 2001). The ratio HD/H2 $`(0.8÷3.0)\times 10^3`$, whereas it is $`10^7÷10^6`$ in the ISM diffuse clouds (e.g. Wright & Morton 1979). Until this discrepancy is clarified the value of Srianand et al. (2000) should be taken as an upper limit of $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}<14`$ K at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 2.3371. So far all measurements have been found to be consistent with the SBB model prediction.

In this letter, we present a new measurement of $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$at higher redshift, $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025, from the VLT/UVES spectra of Q0347–3819.

## 2 Data analysis and results

The spectroscopic observations of Q0347–3819 obtained during UVES commissioning at the VLT 8.2 m telescope are described in detail by D’Odorico, Dessauges-Zavadsky & Molaro (2001) and by Levshakov et al. 2002 (LDDM, hereinafter).

In LDDM relevant physical properties for the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ system (DLA) at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025 are obtained by analyzing numerous H$`_2`$and metal absorption lines associated to the DLA. The $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=3.025`$ system exhibits a multicomponent velocity structure spanning over $`80`$ km s-1. The main component at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.024855 has a hydrogen column density of $`N`$(H i) = $`2.52(\pm 0.04)\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 and shows the presence of molecular hydrogen with a fractional abundance of $`f(\mathrm{H}_2)=3.25(\pm 0.17)\times 10^6`$. Several neutral and ionized species associated with this cloud have been analyzed. In particular the C ii 1036.3367 and C ii 1037.0182 lines have been identified.

A line absorption model for the $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025 system which is able to reproduce the line profiles for the whole set of atomic and ionic species has been elaborated in LDDM. This model allows to get a reliable column density of the saturated lines. LDDM obtained a column density of $`N`$(C ii) = $`5.05(\pm 0.28)\times 10^{15}`$ cm-2 for the C ii 1036.3 main component. This C column density is consistent with what can be inferred from the other elements measured in the system by means of unsaturated lines. For instance, if C goes in lockstep with the undepleted Zn ii we would obtain $`N`$(C ii)= 3.1$`\times 10^{15}`$ cm-2, assuming solar photospheric values from Grevesse and Sauval (1998), while we would obtain $`N`$(C ii)= $`5.8\times 10^{15}`$ cm-2 if C follows Ar i, with the Ar solar value quoted in Sofia & Jenkins (1998). Neutral carbon is not detected and N(C i)/N(C ii) $`<7.9\times 10^5`$.

The column density for the $`N`$(C ii) 1037.0182 main component is $`2.26(\pm 0.12)\times 10^{13}`$ cm-2. Prochaska & Wolfe (1999) reported the detection of the C ii 1334.5323 and C ii 1335.7077 lines in the same system. For the latter line, which is unsaturated, they provide a column density of $`N`$(C ii) = $`3.00(\pm 0.23)\times 10^{13}`$ cm-2, which refers to the total system. When we correct this value according to the relative ratios between the components \[$`1:0.195:0.044:1.952`$ (LDDM)\], we obtain for the main one $`N`$(C ii) = $`1.83(\pm 0.14)\times 10^{13}`$ cm-2. The C ii 1335.7077 line is likely blended with the C ii 1335.6627 which produces the blue asymmetry present in the Keck spectrum at –10 km s-1 (cf. Fig. 5 in Prochaska & Wolfe). The relative strengths of the two blended transitions is $`f_{\mathit{1335.7}}/f_{\mathit{1335.6}}`$ = 8.7. If we correct $`N`$(C ii) by the corresponding factor, for optically thin lines we obtain $`N`$(C ii) = $`1.64(\pm 0.11)\times 10^{13}`$ cm-2 (main component). The weighted mean between the VLT and Keck quantities is $`N`$(C ii) = $`1.92(\pm 0.08)\times 10^{13}`$ cm-2. Combining this value with the ground level column density obtained from the VLT we derive a ratio $`N`$(C ii)/$`N`$(C ii) = $`3.8(\pm 0.3)\times 10^3`$.

The ground state of the C+ ion consists of two levels $`2s^22p`$ 2P$`{}_{1/2,3/2}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0}`$ with an energy separation of $`\mathrm{\Delta }E=63.42`$ cm-1 which corresponds to $`\lambda =157.7`$ $`\mu `$m. The excited level can be populated by several mechanisms such as collisions, fluorescence or IR photon absorption, which include also the CMBR. In the following we use an effective temperature $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ to characterize at $`\lambda =157.7`$ $`\mu `$m the proper spectral energy density of the local IR field approximated by a Planck spectrum with $`T=T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$.

In equilibrium, the population ratio of the upper level $`n_2`$ to the lower level $`n_1`$, in ions with a doublet fine structure in the ground state, is given by:

$$\frac{n_2}{n_1}=\frac{Q_{1,2}+w_{1,2}}{Q_{2,1}+A_{2,1}+w_{2,1}},$$
(1)
where $`w_{1,2}`$, $`w_{2,1}`$ and $`Q_{1,2}`$, $`Q_{2,1}`$ are the photo-absorption, radiative decay, collisional excitation and de-excitation rates, respectively. $`A_{2,1}`$ is the radiative transition probability which is $`A_{2,1}=2.291\times 10^6`$ s-1 for C+.

If only the background radiation contributes to the population of the excited fine-structure states, eq. (1) gives:

$$T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}(z)=\frac{91.325}{\mathrm{ln}\left[g^{}N(CII)/gN(CII^{})\right]},$$
(2)
where $`g^{}`$ and $`g`$ are the statistical weights of the corresponding levels. Thus the estimated $`N`$(C ii)/$`N`$(C ii) ratio would yield $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$= $`14.6\pm 0.2`$ K, which can be considered as a firm upper limit to the $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$. The value expected from the standard model at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$$`=3.025`$ is of $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$= $`10.968\pm 0.004`$ K. Thus the observed $`N`$(C ii)/$`N`$(C ii) ratio provides a stringent limit to the $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$$`=3.025`$ with only little room left for extra contributions.

In the following we show how the detection of H2 in the same component where C ii and C ii are observed can provide additional information on the presence of other excitation processes. In this discussion we assume that the molecular and ionic species trace the same material as it is suggested by the similar broadening shown by the line profiles and by the absence of any evidence for an associated dense H ii region gas on the line of sight as argued in LDDM from the non detection of the N ii 1084.580 and 1084.562 lines.

The H$`_2`$populations over the J = 0 to J = 5 rotational levels of the ground electronic-vibrational state provide an excitation temperature of $`T_{\mathrm{ex}}`$ = 825 $`\pm `$ 110 K and the kinetic temperature is also estimated to be $`T_{\mathrm{kin}}<\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}430}`$ K (LDDM). The population ratios of the higher J levels $`N`$(5)/$`N`$(3) and $`N`$(4)/$`N`$(2) are sensitive to the UV pumping. The measured rate of photo-absorption $`\beta _0`$ $`2\times 10^9`$ s-1 is very close to the average interstellar radiation field in the Galaxy. With this constraint on the UV flux the fluorescent excitation process has a rate $`9.3\times 10^{11}`$ s-1, which is rather low and can be neglected according to Silva & Viegas (2001).

The rates of the radiative processes $`w_{1,2}`$ and $`w_{2,1}`$ may be caused by the cosmic microwave background radiation at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025, but also by local sources of infrared radiation like diffuse emission from dust heated by OB stars to temperatures $`T10÷20`$ K as observed in the Milky Way (Mathis, Mezger & Panagia 1983). The possible contribution from the heated dust is illustrated in Fig. 1 where the MW interstellar radiation fields at galactocentric distances $`D_\mathrm{G}=5`$ and 10 kpc are shown along with the black body spectra calculated at different redshifts using the linear relation $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(z)`$ = $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(0)(1+z)`$. This is representative of our system since, as we have discussed above, the intensity of the UV field in the $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$=3.025 cloud is found to be of the same order of magnitude as in the MW. The positions of the excited levels of C0 and C+, which are suitable to restrict $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$, are also indicated by vertical lines. Fig. 1 shows that the diffuse FIR reemission of stellar radiation by dust grains, if the dust emissivity at $`\lambda =157.7`$ $`\mu `$m is equal to the highest value measured at $`D_\mathrm{G}=5`$ kpc in the MW, always remains lower than the expected CMBR. The corresponding photo-absorption rate is $`w_{1,2}^{\mathrm{dust}}1.8\times 10^{11}`$ s-1, but the expected rate induced by the relic radiation is $`w_{1,2}^{\mathrm{CMBR}}1.1\times 10^9`$ s-1. Moreover, LDDM estimated from the \[Cr/Zn\] abundance ratio that the dust content in the $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025 absorbing region is about 30 times lower as compared with the MW mean value, so that we may exclude significant contribution from dust emission.

We now consider the information on the particle density, since the upper level of C+ may be populated by collisions with several particles such as electrons, e-, hydrogen atoms, H0, protons, H+, and molecules, H$`_2`$. The J=2 level of H$`_2`$has a rather long radiative lifetime and is the more sensitive to the collisional de-excitation. The critical density above which collisional de-excitation becomes important is $`n_\mathrm{H}^{\mathrm{cr}}`$=3.6 cm-3 (LDDM) and, therefore, $`n_\mathrm{H}4`$ cm-3 is required to maintain the observed $`N`$(2)/$`N`$(0) ratio at Tkin $``$ 400 K. Arguments based on the production rate of H$`_2`$imply that the volumetric gas density, $`n_\mathrm{H}`$, ranges between 4 and 14 cm-3.

The H0–C+ collisional rate is of $`Q_{1,2}^{\mathrm{H}^0}1.45\times 10^9n_\mathrm{H}`$ s-1 in the range $`10^2`$ K $`<T_{\mathrm{kin}}<10^3`$ K (Launay & Roueff 1977). Collisions with electrons have the highest rates but the electron density is rather low. Electrons in H i regions come mainly from carbon photo-ionization, so that $`n_\mathrm{e}(\mathrm{C}/\mathrm{H})n_\mathrm{H}`$, which is $`3\times 10^5n_\mathrm{H}`$ for the $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025 system. The rate is $`Q_{1,2}^\mathrm{e}^{}2\times 10^7n_\mathrm{e}`$ s-1 and therefore the collisional rate becomes $`Q_{1,2}^\mathrm{e}^{}6\times 10^{12}n_\mathrm{H}`$ s-1, which is much lower than that of the hydrogen collisions for the same temperature interval (Silva & Viegas 2001). H$`_2`$molecules do not contribute to collisions considering the low fractional abundance measured in the system. The corresponding de-excitation rate, calculated from the principle of detailed balance, is $`Q_{2,1}^{\mathrm{H}^0}9.11\times 10^{10}n_\mathrm{H}`$ s-1, for $`T_{\mathrm{kin}}400`$ K.

We calculated the probability density function of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ using statistical Monte Carlo simulations which suggest that the errors are normally distributed around the mean value of $`N`$(C ii)/$`N`$(C ii) with the dispersion equal to the probable error of this ratio, while $`n_\mathrm{H}`$ is evenly distributed between 4 cm-3 and 14 cm-3. The result is presented in Fig. 2. The most probable value of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ obtained in this analysis is $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ = $`12.1_{3.2}^{+1.7}`$ K. The lower and upper errors of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ correspond to the $`\frac{1}{2}(1p)`$ and $`\frac{1}{2}(1+p)`$ quantiles, respectively (the central 100p% confidence interval was used with $`p=0.95`$).

Since we have considered collisions and excluded fluorescence and dust emission as significant processes in the population of the excited levels, $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$is actually $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$ for this particular DLA. Thus our measurement of $`N`$(C ii)/$`N`$(C ii) = $`3.8(\pm 0.3)\times 10^3`$ leads to the most probable value of $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}=12.1`$ K which is only 1.1 K higher with respect to the predicted $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$and fully consistent within errors.

In Fig. 3 all the previous estimations of $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$are shown. Our result, together with upper limits presented in Fig. 3 support the linear evolution of the CMBR within the framework of the SBB model.

Alternative non-adiabatic cosmological models in which photon creation takes place as the Universe expands predict a different temperature-redshift relation of the type $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(z)`$ = $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$$`(0)(1+z)^{(1\beta )}`$ (Lima, Silva & Viegas 2000). At high redshift the deviation becomes more pronounced and our measurement set a limit to $`\beta `$ 0.22 (2 $`\sigma `$).

## 3 Conclusions

The analysis of the H$`_2`$lines in the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ absorber at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}`$= 3.025 toward QSO 0347–3819 allows us to estimate the local excitation mechanisms which populate the fine-structure levels together with the $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$. From the N(C ii)/N(C ii) ratio we measure the temperature of the local background radiation of $`T_{\mathrm{CMBR}}`$ = $`12.1_{3.2}^{+1.7}`$ K which is consistent with the temperature of the cosmic background microwave radiation of 10.968 K predicted by the standard Big Bang cosmology at the redshift of the absorber.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank our anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions. The work of S.A.L. is supported in part by the RFBR grant No. 00-02-16007.