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# Measurement of the 𝐵⁺ Total Cross Section and 𝐵⁺ Differential Cross Section 𝑑𝜎/𝑑𝑝_𝑇 in 𝑝𝑝̄ Collisions at √𝑠=1.8 TeV

## I Introduction

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) can be used to compute the expected cross sections for the production of heavy quarks at hadron collider energies. Calculations of the hard-scattering cross section have been carried out to next-to-leading order in perturbation theory QCDcalc . Experimental measurements must show that these predictions provide an adequate description of the cross section at 1.8 TeV before they can be confidently extrapolated to higher energies or more exotic phenomena. Unfortunately the QCD predictions are affected by large theoretical uncertainties such as the dependence on the choice of the factorization and renormalization scales, the parton density parameterization and the $`b`$ quark mass Mangano .

Experiments at CERN ua1  and at the Tevatron tevatron  have shown that the $`b`$ quark production cross section is higher than the theoretical predictions obtained with the standard choice of parameters by about a factor of 2–3. Closer agreement between theory and the experimental measurements can be achieved by choosing rather extreme values of the theoretical parameters Mangano . It has also been suggested that the large discrepancy could be explained by pair production of light gluinos that decay into bottom quarks and bottom squarks Berger .

This paper describes a measurement of the $`B^+`$ meson total cross section and differential cross section $`d\sigma /dp_T`$ in hadronic collisions using fully reconstructed $`B^\pm `$ mesons decaying into the exclusive final state $`J/\psi K^\pm `$. The measurement uses a data sample of 98 $`\pm `$ 4 pb-1 collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment from $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions with a center-of-mass energy of 1.8 TeV produced by the Fermilab Tevatron. The data were collected in the run period from 1992 to 1995 which is referred to as Run 1. Our previously published result CDFold  based upon $`19.3\pm 0.7`$ pb-1 of data (Run 1A) found that the total cross section for $`p_T(B)>6.0`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ and $`|y|<1.0`$ is $`\sigma _B`$ = 2.39 $`\pm `$ 0.54(stat $``$ syst) $`\mu `$b.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section II we review previous measurements of the $`B`$ cross section using exclusive $`B`$ decays. In Section III we briefly describe the components of the CDF detector relevant to the analysis presented in this paper. The data collection, event selection procedures and the reconstruction of $`B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm `$ are discussed in Section IV. The measurement of the differential and total cross sections is presented in Sections V and VI, respectively.

## II Previous Measurement of the $`B`$ Production Cross Section

The Run 1A measurement of the $`B`$ meson differential cross section was determined from fully reconstructing the decays $`B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm `$ and $`B^0J/\psi K^0(892)`$ CDFold . The measurement of the $`B`$ transverse momentum spectrum showed that next-to-leading-order QCD adequately described the shape of this distribution for $`p_T>6.0`$ GeV/$`c`$. In the Run 1A publication, CDF used a branching ratio $`BR(B^+J/\psi K^+)`$ = $`(11.0\pm 1.7)\times 10^4`$ and a product of branching fractions $`=BR(B^+J/\psi K^+)\times BR(J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{})`$ = $`(6.55\pm 1.01)\times 10^5`$ Cleo . The current world average for $`BR(B^+J/\psi K^+)`$ is $`(10.0\pm 1.0)\times 10^4`$ which yields $`=(5.88\pm 0.60)\times 10^5`$. The change in the branching fractions scales the published result up by about 10% to $`\sigma _B`$($`p_T`$ $`>`$ 6.0 GeV/$`c`$, $`|y|<1.0`$) = $`2.66\pm 0.61`$ (stat $``$ syst)$`\mu `$b.

This paper updates the measurement presented in 1995 by using the complete Run 1 data sample of 98 $`\pm `$ 4 pb-1 . For this measurement, we use only the decay mode $`B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm `$ where we require both muon candidates from the $`J/\psi `$ decay to be well measured by the silicon vertex detector (SVX). Such a restriction allows us to use fewer selection requirements since the decay mode $`B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm `$ has a lower combinatorial background than $`B^0J/\psi K^0`$, and the SVX information enables us to substantially reduce the prompt background. Moreover, several of the efficiencies are measured using a large sample of $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ candidates rather than relying on Monte Carlo calculations for detailed modeling of detector effects.

## III The CDF detector

The CDF detector is described in detail in CDFdet . We summarize here the features of the detector subsystems that are important for this analysis. The CDF coordinate system has the $`z`$ axis pointing along the proton beam momentum, and the angle $`\varphi `$ is measured from the plane of the Tevatron storage ring. The transverse ($`r`$-$`\varphi `$) plane is normal to the proton beam.

The CDF experiment uses three separate detectors for tracking charged particles: the silicon vertex detector (SVX), the vertex detector (VTX), and the central tracking chamber (CTC). These devices are immersed in a magnetic field of 1.4 Tesla pointed along the $`z`$ axis generated by a superconducting solenoid of length 4.8 m and radius 1.5 m.

The innermost device is the SVX CDFsvx  which provides spatial measurements in the $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ plane. The SVX consists of two cylindrical barrels that cover a region 51 cm long in $`z`$. Each barrel consists of four layers of silicon strip sensors with strips oriented parallel to the beam axis. The distribution of the $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions along the beamline is Gaussian in $`z`$ with a $`\sigma `$ of about 30 cm. Therefore only about $`60`$% of all $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ events have both muon tracks reconstructed in the SVX.

The SVX is surrounded by the VTX, a set of time projection chambers which measure the $`z`$ coordinate of the $`p\overline{p}`$ interaction (primary vertex). Surrounding the SVX and the VTX is the CTC. The CTC is a 3.2 m long cylindrical drift chamber with 84 layers of sense wires ranging in radius from 31 cm to 133 cm. The combined momentum resolution of the tracking chambers is $`\delta p_T/p_T`$ = $`[(0.0009p_T)^2+(0.0066)^2]^{1/2}`$ where $`p_T`$ is the component of the momentum transverse to the $`z`$ axis and is measured in GeV/$`c`$. Charged track trajectories reconstructed in the CTC that are matched to strip clusters in the SVX have an impact parameter resolution of $`\sigma _d(p_T)=(13+40/p_T)`$ $`\mu `$resol  with $`p_T`$ in units of GeV/$`c`$. The track impact parameter $`d`$ is defined as the distance of closest approach of the track helix to the beam axis measured in the plane perpendicular to the beam.

The central muon system consists of three components (CMU, CMP and CMX) and detects muons with $`p_T1.4`$ GeV/$`c`$ in the pseudorapidity range $`|\eta |<1.0`$. The CMU system covers the region $`|\eta |<0.6`$ and consists of four layers of drift chambers outside the hadron calorimeter. Outside the CMU there is an additional absorber of 60 cm of steel followed by four layers of drift chambers (CMP). The CMX system extends the coverage to pseudorapidity $`0.6<|\eta |<1.0`$ but is not used in this analysis.

CDF employs a three level trigger system. The first two levels are implemented in custom electronics. To select events in the third level, we employ a CPU farm using a version of the CDF event reconstruction program optimized for speed.

## IV Data Sample Selection

### IV.1 Dimuon Trigger

The data sample consists of events that pass the $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ trigger. In the first level of this trigger, we require two muon track segments in the central muon chambers separated by at least $`5^{}`$ in azimuth. The trigger efficiency for each muon at Level 1 rises from 50% for $`p_T`$ = 1.7 GeV$`/c`$ to 95% for $`p_T`$ = 3.3 GeV$`/c`$.

In the second level, we require muon segments found in Level 1 to be associated with tracks identified by the Central Fast Tracker (CFT) CFT . The resolution of the CFT is $`\delta p_T/p_T^20.03(\mathrm{GeV}/c)^1`$. In Run 1A and for a subset of the Run 1B data, we required one of the two muons to be matched to a CFT track with $`p_T`$ greater than about 3 GeV$`/c`$ while in the bulk of the Run 1B sample, we required two muon segments to have an associated track with a threshold of about 2 GeV$`/c`$. In Run 1A (1B), the extrapolation of the track was required to be typically within 10 (5) of the muon segment. The efficiency of the track requirements was measured in a $`J/\psi `$ data sample using events in which the muon under study need not have satisfied the requirements for the event to be accepted. The efficiency for the nominal 2 (3) GeV$`/c`$ threshold rose from 50% of the plateau efficiency at 1.95 (3.05) GeV$`/c`$ to 95% of the plateau efficiency at 2.2 (3.4) GeV$`/c`$. That plateau efficiency changed over the course of the run because of aging of the CTC and subsequent modifications to the CFT algorithms. That dependence on time is accounted for in the calculation of the trigger efficiencies.

The Level 3 software trigger required two muon candidates with an effective mass in the $`J/\psi `$ mass region after full reconstruction. Runs with known hardware problems for muons were removed yielding for this analysis a total Run 1 luminosity of 98 pb-1.

### IV.2 $`J/\psi `$ Reconstruction

Background events in the dimuon sample collected with these triggers are suppressed by applying additional muon selection cuts. Track quality requirements are used to reduce the backgrounds arising from poor track measurements. Tighter cuts are imposed on the correlation between the track in the muon chamber and the extrapolated CTC track.

The transverse momentum of each muon from the $`J/\psi `$ for Run 1A is required to be greater than 1.8 GeV/$`c`$ with one muon of the pair greater than 2.8 GeV/$`c`$. For Run 1B, both muons are required to have a transverse momentum greater than 2.0 GeV/$`c`$. Events passing both the trigger and $`p_T`$ requirements identical to those of Run 1A are also accepted. The muons must have opposite charge and the separation in $`z`$ between the two tracks must be less than 5.0 cm at the point of closest approach to the beamline. The $`z`$ coordinate of the decay vertex is required to be within $`\pm 60`$ cm of the detector center.

The invariant mass and uncertainty ($`\sigma _m`$) of the $`J/\psi `$ candidates are calculated after constraining the two muon tracks to come from a common point in space (vertex constraint) to improve the mass resolution. The width of the reconstructed $`J/\psi `$ mass peak is 16 MeV/$`c^2`$. The signal region is defined to be those dimuon candidates with reconstructed mass within 3.3$`\sigma _m`$ of the known $`J/\psi `$ mass PDG . We find $`(8.7\pm 0.2)\times 10^4`$ $`J/\psi `$ over background. In this analysis, the two muons from the $`J/\psi `$ decay are required to be reconstructed in the silicon detector.

### IV.3 Primary Vertex Selection

Knowledge of the distance between the primary $`p\overline{p}`$ interaction vertex and the secondary decay vertex in the transverse plane is crucial to this analysis since the $`B`$ meson proper lifetime is used to discriminate between $`B`$ mesons and background events. We find the transverse position of the primary vertex using the average beamline calculated for each Tevatron $`p\overline{p}`$ store CDFlife . The longitudinal coordinate of the primary vertex $`(z)`$ is measured using data from the VTX detector. The slopes and intercepts of the run-averaged beam position are combined with the event-by-event $`z`$ locations of the vertices to determine the vertex position. The primary vertex uncertainties $`\sigma _x`$, $`\sigma _y`$ and $`\sigma _z`$ are estimated to be 25, 25 and 300 $`\mu `$m, respectively.

### IV.4 $`B`$ Reconstruction

To select charged $`B`$ candidates we considered each charged particle track as a kaon candidate to be combined with a $`J/\psi `$. A charged track in an event is combined with the two muons if the $`z_0`$ parameter of the track is within 5 cm of the $`z`$ position of the $`J/\psi `$ candidate decay vertex. The exit radius of the kaon candidate, which corresponds to the radius at which the track trajectory intersects the plane of the CTC endplate, is required to be greater than $`110`$ cm to limit the search to a region of high tracking efficiency. A cut on the kaon transverse momentum of $`p_T>1.25`$ GeV/$`c`$ is imposed to reduce the large combinatorial background. This cut is very effective since kaons from $`B`$ meson decay have a considerably harder $`p_T`$ spectrum than particles from the underlying event and from events with prompt $`J/\psi `$ production. The muon and kaon tracks are constrained to come from a common point of origin and the mass of the $`\mu ^+`$ $`\mu ^{}`$ pair is constrained to the known $`J/\psi `$ mass. Since the intrinsic width of the $`J/\psi `$ is significantly smaller than our experimental resolution, the mass constraint improves the resolution of the reconstructed $`B`$ mass.

The $`p_T`$ of each $`B`$ candidate is required to be greater than $`6.0`$ GeV/$`c`$. The proper decay length is required to be greater than 100 $`\mu `$m to suppress backgrounds associated with prompt $`J/\psi `$ mesons. The signed proper decay length in the $`B`$ rest frame is defined as

$$ct(B)=\frac{\stackrel{}{X_{J/\psi }}\stackrel{}{p_T^B}}{p_T^B}\frac{1}{(\beta \gamma )^B}=\frac{M_B\stackrel{}{X_{J/\psi }}\stackrel{}{p_T^B}}{(p_T^B)^2}$$
(1)
where

$$\stackrel{}{X_{J/\psi }}=(x_{J/\psi }x_{PV})\widehat{i}+(y_{J/\psi }y_{PV})\widehat{j}$$
(2)
and $`(\beta \gamma )^B`$ is the relativistic boost of the $`B`$ meson . The $`(x_{J/\psi },y_{J/\psi })`$ are the transverse coordinates of the $`J/\psi `$ decay vertex, and the $`(x_{PV},y_{PV})`$ are the transverse coordinates of the event primary vertex. The intersection of the muon tracks as measured in the SVX determines the location of the $`B`$ meson decay.

The $`B^\pm `$ candidate mass distribution is shown in Figure 1. The distribution is fit with a Gaussian signal function plus a linear background using an unbinned maximum likelihood fit. The region below 5.15 GeV/$`c^2`$ has been excluded from the fit since it includes contributions from partially reconstructed higher-multiplicity $`B`$-decay modes. The fit yields $`387\pm 32`$ $`B^\pm `$ mesons.

## V Differential cross section

To measure the differential cross section, we divide the $`B`$ candidate sample into four $`p_T`$ ranges. The invariant mass distributions for each of the $`p_T`$ ranges are then fitted using an unbinned maximum likelihood fit which is described in Section A. The determination of the geometric acceptance, the efficiencies and the luminosity are described in Sections B, C and D respectively. The systematic uncertainties are discussed in Section E, and the results are presented in Section F.

### V.1 Fitting Technique

To measure the $`B^+`$ meson differential cross section as a function of $`p_T`$ , the $`B`$ candidate sample is divided into four $`p_T`$ bins: 6–9, 9–12, 12–15, and 15–25 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ . The invariant mass distribution for each of the $`p_T`$ ranges is then fitted using an unbinned maximum likelihood fit to determine the number of $`B`$ candidates in each $`p_T`$ range, as shown in Figure 2. The likelihood function is a Gaussian signal plus a linear background:

$$=\frac{N_{sig}}{N_{total}}f_{sig}+\frac{(N_{total}N_{sig})}{N_{total}}f_{back}$$
(3)
where the free parameter $`N_{sig}`$ is the number of signal events and $`N_{total}`$ is the total number of candidates in each momentum bin. The function $`f_{sig}`$ is the Gaussian signal mass function:

$$f_{sig}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }s\sigma _i}e^{\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{M_iM}{s\sigma _i}\right)^2}$$
(4)
where $`M_i`$ is the candidate mass obtained from a kinematic fit of the muon and kaon tracks. The uncertainty $`\sigma _i`$ on the mass is scaled by a free parameter $`s`$ in the unbinned maximum likelihood fit which is typically $`1.2`$. The parameter $`M`$ is the mean $`B`$ mass obtained by fitting Figure 1. The background mass function is linear:

$$f_{back}=b\left(M_i\frac{w}{2}\right)+\frac{1}{w}$$
(5)
where $`b`$ is the slope of the background and $`w`$ is the mass range in the fit ($`5.15`$ to $`6.0`$ GeV/$`c^2`$). The region well above the $`B`$ mass yields a better estimate of the slope of the background since it is not affected by partially reconstructed $`B`$ decays. The likelihood function is minimized with respect to the parameters $`N_{sig}`$, $`s`$ and $`b`$. The fit yields $`160\pm 23`$, $`114\pm 17`$, $`62\pm 13`$ and $`71\pm 10`$ events in the four transverse momentum bins.

### V.2 Acceptances and Trigger Efficiencies

The acceptance is determined from a Monte Carlo simulation based on a next-to-leading-order QCD calculation QCDcalc  using the MRST parton distribution functions MRST . The $`b`$-quark pole mass $`m_b`$ is taken to be $`4.75`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ . The $`b`$ quarks are produced in the rapidity range $`|y_b|<1.1`$ with $`p_T(b)>5.5`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ . The renormalization scale is $`\mu =\mu _0\sqrt{m_b^2+p_T^2(b)}`$, and the fragmentation scale is equal to the renormalization scale. The fragmentation into $`B`$ mesons is modeled using the Peterson fragmentation function pete  with the parameter $`ϵ_P`$ set to $`0.006`$ peterson . This value was extracted in a fit to data collected at $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders. Recent results from LEP and SLD suggest that lower values of $`ϵ_P`$ and other functions better describe the fragmentation of $`b`$ quarks into $`B`$ hadrons SLDLEP . Futhermore the assumption that a fragmentation function extracted from $`e^+e^{}`$ data is an accurate description of $`b`$ fragmentation at a $`p\overline{p}`$ collider lacks a strong theoretical basis Mangano . However, the uncertainties due to these factors are expected to be smaller than the uncertainty on the renormalization scale.

Decays of Monte-Carlo-generated $`B`$ mesons into the $`J/\psi `$ and kaon final states are performed using a modified version of the CLEO Monte Carlo program qq  which accounts for the expected $`J/\psi `$ longitudinal polarization. Once the $`B`$ mesons are generated and decayed into their final state, a simulation of the CDF detector is utilized. A simulation of the trigger efficiency has also been included in the acceptance calculation. The events are then processed by the same analysis code used on the data to determine the combined acceptance and trigger efficiency for each momentum bin. The Run 1A and 1B results which incorporate different trigger requirements are listed in Table 1 together with the combined results. The uncertainties given are statistical only.

### V.3 Efficiencies of the Additional Selection Requirements

The detector acceptance and trigger efficiencies described in the previous section did not account for all of the criteria for selecting a $`B`$ candidate. The efficiencies of the additional selection requirements are discussed in this section. Most of these efficiencies are determined using large CDF data samples.

There are two components that comprise the tracking efficiencies. The first part is the efficiency of the tracking in the Level 3 trigger system which is determined using an inclusive single muon data set. The efficiency is measured to be $`(97\pm 2)\%`$ for Run 1B. During Run 1A, a portion of the data-taking suffered from the start time of each event being incorrectly determined. The result was an inefficiency in reconstruction at Level 3 which was determined to be $`4\%`$ l3effi  averaged over all of Run 1A. The Level 3 Run 1A efficiency is $`(93\pm 2)\%`$.

Once an event has been accepted at Level 3, one must account for the offline CTC track reconstruction which may improve the muon track quality or find new tracks that are missed at Level 3. It is also necessary to correct for the track finding efficiency for the kaon track since it is not required in the Level 3 trigger. A detailed study thesis  of the CTC track reconstruction efficiencies was conducted. To measure the efficiency, we simulate single kaon tracks with the CDF Monte Carlo. We then combine the generated CTC hits for such a kaon with the hits in an event with an identified displaced $`J/\psi `$ from the CDF data sample. Hits in the CTC are characterized by a leading edge and a time-over-threshold. Where a real and simulated hit overlap, the hits are combined. Thus the leading edges used in the track reconstruction may be obscured for the simulated kaon as they would be for real particles. We then run the full track reconstruction program on the modified event and search for a track corresponding to the embedded kaon. We find the efficiency of the track reconstruction to be $`(99.6_{0.9}^{+0.4})\%`$ for particles with $`p_T`$ $`>`$ 0.8 GeV$`/c`$ that traversed all layers of the CTC, independent of instantaneous luminosity. The Run 1A single track reconstruction efficiency of $`(98.5\pm 1.4)\%`$ is taken from Ref. CDFold .

The muon segment reconstruction efficiency is found to be $`(98.0\pm 1.0)\%`$ resulting in a combined efficiency of $`(96.0\pm 1.4)\%`$. The efficiency of requiring both muons from the $`J/\psi `$ to have a muon chamber track segment that matches a track reconstructed in the CTC is found to be $`(98.7\pm 0.2)\%`$. The efficiency of this cut is determined from a sample of $`J/\psi `$ candidate events containing muons that were required to pass less stringent matching requirements at Level 3.

The fraction of events in which both muons from the $`J/\psi `$ have been reconstructed in the SVX is measured using a large $`J/\psi `$ data set. This fraction is $`(52.4\pm 0.6)\%`$ for Run 1A and $`(56.3\pm 0.2)\%`$ for Run 1B. The fraction for Run 1B is larger than Run 1A because the inner layer of the SVX detector was moved closer to the beamline, eliminating a small separation between silicon wafers in the first layer present in Run 1A.

The efficiency to reconstruct a $`B`$ meson with a proper decay length $`ct`$ greater than 100 $`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ is determined using Monte Carlo simulations. The $`ct`$ resolution is measured in the $`J/\psi `$ data set by fitting the proper lifetime of events in the sidebands of the $`B`$ candidate mass distribution with a Gaussian function for the prompt component and an exponential function for the long-lived component. The lifetimes of the Monte Carlo generated events are then smeared using the resolution measured in each $`p_T`$ range. The efficiency showed no significant variation with the $`B`$ transverse momentum even though the proper $`ct`$ resolution was degraded by a factor of 2 from the lowest to the highest $`p_T`$ bin. The efficiency of $`(78.4\pm 0.5)\%`$ is the mean of the values measured in each $`p_T`$ bin.

The reconstruction efficiencies are summarized in Table 2. For the $`B`$ candidates decaying to particles completely contained within the detector acceptance, the reconstruction efficiency is $`(36.4\pm 1.0)\%`$.

### V.4 Luminosity Determination

At CDF the luminosity is measured using two telescopes of beam-beam counters to an accuracy of about 4%. We studied the quality of the integrated luminosity calculation in the inclusive $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ sample. After correcting for the time-dependent trigger efficiency, we found that in Run 1B the measured $`J/\psi `$ cross section $`\sigma _\psi `$ fell linearly as a function of instantaneous luminosity $``$. However, for any narrow range of $``$, $`\sigma _\psi `$ was constant as a function of time. Since the minimum luminosity of the data sample is $`4\times 10^{30}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, we have considered two possible extrapolations of $`\sigma _\psi `$ as a function of $``$ to $`=0`$ to calculate a corrected integrated luminosity. The first extrapolation is performed assuming that the linear dependence is valid below $`<4\times 10^{30}`$ and that:

$$^{}𝑑t=(t)\frac{\sigma _\psi (0)}{\sigma _\psi ()}𝑑t$$
(6)
We also perform the extrapolation assuming that no correction is needed below $`<4\times 10^{30}`$. The luminosity correction is taken to be the average of the two extrapolations and we assign a systematic uncertainty that covers the range between the two hypotheses. The correction to the integrated luminosity for Run 1B is

$$R_{}𝑑t/^{}𝑑t=0.88\pm 0.04.$$
(7)
### V.5 Systematic Uncertainties

We divide the systematic uncertainties in the measurement of the $`B^+`$ meson production cross section into two classes: $`p_T`$ dependent uncertainties $`(syst_{p_T})`$ that change from one $`p_T`$ bin to the next and fully correlated uncertainties $`(syst_{fc})`$ that are independent of $`p_T`$ .

#### V.5.1 $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainties

The $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainties include variations of the production and decay kinematics that would affect the determination of the acceptance. We have considered effects due to the model used to generate the $`b`$ quark spectrum and uncertainties in our knowledge of the trigger efficiency.

The model used to generate the $`b`$ quarks is based on a QCD calculation at next-to-leading order. Large uncertainties in the calculation are due to unknown higher-order effects. These effects are quantified by estimating the scale dependence when the renormalization and factorization scales are varied by a factor of 2 above and below their central value of $`\mu =\mu _0=\sqrt{p_T^2+m_b^2}`$. The Peterson fragmentation parameter is varied by $`\pm 0.002`$ around its central value of $`ϵ_P=0.006`$. In each case the uncertainty on the acceptance is taken to be the difference between the acceptance found with the central value and the value found when each variable is varied by the indicated amounts. The dependence of acceptance on the parton density parametrization and the $`b`$ quark mass are much smaller and are not included in the systematic uncertainty. In addition, the parameters of the trigger simulation are varied by $`\pm 1\sigma `$. The total $`p_T`$ dependent uncertainty is given by the sum in quadrature of the $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainties summarized in Table III.

#### V.5.2 Correlated systematic uncertainties

The correlated systematic uncertainties include uncertainties that are independent of the $`B`$ meson $`p_T`$ spectrum. The largest of these uncertainties is due to limited knowledge of the $`B^+J/\psi K^+`$ branching ratio PDG  which yields a systematic uncertainty of about 10%. Other sources of correlated uncertainties are due to the uncertainty on the total reconstruction efficiency shown in Table II and knowledge of the integrated luminosity collected at CDF during Run 1. There is an additional systematic uncertainty associated with the reconstruction of kaons that decay inside the CTC volume. A simulation shows that about $`8\%`$ of the kaons decay in flight, of which half are successfully reconstructed CDFold . We assign the full value of the correction as an uncertainty for the kaon acceptance of $`(96\pm 4)`$%. This assumes that such tracks are modeled realistically in the simulation. The total correlated uncertainty of $`12.7\%`$ is given by the sum in quadrature of the fully correlated systematic uncertainties summarized in Table IV.

### V.6 Results

The differential cross section $`d\sigma /dp_T`$ is calculated using the following equation:

$$\frac{d\sigma (B^+)}{dp_T}=\frac{N_{sig}/2}{\mathrm{\Delta }p_T^{}Aϵ}$$
(8)
where $`N_{sig}`$ is the number of charged $`B`$ mesons determined from the likelihood fit of the mass distribution in each $`p_T`$ range. The factor of 1/2 is included because both $`B^+`$ and $`B^{}`$ mesons are detected while we report the cross section for $`B^+`$ mesons assuming charge invariance in the production process. The width of the $`p_T`$ bin is $`\mathrm{\Delta }p_T`$ and $`^{}`$ is the corrected integrated luminosity of the sample. The geometric and kinematic acceptance $`A`$ is determined from the Monte Carlo simulation and includes the kinematic and trigger efficiencies. The efficiency $`ϵ`$ is the additional reconstruction efficiency not included in the simulation. The product of branching ratios $``$ is determined using the the world-average PDG  branching fractions:

$$BR(B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm )=(10.0\pm 1.0)\times 10^4$$
(9)
$$BR(J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{})=(5.88\pm 0.10)\times 10^2$$
(10)
Table V lists the differential cross section as a function of $`p_T`$. The three uncertainties quoted on the cross section are statistical (stat), $`p_T`$ dependent systematic (syst$`_{p_T}`$), and fully correlated systematic (systfc), respectively.

Figure 3 shows the measured differential cross section at the mean $`p_T`$ of each bin compared to the next-to-leading-order QCD QCDcalc  calculation using the MRST parton density functions MRST . The experimental points are plotted at $`p_T`$ which is the value of $`p_T`$ for which the theoretical differential cross section MRST  equals the mean cross section in each momentum range

$$\frac{d\sigma }{dp_T}|_{p_T}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }p_T}^{\mathrm{\Delta }p_T}\frac{d\sigma }{dp_T}𝑑p_T$$
(11)
The dashed lines in Figure 3 indicate the change in the theoretical predictions as the $`b`$ quark mass is varied between $`4.5`$ and $`5.0`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}/c^2`$ , the renormalization scale is varied between $`\mu _0/2`$ and $`2\mu _0`$, and the Peterson fragmentation parameter is varied between 0.004 and 0.008. The solid curve is for the central values of these parameters: $`m_b=4.75`$ GeV/$`c^2`$, $`\mu _0=\sqrt{m_b^2+p_T^2}`$, and $`ϵ_P=0.006`$. The fraction of $`\overline{b}`$ quarks that fragment into $`B^+`$ is $`f_u=0.375\pm 0.023`$ CDFfrag . This fraction is varied between 0.352 and 0.398.

The comparison between data and theory for $`d\sigma /dp_T`$ is aided by plotting the ratio of data/theory on a linear scale, as shown in Figure 4. The level of agreement between the data and the theoretical prediction is determined by fitting a line through the four ratio points. The fit yields a scale factor for data/theory of $`2.9\pm 0.2(\mathrm{stat}\mathrm{syst}_{p_T})\pm 0.4(\mathrm{syst}_{\mathrm{fc}})`$ with a confidence level of 72%. The first uncertainty on the scale factor is the uncertainty returned by the fit to the ratio points whose uncertainties were determined by summing the statistical and the $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainties in quadrature. The second uncertainty is the fully correlated systematic uncertainty. The hatched band shows the magnitude of the fully correlated uncertainty which arises mainly due to the poor knowledge of the $`B^+J/\psi K^+`$ branching franction. Also shown is a comparison between the shape of the QCD predictions obtained using a different set of parton distribution functions determined by the CTEQ collaboration CTEQ . The effect of changing the parton distribution functions is negligible in comparison with the variation associated with uncertainties in the $`b`$ quark mass, the fragmentation parameter and the renormalization scale shown by the dashed curves.

## VI The total cross section

The total cross section is obtained by using a method similar to the one used for the determination of the differential cross section. However, the last tranverse momentum bin, 15–25 GeV/$`c`$, is replaced with the invariant mass distribution for $`B^\pm `$ candidate events with $`p_T>`$ 15 $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ shown in Fig. 5. With 81 $`\pm `$ 11 candidates and an acceptance of (10.19 $`\pm `$ 0.16)%, the integrated cross section for $`p_T>15`$ GeV/$`c`$ is 207 $`\pm `$ 28(stat) $`\pm `$ 5(syst$`_{p_T}`$) $`\pm `$ 26(systfc) nb. The integrated cross section for $`B`$ transverse momentum $`p_T>6.0`$ GeV/$`c`$ and $`|y|<1.0`$ is given by:

$$\sigma (B^+)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{4}{}}\frac{N_i/2}{^{}A_iϵ}$$
(12)
where $`N_i`$ is the number of charged $`B`$ candidate events in each momentum bin, $`A_i`$ is the acceptance and $`ϵ`$ is reconstruction efficiency. The total cross section is:

$$\sigma _B(p_T>6.0\mathrm{GeV}/c,|y|<1.0)=3.6\pm 0.4(\mathrm{stat}\mathrm{syst}_{p_T})\pm 0.4(\mathrm{syst}_{\mathrm{fc}})\mu \mathrm{b}.$$
(13)
where the first uncertainty is the sum in quadrature of the statistical and $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainty, and the second uncertainty is the fully correlated systematic uncertainty.

## VII Summary

The exclusive decay $`B^\pm J/\psi K^\pm `$ has been used to measure the production cross section of the $`B^+`$ meson from data collected by the CDF detector. A sample size of $`387\pm 32`$ events is obtained from $`𝑑t=`$ 98 $`\pm `$ 4 pb-1 of 1.8 TeV $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions produced by the Fermilab Tevatron collider.

The measured total $`B^+`$ production cross section for $`p_T(B)>6.0`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}/c`$ and $`|y|<1.0`$ is

$$\sigma _B(p_T>6.0\mathrm{GeV}/c,|y|<1.0)=3.6\pm 0.6(\mathrm{stat}\mathrm{syst})\mu \mathrm{b}$$
(14)
where the uncertainty is the sum in quadrature of the statistical and both correlated and $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainties. The differential cross section is measured to be $`2.9\pm 0.2(\mathrm{stat}\mathrm{syst}_{p_T})\pm 0.4(\mathrm{syst}_{\mathrm{fc}})`$ times higher than the NLO QCD predictions with agreement in shape. The first uncertainty is the sum in quadrature of the statistical and $`p_T`$ dependent systematic uncertainty and the second is the correlated systematic uncertainty. The new measurement of the $`B^+`$ differential cross section confirms that the absolute rate is larger than the limits of that predicted by typical variations in the theoretical parameters.

These measurements supersede those of reference CDFold .

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the Fermilab staff and the technical staffs of the participating institutions for their vital contributions. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation; the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare; the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the National Science Council of the Republic of China; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the Bundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung, Germany; and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.


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# Host galaxies of AGN

## 1. Introduction

An unsolved issue in understanding the Seyfert phenomenon is the relation between the Seyfert type of activity and its host galaxy. A number of studies have found a connection between nuclear activity and strong star formation in the host galaxy. Studying host galaxy of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) can help answering questions relevant to the understanding of AGN but also to galaxy formation and evolution such as : how does the AGN affect the host galaxy? Is there a direct link between the activity level of the AGN and the starburst activity? Is the starburst activity nuclear or circum-nuclear? What about the age and metallicity of the host galaxy stellar population.

In order to answer to some of these questions, we perform stellar population synthesis of the integrated starlight emitted in the central 10 arcsec of nearby Active Galaxies in the optical and near-IR range. The good spatial resolution now achievable allows to detect gradients of population and starburst activity in the central region of the galaxies.

## 2. Observations

Long slit spectroscopy of a sample of AGN, including 5 Seyfert 1, 5 Seyfert 2, 3 LINERs and 2 Starburst galaxies was obtained in the visible; 2 Seyfert 1 and 3 Seyfert 2 were also observed in the H band.

In the optical, observations were obtained with the Herzberg at CFHT (Serote Roos et al., 1998) and with EMMI at NTT, in the range 5000-9000Å with a resolution of FWHM=10Å. Spectra are extracted from the central 3-4 arcsec, as well as from surrounding regions located at 5 to 7 arcsec from the center, i.e. within the bulge at the distance of the galaxies. Up to 47 stellar features were measured. These spectra are compared to a library of star spectra (see Section 2).

In the near-infrared domain there is a much better contrast of galaxy light to nuclear light. This domain allows to view the host galaxy with less contamination from the nucleus than is possible in the visible. Moreover cool stellar populations are best studied as their spectral energy distribution peaks near 1$`\mu `$. Also it allows to probe obscured objects since extinction effects are much less important at these wavelengths. The H band was favoured as it is remarkably rich in strong metallic features and exhibits powerful luminosity indicators(Dallier et al.,1996). ISAAC at VLT, in Medium Resolution mode, provides a resolution of FWHM=5Å. In the range 1.56-1.64$`\mu `$m, 30 metallic stellar features are identified, among which some line ratios are strongly dependent on the luminosity class of the stars, while quasi no emission lines from the AGN are present (Fig. 1). A flux calibrated stellar library at a resolution R=2000 is available (Dallier et al., 1996) and is being extended for a better coverage of the H-R diagram.

## 3. Synthesis.

There are two ways of computing stellar population synthesis. The direct approach presupposes perfect knowledge of the stellar evolution in order to create appropriate model to a composite population with specified age, metallicity and star formation rate. The inverse approach where populations are synthesized in terms of observables. In this approach, the one we favour, stellar evolution is used only to introduce constraints as to lower the number of possible solutions and give more weight to the adopted solution.

To compute stellar population synthesis, we compare the equivalent width (EW)of numerous stellar features observed in the galaxy to the EW of the same lines measured in a library of star spectra. Recall that EW are independent of reddening.

We get a system of non-linear equations solved using a method developped by Pelat (1997 and 1998) and Moultaka and Pelat (2000) which determines the best solution. The advantage of this method is that no hypothesis on the IMF, or on the history of star formation is made, and no evolutionary track models are preferred. It gives the contribution of each stellar type to the total radiation at a reference wavelength and the standard deviation to these contributions.

Synthetic spectra are computed using the stellar library. Intrinsic reddening is deduced from the comparison of the overall shape of the observed and synthetic spectra.

An example of the results obtained in the optical range is shown Figure 2 where the synthetic spectrum of each region extracted from one of the LINER galaxies are superposed to the observed spectrum after correction of the internal reddening.

Such a study in the optical lead to two important results i) the stellar populations within a class of AGN activity, whatever the morphological type of the host galaxy, is very homogeneous and ii) the populations are different in the very central regions of Seyfert 2 and LINERs (Boisson et al., 2000 & 2001). LINERs have a very old metal rich population while in Seyfert 2 a contribution of weak or old burst of star formation is observed in addition to the old high metallicity component (in comparison, Starbursts have a stronger and younger stellar population).

In the infrared, the work is still in progress. But some hints of the power of combining optical and infrared bands can be given. Figure 3 displays the spectrum of a circumnuclear region, located at 360pc from the center, of the Seyfert 1 galaxy MCG-6-30-15. The spectral features are similar to those in the nucleus (within a radius R=180pc) although quite different in strength, indicating that the stellar population may be the same in both regions but that in the nucleus stellar features are diluted by a continuous emission. This diluting continuum may be due to dust emission, in which case if one assumes no gradient of population, the comparison of the overall shape of the spectra indicate a dust temperature of about 1000K.

Figure 4 shows the optical spectrum of the same region with the synthetic spectrum superimposed. The stellar population synthesis indicates the presence of 67% dwarf and 23% giant stars. At 1.6$`\mu `$m this translates into 12% dwarf and 88% giant stars with 60% M giants and 20% K giants. In Figure 5 we show this “translated” synthetic stellar population diluted by 20% host dust on top of the nuclear spectrum of MCG-6-30-15. The comparison is quite encouraging.

## 4. Conclusions.

The stellar population in the inner regions of AGN are related to the level of activity of the AGN. These differences are no more conspicuous further away in the bulge of the galaxies. A relationship between the nucleus activity and circumnuclear starburst is advocated.

The near-infrared domain allows to study as well the very nucleus of Seyfert 1 as evidenced in the case of MCG-6-30-15. Future full spectral synthesis in the IR spectra will be performed.

## References

Boisson C., Joly M., Moultaka J., Pelat D., Serote Roos M., 2000, A&A, 357, 850

Dallier R., Boisson C., Joly M., 1996, A&AS, 116, 239

Moultaka J., Pelat D., 2000, MNRAS, 314, 409

Pelat D., 1997, MNRAS, 284, 365

Pelat D., 1998, MNRAS, 299, 877


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# I Introduction

## I Introduction

The origin and amount of baryon asymmetry in our universe depends on both cosmological features and particle-physics properties. Sakharov  discovered that three conditions must be realized in order to obtain a baryon asymmetry: baryon number ($`B`$) violation, charge conjugation ($`C`$) and combined charge conjugation and parity ($`CP`$) violations, and finally out-of-equilibrium dynamics. The first two conditions come out from particle physics, while the third one is usually provided by the expansion of the universe.

The typical particle-physics theory in which these conditions can be realized is the grand unified theory , where $`B`$ violation is a key signature. However, this approach has some shortcomings. In fact, electroweak sphaleron processes  could wash out a previously created baryon asymmetry . Moreover, unified theories are not yet confirmed by proton decay.

Another approach is based on the production of the baryon asymmetry at the electroweak scale by sphaleron processes . However, the standard model realization fails, due to the lower mass limit of the Higgs boson, and the supersymmetric version is in the corner of the parameter space .

Then, a good alternative is the baryogenesis via leptogenesis mechanism , based on the out-of-equilibrium decay of heavy right-handed Majorana neutrinos, which generates a lepton asymmetry to be partially converted into a baryon asymmetry by the sphaleron processes. Indeed, the existence of very heavy neutrinos can account for the smallness of effective neutrino mass by means of the seesaw mechanism .

In this paper we explore the link between the amount of baryon asymmetry generated in the baryogenesis via leptogenesis mechanism and quark-lepton mass matrices. We assume large mixing of solar neutrinos and relate the Dirac neutrino mass matrix to the up quark or down quark mass matrix.

The present article is similar to an update of Ref.. In fact, we use double (atmospheric and solar) large lepton mixing, which is favoured by recent data, instead of single (atmospheric) large lepton mixing, and quark mass matrices from the recent Ref., instead of the mass matrices from Ref..

In section II the baryogenesis via leptogenesis is introduced. In section III the link between baryon asymmetry and mass matrices is studied, and finally, in section IV, we give our conclusion.

## II Baryogenesis via leptogenesis

A baryon asymmetry can be generated from a lepton asymmetry, due to electroweak sphaleron processes . The lepton asymmetry is produced by the decay of heavy right-handed neutrinos, which are Majorana particles and therefore their mass terms violate lepton number ($`L`$). The sphalerons, which violate $`B+L`$ but conserve $`BL`$, convert part of this lepton asymmetry into a baryon asymmetry. The $`CP`$ violation is present because of complex Yukawa couplings of right-handed (singlet) neutrinos with the left-handed lepton doublet and the Higgs doublet. These interactions generate the decay of heavy neutrinos and also the Dirac neutrino mass matrix $`M_\nu `$ through the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the Higgs doublet.

The baryon asymmetry can be defined as

$$Y_B=\frac{n_Bn_{\overline{B}}}{s}=\frac{n_Bn_{\overline{B}}}{7n_\gamma }=\frac{\eta }{7},$$
(1)
where $`n_B`$, $`n_{\overline{B}}`$, $`n_\gamma `$ are number densities, $`s`$ is the entropy density, and $`\eta `$ is the baryon-to-photon ratio. The master formula for the calculation of the baryon asymmetry in the baryogenesis via leptogenesis mechanism is given by

$$Y_B\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{g^{}}dϵ_1,$$
(2)
where

$$ϵ_1\frac{3}{16\pi }\left[\frac{\text{Im}[(y_D^{}y_D)_{12}]^2}{(y_D^{}y_D)_{11}}\frac{M_1}{M_2}+\frac{\text{Im}[(y_D^{}y_D)_{13}]^2}{(y_D^{}y_D)_{11}}\frac{M_1}{M_3}\right]$$
(3)
is a $`CP`$ violating asymmetry, $`d`$ is a dilution factor to be discussed in the following, and $`g^{}100`$ counts the light degrees of freedom in the theory (see for example Ref. and references therein). The $`CP`$ violating asymmetry comes out from the interference between the tree level and one loop graphs in the out-of-equilibrium decay of the lightest heavy neutrino. This lightest neutrino is in equilibrium during the decays of the two heavier ones, washing out the lepton asymmetry generated by them. The Yukawa matrices $`y_\nu `$ are given by $`M_\nu /v`$, where $`vm_t`$ is the VEV of the Higgs doublet. Matrices $`y_D`$ are obtained by $`y_D=y_\nu U_R`$, where the unitary matrix $`U_R`$ diagonalizes the mass matrix of heavy neutrinos, $`M_R`$, with three eigenvalues $`M_1<M_2<M_3`$. The factor $`1/2`$ in Eqn.(2) indicates the part of the lepton asymmetry which is converted into a baryon asymmetry .

The dilution factor should be calculated by solving the Boltzmann equations of the system. It includes the effect of the decay width of the lightest heavy neutrino, as well as the wash out effect of lepton number violating scatterings. In Ref. it is shown that the dilution depends mostly on the mass parameter

$$\stackrel{~}{m}_1=\frac{(M_D^{}M_D)_{11}}{M_1},$$
(4)
with $`M_D=y_Dv`$, and for high $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ some dependence on $`M_1`$ also appears. Minor dilution, $`d`$ of order $`10^1`$, is obtained for $`10^5<\stackrel{~}{m}_1<10^2`$ eV. If $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ is too low, the Yukawa couplings are too small to produce a sufficient number of heavy neutrinos at high temperature, while if $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1`$ is too large, the wash out effect is too strong and destroys the generated asymmetry. See also the discussion in Ref.. In the present paper, emphasis is given to the possible dependence of the baryon asymmetry on neutrino mass matrices, without a detailed study of the dilution.

## III Leptogenesis and mass matrices

In this section we explore the link between the baryon asymmetry and lepton mass matrices. We use symmetric phenomenologically allowed forms for the quark mass matrices with five and four texture zeros , and get neutrino mass matrices by relating them to the up quark mass matrix $`M_u`$ or the down quark mass matrix $`M_d`$. The charged lepton mass matrix $`M_e`$ is always related to the down quark mass matrix. This is suggested by unified and left-right models . As a matter of fact, the baryogenesis via leptogenesis mechanism is active also within such theories (see the review  and the two papers in Ref.). However, we may also assume the quark-lepton mass relations as phenomenological inputs within the standard model with heavy right-handed neutrinos, in such a way to avoid possible problems with proton decay .

We consider only the large mixing solution to the solar neutrino problem, which is favoured by recent analyses. In Ref. it is shown that the double large lepton mixing with the hierarchy $`m_1m_2m_3`$ for the light (effective) Majorana neutrinos leads to the approximate democratic form

$$M_L^1\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 1& 1\\ 1& 1& 1\\ 1& 1& 1\end{array}\right)\frac{1}{m_1},$$
(5)
where $`M_L`$ is the effective neutrino mass matrix. We obtain the mass matrix of heavy neutrinos by means of the inverse seesaw formula

$$M_RM_\nu M_L^1M_\nu .$$
(6)
In this way, $`M_R`$ is obtained by following a kind of bottom-up approach. The Dirac neutrino mass matrix comes from a theoretical or phenomenological hint, and then the heavy neutrino mass matrix is inferred, through the inverse seesaw formula, from the effective neutrino mass matrix.

Charged fermion masses are hierarchical, according to

$$\frac{m_u}{m_c}\frac{m_c}{m_t}\lambda ^4$$
(7)
$$\frac{m_d}{m_s}\frac{m_s}{m_b}\lambda ^2$$
(8)
$$\frac{m_e}{m_\mu }\frac{m_\mu }{m_\tau }\lambda ^2,$$
(9)
where $`\lambda =0.22`$ is the Cabibbo parameter. Hence, the charged lepton and down quark mass hierarchies are similar. We insert these hierarchies into the quark mass matrices of Ref. and then obtain six approximate forms for the Dirac neutrino mass matrix:

$$M_\nu ^I\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& 0& \lambda ^4\\ 0& \lambda ^4& 0\\ \lambda ^4& 0& 1\end{array}\right)m_t,$$
(10)
$$M_\nu ^{II}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& 0& \lambda ^4\\ 0& \lambda ^4& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^4& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right)m_t,$$
(11)
$$M_\nu ^{III}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4& 0\\ \lambda ^4& 0& 1\end{array}\right)m_t,$$
(12)
$$M_\nu ^{IV}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \lambda ^6& \lambda ^8\\ \lambda ^6& 0& \lambda ^2\\ \lambda ^8& \lambda ^2& 1\end{array}\right)m_t,$$
(13)
$$M_\nu ^V\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \lambda ^6& 0\\ \lambda ^6& \lambda ^4& \lambda ^4\\ 0& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right)m_t,$$
(14)
$$M_\nu ^{VI}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}0& \lambda ^3& 0\\ \lambda ^3& \lambda ^2& \lambda ^2\\ 0& \lambda ^2& 1\end{array}\right)m_b.$$
(15)
The charged lepton mass matrix is in the form (15) and gives negligible lepton mixing. The matrix (10) contains three texture zeros. The other matrices contains only two texture zeros. We adopt such matrices to calculate the baryon asymmetry, according to the formulas (2),(3). Since we are interested in the general trend, without considering in detail the $`CP`$ violating phases, we drop the imaginary part in Eqn.(3). The required value for $`Y_B`$, from primordial nucleosynthesis, is in the range $`10^{11}10^{10}`$ (see for example the report ).

For the Dirac matrices $`M_\nu ^{IIII}`$ we get

$$M_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^8& \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^8& \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^4& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right)\frac{m_t^2}{m_1},$$
(16)
$$U_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& 1& \lambda ^4\\ 1& 1& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^4& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(17)
and $`y_D^{}y_D=y_R`$, with $`y_R=M_R/v_R`$. The parameter $`v_RM_3`$ is the VEV of the singlet Higgs field which generates the heavy neutrino mass (although it can be generated as bare Majorana mass term). Note that in the 1-2 sector of $`M_R`$ all entries are of the same order in $`\lambda `$. The eigenvalues of $`M_R`$ are $`M_3m_t^2/m_1`$, $`M_2\lambda ^8M_3`$, and $`M_10`$ or $`M_1M_2`$. Here $`M_10`$ means that $`M_1`$ is much suppressed with respect to $`M_2`$, and $`M_1M_2`$ means that they may differ by about one order in $`\lambda `$. In the first case $`ϵ_1`$ is suppressed and, as a consequence, $`Y_B`$ is much smaller than the required value. In the other case

$$ϵ_1\frac{3}{16\pi }\left(\frac{\lambda ^{16}}{\lambda ^8}1+\frac{\lambda ^8}{\lambda ^8}\lambda ^8\right)10^7,$$
(18)
and $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_1`$, so that $`Y_B10^{11}`$. A sufficient level of baryon asymmetry can be obtained, but $`m_1`$ has not to be less than $`10^5`$ eV, whereas we know that it is less than $`10^2`$ eV. A more precise expression for $`M_\nu `$, keeping the democratic form (5) valid, leads to the case $`M_10`$ and hence to a suppression of $`Y_B`$.

For the Dirac matrix $`M_\nu ^{IV}`$ we have

$$M_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^{12}& \lambda ^8& \lambda ^6\\ \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4& \lambda ^2\\ \lambda ^6& \lambda ^2& 1\end{array}\right)\frac{m_t^2}{m_1},$$
(19)
with eigenvalues $`M_3m_t^2/m_1`$, $`M_2\lambda ^4M_3`$ and $`M_1\lambda ^{12}M_3`$. We have also

$$U_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& \lambda ^4& \lambda ^6\\ \lambda ^4& 1& \lambda ^2\\ \lambda ^6& \lambda ^2& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(20)
and again $`y_D^{}y_D=y_R`$. This relation is due to the democratic form (5). The $`CP`$ violating asymmetry is

$$ϵ_1\frac{3}{16\pi }\left(\frac{\lambda ^{16}}{\lambda ^{12}}\lambda ^8+\frac{\lambda ^{12}}{\lambda ^{12}}\lambda ^{12}\right)10^{10},$$
(21)
and $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_1`$, so that $`Y_B10^{14}`$. This is a too small value.

For the Dirac matrix $`M_\nu ^V`$ we have

$$M_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\lambda ^{12}& \lambda ^{10}& \lambda ^6\\ \lambda ^{10}& \lambda ^8& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^6& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right)\frac{m_t^2}{m_1},$$
(22)
with eigenvalues $`M_3m_t^2/m_1`$, $`M_2\lambda ^8M_3`$ and $`M_1\lambda ^{12}M_3`$. We have also

$$U_R\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& \lambda ^2& \lambda ^6\\ \lambda ^2& 1& \lambda ^4\\ \lambda ^6& \lambda ^4& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(23)
and again $`y_D^{}y_D=y_R`$. The $`CP`$ violating asymmetry is

$$ϵ_1\frac{3}{16\pi }\left(\frac{\lambda ^{20}}{\lambda ^{12}}\lambda ^4+\frac{\lambda ^{12}}{\lambda ^{12}}\lambda ^{12}\right)10^{10},$$
(24)
and $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_1`$, so that $`Y_B10^{14}`$. Again this is a too small value.

For the Dirac matrix $`M_\nu ^{VI}`$ we find

$$ϵ_1\frac{3}{16\pi }\left(\frac{m_b}{m_t}\right)^2\left(\frac{\lambda ^{10}}{\lambda ^6}\lambda ^2+\frac{\lambda ^6}{\lambda ^6}\lambda ^6\right)10^9,$$
(25)
$`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_1`$ and $`Y_B10^{13}`$. Even in this case the baryon asymmetry is too low. Note that the matrix $`M_\nu ^{VI}`$ can be obtained from $`M_\nu ^V`$ dividing powers of $`\lambda `$ by two and replacing $`m_t`$ with $`m_b`$. The factor $`(m_b/m_t)^2`$ comes out from the different scale of Yukawa couplings. It erases almost all the enhancement effect of the less pronounced hierarchy of Yukawa couplings and of heavy neutrino masses. Instead, the dilution factor is similar in any case, because of the relation $`y_D^{}y_Dy_R`$. Dividing again powers of $`\lambda `$ by two, we find $`ϵ_110^7`$ and a sufficient amount of baryon asymmetry $`Y_B10^{11}`$.

The previous results are valid in the nonsupersymmetric model. However, in the supersymmetric model the amount of baryon asymmetry is only slightly enhanced. Model V with $`M_R`$ given by Eqn.(22) is similar to the one considered in Ref., based on the $`U(2)`$ horizontal symmetry, where a different approximation for the dilution factor was used. We confirm the results of the numerical analysis in Ref..

The relation $`\stackrel{~}{m}_1m_1`$ has been found, under some general circumstances, for the bilarge lepton mixing, in Ref.. With respect to that paper, we find $`ϵ_1`$ and $`Y_B`$ smaller by about three orders. This happens because assumptions A1 and A3, but not A2, of Ref. are fulfilled by matrices $`M_\nu ^{IV}`$. In particular, some mixing angles in the unitary matrix that diagonalizes the Dirac neutrino mass matrix are much smaller than the corresponding ratios of Dirac neutrino masses, $`s_{ij}\sqrt{m_{\nu _i}/m_{\nu _j}}`$.

## IV Conclusion

In this paper we have studied the impact of the form of the Dirac neutrino mass matrix $`M_\nu `$ on the generation of the baryon asymmetry through leptogenesis. Assuming a full hierarchical spectrum of Majorana neutrinos, out of five $`M_\nu `$ related to $`M_u`$ none of them generates a sufficient amount of baryon asymmetry. Even the matrix $`M_\nu ^{VI}`$, related to $`M_d`$ (or $`M_e`$), is not able to produce the required value of the asymmetry. If $`M_1M_2`$ the asymmetry is enhanced, so that $`M_\nu ^{IIII}`$ can produce enough asymmetry. This case is not realized if a more precise expression for the Dirac neutrino mass matrix is used. Therefore, we conclude that, in the present context, both the quark-lepton symmetry ($`M_\nu M_u`$) and the up-down symmetry ($`M_\nu M_e`$) for mass matrices are not reliable for the baryogenesis via leptogenesis mechanism. We stress that, with a more moderate hierarchy in $`M_\nu `$, we can get a sufficient amount of baryon asymmetry.

We thank M. Hirsch for communications.


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# Manipulating the critical temperature for the superfluid phase transition in trapped atomic Fermi gases

## Abstract

We examine the effect of the trapping potential on the critical temperature, $`T_C`$, for the BCS transition to a superfluid state in trapped atomic gases of fermions. $`T_C`$ for an arbitrary power law trap is calculated in the Thomas-Fermi approximation. For anharmonic traps, $`T_C`$ can be increased by several orders of magnitude in comparison to a harmonic trap. Our theoretical results indicate that, in practice, one could manipulate the critical temperature for the BCS phase transition by shaping the traps confining the atomic Fermi gases.

Since the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped atomic gases BEC , there has been increasing interest in the possibility of observing the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) phase transition to the superfluid state bardeen  in dilute fermionic akali gases Li6 ; burnett ; you ; baranov ; efremov ; heiselberg ; bohn ; holland ; mackie . Currently, experimental efforts in cooling fermionic atoms of 6Li truscott ; thomas  and 40K jin ; jin2  to the quantum degenerate regime have made significant progress, reaching temperatures as low as $`0.2T_F`$ where $`T_F`$ is the Fermi temperature. However, these temperatures are still far beyond the critical temperature required for the BCS phase transition, which is at least an order of magnitude lower Li6 ; burnett ; you ; baranov ; efremov .

On the other hand, the current techniques used to cool fermionic atoms lose their utility when the temperature becomes much less than $`T_F`$. For example, evaporative cooling, which has been used for 40K, becomes ineffective for temperatures much less than $`T_F`$ due to Pauli blocking evaporate  while sympathetic cooling of the fermions using bosons, as done with 6Li truscott , loses its effectiveness when the heat capacity of the bosons falls below that of the fermions. Due to these technical obstacles in cooling fermionic atoms, it seems that one must seek other avenues to reach the BCS superfluid state.

Recently there have been a number of proposals to study the possibility of achieving a higher $`T_C`$ by increasing the strength of the attractive interactions, i.e., the scattering length between the fermions using either a Feshbach resonance bohn ; holland  or photoassociation mackie . Since $`T_C`$ is a function of the attractive interaction between fermions and the density of states at the Fermi energy, $`\rho _F`$, higher transition temperatures can also be achieved by increasing the density of states for the fermions at the Fermi surface. In bulk superconductors, the only way to modify the density of states is by changing the spatial dimensionality of the system. However, in atomic systems the density of states can be controlled through the shape and strength of the external trapping potential.

The ability of an external trapping potential to change the critical temperature for a phase transition by modifying the density of states, $`\rho (ϵ)`$ (see Eq. (8) below), was first considered by Bagnato et al. for Bose-Einstein condensation bagnato . They showed that the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation, $`T_{BEC}`$, as a function of the number of atoms confined in a power law trap, $`N_B`$, had the power law form $`T_{BEC}N_B^\eta `$ where $`2/9\eta 2/3`$. In a similar manner, we will show that for a trapped gas of $`N_F`$ fermions the density of states at the Fermi surface has the form $`\rho _FN_F^\beta `$ where $`\beta `$ varies from 1/9 to 1/3 depending on the type of trap. Since $`T_C`$ depends exponentially on $`\rho _F`$, small changes in $`\beta `$ can have a dramatic effect on $`T_C`$. In all the experiments with trapped fermions, the trapping potential is well approximated as being harmonic. Our results indicate, however, that higher values of $`T_C/T_F`$ can be obtained using anharmonic power law traps. This indicates that the use of anharmonic traps could place $`T_C`$ within the range of current experiments.

At the ultracold temperatures achieved in fermion experiments, $`p`$-wave collisions between atoms are highly suppressed and $`s`$-wave collisions between atoms in the same internal state are forbidden by the Pauli exclusion principle. Since the BCS transition requires an attractive interaction between fermions in order to form Cooper pairs, the most likely candidate for Cooper pairing in alkali gases is an attractive $`s`$-wave interaction between atoms in different hyperfine states. Fortunately, both 6Li and 40K appear to be very promising candidates. 6Li possesses an anomalously large and negative $`s`$-wave scattering length equal to $`2160a_0`$ Li6 , where $`a_0`$ is the Bohr radius, while for 40K, a Feshbach resonance exists for two of the hyperfine states which can be used to create the required large attractive interaction bohn .

Therefore, we discuss the case of s-wave pairing between atoms of mass $`m`$ in two hyperfine states with an s-wave scattering length $`a<0`$ for collisions between atoms in different states. Furthermore, we assume that the number of atoms in each of the hyperfine states, $`N_F`$, is the same since this is the optimal condition for Cooper pairing. In this case, the transition temperature for a dilute homogenous gas is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{T_C}{T_F}}=\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{g\rho _F}}\right),`$ (1)
where $`g=4\pi \mathrm{}^2|a|/m`$ is the coupling constant for the two-body interactions and $`\alpha =2^{7/3}e^{C7/3}/\pi 0.28`$ with $`C`$ being the Euler’s constant gorkov ; heiselberg ; lifshitz . The density of states at the Fermi surface, in terms of the Fermi momentum $`\mathrm{}k_F`$, is

$$\rho _F=mk_F/2\pi ^2\mathrm{}^2.$$

From Eq. (1) we can see that by raising the density of states at the Fermi surface (or equivalently, by raising $`k_F`$), there will be an exponential increase in the transition temperature. Note that even though we restrict ourselves to the case of $`s`$-wave pairing, our results can easily be extended to pairing via higher partial waves since in those cases the critical temperature has a similar exponential dependence on $`\rho _F`$ lifshitz .

The goal of this paper is to determine the critical temperature for the inhomogeneous Fermi gas where the atoms in both hyperfine states are subject to the trapping potential,

$$U(𝐫)=\epsilon _1\left|\frac{x}{a}\right|^p+\epsilon _2\left|\frac{y}{b}\right|^l+\epsilon _3\left|\frac{z}{c}\right|^q,$$
(2)
and $`p`$, $`l`$, and $`q`$ are positive integers. We refer to the magnitude of the exponents $`p`$, $`l`$, and $`q`$ as the confining power of the trap. For simplicity, we assume that the trapping potential is independent of the hyperfine state, hence the density of fermions is the same for both states, $`n(𝐫)`$. If $`n(𝐫)`$ varies sufficiently slowly, then we can make a local density (or Thomas-Fermi) approximation by assuming that at each point in space the Fermi gas can be treated as being homogenous butts . In that case, a local value of the critical temperature, $`T_C(𝐫)`$, can be calculated using Eq.(1). For temperatures $`TT_F`$, the local density approximation is valid provided the average distance between atoms, $`k_F^1`$, is much less than the distances over which $`n(𝐫)`$ changes significantly. Since the changes in $`n(𝐫)`$ are determined by $`U(𝐫)`$ for which the characteristic length scales are $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$, we have the condition $`k_F^1(abc)^{1/3}`$. In addition, for $`TT_C`$, the coherence length for the Cooper pairs, $`\xi _0=\mathrm{}^2k_F/\pi m\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0=(\pi e^C)k_BT_C`$ is the BCS gap at $`T=0`$, should also be much less than $`(abc)^{1/3}`$ Li6 ; burnett .

In the Thomas-Fermi approximation, the chemical potential, $`\mu `$, is replaced with a local value, $`\mu (𝐫)=\mu U(𝐫)+gn(𝐫)`$ so that the fermions can be treated at each $`𝐫`$ as an ideal homogenous gas with chemical potential $`\mu (𝐫)`$. The term $`gn(𝐫)`$ represents the Hartree-Fock potential experienced by each atom due to the atoms in the opposite hyperfine state. Since we are interested in temperatures $`TT_F`$, the chemical potential may be approximated by the Fermi energy, $`\mu E_F=k_BT_F=\mathrm{}^2k_F^2/2m`$, since for low temperatures $`\mu =E_F+O(T/T_F)^2`$ mli . Correspondingly, we can express $`\mu (𝐫)`$ in terms of a local Fermi wave number, $`k_F(𝐫)`$, defined as

$$\frac{\mathrm{}^2k_F^2(𝐫)}{2m}=E_FU(𝐫)+gn(𝐫).$$
(3)
Using the result $`n(𝐫)=k_F^3(𝐫)/(6\pi ^2)`$ for an ideal Fermi gas, then gives an expression for the density

$$n(𝐫)\left(1\frac{g}{A^{2/3}}n^{1/3}(𝐫)\right)^{3/2}=\frac{1}{A}\left[E_FU(𝐫)\right]^{3/2},$$
(4)
where $`A6\pi ^2\left(\mathrm{}^2/2m\right)^{3/2}`$. For a dilute gas where $`|a|n(0)^{1/3}1`$, the Hartree-Fock term in Eqs. (3) and (4) can be neglected in a first approximation. The Fermi energy is then determined by the requirement that the total number of atoms in each spin component be conserved,

$$N_F=\frac{1}{A}_{V(E_F)}\left[E_FU(𝐫)\right]^{3/2}d^3r,$$
(5)
where the integration volume $`V(E_F)`$ is the volume available to a classical particle with total energy $`E_F`$, i.e. $`E_FU(𝐫)`$. Equation (5) can easily be solved for $`E_F`$ for the case of the power law trap (2) and gives,

$$E_F=\left[\frac{A\epsilon _1^{1/p}\epsilon _2^{1/l}\epsilon _3^{1/q}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\delta +1)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+1/p)\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+1/l)\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+1/q)\mathrm{\Gamma }(5/2)}\left(\frac{N_F}{8abc}\right)\right]^{1/\delta }$$
(6)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(x)`$ is the Gamma function and

$$\delta 3/2+1/p+1/l+1/q.$$

Note that the limit $`p,l,q\mathrm{}`$ corresponds to a box with volume $`8abc`$ bagnato . For a harmonic oscillator, $`p=l=q=2`$, $`8abc`$ is equal to $`2^{9/2}\mathrm{}_x\mathrm{}_y\mathrm{}_z`$ where $`\mathrm{}_i=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m\omega _i}`$ is the harmonic oscillator length along the axis of the trap with frequency $`\omega _i`$. Therefore, $`\overline{n}=N_F/(8abc)`$ can be used to define a characteristic atomic density. Note that, with the exception of the rigid box, $`\overline{n}`$ does not correspond to the average density of atoms in the trap. In what follows, we will assume that $`\overline{n}`$ is fixed and independent of $`\delta `$.

Equation (6) along with Eq. (3) can be used to calculate $`T_C(𝐫)`$. It is clear from Eq. (3) that $`k_F(𝐫)`$ is a maximum at the center of the trap and hence, the density of states at the local Fermi surface, $`\rho _F(𝐫)=mk_F(𝐫)/2\pi ^2\mathrm{}^2`$, is a maximum there. Consequently, $`T_C(𝐫)`$ is largest at $`𝐫=0`$. Physically, this means that as the temperature is lowered Cooper pairing first occurs at the center of the trap and then spreads to the edges of the trap as the temperature is lowered still further. Therefore at $`𝐫=0`$ and neglecting the Hartree-Fock term in Eq. (3), the transition temperature is simply,

$$\frac{T_C(0)}{T_F}=\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}\pi }{|a|\sqrt{8mE_F}}\right).$$
(7)
Evaluating the critical temperature at the center of the trap has the added benefit that the Thomas-Fermi approximation is expected to be most accurate here.

From Eqs. (6) and (7) we see that for a given value of $`\overline{n}`$, $`T_C(0)/T_F`$ is an increasing function of $`1/\delta `$. Furthermore, $`T_F=E_F/k_B`$ is also an increasing function of $`1/\delta `$. Therefore, increasing the confining power of the trap increases not only the ratio of the critical temperature to the Fermi temperature but also the absolute value of the critical temperature. More importantly, from the perspective of current experiments, anharmonic traps for which $`p,l,q3`$ will result in higher values of $`T_C`$ (assuming that all the other terms in Eq. (6) are the same). This is the central result of this paper.

To illustrate the effect of varying the confining power of the trap, we consider the case of $`p=l=q`$ for the values of 1 through 5 and $`\mathrm{}`$. We choose values of $`\epsilon _i`$ and $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ that correspond to parameters used in current experiments with harmonic traps. In Tables 1 and 2 we calculate the Fermi temperature, $`T_F`$, as well as $`T_C(0)`$ for 6Li and 40K, respectively. For 6Li we consider an isotropic trap with $`N_F=10^5`$ and $`\epsilon _i=\mathrm{}\omega =\mathrm{}(2\pi \times 100s^1)`$, which gives $`a=b=c=\sqrt{2\mathrm{}/m\omega }=5.8\mu m`$ and $`\overline{n}=6.4\times 10^{13}cm^3`$. For 40K, we use values from the experiment by DeMarco and Jin jin . This gives $`N_F=3.5\times 10^5`$ and $`\epsilon _1=\epsilon _2=\mathrm{}\omega _r=\mathrm{}(2\pi \times 127s^1)`$ and $`\epsilon _3=\mathrm{}\omega _z=\mathrm{}(2\pi \times 19.5s^1)`$. This gives values for the characteristic lengths of $`a=b=2\mu m`$ and $`c=5.09\mu m`$ and a characteristic density of $`\overline{n}=2.15\times 10^{15}cm^3`$. Bohn has recently showed that there exists an experimentally accessible Feshbach resonance for two of the hyperfine states of 40K that could be accessed to create a scattering length of $`a=1000a_0`$ bohn . We therefore adopt this value for $`a`$ since in the absence of a Feshbach resonance, the scattering lengths for 40K would result in unreasonably small values of $`T_C`$.

Tables 1 and 2 illustrate the dramatic effect that $`p`$ has on $`T_F`$ and $`T_C(0)`$. For both 6Li and 40K, there is a two order of magnitude increase in the Fermi temperature as $`p`$ is increased from $`1`$ to $`\mathrm{}`$. Furthermore, in going from a harmonic trap ($`p=2`$) to a rigid box ($`p=\mathrm{}`$) the Fermi temperatures increase by factors of 24 and 36 for 6Li and 40K, respectively. Even more striking is the change in $`T_C(0)/T_F`$, which increases by three orders of magnitude over the full range of $`p`$. Altogether, this implies that by increasing the confining power of the trap ($`p`$) one could, in principle, increase $`T_C(0)`$ by as much as three orders of magnitude in comparison to a harmonic potential. Note that in our calculation, we take $`E_F`$ as the Fermi energy of an ideal Fermi gas. Including the attractive atom-atom interaction will decrease $`E_F`$. However, one must now include the Hartree-Fock term, $`gn(0)`$, in Eq. (7), which raises the critical temperature. We checked this effect numerically and find that for the parameters used in the paper, including the atom-atom interactions increases $`T_C(0)`$ by a factor of 2 to 3.

Physically, the increase in $`T_F`$ and $`T_C(0)`$ with increasing confining power is a result of the trap being able to confine the atoms to a smaller total volume, which thereby increases the local density. For a rigid box, the atoms are confined to a volume of $`8abc`$ regardless of the value of $`E_F`$. For a harmonic trap, the total volume occupied by the gas corresponds to the extent of the wave function for an atom in the highest occupied state with energy $`E_F\mathrm{}\omega `$, which has a volume much larger than the volume of the ground state wave function given by $`abc`$. In general, the total volume is given by $`V(E_F)`$. For the isotropic form of the power law potential, $`U(𝐫)=\epsilon (r/a)^p`$, the volume scales as $`V(E_F)N_F^{2/(p+2)}`$. This explains the increase in $`T_F`$ and $`T_C`$ since, in the limit of a homogenous gas, they depend only on the density of the fermions.

Alternatively, the increase in $`T_C`$ can also be explained by examining the density of states for an atom with total energy between $`ϵ`$ and $`ϵ+dϵ`$ bagnato ,

$$\rho (ϵ)=\frac{1}{4\pi ^2}\left(\frac{2m}{\mathrm{}^2}\right)^{3/2}_{V(ϵ)}\sqrt{ϵU(𝐫)}d^3r.$$
(8)
Increasing the confining power of the trap reduces the volume of phase space available to an atom with energy $`ϵ`$, $`V(ϵ)`$, and as a result, the number of states is reduced. In fact, it is easy to show that $`\rho (ϵ)ϵ^{\delta 1}`$. The reduction in the density of states causes $`E_F`$ to be increased since the fermions are forced to occupy higher energy states in order to accommodate all $`N_F`$ atoms. In the Thomas-Fermi approximation, the density of states on the local Fermi surface at the center of the trap is $`\rho _F(0)=mk_F(0)/2\pi ^2\mathrm{}^2\sqrt{E_F}`$. Consequently, an increase in the Fermi energy, $`E_F`$, increases the local density of states and therefore $`T_C(0)`$, as can be seen from Eq. (7).

Both Eq. (1) and Eq. (5) are valid in the limit of a dilute gas, $`|a|n(0)1`$. This approximation begins to break down for $`p>5`$ when $`|a|n(0)0.2`$ for both cases considered here. There are, however, two reasons why this need not be of any great concern. First, the neglect of the Hartree-Fock mean-field in Eq. (4) underestimates the actual density of the gas at the center of the trap because the interactions are attractive. The fact that attractive interactions increase the local density for trapped gases is well known for Bose-Einstein condensates dalfovo  and has been previously noted for fermions Li6 . Secondly, Heiselberg has shown that in the regime of intermediate densities, $`|a|n>1`$, $`T_C`$ becomes a finite fraction of $`T_F`$ with values of $`T_C/T_F0.1`$ heiselberg2 . Therefore, for large confining powers, our results underestimate the actual value of $`T_C(0)`$.

Finally we remark that from an experimental point of view, changing the confining power of the trapping potential appears to be realistic. The generation of power law traps would most easily be accomplished using far-detuned optical dipole traps, which have the added benefit of producing a confining potential that is independent of the hyperfine state of the atoms. In particular, the generation of higher-order Bessel beams with radial intensity profiles proportional to $`J_l^2(k_rr)`$, where $`J_l`$ is a Bessel function of integer order and $`k_r`$ is the radial component of the wavevector, have recently been produced using an axicon axicon . Bessel beams with $`l=1`$ to $`4`$ and radii for the hollow core of the beam on the order of tens of micrometers were created. For blue-detuned beams and small $`k_rr`$, the radial optical dipole potential experienced by the atoms is proportional to $`(k_rr)^{2l}`$. Two perpendicular intersecting Bessel beams with $`l>1`$ could be used to create an anharmonic potential. It is worth noting that evaporative cooling of a two-component gas of 6Li to temperatures below $`T_F`$ in an optical trap has recently been demonstrated experimentally thomas .

In conclusion we have examined the effect that a power-law trapping potential has on the BCS transition temperature. We have shown that by increasing the confining power of the trap, one can obtain values of $`T_C`$ that are several orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding harmonic trap. The origin of the increase is the ability of tighter traps to confine the atoms to a smaller total volume.

This work is supported in part by the US Office of Naval Research under Contract No. 14-91-J1205, by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY98-01099, by the US Army Research Office, by NASA, and by the Joint Services Optics Program.