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# Unitarity Corrections to the Structure Functions through the Dipole Picture

## I Introduction

The scattering experiments on deep inelastic electron-proton (DIS) at HERA have provided measurements of the inclusive structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$ as well as of the $`F_L`$ and $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$ in very small Bjorken variable $`x`$ values ($`x10^2`$). In these collisions the proton target is analysed through a hard probe with virtuality $`Q^2=q^2`$. The momentum fraction is $`xQ^2/2p.q`$, where $`p`$ and $`q`$ are the four-momenta of the incoming proton and of the virtual photon probe. In the kinematical region of small $`x`$, the gluon is the leading parton driving the behavior of the deep inelastic observables. The standard QCD evolution  gives a powerlike growth for the gluon distribution and related quantities, and this feature leads, in principle, to the unitarity violation at asymptotic energies, requiring a control of the gluon distribution in high energies. In the partonic language, in the infinite momentum frame, the small momentum fraction region corresponds to the high parton density domain, which is connected with the black disk limit of the proton target and with the parton recombination phenomenon. These issues can be addressed through a non-linear dynamics beyond the usual DGLAP formalism (for a review, see ). The complete knowledge about the non-linear dynamical regime plays an important role in the theoretical description of the reactions in the forthcoming experiments RHIC and LHC.

In the Breit frame, the QCD factorization theorem allows to calculate the scattering processes through the convolution of the partonic subprocess with the parton distribution functions (pdf’s). There, the degrees of freedom of the theory are the quasi-free partons (quarks and gluons). On the other hand, more recently the theoretical description of the small $`x`$ physics has been widely analyzed in the target rest frame, which is a powerful tool concerning an unified picture for both the inclusive and the diffractive scatterings, including vector meson production . Now, the degrees of freedom are the color dipoles, which are the most simple configurations considering the virtual photon Fock states expansion. Its main appeal is a quite simplified picture for the different mentioned processes, based on general properties of quantum mechanics.

The description of DIS in the color dipole picture is quite intuitive, allowing a simple representation instead of the involved one from the Breit (infinite momentum) frame, and such framework was proposed by Gribov many years ago . Considering small values of the Bjorken variable $`x`$, the virtual photon fluctuates into a $`q\overline{q}`$ pair (dipole) with fixed transverse separation $`r`$ at large distances upstream of the target and interacts in a short time with the proton. More complicated configurations should be considered for larger transverse size systems, for instance the photon Fock state $`q\overline{q}+\mathrm{gluon}`$. An immediate consequence of the lifetime of the pair ($`l_c=1/2m_px`$) to be bigger than the interaction’s one is the factorization between the photon wavefunction and the cross section dipole-proton in the $`\gamma ^{}p`$ total cross section. The wavefunctions are perturbatively calculable, namely through QED for the $`q\overline{q}`$ configuration  and from QCD for $`q\overline{q}G`$ . The effective dipole cross section should be modeled and encloses both perturbative and non-perturbative content. However, since the interaction strength relies only on the configuration of the interacting system the dipole cross section turns out to be universal and may be employed in a wide variety of small $`x`$ processes .

Currently, there are several models for the dipole cross section based either in pure phenomenological parametrizations or in a more theoretical ground (for a review, see Ref. ). The main feature in those models is the description of the energy dependence of the interaction, namely taking into account the interplay between hard and soft domains. The dipole cross section should be consistent with the sharp growth on energy at small transverse separation $`r`$ (large gluon density) and a softer behavior for larger $`r`$ (Regge-like phenomenology). An additional ingredient is the expectation for saturation effects in high energies as a consequence of the unitarity requirements. Indeed, the growth of the gluon distribution should be tamed at very small $`x`$ and it has been found that the corrections are important already in the present HERA kinematics . Moreover, such effects are associated with higher twist contributions concerning the standard linear evolution equation, i.e. the DGLAP formalism .

Here, we take into account a formalism providing the unitarity corrections to the deep inelastic scattering at small $`x`$, namely the Glauber-Mueller approach in QCD. It was introduced by A. Mueller , who developed the Glauber formalism to study saturation effects in the quark and gluon distributions in the nucleus considering the heavy onium scattering. Afterwards, the authors of Ref.  extended that approach that has as a limit the GLR results . It is obtained an evolution equation taking into account the unitarity corrections (perturbative shadowing), generating a non-linear dynamics which is related with higher twist contributions. Its main characteristic is to provide a theoretical framework for the saturation effects, relying on the multiscattering of the pQCD Pomeron. The latter is represented through the usual gluonic ladder in the double logarithmic approximation.

Summarizing the Glauber-Mueller approach, the gluonic content of the nucleus or nucleons is obtained in the following way: in the rest frame, a virtual probe (gluon) decays into a gluon pair interacting with the nucleon inside the nucleus. The multiple scatterings of the pair give rise to the unitarization of the corresponding cross section. The calculations are performed in the double logarithmic approximation (DLA), corresponding to the condition $`\alpha _s\gamma _G1`$, where $`\alpha _s`$ and $`\gamma _G`$ are the QCD coupling constant and the gluon anomalous dimension, respectively. In this approximation, the transverse separation of the pair remains fixed allowing an eikonal description for the interaction gluon pair-nucleon through incoherent multiscatterings . The cross section for the interaction can be expressed in terms of the nucleon gluon distribution $`xG(x,\stackrel{~}{Q}^2)`$ and of the transverse separation $`r`$ of the gluon pair. The procedure for an initial state quark-antiquark pair is similar, up to proper color coefficients. Such a formulation has produced comprehensive phenomenological applications: the inclusive structure function $`F_2`$ , the longitudinal $`F_L`$ and charmed $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$ ones , the logarithmic slope $`F_2/\mathrm{log}Q^2`$  and other related quantities have been calculated in the Breit system. The respective nuclear case has been investigated in Refs.  and the equivalence with other high density QCD approaches has been reported in Refs. . Moreover, the asymptotic limit of the inclusive structure function and its logarithmic slope are estimated in . Regarding the rest frame, Glauber-Mueller has been also used to estimate the saturation effects for DIS and diffractive dissociation  as well as it is considered as initial condition for a high energy evolution equation (for a review, see ). Therefore, the Glauber-Mueller approach gives a good framework for the unitarity effects (saturation) in the nucleon and nuclear sectors, providing the dynamics of the observables in a quantitative level.

In this work we make use of the parton saturation formalism to study the description of the observables driven by the gluonic content of the proton in the color dipole picture. The inclusive structure function $`F_2`$ is calculated properly, disregarding approximations commonly considered in previous calculations . The structure functions $`F_L`$ and $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$ are presented for the first time using the Glauber-Mueller approach and the rest frame in comparison with the experimental data. The saturation effects are included in the effective dipole cross section corresponding to the small size dipole contributions. The large dipole sizes are taken into account through an ansätz for the non-perturbative region. Here, we choose to freeze the gluon distribution at large distances . The dipole framework provides a clear identification in the transverse distance $`r`$ range where the perturbative and non-perturbative sectors (soft domain) contribute to the calculated quantities. Large dipoles correspond to soft domain and the small ones are connected with the hard sector. As we will see, the photon wavefunctions play the role of a weight function selecting small dipole sizes, with a non-negligible contribution coming from the large dipole sizes. However, when considering the production of heavy quark pairs (charm and bottom), their masses largely diminish the soft contribution. These issues are addressed throughout this paper.

This work is organized as follows. In the next section we shortly review the deep inelastic scattering in the rest frame, introducing the main formulae for the further analysis. In Sec. (3) one addresses the effective dipole cross section considering saturation effects (unitarity corrections) encoded in the Glauber-Mueller approach, pointing out its main properties and discussing the large transverse separation contribution. The Sec. (4) is devoted to calculate the theoretical estimates for the HERA observables, focusing on those ones dominated by the gluon content. In the last section we draw our conclusions and comments.

## II The Deep Inelastic Scattering in the Proton Rest Frame

In the reference frame where the target (proton) has infinite momentum the usual description of the dynamics evolution is the following: the emitted partons from the target remain quasi-free for enough time in such a way that the virtual probe (photon) detects them as real particles (asymptotic freedom). On the other hand, in the small $`x`$ region it is suitable to describe the evolution in a system where the target is at rest: in this situation the evolution is related to the partonic fluctuations of the probe and their interactions with the nucleon. The rest frame physical picture is advantageous since the lifetimes of the photon fluctuation and of the interaction process are well defined . The simplest case is the quark-antiquark state (color dipole), which is the leading configuration for small transverse size systems. Its life time can be estimated by the uncertainty principle through the energy fluctuation associated with the emerging pair. The well known coherence length is expressed as $`l_c=1/(2xm_p)`$, where $`x`$ is the Bjorken variable and $`m_p`$ the proton mass. For instance, in deep inelastic at HERA kinematics reaching at $`x10^5`$, the coherence length is about $`10^4`$ fm, which is a distance larger than the radius of any atomic nuclei. An immediate consequence of such a picture is the factorization between virtual photon wavefunctions and the interaction cross section on the corresponding amplitude in the impact parameter space representation.

A striking consequence of the formulation above is that the photoabsortion cross section can be derived from the expectation value of the interaction cross section for the multiparticle Fock states of the virtual photon weighted by the light-cone wave functions of these states . The scattering matrix has an exact diagonalization in the $`\gamma ^{}`$ Fock states representation, where the partial-wave amplitudes subjected to the $`s`$-channel unitarization are identified properly. Then, the photoabsortion cross section can be cast into the quantum mechanical factorized form,

$`\sigma _{T,L}^{\gamma ^{}p}(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle d^2𝐫_0^1𝑑z|\mathrm{\Psi }_{T,L}(z,𝐫)|^2\sigma ^{\mathrm{dipole}}(x,z,𝐫)},`$ (1)
The formulation above is valid even beyond perturbation theory, since it is determined from the space-time structure of the process. The $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{T,L}(z,𝐫)`$ are the photon wavefunctions (for transverse, $`T`$, and longitudinal, $`L`$, polarizations) describing the pair configuration, where $`z`$ and $`1z`$ are the fraction of the photon’s light-cone momentum carried by the quark and antiquark of the pair, respectively. The transverse separation of the pair is $`𝐫`$. The precise normalizations of the wavefunctions can be determined through the Fock expansion $`|\gamma _{\mathrm{phys}}>=\sqrt{Z_3}|\gamma _{\mathrm{bare}}>+𝒩_{q\overline{q}}|q\overline{q}>`$, where $`Z_3`$ is the $`\gamma `$-wavefunction renormalization constant, $`|\gamma _{\mathrm{bare}}>`$ denotes the bare state and $`𝒩_{q\overline{q}}`$ is the coefficient determining the probability of the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair fluctuation in the photon . Considering completely normalized states, then $`𝒩_{q\overline{q}}^2=1Z_3`$ and the normalization for transverse photons is obtained from $`𝑑zd^2𝐫|\mathrm{\Psi }_{T,L}(z,𝐫)|^2=𝒩_{q\overline{q}}^2`$. The remaining normalizations, i.e., longitudinal component and cross section, are consequently fixed . The explicit expressions are well known,

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_T(z,𝐫)|^2={\displaystyle \frac{6\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{\overset{n_f}{}}}e_i^2\left\{[z^2+(1z)^2]\epsilon ^2K_1^2(\epsilon r)+m_q^2K_0^2(\epsilon r)\right\}`$ (2)
and

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_L(z,𝐫)|^2={\displaystyle \frac{6\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}{4\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{\overset{n_f}{}}}e_i^2\left\{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}Q^2z^2(1z)^2K_0^2(ϵr)\right\}.`$ (3)
Clarifying the notation, the auxiliary variable $`\epsilon ^2=z(1z)Q^2+m_q^2`$, with $`m_q`$ the light quark mass, and $`K_0`$ and $`K_1`$ are the Mc Donald functions of rank zero and one, respectively.

The quantity $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{dipole}}(x,z,𝐫)`$ is interpreted as the cross section of the scattering of the effective dipole with fixed transverse separation $`𝐫`$ . It is directly dependent on the unintegrated gluon distribution,

$`\sigma ^{\mathrm{dipole}}(x,z,𝐫)={\displaystyle \frac{4\pi \alpha _s}{3}}{\displaystyle \frac{d^2𝐤_\mathrm{𝟏}}{𝐤_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{}{}^{4}}(\frac{x}{z},𝐤_\mathrm{𝟏})\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤_\mathrm{𝟏}.𝐫}\right)}`$ (4)
The unintegrated gluon distribution, $`(\frac{x}{z},𝐤_\mathrm{𝟏})`$, vanishes at the gluon transverse momentum $`|𝐤_1|0`$ (and similarly for the factor $`(1\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐤_\mathrm{𝟏}.𝐫})`$) due to gauge invariance, and therefore the dipole cross section has to be infrared finite. The most important feature of the dipole cross section is its universal character, namely it depends only on the transverse separation $`𝐫`$ of the color dipole. The dependence on the external probe, i.e. the photon virtuality, is included in the wavefunctions.

The main technical difficulty in Eq. (4) is to model the unintegrated gluon distribution function in a suitable way, mainly in the small transverse momentum ($`k_T`$) region (infrared sector). In particular, to obtain these distributions one should solve numerically an evolution equation, which makes the procedure cumbersome for practical use (instead, for a prompt parametrization see ). In general, this is avoided introducing an ansätz for the effective dipole cross section and analyzing the process in the impact parameter space. The main feature of the current models in the literature is to interpolate the physical regions of small transverse separations (QCD-parton improved model picture) and the large ones (Regge-soft picture). Below, we quote two of them, which have connections with the work performed here.

The phenomenological saturation model of Golec-Biernat and Wüsthoff (hereafter GBW) gives a good description of DIS data . The corresponding cross section interpolates between color transparency, i.e. $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{dipole}}r^2`$ at small $`r`$, and constant cross section $`\sigma _0`$ at large $`r`$ (confinement). Such a procedure ensures $`Q^2`$-saturation, while parton saturation at low $`x`$ is obtained with an eikonal-inspired shape for the dipole cross section,

$`\sigma ^{\mathrm{GW}}(x,r^2)`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _0\left(1e^{r^2/R_{\mathrm{sat}}^2(x)}\right),`$ (5)
$`R_{\mathrm{sat}}^2(x)`$ $`=`$ $`4R_0^2(x)={\displaystyle \frac{4}{Q_0^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{x}{x_0}}\right)^\lambda ,`$ (6)
where the parameters $`\sigma _0=23.03`$ mb, $`x_0=\mathrm{3.04\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ and $`\lambda =0.288`$ are fitted to the HERA DIS inclusive data with $`x<10^2`$, whereas $`Q_0^2=1`$ GeV2 sets the dimension. The $`x`$-dependent saturation radius $`R_0^2(x)`$ scales the pair separation $`r`$ in the cross section and is associated with the mean separation between partons in the nucleon. This approach was used to describe diffractive dissociation in a parameter-free way, considering also the required $`q\overline{q}G`$ configuration. Some criticism to the GBW model, mainly concerning a better knowledge of the parton (gluon) distribution at low $`r`$ and its saturation at small $`x`$ are postponed to the next section. The most of them can also to be found in Refs. .

Our work in this paper is closer to the McDermott et al. one  (hereafter McDFGS), where perturbative QCD relates the dipole cross section to the leading logarithmic gluon distribution function in the proton, at LLA($`Q^2`$) accuracy,

$`\sigma ^{\mathrm{McDFGS}}={\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{Q}^2)}{3}}r^2xG(x,\stackrel{~}{Q}^2),`$ (7)
where the identification $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2Q^2`$ is allowed at leading-log level. A study of the dipole cross section is carried for all transverse separations $`r`$ in . The small $`r`$ region is described by the usual gluon pdfs, evoluting with the scale $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2=10/r^2`$, while for large separations ($`r_{\mathrm{pion}}0.65`$ fm) the dipole cross section is driven by the pion-proton contribution with the typical soft energy behavior from the hadronic sector. Moreover, the taming of the parton density is implemented by hand starting at the named critical transverse separation $`r_{\mathrm{crit}}`$, stated when the dipole cross section reaches one half of its maximum value labeled by the pion-proton cross section. In connection with the present work, the Glauber-Mueller approach gives the Eq. (7) at the Born level. Instead of using an ad hoc control of the gluon distribution, the Glauber-Mueller provides corrections required by unitarity in an eikonal expansion. For the large $`r`$ region, we choose to follow a similar procedure from the GBW model, namely saturating the dipole cross section ($`r`$-independent constant value).

Having defined the notation and reviewed the main properties settled by the rest frame representation of deep inelastic process, in the next section we address the unitarity corrections formalism contained in the Glauber-Mueller approach, that we will consider in the calculation of $`F_2`$, $`F_L`$ and $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$.

## III The Glauber-Mueller Approach

The Glauber formalism concerns mainly interactions with a target nucleus, allowing to calculate the amount of unitarity corrections to the nuclear cross section. However this approach can be extended to take into account the evolution of the partonic densities (saturation) through the multiple scatterings. Below, we review shortly the main properties of the Glauber formalism in QCD, either in the nuclear case as its application to the nucleon case. We indicate the original papers  for a complete presentation. It should be stressed that saturation effects mean unitarity corrections to the observables. Indeed, the asymptotic calculations have produced an unified $`\mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$ pattern for the cross section and gluon function instead of a effectively saturated one .

Since the small $`x`$ limit is driven by the gluonic interactions, we consider a virtual probe $`G^{}`$ with invariant mass $`Q^2`$ which decays into a gluon pair $`GG`$ having a transverse separation $`𝐫`$ and transverse momentum $`𝐤`$. Then, the pair interacts with the target through a gluonic ladder at fixed transverse separation. Following the discussion from the previous section, the photoabsortion cross section for the probe particle in terms of $`x`$ and virtuality $`Q^2`$ in the nuclear case is

$`\sigma _{tot}^{G^{}A}(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle d^2𝐫_0^1𝑑z|\mathrm{\Psi }_{GG}(z,𝐫,Q^2)|^2\sigma ^{GG\mathrm{nucleus}}(x,z,𝐫)},`$ (8)
where the variables have the same identification as in the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair discussion. The quantity $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{GG}`$ is the light-cone wavefunction for the gluon pair. The Glauber’s multiscattering theory employs the phase shift method to describe processes at high energy for an incident particle undergoing into successive scatterings. When $`x`$ is small, the coherence length $`l_c`$ is bigger than the mean radius $`R_A`$ for all nuclei and the interaction of the initial parton stands through the entire nuclear path, providing coherent interactions with all target partons along the distance $`l_c`$. These scatterings are coherent in an interaction of a hadronic fluctuaction, i.e. quark or gluon pairs, with the nucleus. There are interference effects among them, generating a reduction in the nuclear cross section, $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{nucleus}}<A\sigma ^{\mathrm{nucleon}}`$. Otherwise, when $`l_cR_A`$, full incoherent scatterings occur leading to the expectation that the nuclear cross section equals to $`A\sigma ^{\mathrm{nucleon}}`$. The well known Glauber formula for the total cross section of a hadronic state with the nucleus is

$`\sigma _{tot}^{\mathrm{nucleus}}=2{\displaystyle d^2𝐛\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{\mathrm{nucleon}}\mathrm{S}_\mathrm{A}(𝐛)}\right)},`$ (9)
where $`S_A(𝐛)`$ is a profile function containing the dependence on the impact parameter $`𝐛`$, which is the conjugate variable to the momentum transfer $`t`$. It is related to the nucleon distribution inside the nucleus and encodes the information about the angular distribution of the scattering. We discuss its particular shape later on. The Eq. (8) is quite general and allows to describe the hadronic fluctuations of the photon or any virtual probe, as saw in the last section.

Considering the scattering amplitude dependent on the usual Mandelstan variables $`s`$ and $`t`$, now written in the impact parameter representation $`𝐛`$,

$`a(s,𝐛){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle d^2𝐪\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝐪.𝐛}𝒜(\mathrm{s},\mathrm{t}=\mathrm{q}^2)}.`$ (10)
the corresponding total and elastic cross sections (from Optical theorem) are rewritten in the impact parameter representation ($`𝐛`$) as

$`\sigma _{tot}`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi Im𝒜(s,0)=2{\displaystyle d^2𝐛Ima(s,𝐛)},`$ (11)
$`\sigma _{el}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^2𝐛|a(s,𝐛)|^2},`$ (12)
A very important property when treating the scattering in the impact parameter space is the simple definition for the unitarity constraint . At fixed $`𝐛`$, the constraint can be expressed in the following way,

$`\sigma _{tot}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _{el}+\sigma _{inel},`$ (13)
$`2Ima(s,𝐛)`$ $`=`$ $`|a(s,𝐛)|^2+C_{in}(s,𝐛),`$ (14)
with $`C_{in}(s,𝐛)`$ denoting the sum of contributions from all the inelastic channels. The constraint above has a simple solution. If the real part of the scattering amplitude vanishes at the high energy limit, corresponding to small $`x`$ values, the solution is

$`a(s,𝐛)`$ $`=`$ $`i\left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{e}^{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }(\mathrm{s},𝐛)}\right],`$ (15)
$`\sigma _{tot}`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle d^2𝐛\left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{e}^{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }(\mathrm{s},𝐛)}\right]},`$ (16)
where the opacity $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is an arbitrary real function and it should be determined by a detailed model for the interaction. The opacity function has a simple physical interpretation, namely $`\mathrm{e}^\mathrm{\Omega }`$ corresponds to the probability that no inelastic scatterings with the target occur. To provide the connection with the Glauber formalism, the opacity function can be written in the factorized form $`\mathrm{\Omega }(s,𝐛)=\mathrm{\Omega }(s)S(𝐛)`$, considering $`S(𝐛)`$ normalized as $`d^2𝐛S(𝐛)=1`$ (for a detailed discussion, see i.e. ).

From Eqs. (16) and (9), we identify the opacity $`\mathrm{\Omega }(sQ^2/x;𝐫)=\sigma ^{\mathrm{nucleon}}(x,𝐫)`$. Moreover, it has been found that the same formalism for multiple scatterings can be applied to the nucleon case. To proceed, we should determine the $`GG`$ cross section. The gluon pair cross section is equivalent to the quark pair one, up to a color factor ($`\sigma ^{GG}=\frac{9}{4}\sigma ^{q\overline{q}}`$). The ($`q\overline{q}`$ pair) dipole-proton cross section is well known , calculated starting from Eq. (4), and in double logarithmic approximation (DLA) has the following form

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{nucleon}}^{q\overline{q}}(x,r)={\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2\alpha _s(\stackrel{~}{Q}^2)}{3}}r^2xG(x,\stackrel{~}{Q}^2)`$ (17)
with the $`r`$-dependent scale $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2=r_0^2/r^2`$. Considering Eq. (17) one can connect directly the dipole picture with the usual parton distributions (gluon), since they are solutions of the DGLAP equations. In our case, we follow the calculations in Ref.  and consider the effective scale $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2=4/r^2`$. Such a value differs from , where it is $`r_0^2=10`$, which is obtained by an averaging procedure on the transverse size integral of $`F_L`$. However, in further studies in vector mesons it was found that $`r_0^2`$ ranges from 4-15, and $`F_2`$ and $`F_L`$ are not sensitive to those variations. Thus, these values are consistent in leading logarithmic $`Q^2`$ approximation.

From the above expression, one obtains a dipole cross section satisfying the unitarity constraint and a framework to study the unitarity effects (saturation) in the gluon DGLAP distribution function. Hence, hereafter we use the Glauber-Mueller dipole cross section given by

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{GM}=2{\displaystyle d^2𝐛\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{\mathrm{nucleon}}^{\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}}(\mathrm{x},𝐫)\mathrm{S}(𝐛)}\right)}.`$ (18)
Here, some comments are in order. The Glauber-Mueller approach is valid in the small $`x`$ region, and the gluon emission is described in the double logarithmic approximation of perturbative QCD. The interaction of the quark pair with the nucleon (proton) occurs through ladder diagrams exchange, satisfying the DGLAP equations in the DLA limit. The high energy limit allows to treat successive scatterings as independent collisions, meaning the process described by the eikonal picture of a relativistic particle crossing the nucleus. Moreover, as a consequence of no correlation among nucleons inside the nucleus (in the nuclear case), there are no correlations among partons from different partonic cascades, stressing that only the fastest parton interacts with the target. The corrections coming from the slowest partons in the cascade (emitted by the pair) lead to the AGL non-linear evolution equation , and they have been considered recently to describe diffractive DIS in Ref. . Regarding criticisms to the Glauber-Mueller approach, we indicate the recent paper  for a complete discussion about the eikonal-like models, concerning their advantages and limitations as well as pointing out the improvements to be taken into account to introduce the proper corrections.

Now, we proceed to calculate numerical estimates of the dipole cross section using the Glauber-Mueller approach through Eqs. (17-18). Then we are calculating saturation effects in the color dipole picture. Firstly, we need to discuss the profile function $`S(b)`$. This function contains information about the angular distribution in the scattering, namely the $`t`$ dependence (quark pair-ladder and proton-ladder couplings). Both of them can be approximated by an exponential parametrization, leading to a simple gaussian shape in the impact parameter space, $`S(b)=\frac{A}{\pi R_A^2}e^{\frac{b^2}{R_A^2}}`$, where $`A`$ is the atomic number and $`R_A`$ is the target radius. We will keep this notation although we are only concerned with the nucleon case. The $`R_A^2`$ value should be determined from data, ranging between $`510`$ GeV-2 for the proton case (see discussions in ). For nuclear reactions, a more suitable shape for the profile should be taken into account, since the gaussian approximation is no longer appropriate to describe the nuclear profile for large $`A`$. Here, we have used the value ( $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2) obtained from a good description of both inclusive structure function and its derivative . Such a value corresponds to significative unitarity corrections to the standard DGLAP input even in the current HERA kinematics.

Now, we discuss in a detailed way the main characteristics emerging from the dipole cross section Eq. (18). In order to do this, in Fig. (2) one shows the Glauber-Mueller dipole cross section as a function of dipole transverse size $`r`$ at fixed momentum fraction $`x`$. For a better illustration on the expected partonic saturation effects, we run the Bjorken $`x`$ down to a quite small value $`x=10^7`$ (THERA region). Hereafter, we are using the GRV gluon distribution at leading order  in the input Eq. (17), whose choice we justify below. The solid lines correspond to the dipole cross section calculation, Eq. (18), whereas the dashed lines are the GBW model  presented for comparison. The general shape in terms of the dipole size comes from the balancing between the color transparency $`\sigma _{dip}r^2`$ behavior and the gluon distribution.

Here some comments about the large transverse separation are in order: although perturbative QCD provides reliable results at small distances (small dipole sizes), the nonperturbative sector is not still completely understood. The usual pdf’s are evoluted from a perturbative initial scale $`Q_0^21`$ GeV2, and one has little information about the behavior at $`Q^2Q_0^2`$. In general one makes use of Regge phenomenology to estimate those contributions (see, for instance ). Thus, extrapolating to lower virtuality regions (large dipole sizes) one needs a parametrization regarding the nonperturbative sector.

This is the main justification of the use the GRV94 parametrization  in our calculations. Bearing in mind that $`Q^2=4/r^2`$, its evolution initial scale is $`Q_0^2=0.4`$ GeV2 allowing to scan dipole sizes up to $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}=\frac{2}{Q_0}`$ GeV-1 (= 0.62 fm). For the most recent parametrizations, where $`Q_0^21`$ GeV2 ($`r_{\mathrm{cut}}0.4`$ fm) the amount of nonperturbative contribution in the calculations should increase. An additional advantage is that GRV94 does not include non-linear effects to the DGLAP evolution since the parametrization was obtained from rather large $`x`$ values. This feature ensures that the parametrization does not include unitarity corrections (perturbative shadowing effects) in the initial scale.

Now, we should introduce an ansatz for the large transverse separation region. A more phenomenological way is to match the pQCD dipole cross section with the typical hadronic one $`\sigma _{\pi N}`$ at $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ as performed in . However, due to the significant growth of the pQCD dipole cross section at high energies, we choose an alternative ansatz: the gluon distribution is frozen at scale $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$, namely $`xG(x,\stackrel{~}{Q}_{\mathrm{cut}}^2)`$. Then, for the large distance contribution $`rr_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ the gluon distribution reads as

$`xG(x,Q^2Q_0^2)={\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{Q_0^2}}xG(x,Q^2=Q_0^2),`$ (19)
leading to the correct behavior $`xGQ^2`$ as $`Q^20`$. In a more sophisticated case, one can substitute the freezed scale $`\stackrel{~}{Q}_{\mathrm{cut}}^2`$ by the saturation scale $`Q_s^2(x)`$ to take into account a realistic value of the gluon anomalous dimension in all kinematic region (see correlated issues in ).

Recently, the phenomenological model of Ref.  has produced a good description of HERA data in both inclusive and diffractive processes. It is constructed interplaying the color transparency behavior $`\sigma _{dip}r_{}^2`$ at small dipole sizes and a flat (saturated) behavior at large dipole sizes $`\sigma _{dip}\sigma _0`$ (confinement). The expression has the eikonal-like form,

$`\sigma _{q\overline{q}}(x,r)=\sigma _0\left[1\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{r^2Q_0^2}{4(x/x_0)^\lambda }}\right)\right],`$ (20)
where $`Q_0^2=1`$ GeV2 and the three fitted parameters are $`\sigma _0=23.03`$ mb, $`x_0=\mathrm{3.04\hspace{0.17em}10}^4`$ and $`\lambda =0.288`$ and the notation for the saturation radius $`R_0(x)=(x/x_0)^{\lambda /2}`$. The GBW total cross section lies below the typical hadronic cross section: for instance in the pion-proton case, convoluting the pion wavefunction squared with the GBW dipole cross section we would have a constant cross section at high energies $`\sigma _{tot}^{GBW}\sigma _{tot}^{\pi N}`$. Despite describing data in good agreement, GBW has some details that deserve some discussions: the approach does not present a dynamical hypothesis for the saturation phenomena and does not match DGLAP evolution. In GBW, saturation is characterized by the $`x`$-dependent saturation radius $`Q_s^2(x)=1/R_0^2(x)`$ instead of the scale coming from Glauber-Mueller, $`\kappa _G(x,Q_s^2)=1`$, which can be easily extended for the nuclear case .

In Fig. (2) one shows the Glauber-Mueller dipole cross section and the GBW model . We choose to compare them due to the fact that GBW is actually a particular case of the Glauber-Mueller approach, considering an oversimplified profile function. We should show below that this fact allows to construct an extended saturation model with DGLAP evolution  (BGK model). In the lower plots, where $`x=10^3`$ and $`x=10^4`$, the GM cross section underestimates the GBW one. However, as $`x`$ decreases the gluon distribution in the proton rises producing a bigger dipole cross section. This feature is clear in the upper plots, for smaller $`x=10^6`$ and $`x=10^7`$, where GM overestimates GBW by a significant factor mostly at intermediate $`r`$ values.

Finally, we show the connection between the Glauber-Mueller approach with the saturation model with DGLAP evolution , observing that it is timely since the latter is quite efficient in describing data and its qualitative success corroborates quantitative QCD studies. Considering the particular case of central collisions, namely scattering at impact parameter $`b=0`$ ($`S=A/\pi R_A^2`$), the Glauber-Mueller approach produces,

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{GM}(x,𝐫,b=0)=2{\displaystyle d^2𝐛\left(1\mathrm{e}^{\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{\mathrm{nucleon}}^{\mathrm{q}\overline{\mathrm{q}}}(\mathrm{x},𝐫)\frac{1}{\pi \mathrm{R}_\mathrm{A}^2}}\right)}.`$ (21)
The integration over $`b`$ can be promptly carryied out, and introducing the notation for the proper normalization for the dipole cross section, $`\sigma _02\pi _0^{R_A^2}𝑑b^2=2\pi R_A^2,`$ the Eq. (21) recovers the simple expression for the saturation model DGLAP evoluted ,

$`\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{BGK}(x,𝐫)=\sigma _0\left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2𝐫^2\alpha _s(\mu ^2)xG(x,\mu ^2)}{3\sigma _0}}\right)\right].`$ (22)
For a phenomenological analysis, the parameter $`\sigma _0`$ and the scale $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2`$ are determined from data in . In our case, it assumes the well defined value $`\sigma _0=12.22`$ mb, using $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2. For a larger radius, for instance $`R_A^2=10`$ GeV-2, one obtains a value $`\sigma _0=24`$ mb, closer to the GBW one. Here, the virtuality scale is $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2=4/r^2`$), whereas BGK choose the parametric form $`\stackrel{~}{Q}^2\mu ^2=C/r^2+\mu _0^2`$ and a two-parameter initial condition for the gluon distribution function.

## IV Unitarity Effects in $`ep`$ Collisions

This section is devoted to the study and estimate of the gluon driven observables measured at HERA kinematical domain in the rest frame. The first one is the inclusive structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$, the main quantity testing the small $`x`$ physics. The unitarity corrections are well established for this observable considering Glauber-Mueller approach  as well as its high energy asymptotics , namely the black disk limit. We review these issues considering the dipole picture (rest frame), using a more complete analysis similar to , but mostly, discuss in detail the role played by the nonperturbative physics needed to describe the structure function, and where in the transverse separation $`r`$ range it starts to be important.

The longitudinal structure function $`F_L(x,Q^2)`$ is also addressed, verifying the frame invariance in comparison with previous laboratory frame calculations . The longitudinal wavefunction strongly suppress large $`r`$ contributions, thus selecting smaller nonperturbative contribution in comparison with the $`F_2`$ case. Moreover, $`F_L`$ is one of the main observables scanning possible higher twist corrections in the standard Operator Product Expansion (OPE) . Therefore, a reasonable description of this quantity suggests that the Glauber-Mueller formalism (or similar eikonal-like approaches) take into account the most important contributions to the complete higher-twist corrections at current kinematical regimes.

The structure function $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2)`$ gives the charm quark content on the proton and is directly driven by the gluon distribution. Therefore it is a powerful observable to scan saturation effects in the small $`x`$ region. However the current experimental status requires more dedicated measurements and a better statistics. We verify a consistent description in the rest frame corroborating the similar analysis in the dipole models  and in those ones considering unitarity corrections in the laboratory frame .

### A The Inclusive Structure Function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$

Now we perform estimates for the inclusive structure function in the rest frame considering the Glauber-Mueller dipole cross section. The expression for $`F_2`$, with the explicit integration limits on photon momentum fraction $`z`$ and transverse separation $`r`$ is,

$`F_2(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{4\pi ^2\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d^2𝐫{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑z\left(|\mathrm{\Psi }_T(z,𝐫)|^2+|\mathrm{\Psi }_L(z,𝐫)|^2\right)\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{GM}(x,𝐫^2).`$ (23)
The notation has been introduced in the previous sections. In the Fig. (3) one shows the estimates for the structure function for representative virtualities $`Q^2`$ from the latest H1 Collaboration measurements . The longitudinal and transverse contributions are shown separately, the longitudinal one being subdominant as is well known. An effective light quark mass ($`u,d,s`$ quarks) was taken, with the value $`m_q=300`$ MeV, and the target radius is considered $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2, in agreement with Ref. . It should be stressed that this value leads to larger saturation corrections rather than using radius ranging over $`R_A^2815`$ GeV-2. The soft contribution comes from the freezing of the gluon distribution at large transverse separation as discussed at the previous section. The gluon distribution considered is GRV94 at leading order , $`xG^{\mathrm{GRV}}(x,\frac{4}{r^2})`$, whose choice has been justified in the previous section.

From the plots we verify a good agreement in the normalization, however the slope seems quite steep. This fact is due to the modeling for the soft contribution and it suggests that a more suitable nonperturbative input should be taken. Indeed, in Ref.  such a question is addressed, claiming that the correct input is the pion-proton cross section parametrized through the Donnachie-Landshoff pomeron. It is found that the large transverse separations give a larger contribution at low $`Q^2`$, whereas it vanishes concerning higher virtualities.

To clarify this issue, we can calculate the integrand $`H_{q\overline{q}}(r,x,Q^2)`$ used in the $`r`$-integration for the cross section $`\sigma _T=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑rH_{q\overline{q}T}(r,x,Q^2)`$, that should have significant nonperturbative content. We plot in the Fig. (4) this quantity at low virtuality $`Q^2=2`$ GeV2 and at higher one $`Q^2=30`$ GeV2 for momentum fraction ranging on $`10^4<x<10^2`$, verifying that the main contribution comes from an asymmetric peak at $`r0.15`$ fm for $`Q^2=2`$ GeV2, while it is shifted to $`r0.07`$ at $`Q^2=30`$ GeV2. In our calculation, the perturbative contribution holds up to $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}=0.62`$ fm, therefore the region $`r>r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ gives a non marginal contribution to the cross section at low virtualities. Indeed, one has found that it reaches about 10 % at $`Q^2=2`$ GeV2 and that when the virtuality increases the contribution gradually vanishes. In fact, using the most recent pdf’s this situation is more critical since $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}`$ is smaller ($`Q_0^212`$ GeV2). This suggests that the photon piece $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_T(z,r)|^2`$ multiplying the dipole cross section enhances the $`r`$-integrand to smaller $`r`$ at high $`Q^2`$, corroborating a similar conclusion already found in Ref. .

To clarify the role played by the soft nonperturbative contribution to the inclusive structure function and to verify the frame invariance of the approach, in the Fig. (5) we plot separately the perturbative contribution and parametrize the soft contribution introducing the nonperturbative structure function $`F_2^{\mathrm{soft}}=𝒞_{\mathrm{soft}}x^{0.08}(1x)^{10}`$ , which is added to the perturbative one. The soft piece normalization is $`𝒞_{\mathrm{soft}}=0.22`$. Such procedure is done in order to compare explicitly the results found in Ref. . Accordingly, we have used just shadowing corrections for the quark sector, taking into account only the transverse photon wavefunction and zero quark mass. The integration on the transverse separation is taken for $`1/Q^2r^21/Q_0^2`$, with $`Q_0^2=0.4`$ GeV2 for leading order GRV94 gluon distribution. This leads to a residual contribution absorbed in the the soft piece coming from transverse separations $`r^2<1/Q^2`$. We considered the target radius being $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV2 (supported by ), which produces a correction more important than the value $`R_A^2=10`$ GeV2. It is again verified that the soft contribution is important at small virtualities and decreasing as it gets larger. In the plots, the dot-dashed lines represent only the perturbative calculations using the particular approximations indicated above, and the solid lines represent the results when we add the soft term.

Concluding, we have a theoretical estimate, i.e. no fitting procedure, of the inclusive structure function $`F_2(x,Q^2)`$ through the Glauber-Mueller approach for the dipole cross section, detecting a non negligible importance of a suitable input for the large dipole size region.

### B The Longitudinal Structure Function $`F_L(x,Q^2)`$

As we saw in the Sec. (II), the inclusive structure function can be expressed in terms of the cross sections $`\sigma _T`$ and $`\sigma _L`$ for the absortion of virtual photons transversally and longitudinally polarized, $`F_2(x,Q^2)=\frac{Q^2}{4\pi \alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}(\sigma _T+\sigma _L)`$. At small $`x`$, the longitudinal structure function is

$`F_L(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{4\pi \alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}}\sigma _L(x,Q^2).`$ (24)
From QED, the longitudinal photons have zero helicity ($`h=0`$) and therefore they have a virtual character. In the naive parton model, the helicity conservation for the electromagnetic vertex implies to the Callan-Gross relation $`F_2=2xF_1`$ and consequently a vanishing value for the longitudinal structure function $`F_LF_22xF_1`$, considering the scattering photon-quarks (spin 1/2). From QCD theory, this quantity has a non-zero value due to the gluon radiation, as is encoded in the Altarelli-Martinelli expression (see discussion in )

$`F_L(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s(Q^2)}{2\pi }}x^2{\displaystyle _x^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dy}{y^3}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{8}{3}}F_2(x,Q^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{40}{9}}yG(y,Q^2)\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{x}{y}}\right)\right],`$ (25)
where $`y=Q^2/sx`$ is the inelasticity variable. Therefore, the structure function $`F_L`$ is an auxiliary observable to detect saturation effects (unitarity corrections) in the gluon distribution.

Experimentally, the determination of the $`F_L`$ is quite limited, providing few data points. Most recently, the H1 Collaboration has determined the longitudinal structure function through the reduced double differential cross section ,

$`\sigma _rF_2(x,Q^2){\displaystyle \frac{y^2}{Y_+}}.F_L(x,Q^2),`$ (26)
where $`Y_+=1+(1y)^2`$. For large inelasticity, the reduced cross section becomes $`(F_2F_L)`$ and the contribution of $`F_L`$ is enhanced for large $`y`$. The longitudinal structure function should be obtained only in the region of large inelasticity, covered in a large range at HERA. In Ref. , two methods were used to perform the extraction: (i) for large $`Q^2>10`$ GeV2, $`F_L`$ is obtained through the extrapolation method, using a NLO DGLAP QCD fit (in the restrict kinematic range $`y<0.35`$ and $`Q^23.5`$ GeV2) to extrapolate $`F_2`$ into the high $`y`$ region. (ii) At low $`Q^2<10`$ GeV2, the behavior of $`F_2`$ as a function of $`\mathrm{ln}y`$ is obtained using the derivative method, based on the cross section derivative $`\left(\sigma _r/\mathrm{ln}y\right)_{Q^2}`$. The data points obtained are consistent with the previous measurements, however they are more precise and lying into a broader kinematical range. Therefore, in the following we use only the new data points to analyse.

In Fig. (6) we present the estimates for the $`F_L`$ structure function, in representative virtualities as a function of $`x`$. For the calculations, it was considered light quarks ($`u,d,s`$) with effective mass $`m_q=300`$ MeV and the target radius $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2. The large $`r`$ region is considered by the freezening of the gluon distribution at that region. Our expression for the observable is then,

$`F_L(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{4\pi ^2\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d^2𝐫{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑z|\mathrm{\Psi }_L(z,𝐫)|^2\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{GM}(x,𝐫^2).`$ (27)
The behavior is in agreement with the experimental result, either in shape as in normalization. A better description can be obtained by fine tunning the target size or the considered gluon distribution function, however it should be stressed that the present prediction is parameter-free and determined using the dipole picture taking into account unitarity (saturation) effects in the effective dipole cross section. We verify that the rest frame calculation, taking into account the dipole degrees of freedom and unitarity effects produces similar conclusions to those ones using the Breit system. For instance, in a previous work , the unitarity corrections to the longitudinal structure function were estimated in the laboratory frame considering the Eq. (25), with unitarized expressions for $`F_2`$ and $`xG(x,Q^2)`$, obtaining that the expected corrections reach to $`70`$ % as $`\mathrm{ln}(1/x)=15`$, namely on the kinematical sector of the upcoming THERA project.

The higher twist corrections to the longitudinal structure function have been pointed out. For instance, Bartels et al.  have calculated numerically the twist-four correction obtaining that they are large for $`F_T`$ and $`F_L`$, although with opposite signs. This fact leads to remaining small effects to the inclusive structure function by almost complete cancellation between those contributions. The higher twist content is analyzed considering the model  as initial condition.

Concerning $`F_L`$, it was found that the twist-four correction is large and has negative signal, concluding that a leading twist analysis of $`F_L`$ is unreliable for high $`Q^2`$ and not too small $`x`$. The results are in agreement with the simple parametrization for higher twist (HT) studied by the MRST group in Ref. , where $`F_2^{HT}(x,Q^2)=F_2^{LT}(x,Q^2)(1+\frac{D_2^{HT}(x)}{Q^2})`$. The second term would parametrize the higher twist content. In our case, the unitarity corrections provide an important amount of higher twist content, namely it takes into account some of the several graphs determining the twist expansion (for recent discussions in these issues, see ).

### C The Charm Structure Function $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2)`$

In perturbative QCD, the heavy quark production in electron-proton interaction occurs basicaly through photon-gluon fusion, in which the emitted photon interacts with a gluon from the proton generating a quark-antiquark pair. Therefore, the heavy quark production allows to determine the gluon distribution and the amount of unitarity (saturation) effects for the observable. In particular, charmed mesons have been measured at deep-inelastic at HERA and the corresponding structure function $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2)`$ is defined from the differential cross section for the $`c\overline{c}`$ pair production,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d^2\sigma ^{c\overline{c}}}{dxdQ^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{2\pi \alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}{xQ^4}}\left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+(1y)^2\right]F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2),`$ (28)
with $`y`$ being the inelasticity variable. In the laboratory frame, the dominant mechanism is the boson-gluon fusion $`\gamma ^{}Gc\overline{c}`$. Hence, the charm structure function is directly driven by the gluon distribution and provides constraints for the gluonic function. In leading order (LO), it is written as ,

$`F_2(x,Q^2,m_c^2)={\displaystyle \frac{4\alpha _s(\mu _F^2)}{9\pi }}{\displaystyle _{a_cx}^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dy}{y}}C_{g,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}^c({\displaystyle \frac{x}{y}},{\displaystyle \frac{m_c^2}{Q^2}})xG(y,\mu _F^2),`$ (29)
where $`a_c=(1+\frac{m_c^2}{Q^2})`$. The mass factorization scale lies in the range $`m_c^2\mu _F^24(Q^2+4m_c^2)`$. Such a scale introduces an uncertainty of about 10 %, and an additional source of uncertainty is the charm mass, in general ranging on $`1.2m_c1.7`$ GeV. The standard QCD coefficient function is labeled by $`C_{g,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}^c(z,\frac{m_c^2}{Q^2})`$.

Experimentally, the latest measurements of the charm structure function are obtained by measuring mesons $`D^\pm `$ production . From the theoretical input, it was used NLO coefficient functions, considering charm mass $`m_c=1.4`$ GeV and factorization-normalization scale $`\mu _F=\sqrt{Q^2+4m_c^2}`$. The function $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2)`$ shows an increase with decreasing $`x`$ at constant values of $`Q^2`$, whereas the rise becomes more intense at higher virtualities. The data are consistent with the NLO DGLAP calculations. Concerning the ratio $`R^{c\overline{c}}=F_2^{c\overline{c}}/F_2`$, the charm contribution to $`F_2`$ grows steeply as $`x`$ diminishes. It contributes less than 10% at low $`Q^2`$ and reaches to about 30 % for $`Q^2>120`$ GeV2 .

Once more the color dipole picture will provide a quite simple description for the charm structure function in a factorized way. Now, the Glauber-Mueller dipole cross section is weighted by the photon wavefunction constituted by a $`c\overline{c}`$ pair with mass $`m_c`$. Our expression for the charmed contribution in deep inelastic is thus written as

$`F_2^{c\overline{c}}(x,Q^2)={\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{4\pi ^2\alpha _{\mathrm{em}}}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d^2𝐫{\displaystyle _0^1}𝑑z\left(|\mathrm{\Psi }_T^{c\overline{c}}(z,𝐫)|^2+|\mathrm{\Psi }_L^{c\overline{c}}(z,𝐫)|^2\right)\sigma _{\mathrm{dipole}}^{GM}(x,𝐫^2)`$ (30)
where $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{T,L}^{c\overline{c}}(z,𝐫)|^2`$ is the probability to find in the photon the $`c\overline{c}`$ color dipole with the charmed quark carrying fraction $`z`$ of the photon’s light-cone momentum with $`T,L`$ polarizations. For the correspondent wavefunctions, the quark mass in Eqs. (2,3) should be substituted by the charm quark mass $`m_c`$. Here, we should take care of the connection between the Regge parameter $`x=(W^2+Q^2)/(Q^2+4m_q^2)`$ and the Bjorken variable $`x_{\mathrm{Bj}}`$. For calculations with the light quarks these variables are equivalent, however for heavier quarks the correct relation is ,

$`x_{\mathrm{Bj}}=x\left({\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{Q^2+4m_c^2}}\right).`$ (31)
In Fig. (7) we show the estimates for the charm structure function as a function of $`x_{\mathrm{Bj}}`$ \[Eq. (31)\] for representative virtualities. In our calculations, it was used the charm mass $`m_c=1.5`$ GeV, the target size $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2 and the frozen gluon distibution at large $`r`$. We have verified a small soft contribution as in the $`F_L`$ case, decreasing as the virtuality rises. There is a slight sensitivity to the value of the charm mass, increasing the overall normalization as $`m_c`$ diminishes. Such a feature suggests that the charm mass is a hard scale suppressing the non-perturbative contribution to the corresponding cross section, which is in agreement with the recent BFKL color dipole calculations of Nikolaev-Zoller  and Donnachie-Dosch .

Regarding the Breit system description, in Ref.  it was found strong corrections to the charm structure function, which are larger than those of the $`F_2`$ ones making use of expression (29). Considering the ratio $`R_2^c=F_2^{c\mathrm{GM}}(x,Q^2)/F_2^{c\mathrm{DGLAP}}(x,Q^2)`$, the corrections predicted by the Glauber-Mueller approach would reach to 62 % at values of $`\mathrm{ln}(1/x)15`$ (THERA region). Then, an important result is a large deviation of the standard DGLAP expectations at small $`x`$ for the ratio $`R^{c\overline{c}}=F_2^{c\overline{c}}/F_2`$ due to the saturation phenomena (unitarization). With our calculation one verifies that it is obtained a good description of data in both reference systems, suggesting a consistent estimation of the unitarity effects for this quantity.

## V Conclusions

We study the dipole picture for the description of deep inelastic scattering, focusing on observables driven directly by the gluon distribution. Starting from the dipole cross section provided by the Glauber-Mueller approach in QCD, we perform estimates for the inclusive structure function $`F_2`$, the longitudinal function $`F_L`$ and the charm structure function on the proton $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$.

For each of the observables discussed, we obtain theoretical estimates, in the rest frame, without further fitting procedure, in good agreement with the updated data from HERA. The resulting calculations corroborate a quite consistent picture for the unitarity corrections from the Glauber-Mueller approach in both Breit and rest reference systems. In the laboratory frame the unitarity effects are connected with the gluon distribution function, whereas in the color dipole framework the basic block is the dipole cross section which is corrected considering saturation effects.

The small transverse separation $`r`$ region is dominated by the leading log DGLAP formalism, with the additional ingredient of unitarization phenomenon as the momentum fraction acquires quite small values. Such corrections are associated with the taming of the gluon distribution in the very small $`x`$ region, in general named saturation regime. However, it should be stressed that the Glauber-Mueller approach and similar eikonal-like models provide a logarithmic $`\mathrm{ln}(1/x)`$ asymptotic behavior for the inclusive structure function and gluon distribution, instead of a constant value for asymptotic energies.

The large transverse separation is described by non-perturbative aspects of QCD. Since this domain is not well determined at the moment, some modelling of the soft region is needed. In this work we choose the ansätz in which the gluon distribution is frozen for virtualities above a cut radius $`r^2>r_{\mathrm{cut}}^2`$ , which corresponds to the region $`Q^2<Q_0^2`$. A convenient choice for the gluon pdf in order to cover the widest possible kinematical window diminishes the uncertainty coming from the soft sector. The most appropriated input is the GRV94 parametrization, where $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}=0.6`$ fm is found, whereas it can take values $`r_{\mathrm{cut}}=0.40.5`$ fm for the more recent pdf’s. Throughout the paper we used the target size $`R_A^2=5`$ GeV-2, which corresponds to strong unitarity corrections.

When performing a comparison with the phenomenological model GBW, we have found that the Glauber-Mueller approach underestimate the dipole cross section from GBW at not small $`x10^3`$. Instead, for very low $`x10^4`$ the Glauber-Mueller overestimates GBW due to the strong increasing of the gluon function in this region. Concerning the saturation model with DGLAP evolution (BGK), it is a particular case of the GM approach when considering central scattering $`b=0`$. Despite that the BGK model matches DGLAP evolution, Glauber-Mueller describes more properly the realistic impact parameter dependence of the process. Moreover, in GM the extension to the nuclear case is built in.

When considering the structure function $`F_2`$, we have found that it is dominated by small transverse distances contributions. However, a non-negligible content from the soft sector is present. Moreover, the photon wavefunctions enhances the dipole cross section into smaller dipole sizes, since the weight function selects smaller $`r`$ as the virtuality $`Q^2`$ diminishes. Our estimates here are parameter-free, however a fine tunning of the parameters can improve the data description. Furthermore, we notice that in calculations from , only the aligned jet dipole configuration $`z`$, $`(1z)0`$ (and only transverse contribution) is considered, whereas we take into account all configurations, including the symmetric ones. Thus, all dipole sizes, even those from the non-perturbative region are included in our results.

Concerning $`F_L`$, the estimates are consistent with the previous calculations in the Breit system and are in good agreement with data. A remarkable feature is that the Glauber-Mueller approach in the color dipole framework gives important higher twist contributions to the leading twist calculation in a simple way. As is well known, $`F_L`$ is the main quantity to study the expected higher twist effects in low virtualities.

The function $`F_2^{c\overline{c}}`$ is directly dependent of the gluon distribution and important unitarity corrections had been found when considering the Breit frame. Here, we verify consistent results in the rest frame in comparison with the previous ones in the fast proton system. We verified that the charm mass suppressed soft contributions in comparison with the $`F_2`$ case, and the results present a slight dependence with the specific value of $`m_c`$.

In conclusion, the Glauber-Mueller approach provides a well stablished formalism to take into account the unitarity effects. It allows to estimate the higher twist contributions to relavant observables in a simplified way, while matching DGLAP evolution equation at Born level and including the impact parameter dependence properly.

## Acknowledgments

MVTM acknowledges Martin McDermott (Liverpool University-UK), Igor Ivanov (IKP-Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany) and Victor Gonçalves (IFM-UFPel, Brazil) for useful enlightenements. This work was partially financed by CNPq, Brazil.


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# Characteristic length scale and energy of a vortex line in a dilute, superfluid Fermi gas

## Abstract

We calculate the characteristic length scale of a vortex line in a dilute, superfluid gas of fermionic atoms, and find that it is in general smaller, and has a weaker density dependence than the BCS coherence length. Taking this into account, we find the energy of a vortex line to be larger than has previously been estimated. As a consequence, the critical frequency for formation of vortices in trapped fermion gases can be significantly larger than earlier calculations have suggested.

The transition to a superfluid Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) state at low temperatures is a generic feature of Fermi systems with an attractive effective interaction. The low-temperature superconductors and liquid $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}`$ are the most familiar examples, but the phenomenon can also be seen in more exotic systems like atomic nuclei, and superfluids are also thought to be important in neutron stars . Shortly after Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute gas of $`{}_{}{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}`$ atoms was achieved , the possibility of observing the BCS transition to a superfluid state in a dilute gas of trapped fermionic atoms was proposed . Trapping and cooling of fermionic alkali atoms have now been achieved, reaching temperatures as low as $`T_F/4`$ for $`{}_{}{}^{40}\mathrm{K}`$  and $`{}_{}{}^{6}\mathrm{Li}`$ , where $`T_F`$ is the Fermi temperature. The typical transition temperature for weakly interacting fermions is $`T_c10^3T_F`$, but one hopes to create systems with $`T_c10^1T_F`$ in the experiments. If temperatures below $`T_c`$ can be reached, a new and exciting laboratory for studying properties of fermion superfluids will be at our disposal. Finding experimental signatures of the BCS transition in these systems is therefore important, and considerable effort has been invested in this problem .

The study of quantized vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates has led to many interesting results , and recently the vortex state in trapped fermionic gases has also been studied  as a means for detecting a superfluid state in these systems. A fundamental quantity in these considerations is the critical rotational frequency for the creation of a vortex line with one quantum of circulation. The gases in the experiments are inhomogeneous because of the trapping potential, but if the vortex is produced near the center of the trap, one can estimate the critical frequency starting from the energy per unit length, $`_v`$, of a vortex in homogeneous matter . Recently, Bruun and Viverit  calculated $`_v`$ at zero temperature, assuming that the size of the vortex core, the region where the order parameter drops from its value in homogeneous matter to zero, is given by the BCS coherence length $`\xi _0`$. However, several studies of vortices in low-temperature superconductors  have found that the formation of bound quasiparticle states localized near the center of the vortex can cause the size of the vortex core to be much smaller than $`\xi _0`$ at low temperatures. The same effect has been found for vortices in superfluid neutron matter , and we will in this Letter argue that it is also present in dilute gases, and that this can lead to a significantly larger vortex energy than that found in .

We consider a dilute, homogeneous gas of fermionic atoms in two different hyperfine states, held at temperature $`T=0`$. In this limit the Pauli principle dictates that the effective $`s`$-wave interaction between two atoms in the same hyperfine state vanish. The interaction between two atoms in different states can be approximated by the $`s`$-wave scattering length $`a`$. For a negative scattering length, the interaction is attractive and if the number of particles in the two states is the same, the $`T=0`$ ground state of the gas is superfluid. Theoretically, the formation of a superfluid state is signaled by a non-zero value for the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, which is proportional to the critical temperature $`T_c`$. In the dilute gas limit $`k_F|a|1`$, where $`k_F`$ is the Fermi wavenumber, it is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0=\left(\frac{2}{e}\right)^{7/3}ϵ_Fe^{\pi /2k_F|a|},$$
(1)
where $`ϵ_F=\mathrm{}^2k_F^2/2m_a`$, $`m_a`$ being the mass of an atom, is the Fermi energy . Corrections from the so-called induced interaction modify the numerical prefactor in this result, but the dependence on $`k_F`$ and $`|a|`$ remains the same .

The energy per unit length of a vortex line with respect to the homogeneous ground state of the superfluid can be estimated by adding the kinetic energy associated with the velocity field around the vortex, and the loss of condensation energy in the vortex core . In this approximation the vortex core is treated as a cylindrical column of normal matter with radius equal to the BCS coherence length $`\xi _0=\mathrm{}v_F/\pi \mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, where $`v_F=\mathrm{}k_F/m_a`$. The result is

$$_v=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_\sigma }{2m_a}\mathrm{ln}\left(D\frac{R_c}{\xi _0}\right),$$
(2)
where $`n_\sigma =k_F^3/6\pi ^2`$ is the number density of one hyperfine state, and $`D=1.36`$. The energy can also be calculated from Ginzburg-Landau theory, and the result turns out to be of the same form, but with $`D=1.65`$ , again assuming that $`\xi _0`$ is the characteristic length scale for the vortex. However, at low temperatures the microscopic properties of the system are important, and, as we will argue below, the existence of quasiparticle states localized near the center of the vortex has to be taken into account at very low temperatures.

The microscopic properties of vortices in fermion superfluids can be derived from the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations , which we write as

$$_{\mathrm{BdG}}\mathrm{\Psi }_i(𝐫)=E_i\mathrm{\Psi }_i(𝐫),$$
(3)
where

$$_{\mathrm{BdG}}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}H_o(𝐫)& \mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)\\ \mathrm{\Delta }^{}(𝐫)& H_o^{}(𝐫)\end{array}\right),$$
(4)
with $`H_o=\mathrm{}^2^2/2m_aϵ_F`$, and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_i=(u_i,v_i)^T`$, where $`u_i`$ and $`v_i`$ are the coefficients in the Bogoliubov quasiparticle transformation, and $`i`$ symbolizes the quantum numbers characterizing the quasiparticle states. The order parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)`$ at temperature $`T`$ is determined by the self-consistency condition

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)=\frac{4\pi \mathrm{}^2|a|}{m_a}\underset{i}{}u_i(𝐫)v_i^{}(𝐫)\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{E_i}{2k_BT}\right),$$
(5)
where $`k_B`$ is Boltzmann’s constant. In cylindrical coordinates $`(\rho ,\phi ,z)`$, a vortex with one quantum of circulation can be described by a complex order parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)=|\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)|e^{i\theta (𝐫)}`$. For a straight vortex line along the axis of the container, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)|=\mathrm{\Delta }(\rho )`$, and $`\theta =\phi `$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\rho )`$ starts out at zero in the center of the vortex core at $`\rho =0`$, and increases asymptotically to the value in homogeneous matter $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$. The low-lying quasiparticle states can be obtained analytically, as first shown by Caroli et al. . Kramer and Pesch  used a similar approach in a study of vortices in type II superconductors, where they showed that at low temperatures, a new length scale, different from $`\xi _0`$, characterizes the size of the vortex core. Their calculation, translated to our notation, is as follows: We label the lowest eigenstates of the BdG Hamiltonian by their angular momentum $`\mu `$, equal to half an odd integer, and the $`z`$ component of the momentum $`k_z=k_F\mathrm{sin}\theta `$, where $`\theta `$ is the angle between $`𝐤_F`$ and the $`xy`$ plane. For $`0<\mu k_F\xi _0`$, where $`k_F\xi _0`$ is of order 10-100 in the weak coupling regime, and for small $`\rho `$, one finds that these eigenstates are of the form

$`u_\mu (𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{k_F\mathrm{\Delta }_0}{2L_zv_F}}\right)e^{i(\mu +1/2)\phi }J_{\mu +1/2}(k_F\rho \mathrm{cos}\theta )`$ (6)
$`v_\mu (𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{k_F\mathrm{\Delta }_0}{2L_zv_F}}\right)e^{i(\mu 1/2)\phi }J_{\mu 1/2}(k_F\rho \mathrm{cos}\theta )`$ (7)
where $`J_p`$ is a cylindrical Bessel function and $`L_z`$ is the length of the vortex line. We define the characteristic length scale of the vortex core via the behavior of the order parameter near $`\rho =0`$:

$$\underset{\rho 0}{lim}\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)=e^{i\phi }\mathrm{\Delta }_0\frac{\rho }{\xi _1}.$$
(8)
As $`T0`$, the sum in Eq. (5) is dominated by the lowest positive energy state, $`\mu =1/2`$. Inserting Eqs. (6) and (7) for $`\mu =1/2`$, and using $`J_p(x)\frac{1}{p!}\left(\frac{x}{2}\right)^p`$ for $`x1`$, we obtain the behavior of the order parameter near $`\rho =0`$ from Eq. (5) as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐫)=\frac{\pi |a|}{m_a}\frac{k_F}{L_zv_F}\mathrm{\Delta }_0e^{i\phi }\rho \underset{k_z}{}\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{E_{1/2,k_z}}{2k_BT}\right).$$
(9)
By comparing with Eq. (8) we find

$$\frac{1}{\xi _1}=\frac{\pi k_F|a|}{L_z}\underset{k_z}{}\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{E_{1/2,k_z}}{2k_BT}\right),$$
(10)
where we have used $`v_F=k_F/m_a`$. Converting the sum over $`k_z`$ to an integral over $`\theta `$ through the relation

$$\underset{k_z}{}=\frac{L_z}{2\pi }𝑑k_z=\frac{L_zk_F}{2\pi }_0^\pi 𝑑\theta \mathrm{cos}\theta ,$$
(11)
we find

$$\frac{1}{\xi _1}=\frac{k_F^2|a|}{2}_0^\pi \mathrm{cos}^2\theta d\theta =\frac{\pi k_F^2|a|}{4},$$
(12)
since $`\mathrm{tanh}(E_{1/2,k_z}/2k_BT)1`$ as $`T0`$. The characteristic length scale at low temperatures $`TT_c`$ is therefore given by

$$\xi _1=\frac{4}{\pi k_F^2|a|},$$
(13)
and is seen to be a result of the dominating role played by the low-lying eigenstates of the BdG Hamiltonian at low temperatures. Numerical results obtained by Gygi and Schlüter  have supported this conclusion. Furthermore, De Blasio and Elgarøy , in a study of vortices in superfluid neutron matter at $`T=0`$, considered various ways of defining the vortex core size. They all gave characteristic sizes generally smaller than $`\xi _0`$, the differences being particularly pronounced for low values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, which is the case in the dilute gas limit. The most important feature, however, was that they had a much weaker dependence on $`k_F|a|`$ than the BCS coherence length, and that the overall trend of the numerical results was well approximated by the Kramer-Pesch estimate for the vortex core size, $`\xi _1`$. The ratio of this quantity to $`\xi _0`$, $`\xi _1/\xi _0e^{\pi /2k_F|a|}/k_F|a|`$, is plotted in Fig. 1, and can be seen to be much smaller than one in the weak coupling regime.

To estimate the vortex energy per unit length at zero temperature, we follow the approach of , but with the important modification that we take the vortex core size to be given by $`\xi _1`$ instead of $`\xi _0`$. The vortex is modeled as a cylindrical region of radius $`\xi _1`$ containing normal matter, surrounded by a velocity field with magnitude given by $`v_s=\mathrm{}/2m_a\rho `$. The superfluid is confined within a cylinder of radius $`R_c\xi _1`$, and is assumed to be uniform along the $`z`$-direction, which also defines the vortex axis. The energy per unit length $`_v`$ of the vortex state with respect to the homogeneous superfluid can then be divided into two contributions. The first is the kinetic energy associated with the flow of the superfluid outside the vortex core, given by

$`_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\xi _1}^{R_c}}m_an_\sigma \left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2m_a\rho }}\right)^22\pi \rho 𝑑\rho `$ (14)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_\sigma }{2m_a}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{R_c}{\xi _1}}\right),`$ (15)
and the second contribution, coming from the loss of condensation energy in the vortex core, can be estimated by multiplying the BCS result for the condensation energy per volume, $`ϵ_{\mathrm{cond}}=3\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2n_\sigma /4ϵ_F`$, with the area of the vortex core $`\pi \xi _1^2`$. This gives

$$_{\mathrm{cond}}=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_\sigma }{2m_a}\frac{3}{\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\xi _1}{\xi _0}\right)^2.$$
(16)
The total energy can therefore be written in the usual form

$$_v=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_\sigma }{2m_a}\mathrm{ln}\left(D\frac{R_c}{\xi _0}\right),$$
(17)
however, in contrast with Eq. (2), $`D`$ is now a function of $`k_F|a|`$ through the ratio $`\xi _1/\xi _0`$. Since $`\xi _1\xi _0`$ in the weak coupling regime, we have

$$D=\frac{\xi _0}{\xi _1}\left[1+\frac{3}{\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\xi _1}{\xi _0}\right)^2\right],$$
(18)
and the vortex energy is to a good approximation given by $`\mathrm{ln}(R_c/\xi _1)`$, which has also been found to be the case in neutron matter . Note that $`D`$ is essentially the inverse of the quantity plotted in Fig. 1, and so it increases rapidly with decreasing $`k_F|a|`$. At the limit of the region where weak coupling can reasonably be expected to hold, $`k_F|a|0.4`$, $`D20.0`$, which is an order of magnitude larger than in the estimate in Eq. (2).

We can now estimate the critical rotation frequency for a dilute gas of atoms trapped in a cylindrically symmetric harmonic oscillator potential

$$V(𝐫)=\frac{1}{2}m_a\omega _z^2[z^2+\lambda _T^2(x^2+y^2)],$$
(19)
where $`\lambda _T`$ describes the anisotropy of the trap. We will use the Thomas-Fermi result for the density profile of this gas, given by

$$n_\sigma (\rho ,z)=n_{\sigma ,0}\left(1\frac{\lambda _T^2\rho ^2+z^2}{R_z^2}\right)^{3/2},$$
(20)
where $`n_{\sigma ,0}=n_\sigma (0,0)`$ is the central density of the cloud, $`R_z=(48N_\sigma \lambda _T^2)^{1/6}l_{\mathrm{osc}}`$ is the extent of the cloud in the $`z`$-direction, $`N_\sigma `$ is the number of atoms in the hyperfine state $`\sigma `$, and $`l_{\mathrm{osc}}=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m_a\omega _z}`$ . Following Lundh et al. , we divide the cloud into vertical slices of height $`dz`$, and use (17) for a cylinder of radius $`\rho _1`$ such that $`\xi _1\rho _1R_{}=R_z/\lambda _T`$, where the gas can be considered uniform. The energy per unit length of the slice at $`z`$ can then be written as

$`_v`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_\sigma (0,z)}{2m_a}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\rho _1}{\xi _1(z)}}\right)`$ (21)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\rho _1}^{R_{}(z)}}m_an_\sigma (\rho ,z)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{2m_a\rho }}\right)^22\pi \rho 𝑑\rho ,`$ (22)
with $`R_{}(z)=(1z^2/R_z^2)^{1/2}R_z/\lambda _T`$ being the extent of the cloud in the $`\rho `$-direction for a given $`z`$, and $`n_\sigma (0,z)`$ is the density along the $`z`$-axis. Inserting Eq. (20) and integrating, one finds

$`_v(z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_{\sigma ,0}}{2m_a}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{z^2}{R_z^2}}\right)^{3/2}`$ (23)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{ln}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2}{e^{4/3}}}{\displaystyle \frac{R_z}{\lambda _T\xi _1(0)}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{z^2}{R_z^2}}\right)^{3/2}\right],`$ (24)
where $`\xi _1(0)`$ is the value of $`\xi _1`$ at the center of the cloud. Integrating over $`z`$, we obtain the total energy of the vortex as

$$E_v=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n_{\sigma ,0}}{2m_a}\frac{3\pi }{8}R_z\mathrm{ln}\left(0.379\frac{R_z}{\lambda _T\xi _1(0)}\right).$$
(25)
The critical rotation frequency $`\omega _{c1}`$ for creating a vortex in the trap is given by $`\omega _{c1}=E_v/L_v`$ where $`L_v=N_\sigma \mathrm{}`$ is the angular momentum of the vortex state. Using $`N_\sigma =\pi ^2R_z^3n_{\sigma ,0}/8\lambda _T^2`$, we find

$$\omega _{c1}=\frac{3}{2}\omega _{}\frac{l_{}^2}{R_{}^2}\mathrm{ln}\left(0.379\frac{R_{}}{\xi _1(0)}\right),$$
(26)
where $`l_{}=l_{\mathrm{osc}}/\lambda _T`$. To compare with the result of Ref. , we take $`\lambda _T=1`$ so that $`\omega _z=\omega _{}\omega `$, and set $`k_{F,0}|a|=0.4`$, $`ϵ_F=200\mathrm{}\omega `$, corresponding to an isotropic trap with $`N_\sigma 1.310^6`$. With these values, we obtain $`\omega _{c1}0.014\omega `$, four times larger than in . In Fig. (2) the ratio between the critical frequency found in this paper and the one found in  is plotted as a function of $`k_F|a|`$, with the other parameters kept at the same values as above. Note that $`\omega _{c1}`$ turns negative for small values of $`k_F|a|`$, reflecting that the condition $`\xi _1R_{}`$ is violated. For the parameters used in this example, this occurs at $`k_F|a|0.01`$ for $`\omega _{c1}`$ given by Eq. (26), and for $`k_F|a|0.33`$ for the corresponding result in Ref. .

To conclude, we have estimated the energy of a vortex in a uniform, dilute gas of atoms at $`T=0`$. The quasiparticle states in the core of the vortex introduce a new characteristic length scale $`\xi _1`$ which has a weaker density dependence than the BCS coherence length $`\xi _0`$ and is much smaller than $`\xi _0`$ in the dilute gas regime $`k_F|a|1`$. Taking this fact into account leads us to predict a considerably higher vortex energy than what was found in earlier calculations. For the case of a trapped gas of fermionic atoms, this means that the critical frequency for the formation of a vortex state can be $`510`$ times higher than previously estimated.

The author is grateful to F. V. de Blasio, G. M. Bruun, R. Kaldare, and C. J. Pethick for illuminating and valuable discussions. Support through a post-doctoral fellowship from The Research Council of Norway (NFR) is acknowledged.


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# Untitled Document

This paper has been withdrawn by the author and will be written again as two separated papers.


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# A new, cleaner colour-magnitude diagram for the metal-rich globular cluster NGC 6528 and the velocity dispersion in the Galactic Bulge

## 1. Introduction

NGC 6528 is perhaps the most metal-rich globular cluster known, e.g. Carretta et al. (2001). It has also been used as a “reference” cluster in studies of other clusters, e.g. Davidge (2000). NGC 6528 is situated at $`(l,b)=(1.14,4.12)`$, i.e. in the plane of the Galactic disk and towards the Galactic bulge. The first effect of this is that it is heavily reddened by foreground dust, e.g. Richtler et al. (1998), Heitsch & Richtler (1999). Most recent distance estimates put the cluster within less than 1 kpc from the Galactic centre (e.g. Richtler et al. 1998). The close proximity to bulge stars further complicates the interpretation of the colour-magnitude diagram (CMD). Since the bulge stars and the cluster stars have roughly the same distance modulus they are superimposed in the CMD. This effect has been noted to be particularly pronounced on the red giant branch (Richtler et al. 1998).

In a pre-study we noted in particular that the colour-magnitude diagram of the globular cluster NGC 6528 closely resembled that of NGC 5927 if the latter was superimposed on the colour-magnitude diagram of Baade’s window (for a set of representative CMDs see Feltzing & Gilmore 2000). This is consistent with the cluster being virtually inside the Galactic bulge and thus having a large contribution of bulge stars in its CMD. Moreover, if the cluster is as metal-rich as indicated in previous studies (and now confirmed by Carretta et al. 2001) then the red-giant branch as well as both the turn-off and the horizontal branch of the bulge and globular cluster will appear at virtually the same magnitudes and colours. The bulge stars will be more spread out in the CMD than those in the cluster, due to the large range of metallicities and ages present in the bulge (e.g. McWilliam & Rich 1994, Feltzing & Gilmore 2000). Thus the only way to obtain a clean CMD for the cluster is to obtain proper motions of the cluster stars relative to the bulge stars and separate the two populations using their proper motions.

This conclusion prompted us to apply for HST time to obtain a second epoch of observations of NGC 6528 with WFPC2 in order to derive the relative proper motion of the cluster as compared to that of the Galactic bulge. We here report on the first results from this proper motion study.

## 2. Data

The data consist of two sets of observations, one from the HST archive and observed in 1994 (GO 5436) and the other our new data for the same field (GO 8696, PI Feltzing). Stellar photometry was done inside the digiphot.daophot package in iraf following standard routines, see e.g. Feltzing & Gilmore (2000). Details of the photometry can be found in Feltzing & Johnson (2001, A&A submitted). There we also describe the routines we adopt to find the individual proper motions of the stars.

In an ideal scenario, where the globular cluster has an appreciable motion in relation to the bulge stellar population, the bulge and cluster stars will form two distinct distributions in the proper motion diagram. See for example the recent results by Zoccali et al. (2001) for NGC 6553, King et al. (1998) for NGC 6739 or Bedin et al. (2001) for M4 for good illustrations of this effect.

In our case the proper motions shows that the motion of the globular cluster in relation to the Galactic bulge is very small. This is as expected since the heliocentric radial velocity relative to the local standard of rest for NGC 6528 is high ($`184.9\pm 3.8`$ km s-1 (Harris 1996), $``$210 km s-1 (Carretta et al. 2001)), which suggests that NGC 6528 is on a mostly radial orbit away from us. However, we note that the histograms for the velocities in the $`l`$ and $`b`$ coordinates have broad wings. To separate the bulge and cluster stars using the measured proper motions, we divide the stars into different magnitude ranges and find the best fitting Gaussians to the proper motion histograms. We found that two Gaussians were required to fit the data well, indicating that, as expected, we have (at least) two stellar populations with different velocity dispersions. Based on previous measurements of bulge and cluster velocity dispersions, we associate the narrow Gaussian with NGC 6528 and the broad Gaussian with the bulge stars. (For a full discussion of the analysis of the proper motion histograms the reader is referred to Feltzing & Johnson 2001 submitted).

## 3. The cleaned CMD

We use our Gaussian fits to the different regions of the CMD to estimate the proper motion cuts which maximize the number of cluster stars relative to the number of bulge stars, whilst still allowing enough cluster stars to make a good cluster CMD. Using different proper motion cuts in different regions of the CMD will affect the relative numbers of cluster stars in each region but this does not matter for comparison of the observed CMD with other globular clusters and with isochrones, where all we use is the position of the cluster stars in the CMD and not their number density.

Our cleaned CMD, Fig. 1, is finally obtained by imposing the following cuts; $`\sqrt{\mu _l^2+\mu _b^2}<0.18`$, for star with $`V_{555}<19`$ and $`\sqrt{\mu _l^2+\mu _b^2}<0.09`$ for the fainter stars. We also find some differential reddening over the field of view of WFPC2. Our final CMD is corrected for differential reddening.

## 4. Age from fitting stellar isochrones

Since NGC 6528 is found to be enhanced, at least in some, $`\alpha `$elements we compare our fiducial points with that of theoretical stellar isochrones from Salasnich et al. (2000) in which $`\alpha `$-enhancement has been included. To facilitate the comparison with the stellar isochrones we define a set of fiducial points.

In the case of $`Z=0.019`$ we moved the isochrones by $`\mathrm{\Delta }(V_{555})=15.95`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(V_{555}I_{814})=+0.63`$. The turn-off is well represented by the 11 Gyr isochrone and the horizontal branch is well matched too. However, all the isochrones are brighter than the AGB. In order for $`Z=0.019`$ isochrones to fit our data on the AGB we would need to increase the distance modulus and the best fitting isochrone would then be very young, younger than 9 Gyr. The horizontal branch would not be well fitted either. Thus it appears unlikely that our data could be well fitted with $`\alpha `$-enhanced isochrones with $`Z=0.019`$.

For the $`Z=0.40`$ isochrones we moved them with the following amount $`\mathrm{\Delta }(V_{555})=15.95`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(V_{555}I_{814})=+0.655`$, see Fig. 2. Here the AGB is much better reproduced and both turn-off and horizontal branch can be well fitted simultaneously. The 11 Gyr isochrone appears to fit best. However as this fit cannot be rigorous due to the limitations in the data the estimated error bar on this must be rather large, perhaps up to 2 Gyr.

## 5. The velocity dispersion in the bulge

From the proper motions and the fitting of the proper motion histograms we find that the velocity dispersion for the cluster is 0.08 arcsec per century. This translates to 24-30 km s-1 for the upper and lower distance limits to NGC6528 of 6.5 kpc and 8 kpc (Richtler et al. 1998).

Globular clusters in the Galaxy have measured velocity dispersions that range from a few km s-1 to $`20`$ km s-1, see Pryor & Meylan (1993) and Dubath et al. (1997). In M 31 at least two globular clusters have measured velocity dispersions $`>20`$ km s-1, Dubath & Grillmar (1997). Zoccali et al. (2001) found $`\sigma `$=28 km s-1 for NGC6553. This result is very similar to ours. Since most globular clusters in the Galaxy have significantly lower velocity dispersion they concluded that their measured $`\sigma _{cluster}`$ was dominated by measurement error. This is most likely also the case for NGC6528.

Assuming the cluster velocity dispersion in NGC 6528 is dominated by errors, we deconvolve this from the measured velocity dispersion for the bulge to find the true bulge velocity dispersion. Using the data for the bright red sample we get $`\sigma _{lbulge}=0.33\pm 0.03`$ and $`\sigma _{bbulge}=0.25\pm 0.02`$ arcsec per century. These numbers are in good agreement with the results for bulge giants found by Spaenhauer et al. (1992), $`\sigma _{lbulge}=0.32\pm 0.01`$ and $`\sigma _{bbulge}=0.28\pm 0.01`$ arcsec per century for their full sample of 429 stars.

These numbers give a $`\sigma _l/\sigma _b=1.32\pm 0.16`$, which is identical, within the error estimates, to the 1.33 predicted for the coordinates of NGC 6528 by the model of kinematics in the Galactic bulge in Zhao (1996).

In their study of NGC 6553 Zoccali et al. (2001) derived $`\sigma _{lbulge}=0.26\pm 0.03`$ and $`\sigma _{bbulge}=0.21\pm 0.02`$ arcsec per century giving $`\sigma _l/\sigma _b=1.24\pm 0.17`$. These values are lower than found here, however, NGC 6553 is situated further out from the Galactic centre than NGC 6528 and we should thus expect $`\sigma _{lbulge}`$ to be a factor $`0.86`$ lower than for the coordinates of NGC 6528, see Zhao (1996) Table 6. $`\sigma _{bbulge}`$ should remain roughly the same. Specifically the model of Zhao (1996) predicts a $`\sigma _l/\sigma _b=1.32`$ at $`l=1,b=4`$ and $`\sigma _l/\sigma _b=1.09`$ at $`l=5,b=3`$, which is consistent, within the errors, to the values found here and in Zoccali et al. (2001) for the bulge stars observed in the fields of NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 (which are situated close to the coordinates for which Zhao’s model makes its predictions).

We may thus conclude that these two new studies of the proper motions of Galactic bulge stars confirm the predictions by models of the kinematics in the Galactic bulge. To our knowledge the current work and that of Zoccali et al. (2001) are the first studies to address the velocity dispersion, measured by proper motions, of bulge stars below the horizontal branch.

## 6. Summary

CMDs of the metal-rich globular cluster NGC 6528 are notoriously difficult to analyze. This is due to the fact the cluster is situated in the Galactic bulge and thus the fields stars belonging to the bulge have the same magnitudes as the stars in NGC 6528.

Using two epochs of observations with HST/WFPC2 we obtain the stellar proper motions for all stars in the field. The proper motions are used to separate the bulge from the cluster stars. The stellar sequences in the resulting CMD are better defined than in any previously published CMD.

Using $`\alpha `$-enhanced stellar isochrones we find NGC 6528 to have a probable age of $`11\pm 2`$ Gyrs, this is the first attempt to establish the absolute age of NGC 6528. Previous studies have only compared the fiducial ridge line for the cluster to that of other globular clusters of similar metallicities. Mainly the comparisons have been with regards to NGC 6553 and 47 Tuc. With the new metallicity determinations for individual stars in both NGC 6553 and NGC 6528 it is now clear that 47 Tuc (at $`0.71`$ dex) has a significantly lower metallicity than NGC 6528 and NGC 6553 and is thus not a suitable comparison cluster as regards differential age determinations (see e.g. Stetson et al. 1996 and references therein).

A comparison with the fiducial line for NGC 6553 confirms results in earlier studies, e.g. Ortolani et al. (1995), that the two clusters indeed have very similar ages.

The stellar proper motion also provide velocity dispersions for both the cluster and field stars. The velocity dispersion of the cluster is most likely dominated by measurement errors. The bulge dispersion can thus be found by deconvolution. The resulting dispersions are consistent with what has previously (Spaenhauer et al. 1992) been found for Bulge giants. Moreover, combining our results with those by Zoccali et al. (2001) we are able to confirm the difference in $`\sigma _l`$ at two positions in the bulge as predicted by the model in Zhao (1996).

To our knowledge, our and Zoccali et al.’s study are the first to address the proper motions amongst bulge horizontal branch and fainter stars.

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