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# Low-Mass Neutron Stars as Anomalous Pulsars

## 1. Introduction

Almost every pulsar has precisely measured period, $`P`$, and the rate of change of period with time, $`\dot{P}`$. The gross properties of these objects are well illustrated by the $`P\dot{P}`$ diagram which now shows rotational data for $`1200`$ isolated (as far as we know) pulsars. The accepted model, a rotating, strongly magnetized, neutron star, gives a plausible explanation for the behavior and evolution of most of these objects.

Approximately 10 objects, having both large $`P`$ and $`\dot{P}`$, form a loose group in the upper right corner. Here the dipole model predicts large values for the magnetic moment, $`M`$, and the surface field, $`B`$. Indeed, the energy in the predicted magnetic field exceeds the rotational energy in this part of the diagram. These objects are the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXP) and the the Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters (SGR) which we refer to collectively as anomalous pulsars. Also for these pulsars the observed X-ray luminosity also greatly exceeds the rate of loss of rotational energy.

Some anomalous pulsars are associated with supernova remnants, and the short lifetimes indicated by $`P/2\dot{P}`$ seem appropriate. It has been proposed (Thompson & Duncan 1996) that energy is supplied by decay of the very-strong magnetic field. The interaction of the strong field with the crust of the neutron star is also invoked to explain the $`\gamma `$-ray bursts observed from SGR. AXP/SGRs are also called “magnetars” in the literature. It is assumed that the slowing torque is largely electromagnetic. However, the grouping of anomalous pulsars in the upper right of the $`P\dot{P}`$ diagram, suggests that something different is happening rather than an extension of the dipole model. We here explore the possibility that the anomalous pulsars are low-mass neutron stars – objects with mass considerably smaller than the generally-accepted mass of 1.4 M.

## 2. Neutron Star Structure

In theory, neutron stars can exist having masses between $``$ 0.2 M and $``$ 3.0 M. The addition of mass at the upper limit causes formation of a black hole. The removal of mass at the lower limit causes nuclei in the crust to fission and beta decay with release of energy and consequent disruption of the star (Colpi, Shapiro, Teukolsky, 1991).

The only mass measurements are for neutron stars in binary systems. The masses of 19 radio pulsars, deduced from measured orbital parameters and characteristics of the companion star are all compatible with a mass of $`1.35\pm 0.04`$ M (Thorsett & Chakrabarty, 1999), but uncertainty of the measurements for 2 systems allow masses slightly below 1.0 M. The masses of 7 X-ray emitting accretion-powered pulsars in binary systems are all compatible with a mass of 1.4 M, but larger uncertainties allow masses ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 M (van Kerkwijk et al 1995).

Since gravitational collapse of a massive star in a type II supernova is thought to produce an $`1.4`$ M compact object, the general belief is that all neutron stars are so formed and have this mass. Larger masses might be achieved through accretion by neutron stars in binary systems but there is presently no evidence for masses $``$ 1.3 M; so the subject of this paper is speculative.

Neutron star properties, including the lower-mass limit, are dependent on the equation of state which is unknown for the high density at the center of a neutron star. Arnett & Bowers (1977) constructed neutron star models for 15 equations of state (Figure 1a). More recent models are given by Lattimer & Prakash (2000). Lower limits of 0.2 - 0.4 M are calculated for most models. “Soft” equations of state predict an almost constant radius of between 8 and 15 km (dependent on eq. of state) for masses 0.5-1.4 M. Then, as the mass approaches the lower limit, the radius, $`R`$, increases rapidly. A “stiff” equation of state predicts a more linear dependence of radius on mass.

Figure 1b, from Baym et al (1971), shows density profiles calculated using one eq. of state and 5 different masses. The 1.4 M star has a radius of 7 km, the 0.5 M star a radius of 10 km, and the 0.1 M star a radius of 50 km. As a point of interest, the 0.1 M star is completely solid; there is no liquid core.

## 3. Cooling

A neutron star formed in a supernova explosion should be born hot and will cool with time. Cooling is dominated by neutrino emission from the core for $``$ $`10^4`$ years, then by photon emission from the surface. Initially the core cools rapidly and the surface remains hot until the heat is conducted to the core.

Figure 2, taken from Page and Applegate (1992), shows cooling curves calculated for neutron stars of different masses and includes a direct URCA process which cools the core rapidly. Below a certain mass the central density is low enough so that the direct URCA process no longer occurs. The time for the cooling wave to reach the surface increases as the mass decreases because the crust gets thicker.

Figure 2. Luminosity vs time for neutron stars of different masses. Circles below the highest curve show luminosities of 3 young pulsars: the central sources in the remnants: Cas A, 3C 58, and the Vela remnant. Data points above the curve are for 2 AXP and 3 SGR. Ages are uncertain by at least a factor of 2 and distances are not well known except for one SGR in the Large Magellanic cloud.

If a neutron star has low central density (and consequent low mass), early neutrino cooling will be greatly reduced. There will be no “exotic” cooling processes and the crust will be thick. Even if there is some cooling of the core, the surface will remain hot until cooled by photon emission. The larger radius expected from a low-mass star will also help to achieve a high luminosity. At an age of a few thousand years, the star must have thermal luminosity in excess of $`10^{35}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup>.

As a matter of interest, if thermal conductivity is greater along the field lines, and if the core cools first, phase-resolved spectra might show cool spots at the magnetic poles - quite different than the hot poles expected from accretion.

## 4. Magnetic Field

The spindown rate, $`\dot{P}`$, of anomalous pulsars is erratic, demonstrating that another process, probably a wind, is responsible for much of the torque (Marsden et al, 1999). Certainly some magnetic field is required to account for the pulsations but characteristic ages calculated using the dipole model (and used to place points in Figure 2) are not expected to be reliable.

One difficulty with the magnetar model is the high value of magnetic field at the surface (eg. $`10^{15}`$ Gauss for SGR 1900+14). Equating the loss of rotational energy to the rate of dipole radiation gives a value for the dipole moment, $`M`$. Since the external field of a dipole along the axis is $`B_p=M/2R^3`$, the surface field at the pole can be expressed as:

$$B_p=[3c^3IP\dot{P}/8\pi ^2]^{1/2}[R]^3$$

Given $`M`$, a low-mass neutron star with large $`R`$ will have considerably lower surface field than the usual ($`R=10`$ km) model. Also the moment of inertia, $`I`$, roughly scales with mass (Arnett & Bowers 1977). If the mass of the model is lowered until $`R=20`$ km, the value of $`B`$ at the surface will decrease a factor of 10. If the radius is 40 km, $`B`$ will be 100 times less than the usual model. The total energy in the field will also drop factors of 10 and 100 in these 2 examples.

## 5. Other Considerations

Some anomalous pulsars are thought to be high-velocity objects. Less energy is required to accelerate a low-mass star than a canonical one. This might be accomplished through asymmetric radiation (Harrison & Tademaru 1975) or during formation.

The process by which low-mass neutron stars may be formed is unknown. Gravitational collapse requires a core of $`1M_{}`$. The collapse of a rotating system with magnetic field might, in spite of gravitational radiation, produce smaller fragments. It will be difficult, however, to identify a low-mass isolated neutron star with present observational techique. The surface and emission process are not well enough understood to derive the radius from spectral data.

This work was supported by NASA contract NAS8-39073.

## References

Arnett, W. D., & Bowers, R. L. 1977, ApJ, 33, 415

Baym, G., Pethick, C. J., & Sutherland, P. 1971, ApJ, 170, 299

Colpi, M., Shapiro, S. L., & Teukolsky, S. A. 1993, ApJ, 414, 717

Harrison, E. R., & Tademaru, E. 1975, ApJ, 201, 447

Lattimer, J. M., & Prakash, M. 2001, ApJ, 550, 426

Marsden, D., Rothschild, R.E., Lingenfelter, R.E., 1999, ApJ

Thorsett, S. E. & Chakrabarty, D., 1999, ApJ512, 288

Thompson, C. & Duncan, R. C. 1996, ApJ473, 322

Page, D., & Applegate, J. H. 1992, ApJ394, L17

van Kerkwijk, M. H., van Paradijs, J., & Zuiderwijk, E. J., 1995, A&A303, 497


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# ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT IN COMPUTATIONAL ASTROPHYSICS – METHODS AND APPLICATIONS

## I INTRODUCTION

Observations of various astrophysical systems such as proto-stars, novae, supernovae, the interstellar medium, galaxies and cosmology show that physical processes in these systems evolve in multi-scale fashion. To take but a single example from proto-star formation, once a Class 0 core forms out of the turbulent, magnetized, molecular gas in a molecular cloud, gravity causes the system to be largely decoupled from the rest of the turbulent flow. And yet, the decoupling is not complete. Large-scale magnetic fields cause the proto-star’s angular momentum to be coupled to that of the external medium. Likewise, different parts of the dusty protostellar envelope are radiatively coupled to each other. The radiative coupling also sets the temperature of the gas, thereby determining its coupling with the magnetic field. As a result, we see the need for: (1) detailed representation of the micro-physical processes, (2) accurate representation of the system of equations that are of interest in computational astrophysics and (3) an ability to do (1) and (2) in a multi-scale fashion via adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). AMR is an elegant technique for concentrating mesh resolution in regions where an accurate answer is desired. Almost all astrophysical processes have magnetic fields and so an ability to represent MHD in multi-scale fashion is a sine qua non for computational astrophysics. The present paper focusses on recent advances by the author that have made it possible to carry out AMR-MHD calculations.

Ever since the first paper on AMR methods for fluid dynamics, see Berger and Colella (1989), it has been recognized that that higher order Godunov schemes play a central role in practical AMR simulations. The reasons are not difficult to see and the talks by Ryu (this conf.) on MHD, Ibanez and Koide (again this conf.) on relativistic flow bear testimony to the usefulness of these techniques in computational astrophysics. Such schemes were first formulated for hydrodynamics by vanLeer (1979), where their usefulness has been very well-documented by Woodward and Colella (1984). In recent years, they have been formulated for several other systems of interest in computational astrophysics wich include relativistic hydrodynamics, see Balsara (1994); radiation hydrodynamics, see Balsara (1999a,b,c); radiation MHD, see Balsara (1999d,e); relativistic MHD, see Balsara (2001a) and multidimensional radiative transfer, see Balsara (2001b). Perhaps the most vigorous evolution has taken place in MHD where Roe and Balsara (1996) designed the first complete MHD eigenvectors that were free of singularities; Brio and Wu (1988), Zachary, Malagoli and Colella (1994), Powell (1994), Dai and Woodward (1994), Ryu and Jones (1995) and Balsara (1998a) designed Riemann solvers for MHD; Dai and Woodward (1995), Ryu et al (1998) and Balsara (1998b) catalogued different forms of TVD schemes for MHD and Balsara and Spicer (1999), Dai and Woodward (1998), Ryu et al (1998), Londrillo and Del Zanna (2000) and Toth (2000) formulated divergence-free higher order Godunov schemes for MHD. The latter divergence-free formulations realize that the divergence of the magnetic field should remain exactly zero. Brackbill and Barnes (1980) and Brackbill (1985) have shown that violating the constraint leads to unphysical plasma transport orthogonal to the magnetic field as well as a loss of momentum and energy conservation. Powell et al (1999) did indeed formulate an AMR scheme for MHD that was not divergence-free only to find that the maximal errors ocurred on the finest meshes due to unphysical build-up of divergence. The finest meshes are the very meshes where one would have wanted the error to be minimal! Moreover, in accreting astrophysical flows, the divergence would flow with the fluid and build up in the very regions where one wants the most accurate answer! This prompted the present author to realize that only a scheme that was divergence-free on the entire AMR hierarchy would be adequate for astrophysical applications. These advances have been catalogued in detail in Balsara (2001c) and implemented in the RIEMANN framework for computational astrophysics. While Balsara (2001c) provides more mathematical details, the present paper focusses more on the intuitive ways of thinking about the subject. As a result, the two papers complement each other.

In Section II we discuss algorithmic issues in AMR hydrodynamics. In Section III we discuss divergence-free AMR-MHD. In Section IV we show how AMR-MHD techniques have been parallelized. In Section V we discuss tests and applications.

## II AMR HYDRODYNAMICS

Fig. 1 provides a schematic of a two-dimensional AMR calculation where we show a large mesh zone and an adaptively refined set of four finer mesh zones adjacent to it. The large mesh zone should be viewed as being part of a coarse mesh and the four finer mesh zones should be viewed as being part of a fine mesh in the AMR hierarchy that abuts the above-mentioned coarse mesh. A consideration of that figure allows us to motivate the four most important algorithmic issues in AMR-hydrodynamics that were formulated by Berger and Colella (1989) (hereafter BC). They are:

(II.a) Time step sub-cycling on refined meshes: A look at Fig. 1 shows that the finer mesh has zones that are half as small as the coarse mesh. As a result, the Courant condition for time step control decrees that the finer mesh can only evolve with time steps that are half as small as the coarse mesh time steps. This is illustrated in the schematic time-axis in Fig. 1. As a result of this limitation, BC realized that the fine mesh should move with a time step that is an integral fraction of the coarse mesh time step. The precise fraction is determined by the mesh refinement ratio. As a result, the fine mesh will undergo more than one time steps before it reaches time-synchonization with the coarse mesh.

(II.b) Prolongation of coarse mesh solution to fine mesh boundaries/or new fine mesh interiors: As the fine mesh undergoes fractional time steps, it will receive temporally interpolated boundary information from the abutting coarse mesh. Even when a new fine mesh is built in a portion of the coarse mesh that was not covered by a fine mesh, one has to find a conservative strategy for transferring the solution from the coarse mesh to the fine mesh. This step is known as prolongation. To prolong the solution from the coarse mesh to the fine mesh one has to use the conservative interpolation of the underlying higher order Godunov scheme.

(II.c) Flux correction at the fine-coarse interface: When the fine mesh and coarse mesh solutions are synchronized, we want to ensure conservation of mass, momentum and energy. As pointed out by BC, a failure to ensure full conservation will result in spurious solutions on the entire AMR hierarchy. This is especially true for most astrophysical systems which give rise to very deep AMR hierarchies, thereby exacerbating the problems associated with a loss of conservation. This ability to ensure conservation is only available when using a higher order Godunov scheme as the underlying solution technique. For example, the staggered mesh formulation of the ZEUS scheme of Stone and Norman (1991) cannot ensure conservation of all variables on AMR hierarchies, thereby limiting its utility for AMR simulations. The flux conservation can be imposed at the times when the fine and coarse meshes are synchronized. This happens at times $`t^n`$ and $`t^{n+1}`$ where the time step is given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=t^{n+1}t^n`$ . The flux conservation is carried out by replacing the coarse mesh flux $`F_{i+1/2,j}^{n+1/2}`$ by a spatial and temporal average of the fine mesh fluxes, i.e. $`f_{m1/2,p}^{n+1/4}`$ , $`f_{m1/2,p+1}^{n+1/4}`$ , $`f_{m1/2,p}^{n+3/4}`$ and $`f_{m1/2,p+1}^{n+3/4}`$ , at the interface between the fine and coarse mesh as shown in Fig. 1. As a result, a layer of coarse mesh zones that abut the fine mesh zones will have to undergo this flux correction. The variable $`U_{i,j}^{n+1}`$ will, therefore, undergo flux-correction, as shown in Fig. 1, whenever the fine and coarse meshes synchronize in time.

(II.d) Restriction of fine mesh solution to coarse mesh: When the fine and coarse meshes are time synchronized, the fine mesh holds the more accurate solution. As a result, we replace the coarse mesh solution by the spatially averaged fine mesh solution. This step is known as restriction.

This completes the process of demonstrating the four essential steps in BC’s AMR strategy for hydrodynamics. These four steps yield a scheme that is fully conservative of mass, momentum and energy. Notice that the coarse meshes deliver their data to the fine mesh in step (b) above. Likewise, the fine meshes deliver data that is generated on them to modify the coarse mesh data in steps (c) and (d). As a result, the solution that evolves on an AMR hierarchy is intimately connected across the levels in the AMR hierarchy! This ensures that all the levels in the AMR hierarchy are causally connected. It also ensures that a spurious solution generated on one level in an AMR hierarchy (for example, the finest level in the scheme of Powell et al (1999)) will eventually propagate and corrupt the solution at all levels in the AMR hierarchy. This brings out the very interesting fact that AMR techniques are physically consistent at a very deep level. At the same time, it shows that violating that consistency can result in a solution that is flawed at all levels (all puns intended!).

## III DIVERGENCE-FREE AMR-MHD

The previous section suggests that it would be desirable to have a similar strategy for AMR-MHD. However, a little thought reveals a major obstacle. We saw in section II.b that it was essential to use the reconstruction strategy for the underlying higher order Godunov scheme in order to arrive at a conservative strategy for AMR-hydrodynamics. However, up until recently, an analogous divergence-free reconstruction strategy for (divergence-free) magnetic fields did not exist. As a result, it was not possible to formulate divergence-free AMR-MHD because it was not possible to transfer the magnetic fields in divergence-free fashion from a coarse mesh to a fine mesh. In retrospect this lack of a divergence-free reconstruction strategy might seem a little surprising since the formulation of a reconstruction strategy is central to the process of designing a higher order Godunov scheme. Balsara and Spicer (1999) had, nevertheless, been able to design a second order accurate Godunov scheme for divergence-free MHD without having to address the reconstruction question. The reason one is able to bypass the issue of divergence-free reconstruction in the formulation of second order Godunov schemes stems essentially from a mathematical anomaly. It turns out that for second order schemes (and only for second order schemes) it is possible to get by without having to address the issue of divergence-free reconstruction. However, in order to formulate a divergence-free AMR-MHD one has to face up to the the task of formulating a divergence-free reconstruction strategy. We do that next for two-dimensions in this paper. Mathematical details associated with the two-dimensional case as well as the analogous three-dimensional problem are catalogued in Balsara (2001c).

Consider Fig. 2 which shows the four magnetic field components on the four faces of a square. This is the lay-out of magnetic field variables from Balsara and Spicer (1999) and yields a scheme for divergence-free magnetic field evolution. To arrive at a second order accurate formulation we endow the field components with piecewise linear variation in the transverse direction as shown in Fig. 2. One may well wonder why this should necessarily yield a second order accurate formulation. It can be shown, see Balsara (2001c), that for variations that are restricted to lie in one dimension, this yields a second order accurate TVD scheme. Multidimensional TVD schemes can be build out of such one dimensional building blocks. As a result, we know that the strategy of endowing the field components with piecewise linear variations in the transverse direction will yield a second order accurate representation of the field in the interior of the square. The most general polynomial representation of the vector field in the interior of the square that matches the linear profiles at the boundaries is also given in Fig. 2. In order for the polynomials to be divergence-free the polynomial coefficients should satisfy the divergence-free constraints, also given in Fig. 2. These constraints can be straightforwardly derived by taking the divergence of the polynomials. The result is that the independent polynomial coefficients are exactly specified by specifying the piecewise linear variation of the field components in the transverse direction. A similar result obtains in three dimensions. We are now in a position to specify the magnetic field at any point in the interior of the square – this being the problem of divergence-free reconstruction. It is now easy to see that if the square is subdivided into four squares through the refinement process we can still specify the magnetic field at the faces of each of the four smaller squares. Because the generating polynomial is divergence-free, this specification is also divergence-free. This solves the problem of divergence-free prolongation from coarse meshes to fine meshes. It is now easy to specify the four important algorithmic issues in divergence-free AMR-MHD. They are:

(III.a) Time step sub-cycling on refined meshes: This is entirely analogous to section II.a.

(III.b) Divergence-free prolongation of coarse mesh magnetic field to fine mesh boundaries: This is discussed in the two paragraphs above. For three dimensions the problem becomes more complicated but it has been worked out in detail by Balsara (2001c).

(III.c) Electric field correction at the fine-coarse interface: In section II.c we saw that whenever the fine and coarse meshes are time-synchronized the fine and coarse mesh fluxes have to be made consistent at the interface between the fine and coarse mesh. The electric field plays a central role in the divergence-free evolution of the magnetic field, just as the flux plays a central role in the evolution of higher order Godunov schemes. As a result, following a style of reasoning that is entirely analogous to section II.c, we have to make the electric field consistent at the interface. This is illustrated in Fig 1 for the evolution of the z-component of the magnetic field. Further details have been provided in Balsara (2001c).

(III.d) Restriction of fine mesh solution to coarse mesh: In a direct analogy to Section II.d, when the fine and coarse meshes are temporally synchronized we replace the coarse mesh magnetic fields by the area-averaged fine mesh magnetic fields.

## IV PARALLEL PROCESSING OF AMR HIERARCHIES

The previous two sections have described the algorithmic issues in divergence-free AMR-MHD in some detail. However, carrying out an AMR calculation requires one to understand several further issues. They can be illustrated by looking at Fig. 3 which shows an AMR-MHD simulation of a supernova remnant. Figs. 3a and 3b show the log of the density and pressure variables. Figs. 3c and 3d show the Mach number and the magnitude of the magnetic field. Fig. 3e shows the color coded levels in the AMR hierarchy, blue being the base level grid, yellow being the first level of refinement and red being the second level of refinement. Fig. 3f shows the divergence of the magnetic field showing that it remains within the bounds of machine accuracy. This allows us to motivate several issues in supporting parallel AMR calculations, all of which are catalogued in detail in Balsara and Norton (2001). The issues are:

(IV.a) Object-oriented representation of the AMR hierarchy: We see from Fig. 3e that the meshes concentrate themselves in regions of strong shock, which is what we desire from an AMR calculation. However, We see that each level of refinement is made of many small meshes, all of which taken together form the AMR level. This requires a high level of abstraction modeling so that each small mesh, along with all the data structures that are needed for representing the MHD solver on a mesh can be manipulated as a single unit. This is made possible by object-oriented methods which allow us to encapsulate the data as well as the functions that change the data as a single unit.

(IV.b) Load balancing of each level: AMR computations are CPU and memory intensive. As a result, it is important to carry them out on parallel machines. However, it is difficult to know how to deal out the different meshes to the different processors of a parallel machine. This process of dealing the meshes out should be done in such a way that each processor should has the same amount of computational load. This is done via a load balancer. Several different load balancer strategies are catalogued and inter-compared in Balsara and Norton (2001).

(IV.c) Parallel processing of the AMR hierarchy: Parallel processing of the AMR hierarchy is tantamount to processing each level in the AMR hierarchy in a load balanced fashion. Balsara and Norton (2001) have shown that this can be done using modern parallel processing techniques along with the load balancer described above.

(IV.d) Solution-adaptive evolution of the AMR mesh hierarchy: We see that as the SNR shock moves through the mesh, the grids that make up the levels have to change in response to the shock. This requires that one is able to flag regions that need refinement and put down new refined meshes where they are called for while removing old refined meshes from regions that do not require refinement any longer. Such strategies were developed by Berger and Rigoutsis (1991) and Balsara and Norton (2001) have shown that they are easily parallelized.

## V TESTS and APPLICATIONS

(V.a) Test of Supernova Remnant Explosion: Balsara (2001c) provides several test problems to demonstrate divergence-free AMR-MHD. The present test problem is motivated by the work of Balsara, Benjamin and Cox (2001) (hereafter BBC) who simulated the evolution of supernova remnants and their propagation through the magnetized interstellar medium (ISM) on large, i.e. $`256^3`$ zone, meshes. In this test problem we do one of the same problems from BBC using AMR-MHD on a $`64^3`$ zone base mesh and two levels of refinement. Since the mesh refinement was carried out with a refinement ratio of two across each level, the simulation with AMR has the same effective resolution as the large uniform mesh simulation. Fig 3 shows the variables from the AMR-MHD simulation. In Section IV we catalogued the variables that were plotted out in each of the sub-figures in Fig. 3. Similar variables from the large uniform mesh simulation have been shown in BBC. It can be seen that for the same effective resolution, the AMR-MHD simulation produces the same quality of solution as the simulation presented in BBC. This shows that there are some systems in computational astrophysics where it is possible to intercompare the AMR-MHD simulation with a large uniform mesh simulation and verify that the two simulations produce the same quality of result if they have the same effective resolution. This is a powerful demonstration of the saliency and effectiveness of AMR-MHD techniques in computational astrophysics. We also notice from Fig. 3f that the divergence of the magnetic field has remained within the bounds of machine accuracy!

(V.b) Application to Protostellar Core Collapse and Fragmentation: Understanding how protostellar cores form from a rotating density condensation has long been a problem of great interest in star formation studies. However, previous studies, see Truelove et al (1997) and Boss et al (2000) have been hydrodynamical. The above authors have shown that AMR is extremely useful for such simulations because the formation of density condensations is not correctly represented when the mesh-based Jeans criterion is not met (which inevitably happens in a uniform mesh calculation). I.e. if too much mass is concentrated in one zone so that the zone becomes Jeans unstable then the fluid flow is not properly represented on such a mesh. In such situations, our only recourse is to refine the mesh. The above-mentioned hydrodynamical studies permit one to answer some questions. However, they do not permit one to answer the important questions associated with the inclusion of magnetic fields: (1) How does the inclusion of magnetic fields change the disks that form? (2) Does the magnetic field naturally form an hourglass morphology? (3) How does the angular momentum evolve? (4) Do outflows form? Can we understand their formation mechanism? (5) The inclusion of fields introduces a competition between three timescales – the free-fall timescale, the magnetic braking timescale and the ambipolar diffusion timescale. How do those three timescales compete with each other?

Fig. 4 from Balsara and Burkert (2001) shows figures from an AMR-MHD simulation of this problem on a $`128^3`$ zone base mesh with four further levels of refinement. The magnetic field was aligned with the rotation axis which was taken to be the z-axis. The barotropic approximation of Boss et al (2000) was used but ambipolar diffusion was not included. Fig. 4a shows the log (density) in the xy-midplane at a relatively early time. We see that the system fragments into two disks, just like in the hydrodynamical case. Fig. 4b shows the same variable at a late time. We now see that the disks in the MHD simulation have lost angular momentum and coalesced, unlike the hydrodynamical case. This can be explained via mechanisms similar to the magnetic braking idea of Paleologou and Mouschovias (1983). Fig. 4c shows the magnetic field in the xy-plane at the same time as Fig. 4b demonstrating that the field has been dredged in by the infall. The field, however, is connected to the ambient gas and so imparts some of the two-disk system’s angular momentum to the ambient gas. The ambient medium is thus spun up at the expense of the two-disk system which eventually inspirals and coalesces to form a single disk as shown in Fig. 4b. Fig. 4d shows a color coded representation of the levels at the same time as Figs. 4b and 4c showing how the levels are nested one within the other and how they track the increasing density. Fig. 4e shows a zoomed view of the magnetic field lines in the central part of the yz-midplane at a late time. We see that the accretion processes have caused the field to naturally organize itself into an hourglass morphology. The colors in Fig. 4e track magnetic pressure. Fig. 4f shows the z-velocity in the same portion of the yz-midplane. We see from the colors that an outflow has been established. We claim that it is a magneto-centrifugal outflow because it establishes itself in the same areas of the rotating gas where the gas has a substantial rotational velocity and is restricted to regions where the magnetic field makes a large angle with the rotation axis. This is consistent with the theory for MHD-outflows presented by Blandford and Payne (1982).

In Fig. 5 we show plots that make several aspects of the problem more quantitative. Bacmann et al (2001) found that Class 0 cores have a centrally flattened density profile. In keeping with their observation, we fit the profiles of either disk to a Gaussian profile $`\rho exp[(R/R_D)^2]`$ where $`R`$ is the radius of the disk and $`R_D`$ is the scale of the disk. The top curve in Fig. 5a shows the distance between the disks (in pc) as a function of time (in years). The middle curve in Fig. 5a shows $`R_D`$ as a function of time. We see that at $`7500yrs`$ the disks coalesce resulting in a cusp in either of the two curves. The lower (and very jagged) curve in Fig. 5a traces out the standard deviation in our measurement of $`R_D`$ . We see that the standard deviation is substantially smaller than our measurement of $`R_D`$ , indicating that our choice of a Gaussian density profile was a good one. ( We note, however, that the observations and simulations have latitude for other centrally flattened profile fits. However, any centrally flattened profile would make allowance for a flattening length scale much like $`R_D`$ .) It is worthwhile asking how the central density and magnetic field in the disks evolve? The upper plots in Figs. 5b and 5c show the evolution of the central density and magnetic pressure respectively in the disk/s as a function of time. The lower plots in Figs. 5b and 5c measure the mean density and magnetic field in the disk/s averaged over the disk scale $`R_D`$ . Again, the reorganization of material at the time of coalescence at $`7500yrs`$ is shown by a cusp in either plot. While the central density can reorganize itself the central field cannot. As a result, the field shows a steeper rise than the density after $`7500yrs`$ . It is always worthwhile asking how the inclusion of ambipolar drift (AD) would change this scenario. Should AD operate, this process of dredging in field would not be as pronounced. While we have not included AD, we have evaluated its effect on a post-facto basis. This is important because the the free-fall, the magnetic braking and AD timescales compete in regulating the early evolution of protostellar cores. This is shown in Fig. 5d where the upper plot shows the magnetic braking time, the middle plot shows the ambipolar diffusion time for cosmic ray heating and the lower plot shows the ambipolar diffusion time for far ultraviolet heating. The infall time is a little larger than the magnetic braking time. We see that the braking does dominate in this problem so that the disks coalesce before infall to the center, as would be expected in such a situation. However, with the inclusion of AD, it is possible for the AD timescales to be much shorter suggesting that AD could reorganize the field structures in times that are shorter than the infall time. To summarize, the inclusion of magnetic fields has indeed shown the rich interplay of new physics and timescales in this very important problem.

## VI CONCLUSIONS

Several advances in divergence-free AMR-MHD and its application to astrophysics are reported here. We list them below:

(1) A general strategy is presented for the time-update of the MHD system of equations on AMR hierarchies.

(2) Just as Berger and Colella (1989) reduced the conservative time-update of the Euler equations on an AMR hierarchy to the application of a few simple steps, we have reduced the divergence-free time-update of the MHD equations on an AMR hierarchy to the application of a few simple steps. The steps have been summarized in Section III.

(3) A significant advance has been made in the divergence-free reconstruction of vector fields.

(4) Divergence-free prolongation of magnetic fields on an AMR hierarchy can be carried out via a very slight extension of the divergence-free reconstruction scheme mentioned in the previous point.

(5) A divergence-free restriction strategy is presented.

(6) An electric field correction strategy is presented which restores the consistency of electric fields at a fine-coarse interface in the AMR hierarchy.

(7) Because of the above four points, the time-step can be sub-cycled on finer meshes without loss of the divergence-free property of the magnetic fields.

(8) The above-mentioned innovations have been incorporated in the RIEMANN framework for parallel, self-adaptive computational astrophysics. Several stringent test problems have been presented and it is shown that the method presented in this paper for AMR-MHD is truly divergence-free.

(9) Several very useful insights into astrophysical processes have been derived from the AMR-MHD simulations that have been presented.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by NSF grants AST-0132246 and 005569-001.

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text:
# Kinematics of Planetary Nebulae in M51’s Tidal Tail

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text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

D-branes on group manifolds are characterized by the gluing condition $`J=R\overline{J}`$ at the boundary -. It has been shown that the maximally symmetric gluing condition $`J=\overline{J}`$ (in the closed string picture) constrains the end points of open strings to conjugacy classes of the group manifold . To make the Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) action for open strings well-defined, the position of the conjugacy classes has to be quantized – in perfect agreement with the Cardy boundary states. Related aspects of D-branes on group manifolds have been discussed in  using various approaches.

D-branes on coset models have been studied more recently . It was shown how the D-branes can be given a geometrical interpretation from the point of view of the gauged WZW model. In , more general boundary conditions were proposed for the group-valued field $`g`$ in the gauged WZW model, and an algebraic classification of Cardy boundary states on a $`G/H`$ coset conformal field theory (CFT) has been realized geometrically on the gauged WZW model.

In the $`G/H`$ gauged WZW model, the boundary value of the group-valued field $`gG`$ was suggested to be constrained to a product of two conjugacy classes, one for $`G`$ and the other for $`H`$ . This result was reached essentially by demanding that the vector (diagonal) gauge symmetries of $`g`$ in the bulk are conserved when the boundary conditions are imposed. The boundary condition for the gauge field $`A`$ was mentioned in , but there $`g`$ is assumed to be in a single conjugacy class of $`G`$ instead of in the product of two conjugacy classes. It is interesting then to see how one can give a consistent description of the boundary conditions for the group-valued field $`g`$ and the gauge field $`A`$ (or equivalently, for $`g`$ and fields $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$).

As already mentioned, in the WZW model the maximally symmetric D-branes are characterized by the gluing condition $`J=\overline{J}`$. Then the end points of open strings are restricted to the conjugacy classes of the group $`G`$ . Based on this experience with the boundary WZW model, it is natural to ask if there are similar gluing conditions for the gauged WZW model that encode the boundary conditions for $`g,U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$. That is, can the corresponding D-branes be characterized by gluing conditions?

Here we propose such gluing conditions for the gauged WZW model that resemble those for the ordinary WZW model. They enable us to characterize the D-branes explicitly, and to determine the boundary conditions for all fields in the coset model. Our results pertain to the maximally symmetric D-branes in the gauged WZW model. We recover the boundary conditions on $`g`$ , and also extend the result to cover gluing conditions twisted by inner automorphisms of $`G`$ reducing to $`H`$. We find that in the product of the twisted conjugacy classes, the twistings cancel, and we are left with the same product of (untwisted) conjugacy classes appropriate to the untwisted case.

Furthermore, from our gluing conditions, we construct the gauged WZW action for open strings. The new feature is that the two-forms $`\omega `$ depend on the boundary value of one of the $`H`$-valued fields $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$ ($`U`$, say). When rewriting our action in terms of the gauge field $`A`$, we find that the resulting action coincides classically with that in . This is possible because the $`U`$-dependent terms from different sources cancel in a nontrivial way; this indicates that our gluing conditions indeed describe D-branes in the gauged WZW model.

The layout of this note is as follows. In Section 2, we introduce the gluing conditions $`J=\overline{J}`$ and $`K=\overline{K}`$ in the gauged WZW model, and obtain the boundary conditions for fields $`g,U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$. We then consider twisted gluing conditions, and find that inner automorphisms of $`H`$ do not change the boundary restrictions of $`g`$ — only $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$ are affected. In Section 3, we construct the gauged WZW action for open strings from our gluing conditions, and compare it with that in . A short summary is presented in Section 4 as our conclusion.

## 2 Gluing conditions in the gauged WZW model

The level-$`k`$ WZW action for closed strings on a compact, connected, simply connected, Lie group $`G`$ may be written

$`S^G(g)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}d^2zL^{\mathrm{kin}}(g)+{\displaystyle _B}\chi (g)\right)`$ (1)
where $`L^{\mathrm{kin}}(g)=tr(_zg_{\overline{z}}g^1)`$, $`\chi (g)=\frac{1}{3}tr(dgg^1)^3`$, and $`B`$ is a three-dimensional manifold bounded by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The chiral currents are

$$𝒥_z=_zgg^1,\overline{𝒥}_{\overline{z}}=g^1_{\overline{z}}g$$
(2)
corresponding to the “global” symmetries $`g(z,\overline{z})L(z)g(z,\overline{z})`$, $`g(z,\overline{z})g(z,\overline{z})R(\overline{z})^1`$, respectively.

One may gauge the vector (diagonal) subgroup of this “$`G_L(z)\times G_R(\overline{z})`$” symmetry. The resulting local symmetry transformation is then $`g(z,\overline{z})m(z,\overline{z})g(z,\overline{z})m(z,\overline{z})^1`$, with $`m`$ an element of the subgroup $`HG`$. Introduce the “gauge fields” $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}H`$, transforming as $`UmU`$, $`\stackrel{~}{U}m\stackrel{~}{U}`$. A gauge invariant action is

$$S^{G/H}=S^G(U^1g\stackrel{~}{U})S^H(U^1\stackrel{~}{U})$$
(3)
Here $`S^H`$ is defined as in (1) except that the trace used $`tr_H\{\}`$ is that appropriate to the Lie algebra $`\mathrm{Lie}H`$ of $`H`$, and the level is $`k_H`$. Let $`t_H`$ denote an element of $`\mathrm{Lie}H`$, and let $`ϵ`$ be the embedding of $`\mathrm{Lie}H`$ in $`\mathrm{Lie}G`$, so that $`ϵ(t_H)`$ is the element of the subalgebra $`\mathrm{Lie}H\mathrm{Lie}G`$ corresponding to $`t_H`$. Now $`tr_G(ϵ(t_H))=\iota tr_H(t_H)`$, where the subscript $`G`$ is included for clarity, and $`\iota `$ is the index of the embedding. Therefore, by the construction of (3), $`k_H=\iota k`$.

Making use of the Polyakov-Wiegmann identities

$`L^{\mathrm{kin}}(g_1g_2)=L^{\mathrm{kin}}(g_1)+L^{\mathrm{kin}}(g_2)tr(g_1^1_zg_1_{\overline{z}}g_2g_2^1+g_1^1_{\overline{z}}g_1_zg_2g_2^1)`$
$`\chi (g_1g_2)=\chi (g_1)+\chi (g_2)dtr(g_1^1dg_1dg_2g_2^1)`$ (4)
and defining

$$A_z=_z\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{U}^1,A_{\overline{z}}=_{\overline{z}}UU^1$$
(5)
results in the gauged WZW action

$$S^{G/H}=S^G+\frac{k}{2\pi }_\mathrm{\Sigma }d^2ztr\left\{A_{\overline{z}}_zgg^1A_zg^1_{\overline{z}}g+A_{\overline{z}}gA_zg^1A_zA_{\overline{z}}\right\}$$
(6)
Note that the vector fields $`A_z,A_{\overline{z}}`$ take values in $`\mathrm{Lie}H`$.

Working backwards then, the gauged WZW action (6) may be rewritten as a coset action

$$S^{G/H}=S^G(\stackrel{~}{g})S^H(h)$$
(7)
with

$$\stackrel{~}{g}=U^1g\stackrel{~}{U}G,h=U^1\stackrel{~}{U}H,gG,U,\stackrel{~}{U}H$$
(8)
Each WZW action in the gauged WZW action $`S^{G/H}=S^G(\stackrel{~}{g})S^H(h)`$ is well defined for the fields $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h`$ , and the associated currents are

$`J=_z\stackrel{~}{g}\stackrel{~}{g}^1,\overline{J}=\stackrel{~}{g}^1_{\overline{z}}\stackrel{~}{g}`$
$`K=_zhh^1,\overline{K}=h^1_{\overline{z}}h`$ (9)
$`J`$ and $`K`$ are associated with the groups $`G`$ and $`H`$, respectively, and the sign difference on the currents stems from the minus sign in front of $`S^H`$ in (7). The two currents are not independent , however, since there is a first class constraint. Recall that the Lie algebra embedding is denoted $`ϵ:\mathrm{Lie}H\mathrm{Lie}G`$. The components of $`J`$ and $`ϵ(K)`$ in the Lie subalgebra $`HG`$ are clearly related. At the quantum level, the constraint can be expressed as111For simple illustration, we have omitted the contribution from the ghost fields.

$$\psi ^{}|tr\{ϵ(t_H)\left(J+ϵ(K)\right)\}|\psi =0$$
(10)
Here $`\psi |,\psi ^{}|`$ are ghost-free states and $`t_H`$ is any element of the Lie algebra of $`H`$. In terms of $`J`$ and $`K`$, the conformal stress-tensor is $`T=\frac{1}{2k+c_G}:tr_G(JJ):\frac{1}{2k_H+c_H}:tr_H(KK):`$. $`c_G`$ and $`c_H`$ are the eigenvalues of the quadratic Casimir operators in the adjoint representation of $`G`$ and $`H`$, respectively. Exploiting the constraint, we have $`\psi ^{}|T(z)|\psi =\psi ^{}|T^G(z)T^H(z)|\psi `$ with $`T^G=\frac{1}{2k+c_G}:tr_G(JJ):`$ and $`T^H=\frac{1}{2k+c_{ϵ(H)}}:tr_G\{ϵ(K)ϵ(K)\}:`$. This is a field-theoretic version of the GKO stress-tensor, confirming that the current $`K`$ is related to the current of the Kac-Moody subalgebra via the constraint .

In order to describe maximally symmetric D-branes in the gauged WZW model, we will henceforth consider world sheets $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with nonvanishing boundary, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }0`$. We propose the gluing conditions

$$J|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=R\overline{J}|_\mathrm{\Sigma },K|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=R\overline{K}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }$$
(11)
with $`R`$ an automorphism of the Lie algebra of $`G`$ reducing to $`H`$. When $`g=1`$, $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ reduces to $`h`$, so the gluing condition $`K|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=R\overline{K}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be induced from $`J|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=R\overline{J}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Initially, we shall focus on $`R=1`$:

$$J|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=\overline{J}|_\mathrm{\Sigma },K|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=\overline{K}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }$$
(12)
In that case, we see that the gluing conditions may be recast into

$`\stackrel{~}{g}^1_\tau \stackrel{~}{g}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+Ad(\stackrel{~}{g})}{1Ad(\stackrel{~}{g})}}\stackrel{~}{g}^1_\sigma \stackrel{~}{g}`$
$`h^1_\tau h`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+Ad(h)}{1Ad(h)}}h^1_\sigma h`$ (13)
with $`Ad(g)y=gyg^1`$. The coordinates are related by $`_z=_\tau +_\sigma ,_{\overline{z}}=_\tau _\sigma `$. The expressions (13) are sensible because, as in the WZW model , when $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h`$ are restricted to conjugacy classes of $`G`$ and $`H`$, respectively, the operators $`(1Ad(\stackrel{~}{g}))`$ and $`(1Ad(h))`$ are invertible when acting on $`\stackrel{~}{g}^1_\sigma \stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h^1_\sigma h`$. On the boundary, we may therefore choose the parametrizations

$`\stackrel{~}{g}(\tau )=(U^1n)f(U^1n)^1(\tau ),n,fG`$
$`h(\tau )=(U^1p)l^1(U^1p)^1(\tau ),p,lH`$ (14)
with $`UH`$. We choose this parametrization so that the boundary value of $`g`$ in (15) below agrees with that in , up to the change in notation replacing their $`k`$ with $`n`$. Exploiting (8), we then arrive at

$$g(\tau )=nfn^1plp^1(\tau )$$
(15)
and

$$\stackrel{~}{U}(\tau )=pl^1p^1U(\tau )$$
(16)
Thus, the boundary condition (15) for $`g`$ derived from our gluing conditions (12) agrees exactly with that of : $`g`$ is restricted to a product of two conjugacy classes, one for $`G`$ and one for $`H`$. Furthermore, and as expected, we see that the fields $`U`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$ are related on the boundary (16).222If we choose to write expressions for the fields in terms of $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$, instead of $`U`$, we find that $`g`$ is a product of elements of conjugacy classes of $`H`$ and $`G`$, instead of the reverse order: $`G`$ and $`H`$. The two conjugacy classes are identical in the two cases, however. This is important for the Cardy correspondence between boundary conditions and bulk primary fields, as we’ll see below.

Now, since all elements of $`G`$ and $`H`$ are conjugate to such elements, we can put $`f=e^{2\pi i\lambda _G/k}`$ and $`l=e^{2\pi i\lambda _H/k_H}`$ in (15), where $`\lambda _G`$ and $`\lambda _H`$ are elements of the Cartan subalgebras of the Lie algebras of $`G`$ and $`H`$, and the factors $`2\pi /k,2\pi /k_H`$ are included for later convenience. Extended Weyl invariance implies that we can restrict $`\lambda _G`$ to

$$\overline{P}^k(G)=\{\lambda _G|\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}\alpha (\lambda )k,\alpha R_>(G)\}$$
(17)
where $`R_>(G)`$ denotes the set of positive coroots of $`\mathrm{Lie}G`$. Similarly, we can restrict to $`\lambda _H\overline{P}^{k_H}(H)`$.

Let us now consider the twisted gluing conditions

$$J=Ad(r)\overline{J},K=Ad(r)\overline{K}$$
(18)
where $`r`$ is a fixed but arbitrary element of $`H`$. $`R`$ is thus chosen to be an inner automorphism of the Lie algebra of $`G`$ reducing to $`H`$ (11). In this case, the elements $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h`$ are constrained to twisted conjugacy classes of $`G`$ and $`H`$ at the boundary, respectively, and may be parametrized as

$`\stackrel{~}{g}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`(U^1n)f(U^1n)^1(\tau )r`$
$`h(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`(U^1p)l^1(U^1p)^1(\tau )r`$ (19)
As before, these boundary conditions are easily translated into those on $`g,U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$:

$$g(\tau )=nfn^1plp^1(\tau )$$
(20)
and

$$\stackrel{~}{U}(\tau )=pl^1p^1U(\tau )r$$
(21)
We see that twisting the gluing conditions by an inner automorphism of the Lie algebra of $`H`$ does not affect the boundary conditions on $`g`$, even though the boundary conditions in each of the sectors (represented by $`\stackrel{~}{g},h`$) are affected (19). The boundary value of $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$ depends on the automorphism through (21).

## 3 Gauged WZW action for open strings

Let us turn to the gauged WZW action for open strings. The WZW term is not well-defined for a worldsheet $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with a boundary. The remedy is to introduce an auxiliary disc $`D`$ for each hole in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with boundaries common with those of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. For simplicity, we consider the situation with a single hole. The map $`g`$ from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ to $`G`$ is then extended333By a common abuse of notation, we use the same symbols to denote such extensions as well as the original maps. to a map from the extended worldsheet $`\mathrm{\Sigma }D`$. The disc $`D`$ is mapped into the conjugacy classes for $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h`$ on the boundary. Following the strategy in  and exploiting our gluing conditions, we propose

$`S^{G/H}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}L^{\mathrm{kin}}(\stackrel{~}{g})+{\displaystyle _B}\chi (\stackrel{~}{g}){\displaystyle _D}\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})\right)`$ (22)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k_H}{4\pi }}\left({\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}L^{\mathrm{kin}}(h)+{\displaystyle _B}\chi (h){\displaystyle _D}\omega (h)\right)`$
as the gauged WZW action for open strings. $`B`$ is a three-dimensional manifold bounded by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }D`$. $`\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})`$ and $`\omega (h)`$ are the Alekseev-Schomerus two-forms defined on the conjugacy classes of $`G`$ and $`H`$, respectively. With our parametrizations, they become

$`\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})`$ $`=`$ $`tr\left\{(U^1n)^1d(U^1n)f(U^1n)^1d(U^1n)f^1\right\}`$
$`\omega (h)`$ $`=`$ $`tr\left\{(U^1p)^1d(U^1p)l^1(U^1p)^1d(U^1p)l\right\}`$ (23)
On the conjugacy classes, the three-forms $`\chi `$ satisfy

$$d\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})=\chi (\stackrel{~}{g}),d\omega (h)=\chi (h)$$
(24)
The action (22) is ambiguous, since one could choose a different auxiliary disk $`D^{}`$, while keeping the same boundary conditions on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Topologically, $`D(D^{})S^2`$, and so the difference in (22) with the two choices is related to embeddings of $`S^2`$ into $`G`$ and $`H`$, subject to the boundary conditions on $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`h`$, respectively. As explained in , these latter are characterized by coroot lattice vectors $`s_G`$ of $`G`$, and $`s_H`$ of $`H`$, respectively. The corresponding ambiguities in the action (22) are then

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_GS^{G/H}=\frac{k}{4\pi }\left(_B\chi (\stackrel{~}{g})_{S^2}\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})\right)=2\pi s_G(\lambda _G)$$
(25)
and

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_HS^{G/H}=\frac{k_H}{4\pi }\left(_B\chi (h)_{S^2}\omega (h)\right)=2\pi s_H(\lambda _H)$$
(26)
Single-valuedness of path integrals involving the action (22) therefore leads to

$$\alpha _G(\lambda _G)ZZ$$
(27)
$$\alpha _H(\lambda _H)ZZ$$
(28)
for any coroots $`\alpha _G`$ and $`\alpha _H`$ of the Lie algebras of $`G`$ and $`H`$. Therefore $`\lambda _G`$ and $`\lambda _H`$ are quantized to be associated with integral weights of those Lie algebras. Furthermore, the allowed set

$$P^k(G)=\{\lambda _G|\alpha (\lambda _G)\{0,1,\mathrm{},k\},\alpha R_>(G)\}$$
(29)
labels the set of bulk primary fields in the WZW model, and similarly for $`\lambda _H`$ in $`P^{k_H}(H)`$.

Now, pairs of such Cartan subalgebra elements (and so their associated weights) $`\{\lambda _G,\lambda _H\}`$ label the bulk coset primary fields. In the simplest cases, this verifies Cardy’s assertion that the boundary conditions are in one-to-one correspondence with bulk primary fields. When $`G`$ and $`H`$ share central elements, however, there are the complications of selection rules and their dual field identifications, and there is a so-called fixed point problem in some cosets. All these were discussed in . Remarkably, Cardy’s correspondence continues to hold. Possible exceptions are the so-called maverick cosets , that are problematic even in the closed string case.

In summary, the gluing condition $`J=\overline{J}`$ ($`K=\overline{K}`$) implies that $`\stackrel{~}{g}=U^1g\stackrel{~}{U}`$ ($`h=U^1\stackrel{~}{U}`$) is restricted to a conjugacy class of the group $`G`$ (subgroup $`H`$), labelled by $`\lambda _G\overline{P}^k(G)`$ ($`\lambda _H\overline{P}^{k_H}(H)`$). The constraint (10) then indicates that $`g`$ is restricted to be a product of elements labelled by $`\lambda _G`$ and $`\lambda _H`$. The quantization conditions (27) and (28) then show that we can label the boundary states in the coset theory by $`\{\lambda _G,\lambda _H\}`$ with $`\lambda _GP^k(G)`$ and $`\lambda _HP^{k_H}(H)`$. Our gluing conditions $`J=\overline{J}`$ and $`K=\overline{K}`$, with the quantization conditions (27) and (28), verify Cardy’s correspondence.

The local gauge transformation

$$gmgm^1,UmU,\stackrel{~}{U}m\stackrel{~}{U}$$
(30)
with $`mH`$, reduces on the boundary to

$$nmn,pmp,UmU,\stackrel{~}{U}=pl^1p^1Umpl^1p^1U$$
(31)
Since $`\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})`$ and $`\omega (h)`$ are invariant under the (reduced) local gauge transformations (31), the gauged WZW action for open strings (22) is invariant under the transformation (30).

We may rewrite the gauged WZW action (22) in terms of the gauge fields $`A`$ and the related $`H`$-valued fields $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$. Classically, i.e., neglecting possible quantum corrections from the path-integral measure, we arrive at

$`S^{G/H}`$ $`=`$ $`S^G(g)+{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}d^2ztr\left\{A_{\overline{z}}_zgg^1A_zg^1_{\overline{z}}g+A_{\overline{z}}gA_zg^1A_zA_{\overline{z}}\right\}`$ (32)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{4\pi }}{\displaystyle _D}d^2z𝒞`$
with

$`𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})+\omega (h)tr\left\{g^1dgd\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{U}^1dUU^1(dgg^1+gd\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{U}^1g^1)\right\}`$ (33)
$`+`$ $`dUU^1d\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{U}^1`$
Since the images of $`D`$ are also constrained to the conjugacy classes, we extend the boundary conditions (15) and (16) to $`D`$. $`𝒞`$ is defined on $`D`$ only, so after straightforward calculation, it can be rewritten as

$$𝒞=\left(\omega (n)+\omega (p)+tr(dc_2c_2^1c_1^1dc_1)\right)$$
(34)
Here $`c_1=nfn^1`$ and $`c_2=plp^1`$, elements of conjugacy classes of $`G`$ and $`H`$, respectively, and

$$\omega (n)=tr(n^1dnfn^1dnf^1),\omega (p)=tr(p^1dplp^1dpl^1)$$
(35)
Notice that $`\omega (n)`$ and $`\omega (p)`$ just written are different from $`\omega (\stackrel{~}{g})`$ and $`\omega (h)`$ given in (23) above. Eqs. (34) and (35) show that all the $`U`$-dependent terms in (33) cancel in a nontrivial way. Inserting (34) in the action (32), we recover the action of  (see (2.9) of  and (3.11) of ). Thus, the open string action (22) constructed from our gluing conditions can be reduced classically to those written previously in a different approach.

To conclude this section, let us discuss the relation of the gluing conditions to the currents

$`j=_zgg^1gA_zg^1+A_z`$
$`\overline{j}=g^1_{\overline{z}}gg^1A_{\overline{z}}g+A_{\overline{z}}`$ (36)
defined by varying the gauge fields $`A`$  in a gauged WZW action. One might hope that our gluing conditions could be expressed in a natural way using $`j,\overline{j}`$. This does not turn out to be the case, however. The only simple relations between the currents $`j,\overline{j}`$ and $`J,\overline{J},K,\overline{K}`$ are

$`U^1jU=J+K`$
$`\stackrel{~}{U}^1\overline{j}\stackrel{~}{U}=\overline{J}+\overline{K}`$ (37)
and they also involve the fields $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$. The complete set of gluing conditions (12) cannot be rewritten in terms of $`j,\overline{j}`$, only, and so D-branes in the gauged WZW model cannot be characterized in that manner. While the gluing conditions can be rewritten in terms of $`j,\overline{j}`$ and $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$, their form is not enlightening.

## 4 Conclusion

We have proposed the gluing conditions $`J=\overline{J}`$ and $`K=\overline{K}`$ to describe D-branes in the gauged WZW model. The gauged WZW action can be written as $`S^{G/H}=S^G(\stackrel{~}{g})S^H(h)`$, showing that the fields $`\stackrel{~}{g},h`$ formally decouple – we can therefore introduce two currents $`J`$ and $`K`$ for the group $`G`$ and the subgroup $`H`$. The boundary conditions for $`g,U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$ have been derived from the gluing conditions, and the boundary condition on $`g`$ proposed in  has been recovered.

We have also considered gluing conditions twisted by inner automorphisms of $`G`$ reducing to $`H`$. It was found that in the product of the twisted conjugacy classes, the twistings cancel, and we are left with the same product of (untwisted) conjugacy classes as in the untwisted case.

From our gluing conditions, we have constructed the gauged WZW action for open strings, with the new feature that the two-forms $`\omega `$ depend on the boundary value of one of the $`H`$-valued fields $`U,\stackrel{~}{U}`$. When rewriting our action in terms of the gauge field $`A`$, we have shown that all the $`U`$-dependent terms cancel each other in a nontrivial way, and the resulting action coincides classically with that in . This indicates that these gluing conditions indeed describe D-branes in the gauged WZW model.

Acknowledgements The work of T.K. is supported in part by a grant from the Ministry of Education (grant number 13135215). J.R. is supported by a CRM-ISM postdoctoral fellowship. The research of M.A.W. and J.-G.Z. is supported in part by NSERC.


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# Kafri, Mukamel, and Peliti Reply

Kafri, Mukamel, and Peliti Reply: The Comment of Hanke and Metzler HM  questions the validity of the analysis presented in KMP1  to DNA chains of finite length as used in experiments. Their argument is that for the analysis to be valid “each of the three segments going out of a vertex must be much longer than the persistence length $`\mathrm{}_p`$ of this segment”. By using the persistence lengths $`\mathrm{}_p(L)40`$Å for a single strand and $`\mathrm{}_p(H)500`$ Å for a double helix (bound segment) they arrive at the conclusion that in order to observe the asymptotic behavior found in KMP1  one needs chains which are far longer than those studies experimentally.

This assertion constitutes a misunderstanding of the analysis given in KMP1 . In this analysis one considers a loop interacting with the rest of the chain and not just with the vicinal double helices. Thus, in KMP1  each of the two lines attached to the loop is in fact composed of an alternating sequence of bound segments and denaturated loops. It may be viewed as a stick and joint structure, whereby adjacent double helices (which may be considered as rigid rods as they are shorter than $`\mathrm{}_p(H)`$) are loosely attached to each other via an open loop (see Fig. 1). Thus, the “rest of the chain” as considered in reference KMP1  is in fact a random rod structure with a persistence length given by the length of the rod connecting two loops. This length can be easily estimated from the analysis of Poland and Scheraga and its generalization as given in KMP1 . It can be shown that the probability distribution of rods of length $`k`$ at the transition is $`P(k)(w/s)^k`$. Here $`w=\mathrm{exp}(\beta _\mathrm{M}E_0)`$ is the Boltzmann weight of a bound pair with energy $`E_0`$ at the melting temperature, $`1/\beta _\mathrm{M}`$, and $`s`$ is a non-universal geometrical factor. This is an exponentially decaying distribution with a typical length of order $`\xi 1/|\mathrm{ln}(w/s)|`$. This length has nothing to do with the persistence length of the bounded segments and in fact it is far shorter (of the order of a small number of base pairs). An estimate of this length can be obtained using Eq. 4 of KMP1  at the transition

$$\frac{s}{w}=\underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{1}{k^c}+1.$$
(1)
With the estimated value of $`c=2.115`$ (in three dimensions) this yields $`\xi 1.07`$ in units of $`\mathrm{}_p(L)`$. Note that this length is non-universal and it depends on the details of the model, such as the statistical weight of small loops, the stacking interactions and other details. However, these features are not expected to change this length considerably. Therefore, the criticism expressed in the Comment is not valid and the analysis in the Letter is applicable to finite chains of the length studied experimentally. In reference KMP1  the detailed structure of the “rest of the chain” is ignored when the self-avoiding interaction is considered. However, as argued in KMP1  this assumption is reasonable and should yield a good estimate of the effect of self-avoiding interactions.

A strong support for this picture is provided by numerical simulations of Causo et. al. CCG  and Carlon et. al. COS  of chains of finite length in which the self avoiding interactions are fully taken into account. In both studies the melting transition was found to be first order, compatible with $`c>2`$ as found in KMP1 . In COS  the exponent $`c`$ is evaluated directly for chains of length 50-200 monomers (each monomer corresponds to $`\mathrm{}_p(L)`$ namely to about 8 base pairs). Moreover, the inclusion of the different stiffnesses of the bound and unbound segments (in simulations persistence length ratio, $`\mathrm{}_p(H)/\mathrm{}_p(L)`$, was taken to vary between 1 and 10) did not change the estimate significantly. The fact that the observed $`c`$ is consistent with that obtained by reference KMP1  strongly supports the basic assumptions behind this analysis. It also indicates that the scaling behavior predicted in KMP1  may be observed in finite chains of lengths between hundreds to thousands base pairs, which is the experimentally relevant range.

Y. Kafri and D. Mukamel

Department of Physics of Complex Systems, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

L. Peliti

Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche and Unità INFM, Università “Federico II”, Complesso Monte S. Angelo, I–80126 Napoli, Italy


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# Spherically Symmetric, Self-Similar Spacetimes

## Acknowledgements

KSG thanks the University of Natal and the National Research Foundation for ongoing support. He also thanks CIRI for their kind hospitality during the course of this work.