text:
# Chandra Deep Field South: The 1Msec Catalog

## 1 Introduction

The X–ray background (hereafter XRB) was first identified by Giacconi et al. (1962) and its resolution into discrete sources has since been a major goal of X–ray astronomy. Deep surveys by the major X–ray facilities UHURU (Matilsky et al., 1973), HEAO-1 A2 (Piccinotti et al., 1982), Einstein (Giacconi et al., 1979), ROSAT (Hasinger et al., 1998), ASCA (Ueda et al., 1999) and BeppoSAX (Giommi et al., 2000) have resolved an increasing fraction of the XRB in the 0.5–2 keV and in the 2–7 keV band and produced catalogs of sources which were then used for a wide variety of other astrophysical investigations. These surveys were primarily limited by effective area and source confusion at the faintest achievable fluxes. Unlike these previous missions, Chandra (Weisskopf et al., 2000) provides arcsecond resolution over a majority of the detector, in particular the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS–I, Garmire et al., 1992; Bautz et al., 1998). Superior spatial resolution coupled with a substantial gain in light–gathering power over ROSAT has allowed our 942 ks exposure (hereafter 1Msec) of the CDFS (and the analogous exposure of the Hubble Deep Field North) to become the deepest X–ray exposure(s) ever taken, improving by factors of $`20`$ and $`200`$ the deepest ROSAT and ASCA surveys, respectively.

Along with the Chandra Deep Field North (CDFN) (Hornschemeier et al., 2000, 2001; Brandt et al., 2001a, b), the CDFS provides a unique dataset in which to investigate both statistical and source-by-source properties of active galaxies over a large range of redshift and parameter space. Already, the CDFS has discovered both single interesting objects (Norman et al., 2001) and statistical correlations (Giacconi et al. 2001; Tozzi et al. 2001, hereafter Paper I and II).

The Chandra Deep Field South is centered on $`\alpha `$ = 03:32:28.0, $`\delta `$=-27:48:30 (J2000), and was selected as having: (1) low Galactic neutral hydrogen column (NH $``$ 8 $`\times `$ 1019 cm-2); (2) no bright stars ($`m_\text{v}14`$) within 30$`\mathrm{}`$ and (3) field accessibility from the new 8m class telescopes, namely VLT and Gemini-South. Note that recent higher–resolution HI maps (from the Parkes Multi–beam Survey; L. Staveley–Smith, private communication) confirm the HI hole in the CDFS, but do show some sub–structure (on $`10`$ arcminute scale) near the Chandra pointings, at the level of $`10^{19.5}`$ cm-2.

Here we present the catalog of the sources in the CDFS field found in the 1Msec exposure along with fluxes (or upper limits) in $`R`$, for their presumed optical counterparts. The first scientific results derived from the 1Msec observation are presented in Rosati et al. 2001 (Paper III).

The Paper is structured as follows: in Section 2 we discuss the data, in Section 3 we discuss extraction for point and extended sources and their photometry; in Section 4 the optical identifications are presented. We conclude with a discussion of this dataset. The common catalog is given in Table 2. In Tables 3, 4 and 5 are listed sources detected only by SExtractor and wavelet techniques, and extended properties respectively.

## 2 X–ray Data

### 2.1 Diary of Observations

The final X–ray image used to generate the catalog is a combination of 11 individual Chandra ACIS–I pointings summarised in Table 1. The maximum total exposure time is 942 ks, but varies across the detector(s), with a minimum of 25 ksec at the edge of the field where we obtained only single exposures due to rotation of the field–of–view. ACIS consists of ten CCDs, distributed in a 2x2 array (ACIS–I) and a 1x6 array (ACIS–S, see the Chandra Observatory Guide at http://asc.harvard.edu/udocs/docs/docs.html). All four ACIS–I chips and the ACIS–S3 chip were used for the CDFS observations. The telescope aimpoint was centered on the ACIS–I3 chip for each exposure. Effective area and spatial resolution of the telescope vary inversely as off–axis angle. Unfortunately the S3 CCD is far enough off–axis to decrease its effective area by a factor of 0.7 (at 4.5 keV) and its spatial resolution by a factor of 0.1 or less relative to the aimpoint. We have therefore chosen to ignore any data in the S3 CCD for the purpose of this work.

Our first two observations in 1999 (1431–0, 1431–1, see Table 1) were taken with the ACIS–I at -110 C. All other observations were taken at -120 C. The CTI–induced QE loss due to grade redistribution (see Townsley et al. 2001) was mitigated by the ten degree change, especially in the hard band. As an example, the effective area improved by 5% at 4.5 keV. The improvement is higher at larger energies, where, however, the effective area is much smaller. The 7 observations taken in December 2000 were processed by the Chandra X–ray Center using the most recent calibration files which were introduced in versions R4CU5UPD11 (and later) of the processing software. Those observations taken in 1999 and the summer of 2000 were also re–processed by the Chandra X–ray Center using the new calibration files.

### 2.2 Processing Standards

CIAO 2.0.1 (see http://asc.harvard.edu/ciao) was used to reduce all of the data sets. While calculating exposure maps, the program asp\_apply\_sim was used to fix the shifts between exposure maps and X–ray images. The data were filtered to include only the standard ASCA event grades 0, 2, 3, 4 and 6. All hot pixels and columns were removed. We also removed the flickering pixels (caused mainly by cosmic rays afterglows), defined as the pixels with more than two contiguous events within 3.3 sec. Time intervals with background rates larger than 3$`\sigma `$ over the average global value were removed. Due to the high background, about 8800 sec were removed from the level 2 files; most of them were removed from the first exposure, which contained the only long–lasting high background flare. The final exposure time of 942 ks also reflects corrections for CCD read–out time and time lost due to bad satellite aspect.

There are small shifts (between 20” and 1”) between the aimpoints of each exposure. We calculated these relative shifts by registering the brightest sources and combining the eleven observations. The combined data has the same coordinate system as Obs. ID 2406. We extracted three images from the total 1Msec data: a soft image (0.5–2.0 keV), a hard image (2.0–7.0 keV) and the total image (0.5–7.0 keV). The images were binned 2 $`\times `$ 2, which gives an image scale of 0.982″/pixel. The hard and total bands were cut at 7 keV since above this energy the effective area of Chandra is decreasing, while the instrumental background is rising, giving a very inefficient detection of sky and source photons. Figures 1 and 2 shows the soft and hard images. Exposure maps for the soft and hard bands were calculated for each observation, and then combined using the determined shifts and weighting for the individual exposure times. The soft exposure map is shown in Figure 3. A single ACIS–I pointing covers a field of about 0.08 deg2. Due to the different roll angles of the individual pointings, the final image covers a total of 0.109 deg2, decreasing rapidly near the flux limit. The solid angle as a function of the effective exposure time is shown in Figure 4. The sky coverage (see Figure 5) is defined as the solid angle within which a source with a given X–ray flux can be detected at S/N$`>2.1`$. MARX simulations verify that our model for the sky coverage is accurate within a few percent. The computation of the sky coverage and the simulations are described in Tozzi et al. (2001).

## 3 Detection Techniques

### 3.1 Sextractor

To detect sources in the Chandra Deep Field South we ran a modified version of the SExtractor algorithm (Bertin & Arnouts, 1996) on the 0.5–7 keV image. This modified detection algorithm is several orders of magnitude faster than the wavelet algorithm of Rosati et al. (1995) or WAVDETECT in the CIAO software (Dobrzycki et al., 1999; Freeman et al., 2001). Detection parameters (e.g., threshold, characteristic object size, and ultimately the signal–to–noise) were chosen to find very faint sources, while limiting the number of spurious sources to 10, or approximately $`3`$% of the total sample. The number of fake sources as a function of the algorithms’ parameters was determined via extensive simulations as described in Tozzi et al. (2001).

SExtractor was first run on the 0.5–7 keV image to produce an initial list of candidate sources. SExtractor detection parameters were chosen as a result of simulations and we adopted a detection threshold of 2.4, with a Gaussian filter with $`1.5\mathrm{}`$ FWHM and a minimum area of 5 connected pixels. SExtractor parameters were chosen to detect sources to the faintest limits, thus including a sizeable number of spurious sources. Object photometry for each source was then performed separately in the soft and hard bands and its significance was determined by measuring the signal–to–noise for each source. The definition of S/N was that adopted by Tozzi et al. (2001). Source counts are measured in a circle of radius $`R_s`$, where $`R_s`$ is in units of pixels and is determined by a function $`R_s`$ = 2.4$`\mathrm{}`$ $`\times `$ FWHM (with a minimum of 5 pixels). The FWHM was modeled as a function of the off–axis angle to reproduce the broadening of the PSF. The parabolic fit we adopted has the coefficients $`(a_0,a_1,a_2)=(0.6779,0.0405,0.0535)`$. The radius $`R_s`$ reproduces the 95% encircled–energy radius as included in the WAVDETECT algorithm. Note that the fit that we used for photometry is different from the fit of the average FWHM of the observed sources that we used later to select extended sources.

The local background was calculated for each source in an annulus with outer radius of Rs \+ 12 pixels ($`11.8\mathrm{}`$) and inner radius Rs \+ 2 pixels ($`1.9\mathrm{}`$), after masking out nearby sources. We considered only sources with S/N $``$ 2.1 in either the soft or hard band. This procedure removed 47 sources from the raw catalog obtained with SExtractor. Detailed simulations have shown that a S/N$`>`$2.1 threshold results in less than 10 spurious sources in the whole sample. Our simulations have also shown that aperture photometry leads to an underestimate of the source count rate by approximately $`4`$% (see panel c of Figure 1 of Paper II). We have corrected this photometric bias before converting count–rates into energy fluxes. We also notice that our aperture photometry is based on apertures larger than both the hard and soft PSFs, so that we do not suffer any effect from the energy dependent nature of the PSF.

Incidentally, we remark that the same procedure run separately in both the soft and hard bands did not add any new detections. Conversely, the combined catalog obtained from the detections in the two separate bands, was missing several bona fide sources found in the 0.5–7 keV image. This is expected since we are far from being background limited: the soft background is $`(2.6\pm 0.4)\times 10^7`$ counts/arcsec2/s, while the hard (2–7 keV) background is $`(4.2\pm 0.5)\times 10^7`$ counts/arcsec2/s. The higher background in the total image is therefore more than compensated for by the higher signal–to–noise of the sources.

We checked the detections by eye, removing a spurious double detection far off–axis, and splitting two blended sources. We checked also that point sources included in the brightest extended sources (see §3.4) are correctly identified. Thus, we have 294 sources with S/N $``$ 2.1 from the soft image, and 247 sources from the hard image. The total number of SExtractor sources is 332. There are 85 only detected in the soft band, and 38 only detected in the hard band.

### 3.2 Wavelet Transform

To independently check the sources detected with SExtractor, we ran WAVDETECT (Dobrzycki et al. 1999; Freeman et al. 2001) on the 0.5–7 keV image. A probability threshold of 1 $`\times `$ 10-6, and scales of 1, 1.414, 2.0, 2.828, 4.0, 5.656, 8.0 pixels were used for source identification. The combined image of 1 Msec has $``$ 1.4 $`\times `$ 106 pixels; therefore we expect $``$ 1.4 false detections per image for a uniform, static background. However, this is not the case for our data, where the background is not static and varies across the field, especially at the edges, between individual observations.

Instead of defining another completeness criterium for the sources detected with WAVDETECT, and thus a separate catalog, we use this sample as a complement to the SExtractor catalog. Therefore we apply the same S/N$`>`$2.1 threshold on the list of candidates obtained with WAVDETECT, removing 23 of them. Again, the measure of the signal–to–noise ratio for each source candidate has been done independently in both the soft and hard images, using the same extraction regions described in the previous Section. Finally, we have 288 sources with S/N $`>`$ 2.1 from the soft image, and 240 sources from the hard image. The total number of sources is 318. There are 78 detected in the soft band only, and 30 detected in the hard band only.

### 3.3 Joint Data Set

We compared the two catalogs from SExtractor and WAVDETECT, using a matching radius of $`2\mathrm{}`$. We found 304 sources were detected by both methods. These jointly detected sources constitute the first section of the catalog, given in Table 2. We also have 28 sources which are detected by SExtractor only, which we list Table 3, and 14 which are detected by WAVDETECT only, which we list in Table 4. In Figs 6 and 7 we compare the photon counts measured with the SExtractor method with the counts measured with WAVDETECT for each detected source. The comparison has been done both in the soft and hard band. We note an excellent agreement between the independent photometric measurements. It should also be noted that all quoted counts in the catalog (Tables 2-4) were determined using the aperture method described in Section 3.1 above. The adopted cut at S/N$`>`$2.1 corresponds to $`11`$($`13`$) counts for the faintest sources in the soft(hard) band at the aimpoint. The net count rates were obtained by dividing the net counts by the effective exposure time, which includes the effect of vignetting.

The energy fluxes were computed separately in the soft and hard bands. We prefer to quote the energy flux in the 2–10 keV band as extrapolated from the counts in the 2–7 keV bands, in order to make a direct comparison with previous results from the literature. To derive the energy flux from the observed count rate for the soft and hard bands, we have assumed a conversion factor appropriate for the measured average spectrum of all the sources $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.375\pm 0.015`$ (found for all the 1 Msec sources). After fixing the local absorption to the Galactic value of 8 $`\times `$ 1019 cm-2, we have a conversion factor of $`(4.6\pm 0.1)\times 10^{12}`$ from count rate to erg s-1 cm-2 in the soft band and $`(3.0\pm 0.3)\times 10^{11}`$ in the hard band. The uncertainties correspond to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.4\pm 0.3`$. The error on the fluxes in the table include only the Poissonian error resulting from the source and background counts. With the adopted conversion factors, the minimum fluxes achieved in the soft and hard band are $`5.5\times 10^{17}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and $`4.5\times 10^{16}`$ erg s-1 cm-2, respectively.

### 3.4 Extended Sources

The CDFS 1Msec source catalog contains a sizeable fraction of sources which are resolved by Chandra. A search for extended sources in the Msec exposure (Paper III) yielded 18 diffuse sources. For relatively rare objects like groups and clusters of galaxies, which are known to contribute up to $`10\%`$ of the soft background at $`10^{14}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 (Rosati et al. 1995), the CDFS probes the very faint end of their X–ray luminosity function. In order to search for extended sources associated with hot halos of galaxies, groups and clusters, we used the soft image and characterized the source extent with the FWHM of the best fit Gaussian profile. A higher S/N cut, $`S/N>3`$, is required for a robust determination of the source extent. The likelihood that a source is extended can be estimated as a function of the off–axis angle by comparing the measured FWHM with the local PSF width. The latter was empirically derived with the same profile fitting procedure by using a sample of 346 sources which were drawn from the combination of the CDFS with two additional deep fields in the Chandra Archive, MS$`1137.5+6625`$ (sequence number 800044, 120 ks) and CL0848.6+4453 (Lynx field, 800103, 190 ks). This control sample was constructed including only sources with $`S/N>3`$ and excluding outliers in the extent distribution with a $`3\sigma `$ clipping procedure. The best fit of the PSF FWHM as a function of the off–axis angle is shown in Figure 10 (top panel) as a solid line. The coefficients of the parabolic fit are: $`(a_0,a_1,a_2)=(1.152,0.193,0.025)`$. This fit was subtracted from each data point to obtain the FWHM residuals (Figure 10, bottom panel). We then fitted a Gaussian distribution to these residuals in four different off–axis angle bins (0-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12 arcmin) and derived the $`3\sigma `$ upper values whose parabolic fit defines our cut off line for extended sources (dashed line). A catalog of the 18 extended sources selected in this way is given in Table 5. We have visually inspected these sources to make sure that strong variations in the exposure map do not affect source characterization.

This procedure will generally not work well for very extended low surface brightness sources for which a simple Gaussian fit is not appropriate, or which might have been missed by both our standard detection algorithms. To search for very diffuse sources we used a complementary approach. We ran WAVDETECT with a small characteristic scale to preferentially select point–like sources. These objects are removed from the soft image by replacing the source region with a simulated background. We then rebinned the resulting image to a larger pixel size (4 arcsec) and used WAVDETECT to search for significant sources (probability threshold of 1 $`\times `$ 10-6) with characteristic scales of 1.0, 1.414, 2.0, 2.828, 4.0, 5.656, 8.0 pixels. We remind the reader that running WAVDETECT on the original image with large characteristic scales would produce poor results due to well-known cross talk between the small and large scales in the wavelet analysis. One diffuse source is clearly detected with this method (#645 detected by WAVDETECT only). This is a low surface brightness feature also apparent by visual inspection of the field (Figure 1, lower right). We have added this source to our extended source catalog. The K–band finding chart (Figure 11) shows an asymmetric distribution of X–ray emission, which is likely associated with an intermediate redshift poor cluster.

Visual inspection and optical colors indicate that some of them are groups or isolated early type galaxies at $`z<1`$. In several cases however, the X–ray emission is dominated by a central, hard component which is likely due to low–level nuclear activity. Of all the 18 diffuse sources, one has been identified (#594; see Figure 12) with a poor cluster at $`z=0.72`$. The X–ray luminosity is $`L_X(0.52\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})=4\times 10^{42}`$ erg s-1, and the temperature $`kT=1.2_{0.3}^{+0.6}`$ keV (1 sigma errors). The stacked spectrum of the three brightest extended sources ($`F_X=13`$ erg s-1 cm-2 in the soft band) clearly identified as groups, is well fitted by a Raymond-Smith model with $`kT=1.7_{0.4}^{+0.6}`$ keV, assuming metallicity 0.3 solar and redshift equal to the spectroscopic or photometric one. The mean surface brightness of these diffuse sources, computed as the ratio between the flux and a circular area of 2\*FWHM radius, is as low as $`10^{16}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 $`\text{arcmin}^2`$, i.e. between 10 and 20 times fainter than the faintest extended sources discovered by ROSAT.

## 4 Optical Identifications

Our primary optical imaging was obtained using the FORS1 camera on the ANTU (UT-1 at VLT) telescope. The $`R`$ band mosaics from this data cover $`13.6\mathrm{}\times 13.6\mathrm{}`$ to depths between $`26`$ and $`26.7`$ (Vega magnitudes). This data does not cover the full CDFS area and must be supplemented with other observations. The ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) has covered this field to moderate depths in several bands, of which we present $`R`$ ($`<26.1`$ Vega) here (Arnouts et al. 2001; Vandame et al. 2001). The EIS data has been obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the ESO-MPG 2.2 meter telescope at La Silla.

The Chandra data itself has a pointing accuracy of roughly 1 $`\mathrm{}`$. Identification of optical counterparts then depends on registering the X–ray and optical data to the highest possible accuracy. To do this we required a stable and fixed astrometric frame. We have chosen to tie all image astrometry to the FORS1 frame as described below.

### 4.1 Positional Accuracy

The registration of the X–ray to optical coordinates was done by first cross-correlating the optical and X–ray source catalogs assuming that any residual offsets were smaller than the search box size ($`10\mathrm{}`$). After correcting for the bulk offsets, the correlation was re-run with a smaller box size. These catalogs were then used to generate an input file for the IRAF task CCMAP, which generates an astrometric solution from the correlated image and sky coordinates. We found shifts in (RAR \- RAX, DecR \- DecX) of (1.1, -0.8) arcseconds from the FORS1 $`R`$ band to X–ray imaging (see Figures 8 and 9). The measured positional r.m.s. is $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$. We have adopted $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ as our $`3\sigma `$ error box. Due to the strong effect of off–axis angle on the X–ray PSF and centroid, we scaled the error radius $`\delta _r`$ with off–axis angle ($`\theta `$) and signal–to–noise: $`\delta _r=c_0(\text{F}WHM^{}(\theta )/(\text{S}/N))^{c_1}`$, where $`c_0=0.77`$ and $`c_1=0.68`$ and FWHM is the same quadratic as above but is re-normalized such that a source at zero off–axis angle would have the $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ $`3\sigma `$ error box. We are likely over–estimating the number of possible counterparts for some sources. The resulting optical counterpart candidates presented in Tables 2, 3 and 4 are sorted by separation from the X–ray centroid (the optical ids are also marked with boxes in Figures 15, 16 and 17).

After applying the shifts and error estimates we find that 85% of the sources have a counterpart within the $`3\sigma `$ error circle. This percentage is 78% when calculated with the shallower WFI $`R`$ band data.

### 4.2 Optically Undetected Sources

About 15% of the sources in our sample have no optical counterpart within the assumed error circle down to the limiting R magnitude. Some of those sources might have unusually high $`f_x/f_R`$ ratios, extending the known parameter space of X–ray sources, see figure 13 (here $`f_R`$ is the energy flux in the $`R`$–band). We have therefore compared the distribution of the $`f_x/f_R`$ ratios of our X–ray sources without optical counterparts – which we assumed have the limiting R magnitude – with the analogous distribution for our X–ray sources with optical counterparts. As shown in Figure 14, the distribution of the $`f_x/f_R`$ lower limits of optically undetected sources (dashed line) is consistent with the high $`f_x/f_R`$ tail of the distribution of optically detected sources (solid line). For a concise discussion of the nature of these sources see §5.

## 5 Discussion and Conclusions

We briefly summarize the detection criteria adopted in this Paper. There are three basic steps: 1) a detection algorithm (either SExtractor or WAVDETECT) has been run on the full 0.5–7 keV image to generate a list of source candidates; 2) aperture photometry has been performed independently in the 0.5–2 keV image and 2–7 keV image at the position of each source candidate; 3) all those sources with S/N$`>`$2.1 either in the soft or in the hard image are considered as real sources and appear in our catalogs. This procedure may not reach the deepest sensitivity achievable with our observations, however, it is a good compromise achieving low limiting fluxes without introducing numerous fake sources. As assessed by extensive simulations described in Tozzi et al. (2001), the fraction of fake sources to be expected in our sample is less than 10 (or $`3`$%) with this method. The faintest sources in our samples have approximately 10 net counts. Given the exposure time and the adopted conversion factors the limiting fluxes achieved in the 0.5–2 keV and in the 2–10 keV band are $`5.5\times 10^{17}`$ erg s-1 cm-2 and $`4.5\times 10^{16}`$ erg s-1 cm-2, respectively.

These limiting fluxes are about 20 and 200 times lower than that previous X–ray missions in the soft and hard bands respectively. The catalog of sources presented in this Paper allows us to investigate the nature of X–ray faint sources with unprecedented sensitivity, together with their optical properties. Most of the sources in our sample fall within the X–ray to optical flux ratio range typical of AGN as determined from the EMSS sources (Stocke et al. 1991). In addition a significant population of X–ray faint/optically bright sources is observed, with $`f_x/f_R0.1`$, lower than those typical of AGNs. Most of these sources are detected in the soft band only (circles in Figure 13). This population of sources has been already partially identified as nearby, bright normal galaxies by Tozzi et al. (2001); Hornschemeier et al. (2001); Barger et al. (2001). Only a few sources seem to have $`f_x/f_R`$ values higher than usual, which may be obscured AGN at very high redshift. This population of optically faint sources ($`R>25`$) is consistent with a mix of obscured AGN at $`z=13`$ and evolved, high–z galaxies (see Alexander et al. 2001; Cowie et al. 2001). The nature of these sources will be investigated in greater detail in following papers.

The data presented here constitute (along with the Chandra Deep Field North) the deepest X–ray exposure ever taken. As such, it is a unique dataset for current and future research. A proposal to re–observe this field with Chandra will await detailed analysis of the current dataset. However, a SIRTF Legacy program will be observing this field with both MIPS and IRAC during their own deep survey. Also, a 500ks observation with XMM has been planned in the CDFS this year. The high XMM throughput, combined with the arcsec Chandra resolution, will allow high quality X–ray spectra and secure optical identifications to be obtained for most of the X–ray sources in the CDFS. The intensive optical and infrared coverage is planned to continue and to be vigorously pursued at ESO. Deep VLA radio observations are being analyzed.

We thank Dr. Harvey Tananbaum for making available 500 kiloseconds of Director Discretionary Time which doubled our original guaranteed time on this field, thus permitting us to achieve the quoted sensitivity. We thank the entire Chandra Team for the high degree of support we have received in carrying out our observing program. In particular, we wish to thank Antonella Fruscione for her constant help in the use of the CXC software. Finally, we thank the anonymous referee for a detailed report that considerably improved the presentation of the results. R. Giacconi and C. Norman gratefully acknowledge support under NASA grant NAG-8-1527 and NAG-8-1133.


format: text

text:
# References

Bound states of anti-nucleons in finite nuclei

G. Mao, H. Stöcker and W. Greiner

Institut für Theoretische Physik der J. W. Goethe-Universität
Postfach 11 19 32, D-60054 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

## Abstract

We study the bound states of anti-nucleons emerging from the lower continuum in finite nuclei within the relativistic Hartree approach including the contributions of the Dirac sea to the source terms of the meson fields. The Dirac equation is reduced to two Schrödinger-equivalent equations for the nucleon and the anti-nucleon respectively. These two equations are solved simultaneously in an iteration procedure. Numerical results show that the bound levels of anti-nucleons vary drastically when the vacuum contributions are taken into account.

PACS number(s): 21.10.-k; 21.60.-n; 03.65.Pm

In spite of the great successes of the relativistic mean field (RMF) theory  and the relativistic Hartree approach (RHA)  in describing the ground states of nuclei, the arguments of introduction of strong Lorentz scalar ($`S`$) and time-component Lorentz vector ($`V`$) potential in the Dirac equation are largely indirect. So far, no evidence from experiments ensures the physical necessity. One usually compares the theoretical predictions only with the experimental data of the nucleon sector (i.e., the shell-model states), which is subject to a relatively small quantity stemming from the cancellation of two potentials $`S+V`$ ($`V`$ is positive, $`S`$ is negative.). While the dynamical content of the Dirac picture certainly lies with both the nucleon and the anti-nucleon sector, the study of the anti-nucleon sector enjoys an additional bonus: it provides us with a chance to determine the individual $`S`$ and $`V`$! Due to the G-parity, the vector potential changes its sign in the anti-nucleon sector. The bound states of anti-nucleons are sensitive to the sum of the scalar and vector field $`SV`$. Combining with the information from the nucleon sector, one may fix the individual values of the scalar and vector field.

The study of the anti-nucleon bound states is extremely interesting for modern nuclear physics. If the potential of anti-nucleons is much weaker than what one expects or predicts by means of the RMF/RHA models, that is, the strong scalar and vector field are not necessary, one may question the validity of the models since some important physical ingredients, such as quantum corrections, correlation effects, three-body forces et al., are still missing in these phenomenological approaches. One may think about constituting a more elaborate model. Alternatively, if a deep potential of anti-nucleons is indeed observed, that is, the strong scalar and vector potential are realistic, an interesting phenomenon is that at certain density the energy of anti-nucleons may turn out to be larger than the free nucleon mass, the system becomes unstable with respect to the nucleon–anti-nucleon pair creation . On the other hand, as pointed out in Ref. , in high-energy relativistic heavy-ion collisions, the nucleons may be emitted from the deep bound states emerging from the Dirac sea due to dynamics. These can create a great number of anti-nucleons in bound states. Such collective creation processes of anti-matter clusters have a large probability for the production of anti-nuclei, – and analogously also for multi-$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, multi-$`\overline{\lambda }`$ nuclei. These open two fascinating directions to extend the periodic system, i.e., to extend into the anti-nucleon sector and into the multi-strangeness dimension, in addition to the islands of super-heavy nuclei. In order to reach the quantitative study of the above theoretical conjecture, a prerequisite is to know the exact potential depth of the bound states of anti-nucleons. Up to now, no answers from experimental side or theoretical side are available.

This is the aim of the present work. We study the problem within the relativistic Hartree approach including the vacuum contributions. The starting point is the following effective Lagrangian for nucleons interacting through the exchange of mesons

$``$ $`=`$ $`\overline{\psi }[i\gamma _\mu ^\mu M_N]\psi +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}_\mu \sigma ^\mu \sigma U(\sigma ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\omega _{\mu \nu }\omega ^{\mu \nu }`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_\omega ^2\omega _\mu \omega ^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}𝐑_{\mu \nu }𝐑^{\mu \nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_\rho ^2𝐑_\mu 𝐑^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}A_{\mu \nu }A^{\mu \nu }`$
$`+\mathrm{g}_\sigma \overline{\psi }\psi \sigma \mathrm{g}_\omega \overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu \psi \omega ^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{g}_\rho \overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu 𝝉\psi 𝐑^\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}e\overline{\psi }(1+\tau _0)\gamma _\mu \psi A^\mu ,`$
here U($`\sigma `$) is the self-interaction part of the scalar field

$$U(\sigma )=\frac{1}{2}m_\sigma ^2\sigma ^2+\frac{1}{3!}b\sigma ^3+\frac{1}{4!}c\sigma ^4.$$
(2)
Based on this Lagrangian, we have developed a relativistic model describing the bound states of both nucleons and anti-nucleons in finite nuclei . Instead of directly searching for two solutions of the Dirac equation in a finite many-body system, we reduce the Dirac equation to two Schrödinger-equivalent equations for the nucleon and the anti-nucleon respectively. These two equations can be solved simultaneously with the numerical technique of the relativistic mean-field theory for finite nuclei. The contributions of the Dirac sea to the source terms of the meson fields are evaluated by means of the derivative expansion  up to the leading derivative order for the one-meson loop and one-nucleon loop. Thus, the wave functions of anti-nucleons, which are used to calculate the single-particle energies, are not involved in evaluating the vacuum contributions to the scalar and baryon density which are, in turn, expressed by means of the scalar and vector field as well as their derivative terms . The Schrödinger-equivalent equation of the nucleon and the equations of motion of mesons (containing the densities contributed from the vacuum) are solved within a self-consistent iteration procedure . Then, the equation of the anti-nucleon is solved with the known mean fields to obtain the wave functions and the single-particle energies of anti-nucleons. The space of anti-nucleons are truncated by the specified principal and angular quantum numbers $`n`$ and $`j`$ with the guarantee that the calculated single-particle energies of anti-nucleons are converged when the truncated space is extended. We find that the results are insensitive to the exact values of $`n`$ and $`j`$ provided large enough numbers are given. We have used $`n=4`$, $`j=9`$ for $`{}_{}{}^{16}\mathrm{O}`$; $`n=5`$, $`j=11`$ for $`{}_{}{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}`$; and $`n=9`$, $`j=19`$ for $`{}_{}{}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}`$.

In the previous RHA calculations for the bound states of nucleons , the parameters of the model are fitted to the saturation properties of nuclear matter as well as the $`rms`$ charge radius in $`{}_{}{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}`$. The best-fit routine within the RHA to the properties of spherical nuclei has not been performed yet. Thus, we first fit the parameters of Eqs. (1) and (2) within the RHA to the empirical data of binding energy, surface thickness and diffraction radius of eight spherical nuclei $`{}_{}{}^{16}\mathrm{O}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{48}\mathrm{Ca}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{90}\mathrm{Zr}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{116}\mathrm{Sn}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{124}\mathrm{Sn}`$, and $`{}_{}{}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}`$ as has been done in Ref.  for the RMF model. We distinguish two different cases with (RHA1) and without (RHA0) nonlinear self-interaction of the scalar field. The obtained parameters and the corresponding saturation properties are given in Table I. For the sake of comparison, two sets of the linear (LIN) and nonlinear (NL1) RMF parameters from Ref.  are also presented. One can see that the RHA gives a larger effective nucleon mass than the RMF does, which is mainly caused by the feedback of the vacuum to the meson fields, as can be seen from Eqs. (71) $``$ (74) of Ref. . When the effective nucleon mass decreases, the scalar density originated from the Dirac sea $`\rho _S^{sea}`$ increases. It is negative and cancels part of the scalar density contributed from the valence nucleons $`\rho _S^{val}`$, which causes the effective nucleon mass to increase again. At the end, it reaches a balance value. In the fitting procedure, we have tried different initial values giving smaller effective nucleon mass. After running the code many times, all of them slowly converge to a large $`m^{}`$. The larger effective nucleon mass explains why a larger $`\chi ^2`$ value is obtained for the RHA1 compared to the NL1. If one uses the current nonlinear RMF/RHA models to fit the ground-state properties of spherical nuclei, an effective nucleon mass around 0.6 is preferred. The situation, however, might be changed when other physical ingredients, e.g., tensor couplings, correlation effects, three-body forces, are taken into account, which warrants further investigation. On the other hand, in the case of linear model, the RHA0 gives a better fit than the LIN does. This is mainly due to the vacuum contributions which improve the theoretical results of the surface thickness substantially, and finally improve the total $`\chi ^2`$ value. An interesting quantity is the shell fluctuation which can be best expressed via the charge density in $`{}_{}{}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}`$ as

$$\delta \rho =\rho _C(1.8\mathrm{fm})\rho _C(0.0\mathrm{fm}).$$
(3)
The empirical value is $`0.0023`$ $`\mathrm{fm}^3`$ , which is nicely reproduced in the RHA (see Table I) while the RMF overestimates $`\delta \rho `$ by a factor of 3, sharing the same disease with the non-relativistic mean field theory .

In Table II we present the results of both the proton and the anti-proton spectra of $`{}_{}{}^{16}\mathrm{O}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{40}\mathrm{Ca}`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}`$. The binding energy per nucleon and the rms charge radius are given too. The numerical calculations are performed within two frameworks, i.e., the RHA including the contributions of the Dirac sea to the source terms of the meson fields and the RMF taking into account only the valence nucleons as the meson-field sources. The experimental data are taken from Ref. . From the table one can see that all four sets of parameters can reproduce the empirical values of the binding energies, the rms charge radii and the single-particle energies of protons fairly well. For the $`E/A`$ and the $`r_{ch}`$, the agreement between the theoretical predictions and the experimental data are improved from the LIN to the RHA0, RHA1 and NL1 set of parameters. For the spectra of protons, due to large error bars, it seems to be difficult to queue up the different sets of parameters. However, because of the large effective nucleon mass, the RHA has a smaller spin-orbit splitting (see $`1p_{1/2}`$ and $`1p_{3/2}`$ state) compared to the RMF. This situation can be improved through introducing a tensor coupling for the $`\omega `$ meson  which will be investigated in the future studies. For the anti-nucleon sector, no experimental data are available. In all four cases, the potential of anti-protons is much deeper than the potential of protons. On the other hand, one can notice the drastic difference between the RHA and the RMF calculations – the single-particle energies of anti-protons calculated from the RHA are about half of that from the RMF, exhibiting the importance of taking into account the Dirac sea effects. It demonstrates that the anti-nucleon spectra deserve a sensitive probe to the effective interactions. The spin-orbit splitting of the anti-nucleon sector is so small that one nearly can not distinguish the $`1\overline{p}_{1/2}`$ and the $`1\overline{p}_{3/2}`$ state. This is because the spin-orbit potential is related to $`d(S+V)/dr`$ in the anti-nucleon sector and two fields cancel each other to a large extent. Nevertheless, the space between the $`1\overline{s}`$ and the $`1\overline{p}`$ state is still evident, especially for lighter nuclei. This might be helpful to separate the process of knocking out a $`1\overline{s}_{1/2}`$ nucleon from the background – a promising way to measure the potential of the anti-nucleon in laboratory.

In summary, we have proposed to study the bound states of anti-nucleons in finite nuclei which will provide us with a chance to judge the physical necessity of introducing strong scalar and vector potential in the Dirac picture. Due to the feedback of the vacuum to the meson fields, the scalar and vector fields decrease in the RHA. Numerical calculations show that the single-particle energies of anti-nucleons change drastically in the RMF and the RHA approach for different sets of parameters, while the single-particle energies of nucleons remain in a reasonable range. It is very important to have experimental data to check the theoretical predicted bound levels of anti-nucleons. If the Dirac picture with the large potentials is valid for nucleon-nucleus interactions, a fascinating direction of future studies is to investigate the vacuum correlation and the collective production of anti-nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Experimental efforts in this direction are presently underway .

The authors thank P.-G. Reinhard, Zhongzhou Ren, J. Schaffner-Bielich and C. Beckmann for stimulating discussions. G. Mao gratefully acknowledges the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for financial support and the people at the Institut für Theoretische Physik der J. W. Goethe Universität for their hospitality. This work was supported by DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Theoretische und Experimentelle Schwerionenphysik, GSI, BMBF, DFG and A.v.Humboldt-Stiftung.


text:
# Eliminating the ‘flatness problem’ with the use of Type Ia supernova data

## 1 Introduction

It was first mentioned long ago (Dicke 1970), that the universe must be ‘extremely finely tuned’ to yield the present observed balance between the kinetic energy of expansion $`K`$ and the gravitational potential energy of cosmic matter $`U`$. The balance is usually quantified in terms of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, which is the energy ratio, $`|U|/K`$, and also the ratio of the total matter density, $`\rho `$, to the critical density, $`\rho _c`$. Thirty years ago, observational limits on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ were described as $`0.1<\mathrm{\Omega }_0<10`$, and it was argued that such an apparently wide range implies a very narrow range at earlier epochs. It has been estimated more than once since that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ departs from unity by one part in $`10^{16}`$ at the epoch of light element production, or by one part in $`10^{60}`$ at the Planck epoch. Why was there such a remarkably fine balance between the kinetic and potential energies in the ‘initial conditions’ for the cosmic evolution?

This argument has become known as the ‘flatness problem’, since the energy ratio is associated with the sign of the spatial curvature in the Friedmann model. It serves as one of the main motivations for the idea of inflation (Guth 1981); this idea suggests an elegant solution to the problem (Guth 1981, Linde 1990). Various aspects of the problem have discussed by Frieman & Waga (1998), Kaloper et al. (1999), Berera et al. (1999), Albrecht & Magueijo (1999), Barrow & Magueijo (1999), Kaloper & Linde (1999), Clayton & Moffat (1999), Avelino & Martins (1999), Arkani-Hamed et al. (2000), Pierpaoli et al. (2000), Kavasaki et al. (2000), Roos & Harun-or-Rashid (2000), Kaganovich (2001), Tegmark et al. (2001), Barrow & Kodama (2001), Starkman et al. (2001), Youm (2001), Deffayet et al. (2001), to mention only some publications of the last 2-3 years.

In this Letter, I show that the recent Type Ia supernova measurements (Riess et al. 1998, Perlmutter et al. 1999) displays the fine-tuning argument in a new light. In Sec.2, a brief account of the concordant data and the new standard model which is based on them is given; new general constraints on $`|\mathrm{\Omega }(t)1|`$ for any epoch of the cosmic evolution are presented in Sec.3; the results are discussed in Sec.4.

## 2 Standard model re-visited

The dynamical equation of the Friedmann cosmology has a form of energy conservation ($`K+U=Const`$):

$$\dot{a}^2=(a/A_V)^2+(a/A_D)^1+(a/A_B)+(a/A_R)^2k,$$
(1)
where $`a(t)`$ is the curvature radius and/or scale factor of the model; $`k=+1,0,1`$ for elliptic ($`K+U<0`$) expansion with positive spatial curvature, parabolic expansion ($`K+U=0`$) with zero curvature and hyperbolic expansion ($`K+U>0`$) with negative curvature, respectively.

The constants $`A`$ in Eq.(1) represent the four major cosmic energy components which are vacuum (V), dark matter (D), baryons (B) and radiation or relativistic energy (R). The constants are the integrals of the Friedmann ‘thermodynamical’ equation:

$$A=[\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho a^{3(1+w)}]^{\frac{1}{1+3w}},$$
(2)
where $`w`$ is the pressure-to-density ratio which is $`1,0,0,1/3`$ for vacuum, dark matter, baryons and radiation, respectively. Hereafter, the integrals $`A`$ are called the Friedmann constants. The constants are related to the ‘initial condition’, under which the cosmic energy forms, vacuum including, were generated in the early universe.

The Friedmann constants can be evaluated quantitatively with the use of the current concordant figures for the four energy densities (Riess et al.1998, Perlmutter et al. 1999, see also for a review Primack 2000):

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_V=0.7\pm 0.1,\mathrm{\Omega }_D=0.3\pm 0.1,\mathrm{\Omega }_B=0.02h_{100}^2,\mathrm{\Omega }_R=0.6\alpha \times 10^4,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}<\alpha <1030.$$
(3)
These figures are in general agreement with the Hubble constant $`h_{100}=0.70\pm 0.15`$ and the cosmic age $`t_0=15\pm 3`$ Gyr. More rigorous recently published upper and lower bounds on the cosmic age are $`13.2\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{+1.2}{0.8}`$ Gyr for $`h_{100}=0.72\pm 0.08`$ (Ferreras et al. 2001).

The present-day value of $`a(t)`$ is determined by these figures; approximately, on the order of magnitude, one has: $`a_0=a(t_0)A_V`$, for all the three types of expansion and the signs of spatial curvature.

The four Friedmann constants calculated with the concordant data are proved to be coincident, on the order of magnitude (Chernin 2001):

$$A_VA_DA_BA_RA10^{60\pm 1}M_{Pl}^1.$$
(4)
Here, units are used in which the speed of light, the Boltzmann constant and the Planck constant are all equal unity: $`c=k=\mathrm{}=1`$. The Planck mass is $`M_{Pl}=G^{1/2}1.2\times 10^{19}`$ GeV.

The time-independent coincidence of the Friedmann constants described by Eq.(4) looks like a symmetry relation that brings vacuum into association with non-vacuum cosmic energies. (A similar relation for baryons and radiation was recognized soon after the discovery of the CMB – Chernin 1968). As I show below, the symmetry relation between vacuum and matter puts a robust upper bound on $`|\mathrm{\Omega }(t)1|`$ at any epoch of cosmic evolution.

## 3 Setting constraints on $`|\mathrm{\Omega }(t)1|`$

The concordant data of Sec.2 narrow essentially the observational bounds on $`\mathrm{\Omega }(t_0)=\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, in comparison with what was discussed three decades ago (see Sec.1). A conservative restriction can be seen from Eq.(3) above: $`0.8<\mathrm{\Omega }_0<1.2`$. More stringent limits (like $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.97\pm 0.05`$) are also advocated in current literature (Roos & Harun-or-Rashid 2001). From the point of view of the fine-tuning argument, the new data make the problem harder than it was in 1970, but not too much – it was hard enough from the very beginning. It is more significant that the Type Ia supernova measurements (Ries et al.1998, Perlmutter et al. 1999) have changed the very sense of the problem.

In the new standard model described in Sec.2, the dynamics of expansion exhibits the parabolic ($`K+U=0`$) behaviour as $`t`$ goes to both zero and infinity for flat, closed and open models, as is seen from Eq.(1). Considerable (maximal) deviations from the regime can be expected for $`k0`$ in an ‘intermediate’ cosmic time interval.

As for spatial geometry, the ratio of the horizon radius to the radius of 3-curvature, $`ct/a`$, may be a practical measure of non-flatness. This ratio goes to zero when time goes to both zero and infinity, as is also seen from Eq.(1). It means that non-flatness wanishes at early and late epoch of the cosmic evolution. In both closed and open models, the radius of 3-curvature is comparable with the radius of the horizon at the intermediate times. In this sense, non-flatness is finite and, generally, not small in the intermediate time interval, including the present epoch at which $`aA_Vct`$ (see. Sec.2).

To put these considerations in a quantitative way, let us follow the evolution of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ as a function of time. It is easy to see from Eq.(1) that

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(t)=[1k(\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho (t)a(t)^2)^1]^1,$$
(5)
where $`\rho (t)`$ is the total density:

$$\frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho =A_V^2+A_Da^3+A_Ba^3+A_R^2a^4.$$
(6)
In the limits $`t0`$ and $`t\mathrm{}`$, the function $`\mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$ reaches the unity level, and the maximal deviation from unity may be expected in the intermediate time interval mentioned above. In this time interval (starting, say, with $`a(0.010.1)a_0`$), the most significant contributions to the total density $`\rho `$ are provided by the vacuum density $`\rho _V`$ and the dark matter density $`\rho _D`$. Thus, with good accuracy, one can re-write Eq.(5) in the simple form:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(t)[1k(\frac{a^2}{A_V^2}+\frac{A_D}{a})^1]^1.$$
(7)
At $`a=a_{ex}=(\frac{1}{2}A_V^2A_D)^{1/3}`$ the function $`\mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$ has an extremum,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{ex}[1\frac{1}{2}k(\frac{A_D}{A_V})^{2/3}]^1.$$
(8)
Putting in accordance with Eq.(4) $`A_VA_D`$, one finds that there are a minimum $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{ex}2/3`$ for $`k=1`$ and a maximum $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{ex}2`$ for $`k=1`$.

This leads to upper bounds on deviation from the unity level of $`\mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$ valid for all the times of the cosmic evolution:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(t)11,k=1;|\mathrm{\Omega }(t)1|1/3,k=1.$$
(9)
Defined and estimated in this way, the upper bounds of Eq.(8) prove to be rather severe. They rule out completely any possibility of large deviations from the near-parabolic dynamics at any epoch of cosmic expansion. Numerically, the bounds are not too different from the present-day observed figures; the latter could be expected, because the epoch of extremum, $`a_{ex}2^{1/3}A_V`$, is not far from us in look-back time.

## 4 Dicussion

The new standard model inspired by the Type Ia supernova measurements (Riess et al.1998, Perlmutter et al. 1999) describes not only the present transition epoch of the cosmic expansion, but as well the early epoch of matter (radiation) domination and the later epoch of vacuum domination (Sec.2). The model leads to the strong conclusion that the cosmic expansion is exactly parabolic or nearly parabolic during all the cosmic evolution. Eqs.(5-8) show this in an explicit quantitative way and clarify also the basic cause of the nearly-parabolic dynamics in the standard model.

The physics which is behind the phenomenon is directly related to the Friedmann constants of the standard model. According to Eq.(7), the constraints on possible deviations from the parabolic dynamics are expressed in the terms of the Friedmann constants. The (practically exact) relation of Eq.(7) includes the vacuum constant $`A_V`$ and the dark matter constant $`A_D`$. The Type Ia SN data put the constants in a simple relation: $`A_VA_D`$. This approximate relation is enough to provide the upper bound on possible deviations from the parabolic regime of the cosmic expansion for all the cosmic time.

The quantitative estimate of Eqs.(7,8) and the qualitative conclusion that follows from it are obviously stable and robust: they are insensitive to small variations of the constants involved. Moreover, the estimate does not depend on the absolute values of the individual constants; only the constant ratio $`A_D/A_V`$, which is unity or near unity, affects the result. In this sense, the presently observed near-parabolic expansion is completely controlled by only one order-of-unity empirical parameter of the model.

Thus, the long-standing problem of the near-parabolic dynamics finds a clear solution: the cosmic expansion is basically as it is because the Friedmann constants are nearly coincident.

There is no need in addressing a hypothetical pre-Friedmann inflation to solve the problem. As for the fine-tuning argument (see Sec.1), it appears now in a quite different light. As is seen from Eqs.(5-7), the seemingly fine-tuned inter-relation between the time-dependent kinetic $`K`$ and potential $`U`$ energy at an early epoch is robustly determined by the time-independent symmetry relation of Eq.(4).

Instead of the ‘fine tuning’ argument, one faces now a new question: Why are the Friedmann constants nearly coincident?

The physical nature of the Friedmann constants seems to be associated with the origin of the cosmic energy forms in the very early universe. One may expect that the physical processes that developed at that time might bring the four cosmic energies into a correspondence with each other. A possible approach to the problem (Chernin 2001) assumes that the freeze-out process at the epoch of the electroweak ($`1`$ TeV) temperatures might be responsible for establishing the symmetry relation between vacuum and matter. If so, the ‘initial conditions’ for the observed cosmic dynamics were generated in the terms of the Friedmann constants at cosmic age $`t10^{12}`$ sec.

I thank Dr. R. Dümmler of Oulu University for helpful comments.

## References

Albrecht A., Magueijo J., 1999, Phys. Rev., D59, 043516

Arkani-Hamed N., Dimopoulos S., Kaloper N., Sundrum R., 2000, Phys. Lett., B480, 193

Avelino P.P., Martins C.J.A.P., 1999, Phys. Lett., B459, 46

Barrow J.D., Magueijo J., 1999, Phys. Lett., B447, 24

Barrow J.D., Kodama H., 2001, Class. Quant. Grav., 18, 1753

Berera A., Gleiser M., Ramos R.O., 1999, Phys. Rev. Lett., 83, 264

Chernin A.D., 1968, Nature, 220, 250

Chernin A.D., 2001, Physics-Uspekhi, 71, 1153 (preprint: astro-ph/0110003)

Clayton M.A., Moffat J.W., 1999, Phys. Lett., B460, 263

Deffayet C., Dvali G., Gabadadze G., Lue A., 2001, Phys. Rev., D64, 104002

Dicke R.H., 1970, Gravitation and the Universe. Amer. Phil. Soc., Philadelphia

Frieman J.A., Waga I., 1998, Phys. Rev., D57, 4642

Guth A., 1981, Phys. Rev., D23, 347

Kaganovich A.B., 2001, Phys. Rev., D63, 025022

Kaloper N., Linde A., 1999, Phys. Rev. D59, 10130

Kaloper N., Linde A., Bousso, R., 1999, Phys. Rev., D59, 043508

Kavasaki M., Yamaguchi M., Yanagida T., 2000, Phys. Rev. Lett., 85, 3572

Linde A., 1990, Particle physics and inflationary cosmology. AIP, New York

Perlmutter S. et al., 1999, ApJ, 517, 565

Pierpaoli E., Scott D., White M., 2000, Mod. Phys. Lett., A15, 1357

Primack J.R., 2001, Nucl. Phys. B Proc. Suppl. 87, 3

Riess A.G. et al., 1998, AJ, 116, 1009

Roos M., Harun-or-Rashid S.M., 2000, preprint (astro-ph/0005541)

Starkman G.D., Stojkovic D., Trodden M., 2001, Phys. Rev., D63, 103511

Starkman G.D., Stojkovic D., Trodden M., 2001, preprint (astro-ph 0106143)

Tegmark M., Zaldarriaga M., Hamilton A.J.S., 2001, Phys. Rev., D63, 043007

Youm D., 2001, Phys. Rev. D63, 125011


text:
# 1 Cosmic Connections, Complementarity, Concordance and Consistency

## 1 Cosmic Connections, Complementarity, Concordance and Consistency

If your model of the Universe is a turtle, you want to know how big the turtle is, how old the turtle is, where the turtle came from and, in some obscure animistic models, how fast the turtle is expanding. Cosmological parameters are the observable quantities that most cosmologists think are important. In the context of general relativity and the hot big bang model, cosmological parameters are the numbers that, when inserted into the Friedmann equation,

$$H^2=H_o^2\left[\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }+\mathrm{\Omega }_ka^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}a^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{rel}}a^4\right],$$
(1)
best describe our particular observable Universe. The expansion is parametrized by Hubble’s constant, $`H_o=\dot{a}/a`$, where $`a`$ is the scale factor of the Universe. Observational estimates of the parameters in this equation, $`H_o`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ (and their subcomponents) have been derived from hundreds of observations and analyses (e.g. Fig. 1). Table 1 is my attempt to summarize this immense body of work.

Various methods to extract cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) and non-CMB observations are forming an ever-tightening network of interlocking constraints. CMB observations tightly constrain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$, while type Ia supernovae observations tightly constrain $`q_o`$. Since lines of contant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k`$ and constant $`q_o`$ are nearly orthogonal in the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ plane, combining these measurements optimally constrains our Universe to a small region (Fig. 1). Four years ago when $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ was assumed to be zero, the critical density, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{crit}=\frac{3H_o^2}{8\pi G}`$ was critical – it determined the fate of the universe – whether it would expand forever or recollapse. Currently, the notion of critical density has lost much of its importance. That role has been usurped by $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$; if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$ the universe will expand forever.

The upper limit on the energy density of neutrinos comes from the shape of the small scale power spectrum. If neutrinos make a significant contribution to the density, they suppress the growth of small scale structure by free-streaming out of over-densities. The CMB power spectrum is not sensitive to such suppression and is not a good way to constrain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$. Hubble scholars used to be irreconcilably divided into camps described by a bimodal distribution peaking at $`H_o=50`$ and $`H_o=90`$. These peaks seem to have merged into a more agreeable Gaussian distribution peaking between 65 and 80 with error bars from hostile groups now overlapping.

The parameters in Table 1 are not independent of each other. The elongated contours in the top plot of Fig. 1 is one example of correlation. Another example is the age of the Universe, $`t_\mathrm{o}=h^1f(\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m},\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda })`$. Estimates of $`h,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ can be inserted into Eq. 1. Integration then yields the age of the Universe ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is negligible and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k=1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0`$). If the Universe is to make sense, independent determinations of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`h`$ and the minimum age of the Universe must be consistent with each other. This is now the case (Fig. 2). Presumably we live in a Universe which corresponds to a single point in multidimensional parameter space. Estimates of $`h`$ from HST Cepheids and the CMB must overlap. Deuterium and CMB determinations of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2`$ should be consistent. Regions of the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ plane favored by supernovae and CMB must overlap with each other and with other independent constraints. This is the case .

The proportionality constant $`w`$ in the equation of state, $`p=w\rho `$, is important in deciding whether the generalization of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ into a time varying $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (i.e. quintessence) is necessary. So far the observations seem to be favoring the simplest case $`w=1`$, (i.e. pure cosmological constant) and do not call for this generalization.

Just as $`h`$ describes the first derivative of the scale factor, the deceleration parameter $`q_o`$ describes the second derivative. The redshifts and apparent magnitudes of type Ia supernovae have been used to find that $`q_o\stackrel{<}{_{}}0`$ – the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. The geometry of the Universe does not seem to be like the surface of a ball ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_k<0`$) nor like a saddle ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_k>0`$) but seems to be flat ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_k0`$) to the precision of our current observations.

## 2 Background and the Bumps on it

Equation 1 is our hot big bang description of the unperturbed GR-based Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Universe. There are no bumps in it, no over-densities, no inhomogeneities, no anisotropies and no structure. The parameters in it are the background parameters. It describes the evolution of a perfectly homogeneous universe .

However, bumps are important . If there had been no bumps in the CMB thirteen billion years ago, no structure would exist today (Fig. 3). The density bumps seen as the hot and cold spots in the CMB map have grown into gravitationally enhanced light-emitting over-densities known as galaxies. Their gravitational growth depends on the cosmological parameters – much as tree growth depends on soil quality (see  for the equations of evolution of the bumps). Specifically, matching the power spectrum of the CMB (the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ which sample the $`z1000`$ universe) to the power spectrum of local galaxies ($`P(k)`$ which sample the $`z0`$ universe) can be used to constrain cosmological parameters. We measure the bumps and from them we infer the background.

## 3 GUTs, TOEs, Branes, Quintessence and Ekpyrotic Cycles

Many aspects of our Universe are more fundamental, but harder to estimate, than the cosmological parameters listed above. For example, the number of dimensions of our Universe is a useful parameter that would help us extend the frontiers of current research and smooth the inevitable transition from classical to quantum cosmology. The background and the bump parameters discussed in the previous sections were classical parameters.

Models of inflation usually consist of choosing a form for the potential. Estimates of the slope of the CMB power spectrum $`n_s`$ and its derivative $`\frac{dn_s}{dk}`$  may soon begin to constrain these potentials. Inflation solves the origin of structure problem with quantum fluctuations, and is just the beginning of quantum contributions to cosmology.

$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM is an observational result that has yet to be theoretically confirmed. From a quantum field theoretic point of view $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.7`$ presents a huge problem. It is a quantum term in a classical equation. But the last time such a quantum term appeared in a classical equation, Hawking radiation was discovered. A similar revelation may be in the offing. The Friedmann equation will eventually be seen as a low energy approximation to a more complete quantum model in much the same way that $`\frac{1}{2}mv^2`$ is a low energy approximation to $`pc`$.

Quantum cosmology is opening up many new doors. Varying coupling constants are expected at high energy  and $`c`$ variation, $`G`$ variation, $`\alpha `$ variation, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ variation (quintessence) are being discussed. We may be in an ekpyrotic universe or a cyclic one . The topology of the Universe is also not without interest . Just as we were getting precise estimates of the parameters of classical cosmology, whole new sets of quantum cosmological parameters are being proposed (see Liddle, these proceedings, for a discussion of inflation and some of the new cosmological ideas).

But there is hope. For example, inflationary models and the new ekpyrotic models make different predictions about the slope and amplitude of the tensor mode ($`n_T`$ and $`A_T`$) contribution to the CMB power spectrum. Measurements of CMB polarization over the next few years will add more diagnostic power to CMB parameter estimation and may be able to usefully constrain $`n_T`$ and $`A_T`$ and distinguish these two models.

I have presented my version of the current best-fit cosmological parameters. Other versions can be found at  and Turner (this volume). By estimating cosmological parameters with precision, cosmology has learned to stick its neck out – it has become a real science, error bars and all. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model is still the leading candidate. Our classical picture of the Universe is falling into place even as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and the new mysteries of quantum cosmology enlarge the darkness, keeping the Universe safe for theoretical rogues and their poorly constrained speculations.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is supported by an Australian Research Fellowship and thanks Matts Roos for a tour through a Finnish swamp looking for berries in the dusk.