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# Numerical Relativity: Status and Prospects

## 1 Introduction

From its beginning a few decades ago, Numerical Relativity has enticed researchers with the promise to finally unravel what General Relativity has kept hidden for almost a century. However, as any other discipline in its infancy, a costly price has been paid to understand how to construct spacetimes numerically and decipher its physical content. Despite significant results obtained in a number of areas, like the discovery of critical phenomena in G.R., some criticisms to the field exist due to progress not being as rapid as some expected.

Although it is certainly true that the pace has not been as fast as hoped, progress has been steady and the current status of the discipline gives confidence for even the near future. Just as much has been learned from the theory from analytical (‘pencil and paper’) techniques in its first century, the second century promises to considerably advance our knowledge due to our ability to numerically probe interesting scenarios. In this article, I describe the current status of the field in a number of fronts and highlight the progress achieved during the past three years (from the previous G.R. meeting). It will be impossible to cover all areas in this contribution, thus I will concentrate on black hole simulations since it is precisely in strongly gravitating/highly dynamical scenarios where this field has its ‘niche’. Also, for the most part, I will avoid non-vacuum scenarios as these will be discussed by Shibata in the present volume.

## 2 The Arena

Achieving a numerical implementation of a PDE system is a complicated task as one tries to model a ‘continuum’ with a discrete representation. Of all systems to be modeled, arguably, the most difficult one is given by Einstein equations. Lack of a preferred frame; gauge issues; a system of ten quasi-linear tightly coupled equations; singularities; variables “being” the spacetime rather than living ‘on top of it’; etc. complicate the implementation task. In fact, even the equations are not a priori expressed in a convenient form for a numerical evolution; i.e. $`E_{ab}G_{ab}8\pi T_{ab}=0`$ does not have an explicit initial value problem in general (IVP). That is, given the initial state of the system at a given “time”, the solution to the future is obtained by integrating the equations. The seminal work of Choquet-Bruhat 50 years ago showed the path to follow to achieve a convenient treatment and since then, many works have extended this and presented different variations on how to define an IVP for Einstein equations.

At present, there are roughly three main ‘venues’ or approaches pursued in numerical relativity to cast the problem in a convenient way: the Cauchy, characteristic and conformal approaches. Several important milestones have been achieved in each of these approaches and I would present them in separate sections, stressing where each one stood just few years ago and where they are now which illustrate they have come a considerable way. Yet, there are still many hurdles left to be crossed for a robust implementation and where appropriate I will include some points that would need to be addressed for this purpose.

### 2.1 Singularity handling

Of all the aforementioned problems, a crucial one is handling the singularity which can be already present on the initial hypersurface or might be formed at a later time by gravitational collapse. At the analytical level, a singularity marks the demise of the theory; but at the numerical one, even points away from it but “close” enough will have fields whose gradients will likely be too large for the implementation. Thus, if at all possible, one would like to stay away from the singularity and neighboring points. For years, the prevalent strategy was to use the freedom in choosing the foliation of the spacetime, so as to not evolve the equations in that region. By ‘piling-up’ the slices so that the proper-time along the normal direction is zero, one ‘avoids’ the singularity. Although this strategy works for short time evolutions, it induces large gradients in long evolutions (due to the slices being considerably ‘bent’). Recently, the prevalent strategy has become the one known as singularity excision; here the idea is to simply cut-short the evolution inside the event horizon. For this strategy to be physically valid, two conditions are required: First, the validity of cosmic censorship and second a method to estimate the location of the event horizon with only partial information of the spacetime. The second one is addressed by locating apparent horizons (with the caveat that they might not exist even where there is an event horizon) while the first one is still an assumption believed to hold in ‘reasonable’ spacetimes.

### 2.2 The Formulations

As mentioned, there are many ways to cast Einstein equations in convenient form for numerical purposes. These can be roughly distinguished by the level set of hypersurfaces adopted to foliate the spacetime and whether this is the physical one or a ‘larger’ one where the physical description is obtained a posteriori by a rather straightforward restriction. A notion of “time” is defined by a chosen foliation of the spacetime (physical or not) which is parametrized by a parameter $`\lambda `$. The character of the normal to the $`\lambda =const`$ surfaces ($`n_a=_a\lambda `$) characterizes the approach. A Cauchy/characteristic approach corresponds to $`n_a`$ being timelike/null111Of course one can deal with more generic conditions but this has not been pursued agressibly yet..

In all approaches, the evolution equations are obtained by projecting Einstein equations onto the hypersurfaces. The projections with respect to the normal (either one or both components of $`E_{ab}`$) correspond to constraint equations which are preserved by the evolution equations if they are satisfied at the initial hypersurface by virtue of the Bianchi identities. Note however, that this allows one to arbitrarily modify the evolution equations by adding the constraints to them. Although this defines a totally equivalent system, the behavior of the numerical implementation can be drastically different as we will discuss later.

Just as is customary in analytical investigations of the theory, there is far from a preferred approach; we have long learned that in General Relativity “one size does not fit all”. Indeed, different approaches are naturally suited for different problems and I will describe the main focus of these in current efforts.

Cauchy approach: As mentioned, in this case the spacetime is foliated with spacelike hypersurfaces, as a result, all $`\lambda =const`$ surfaces ‘end’ at $`i_o`$. This brings in a problem as only in a limited number of cases, the numerical implementation can cover the whole hypersurface due to limited computational power222One can compactify the spacetime and do include infinity in the numerical grid, however, special care must be taken as the effective discretization length grows to infinity which can easily render the numerical implementation useless.. Hence the hypersurfaces are terminated at an outer boundary defining a finite domain. The most widely known formulation of Einstein equations within this approach is the so-called ADM system; however, difficulties observed in the implementation of this system have spurred substantial efforts to consider different reformulations that might aid in the implementation (and in several cases there is evidence for this being the case). Aside from having spacelike leaves, the choice of foliation is largely arbitrary; as a result this approach is quite flexible and is certainly the most popular one in numerical relativity.

Characteristic approach: In this formulation, the hypersurfaces are characteristics of the spacetime. In the particular case of an isolated system, these hypersurfaces can be chosen to reach future null infinity. Since gravitational waves propagate along these hypersurfaces the phase of the waves approaches a constant in the far regions. The spacetime can be compactified (as suggested by Penrose to study asymptotic properties) without numerical problems and enabling the rigorous evaluation of fields at future null infinity. The applicability of this approach is basically restricted to cases where null hypersurfaces do not cross333There exist proposals to go around this problem in a variety of cases though they might be difficult to implement numerically. (i.e. free of caustics or crossovers), otherwise the coordinate system becomes singular. In caustic-free regions, this approach is quite useful and simplifies the description when compared to the Cauchy approach as much of the gauge freedom is fixed and the variables are intimately related to physical quantities.

Conformal approach: This formulation is in a way the most general one as it does not assume any particular condition on the hypersurfaces, it is thus amenable for a Cauchy, characteristic or more generic implementations. The peculiarity of this formulation is that it first obtains the description of an unphysical spacetime and the physical one is obtained a posteriori. The computational boundaries are therefore outside the physical spacetime, and hence are causally disconnected from it assuming all leaves of the foliation cross future null infinity.

## 3 Status

### 3.1 Cauchy approach

Recent Past: A few years ago numerical simulations within this approach presented a series of remarkable results. Among these, the discovery of critical phenomena in GR in spherical symmetry (1D), axisymmetric (2D) head-on collisions of black holes and collapse of Vlasov systems. 1D simulations were implemented with impressive accuracy thanks to the use of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), \[see for instance\]. 2D simulations on the other hand, barely had enough resolution to resolve the essential features and since singularity excision was used they could not proceed too much into the future. The need to produce generic simulations capable of producing waveforms templates for gravitational wave data analysis shifted the attention onto three-dimensional (3D) implementations. In a way, this was a bit regrettable as many interesting physical systems which are truly (or basically) two dimensional in nature were left aside. Currently, activities in both 2D and 3D are aggressively carried out, a few examples are:

2D: Recently, a few groups have undertaken the effort to produce 2D simulations with the necessary numerical techniques to obtain the desired accuracy to address problems like critical collapse in axisymmetry; head-on collisions of black holes and accretion onto a black hole. Among these AMR and singularity excision are the most notable ingredients. The implementation in  is concentrating on studying critical phenomena in Einstein-Klein-Gordon systems to investigate critical behavior in more generic settings. The ADM formulation is being used with a partially constrained implementation (i.e. some of the constraints are used to update the field variables) which apparently helps to remove exponential growing modes typical of free evolution schemes (where the constraints are just used to monitor the quality of the solution) and encouraging results are being obtained. For instance, simulations describing two separated ‘pulses’ of scalar field in a slightly super-critical configuration are followed. As time progresses, each pulse collapses forming two separated black holes which later merge into one which then settles into an almost stationary black hole. At late times the accuracy deteriorates but this will likely be solved once AMR gets fully incorporated.

3D: Three dimensional simulations still have a number of unresolved issues. Poor resolution; lack of understanding of ‘ideal formulations’; boundary treatment and initial data definitions are among the outstanding problems being studied at present. Despite these difficulties, significant advances have been presented recently. Next I comment on some of these,

Initial Data: On the initial data problem, work is advancing towards obtaining realistic initial data. Within this approach, the problem of posing consistent initial data reduces to providing the intrinsic metric of the initial hypersurface and its extrinsic curvature satisfying the constraints (Hamiltonian and momentum constraints). A procedure to handle this problem was developed by Lichnerowicz and further refined by York which involves specifying a conformally related ‘seed’ metric (see  for a detailed description).

For decades the prevalent approach was to solve this Lichnerowicz-York problem assuming a conformally flat seed metric (supplemented by an appropriate seed for a quantity related to the extrinsic curvature). However, since the Kerr-Newman spacetime can not be obtained this way, spinning black holes which can be obtained under this assumption must contain spurious gravitational radiation. A series of proposals have been presented to give away with conformal flatness and implementations of these are already in place or being developed. Reasonable arguments indicate that these initial should data contain less spurious radiation, but it is yet unclear how much there is. This issue will be fully resolved by numerical evolutions. A key ingredient that needs to be worked out for treating binary systems is to choose the initial data achieving a smooth transition from the Post-Newtonian phase description of the inspiraling phase. This will guide the choice of ‘seed variables’ in a way consistent with the description of the problem and aid in minimizing spurious radiation. Work in this area is just beginning.

Single Back Hole evolutions: Singularity excision has also allowed for extending simulations of single black hole spacetimes by several of orders of magnitude when compared to similar spacetimes modeled with singularity avoiding techniques (see figure 1). At least for a number of cases, there are now simulations that can evolve single perturbed black holes for considerable lengths of time, certainly longer than needed for studying a variety of scenarios; probing regimes beyond what we know from perturbation theory and study the produced waveforms. The work presented in, illustrates how singularity excision, coupled with a carefully designed coordinate condition that minimizes changes in particularly sensitive variables in the BSSN444BSSN is a variant of the ADM formulation which has become quite popular due to its better performance in several situations when compared to the ADM one. formulation, enables practically unlimited evolutions of spacetimes describing black holes perturbed by ‘Brill waves’. Not only do these results outperform the very best ones obtained with ‘old’ 2D codes (with singularity avoidance), but it is used to accurately extract the expected waveforms.

Binary Back Hole evolutions: Binary black hole systems are among the ‘hottest’ problems for numerical relativity. This system is a prime candidate for producing gravitational radiation to be measured by the new generation of gravitational wave detectors. An accurate description of the system requires numerical simulations of the full Einstein equations especially for the merger phase. In dealing with such a problem numerically, one must handle two initially separated black holes which will merge and settle into a single perturbed black hole (which can then be treated by black hole perturbations). The total length of simulations required is at least in the order of hundreds of M’s (from about the inner most stable circular orbit to the point where perturbations around a single black hole can be safely used). There is still no implementation capable of addressing these requirements but some hopeful preliminary investigations have been presented. In particular, a proof-of-principle implementation was presented demonstrating the ability to simulate the system containing two initially separated singularities to past the merger phase with the use of singularity excision. The results in illustrated an evolution of a system whose initial data described two-separated (by about $`10M`$) equal mass ($`M`$) black holes (judging from the locations of the apparent horizons) and followed the dynamics of the system to well past the merger. Figure 2 illustrates the location of the apparent horizons at different times. Although the simulation crashes after a few tens of Ms, this work showed that singularity excision techniques can handle the binary black hole problem.

Towards the attainment of the ‘ultimate’ reformulation: Considerable efforts are being spent to understand why different formulations of Einstein equations yield simulations behaving quite different. The difficulties observed in numerical implementations spurred a large number of works that presented re-formulations of Einstein equations in explicit symmetric hyperbolic form (see  for a detailed list). These formulations write the system in first order form (and hence require introducing additional variables to express spatial derivatives) and manipulate the equations through the addition of constraints to guarantee the existence of a complete set of eigenvectors (of the matrices describing the the principal part of the system). Several benefits are gained after all this work555See Rendall’s contribution to this volume.: the standard mathematical machinery for PDE’s can be used to determine the well posedness of the problem under study; whether the characteristic speeds of the system are physical (lie inside the null cones) and furthermore, determine which combination of variables are ingoing and outgoing with respect to a given boundary (which plays an important role when imposing boundary conditions). In a well posed problem, the solution at a later time, $`S(t)`$, satisfies $`|S(t)|\alpha e^{\kappa t}|S(t=0)|`$ (with $`\alpha ,\kappa 𝐑`$). This property guarantees continuous dependence on the initial data which is important as the initial data provided in a numerical implementation is, at best, the desired one only up to round-off errors. The fact that the solution is bounded by an exponential function though, is not sufficient information for the numerical implementation, as one would like to rule out exponential modes in some given problems. This is the case, for instance, when modeling a black hole spacetime in an appropriately chosen gauge which, even when perturbed, should relax to a stationary black hole.

Clearly, given any formulation one can write infinitely many others by simply adding constraints to the right hand sides with free multiplicative parameters. Although at the analytical level all these formulations are exactly equivalent; at the numerical one they might display considerable differences. Examples of such behavior have been illustrated in 3D  and in 1D . For instance, in  a two-parameter hyperbolic family of reformulations of Einstein equations has been presented which have exactly the same principal part. Therefore, well posedness of systems treated by all members of the family follows in a totally equivalent manner. This work presented results obtained by simulating Schwarzschild spacetimes with different members of this family under the same numerical implementation. Total evolution times ranged from as short as $`6M`$ to $`1500M`$. Figure 3 illustrates the norm of a representative constraint vs. time for two different members of the family of formulations (under the same discretization and resolution). While for one, the violations become very severe at earlier times, for the other only at quite late times do these become apparent. The message from these and other works is that for numerical simulations, well posedness is not enough! There is an urgent need for a method to discern from the “zoo” of formulations those that might simplify the attainment of a stable implementation. Formulating such a method is certainly non-trivial, as one would need to be able to separate “gauge modes” from physical ones; understand the behavior of constraints off the constraint surface and the influence of non-principal part terms in the evolution as well as that of boundaries. Nevertheless, its impact on the field would likely be profound.

Boundary conditions: Outer boundary conditions are difficult to define in any theory containing propagating waves. It is particularly difficult in relativity due to backscattering, gauge and constraint issues. Approximate boundary conditions have been used in the past with different degrees of effectiveness (see  for a list). However, not only is it not clear how much spurious reflections or incoming waves these introduced but most importantly whether are these even consistent. At the core of this question lies the fact that ‘standard’ boundary conditions provide values to all variables and whether these conditions satisfy the constraints. Recently, insight into this problem and its physical interpretation has been presented in where a careful analysis was presented that studied the question of well posedness of the problem considering the presence of boundaries. The conclusion is that only two pieces of information can be given (related to the polarizations of incoming radiation) while the rest are determined by the Einstein equations themselves.

The need for having correct boundary conditions respond to several reasons: (i) Placing boundaries as ‘close as possible’ to minimize computational costs; (ii) Eliminate constraint violating mode sources, (iii) Eliminate spurious reflections . Recently a number of efforts (in linearized gravity in 3D or full gravity in spherical symmetry) have shown that carefully treated boundaries can satisfy these requirements benefiting the numerical evolution.

### 3.2 Characteristic approach

Recent Past: Numerical implementations within this formulation have come a long way despite it being ‘newer’ than the Cauchy ones. In the recent past the characteristic formulation has been demonstrated to be a useful tool by producing the first unlimited evolution of single black hole spacetimes. Work within this formulation is concentrating on scenarios or spacetime regions which are expected to be free of caustics. I will here mention a few examples both in the vacuum and non-vacuum cases (I include the latter since it is not being covered by Shibata’s contribution to this volume).

Unfortunately, because of caustic formation, this formulation can not address all problems of interest, in particular binary black holes or binary neutron stars. However for certain systems back of the envelope calculations indicate they should be free of this problem .

Motivated by these problems a series of works were devoted to understand the incorporation of matter within the formulation. Most notably the implementation of high resolution schemes and the simulation of weak pressure fluids in full 3D black hole spacetimes.

Present focus

2D: Much activity is being carried out with $`2D`$ characteristic codes. In particular, studies of neutron star perturbations in full general relativity are being carried out where the dynamics of the fluid is described by high resolution shock capturing schemes. In these works, the equilibrium configuration of the star is perturbed and additional incoming gravitational waves are considered in some tests. The oscillations of the star are accurately modeled and compared with perturbative results and the gravitational radiation is read-off at future null infinity. Figure 4 illustrates the oscillations a polytropic star which has been perturbed by slight density and pressure deviations from the equilibrium configuration. Mass conservation is verified to an impressive degree of accuracy which coupled to a series of other successful tests indicate the code is ready to tackle interesting scenarios.

3D: Non-vacuum 3D simulations within this approach are targeting spacetimes containing a black hole and a compact star. Proof of principle tests to examine the feasibility of extending the vacuum code described in to the non-vacuum case proved successful in very weak pressure cases. Efforts are now concentrated in providing correct initial data describing a star “close” to the black hole. The main reason for this is to avoid caustics. A back of the envelope calculating using the lens equation implies that the spacetime will be free of caustics provided $`D<R_s^2/(4m_s)`$ (where $`R_s,m_s`$ are the are radius and mass of the star which is at a distance $`D`$ of a unit mass black hole). This defines a window of applicability which does contain interesting sources for gravitational wave detectors. Since neutron star-black hole systems are also likely sources for gravitational wave detection, simulations of this systems will have immediate practical uses.

The implementation to treat this problem follows closely the $`2D`$ one as far as treatment of the fluid equations is concerned but, being still a serial code, it can not achieve as high resolutions in full 3D and some numerical problems are still being addressed. Once the level of resolution needed is achieved, the simulation should perform as well as the one in the 2D case. Figure 5 shows a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$ polytrope with radius $`5M`$ which is placed at a distance of $`9M`$ from a mass $`M`$ black hole and moves in the $`\theta `$ direction. Since a portion of the star lies inside ISCO, as time progresses it becomes quite distorted. Results obtained with this simulation are qualitatively correct but they still have inadequate accuracy for producing useful gravitational wave templates.

On the vacuum front, a project aimed towards obtaining gravitational radiation of a binary black hole spacetime is also under development. Here, the spacetime is envisioned in a time-reversed point of view. This is motivated by the possibility of posing a double null problem whose inner boundary corresponds to a fissioning white hole (which in a time reversed point of view corresponds to merging black holes) and the other corresponds to $`^{}`$. An inverse scattering process can be formulated to obtain the radiation produced by a binary black hole collision. Preliminary investigations of this approach have targeted a “close limit approximation” yielding excellent results. Of course, since the theory is non-linear this procedure is far from direct. However, note the data needed for this problem is intimately related to the radiation fields at both scri’s which are expected to be quite small (in fact should be ‘zero’ at $`^{}`$ and about $`5\%`$ of the total mass at $`^+`$); thus, one can formulate (partially hand-waving) arguments to give support to this approach in terms of an iterative procedure.

### 3.3 Conformal approach

As mentioned within this approach, the description of an unphysical spacetime is obtained and a restriction of the solution yields the physical spacetime (and the metric of the latter is conformally related to that of the former). All implementations within this approach have used a Cauchy initial value problem formulation thus have many similarities to what was included section3.1. There is an extra gauge issue here since the relation between the conformal metrics is essentially arbitrary.

Recent Past: The conformal implementation of Einstein equations has proceeded at a steady pace since it was first used to investigate critical phenomena in 1D and subsequently extended to higher dimensional spacetimes.

Present: Preliminary proof-of-principle simulations of Schwarzschild black holes in this formulation have been presented in . These targeted the Kruskal extension and simulations proceeded well for moderate amounts of times.

More recently, linear waves on Minkowski spacetimes have been successfully evolved reconstructing the spacetime all the way to $`i^+`$ . Since $`i^+`$ is safely inside the computational domain, this formulation allows for studying the regularity and structure of the whole spacetime. Figure 6 illustrates three different timelike geodesics in flat spacetime perturbed linearly. As expected, all end at the same point in the future which meets $`^+`$, it is confirmed that $`i^+`$ is regular by studying the spacetime structure in its neighborhood. Although more experience still needs to be gained to exploit this formulation (particularly in gauge related issues), it is becoming clear that this formulation is indeed a useful tool in numerical relativity and the ideal one to study global properties of spacetimes.

## 4 Future Problems

It is certainly true that most current efforts in the field are directed towards systems which will likely produce gravitational waves detectable by the new generation of detectors. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The ability to solve Einstein equations in generic scenarios will open the door for studying a variety of problems, a few examples being

* Astrophysically relevant systems: A series of spectacular and yet poorly understood phenomena “illuminate” the sky with powerful energetic emissions. Active galactic nuclei, gamma ray bursts, quasars, micro-quasars, give away so much energy in relatively short periods of time (but not so short that “explosive” mechanisms can be called into place; see Piran’s contribution to this volume) that it is believed that a compact central object, a fairly massive surrounding plasma and magnetic fields are key ingredients of the central engine powering these emissions. Modeling such systems accurately require solving Einstein equations in the highly dynamical/strong field scenarios. Future research in this field will certainly have strong emphasis towards astrophysically motivated problems.
* Spacetimes on the large: Numerical simulations are also opening the door to understand the structure of spacetimes in the large. Under certain assumptions the asymptotic behavior of spacetimes is well understood but only in a limited number of cases does one have an explicit relation between sources and fields at infinity. Numerical implementations can be used to search for this relation and to examine asymptotic fields behavior without past adopted assumptions to render the problem analytically tractable.
* Quantum Gravity: Another area where simulations might provide valuable insights on prospective quantum gravity theories. First attempts in this direction are studying consequences of the AdS/CFT duality, and the final fate of black strings which will provide insights in the classical or low energy limit of possible theories. By analyzing this limit, one can foresee that unacceptable results will help in ruling out some candidates while others might help us understand acceptable ones.

## 5 Final Comments

As has been evident from the contributions to the numerical relativity sessions in this meeting and recently published results notable advances are taking place in this field. It is certainly impossible to do justice to all efforts in numerical relativity in this contribution666For more details please refer to .. I hope this article gives a current glimpse of the activity in the field and, especially, highlights that considerable progress has been achieved in the past few years. Undoubtedly, we still face many problems to realize the full potential of this activity and researchers are working hard towards their resolutions. Numerical techniques, complementing the analytical ones are paving the way for understanding the full implications of the theory; certainly, the second century of General Relativity promises be an exciting one.

## 6 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank N. Bishop, F. Pretorius and F. Siebel for helpful comments on early versions of the manuscript. I thank M. Alcubierre, S. Husa, M. Scheel and F. Siebel for providing some of the figures included in this text. Computations of some of the results presented here were performed on the vn.physics.ubc.ca Beowulf cluster which was funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). I want to express my gratitude to the California Institute of Technology for its hospitality where the last parts of this work were completed. Finally it is a great pleasure to thank the organizers of GR16 for such an exciting conference.


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# On Signatures of Short Distance Physics in the Cosmic Microwave Background

## I Introduction

It has recently been emphasized that the predictions of inflationary cosmology for the spectrum of density fluctuations and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies may not be robust against effects of trans-Planckian (string) physics RHBrev . This trans-Planckian problem can easily be seen from the space-time sketch in Fig. 1. Essentially all current realizations of the inflationary scenario are based on weakly interacting fields, in which context the Fourier modes of the field representing cosmological fluctuations evolve independently from the initial time (e.g. the beginning of inflation) until their amplitude reaches order $`1`$ in the recent past. Most models also have a period of inflation greatly in excess of the minimal number required to solve the cosmological problems of standard cosmology inf ; Linde . Provided that the period of inflation lasts more than about 70 e-foldings, then the physical wavelength of comoving scales responsible for present CMB anisotropies was smaller than the Planck (string) scale at the beginning of inflation. Hence, to study the evolution of fluctuations from the time they are formed until the time their wavelength becomes larger than the Planck (string) scale, the effects of trans-Planckian (string) physics cannot be neglected.

The possible effect of trans-Planckian physics on the spectrum of cosmological perturbations was first studied in detail in Ref. MB  (see also Ref. Niemeyer ) by means of replacing the standard free field theory dispersion relation by some ad hoc dispersion relations. The same method and dispersion relations were used in Unruh  and CJ  in the context of an analysis of possible trans-Planckian effects on black hole radiation. It was found that if the evolution of the modes is non-adiabatic in the initial stages, then significant effects on the spectrum of cosmological fluctuations are possible MB3 ; NP2 . Subsequently, the possibility of measurable effects of trans-Planckian physics on observables such as CMB anisotropies and power spectra of scalar and tensor metric fluctuations was studied kempf ; Chu ; Easther ; kempfN ; Hui ; HoB  in models where the trans-Planckian physics is based on stringy space-time uncertainty relations, and in some examples large effects were found.

Very recently, a paper has appeared Kaloper  which claims to show using general effective field theory techniques that trans-Planckian effects on CMB anisotropies in an inflationary Universe must be suppressed by a factor of $`(H_{\mathrm{inf}}/M)^2`$, where $`H_{\mathrm{inf}}`$ is the Hubble constant during inflation, and $`M`$ is the scale of trans-Planckian physics. This result implies that trans-Planckian effects are not observable. This conclusion appears to be in conflict with the analyses of Refs. Easther ; Hui ; HoB .

The purpose of this note is to point out that the conclusions of Ref. Kaloper  are too pessimistic concerning the potential observability of trans-Planckian (string) physics in the spectrum of CMB anisotropies. The key point is that in Ref. Kaloper , the effect of trans-Planckian physics on the amplitude of fluctuations of a particular Fourier mode of the fluctuating field is estimated at the time the mode crosses the Hubble radius during inflation, and assuming that the state of this mode is the local vacuum state at that time. Recall that in an expanding background, the vacuum state of a scalar field on this background - and the fields which characterize cosmological perturbations are such scalar fields - is not uniquely defined. In particular, a state which at early times is empty of particles in the comoving frame will in general appear to contain many particles at a later time Parker ; BDbook . The effect described in Ref. Kaloper  is indeed usually very small. However, the more important effect of trans-Planckian physics is to open the possibility of a non-adiabatic evolution of the initial local vacuum (the local vacuum at the initial time, e.g. the beginning of inflation) on trans-Planckian scales, thus leading to a state of the fluctuation mode at the time of Hubble radius crossing which is highly excited MB , or to lead to other effects which can be characterized as changing the initial conditions on the state at the time when the fluctuation mode crosses the Hubble radius.

To make these points clear, it is important to dispel the myth that in current models of inflation, based on weakly coupled fields, the fluctuations are generated at the time they cross the Hubble radius. Thus, in the following section we will give an overview of the quantum theory of the generation and evolution of cosmological fluctuations, hopefully providing a pedagogical introduction to this subject. In Sec. III, we then compare the analysis of Kaloper  with the studies which have shown that trans-Planckian physics may leave imprints in physical quantities such as CMB anisotropies which are observable. Finally, in Sec. IV, we present our conclusions.

## II Theory of Cosmological Perturbations

In the following we give an overview of the quantum theory of cosmological perturbations. The reader is referred to MFB  for details and references to the original literature (see for example Ref. MS . A modern textbook treatment can also be found in LLbook . Since gravity is a purely attractive force, and since the fluctuations on scales of the CMB anisotropies were small when the anisotropies were generated, the fluctuations had to have been very small in the early Universe. Thus, a linearized analysis of the fluctuations is justified. In this case, the Fourier modes of the cosmological fluctuations evolve independently.

The basic idea of the theory of cosmological perturbations (which includes the theory of gravitational waves) is to quantize the linear fluctuations about a classical background cosmology described by a homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann cosmology with metric

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=a^2(\eta )\left(\mathrm{d}\eta ^2\mathrm{d}𝐱^2\right).$$
(1)
Here, $`\eta `$ is conformal time related to the physical time $`t`$ via $`\mathrm{d}t=a(\eta )\mathrm{d}\eta `$, and we have considered for simplicity the case of a spatially flat Universe. The coordinates $`𝐱`$ are comoving coordinates. The starting point is the full action of gravity plus matter

$$S=\mathrm{d}^4x\sqrt{g}R+S_\mathrm{m},$$
(2)
where the first term is the usual Einstein-Hilbert action for gravity, $`R`$ being the Ricci scalar and $`g`$ the determinant of the metric, and $`S_\mathrm{m}`$ is the matter action. For the sake of simplicity, and since it is the usual assumption in simple inflationary Universe models, we take matter to be described by a single minimally coupled scalar field $`\phi `$. Then, we separate the metric and matter into classical background variables $`g_{\mu \nu }^{(0)},\phi ^{(0)}`$ which depend only on time, and fluctuating fields $`h_{\mu \nu },\delta \phi `$ which depend on space and time and have vanishing spatial average:

$$g_{\mu \nu }=g_{\mu \nu }^{(0)}(\eta )+h_{\mu \nu }(\eta ,𝐱),\phi =\phi ^{(0)}(\eta )+\delta \phi (\eta ,𝐱).$$
(3)
There are two kinds of metric perturbations of interest in early Universe cosmology: the scalar and tensor fluctuations 111Vector fluctuations are redshifted in expanding cosmological backgrounds and hence are not usually considered.. At the level of the linearized equations of motion there is no coupling between scalar and tensor modes, and thus they can be quantized independently.

Let us first consider tensor fluctuations. Tensor fluctuations correspond to gravitational waves. The perturbed metric only has non-vanishing space-space components $`h_{ij}(\eta ,𝐱)`$,

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=a^2(\eta )[\mathrm{d}\eta ^2(\delta _{ij}+h_{ij})\mathrm{d}x^i\mathrm{d}x^j],$$
(4)
which can be expanded in terms of the two basic traceless and symmetric polarization tensors $`e_{ij}^+`$ and $`e_{ij}^\times `$ as

$$h_{ij}(\eta ,𝐱)=h_+e_{ij}^++h_\times e_{ij}^\times $$
(5)
where the space and time dependence is in the coefficient functions $`h_+`$ and $`h_\times `$. When the Einstein action is expanded to second order in the metric fluctuations about a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) background (1), the action for $`h_+`$ and $`h_\times `$ reduces to that of a free, massless, minimally coupled scalar field $`h`$ in the FRW background. To obtain the correct normalization, the metric must be multiplied by the normalization factor $`m_{\mathrm{Pl}}/\sqrt{2}`$, where $`m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ is the four-dimensional Planck mass. In order to obtain the equation of motion, we expand the action to second order in the fluctuating fields (the terms in the action linear in the fluctuating fields vanish if the background is taken to be a solution of the equations of motion). In Fourier space, the action is

$$\delta S_\mathrm{g}=d\eta \frac{a^2}{2}\left(h_𝐤^{}h_𝐤^{}k^2h_𝐤h_𝐤\right).$$
(6)
This leads to the equation of motion

$$h_𝐤^{\prime \prime }+2\frac{a^{}}{a}h_𝐤^{}+k^2h_𝐤=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.$$
(7)
The Hubble friction term can be eliminated via a change of variables $`\mu _kah_k`$, yielding the equation of motion

$$\mu _𝐤^{\prime \prime }+\left(k^2\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}\right)\mu _𝐤=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.$$
(8)
One recognizes the equation of motion of a parametric oscillator, an oscillator with a time-dependent fundamental frequency.

Let us now turn the second type of cosmological perturbations: scalar perturbations. Scalar metric fluctuations couple to matter, and give rise to the large-scale structure of the Universe. The description of scalar metric perturbations is more complicated than the analysis of gravitational waves both because of the coupling to matter and also because some perturbation modes correspond to space-time reparametrizations of a homogeneous and isotropic cosmology. This is the issue of gauge fixing. A simple way to address this issue is to work in a system of coordinates which completely fixes the gauge. A simple choice is the longitudinal gauge, in which the metric takes the form MFB

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=a^2(\eta )\left[(1+2\mathrm{\Phi })d\eta ^2(12\mathrm{\Psi })\delta _{ij}\mathrm{d}x^i\mathrm{d}x^j\right],$$
(9)
where the space and time dependent functions $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ are the two physical metric degrees of freedom which describe scalar metric fluctuations The fluctuations of matter fields give additional degrees of freedom for scalar metric fluctuations. In the simple case of a single scalar matter field, the matter field fluctuation can be denoted by $`\delta \phi `$. In the absence of anisotropic stress, it follows from the Einstein equations that the two metric fluctuation variables $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ coincide. Due to the Einstein constraint equation, the remaining metric fluctuation $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is determined by the matter fluctuation $`\delta \phi `$. It is clear from this analysis of the physical degrees of freedom that the action for scalar metric fluctuations must be expressible in terms of the action of a single free scalar field $`v`$ with a time dependent mass (determined by the background cosmology). As shown in M85  (see also L80 ), this field is

$$v=a\left(\delta \phi +\frac{\phi _0^{}}{}\mathrm{\Psi }\right)=z,$$
(10)
where $`\phi _0(\eta )\phi ^{(0)}`$ denotes the background value of the scalar matter field, $`=a^{}/a`$,

$$za\frac{\phi _0^{}}{},$$
(11)
and $``$ denotes the curvature perturbation in comoving gauge L85 . The action for scalar metric fluctuations is M88

$$\delta S_{}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{d}^4𝐱\left[(v_𝐤^{})^2\delta ^{ij}v_{𝐤,i}v_{𝐤,j}+\frac{z^{\prime \prime }}{z}v_𝐤^2\right],$$
(12)
which leads to the equation of motion

$$v_𝐤^{\prime \prime }+\left(k^2\frac{z^{\prime \prime }}{z}\right)v_𝐤=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0},$$
(13)
which under the change $`az`$ is identical to the equation (8) for gravitational waves. Therefore, we obtain again the equation of a parametric oscillator. Note that if $`a(\eta )`$ is a power of $`\eta `$, then $`\phi _0^{}`$ and $``$ scale with the same power of $`\eta `$. The variable $`z`$ is then proportional to $`a`$, and thus the evolution of gravitational waves and scalar metric fluctuations is identical. In this case, the solution can be expressed in terms of Bessel functions.

Let us now analyze the behavior of the classical mode functions $`\mu _𝐤(\eta )`$ and $`v_𝐤(\eta )`$. The equations (8) and (13) are harmonic oscillator equations with a time-dependent mass given by $`a^{\prime \prime }/a`$ and/or $`z^{\prime \prime }/z`$. On scales smaller than the Hubble radius, the mass term is negligible, and the mode functions oscillate with constant amplitude. On scales larger than the Hubble radius, however, the mass term dominates and the $`k^2`$ term can be neglected. The mode functions no longer oscillate. In an expanding background, the dominant mode of $`\mu _𝐤(\eta )`$ and $`v_𝐤(\eta )`$ scales as $`a(\eta )`$. Thus, the role of the time of Hubble radius crossing is to give the time when the classical mode functions begin to increase in amplitude.

So far, all the considerations are classical. This is sufficient to describe the evolution of the perturbations. However, if one is interested in the source of the fluctuations, then a quantum treatment becomes necessary. In this framework, the state of each mode of the fluctuating field is fixed at some initial time $`t_\mathrm{i}`$ which (at least in the context of cosmology described by the above action) is independent of $`k`$ and can be taken to be the beginning of the period of inflation. Note that in the framework currently used in inflationary cosmology it is wrong to consider that fluctuations on scale $`k`$ are generated at the time $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$ when that scale crosses the Hubble radius.

The quantum description can be discussed most easily in the Heisenberg picture in which the states are time-independent but the operators evolve. From the action (12) it follows that the momentum canonically conjugate to the field $`v`$ is $`\mathrm{\Pi }_𝐤=v_𝐤^{}`$ and this leads to the Hamiltonian

$$H_{}=\mathrm{d}^3𝐱\left(\mathrm{\Pi }_𝐤^2+\delta ^{ij}v_{𝐤,i}v_{𝐤,j}\frac{z^{\prime \prime }}{z}v_𝐤^2\right),$$
(14)
We now canonically quantize this Hamiltonian, elevating $`v`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ to canonically conjugate operators $`\widehat{v}`$ and $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}`$, and imposing the Hamilton equations as equations of motion. It then immediately follows that the operator $`\widehat{v}`$ satisfies the same equation of motion as the classical field $`v`$. We can expand the operator $`\widehat{v}`$ into a basis of operators $`\widehat{c}_𝐤`$ and $`\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}`$ which, at the initial time $`\eta _\mathrm{i}`$, correspond to the Minkowski field creation and annihilation operators. Specifically,

$$\widehat{v}(\eta ,𝐱)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^{3/2}}\mathrm{d}^3𝐤[\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta )e^{i𝐤𝐱}+\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta )e^{i𝐤𝐱}],$$
(15)
The difference with the case of a free field is that, due to the interaction of the field $`\widehat{v}(\eta ,𝐱)`$ with the classical background, the time dependence of the creation and annihilation operators is no longer given by $`e^{\pm i\omega \eta }`$. This is a manifestation of the fact that particles creation is now possible. The operators $`\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta )`$ and $`\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta )`$ obey the usual creation and annihilation operator algebra

$$[\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta ),\widehat{c}_𝐩^{}(\eta )]=\delta (𝐤𝐩).$$
(16)
This relation is of course valid for any time $`\eta `$. As initial state, we choose the state which is empty of particles from the point of view of the local comoving observer at the initial time $`\eta _\mathrm{i}`$. This state $`|0`$ is defined by

$$\widehat{c}_𝐤|0=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.$$
(17)
Since due to the time dependence of the background there is nontrivial mixing between creation and annihilation operators at different times, this state is in general not the vacuum at later times. Since the mode equation for fixed $`𝐤`$ has exactly two independent solutions, the creation and annihilation operators at time $`\eta >\eta _\mathrm{i}`$ must be related to the creation and annihilation operators at initial time $`\eta _\mathrm{i}`$ via a Bogoliubov transformation

$`\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _k(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i})+\beta _k(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta _\mathrm{i}),`$ (18)
$`\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _k^{}(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta _\mathrm{i})+\beta _k^{}(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i}),`$ (19)
where the Bogoliubov coefficients $`\alpha _k`$ and $`\beta _k`$ satisfy the normalization condition

$$|\alpha _k|^2|\beta _k|^2=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}.$$
(20)
This relation guarantees that the commutation relations are preserved in time. The time dependence of the quantum field can now be written as $`\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta )=(\alpha _k+\beta _k^{})(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i})v_k(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i})`$. The temporal function $`v_𝐤(\eta )`$ is solution of the classical mode equation and should be chosen to be pure positive frequency at the time $`\eta _\mathrm{i}`$, with vacuum normalization

$$v_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2k}},v_𝐤^{}(\eta _\mathrm{i})=i\sqrt{\frac{k}{2}}.$$
(21)
This amounts to choosing $`v_k^{(\mathrm{in})}(\eta )e^{ik(\eta \eta _\mathrm{i})}/\sqrt{2k}`$. The Bogoliubov transformation exhibited in Eqs. (18), (19) gives the most general time evolution of the quantum field $`\widehat{v}(\eta ,𝐱)`$. In particular, it is not necessary that the “out” region be flat. If this is the case, then the most general mode function in the “out” region is a linear combination of positive and negative frequency plane waves, i.e.,

$`v_k^{(\mathrm{out})}(\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`a_kv_k^{(\mathrm{in})}(\eta )+b_kv_k^{(\mathrm{in})}(\eta ),`$ (22)
$`v_k^{(\mathrm{out})}(\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`a_k^{}v_k^{(\mathrm{in})}(\eta )+b_k^{}v_k^{(\mathrm{in})}(\eta ).`$ (23)
Inserting these relation into the canonical decomposition of the field $`\widehat{v}^{(\mathrm{out})}(\eta ,𝐱)`$, see Eq. (15) \[using that $`c_𝐤(\eta )=v_k(\eta )c_𝐤(\eta _\mathrm{i})`$\], and comparing with the equation obtained using Eqs. (18), (19), one immediately reaches the conclusions that the coefficients $`a_k`$ and $`b_k`$ are in fact given by

$$a_k=\alpha _k,b_k=\beta _k^{}.$$
(24)
The “number operator” (using language appropriate to a scalar field on a given background) which measures the number of particles of comoving momentum $`𝐤`$ from the point of view of the comoving observer at time $`\eta `$ is

$$\widehat{N}_𝐤(\eta )=\widehat{c}_𝐤^{}(\eta )\widehat{c}_𝐤(\eta ).$$
(25)
In the state $`|0`$, the expectation value of this number operator is

$$0|\widehat{N}_k|0=|\beta _k|^2.$$
(26)
The Bogoliubov coefficients $`\beta _k`$ thus measure the number of particles from the point of view of the comoving observer at time $`\eta >\eta _\mathrm{i}`$ in the state which at time $`\eta _\mathrm{i}`$ is the local vacuum state. Translated to field language, these Bogoliubov coefficients measure the magnitude of the two point field correlation function in momentum space at later times in the initial vacuum state. Let us notice that the Bogoliubov coefficient can also be determined by the overlap integral

$$\beta _k=v_k^{(\mathrm{in})},v_k^{(\mathrm{out})},$$
(27)
where $`a,b`$ stands here for the usual Klein-Gordon scalar product.

The quantum mechanical interpretation of the two phases $`t<t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$ and $`t>t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$ is the following: on sub-Hubble scales we have oscillating quantum vacuum fluctuations and the Bogoliubov coefficients $`\beta _k`$ vanish. There is no particle production on these scales. Once the scales cross the Hubble radius, the mode functions begin to grow and the fluctuations get frozen. By (27) this implies a growth of the Bogoliubov coefficients $`\beta _k`$ which is proportional to the amplitude of $`v_k(\eta )`$. The initial vacuum state then becomes highly squeezed at $`tt_\mathrm{H}(k)`$. In the case of gravitational waves, this physics was first discussed in Grishchuk . For a free scalar field on a cosmological background, the squeezing of the initial quantum vacuum state corresponds to particle production BDbook . Applied to the fields representing cosmological fluctuations, the squeezing leads to the generation of effectively classical cosmological perturbations.

For cosmological applications, it is particularly interesting to calculate the two-point correlation functions of gravitational waves and density perturbations. For gravitational waves, the power spectrum of gravitational waves in the vacuum state $`|0`$ can be written in terms of the new field $`\mu _k`$ as

$$𝒫_g(k)=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\frac{k^3}{2\pi ^2a^2}|\mu _k|^2.$$
(28)
The two point function appearing in (28) is that of a free canonically normalized massless scalar field multiplied by $`2/m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2`$. The factor $`2`$ comes from the fact that gravitational waves have two independent states of polarization. In analogy to (28), the power spectrum of the curvature fluctuation $``$ is

$$𝒫_{}(k)=\frac{k^3}{2\pi ^2z^2}|v_k|^2.$$
(29)
This last quantity can be estimated very easily. From the fact that on scales larger than the Hubble radius the mode functions are proportional to $`a(\eta )`$, we find

$$𝒫_{}(k)\frac{k^3}{2\pi ^2}\frac{1}{2k}\frac{1}{a^2[\eta _\mathrm{H}(k)]},$$
(30)
where $`\eta _\mathrm{H}(k)`$ is the conformal time of Hubble radius crossing for the mode with comoving wavenumber $`k`$. Note that the second factor on the r.h.s. of (30) represents the vacuum normalization of the wavefunction.

## III Why Significant Effects of Trans-Planckian Physics on CMB Anisotropies are Possible

Let us now return to the main topic of this Letter, namely the question of why significant effects of trans-Planckian (string) physics on CMB anisotropies are possible. They key point is that in most current models of inflation, the duration of the phase of quasi-exponential expansion is so long that at the beginning of this period, the time when the initial conditions for the fluctuations are set, the physical wavelengths of modes responsible for the CMB anisotropies are smaller than the Planck (string) scale. Let us illustrate this point with a concrete example. In a single-field model of inflation, the number of e-folds is given by the formula

$$N=\frac{8\pi }{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2}_{\phi _\mathrm{i}}^{\phi _\mathrm{e}}d\phi V(\phi )\left(\frac{\mathrm{d}V}{\mathrm{d}\phi }\right)^1,$$
(31)
where $`\phi _\mathrm{i}`$ is the value of the scalar field at the beginning of inflation and $`\phi _\mathrm{e}`$ is the value at the end of inflation, i.e., when $`\dot{H}/H^2=1`$ (a dot means a derivative with respect to cosmic time $`t`$). Let us consider the prototypical model of inflation, namely chaotic inflation with a scalar field potential which is given by $`V(\phi )=(\lambda /4!)\phi ^4`$ with $`\lambda 10^{15}`$. In this case $`\phi _\mathrm{e}=m_{\mathrm{Pl}}/\sqrt{\pi }`$. The integral in Eq. (31) can be easily performed and we get

$$N=\frac{\pi }{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2}\phi _\mathrm{i}^21.$$
(32)
In chaotic inflation the initial conditions are fixed according to the rule $`V(\phi _\mathrm{i})m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^4`$ which amounts to $`\phi _\mathrm{i}(24/\lambda )^{1/4}m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$. As a consequence, we deduce that $`N2\pi \sqrt{6/\lambda }14.9\times 10^8`$. This means that the Hubble radius today, $`\mathrm{}_\mathrm{H}=10^{61}\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ ($`h=0.5`$), where $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ is the Planck length, was equal to $`e^{10^8}\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{Pl}}10^{4.7\times 10^7}\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ at the beginning of inflation, i.e., very well below the Planck length indeed. On these scales, it is clear that the framework of standard quantum field theory described in the previous section and used in order to establish what the predictions of inflation are most likely breaks down.

This simple example raises the following question: do the predictions of inflation depend on physics on scales shorter than the Planck length? In trying to answer this question we immediately face the problem that the trans-Planckian physics is presently unknown and that, as a consequence, it is impossible to study its impact on the inflationary predictions. To circumvent this difficulty, one studies the robustness of inflationary predictions to ad-hoc (reasonable) changes in the standard quantum field theory framework supposed to mimic the modifications caused by the actual theory of quantum gravity. If the predictions are robust to some reasonable changes, then it seems likely that they will be robust to the modifications induced by the true theory of quantum gravity. On the other hand, if the predictions are not robust, the knowledge of the exact theory is required in order to predict exactly what the changes are. However, one can still study what is the origin of these modifications and try to use the currently available data to put constraints on the unknown theory of quantum gravity.

Let us now describe what are the possible ad-hoc modifications that can be considered. So far, four different possibilities have been studied. The first one consists in replacing the standard dispersion relation $`\omega =k`$ by some ad-hoc relations. This proposal was first made in Refs. Unruh ; CJ  in the context of black hole physics and is based on an analogy with condensed matter physics. It is known that the dispersion relation starts departing from the linear relation $`\omega =k`$ on scales of the order of the atomic separation: the mode feels the granular nature of matter. In the same way, one can expect the dispersion relation to change when the mode starts feeling the discreteness of space-time on scales of the order of the Planck (string) length. Some of the dispersion relations studied so far in the literature are displayed in Fig. 2. We will come back to this possibility below.

The second proposal is to modify the standard commutation relations.

The modification envisaged in Refs. Ve ; GM ; ACV ; GKP  amounts to choose

$$[\widehat{x},\widehat{p}]=i\mathrm{}(1+\beta \widehat{p}^2),$$
(33)
which introduces a short distance cut-off. Its implications for the wave equation were studied in Ref. kempf . It has been argued that this commutation relation could be a generic prediction of string theory. It has been shown in Refs. Chu ; Easther ; kempfN  that significant effect on the power spectrum are possible in this case.

The third proposal consists in assuming that the quantum state in which the cosmological perturbations are placed is no longer the vacuum but some excited state. In this case, it has been shown in Ref. Hui  that a possible observable signature is the modification of the consistency relations between the spectral indices of scalar and tensor fluctuations in inflation. Proposals 2 and 3 are not necessarily unrelated. For example, in the work of Ref. Easther , the modified commutation relation leads to a state at Hubble radius crossing which is not the adiabatic vacuum.

Very recently, a fourth possibility has been suggested in Ref. Kaloper  using general effective field theory techniques. In this case, it has been demonstrated that trans-Planckian effects on CMB anisotropies in an inflationary Universe are suppressed by a factor of $`(H/M)^2`$, where $`H`$ is the Hubble constant during inflation, and $`M`$ is the scale of trans-Planckian physics. If we take into account that the value of $`H`$ during inflation is bounded from above due to the observational bounds on the spectrum of gravitational waves Hbound , then - in models in which the string scale is close to the usual four-dimensional Planck scale - this suppression factor render the signatures of this kind of trans-Planckian physics far too small to be observed in the near future. On this basis, the authors of Ref. Kaloper  conclude that short distance physics cannot be observed in the CMB. However, this conclusion clearly rests on the type of modifications chosen by the authors and is not true in general.

To demonstrate that a priori significant changes in the inflationary predictions are possible, let us come back to the case where the standard dispersion is modified. The method is to replace the linear dispersion relation $`\omega _{_{\mathrm{phys}}}=k_{\mathrm{phys}}`$ by a non standard dispersion relation $`\omega _{_{\mathrm{phys}}}=\omega _{_{\mathrm{𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬}}}(k)`$. In the context of cosmology, it has been shown in Ref. MB  that this amounts to replacing $`k^2`$ appearing in (13) with $`k_{\mathrm{eff}}^2(n,\eta )`$ defined by

$$k^2k_{\mathrm{eff}}^2(k,\eta )a^2(\eta )\omega _{_{\mathrm{phys}}}^2\left[\frac{k}{a(\eta )}\right].$$
(34)
For a fixed comoving mode, this implies that the dispersion relation becomes time-dependent. Therefore, the equation of motion of the quantity $`v_k(\eta )`$ takes the form

$$v_k^{\prime \prime }+\left[k_{\mathrm{eff}}^2(k,\eta )\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}\right]v_k=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.$$
(35)
Let us remark that a more rigorous derivation of this equation, based on a variational principle, has been provided in Ref. LLMU , see also Refs. jacobson ; jacobson2 .

The evolution of modes thus must be considered separately in three phases, see Fig. 1. In Phase I the wavelength is smaller than the Planck scale, and trans-Planckian physics is expected to play an important role. In Phase II, the wavelength is larger than the Planck scale but smaller than the Hubble radius. In this phase, trans-Planckian physics is expected to have a negligible effect (and the work of Kaloper  makes this statement quantitative). Hence, by the analysis in Section II, the wavefunction of fluctuations is oscillating in this phase,

$$v_k=B_1\mathrm{exp}(ik\eta )+B_2\mathrm{exp}(ik\eta )$$
(36)
with constant coefficients $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$. In the standard approach, the initial conditions are fixed in this region and the usual choice of the vacuum state leads to $`B_1=1/\sqrt{2k}`$, $`B_2=0`$ (see the previous section). Phase III starts at the time $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$ when the mode crosses the Hubble radius. During this phase, the wavefunction is squeezed and is given by

$$v_k=C_1z(\eta )+C_2z(\eta )^\eta \frac{\mathrm{d}\tau }{z^2(\tau )}.$$
(37)
The source of trans-Planckian effects on observations studied in MB  is the possible non-adiabatic evolution of the wavefunction during Phase I. If this occurs, then it is possible that the wavefunction of the fluctuation mode is not in its vacuum state when it enters Phase II and, as a consequence, the coefficients $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$ are no longer given by the standard expressions above. In this case, the wavefunction will not be in its vacuum state when it crosses the Hubble radius, and the final spectrum will be different. In general $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$ are determined by the matching conditions between phase I and II. If the dynamics is adiabatic throughout (in particular if the $`a^{\prime \prime }/a`$ term is negligible), the WKB approximation holds and the solution is always given by

$$v_k(\eta )\frac{1}{\sqrt{2k_{\mathrm{eff}}(k,\eta )}}\mathrm{exp}\left[i_{\eta _\mathrm{i}}^\eta k_{\mathrm{eff}}d\tau \right],$$
(38)
where $`\eta _i`$ is some initial time. Therefore, if we start with a positive frequency solution only and uses this solution, one finds that no negative frequency solution appears. Deep in the region II where $`k_{\mathrm{eff}}k`$ the solution becomes

$$v_k(\eta )\frac{1}{\sqrt{2k}}\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi ik\eta ),$$
(39)
i.e. the standard vacuum solution times a phase which will disappear when we calculate the modulus. The phase $`\varphi `$ is given by $`\varphi _{\eta _\mathrm{i}}^{\eta _1}k_{\mathrm{eff}}d\tau `$, where $`\eta _1`$ is the time at which $`k_{\mathrm{eff}}k`$. By focusing only on trans-Planckian effects on the local vacuum wave function at the time $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$, the authors of Kaloper  miss this important potential source of trans-Planckian signals in the CMB.

It is possible to give the conditions for violation of adiabaticity and to quantify exactly the accuracy of the WKB approximation. Given an equation of the form $`\mu ^{\prime \prime }+\omega ^2\mu =0`$ (in the present context, one has $`\omega ^2=k_{\mathrm{eff}}^2a^{\prime \prime }/a`$), the WKB approximation is valid if the quantity $`|Q/\omega ^2|1`$, where the quantity $`Q`$ is defined by the following expression

$$Q=\frac{3(\omega ^{})^2}{4\omega ^2}\frac{\omega ^{\prime \prime }}{2\omega }.$$
(40)
This standard criterion can be obtained in the following manner. The WKB solution, $`\mu _{\mathrm{wkb}}`$, satisfies the equation $`\mu _{\mathrm{wkb}}^{\prime \prime }+\mu _{\mathrm{wkb}}(\omega ^2Q)=0`$ exactly. Therefore, one has $`\mu \mu _{\mathrm{wkb}}`$ if $`|Q/\omega ^2|1`$. To obtain a modification of the inflationary spectrum, it is sufficient to find a dispersion relation such that $`|Q/\omega ^2|1`$ in phase I.

Let us now present some concrete examples where a change in the inflationary spectrum has been obtained. The first dispersion relation for which these effects were found is

$$k_{\mathrm{eff}}^2(k,\eta )=k^2k^2|b_m|\left[\frac{\mathrm{}__\mathrm{C}}{\lambda (\eta )}\right]^{2m},$$
(41)
where $`\lambda (\eta )=2\pi a(\eta )/k`$ is the wavelength of a mode. For this case, it was found that the spectral index is modified and that superimposed oscillations appear. However, important concerns regarding the previous conclusion can be raised. For example, the dispersion relation (41) used leads to complex frequencies in the context of an inflationary model with a long period of superluminal expansion. Furthermore, the initial conditions for the Fourier modes of the fluctuation field have to be set in the region where the evolution is non-adiabatic and the use of the usual vacuum prescription can be questioned. For this reason, the previous example is not satisfactory MB2 .

Examples where a modification can be obtained without the previous difficulties can nevertheless be obtained. In Ref. LLMU  such an example has been explicitly constructed with the dispersion relation

$$\omega _{\mathrm{phys}}^2=k_{\mathrm{phys}}^2+2b_{11}k_{\mathrm{phys}}^42b_{12}k_{\mathrm{phys}}^6.$$
(42)
The coefficients $`b_{11}`$ and $`b_{12}`$ can be chosen such the dispersion relation has a maximum around $`k__\mathrm{C}`$ and a minimum at a scale smaller than $`k__\mathrm{C}`$. This minimum can be chosen to be smaller than the Hubble parameter during phase I. This is the case in Fig. 3.

In this example, $`\omega _{\mathrm{phys}}`$ always remains real, the initial conditions can be fixed in a region where the WKB approximation is valid (as a consequence, the initial state can be chosen as the minimal energy state Brown78 ) and where the mode function $`v_k`$ oscillates. Since there is a phase during which the WKB approximation is not valid, the final spectrum is modified. It has been calculated explicitly in Ref. LLMU . The difficulties described previously can also be avoided by considering the evolution of fluctuations in a bouncing cosmology in which the initial conditions can be set in the asymptotically flat past, and focusing on modes for which the frequency never becomes complex BJM . For all the examples where everything can be done consistently, the coefficients $`B_1(k)`$ and $`B_2(k)`$, see Eq. (36), in phase II are found to be of the form

$`B_1(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2k}}}[1+ϵ\xi _1(k)+𝒪(ϵ^2)],`$ (43)
$`B_2(k)`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ\xi _2(k)+𝒪(ϵ^2),`$ (44)
where the functions $`\xi _1(k)`$ and $`\xi _2(k)`$ have been explicitly calculated in Refs. LLMU ; BJM . In the previous relations, $`ϵ`$ is a small parameter which is basically the time that the mode has spent in the region where the WKB approximation is violated. The advantage of expanding the two coefficients in the parameter $`ϵ`$ is that general equations can be obtained. But this does not mean that the correction has to be proportional to a small parameter and large non perturbative effects can also be obtained if the time spent by the mode in the region where WKB is not valid is large.

In this case, another concern Tanaka ; Starob  is that the excitations produced during Phase I might have an important back-reaction effect. This is because an excited state leads to an energy density that could be larger that the vacuum energy density causing inflation. The energy density due to trans-Planckian effect is LLMU

$$\rho 𝒪(ϵ^2k__\mathrm{C}^4).$$
(45)
Therefore, there is no back-reaction problem if $`\rho <m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2H_{\mathrm{inf}}^2`$. Obviously, the smallest $`ϵ`$ is, the less severe the back-reaction problem is but, at the same time, the less important the modification of the spectrum is. The important point is that, by playing with the quantities $`H_{\mathrm{inf}}`$ and $`k__\mathrm{C}`$, a window where the correction is significant and where there is no back-reaction can be found. These results are summarized in Fig. 4.

In the light of the work of Refs. Easther ; kempfN , another way to think about the coefficients $`B_1(k)`$ and $`B_2(k)`$, see Eqs. (43) and (44), is as phenomenological parameters which describe the effects of short distance physics. Trans-Planckian (stringy) physics can lead to non-standard values of these coefficients at the earliest time when the fluctuation modes can be described by the usual actions for linearized gravitational fluctuations discussed in Section II, and the work of Ref. Easther  presents a concrete model where values of $`B_1(k)`$ and $`B_2(k)`$ arise which differ from the standard values enough to produce measureable effects but for which the back-reaction of the non-vacuum state at Hubble radius crossing is negligible (We thank Brian Greene for communications on this point).

## IV Discussion and Conclusion

Based on a review of the theory of cosmological fluctuations as applied to inflationary cosmology we have discussed the main sources of expected trans-Planckian (stringy) signatures on the spectrum of CMB anisotropies. One important potential source MB  is the fact that the evolution of the fluctuation modes can be non-adiabatic when their wavelength is smaller than the Planck (string) scale. This leads to an excited state of the fluctuation modes at the time when the mode crosses the Hubble radius at $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$. Another way in which trans-Planckian effects can lead to an excited state of the fluctuation modes at $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$ is that new physics Easther ; kempfN  will generate non-trivial Bogoliubov coefficients $`B_1(k)`$ and $`B_2(k)`$, see Eqs. (43) and (44), at the earliest time that the modes can be adequately approximated by the usual actions for linearized gravitational fluctuations.

The recent paper Kaloper  does not address this issue. It focuses on the computation of the trans-Planckian (stringy) corrections to the fluctuation amplitude in the local vacuum state at $`t_\mathrm{H}(k)`$, and comes to the correct conclusion that these corrections are usually negligible. If one were to try to use the effective field theory techniques used in Kaloper  to address the evolution of the modes in Phase I, one would not be able to integrate over degrees of freedom with frequency larger than $`H`$. Since the frequencies of the modes in Phase I are trans-Planckian, one is not allowed to integrate out any sub-Planckian modes. From this point of view one would reach the conclusion that one is not in the regime of applicability of effective field theory, and that therefore the corrections to results obtained (like the standard results of inflation on the spectrum of fluctuations) should be expected to be of order unity or larger.

We hope that the review of the theory of cosmological perturbations presented in Section II will be of use to physicists not actively working on cosmological perturbations, and that it will dispel the myth that fluctuations are generated at Hubble radius crossing. Note also that in the modern version of the theory of cosmological perturbations presented here, there is no need for ad hoc ultraviolet subtractions, since the analysis is done consistently in momentum space in linear perturbation theory. A final caveat, however, is that if it were to turn out that inflation is the result of some highly nonlinear theory at a scale much smaller than the Planck scale (see e.g. the model of BZ ), then the theory of cosmological perturbations presented in Section II would not apply on scales smaller than the Hubble radius. One would then need to calculate in terms of an effective field theory, and by the analysis of Kaloper  one would not expect any deviations from the expected spectrum of scale-invariant fluctuations due to trans-Planckian physics.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Brian Green and Paul Windey for comments and careful reading of the manuscript and the authors of Ref. Kaloper  for sending us a draft of their paper before publication and for useful comments on this manuscript. We acknowledge support from the BROWN-CNRS University Accord and are grateful to Herb Fried for his efforts to secure this Accord. R. B. wishes to thank the CERN Theory Division for hospitality and support during the time when this paper was written. The research was also supported in part (at Brown University) by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-FG02-91ER40688, TASK A.


text:
# Erratum: Effective Lorentz Force due to Small-Angle Impurity Scattering: Magnetotransport in High-𝑇_𝑐 Superconductors [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 4652 (2001)]

Although the equations in this Letter (cond-mat/0011020) are correct, V. Yakovenko  has pointed out to us that our evaluation, in the first paragraph of page 4655, of the new contribution to the Hall angle is incorrect. This estimate was based on the assumptions that the angle-dependent impurity scattering rate $`1/\tau _u`$ had a non-zero derivative at the zone edge and that all other angular dependence in Eqs. (21-23) can be neglected for simplicity. Actually, as pointed out by Yakovenko, $`1/\tau _u`$ must have zero derivative at the zone edge, and then our estimate of the new contribution to the Hall angle vanishes.

The effect we derived is non-zero in a the general case where other angular dependences are kept explicitly, such as the angular anisotropies of the density of states and of the small-angle cutoff parameter $`\theta _c`$. In fact, these are the microscopic basis for the anisotropy of $`1/\tau _u`$; they give a contribution of the same order as that of $`1/\tau _u`$ and must be kept in a consistent calculation. These issues and a revised estimate will be addressed elsewhere.

Fig. 1 concerns Ni-doped YBCO. The text and caption are in error in referring to Zn doping.

We thank V. Yakovenko for his interest and helpful correspondence.


text:
# Observation of 𝜒_{𝑐2} Production in 𝐵-meson Decay

KEK Preprint 2001-171

Belle Preprint 2002-5

(February 12, 2002)

## Abstract

We report the first observation of $`\chi _{c2}`$ production in $`B`$-meson decays. We find an inclusive $`B\chi _{c2}X`$ branching fraction of $`(1.80_{0.28}^{+0.23}\pm 0.26)\times 10^3`$. The data set, collected with the Belle detector at the KEKB $`e^+e^{}`$ collider, consists of 31.9 million $`B\overline{B}`$ events. We also present branching fractions and momentum spectra for both $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ production.

Although the theory for weak decays of $`b`$ quarks is formulated in terms of quark processes, experiments are done with $`B`$ hadrons. The application of quantities calculated at the quark level to the physically realizable hadrons usually requires theoretical assumptions and approximations. One widely used approximation is “factorization,” where it is assumed that the participating quarks form hadrons with no subsequent transfer of quantum numbers between them FACT . Since this assumption is widely used, it is important that the range of its validity is carefully tested.

In the factorization limit, decays of the type $`B\chi _{c0}X`$ and $`\chi _{c2}X`$ are not allowed by angular momentum and vector-current conservation KNR . These decays can occur if there is a (factorization-violating) exchange of soft gluons between the quark pairs prior to hadron formation. Belle has recently reported the observation of the decay $`B^{}\chi _{c0}K^{}`$ with a decay branching fraction that is comparable to that for the factorization-allowed decay $`B^{}J/\psi K^{}`$ CHIC0 . The CLEO collaboration has published a 95% CL upper limit on the inclusive decay $`B\chi _{c2}X`$ of $`2.0\times 10^3`$ CLEO .

In this paper we report evidence for the inclusive decay $`B\chi _{c2}X`$ from an analysis of 31.9 million $`B\overline{B}`$ events produced in a 29.4 fb-1 data sample taken at the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric $`e^+e^{}`$ collider. An additional 3.0 fb-1 sample taken at a center-of-mass energy 60 MeV below the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ is used to study backgrounds from non-resonant (continuum) processes.

The Belle detector consists of a three-layer silicon vertex detector (SVD), a 50-layer central drift chamber (CDC), an array of aerogel threshold $`\stackrel{ˇ}{\mathrm{C}}\mathrm{erenkov}`$ counters (ACC), time-of-flight scintillation counters (TOF), a CsI(Tl) crystal electromagnetic calorimeter (ECL), a 1.5 T superconducting solenoid coil and an instrumented iron-flux return for muon and $`K_L`$ detection (KLM). The detector is described in detail elsewhere Belle .

Events with candidate $`B`$ mesons are selected by first applying general hadronic event criteria. These include the requirement of at least three charged tracks, an event vertex consistent with the interaction point, reconstructed center-of-mass (CM) energy greater than $`0.2\sqrt{s}`$, a longitudinal component of reconstructed CM momentum less than $`0.5\sqrt{s}/c`$, and a total ECL energy between $`0.1\sqrt{s}`$ and $`0.8\sqrt{s}`$ with at least two energy clusters. To suppress continuum backgrounds we also require the ratio of the second to zeroth Fox-Wolfram moments to be less than 0.5 FoxWolf .

We reconstruct $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ via the decays to $`J/\psi \gamma `$, $`J/\psi l^+l^{}`$. Both leptons are required to be loosely identified as leptons. Electrons are identified using a combination of drift chamber $`dE/dx`$ measurements, aerogel response, and electromagnetic shower position, shape and energy. Muons are identified with KLM hit positions and penetration depth. In order to recover dielectron events where one or both electrons have radiated a photon (final state radiation or bremsstrahlung), we include the four-momentum of every photon detected within 0.05 radians of the original $`e^+`$ or $`e^{}`$ direction in the invariant mass calculation. The $`J/\psi \mu ^+\mu ^{}(e^+e^{})`$ candidate invariant mass is required to be between $`25(40)`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ and $`+25`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ of the known $`J/\psi `$ mass, with an expected resolution of 9.6(10.8) MeV/$`c^2`$ for dimuon(dielectron) $`J/\psi `$’s. The larger range for dielectron candidates is to include candidates that fall in the radiative tail, even after the photon correction.

To reduce combinatoric background, we veto gamma candidates that form a good $`\pi ^0`$ candidate with any other photon candidate of energy greater than 60 MeV in the event. A good candidate $`\pi ^0`$ is defined by a $`\chi ^2`$ of less than 10 after a mass-constrained kinematic fit. We then make a histogram of the mass difference between the $`\chi _c`$ and the $`J/\psi `$ candidates; this nearly eliminates the effect of the $`J/\psi `$ measurement error. The error on the mass difference is dominated by the photon energy resolution. The momentum of the $`\chi _c`$ candidate in the CM reference frame is required to be less than 1.7 GeV/$`c`$ (the kinematic limit for a $`\chi _c`$ coming from a $`B`$ meson); this requirement was not used in the determination of the $`\chi _c`$ momentum spectra.

In Fig. 1 a clear $`\chi _{c2}`$ peak can be seen next to a larger $`\chi _{c1}`$ peak. In order to determine the yield we fit the distribution to two Crystal Ball line shapes CB  and a third-order Chebyshev polynomial for the background. The Crystal Ball function allows for a “tail” in the line shape that is due to photon shower leakage in the ECL.

In this fit (the “standard” fit), the signal line shapes (i.e. the widths, means, and tail parameters) are allowed to float with the following constraints: the difference between the means is fixed to the known $`\chi _{c1}\chi _{c2}`$ mass difference; the $`\chi _{c2}`$ width is fixed to 1.1 times the $`\chi _{c1}`$ width, to take into account the Monte Carlo expected ratio of the widths, which is consistent with a higher average $`\chi _{c2}`$ photon energy; and the tail parameters are fixed to be the same. The background shape is fixed by fitting to the regions outside the signal region from 0.35 to 0.50 GeV/$`c^2`$.

The signal shape was compared with predictions from an inclusive $`B\chi _{c1}X`$ and $`\chi _{c2}X`$ full Monte Carlo simulation. The signal widths in data are larger. In a study of $`D^0D^0\gamma `$, we find that the calorimeter response for a single photon is broader in the data than in the Monte Carlo: for the $`\chi _cJ/\psi `$ mass difference, we expect the width to be increased by a factor of 1.3. For $`\chi _{c1}`$ the Monte Carlo width is $`7.0\pm 0.2`$ MeV/$`c^2`$, the corrected width is $`9.1\pm 0.3`$ MeV/$`c^2`$, and the measured width is $`10.0\pm 0.6`$ MeV/$`c^2`$. We consider the variation in signal yields for various fitting scenarios in determining the systematic error due to fitting.

The background shape was checked against a full Monte Carlo simulation that included the appropriate amounts of $`B\overline{B}`$ and non-resonant events. The Monte Carlo and data background shapes are in good agreement and their normalizations agree within 3%.

We find a yield of $`2529\pm 127`$ events in the $`\chi _{c1}`$ peak and $`611\pm 76`$ events in the $`\chi _{c2}`$ peak, where the error is statistical only.

Several sources of background production were checked. Two-photon processes produce $`\chi _{c2}`$ 2Photon . To estimate the contribution to the $`\chi _{c2}`$ signal from events of this type we looked at the equivalent of 560 fb-1 of Monte Carlo data. From this sample we estimate a background contribution of 1.9 events. We also checked the 3.0 fb-1 continuum data sample for $`\chi _c`$ production. We expect a small number of events from feed down from continuum $`\psi (2S)`$’s and possible direct $`\chi _c`$ production. From the fit we find $`14.0\pm 6.4`$ events in the $`\chi _{c1}`$ region and $`0.4\pm 5.7`$ events in the $`\chi _{c2}`$ region. Expected contributions of feed down from continuum $`\psi (2S)`$ production are 0.5 events for $`\chi _{c1}`$ and 0.2 events for $`\chi _{c2}`$ CONT , and, hence, consistent with the above measurements. For the $`\chi _{c2}`$ case, we follow the prescription of Feldman and Cousins and find the 68.27% confidence interval for the event yield to be \[0.0,6.1\] FC . We scale the continuum yields by the ratio of on- and off-resonant luminosities, corrected for the difference in continuum cross section due to the slight difference in beam energies. The scaled $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ continuum yields are subtracted from the on-resonance yields. We use the Feldman-Cousins confidence limits in determining the statistical error for $`\chi _{c2}`$ after the subtraction.

To convert yields to branching fractions we determine the reconstruction efficiency with a full inclusive $`B\chi _{c1}X`$ and $`\chi _{c2}X`$ Monte Carlo. We find the efficiencies for reconstruction to be $`32.0\pm 0.5`$% and $`33.1\pm 0.9`$%, respectively. The $`\chi _c`$ momentum spectra of the Monte Carlo are similar to those measured in data. The efficiencies are uniform over the allowed $`\chi _{c1}`$, $`\chi _{c2}`$ momentum range.

We use the 2001 Particle Data Group PDG  values for daughter branching fractions $``$$`(J/\psi l^+l^{})=0.118\pm 0.002`$, $``$$`(\chi _{c1}J/\psi \gamma )=0.273\pm 0.016`$, and $``$$`(\chi _{c2}J/\psi \gamma )=0.135\pm 0.011`$. The inclusive $`B\chi _cX`$ branching fractions are found to be: $``$$`(B\chi _{c1}X)=(3.63\pm 0.22)\times 10^3`$, and $``$$`(B\chi _{c2}X)=(1.80_{0.28}^{+0.23})\times 10^3`$. These numbers are summarized in Table 1.

Some of the $`B\chi _c`$ decays result from “feed down” from the $`\psi (2S)`$; these are not forbidden by factorization. In order to determine the rate for direct decays to the $`\chi _c`$ states, the $`\psi (2S)`$ contribution must be subtracted. This feed down is estimated using the Particle Data Group $`B\psi (2S)X`$ and $`\psi (2S)\chi _c\gamma `$ branching fractions. After correcting for feed down we find: $``$$`(B\chi _{c1}X)=(3.32\pm 0.22)\times 10^3`$, and $``$$`(B\chi _{c2}X)=(1.53_{0.28}^{+0.23})\times 10^3`$.

Significant sources of systematic error are in the efficiencies for lepton identification (2% per lepton track), tracking (2% per track), photon detection (2%), as well as daughter branching fractions (6% for $`\chi _{c1}`$, 8% for $`\chi _{c2}`$), and fitting systematics (4% for $`\chi _{c1}`$, 10% for $`\chi _{c2}`$). The systematic errors are summarized in Table 2.

The fit for the $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ yields is sensitive to the signal and background shapes. We estimate the error associated with the fit by performing the fit in a variety of ways including: fixing the signal means, widths, and tail shapes to Monte Carlo values (with the widths multiplied by a scaling factor and separately by adding a random number from a Gaussian distribution generated to yield the desired width increase); allowing the means to float, with the widths and tail shape fixed; allowing the means and widths to float, with the tail shape fixed; and allowing all parameters to float. In all cases, when a parameter is allowed to float, the $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ line shapes are constrained appropriately as with the standard fit. Two methods of fitting the backgrounds are also used: fixing the background with the sidebands (as with the standard fit) and allowing the background shape to float freely. The one combination that is not used is to fit with a free tail shape and a free background shape as there can be a trade off between the background area and tail area in the fit.

In addition to the above fits, we confirmed that a third-order polynomial is sufficient to fit the background by performing a fit to the background Monte Carlo; adding additional terms did not improve the confidence levels of the fits. The fitting systematic error is assigned from the largest variation between the fits described above and our standard fit.

The $`\chi _c`$ momentum spectra are interesting as they can give clues to the production mechanisms. The high momentum end is dominated by two-body decays to $`\chi _{c1}(\chi _{c2})K`$ and $`\chi _{c1}(\chi _{c2})K^{}`$ while the low end may be from higher mass $`K^{}`$ resonances, multi-body decays or feed down from $`\psi (2S)`$. To determine the momentum spectra, we divide the data into sets based on the momentum of the $`\chi _c`$ candidate. We then fit each distribution for the $`\chi _{c1}`$ and $`\chi _{c2}`$ yields, which are converted into differential branching fractions, corrected bin-by-bin for the detector efficiency. The resulting momentum spectra, shown in Fig. 2, are broad indicating that a large component of either multi-body decays or higher $`K^{}`$ resonances is present. The shaded histogram in Fig. 2 shows the $`\chi _{c2}`$ momentum distribution for Monte Carlo-simulated $`B\chi _{c2}K`$ decays, which indicates that almost all $`\chi _{c2}`$’s from these decays have momenta between 1.2 and 1.6 GeV/$`c`$. After doing a fit of this Monte Carlo histogram to the data histogram we find an upper limit at the 90% confidence level of $`5.0\times 10^4`$ for the $`B\chi _{c2}K`$ branching fraction. The shaded area in Fig. 2 corresponds to this upper limit. A more detailed analysis of this decay is forthcoming.

In summary, we report the first statistically significant observation of $`\chi _{c2}`$ production in $`B`$-meson decays. The $`B\chi _{c1}X`$ and $`B\chi _{c2}X`$ branching fractions are measured to be $`(3.63\pm 0.22\pm 0.34)\times 10^3`$ and $`(1.80_{0.28}^{+0.23}\pm 0.26)\times 10^3`$, respectively, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. After subtraction for feed down from $`\psi (2S)`$, we find the direct branching fractions to be $`(3.32\pm 0.22\pm 0.34)\times 10^3`$ and $`(1.53_{0.28}^{+0.23}\pm 0.27)\times 10^3`$ respectively. The non-zero $`\chi _{c2}`$ production is an indication that the factorization model does not give a complete picture for charmonium production in $`B`$-meson decays. The momentum spectra include a large low momentum component, indicating either multibody final states or final states with higher resonant $`K^{}`$ production.

We wish to thank the KEKB accelerator group for the excellent operation of the KEKB accelerator. We acknowledge support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources; the National Science Foundation of China under contract No. 10175071; the Department of Science and Technology of India; the BK21 program of the Ministry of Education of Korea and the CHEP SRC program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation; the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research under contract No. 2P03B 17017; the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia; the National Science Council and the Ministry of Education of Taiwan; and the U.S. Department of Energy.