text:
# An adaptive filter for the PLANCK Compact Source Catalogue construction

## 1 Introduction

The ESA PLANCK Surveyor will produce ten all-sky high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies at 9 frequencies, from which the angular power spectrum will be derived to place constraints on the cosmological parameters. The maps produced by the PLANCK satellite, however, will not only include the CMB signal but also contain some astrophysical foreground sources arising from dust, free–free, synchrotron emission, Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effects and extragalactic point sources. It is therefore an important task to separate those foreground sources from the CMB signal. In this paper we will concentrate on the bright point sources with flux above $`0.10.3`$ Jy in connection with the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue (ERCSC) from the PLANCK mission. The main goal of the ERCSC construction is to produce such a catalogue right after the first six months of observation of the CMB sky by the PLANCK before more complicated and time consuming analysis of the CMB power spectrum, component separation and investigation of in-flight systematics. Therefore, it would be very useful to develop a fast method of the point sources extraction which needs as little information as possible about the parameters of the experiment.

In this paper, we present a fast linear algorithm for the extraction of extragalactic point sources from the CMB maps, which is a generalized amplitude-phase method of Naselsky, Novikov & Silk (2002). There have been developments of methods on point source extraction such as the high-pass filter by Tegmark and de Oliveira-Costa (1998) (hereafter TO98), Maximum–Entropy Method (MEM) by Hobson et al. (1999), and Mexican Hat Wavelet method (MHW) by Cayón et al. (2000). Here we introduce a simple top-hat filter for the extraction of point sources in the CMB maps. This method works very well without assumptions about the cosmological model, or a priori knowledge of the power spectrum of CMB and point sources.

The filter proposed by TD98 is optimal for point source extraction from the theoretical point of view, and requires the exact information about the CMB and the foregrounds power spectrum, the beam shape properties (its ellipticity and orientation), and the pixel noise level. For concrete applications, however, other methods can also be useful, which explains the succeeding discussions of other filters in the literature mentioned above and in this paper. We will compare our filter with the TD98 filter.

This paper is arranged as follows. In Section 2 we introduce the top–hat filter and elaborate the subtlety in the definition of the criterion by which the point sources are extracted. As our top–hat filtering range is adaptive, we apply in Section 3 the top–hat filter to the numerical simulated maps and estimate the filtering ranges for the PLANCK channels when the experiment parameters such as the beam size and the pixel noise level are known. We also compare our method with the theoretically optimal TD98 filter in Section 4. In Section 5 we generalize our filter to an algorithm that does not need any information about the CMB power spectrum, the beam size and the noise level. The results and discussion are in Section 6.

## 2 The top–hat filter

In the observed map by the PLANCK satellite the signal at pixel $`i`$ can be expressed as

$$d_i=S_i(𝒓_i)+n_i$$
(1)
where $`n_i`$ is the pixel noise, $`𝒓_i`$ correspoinds to the position of the $`i`$-pixel in the map and $`S_i\mathrm{\Delta }T/T(𝒓_i)`$ includes the CMB signal and foreground contaminations, of which the relevant component to this paper is the point source contribution. Expanding $`\mathrm{\Delta }T/T`$ in spherical harmonics, we have

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T}(𝒓_i)=\underset{\mathrm{}m}{}B_\mathrm{}ma_\mathrm{}mY_\mathrm{}m(𝒓_i),$$
(2)
where $`B_\mathrm{}m`$ is the beam response. The main idea of our method to extract point sources is through a simple linear top–hat filter in the harmonic domain with two cut–off scales. These two scales serve to remove the influence of the lower and higher multipole parts of the total power spectrum of the signal for optimal extraction of point sources from the PLANCK maps.

In TD98 the authors introduced the ratio of the amplitude of a point source (convolved with the beam) to the variance of the total signal in the map $`\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^2`$, which can be denoted as

$$\overline{\mathrm{}}=\left(\frac{B^2S^2}{\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}^2}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(3)
Here $`B^2S^2=(\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{PS}}/T)^2`$ is the contribution from the point source relative flux $`S`$ to the map, $``$ denotes convolution, and $`B`$ is the beam response, which is assumed Gaussian. They found the shape of the filter $`F_{\mathrm{TD98}}`$ by maximizing $`F_{\mathrm{TD98}}\overline{\mathrm{}}`$.

In our method we introduce a linear filter,

$$_{\mathrm{TH}}(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})=\mathrm{\Theta }(\mathrm{}\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}})\mathrm{\Theta }(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{}),$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the Heaviside step function, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)=0`$ for $`x0`$, and $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)=1`$ for $`x>0`$. $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ is the filtering range of $`_{\mathrm{TH}}`$. This filter has a top–hat shape in the harmonic domain with two characteristic scales $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$, both of which are functions of the antenna beam shape, the power spectrum of the CMB, the power spectra of all kinds of foregrounds and pixel noise, and possible systematic features. When these parameters are known, we can find $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ through maximizing $`F_{\mathrm{TH}}R`$ for each frequency channel of the PLANCK mission111The values $`lmin`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ can be used as the first step of the iteration scheme introduced in Section 5 to maximize the $`R`$ factor when the parameters have considerable variations against predicted values.. Here $`F_{\mathrm{TH}}`$ is the filter in Eq. (4) in the real domain and $`R`$ is the resultant relative flux,

$$R=\mathrm{}\nu _{\mathrm{min}},$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{}=(BS)/\sigma _{\mathrm{tot}}`$ and $`\nu _{\mathrm{min}}`$ is defined by $`\nu _{\mathrm{min}}\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ being the amplitude of the deepest minimum in the map, with $`\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ the square root of the variance of the pre-filtered map.

Note that there is a subtle difference between the TD98 filtering and the top-hat optimization algorithm in the definition of the criterion by which the point sources are extracted. In order to obtain the filter shape, the TD98 filter is defined by maximizing the $`\overline{\mathrm{}}`$ ratio in their theoretical derivation whereas the top–hat filter is defined by maximizing the $`R=\mathrm{}\nu _{\mathrm{min}}`$ ratio. According to the prediction of bright point source contamination in the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI) frequency range of the PLANCK mission \[Toffolatti et al. 1998\], point sources with flux above $`0.10.5`$ Jy are rare events in a $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ patch of the sky. For the 30 GHz frequency channel, for example, the estimated number density of point sources is $``$0.3-1 source for each $`10^{}\times 10^{}`$ patch. Thus each bright point source is a peculiar peak in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }T/T`$ map and the observed amplitude of the point source in the map is a combination of the point source contribution itself (which is not known), the signal from the CMB plus foregrounds convolved with beam response, and pixel noise contribution in the pixel containing the point source signal. As is mentioned in TD98, in order to extract point sources from the filtered map it is necessary to introduce a criterion to screen point sources from the ‘noise’222 by ‘noise’ we mean the filtered CMB plus foregrounds and pixel noise. It is the so–called $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ criterion, which means that the peaks in the filtered map with amplitudes above $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ threshold are identified as point sources, $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ being the square root of the variance of the filtered map. The amplitude of each filtered peak above $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$, however, is the combination of the amplitude of the point source and the filtered ‘noise’. Therefore, generally speaking, the final (filtered) signal around the peak area with the amplitude around $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ is sensitive to the actual realization of the pre-filtered ‘noise’, which can either increase or decrease the point source amplitude depending on initial realization of the ‘noise’ signal. This is the reason why the TD98 filter can distinguish mean point source contribution from the map. In our method for the construction of the filter we consider the worst case, i.e., when the point source is at the position of the deepest minimum $`\nu _{\mathrm{min}}\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ of the signal in the map.

We would like to point out the significance of the two characteristic scales $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ on enhancing the ratio of the point source flux to the $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ of the filtered map. There are two main features on the total power spectrum $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ from the map as shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. On the low multipole end, there are the CMB itself which has the standard characteristic of $`C_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{}^2`$ with a Harrison-Zel’dovich power spectrum from adiabatic perturbation, together with the so–called low multipole tail from the foregrounds such as dust emission, free–free and synchrotron emission. Thus the scale $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ of the top–hat filter cuts off this low multipole part of the total power spectrum $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$. For the high multipole end, on the other hand, the most dominant component in $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ is the pixel noise. The corresponding scale $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is therefore crucial in cutting down the pixel noise contribution in the filtered map, hence decreasing $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$.

The top–hat filter aims to suppress the low multipole tail and the pixel noise contribution so as to minimize the $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$. At the same time, it retains the part of $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ that is most modified by the beam response (see the shaded area of each panel in both Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). This means that, instead of the theoretically optimal TD98 filter which needs some preliminary and detailed information about the power spectra of the PLANCK map components and corresponding beam response, the top–hat filter has the simplest shape that transforms the uncertainties of the parameters to the scales of the cut-off $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$.

In constructing the top-hat filter for a specific frequency channel, we have to estimate the two cut–off scales when the experimental parameters such as the beam size and the pixel noise level are known. To do so, we choose the deepest minimum of the ‘noise’ as the position of the point source (hence the expression of Eq. (5)) and optimize the cut-off scales $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ exactly from such worst realization of the point source signal and ‘noise’. The filter with the filtering range obtained by the optimization of the signal $`S_\mathrm{f}`$ (point source) to the ‘noise’ $`(N_\mathrm{f})`$ ratio for the filtered map in the worst case under the condition $`S_\mathrm{f}/N_\mathrm{f}\mathrm{max}`$ allows us to detect all point sources with the same flux (and above) at any other different locations of the map. 333The deepest minimum at the initial map as a rule is quite isolated (see Zabotin & Naselsky 1985, Bond & Efstathiou 1987, Coles & Barrow 1987). The probability of finding such a realization of the point source and ‘noise’ is negligibly small. Thus the description ‘different locations of the map’ means different (and most probable) realization of the ‘noise’ at the point source area.

## 3 Estimation of the filtering range

In this section we describe the technique of the filtering range $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ estimation for the 10 maps of the PLANCK mission. The basic model of the PLANCK experiment which details the scan strategy, pixel noise properties, beam shape analysis and different kinds of the foreground contaminations is recently discussed in Mandolesi et al. (2000), Burigana et al. (1998), Bersanelli et al. (1997), and Chiang et al. (2001). In this section in order to determine the filtering range we will first assume that all the above-mentioned characteristics of the possible signals are well determined with corresponding accuracy. This condition will be relaxed in Section 5 when we introduce a more generalized algorithm for the top–hat filtering. At this stage those well–determined characteristics allow us to estimate the optimal values of the $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ range for the top–hat filter (Eq.( 4)) and compare the efficiency of the point source extraction from the maps by applying the TD98 and the top–hat filter. Below we will use the flat sky approximation for the CMB maps without loss of generality. Moreover, Chiang et al. (2001) have shown the importance of periodic boundary condition of simulations, which is the standard part of the flat sky approximation, for descriptions of the real signal from small patches of the sky.

We produce for each PLANCK observing frequency channel a set of realizations of simulated maps using the data provided by Vielva et al. (2001). The details of the simulations are listed in Table 1. The CMB signals are created from the angular power spectrum of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model by Lee et al. (2001). Dust emission is simulated with power law index $`3`$. The free-free and synchrotron emissions are not simulated and added to obtain the filtering range $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ in Table 2. Without adding these two parts of foreground emissions would, of course, affect the estimation of the filtering range, especially for LFI frequency channels, where the rms of both emissions are less than by one order of magnitude or comparable to that of CMB. As the free-free and synchrotron would have been assumed Gaussian, what would be modified is not the filtering range but the enhancement factor $`R`$. Moreover, as will become clear in Section 5, these filtering ranges serve as the initial values for the iteration scheme when we generalize the top-hat filter. The combined realization is then convolved with the corresponding antenna beam size. In this section we assume Gaussian beams $`B_k=\mathrm{exp}(k^2\theta ^2/2)`$, where $`\theta =\text{FWHM}/2.355`$, but a more realistic PLANCK antenna beam shape can be modelled using the method proposed by Chiang et al. (2001), which, as will be shown in Section 5, can also be tackled without difficulty.

To estimate the $`(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})`$ filtering range, in each realization we add one beam–convolved point source with fixed amplitude $`\mathrm{}=3`$, which is deliberately located at the deepest minimum of the realization with beam–convolved CMB signal including foregrounds plus pixel noise. In the flat sky approximation we firstly Fourier transform the total map, then we impose the top–hat filter as in Eq. (4) with a cut–off in Fourier domain, $`(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})=\mathrm{\Theta }(|𝐤|k_{\mathrm{min}})\mathrm{\Theta }(k_{\mathrm{max}}|𝐤|)`$. We inverse Fourier transform the filtered Fourier ring and calculate the ratio of the peak amplitude to the $`\sigma _f`$ from the filtered map. The filtering range $`(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})`$ is determined as the one from which the maximal enhancement $`R`$ can be reached for the filtered map.

Figure 3 shows the surface $`R`$ as functions of $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ for the High Frequency Instrument (HFI) 143 GHz channel. The surface $`R(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})`$ for each frequency channel is morphologically similar, but the position for maximal $`R`$ can vary slightly from realization to realization owing to different lowest minimal values $`\nu _{\mathrm{min}}\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ of Eq. (5) and the effect from cosmic variance. From the contour map we can easily see that, due to the flatness around the maximum, the filtering range covers roughly 10 per cent of $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ with only a few percent of variation in enhancement. We therefore optimize the filtering range from a set of realizations for each channel. In Table 2 we show the optimal sets of the filtering range in Fourier and corresponding spherical harmonic domain for all PLANCK frequency channels.

The choice of $`\mathrm{}=3`$ of the initial beam–convolved point source is to make sure the enhancement $`R>5`$ for all the PLANCK channels. Therefore, with the top–hat filtering algorithm, we can claim that the point sources extracted will have amplitudes above $`3\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ in the pre-filtered map. Theoretically, we can apply peak statistics to confirm that the highest point in the filtered map for the suggested filtering range should be a point source. The number of peaks above the threshold $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ per steradian is

$`N_{\mathrm{max}}(\nu _\mathrm{t})={\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^2}{(2\pi )^{3/2}\theta _{}^2}}\nu _\mathrm{t}\mathrm{exp}({\displaystyle \frac{\nu _\mathrm{t}^2}{2}})+`$ (6)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi \sqrt{3}\theta _{}^2}}\left\{1\mathrm{\Phi }\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\nu _\mathrm{t}}{2(12\gamma ^2/3)^{1/2}}}\right]\right\}`$
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the error function, $`\theta _{}^2=2\sigma _1^2/\sigma _2^2`$, and $`\gamma =\sigma _1^2/\sigma _0\sigma _2`$ \[Bond and Efstathiou 1987\]. The spectral parameters are defined as

$$\sigma _i^2=\pi \mathrm{}^{2i+1}C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}𝑑\mathrm{}.$$
(7)
In order to find the threshold of the highest peak from the theoretical point of view, we put $`A_\mathrm{f}N_{\mathrm{max}}(\nu _\mathrm{t})=1`$, where $`A_\mathrm{f}`$ is the area of the simulation patch for each channel and $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ is the threshold parameter above which there is only one peak. We exclude the point source contribution from the input power spectrum $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ in Eq. (7) so that the criterion for point source extraction should be set above the threshold from the calculation. The threshold before filtering $`\nu _\mathrm{t}^\mathrm{i}`$ and after filtering $`\nu _\mathrm{t}^\mathrm{f}`$ for the corresponding simulation patch of each channel are listed in Table 2. According to the $`\nu _\mathrm{t}^\mathrm{f}`$ values for all channels, the threshold of the highest peak for the corresponding area after filtering by the suggested range are less than $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$. Hence, the $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ is an appropriate criterion for point source extraction.

Figure 4 illustrates an example of point source enhancement of a realization from the HFI 143 GHz channel. Panel (a) shows the simulated map with one added point source of $`\mathrm{}=3.21`$, i.e., the amplitude of the beam–convolved point source is $`3.21\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$. In panel (b) we display the detailed part of the beam–convolved point source located at the deepest minimum of the map. We specifically choose the 143 GHz channel for presentation because the beam shape carried by the point source is not much deformed by the pixel noise level. This figure shows the enhancement is related to the size of FWHM, and the level of the pixel noise against the beam-convolved CMB plus foregrounds. As shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, the bending of the power spectrum by the beam response can be preserved towards high multipole modes as long as the pixel noise level is low. The less the pixel noise level, the more towards the high multipole modes the filtering range shifts in order to include the bending, hence the more low multipole power is excluded in the filtered $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$, resulting in higher $`R`$. For larger FWHM (e.g. compare the power spectrum of the single point source at 143 GHz with 353 GHz channel in Fig. 2), which nevertheless bends the total power spectrum, the filtering range has to shift towards low multipoles to keep the bending part, thus more power is included in the $`\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$, resulting in smaller $`R`$. Panel (c) is the filtered map after the filtering ($`k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}}`$) = (42,86) with enhancement $`R=15.5`$.

We set the initial value $`\mathrm{}=3`$ for the estimation of the optimal filtering range $`(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})`$. For $`\mathrm{}>3`$, the filter with the optimal filtering range will enhance the index $`R`$ even more. As tabulated in Table 3, the enhancement for higher frequency channels can reach above 20, which means that with our proposed method we can extract point source amplitude much less than $`3\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ in the pre-filtered map. We can also estimate what level of the point source amplitude at each channel can be detected by the suggested filter. In Table 3 we list the amplitudes of the point sources in terms of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ which can be filtered to reach the criterion $`R=5`$ with the suggested range.

## 4 Comparison with the TD98 filter

Using the top–hat filter with the optimal filtering range of $`(k_{\mathrm{min}},k_{\mathrm{max}})`$ we can compare its efficiency and accuracy of the point source extraction from the same realizations with the TD98 filter. The TD98 filter is expressed as

$$W_k=\frac{B_k}{C_k^{\mathrm{tot}}}=\frac{B_k}{B_k^2C_k+C^{\mathrm{pix}}},$$
(8)
where $`B_k`$ is the beam, $`C_k`$ is the sum of the power spectrum of the CMB and foreground components and $`C^{\mathrm{pix}}`$ is the pixel noise power spectrum. The shape of the TD98 filter for each channel is shown with long dash line in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, which also targets the bending of the total power spectrum. Although the TD98 filter is theoretically optimal, the trouble is that it requires the input of the CMB, and foregrounds power spectrum and the parameters of the experiments such as the beam size and shape, and the pixel noise power spectrum. As is claimed in TD98, the different inputs of cosmological models can have 20 per cent variation in $`R`$. In this regard, we also compare the standard (Eq. (8)) and the modified TD98 filter, which is mentioned briefly in their paper. The modified version is that, instead of inserting any theoretical CMB power spectrum from different cosmological models and power–law foregrounds into $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ in the filter ($`C_k^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ in the flat sky approximation), we can simply insert $`C_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ from the observed map itself as long as the power spectrum of the CMB is not severely modified by point sources, which is the case when we only have one point source in the simulated map. This is to compensate any fluctuations caused by cosmic variance. The bonus of this is that the modified TD98 filter does not depend on any cosmological models. In Table 3 we show from the top–hat, the TD98 and modified TD98 filter the enhancement factor of a $`3\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$ point source at the deepest minimum of the map from a set of realizations. We can see that for LFI channels, the top–hat filter performs better than both TD98 and the modified TD98 filters at the worst situation. We would like to point out that the TD98 filter is optimal when targeting the mean $`R`$, i.e., when a few point sources are located at both above and beneath the mean level of the map. We therefore list also in Table 4 the enhancement factor $`R`$ by placing one point source at a random position of a map and calculate the mean enhancement factor for a set of realizations. It is shown that the TD98 filter performs better than the top–hat filter, indicating that the top–hat filtering is $``$13-15% below the optimal extraction of point sources. This would transfer to roughly 7-10% loss of point source extraction compared to the TD98 filter when all the parameters are known, such as the CMB, dust power spectrum, beam properties, and the noise level.

To compare from the theoretical point of view the enhancement factor in details between these two filters for a single point source, we need the information of the location and amplitude of the point source. Specifically when we place one point source at the deepest minimum, this situation favours the top–hat filter, as the top–hat filter is ‘designed’ for this situation and similar situations such as other local minima. Also the amplitude of the point source is crucial in the enhancement factor $`R`$. Though from Table 3 for the HFI channels the $`R`$ from TD98 filter is higher, it does become smaller than that from the top–hat filter when the point source amplitude is significantly smaller than $`3\sigma _{\mathrm{in}}`$.

## 5 Generalization of the top–hat filter

The determination of the top–hat filtering range for each channel is sensitive to the CMB power spectrum model, pixel noise properties, beam shape and foregrounds contamination. However, for the proposed ERCSC construction it is absolutely necessary to simplify the method of the point source detection from the map, using general characteristics of the ‘noise’ and point sources only. We would like to point out specifically that the point source filter with adaptive range and a fixed shape, such as the top–hat filter is a much simpler way to define such kind of filters. As the concept of the top–hat and the TD98 filter to extract point sources takes advantage of the bending on the power spectrum by the beam response and the pixel noise level, they are both useful for the regions near the ecliptic plane in the flat sky approximation, where the scans are nearly parallel without crossings (see the fig.1 of Delabrouille, Patanchon & Audit 2002). For high galactic latitude scans, however, the crossings of scans complicate the beam shape configuration. The effective asymmetric beam will manifest itself in the Fourier domain which is not isotropic in the Fourier ring (see the Fig.1 of Chiang et al. 2001). It is unknown whether the global beam orientation is fixed (parallel) in the scans of PLANCK. If it is not, it will have degradation effect on point source extraction from any input of fixed beam function, such as the TD98 filter and MHW method.

To tackle this problem and also to relax the condition we set earlier in Section 3 to determine the filtering range, we would like to expand the top–hat filter to a more generalized algorithm. Following Naselsky, Novikov & Silk (2002), we can apply the iteration scheme for point source extraction from the map, using as the initial step of iterations the suggested $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ parameters from Table 2. Without acquiring the exact characteristics of the experiment such as pixel noise level and beam shape and size, the initial filtering with the suggested set of $`(\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}},\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}})`$ may not result in maximal enhancement for that specific realization. We can, however, always find the highest peak in the filtered map after the first top–hat filtering. There are two possibilities for the value of the amplitude of such peak. If we choose the criterion for the point source detection as $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$, it is likely that the actual value of the amplitude for the highest peak satisfies this criterion, from which we can claim we have identified a point source that can be removed easily from the map. If the highest peak is less than $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$, we can make the second iteration by slightly fine–tuning the $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ parameter. For the highest peak $`<5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ after the first iteration, if we still cannot increase its filtered amplitude up to the criterion after fine-tuning, we can claim that it is not a point source. Of course, for higher frequency channels of HFI we can set the criterion lower than $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$ as shown in Table 3, which means we can detect point sources with $`\mathrm{}<3`$.

The principal idea is that, with an adaptive filtering range, we can change $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ step by step to check the change of $`R`$ of the highest peak. In each iteration we need to compare the amplitude of the highest peak (after filtering) with the criterion for point source detection. For this algorithm, suppose that for the 100 GHz channel of HFI we put a point source with $`\mathrm{}=3`$ at an unknown position in the map and the pixel noise level is twice the predicted value. When we apply the filter with the suggested range, we can detect the highest point, which is less than $`5\sigma _\mathrm{f}`$. By tuning the $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ with fixed $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ to re-filter the original map, we can always find the enhancement $`R`$ by going through a bump along $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$. The position of the highest peak in the filtered map is the same as the initial iteration, but with different $`R`$, which indicates our suggested filtering range is not optimal. Then we fix the $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ corresponding to the maximum $`R`$ of the bump, re-filtering along the $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ axis to find the $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ corresponding to the maximal $`R`$. Through this process we can always find the new $`k_{\mathrm{min}}`$ and $`k_{\mathrm{max}}`$ parameter which has the maximal enhancement $`R`$.444In this example the $`R`$ is now lower than that listed in Table 2 as the pixel noise is doubled.

## 6 Discussions and Conclusion

We have introduced a simple and fast top–hat filter for extraction of point sources in CMB maps. As the filter cut–off range is adaptive, we can estimate it with the simulated maps when the parameters of the PLANCK channels are known.

We would like to emphasise that the main shape of the antenna beam for the PLANCK mission is close to elliptical due to optical distortions and telescope designs \[Burigana et al. 2000\]. The orientation of the beam, therefore, is crucial for any methods of point source extraction, which should be taken into account in order for maximal extraction of point sources. Our top–hat iteration algorithm, however, does not need this part of information and it will be even more useful if there is change of the beam shape due to the degradation effects of the mirrors during the mission.

We also perform detailed comparison of the proposed top–hat algorithm with the TD98 filter. The advantage of our method is that it is very simple, fast and does not require any detailed information about the real beam shape, the spectra of CMB and noise, and possible correlations in the pixel noise. In practice one can take the ready filter with the suggested range from Table 2 for each PLANCK frequency channel (if desirable) to improve it by the simple and fast algorithm described in Section 5. We would like to mention that the efficiency $`R`$ for the top–hat filter and the TD98 filter shown in Table 3 are practically the same.

## Acknowledgments

This paper was supported in part by Danmarks Grundforskningsfond through its support for the establishment of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center and by grants RFBR 17625 and INTAS 97-1192. We thank Dmitri Novikov for useful discussions and remarks.


format: text

text:
# Electron Transport in Metallic Grains

## I Introduction

In this paper, we review the results of electron transport measurements in metallic grains in weak electrical contact with leads. In these grains, the conduction electrons remain localized within the grain much longer than the time between bounces from the grain boundary. The time $`\tau `$ that a conduction electron remains localized within the grain is related to the uncertainty in electron energy $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=h/\tau `$. The Thouless energy of the grain encodes the notion of the time it takes an electron to explore the grain volume. It is given by $`E_{Th}\mathrm{}v_Fl/D^2`$, where $`v_F`$, $`l`$, and $`D`$ are the Fermi velocity, elastic mean free path and the grain diameter. Unlike the Thouless energy, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is highly dependent on the contact resistance between the grain and the leads. The grain has the property that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }E_{Th}`$. This property differentiates the grain from higher-dimensional systems, where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`E_{Th}`$ are comparable. Because of this property, electron transport in grains is different from that in higher dimensional systems. For example, in grains, the spin effect on magnetoconductance can be much stronger than the orbital effects. By comparison, in higher dimensional systems, the Aharonov Bohm effect on magnetoconductance greatly exceeds the spin effect. Thus, normal metal grains have the ability to spin-polarize and spin-analyze, Desmukh and Ralph  which opens a possibility to use grains as devices in spintronics.

## II Closed and Open Grains

Figure 1 shows a schematic of a sample containing one metallic grain connected between two electron reservoirs. Electron transport through the grain depends on the value of the contact resistances $`R_L`$ and $`R_R`$ between the grain and the leads. If both resistances are much larger than the resistance quantum, $`R_Q=h/e^2`$, the grain exhibits Coulomb blockade and discrete energy levels at low temperatures. In this regime, the grain is referred to here as a closed grain.

Tunneling spectroscopy of energy levels in closed grains is difficult, because the grain diameter must be less than approximately $`10nm`$ in order to resolve the discrete energy levels at dilution refrigerator temperature. Such spectroscopic measurements were first carried out by Ralph, et al. on grains of Al. Ralph et al. (1995) More recent measurements have extended this work to grains of Au, Co, Cu, Ag and alloys of Al and Au. For a recent review see Ref. Delft and Ralph (2001).

When $`R=R_L+R_R`$ is smaller than the resistance quantum (roughly speaking), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ becomes larger than the level spacing $`\delta `$. If $`\mathrm{\Gamma }>\delta `$, the grain is referred to here as open. In an open grain, both the energy spectrum and the Coulomb blockade are washed out. The width in energy of a charged state of the grain is $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}h/RC`$, where $`C=C_L+C_R`$ is the sum of the junction capacitances. The ability to differentiate charged states of the grain is conditional on $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}<E_C=e^2/2C`$.

Two properties differentiate open grains from higher dimensional systems. First, charging effects in open grains are not completely washed out. Effectively, the charging energy is exponentially reduced from the charging energy $`E_C`$ in closed grains, as $`E_C^{eff}E_C\mathrm{exp}(\alpha R_Q/R)`$, where $`\alpha `$ is a constant of order 1. Panyukov and Zaikin (1991); Nazarov (1999) $`\alpha `$ depends on the nature of the contacts. In tunneling contacts, $`\alpha =0.5`$ Panyukov and Zaikin (1991) and in diffusive point contacts, the suppression is much stronger, $`\alpha =\pi ^2/8`$ Nazarov (1999).

Second, the correlation energy of open grains is much smaller than the Thouless energy. The time that it takes for an electron to traverse from one lead to the other is much longer than the time it takes to traverse through the grain volume. As described in the introduction, an electron bounces multiple times from the grain boundary in the course of its travel between the leads. Long localization time is the reason that in a magnetic field, the spin-effect on transmission is stronger than the orbital effect. Spin up and spin down electrons begin to have different transmission when the Zeeman splitting becomes larger than the correlation energy. The directed area of an electron orbit in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field remains relatively small, despite the fact that the localization time is long. Delft and Ralph (2001) As a result, the Aharonov-Bohm flux remains weak even if the transmission has significant spin-dependence.

## III Fabrication of Closed and Open Grains

In standard metal deposition techniques, the grains typically nucleate at a certain center to center spacing, which depends on deposition rate and temperature. After the nucleation stage, the deposition does not produce new grains. Instead, the grains grow in size. The grains tend to have a pancake shape with an irregular basis. Metal deposition is stopped before the grains form a percolating network.

The pioneering experiments by Ralph, et al. Ralph et al. (1995) were performed using a nanometer scale hole in an insulating Si3N4 membrane. The hole is used to select a single grain to establish a weak tunneling contact between two Aluminum leads. In the subsequent experiments by Davidović and Tinkham, Davidović and Tinkham (1999) a careful shadow evaporation technique is used to create a nanometer scale tunneling junction between two Aluminum leads. The grains are embedded inside the junction, and, electron transport is dominated by tunneling through a single grain.

Recently, we have developed a new technique to create grains of circular shapes, in our laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The grains are formed by melting of a Au film on a $`Si_3N_4`$ substrate. A wide gold film of thickness 80nm is melted by applying a voltage pulse of amplitude 10V and a low source impedance. While melting, the film breaks into electrically isolated droplets of Au, preventing further current flow. Droplets are quenched by the substrate which is at room temperature. Figure 2-A shows an irregular array of Au grains on the substrate, obtained by this melting process.

This principle is extended to quench a single gold droplet between two larger gold electrodes. Figure 2 shows a gold grain in weak electric contact with two Au leads. We verify through microscopy that no additional connections are formed outside the slit shown in Figure 2. Typical grain size is 20-40nm. This device is obtained by careful melting of a point contact between two larger Au leads. Melting is controlled by adjusting the amplitude and the source impedance of the voltage pulse. Using surface Au migration techniques, the contact resistance between the grain and the leads can be tuned from $`Rh/e^2`$ to $`Rh/e^2`$. This ability permits us to explore grain physics in open-grain regime.

## IV Spectroscopic Measurements of Discrete Energy Levels

In metallic grains, the charging energy is typically much larger than the level spacing. The reason is that the charging energy scales roughly as inverse of the grain area, and the level spacing scales as inverse of the grain volume. Since the surface to volume ratio is small, charging effects are observed even at temperatures at which the energy levels can not be resolved.

At temperatures where $`\delta k_BTE_C`$, the I-V curve of the grain displays Coulomb blockade. In good samples, the I-V curve is well described by the Orthodox theory of single charge tunneling. Averin and Likharev (1991) This model permits evaluation of sample parameters, such as junction capacitances and resistances. Alternative techniques of parameter evaluations have also been developed - for details see original publications in Ref. Ralph et al. (1995); Davidović and Tinkham (1999).

As the temperature is lowered so that $`kT\delta `$, individual energy levels of the grain become resolved. Figure 3 shows the I-V curve of a gold nanoparticle of diameter $``$ 5nm, at 30mK temperature. The steps in current correspond to discrete energy levels of the particle. Levels 1, 2, and 3 are indicated with arrows.

### IV.1 Effects of Electron-Electron Interactions

A crude picture in which the eigenenergy of a many-electron system is approximated by the occupation of a specific set of quasiparticle states, with simply additive energies is insufficient to explain the observed energy spectra. The first step beyond this picture was made by Agam et al. Agam et al. (1997) They pointed out the need to take into account of cross-terms in the Fermi-liquid energy expansion. In the Fermi liquid, the energy of a quasiparticle depends on what other quasiparticles are present. Thus, instead of a single voltage associated with tunneling into a quasiparticle state, there will be a cluster of possible voltages, depending on what other quasiparticles are present. This possibility would not arise if one considered only equilibrium states at $`T=0`$, since only the lowest-energy configuration of excitations would be present. However, Agam et al. Agam et al. (1997) pointed out that, if successive tunneling events took place more quickly than relaxation from previous tunneling events took place, there would be a certain probability of nonequilibrium occupation numbers and hence of several possible eigenenergies for a given quasiparticle excitation. An important consequence of this model in its simplest form is that the lowest tunneling resonance should remain single, because a second tunneling event into a given level could not take place until the level had been vacated, and when the lowest excited level is vacated, the grain is in its unique ground state.

The approach of Agam et al. was essentially perturbative, taking into account cross-terms in the Fermi liquid expansion. Somewhat earlier, Sivan et al. Sivan et al. (1994) had applied a perturbative approach to estimate the level width which results from the lifetime limitation due to interelectronic scattering. Their conclusion was that level widths should increase with excitation energy, and become as large as the level spacing when $`EE_{Th}`$. This result implies that above $`E_{Th}`$, the excitations are broad enough to blend into a continuum. Careful analysis of experimental measurements by Sivan et al. on diffusive semiconductor quantum dots supported this conclusion.

The next major step in developing the theory of quasiparticle lifetimes was a nonperturbative treatment by Altshuler et al. Altshuler et al. (1997) Their approach was to map the problem of lifetimes into a problem of localization in the Fock-space of wavefunctions, analogous to the problem of Anderson localization on a Cayley tree. According to their analysis, the quasiparticle spectrum of a quantum dot separates into four regimes with increasing excitation energy. The quasiparticle states are predicted to be sharp and single at low energy. As the energy is increased, the resonances are sharp and clustered, then broad but resolvable, and finally forming an unresolved continuum above the Thouless energy.

The early data by Ralph et al. were in quantitative agreement with the basic predictions that the tunneling resonances cluster and broaden with increasing energy. More recent measurements by Davidović and Tinkham have explored the progression from resolved narrow resonances into effectively uniform tunneling density of states. Fig. 3 displays the current voltage characteristic of a 5nm Au grain. At low bias voltage, the tunneling steps are relatively sharp and simple. At 65 mV, a more complicated current threshold is found. It indicates that at large bias voltage the tunneling resonances do not reflect single quasiparticles. The measurements by Davidović and Tinkham show that at voltages larger than the Thouless energy, quasiparticle states can not be resolved, in agreement with the earlier studies by Sivan et al. Sivan et al. (1994). For further details, see Ref. Davidović and Tinkham (1999).

### IV.2 Electron Spin

The magnetic field dependence of eigenenergies in normal Al nanoparticles shows simple Zeeman splitting of two-fold degenerate energy levels. Ralph et al. (1995) The g-factor of spin doublets in Al has been measured to be $`2\pm 0.05`$. The observation of two-fold spin degeneracy is a direct demonstration that the electronic states in normal metal grains are essentially the same as the quantum states of the non-interacting electron-in-a-box model, at least near the ground state. The levels are filled sequentially, despite the fact that the grain contain several thousand strongly interacting conduction electrons.

The applied magnetic field also affects the orbital energy of a discrete level. In metallic grains, the orbital effect is usually much weaker than the Zeeman splitting. Delft and Ralph (2001) By comparison, in semiconducting quantum dots in perpendicular fields, the orbital effect greatly exceeds the spin effect.

In Al nanoparticles, the effects of spin-orbit scattering can be neglected, because Al is a light element. In metallic grains of heavier elements, spin-orbit interaction reduces the g-factors of Kramers doublets. Spin orbit interaction induces mixing between pure spin up states and pure spin down states.

Salinas et al. Salinas et al. (1999) examined the role of spin orbit interaction induced by gold impurities in aluminum grains. They found that g-factors are reduced from 2. Salinas et al. demonstrated avoided level crossing between Kramers doublets. Measurements in pure Au grains, made by Davidović and Tinkham, demonstrated Zeeman splitting with g-factors much smaller than two. They found that in Au grains, g-values range from $`0.3`$ to $`0.5`$. Figure 4 displays Zeeman splitting in a Au grain of diameter 9nm.

Theories explaining g-factors in small metallic grains have been developed by two groups at approximately the same time, by Matveev et al. Matveev et al. (2000) and Brouwer et al. Brouwer et al. (2000) Matveev et al. show that the g-value reduction becomes significant when the spin-orbit scattering rate $`\tau _{SO}^1`$ is comparable with the level spacing. They predict that the g-factor is distributed by the Maxwell distribution among different Kramers doublets in the limit when $`\tau _{SO}\delta /\mathrm{}1`$. The average g-value is

$$<g^2>=6\delta \tau _{SO}/\pi \mathrm{}+al/D,$$

where $`a`$ is a dimensionless constant determined by the geometry of the nanoparticle. The two terms represent the spin and the orbital contribution to the g-factor. This equation shows that if the spin orbit scattering is strong, that is, $`\delta \tau _{SO}/\mathrm{}1`$, then the g-factor is determined by the orbital contribution. This contribution is of order 1 in a ballistic nanoparticle.

Hence, measurements of very small g-factors in Au grains are consistent with the theory if, 1), the spin-orbit scattering rate is much larger than $`\delta /\mathrm{}`$, and 2), that the grains are diffusive, that is, $`lD`$. Short mean free path in these grains is surprising. If a thick gold film is grown in identical conditions, the mean free path is much longer than the grain diameter studied by Davidović and Tinkham. For example, a g-factor of $`0.3`$ in a 9nm grain implies that the mean free path is less than $`8\AA `$, which is certainly not the case in bulk films.

It is possible that impurities such as water adsorb more easily into the grain than into bulk film. The grains are formed by nucleation, and they grow in size by capturing nearby Au atoms, which freely diffuse over the substrate surface. The substrate surface is heavily contaminated by water molecules. This increases the probabilty that an impurity molecule is adsorbed inside the grain, possibly explaining the short mean free path.

Brouwer at al. predict that the splitting of an energy level in a grain depends on the direction of the applied magnetic field, as a result of mesoscopic fluctuations. Brouwer et al. (2000) The anisotropy is described by the eigenvalues $`g_j^2`$ (j=1,2,3) of a tensor, corresponding to the g-factors along three principal exes. The anisotropy is enhanced by eigenvalues repulsion between $`g_j`$.

More recently, Petta and Ralph determined the effects of spin-orbit scattering on discrete energy levels in Copper, Silver, and Gold nanoparticles. Petta and Ralph (2001) They determined the level to level fluctuations in the effective g-factor for Zeeman splitting. The statistics are found to be well described by the theoretical predictions. The strength of the spin-orbit scattering increases with atomic number and also varies between nanoparticles made of the same metal.

Petta and Ralph have also measured the angular dependence, as a function of the direction of magnetic field, for the Zeeman splitting of individual energy levels in copper grains. Petta and Ralph  They confirm the theoretical prediction by Brouwer at al., that the g-factors are highly anisotropic, with angular variations as large as five. Both the principal axes directions and g-factor magnitudes vary between different energy levels within one grain.

## V Open Grains

We have recently begun measuring open gold grains, using a new device geometry developed in our laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology. For the remainder of this review, we present some of the most striking effects we have discovered in these grains.

In section 3, we showed that a single gold grain can be captured between two gold leads. One device is shown in Fig. 2. These devices are very different from metallic quantum dots studied previously. First, the grain is formed by melting. It tends to have a spherical shape, as opposed to the pancake shaped grains studied previously. We speculate that the mean free path in these grains is significantly longer that the mean free path in grains formed by nucleation.

Second, the contacts between the grain and the leads are not tunneling junctions. In tunneling junctions, there are normally many channels, and every channel has a weak transmission. In our new devices, the electrical contacts have few conducting channels, and every channel has a relatively large transmission, e. g. of order $`10\%`$. The contacts between the grain are sensitive to the motion of single gold atoms near the interface between the grain and the leads. This suggest that the electrical contact is closer to a diffusive metallic point contact than to a tunneling junction.

We study how the I-V curve at dilution refrigerator temperatures evolves as a function of total grain resistance. We find that if the room temperature resistance is larger than approximately $`20k\mathrm{\Omega }`$, samples display sharp Coulomb blockade at $`T=0.015K`$ with charging energy of order several meV. In approximately $`30\%`$ of those samples, the I-V curve is consistent with the Orthodox theory of sequential electron tunneling through a single grain. Averin and Likharev (1991)

The existence of Coulomb blockade demonstrates that the grain is weakly coupled to the leads. If the sample resistance at room temperature is smaller than approximately $`10k\mathrm{\Omega }`$, Coulomb blockade is washed out at $`T=0.014K`$. Figure 5 shows differential conductance versus bias voltage in three open grains. Typical grain diameter is 40nm. Typical charging energy (in weak coupling regime) is 4meV. We show below that the weak zero-bias conductance dip is a remnant of the Coulomb blockade.

Open grains are characterized by comparing the I-V curves at low temperature with the theory of strong electron tunneling through mesoscopic metallic grains. Golubev et al. (1997) Describing the details of sample characterization is beyond the scope of this summary.

## VI Coulomb Blockade in Open Grains

The analysis of strong electron tunneling through metallic grains requires advanced theoretical methods. Flensberg (1993); Panyukov and Zaikin (1991); Golubev et al. (1997); Falci et al. (1995); Wang and Grabert (1996); Konig and Schoeller (1998); Hofstetter and Zwerger (1997) The ground state energy of the grain retains its periodic dependence on charge. Quantum fluctuations renormalize the grain parameters. If the grain is connected by tunneling junctions, the effective charging energy is suppressed by a factor of $`exp(G/2G_Q)`$, where $`G_Q=e^2/h`$ and $`G`$ is the sum of the two contact conductances. Experiments in metallic islands connected by tunneling junctions demonstrated the existence of charging effects for the values of $`G`$ exceeding $`G_Q`$Joyez et al. (1997); Chouvaev et al. (1999)

Charging effects are possible even if the grain is connected by metallic contacts, as long as they provide sufficient isolation of the grain from the leads. The total linear conductance between the grain and the leads at energy $`E`$ is $`G=(e^2/h)\mathrm{\Sigma }_nT_n(E)`$, where $`T_n(E)`$ are the transmissions of the channels. $`G`$ fluctuates with energy, with a characteristic correlation energy $`h/\tau `$. The effective charging energy of the grain takes the form Flensberg (1993); Nazarov (1999)

$$E_C^{eff}=E_C\mathrm{\Pi }_n\sqrt{1T_n}$$

In diffusive contacts, averaging over distribution of $`T_n`$ over different channels leads to Nazarov (1999)

$$E_C^{eff}E_C\mathrm{exp}(\pi ^2<G>/8G_Q).$$

$`<G>`$ is the total conductance between the grain and the leads, averaged over different channels.

The quantity $`<G>`$ involves an additional averaging of the transmission coefficient over a strip of energies of width $`E_C`$ around the Fermi level. Gramespacher and Matveev (2000); Kamenev and Larkin . This quantity almost does not fluctuate, since $`E_Ch/\tau `$.

This summary does not do justice to the subtlety of the theory. It is sufficient to show that the absence of any field dependence of the zero-bias conductance dip proves that the conductance dip in Fig. 5 is due to Coulomb blockade. It is not due to zero-bias anomaly in Altshuler-Aronov’s sense, which would be split. Altshuler and Aronov (1985) We show in the next section that, after averaging over different impurity configurations, for any value of magnetic field, the differential conductance has a minimum at $`V=0`$.

## VII Conductance Fluctuations in Open Grains

We show below that the conductance fluctuation in open grains are based on electron spin. Essentially, in a magnetic field, spin up electrons and spin down electron have different wavelengths at the Fermi level. In certain magnetic fields, spin up electrons may interfere constructively when spin down electrons interfere destructively, or vice versa, resulting in net spin polarized current.

The influence of electron spin on electronic properties of open grains is demonstrated by tracing the fluctuations in conductance versus magnetic field and the bias voltage. Fig 6 shows conductance fluctuations (CF) as a function of voltage and magnetic field at $`T=0.014K`$ in one open grain with room temperature resistance of $`14k\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

The fluctuations of conductance versus magnetic field are strongly correlated with fluctuations in conductance versus voltage. The image shows that there are diamond shaped regions in the parameter space within which the conductance is suppressed. In the figure, some of the diamond edges are highlighted with lines of the form $`eV=\pm 2\mu _BH+const`$.

The diamond edges are found to be consistent with the g-factors of bulk Au. Monod and Janossy (311) The detailed mechanism of how Zeeman splitting changes the I-V curve is not well understood yet. In addition, in certain samples, the diamonds are absent; they are replaced with a dense network of lines of the form $`eV=\pm 2\mu _BH+const`$. Since the slope of the lines is reproducible among samples, and since the slope is effectively given by the g-factor of bulk $`Au`$ (g=2), we are confident that the underlying interference effect is induced by the Zeeman splitting.

The fluctuations of conductance are highly sensitive to changes in the impurity configuration. Thermal cycling leads to complete scrambling of the fluctuations at $`T=0.015K`$. The average conductance changes by less than $`5\%`$ with thermal cycling. By averaging conductance fluctuations over many different impurity configurations, we obtain a smooth background I-V curve, at any magnetic field. The zero-bias conductance dip has virtually no remaining magnetic field dependence after this averaging.

Theoretically, one must address the role of electron spin on the field dependence of the I-V curve, in the regime where the spin effects are much stronger than the orbital effects. Experimentally, we are adding a gate to our devices, which will allow investigations of the fluctuations at zero bias voltage without possible complications arising from nonequilibrium effects at finite bias voltage.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are indebted to Michael Pustilnik, Leonid Glazman, Piet Brouwer, Yuval Oreg and Bertrand Halperin for numerous useful discussions. Part of this work was performed in part at the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility, (a member of the National Nanofabrication Users Network), which is supported by the NSF, under grant ECS-9731293, Cornell University and Industrial affiliates. We thank the microscopy facility at Georgia Institute of Technology for the access to the scanning electron microscope. This research is supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation grant 2000-13874 and the NSF grant DMR-0102960.


text:
# SHAPELETS: A NEW METHOD TO MEASURE GALAXY SHAPESaafootnote aTo appear in Procs. of the Workshop “The Shapes of Galaxies and their Halos”, Yale, May 2001.

## 1 Introduction

The measurement of galaxy shapes is a fundamental task in observational astronomy. In these proceedings, we present a new method for shape measurements described in detail in Refregier (2001). It is based on the linear decomposition of each galaxy into a series of localised basis functions with different shapes, which we call ‘Shapelets’. As a basis set, we choose the Gauss-Hermite series, whose remarkable properties make it ideal for astronomical applications. In particular, we summarise the results of Refregier & Bacon (2001) who showed how shapelets can be used to measure weak lensing, with the precision required for upcoming surveys. We also describe how shapelets can be used to reconstruct images from interferometric data, as described by Chang & Refregier (2001).

We illustrate the method using images from the Hubble Space Telescope and from the FIRST radio survey. Finally, we describe several further applications of shapelets and discuss their relevance in the context of astronomical applications requiring high precision.

## 2 Shapelet Method and Properties

We begin by summarising the formalism of Refregier (2001) for a description of galaxies in the Gauss-Hermite basis set. A galaxy with intensity $`f(𝐱)`$ can be decomposed into our basis functions $`B_𝐧(𝐱;\beta )`$ as

$$f(𝐱)=\underset{𝐧}{}f_𝐧B_𝐧(𝐱;\beta ),$$
(1)
where $`𝐱=(x_1,x_2)`$ and $`𝐧=(n_1,n_2)`$. The 2-dimensional cartesian basis functions can be written as $`B_𝐧(𝐱;\beta )=B_{n_1}(x_1;\beta )B_{n_2}(x_2;\beta )`$, in terms of the 1-dimensional basis functions

$$B_n(x;\beta )\left[2^n\pi ^{\frac{1}{2}}n!\beta \right]^{\frac{1}{2}}H_n\left(\frac{x}{\beta }\right)e^{\frac{x^2}{2\beta ^2}},$$
(2)
where $`H_n(x)`$ is a Hermite polynomial of order $`n`$. The parameter $`\beta `$ is a characteristic scale, which is typically chosen to be close to the radius of the object. These basis functions are the eigenstates of the Quantum Harmonic Oscillator (QHO), allowing us to use the formalism developed for this problem. Similar decomposition into basis functions has been independently suggested by Bernstein & Jarvis (2001). The first few basis functions are shown in Figure 1.

Because these basis functions, or ‘shapelets’, form a complete orthonormal set, the coefficients $`f_𝐧`$ can be found using

$$f_𝐧=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}d^2xf(𝐱)B_𝐧(𝐱;\beta ).$$
(3)
Figure 2 shows an example of the decomposition of a galaxy in the Hubble Deep Field (Williams et al 1996). The details of the image are fully reconstructed if coefficients up to $`n=20`$ are included; this decomposition thus provides an excellent and efficient description of galaxy images in practice.

The chosen basis functions have a number of remarkable properties. Firstly, they are invariant under Fourier transforms up to a scaling factor, so that

$$\stackrel{~}{B}_n(k;\beta )=i^nB_n(k;\beta ^1),$$
(4)
where tildes denote Fourier transforms. As a result, convolutions (which correspond to products in Fourier space) can be simply expressed using shapelets. Let us consider the convolution $`h(x)=(fg)(x)`$ of 2 functions. Each function can be decomposed into shapelet coefficients with scales $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$ and $`\gamma `$, which are then related by

$$h_n=\underset{m,l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}C_{nml}f_mg_l,$$
(5)
where the convolution tensor $`C_{nml}(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )`$ can be estimated analytically using a simple recursion relation (Refregier & Bacon 2001).

Shapelets also have simple properties under coordinate transformations such as translation, dilation, rotation and shear. For instance, let us consider the distortion of an image $`f(𝐱)`$ under the action of a weak shear $`\gamma _i`$, as occurs in weak gravitational lensing. To first order in the shear, the distorted image can be written as

$$f^{}(1+\gamma _i\widehat{S}_i)f,$$
(6)
where $`\widehat{S}_i`$ is the shear operator. It is easy to show that this operator takes a simple form in shapelet space, namely

$$\widehat{S}_1=\frac{1}{2}\left(\widehat{a}_1^2\widehat{a}_2^2\widehat{a}_1^2+\widehat{a}_2^2\right),\widehat{S}_2=\widehat{a}_1^{}\widehat{a}_2^{}\widehat{a}_1\widehat{a}_2,$$
(7)
where $`\widehat{a}_i^{}`$ and $`\widehat{a}_i`$ are the raising and lowering operators in the QHO formalism, for each dimension $`i=1,2`$. Similar operators can be constructed for the other coordinate transformations.

## 3 Measurement of Weak Lensing

The weak distortions induced by lensing on the images of background galaxies provide a direct measure of the distribution of mass in the Universe. This weak lensing method is now routinely used to study galaxy clusters, and has recently been detected in the field (Wittman et al 2000; Bacon et al 2000; Kaiser et al 2000; Maoli et al 2001; van Waerbeke et al 2000, 2001; Rhodes et al. 2001). Because the lensing effect is only of a few percent on large scales, a precise method for measuring the shear is required. The original methods of Bonnet & Mellier (1995) and Kaiser, Squires & Broadhurst (KSB; 1995) are not sufficiently accurate and stable for the upcoming weak lensing surveys (see Bacon et al 2001, Erben et al 2001). Thus several new methods have been proposed (Kuijken 1999; Rhodes, Refregier & Groth 2000; Kaiser 2000; Bernstein & Jarvis 2001).

The remarkable properties of our basis functions make shapelets particularly well suited for providing the basis of a new method for measuring the shear (Refregier & Bacon 2001). First, the Point-Spread Function (PSF) of the instrument can be modeled by decomposing stellar images into shapelets and by interpolating the resulting coefficients across an image. Galaxy images can then themselves be decomposed into shapelet coefficients, and the analytical form of the convolution matrix (see Eq. ) can be used to deconvolve the Point-Spread Function. From the properties of shapelets under shears (eq. ), one can then construct a linear estimator for the shear from the (deconvolved) coefficients of the galaxies of the form

$$\stackrel{~}{\gamma }_{i𝐧}=\frac{f_𝐧^{}f_𝐧}{S_{i𝐧m}f_𝐦}$$
(8)
where $`f_𝐧^{}`$ are the lensed coefficients, the brackets denote an average over the unlensed galaxy population, and $`𝐧`$ is even (odd) for the $`\gamma _1`$($`\gamma _2`$) component of the shear. The tensor $`S_{i𝐧m}`$ is the matrix representation of the shear operators of Equation (7). It is easy to show that these estimators are unbiased, i.e. that $`\stackrel{~}{\gamma }_{i𝐧}=\gamma _i`$, if the unlensed galaxies are randomly oriented. These estimators can then be combined to construct a minimum variance global estimator for the shear over a sample of galaxies.

To test the method, we used the image simulations described in Bacon et al. (2001). These were designed to reproduce the observational conditions of ground based telescopes such as appropriate throughput, PSF and noise, along with the statistics of the galaxy population observed in HST images. An artificial shear was applied to the simulated galaxies, and the shapelet method was used on the resulting realistic images to recover the applied shear. The recovered shear values from the simulations are plotted as a function of the output shear in Figure 3. Clearly, the method is unbiased, and is found to be robust with PSF shape and size. It thus provides an improvement over the KSB method which was shown to have small but significant instabilities and biases (Bacon et al 2001; Erben et al. 2001).

## 4 Image reconstruction with Interferometers

Another application of shapelets is the reconstruction of images from interferometric data, as described in detail in Chang & Refregier (2001). Interferometric data are collected in the $`uv`$ space, the Fourier-transform of the sky surface brightness. The observed quantity is the visibility measured for each antenna pair $`(i,j)`$ at time $`t`$ and at frequency $`\nu `$ and is given by

$$V_{ij}(\nu ,t)=d^2l\frac{A(𝐥,\nu )f(𝐥,\nu ,t)}{\sqrt{1|l|^2}}e^{2\pi i[ul+vm+w(\sqrt{1|l|^2}1)]},$$
(9)
where $`f(𝐥,\nu ,t)`$ is the surface brightness of the sky at position $`𝐥=(l,m)`$ with respect to the phase center, and $`A(𝐥,\nu )`$ is the (frequency-dependent) primary beam.

In analogy with the shapelet decomposition in real space, we wish to decompose sources directly in the $`uv`$ space. However, the discrete and finite sampling of the $`uv`$ plane prevents a direct linear decomposition of the visibilities $`V_{ij}`$ into shapelet coefficients. Instead, we simultaneously fit for the shapelet coefficients of a collection of sources on the $`uv`$ plane, by using a $`\chi ^2`$ fit:

$$\chi ^2=(𝐝𝐌f)^T𝐂^1(𝐝𝐌f),$$
(10)
where $`𝐝=\{\overline{V}_{ij}\}`$ is the visibility data vector , $`𝐌=\{\overline{V}_{ij}^{𝐧s}\}`$ is the theory matrix composed of visibilities corresponding to each basis function, and $`𝐟=\{f_{𝐧s}\}`$ is the shapelet coefficient vector. The indices $`s`$ and $`n`$ stand for the source number and shapelet state, respectively. The covariance error matrix of the visibilities

$$𝐂=\mathrm{cov}[𝐝,𝐝]=(𝐝𝐝)^T(𝐝𝐝)$$
(11)
is provided by the interferometric hardware. The resulting $`\chi ^2`$-fit is linear in its parameters and can therefore be performed by simple matrix operations. The complex effects of bandwidth smearing, time averaging and non-coplanarity of the array can be fully corrected for in the process.

As an example we consider the observing conditions of the FIRST radio survey (Becker et al. 1995; White et al. 1997). Using one of the FIRST pointings, as shown in Fig. 4, we find that our method compares well with CLEAN, the commonly used method for interferometric imaging. Our method has the advantage of being linear in the shapelet parameters, of fitting all sources simultaneously, and of providing the full covariance matrix of the coefficients, which allows us to quantify the errors and cross-talk in image shapes. It is well-suited for quantitative shape measurements which require high-precision. In particular, combining with the results from the previous section (Refregier & Bacon 2001), our results provide an accurate method for measuring weak lensing with interferometers.

## 5 Conclusions

Shapelets provide a new method to measure the shape of galaxies. The chosen basis functions have convenient properties under convolutions and distortions. This makes shapelets ideally suited for the measurement of weak lensing shear, after correcting for the smearing effect of the point spread function. They can also be used to reconstruct images from interferometric data. The method is very general and is ideally suited for astrophysical applications requiring high precision. In particular, it can be used for image compression, modeling and deconvolution of the point spread function, and de-projection from 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional data. Another immediate application to explore is that of the measurement and classification galaxy morphology. Shapelets could thus help in unifying the different observational and theoretical studies of galaxy shapes presented in this volume.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Richard Ellis, David Helfand and Richard Massey for useful discussions and on-going collaboration. AR was supported by a fellowship from the EEC TMR network on gravitational lensing and by a Wolfson College Fellowship. TC was supported by NSF grant AST-98-0273. DJB was supported at the IfA by a PPARC postdoctoral fellowship.

## References


text:
# Destruction of the phase coherence by the magnetic field in the fluctuation region of thin superconducting film.

\[

## Abstract

Reduction of the gradient of current density is observed near $`T_c`$ in thin superconducting films. This effect is explained by the influence of fluctuation superconductivity on the current density distribution. The observed suppression of this effect by low magnetic field is explained by the destruction of phase coherence by magnetic field. The current density distribution in high magnetic field does not differ from that in the normal state down to low temperature ($`T<T_{c2}`$). This is interpreted as evidence that the superconducting state without pinning below $`H_{c2}`$ is not a vortex liquid but a state without the phase coherence.

PACS numbers: 74.60.Ge

\]

The superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum effect. Phase $`\varphi `$ of wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }=|\mathrm{\Psi }|exp(i\varphi )`$ of superconducting electrons can cohere all over volume of a superconductor. Quantization of a magnetic flux  and the Meissner effect  are consequences of the phase coherence. According to the relation for supercurrent (see for example )

$$j=\frac{hen_s}{4\pi m}(\frac{d\varphi }{dr}\frac{4\pi e}{hc}A)=\frac{1}{\lambda _L^2}(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi }\frac{d\varphi }{dr}A)$$
$`(1)`$
the magnetic flux, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, contained within a closed path of integration must be equal $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_0n`$ because the integral of $`d\varphi /dr`$ along the closed path must be equal $`n2\pi `$. Here $`\lambda _L=(mc/e^2n_s)^{0.5}`$ is the London penetration depth; $`n_s`$ is the superconducting electron density; $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=hc/2e`$ is the flux quanta; n is an integer. n must be equal zero in the absence of singularity (nonsuperconducting inclusion) within the closed path of integration because in this case the closed path can be tightened to zero while remaining inside superconducting region. Thus, the magnetic flux cannot be within a superconducting region with phase coherence and without singularities. And this is the cause of the Meissner effect .

Therefore, magnetic field can penetrate into a superconductor only if: 1) superconductivity is destroyed, or 2) singularities appears, or 3) the phase coherence is absent. The first case is observed in type I superconductor. The second case is observed in the Abrikosov state of type II superconductor. The singularities are the Abrikosov vorteces in this case. These two cases are widely known. The third case is not so well known. It is observed in fluctuation superconductivity regions, for example above the second critical field, $`H_{c2}`$, in type II superconductors.

Zero electrical resistance, the main property of superconductors, can exist only in states with a long range phase coherence. In a state without the phase coherence superconducting fluctuations increase the electrical conductivity  (this excess conductivity is called paraconductivity) whereas resistance remains non-zero.

According to the Josephson relation  electrical voltage

$$V=\frac{h}{4\pi e}\frac{d\varphi }{dt}$$
$`(2)`$
in states with the long range phase coherence. Here V is a voltage between two points; $`\varphi `$ is a phase difference between these points. The phase difference changes in time in the Abrikosov state if the vorteces flow. The resistance caused by the vortex flow is called flux flow resistance . This name is no quite right because a magnetic flux induced by a external magnet does not moved in a superconductor.

The vortex flow is caused by an electrical current . A flow velocity in real samples depends not only on a current value but also on a pinning force . The vortex can not flow at a current lesser than a critical current. The resistance is equal zero in this case. The pinning effect may be in the state with the phase coherence only. Therefore it may be considered as a consequence of the phase coherence.

According to the Abrikosov solution  obtained in the mean-field approximation the long range phase coherence appears at mean-field transition point, $`H_{c2}`$. But the second critical field is no a critical point in the fluctuation theory. In the consequence of the fluctuation the pinning appears below $`H_{c2}`$ . It was shown in work  that the pinning appearance in bulk superconductor is a narrow transition. This transition was interpreted in work  as a transition from a fluctuation state, as the state with superconducting electrons but without the phase coherence, into the Abrikosov state, as the state with the long range phase coherence. The position of this transition was denoted as $`H_{c4}`$ in work .

The result of  was repeated at investigations of $`YBa_2Cu_3O_{7x}`$ . But the absence of the pinning in a substantial range of temperature and magnetic field below $`H_{c2}`$ in high-Tc superconductor was interpreted as a consequence of the vortex lattice melting . This interpretation differs from the one proposed in . The state without pinning is considered as a vortex liquid in this interpretation. The vortex liquid is a state with the phase coherence because the vorteces are singularities in superconducting state with the phase coherence. And singularities can not exist without medium.

The resistance in the vortex liquid is caused by the vortex flow  as well as in the Abrikosov state. Therefore some difference of resistive properties of the vortex liquid and of the state without the phase coherence may be expected. Nonlocal resistivity in the vortex liquid is predicted in paper . The nonlocal resistivity is considered as a consequence of the viscosity and the incompressibility of the vortex liquid in . The nonlocal resistivity in the vortex liquid may be considered also as a consequence of the phase coherence because the viscosity of the vortex liquid as well as the vorteces can not exist without the phase coherence.

The nonlocal resistivity considered in  may be interpreted as a reduction of a gradient of the current density in a consequence of the viscosity of the vortex liquid. A similar nonlocal resistivity may be observed also in the fluctuation region above $`T_c`$. According to the relation (1) and the Maxwell equation a superconducting current density within fluctuation superconducting drops which appear near $`T_c`$ must be constant because size of this drops is smaller than the penetration depth. Therefore a gradient of the current density must decrease near $`T_c`$. This decreasing can be visible if size of the fluctuation superconducting drops is no much small. It may be within the critical region. The critical region of a bulk superconductor is very narrow. Therefore we use amorphous $`Nb_{1x}O_x`$ thin films. The critical region of these films is enough wide.

The $`Nb_{1x}O_x`$ films were produced by magnetron sputtering of Nb in an atmosphere of argon and oxygen. The critical temperature $`T_c`$ of these films depend on oxygen content. Three films with $`x0.150.25`$ and $`T_c`$ 1.86 K, 2.46 K and 2.52 K were used in this work. Amorphous $`Nb_{1x}O_x`$ is a type-II superconductor with big value of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter $`\kappa `$ and of the normal resistivity, $`\rho _n`$: $`\kappa 50`$, $`dH_{c2}/dT=22kOe/K`$, $`\rho _n=200\mu \mathrm{\Omega }cm`$. The temperature dependence of normal resistivity is very weak, $`|d\rho _n/dT|/\rho _n<0.0002K^1`$ in the region 20-40 K, where superconducting fluctuation is small. The resistivity increases with decreasing temperature. This change can be connected with weak localization. The used films have very weak pinning. It was shown in work  that the resistive dependencies of these films are described by paraconductivity theory in a wide region both above and below $`H_{c2}`$.

The film structure used is shown schematically in Fig. 1. This structure was obtained by electron lithography and ion-beam etching. The width of the strip in which current flows is equal approximately $`4\mu m`$. The branch width is equal approximately $`8\mu m`$. The distance between potential contacts 1-1 is equal approximately $`6\mu m`$. The distance between potential contacts 3 and 4 is $`4\mu m`$, between 3 and 2 is $`8\mu m`$. The width of the strip of the potential contacts is $`0.2\mu m`$. The film thickness d = 20 nm.

The voltage was measured with a relative error 0.0001. The temperature was measured with a relative error 0.001. A magnetic field produced by a superconducting solenoid was perpendicular to a film plane.

Results obtained by investigation of three samples with $`T_c`$ = 1.86 K, 2.46 K and 2.52 K are similar. The temperature dependencies of the relation $`v_{ii}=V_{ii}(T)/V_{ii,n}`$ on contacts 1-1, 4-4, 2-2 and 3-3 of the sample with $`T_c`$ = 1.86 K in zero magnetic field are shown on figure 1. $`V_{ii}(T)`$ is voltage on contacts 1-1, 4-4, 2-2 and 3-3 at temperature T and $`V_{ii,n}`$ is the same at T = 4.2 K where superconducting fluctuation is very small. The relations voltage on the contacts to the transport current value, I, in the normal state are $`V_{11,n}/I=146\mathrm{\Omega }`$; $`V_{33,n}/I=185\mathrm{\Omega }`$; $`V_{44,n}/I=111\mathrm{\Omega }`$; $`V_{22,n}/I=60\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The $`v_{ii}(T)`$ do not depend on the transport current value if I does not heat appreciably the film. The overheating of the region between contacts 1-1 determined by displacement of the resistive transition at relatively large current is equal $`0.008K/(10\mu A)^2`$. The overheating of the regions between other contacts is smaller. The dependencies on Fig.1 are obtained at $`I=2\mu A`$. The overheating at this current value does not exceed 0.0005 K.

Because the film is very homogeneous (critical temperature difference of regions between contacts 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 and 1-1 does not exceed 0.001 K) the resistivity, $`\rho `$, between all contacts must be equal. Consequently the observed difference of the $`v_{22}`$, $`v_{44}`$, $`v_{33}`$ and $`v_{11}`$ values is caused by a change of the current density, j, between contacts 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 near $`T_c`$. It is obvious that j between contacts 1-1 does not change if I is constant. The $`v_{11}(T,H)`$ dependencies repeat the resistivity dependencies obtained before . These dependencies are described by paraconductivity theory . $`1/v_{11}1`$ is proportional to the paraconductivity value, $`\sigma _{fl}`$: $`1/v_{11}1=\rho _n/\rho (T)1=\sigma _{fl}\rho _n`$. If we will introduce an average current density between the potential contacts, $`j_{ii}`$, we may write $`V_{ii}=j_{ii}\rho l_{ii}`$. $`l_{ii}`$ is a distance between potential contacts i-i. Then $`v_{ii}=V_{ii}(T)/V_{ii,n}=j_{ii}(T)\rho (T)/j_{ii,n}\rho _n`$. Where $`j_{ii,n}`$ is the average current density between the contacts i-i in the normal state without superconducting fluctuation (at T = 4.2 K). Because $`j_{11}`$ is not changed, $`v_{ii}/v_{11}=j_{ii}(T)/j_{ii,n}`$. We may estimate a value of a additional current between contacts i-i near the superconducting transition from above relation. $`\mathrm{\Delta }j_{ii}=j_{ii}(T)j_{ii,n}=j_{ii,n}(v_{ii}/v_{11}1)`$.

It is obvious that the difference of the values $`V_{33,n}/I`$; $`V_{44,n}/I`$; $`V_{22,n}/I`$ is caused first of all by a difference of the current density between these contacts, $`j_{22,n}<j_{44,n}<j_{33,n}`$, because distances between these potential contacts are approximately equal. Near $`T_c`$, $`v_{44}/v_{11}1>0`$, $`v_{22}/v_{11}1>0`$ and $`v_{33}/v_{11}1<0`$ (Fig.1). This means that the current density between the different contacts draw nearer close by $`T_c`$. According to figure 1 $`v_{22}/v_{11}1>v_{44}/v_{11}1`$. This means that the additional current value decreases with removal from the I strip more slowly than $`j_{ii,n}`$. $`v_{44}/v_{11}1`$ and $`v_{22}/v_{11}1`$ increases with approach to the $`T_c`$ more sharply than paraconductivity value and is observed near $`T_c=1.84K`$ only (Fig.1). The $`T_c`$ value was determined from paraconductivity dependence in linear approximation region with exactness 0.01 K.

Thus, the reduction of the gradient of the current density near $`T_c`$ is observed indeed. This effect was observed in all investigated samples and therefore can not be connected with sample inhomogeneity. Following to  we will call this effect as the nonlocal resistivity. The nonlocal resistivity can be useful for investigation of an action of a magnetic field on the superconducting drops. Two possibility can be in a enough high magnetic field: 1) the Abrikosov vorteces appear within the superconducting drops; 2) the magnetic field destroys the phase coherence. In the first case the observed effect must not decrease in the magnetic field because the relation (1) is linear.

Our investigations show that a magnetic field suppresses the nonlocal resistivity much more strongly than the paraconductivity value (Fig.2). The nonlocal resistivity begins to decrease in very low magnetic field (Fig.2), decreases in some times at H = 0.5 kOe and disappears in higher magnetic field (fig.3). The paraconductivity value changes very little in these values of the magnetic field (see Fig.2). The observed small change of the paraconductivity value is consistent with small change of the mean-field critical temperature, $`T_{c2}T_c=H/(dH_{c2}/dT)`$. At H = 20 Oe, $`T_{c2}T_c0.001K`$; at H = 0.5 kOe, $`T_{c2}T_c0.02K`$.

The magnetic field can not act on superconducting drops with size smaller than $`(\mathrm{\Phi }_0/H)^{0.5}`$. Consequently the superconducting drops with size $`>(\mathrm{\Phi }_0/20Oe)^{0.5}=1\mu m`$ contribute to the observed effect. But the nonlocal resistivity is observed at H = 500 Oe. Therefore we can propose that the superconducting drops with size $`<(\mathrm{\Phi }_0/500Oe)^{0.5}=0.2\mu m`$ contribute to the effect also.

Thus, the magnetic field destroys the phase coherence in the fluctuation superconducting drops first of all. The nonlocal resistivity predicted for the vortex liquid in work  is not observed in high magnetic field up to low temperature. This means that a state without pinning is no the vortex liquid but is the state with superconducting electrons but without the phase coherence. Consequently the transition observed in  is not the vortex lattice melting but is the phase coherence disappearance.

A.V.N. is grateful to M.A.Moore for the idea to measure the nonlocal resistivity in a thin superconducting film. This work was supported by the National Program of Russia on ”Superconductivity” of SSTP ”ADPCM”, Project 95040.


text:
# Comment on “Spectroscopy with Random and Displaced Random Ensemble”

C. W. Johnson and his collaborators recently found that the dominance of 0+ ground state (0 g.s.) dominance of even fermion systems can be obtained by using a two-body random ensemble (TBRE). This discovery brought the physics of many-body systems interacting via random interactions into a sharp focus. One of the most interesting and important issues is the origin of the 0 g.s. dominance.

The purpose of this Comment is to point out that the time reversal invariance, which was used in Ref.  to explain the 0 g.s. dominance, cannot be an explanation, and that the results by using a displaced TBRE are much more complicated than those shown in .

The key point of  to explain the 0 g.s. dominance is the behaviors of centroid $`E_{cI}`$, defined as $`d_I^1tr(H)_I`$, and the variance $`\sigma _I^2`$ defined as $`d_I^1(HE_{cI})^2_I`$. Here $`I`$ is the total angular momentum. The $`E_{cI}`$ was noticed in Ref. to be small. Therefore, the $`\sigma _I^2`$ was assumed to play a crucial role. This idea was actually found to be not applicable to fermions in a single-$`j`$ shell in . An argument, which is essentially a combination of behavior of $`\sigma _I`$ and a statistical behavior of two-body coefficients of fractional parentage, was proposed to explain both the properties of $`E_{cI}`$ and the 0 g.s. dominance  of even fermion systems in a single-$`j`$ shell. A simple approach to study this problem was given recently in .

It is stressed here that the correlation between states is essential to explain the 0 g.s. dominance, or more generally, to explain a sizable probability (denoted as $`P(I)`$)of a certain $`I`$ g.s. by using a TBRE. Here correlation is an antonym of independence, it refers to, e.g., for fermions in a single-$`j`$ shell, the state with $`I_{max}2`$ is very likely the first excited state when the $`I=I_{max}`$ state is the g.s.. It is incorrect to consider only the statistical behavior of energy levels. Taking $`\sigma _I`$ of 5-fermion system in a single-$`j`$ shell as an example, $`\sigma _I`$ with $`I=I_{min}=\frac{1}{2}`$ is very large. However, the $`P(\frac{1}{2})`$ is always close to zero. One can also find many such examples in even fermion systems. The $`\sigma _I`$ of the $`I=I_{max}`$ state of fermions in a single-$`j`$ shell is always 0, but the $`P(I_{max})`$ is always sizable for fermions in a small $`j`$ shell.

Next, the authors of Ref.  showed a few interesting examples by using a displaced TBRE. We emphasize here, however, that the results by using a displaced TBRE are actually very complicated. A negative displacement of the TBRE may favor 0 g.s., as showed in Ref. . However, this is not always correct. In fact, both negative displacements and positive displacements may favor the 0 g.s. probability (e.g., $`P(0)100\%`$ for 4 fermions in a two-$`j`$ ($`j_1=13/2,j_2=9/2`$) shell by using a TBRE$`\pm 5`$) or quench down the 0 g.s. probability (e.g., $`P(0)0\%`$ for 4 fermions in a two-$`j`$ ($`j_1=11/2,j_2=3/2`$) shell by using a TBRE$`\pm 5`$), or may play a minor role by a very slight change in $`P(I)`$’s (e.g., 4 fermions in a two-$`j`$ ($`j_1=9/2,j_2=5/2`$) shell by using a TBRE$`\pm 5`$).

Our conclusion is that the time reversal invariance, which was further interpreted in Ref.  by the behaviors of $`E_{cI}`$ and $`\sigma _I^2`$, can not be the origin of the 0 g.s. dominance, as was pointed out in , and that the discussion by using a displaced TBRE in  is not true in general.