text:
# Optimization of a Langmuir-Taylor detector for lithium

## I Introduction

Very sensitive detectors for neutral atoms, which were first necessary for Rabi experiments (see reviews in ref. king56 ; ramsey56 ), still govern the feasibility of many experiments. Two different detectors fulfill the requirements of high efficiency and low background:

* the Langmuir-Taylor detector langmuir25 ; taylor29 ; taylor30  is based on the surface ionization process. For ground state atoms, the ionization probability is large when the ionization potential is low. Therefore, this detector is mostly used with alkali atoms. For thermal atoms, the detection probability is almost independent of their velocities. The detection of a few atoms per second is feasible, if the produced ions are detected with an electron multiplier.
* the laser induced fluorescence detector, which is commonly used in cold atom experiments, has a detection probability close to $`100\%`$ for slow atoms. However, its detection probability decreases rapidly with the atom velocity and a large efficiency is very difficult to achieve for thermal atoms. Finally, laser stray light is usually the dominant source of background and limits the detection of a very low atomic flux.

Therefore, the Langmuir-Taylor detector is probably the best detector for thermal alkali atomic beams. Optimization of this detector is more difficult in the case of lithium, because lithium has the highest ionization potential of the alkali atoms. In the present paper, we give a detailed description of the detector in this case. More precisely, after the introduction, we describe the detector principle and its design in part 2. In part 3, we present our measurements of the detection probability, which depends on the degree of oxidation of rhenium surface persky68 ; kawano86 . The various sources of background signal and their minimization are described in part 4, while, in part 5, we discuss the detector response time. In part 6, these observations are rationalized by a theoretical modeling of the surface ionization process. Two appendices present complementary information: appendix A discusses the relation between heating current and rhenium ribbon temperature and appendix B briefly analyzes literature data concerning the dependence of rhenium work function with surface oxidation kawano86 ; kawano98 ; kawano00 ; kawano99 .

All the information needed to optimize this detector is thus collected and analyzed in the present paper. A recent paper by F. Stienkemeier et al. stienkemeier00  has described the Langmuir-Taylor detector, using a rhenium surface, applied to detect various atoms (including lithium) attached to helium droplets. Our measurements and analysis are largely complementary to those of this work.

## II Detector principle and design

### II.1 Detector principle

Surface ionization of an atom $`A`$ occurs if the ionization potential $`I`$ of the atom is comparable to the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ of the metal. The atom is then emitted as a positive ion $`A^+`$ with a probability $`P_+`$ and as a neutral atom with the probability $`(1P_+)`$. The probability $`P_+`$ is usually assumed to be given by the Saha-Langmuir law:

$$P_+=\frac{1}{1+\frac{g_0}{g_+}\mathrm{exp}(\frac{I\mathrm{\Phi }}{k_BT})}$$
(1)
where $`g_0`$ and $`g_+`$ are the statistical weights of the ion and atom ground states (in the case of alkali atoms, $`g_0/g_+=2`$). The validity of this law is discussed in part 6. The wire temperature must be high, typically $`1500`$ K or larger, not because of its influence on the ionized fraction $`P_+`$, but to reduce the ion residence time on the surface. This residence time $`\tau `$ is given by:

$$\tau =\tau _0\mathrm{exp}\left(E_{ads}/k_BT\right)$$
(2)
Here $`E_{ads}`$ is the ion adsorption energy (typically a few eV) and $`\tau _0`$ should be close to the vibrational period of the ion near the surface (near $`10^{13}`$ s, see table 2). Finally, the ionization probability is independent of the initial kinetic energy as long as this energy is smaller than or comparable to the adsorption energy, because the residence time on the surface is sufficient to insure thermal equilibrium with the surface.

Because of the high ionization potential of lithium, $`I_{Li}=5.392`$ eV, we need a metal with a large work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. Among refractory metals, the highest values of the work function are for platinum ($`\mathrm{\Phi }=5.77`$ eV), iridium ($`\mathrm{\Phi }=5.70`$ eV) kaack95 , rhenium ($`\mathrm{\Phi }=4.96`$ eV) and tungsten ($`\mathrm{\Phi }=4.54`$ eV) kawano99 . Moreover, oxidation increases the tungsten work function ($`\mathrm{\Phi }6`$ eV following N. F. Ramsey ramsey56 , $`\mathrm{\Phi }5.96.2`$ eV following H. Pauly and J. P. Toennies pauly68 ) and a similar effect occurs for rhenium persky68 ; kawano86 ; zandberg95 ; kawano99 . In appendix B, we discuss the dependence of rhenium work function with temperature and oxygen partial pressure: this information supports strongly the idea that rhenium is probably the best material for a lithium detector. The work function is also a function of the alkali surface coverage kaack95 ; kawano86 ; zandberg95 . This effect is very important if one uses a high flux especially when the residence time is long (i.e. at low temperature) but it is usually negligible for a high sensitivity detector dedicated to very low atomic flux.

### II.2 Detector design

The central part of the detector is a rhenium ribbon. The ribbon thickness $`a`$ must be quite small, to facilitate resistive heating and cleaning (see part 4), while the width $`b`$ is fixed by experimental needs. For example, we use commercially available ribbons with $`a=0.0008\mathrm{"}=20.3`$ $`\mu m`$ and $`b=0.040\mathrm{"}=1016`$ $`\mu m`$ provided by A. D. Mackay or $`a=30`$ $`\mu m`$ and $`b=760`$ $`\mu m`$ provided by Goodfellow. The ribbon is a few centimeters long. It is heated by circulating a DC current of a few amperes, necessary to reach the operating temperature $`T1500`$ K. In appendix A, we discuss the relation between the current and the ribbon temperature. Higher temperatures ($`T2200`$ K) are needed during the cleaning process. At $`T=2000`$ K, the power per unit length is about $`5`$ W/cm and this heat load may induce some outgassing of the vacuum tank.

The ribbon expansion goodfellow ; rembar  when going from ordinary temperature to a temperature near $`2000`$ K is close to $`1\%`$. Usually, the ribbon is kept straight by a soft spring, with an applied force less than $`1`$ Newton (for data concerning the mechanical strength of rhenium, see ref. goodfellow ; rembar ). In our arrangement, the rhenium ribbon is spot-welded at both ends to tantalum sheets.

The ions emitted by the wire are collected and focussed on the entrance funnel of a channeltron, by a simple ion optics, as shown in figure 1. The ion trajectories have been calculated with the SIMION software SIMION  and this calculation serves to define the various electrical potentials, which are further optimized by maximizing the ion signal. The repeller plate potential must not exceed a few volts, otherwise the electrons emitted by the hot wire may ionize the background gas, thus contributing to the background signal. A fast counting electronics is used to convert the channeltron pulses into a signal expressed in counts per second.

## III Detection probability

The principle of our measurement is to use an effusive atomic beam of lithium. As the theory of such a beam is perfectly understood ramsey56 , we can calculate the atomic flux $`dN/dt`$ reaching the ribbon:

$$\frac{dN}{dt}=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }$$
(3)
where the beam intensity $``$ is given by $`=n_{Li}v_{mean}a^{}/(4\pi )`$ ($`n_{Li}`$ is the lithium density in the oven, $`v_{mean}=\sqrt{8k_BT/\pi m}`$ is the mean velocity inside the oven, $`a^{}`$ is the area of the oven exit hole) and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the solid angle of the rhenium wire seen from the oven. In some experiments, we used a piezoelectric slit, whose width is tunable under vacuum, to reduce this solid angle, thus verifying the detector linearity with the atomic flux. Under these conditions, the signal remains in the linearity domain of the channeltron as long as the lithium oven temperature does not exceed $`673`$ K.

Several equations relating the lithium vapor pressure to the temperature appear in the literature ditchburn41 ; nesmeyanov63 . Nesmeyanov nesmeyanov63  considers that the most reliable data covering the $`735915`$ K range are represented by the equation:

$$log_{10}\left(p_{Li}\right)=8.0128172/T$$
(4)
with the pressure in Torr. We use the perfect gas approximation to convert pressure to density by $`n_{Li}=p_{Li}/k_BT`$.

As we must extrapolate this equation, we made a laser absorption experiment with the same atomic beam to test this extrapolation. Because of laser saturation and optical pumping, the theoretical description of laser absorption is not very simple and we use it here just as a relative measurement. The atomic density $`n`$ in the beam is proportional to the absorption:

$$n\mathrm{ln}(I_t/I_0)(I_0I_t)/I_0$$

where $`I_0`$ and $`I_t`$ are the incident and transmitted laser intensities. This experiment was made in the temperature range $`673777`$ K. To calibrate this measurement, we use the vapor pressure at the highest temperature of our study. The results of the absorption experiment are shown in figure 2 which plots the beam intensity $``$ thus deduced. These results prove that the lithium pressure law can be safely extrapolated,for $`T673`$ K.

On the same figure, we have plotted the beam intensity $``$ deduced from our measurements of the ion signal, as if the detection probability was equal to $`100\%`$. These results follow the same slope as the pressure law in this logarithmic plot, further supporting the extrapolation of the pressure law. During this experimental run, the rhenium ribbon temperature was $`T=1590`$ K and the residual gas pressure in the detector chamber was $`3\times 10^8`$ mbar (corresponding to $`p_{O_2}6\times 10^9`$ mbar if the residual gas is mostly air). From this plot, we get the detection probability $`D_+=32\pm 5\%`$. This error bar does not include the remaining uncertainty on the lithium vapor pressure.

In a second series of experiments, we measured the detection probability as a function of surface temperature and oxygen pressure: the flux of lithium atoms impinging on the rhenium ribbon was estimated to be $`5.75\times 10^5`$ atoms per second. Before each measurement, the wire was flashed at $`T=2250`$ K for $`2`$ minutes, then the heating current was adjusted to reach the working temperature and oxygen was admitted. After a stabilization period, the ion signal was measured with the lithium beam on and off and the background was substracted. We have varied the rhenium ribbon temperature in the range $`15901880`$ K. Two measurements were made by introducing oxygen with a leak valve, with oxygen pressures equal to $`2.1\times 10^7`$ and $`5.0\times 10^7`$ mbar (uncorrected ion gauge readings) and one measurement with our best vacuum ($`3\times 10^8`$ mbar) corresponding to $`6\times 10^9`$ mbar of oxygen, if the residual gas is mostly air. We thus deduce the detection probability $`D_+`$, which is plotted in figure 3. These new values of the detection probability and the first measurement ($`D_+=32\pm 5\%`$ at $`T=1590`$ K in our best vacuum) are not in very good agreement. This discrepancy, which illustrates the difficulty of such absolute measurements, may be due to a variation of the composition of the residual gas in the detection chamber (the experiments corresponding to figure 2 have been made one year before the experiments with a variable oxygen pressure).

$`D_+`$ is the product of the ionization probability $`P_+`$ by an ion counting efficiency $`E_+`$. This efficiency combines several experimental factors (ion collection efficiency, channeltron efficiency including electronic threshold effects) and all the errors in the estimation of the atomic flux. We have no way of measuring directly $`E_+`$, but the saturation of the detection probability with a maximum observed value $`D_+=0.66`$ must correspond to an ionization probability close to $`100\%`$, following literature data persky68 ; kawano86 ; kawano98 ; kawano00 ; kawano99 . From this remark, we get a good estimate of the ion counting efficiency $`E_+=0.71`$, this precise value being such that the corresponding $`P_+`$ values depend smoothly on the rhenium surface oxidized fraction $`f`$ defined in Appendix B. This data is analyzed in part 6.

The experiments of Stienkemeier et al. stienkemeier00  involve lithium atoms attached to helium droplets and the rhenium ribbon is kept in a higher vacuum (residual pressure $`5\times 10^9`$ mbar) than in our experiment. The efficiency was estimated indirectly by comparison with other alkali atoms, with a peak value of $`10`$ % near $`T=1350`$ K. This value, substantially lower than our own, corresponds to a lower degree of oxidation of the rhenium surface, in agreement with the use of a higher vacuum.

## IV Optimization of the background signal

The background signal has three main origins:

* the components of the background gas with ionization potentials below $`9`$ eV can be ionized on the rhenium surface
* a fresh rhenium wire contains a few ppm of alkali atoms. When the wire is hot, these atoms diffuse inside the wire and reach the surface where they are emitted as ions
* the background depends strongly on the oxidation of the rhenium ribbon and this can be explained by the emission of rhenium oxide ions.

We are going to discuss now these three sources of background signals. All these contributions to the background signal can be emitted from any point of the rhenium ribbon surface, but the corresponding ions are detected only if they are focused on the channeltron entrance funnel. A trick to reduce the background signal is to limit ion collection to a small part of the rhenium ribbon. In our case, the ion optics collects the ions emitted by the $`5`$ mm long central part of the ribbon and this length cannot be much reduced, at least for our applications.

### IV.1 Ionization of the background gas

Surface ionization of many organic molecules is possible on rhenium surfaces and this technique is well established, as reviewed by Zandberg zandberg95 . The ionization probability of any component of the residual gas depends rapidly on its ionization potential $`I`$, through Saha-Langmuir law (1). For a species with a partial pressure close to $`10^8`$ mbar, about $`5\times 10^{11}`$ molecules impinge on a $`1`$ centimeter length of hot wire per second. Assuming a wire temperature $`T1500K`$ and an oxidized rhenium surface with $`\mathrm{\Phi }6`$ eV, the corresponding contribution to the background remains below $`10^2`$ ions per second if $`I\mathrm{\Phi }>3`$ eV i.e. if $`I9`$ eV. Various types of organic molecules have their first ionization potential near this value and can be ionized: a mass spectrum produced by ionization of the residual gas (produced by oil diffusion pumps) on an oxidized tungsten ribbon is shown in ref. pauly68  and this spectrum is very dense. It is therefore very important to operate in a high and clean vacuum, because an oil-free vacuum contains mostly species with high ionization potentials ($`H_2`$, $`H_2O`$, $`CO`$…). Practically, the detector should be in a UHV chamber pumped by a turbo molecular pump or an ion getter pump. A cold trap at liquid nitrogen temperature may be useful to reduce the vapor pressure of condensable species, but its use may not be necessary.

### IV.2 Cleaning the alkali content of the rhenium ribbon

Following Goodfellow goodfellow , rhenium ribbons contain $`4`$ ppm of potassium in mass corresponding to $`3\times 10^{14}`$ potassium atoms per centimeter of ribbon length. At high temperatures, these potassium atoms diffuse inside the wire, reach its surface where they are emitted as ions. Using the diffusion equation, we get the value of this ion current, assuming an homogeneous initial potassium density and a wide ribbon ($`ab`$):

$$I_{ion}=\frac{8Nq}{\pi ^2\tau _1}\underset{p=\text{o}dd}{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{p^2t}{\tau _1}\right)$$
(5)
where $`N`$ is the total number of potassium atoms in the ribbon and $`q`$ is the modulus of the electron charge. This sum of exponential is characteristic of a diffusion process, the diffusion mode of order $`p`$ decaying with a time constant $`\tau _p=\tau _1/p^2`$. For long times, the decay becomes purely exponential, with the time constant $`\tau _1`$ related to the diffusion constant $`D`$ by:

$$\tau _1=\frac{a^2}{\pi ^2D}$$
(6)
During the preparation of a ribbon made at a temperature $`T=2250`$ K, the repeller plate (see figure 1) served to collect about $`38`$ % of the emitted ions. The corresponding total ion current is plotted as a function of time in figure 4. These observations are well explained by equation (5). From the longest time constant $`\tau _13.0\times 10^5`$ s, we deduce the diffusion constant for potassium inside rhenium $`D=0.3\times 10^{15}`$ $`m^2s^1`$ at $`T=2250`$ K. As this time constant is long and as it scales like $`a^2`$, it is very important to choose a ribbon with a small thickness $`a`$, to minimize the duration of the cleaning process.

After $`6.5`$ hours of baking, we have briefly varied the wire temperature $`T`$ and recorded the ion current as a function of temperature. This current is proportional to the diffusion constant, thus giving the temperature dependence of the diffusion constant $`D`$, usually described by an Arrhenius law:

$$D=D_0\mathrm{exp}\left(E_{diff}/k_BT\right)$$

From our measurements, we get the activation energy of this diffusion process, $`E_{diff}=5.36\pm 0.23`$ eV, and the prefactor value, $`D_0=0.3\times 10^3`$ $`m^2s^1`$.

### IV.3 Influence of rhenium oxidation on background signal

While measuring the detection probability as a function of surface temperature and oxygen pressure, we have recorded the background signal. We discuss here only the data corresponding for $`T=1508`$ K, because the temperature dependence is not very simple. With our best vacuum (about $`3\times 10^8`$ mbar), the background signal was $`13\times 10^3`$ counts per second and this signal increased rapidly with oxygen pressure, reaching $`1.6\times 10^4`$ and $`2.6\times 10^4`$ counts per second when the oxygen pressure was $`2.1\times 10^7`$ or $`5.0\times 10^7`$ mbar respectively. Moreover, the noise of this background signal is substantially larger than Poisson noise (up to $`5`$ times larger for $`1`$ second counting periods). These two effects of a strong oxidation (rapid increase of the background and excess noise) decrease considerably the performance of the detector for a small atomic flux, even if oxidation gives an important gain on detection probability.

### IV.4 Operating conditions and ultimate performances

We have already explained the need for a high and clean vacuum. If one operates near $`T=1500`$ K, a small oxygen residual pressure of the order of a few $`10^9`$ mbar is sufficient to reach a detection probability of the order of $`1030`$ % and to keep the background at a very low level. If the initial baking time has been sufficiently long, the potassium content of the rhenium ribbon may be sufficiently reduced to give a small background signal, as long as the working temperature is not too high. In Bielefeld, where a very large set of experiments have been done loesch93 ; hobel01 , and because the background pressure, produced by an ion getter pump, is below $`1\times 10^8`$ mbar, the typical background count rate is $`100`$ counts per second. In Toulouse, where we have less experience and a less good vacuum (near $`3\times 10^8`$ mbar produced by a turbo pump), the typical background count rate is $`13\times 10^3`$ counts per second.

Finally, in a high vacuum, surface contamination of the rhenium ribbon by cracking of organic molecules is very slow, but it is nevertheless necessary to clean the ribbon surface from time to time by flashing it to a high temperature (typically $`2250`$ K) for a few minutes, to get a reproducible operation.

## V Time response of the detector: residence time of lithium on a rhenium surface

The time response of a detector is very important for many applications. The dominant contribution for the present detector is the ion residence time on the surface, usually in the microsecond to millisecond range. The simplest measurement technique uses a chopped atomic beam stienkemeier00 . Another method, based on the autocorrelation function of the ion current gladyszewski94 , has also been be used and this method extends the measurement range down to the microsecond range, a value difficult to achieve by chopping atomic beams. All the data sets present in the literature have been fitted by equation (2) namely $`\tau =\tau _0\mathrm{exp}\left(E_{ads}/k_BT\right)`$.

Using a chopped atomic beam, we collected two measurements, extending slightly the ranges covered by these works stienkemeier00 ; gladyszewski94 . Table 1 presents a comparison of our measurements to the values deduced from fitted laws given in these two papers. The agreement between these results is rather poor and this is easily understood for the following reasons:

* temperature measurement may be affected by systematic errors (see appendix A) and any error on the temperature has a large effect, because the residence time $`\tau `$ varies very rapidly with temperature
* in the simplest theoretical model (for example see ref. scheer63b ), the adsorption energy increases with the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and the work function depends on the degree of oxidation of the rhenium surface. As different experiments test rhenium surfaces with different degrees of oxidation, the different values of the residence time for the same temperature may be a real effect.

Table 2 collects the information concerning the residence time of all the alkali on rhenium, so as to illustrate the trends followed by $`\tau _0`$ and $`E_{ads}`$ through this chemical family. $`\tau _0`$ is expected to be close to the vibrational period of the ion near the surface and this property, well verified in several cases, is not verified by the data concerning lithium. The very long extrapolation surely explains the scatter on $`\tau _0`$ with a correlated modification of the adsorption energy (as an example, the very different parameters of ref. stienkemeier00  and gladyszewski94  for lithium lead to the same value the residence time at $`T=1600`$ K). The adsorption energy may also vary with surface oxidation, as discussed above, but this effect cannot explain the very large differences appearing in the case of lithium .

## VI Modeling of the surface ionization process

Surface ionization of a species $`A`$ is usually described using the Saha-Langmuir equation (1). This implicitly assumes a thermal equilibrium between the desorbing particle and the surface and is thus independent of the characteristics of the electron transfer process between $`A`$ and the surface. As will be shown below, it reproduces rather well the experimental observations. However, one can wonder about the corresponding microscopic view of the process and possible dynamical effects. The charge transfer between an atomic projectile and a free-electron metal surface is rather well understood geerlings90  and quantitative descriptions are available (see e.g. borisov96  for the alkali case). We can use this microscopic description to predict the surface ionization efficiency and compare it to the Saha-Langmuir prediction.

As an alkali atom approaches a metal surface, its electronic levels couple with the continuum of metal states, resulting in a finite lifetime of the atomic levels. The corresponding width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ gives the charge transfer rate between the atom and the surface. At $`T=0`$ K, the electron is transferred from the atom to the surface if the atomic level is above the surface Fermi level and in the opposite direction if the atomic level is below the Fermi level. For a finite temperature $`T`$, electron transfer occurs in both directions according to the fractional population of the metallic states at the atomic level energy position geerlings90 . For a free-electron metal, the width of the alkali level varies approximately exponentially with the distance $`z`$ to the surface borisov96 . Qualitatively, when an alkali leaves the surface, the very large width at small $`z`$ allows the alkali charge state to reach thermal equilibrium; however, this is not true at large $`z`$ and there exists a distance, called freezing distance, $`z_F`$, beyond which the charge state of the desorbing alkali decouples from the surface overbosch80 . Since the alkali level energy is a function $`E_a(z)`$ (for the ionic state, it roughly follows an image potential variation borisov96 ), the charge state equilibrium value changes with $`z`$ and the asymptotic charge state of the desorbed particle is different from its value on the surface and it a priori depends on the desorption velocity. This ’freezing distance’ discussion provides a qualitative picture of the charge transfer between a projectile and a metal surface. Quantitatively, if we assume that the desorbing particle follows a classical trajectory $`z(t)`$, the evolution of its charge state is governed by a rate equation geerlings90 :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_+}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{\Gamma }f(E_a(t),T)n_+(t)`$ (7)
$`+\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(1n_+(t)\right)\left(1f(E_a(t),T)\right)`$
where $`n_+(t)`$ is the ion charge fraction, $`f(E_a(t),T)`$ the Fermi function and $`E_a(t)`$ designates $`E_a(z(t))`$.

Surface ionization is modeled by solving equation (7) for a set of different classical trajectories, representing the different possibilities for a desorbing alkali. The energies and widths in (7) are taken from the parameter-free description of the alkali free-electron metal surface study of ref. borisov96 . The initial state ($`z=z_{ini}`$) close to the surface is taken ionic ($`n_+=1`$) and equation (7) yields the survival probability of the ion at a large distance for each trajectory and we then have to sum the contributions from the different trajectories. In practice, we solve equation (7) up to a large $`z`$ distance for a set of total energies, $`E`$, of the desorbing particle in the ionic channel. The $`z(t)`$ trajectory introduced in equation (7) is common to the ionic and neutral desorption channels, which is not appropriate for large $`z`$. To circumvent this problem in the summation over the heavy particle energies, $`E`$, we assume that the charge state stabilizes around the freezing distance $`z_F`$ where we compare the local kinetic energy of the desorbing particle to the energy required for desorption in the ionic or neutral channel in order to decide whether desorption is energetically allowed or not. Ionic and neutral potential energy curves being different, this leads to a lower desorption threshold for neutral desorption. The different contributions are summed with a thermal weighting factor to yield the surface ionization probability $`P_+`$:

$$\frac{P_+}{1P_+}=\frac{_0^{\mathrm{}}P_s^+(E)\mathrm{exp}\left(E/k_BT\right)𝑑E}{_{E_{th}}^{\mathrm{}}\left(1P_s^+(E)\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(E/k_BT\right)𝑑E}$$
(8)
where $`E`$ is measured with respect to the ionic threshold and $`E_{th}`$ is equal to $`E_{th}=E_a(\mathrm{})E_a(z_F)`$. The freezing distance, obtained from the level width calculated in ref. borisov96 , is equal to $`9.6`$ $`a_0`$ for lithium; it does not vary much in the energy range concerned in surface ionization.

We thus get the surface ionization probability for a given surface work function and temperature. Such an approach is indeed valid for a free-electron metal and should also be meaningful in the case of low adsorbate coverage of a metal. In the case of a low adsorbate coverage on the surface, the perturbation of the charge transfer is usually described in terms of local and non-local effects (see a review on the adsorbate effects in gauyacq98 ). The local effect is due to the local potential around the adsorbate which can strongly perturb the electron transfer in a certain region surrounding the adsorbate. The non-local effect comes from the surface work function change induced by the adsorbate. An approach like the present one only considers the non-local aspects. Local aspects are mostly visible in scattering experiments which select specific trajectories, thus probing specific areas on the surface. Surface ionization a priori concerns the entire surface and thus should average over the local effects. For very large adsorbate coverages, the electronic structure of the surface is modified, possibly leading to an insulator layer on the surface, on which the charge transfer properties are different (see e.g. a review in borisov00 ).

We are going to describe surface ionization of lithium on a rhenium surface as a function of the temperature $`T`$ and of the residual pressure, within the above approach and we will use the rhenium work function extracted by Kawano et al. kawano99  from their electron emission experiment (either directly the published data or the modeling of these results presented here in Appendix B). Figure 5 presents the calculated surface ionization probability of lithium for a residual air pressure of $`2.0\times 10^7`$ Torr, compared to the experimental results of Kawano et al. kawano86 . The present microscopic results, obtained with the surface work function modeling, are seen to reproduce the experimental trends rather well, the abrupt change of the ionization probability from $`100`$% down to a few % as the temperature is increased clearly appears to be connected with the change of surface work function or equivalently to the degree of oxidation of the rhenium surface. The two limits (high and low $`T`$) in the present case correspond to either an almost clean rhenium surface and an oxidized rhenium surface. The temperature $`T_c`$ at which the abrupt change occurs depends on the residual gas pressure which directly influences the oxygen adsorption change with temperature. $`T_c`$ decreases when the residual pressure decreases. Typically, it changes by around $`300`$ K for a residual air pressure change between $`10^9`$ and $`2\times 10^6`$ Torr. The experimental and theoretical variations of the ionization probability are shifted one with respect to the other by around $`40`$ K. This can be due to the approximations involved in the present modeling and/or to the accuracy of the temperature scale (see below and Appendix A). Finally, the asymptotic value of the ionisation probabibility at high temperature is underestimated by our calculation and this proves that we use a too low value of the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ of clean unoxidized rhenium. Clearly, this value, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=4.94`$ eV, taken from our fit of Kawano et al. kawano99  data ( see Appendix B), is slightly lower than, for instance, the value obtained by Persky persky68 , $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=5.0\pm 0.1`$ eV.

For surface ionization of sodium on rhenium surface, a similar agreement (not shown here) is found between the present modeling and the experimental results of Kawano et al. kawano98 . Figure 5 also presents the prediction of the Saha-Langmuir equation for the same conditions. The predictions of the present microscopic study are extremely close to those of the Saha-Langmuir equation, typically within a couple of %. In fact, this can be understood if we replace the value of $`P_s^+`$ from the numerical solution of equation (7) by its freezing distance approximation overbosch80 , i.e. if the final charge state $`P_s^+`$ is taken equal to its equilibrium value at the freezing distance:

$$P_s^+=\frac{1}{1+2\mathrm{exp}(\frac{E_a(z_F)\mathrm{\Phi }}{k_BT})}$$
(9)
Bringing equation (9) into equation (8) then leads to the Saha-Langmuir equation (1), the value of $`E_a(z_F)`$ disappearing from the result. One can notice that the freezing distance approximation (9) consists in applying the Saha-Langmuir law expression for the electronic levels alone at the point where the electronic levels decouple; the sum over the heavy particle energies (equation (8)), which takes into account the energy changes between $`z_F`$ and infinity, transforms it into the usual Saha-Langmuir expression for the total energy of the system evaluated at infinity. The good agreement between the present microscopic model and Saha-Langmuir expression thus proves that dynamical effects are absent and that the specificity of the metal surface-projectile charge transfer process disappears. This comforts the validity of a thermal equilibrium approach for the surface ionization process.

Figure 6 presents a comparison of experimental and theoretical results for the surface ionization probability for a residual air pressure of $`2.0\times 10^6`$ Torr. Two theoretical results are presented which were obtained either by using directly the surface work function extracted from electron emission experiments kawano99  or by using its modeling (Appendix B). The two results are close one to the other, confirming the efficiency of the modeling of the work function change. The two experimental sets are the results from reference kawano86  and the present results. The latter have been multiplied by $`1.41=1/E_+`$ to transform our detection probability result $`D_+`$ into an ionization probability $`P_+`$. Although the general behaviour of $`P_+`$ as a function of T is the same in the three sets, they appear shifted one with respect to the other. The abrupt change in $`P_+`$ as a function of T from ref. kawano86  is more rapid than in the present study. In both cases, there is an upward temperature shift when going from the model to the experiments (about $`70`$ K for the data of ref. kawano86  and $`110`$ K for our results). These differences are tentatively attributed to the accuracy of the temperature scales, both in the experimental results on surface ionization (estimated to $`5`$ % in the present study) and in the modeling via the use of the electron emission experimental results kawano99 .

## VII Acknowledgements

We want to thank J. P. Toennies, J. P. Ziesel, A. Bordenave-Montesquieu for their help and advice and P. Echegut for information on rhenium emittance and advice on temperature measurements. We thank H. Kawano, L. Gladyszewski, F. Stienkemeier and M. Wewer for helpful correspondence. Région Midi Pyrénées is gratefully acknowledged for financial support.

## Appendix A: Hot wire temperature

For a long ribbon of thickness $`a`$ and width $`b`$, the equilibrium temperature $`T`$ results from the equilibrium between the input power due to Joule effect and radiative losses:

$$\frac{\rho (T)I^2}{ab}=ϵ(T)\sigma T^4[2(a+b)]$$
(10)
where $`\rho (T)`$ is the electrical resistivity, $`ϵ(T)`$ the total emittance, both temperature dependent and $`\sigma `$ the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. It is a very good approximation to forget thermal conduction along the wire, as long as one does not want to describe the temperature distribution near the ribbon ends. Rhenium resistivity in $`\mathrm{\Omega }m`$ rembar  is well fitted by:

$$\rho (T)=26.0\times 10^8\times (1+1.27\times 10^3\times T)$$
(11)
for $`1200<T<2000`$ K. For the total emittance of rhenium, we have also fitted the three data sets collected in ref. touloukian70  and covering the range $`300<T<3000`$ K by a linear function of $`T`$:

$$ϵ(T)=0.0852\times (1+1.15\times 10^3\times T)$$
(12)
all the data points being within $`\pm 20\%`$ of this fit: this uncertainty produces the dominant temperature error bar equal to $`5\%`$. It appears from equations (11,12) that the ratio $`\rho (T)/ϵ(T)`$ is a very slow function of the temperature $`T`$. This explains why the simple law $`T\sqrt{I}`$ is an excellent approximation as noted by ref. stienkemeier00 . In the range $`12002000`$ K, we get:

$$T=1124\times \sqrt{I}$$
(13)
where $`I`$ is measured in ampere. The numerical factor $`1124`$ corresponds to the dimensions ($`a=30`$ $`\mu m`$ and $`b=760`$ $`\mu m`$) of the ribbon used in Toulouse and, for other ribbon geometries, this factor is easily scaled, using equation (10). All temperatures appearing in this paper were deduced from this equation (even up to $`2250`$ K), without recalling our estimated $`5`$% error bar.

We have also used an optical pyrometer to measure the temperature: the sensitivity is close $`\pm 5`$ Kelvin, but we have no way to test its calibration. Moreover, such pyrometers are calibrated to measure the temperature of a blackbody radiation and the readings $`T_r`$ must be corrected to take into account rhenium spectral emittance touloukian70  near $`655`$ nm $`ϵ_{655}0.40`$ and window transmission $`\theta `$. The corrected temperature $`T_c`$ is given by:

$$\frac{1}{T_c}=\frac{1}{T_r}+\frac{k_B}{h\nu _{655}}\mathrm{ln}(ϵ_{655}\theta )$$
(14)
This correction is substantial (about $`200`$ K near $`2000`$ K). With our pyrometer, the readings $`T_r`$ are lower than the values of $`T`$ deduced from equation (13) by about $`5\%`$ while the corrected values $`T_c`$ are higher by roughly the same amount.

## Appendix B: Rhenium work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ as a function of oxidation and temperature

The strong influence of oxidation of rhenium surface on the ionization probability of lithium was first observed by Persky persky68  in 1968. This study was continued by Kawano and coworkers kawano86 ; kawano98 ; kawano00 , who used the Saha-Langmuir law to deduce the work function from the observed ionization probability. In 1999, Kawano et al. kawano99  also measured the work function of oxidized rhenium from the emitted electron current, using the Richardson law ( $`J=AT^2\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{\Phi }/k_BT\right)`$) to relate the current density $`J`$ to the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. The two values of the work function differ noticeably, the work function for positive ion emission deduced from the Saha-Langmuir law being substantially larger than the work function for electron emission deduced from the Richardson law.

We first discuss the work function for electron emission because Kawano and coworkers kawano99  have collected a large data set as a function of oxygen pressure and rhenium temperature. We have developed a simple model which fits these results very satisfactorily. The oxygen surface coverage is assumed to be described by the following chemical equilibrium:

$$2\text{ rhenium sites }+O_22\text{ oxidized rhenium sites}$$
(15)
Let $`\sigma _{Re}`$ and $`\sigma _{ReO}`$ be the density of unoxidized and oxidized sites respectively, and $`p(O_2)`$ the partial pressure of molecular oxygen. The equation resulting from this chemical equilibrium is:

$$\left(\frac{\sigma _{ReO}}{\sigma _{Re}}\right)^2=\frac{p(O_2)}{p_c(T)}$$
(16)
where $`p_c(T)`$ is the equilibrium constant of the reaction, written so as to have the dimension of a pressure. From this equation, we can deduce the fraction $`f`$ of the oxidized sites:

$$f=\frac{\sigma _{ReO}}{\sigma _{Re}+\sigma _{ReO}}=\frac{\sqrt{p(O_2)/p_c(T)}}{1+\sqrt{p(O_2)/p_c(T)}}$$
(17)
We would get a different equation if we consider that each rhenium site accepts two oxygen atoms. We have also tried to fit the data with this modified equation. As the resulting fit is considerably less good, we consider that this second hypothesis is not correct. The second assumption of the model is that the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ increases linearly with the coverage $`f`$ from the pure metal value $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ to the completely oxidized value noted $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0+\mathrm{\Delta }`$:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_0+f\mathrm{\Delta }$$
(18)
This assumption is surely oversimplified but we do not see how to refine easily this model as it already represents quite well the results presented of H. Kawano et al. kawano99  in the temperature range $`14002000`$ K. Our fit to these results is presented in figure 7. Below $`1400`$ K, the observed variations of the work function deviate strongly from the trend observed at higher temperatures and we have not tried to fit this data. From the fits, we extract the following values: $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=4.94`$ eV, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1.125`$ eV and for each temperature a value of the equilibrium constant $`p_c(T)`$. The data of figure 5 of reference kawano99  are well fitted too, but with a slightly lower $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ value, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1.00`$ eV. From these fits, we have deduced 8 values of $`p_c(T)`$. A good test of the consistency of our model is that, as expected from thermodynamics, these values are well represented by the following formula:

$$log_{10}(p_c(T))=A+\frac{B}{T}$$
(19)
If the pressures are expressed in Torr, we get $`A=9.186`$ and $`B=25072`$ K. The quantity $`B`$ corresponds to an energy $`B=2.16`$ eV, which represents the energy difference between the two sides of the chemical equilibrium described by equation (15). This modeling provides a very efficient way of interpolating between the measured work function values and we used it in our treatment of the surface ionization to define the surface work function as a function of the operating conditions.

The work function of rhenium can also be deduced from the measurements of the ionization probability of sodium or lithium kawano86 ; kawano98 ; kawano00 . The analysis is somewhat more complex because the experiments were done with intense alkali halide beams and the dissociation equilibrium of the molecule on the surface must be taken into account. The Saha-Langmuir law is used to extract the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_+`$ (thus noted as it differs from the electron emission value) from the data as a function of the surface temperature and oxygen pressure. However, two aspects of the analysis of Kawano and coworkers deserve further discussion:

* the ionization potential $`I`$ of the alkali atom is taken as a function of the wire temperature (this function appears to be $`I(T)=I_0+2.5k_BT`$). This is a substantial effect which is not commonly considered (see for instance ref. kaack95 , in which very accurate measurements of the platinum and iridium work function are made as a function of the temperature). Adding this unusual T dependence to the atomic ionization energy significantly contributes to the observed difference between the surface work function extracted from electron emission and the effective work function extracted from surface ionization data.
* it is surely very difficult to estimate the ionization probability to better than a few percent, in particular because the flux incident on the wire is calculated from vapor pressure data which are not very accurate (as discussed in the present paper in the lithium case). It is therefore very difficult to understand how the work function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_+`$ can reach a value as large as $`6.7`$ eV (see figure 3b of ref. kawano98  where the experiment was done with NaCl): as soon as $`(\mathrm{\Phi }_+I)5.3k_BT`$, the Saha-Langmuir law predicts $`P_+0.99`$, almost impossible to distinguish experimentally from $`P_+=1`$. For temperatures close to $`1500`$ K, the maximum value of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_+`$, which can be reliably deduced from Saha-Langmuir law, is not larger than $`6.1`$ eV when working with lithium (and only $`5.8`$ eV when working with sodium for which $`I=5.139`$ eV).
* finally, one can stress that most of the experimental results of ref. kawano86  and kawano98  on the surface ionization probability of lithium and sodium can be reproduced by Saha-Langmuir law using the surface work function extracted from electron emission kawano99  and the ionization potential of the free atom. There does not seem to be any need to introduce an effective work function for surface ionization, which could be, at best, only a parameterization of the experimental results.

Therefore, we think that the experimental results on $`P_+`$, obtained by Kawano and co-workers are very interesting for the characterisation of a surface ionization detector, but the values of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_+`$ extracted from these should be considered with caution.


format: text

text:
# The Galactic Bar

## 1. Introduction

In the last ten years it has been established that the Milky Way is a barred Galaxy. More precisely, its central bulge is a rapidly rotating bar. While there had been a number of papers since the 1970’s arguing that the large non-circular motions seen in HI and CO observations of the inner Galaxy were best interpreted in terms of a barred potential (e.g, Peters 1975, Cohen & Few 1976, Liszt & Burton 1980, Gerhard & Vietri 1986, Mulder & Liem 1986), it was only in the 1990’s that the combined evidence from the NIR light distribution (Blitz & Spergel 1991, Weiland et al. 1994, Binney, Gerhard & Spergel 1997), source count asymmetries (Nakada et al. 1991, Stanek et al. 1997, Nikolaev & Weinberg 1997), gas kinematics (Binney et al. 1991, Englmaier & Gerhard 1999, Fux 1999, Weiner & Sellwood 1999), and large microlensing optical depth (Udalski et al. 1994, Zhao, Spergel & Rich 1995, Han & Gould 1995, Alcock et al. 1997, Stanek et al. 1997) has convinced most workers in the field.

The emphasis of recent work has shifted towards determining parameters like the orientation, size, and pattern speed of the bar, and towards constructing a unifying quantitative model, within which the various observational results can be coherently explained. Furthermore, from such a model we should be able to predict the dynamical state of the Galactic bulge and inner disk, and to understand effects of the bar on Galactic evolution, such as how it facilitates mass inflow, star formation, and chemical homogenization of the disk. This work is still very much in progress, with the answers to several important questions not yet clear. For example, do we need to make a distinction between the barred bulge and a bar in the disk, between components of different age and metallicity? To what extent do the various tracers (NIR light, clump giants, NIR star counts and IRAS sources) represent the mass distribution? Can we quantitatively explain the kinematics of the Galactic centre gas and the $`3\mathrm{kpc}`$ arm, predict the locations of the Galactic spiral arms, and decide whether they are seen in the old stars as well as the gas? How does the large microlensing optical depth fit in? Can we correctly predict with dynamical models the observed stellar kinematics in the bulge and the measured microlensing duration distribution?

In this article, I would like to report on some steps towards such a unifying model, concentrating on the photometric structure (§2) and pattern speed of the bar (§3), and the predicted bulge microlensing (§4). For a more extensive review than given here see Gerhard (1999). All length scales given below are for a Sun-center distance $`R_0=8\mathrm{kpc}`$.

## 2. Photometric structure

The most detailed models for the distribution of old stars in the inner Galaxy are currently based on the COBE/DIRBE NIR data. These data have complete sky coverage, and broad-band emission maps are available over a large wavelength range from the NIR to the FIR, but they have relatively low spatial resolution, they must still be ‘cleaned’ for residual dust absorption, and they contain no distance information, so deprojection is not straightforward. The cleaned data show that the bulge is brighter and more extended in latitude $`b`$ at positive longitudes $`l`$ than at corresponding $`l`$, except for a region close to the center where the effect is reversed (Weiland et al. 1994, Bissantz et al. 1997). The asymmetry is strongest around $`|l|10^{}`$. These signatures are as expected for a barred bulge with its long axis in the first quadrant (Blitz & Spergel 1991), and contain information about the bar’s shape and orientation. The region of reversed asymmetry at small $`|l|`$ argues for a bar rather than a lopsided light distribution; see also Sevenster (1999).

The first models fitted to these data were parametric models assuming specific functional forms for the luminosity distribution of the barred bulge and disk and excluding low-latitude regions from the fit (Dwek et al. 1995, Freudenreich 1998). Non-parametric models were constructed by Binney, Gerhard & Spergel (1997), using a Lucy algorithm based on the assumption of strict triaxial symmetry, and by Bissantz & Gerhard (2002), using a penalized maximum likelihood algorithm. Both models are derived from the data as cleaned by Spergel, Malhotra & Blitz (1997), who used a fully three-dimensional model of the dust distribution based on the FIR emission data. The recent model by Bissantz & Gerhard includes a spiral arm model as a prior, maximizing simultaneously eightfold symmetry and smoothness of the luminosity distribution through corresponding penalty terms in the likelihood function. Figure 1 shows two sections through the model. In this model the bulge-to-disk ratio in NIR luminosity is about $`20\%`$, similar to the value given by Kent, Dame & Fazio (1991). Other bar and disk properties from the COBE models are summarized below. Physical models for the COBE bar can be found for a range of bar orientation angles, $`15^{}\mathrm{}<\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}\mathrm{}<35^{}`$, where $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}`$ measures the angle in the Galactic plane between the bar’s major axis at $`l>0`$ and the Sun-center line. $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}`$ must therefore be determined from other data; see also Zhao (2000).

The bar is also seen in starcount observations in inner Galaxy fields. Stanek et al. (1997) analyzed reddening-corrected apparent magnitude distributions of clump giant stars in 12 OGLE fields. The small intrinsic luminosity spread ($``$ 0.2-0.3 mag) makes these stars good distance indicators. The peak of the distribution is brighter at $`l>0`$ where the line-of-sight passes through the near side of the bar. These fields cover only a small fraction of the sky, but fitting a parametric model constrains the bar orientation angle as well as the axis ratios and density profile. Nikolaev & Weinberg (1997) reanalyzed the IRAS variable population in a similar spirit; here the distance information comes from the known range of AGB star luminosities. NIR starcounts have also shown longitudinal asymmetries due to the bar (Unavane & Gilmore 1998). López-Corredoira et al. (1997, 2000) and Hammersley et al. (1999) have modelled the Two Micron Survey Starcounts (mostly bright K and M giants) in several strips across the bulge. Structural information on the bulge and disk can be derived from these data together with a model for the bright-star luminosity function. Ongoing work on deeper surveys (ISOGAL, DENIS, 2MASS) will provide important new information on the old stellar population in the inner Galaxy; first results are given by van Loon (2001) and Alard (2001), who has interpreted residuals in the 2MASS star counts from the main bar in terms of a secondary inner bar.

An important goal is to construct a model that simultaneously reproduces both the starcount and integrated light data. The Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) models represent a first step in this direction, having been constrained a posteriori by the clump giant apparent magnitude distributions from Stanek et al. (1997). As Figure 2 shows, their favoured model matches well the asymmetry of the peak positions in the fields near $`l=\pm 5^{}`$ with respect to Baade’s window, and also the relative peak amplitudes within $`10\%`$, showing that the line-of-sight distribution of luminosity in the bulge part is approximately correct.

Modelling the HI and CO ($`l,v`$) diagrams provides information on the gravitational potential of the bar and disk. Several recent gas flow models (see §3) have produced ($`l,v`$) diagrams with which many features seen in the observed ($`l,v`$) diagrams may be qualitatively understood, such as the 3 kpc arm, the non-circular velocities around the end of the bar, the cusped-orbit shock transition and inner $`x_2`$-disk, the molecular ring and the spiral arm tangent locations, although no model as yet provides a satisfactory account quantitative account of the entire observed ($`l,v`$) diagrams.

The following subsections contain my best summary of the main bar and disk parameters from this and other work.

Bar orientation From the integrated light alone, physically reasonable models can be found for $`15^{}\mathrm{}<\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}\mathrm{}<35^{}`$. Starcount models give values between $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}=12\pm 6^{}`$ (López-Corredoira et al. 2000) and $`2030^{}`$ (Nikoalev & Weinberg 1997, Stanek et al. 1997). The models of Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) for the DIRBE L-band data, when additionally constrained by the clump giant apparent magnitude distributions of Stanek et al. (1997), give an optimal $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}=2025^{}`$, but $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}1530^{}`$ is within the uncertainties. The gas-dynamical models and the orbit analysis of Binney et al. (1991) are also compatible with $`15^{}\mathrm{}<\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}\mathrm{}<35^{}`$, depending on whether the emphasis is on the peak in the terminal velocity curve, the arm morphology, or the magnitude of the non-circular motions near the 3 kpc arm. Finally, microlensing observations favour $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}15^{}`$ (Zhao & Mao 1996). Thus a good working value is $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}=20^{}`$. Not consistent with this appear to be the bar model of Hammersley et al. (2000), which is based on the identification of a region of strong star formation at $`l=27^{}`$ with the nearer end of the bar, and the star count results reported in van Loon (2001), which place the near end of a 1.4 kpc size bar at negative longitudes.

Bar length: Models based on the DIRBE NIR maps find the end of the bar around $`R_{GC}=3.13.5\mathrm{kpc}`$, when $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}20^{}`$ (Freudenreich 1998, Binney, Gerhard & Spergel 1997, Bissantz & Gerhard 2002). This is consistent with with the OH/IR stars (Sevenster 1999), IRAS variables (Nikolaev & Weinberg 1997), and the range of $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$ given below, for a fast bar, while other starcount models use exponential or Gaussian density distributions with shorter scale-lengths.

Bar axis ratios: The parametric DIRBE models give axial ratios of about 10:3-4:3. This is in agreement with the new non-parametric model of Bissantz & Gerhard (2002), whereas Binney, Gerhard & Spergel (1997) had found 10:6:4 without taking into account the foreground spiral arms. The starcount models give 10:4:3 (Stanek et al. 1997) and 10:5.4:3.3 (López-Corredoira et al. 2000). Thus there is good overall agreement at around 10:4:3.

Disk scale-length: In the integrated NIR the radial exponential disk scale $`R_D`$ is significantly shorter than in the optical; numerical values are around $`2.5\mathrm{kpc}`$ (Freudenreich 1998, Binney, Gerhard & Spergel 1997) or somewhat shorter ($`2.1\mathrm{kpc}`$, Bissantz & Gerhard 2002). Hammersley et al. (1999) report satisfactory agreement of their NIR counts with a model with $`R_d=3.5\mathrm{kpc}`$, but have not tested other values of $`R_D`$. López-Corredoira et al. (2000) find that $`R_d=3.0\mathrm{kpc}`$ is too short to describe the NIR TMSS counts well. Earlier starcount models (Robin et al. 1992, Ortiz & Lépine 1993) favour a short disk scale, $`R_d=2.5\mathrm{kpc}`$. It is not clear what causes the differences between the various starcount models, and between the TMSS starcounts and the integrated NIR light. There may be some interplay between the disk scale-length, the bulge profile, and the spiral arm luminosity distribution. To clarify this will need further work with spatially complete data.

## 3. Pattern speed

The pattern speed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$, or equivalently, the corotation radius $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$, is the most important dynamical parameter of the bar, because it determines the orbits of stars in the disk. Bar pattern speeds can be parametrized by the ratio $`R=D_L/a_b`$, where $`D_L`$ is the Lagrangian radius at which the gravitational and centrifugal forces cancel out, approximately equal to the axisymmetric corotation radius, and $`a_b`$ the bar’s semi-major axis length. The Milky Way bar is a fast bar ($`R\mathrm{}>1`$), as are the bars in external galaxies for which pattern speeds have been determined (see Debattista, Gerhard & Sevenster 2002 for a summary). Three methods have been used to estimate the pattern speed of the Galactic bar:

Hydrodynamical simulations: The gas-dynamical simulations of Englmaier & Gerhard (1999) and Fux (1999) agree in their interpretation of the 3 kpc arm as one of the lateral arms close to the bar, placing it inside corotation. Sevenster (1999) argues that the 3 kpc arm is part of an inner ring, which would also place it slightly inside the corotation radius $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$. The main Galactic spiral arms outside $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$, on the other hand, imply an upper limit for $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}`$, but this is more model-dependent. These gas-dynamical models thus give a range of $`3\mathrm{kpc}\mathrm{}<R_{\mathrm{CR}}\mathrm{}<4.5\mathrm{kpc}`$ (see Gerhard 1999 where also a corresponding resonance diagram is shown). Weiner & Sellwood (1999) have concentrated in their models to reproduce the extreme (non-circular) velocity contour in the HI data of Liszt & Burton (1980), using gravitational potentials that include a Ferrers bar. They favour a somewhat lower value for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p42\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$, corresponding to $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}5.0\mathrm{kpc}`$, but also need a significantly larger bar angle $`\phi _{\mathrm{bar}}34^{}`$ than favoured by the results reported in §2. The recent SPH simulations of Bissantz, Englmaier & Gerhard (2002) based on the COBE bar potential of Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) find $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p=60\pm 5\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$, corresponding to $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}=3.3\pm 0.3\mathrm{kpc}`$. The best of these models include a second, lower pattern speed for the Galactic spiral arms. These models give a very good representation of the ($`l,v`$) diagram in the region outside the bar, but still underpredict the non-circular velocities in the 3 kpc arm. However, both Bissantz et al. (2002) and Fux (1999) find that the amplitude of these non-circular velocities is influenced by additional parameters such as the details and time-dependence of the gravitational potential in the bar-spiral transition region, which are almost certainly not reliably modelled in the simulations.

Orbital resonances: Dehnen (2000) has interpreted features in the local stellar velocity distribution as due to the outer Lindblad resonance with the bar, resulting in $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}=0.55\pm 0.05R_04.4\pm 0.4\mathrm{kpc}`$ for $`R_0=8\mathrm{kpc}`$, near the upper end of the range from the gas-dynamical models, and corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p=51\pm 4\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$. While the match to the Hipparchos data appears convincing, this analysis relies on the assumption that the quadrupole moment of the bar is strong enough near the Sun to dominate the resonance, as compared to that of the spiral arms. In the new COBE models of Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) the more elongated bar as compared to previous models does dominate the quadrupole moment near the Sun, but there still is the caveat that we know little about the amplitude of the Galactic spiral arms in the old stellar component.

Direct method: Recently, Debattista et al. (2002) have adapted the Tremaine-Weinberg (1984) method to a sample of tracers in the Milky Way, and have used it to analyze the sample of OH/IR stars collected by Sevenster and collaborators (see Sevenster et al. 2001). For $`R_0=8\mathrm{kpc}`$ and $`V_0=220\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ and assuming inward LSR motion of $`u_{\mathrm{LSR}}=0`$ as suggested by HI absorption observations (Radhakrishnan & Sarma 1980), they find $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p=59\pm 5\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$ for these sources with a possible additional systematic error of perhaps $`10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$. The OH/IR stars which carry the main signal in the analysis are at low latitude and slightly outside the region of the bar, according to the models described in §2. Thus the feature responsible for the measured pattern speed most likely is the inner parts of the spiral arms, particularly the Scutum arm tangent. The high value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ suggests that this spiral arm might be coupled to the bar; perhaps it is even an inner ring rather than a spiral arm. Such rings are common in barred galaxies (Buta 1995), and being elongated along the bar, corotate with the bars they contain. Sevenster & Kalnajs (2001) have postulated such a ring in the Milky Way. In either case, the pattern speed of the outer spiral arms could be lower, as favoured by the most recent hydrodynamic simulations and the independent work of Lépine et al. (2001) on Cepheid velocities.

Taking these results together, a good estimate for the corotation radius is $`R_{\mathrm{CR}}=4\pm 0.5\mathrm{kpc}`$. Recall from §2 that the major axis length of the COBE bar is approximately $`3.3\pm 0.2\mathrm{kpc}`$, so $`R1.2\pm 0.2`$.

## 4. Microlensing

Microlensing observations provide important new constraints on the Galactic mass distribution. Several hundred microlensing events have been observed towards the Galactic bulge by the OGLE and MACHO collaborations. These observations give information about the integrated mass density towards the survey fields as well as about the lens mass distribution. The most robust observable is the total optical depth averaged over the observed fields, $`\tau `$. Early measurements gave surprisingly high values $`\tau _624`$ (Udalski et al. 1994, Alcock et al. 1997), where $`\tau _6\tau /10^6`$. Alcock et al. (2000a) determined $`\tau _6=2.43_{0.38}^{+0.39}`$ for all source types from 99 events centered on $`(l,b)=(2.68^{},3.35^{})`$, using a difference image analysis (DIA) technique. From this measurement they deduced an optical depth $`\tau =(3.23\pm 0.5)\times 10^6`$ for bulge sources only in the same field. Popowski et al. (2000) published a preliminary analysis of 52 clump giant sources in 77 Macho fields, resulting in a lower $`\tau _6=2.0\pm 0.4`$ centered on $`(l,b)=(3.9^{},3.8^{})`$. The important advantage of using clump giant sources is that they do not suffer from blending problems.

The measured optical depth values in these bulge fields are unexpectedly high. Axisymmetric Galactic models predict $`\tau _611.2`$, insufficient to explain the quoted values (Kiraga & Paczynski 1994, Evans 1994). Models with a nearly end–on bar enhance $`\tau `$ because of the longer average line-of-sight from lens to source. The maximum effect occurs for $`\varphi \mathrm{arctan}(b/a)`$ when $`\tau _{\mathrm{bar}}/\tau _{\mathrm{axi}}(\mathrm{sin}2\varphi )^12`$ for $`\varphi =15^{}`$ (Zhao & Mao 1996). $`\tau `$ is also proportional to the mass of the bar/bulge and increases with the bar length.

Nonetheless, models based on barred mass distributions derived from Milky Way observations typically give only $`\tau _612`$ (e.g., Zhao, Spergel & Rich 1995, Stanek et al. 1997, Bissantz et al. 1997), significantly less than most of the measured optical depths. Figure 3 shows predicted optical depths for the new COBE bar model of Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) as a function of latitude, at the central longitude positions of the newest microlensing measurements. The mass normalization of the disk and bulge in this model is calibrated by assuming constant L-band mass-to-light ratio and by matching the predicted gas flow velocities in a hydrodynamic simulation to the Galactic terminal velocity curve; see above. The numerical values are $`\tau _6=1.1`$ for all sources at the position of the DIA measurement and $`\tau _6=1.27`$ for clump giant sources at the centroid position given by Popowski et al. (2000).

The model prediction for clump giant sources is within $`1.8\sigma `$ of the Popowski et al. MACHO value. On the other hand, the recent DIA value is still some $`3.2\sigma `$ away from the model prediction. Because the apparent magnitude distributions for clump giant stars predicted by this model agree closely with those measured by Stanek et al. (1997) – see Fig. 2 – this model gives a good approximation to the distribution of microlensing sources. Changing the quoted optical depths substantially is therefore hard unless the mass distribution of the lenses differs substantially from that of the sources. While the NIR model prediction could be slightly increased if the mass-to-light ratio were not spatially constant, this is only a $`20\%`$ effect since limited by the terminal velocity curve (Bissantz et al. 1997).

General arguments (Binney, Bissantz & Gerhard 2000) show that an optical depth for bulge sources as large as that implied by the MACHO DIA measurement is very difficult to reconcile with the Galactic rotation curve and local mass density, even for a barred model and independent of whether mass follows light. To illustrate this, the extra optical depth required on top of the Bissantz & Gerhard (2002) model prediction would correspond to an additional mass surface density towards the bulge of some $`1500\mathrm{M}_{}/\mathrm{pc}^2`$ at the optimal location half-way to the bulge. This is comparable to the luminous surface mass density in the NIR model (some $`3600\mathrm{M}_{}/\mathrm{pc}^2`$ but not optimally located. Because the model predictions are fairly robust, it is important to check again whether the DIA measurement could still be significantly affected by blending.

These results have a further important implication. Because a model based on the maximal disk assumption and calibrated with the terminal velocities still underpredicts the observed bulge microlensing optical depths, the contribution of a non-lensing CDM dark halo to the mass distribution in the inner Galaxy cannot be large (from the LMC microlensing experiments of Alcock et al. 2000b at most a fraction of the dark matter halo can contribute to microlensing.) Thus the bulge microlensing results argue strongly for a massive disk and low central density halo (see also Binney & Evans 2001). This is consistent with the fact that the NIR disk with constant mass-to-light ratio fitted to the terminal velocity curve correctly predicts the local disk surface mass density, leaving little room for extra mass in the inner Galaxy (Gerhard 1999).

## References

Alard C., 2001, A&A, 379, L44

Alcock C., et al. , 1997, ApJ, 479, 119

Alcock, C., et al. 2000a, ApJ, 541, 734

Alcock, C., et al. 2000b, ApJ, 542, 281

Binney, J.J., Bissantz N., Gerhard, O.E., 2000, ApJL, 537, L99

Binney, J.J., Evans, N.W., 2001, MNRAS, 327, L27

Binney, J.J., Gerhard, O.E., & Spergel, D.N. 1997, MNRAS, 288, 365

Binney J.J., Gerhard O.E., Stark A.A., Bally J., Uchida K.I., 1991, MNRAS, 252, 210

Bissantz, N., Englmaier, P., Binney, J.J., & Gerhard, O.E. 1997, MNRAS, 289, 651

Bissantz, N., Englmaier, P., Gerhard, O.E. 2002, MNRAS, submitted

Bissantz, N., Gerhard, O.E. 2002, MNRAS, in press

Blitz L., Spergel, D., 1991, ApJ, 379, 631

Buta R., 1995, ApJS, 96, 39

Cohen R.J., Few R.W., 1976, MNRAS, 176, 495

Debattista V.P., Gerhard O.E., Sevenster M.N., 2002, MNRAS, in press

Dehnen W., 2000, AJ, 119, 800

Dwek E., et al. , 1995, ApJ, 445, 716

Englmaier P., Gerhard O.E., 1999, MNRAS, 304, 512

Evans N.W., 1994, ApJL, 437, L31

Freudenreich H.T., 1998, ApJ, 492, 495

Fux R., 1999, A&A, 345, 787

Gerhard, O., 1999, in Galaxy Dynamics, ASP, 182, 307

Gerhard O.E., Vietri M., 1986, MNRAS, 223, 377

Han C., Gould A., 1995, ApJ, 449, 521

Hammersley P.L., Cohen M., Garzón F., et al., 1999, MNRAS, 308, 333

Hammersley P.L., Garzón F., Mahoney T.J., et al., 2000, MNRAS, 317, L45

Kent S.M., Dame T.M., Fazio G., 1991, ApJ, 378, 131

Kiraga M., Paczyński B., 1994, ApJ, 430, L101

Lépine J.R.D., Mishurov Y.N., Dedikov, S.Y., 2001, ApJ, 546, 234

Liszt H.S., Burton W.B., 1980, ApJ, 236, 779

López-Corredoira M., Garzón F., Hammersley P.L., et al., 1997, MNRAS, 292, L15

López-Corredoira M., Hammersley P.L., Garzón F., et al., 2000, MNRAS, 313, 392

Mulder W.A., Liem B.T., 1986, A&A, 157, 148

Nakada Y., Deguchi S., Hashimoto O., Izumiura H., Onaka T., Sekiguchi K., Yamamura I., 1991, Nat, 353, 140

Nikolaev S., Weinberg M.D., 1997, ApJ, 487, 885

Ortiz R., Lépine J.R.D., 1993, A&A, 279, 90

Peters W.L., 1975, ApJ, 195, 617

Popowski P., et al., 2000, ASP, in press, astro-ph 0005466

Radhakrishnan V., Sarma V.N.G., 1980, MNRAS, 85, 249

Robin A.C., Crézé M., Mohan V., 1992, A&A, 265, 32

Sevenster M.N., 1999, MNRAS, 310, 629

Sevenster M.N., Kalnajs, 2001, AJ, 122, 885

Sevenster M.N., van Langefelde H., Chapman J.M., Habing H.J., Killeen N.E.B., 2001, A&A, 366, 481

Spergel D.N., Malhotra S., Blitz L., 1996, in: Spiral Galaxies in the Near-IR, eds. D. Minniti, H.-W. Rix, Springer, Berlin, 128

Stanek K.Z., et al. 1997, ApJ, 477, 163

Tremaine S., Weinberg M.D., 1984, ApJ, 425, 81

Udalski A. et al. , 1994, Acta Astron., 44, 165

Unavane M., Gilmore G., 1998, MNRAS, 295, 145

van Loon J.T., 2001, AP&SS, 277, 313

Weiland J.L., et al. , 1994, ApJL, 425, L81

Weiner B., Sellwood J.A., 1999, ApJ, 524, 112

Zhao H.S., 2000, MNRAS, 316, 418

Zhao H.S., Mao S., 1996, MNRAS, 283, 1197

Zhao H.S., Spergel D.N., Rich R.M., 1995, ApJ, 440, L13