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# Cosmological Information from Quasar-Galaxy Correlations induced by Weak Lensing

## 1 Introduction

Weak gravitational lensing by large-scale structures gives rise to a magnification bias on distant quasar samples. Quasars behind matter overdensities are magnified and therefore preferentially included into flux-limited samples. Area magnification dilutes quasars on the sky and counter-acts the magnification to some degree, but the number count function of bright quasars is sufficiently steep to provide a huge reservoir of faint quasars to be magnified above the flux limit. Bright quasars in flux-limited samples thus occur preferentially behind matter overdensities.

Galaxies are biased tracers of dark matter. If the bias is positive, their number density is higher in matter overdensities. Since these overdensities act as gravitational lenses for background sources, they give rise to purely lensing-induced cross-correlations between background quasars and foreground galaxies.

Typical angular scales for this effect range from a few arc minutes to one degree. The lensing effect of individual galaxies does not matter on such scales. Group- or cluster-sized haloes contribute to the correlation only on scales below about one arc minute. On larger scales, the expected signal is caused by the large-scale matter distribution only. Measurements of the lensing-induced QSO-galaxy correlation function therefore have the potential to constrain the dark-matter power spectrum, several cosmological parameters, and the galaxy bias.

Many such measurements have been undertaken (e.g. Benítez & Martínez-González 1995, Norman & Impey 1999, Benítez et al. 2001, Norman & Impey 2001). The existence of highly significant large-scale QSO-galaxy correlations has been convincingly demonstrated (cf. Fugmann 1990; Bartelmann & Schneider 1993, 1994; Bartelmann et al. 1994; Rodrigues-Williams & Hogan 1994; Benîtez & Martînez-González 1995; Norman & Impey 1999), but the measurement of the amplitude and shape of the cross-correlation function is still highly uncertain (see Bartelmann & Schneider 2001 for a review). This is mainly because homogeneous, sufficiently deep galaxy surveys of large portions of the sky have so far been unavailable.

Upcoming wide-field surveys, above all the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. 2000), will provide huge, homogeneous samples of quasars and galaxies covering a substantial fraction of the sky. The detection and analyses of QSO-galaxy cross-correlations with high signal-to-noise ratio is thus coming within reach. We investigate in this paper which parameters can best be constrained with such a measurement, and what accuracy we can expect to achieve.

The main route to extract cosmological information from weak lensing has so far been the exploitation of cosmic shear. This approach measures the gravitational tidal field of the dark matter between background galaxies and the observer. Despite the many difficulties in measuring exact shape parameters of faint galaxies, impressive results have been obtained in the past year, demonstrating the power of the method (Bacon et al. 2000, Hoekstra et al. 2001, Kaiser et al. 2000, Van Waerbeke et al. 2001, Wittman et al. 2000). However, it depends upon the crucial assumption that galaxy ellipticities are intrinsically uncorrelated (see Heavens et al. 2000 and references therein).

Quasar-galaxy cross-correlations induced by weak lensing provide a complementary method for analysing weak lensing by large-scale structures which does not depend on this assumption, and does not need any shape measurement. It therefore allows an independent and welcome cross-check of the cosmic shear results and, in addition, it allows the determination of the galaxy bias factor.

The ratio $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0/b`$ can be constrained using the ratio $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}/w_{\mathrm{GG}}`$, where $`w_{\mathrm{GG}}`$ is the angular auto-correlation function of the foreground galaxies (Benítez & Sanz 2000). However, this method neglects all information contained in the amplitude and angular shape of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$. Motivated by recent cosmic shear results, we investigate here how well cosmological parameters can be constrained if the full information provided by quasar-galaxy cross-correlations is used.

In this paper, we briefly outline the lensing theory of QSO-galaxy cross-correlations and investigate on which parameters the cross-correlation function depends. We show that the dimensionality of the parameter space can be substantially reduced. We then use simulated measurements to investigate how accurately the remaining parameters can be constrained.

## 2 Theory

The theory of the QSO-galaxy cross-correlation function caused by weak lensing was introduced and developed in several earlier studies. We can therefore be brief here and limit the discussion to the issues required later on.

Let $`n_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`n_\mathrm{G}`$ be the number densities on the sky of quasars and galaxies, respectively. The QSO-galaxy cross correlation function is then

$$w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )=\frac{[n_\mathrm{Q}(\varphi )\overline{n}_\mathrm{Q}][n_\mathrm{G}(\theta +\varphi )\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}]}{\overline{n}_\mathrm{Q}\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}},$$
(1)
where the average extends over all positions $`\varphi `$ and all directions of $`\theta `$. The average number densities of quasars and galaxies are $`\overline{n}_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}`$, respectively. If there is no overlap in redshift between the quasar and galaxy populations, this correlation is exclusively due to lensing, and can be written (Bartelmann, 1995) :

$$w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )=2(\alpha 1)\overline{b}(\theta )w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta ),$$
(2)
provided that the magnification $`\mu `$ is weak, $`|\mu 1|1`$. Here, $`\alpha `$ is the logarithmic slope of the cumulative quasar number-count function near the flux limit and $`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ is the cross-correlation function between the lensing convergence $`\kappa `$ and a suitably weighted projected density contrast $`\overline{\delta }`$. The convergence itself is a weighted projection of the density contrast, so that the correlation function $`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ is straightforwardly related to the projected dark-matter power spectrum.

Equation 2 provides an operational definition of a mean galaxy bias factor $`\overline{b}(\theta )`$ on a given angular scale $`\theta `$. As defined, it averages over all galaxies considered in the cross correlation at an angular separation $`\theta `$ from the nearest quasar, and thus involves averaging over redshift and possibly also morphological type, unless galaxies are selected according to their morphology. Being linear in the galaxy number density, the QSO-galaxy cross-correlation is insensitive to a possible stochasticity of the bias. In practice, measurements will determine the $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ within an angular range $`R`$ around $`\theta `$. We will abbreviate the average bias factor within that interval as $`\overline{b}_R`$.

Of course, the relation of the bias factor $`\overline{b}_R`$ to commonly used definitions of the galaxy bias factor depends on how the bias depends on physical scale, redshift, and galaxy type. We will further discuss this issue in Sect. 2.2 below.

### 2.1 The $`\kappa `$-$`\delta `$ cross correlation

We now describe briefly how the cross-correlation function $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ between lensing convergence and projected density contrast can be evaluated. More detail can be found in Bartelmann (1995), Dolag & Bartelmann (1997), Sanz et al. (1997) and Bartelmann & Schneider (2001).

Since both $`\kappa `$ and $`\overline{\delta }`$ are weighted line-of-sight projections of the density contrast, we aim at an expression relating $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ to the matter power spectrum.

Specifically, we can write $`\kappa `$ as the projection

$$\kappa (\theta )=_0^{w_\mathrm{H}}dwp_\kappa (w)\delta [f_K(w)\theta ,w],$$
(3)
where $`w`$ is the radial comoving distance along the line-of-sight, $`f_K(w)`$ is the comoving angular diameter distance and $`p_\kappa (w)`$ is the projector

$`p_\kappa (w)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{\Omega }_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{H_0}{c}}\right)^2`$ (4)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle _w^{w_\mathrm{H}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}w^{}}{a(w)}}W_\mathrm{Q}(w^{}){\displaystyle \frac{f_K(w)f_K(ww^{})}{f_K(w^{})}}.`$
The ratio between the angular diameter distances $`f_K`$ represents the usual effective lensing distance, $`W_\mathrm{Q}(w)`$ is the normalised distance distribution of the sources, in our case the quasars, and $`a(w)`$ is the cosmological scale factor.

Similarly, the projected density contrast $`\overline{\delta }`$ can be written as

$$\overline{\delta }(\theta )=_0^{\mathrm{}}dwp_\delta (w)\delta [f_K(w)\theta ,w],$$
(5)
where $`p_\delta (w)`$ is the normalised distance distribution of the galaxies that are cross-correlated with the quasars.

The correlation function $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ can now be related to the statistics of $`\delta `$,

$`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ $`=`$ $`\kappa (\varphi )\overline{\delta }(\varphi +\theta )`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dwp_\kappa (w)dw^{}p_\delta (w^{})}`$
$`\times `$ $`\delta [f_K(w)\theta ,w]\delta [f_K(w^{})(\varphi +\theta ),w^{}].`$
Using Limber’s equation for the statistics of projected homogeneous Gaussian random fields, inserting the Fourier transform of the density contrast, and introducing the power spectrum $`P_\delta (k)`$, we find

$`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dw\frac{p_\kappa (w)p_\delta (w)}{f_K^2(w)}}`$ (6)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{s\mathrm{d}s}{2\pi }P_\delta (\frac{s}{f_K(w)},w)\mathrm{J}_0(s\theta )}.`$
The quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function, $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )=2(\alpha 1)\overline{b}(\theta )w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$, describes the statistical excess of quasars around galaxies with respect to a Poisson distribution, or the excess of galaxies around QSOs, at an angular distance $`\theta `$.

### 2.2 The bias factor

The relation of the average bias factor $`\overline{b}_R`$ to the usual galaxy bias factor depends on the properties of biasing and of the galaxies considered. If biasing is linear and possibly stochastic, the bias factor as defined here averages over $`rb_{\mathrm{var}}`$, where $`b_{\mathrm{var}}`$ is the ratio of variances in the galaxy and dark-matter distributions, and $`r`$ is the linear correlation coefficient defined by Dekel & Lahav (1999). For nonlinear biasing, $`\overline{b}_R`$ averages over the biasing parameter $`\widehat{b}`$, which is the slope of the linear regression of the galaxy fluctuations on the density contrast and whose relation to other conventional measures of galaxy biasing becomes more involved (Dekel & Lahav 1999). In other words, the physical meaning of $`\overline{b}_R`$ is defined by Eq. (2), but its relation to other measurements of galaxy biasing depends on the biasing model and remains to be specified if such a relation needs to be established.

Generally, the galaxy bias can depend on time, scale, and galaxy parameters like luminosity or morphological type. Numerical simulations using semi-analytic galaxy-formation models predict how the bias of different morphological galaxy types evolves with redshift (cf. Kauffmann et al. 1999), and such prescriptions can be used for establishing the relation between $`\overline{b}_R`$ and other biasing parameters. The impact of a possible scale dependence of the bias on quasar-galaxy cross-correlations can also be taken into account. This was studied by Guimarães et al. (2001), who used ratios between measured and theoretical galaxy power spectra for estimating the mean bias parameter in Fourier space, $`\overline{b}(k)`$. Naturally, such methods strongly depend on the bias model.

For our application, the redshift dependence of the mean bias $`\overline{b}`$ can probably be neglected because the galaxies expected to be cross-correlated with background quasars will be in a relatively narrow redshift range peaking near $`z0.3`$. Furthermore, the scale dependence can be constrained. Benítez & Sanz (2000) showed that the ratio $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}/w_{\mathrm{GG}}`$ effectively measures $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0\overline{b}/b_{\mathrm{var}}^2`$, without the need to know the cosmological parameters. For linear and deterministic biasing, $`b_{\mathrm{var}}`$ reduces to $`\overline{b}`$ and we have :

$$\frac{w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )}{w_{\mathrm{GG}}(\theta )}=Q\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{\overline{b}(\theta )}$$
(7)
for quasars and galaxies located at single redshifts $`z_\mathrm{Q}`$ and $`z_\mathrm{G}`$. Van Waerbeke (1998) extended this calculation to realistic redshift distributions, for which the constant $`Q`$ becomes a known scale-dependent function $`Q(\theta )`$, but remains only weakly sensitive to cosmological parameters. Therefore, the method proposed by Benítez & Sanz allows constraints on the scale dependence of the bias.

We investigate here the possible constraints on cosmological parameters that can be derived from the angular shape and amplitude of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$. For doing so, we assume that the bias is independent of scale on the angular scales we are considering, i.e. between $`1^{}`$ and $`1^{}`$. A scale-dependent bias factor could be taken into account assuming that the variation with scale can be expressed by a smooth function $`f(\theta )`$, so that

$$\overline{b}(\theta )=\overline{b}_Rf(\theta )$$
(8)
Models or measured constraints on $`f(\theta )`$ can then be included into the calculation of the cross-correlation function $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$.

### 2.3 Expected galaxy overdensity

We now evaluate Eq. (6) under the following assumptions. First, we choose a CDM power spectrum and use the formalism by Peacock & Dodds (1996) to approximate its non-linear evolution. This is crucial because the linear approximation underestimates the correlation amplitude on arc-minute scales by about an order of magnitude (Dolag & Bartelmann 1997). Unless specified otherwise, we use the cluster normalisation constraint $`\sigma _8=0.52\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{0.52+0.13\mathrm{\Omega }_0}`$ from Eke et al. (1996).

Since we shall later need to compute the correlation function many times to explore the parameter space, we assume that the redshift distributions for source quasars and foreground galaxies are delta functions, which speeds up the computation, but affects the amplitude of $`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ only by at most 20% compared to realistic distance distributions. We place all galaxies at redshift $`z=0.3`$, and all quasars at redshift $`z=1.5`$.

Finally, we need a model for the quasar number counts as a function of flux. In the quasar catalogue of the Sloan Early Data Release (Schneider et al. 2001), the cumulative number-count function for quasars brighter than $`19^{\mathrm{th}}`$ magnitude is well approximated by a power law with a logarithmic slope of $`\alpha 2`$.

Some illustrative results for $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$ are presented in Fig. 1. The curves in the left panel show the expected cross-correlation functions for nonlinearly evolving density perturbations in a flat, low-density universe ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, cluster normalised with $`\sigma _8=0.93`$; solid line), an Einstein-de-Sitter universe (cluster normalised with $`\sigma _8=0.52`$, dashed line; and normalised to $`\sigma _8=1`$, dashed-dotted line).

For comparison, the dotted curve was computed for an $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, cluster normalised cosmology, but assuming linear growth of the density perturbations. At small angular scales (below $`10^{}`$), most of the correlation amplitude is contributed by mildly nonlinear matter perturbations. The right panel shows the correlation function out to large angular scales, where it drops below zero. The break towards two degrees occurs when the first zero of the Bessel function in Eq. (6) moves across the physical scale of the peak in the power spectrum. Hence, the correlation signal is expected to drop sharply at these large angular scales.

Figure 1 demonstrates that the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function varies substantially if the cosmological model is changed. Therefore, it can be used as a tool to measure cosmological parameters. We explore this issue in the next section.

## 3 Dependence on cosmological parameters

### 3.1 Reduction of the parameter space

Equation (6) illustrates how the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function depends on various assumptions and parameters. The redshift distributions of the source quasars and the foreground galaxies enter through the functions $`p_\kappa (w)`$ and $`p_\delta (w)`$, respectively. These distributions can be observed. Likewise, the logarithmic slope $`\alpha `$ of the quasar number-count function can directly be obtained through observations.

Therefore, the remaining unknowns of the cross-correlation function are the dark-matter power spectrum and its growth, the cosmological parameters, and the bias factor of the galaxies relative to the dark matter. We now explore how sensitively the cross-correlation function depends on these inputs.

First, we shall assume that the matter content in the Universe is dominated by cold dark matter. For a Universe containing pure cold dark matter, the location of the peak of the power spectrum is defined by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$ (Bardeen et al. 1986), and it changes to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h\mathrm{exp}[\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}(1+\sqrt{2h}/\mathrm{\Omega }_0)]`$ in presence of baryons (Sugiyama 1995). For reasonably low values of the baryon density parameter, the main effect of the preceding modification is merely a weak change of the first relation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. For $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{b}h^2=0.02`$ (Wang et al. 2001), we find that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Omega }_0h0.03`$. This detailed, weak dependence on the baryon density does not qualitatively affect the following results. We shall see in Sect. 4.2 how the parameter estimation changes if we ignore any relation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the other parameters.

The remaining free parameters appearing in the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function are the cosmological parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`h`$, the normalisation of the power spectrum, which is expressed by its variance $`\sigma _8`$ on scales of $`8\text{Mpc}/h`$, and the bias factor $`\overline{b}_R`$.

### 3.2 Independence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$

Interestingly, $`w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )`$ depends only very weakly on the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ on scales larger than one arc minute. This is demonstrated by Fig. 2 for different angular scales and different cosmologies. Above one arc minute, the contours tend to align parallel to the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ axis. At an angular scale of $`15`$ arc minutes for instance, the variation of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ for a given density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is less than $`10\%`$. For comparison, increasing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ from $`0.1`$ to $`1`$ changes the correlation amplitude by roughly a factor of four. Thus, focusing on intermediate and large angular scales, the correlation function can be considered insensitive to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. This safely allows the reduction of the effective parameter space to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, $`\sigma _8`$, $`h`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$.

### 3.3 Dependence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$

Regarding the dependence of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$, a rough inspection of Eq. (6) would give $`w_{\kappa \delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_0\sigma _8^2`$, where the factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ comes from Poisson’s equation, and the scaling $`\sigma _8^2`$ reflects the normalisation of the power spectrum. However, closer examination reveals a more complicated dependence. Due to the nonlinear evolution of the power spectrum, $`\sigma _8`$ does not only change the correlation amplitude, but also its shape. Similarly, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ affects the nonlinear evolution of the power spectrum, and therefore also changes the shape of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$.

Figure 3 illustrates the dependence of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$, at three angular scales, for fixed values of $`h`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$. For measurements taken at a single angular scale only, the dependence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$ is degenerate. At small angular scales, for instance, an increase in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ can be compensated by a decrease in $`\sigma _8`$ (cf. the left panel of Fig. 3). However, this degeneracy can be broken if measurements at different angular scales are combined. At large angular scales, for example, an increase in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ would have to be compensated by an increase in $`\sigma _8`$ (cf. the right panel of Fig. 3). Therefore, the shape of the correlation function contains cosmological information, and it is thus important to measure the correlation signal across a wide range of angular scales. The dashed line in Fig. 3 shows the cluster normalisation constraint given by Eke et al. (1996).

We note that there is an interesting angular scale around $`40^{}`$ where the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function becomes almost independent of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. The dependence of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$ can be understood as follows:

* From Eq. (6), we see that the correlation function is roughly proportional to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0\times sdsP(s)\mathrm{J}_0(s\theta )`$. At small angular scales, the Bessel function is close to unity over a large range of wave numbers $`s`$, and the result of the integration over $`s`$ is roughly proportional to $`\sigma _8^2`$. Hence, we have $`w\mathrm{\Omega }_0\sigma _8^2`$, whatever the value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.
* At large angular scales, the oscillations of the Bessel function largely cancel the power at high wavenumbers, and thus the $`s`$ integration is only sensitive to the low-$`s`$ part of the power spectrum. Since this rising part of the power spectrum decreases rapidly with increasing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ (or equivalently increasing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$) and keeping the normalisation constraint fixed, the correlation amplitude decreases as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ increases.
* At intermediate angular scales, the various effects of changing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ cancel each other almost exactly, which leads to the insensitivity of the correlation amplitude to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ at angular scales around $`40^{}`$.

The overall dependence of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ on $`\sigma _8`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ reflects the physically motivated proportionality $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, which is the simplest possible relation between these parameters. More general cases will be taken into account in Sect. 4.3.

Our main conclusions from this section are that the dependence of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is so weak that it can be neglected, and the degeneracy between $`\sigma _8`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ can be broken by measuring $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ over a wide range of angular scales between a few arc minutes and one degree. Assuming $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$, $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ becomes almost independent of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ for angular scales near $`40^{}`$. At that scale, the amplitude of the correlation function is proportional to $`\overline{b}\sigma _8^2`$, and a measurement of this product is in principle possible. We will address this point in Sect. 4.2.

## 4 Expected measurements

We now evaluate how accurately the remaining cosmological parameters can be constrained through measurements of quasar-galaxy cross-correlation functions. For that purpose, we simulate observations of quasar-galaxy cross-correlations expected to be possible with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data.

### 4.1 Signal-to-noise estimate

Since our goal is to constrain cosmological parameters from quasar-galaxy cross-correlations, we now assess a strategy for optimally using the data. Within narrow, ring-shaped bins of radius $`\theta `$ centred on $`N_\mathrm{Q}`$ background QSOs, the total deviation of the galaxy count from its mean is

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_\mathrm{Q}}{}}\left(N_{\mathrm{G},i}\overline{N}_\mathrm{G}\right)N_\mathrm{Q}\overline{N}_\mathrm{G}w_{\mathrm{Q}G}(\theta ),$$
(9)
where $`\overline{N}_\mathrm{G}`$ is the mean galaxy count obtained from randomly selected fields, and $`N_{\mathrm{G},i}`$ the galaxy count in the ring centred on the $`i`$-th QSO. In a stack of such narrow, ring-shaped bins, the signal-to-noise ratio of the detection will be

$$\left(\frac{S}{N}\right)\sqrt{N_\mathrm{Q}\overline{N}_\mathrm{G}}w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta ).$$
(10)
As we saw before, the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$ is larger than the cross correlation $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ between convergence and projected density contrast by a factor $`2(\alpha 1)\overline{b}`$. The value of the bias factor $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$ is expected from simulations fall near unity. However, the value of $`(\alpha 1)`$ depends on the quasar sample.

The measured cumulative quasar number-count function strongly depends on the selection criteria of the quasars. For our measurement, we first need a cut at low redshift to exclude any overlap between the QSOs and the galaxies. Then, for a given magnitude range, we need a clean and complete sample. Since most of the SDSS quasars are photometric, this implies cutting the sample in multicolour space for optimising the selection criteria. We leave this level of detail aside in this paper. We use the fitting function provided by Pei (1995) for estimating the cumulative quasar number-counts as a function of magnitude, i.e. a broken power law with slopes of $`\alpha 0.64`$ for QSOs fainter than $`B19`$, and $`\alpha 2.52`$ for brighter QSOs.

Since faint QSOs have $`\alpha <1`$, they are negatively-biased by the lensing magnification. Thus, taking all observed QSOs straightforwardly into account would tend to reduce or even reverse the correlation signal. However, we can separate the dependences of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$ on angular scale (which contains the cosmological information) and on quasar magnitude and thus keep all information required to stack the correlation signal from all quasars in a sample.

The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality provides optimal weights for quasars with respect to magnitude. We find that the signal-to-noise ratio is optimised by

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{S}{N}}\right)_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dm(\alpha (m)1)^2N_Q(m)}{dm|\alpha (m)1|\sqrt{N_Q(m)}}}\sqrt{\overline{N}_G}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta ),`$
where $`N_\mathrm{Q}(m)`$ is the number of quasars in the magnitude bin $`[m,m+\mathrm{d}m]`$, and $`\alpha (m)`$ is the corresponding slope of the number counts. Therefore, we can consider the following effective correlation function

$$w_{\mathrm{eff}}(\theta )=2\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}(\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}1)w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta ),$$
(11)
where $`\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is an effective slope describing the entire quasar sample,

$$\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}=1+\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_Q}}\frac{dm(\alpha (m)1)^2N_Q(m)}{dm|\alpha (m)1|\sqrt{N_Q(m)}}.$$
(12)
The signal-to-noise ratio of the optimally weighted data can now simply be calculated using $`w_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ instead of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ in Eq. (10). The effective correlation function $`w_{\mathrm{eff}}(\theta )`$ is related to an average absolute deviation of the galaxy number counts in the vicinity of quasars from their mean, weighted appropriately. In effect, each magnitude bin gives a constructive signal to the cross-correlation, and the weighting ensures a maximised signal-to-noise ratio. To get an idea of a reasonable value for $`\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}`$, we use Pei’s (1995) broken power-law fit for a sample of QSOs ranging in magnitude from $`m=16`$ to $`m=21`$. Evaluating the integral in Eq. (4.1), we find that $`\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}=1.35`$.

Some quasars have a magnitude $`m`$ for which $`|\alpha (m)1|0`$, so they will only contribute noise to the final correlation function. Those quasars are down-weighted by Eq. (4.1), but the selection can be further restricted by keeping only quasars whose signal-to-noise ratio for the lensing effect exceeds a specified threshold. The sample is then constrained by the condition

$$|\alpha (m)1|>\frac{1}{\sqrt{N_\mathrm{Q}\overline{N}_\mathrm{G}}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}w_{\kappa \delta }(\theta )}.$$
(13)
The number of quasars satisfying this criterion is expected to be a large fraction of the total available sample. We thus neglect the sample restriction in the following, but it should be taken into account in any measurement of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ from real data.

In the previous section, we emphasised the importance of measuring the cross-correlation across a wide range of angular scales with a good signal-to-noise ratio. Thus, the size of the ring-shaped bins around quasars in which galaxies are counted must change with the ring radius $`\theta `$. At large radii, wide bins are needed, and the earlier narrow-bin calculation no longer holds. The general result for an annular bin is

$$\left(\frac{S}{N}\right)=\sqrt{\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}N_\mathrm{Q}}\frac{\mathrm{d}^2\varphi w_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi )[U_\theta ^{}(\varphi )U_\theta (\varphi )]}{\sqrt{\pi (\theta ^2\theta ^2)}},$$
(14)
where $`U_\theta `$ is a top-hat filter of radius $`\theta `$. This integration over a disk replaces the zeroth-order Bessel function $`\mathrm{J}_0(s\theta )`$ in Eq. (6) by $`2\pi \theta \mathrm{J}_1(s\theta )/s`$, and thus

$`{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^2\varphi w_{\kappa \delta }(\varphi )U_\theta (\varphi )}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dw\frac{p_\kappa (w)p_\delta (w)}{f_K^2(w)}}`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle dsP_\delta (\frac{s}{f_K(w)},w)\theta \mathrm{J}_1(s\theta )}.`$
In order to adapt this model to a forthcoming application to the SDSS data sample, we will use the following parameters:

* The galaxy density is $`\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}3\text{arcmin}^2`$ (Scranton et al. 2001) for SDSS galaxies down to $`r^{}=22`$. It is shown that masking of stars or bad seeing is important at that magnitude limit, and the usable area of the survey is reduced by a factor 2/3.
* The angular coverage is taken from $`\theta =0.5^{}`$ to $`1^{}`$ and separated in 15 logarithmically spaced bins. Below $`0.5^{}`$, the shot noise becomes important due to the fairly low galaxy number density. Above one degree, the amplitude of the correlation function drops rapidly as shown in Fig. 1, and so does the signal of the galaxy overdensity.
* The effective logarithmic slope of the quasar number-count function is set to $`\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}=1.35`$.
* The quasar number $`N_\mathrm{Q}`$ is essential for determining the signal-to-noise ratio. Its value is continuously increasing with the size of the survey and will reach its maximum in 2005. The SDSS Early Data Release contains approximately 4000 spectroscopic quasars and 9000 quasar candidates based on photometry alone. The expected quasar number of the final survey is on the order of $`10^5`$ for spectroscopically identified quasars, and can reach on the order of $`10^6`$ for photometrically selected quasars (G. Richards, private communication). Furthermore, we need a quasar sample which is well separated in redshift from the galaxy sample. For this purpose, we will only use quasars with $`z1`$. In order to account for these numbers and for the reduction of the usable survey area due to masking, we will consider an effective number of quasars $`N_\mathrm{Q}`$ between $`5\times 10^3`$ and $`5\times 10^5`$.

Photometric redshifts will be available for all quasars. The amplitude of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ is mainly sensitive to the mean redshift of the considered quasar sample rather than its exact redshift distribution. Therefore we can safely neglect any uncertainties in the redshift estimates.

### 4.2 Constraints on $`\overline{b}(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$

We saw earlier that assuming $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$ (or similar relations) causes the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation to be only weakly sensitive to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ near the angular scale of $`40^{}`$ (corresponding to an effective scale of roughly $`8\mathrm{h}_{50}^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$), and this property can in principle be used to further reduce the parameter space. At angular scales near $`40^{}`$, the density perturbations probed by the correlation function are well within the linear regime, where the amplitude of the power spectrum simply scales $`\sigma _8^2`$. At that scale, the correlation amplitude scales $`b(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$ to good accuracy, almost independently of the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. Given $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, the shape parameter of the power spectrum is fixed by the Hubble constant. The product $`\overline{b}(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$ can therefore be determined through the correlation amplitude only up to the level of uncertainty reflecting the uncertainty of the Hubble constant, and by the remaining weak dependence on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. Figure 4 shows how the amplitude of the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function near $`40^{}`$ changes with the Hubble constant and the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. The overall uncertainty is on the order of $`20\%`$.

The variation of $`w_{\kappa \delta }`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ can be reduced by narrowing the angular range from which the data are taken, however at the expense of the signal-to-noise ratio. Within an annulus with inner radius $`30^{}`$ and outer radius $`50^{}`$, where the amplitude of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\mathrm{\Omega }_0)`$ changes by less than about $`20\%`$, the expected signal-to-noise ratio can be determined from Eq. (14) with the appropriate top-hat filters,

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{S}{N}}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}N_\mathrm{Q}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^2\varphi w_{\mathrm{eff}}(\varphi )[U_{50^{}}(\varphi )U_{30^{}}(\varphi )]}{\sqrt{\pi (50^230^2)}}}`$ (16)
$``$ $`9\left({\displaystyle \frac{N_Q}{10^5}}\right)^{1/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{n}_\mathrm{G}}{3}}\right)^{1/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{2(\alpha _{\mathrm{eff}}1)b(40^{})}{0.7}}\right),`$
where we have used the number of spectroscopic quasars expected to be provided by the SDSS. Using photometric quasars, this signal-to-noise ratio might be improved. Therefore, the accuracy of a measurement of $`\overline{b}(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$ through quasar-galaxy cross-correlations is limited by the uncertainties in the Hubble constant and the density parameter if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is treated as unknown. We emphasise the fact that the only external information we use for this method is the Hubble constant. Any additional constraint on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ can substantially increase the precision of the $`\overline{b}(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$ measurement.

### 4.3 Parameter estimates: $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, $`\sigma _8`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$

We now investigate possible parameter estimates using the information coming from all angular scales. Using Eqs. (14) and (4.1), we can simulate measurements of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$ and then compute the uncertainty of the parameter constraints we wish to extract from the data.

We saw above that the shape of the correlation function contains important information on the cosmological parameters. For achieving similar signal-to-noise ratios in all annular bins of the measurement, we use logarithmically spaced annuli around the quasars. In order to estimate the uncertainty of our parameters, it is worth noticing that $`10^5`$ quasars spread evenly across the whole survey area are on average separated by about $`20^{}`$. Given our 15 logarithmically spaced bins covering the angular range introduced above, this means that the errors in the three outer bins would be effectively correlated. The others are only very weakly affected by possible correlations. Given the low amplitude of the cross-correlation, the Poisson noise dominates in our case. Hence, a simple $`\chi ^2`$ of the difference between the simulated data and the model enables us to reasonably estimate the uncertainty of the parameters. However, it has to be kept in mind that we are ignoring any angular variation in the bias, which might contribute to the parameter uncertainties.

However, due to the large parameter space and some partial parameter degeneracies, the $`\chi ^2`$ minimisation yields allowed ranges for the complete parameter set which are fairly wide compared to the existing parameter constraints. An attempt to find constraints on the full parameter space $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\sigma _8,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda },h,\overline{b}_\mathrm{R})`$ is therefore not promising. We have to include additional information for better constraining our parameter set.

The prime advantage of the quasar-galaxy cross-correlations compared to other methods for estimating the cosmological parameters is its direct sensitivity to the galaxy bias factor. In addition, it is a weak-lensing based method which can directly measure $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and provide an independent cross-check of results obtained from weak-shear observations, as it does not rely on the assumption of intrinsically uncorrelated galaxy ellipticities. The most accurate measurements of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ will be provided by CMB experiments. They rely on information coming from photons emitted at the recombination epoch ($`z1200`$) and depend on the curvature of photon trajectories as they propagate through the Universe. An independent measurement of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ using only low-redshift information probes the consistency of the cosmological model.

For the following, we will use two external pieces of information. The first is an estimate of the power spectrum normalisation $`\sigma _8`$. For this, we use the cluster normalisation relation: $`\sigma _8=0.52\mathrm{\Omega }_0^{0.52+0.13\mathrm{\Omega }_0}`$ (Eke et al. 1996), since there is no precise and direct measurement of $`\sigma _8`$. The second is an estimate of the peak location of the power spectrum $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. We will use either a direct measurement, provided by galaxy surveys, or a measurement of the Hubble constant $`h`$, if we adopt the relation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$. Finally, the remaining unknown parameters of the problem are the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, the density parameter corresponding to the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and the bias parameter $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$, of which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ can be ignored.

Other reductions of the parameter space are of course possible, but this one is particularly attractive because it allows a measurement of the galaxy bias and its dependences on scale, galaxy morphology, magnitude etc. In what follows, our first fiducial model has $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$, $`h=0.72`$, in agreement with recent constraints from the Hubble Key Project (Freedman et al. 2001), and is cluster normalised. We will later drop this relation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. Hence, we compute

$$\chi ^2(\mathrm{\Omega }_0,b)=\underset{i}{}\frac{\left[\delta N_\mathrm{M}(\theta _i;\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\overline{b}_\mathrm{R})\delta N_{\mathrm{obs}}(\theta _i;\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\overline{b}_{\mathrm{R},0})\right]^2}{\sigma _i^2},$$
(17)
where $`\delta N_\mathrm{M}(\theta _i)`$ and $`\delta N_{\mathrm{obs}}(\theta _i)`$ are the overdensities of galaxies in bin number $`i`$ expected in the model and detected in the simulated observation, respectively, and $`\sigma _i`$ is the Poisson noise in that bin.

The results are shown in Fig. 5. For this example, we have assumed a cosmological model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ and a galaxy bias factor of unity. The contours show the 68.3%, 95.5%, and 99.7% confidence levels. Results for two different quasar sample sizes are presented, namely $`10^4`$ and $`10^5`$ quasars, from left to right. We see that a large quasar sample is required in order to at least confirm a low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$.

Previous quasar surveys listed only a few thousand objects, therefore we expect the SDSS to provide us with the first quasar-galaxy cross-correlation measurement with a reasonable signal-to-noise ratio that allows the extraction of some cosmological information. The two contour plots show a near-degeneracy between $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$, for low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$. Indeed, by lowering $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ the correlation function increases due to the cluster normalisation. For low $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, mainly the amplitude of the correlation function changes rather than its shape. Low values of the bias parameter can compensate for this change and still allow a good fit. Thus, assuming the relation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$, quasar-galaxy correlations can provide an estimate of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, but only poorly constrain $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$. Figure 5 also shows that $`\overline{b}`$ can be measured with good accuracy if the cosmological parameters are assumed to be known; $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}15\%`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$.

As we discussed before, it is possible to probe other parameters with the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function. For example, Fig. 6 shows what confidence intervals we can expect for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$, assuming $`h=0.72`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}=1`$. For instance, an independent measurement of the bias can be obtained combining cosmic shear and galaxy counts provided similar galaxy samples are considered (cf. Schneider 1998 and van Waerbeke 1998 for the theory, and Hoekstra et al. 2001b, in preparation, for a measurement using a joint analyses of the Red Cluster Survey and the VIRMOS-DESCART Survey). Using external information on $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$, we see that interesting constraints on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$ can be derived: we find $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Omega }_010\%`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _85\%`$.

The validity of the assumed relation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$ (or more generalised relations taking baryons and neutrinos into account) depends on the matter and radiation content of the Universe, which is presently uncertain. For a more conservative approach, one can drop this relation and use measurements for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. The two plots in Figure 7 show the corresponding changes of the confidence levels. In the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$-$`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$ plane, we see that we then get interesting constraints of the parameters. As we can expect in the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$-$`\sigma _8`$ plane, the contours are not significantly affected, and an interesting sensitivity on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$ remains. Similar contour plots can be obtained from cosmic-shear measurements (e.g. Van Waerbeke et al. 2001) by assuming a fixed value for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. As shown in Figure 7, quasar-galaxy cross-correlations measured with the SDSS will soon enable us to probe these parameters equally well as cosmic shear does with current deep imaging surveys.

Regarding $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$, we saw from the different contour plots that we achieve much higher sensitivity by using external information on $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. Table 1 summarises the uncertainties on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$ we can achieve, depending on the quasar sample size. We can reasonably expect the final usable quasar number to be at least of the order of $`10^5`$, which means an independent measurement of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ with an accuracy of $`17\%`$, and of $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$ with an accuracy of $`10\%`$, should be feasible.
Clearly, the final goal of using quasar-galaxy correlations is probing the galaxy bias, but as these plots show, this method can also be used for constraining cosmological parameters.

The additional parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is now known to approximately $`20\%`$ (Dodelson et al. 2001), and its accuracy is expected to greatly improve with SDSS in the near future. However, this uncertainty adds to the uncertainty of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$. To see the implications, the frame in the left panel of Fig. 7 shows the effect on the 1-$`\sigma `$ confidence level of using different values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. The dashed line represents the 1-$`\sigma `$ contour computed for the correct value of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ used for the simulations ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.21`$); the upper and lower contours are computed for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.23`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.19`$, respectively. From this plot, we can see that mistaking $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ by $`10\%`$ will introduce a systematic of about $`16\%`$ in $`\overline{b}_\mathrm{R}`$ and $`10\%`$ in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$.

## 5 Conclusion and prospects

Background quasars and foreground galaxies are cross-correlated on angular scales between $`1^{}`$ and $`1^{}`$ through the magnification bias due to weak lensing by large-scale structures. The effect probes the dark matter distribution in the Universe in much the same way as measurements of cosmic shear do, but by counting objects instead of measuring shapes, and thus without the crucial assumption that the ellipticities of background galaxies are uncorrelated. In addition, the lensing-induced QSO-galaxy correlations probe the relation between the distributions of galaxies and dark matter.

The existence of statistically significant correlations between foreground galaxies and background quasars has firmly been established. Up to now, however, the quasar-galaxy correlation function $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ could not be reliably measured because homogeneous, sufficiently deep, wide-field galaxy surveys were missing. With the advent of such surveys, for which the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is the prototypical example, a measurement of this weak lensing effect with high signal-to-noise ratio is now within reach.

Using quasar-galaxy cross-correlations and assuming a linear and deterministic bias, Benítez & Sanz (2000) showed how to measure $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0/\overline{b}`$ at a given angular scale from the ratio $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )/w_{\mathrm{GG}}(\theta )`$ between the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation and the galaxy-galaxy autocorrelation functions. However, their method discards the information contained in the amplitude and angular shape of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$. In this paper, we investigated what kind of cosmological information can be expected from an accurate measurement of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ using the SDSS data. Our main assumptions were that

* galaxies are biased relative to the dark matter, possibly in a non-linear or stochastic way.
* the shape parameter of the power spectrum either satisfies $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$, or can be fixed by the peak location in galaxy power spectra;
* the power spectrum is normalised such that the local abundance of rich galaxy clusters is reproduced; and
* the lensing magnification is weak. $`|\mu 1|1`$.

Under these assumptions, $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ depends in principle on the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the Hubble constant $`h`$ (or $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$), the normalisation of the power spectrum $`\sigma _8`$, and the bias parameter $`\overline{b}`$. This parameter range is too large to allow any accurate cosmological constraints from the quasar-galaxy correlations alone. However, the parameter range can safely be reduced. We showed that:

1. the dependence of the quasar-galaxy cross-correlation function on the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is entirely negligible on scales above one arc minute;
2. assuming the relation $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0h`$, we find an interesting angular range within which the amplitude of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ is insensitive to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$, and where its amplitude is simply proportional to $`\overline{b}(40^{})\sigma _8^2`$;
3. neglecting any relation between $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the other parameters and using the cluster normalisation, the matter density and the bias parameter can be constrained with with $`17\%`$ and $`10\%`$ relative accuracy, respectively;
4. knowing the value of the bias parameter, it is possible to accurately measure of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\sigma _8`$, namely with $`17\%`$ and $`7\%`$ relative accuracy, respectively.

We used a scale-independent bias, but models or measured constraints on $`\overline{b}(\theta )`$ can be included into the calculation of the cross-correlation function $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}(\theta )`$.

Our knowledge of the cosmological parameters will greatly improve over the next few years, partly through the wide-field galaxy surveys themselves, but most dramatically through the CMB experiments. Therefore, the quasar-galaxy cross-correlations will be less important for determinations of cosmological parameters, although they will allow important consistency checks. However, the most important contribution from a measurement of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ will be a direct determination of the galaxy bias factor on a broad range of scales, for different luminosities and morphological types of galaxies.

Williams & Irwin (1998) and Norman & Williams (2000) cross-correlated APM galaxies with LBQS and 1-Jansky quasars and claimed significant galaxy overdensities around quasars on angular scales of order one degree. As the amplitude of their correlations cannot be explained in terms of weak lensing by large-scale structures in a CDM universe, it is highly important to reexamine them.

Finally, the shape of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ depends on the shape of the underlying dark-matter power spectrum, and a measurement of $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ will therefore test whether the CDM power spectrum adequately describes the weak-lensing effects by large-scale structure. This, of course, is also probed by cosmic shear, but only under the assumption that intrinsic galaxy ellipticities are uncorrelated. Measuring $`w_{\mathrm{QG}}`$ thus provides a useful, independent, weak-lensing based method for directly constraining the dark-matter power spectrum.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank Yannick Mellier, Ludovic Van Waerbeke and Simon White for useful discussions.


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# DISTRIBUTION OF CARBON ATOMS IN IRON-CARBON fcc PHASE: AN EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL STUDY

## I INTRODUCTION

The physical properties of the austenite solid solution phase have been studied extensively over the years in connection with, e.g., the assessment and understanding of the phase diagram \[1-6\], the diffusion controlled  and martensitic phase transitions in Fe-C alloys . In austenite the iron atoms are arranged in a close-packed face-centred cubic (fcc) lattice, and the C atoms occupy a limited number of the octahedral interstices which are located at the centres and at the mid-points of the edges of the unit cubes, these two positions being crystallographically equivalent (Fig.1) . Accordingly, various models of austenite have been proposed which are based on assuming two sublattices, one for the Fe atoms and the second one for the mixture of carbon atoms (C) and vacant octahedral interstices (Va). The general theme of the present paper is the distribution of the C atoms in the interstitial sites, as revealed by three complementary sources of information, viz., thermodynamic properties, Mössbauer experiments and Monte Carlo simulations.

In the ideal solution model (ISM) for thermodynamic properties of austenite it is assumed that C and Va distribute themselves at random in the octahedral interstitial sites, the amount of which is equal to the number of Fe atoms. On these basis, the thermodynamic activity ($`a_c`$) of C in an ideal mixture of NC carbon atoms with NFe iron atoms is shown to be proportional to the ratio $`y_c/(1y_c)`$, where $`y_c`$ = NC/NFe, and $`1y_c`$ represent the fraction of occupied and of empty interstitial sites, respectively \[10-13\]. Since the experimental $`a_c`$ in austenite deviates positively from the ISM, many approaches have been proposed to account for the non-ideal behaviour \[14-22\]. The reader is referred to ref.  for a recent review of the work of most relevance for the present study. In the strict version of the approach known as the hard-blocking excluded-sites model (HBESM) it is assumed that the presence of a solute atom blocks the occupancy of a certain number ($`b`$) of the nearest neighbor interstitial sites (NNIS), so that a site is either blocked or is available for the mixing of C atoms and Va \[9, 15 , 23\]. Further, if the mixing in the non-blocked sites occurs at random, the $`a_c`$ in austenite becomes proportional to $`y_c/[1(1+b)y_c]`$ . Frequently, $`b`$ has been treated as an adjustable parameter, identified with the value to be inserted in the expression for $`a_c`$ in order to reproduce the experimental data . Alternatively, some theoretical studies have been reported which suggest that $`b`$ should in fact be treated as composition dependent . A different approach will be explored in the present work, which is based on combining two theoretical methods. First, we will adopt the quasi-chemical approximation (QCA) to the statistical mechanics of interstitial solutions \[12,24-27\]. In the QCA all interstitial sites are available for mixing, but the C atoms are regarded as exerting a repulsive force on each other, so that they enter adjacent interstitial positions less frequently as would be the case if their distribution were random. Thus the QCA will allow us to treat soft-blocking effects in austenite. The key parameters in this treatment are the energies of formation of the C-C and C-Va pairs, which will be accurately determined by analysing $`a_c`$ data. Secondly, we will perform Monte Carlo (MC) simulations for various values of the NC/NFe ratio, using the pair formation energies from the quasi-chemical analysis. In this way, the average distribution of interstitials around a given C atom will be studied as function of composition. In particular, the average number of empty NNIS will be determined for various alloys, and compared with the results of previous studies, as well as with information extracted from Mössbauer experiments.

In the analysis of the Mössbauer spectra of austenite various assumptions about the distribution of C in the octahedral interstitial sites have been proposed . In particular, a model has been suggested for dilute solutions in which the 12 NNIS of a C atom are excluded . In this case the C atoms occupy only the centre of the cubes of a structure with the formula Fe8C1-y, so that three possible environments for Fe atoms, associated to different hyperfine interaction may be distinguished, which are shown schematically in Fig.2, viz.,

a. Fe atoms without nearest neighbor and next nearest neighbor C atoms, associated to the singlet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{00}`$.

b. Fe atoms without nearest neighbour but with $`n`$ next nearest neighbour C atoms ($`n=14`$), ascribed to the singlet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{0n}`$.

c. Fe atoms with one C atom nearest neighbour but without next nearest C neighbours, related to doublet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{10}`$.

Alternatively, a model  has been proposed in which all the octahedral sites of the fcc structure are available for occupation and no assumptions are made on the distribution of the C atoms in the second interstitial shell. The various Fe-C environments involved in this type of model are shown schematically in Fig.3, viz.,

a. Fe atoms without nearest neighbours C atoms, associated to the singlet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$.

b. Fe atoms with one nearest neighbor C atom, or Fe atoms with two C atoms nearest neighbours at 900 from each other, related to the doublet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$.

c. Fe atoms with two C atoms placed at opposite nearest sites (1800), ascribed to the doublet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide new experimental and theoretical information on the distribution of C atoms in the octahedral sites of the austenite phase. The work proceeds as follows. First, Mössbauer experiments are performed on a series of alloys with up to 12 at.%.

## II EXPERIMENTAL

### A Alloys, samples and heat-treatments

Five Fe-C compacted graphite alloys were prepared in a medium frequency induction furnace using the sandwich technique in ladle to treat the liquid metal. The necessary amount of Si, Mg, Ce and Ca was added to obtain compacted graphite morphology. The final alloy contained 3.40 wt.%C, 2.35 wt.%Si, 0.58 wt.%Mn, 0.04 wt.%Cu, 0.01 wt.%P, and 0.02 wt.%S.

Samples of 20 mm diameter and 3 mm thickness were taken from ”Y-shape” blocks (ASTM A-395) cast in sand moulds.Samples S1, S2, S3, S4 and S5 (see below) were annealed at 1173K during 30 minutes, quenched in a salt bath and held at 623K during 1, 3, 4, 5 and 10 minutes respectively. The samples for Mössbauer spectroscopy were prepared by conventional grinding techniques to reduce their thickness down to about 70mm, using diamond paste of 6, 1 and 0.1mm for final polishing.

### B X-ray measurements

X-ray measurements were performed in a Philips PW1710 diffractometer using the monochromatic Kα radiation of Cu, in Brag Brentano’s geometry, with a step mode collection of 0.02, 10s by step, with 2$`\theta `$ ranging from 390 to 980. The X-ray patterns, presented in Fig.4, were analysed with the Rietveld method . The actual C concentration in the samples was determined by combining the lattice-parameters ($`a`$) extracted from the diffraction patterns with the known a versus composition relation for fcc Fe-C alloys . The resulting lattice-parameter and the inferred $`y_c`$ values for the various alloys are listed in Table I.

### C Mössbauer experiments

Mössbauer spectra were taken in a transmission geometry using a 57CoRh source of approximately 5mCi intensity and recorded in a standard 512 channels conventional constant acceleration spectrometer. In order to analyse in detail the austenite pattern, the spectra were taken in the velocity range between - 2 and + 2 mm/s. Velocity calibration was performed against a 12 mm thick $`\alpha `$ \- Fe foil. All isomer shifts were referred to this standard at 298K. The spectra were fitted to Lorentzian line shapes using a non-linear least-squares program with constraints. For the effective thickness of the samples analysed no Voigt line-shape correction was necessary .

The results of the Mössbauer experiments are shown in Fig.5. The central subspectra were associated to austenite, whereas the external lines on the spectra to ferrite/martensite phases . The hyperfine parameters and the relative fractions flm ($`l,m`$ = number of C atoms in the first and second coordination shell, respectively) associated to the various Fe environments obtained using the models  referred to in Sect.I are listed in Table II. Concerning the second model , the contribution to the spectra of the doublet $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ associated to Fe sites with two C atoms placed in opposite interstitial sites resulted undetectable by the present technique.

## III THEORETICAL

### A Monte Carlo simulations

The austenite interstitial solid solution is described as a lattice gas of NC carbon atoms and NVa vacancies, distributed in the NC\+ NVa = N=NFe octahedral interstitial sites of the fcc structure (Fig. 1) associated to NFe iron atoms. The occupancy of the first and second interstitial shell was accounted for in three-dimensional MC simulations to calculate the number $`n_{ij}`$ ($`i,j`$ = C or Va) of C-C, C-Va and Va-Va pairs, the relative fractions flm associated to the different Fe environments, and the number Ci0 of C atoms having $`i`$ C atoms in the first interstitial coordination shell and none in the next interstitial shell.

A Fortran 77 routine using the Monte Carlo method, an Ising-type Hamiltonian and periodic boundary conditions was developed. Metropolis method was used to define the probability of the C jumps. A randomly chosen C atom has the probability $`P`$ to jump to an empty interstitial neighbouring site, also randomly chosen, viz.,

$$P=\left\{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{exp}[(\epsilon _{Ti}\epsilon _{Tf})/RT]\text{ if }\epsilon _{_{Tf}}>\text{ }\epsilon _{_{Ti}}}{1\text{ if }\epsilon _{_{Tf}}\epsilon _{_{Ti}}}\right\}$$
(1)
where $`\epsilon _{Ti}`$ and $`\epsilon _{Tf}`$, are the initial and final total energies, respectively, calculated using the relation $`\epsilon _T=n_{CC}\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$. Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$ = 2 $`\epsilon _{CVa}`$ \- $`\epsilon _{CC}`$ is the energy of formation of a C-C pair of nearest neighbour C atoms relative to the individual C atoms (see below), $`n_{CC}`$ is the number of C-C pairs, $`\epsilon _{CC}`$ and $`\epsilon _{CVa}`$ are the interaction energies of the C-C and C-Va pairs, respectively, $`R`$ is the gas constant and $`T`$ is the temperature in Kelvin. If the atom movement decreases the total energy, the jump is allowed ($`P`$=1), but if the total energy increases, the jump is allowed with a probability $`P=exp[(\epsilon _{Ti}\epsilon _{Tf})/RT]`$. The Fe atoms remain still during the simulation, and their positions were only used to calculate the number of $`n_{ij}`$ pairs and the relative fractions flm associated to the different Fe environments.

In order to study the convergence of the results, cells of 43, 63, 83 and 103 were used. For simulations using cell sizes of 63 and higher the $`n_{ij}`$ and flm fractions did not vary, hence cells of 864 Fe atoms and the corresponding number of C atoms were employed to decrease the calculation time. For all C concentrations, the equilibrium of the system was attained approximately at three MC steps, where a MC step is defined as NC attempts of movement of a C atom.

Finally, the occupation of the interstitial sites was characterised using the average number $`z`$ of empty NNIS, which was calculated from the MC results as follows:

$$z=\frac{\underset{i=0}{\overset{12}{}}C_{i0}(12i)}{\underset{i=0}{\overset{12}{}}C_{i0}}$$
(2)
### B Quasichemical model calculations

The energy of formation of a C-C pair that enters in the MC calculation was determined by analysing experimental $`a_c`$ data in terms of the QCA to the statistical mechanics of the Fe-C solutions developed by Bhadeshia . This formalism yields for the activity $`a_c`$

$$a_c=\frac{y_c}{1y_c}\mathrm{exp}[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\text{G}_c}{RT}]\left\{\left(\frac{y_c}{1y_c}\right)^2\left(\frac{1y_c\frac{\overline{\lambda }}{N_{Va}}}{1y_c}\right)\right\}^{\frac{Z}{2}}\mathrm{exp}[\frac{Z\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon }{2RT}]$$
(3)
where $`Z`$ (=12) is the number of NNIS, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Gc is the Gibbs energy of C in austenite relative to graphite. The value of the parameter $`\overline{\lambda }`$ that minimise the Gibbs energy is:

$`\overline{\lambda }={\displaystyle \frac{N_{Va}}{2\sigma }}\left\{1\left[14\sigma y_c\left(1y_c\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\right]\right\}`$

with

$`\sigma =1\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon }{RT}}\right]`$

A linear approximation of Eq.3, appropriate for describing the dilute solution range was fitted to carbon activity data measured at 1423K . A least-squares fit of the equation:

$`RT\mathrm{ln}\left[a_c{\displaystyle \frac{1y_c}{y_c}}\right]=y_cZ\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon +\mathrm{\Delta }\text{G}_c`$

which is shown in Fig.6 yielded $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Gc=445125 cal/mol, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$=149239 cal/mol. This one was adopted in the MC simulations.

The number of pairs $`n_{ij}`$ calculated for $`0<y_c<1`$ using the quasichemical formalism (Table III) are plotted in Fig. 7 using lines. For comparison the $`n_{ij}`$ determined in the MC calculations using $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$ = 1492 cal/mol are plotted using symbols. The inset there gives a comparison for the composition range corresponding to the experimental solubility of C in austenite, viz., $`y_c<0.1`$. There is a very good agreement between the QCA and the MC predictions for $`n_{ij}`$, which encourages a discussion of the MC results for the relative fractions flm of the various Fe environments, as functions of $`y_c`$.

## IV DISCUSSION

### A Monte Carlo versus Mössbauer results

The MC results for the flm as functions of $`y_c`$ are plotted in Fig. 8. According to the present simulations the main contributions to the Mössbauer spectra originate in the Fe environments without C atoms in the first interstitial shell (f00 and f0n). Next in importance is the contribution of environments with one C atom in the first interstitial shell and none in the second (f10). Further, the simulations show that the contribution of Fe atoms having the first and second interstitial shells occupied (fnm) is not negligible, which indicates that this kind of Fe environments should be accounted for in fitting Mössbauer spectra. Figure 8 also demonstrates that the relative fraction associated to Fe atoms with more than one C atom in the first interstitial shell and without C atoms in the second shell (fn0) is negligible. This result contradicts the assumption of one of the models  developed to interpret the Mössbauer pattern of the austenite, which was reviewed in Sect.I. In fact, we find that the contribution of Fe environments with two C atoms either at 900 or 1800 is negligible.

In order to compare the MC results with the results of analysing the present Mössbauer spectra (Table II), the relative fractions f00 and the sum f0 = f00 \+ f0n were chosen as the key quantities in the Fe8C1-y model  and the random model , respectively. The reason for this choice is that Fe environment with C atoms in the first and the second interstitial shells have not been considered by any of the models proposed to reproduce the Mössbauer spectra . Moreover, we have also shown that the fraction of Fe environments with two C atoms in the first shell is negligible according to MC results. Hence, the only fractions that can be determined without ambiguity for these models are f00 and f0, respectively.

A comparison between the f00 and f0 versus composition values extracted from the Mössbauer spectra (open symbols) and the MC simulations (filled symbols) is presented in Fig. 9. According to Fig. 9 the ”random model” underestimates significantly the contribution of the Fe environments without nearest neighbour C atoms. This suggests that in this composition range, some blocking effect of the NNIS in austenite should be accounted for. In agreement with this expectation, the MC results fit remarkably well with the f00 values extracted from Mössbauer experiments when the Fe8C1-y model is adopted, i.e., the model including some blocking effect of the interstitial sites.

Finally, MC simulations have been reported previously  which are based on extracting from Mössbauer measurements a weak C-C repulsion in the first coordination shell (w1 = 830 cal/mol) and a stronger one (w2 = 1730 cal/mol) in the second shell. Such calculations were interpreted  as indications that the Fe8C1-y model is not adequate to represent the austenite phase. Similar results (w1 = 830 cal/mol) were arrived at in ref.  by assuming that pairs of C atoms can occupy the first interstitial shell either at 900 or at 1800. The present MC results, based on energies extracted from thermodynamic data, do not support these results.

### B Account of blocking effects

In Fig. 10 the average number of empty NNIS $`z`$ obtained from the MC simulations is plotted as function of $`y_c`$ (symbols). The $`z`$ values corresponding to the composition of the present experimental alloys are plotted using empty symbols. The dashed line in this graphic refers to the $`z`$ value corresponding to a random mixture, viz., $`z=12(1y_c)`$. The empty symbols in Fig.10 indicate that already in alloys with $`y_c=0.05`$ the NNIS of the C atoms are, on the average, less occupied than in a random mixture. This fact is in qualitative agreement with the ideas behind the excluded-sites model, which motivates the following analysis of the blocking effects in models for $`a_c`$ in austenite.

It has recently been pointed out  that in a strict hard-blocking model, empty sites must be interpreted as blocked sites. This implies that the $`b`$ parameter of the HBESM (Sect.I) should be considered as equal to $`z`$ (Fig.10). Two consequences of such interpretation will be discussed. The first consequence is that the MC results in Fig.10 cannot be represented using the HBESM unless the $`b`$ parameter is allowed to vary with composition. In qualitative agreement with this, Oates et al.  interpreted their own $`z`$ values from MC calculations as a composition dependent $`b`$ parameter, decreasing with the increase in the C content. However, the excluded sites model does not explain the composition dependence of $`b`$, which has stimulated some attempts to improve the simple picture by invoking, e.g., overlapping of the sites excluded by different interstitial atoms . The second consequence of the current  interpretation of the hard-blocking is that Fig. 10 yields $`b`$ (=$`z`$) $`>`$10 in the composition range $`y_c<0.2`$. However, these values cannot be reconciled with those extracted from experimental $`a_c`$ data. The latter are integral and non-integral $`b`$ values falling in the range 3 $`<`$$`b`$ $`<`$5 .

In view of these facts we conclude that the strict form of the excluded-sites model (Sect.I) does not seem able to account for the present blocking effects by using the same $`b`$ values which are known to reproduce the experimental $`a_c`$ data. It is also evident that a more realistic account of such effects would require abandoning the one-parameter formula for $`a_c`$, i.e., what has been considered as the main advantage of the HBESM .

## V SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

In the present study the energy parameters describing the interstitial solution of C in the fcc phase of Fe have been obtained by analyzing experimental thermodynamic data in terms of the quasichemical approximation. These parameters have been used as input information in Monte Carlo simulations, and various key quantities have been obtained. In particular, the composition dependence of various fij ratios, describing the relative weight of the various Fe configurations contributing to the Mössbauer spectra of Fe-C austenite, have been predicted and compared with those derived by modelling the Mössbauer spectra. In this way, two alternative models  for the contribution of the Fe environments have been tested. The present comparison between Mössbauer and theoretical results indicates that a description similar to the Fe8C structure  should be preferred for the Fe-C austenite phase. Such a model  is usually associated to the blocking of some of the nearest neighbour interstitial sites by a C atom. However, the present results cannot be accounted for by the simplest hard-blocking excluded sites model, often used to provide a one-parameter formula for the activity of C in austenite. We believe that the picture of blocking effects in austenite emerging from the present study should be useful in further attempts to refine the current models for thermodynamics of interstitial solutions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was partially supported by Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), PICT 1277, PICT 034517 and PICT-99-03-6507 of the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT). G. J. Z. is member of Carrera del investigador CICPBA.

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FIGURE CAPTIONS

Figure 1: Interstitials sites of the austenite fcc phase. a) $`\mathrm{}`$ : C atom, b) $``$ : Vacancy, c) dotted line: C-Va pair, d) solid line: Va-Va pair and e) dashed line: C-C pair. Fe atoms are placed in the corners of the cube and in the face centres.

Figure 2: Fe environments in the Fe8C1-y model . Filled and open circles correspond to C and Fe atoms, respectively.

Figure 3: Fe environments in the random model . Filled and open circles correspond to C and Fe atoms, respectively.

Figure 4: X-Ray diffractograms of samples S1 to S5. The bottom bar diagrams indicate from top to bottom: ferrite, austenite, martensite and C graphite.

Figure 5: Mössbauer spectra recorded for samples S1 to S5.

Figure 6: Linear fit for activity data of ref.. The values $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$ = 149239 cal/mol and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Gc = 445125 cal/mol were determined.

Figure 7: The number nij (i, j = C or Va) of pairs C-C, C-Va and Va-Va. Squares, triangles and circles represent Va-Va, C-C and C-Va pairs respectively, obtained from Monte Carlo simulations using $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$=1492 cal/mol. a) dash-dotted line: Va-Va, b) dashed line: C-C pairs and c) dotted line: C-Va pairs, calculated using the quasichemical model with the same $`\mathrm{\Delta }\epsilon `$ value. The inset gives a comparison for the composition range corresponding to the experimental solubility of C in austenite, viz., yc $`<`$0.1.

Figure 8: The relative fractions flm (l, m = number of C atoms in the first and second coordination shell, respectively) associated to the various Fe environments obtained using Monte Carlo simulations, as functions of C content.

Figure 9: The relative fractions f00 (circles) and f0 (diamonds) associated to the various Fe environments obtained from Mössbauer data (open symbols) using the models  referred to in Sect.I, compared with results from Monte Carlo simulations (filled symbols).

Figure 10: The average number $`z`$ of empty nearest neighbour interstitial sites of a C atom in austenite calculated as a function of composition using Monte Carlo simulations.

TABLE CAPTIONS

Table I: Lattice parameter (a) determined from the diffractograms using Rietveld  and corresponding to the samples S1, S2, S3, S4 and S5. The C content was determined using the empirical relation of ref.28.

Table II: Hyperfine parameters and relative fractions of the different Fe environments found in austenite using the models of refs. 28 and 29.

Table III: Pair interaction energy and number of nij pairs in the austenite phase obtained using the quasichemical model .

Table I

| Sample | Cell constant a (Å) | $`y_c`$ |
| --- | --- | --- |
| S1 | 3.6101 | 0.0521 |
| S2 | 3.6261 | 0.0761 |
| S3 | 3.6281 | 0.0791 |
| S4 | 3.6301 | 0.0821 |
| S5 | 3.6321 | 0.0861 |

Table II

|  | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{00}`$ | | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{0n}`$ | | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{10}`$ | | | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ | | | $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ | |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Sample | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{f_{00}}{\%}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{f_{0n}}{\%}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{\Delta }}{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{f_{10}}{\%}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{\Delta }}{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{f_1}{\%}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\delta }{mm/s}`$ | $`\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{f_0}{\%}`$ |
| S1 | -0.1 | 431 | 0.051 | 161 | 0.661 | -0.011 | 412 | 0.611 | -0.011 | 432 | -0.071 | 571 |
| S2 | -0.1 | 331 | 0.051 | 231 | 0.671 | 0.011 | 442 | 0.621 | 0.011 | 481 | -0.051 | 521 |
| S3 | -0.1 | 297 | 0.061 | 231 | 0.671 | 0.011 | 483 | 0.631 | 0.021 | 511 | -0.041 | 491 |
| S4 | -0.1 | 271 | 0.061 | 211 | 0.671 | 0.011 | 522 | 0.631 | 0.021 | 501 | -0.041 | 501 |
| S5 | -0.1 | 242 | 0.051 | 252 | 0.671 | 0.011 | 513 | 0.631 | 0.021 | 561 | -0.031 | 441 |

Table III

| Kind of pair | Number of pairs ( nij) | Energy per pair |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Va-Va | nVa-Va = $`\frac{1}{2}`$ Z N (1-yc-$`\lambda `$) | 0 |
| C-Va+Va-C | nC-Va = Z N $`\lambda `$ | $`\epsilon _{CVa}`$ |
| C-C | nC-C = $`\frac{1}{2}`$ Z N (yc-$`\lambda `$) | $`\epsilon _{CC}`$ |