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# Gravitational waves from inspiraling binary black holes

## 1 Introduction

Binary systems made of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) that spiral in toward coalescence because of gravitational-radiation damping are among the most promising candidate sources for interferometric gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, such as the Laser Inteferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), VIRGO, GEO and TAMA . The inspiral waveform will enter the detector frequency band during the last few minutes or seconds of evolution of the binary and the GW community plans to track the signal phase and build up the signal-to-noise ratio by integrating the signal for the time during which it stays in the detector bandwidth. This is achieved by filtering the detector output with a template which is an (approximate) theoretical copy of the observed signal.

Einstein theory predicts that the radiative transverse traceless (TT) gravitational field $`h_{ij}^{\mathrm{TT}}`$, far away from the source, is related to the motion and the structure of the source, at lowest order in the post-Newtonian (PN) expansion, by the quadrupole formula

$$h_{ij}^{TT}(T,D)=\frac{2G}{c^4D}𝒫_{ijkm}(𝑵)\frac{d^2}{dT^2}Q_{km}\left(T\frac{D}{c}\right),$$
(1)
where $`Q_{ij}`$ ($`i,j=1,2,3`$) is the tracefree quadrupole moment of the source; $`D`$ is the distance from the source; $`𝑵=𝑿/D`$ is the unit vector from the source to the observer; $`𝒫_{ijkm}(𝑵)`$ is the TT projection operator onto the plane orthogonal to $`𝑵`$; $`G`$ is the Newton constant; and $`c`$ is the speed of light. From Eq. (1) (and its extensions at higher PN orders) we see that the more precisely we know the two-body motion, the more accurately the PN template $`h_{ij}^{\mathrm{TT}}`$ will describe the “real” gravitational waveform.

In Fig. 1 we show a typical gravitational waveform. The part of the waveform drawn with a continuous line is emitted during the inspiral phase when the two black holes are largely separated, e.g., $`r10GM/c^2`$ where we denoted by $`r`$ the radial separation and by $`M`$ the total mass of the binary system. During the inspiral, the two black holes follow an adiabatic sequence of quasi-circular orbits. The equation of motion in the center-of-mass frame can be written schematically as

$$\frac{d^2𝒙}{dt^2}=\frac{GM𝒙}{r^3}[1+𝒪(ϵ)+𝒪(ϵ^2)+𝒪(ϵ^{5/2})+𝒪(ϵ^3)+\mathrm{}]\times [1+𝒪(\nu )+𝒪(\nu ^2)+\mathrm{}],$$
(2)
where $`𝒙`$ denotes the separation vector between the two bodies and $`r=|𝒙|`$. Equation (2) is characterized by a double expansion: in the PN parameter $`ϵv^2/c^2GM/(c^2r)`$, and in the parameter $`\nu =m_1m_2/M^2`$, where $`m_1`$ and $`m_2`$ are the masses of the two black holes. The parameter $`\nu `$ ranges between $`0`$ (test-mass limit) and $`1/4`$ (equal-mass case).

It is well known that the PN expansion converges badly: as the two bodies draw closer, and enter the nonlinear, strong curvature phase, the motion becomes relativistic, e.g., $`v/c0.3`$, and it is more and more difficult to extract reliable information from the PN series. More specifically, when the distance between the inspiraling black holes shrinks to $`r<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}GM/c^2`$, the PN expansion can no longer be trusted . The dashed line in Fig. 1 depicts the (less known) part of the waveform emitted during the final phase of evolution, when nonlinearities and strong curvature effects become important and nonperturbative analytical and/or numerical techniques should be used to describe it. This final phase includes the transition from adiabatic inspiral to plunge, beyond which the two-body motion is driven (almost) only by the conservative part of the dynamics. For nonspinning binary black holes, the plunge starts at the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) of the binary black holes. Beyond the plunge the two black holes merge, forming a Kerr black hole. As the system reaches the stationary Kerr state, the nonlinear dynamics of the merger resemble more and more the oscillations of the black-hole quasi-normal modes  and the gravitational signal will be a superposition of exponentially damped sinusoids (ring-down waveform). However, if the black holes carry a big spin, it is likely that the plunge stage will never be reached and the late dynamical phase will be much more complicated in this case.

Likely, the first detection of gravitational waves with LIGO/VIRGO interferometers will come from binary systems made of black holes of comparable masses, say with a total mass $`M10M_{}÷30M_{}`$. In fact, if we assume binary black holes are originated by “population synthesis” , the estimated detection rate per year is $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}\times 10^30.6`$ at $`100\mathrm{Mpc}`$ , while if globular clusters are considered as “machines” for making binary black holes  the detection rate per year is $`0.040.6`$ at $`100\mathrm{Mpc}`$ . These numbers, especially the latter, are more optimistic than the estimated detection rate per year for neutron star binaries, which is $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}\times 10^40.3`$ at $`20\mathrm{Mpc}`$  or for neutron star/black hole binaries, which is $`<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}\times 10^40.6`$ at $`43\mathrm{Mpc}`$ .

Although the number of cycles in the LIGO/VIRGO frequency band of gravitational waves emitted by comparable-mass binary black holes is not very high, on the order of $`10200`$, however these particular sources demand a more careful analysis because the gravitational waves the detectors will be sensitive to are emitted during the final stages of inspiral where PN expansion fails. For example, in the nonspinning case the GW frequency at the ISCO (evaluated using the Schwarzschild ISCO) is $`f_{\mathrm{GW}}^{\mathrm{ISCO}}220\mathrm{Hz}`$ for $`M=20M_{}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{GW}}^{\mathrm{ISCO}}167\mathrm{Hz}`$ for $`M=30M_{}`$, well inside the LIGO/VIRGO band. Moreover, black holes could carry big spins which could affect the waveforms, so if data analysis will be done with spinless templates there is considerable chance to miss the gravitational-wave signal.

In the next section we shall summarize what has been done in the literature to cope with those problems and which issues remained to be solved.

## 2 Analytic methods to predict gravitational waveforms

For spinless black hole binaries, we consider the so-called restricted waveform: $`h(t)=v^2\mathrm{cos}(\phi _{\mathrm{GW}}(t))`$, where $`\phi _{\mathrm{GW}}=2\phi `$ with $`\phi `$ the orbital phase and $`v`$ is the invariantly defined velocity $`v=(M\dot{\phi })^{1/3}=(\pi Mf_{\mathrm{GW}})^{1/3}`$. This waveform is obtained disregarding all the multipolar components appearing in the gravitational waveform except the quadrupolar one \[see Eq. (1)\]. To determine in the adiabatic limit the evolution of the GW phase, $`\phi _{\mathrm{GW}}(t)`$, it is sufficient to use the energy-balance equation

$$\frac{d}{dt}=,$$
(3)
relating the orbital energy function $``$ (center-of-mass energy that is conserved in absence of radiation reaction) to the gravitational-flux (or luminosity) function $``$, which are known for quasi-circular orbits as a PN expansion in $`v`$. It is easily shown that Eq. (3) is equivalent to the following system of differential equations \[see, e.g., \]

$$\frac{d\phi _{\mathrm{GW}}}{dt}=\frac{2v^3}{M}\frac{dv}{dt}=\frac{(v)}{Md(v)/dv},$$
(4)
whose solution provides the phasing $`\phi _{\mathrm{GW}}(t)`$ during the inspiral.

### 2.1 “Genuine” post-Newtonian calculations

Let us summarize what we know about the two crucial ingredients $``$ and $``$ entering Eq. (4). The equations of motion of two compact bodies at 2.5 PN approximation were first derived in Refs. . The 3PN equations of motion have been obtained by two separate groups: Damour, Jaranowski and Schäfer  used the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) canonical approach while Blanchet, Faye, and de Andrade  worked with the PN iteration of Einstein equations in harmonic gauge. Recently, Damour et al.  working in the ADM formalism and applying dimensional regularization, uniquely determined the so-called “static” parameter which entered the 3PN equations of motion  and up till then was unknown. Thus, at present time the energy function $``$ is known up to 3PN order.

The gravitational flux emitted by compact binaries was first computed at 1PN order in Ref. . Subsequently, it was determined at 2PN order using a formalism based on multipolar and post-Minkowskian approximations and independently by using a direct integration of the relaxed Einstein equations . Non-linear effects of tails at 2.5PN and 3.5PN orders were computed in Refs. . More recently, the gravitational-flux function for quasi-circular orbits has been derived up to 3.5PN order . However, at 3PN order  the gravitational-flux function depends on an arbitrary parameter which is not fixed by the regularization scheme used by the authors.

Although the knowledge of higher order PN corrections to $``$ and $``$ is a necessary ingredient to extract the phase of gravitational signals emitted by neutron star or black-hole/neutron-star binaries, however it is not by itself sufficient for computing GWs of comparable-mass binaries. As underlined above, this is due to the fact that for these sources LIGO/VIRGO will detect gravitational signals emitted when the motion is relativistic and (genuine) perturbative PN calculations can no longer be trusted.

### 2.2 Post-Newtonian resummation methods

Certainly, the best way of extracting the GW signal emitted by comparable-mass binaries during the last stages of inspiral, would be to solve numerically the Einstein equations of a binary black hole system. Unfortunately, despite the interesting progress made by the numerical relativity community during the recent years , an estimate of the waveform emitted by black-hole binary has not yet been provided. Preliminary results for the plunge, merger and ring-down waveforms were only recently obtained  and they use initial conditions at the ISCO which differ from PN predictions. To overcome this gap and tackle the delicate issue of the late dynamical evolution, various *nonperturbative analytical* approaches have been proposed  to study the motion of two spinning and nonspinning bodies in general relativity.

The main features of the various PN resummation methods can be summarized as follows: (i) they provide an analytic (gauge-invariant) resummation of the orbital energy function $``$ and gravitational flux function $``$, (ii) they can describe the motion (and provide the gravitational waveform) beyond the adiabatic approximation and (iii) they can in principle be extendible to higher PN orders. More importantly, they can be used to provide initial data for black holes just starting the plunge motion which can be used by the numerical relativity community to evolve the full Einstein equations during the merger phase. However, the resummation methods are also based on some assumptions hard to prove rigorously – for example, in deriving the orbital energy and the gravitational flux functions in the comparable-mass case, it is assumed that they are smooth deformations of the analogous quantities in the test-mass limit. Moreover, in absence of an exact solution or of experimental data we can test the robustness and reliability of those resummation approaches only using internal convergence tests.

As underlined at the beginning of Sec. 2, in absence of spins, the two crucial ingredients necessary to extract the GW phasing are the orbital energy function $``$ and the gravitational flux function $``$. In Sec. 2.2.1 we shall discuss a resummation approach which provides a better behaved flux-type function , while in Sec. 2.2.2 we shall summarize another resummation method which provides an improved energy-type function . By combining these two resummation methods, Buonanno and Damour  proposed a way of describing the black hole motion beyond the adiabatic limit, including the transition from inspiral to plunge, whose main features are discussed in Sec. 2.3.

#### 2.2.1 Padé approximants

Starting from the PN expansions of $`(v)`$ and $`(v)`$ Damour, Iyer and Sathyaprakash  proposed a new class of waveforms based on the systematic use of Padé resummation, 111 Let us assume that we know the function $`g(v)`$ only through its Taylor approximant $`G_N(v)=g_0+g_1v+\mathrm{}+g_Nv^NT_N[g(v)]`$. The idea of Padé summation  is to replace the power series $`G_N(v)`$ by the sequence of rational functions
$$P_K^M[g(v)]=\frac{A_M(v)}{B_K(v)}\frac{_{j=0}^Ma_jv^j}{_{j=0}^Kb_jv^j}$$
with $`M+K=N`$ and $`T_{M+K}[P_K^M[g(v)]]=G_N(v)`$ ($`b_0=1`$). For $`M,K+\mathrm{}`$, $`P_K^M(v)g(v)`$. The choice $`K=M`$ or $`K=M+1`$ defined the near diagonal Padé approximants. which is a standard mathematical technique used to accelerate the convergence of poorly converging or even divergent power series. For lack of space we shall discuss briefly only the Padé approximant to the flux function $``$.

In the test mass limit ($`\nu 0`$) the flux function has a simple pole at the light ring ($`v^2=1/3`$). Damour et al.  argued that the origin of this pole is quite general and that we should expect a pole singularity also in the equal-mass case. Thus, after factoring out this pole (defined by what they call the better behaved energy-function $`e(v)`$, see Ref. ), they introduced the better behaved flux-function $`f(v)(1v/v_{\mathrm{pole}})(v)`$. Using the 2.5PN expansion of $`(v)`$ and applying the (near diagonal) Padé resummation 222 See previous footnote. to $`f(v)`$, they derived the $`v^n`$-Padé approximant to the gravitational flux function:

$$_P^n(v;\nu )=\frac{1}{1v/v_{\mathrm{pole}}^n(\nu )}f_P^n(v;\nu ).$$
(5)
To test the reliability of the result, Damour et al. showed that in the test mass limit the (near diagonal) Padé approximant to $`(v;\nu =0)`$, given by Eq. (5), exhibits a very good convergence toward the exact result, which is numerically known when $`\nu =0`$. \[See Fig. 3 in Ref. .\] Thus, arguing that the equal-mass case can be obtained as a smooth deformation of the test mass limit, with deformation parameter $`\nu `$, they propose $`_P^n(v;\nu )`$ as the best estimation of the GW flux for comparable-mass binaries.

#### 2.2.2 Effective-one-body reduction

The resummation technique discussed in this section, the so-called effective-one-body (EOB) approach , was originally inspired by a similar approach introduced by Brézin, Itzykson and Zinn-Justin  to study electromagnetically interacting two bodies. The basic idea, illustrated in Fig. 2, is to map the real conservative two-body dynamics up to 2PN order (see below for the extension at 3PN order) onto an effective one-body problem, where a test particle of mass $`\mu =m_1m_2/M`$, with $`m_1`$, $`m_2`$ the black-hole masses and $`M=m_1+m_2`$, moves in some effective background metric $`g_{\mu \nu }^{\mathrm{eff}}`$. This mapping has been worked out within the Hamilton-Jacobi formalism, by imposing that whereas the action variables of the real and effective description coincide, i.e. $`L_{\mathrm{real}}=L_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, $`_{\mathrm{real}}=_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, where $`L`$ denotes the total angular momentum, and $``$ the radial action variable, the energy axis is allowed to change, $`E_{\mathrm{real}}=f(E_{\mathrm{eff}})`$, where $`f`$ is a generic function. By applying the above rules defining the mapping, it was found that as long as radiation-reaction effects are not taken into account, the effective metric is just a deformation of the Schwarzschild metric, with deformation parameter $`\nu =\mu /M`$.

The effective metric reads :

$$ds_{eff}^2=A(R)c^2dt^2+\frac{D(R)}{A(R)}dR^2+R^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2.$$
(6)
More importantly the reduction to the one-body dynamics provides the improved real Hamiltonian

$$_{\mathrm{real}}^{\mathrm{improved}}(r,p_r,p_\phi )=Mc^2\sqrt{1+2\nu \left(\frac{_{\mathrm{eff}}^\nu (R,P_R,P_\phi )\mu c^2}{\mu c^2}\right)},$$
(7)
where $`(r,p_r,p_\phi )`$ are the ADM coordinates used in the real description. The effective coordinates $`(R,P_R,P_\phi )`$ can be related to $`(r,p_r,p_\phi )`$ by a (generalized) canonical transformation given at 2PN order in Ref.  and at 3PN order in Ref. . The effective Hamiltonian reads:

$$_{\mathrm{eff}}(\nu ,R,P_R,P_\phi )=\mu c^2\sqrt{A(R)\left(1+\frac{A(R)P_R^2}{\mu ^2c^2D(r)}+\frac{P_\phi ^2}{\mu ^2c^2R^2}\right)}.$$
(8)
We refer to the real Hamiltonian (7) as improved real Hamiltonian because being a (partial) PN resummation of the original badly convergent real Hamiltonian $`_{\mathrm{real}}=_{\mathrm{New}}+_{1\mathrm{P}\mathrm{N}}/c^2+_{2\mathrm{P}\mathrm{N}}/c^4\mathrm{}`$, it should better capture the nonperturbative effects of the final stage of the black-hole motion. Remarkably, the mapping between the real and the effective Hamiltonians in Eq. (7) coincides with the mapping obtained in Ref.  in the context of quantum electrodynamics, where these authors mapped the one-body relativistic Balmer formula onto the two-body energy formula.

The EOB approach was then extended at 3PN order in Ref. . The authors found that starting from the 3PN level there are more equations to satisfy than the number of free parameters appearing in the energy-map and in the effective metric. Hence, they suggested the following two possibilities. At the price of modifying the coefficients of the effective metric at 1PN and 2PN levels, and the energy-map (7) as well, it is still possible at 3PN order to (uniquely) map the real two-body dynamics onto the dynamics of a test mass moving on a geodesic \[see for detail Appendix A of Ref. \]. However, this solution looks quite complicated and, more importantly, it does not look very natural to wait to know the 3PN Hamiltonian to derive the matching at 1PN and 2PN levels. The authors then suggested to abandon the hypothesis (used at 2PN order ) that the effective test mass moves along a geodesic and introduced in the Hamilton-Jacobi equation (arbitrary) higher derivatives terms which provide enough coefficients to obtain the matching. Because of these terms the effective 3PN Hamiltonian is not uniquely fixed by the matching rules defined above; the general expression is given by Eq. (3.12) in Ref. . It is interesting to note that also in the non-geodesic case the relation between the effective and real Hamiltonians is still given by Eq. (7).

To have a qualitative understanding of the way the EOB can accelerate the PN convergence, we compare in Figs. 3 the PN-expanded binding energy (on the left panel) to the EOB-resummed binding energy (on the right panel) versus the radial separation, for circular orbits, in the equal-mass case, for two choices of the angular momentum $`L`$ and at different PN orders. \[To obtain the plots we used the 3PN-expanded and EOB-resummed Hamiltonians given by Eqs. (3.12) and (4.27) of Ref.  with $`\omega _s=0`$  and $`z_1=0=z_2`$. We also used the (generalized) canonical transformation between the ADM and the “effective” coordinates given by Eqs. (4.29)–(4.36) of Ref. .\]

Note that the PN-expanded energy oscillates at the various PN orders while the EOB energy has a monotonic behaviour. The fractional difference between the PN-expanded and EOB binding energies is, e.g., for $`L=3.2\mu GM`$, $`2.3\%`$ (2PN order) and $`0.24\%`$ (3PN order) at $`R=9GM/c^2`$ and $`17.6\%`$ (2PN order) and $`2.8\%`$ (3PN oder) at $`R=6GM/c^2`$.

An interesting nonperturbative information of binary black hole systems is the presence of the ISCO defined as the solution of the equations $`/r=0=^2/r^2`$. In the test mass limit (Schwarzschild metric) the ISCO exists and the nonrelativistic energy associated to it is $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{Schw}}=0.01430Mc^2`$. If we consider the PN-expanded real Hamiltonian \[Eq. (4.27) of Ref. \] in the test mass limit and look for the ISCO, we find that at 1PN order $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{PN}\mathrm{exp}}=0.00778Mc^2`$, at 2PN order the ISCO does not exist, while at 3PN order $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{PN}\mathrm{exp}}=0.01129Mc^2`$. On the other hand, because by definition the EOB converges in the test mass limit to the Schwarzschild case, it automatically provides the correct ISCO. Thus, in the same way as Padé approximants, the EOB resummation method, provides by construction the right prediction in the test mass limit. Although we cannot prove that in the comparable-mass case the EOB approach is converging to the right limit, however, we can certainly say that it shows reasonable stability in the predictions at 1PN, 2PN and 3PN orders.

In Fig. 4 we summarize the binding energy at the ISCO predicted by various post-Newtonian  and numerical relativity calculations . The equal-mass ISCO binding energies predicted by the EOB approach at various PN orders are: $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{EOB}}=0.01440Mc^2`$ (1PN order), $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{EOB}}=0.01498Mc^2`$ (2PN order) and $`_{\mathrm{isco}}^{\mathrm{EOB}}=0.01670Mc^2`$ (3PN order). Note that the fractional difference from 1PN to 2PN order is $`4\%`$ and it increases to $`10\%`$ from 2PN to 3PN order. Figure 4 shows that except the very recent result of Ref. , which is much closer (probably due to their definition of the binary orbital frequency) to the PN estimates than the numerical relativity predictions, the PN and numerical relativity results  differ very much.

### 2.3 Beyond the adiabatic approximation: transition inspiral to plunge

Let us now introduce radiation-reaction effects. As discussed in Sec. 2.2.1, Padé approximants  give a good estimate of the energy-loss rate $``$ along circular orbits up to 2.5 PN order. In Ref.  this resummation method was combined with the EOB approach, and the authors deduced a system of ordinary differential equations which describe the late dynamical evolution of a binary–black-hole system. In spherical coordinates $`(\phi ,R,P_\phi ,P_R)`$, their relevant equations are :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dR}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_{\mathrm{real}}^{\mathrm{impr}}}{P_R}},{\displaystyle \frac{dP_R}{dt}}+{\displaystyle \frac{_{\mathrm{real}}^{\mathrm{impr}}}{R}}=0,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\phi }{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_{\mathrm{real}}^{\mathrm{impr}}}{P_\phi }},{\displaystyle \frac{dP_\phi }{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{_{\text{Padé}}(\dot{\phi })}{\dot{\phi }}}.`$ (9)
Differently from Eqs. (2), the above equations go beyond the adiabatic approximation (at least for what concerns the conservative part of the dynamics) and can be analytically or numerically solved to study the transition between the adiabatic inspiral and the plunge.

Let us discuss briefly the main features of this transition in the two extreme limits $`\nu 1`$ and $`\nu =1/4`$ \[see Ref.  for more details\]. The case $`\nu 1`$ refers to binary–black-hole systems in which a very small black hole spirals around a supermassive black hole. They are typical GW sources for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). In this case, it was found  that the transition from adiabatic inspiral to plunge is sharply localized around the ISCO. Ori and Thorne  pointed out that likely LISA could observe the transition from inspiral to plunge with a signal-to-noise ratio of a few.

For equal-mass binaries ($`\nu =1/4`$), the radiation damping effects are important in an extended region on the order of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(Rc^2/GM)1`$ above the naive (Schwarzschild) ISCO $`R=6GM/c^2`$. The transition from inspiral to plunge is rather blurred and the dephasing between the full and the adiabatic waveform becomes visible somewhat before the naive ISCO. The plunge part of the exact waveform looks like a continuation of the inspiral part because the orbital motion remains quasi-circular throughout the plunge.

Figure 5 shows the plunge, merger and ring-down part of the waveform  for equal-mass binary. The ringdown waveform contains only the mode that is damped more slowly, $`l=2`$, $`m=2`$ , at frequency $`\omega _{qnm}1880(10M_{}/M_{\mathrm{BH}})`$ Hz, where $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is the mass of the final black hole formed. The dimensionless rotation parameter is $`a_{\mathrm{BH}}=J_{\mathrm{BH}}/(GM_{\mathrm{BH}}^2)=0.795`$, where we denoted the angular momentum of the final Kerr black hole by $`J_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. The energy emitted during the plunge is $`0.7\%`$ of $`M`$, with a comparable energy loss $`0.7\%`$ of $`M`$ during the ring-down phase . This gives a total energy released of $`1.4\%`$ of $`M`$ to be contrasted with the much larger value $`45\%`$ of $`M`$ recently estimated in Ref. .

Recently Damour, Iyer and Sathyaprakash  investigated the consequences of the EOB waveform for LIGO/VIRGO data analysis. They derived that the GW radiation coming from the plunge and merger can significantly enhance the signal-to-noise ratio for binaries of total mass $`M>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}30}M_{}`$. They found that the signal-to-noise ratio reaches the maximum value of $`8`$ for $`M80M_{}`$ at $`100\mathrm{Mpc}`$. Previous estimations using maximally spinning binaries found that the merger dominates on inspiral. For example Flanagan and Hughes  predicted that the energy released during the plunge is $`10\%M`$ while during the ring-down phase $`3\%M`$ and the signal-to-noise ratio reaches the maximum value of $`40`$ for $`M200M_{}`$ at $`100\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

## 3 Open issues

### 3.1 Spinning binary black holes

The theoretical prediction of GWs from comparable-mass binaries is not only affected by the failure of the PN-expansion, but also by spin effects. Various studies  estimated that if the binary’s holes carry a spin, the evolution in time of the GW phase will be significantly affected by it – for example the spin can introduce modulations and irregularities in the gravitational waveforms. These features can become quite “dramatic” as long as the two spins are big and not aligned or antialigned with the orbital angular momentum.

To give a rough idea of the effects we are alluding to and that we are currently investigating , we sketch in Fig. 6 the Fourier-domain phase $`\varphi (f)`$ of the GW signal versus frequency for various approaches, including possible modulations due to spin effects. The various methods give the same prediction for the Fourier-domain phase up to the frequency where the PN series fails – for example for $`M=20M_{}`$, $`f_{\mathrm{PN}\mathrm{failure}}50\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$, while for $`M=30M_{}`$, $`f_{\mathrm{PN}\mathrm{failure}}33\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$ , which are well inside the LIGO/VIRGO band.

More recently, Levin  claimed that because of spin effects the two-body dynamics could be affected by chaos, or more in general the dynamics, and as a consequence the gravitational waveform, could depend strongly on the initial conditions. However, Schnittman and Rasio reanalysed this issue in Ref. . By calculating the divergence of nearby trajectories for a broad sample of initial conditions they concluded that the divergent time is much greater that the inspiral time. So even if chaos were present it should not affect the detection of inspiral waveforms with LIGO/VIRGO.

To tackle these delicate issues it would be desirable to extend the resummation methods discussed above to the case of spinning binaries. To this respect we notice that the Padé resummation method has been recently extended to the gravitational flux function including spin-orbit and spin-spin effects . Moreover, on the line of the EOB appoach, Damour  has recently mapped the conservative dynamics of two spinning black holes into the one of a test particle moving in an external $`\nu `$-deformed Kerr metric. It will be very important to complete Damour’s analysis by including radiation reaction effects and describe the late nonadiabatic dynamics of spinning black hole binaries.

### 3.2 Possible strategy for not missing the GW signal from comparable-mass binary black holes

In sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 we discussed the best theoretical gravitational waveforms currently available. These waveforms should certainly be used in detecting and extracting physical parameters (masses and spins) for GWs emitted by neutron-star binaries and neutron-star/ black hole binaries. On the other hand the direct application of these templates to detect GWs from comparable-mass black-hole binaries is less straightforward. Indeed, the approaches analysed in sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 are inevitably affected by approximations and assumptions, introduced to overtake the fact that the two-body problem is known only up to a certain PN order. It would be important for detection purposes to quantify such uncertainties and take them into account when building the best theoretical GW templates. If not, the risk is to miss the GW signal. A possibility  is to deform and expand (e.g., by introducing new parameters), the template family generated by the resummation method having better PN convergent properties, in such a way that the new (higher-dimensional) template space could (i) include, or at least be not very far, from all the other approaches characterized by worse PN convergent properties and (ii) describe signals (hopefully the real GW signal!) whose functional form cannot be described by any of the original template families. To reach this goal the ideas underlying the Fast Chirp Transform technique, recently proposed in Ref. , deserves attention. Moreover, for comparable-mass binaries the inclusion of spin effects and the enlargement of the template space, hopefully, should not make the total number of templates huge, because the number of cycles expected in the LIGO/VIRGO band for nonspinning binaries is already rather small $`20100`$. \[The situation would be different for neutron star or neutron-star/black hole binaries for which in the nospinning case we expect a number of cycles on the order of $`10^410^6`$.\]

The new template space  could be used for on-line search. When an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio is found, say $`>\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}8}`$, then the output signal could be re-analysed by templates provided, e.g., by the PN Taylor-expanded, Padé approximant and EOB methods, to (i) determine which approach better describe the real signal and (ii) extract the binary’s parameters, as the masses and the spins.

The author wishes to thank T. Damour, Y. Chen, D. Chernoff, B.S. Sathayprakash, K.S. Thorne and M. Vallisneri for fruitful collaborations and/or very useful discussions and suggestions. Note added. While this manuscript was being refereed, an interesting paper of Blanchet  appeared on the web. He compares the minimum energy of circular orbits for equal-mass–binary, at 3PN order, with the numerical-relativity results of Ref.  finding good agreement.

## References


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# HD 304373, the second case of 1O/2O double–mode Cepheid in the Galaxy

## 1 Introduction

The All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) is a project started at the beginning of 1996; its ultimate goal is to detect any kind of photometric variability present on a large area of the sky (Pojmańsky 1997). The aim has been pursued by means of an automated mount equipped with a 716x512 pixel meade CCD camera, a 135-mm f/1.8 lens and an $`I`$–band filter. The instrument is located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and in the first three years it surveyed fifty 2x3 deg2 fields. Detailed descriptions of the project, the instrument, the data reduction and analysis can be found in three dedicated papers (Pojmańsky 1997, 1998 and 2000).

In 2001 we started a careful re-examination of the pulsating stars included in the ASAS catalogue, to find further confirmations of the characteristics of Cepheids with $`P<`$8 d, RR Lyr stars and High Amplitude Delta Scuti stars. Such a re-examination can be useful to detect new double–mode radial pulsators, which are among the most elusive variable stars. Their discovery constitutes a continuous observational challenge in the study of stellar oscillations, especially in the Galaxy, where selection effects are very important. From a physical point of view, the period ratio directly allows us to identify the pulsation modes. In turn, the matching of the observed period ratios constitutes a powerful and practical tool to model the interior of stars. Pardo & Poretti (1997) provide a systematic frequency analysis of the available photometry of the galactic double–mode Cepheids. Thirteen stars show the fundamental ($`F`$) period ($`P_0`$) and the first overtone (1O, $`P_1`$) periods, ($`P_1/P_0`$ between 0.7127 and 0.6968), only one shows the 1O and second (2O, $`P_2`$) overtone periods (CO Aur, $`P_2/P_1`$=0.8008). Therefore, after the detection of a large number of double–mode Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds, it is quite evident that the discovery of new double–mode Cepheids, and in particular new 1O/2O cases, can help to compare Cepheids of our Galaxy with those in other ones.

ASAS 112843 –5925.7 has been classified as a RR Lyr variable with $`P`$=0.9220 d (Pojmański 2000). The light curve has an amplitude of 0.22 mag in $`I`$–band. It looks scattered, but no second periodicity has been suspected during the automatic period search, performed by analysis of variance method (Pojmański 1998). The simbad database identifies ASAS 112843 –5925.7 as HD 304373$``$TYC 8629-00990-1 (spectral type F8). tycho photometry yields $`B_T`$=11.22$`\pm `$0.06 and $`V_T`$=10.57$`\pm `$0.05 (H$`ø`$g et al. 2000).

## 2 Data analysis

The original dataset consists of 544 measurements in the $`I`$–band. They span about 1000 d, from 1997 April to 2000 January. The first 209 measurements were collected in 40 days in April and May 1997. Later, the survey started again in October 1998 and lasted until January 2000, only stopped for the heliacal conjunction (a gap of 70 day from August to October 1999). Thanks to this extensive coverage, the spectral window shows the 1 cy-1 peak reduced at only 53% of the power. In many occasions HD 304373 was measured several times during every night and therefore the alias at 1 cd-1 is also reduced (55% of the power). Hence, the dataset on HD 304373 appears very appropriate for an accurate frequency analysis. In order to detect the frequency content of HD 304373 we applied the same technique used by Pardo & Poretti (1997). The least–squares power spectrum method (Vaniĉek 1971) allowed us to detect one by one the constituent of the light curve. After each detection, we refined the frequency values by applying the MTRAP code (Carpino et al. 1987), particularly suitable for the double–mode pulsation as it keeps the relationships between the detected terms (i.e., 2$`f_1`$, $`f_1+f_2`$, …) locked.

A quick glance to the original dataset was enough to discover the double–mode nature of HD 304373: two terms at $`f_1`$=1.084 cd-1 and $`f_2`$=1.345 cd-1 clearly stand out, but a very high peak appeared at a very low frequency in the subsequent power spectrum. Therefore, we repeated the analysis by subdividing the original datasets into subsets (Tab. 1) as the low–frequency peak suggested the presence of systematic errors. In the first subset we detected not only the $`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$ term, but also 2$`f_1`$ and, more hidden in the noise, $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$. In the second dataset we detected again the $`f_1`$, 2$`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$ terms, but also the $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$ and 3$`f_1`$ ones, which are clearly over the noise. In the third dataset we only detected the $`f_1`$, 2$`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$ terms. The second and third subsets had the same mean magnitude, while the first one showed a remarkable systematic shift (Tab. 1). Therefore, we built up a homogenous dataset by shifting all the magnitudes of the first subset by –0.029 mag.

The results of the frequency analysis of such a dataset is shown in Fig. 1. The first power spectrum is dominated by the $`f_1`$=1.0842 cd-1 term and its alias structure. This frequency is coincident with that reported in the ASAS database. The low peak at $`f_2`$=1.3454 cd-1 becomes the highest in the second spectrum. The double–mode nature of HD 304373 is clearly established looking at these two panels. The subsequent analysis detected the 2$`f_1`$ term (left panel in the middle row) and the coupling term $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$ (right panel in the middle row). The presence of the coupling term ruled out the possibility of a binary system composed of two pulsating stars. In the bottom row the signal detection is more complicated. If the 3$`f_1`$ term can be recognized in the fifth panel, the sixth one looks characterized by a bunch of frequencies around integer values of cd-1. One peak structure is at the sinodical month ($`f`$=0.034 cd-1) and its aliases, reflecting the Full–Moon interference: this spurious peak is quoted by Pojmański (1998) as a common result in his period search in the ASAS database. Another one is close to the $`f_1`$ value, just at the limit of the frequency resolution. Its presence can be explained pointing out that the amplitude of the $`f_1`$ term results smaller in the third dataset (0.067$`\pm `$0.003 mag) than in the other two (0.089$`\pm `$0.002, 0.090$`\pm `$0.002 mag). This term disappears analyzing only the first two datasets combined together. We also modified the last 90 measurements by amplifying the contribution of the first frequency, increasing its amplitude by a factor 1.33. In such a way, we obtained a dataset in which the $`A_1`$ term is constant. The frequency analysis detected the $`f_1,f_2,2f_1,f_1+f_2,3f_1`$ and $`f`$=0.034 cd-1terms, but no peak close to $`f_1`$. Therefore, it is definitely established that the smaller $`A_1`$ amplitude in the third dataset is responsible for the observed doublet.

## 3 Least–squares fits and Fourier decomposition

Table 1 reports the parameters of the least–squares fits obtained by means of the formula

$$I(t)=I_o+\underset{z}{}A_z\mathrm{cos}[2\pi f_z(tT_o)+\varphi _z]$$
(1)
where $`f_z`$ is the generic frequency, which can be an independent frequency ($`f_1`$and $`f_2`$), a harmonic (2$`f_1`$and 3$`f_1`$) or the cross coupling term $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$. The fits of the three subsets are reported for comparison purposes; the procedure to identify the terms present in the light curve of HD 304373 is the same used by Pardo & Poretti (1997, see their Tab. 3), but here we failed to build a homogenous dataset owing to the differences in amplitudes. Indeed, the amplitude variation of $`f_1`$ looks big; its instrumental origin is not confirmed by the values of the $`f_2`$ term, which remains constant among the three subsets. Moreover, the amplitude ratio $`R_{21}`$ (0.18$`\pm `$0.02, 0.22$`\pm `$0.02 and 0.18$`\pm `$0.04) and the phase difference $`\varphi _{21}`$ (3.89$`\pm `$0.20, 3.78$`\pm `$0.18, 3.62$`\pm `$0.33 rad) of the $`f_1`$ term remain constant. That does not support a beating modulation between two close frequencies as in this case the shape of the $`f_1`$ light curve should vary following the beat phase. Our analysis clearly indicates a sudden decrease of the $`f_1`$ amplitude, but it is not able to point out the reason precisely. Therefore, we considered the 454 measurements between JD 2450546 and 2451402 as the final dataset, adjusted for the systematic differences.

In order to fit the $`f_1`$ curve three harmonics are necessary, while the $`f_2`$ curve does not require any harmonics. Therefore it is possible to calculate the Fourier parameters only in the former case. The values obtained from the final dataset are $`\varphi _{21}=3.80\pm `$0.11 rad, $`\varphi _{31}=1.75\pm `$0.23 rad and $`R_{21}`$=0.21$`\pm `$0.02. Figure 2 shows the light curves of the two periods of HD 304373: the upper curve was obtained by subtracting the $`f_2`$ and $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$ terms from the measurements, the lower one by subtracting $`f_1`$, 2$`f_1`$, 3$`f_1`$, $`f_1`$+$`f_2`$. Note also that the spurious term at $`f`$=0.034 cd-1 was not removed from the data. When considering it, the least–squares parameters don’t change in a significant way and the residual rms decreases just a little, to 0.019 mag.

## 4 The double–mode pulsation

Our analysis detected the simultaneous excitation of two modes in the light curve of HD 304373: $`P_1`$=0.922405 d and $`P_2`$=0.743241 d. The resulting ratio, $`P_2/P_1`$=0.8058, is that expected for Cepheids pulsating in the 1O and 2O radial modes. In the Galaxy there was only one similar star so far, i.e., CO Aur ($`P_1`$=1.78303 d, $`P_2`$=1.42778 d, $`P_2/P_1`$=0.8008; Mantegazza 1983).

Figure 3 shows the $`P_2/P_1`$ ratio as a function of $`\mathrm{log}P_1`$ period (Petersen diagram) for 1O/2O pulsators in the Large (Alcock et al. 1999; Soszyński et al. 2000) and in the Small (Udalski et al. 1999) Magellanic Clouds. The parabolic fit of the LMC stars shown in Fig. 3 is after Soszyński et al. (2000), while the linear fit of the SMC stars has been worked out again. Figure 3 gives evidence that the $`P_2/P_1`$ values are not well separated in the Magellanic Clouds. It implies that the $`P_2/P_1`$ ratio is less sensitive than the $`P_1/P_0`$ ratio to the difference in metallicity between the Magellanic Clouds. Indeed, the $`P_1/P_0`$ ratio for each galaxy defines three well separated lines in the Petersen diagram (see Fig. 1 in Soszyński et al. 2000).

The $`P_2/P_1`$ value related to HD 304373 is quite normal for both samples and very similar to that of macho\*05:30:11.7 -69:52:02, a star belonging to the LMC (Fig. 3). Moreover, this ratio cannot be matched by the galactic composition models proposed by Morgan & Welch (1997), while it can be by the SMC and LMC ones. If HD 304373 is a normal Pop. I star, its $`P_2/P_1`$ value suggests a small dependence on metallicity, as it does not change in a environment as the Milky Way, which is more metallic than the Clouds.

We obtain $`<I>`$=16.51 (standard deviation $`\pm `$0.12 mag) considering the eleven 1O/2O Cepheids with 0.80$`<P_1<`$1.00 d in the LMC (see Tab. 2 in Soszyński et al. 2000). Assuming $`mM`$=18.5 for LMC stars, we get $`<M_I>`$=–2.0 for 1O/2O Cepheids. Therefore, $`I`$=9.70 locates HD 304373 at 2.2 Kpc from the Sun. Taking into account the galactic coordinates ($`l=293^o`$, $`b=2^o`$), HD 304373 is 77 pc away from the galactic plane. These considerations support the hypothesis that HD 304373 is a disk Pop. I star. Christensen-Dalsgaard & Petersen (1995) pointed out that the matching between the F/1O ratios for galactic pulsators and the theoretical models occurs for metallicities smaller than the solar value of 0.017–0.020; if that applies for the 1O/2O pulsators too, a metallicity close to 0.010 allows the $`P_2/P_1=0.8058`$ and $`P_1`$=0.922405 d values to reasonably fit the theoretical models (Christensen-Dalsgaard & Petersen 1995; Morgan & Welch 1997).

Moreover, we notice that the scatter of the $`P_2/P_1`$ values observed in both Clouds is intrinsic, i.e., originated from slightly different physical conditions inside the stars (it is much larger than the error bars on the period ratios, typically a few units of 10-5, since the periods are known with high accuracy). Therefore, the weak effect of the metallicity can be masked by other reasons (see also Fig. 4 in Christensen-Dalsgaard & Petersen 1995).

As in the case of CO Aur, there is no significant contribution of the 2$`f_2`$ harmonic in the light curve of HD 304373, i.e., it is perfectly sine–shaped within error bars. This is quite common among the 1O/2O pulsators. On the other hand, the $`\varphi _{21}`$, $`\varphi _{31}`$ and $`R_{21}`$ values found for the 1O light curve of HD 304373 are in excellent agreement with the values observed in the 1O light curves of 1O/2O pulsators in the Magellanic Clouds.

## 5 Conclusions

In each class (HADS, RR Lyr and Cepheids) the shortest period stars are typical of metal–poor environments. The more evident cases are the very–short period SX Phe stars observed in globular clusters. HD 304373 has a very short fundamental period for a classical Cepheid: assuming $`P_1/P_0`$=0.70, we obtain $`P_0`$=1.32 d. This result supports the previous discussion, suggesting a low metallicity for HD 304373 and explaining why its $`P_2/P_1`$ value is so similar to that of 1O/2O pulsators in the Magellanic Clouds.

From a methodological point of view, we identified the presence of a peak close to $`f_1`$ as the result of a smaller amplitude in the last observing season. No reasonable physical explanation has been found and its instrumental origin is likely. We also detected the influence of a non perfect sky subtraction or flat–fielding in presence of the Full Moon. It is interesting to note that this instrumental effect makes HD 304373 brighter at the New Moon and fainter at the Full Moon. We stress the importance of checking the homogeinity of the time–series on pulsating stars before processing them.

###### Acknowledgements.

The research has made use of the simbad database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. The authors wish to thank L. E. Pasinetti for help and encouragement in this work, E. Antonello, L. Mantegazza, S.M. Morgan, J.O. Petersen, L. Szabados and the referee, P. Moskalik, for useful comments on a first draft of the manuscript.


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# 1 Variation with time of the number of customers for various ℎ = 0.000002 to 0.02 at fixed ϵ=0.05, again from 20 lattices 5001×5001.

Social Percolation and the Influence of Mass Media

Ana Proykova1 and Dietrich Stauffer

Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University,

D-50923 Köln, Euroland

1 Department of Atomic Physics, University of Sofia, Sofia-1126, Bulgaria

Abstract: Mass media shift the percolative phase transition observed in the marketing model of Solomon and Weisbuch.

Keywords: percolation, external field, customers, cinema

“Social percolation”  was invented to describe how a new product can penetrate a consumer market by word-of-mouth. Imagine a new movie comes out, and person $`i`$ goes to the cinema if and only if (s)he hears from neighbours that the movie quality $`q`$ is above the own quality expectations $`p_i`$. Initially, $`q=1/2`$, and the $`p_i`$ are distributed randomly between 0 and 1. If a movie is a success, the next movie has its quality $`q`$ lowered by 0.001; if the movie is a flop, the next movie will be better by 0.001. In this way, $`q`$ moves towards the percolation threshold $`p_c`$ (=0.593 on the square lattice): self-organized criticality .

It has been suggested  to include the effect of mass media through advertizing, in addition to the traditional word-of-mouth propaganda from the neighbours . In percolation theory such a role is played by the ghost field $`h`$ which couples each site to a ghost site with probability $`1\mathrm{exp}(h)`$, just as telephone links via sattelite may keep together a widely scattered family. This ghost field $`h`$ plays the role of a magnetic field in Ising models and rounds the phase transition at the critical point. However, since social percolation is a dynamic process, the analogy of the present simulations with magnetic or ghost fields is not complete.

We thus assume that with a certain probability $`h`$ every site $`i`$ initially is informed about the quality $`q`$ of a new movie; the informed sites with own expectation $`p_i`$ below $`q+0.001`$ visit the movie. Then they tell their neighbours, the normal social percolation process starts, the mass media no longer play any role. (The number 0.001 is added to $`q`$ to account for slightly different convincing powers of movie revies compared with neighbour opinions.)

When is a movie called a success, causing $`q`$ to decrease for the next film? In traditional social percolation without mass media, the criterion was the existence of a cluster of movie goer extending from one side of the lattice (Hollywood) to the other (New York). With a ghost field one always has an infinite cluster, just as with a magnetic field one gets a finite magnetization. In our case, through mass media one single site on the border opposite to the initially informed border of the lattice can visit the movie. Thus a percolating cluster no longer means success. Instead, we define a movie to be a success if at least a fraction $`ϵ`$ of all people go to this movie; typically, $`ϵ`$ is five percent. We no longer have to initialize one lattice border as being informed; those sites which are convinced by the mass media (typically $`h=0.0002`$) are the starting sites of the word-of-mouth propaganda.

We start with one movie having quality $`q`$; depending on whether or not the threshold fraction $`ϵ`$ of movie visits is reached, the quality is changed to 0.499 or 0.501. Then this movie is put onto the market, with a new initial distribution of people convinced my mass media. This process is repeated again and again for 200 movies, and during this iteration the resulting quality $`q`$ first changes linearly in time until it reaches its stationary value $`q_f`$ and fluctuates about this value. To avoid the problems discussed by Huang , we do not change the $`p_i`$ during the simulation of one movie; each new movie gets a new distribution of $`p_i`$.

Fig.1 shows how the number of customers in a market of 25 million varies as a function of time (= number of iterations = number of new movies introduced to the market). The quality $`q`$ as a function of time starts from zero and moves linearly to its stationary value about which it fluctuates thereafter. Fig.2 shows this final quality $`q`$ as a function of $`h`$ and $`ϵ`$. Markets above a million show no significant size effects, Fig.3. In the stationary state, the distribution of the numbers of customers shows no clear distinction between hits and flops, in agreement with reality .

We also coupled the advertising success $`h`$ with the quality expectations by assuming a probability $`(1+p_i)h`$ or $`(2p_i)h`$ to believe initially the mass media, instead of just $`h`$. However the only role of this coupling, Fig.4, is the increase of the initial population of buyers (movie watchers) and the decrease of the time, necessary to convince reasonable amount of people to go. Most probably this is good for the trading (movie-making) company.

The plot of $`L=2001`$ with various $`ϵ`$ (not shown) shows the same pattern already observed in Fig.1 for the decoupled case ($`L=5001`$). Again the role of coupling the advertisment to the internal expectations is the increase of the initial number of customers.

In summary we see that a moderate amount of advertising decreases the time after which the number of customers and the quality of the product reaches the stationary state (provided the cost of advertising is smaller than the resulting profit).

This work was supported by the Sofia-Cologne university partnership.


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# Cosmogenesis Backgrounds, Experiment Depth and the Solar Neutrino TPC

## 1 Introduction

A solar neutrino Time Projection Chamber (TPC) provides unique and very powerful information about solar neutrinos, their nuclear parents and their fluxes (electron and non-electron), which ultimately translates into better measurements of the neutrino mass and mixing parameters .

The TPC measures only $`\nu e`$ elastic scattering, and determines the electron direction and kinetic energy. This information allows reconstruction of the incident neutrino energy.

Directionality also allows to use only electrons recoiling away from the sun, effectively eliminating most background events. The rest of the background events is eliminated by subtracting a 12-hours delayed coincidence, very much the same way as the SuperKamiokande experiment can extract a clean solar neutrino sample mixed with a much larger non-directional background . In that experiment, however, low recoil angle and large multiple scattering conspire to destroy any directional information that could help to determine the neutrino energy. The TPC considered here looks at events with large scattering angle and low multiple scattering .

This paper is written for the sole purpose of confirming that this detector can work at moderate depths. This has been the subject of much skepticism in public meetings, and besides the main results, consistency checks are offered. There are several advantages in working at moderate depths:

* Virtually all available underground sites can accommodate this detector, allowing us to concentrate on the aspects that really matter: low excavation costs, low radon, quality and quantity of dust contamination, and strong laboratory support.
* This detector will be housed in a gigantic hall. Low overburden reduces the civil engineering complexity.
* Very deep sites have unacceptable rock temperatures, making the assembly and operation more difficult and expensive.
* Moderate depths allow the plentiful observation of certain background events, which provide excellent calibration of the TPC performance. These include :

+ $`O(10^6)`$ straight, minimum-ionizing cosmic rays per year, which allow a complete calibration of the electric field, gain, electronics amplification, electron lifetime, and diffusion, without a need for separate hardware and software. A TPC “without moving parts” minimizes failures and avoids costly and potentially contaminating accesses.
    + $`O(10^5)`$ delta rays above 100 keV per year. These have a well-known kinematic relation between the angle and energy of the delta ray, providing free and very accurate calibration of the detector resolution.

In section 2, we introduce concepts useful to the analysis. The main results are presented in section 3, divided into analyzes of cosmogenesis backgrounds generated above and below ground. Depths between 1500 and 3000 mwe are considered. In section 4, we cross check our results against other, published results and draw the conclusions.

## 2 Overview of the TPC and cosmogenesis

In the following, we consider a TPC whose parameters have been outlined in . Briefly, as shown in Fig.1, it is a TPC of 4000 cubic meters volume, surrounded by a 1.5 meters of radiopure, hydrogen rich material (either plastic or water ice), which forms the inner shielding. Surrounding the inner shielding are 30 centimeters of steel, forming the pressure vessel and outer shielding. The weight of the inner shield is 1.9 kilotons, and the weight of the iron is 3.6 kilotons. The last five centimeter thick layer of the inner shield, surrounding the TPC, weighs 59 tons. We mention it here because it is particularly helpful for instantly estimating self-shielded backgrounds (see section 2).

The TPC contains 7.6 tons of gas at ten atmospheres, and the gas is a mixture of helium (97%) and methane (3%), for a total methane weight of 840 kg. The TPC will also contain approximately 100 kg of electrodeposited copper and 2 kg of sense wires. With these conditions, 14 meters of gas (the diameter of the chamber) represent approximately 0.14 Compton interaction lengths, indicating that roughly one in seven 1 MeV gamma rays entering the chamber will interact with the gas.

We have discussed elsewhere  that recoiling electrons will generate a track of 9 cm length for 100 keV electrons and of 1.8 m for 600 keV electrons. The maximum drift time is 8.3 milliseconds, so that the TPC snaps an electronic picture of the gas volume 120 times per second. Whenever an event is encountered, a time interval around the event of $`\pm 9`$msec is considered for vetoing.

The signal (a single electron) is readily simulated by $`\beta `$ radiation inside the active volume, and $`\gamma `$ radiation from any source, generating a Compton scattering inside the chamber.

When looking at the volume distribution, the TPC occupies about 62% of the volume in Fig.1. Most cosmic rays will track through the sensitive volume and provide a direct veto that eliminates all short-lived radionuclides as well as neutrons, which thermalize and are absorbed in about 0.1 msec in the inner shield. About 25% of cosmic rays crossing the steel shell will not cross the active volume and all types of radioactive backgrounds produced by them will have to be considered.

When looking at the weight distribution, however, the active volume of the TPC only has a 0.13% share of the total weight. Cosmogenesis backgrounds produced outside the active volume have a very small chance of interacting with the gas.

In , it was found that background rates of around 600 events per day, above 100 keV and before directional cuts, result in a non-dominant background subtraction error over two years of data taking. Over a longer period of time, even background rates at the level of one thousand events per day will not drastically affect the final precision of the experiment.

### 2.1 Cosmic generation of radionuclides

At any given depth, the quantity of a particular long-lived daughter $`i`$, generated in a given sample of mother nuclei $`j`$, can be described by a charging capacitor law

$$N_c(t)=ϵ_{ij}(h)\tau (1e^{t/\tau })$$
(1)
where $`\tau `$ is the daughter nuclide lifetime. The variable $`ϵ_{ij}(h)`$ carries all the information about the reaction probability,

$$ϵ_{ij}(h)=<\sigma _{ij}(h)>N_t\mathrm{\Phi }(h).$$
(2)
Here $`N_t`$ is the number of target nuclei, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(h)`$ the depth-dependent flux, and $`<\sigma _{ij}>`$ the cross-section for the process, averaged over the depth-dependent spectrum,

$$<\sigma _{ij}(h)>=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Phi }(h)}𝑑E\sigma _{ij}(E)\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }(E,h)}{dE}.$$
(3)
The values of $`ϵ_{ij}(h)`$ for dominant reactions are given in table 1.

The cross section depends strongly on the depth. Besides the overburden attenuation, nuclide activation is dominated by hadronic showers at sea level ($`h=10.33`$ meters of water equivalent, mwe), by muon capture at intermediate depths and by fast muons at all depths below 100 mwe .

The activity during charge-up is

$$A_c(t)=ϵ_{ij}(h)(1e^{t/\tau }).$$
(4)
and after a long time one obtains:

$$N_c(\mathrm{})=ϵ_{ij}(h)\tau ,A_c(\mathrm{})=ϵ_{ij}.$$
(5)
For a sample that is charged up at the surface and taken deep underground, the discharging capacitor equations hold:

$$N_d(t)=N_0e^{t/\tau },A_d(t)=\frac{N_0}{\tau }e^{t/\tau }.$$
(6)
$`N_0`$ is, in all practical cases, close to $`N_c(\mathrm{})`$. It can be reduced by up to two orders of magnitude for materials which are mined or taken deep underground, and are exposed to surface radiation during transportation or processing before storing underground again.

Cosmic fluxes, their energy and angular dependence were kindly provided by E. Nolte . Dr. Nolte provided us also with the measured cross sections for nuclide production by fast muons, and the measured muon capture cross sections to estimate this source of backgrounds as well .

### 2.2 Cross section approximations

The following approximations were used when parameterizing nuclear cross sections. In processes involving a nucleus and an electromagnetic particle such as a muon, electron, or photon most activation occurs by exciting the giant dipole resonance through the exchange of a quasi-real 17 MeV photon. The resonance area is roughly proportional to the product of the nucleus charge Z and nucleus atomic number A. The resonance decays predominantly into a heavy nucleus and a nucleon. If the total resonant cross section is known, we multiply it by two to obtain an upper limit on total or partial activities where needed.

According to , the total radionuclide production cross section is assumed to depend on energy as:

$$\sigma (E)=\sigma _0E^{0.75}.$$
(7)
The energy dependence includes secondary production by bremsstrahlung photons and high energy delta rays.

As will be shown in section 3, activation by cosmic rays at sea level is the dominating contribution to our backgrounds. Since the hadronic spallation cross sections of interest are not 100% measured , we estimated the missing cross sections using Fig.2, which plots the muon-nuclide cross sections, all known, against the cosmic hadron-nuclide production rates , not all known.

### 2.3 Compton absorption length

The volume-large TPC is surrounded by some 4 mwe of passive material (see Fig.1). This material is self-shielded, meaning that its thickness $`L`$ is much greater than the Compton absorption length $`\lambda `$, and only a very small fraction of the gamma rays produced within the device enters the active volume.

Under the conditions in which the inner shield is self-shielded, yet is thin compared to the dimensions of the TPC, the fraction $`f`$ of gamma rays entering the TPC, can be estimated analytically:

$$f=\frac{1}{2L}_0^1d\mathrm{cos}\theta _0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑xe^{x/\lambda \mathrm{cos}\theta }=\frac{\lambda }{4L}$$
(8)
where $`x`$ is the distance between the origin point of the emitted photon and a TPC wall and $`\theta `$ is the emission direction angle with respect to the perpendicular of this wall.

The factor of 1/2 in front of the right hand side of the equation takes into account those gamma rays that point away from the TPC. The result, by no means new, is displayed for two reasons: first, it makes very clear that radiopurity near the TPC is of paramount importance, and second, it allows for a quick cross check of more complex simulations by reducing the backgrounds to those originating from a smaller, known fraction of the shield.

The real life attenuation length of gamma rays originating outside the TPC involves also geometric factors and energy cuts (once a photon energy falls below 200 keV, it cannot generate a candidate). They have been calculated with GEANT and are shown in Fig.3.

### 2.4 Radionuclides of interest

Considering the activation of inner shielding and gas, all daughters of C, He, and possibly O (if different type of inner shielding is chosen) need to be considered. No radionuclide has a half-life exceeding two months, meaning that activation above ground decays away during any reasonable construction and assembly time. The light radionuclides and their radioactivity parameters are shown in table 2.

For the steel shielding and copper strips, we also need to consider isotopes with half-lives exceeding several months (see table 3). These are activated at the surface.

## 3 Results.

### 3.1 Above ground activation

There is no long-term above-ground activation of the inner shield or gas, as all possible daughters have half-lives well below one year. The two components that may be activated with long-lived radionuclides are the steel vessel and the copper strips and grids. We combine the tables of the preceding section to produce table 4, which evaluates the total rate of photons and background rates from the corresponding components. The above ground exposure time was chosen to be infinite.

We find already the largest background from 60Co activated in the copper immediately after being taken underground. A two year wait cuts the background down to 4000 events per day. However, copper will be electrodeposited on plastic to produce both strips and the various HV grids. Electrodeposition will probably strongly reduce most radio-impurities, including certainly cobalt. It should also be mentioned that tracks originating in the detector plane will look anomalous (the track beginning will be recorded by a single wire or strip, for example).

### 3.2 Underground activation: TPC gas

Table 5 shows the activity in the TPC gas at four depths varying from 1500 to 3000 mwe. As can be seen, a 11C component dominates, however the backgrounds are still a few orders of magnitude below the expected TPC backgrounds of a few hundred events per day. Hydrogen is inert from a cosmogenesis point of view, while He contributes a modest tritium background on which we do not trigger.

### 3.3 Underground activation: inner shield

Table 6 shows the activity in the inner shield at four depths varying from 1500 to 3000 mwe. The table considers the cosmic rays which enter the TPC (all the short-lived radionuclides are removed).

The cosmic rays whose total induced activity needs to be considered are those which do not enter the TPC and are not vetoed. Their total contribution to the background is related via Eq. (8) to the number of cosmic rays which cross the inner $`\lambda `$/4-thick layer of plastic but avoid the TPC. These are approximately 0.2% of the total cosmic rays crossing the TPC. We conclude that the contribution from non-vetoed short-lived species is negligibly small.

### 3.4 Underground activation: copper and steel

Table 7 shows the activity in the copper and the steel. As can be seen, this contribution is much smaller than from the inner shield.

### 3.5 Underground activation: muon bremsstrahlung and muon capture

The energy deposited by fast muons in our device increases by a factor of 1.7, to $`10^5`$ GeV per day (1500 mwe), when bremsstrahlung is taken into account. At 3000 mwe, the factor and deposited energy are 2.2 and $`10^4`$ GeV per day, respectively. The average photon energy (energy weighted) is approximately 100 (at 1500 mwe) to 150 GeV (at 3000 mwe). The average photon energy above 200 keV varies from 15 (at 1500 mwe) to 20 GeV (at 3000 mwe). Because of the $`Z^2`$ dependence of bremsstrahlung, about 97% of the photons are emitted in the iron.

The total number of photons between 200 keV and 10 MeV is about 1000 (at 1500 mwe) to 50 (at 3000 mwe) per day, and they are emitted nearly parallel to the muon. In practice, simulations showed that this source of backgrounds contributes less than 0.1 candidate events per day at any depth.

Muon capture at these depths ranges from 0.03/ton/day (1500 mwe) to 0.002/ton/day (3000 mwe). These numbers are at least two orders of magnitude below those provided in table 1 and are negligible.

## 4 Cross checks and conclusions

### 4.1 Cross checks

There are ways to roughly cross check our results. If radiopurity is expressed in $`{}_{}{}^{238}U`$ equivalent purity, BOREXINO purity needs are about $`10^{16}`$ g/g  and less than ten events per day. In the case of the TPC, the cage needs to have a purity of $`10^{13}`$ g/g  and less than 600 events per day (the two numbers do not scale the same way because the cage weighs less than the BOREXINO inner detector, and because only a fraction of the gammas originating in the cage will interact in the TPC volume).

If BOREXINO would observe negligible backgrounds at 4500 mwe (1200 mwe below its current location), then the TPC will observe negligible backgrounds at roughly 1200 mwe, if scaled by purity, and at 2000 mwe, if scaled by number of events.

### 4.2 Conclusions

The TPC has a unique set of properties amongst solar neutrino detector.

1. the active volume occupies 62% of the total device, but weighs only 0.1% of the total weight. The active volume intercepts a large fraction of the cosmic rays and most short-lived radionuclides are simply vetoed by the observable muon track.
2. it distinguishes events of multiplicity two or more from events of multiplicity one.
3. its active volume is virtually free of any significant cosmogenesis backgrounds. Cosmogenesis backgrounds come from the surrounding materials, which are self-shielded.
4. the TPC directional capability further eliminates most events not pointing at the sun, and subtracts statistically the remainder.

All of the characteristics above combine to give a detector virtually immune of cosmogenesis backgrounds at depths as low as 1500 mwe.

The largest long-term backgrounds found by this analysis were from copper and steel activated at the surface (which are independent of depth). Two lessons are to be learned from this analysis. First, copper will have to be electrodeposited, a procedure known to suppress backgrounds by at least a few orders of magnitude. In particular, electrodeposition virtually eliminates 60Co . Second, during the R&D phase, there will be of order 0.5 meters of inner shielding, and the backgrounds should be dominated by 54Mn (after the R&D device is adequately shielded from the surrounding rock). There will be a premium in obtaining steel that has been ”sheltered” from cosmic radiation. In the final detector, 54Mn is taken care of by increasing the thickness of the inner shield by 0.5 meters (originally  a one meter thick inner shield was considered).

In practice, the TPC depth is not limited by backgrounds, but rather by dead time, surface charging and future applications for the TPC. Civil engineering needs to be assessed too to evaluate the cost of a very large hall as a function of depth.

As discussed above, each cosmic event vetoes 1.8% of a second, therefore it is advisable not to build the TPC above the depth where the cosmic muon rate is 1 Hz (approximately 1900 mwe).

Surface charging has been discussed in . The advantages in building a TPC with insulating walls are better electrostatic stability and better control of the materials. The exact limit depends on the final choice of plastic and the safety factor above the charge-up limit. For acrylic it is probably advisable not to go above 2000 mwe, whereas a plastic as conductive as polyethylene would not be charged up under any realistic circumstances.

Future applications of the TPC may include dark matter searches, where low-energy nuclear recoil (roughly 20 keV) is the signature for dark matter interactions. The signature is non-directional, and the recoil energy is proportional to the nuclear mass of the target. In practice one tries to see a change in the very low energy spectrum when the gas nuclear mass changes ($`e.g.`$, varying the gas from helium to carbon, then to neon, argon, xenon). The lack of directional information, plus varying cosmogenesis backgrounds, will perhaps provide the most stringent constraints on depth.

### 4.3 Acknowledgements

We are particularly indebted to R. Brodzinski and E. Nolte. Dr. Brodzinski pointed out that backgrounds would probably be dominated by above ground activation, and provided information and criticism that was helpful throughout the paper. Prof. Nolte provided an early version of his soon-to-be published paper which provided the backbone for all the calculations and results presented in this paper.