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# The Resonant Dynamical Evolution of Small Body Orbits Among Giant Planets

## 1 Introduction

Commensurabilities in a mean motion are very common in the Solar System. Resonant relations in the Main Belt have been known for nearly one and a half century - gaps in the distribution of asteroids were first linked to mean motion resonances (MMRs) by Kirkwood (kw (1867)). The influence of commensurabilities on the dynamics of small celestial bodies can be found in every region of the Solar System: from the Kuiper Belt (Nesvorny & Roig nr1 (2000)) to the vicinity of the Venus orbit (Milani & Baccili mib (1999)).

Resonant relations of small bodies in the region among giant planets have been studied for the last three decades. Long time orbital stability was found close to the $`L_4`$ and $`L_5`$ Lagrangian points of Jupiter (Everhart eve (1973)), in the narrow bands centered on 7.02 and 7.54 AU (Franklin et al. fls (1989)) and in the region between 24 - 27 AU (Holman hol97 (1997)). Recent papers describe the local (Grazier et al. dep (1999)) or global (Robutel & Laskar dmss (2001)) dynamics in the region of the giant planets.

In the cited works the exploration of small body dynamics was used to find stable regions of the Solar System where particles can survive on Gyr timescales on circular or quasi-circular orbits. However, the aim of this work is to investigate the dynamics of real particles in order to find the possible paths of their evolution and to learn about the role of MMRs as the mechanism of the orbital temporary stabilization process.

## 2 Method of computations

In most of the previous papers on the subject, the results were based on the integrations of the equations of motion for fictitious test particles, with initial orbital elements chosen ’ad-hoc’. In this paper, on the contrary, we simulate the evolution of the orbital elements of real Centaurs and their clones. We chose orbits of all objects situated entirely inside the giant planets region: 1998 $`SG_{35}`$, 1999 $`UG_5`$, 2000 $`EC_{98}`$, 2000 $`GM_{137}`$ and 2001 $`BL_{41}`$. All these objects are unnumbered, often single-oppositional which means that their elements stored in public databases can be approximated. That is why we decided to re-calculate their orbits using all available observations. Unfortunately, the data did not allow us to acquire the elements of 2000 $`GM_{137}`$ with a reasonable precision, so we omitted this object in our computations.

To compute the orbital elements of these real Centaurs at the initial epoch of our simulations, we took the observations from the files available at Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, USA. The sets of apparitions covered a very short time interval of about a month to a month and a half for the 1998 $`SG_{35}`$, 2000 $`EC_{98}`$ and 2001 $`BL_{41}`$, and over 4 months for the 1999 $`UG_5`$. Observations were selected according to the mathematically objective criteria elaborated by Bielicki and Sitarski (bs1 (1991)), assuming a normal distribution of their random errors. Only 1 observation of the 1998 $`SG_{35}`$ and 4 observations of the 1999 $`UG_5`$ were rejected, the rest were used in the orbit improvement process. Calculations were executed using Sitarski’s orbital programme package (Sitarski prof2 (1971, 1979, 1984)). Table 1 gives the elements acquired for the bodies.

### 2.1 Particle cloning

These small bodies move in the giant planets region, with the perihelion distance close to Jupiter orbit and with the aphelion between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. Orbits of the particles are chaotic due to strong planetary perturbations, their Lyapunov time is short and lasts about 1000 years.

As an example, let us take two orbits of bodies moving in the gravitational field of the 4 planets - their 5 orbital elements are identical and they only differ in the starting semi-major axes by 1.5 km ($`10^8`$ AU). Fig. 1A shows the eccentricity variations as a function of semi-major axis for two orbits - the nominal (crosses) and the changed one (circles) in a time span of only 11,000 years. Fig. 1B shows the logarithm of the divergence of semi-major axes between these orbits. The divergence is close to $`10^8`$ AU in the first 3,000 years of the evolution but after this time it changes rapidly and both orbits start to evolve differently (see the huge leap of values of the logarithm on Fig. 1B). This means that even very small changes of one of the elements make the particle’s dynamics quite different after a small time span. To avoid this problem, an ensemble of possible orbital elements is often used in such cases - the object’s dynamical evolution is described in terms of probability.

Usually sets of elements are acquired by varying initial orbital elements within a reasonably small range, in most cases in the range of their mean errors. This procedure forms different orbital element sets but they cannot be treated as element sets of one celestial body. In fact they represent similar orbits of different bodies since these orbits do not fit the observations well. The sets of elements, used in the modelling and described in this paper, were generated in a different way. We used the method (found by Sitarski sit (1998)) for creation of orbits which represent the observations well. This method makes it possible to produce any number of orbital element sets and all of them fit the observations. Hence, these orbits can be treated as possible orbits of one celestial body.

The dynamics of small bodies was modelled with the use of 404 orbital element sets created by the method mentioned above: for every real body 100 additional orbits were created. Table 2 shows the boundary values of all six elements for each real object.

## 3 Numerical Model

Dynamical evolution was investigated by integrating a 6-body problem, with the central mass, 4 giant planets from Jupiter to Neptune, and a massless particle. We analyzed 404 sets of initial conditions, each of them consisting of positions and velocities for the planets (the same values in all cases) and for the massless particle. The orbital elements for the planets were taken from the Bretagnon’s planetary theory. For the massless particle, we used the 4 orbits of real Centaurs and 400 orbits cloned using Sitarski’s method (100 clones for each real body). The initial positions and velocities were reduced to the barycentre of the inner Solar System. The sets were integrated separately 200,000 years forwards using the 15-th order RADAU integrator (Everhart rad2 (1974), rad (1985)) with an error tolerance set to $`10^{14}`$. This integrator adjusts the step size to maintain the accuracy for all objects taking part in the process.

Locations of mean motion resonances were simply calculated with the use of Kepler’s third law. The critical angle of the resonance was defined as follows:

$`\sigma =k_1\lambda _pk_2\lambda +(k_2k_1)\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$

where $`k_1,k_2`$ are integers, $`\lambda _p`$ and $`\lambda `$ are the mean longitudes of a planet and a test particle respectively, and $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ denotes the longitude of the perihelion of test orbit. During the experiment only two-body MMRs were examined.

We accepted a special method for a resonance description. In our notation, a resonance 2/3 means that a planet takes 2 revolutions around the barycentre in the time in which a small body takes 3.

## 4 The influence of MMRs on small body dynamics

The experiment showed that MMRs can temporarily stabilize numerous elliptic orbits in the Jupiter - Uranus region in periods of time comparable to their typical lifetimes (i.e., the time over which non-resonant particles can survive in that region).

Two types of resonant behaviour were observed. The first one - when a small body is in a two-body MMR with only one planet. This relation usually lasts a short time, from several hundred up to 35,000 years. There were 120 particles of this resonant type. We only noticed two particles in a resonance with one planet for a longer time span.

One of these particles, corresponding to one of the 1998 $`SG_{35}`$ clones, is shown in Fig. 2. After 118,000 years of chaotic evolution the particle enters the 2/3 resonance with Jupiter and remains in this relation to the end of the integration process. Fig. 2A presents variations of the semi-major axis as a function of time. The critical angle usually librates about $`0^{}`$ when a body is located in this particular resonance (see Fig. 2B). Even high and growing amplitude (over $`150^{}`$) of the librations is incapable of destabilizing the dynamics of the particles in a time span of over 80,000 years.

Similarly to this Hilda type orbit, nearly all other orbits remaining in resonance with only one planet behave like the Toro class orbits (see Fig. 3). This class defined by Milani (mi1 (1989)) consists of Earth-crossing objects which avoid close approaches by entering a MMR. Most particles remaining in the resonant relation with Jupiter or Saturn cross their orbits in ecliptic projections but cannot approach them. The time of such resonant relations is smaller than for Toro like orbits (with some exceptions) but this can be caused by stronger perturbations acting on a body in the giant planet region.

The second type of resonant behaviour is characterized by much longer resonant interactions up to 160,000 years in our sample. Test particles are in two-body MMRs with 2 or 3 planets (see Fig. 4). These overlapping resonant relations can stabilize orbits far more effectively - for over $`10^5`$ years. Fig. 4 presents the evolution of the MMRs critical angles for one of these orbits. When two MMRs overlap each other, the behaviour of the critical angle of the dominant resonance starts to vary (see Fig. 4C) - the critical angle begins to circulate with an overlapped libration of amplitude almost constant. Irregularities of the rotation and of the amplitude of libration do not mean that the body will leave the MMRs in the near future but the possibility that a small body will approach a planet increases with time. Only 9 to 15 % of orbits were stabilized on time spans longer than 35,000 years (according to the object).

Fig. 4 shows that overlapping resonances can also protect the body from close approaches to planets. The disturbing resonance does not necessarily destabilize the orbit of the body if the influence is weak.

## 5 Migration to the Main Belt

About 30 - 40 % of test bodies migrate to the Main Belt on non-cometary (asteroidal) orbits (see Hilda type orbit in Fig. 2). Most of them leave this region in a dynamically short time, usually in less than 250 orbital periods without entering a MMR, but about 30 % of them will have resonant interactions with Jupiter and/or Saturn. When they enter a MMR, their lifetime in the Main Belt grows rapidly - up to 20,000 orbital revolutions in our calculations.

The modelling shows that proto-cometary objects in their pre-active state can enrich the Main Belt population. A particularly interesting case is that of the short-lived resonant groups of asteroids, like the Griquas. This is a group of resonant asteroids dynamically differentiated from the other resonant groups, and that cannot be primordial resonant bodies due to their short lifetimes. These vary from $`10^4`$ to $`10^7`$ years (Roig et al. ro1 (2002)) which may indicate that a certain per cent of these asteroids came from another regions. Have they come from the outer Solar System ? Unfortunately, our integrations do not give an answer to this question. The calculations indicated only 1 particle with $`3.1<a<3.27`$ and $`e>0.35`$ close to a 1/2 MMR with Jupiter with the orbital lifetime longer than $`10^4`$ years.

We decided to integrate backwards the equations of motion of 147 real asteroids moving close to 1/2 MMR with Jupiter to find out if these objects are able to come from the region outside the orbit of Jupiter. The results shows that 1/2 MMR members can be enriched by Centaurs coming from two different regions but the backward simulations cannot be treated as the evidence.

## 6 Islands of temporary stability

The numerical experiment allowed one to find temporary ”islands of stability” in the chaotic region of the giant planets - bands where particles are trapped for the time estimated for $`10^410^5`$ years. These ”islands” are observed near 6, 6.8, 8.2, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11, 11.6, 12.1, 13, 15.1 and 17.3 AU in the giant planets region, and also close to 2.8 - 3.1 and 3.4 - 4.2 AU in the Main Belt.

Fig. 5 shows the bands of stability in the ($`a`$,$`e`$) plane. All orbits located in these zones were temporarily stabilized by MMRs in the time span of over $`10^4`$ years. This period of time is comparable with the mean lifetime of the non-resonant particles in the region among giant planets estimated by Franklin et al. (fls (1989)). Most of the resonances are observed in the Main Belt and outside Saturn’s orbit. The region between Jupiter and Saturn is weakly inhabited. This can be caused by strong gravitational perturbations from these two planets. The other hardly inhabited region (in fact nearly empty) is located outside the orbit of Uranus. This can be due to the ensemble selection.

The most effective MMRs stabilizing dynamics of particles are gathered in Table 3.

## 7 Discussion and Conclusions

The region among the giant planets is one of the most chaotic in the Solar System. Strong perturbations cause small bodies to evolve in the region among giant planets over a dynamically short time equal to the $`10^310^4`$ years. Our results show that this time can be much longer if the body is temporarily trapped by a MMR with a planet.

Temporary stable orbits of the Centaurs seem to be a good example of the ”resonance stickness” (Dvorak et al. dvo (1998), Tsiganis et al. tsg (2000)). Gravitational perturbations can easily push a body into a MMR even if the eccentricity of the body is high. The evolution of the semi-major axis, eccentricity and inclination is chaotic in the borders of the resonance. The perturbations can push the body outside the resonance in timescale of $`10^410^5`$ years in the same way as they pushed the object into this MMR. The number of small bodies which enter a resonance on highly eccentric orbits during a short time of dynamical evolution (200,000 years) indicates that a resonance sticking is a common mechanism affecting particle lifetimes in chaotic zones.

To ensure that the phenomenon we encountered is in fact the resonance stickness, we investigated the autocorrelation function of the time series of the osculating elements of one of the resonant orbits. If the body is ”stuck” to a resonance we observed quasi-periodic variations of orbital elements on a timescale much longer than the Lyapunov time of this orbit (Tsiganis et al. tsg (2000)).

Fig. 6 presents the autocorrelation function of the semi-major axis as a function of the time-lag k for one of the test particles being in 1/1 and 5/2 MMRs with Saturn and Jupiter, respectively. Time series consisted of 1302 points (which corresponds to 40,000 years) starting at t=100,000 years. The series is strongly suppressed in time but this is due to the presence of gravitational perturbations from the giant planets in our 6 body problem. If we had a 3-body problem the suppression would be absent. Although the suppression is high, quasi-periodic variations can be observed. This seems to confirm the thesis of resonance stickness.

The most unintuitive result is that overlapping resonances can stabilize small body orbits on a much longer timescale than single resonances. The overlapping resonances are usually responsible for chaotic evolution, but our results show that they can stabilize dynamics rather than destabilize it. When we observe the particle motion in overlapping resonance with planets, we can see that its evolution is chaotic but only inside the borders of the MMRs. The resonances protect the body from close approaches to planets. Giant planets are close to resonant relations (Jupiter - Saturn - Uranus and Saturn - Uranus - Neptune, Sussmann and Wisdom sc2 (1988), sc3 (1992)) which means that a small body can be locked in a MMR with 1 planet and close to MMRs with the other 1 or 2 massive bodies. When gravitational perturbations change the orbit of the particle, the body can be easily ”pumped up” into another MMR. Phase space of MMRs is thicker when the eccentricity increases and hence bodies can remain in overlapping MMRs. The overlapping resonances protect the body from close approaches to planets (which are the main mechanism of chaos in the region) and according to our calculations bodies are unable to change the portion of the phase space where they evolve, on a timescale of over $`10^5`$ years.

Resonances between the test particle and the 4 planets have not been observed. This is in good agreement with Sussman’s and Wisdom’s works cited above.

The results presented in this work indicate that Centaurs may also enrich the population of asteroids in the Main Belt. MMRs can stabilize Centaur orbits on the timescale of $`10^4`$ \- $`10^5`$ years. This is a very short period of time in comparison with the lifetime of some asteroidal families in this region but shows that the Main Belt can include non-processed inactive cometary nuclei, not only extinct material. It is hard to say if such nuclei can be called primordial but our results show that the material can reach the asteroid belt on non-cometary orbits, without approaching the Sun. The particles did not enrich specific groups of asteroids in the Main Belt. The only group which seems to be overpopulated are Trojans.

We tried to consider if Centaurs can be a parental population of groups of asteroids with the lifetime comparable to $`10^410^5`$ years. Griquas are an example of such a group. They do not originate in the break-up event, a lot of the group members have lifetimes comparable to the lifetimes of Centaurs in the Main Belt. But, unfortunately, our modelling did not produce a group of objects with $`3.1<a<3.27`$ and $`e>0.35`$. Although, when we integrated backwards all known orbits of the Griqua group members, we found that some of them are able to come from the regions among giant planets. Further investigations are needed to explain the origin of Griqua type bodies.

The earlier works of Everhart (eve (1973)) and Franklin et al. (fls (1989)) indicate that there are two narrow bands at 7.02 and 7.54 AU where particles can survive longer than $`10^6`$ years. In 1997 Holman (hol97 (1997)) pointed to a region between 24 and 27 AU where low inclined ($`i1^{}`$) and low eccentric ($`e0.01`$) objects can survive 1 Gyr. Our results do not indicate any stable orbits close to those bands. This means that the resonant dynamics is not the main mechanism responsible for stabilizing orbits in these areas. Slow evolution of low inclined, quasi circular orbits close to bands at 7.02 and 7.54 AU and in the Holman’s region is caused by tiny variations of the gravitational force acting on bodies.

Centaurs are perceived as a intermediate stage between Kuiper Belt objects and Jupiter Family comets (Levison & Duncan levi (1997)). During the integration we noticed only 10 % of orbits with $`q<1.5`$ AU and $`Q>5.0`$ AU. Most of them were orbits of 1998 $`SG_{35}`$ and 2001 $`BL_{41}`$ objects (79 and 13 orbits respectively).

It is hard to compare our results with those presented in Grazier’s and Robutel’s papers due to different timescales. Their work focused on research of long time stability of Solar System regions while we studied the paths of a small ensemble of orbits. We believe that the results of our experiment and Robutel’s survey would be similar for the same timescales of integrations.

Further studies are required to broaden our knowledge on orbital stabilization by overlapping and many-body MMRs in the chaotic region of the Solar System.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank G. Sitarski for help and comments. Many thanks to the referee F. Roig for his valuable discussions and helpful reviews. The computations were accomplished in the Poznań Supercomputing and Network Centre and in the Interdisciplinary Centre of Mathematical Modelling of the Warsaw University.


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# Accretion-ejection instability and QPO in black hole binaries I. Observations

## 1 Introduction

The observation of Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs) in X-ray binaries is widely considered as a key to understanding the physics of the inner region of accretion disks around compact objects. Although the origin of the QPOs is still debated, it is considered that such models should yield information of prime importance on the physics and the geometry of the accretion process, in these and other accreting sources. In particular, in the last years, many observational results have pointed to the importance of a low-frequency QPO, found in binaries hosting neutron stars or black holes. A recent result, reported by Psaltis et al. (1999), shows that in these sources its frequency is correlated with that of a higher-frequency QPO (in neutron-star binaries, this is the lower of the pair of so-called ‘kHz QPOs’), believed to be close to the rotation frequency at the inner edge of the disk. Thus the frequency of this QPO ranges from $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 1 to a few tens of Hz in black-hole and neutron-star binaries. It has been intensively studied, in particular, in the micro-quasar GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$, where its occurrence in the low-hard state is so frequent that it has been dubbed the “ubiquitous” QPO (Swank et al. , 1997; Markwardt et al. , 1999, hereafter SM97 for both these references). These studies have allowed SM97 and Muno et al.  (1999) to find a number of correlations, showing that the QPO probably has its origin in the disk, although it affects more strongly the coronal emission.

One of these correlations involves the QPO frequency and the color radius of the disk $`r_{col}`$, considered as a measure of the disk inner radius $`r_{int}`$. Even though this is not a very tight correlation, it would mean that the QPO frequency would most often correspond to a Keplerian rotation frequency in the disk, at a radius of a few times (typically $`2`$ to $`5`$) $`r_{int}`$; this is consistent with the correlation of Psaltis et al.  (1999), where the high-frequency to low-frequency ratio is about 11, assuming, as usually believed, that the high-frequency QPO is close to the Keplerian frequency at the inner edge of the disk.

However these observational results must be taken with extreme caution: $`r_{col}`$ is obtained from a fit of the source spectrum with a model, and the results of the fit raise many questions:

1. The model spectrum consists of a multi-color black-body part, thought to originate in an optically thick disk, and a power-law tail at higher energies, considered as inverse Compton emission from a hot corona which might lie either above the disk, or in the region between the disk and the central object. We will call them, for simplicity, the disk and coronal emissions respectively. However in the low-hard state where the low-frequency QPO is most often seen, the coronal emission often dominates the disk one, even at low energies. In this case the extraction of the disk parameters becomes difficult.
2. Indeed the fits often give values of $`r_{col}`$ which must clearly be ruled out, since they are extremely low and sometimes even within the Schwarzschild radius.
3. In a recent paper Merloni et al. (2000) (hereafter MFR) have shown that other effects, associated with the vertical structure of the disk, could strongly affect the determination of the disk parameters. Using synthetic spectra to test the fitting algorithm, they find that the disk black body model underestimates the radius by a factor which may be quite large, when the coronal emission dominates the disk emission. This makes the extraction of disk parameters difficult, since we have little information on the conditions causing this effect.
4. Even when the disk emission is strong enough to allow a reliable fit, the model spectrum contains assumptions which may affect the outcome. In particular the disk is assumed to be axisymmetric with a temperature varying as $`T^{3/4}`$, following the standard $`\alpha `$-disk model. These are strong assumptions which may affect the validity of the fit parameters. However, since the RXTE/PCA data starts above 2 keV, the observations are not very sensitive to the whole structure of the disk itself. On the other hand, various corrections (e.g. due to electron scattering) must be applied. One can only expect that, when the assumptions are not too far from reality, there is a proportionality between the color radius $`r_{col}`$ and the disk inner radius $`r_{int}`$.

Points (1-3) above thus lead us to take with extreme caution, or rule out, determinations of the disk parameters when the ratio of the disk black body flux (determined from the fit) is less than about half of the total flux. We will see below that indeed, among the data points we obtain for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$, all the ones giving anomalously low values of $`r_{col}`$ are excluded if this criterion is applied. On the other hand point (4) above is much more difficult to address, as long as we have no observational tests of the disk structure. Determining the nature of the QPO would be very likely to shed light on this, but this also depends on our knowledge of the disk parameters.

Recently SMR have analyzed observations of the micro-quasar GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$, and found that in this source the low-frequency QPO differed markedly from other sources, in particular XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$: the color radius was found to be quite small (down to a few kms), and to increase with the QPO frequency. On the contrary in XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$, and in most observations of other sources, the color radius and the QPO frequency are inversely correlated.

In this paper our goal is to check this reversed correlation which (as will be seen in Paper II) might be consistent with the explanation of this QPO by the Accretion-Ejection Instability (AEI) recently presented in Tagger & Pellat (1999). It would be due to relativistic effects, when the disk inner radius approaches the Last Stable Orbit. Thus we begin in section 2.1 by reconsidering the data points from GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ presented by SMR, repeating the whole data reduction and fitting process; we discuss them in regard to the criterion of MFR, which we take as a guide for the validity of the fitting procedure. This results in excluding all the points at anomalously low radius values, and retaining points only in a limited radial range. We then turn to the other source studied by SMR, XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$, but the criterion of MFR leads us to exclude almost the whole data set: the source was at the time of the study in an extremely bright high soft state/ very high outburst state. We thus chose to study a different source, GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$, because its high variability and the large number of observations including the low frequency QPO suggested that we could explore the radius-frequency correlation over a much broader range of values for $`r_{col}`$. In particular the observations of SM97 showed that, during the much studied 30 min. cycle of that source, both $`\nu _{QPO}`$ (the QPO frequency) and $`r_{col}`$ vary by a large factor, and apparently in opposite directions. The choice of this particular observation was driven also by the existence of a multiwavelength campaign (Mirabel et al., 1998), that could allow a richer discussion between QPOs, disk instabilities and ejections of plasma, since several authors have now linked the changes of luminosity to disk instabilities (e.g. Feroci et al.  , 1999; Fender et al.  , 2001, and references therein). We have thus analyzed two such cycles, essentially repeating the analysis of SM97 and turning our attention to the frequency-radius correlation.

We will present the observations of GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ and GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$ in sections 2.1 and 2.2 respectively. We will then in section 2.3 discuss and compare the results, which will be then be confronted with a theoretical model in Paper II. We will also discuss the different behaviors observed when the disk color radius takes anomalously small values, leading to a discussion of disk properties and to a possible explanation for these very small values.

## 2 Data reduction and analysis

### 2.1 GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$

GRO J1655-40 (Nova Scorpii 1994) was discovered in 1994 by the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) (Wilson et al. 1994). Its optical counterpart was discovered in 1995 (Bailyn et al.,1995), and the orbital parameters gave a primary mass of $`7.02\pm 0.22M_{}`$ (Orosz & Bailyn, 1997; van der Hooft et al., 1998), placing it well above the $`3M_{}`$ maximum mass for neutron stars. Its distance is estimated at $`3.2\pm 0.2`$ kpc (Hjellming & Rupen, 1995), with an inclination angle $`69.5^{}`$. GRO J1655-40 is also known as one of the few galactic microquasars, since radio observations show two extended radio lobes with superluminal motions (Hjellming & Rupen, 1995). In order to be able to compare directly the results on the disk color radius with the ones presented below for GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$, we have re-done the data reduction and analysis of the series of twelve public observations (AO1) of GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ during its 1996 outburst (see figure 1), already presented by SMR, when QPO were observed. Figure 1 shows the BATSE and RXTE ASM light curves during that period, and the dates where QPO were observed. Table 1 gives the corresponding disk parameters.

For our analysis the RXTE spectra were obtained using only the Proportional Counter Array (hereafter PCA). We used the standard 2 data only when the offset pointing was less than $`0.02^{}`$ and the elevation angle above $`10^{}`$; in almost all cases all the PCU were “on” during the observation, but we chose to use only the spectra extracted from PCU 0 and 1 separately, and then fit them together in XSPEC. Given the high flux of the source this allows us to get sufficient statistics while limiting the effects associated with the various PCUs.

The data reduction/extraction was made following the standard RXTE data reduction. In order to compare precisely with the results of SMR, we have used FTOOLS package 4.1, but checked that package 5.0 gave nearly identical results.

We first generated spectra using all the PCU layers, which gives a higher count rate, and then extracted spectra only from the top layer; the fits parameters deduced with the two methods presented no significant differences, and since there was, for this source, no particular need to get the highest count rate (the source was sufficiently bright, and the exposure sufficiently long that the data had small statistical errors), the results presented here are obtained with the later method.The background was estimated using the PCABACKEST tool version 2.1, and we chose to ignore channel energies bellow $`2.5keV`$, and above $`20keV`$, in order to use the best detector energy band (choosing this band, we avoided the uncertainties due to the response matrix at lower and higher energies, and the problems due to background subtraction near $`25keV`$ – see also SMR); we then added a systematic error of $`1.5\%`$ on each data point. The response matrices were generated using the PCARSP tool version 2.38, and we deadtime correct the spectra following the RXTE cook book method. The spectral fits were obtained using XSPEC version 10., using the multicolor disk blackbody model with a power law tail at higher energy, and a hydrogen column absorption fixed at $`N_H=0.9\times 10^{22}cm^2`$ as found with ASCA (Zhang et al., 1997a). We have found that no other contributions to the spectrum (e.g iron line) needed to be introduced in the fit, giving results consistent with those of SMR while reducing the number of fit parameters. On the other hand, since there is little uncertainty on the QPO centroid frequencies, we have not re-done the power spectra analysis, and we use here the frequency values given by SMR.

Table 1 shows the results of our fits. Column 7 shows the ratio (Disk black body flux/total flux) which, according to MFR, we will first use to discriminate between two different spectral states of the source. For our purpose, the total flux is obtained by extrapolating the spectra to 50 keV. Table 1 shows that the observations clearly come in two categories: one where the ratio Disk black body flux/total flux is lower than .5, so that according to the criterion of MFR the disk radius value should be considered as unreliable, and where indeed the radius is always unrealistically low; and one where the ratio is higher than .5 and where the obtained radius appears to be more trustworthy: it lies in the range we expect for a disk around a black hole, and gives more consistent values.

Figure 2 shows the spectra for the first two observations, typical of these two behaviors: on July 25 the disk emission dominates at low energy, allowing a satisfying spectral fit. On August 1 the coronal emission dominates at all energies, and results in an unreliable fit. Figure 3 is the resulting plot, for the data points we retain, of the QPO centroid frequency versus the disk color radius, where $`r_{col}`$ is given in km, with $`R^{}=((r_{col}/km)/(D/10kpc))^2\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ $`R^{}`$ being the XSPEC dimensionless parameter. Comparing with figure 2 of SMR, we note that the points we exclude correspond to higher temperatures and lower disk flux. It is quite remarkable that they are also the observations where a higher frequency QPO is simultaneously observed. This might confirm that indeed the disk is in a different state in the observations we retain and the ones we reject, but we will not attempt to explore an explanation, which would clearly require reaching a much better understanding of the disk behavior than our present one – although in our discussion we will contrast this with the behavior of GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$. On the other hand, with the data points we retain, we confirm the general tendency noted by SMR that, contrary to other sources, the QPO frequency increases with increasing disk radius in GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$.

### 2.2 GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$

We thus turn to the microquasar GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$. This source has been the object of very frequent observations, many of them showing the low-frequency QPO and strong variability. In particular, the very exhaustive analysis of Muno et al. (1999) shows the QPO, in different spectral states, and over a large range of frequencies. Furthermore, SM97 had shown that, during the $``$ 30 minutes cycles of GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$, the QPO could be tracked at a varying frequency, together with a color radius varying by a factor $``$ 5, during the “low and hard” part of the cycle. These cycles have been extensively studied; multiwavelength observations (Mirabel et al., 1998; see also Chaty, 1998) have shown them to be associated with supra-luminal ejections, and they turn out to be the most frequent type of behavior of that source after the steady ones (Muno et al., 1999; Belloni et al., 2000). Observing the correlated changes of radius and QPO frequency during such events may limit the influence of other effects, such as the mass accretion rate etc., and provide a way to analyze the disk history during such events. This could then complement the analysis of Belloni et al. (2000), based only on color-color diagrams.

Figure 4 shows three consecutive cycles observed by RXTE on 1997 Sept. 9. The first cycle is the one shown in detail by SM97, while the second cycle was the object of the multiwavelength observations of Mirabel et al. (1998). We have thus chosen to analyze these two consecutive cycles: we repeat the analysis of SM97 for the first cycle, using for the spectral fits and color radius derivation the same procedure as for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$. In order to confirm the results we obtain, we repeat the same analysis for the following cycle. We have also made a rapid analysis showing that the same behavior is observed during the third cycle. We treat only the time interval over which the QPO was observed by SM97, i.e. starting near the transition from the high/soft to the low/hard state, and ending at the intermediate peak halfway through the low state. At that time the QPO disappears, and the power-law emission decreases dramatically (Mirabel et al., 1998; Chaty, 1998).

#### 2.2.1 Spectral analysis

Our goal was to track the variations of the QPO frequency and of the disk color radius, while they vary rather rapidly. We thus reduced the time interval over which the spectral fit and the QPO frequency determination were obtained, to the minimal value compatible with sufficient statistics. We used the standard 2 data accumulated over 16s intervals; although the source occasionally varies on shorter time scales, we have checked that this does not affect the results we present. Due to the poorness of the statistics, we extracted spectra from all available PCU (though only PCU 0 to 3 were “on” during the whole observation), and all layers to get the most possible incoming flux. The spectra, after dead time correction and background correction, were first fitted, as for GRO J1655-40, between $`2.5`$ and $`20`$ keV in XSPEC with the standard model consisting of a multicolor disk blackbody and a power law tail at higher energy, taking into account a low energy absorption with $`N_H`$ fixed at $`5.7\times 10^{22}cm^2`$ ( Markwardt et al., 1999). The fits were not satisfactory, with an average reduced $`\chi `$ square $`2.5`$. An analysis of the residual showed a large difference between the spectra and the model used around 6 keV, so that in a second pass we added to the model an iron emission line, with centroid energy found at $`5.9`$ keV.

As for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$, the coronal emission dominates the light curve in some observations. We thus choose the following procedure: we distinguish in the observations a high state and a low state; the latter is defined by the combination of a low temperature ($`\stackrel{<}{}1`$ keV) and a large radius. In this state, the coronal contribution dominates but the correction of MFR (which was derived for high states) should not apply, and the color radius is much larger than at other times, so that we retain these points - which correspond to most of the intervals where the QPO was present. In the high state on the other hand, the radius is much lower and we apply the same criterion as above, retaining only data points where the black-body contribution exceeds half of the total (extrapolated to 50 keV), although we find that in general the radius values for the rejected points are more consistent than in GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$. The resulting parameters and classification are presented in Table 2.

#### 2.2.2 Temporal analysis

As we wanted to follow the QPO in the range 2-12 Hz found in SM97, we generate power spectra for the first cycle of figure 4 using the binned data, with 8 ms resolution, and the event data with time resolution of 62 $`\mu `$s collected during 4s ccumulation, after background correction. Actually the background is so low that retaining it would change the results only by less than $`.5\%`$. From this we generated a dynamical power spectrum of the source, repeating the analysis of SM97. Our result, shown on figure 5 (left), confirms theirs: the shaded, U-shaped pattern seen on the lower part of figure 5 between times $`1000`$ and $`1500`$, shows the QPO frequency and its evolution during the cycle. We then repeated this analysis for the second cycle, confirming the generality of this behavior (figure 5, right).

The second step was then to track as precisely as possible the QPO frequency, and to correlate it with the disk color radius extracted with the same process used for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ in section 2.1. We do this using the same time resolution data, but with exposures of 16s. Power spectra were then generated using POWSPEC version 1, after background subtraction and collimator correction; they were then fitted with a model consisting of a power law with average index $`1.5`$, plus a lorentzian whose line center is taken as the QPO centroid frequency; in some cases several lorentzians were required to fit the 16s power spectrum; we then chose the one closest to the frequency at which power was strong in power spectra of neighboring intervals. The trend of the usually strongest feature is easily picked out from the dynamical power spectrum. The choice of this 16 second interval for the temporal analysis is a compromise between conflicting constraints: looking at variations of the disk radius and the QPO centroid frequency on short enough time scales (without averaging on too long time intervals over which the source varies rapidly), having enough flux to get sufficient statistics on each data point, and getting the QPO frequency with good accuracy.

### 2.3 Results

The individual power spectra, obtained from interval # 2, are shown in Fig. 6. One sees that, with the time intervals of 16s., the QPO can most often be identified and properly found with our fitting procedure. Figure 7 shows superpositions of our results for the disk color radius, the QPO frequency, and the disk temperature during both cycles. Figure 8 shows, for both cycles, the correlation between the QPO frequency and the disk color radius. At large $`r_{col}`$ the QPO frequency decreases with increasing $`r_{col}`$, as discussed by Sobczak et al. (2000) for XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$; this is also the general tendency for this correlation, noted by SM97 during one cycle, and more generally by Muno et al. for an ensemble of observations (in particular for similar 30 min. cycles).

It would be tempting to interpret the points at lower radius as a turnover, indicating a reversed correlation as seen in GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$. However, returning to Fig. 7, one sees that this interpretation must be excluded: the points at lowest radius correspond to the very first manifestations of the QPO. At this time the count rate has not yet started to decrease (this might indicate that the appearance of the QPO is not a consequence of the transition, but possibly its cause), while the QPO frequency decreases monotonously; the color radius first decreases before it starts growing, when the count rate decreases, marking the transition to the low state: this causes the reverse correlation seen in Fig. 8. On the other hand, returning to the data points in the high state, before the onset of the QPO one sees that in its variations the color radius consistently shows a fixed lower bound, which probably marks the Last Stable Orbit.
The data points showing an inverse QPO frequency-color radius correlation lie at lower color radius, and at these times the disk temperature decreases, as predicted by MFR. It is thus very likely that, in the spectral fits for these points, the correlation between the color radius and the disk inner radius has become anomalous.

## 3 Discussion

The possibility, which will be explored in Paper II, of a theoretical explanation has led us to reconsider the contrasting correlations, observed by SMR in GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ and XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$, between the disk color radius and the QPO frequency. First guided by the arguments of MFR, we have rejected data points for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ where the measure of the disk color radius was dubious. The major result of this work is thus that, though we have used the most stringent criterion to select “good” observational data points, the reverse correlation remains: the QPO frequency decreases with decreasing radius in the case of GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$.
In the case of XTE J$`1550`$-$`564`$ the data, for the observations where a QPO is seen, always correspond to a low value of the ratio disk black body/total flux, and may not be reliable according to the criterion of MFR. We have thus turned to GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$, because previous work by SM97 and Muno et al. (1999) had shown that, during the frequently observed 30 min. cycles of that source, the QPO frequency and disk color radius varied in a correlated manner over a large interval. We have done a complete analysis of two of these cycles, sampling data over the minimal time interval compatible with proper statistics in order to follow as precisely as possible the rapid variations of the source. This does not show a reverse correlation as in GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$. Data points obtained at the onset of the QPO would seem to indicate it, but a detailed analysis shows that they are probably incorrect (the spectral fit returning an anomalous value of the disk color radius), so that we have to rule them out.

However the measure of the radius is not an absolute one. It is obtained from a multicolor black-body + power law tail model (plus an iron line when needed), involving a number of hypotheses (such as axisymmetry of the disk emission, and $`r^{3/4}`$ radial temperature profiles), and should be submitted to a number of corrections (such as electron diffusion or spectral hardening factor) which we have not tried to include here. Furthermore, MFR have recently shown that effects due to the finite disk thickness could result in a systematic underestimation of the radius, when it becomes small. It is remarkable here that, for the GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$ data we have rejected, the spectral fit returns a color temperature which is lower than usual, and in particular lower than at times just preceding the onset of the QPO, although the radius decreases: this is compatible with the predictions of MFR, whose mechanism relies in part on the dissipation of part of the accretion energy in the corona rather than the disk (so that the disk cools down).

On the other hand, the data we have rejected for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ show a very different behavior, also frequently observed in the low and steady state of GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$ (Muno et al., 1999): there, the color radius takes extremely small values (sometimes very few kilometers) while the color temperature becomes high. This is not the behavior predicted by MFR, and it is quite unlikely that corrections of this type could explain so strongly anomalous values of the radius: the lowest radius value found by Sobczak et al. (2000) is about 4 times lower than the ones we retain.

However, we note that, if the emissivity is close to unity, the spectral fits actually measure (essentially by the intensity of the black body emission) the size of the emitting region: a simplistic view of the multicolor blackbody spectrum used in the spectral fits is that the peak of the emission corresponds to the highest temperature in the disk, and the total intensity to the area of the emitting region at that temperature, all this weighted by the temperature distribution in the disk. In GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ we find that the color radius can strongly vary, while the total luminosity remains approximately constant. The most obvious explanation would then be that the total accretion energy dissipated in the disk does not vary much, but that the area of the region where it is dissipated does. This leads us to suggest that the anomalously low measured radius, together with a high temperature, could be interpreted by the presence in the disk of a hot point or a spiral shock, where a substantial fraction of the accretion energy would be dissipated. A spiral shock could result from the non-linear evolution of the AEI, just as the gas forms shocks in the arms of spiral galaxies.
The discussion about the exact ratio $`r_{col}/r_{in}`$, related to the hardening factor by $`r_{in}=r_{col}\times f^2`$, with $`f=T_{col}/T_{eff}`$ , being the hardening factor (Ebisawa et al., 1994) is a very complex one. It appears to be dependent on many physical parameters, as shown e.g. by Shimura & Takahara (1995), for a Schwarschild Black Hole. Although both GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$ and GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ are thought to be a Kerr Black Hole, we adopted the best result found in their work, $`f=1.9`$, and tentatively estimated the position of the last stable orbit, using $`R_{LSO}\frac{3}{5}\times 0.8R_{col}f^2`$ (Ebisawa et al., 1994). We chose for each source the lowest “good” value of $`R_{col}`$ as the one approaching $`R_{LSO}`$ the most. In the case of GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$, this leads to an estimation of $`R_{LSO}36`$ km, inconsistent with a $`7M_{}`$ Schwarschild Black Hole, where $`R_{LSO}`$ would be of the order of $`63`$ km. This large difference can be due to two effects. First, the value we adopt is not the exact measure of the last marginally stable orbit, but is really a rough estimation of it (we at least expect it to be closer to the compact object). The second one, which may be the major effect, is that this source, in particular, is expected to be a maximally rotating Black Hole (Strohmayer, 2001), where $`R_{LSO}=17`$ km, which is, then, much more consistent (Paper 2). The case of GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$ can now be explored, since Greiner (2001) has estimated the mass of the Black Hole to be close to $`14M_{}`$. The result found ($`R_{LSO}59`$ km) , as for GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$, is inconsistent with a Schwarschild Black Hole of $`14M_{}`$, but would perfectly fit the case of a maximally rotating Kerr Black Hole of such mass (see Paper 2). We also note as an interesting possibility to discuss the mass of the Black Hole the work of di Matteo and Psaltis (1999), which should be enriched by recent measurements of this mass.
But we have to exercise here, extreme caution, since :

* all the calculations in Shimura & Takahara (1995), in particular the determination of the best value of the hardening factor, are made for a Schwarschild black hole;
* all the calculations, presented in Ebisawa et al. (1994), and Shimura & Takahara (1995), are done for a Shakura & Sunyaev (1973) $`\alpha `$-disk, where energy and angular momentum are locally dissipated in the disk under the effect of viscous stresses; whereas in the framework of the AEI, only a small part of the energy warms the disk. Most of it is transported toward the corotation radius (Tagger & Pellat, 1999; Paper 2, Varnière et al., in Prep.);
* the Kerr metric may also affect the relation of Ebisawa et al.  (1994), between $`R_{LSO}`$, the radius of the Last Stable Orbit, and the measured $`R_{col}`$;
* although in the case of GRO J$`1655`$-$`40`$ the black hole is thought to be rapidly rotating, this is still unsolved for GRS $`1915`$+$`105`$; its temporal behavior does not allow a firm conclusion (Strohmayer, 2001) (one has to note, nevertheless, that previous studies give preference to a rapidly rotating black hole (Zhang et al.  , 1997).

The relevance of these calculations is thus a matter of debate, and we cannot draw conclusion on the value $`f=1.9`$ for the hardening factor, or on the rotation of the black holes. It is however remarkable that the independent method presented in Paper 2 gives a good range of masses, for both sources, in the cases where both are spinning rapidly.
Our conclusions must be considered as tentative, given the uncertainties on the measure of the disk color radius and its relation with its inner radius, and given the other effects associated with the disk parameters, such as the amplitude and the radial distribution of the magnetic field. On the other hand, a coupled investigation of the low frequency QPO and of the disk spectral properties seems to be a most promising way to probe the physics of the inner accretion disk in black hole binaries.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors wish to thank many experts of the field for helpful discussions and comments. In particular we thank C. Markwardt (including help with his IDL library site and advice on producing dynamical power spectra), S. Chaty, F. Mirabel, E. Morgan, M. Muno, and R. Remillard. We also thank all the people contributing to the GSFC public database existence and update, and the helpful and constructive comments of both referees.


text:
# Evidence for new interference phenomena in the decay 𝐷⁺→𝐾⁻𝜋⁺𝜇⁺𝜈

## Abstract

Using a large sample of charm semileptonic decays collected by the FOCUS photoproduction experiment at Fermilab, we present evidence for a small, even spin $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ amplitude that interferes with the dominant $`\overline{K}^0`$ component in the $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ final state. Although this interference significantly distorts the $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ decay angular distributions, the new amplitude creates only a very small distortion to the observed kaon pion mass distribution when integrated over the other kinematic variables describing the decay. Our data can be described by $`\overline{K}^0`$ interference with either a constant amplitude or broad spin zero resonance.

The FOCUS Collaboration111See http://www-focus.fnal.gov/authors.html for additional author information.

This paper describes discrepancies between the observed decay intensity for the decay $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ and that expected for pure $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ decay. The data are overlayed with a simple model incorporating a particular choice of interference amplitude. A later paper will present the results of fits for the parameters describing the interfering amplitude along with new values of the form factors describing $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$.

Five kinematic variables that uniquely describe $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ decay are illustrated in Figure 1. These are the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ invariant mass ($`m_{K\pi }`$) , the square of the $`\mu \nu `$ mass ($`q^2`$), and three decay angles: the angle between the $`\pi `$ and the $`D`$ direction in the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ rest frame ($`\theta _\text{v}`$), the angle between the $`\nu `$ and the $`D`$ direction in the $`\mu \nu `$ rest frame ($`\theta _{\mathrm{}}`$), and the acoplanarity angle between the two decay planes ($`\chi `$). The acoplanarity conventions for the $`D^+`$ and $`D^{}`$ will be discussed near the end of this paper.

It has been known for many years that the $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ final state is strongly dominated by the $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ channel . In the process of studying the $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ decay distribution, we found significant discrepancies between our data and the angular decay distributions for $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ predicted using previously measured  form factor ratios. In particular, we discovered a significant forward-backward asymmetry in $`\theta _\text{v}`$ suggesting a new term in the decay distribution that is linear in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ and a strong function of the kaon-pion mass. In pure $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$, the acoplanarity-averaged decay intensity should consist of terms with only even powers of $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$. In this paper we present an explicit model for this effect in terms of coherent interference between a small spin zero component of the kaon-pion system with a dominant $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ component. Throughout this paper, we describe this interference as due to a constant, s-wave amplitude described by a single modulus and phase. We do not exclude the possibility of a broad spin zero resonance or even higher spin resonances with helicity amplitudes tuned to resemble the behavior of a single, broad s-wave resonance.

Angular momentum considerations allow us to predict the dependence of the interference-induced, linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ term on other decay variables such as $`q^2`$, $`\theta _{\mathrm{}}`$ , and $`\chi `$. We present this model and show how well our data match these predictions. Throughout this paper, unless explicitly stated otherwise, the charge conjugate is also implied when a decay mode of a specific charge is stated.

The data for this paper were collected in the Wideband photoproduction experiment FOCUS during the Fermilab 1996–1997 fixed-target run. In FOCUS, a forward multi-particle spectrometer is used to measure the interactions of high energy photons on a segmented BeO target. The FOCUS detector is a large aperture, fixed-target spectrometer with excellent vertexing and particle identification. Most of the FOCUS experiment and analysis techniques have been described previously . Here, for the first time, we describe our muon identification. FOCUS uses two muon detector systems, the inner muon hodoscope, and the outer muon detector. Muons are identified by their ability to penetrate approximately 21 interaction lengths of absorber for the inner muon system, and 18 interaction lengths for the outer system. For the inner system, potential muon tracks are projected through the electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, and additional iron shielding walls. This trajectory is then matched to hits recorded in an inner muon detector consisting of six arrays of scintillation counters subtending approximately $`\pm 45`$ mrad. The outer muon detector consists of three views of resistive plate chambers which are shielded by the outer electromagnetic calorimeter and the iron yoke of the second analysis magnet. This subtends an additional region of roughly $`\pm 140`$ mrad. For the outer muon system, potential muon tracks are projected through the magnet yoke and then matched to outer muon hits.

Our analysis cuts were chosen to give reasonably uniform acceptance over the 5 kinematic decay variables, while still maintaining a reasonably strong rejection of backgrounds. To isolate the $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ topology, we required that candidate muon, pion, and kaon tracks appeared in a secondary vertex with a confidence level exceeding 5%. The muon track, when extrapolated to the shielded muon arrays, was required to match muon hits with a confidence level exceeding 5%. The kaon was required to have a Čerenkov light pattern more consistent with that for a kaon than that for a pion by 2 units of log likelihood, while the pion track was required to have a light pattern favoring the pion hypothesis over that for the kaon by 2 units .

To further reduce muon misidentification, an inner muon candidate was allowed to have at most one missing hit in the 6 planes comprising our inner muon system. In order to suppress muons from pions and kaons decaying in our spectrometer, we required inner muon candidates to have an energy exceeding 8 GeV. For outer muons we required an energy exceeding 6 GeV. Non-charm and random combinatoric backgrounds were reduced by requiring both a detachment between the vertex containing the $`K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+`$ and the primary production vertex of 12 standard deviations and a minimum visible energy $`(E_K+E_\pi +E_\mu )`$ of 30 GeV. To suppress possible backgrounds from higher multiplicity charm decay, we isolate the $`K\pi \mu `$ vertex from other tracks in the event (not including tracks in the primary vertex) by requiring that the maximum confidence level for another track to form a vertex with the candidate be less than 0.1%.

In order to allow for the missing energy of the neutrino in this semileptonic $`D^+`$ decay, we required the reconstructed $`K\pi \mu `$ mass be less than the nominal $`D^+`$ mass. Background from $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+`$, where a pion is misidentified as a muon, was reduced using a mass cut: we required that when these three tracks were reconstructed as a $`K\pi \pi `$, their $`K\pi \pi `$ invariant mass differed from the nominal $`D^+`$ mass by at least three standard deviations. In order to suppress background from $`D^+D^0\pi ^+(K^{}\mu ^+\nu )\pi ^+`$ we required $`M(K^{}\mu ^+\nu \pi ^+)M(K^{}\mu ^+\nu )>0.18\text{GeV}/c^2`$. The momentum of the undetected neutrino was estimated from the $`D^+`$ line-of-flight as discussed below.

We assumed that the reconstructed $`D`$ momentum vector points along the direction defined by the primary and secondary vertices. This leaves a two-fold ambiguity on the neutrino momentum. We use the solution that gives the lower $`D`$ momentum, which, according to our Monte Carlo studies, produced somewhat better estimates for the kinematic variables. Due to resolution, 50% of events were reconstructed outside physical limits (the $`p_{}`$ of the charged daughters relative to the $`D^+`$ direction implied a parent mass larger than the nominal $`D^+`$ mass). These events are recovered by moving the primary vertex to the nearest allowed solution and the kinematic variables are recomputed. Monte Carlo studies show that the inclusion of the recovered events does not significantly degrade either the resolution or the signal-to-noise ratio.

It was important to test the fidelity of the simulation with respect to reproducing the resolution of those kinematic variables which depend on the neutrino momentum. To do this, we studied fully-reconstructed $`D^0K^{}\pi ^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ decays where, as a test, one of the pions was reconstructed using our line-of-flight technique. We then compared its reconstructed momentum to its original, magnetic reconstruction in order to obtain an “observed” resolution function that was well matched by our simulation.

Figure 2 shows the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ mass distribution for the signal we obtained using the cuts described above. A very strong $`\overline{K}^0`$(896) signal is present. To assess the level of non-charm backgrounds, we plot the “right-sign” (where the kaon and muon have the opposite charge) and “wrong-sign” $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ mass distributions separately. We subtract the distributions of wrong-sign from right-sign events as a means of subtracting non-charm backgrounds that are nearly charge symmetric.

Figure 3 compares the wrong-sign-subtracted $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ distribution to that predicted by our Monte Carlo which incorporates all acceptance, and resolution effects as well as all known charm backgrounds. We show separate distributions for events with a $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ mass in the range $`0.8<m_{K\pi }<0.9\text{GeV}/c^2`$ and $`0.9<m_{K\pi }<1.0\text{GeV}/c^2`$.

Although the events with a reconstructed mass above 0.9 $`\text{GeV}/c^2`$ are a reasonable match to the prediction, a striking discrepancy is apparent in the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ distribution for those events below the pole. As will be explained in detail later, we believe this can be explained by the interference of a broad (or nearly constant) s-wave amplitude with the Breit-Wigner amplitude describing the $`\overline{K}^0`$. In particular, this interference creates a term in the decay intensity that, when averaged over acoplanarity, is linear in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ whereas the pure $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ process produces only even powers in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ in this intensity. The slight forward-backward asymmetry present in the Monte Carlo histograms of Figure 3 primarily reflects acceptance variation.222The known charm backgrounds tend to have the opposite $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ asymmetry to that observed in Figure 3. Their level can also be significantly reduced under tighter analysis cuts that still preserve the much larger asymmetry in the data.

We exploit the fact that all acoplanarity-averaged terms in the decay intensity expected for pure $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ should be proportional to even powers of $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ (see Eqn. 1 below). Because our analysis cuts give reasonably uniform acceptance over $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$, we can construct a weight designed to project out any linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ contribution to the decay distribution. This weight is the product of a wrong-sign subtraction weight (+1 for right-sign and -1 for wrong-sign) multiplied by $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$. The weighted $`m_{K\pi }`$ distribution is shown in Figure 4 and compared to two Monte Carlo simulations. One Monte Carlo is based on pure $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ and known charm backgrounds (dashed histogram) while the second (solid histogram) also includes the interfering s-wave amplitude that we will describe later. The dashed histogram shows that the residual effects of charm backgrounds, acceptance variation and resolution effects produce a much smaller variation with $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ than we observe. The striking mass dependence of the linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ term displayed in Figure 4 will be the principal tool we will use to estimate the parameters of the interfering amplitude. Figures 56 compare the dependence of the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ asymmetry on two other kinematic variables ($`\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`q^2`$) to the Monte Carlo with and without the s-wave amplitude. The acoplanarity dependence of the interference term will be discussed in a later section.

It was possible to understand the forward-backward asymmetry in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ using a simple model summarized by Eqn. 1. Using the notation of , we write the decay distribution for $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ in terms of the three helicity basis form factors: $`H_+,H_0,H_{}`$. For simplicity, we show the decay distribution in the limit of zero lepton mass

$$\frac{d^5\mathrm{\Gamma }}{dm_{K\pi }dq^2d\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}d\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}}d\chi }Kq^2\left|\begin{array}{c}(1+\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{sin}\theta _\text{v}e^{i\chi }\text{B}_{K^0}H_+\hfill \\ (1\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{sin}\theta _\text{v}e^{i\chi }\text{B}_{K^0}H_{}\hfill \\ \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{}}(\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}\text{B}_{K^0}+Ae^{i\delta })H_0\hfill \end{array}\right|^2$$
(1)
where $`K`$ is the momentum of the $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ system in the rest frame of the $`D^+`$. The helicity basis form factors are given by:

$`H_\pm (q^2)`$ $`=`$ $`(M_D+m_{K\pi })A_1(q^2)2{\displaystyle \frac{M_DK}{M_D+m_{K\pi }}}V(q^2)`$
$`H_0(q^2)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m_{K\pi }\sqrt{q^2}}}\left[(M_D^2m_{K\pi }^2q^2)(M_D+m_{K\pi })A_1(q^2)4{\displaystyle \frac{M_D^2K^2}{M_D+m_{K\pi }}}A_2(q^2)\right]`$
The vector and axial form factors are parameterized by a pole dominance form:

$$A_i(q^2)=\frac{A_i(0)}{1q^2/M_A^2}V(q^2)=\frac{V(0)}{1q^2/M_V^2}$$

where we use world average  values of $`R_VV(0)/A_1(0)=1.82\mathrm{and}\mathrm{R}_2\mathrm{A}_2(0)/\mathrm{A}_1(0)=0.78`$ and nominal (spectroscopic) pole masses of $`M_A=2.5\text{GeV}/c^2`$ and $`M_V=2.1\text{GeV}/c^2`$.333Eqn. 1 implicitly assumes that the $`q^2`$ dependence of the s-wave amplitude coupling to the virtual $`W^+`$ is the same as the $`H_0`$ form factor describing the $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$. This assumption is consistent with our data as illustrated in Figure 6. The modulus $`A`$ would then be the form factor ratio.

The $`\text{B}_{K^0}`$ stands for a Breit-Wigner amplitude (Eqn. 2) describing the $`\overline{K}^0`$ resonance: 444We are using a p-wave Breit-Wigner form with a width proportional to the cube of the kaon momentum in the kaon-pion rest frame ($`P^{}`$) over the value of this momentum when the kaon-pion mass equals the resonant mass ($`P_0^{}`$).

$$\text{B}_{K^0}=\frac{\sqrt{m_0\mathrm{\Gamma }}\left(\frac{P^{}}{P_0^{}}\right)^{(3/2)}}{m_{K\pi }^2m_0^2+im_0\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{P^{}}{P_0^{}}\right)^3}$$
(2)
In Eqn. 1, the s-wave amplitude is modeled as a constant (no variation with $`m_{K\pi }`$) with modulus $`A`$ and phase $`\delta `$. Angular momentum conservation restricts its contribution to the $`H_0`$ piece that describes the amplitude for having the virtual $`W^+`$ in a zero helicity state relative to its momentum vector in the $`D^+`$ rest-frame.

Assuming this new, previously unreported amplitude is small, it will primarily affect the decay distribution through interference with the dominant Breit-Wigner amplitude. Expanding Eqn. 1, we find that interference between the s-wave amplitude and the $`\text{B}_{K^0}`$ amplitude produces the following three interference terms:

Interfere $`=`$ $`8\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{}}A\mathrm{}\left(e^{i\delta }\text{B}_{K^0}\right)H_0^2`$ (3-c)
$`4(1+\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{sin}\theta _\text{v}A\mathrm{}\left(e^{i(\chi \delta )}\text{B}_{K^0}\right)H_+H_0`$
$`+4(1\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}})\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{sin}\theta _\text{v}A\mathrm{}\left(e^{i(\chi +\delta )}\text{B}_{K^0}\right)H_{}H_0`$
Only the first term (3-c), $`8\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{}}A\mathrm{}\left(e^{i\delta }\text{B}_{K^0}\right)H_0^2`$, will be present if one integrates over the acoplanarity variable $`\chi `$. Since our acceptance is very uniform in $`\chi `$, we will primarily observe the effects of 3-c when we average over $`\chi `$. We will begin by studying the acoplanarity-averaged asymmetry distributions before turning attention to the two acoplanarity dependent terms: Eqn. 3-c and 3-c.

The previously mentioned, weighted $`m_{K\pi }`$ distribution is shown in Figure 4. The shape of the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ term versus $`m_{K\pi }`$ is a strong function of the interfering s-wave amplitude phase $`\delta `$. Because acceptance and resolution corrections are small, the phase can be informally determined from the $`m_{K\pi }`$ dependence expected from the interference of this phase with the phase variation expected for a Breit-Wigner, $`\mathrm{}\left(e^{i\delta }\text{B}_{K^0}\right)`$. Figure 4(a) demonstrates that the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ weighted distribution in data is consistent with a constant s-wave amplitude of the form $`0.36\mathrm{exp}(i\pi /4)`$ $`(\text{GeV})^1`$. The magnitude of this amplitude is the value required to match the total asymmetry in data over the interval $`0.8<m_{K\pi }<0.9`$ $`\text{GeV}/c^2`$. In the discussion to follow, the s-wave amplitude will be fixed to this value.

We next turn to a discussion of the dependence of the acoplanarity-averaged linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ term on other kinematic variables. Figure 5 compares the observed $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ weighted distribution as a function of $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _{\mathrm{}}`$ to that expected in our model using our constant s-wave amplitude of $`0.36\mathrm{exp}(i\pi /4)`$ $`(\text{GeV})^1`$. We show the distributions for $`m_{K\pi }`$ both above and below 0.9 $`\text{GeV}/c^2`$.

In the context of our model, the acoplanarity-averaged, linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ term should be of the form: $`8\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{\mathrm{}}A\mathrm{}\left(e^{i\delta }\text{B}_{K^0}\right)H_0^2`$ and is proportional to $`1\mathrm{cos}^2\theta _{\mathrm{}}`$. This parabolic dependence is quite evident in the weighted histogram shown in Figure 5 for those events with $`m_{K\pi }<0.9\text{GeV}/c^2`$ where the forward-backward asymmetry is the largest.

As a final test of the acoplanarity-averaged interference term, we examine the $`q^2`$ dependence of the linear $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ coefficient. In our model, this coefficient should be proportional to $`Kq^2H_0^2(q^2)`$. Figure 6 compares the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ weighted $`q^2`$ distribution to the data with and without the additional s-wave amplitude of $`0.36\mathrm{exp}(i\pi /4)`$ $`(\text{GeV})^1`$.

Eqn. 3-c and 3-c produce an s-wave interference term with sinusoidal variation in $`\chi `$ and are proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}\theta _\text{v}`$. In the absence of the s-wave amplitude, all acoplanarity dependences either involve $`\mathrm{cos}(2\chi )`$ or are odd functions of $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$. The fact that (with the known form factors) the $`H_{}`$ term (Eqn. 3-c) dominates over the $`H_+`$ term has guided us in the construction of a weight to study the acoplanarity dependence of the s-wave interference. We weighted the acoplanarity distributions by weights of the form $`\mathrm{sin}(\chi +\delta )`$ and $`\mathrm{cos}(\chi +\delta )`$ where $`\delta =\pi /4`$ (the phase of s-wave amplitude in our model). We also multiplied these weights by $`+1`$ for right-sign events and $`1`$ for wrong-sign events to subtract away the bulk of the non-charm background. For reasonably uniform acceptance, these weights should average to zero for any constant or $`\mathrm{cos}(2\chi )`$ terms or any of the $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}\mathrm{cos}\chi `$ terms present without s-wave interference.

Because the $`H_{}`$ term (Eqn. 3-c) dominates over the $`H_+`$ term, by offsetting the phase of the weight by the phase of our s-wave amplitude, we have arranged things such that the $`\mathrm{cos}(\chi +\delta )`$ weighted distribution should be proportional to $`\mathrm{}(\text{B}_{K^0})`$ (an odd function of $`m_{K\pi }`$-$`m_0`$) and the $`\mathrm{sin}(\chi +\delta )`$ weighted distribution should be proportional to $`\mathrm{}(\text{B}_{K^0})`$ (an even function of $`m_{K\pi }`$-$`m_0`$). These expectations are essentially borne out in the weighted plots shown in Figure 7.

The presence of s-wave interference creates an interesting new complication in the conventions concerning the definition of the acoplanarity variable $`\chi `$. Our conventions are guided by CP symmetry considerations. We define the sense of the acoplanarity variable via a cross product expression of the form: $`(\stackrel{}{P}_\mu \times \stackrel{}{P}_\nu )\times (\stackrel{}{P}_K\times \stackrel{}{P}_\pi )\stackrel{}{P}_{K\pi }`$ where all momenta vectors are in the $`D^+`$ rest frame. Since our $`\chi `$ convention involves five momenta vectors, we believe that as one goes from $`D^+D^{}`$ one must change $`\chi \chi `$ in Eqn. 1. In the absence of the interference, there is no need to consider the sign conventions on $`\chi `$ since the decay distribution involves only cosines of $`\chi `$ or $`2\chi `$.

This point is made graphically by Figure 8 which compares the observed wrong-sign subtracted acoplanarity distribution for the $`D^+`$ and $`D^{}`$. These distributions are quite consistent once the sign convention is properly reversed for the $`D^{}`$ relative to the $`D^+`$, indicating no evidence for CP violation in these decays.

We have presented compelling evidence for the existence of a coherent $`K^{}\pi ^+`$ s-wave contribution to $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$. It has been assumed in all previous experimental analyses that this decay was strongly dominated by the process $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$. The previously unobserved, s-wave contribution is modeled as a constant amplitude of the approximate value $`0.36\mathrm{exp}(i\pi /4)`$ $`(\text{GeV})^1`$. Its strength, 0.36, is roughly 7% of the $`\overline{K}^0`$ Breit-Wigner amplitude at the pole mass in the term that couples to $`H_0`$ in Eqn. 1. The effect of this new interference is very noticeable in our data and creates a $``$15% forward-backward asymmetry in the variable $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _\text{v}`$ for $`D^+\overline{K}^0\mu ^+\nu `$ events with $`m_{K\pi }`$ below the $`\overline{K}^0`$ pole.

Although such an interference effect has been discussed in the phenomenological literature , there has been no discussion of it (to our knowledge) in the experimental literature. How could such a large effect have gone unnoticed in the past? We believe one answer is that an amplitude of this strength and form creates a very minor modulation to the $`m_{K\pi }`$ mass spectrum as shown in Figure 9. Another reason is that this effect is much more evident when one divides the data above and below the $`\overline{K}^0`$pole as we have done. We were unable to find evidence that this particular split was studied in previously published data. Finally, the FOCUS data set has significantly more clean $`D^+K^{}\pi ^+\mu ^+\nu `$ events than previously published data.

We wish to acknowledge the assistance of the staffs of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the INFN of Italy, and the physics departments of the collaborating institutions. This research was supported in part by the U. S. National Science Foundation, the U. S. Department of Energy, the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CONACyT-México, the Korean Ministry of Education, and the Korea Research Foundation.


text:
# T-shaped spin filter with a ring resonator

## Abstract

A planar ballistic structure is predicted to be highly effective in filtering electron spin from an unpolarized source into two output fluxes with the opposite and practically pure spin polarizations. The operability of the proposed device relies on the peculiar spin-dependent transmission properties of the T-shaped connector in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction as well as the difference in the dynamic phase gains of the two alternative paths around the ring resonator through upper and lower branches for even and odd eigenmodes.

The high-vacuum experiments of early 1920s performed by Stern and Gerlach demonstrated that the trajectory of neutral silver atom is affected by the spin eigenvalue of its unpaired electron in the inhomogeneous magnetic field . The observed effect is typically weak. With all recent attention to the spin related phenomena , the solid-state implementation of similar principles is of considerable interest. Propelled by the modern nanotechnology, the practically unlimited ability to modify the matter properties suggests a conceptual possibility to design a miniature spin filter of superior quality and effectiveness.

In this Letter we propose a planar three-terminal ballistic solid-state device that can filter an unpolarized incident electrons into two output channels according to the their spin orientation. The Stern-Gerlach nonuniform magnetic field is substituted by the intrinsic spin-orbit (SO) interaction, naturally present in the low-symmetry setups (for example, in semiconductor heterostructures) and acting on the electron spin as an effective momentum-dependent magnetic field. Various suggestions, how to utilize the SO effect, have recently been published in a number of spin-related proposals . This approach is a potentially big advantage over the external sources of the strong magnetic field that are bulky and/or require extensive additional circuitry (though incorporation of the ferromagnetic films into the layered structure has also been considered ). We have analyzed several geometries, mainly symmetric and asymmetric 2D ballistic rings. Important property of this type of structures is the possibility of at least two alternative paths for the incoming electron that can lead to the interference and noticeable manifestations of the intrinsic SO effect in the spin-dependence of the transmission probabilities. The special geometry provides high effectiveness with up to $`70\%`$ of the incident unpolarized flux filtered into two output fluxes with practically pure spin states.

The structure under consideration consists of an area of complex geometry formed from the two-dimensional electron gas using, e.g., an electrostatic split-gate technique, and connected to the exterior by a number of quasi-one dimensional (1D) wires. The simplest model 2D ($`x`$$`y`$ plane) spin-independent electron Hamiltonian is complimented by the spin-related term (symmetrized to keep it Hermitian that is denoted here by curly brackets $`\{\mathrm{}\}`$):

$$H=\widehat{1}\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}(k_x^2+k_y^2)+\left\{\eta (x,y)(\widehat{\sigma }_xk_y\widehat{\sigma _y}k_x)\right\}.$$
(1)
Equation (1) defines the problem along with the boundary conditions on the two-component spinor wavefunction $`\widehat{u}=0`$ at the structure edges (hard walls). The third dimension (i.e., the $`z`$ coordinate) is strongly quantized. The SO interaction can be caused, in particular, by the asymmetry in the $`z`$-confining potential (the so-called Rashba  or structure-asymmetry-induced term) with its strength given by the coefficient $`\eta `$, $`\widehat{\sigma }_\alpha `$ are the Pauli matrices ($`\alpha =x,y,z`$), and $`\widehat{1}`$ is a $`2\times 2`$ unity matrix. The $`\eta `$ in the first approximation is proportional to the $`z`$-component of the local electric field in the structure layer and depends on the properties of the semiconductor which forms 2D layer. For the practical means, this asymmetry in the confining potential can be formed and/or manipulated locally by the special control electrode(s) located over/under the structure . For simplicity, we ignore other potential sources of SO interaction in our system (that nevertheless exist and compete in real systems) . We also leave aside any other phenomena beyond explicitly expressed in Eq. (1) (especially many-body interactions and all types of relaxation processes). We concentrate here exclusively on the stationary setup.

Transmission and reflection properties of the arbitrarily complex linear system connected to the exterior via 1D wires can be condensed into a finite-size scattering matrix $`𝐒`$ , consisting of the reflection coefficients $`r_{ii}`$ (in the $`i`$-th channel) and transmission coefficients $`t_{ij}`$ (describing propagation of the particle from the $`j`$-th into the $`i`$-th channel). We choose to enumerate as distinguishable channels (or terminals) all energetically allowed electron fluxes through different 1D subbands even of the same wire. Thus, the number of the channels can differ from the number of the attached leads. Having said that, we will be primarily interested in the situation when all connecting wires are identical and the incident electron energy permits transmission solely through the ground subband. For example, in the hard-wall approximation the ground subband wavefunction in the ideal lead of width $`w`$ is a plane wave $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm =\psi _0(y)\mathrm{exp}(\pm ikx)`$ with an envelope $`\psi _0(y)=(2/w)^{1/2}\mathrm{cos}(\pi y/w)`$ that is symmetric in the perpendicular direction and corresponds to the quantization energy $`E_0=\mathrm{}^2\pi ^2/2mw^2`$ (these formulae are given in coordinates describing the channel along the axis $`x`$). The total energy of the state in the lead is $`E=E_0+E_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ where $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}=\mathrm{}^2k^2/2m`$. For the kinetic energy interval $`0<E_{\mathrm{kin}}<3E_0`$ the propagation in the arms is possible only through the ground subbands.

In the case of a spinless particle, the $`r_{ii}`$, $`t_{ij}`$ are scalars. By taking electron spin into consideration, the number of transmission channels effectively doubles. If the spin-dependent interactions are not overly strong, and especially when they are spatially localized to the interior of the system (that is near the control electrodes in our case), it is convenient to just “upgrade” transmission and reflection coefficients of the $`𝐒`$ into $`2\times 2`$ submatrices, thus keeping pairs of the channels differing only by the spin orientation together. Each $`2\times 2`$ coefficient in this case can be conveniently expanded as

$$\widehat{x}=\widehat{1}x_1+i\underset{\alpha }{}\widehat{\sigma }_\alpha x_\alpha \text{ (}x=r_{ii}\text{ or }t_{ij}\text{).}$$
(2)
With the total flux $`𝐅𝐔^+𝐔`$, the requirement of the flux conservation for $`𝐔_{\mathrm{out}}=\mathrm{𝐒𝐔}_{\mathrm{in}}`$, corresponding to an arbitrary column $`𝐔_{\mathrm{in}}`$ (symbolically representing coherent incident waves $`\widehat{u}_i`$ coming through all channels), can only be secured if

$$𝐒^+𝐒=\mathrm{𝟏}.$$
(3)
We perform now the symmetry analysis of this system. For a broad class of problems including the one defined by Eq. (1), time-reversal invariance (with the operator $`\widehat{T}=i\widehat{\sigma }_yK`$ where $`K`$ is the complex conjugation) establishes the following relation on the scattering matrix $`𝐒`$

$$\widehat{\sigma }_y𝐒^{}\widehat{\sigma }_y𝐒=\mathrm{𝟏}.$$
(4)
This equation should be regarded as a symbolic one, with the Pauli matrix multiplications applied to each submatrix $`\widehat{r}_{ii}`$, $`\widehat{t}_{ij}`$ separately.

Combined with Eq. (3), this relation can be converted into a more practical form $`\widehat{\sigma }_y𝐒^{}\widehat{\sigma }_y=𝐒^+`$, that immediately results into

$$r_{ii,\alpha }=0,t_{ij,1}=t_{ji,1},t_{ij,\alpha }=t_{ji,\alpha },$$
(5)
Additional structure symmetry elements can provide further relations on the components of $`𝐒`$. For example, for the system symmetric in respect to the reflection $`yy`$ ($`S_y`$), the operator $`i\widehat{\sigma }_yS_y`$ commutes with the model Hamiltonian giving

$$\widehat{\sigma }_yS_y(𝐒)\widehat{\sigma }_y=𝐒.$$
(6)
The effect of reflection $`S_y`$ on the scattering matrix is set by the permutation of the pairs of indices $`(i,j,\mathrm{})(k,l,\mathrm{})`$ corresponding to the symmetrically located channels. In components, that leads to relations

$`r_{ii,1}=r_{kk,1},`$ $`t_{ij,1}=t_{kl,1},t_{ij,x}=t_{kl,x},`$ (8)
$`t_{ij,y}=t_{kl,y},t_{ij,z}=t_{kl,z}.`$
As a consequence, together with the relations of Eq. (5) this also suggests $`t_{ik,y}=0`$ for terminals $`ik`$. Another important case comes up when channels $`i`$ and $`j`$ are positioned along the reflection plane and as a result they reflect to themselves. For this setup $`t_{ij,x}=t_{ij,z}=0`$.

Similar relations take place for the reflection $`xx`$ ($`S_x`$). As for the $`zz`$ ($`S_z`$), it changes the sign of the intrinsic electric field responsible for the Rashba SO interaction, thus establishing relations between scattering matrices $`𝐒(\eta )`$ and $`𝐒(\eta )`$ as

$$\widehat{\sigma }_z𝐒(\eta )\widehat{\sigma }_z=𝐒(\eta ).$$
(9)
These simple qualitative considerations suffice for the purposes of the present Letter .

An elementary channel flux $`F\widehat{u}^+\widehat{u}`$ with the $`100\%`$ polarization is conveniently given by the spinor column $`\widehat{u}=(u_{},u_{})`$. The relative magnitude and phase between $`u_{}`$ and $`u_{}`$ characterize orientation of the spin; vector $`𝑷`$ defined by three components $`P_\alpha `$ in the $`xyz`$ coordinate system is called the polarization vector, $`P_\alpha F\widehat{u}^+\widehat{\sigma }_\alpha \widehat{u}`$. For the arbitrary spinor $`\widehat{u}`$ the absolute value $`|𝑷|=1`$. Being pumped into the channel $`j`$, the $`\widehat{t}_{ij}\widehat{u}`$ part of the incident flux will seep through the structure into the $`i`$ output channel. In the general case of spin-dependent interactions present in the system, $`\widehat{t}_{ij,\alpha }0`$ and the spin will rotate from its original orientation. Moreover, the magnitude of the transmitted flux will depend on the spin orientation of the incident flux.

Partially polarized electron fluxes can be mimicked by a number of independent (not phase coherent) elementary fluxes $`\widehat{u}_q`$ through the same channel that are just additive in the case of our linear system

$$F=\underset{q}{}F_q,𝑷F=\underset{q}{}𝑷_qF_q.$$
(10)
To present the unpolarized input flux in channel $`j`$, we use, for example, two elementary fluxes $`\widehat{u}_1=(1,0)`$ and $`\widehat{u}_2=(0,1)`$. Now it is very easy to evaluate $`F,𝑷`$ for the electron flux, transmitted into channel $`i`$. Indeed,

$$F|t_{ij,1}|^2+|t_{ij,x}|^2+|t_{ij,y}|^2+|t_{ij,z}|^2,$$
(11)
with the $`x`$-component of spin polarization

$$P_xF2\mathrm{I}\mathrm{m}(t_{ij,1}t_{ij,x}^{}+t_{ij,y}^{}t_{ij,z})$$
(12)
and $`P_y`$, $`P_z`$ obtained by the cyclic permutation of indices. This equation shows, in particular, that if only one component of $`\widehat{t}_{ij}`$ is present, polarization of the transmitted electron flux is zero for unpolarized input.

With the polarization vector $`𝑷`$ of the transfered flux expressed that way, we can come to another very important consequence with the help of Eqs. (3) and (4): the system with the Hamiltonian of Eq. (1) and just two connecting terminals cannot polarize transmitted electron flux. This conclusion is generally relaxed for the structures with three or more terminals (see also  in relation to this matter). We restrict ourselves here to three-terminal devices.

Quickly, we recollect now the results , obtained for the simple T-shaped structure, formed by the confining potential of two intersecting 1D channels \[see Fig. 1(a)\]. The SO interaction is formed in the 2D electron gas layer by gate electrodes and localized to the intersection area only. As the unpolarized electrons enter the input arm ($`x`$), the quantities of interest are the magnitudes and polarizations of the two output fluxes through the $`\pm y`$ arms. With the $`S_y`$-symmetric T-shaped structure providing symmetry relations of Eqs. (6) and (8), the total transmitted fluxes of the two output channels are the same but their polarizations along the $`x`$ and $`z`$ axes are opposite ($`P_y`$ is the same). The transmission varies vary gradually with the incident energy but has low dips in the vicinity of the resonances with the quasi-localized 0D electron levels at the intersection (corresponding to the total reflection in the case of no SO). The SO interaction forms also a fine structure near these resonances. In the resonance regions where the difference between the incident energy and the energy of the quasi-localized 0D state becomes comparable to the SO term, high values of polarization take place. Actually, the smaller the SO term is, the narrower these regions of high polarization and the higher (closer to $`100\%`$) the polarization values become. Note, though, that this happens at the expense of diminishing total transmission.

The same T-shaped spin filter with an attached ring resonator is shown in Fig. 1(b). In Figure 2, we present the energy dependence of the total transmitted flux $`F`$ (light area) and its polarized part $`|𝑷|F`$ (dark) into one of the two symmetric output channels (the flux conservation ensures that $`F0.5`$). The data shown are obtained for $`\eta =0`$ (no SO), $`\eta _0`$ (relatively small SO), and $`3\eta _0`$ (stronger SO) that are given in graphs (a)–(c), respectively. Coefficient $`\eta _0=6`$ $`\mu `$eV$`\mu `$m is a reasonable basic value for the Rashba constant in InAs/InGaAs heterostructures , electron effective mass $`m=0.023m_0`$ where $`m_0`$ is the free electron mass, the channel width $`w=0.1`$ $`\mu `$m, and the ring radius $`R=0.2`$ $`\mu `$m \[dashed circle in Fig. 1(b)\]. This set of parameters gives the ground subband quantization energy $`E_0=1.6`$ meV; thus, $`3\eta _0`$ is equal to $`0.11\times E_0w`$. We (arbitrarily) assume the SO coefficient $`\eta (r)`$ to have the spatial dependence $`\eta (r)=\eta /[1+e^{(rr_0)/\mathrm{\Delta }r}]`$, where $`\eta `$ and $`r_0=0.1`$ $`\mu `$m are defined by the back and front electrode potentials and their sizes, $`\mathrm{\Delta }r=0.025`$ $`\mu `$m is included to account qualitatively for the fringe fields, $`r=[(x+R)^2+y^2]^{1/2}`$. For a numerical solution, we have applied the recursive method of Usuki et al. .

In the absence of the SO interaction \[Fig. 2(a)\], only $`t_{ij,1}`$ terms are present in the transmission coefficients and the polarization of the output fluxes repeats that of the incident fluxes; thus, it is zero for the unpolarized input flux. Energy dependence of the transmission probability consists of a number of resonant peaks, corresponding to the eigenstates in the ring. Strictly speaking, eigenstates in the ideal ring should be defined via the Bessel functions. Under the assumption $`w2\pi R`$, energies of several first states can be approximated by $`E_{R,l}=k_l^2/2m`$ (counted from the quantization energy $`E_0`$ in the ideal channel of width $`w`$), where $`k_l=l/R`$ and $`l`$ is an integer. Thus, except for the ground state $`l=0`$, the eigenstates in the ring are quadruply degenerate — twice because of the orbital motion $`\pm l`$, and twice due to the spin. Presence of the attached terminal leads inflicts a finite lifetime of the ring eigenmodes (and leads to some renormalization of the energies).

The arrows in the upper part of the graph indicate several first energies $`E_{r,l}`$. One can immediately note that for even orbital numbers $`l`$, transmission peaks are well defined, while for odd $`l`$, the peaks are suppressed and the main feature here is a dip in the transmission probability. This can qualitatively be explained as follows. An electron wave transferring to, say, upper output channel passes $`1/4`$ of the ring if moving through the upper branch $`AC`$ and $`3/4`$ for the lower branch $`ABC`$. Thus, the difference in the gained dynamic phase  is $`\pi l`$ that gives a multiplier of $`+1`$ for even and $`1`$ for odd modes that secures either constructive or destructive interference at the output connector. Deviation from the described scenario, especially for a couple of the first eigenmodes can be explained by the leakage of the electron wave in the lower branch into the $`y`$ lead (the leakage is stronger for smaller $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}`$), thus, severely disturbing the balance of the wave amplitudes arriving via two paths.

Now it is easy to understand the structure of the transmission spectra in the presence of the SO interaction \[Figs. 2(b) and 2(c)\]. All peaks are split into two subpeaks because the four-fold degeneracy of the eigenstates in the ring is lifted into two pairs by the SO mixing . Taking into consideration the symmetry relations of Eqs. (6) and (8) for the $`S_y`$-symmetric T-shaped connector, one can conclude that the explanation given above is still valid for the $`t_{ij,1}`$, $`t_{ij,y}`$ components of the transferred flux, but for the $`t_{ij,x}`$ and $`t_{ij,z}`$, where the sign for the waves transmitted into the upper and lower branches are opposite, constructive interference takes place for odd eigenmodes in the ring. That is indeed very important conclusion since constructive interference of the $`xz`$ polarized and unpolarized electron fluxes take place for drastically different incident energies. This explains really high polarization for the energies corresponding to the odd modes — the polarization reaches $`100\%`$ where the dark-area ($`|𝑷|F`$) and the light-area ($`F`$) contour boarders adjoin.

Another important observation concerns the $`P_y`$-component of the transmitted flux. It is the same for both $`+y`$ and $`y`$ output fluxes in the symmetric structure. That means that for the odd eigenmodes the corresponding flux component interferes destructively, just like the unpolarized flux fracture. Thus, $`P_y0`$ and polarizations of two output fluxes are not only extremely high, but they are also practically exactly opposite for two output arms, which is indeed an optimal situation for the filter.

So far we have implicitly considered monoenergetic incident electrons. For the described effect to be observable in a more realistic setup, the energy distribution of the incident electrons should not substantially exceed the energy gap between adjacent ring eigenmodes and be aligned in such a way that to overlap primarily with only one subpeak of the SO split transmission peak, as the spin polarization is approximately opposite for two subpeaks. These requirements could be fulfilled by adjusting the Fermi levels of contact reservoirs and performing experiments in a proper temperature range.

In summary, we have proposed a device consisting of the T-shaped spin filter with an attached ring resonator. Matching incident electron energies to some of the eigenmodes in the ring, we have been able to achieve both a superior spin selectivity and high transmission efficiency.

This work was supported by the ONR and DARPA.