text:
# Large Scale Magnetic Fields and the Number of Cosmic Ray Sources above 10¹⁹ eV

## I Introduction

Despite a growing amount of data the origin of cosmic rays especially at the highest energies is still obscure. For ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) with energies above $`10^{18}`$, there are still many open questions such as “How can particles be accelerated to these extremely high energies?”, and “What are their sources ?” reviews . The best candidates for acceleration sources are powerful objects, such as hot spots of radio galaxies and active galactic nuclei biermann , but they are still not identified and it is still unknown how many of them contribute to the observed cosmic ray flux.

The observed spectrum covers about 11 orders of magnitude, from 1 GeV to $`10^{11}`$ GeV, and is described by a power law $`E^\gamma `$ with two breaks at the “knee”, at $`4\times 10^{15}`$ eV, and at the “ankle”, at $`5\times 10^{18}`$ eV. Above the knee the spectrum steepens from a power law index $`\gamma 2.7`$ to $`3.2`$. Above the ankle the spectrum flattens again to a power law index $`\gamma 2.8`$. Cosmic rays with energies above the ankle cannot be confined by the Galactic magnetic field, and the lack of counterparts in our Galaxy suggests that the ankle marks a cross-over from a Galactic component to a component of extra-galactic origin. Data from the Fly’s Eye experiment also suggest that the chemical composition is dominated by heavy nuclei up to the ankle and by protons beyond Fly .

If UHECR have an extra-galactic origin, we would expect a cutoff in the spectrum due to the fact that in the bottom-up scenario UHECR are assumed to be protons accelerated in powerful astrophysical sources: Even if they can achieve, under extreme conditions, such high energies, they will lose their energy mostly by pion production on the microwave background. For sources further away than a few dozen Mpc this would predict a break in the cosmic ray flux known as Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff gzk , around $`50`$EeV. This break has not been observed by experiments such as Fly’s Eye Fly , Haverah Park Haverah , Yakutsk Yakutsk , Hires Hires  and AGASA AGASA , which instead show an extension beyond the expected GZK cutoff and events above $`100`$EeV.

One of the possible solutions to the lack of observed counterparts to the highest energy events ssb ; ES95  is to suppose the existence of large scale intervening magnetic fields with intensity $`B0.11\mu `$ES95 , which would provide sufficient angular deflection even for high energies and could explain the large scale isotropy of arrival directions observed by the AGASA experiment AGASA  as due to diffusion.

It has been realized recently that magnetic fields as strong as $`1\mu G`$ in sheets and filaments of large scale structures, such as our Local Supercluster, are compatible with existing upper limits on Faraday rotation vallee ; ryu ; blasi .

In our previous paper isola  we considered the effects of such strong magnetic fields in the particular case of a single source corresponding to Centaurus A, which is a radio-galaxy located in the southern hemisphere at a distance of 3.4 Mpc. There we employed detailed numerical simulations for the energy spectrum and the angular distribution of ultra-high energy nucleons propagating in extra-galactic magnetic fields of r.m.s. strength between 0.3 and 1 $`\mu `$G. We found that this model is inconsistent with the data when $`B0.3\mu G`$ because the angular distribution predicted is not isotropic but concentrated around the position of the source and because the northern hemisphere experiments should never have detected the highest energy events for which the angular deflection is too weak to bring the particle in the field of view of these experiments; therefore we argued that at least a few sources within the GZK cutoff are required to produce the observed UHECR flux.

The goal of our present paper is to elaborate more detailed constraints on the number of sources necessary to reproduce the observed distribution, as a function of the poorly known strength of the extra-galactic magnetic field in our Local Supercluster. As will be explained below in more detail, we assume a discrete distribution of sources in the Local Supercluster permeated by magnetic fields of strength up to $`B0.3\mu `$G.

As in our previous paper, we restrict ourselves to UHECR nucleons, and we neglect the Galactic contribution to the deflection of UHECR nucleons since typical proton deflection angles in galactic magnetic fields of several $`\mu `$G are $`10^{}`$ above $`4\times 10^{19}`$eV medina ; anchordoqui , and thus are small compared to deflection in $`0.3\mu `$G fields extended over megaparsec scales.

As statistical quantities used to test various scenarios we adopt the angular power spectrum based on the set of spherical harmonics coefficients $`a_{lm}`$, as used in Ref. Sommers , which is sensitive to anisotropies on large scales, and the two-point correlation function as defined in Ref. Tinyakov , which contains information on the small scale anisotropy.

As will become apparent, the statistics for these quantities is so far limited by the small number of observed events but the present development of large new detectors will considerably decrease their statistical uncertainties. In particular, the Pierre Auger experiment auger  will combine ground arrays measuring lateral shower cross sections with fluorescence telescopes measuring the longitudinal shower development. Since two of these hybrid detectors are planned, one in the southern hemisphere currently under construction in Argentina, and one in the northern hemisphere, full sky coverage will be achieved, with an exposure that is practically uniform in right ascension, and a geometrical dependence on declination. There are furthermore plans for space based air shower detectors such as OWL owl  and EUSO euso  which may also achieve full sky coverage. For this reason it is feasable to consider a multi-pole analysis of the angular distribution which involves statistical estimators of integrals covering the full sky: Since these estimators involve factors $`1/\omega _i`$, where $`\omega _i`$ is the exposure associated with the ith observed direction, they are undefined if the exposure vanishes anywhere on the sky. However, even in the absence of full-sky coverage one can define analogous quantities and their estimators (which are then different from the usual spherical multipoles) by simply restricting them to the area of the sky where the exposure function does not vanish. We will use these modified statistical quantities to compare model predictions with the existing AGASA data.

The auto-correlation analysis provides information about the small scale anisotropy and can be applied to partial sky coverage such as for the AGASA experiment without restriction. The observed data actually show significant small-scale angular clustering (five doublets and one triplet within $`2.5^{}`$ out of 57 events above 40 EeV). This clustering has a chance probability of less than $`1\%`$ in the case of an isotropic distribution. It has been pointed out that in the presence of turbulent extra-galactic magnetic fields of fractions of a micro Gauss clustering could be induced by magnetic lensing harari ; SLB99 ; LSB99 ; harari2 . The auto-correlation analysis presented in the present paper will demonstrate that quantitatively.

The paper is organized as follows: in section II we briefly describe our numerical simulations, in sections III and IV we present our results on multi-pole analysis and auto-correlation function, respectively. Section V briefly reconsiders Centaurus A as the unique source in case of a field as strong as a micro Gauss and in section VI we conclude.

## II Numerical simulations

We use the same numerical approach used in earlier publications isola ; SLB99 ; LSB99 , but we take a discrete distribution of sources centered at 20 Mpc from Earth and distributed on a sheet with a Gaussian profile of thickness 3 Mpc and radius 20 Mpc, with both magnetic field strength and source density following the profile of the sheet and no sources present within 2 Mpc from the observer. This is a simple approximation to our location in the Local Supercluster and to its shape. We also assume that the sources inject protons with a $`E^{2.4}`$ spectrum extending up to $`10^{22}`$eV. We note that the angular distributions are not very sensitive to assumptions on the injection spectrum.

We assume a random turbulent magnetic field with power spectrum $`B(k)^2k^{n_B}`$ for $`2\pi /L<k<2\pi /l_c`$ and $`B^2(k)=0`$ otherwise. We use $`n_B=11/3`$, corresponding to Kolmogorov turbulence, in which case $`L`$, the largest eddy size, characterizes the coherence length of the magnetic field. For the latter we use $`L1`$Mpc, corresponding to about one turn-around in a Hubble time. Physically one expects $`l_cL`$, but numerical resolution limits us to $`l_c0.008L`$. We use $`l_c0.01`$Mpc. The magnetic field modes are dialed on a grid in momentum space according to this spectrum with random phases and then Fourier transformed onto the corresponding grid in location space. The r.m.s. strength $`B`$ is given by $`B^2=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑kk^2B^2(k)`$.

Typically, 5000 trajectories are computed for each realization of the magnetic field obtained in this way and of the source positions, for 10-20 realizations in total. Only those trajectories that cross a sphere of 1.75 Mpc radius around Earth (corresponding to $`5^{}`$ viewed from 20 Mpc distance) are used. Each time such a trajectory crosses this sphere, arrival direction and energy are registered as one event. Each trajectory is followed for a maximal time of 10 Gyr and as long as the distance from the observer is smaller than double the source distance. The results do not significantly depend on these cut-offs. Furthermore, the distance limit is reasonable physically as it mimics a magnetic field concentrated in the large scale structure, with much smaller values in the voids, as generally expected. Similar codes have been developped in Refs. propa .

When dialing simulated data sets from the simulated sky distributions, one has to take into account the non-uniform exposure of the particular experiment considered. This can be done by dialing from the simulated distribution multiplied by an exposure function depending on the sky solid angle $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. This function, measured in units of km2years, gives the effective time-integrated collective area of the detector in a given direction $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. A detector which operates continuously will have an exposure function roughly independent of right ascension and thus will only depend on the declination angle $`\delta `$. We will only need the exposure function up to an irrelevant overall normalization. For a detector at a single site we use the following parameterization:

$$\omega (\delta )\mathrm{cos}a_0\mathrm{cos}\delta \mathrm{sin}\alpha _m+\alpha _m\mathrm{sin}a_0\mathrm{sin}\delta ,$$
(1)
where $`a_0`$ is the latitude of the detector and $`\alpha _m`$ is zero for $`\xi >1`$, $`\pi `$ for $`\xi <1`$, and $`\mathrm{cos}^1(\xi )`$ otherwise, where $`\xi (\mathrm{cos}\theta _m\mathrm{sin}a_0\mathrm{sin}\delta )/[\mathrm{cos}a_0\mathrm{cos}\delta ]`$. The angle $`\theta _m`$ is the maximal zenith angle out to which the detector is fully efficient ($`60^{}`$ for Auger, $`45^{}`$ for AGASA). The exposure function which results for the AGASA experiment and that we will use in the following, has been discussed, for example, in Ref. rr , see in particular Fig. 2 there.

## III The angular power spectrum

The angular power spectrum is defined as the average $`a_{lm}^2`$:

$$C(l)=\frac{1}{2l+1}\underset{m=l}{\overset{l}{}}a_{lm}^2,$$
(2)
and the statistical estimator for the spherical harmonic coefficients $`a_{lm}`$ is given by Sommers

$$a_{lm}=\frac{1}{𝒩}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{1}{\omega _i}Y_{lm}(u^i),$$
(3)
where $`N`$ is the number of discrete arrival directions, either of the real data, or randomly sampled from the simulated sky distributions. Furthermore, $`\omega _i`$ the total experimental exposure at arrival direction $`u^i`$, $`𝒩=_{i=1}^N1/\omega _i`$ the sum of the weights $`1/\omega _i`$, and $`Y_{lm}`$ is the real-valued spherical harmonics function.

In order to obtain the statistical distribution of the $`C(l)`$ predicted by specific simulated scenarios, we dial $`C(l)`$ typically $`10^4`$ times from the simulated distributions \[multiplied by the exposure function $`\omega (\delta )`$\] for each realization of the magnetic field and the source positions.

For each $`l`$ we plot the average over all trials and realizations as well as two error bars. The smaller error bar (shown to the left of the average) is the statistical error, i.e. the fluctuations due to the finite number $`N`$ of observed events, averaged over all realizations, while the larger error bar (shown to the right of the average) is the “total error”, i.e. the statistical error plus the cosmic variance, in other words, the fluctuations due to finite number of events and the variation between different realizations of the magnetic field and source positions.

To estimate the true power spectrum from Eqs. (2) and (3) requires data with full sky coverage and therefore at least two detector sites such as forseen for the Auger experiment. For its exposure function we add Eq. 1 for two sites located at $`a_0=35^{}`$ and at $`a_0=39^{}`$. The AGASA experiment only has partial sky coverage and, consequently, the true multi-pole spectrum cannot be computed from its data. For this case we consider the quantities defined by restricting Eq. (3) to the sky area where $`\omega (\delta )>0`$. This method is also used in the analysis of cosmic microwave background fluctuations where window functions are used which are unity in the observed region and zero elsewhere. In our case this corresponds to using the AGASA exposure function for the $`\omega _i`$ in Eq. (3) for the coefficients $`a_{lm}`$. This defines the modified angular power spectrum $`C(l)`$ both for the simulated data sets and the real data.

We start by comparing in Fig. 1 the power spectra predicted by the completely isotropic distribution with the AGASA exposure function with the actual AGASA results which appear completely consistent with isotropy on large scales. Note that the increasing power for $`l=0`$ and $`l=1`$ is due to the incomplete sky coverage of AGASA.

In the following figures, in case of full sky coverage, we show as solid line the analytical prediction for an isotropic distribution. In this case the power is the same for all $`l`$-values and decreases as $`1/N`$ as the number of arrival direction increases. AGASA data are shown as histograms. A pure mono-pole intensity distribution is equivalent to isotropy while the strength of other multi-poles relative to the mono-pole is a measure of anisotropy.

Since the typical experimental angular resolution is $`3^{}`$, in principle information is contained in modes up to $`l60`$. In the following we show the values of $`C(l)`$ with $`l`$ only up to 10 because the structure on small scales corresponding to larger $`l`$ is better described by the auto-correlation function discussed in the next section.

In Figs. 2 and 3, we compare the angular power spectrum $`C(l)`$ predicted for the AGASA experiment at energies $`E40EeV`$, for magnetic field strength $`B=0.05\mu `$G, and 100 and 400 sources, respectively, with the actual AGASA data. Both plots have been obtained for $`N=58`$, the present number of events with energies above $`4\times 10^{19}`$eV observed by AGASA.

The case of 100 sources seems roughly consistent with the experimental data while the case of 400 sources shows some deviations for the lowest multi-poles. This can be interpreted as the magnetic field being too weak to sufficiently isotropize the arrival directions with respect to the sources which were assumed to follow the Local Supercluster: For a number of sources much larger than the number of observed events $`N`$, it is likely that each observed event has been produced by a different source. The number of contributing sources is thus maximal and the fluctuations around the assumed (non-isotropic) distribution is minimal, making the anisotropy more visible. This is illustrated by Fig. 4, which shows the UHECR angular distribution as seen on Earth in terrestrial coordinates for $`E40EeV`$, $`B=0.05\mu G`$, and 400 sources. The distribution is concentrated around the solid line which represents the Supergalactic plane.

In contrast, the scenario with 100 sources seems to be more sensitive to the limited statistics due to the relatively small number of events observed by AGASA. In fact, the statistical errors due to the small number of events at low multi-poles is higher in Fig. 2 than in Fig. 3.

For full sky exposure function corresponding to the Auger parameters, and assuming 500 oberved events, we obtain the situation shown in Fig. 5. In this case the deviation from isotropy, plotted as the solid line, is much more evident and would be easily determined by future observations. As we will show and explain in the next section, the scenario with 100 sources is, however, ruled out by the AGASA data from the analysis of the auto-correlation function. For the relatively small deflection induced by $`B=0.05\mu `$G, the number of sources must be at least as large as the number of events observed in different directions; much fewer than 100 sources are therefore ruled out in this case.

We now investigate whether stronger magnetic fields, by providing larger angular deflection, might provide a better match to isotropy. In particular, we focus on the case where $`B=0.3\mu `$ G. In Fig. 6 we show results for $`B=0.3\mu `$G and 10 sources, all other assumptions being the same as in Fig. 2.

The distribution seems to be roughly consistent with the data, but we also found that 5 and 100 sources result in almost the same distribution. Since in this case the limited statistics does not allow us to discriminate between widely different number of sources, we turn to the case of Auger exposure with full sky coverage, assuming 500 events observed above 40 EeV. The results are shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 for the case for 5 and 10 sources, respectively. The case of 100 sources is already ruled by the auto-correlation function of the AGASA data, as will be shown in the next section.

Note that as for the weak field case the scenarios shown in Fig. 7 and 8 predict an anisotropy that should be easily detectable by the Pierre Auger experiment, in contrast to the AGASA experiment (compare Fig. 6). More generally, we note that the scenario with $`B=0.05\mu G`$ gives a distribution very different from the one with $`B=0.3\mu G`$. Thus future experiments with full sky coverage should be able to give important information on the strength of the magnetic field in the Local Supercluster by performing a multi-pole analysis. Furthermore, in the present case of $`B=0.3\mu `$G Figs. 7 and 8 show that multipoles $`l3`$ hardly depend on the number of sources, whereas the lowest multipoles , which are less influenced by deflection, have a noticeable dependence on the number of sources, similarly to the case of weak field $`B0.05\mu `$G.

If a nearly isotropic angular distribution is confirmed by future observations, we can conclude that for magnetic fields $`B0.3\mu `$G a number of sources of 5-10 would be favored by the data. As will be shown in the next section, the auto-correlation function does not allow a much higher number of sources because magnetic lensing would not produce sufficient clustering on small scales. On the other hand, much fewer than 5 sources are ruled out by the arguments given in our previous paper isola .

Assuming an energy independent exposure function and using a simple $`E^2`$ spectrum, it is possible to estimate the number of events which will be observed in the future. In the case of Auger observatories, for a total acceptance of $`7000`$km$`^2`$sr per array, in five years we should observe $`2200`$ events above $`4\times 10^{19}`$ eV Sommers . Here we have been conservative and used $`N=500`$.

## IV Auto-correlation function

For the auto-correlation function we follow the same approach used in Ref. Tinyakov . We start from either actual data or from a randomly generated set of $`N`$ events dialed from the simulated distributions, multiplied by the exposure function. For each event we divide the sphere into concentric bins with a fixed angular size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$, and we count the number of events falling into each bin. We then divide by twice the solid angle size $`S(\theta )`$ of the corresponding bin, arriving at

$$N(\theta )=\frac{1}{2S(\theta )}\underset{ji}{}R_{ij}(\theta ),$$
(4)
where

$$R_{ij}(\theta )=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{if }\theta _{ij}\text{ is in same bin as }\theta \hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}.$$

We note that the auto-correlation function in the strict sense would include a factor $`(𝒩^2\omega _i\omega _j)`$ under the sum in Eq. (4). However, the differences are small and in any case we are free to choose any statistical quantity as long as the same quantity and its fluctuations are used to compare simulations and data.

In analogy to the previous section, for each magnetic field and source position realization we dial $`N(\theta )`$ $`10^4`$ times from the simulated distributions in order to obtain its average and variances for which we plot the same two error bars as for the power spectrum. The histograms shown subsequently represent again the result for the AGASA data, where the sharp peak at small separation angles results from the six observed clusters. We have verified that using incorrect exposure functions in general destroys the agreement found between a simulated isotropic distribution and the data at large $`\theta `$ AGASA . The observed distribution of events thus reflects the non-uniform exposure rr ; Tkachev .

We start by comparing the autocorrelation function for the real AGASA data with the isotropic distribution in Fig. 9. This demonstrates that the AGASA data are completely consistent with isotropy except at scales larger than a few degrees.

In Fig. 10 we show the angular correlation function for $`N=58`$ events with energies $`E40EeV`$, predicted by simulations with $`B=0.05\mu `$G and 100 sources, using the AGASA exposure function.

This case shows no correlation at angles as small as the angular resolution, where AGASA shows a peak, whereas there are strong correlations at larger angles, which is not consistent with the observed isotropic distribution at large scales. This also corresponds to the fact that in the case of weak magnetic fields we expect that clusters just reflect the point-like sources but if the number of sources is much larger than the number of observed events $`N`$, each source constributes at most one events and clustering is not possible. As remarked in the previous section, a much smaller number of sources is not possible either due to the large number of observed arrival directions.

In Figs. 1112, and 13 we show the angular correlation functions predicted by scenarios with $`B=0.3\mu `$G, with 5 and 10 and 100 sources, respectively. In the case of 100 sources the simulated distribution do not show any correlation at small scales. Similarly to the weak field case, this can be understood due to the fact that the source images produced by magnetic lensing contain at most one event if the number if sources is much larger than $`N`$. Note also that cosmic variance becomes very small for $`N100`$.

We obtain the same result for $`B=0.1\mu `$G and 100 sources. Thus we can argue that 100 is an approximate current upper limit for the number of sources. On the other hand for 5-10 sources the simulated auto-correlation function seems to be in agreement with the observed clustering at small scales. In Fig. 14 we show for one of these cases what could be expected for Auger exposures. This demonstrates that, for the amount of data expected with next generation experiments, the statistics will be dominated by cosmic variance instead of the limited number of events observed, as is presently the case.

## V Only one source: Centaurus A

Now we briefly reconsider the model discussed in our previous paper isola , with Centaurus A as single source, and $`B=1\mu `$G. The predictions for the angular power spectrum and the auto-correlation function are compared with the AGASA data in Figs. 15 and 16, respectively.

The angular power spectrum shows a $`3\sigma `$ deviation from the data at $`l=2`$. Furthermore, the auto-correlation function does not show significant correlations at angular resolution scales, in contradiction to the data. This is due to the fact that for a magnetic field as strong as 1$`\mu `$G, we are in a range of energies where many overlapping images the source are produced harari2 . Correlations up to relatively large scales would only appear at energies above $`10^{20}`$eV, as can be seen in Fig. 17 which was produced for the Auger exposure function.

## VI Discussion and Conclusions

In the present work we assumed a discrete distribution of sources distributed in the Local Supercluster and estimated the number of sources necessary to reproduce the experimental data, in dependence on the typical strength of the extra-galactic magnetic fields permeating the Local Supercluster. As statistical quantities for this analysis we used spherical multi-poles and the auto-correlation function. We found that for weak magnetic fields $`0.05\mu `$G the simulation predictions appear to be not consistent with the observed distribution for any number of sources because the magnetic field is too weak to isotropize the anisotropic distribution associated with the Supergalactic plane. Full sky experiments of the size of the Pierre Auger project will be sensitive to the difference in the distribution of multi-poles between weak and strong magnetic fields, which thereby could give direct informations about the strength of the magnetic fields. For stronger magnetic fields $`0.3\mu `$G we found that the number of sources is constrained. In our previous paper isola  we already showed that a single source cannot reproduce the observed isotropic distribution. Here we found that for $`100`$ sources the auto-correlation function does not reproduce the correlations observed at small scales. This can be interpreted by the fact that for a number of sources much higher than the number of observed events there are more source images produced by lensing than observed events and thus clustering is not observable. Therefore, the current upper limit on the number of contributing sources is $`100`$ in this case. On the other hand, a number of sources around 10 seems to reproduce quite well the observed small scale clustering. We also showed that the model with Centaurus A as the only source and very strong fields $`1\mu G`$, considered as marginally consistent in our previous paper isola , is not consistent with isotropy at large scales due to a predicted quadrupole deviation from isotropy and because the auto-correlation function is not consistent with the clustering at small scales observed by AGASA. We conclude then that a distribution of $`10`$ sources in the Local Supercluster, with magnetic fields in the sub micro Gauss range, could reproduce at least current observations. Our approach can equally be applied to other source distributions.

Due to the still sparse statistics of current data, in the present paper we refrained from quantifying the statistical significance of deviations between models and data, because small number fluctuations are in general not Gaussian and, for different multipoles and separation angles, can be correlated. Results based on comparison with the AGASA data presented here should rather be understood as suggestive tendencies. Quantitative significances can be obtained by determining in how many simulated trials a certain quantity, such as the multi-poles and auto-correlations studied here, or certain combinations thereof, show deviations from the data of opposite sign to the average deviation. We leave that to a study with data of much higher statistics above $`10^{19}`$eV than available today, as expected from future full-sky experiments. These experiments will put much more stringent constraints both on the number of sources and the magnetic field strength.

## Acknowledgements

We thank Martin Lemoine for past and ongoing collaborations related to the development of numerical propagation codes. CI also wishes to thank Olivier Doré and Lorenzo Sorbo for useful suggestions on the manuscript.


format: text

text:
# 1 A schematic phase diagram in (𝛽,𝛽_𝐴)-plane for the mixed action of eq. ().

TIFR/TH/02-08

hep-lat/0203015

On The Deconfinement Transition in SU(4) Lattice Gauge Theory

Rajiv V. Gavai111gavai@tifr.res.in
Department of Theoretical Physics
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Homi Bhabha Road
Mumbai 400005, India

ABSTRACT

The deconfinement transition in $`SU(4)`$ lattice gauge theory is investigated on $`N_s^3\times N_t`$ lattices for $`N_s`$ = 8–16 and $`N_t`$ = 4–8 using a modified Wilson action which is expected to be free of any bulk transitions. The susceptibility $`\chi _{|L|}^{\mathrm{max}}`$, where $`L`$ is the order parameter for deconfinement, is found to increase linearly with spatial volume for $`N_t`$ = 4, 5, and 6, indicating a first order deconfinement phase transition. The latent heat of the transition is estimated to be $`\frac{2}{3}`$ of the corresponding ideal gas energy density at $`T_c`$.

1. INTRODUCTION

It is widely expected that the ongoing experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, BNL, New York, and those at the proposed Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Geneva, will provide us a strong evidence for Quark-Gluon Plasma and may even yield crucial details about this new phase and the nature of the phase transition(s) leading to it. The physics driving this phase transition is naturally of great interest. While the real world has two light ($`u`$,$`d`$) flavours of quarks and one somewhat heavier ($`s`$) flavour, both analytical and numerical methods in lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) begin from the limiting cases of either massless or infinitely massive quarks. One talks of the chiral symmetry restoring phase transition and the deconfinement phase transition in these two cases respectively and has suitable order parameters to investigate them. For quarks with $`N`$ colours and $`N_f`$ flavours, these transitions are related to spontaneous breaking of a global $`Z(N)`$ and $`SU(N_f)\times SU(N_f)`$ chiral symmetry, which QCD has in the infinite quark mass and zero quark mass limit respectively. Which of them is more relevant in the real world, is a priori not clear, since these symmetries are broken explicitly to various extents. The low masses of the light flavours suggest chiral symmetry to be the dominant one, leading one to expect a chiral transition in QCD at finite temperature. Indeed, the behaviour of the corresponding order parameter, the chiral condensate $`\overline{\psi }\psi `$, confirms this expectation in numerical simulations. However, it is also seen in the same numerical simulations that even the order parameter for the deconfinement transition,

$$L(\stackrel{}{x})=\frac{1}{N}\mathrm{tr}\underset{t=1}{\overset{N_t}{}}U_4(\stackrel{}{x},t),$$

acquires nonzero values at this chiral transition; in principle, it could have done so already at temperatures a lot below the chiral transition since no symmetry prevents it from doing so. The energy density also shows a large change at the transition which would be unexpected from a naive count of degrees of freedom at a chiral transition but is in fact consistent with that expected of a deconfinement transition. These apparently mysterious observations for QCD with light dynamical quarks can be explained  using arguments based on the large $`N`$ limit, if the deconfinement transition for $`N4`$ is of second order. $`SU(4)`$ is clearly the simplest case to check whether this is so.

Numerical simulations of $`SU(4)`$ theory at finite temperatures have been done in the past  and recently  as well. All of them reported a first order deconfinement transition but they all used the Wilson action, or the more general mixed action:

$$S=\underset{P}{}\left[\beta \left(1\frac{\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{tr}U_P}{N}\right)+\beta _A\left(1\frac{\mathrm{tr}_\mathrm{A}U_P}{N}\right)\right].$$
(1)
Here $`U_P`$ denotes the directed product around an elementary plaquette P of the link (gauge) variables, $`U_\mu (x)`$, located at site $`x`$ in the direction $`\mu `$ =1–4, $`\mathrm{tr}`$ and $`\mathrm{tr}_\mathrm{A}`$ denote the traces of $`U_P`$ in the fundamental and adjoint representations, the $`\beta `$’s are the corresponding couplings, and $`N`$ is the number of colours. The sum over $`P`$ is over all independent plaquettes. A well known problem in the simulations with these actions, especially for large $`N`$, is the presence of bulk transitions which are lattice artifacts. The generic phase diagram of the mixed action (1) in its coupling plane is depicted schematically in Fig. 1. The solid lines in it show first order bulk transition lines. The dotted line after the end point D is drawn to suggest the impact D may have on the Wilson axis ($`\beta _A`$ = 0). For $`N4`$, D is expected to be where E is shown, causing a first order bulk transition for the usual Wilson action. In order to avoid it, simulations were made at negative $`\beta _A`$  and/or for larger  $`N_t`$ = 6 and obtained a first order deconfinement phase transition for $`SU(4)`$.

Extensive studies  of the deconfinement phase transition for the action above for the $`N=2`$ case have, however, shown that the presence of bulk transitions affect the order and location of the deconfinement transition in subtle and somewhat inexplicable ways. For example, recall that one expects the coupling at which the deconfinement transition takes place to move logarithmically with $`N_t`$, the temporal extension of the lattice whereas a shift in the bulk transition point is expected to be inversely proportional to the 4-volume of the lattice, $`N_s^3N_t`$, where $`N_s`$ is the spatial lattice size. This was the rationale behind the choice of simulation parameters in the earlier  studies of the $`SU(4)`$ theory. However, we  found that either this expectation is incorrect or there are apparent qualitative violations of universality for the $`SU(2)`$ theory since its deconfinement transition was of second order for small $`\beta _A`$ but was of first order for large enough $`\beta _A`$ for an entire range of $`N_t`$ from 2 up to 8, with hardly any shift with $`N_t`$. Indeed, universality was restored  in that case only after eliminating the bulk transitions associated with the $`Z(2)`$ vortices and $`Z(2)`$ monopoles by adding large chemical potentials for them. It seems natural to expect that the bulk transitions for $`N=4`$ may also have affected the earlier results on the order of its deconfinement transition for the action above for $`N_t`$ = 4 or 6. A cleaner determination of the order of the deconfinement transition for $`SU(4)`$ may be obtained by wiping off the corresponding bulk transitions by suppressing the relevant $`Z(N)`$ objects. We pursue this idea here to investigate the deconfinement phase transition in the $`SU(4)`$ theory.

2. SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS

Generalizing the idea of positive plaquette models  in the literature for the $`SU(2)`$ lattice gauge theory to the case of $`SU(N)`$ theories, we propose to simulate the action

$$S=\beta \underset{P}{}\left(1\frac{\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{tr}U_P}{N}\right)\theta \left(\frac{\pi }{N}|\alpha |\right),$$
(2)
for $`N=4`$, where $`\pi <\alpha \pi `$ is the phase of tr $`U_P`$. By adding the adjoint term of eq. (2) to the action (3), one sees that the phase diagram of the resultant mixed action should not have the bulk lines AC or BC and hence the endpoint D or E. This is because the action (2) restricts $`\mathrm{tr}U_P`$ to lie only in one $`Z(N)`$-sector for all, even small, $`\beta `$.

We have simulated the above action on $`N_s^3\times N_t`$ lattices for $`N_s`$ =8, 10, 12, 15, 16 and $`N_t`$ = 4, 5, 6, 8 using a 15-hit Metropolis et al. algorithm. The calculations were done on a cluster of pentiums. Typically short runs to look for points of rapid variations in $`|L|`$ were followed by long runs (a few million sweeps) to determine the susceptibility $`\chi _{|L|}`$,

$$\chi _{|L|}=N_s^3(|L|^2|L|^2),$$
(3)
as a function of $`\beta `$ using the histogramming technique . In order to monitor the presence of any bulk transition, we also studied the plaquette susceptibility given by,

$$\chi _P=6N_s^3N_t(P^2P^2),$$
(4)
where P denotes the average of (Re tr $`U_P`$)/N over the entire lattice. Usual finite size scaling techniques were used to determine the order of the transition and its exponents. According to the finite size scaling theory , the peak of the $`|L|`$ (or plaquette) susceptibility at the location of the deconfinement (or bulk) transition should grow on $`N_s^3\times N_t`$ lattices like

$$\chi _{|L|\mathrm{or}P}^{\mathrm{max}}N_s^\omega ,$$
(5)
for fixed $`N_t`$. For a second order transition, $`\omega \gamma /\nu `$, where $`\gamma `$ and $`\nu `$ characterize the growth of the $`|L|`$ (plaquette)-susceptibility and the correlation length near the critical temperature (coupling) on an infinite spatial lattice. If the phase transition were to be of first order instead, then one expects  the exponent $`\omega =3`$, corresponding to the dimensionality of the space. In addition, of course, the $`|L|`$ or $`P`$ is expected to exhibit a sharp, or even discontinuous, jump. The corresponding probability distribution should then show a double peak structure in stead of a usual gaussian distribution.

In simulations on $`N_s^3\times 4`$ lattices, $`N_s=`$ 8, 10, 12, we found the hot (all link variables random) and cold (all links equal to identity) starts to converge quickly to a unique value of $`|L|`$ at couplings a little away from the transition point on its both sides but a clear co-existence of states was visible for all lattices at the transition point, as shown in Fig. 2. It is clearly seen that the tunnelling frequency goes down with spatial volume. The histograms of $`|L|`$, shown in Fig. 3, display peaks which become narrower with increasing volume while the gap between them remains unchanged. These classic signs of a first order phase transition are confirmed by a quantitative analysis of the growth of $`\chi _{|L|}`$ with volume, as seen in Fig. 4. The horizontal lines in each case are predictions obtained by scaling the $`N_s=8`$ results linearly with volume, as expected from eq. (5) and $`\omega =3`$ for a first order transition.

Although the above first order transition is clearly a deconfinement transition, as the behaviour of the order parameter $`|L|`$ certifies, it could, of course be due to a coincident bulk transition. One can check for this possibility by analogous studies of the average plaquette $`P`$. Fig. 5 displays the histograms of $`P`$ for the same runs as in Figs. 2 and 3. These histograms do exhibit curious non-gaussian structures, with a suggestion to develop a discontinuity as the spatial volume grows. The corresponding susceptibilities turn out to be too noisy to be conclusive, especially when compared to the behaviour of $`|L|`$-susceptibility in Fig. 4. However, their growth with volume is not inconsistent with being linear. We therefore made simulations on larger symmetric lattices up to the sizes $`12^4`$ at these couplings and in their immediate neighbourhood and found only usual gaussian distributions for the plaquette. For a genuine bulk transition, the behaviour in Fig. 5 should have been accentuated with the three-fold increase in the 4-volume. Recall that the presence of latent heat at a first order deconfinement phase transition can also be a source of the behaviour in Fig. 5. This should then lead to specific predictions as the temporal lattice size is increased. We postpone discussing them in the next section, turning in stead to investigations of larger $`N_t`$.

For larger $`N_t`$, we used many longer runs in the region of strong variation of $`|L|`$ to obtain the susceptibility directly and used the histogramming technique only for the finer determinations of the critical coupling. Our results for $`|L|`$ as a function of $`\beta `$ clearly show the expected shift for a deconfinement phase transition for $`N_t`$ = 4 and 6, as can be seen in Fig. 6.

As is usual for the $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$ theories, the rise of the order parameter at $`\beta _c`$ is seen to be slower in Fig. 6 as $`N_t`$ is increased due to the well-known ultra-violet effects. The $`\beta _c`$ values, determined from the $`\chi _{|L|}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ and listed in Table 1 for $`N_t`$ = 4, 5 and 6 for different spatial volumes, also evidently suggest strong shifts in $`\beta _c`$ with $`N_t`$. Comparing our results in Table 1 with those of Ref.  for $`N_t=6`$ for the usual Wilson action, i.e, for eq.(1) with $`\beta _A`$ = 0, one finds a shift by $`0.1`$ towards smaller coupling. Using in each case the peak height for the smaller spatial volume, the $`\chi ^{\mathrm{max}}`$ on the bigger lattice can be predicted, assuming a first order deconfinement phase transition. The predictions listed in Table 1 can be seen to be in very good agreement with the direct Monte Carlo determinations. Along with the shifts in $`\beta `$, these confirm that the same physical first order deconfinement phase transition is being simulated on these lattices as the continuum limit of $`a0`$ is approached in a progressive manner by increasing the temporal lattice size $`N_t`$.

3. SCALING AND LATENT HEAT

A quantitative test of the fact that the first order transition reported in the previous section is indeed a physical deconfinement transition (and not a bulk transition) consists of translating all the $`\beta _c`$ in Table 1 to the corresponding transition temperature in physical units and thus checking whether it is constant while the $`\beta _c`$’s shift with $`N_t`$ as expected from the renormalization group equation,

$$aT_c=\frac{1}{N_\tau }=\frac{T_c}{\mathrm{\Lambda }_L}\left(\frac{4b_0}{\beta }\right)^{b_1/b_0^2}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\beta }{8b_0}\right),$$
(6)
where

$$b_0=\frac{11}{12\pi ^2},\mathrm{and}b_1=\frac{17}{24\pi ^4},$$
(7)
are the first two coefficients of the perturbative $`\beta `$-function for the $`SU(4)`$ Yang-Mills theory. Fig. 7 exhibits a comparison of our set of $`\beta _c`$ for $`N_t`$ =4, 5, 6 and 8 with eq.(6). The normalization was chosen by demanding the line to pass through the point at $`N_t=6`$. While the shifts are in accord with the expectations, one also sees strong quantitative deviations. These are, however, not unusual: similar deviations have been seen in the studies for $`N`$ = 2 and 3  as well. As pointed earlier , and tested successfully  for $`SU(2)`$ and $`SU(3)`$, one possible cure for removing these deviations is to employ a better choice of the coupling in eq.(6) which consists of replacing $`\beta `$ there by

$$\beta _E=\frac{0.25(N^21)}{1P}.$$
(8)
Fig. 8 displays our data using this new variable along with the corresponding RG-curve of eq.(6) normalized the same way as before. One sees an excellent agreement, providing a concrete quantitative evidence in favour of the physical nature of the transition. Furthermore, it leads to an estimate of $`T_c`$ = $`18.5\pm 0.5\mathrm{\Lambda }_L`$, where the error is estimated by requiring all the data points to lie within the band generated by it.

Apart from the characteristic (logarithmic) shift of the transition point with $`N_t`$, seen above, the latent heat of a first order deconfinement phase transition provides yet another quantitative test of the continuum limit since it should also remain constant as $`N_t\mathrm{}`$. Requiring the pressure to be continuous at the deconfinement phase transition, the latent heat can be obtained from two different observables $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1\mathrm{\Delta }(ϵ3p)/T_c^4`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2\mathrm{\Delta }(ϵ+p)/T_c^4`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ denotes discontinuities across the transition in the respective variables,

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=48N_t^4a{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{a}}\mathrm{\Delta }P,`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_2=32N_t^4{\displaystyle \frac{C(g^2)}{g^2}}(\mathrm{\Delta }P_t\mathrm{\Delta }P_s),`$ (9)
and $`C(g^2)=(10.2366g^2+O(g^4))`$ for $`SU(4)`$ . We will employ the perturbative $`\beta `$-function in $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ with its coefficients given by eq. (7). In order to obtain the $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }P_s`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }P_t`$, the minimum of the histogram $`N(|L|)`$ was used to separate the two phases in each case. The errors were estimated by varying it within the limits suggested by the corresponding histograms. From eq. (9), it is clear that the plaquette discontinuity $`\mathrm{\Delta }PN_t^4`$ if one is to obtain the same latent heat in physical units, since the rest of the factors vary mildly with $`N_t`$. In case of a bulk phase transition, on the other hand, one would expect the plaquette discontinuity to remain constant or exhibit a mild increase. Indeed, as Fig. 9 displays, its decrease with $`N_t`$ is seen to be consistent with these expectations for $`N_t5`$. Our estimates of latent heat from $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ are shown in Fig. 10 as a function of $`N_t`$ (filled symbols) along with the corresponding results of Ref.  for $`N_t`$ = 6 (open symbols) which can be seen to be in good agreement with ours. Both the estimates in eq.(9) must agree with each other as $`N_t\mathrm{}`$, since the neglected cut-off corrections become then insignificant. Table 2 and Fig. 10 verify this to be the case. One may therefore take the results for $`N_t`$ =8 as a reasonable approximation to the continuum limit. Comparing them with the energy density of the corresponding ideal gas at $`T_c`$, $`ϵ_{SB}=\pi ^2(N^21)T_c^4/15=\pi ^2T_c^4`$, one obtains for the latent heat,

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ}{ϵ_{SB}}=0.6657\pm 0.0162.$$
(10)
Here we have used $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1`$ to get the result above. Using $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ leads to $`0.65\pm 0.10`$.

4. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Establishing the order of the deconfinement phase transition for the $`SU(4)`$ lattice gauge theory at finite temperature is important for our understanding of the physics of the phase transition to quark-gluon plasma. Possible subtle influences, which the bulk transitions for the mixed action of eq. (1) (see Fig. 1) may have, necessitate an approach to bypass them. In this paper, we have attempted this by generalizing the idea of positive plaquette model for the $`SU(2)`$ case and simulating the action of eq. (2) to investigate the $`SU(4)`$ theory at $`T0`$ on $`N_s^3\times N_t`$ lattice with $`N_s2N_t`$ and $`N_t`$ = 4, 5, 6 and 8.

Various qualitative indicators, such as, the histograms and evolutions of the order parameter $`L`$, suggest a first order deconfinement phase transition for $`SU(4)`$ on $`N_t=4`$ lattices with $`N_s`$ varying up to 12. The linear growth of $`\chi _{|L|}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ with volume for $`N_t`$ = 4, quantitatively confirms this finding. Increasing $`N_t`$ to 5 and 6, one again finds a growth in $`\chi _{|L|}^{\mathrm{max}}`$ that is consistent with being linear in volume. Defining the transition coupling as the location at which the maximum of the above susceptibility occurs, one finds a significant shift in it as $`N_t`$ is varied from 4 to 8. The amount of shift is consistent with the expectations of a physical deconfinement transition; a bulk transition would have had much smaller shifts. Indeed, the set of $`\beta _c`$ for $`N_t`$ =4, 5, 6 and 8 is consistent with the asymptotic scaling relation of eq.(6) when used in conjunction with the improved coupling of eq. (8), leading to a determination of the transition temperature $`T_c=(18.5\pm 0.5)\mathrm{\Lambda }_L`$.

The presence of latent heat at a first order phase transition necessarily means a discontinuity in the average plaquette on a finite lattice, which can however also be due to an unphysical bulk transition. We find that the plaquette discontinuity $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$ decreases with increase in $`N_t`$ as approximately the fourth power of $`N_t`$. This indicates both a lack of a bulk transition and the presence of a first order deconfinement phase transition, since it suggests i) a vanishing discontinuity in the $`N_t\mathrm{}`$ limit ii) but in a manner that leaves the latent heat constant in physical units. We estimate the latent heat to be $`(0.666\pm 0.016)`$ times the corresponding ideal gas energy density at $`T_c`$ using the perturbative $`\beta `$-function in eq. (9). This value, obtained from our $`N_t`$ =8 simulation, is expected to be close to the continuum limit since the two different estimates from eq. (9) coincide. Comparing with the corresponding value (using again perturbative $`\beta `$-function) for the $`SU(3)`$ theory, which is about 0.43 , one finds that the deconfinement transition grows stronger in nature as the number of colours $`N`$ is increased. Whether this continues as $`N`$ is increased further is at present not clear. However, already the known results for $`N`$ = 3 and 4 are sufficient to cast doubt on the explanation proposed in Ref. . Consequently, the mystery of the behaviour of the energy density and the deconfinement order parameter, $`L`$, mentioned in the introduction remains.

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to acknowledge interesting discussions with Sourendu Gupta.


text:
# Bar Dynamical Friction and Disk Galaxy Dark Matter Content

## 1. Introduction

Near infra-red images reveal bars in over $`50\%`$ of disk galaxies (Knapen et al. 2000; Eskridge et al. 2000). The principal dynamical quantity for barred (SB) galaxies is the pattern speed of the bar, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$, usually parametrized by the ratio $`D_L/a_B`$ (where $`D_L`$ is the corotation radius and $`a_B`$ is the semi-major axis of the bar). A bar is termed fast when $`1.0\mathrm{}<1.4`$, while, for a larger value of $``$, a bar is said to be slow. All measurements of bar pattern speeds have found fast bars (e.g. Gerssen 2002), a result which has been interpreted as evidence for maximum disks in SB galaxies (Debattista & Sellwood 1998, 2000).

## 2. Bar Dynamical Friction in $`N`$-Body Simulations

Fig. 1 plots the evolution of $`D_L`$ and $`a_B`$ for a near-maximum disk, and demonstrates that fast bars can survive for a Hubble time in such systems. This simulation used a hybrid grid code, allowing us to achieve much higher resolution than in previous work. At the end of the simulation, which lasted some 44 initial rotation periods of the bar, $`=1.3\pm 0.1`$. Although the bar slows down by $`35\%`$ in this case, secondary bar growth can still preserve a fast bar in this case. But secondary bar growth has its limitations: for a flat rotation curve, $`D_{L}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}/D_{L}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{p}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}/\mathrm{\Omega }_{p}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}`$, so a strongly braked bar would need to grow ever longer, which, however, makes friction even stronger (Debattista & Sellwood 2000).

Weinberg & Katz (2001) argued that $`N`$-body simulations require $`N_\mathrm{p}\mathrm{}>4\times 10^6`$ particles to resolve correctly the bar-halo interaction, while simulations at lower $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ are largely noise-driven. In Fig. 2 I plot the fractional drop in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ between early and late times in a series of simulations in which only $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ was varied. No significant change in the evolution of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ is seen, despite the factor of 100 difference in $`N_\mathrm{p}`$, suggesting that Weinberg & Katz (2001) have been too pessimistic in their assessment of noise effects. This can be understood by recognizing that a bar slows continuously, so that resonances are broadened. If resonances had been sharp, then indeed large $`N_\mathrm{p}`$’s would be required, but for broad resonances, more modest $`N_\mathrm{p}`$’s suffice.

## 3. A Post-Interaction Galaxy

Following Ostriker & Peebles (1973), it is sometimes thought that unbarred (SA) galaxies must be stabilized by massive dark matter (DM) halos; however, bars can also be suppressed by rapidly rising rotation curves (Toomre 1981; Sellwood & Evans 2001). Noguchi (1987) showed that disks stabilized by massive DM halos can still form bars via interactions, and that such bars would be slow. Thus SB galaxies with evidence of past interactions provide a means to statistically test whether SA galaxies are stabilized by massive halos.

NGC 1023 shows evidence of a past interaction (Sancisi et al. 1984), without being at present significantly perturbed. Debattista et al. (2002) measured $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ for this galaxy, using the method of Tremaine & Weinberg (1984). The Tremaine-Weinberg (TW) method is contained in the following simple equation:

$`\mathrm{\Omega }_p\mathrm{sin}i={\displaystyle \frac{_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}h(Y)V_{los}(X,Y)\mathrm{\Sigma }(X,Y)𝑑X𝑑Y}{_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}h(Y)X\mathrm{\Sigma }(X,Y)𝑑X𝑑Y}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝒱}{𝒳}}`$ (1)
where $`V_{\mathrm{los}}`$ is the line-of-sight velocity, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the surface brightness, $`h(Y)`$ is an arbitrary weight function, $`i`$ is the inclination and $`(X,Y)`$ are galaxy-centered coordinates along the disk’s major and minor axes respectively. We obtained 3 slit spectra parallel to the disk’s major axis, for each of which we computed $`𝒱`$ and $`𝒳`$. Then, plotting $`𝒱`$ versus $`𝒳`$ gives a straight line with slope $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p\mathrm{sin}i=4.7\pm 1.7`$ $`\mathrm{k}ms^1arcsec^1`$. From the rotation curve, corrected for asymmetric drift, this gives $`D_L=53_{15}^{+30}{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }`$. Multi-band photometry gives $`a_B=69^{\prime \prime }\pm 5^{\prime \prime }`$; therefore $`=0.77_{0.25}^{+0.43}`$, consistent with a fast bar. Thus NGC 1023 must have a maximum disk; moreover, if the bar formed in the interaction (which cannot be ascertained), then it cannot have been stabilized by a massive DM halo.

## 4. Pattern Speed in the Milky Way

As shown by Kuijken & Tremaine (1994), the TW method can also be applied to the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG). For discrete tracers, the TW method becomes:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }_pR_0V_{\mathrm{LSR}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝒦}{𝒫}}u_{\mathrm{LSR}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝒮}{𝒫}}`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_if(r_i)v_{r,i}}{_if(r_i)\mathrm{sin}l_i\mathrm{cos}b_i}}u_{LSR}{\displaystyle \frac{_if(r_i)\mathrm{cos}l_i\mathrm{cos}b_i}{_if(r_i)\mathrm{sin}l_i\mathrm{cos}b_i}}`$
where $`R_0`$ is the Sun-MWG center distance, $`V_{\mathrm{LSR}}`$ is the tangential velocity of the local standard of rest (LSR), $`u_{\mathrm{LSR}}`$ is the radial velocity of the LSR, $`f(r_i)`$ is the observational detection probability (which need not be known), $`v_{r,i}`$ is the heliocentric radial velocity of a discrete tracer, and $`(l_i,b_i)`$ are its Galactic coordinates. A survey which satisfies the condition of uniform sampling, as required by the method, is the ATCA/VLA OH 1612 MHz survey (Sevenster et al. 1997a,b & 2001), covering $`|l|45^{}`$ and $`|b|3^{}`$. The properties of OH/IR stars make them well suited for Galactic studies. They have bright, maser emission at 1612.23 MHz, which is insensitive to interstellar extinction; the double-peaked profile of the emission permits easy identification; and they are concentrated in the inner MWG, as a result of the Galactic metallicity gradient.

We extracted from the ATCA/VLA OH 1612 MHz survey a sample of $`250`$ OH/IR stars which are older than 0.8 Gyr and have a flux density higher than 0.16 Jy; these criteria give OH/IR stars between $`4`$ and $`10`$ kpc away from the Sun. Applying Eqn. 2 to this sample, as shown in Fig. 3, we obtained $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=252\pm 41`$ $`\mathrm{k}ms^1`$, where the error was estimated by resampling. If we then assume $`V_{\mathrm{LSR}}/R_0=220/8`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$ (from SgrA motion, Backer et al. 1999; Reid et al. 1999 and Cepheid proper motions, Feast & Whitelock 1997) and $`u_{\mathrm{LSR}}=0`$ (from SgrA HI absorption spectrum, Radhakrishnan et al. 1980), we obtain $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p=59\pm 5\pm 10`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{kpc}^1`$, where the last error is our estimated systematic error. This $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ is consistent with the hydrodynamical simulations of Bissantz et al. (2002), which also require $`=1.0\pm 0.1`$.

## References

Backer D. C., Sramek R. A. 1999, ApJ, 524, 805

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

Debattista V. P., Sellwood J. A. 1998, ApJ, 493, L5

Debattista V. P., Sellwood J. A. 2000, ApJ, 543, 704

Debattista, V. P., Corsini, E. M. & Aguerri, J. A. L. 2002, MNRAS, in press

Debattista, V. P., Gerhard, O. & Sevenster, M. N. 2001, MNRAS, accepted

Eskridge P. B., Frogel J. A., et al. 2000, AJ, 119, 536

Feast M., Whitelock P. 1997, MNRAS, 291, 683

Gerssen J. 2002, these proceedings

Knapen J. H., Shlosman I., Peletier R. F. 2000, ApJ, 529, 93

Kuijken K., Tremaine S. 1994, ApJ, 421, 178

Noguchi M. 1987, MNRAS, 228, 635

Ostriker J. P., Peebles P. J. E. 1973, ApJ, 186, 467

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

Reid M. J., Readhead A. C. S., et al. 1999, ApJ, 524, 816

Sancisi R., van Woerden H., Davies R. D., Hart L. 1984, MNRAS, 210, 497

Sellwood J. A., Evans N. W. 2001, ApJ, 546, 176

Sevenster M. N., Chapman J. M., et al. 1997a, A&AS, 122, 79

Sevenster M. N., Chapman J. M., et al. 1997b, A&AS, 124, 509

Sevenster M. N., van Langevelde H., et al. 2001, A&A, 366, 481

Toomre A. 1981, in The Structure and Evolution of Normal Galaxies, ed. S. M. Fall, & D. Lynden-Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 111

Tremaine S., Weinberg M. D. 1984, ApJ, 282, L5

Weinberg M. D., Katz N. 2001, astro-ph/0110632


text:
# Superparamagnetic-like ac susceptibility behavior in a ”partially disordered antiferromagnetic” compound, Ca3CoRhO6

## Abstract

We report the results of dc and ac magnetization measurements as a function of temperature (1.8 - 300 K) for the spin chain compound, Ca3CoRhO6, which has been recently reported to exhibit a partially disordered antiferromagnetic (PDAF) structure in the range 30 - 90 K and spin-glass freezing below 30 K. We observe an unexpectedly large frequency dependence of ac susceptibility in the T range 30 - 90 K, typical of superparamagnets. In addition, we find that there is no difference in the isothermal remanent magnetization behavior for the two regimes below 90 K. These findings call for more investigations to understand the magnetism of this compound.

PACS numbers: 75.50.-y; 75.30.Cr; 75.50.Lk

E-mail address: sampath@tifr.res.in

Recently, the spin-chain compound, Ca3CoRhO6 (Ref. 1), has started getting attention due to the fact this compound exhibits a novel type of magnetic phase transition. This compound crystallizes in a K4CdCl6 type rhombohedral structure (space group R$`\overline{3}`$c). With this structure, in this compound, there are one-dimensional chains of alternating face-sharing CoO6 trigonal prisms and RhO6 octahedra. Ca cations separate these chains, and the magnetic ions form a triangular lattice with an interchain spacing of 5.313 $`\AA `$. The dc magnetic susceptibility ($`\chi `$) as well as neutron diffraction data reveal that there are two magnetic transitions, one at 90 K (T1) and the other at 30 K (T2). In the magnetically ordered state, the magnetic ions along the chain couple ferromagnetically, whereas the interchain nearest neighbour interaction is antiferromagnetic. This type of interaction may cause magnetic frustration, as this compound is intrinsically a triangular lattice. As a consequence of this geometrical frustration, between T1 and T2, 2/3 of the ferromagnetic chains (present at the corners of the hexagon) have been reported to couple antiferromagnetically with each other and the other 1/3 (at the centre of the hexagon) are proposed to be left incoherent with the other chains (see Fig. 1a of Ref. 3). There are only few compounds known with this kind of triangular lattice of antiferromagnetic spin chains, e.g., CsCoCl3 and CsCoBr3. However, the magnetism of this compound is proposed to be unusual in the sense that, below T2, the incoherent chains appear to freeze in a disordered state, whereas in the Cs compounds, a ferrimagnetic state is attained below the lower transition temperature. However, the ferrimagnetic phase can be obtained even in the present material by an application of a magnetic field (H) of the order of 20 to 30 kOe. In other words, this compound is characterized by an interesting magnetic phase diagram.

While we believe that this novel magnetic compound will attract future attention for various investigations, it is of interest to look for further characteristics of such a complex magnetic material, in particular, to compare the anomalies due to the disordered nature of the magnetism in the two temperature ranges below 90 K. With this motivation, we have carried out magnetic measurements on this material, the results of which are reported in this article. The results apparently raise interesting questions.

The compound Ca3CoRhO6 in the polycrystalline form was prepared by solid state route. Stoichiometric amounts of high purity ($`>`$99.9%) CaCO3, CoO and Rh powder were thoroughly mixed. Then the mixture was calcined at 900 C for one day. Subsequently, the preacted powder was finely ground, pelletized and heated at 1200 C for about 10 days with few intermediate grindings. The x-ray diffraction pattern confirmed that the sample is a single phase (a= 9.202 $`\AA `$ and c= 10.730 $`\AA `$). The dc $`\chi `$ measurements were performed in the range 1.8 - 300 K at different fields (1, 30 and 50 kOe) both for zero-field-cooled (ZFC) as well as field-cooled (FC) state of the specimens employing a commercial (Quantum Design) superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). The same magnetometer was employed to take ac $`\chi `$ data (1.8 - 300 K) at various frequencies in zero field as well as in the presence of two dc fields (5 and 30 kOe). Isothermal magnetization (M) and remanent magnetization (MIRM) behavior were also tracked at 5 and 62 K employing a commercial magnetometers both by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM, Oxford Instruments) and SQUID and the results obtained from both the instruments agree quite well.

The T-dependence of dc $`\chi `$ measurements are shown in Fig. 1. There is a sharp drop of $`\chi `$ above about 35 K for ZFC-curves for all H as though there is a magnetic transition at this temperature. ZFC $`\chi `$-T plots tend to merge below about 20 K for all the values of H. However, FC-curves at low temperatures show a different behavior in the sense that the values are found to be H-dependent, though the plots tend to a constant value below 20 K in all cases. Above about 35 K, $`\chi `$ values are field-dependent for both the ZFC and FC measurements and the features are suggestive of another transition in the range 90 - 100 K. As noted earlier, the plot of inverse $`\chi `$ versus T (Fig. 1, inset) is highly non-linear in the paramagnetic state (above 90 K). The Curie-Weiss temperature inferred from the near-linear range of 225 - 300 K is found to be about 175 K, the positive sign indicating strong ferromagnetic interaction; this value however is marginally higher than that reported (150 K) in Ref. 1.

The findings are otherwise in good agreement with those reported in Ref. 1. There is a distinct difference between the plots of isothermal M at 5 and 62 K (Fig. 1, inset) in the sense that there is a plateau in the H range 20 - 40 kOe at 62 K due to ferrimagnetic alignment of the spins. There is a significant hysteresis in the plot for 5 K resulting in a remanence of M (vide infra) after reducing H to zero, which is in agreement with the proposed spin-glass behavior. We have observed similar magnitudes of remanence even at 62 K, which is not obvious from Fig. 1 inset, due to the compression of the scale on the y-axis. The ZFC-FC $`\chi `$ curves obtained in the presence of 1 kOe field tend to bifurcate at a temperature close to 70 K; however, applications of higher fields lower the temperature at which this bifurcation occurs, implying thereby that at much smaller fields (in few gausses) this feature may occur at temperatures higher than 70 K. There is a tendency for a broad peak in temperature range 100 to 150 K in $`\chi `$ versus T plots for H= 1 and 30 kOe, but it is cut off around 100 K due to the onset of magnetic ordering. It is to be noted this peak is clearly visible in the data for H= 50 kOe. This maximum in $`\chi `$ resembles that of Bonner and Fischer’s prediction for one-dimensional magnetism. Alternatively, short-range correlations also may be responsible for this feature.

We now present the results of ac $`\chi `$ measurements (see Fig. 2). It is clearly seen that, in the zero-field data, there is a well-defined peak at 50 K in the real part ($`\chi `$$``$) of ac $`\chi `$ typical of spin-glasses. However, what is remarkable is that the anomalies associated with magnetic ordering start building at temperatures as high as 90 K. Therefore, it is very difficult to associate the ac $`\chi `$ anomalies (see further below) to the transition at T2. This observation may be correlated to the ZFC-FC divergence at a temperature close to 90 K at low fields (say, at 1 kOe) as discussed above. The fact that the $`\chi `$$``$ peak arises from some kind of spin-glass freezing appears to be endorsed by the observation of an upturn in the imaginary part ($`\chi `$$``$$``$) of the ac $`\chi `$ as well (prominent below about 75 K). One does not expect such a feature at the magnetic transition temperature due to long range magnetic ordering. It is also remarkable that the width of the $`\chi `$$``$-feature is so large that it spans entire temperature range between T1 and T2. What is puzzling is the large frequency dependence of the temperature at which the peak appears, for instance, from 50 K at 1 Hz to 70 K at 1 kHz in the $`\chi `$$``$ data, in sharp contrast to that known in canonical spin glasses. Quantitatively speaking, the magnitude of the factor, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$Tf/Tf$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$(log$`\omega `$), turns out to be as large as about 0.1, which is typically seen in superparamagnetic materials. The peak temperature in the $`\chi `$$``$ vs T plot typically represents the spin-freezing temperature (Tf). The value of this factor in canonical spin glasses is known to be below 0.01. It is to be noted that the values of $`\chi `$ are also practically frequency-independent below 30 K. We have also taken the data in the presence of a H of 5 and 30 kOe. While the ac chi features for 5 kOe resemble those of zero-field data, for H= 30 kOe data, the $`\chi `$$``$ cusp vanishes and the peak gets broadened by the field with a significantly reduced intensity; also the $`\chi `$$``$$``$-anomaly is completely depressed. This finding is consistent with the proposed phase diagram in the sense that the disordered magnetic state is destroyed at a field of 30 kOe.

We have also probed the magnetic relaxation behavior in the two temperature ranges, by measuring at 5 and 62 K (Fig. 3). For this purpose, we have zero-field-cooled the specimen to respective temperatures, switched on the field of 5 kOe, waited for 5 mins and then the decay of MIRM was tracked as a function of time (t) for about an hour after the field was switched off. We observed that MIRM dropped to a value below the detection level of the instrument in the paramagnetic state (say, at 120 K) as expected. However, the values at 5 and 62 K are significant (in agreement with the M versus H behavior discussed above) and found to undergo slow decay with t. A quantitative analysis of the data to an exponential form popularly noted for canonical spin glasses is found to hold good for a narrow range of the plot (below about 1000 sec), but deviations occur for MIRM curve at higher t values. It appears that, barring low-t region, MIRM seems to vary logarithmically as shown in Fig. 3 with comparable values of the coefficient of the logarithmic term. It thus appears that a superimposition of exponential (for low t values) and logarithmic (at higher t values) terms describe the relaxation process. As the actual form of relaxation is a matter of great discussion even in conventional spin glasses, a further discussion on this aspect for the present complex material is not desirable. What is important to note is that, while the slow relaxation of MIRM at 5 K is consistent with the spin-glass freezing proposed in Ref. 3, similar behavior at 62 K is unexpected on the basis of the analysis of the neutron diffraction data. If the interpretation of previous results are correct, one can argue that coexisting antiferromagnetic chains and paramagnetic chains can also give rise to this behavior which by itself will be an interesting conclusion. Alternatively, on the basis of the similarities of the relaxation behavior at 5 and 62 K quantitatively evidenced by a comparable values of the coefficients of the logarithmic term (see Fig. 3), one is also tempted to propose that the dynamics in the entire temperature range below 90 K observed here is the one due to superparamagnetic clusters formed between T1 and T2, the dynamics of which apparently gets frozen below T2.

To conclude, we have observed a large frequency dependence of ac susceptibility in Ca3CoRhO6 in a temperature range in which a partially disordered antiferromagnetic phase has been previously proposed. If the interpretation of the neutron diffraction data for the range 30-90 K is correct, the present results raise a very interesting question how the coexistence of antiferromagnetic and incoherent magnetic chains result in superparamagnetic-like behavior. It is also surprising that the magnetic relaxation behavior in the two temperature regimes in the magnetically ordered state is found to be similar, which prompts us to propose that the dynamics of the superparamagnetic clusters formed in the range 30-90 K freeze below about 30 K. We hope that this work motivates further microscopic investigations for a better understanding of the magnetism of this compound.

The help of Kartik K Iyer during measurements is acknowledged.