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# submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters Mid-Infrared Spectropolarimetric Constraints on the Core-Mantle Interstellar Dust Model

## 1 Introduction

Although its total mass is only $`0.1\%`$ of that of galaxies, interstellar dust plays an important role in the galactic evolution, the formation of stars and planetary systems, and possibly, the origins of life. The physical and chemical nature of interstellar dust is characterized by its composition, size, shape, and structural form. Current major observational information includes the wavelength dependent extinction, scattering (albedo), and polarization curves, the absorption and emission spectra, and the elemental depletions.

The extinction curve is a sharp discriminator of (dominant) size ($`100\mathrm{\AA }`$),111Smaller grains are in the Rayleigh limit at the ultraviolet (UV), and their extinction cross sections per unit volume are independent of size. Infrared (IR) emission provides a stronger constraint on their sizes (see Li & Draine 2001).  but a very poor discriminator of composition. Interstellar polarization is not a separate subject but should be treated as part of the extinction data, except that it indicates that some fraction of the interstellar grains are both nonspherical and significantly aligned. It is the extinction (absorption) and emission spectral lines instead of the overall shape of the extinction curve provides the most diagnostic information on the dust composition. Based on the 2175$`\mathrm{\AA }`$ extinction hump and the ubiquitous 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H stretching mode, 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O stretching mode, and 18$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ O-Si-O bending mode absorption features seen in interstellar regions as well as the elemental depletions, it has now been generally accepted that interstellar grains consist of amorphous silicates and some form of carbonaceous materials (see Li & Greenberg 2002 for a recent review).

However, the spectroscopic absorption/emission profiles are unable to tell what structural forms dust grains may take; i.e., no definite conclusion can be drawn yet on the physical relationship between the silicate and carbonaceous grain components. As a matter of fact, three distinctly different grain morphologies are proposed for the three most common dust models – (1) in the silicate-graphite model (and its updated versions) the bare silicate and graphite grains are assumed to be physically separated (Mathis, Rumpl, & Nordsieck 1977 \[hereafter MRN\]; Draine & Lee 1984; Siebenmorgen & Krügel 1992; Dwek et al. 1997; Li & Draine 2001; Weingartner & Draine 2001); (2) in the silicate core-carbonaceous mantle model the silicate grains are assumed to be coated with a layer of carbonaceous materials in the form of organic refractory (Greenberg 1989a; Désert, Boulanger, & Puget 1990; Li & Greenberg 1997) or hydrogenated amorphous carbon (HAC; Jones, Duley, & Williams 1990); (3) in the composite dust model interstellar grains are taken to be fluffy aggregates of small silicates, vacuum, and carbon of various kinds (amorphous carbon, HAC, and organic refractories; Mathis & Whiffen 1989, Mathis 1996). Assuming reasonable elemental depletions, all dust models are reasonably successful in reproducing the observed interstellar extinction and polarization curves (MRN; Draine & Lee 1984; Mathis 1986; Mathis & Whiffen 1989; Mathis 1996; Li & Greenberg 1997; Weingartner & Draine 2001), the silicate absorption/polarization features (Draine & Lee 1984; Greenberg & Li 1996; Mathis 1998), and the dust thermal emission from the near-IR to submillimeter (Désert et al. 1990; Dwek et al. 1997; Li & Draine 2001) except that the composite grains may be too cold and produce too flat a far-IR emissivity to be consistent with the observational data (Draine 1994; Dwek 1997).

Very recently, Adamson et al. (1999) suggest that spectropolarimetric studies of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ hydrocarbon and 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate absorption features would provide a powerful constraint on the dust morphology. The ubiquitous 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate absorption feature is often found to be polarized; some sources also have the 18$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ O-Si-O polarization feature detected (see Smith et al. 2000 for a summary). Another ubiquitous strong absorption band in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) is the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature, commonly attributed to the C-H stretching mode in saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons (see Pendleton & Allamandola 2002, Li & Greenberg 2002 for summaries). If, for the very same region, only the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature or the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature is polarized while the other is not, one can then conclude that the silicate and carbonaceous dust components are physically separated. An attempt to measure the polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ absorption feature was recently made by Adamson et al. (1999) toward the Galactic center source IRS 7. They found that this feature was essentially unpolarized. This appeared to pose a severe challenge to the core-mantle dust model (see §4 for discussions).

In this Letter, we explore the IR absorption and polarization properties of the silicate core-carbonaceous mantle model with emphasis on the polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H feature. In §2 we discuss the optical properties of interstellar hydrocarbon dust material. In §3 we predict the relative degrees of polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H and 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O features. This will allow comparison with future observations and provide a potentially powerful test on the core-mantle dust model. In §4 we compare our model results with the available observational data and discuss its implication. In §5 we summarize our main conclusions.

## 2 Optical Properties of Interstellar Hydrocarbon Material

The interstellar organic hydrocarbon dust component reveals its presence in the diffuse ISM through the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ absorption feature. Since its first detection in the Galactic center sources, it has now been widely seen in the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies (see Pendleton & Allamandola 2002 for a summary). Although it is generally accepted that this feature is due to the C-H stretching mode in saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons, the exact nature of this hydrocarbon material remains uncertain. Nearly two dozen different candidates have been proposed over the past 20 years (see Pendleton & Allamandola 2002 for a review). The organic refractory residue, synthesized from UV photoprocessing of interstellar ice mixtures, provides a perfect match, better than any other hydrocarbon analogs, to the observed 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ band, including the 3.42$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$, 3.48$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$, and 3.51$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ subfeatures (Greenberg et al. 1995).

However, the absorption spectra of organic residues display a strong 3.0$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ O-H feature and a broad 5.5–10$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ band which are inconsistent with the diffuse ISM observations. We note that these features, largely attributed to the combined features of the O-H, C=O, C-OH, C$``$N, C-NH2, and NH2 stretches, bendings, and deformations, will become weaker or even fully absent if the organics are subject to greater UV photoprocessing which will result in photodissociation and depletion of H, O, N elements. We also note that the organic residue samples presented in Greenberg et al. (1995) were processed at most to a degree resembling one cycle (from molecular clouds to diffuse clouds). According to the cyclic evolutionary dust model, interstellar grains will undergo $`50`$ cycles before they are consumed by star formation or becomes a part of a comet (Greenberg & Li 1999).

With a rather weak 5–10$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ band and absent in the 3.0$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ O-H feature, the IR spectrum of the organic extract from the Murchison meteorite is also very close to the observed 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ interstellar feature (Pendleton et al. 1994). We therefore adopt the Murchison meteorite 2.5–25$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ transmission spectrum (Cronin & Pizzarello 1990) to construct the complex refractive index $`m(\lambda )=m^{}(\lambda )+im^{\prime \prime }(\lambda )`$ for the interstellar carbonaceous organic material.

Let $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}(\lambda )`$ be the mass absorption coefficient at wavelength $`\lambda `$. For spherical grains in the Rayleigh limit we have $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}(\lambda )=\frac{6\pi }{\rho \lambda }\mathrm{Im}\left(\frac{m^21}{m^2+2}\right)`$ where $`\rho `$ is the dust mass density. Furton, Laiho, & Witt (1999) measured $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})1.4\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1`$ for a HAC sample with a hydrogen to carbon ratio of $`\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{C}0.5`$ considered as “a viable analog to the true interstellar HAC material”. Most recent measurements by Mennella et al. (2002) found $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})1.6\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1`$ for a $`\mathrm{H}/\mathrm{C}0.7`$ HAC sample. We therefore adopt $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})=1.5\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1`$ for the interstellar carbonaceous organic dust. Taking $`\rho =1.5\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$ (Furton et al. 1999) and $`m^{}(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})=1.7\pm 0.1`$ (at 3–4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ $`m^{}1.81`$ \[Zubko et al. 1996\]; 1.65 \[Alterovitz et al. 1991\]; 1.67 \[Furton et al. 1999\]), we obtain $`m^{\prime \prime }(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})0.095\pm 0.007`$ from $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}=1.4\times 10^3\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1`$.222Greenberg & Li (1996) derived $`m^{\prime \prime }(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})0.026`$ from the mass absorption coefficient $`\kappa _{\mathrm{abs}}440\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1`$ measured for “yellow stuff” (“first generation” organic refractory material; Greenberg 1989b).

Neglecting reflection, the 2.5–25$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ imaginary part of the index of refraction can be calculated from the transmission spectrum of the Murchison meteorite: $`m^{\prime \prime }(\lambda )=m^{\prime \prime }(3.4\mu \mathrm{m})\left(\frac{\lambda }{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)\left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}𝐓_\lambda }{\mathrm{ln}𝐓_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}}\right)`$ where $`𝐓_\lambda `$ is the transmittance. For $`0.09\mu \mathrm{m}\lambda 1\mu \mathrm{m}`$ we take the $`m^{\prime \prime }`$ values measured from the heavily processed organic residue (Jenniskens 1993). For $`\lambda >1\mu \mathrm{m}`$ we take $`m^{\prime \prime }(\lambda )=m^{\prime \prime }(1\mu \mathrm{m})/\lambda `$ and then smoothly add the Murchison meteorite $`m^{\prime \prime }`$ to this continuum. Finally, the real part of the index of refraction $`m^{}(\lambda )`$ is calculated from $`m^{\prime \prime }(\lambda )`$ through the Kramers-Kronig relation. The resulting $`m^{}`$ and $`m^{\prime \prime }`$ are shown in Figure 1 for $`2\mu \mathrm{m}<\lambda <20\mu \mathrm{m}`$.

## 3 Polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Feature

To calculate the polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H absorption feature, for simplicity, we consider spheroidal silicate core-carbonaceous organic mantle dust grains. We consider both confocal spheroidal core-mantle grains and equal-eccentricity spheroids (both the core and the mantle have the same eccentricity \[i.e. the same shape\]). Undoubtedly, real interstellar grains must be more complicated. Since our ability to compute scattering and absorption cross sections for nonspherical particles is extremely limited, we use the confocal and equal-eccentricity spheroidal shapes as a first approximation. The discrete dipole approximation (Draine 1988) may be taken to study more complicated shapes. Quantitative differences are expected but this will not affect the conclusion of the paper, i.e., both the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H absorption feature and the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O feature are expected to be polarized for nonspherical and aligned core-mantle grains.

Let $`a_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`b_\mathrm{c}`$ be the core semiaxis along and perpendicular to the symmetry axis, respectively; $`a_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`b_\mathrm{m}`$ be the mantle semiaxis along and perpendicular to the symmetry axis, respectively; $`e_\mathrm{c}`$ and $`e_\mathrm{m}`$ be the core and mantle eccentricities, respectively; $`f_{\mathrm{sil}}`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{carb}}`$ ($`1f_{\mathrm{sil}}`$) be the volume fractions of the core and the mantle, respectively. For confocal spheroids, $`e_\mathrm{c}`$ relates to $`e_\mathrm{m}`$ through $`f_{\mathrm{sil}}`$.

Let $`C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}`$ and $`C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}`$ be the absorption cross sections for light polarized parallel and perpendicular, respectively, to the grain symmetry axis. For an ensemble of grains spinning and precessing about the magnetic field, the polarization cross section is $`C_{\mathrm{pol}}^{\mathrm{pro}}=\left(C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}\right)/2`$ for prolates, and $`C_{\mathrm{pol}}^{\mathrm{obl}}=\left(C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}\right)`$ for oblates; the absorption cross section is $`C_{\mathrm{abs}}=\left(C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}+2C_{\mathrm{abs}}^{}\right)/3\mathrm{\Phi }C_{\mathrm{pol}}\left(32/\mathrm{cos}^2\gamma \right)/6`$ where $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the polarization reduction factor; $`\gamma `$ is the angle between the magnetic field and the plane of the sky (Lee & Draine 1985). We take $`\mathrm{\Phi }=1`$ and $`\gamma =0`$.

In the wavelength of interest here, tenth-micron interstellar grains are in the Rayleigh limit. We therefore calculate the absorption cross sections of confocal spheroids using the “dipole approximation” (Gilra 1972; Draine & Lee 1984). For equal-eccentricity spheroids we take the approach of Farafonov (2001) and Voshchinnikov & Mathis (1999). We adopt the Draine & Lee (1984) dielectric functions for silicate dust.

Let $`V_{\mathrm{sil}}`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}`$ be the silicate core and carbonaceous mantle volumes, respectively. The volume fraction of the carbonaceous mantles $`f_{\mathrm{carb}}[V_{\mathrm{carb}}/(V_{\mathrm{carb}}+V_{\mathrm{sil}})]`$ can be estimated from the observed 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H ($`\tau _{3.4}`$) and 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O ($`\tau _{9.7}`$) optical depths: $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}\left(\tau _{3.4}/\tau _{9.7}\right)\left(\rho _{\mathrm{sil}}/\rho _{\mathrm{carb}}\right)\left(\kappa _{\mathrm{sil}}^{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}/\kappa _{\mathrm{carb}}^{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)0.25`$ where $`\tau _{3.4}/\tau _{9.7}1/18`$ (Sandford, Pendleton, & Allamandola 1995); $`\rho _{\mathrm{sil}}`$ and $`\rho _{\mathrm{carb}}`$ are the mass densities of the silicate ($`3.5\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) and carbonaceous ($`1.5\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) dust; $`\kappa _{\mathrm{sil}}^{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}(2850\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1)`$ is the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O silicate mass absorption coefficient (Draine & Lee 1984); $`\kappa _{\mathrm{carb}}^{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}(1500\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{g}^1)`$ is the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H mass absorption coefficient of carbonaceous organic dust (see §2).<sup>3</sup><sup>3</sup>3This appears to be consistent with the estimation of Tielens et al. (1996) who found $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}0.23`$. But we caution that much lower mass densities ($`\rho _{\mathrm{sil}}=2.5\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$, $`\rho _{\mathrm{carb}}=1.0\mathrm{g}\mathrm{cm}^3`$) were adopted in Tielens et al. (1996).  However, a much thicker mantle ($`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}1`$) is required to account for the visual/near-IR interstellar extinction (Li & Greenberg 1997). The mass ratio of carbonaceous organics to silicates in the coma of comet Halley, measured in situ, was approximately 0.5 (Kissel & Krueger 1987). This also points to $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}1`$ – it is often suggested that cometary dust is of interstellar origin (Greenberg 1982). In dense clouds thicker organic mantles would be expected (but the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H band strength also changes; see §4). Therefore, we will consider 3 cases: $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}=0.25,1,2`$.

We consider spheroids with a wide range of elongations. For a given mantle elongation $`a_\mathrm{m}/b_\mathrm{m}`$, the elongation of the core $`a_\mathrm{c}/b_\mathrm{c}`$ is determined from the mantle thickness$`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}`$. We calculate the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H excess extinction $`A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}`$ and excess polarization $`P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}`$, and the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O excess extinction $`A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}`$ and excess polarization $`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}`$ as a function of the mantle elongation $`a_\mathrm{m}/b_\mathrm{m}`$ and mantle thickness. In Figure 2 we show $`\left(P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)/\left(P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)`$, the ratio of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ polarization-to-extinction ratio to the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ polarization-to-extinction ratio.444We note that the excess extinction and polarization are the peak values. The polarization peak shifts to a longer wavelength relative to the extinction peak (Kobayashi et al. 1980).

It is seen in Figure 2 that for prolate (both confocal and equal-eccentricity) grains, the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H absorption feature is polarized to a slightly higher degree than the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate feature. For oblate grains, the degree of polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature can be lower in comparison with the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature, but even the most extreme case considered in this work still has $`\left(P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)/\left(P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)>75\%`$. Therefore, we can conclude that the silicate core-carbonaceous organic mantle model predicts a more or less similar degree of polarization for both the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ Si-O feature and the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H feature.

## 4 Discussion

Observationally, there exists a correlation between the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate and the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H hydrocarbon optical depths (Sandford et al. 1995). Although this is consistent with the core-mantle model, it does not necessary establish a core-mantle relationship between the silicate and hydrocarbon materials since such a correlation could also be achieved for a proportional distribution of these materials. In §3 we have seen that both the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature and the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature are expected to be polarized for aligned, nonspherical silicate core-carbonaceous organic mantle grains. Again, a positive detection of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ polarization does not necessary approve the core-mantle model, but a positive detection of one feature together with a negative detection of another would be a fatal judgement for the core-mantle model.

Attempts to measure the polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ absorption feature ($`P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}\mathrm{obs}}`$) was recently made by Adamson et al. (1999) toward the Galactic center source IRS 7. They found that this feature was essentially unpolarized. Since no spectropolarimetric observation of the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate absorption feature ($`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$) has yet been carried out for IRS 7, they estimated $`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$ from the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate optical depth $`A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$, assuming that the IRS 7 silicate feature is polarized to the same degree as the IRS 3 (another Galactic center source) silicate feature; i.e., $`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}=P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}`$ (observational data for $`A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$, $`A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}`$ and $`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}`$ are available). Assuming the IRS 7 aliphatic carbon (the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ carrier) is aligned to the same degree as the silicate dust, they expected the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ polarization to be $`P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}\mathrm{mod}}=P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}\times A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$. In so doing, they found $`P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}\mathrm{obs}}P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}\mathrm{mod}}`$ (Adamson et al. 1999). Therefore, they concluded that the aliphatic carbon dust is not in the form of a mantle on the silicate dust as suggested by the silicate core-carbonaceous mantle models.

We note that, to draw this conclusion, two critical assumptions were made: (1) $`P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}=P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS3}}`$; (2) $`P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}/A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}=P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{IRS7}}`$. Although the 2nd assumption does not seem to significantly deviate from the detailed calculations \[$`0.7\left(P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)/\left(P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)1.2`$ for reasonable dust parameters; see §3 and Figure 2\], the 1st assumption is questionable and needs observational support. We urgently need spectropolarimetric observations of IRS 7 in the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ region or of IRS 3 in the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ region. If we take the most likely dust parameters (1) $`a_\mathrm{m}/b_\mathrm{m}=1/2`$ oblate555The $`a/b=1/2`$ oblate shape was shown to provide a better match than any other shapes to the 3.1$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ ice polarization feature (Lee & Draine 1985) and the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate polarization feature (Hildebrand & Dragovan 1995) toward the Becklin-Neugebauer object.  and (2) $`V_{\mathrm{carb}}/V_{\mathrm{sil}}=1`$ (Li & Greenberg 1997), our model calculations give $`\left(P_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{3.4\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)/\left(P_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_{9.7\mu \mathrm{m}}\right)0.9`$ (see Figure 2), we therefore expect an excess polarization $`<0.8\%`$ for the IRS 7 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate feature, and $`>0.23\%`$ for the IRS 3 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H feature.

It is worth noting that the absorption features of ices – the “precursor” of organic residue – are seen in polarization in various sources (see Li & Greenberg 2002 for a recent review). The ice polarization feature toward the Becklin-Neugebauer object was well fitted by ice-coated grains (Lee & Draine 1985), suggesting a core-mantle grain morphology.

The exact nature of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature carrier remains a subject of debate (see Pendleton & Allamandola 2002, Li & Greenberg 2002). The carbonaceous organic refractory proposal recently receives further support from the very recent discovery of a 6.0$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature in dense clouds which was attributed to organic refractory by Gibb & Whittet (2002). They found that its strength is correlated with the 4.62$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ OCN- (“XCN”; Schutte & Greenberg 1997) feature which is considered to be a diagnostic of energetic processing. It would be interesting to see whether heavily processed organic residue is able to provide a close match to the 5.85$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ and 7.25$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H deformation bending modes seen toward the Galactic center source Sgr A as well (Chiar et al. 2000).

The 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature consists of three subfeatures at $`2955\mathrm{cm}^1`$ (3.385$`\mu `$m), $`2925\mathrm{cm}^1`$ (3.420$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$), and $`2870\mathrm{cm}^1`$ (3.485$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$) corresponding to the symmetric and asymmetric C-H stretches in CH3 and CH2 groups in aliphatic hydrocarbons which must be interacting with other chemical groups. The amount of carbonaceous material responsible for the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature is strongly dependent on the nature of the chemical groups attached to the aliphatic carbons. For example, each carbonyl (C=O) group reduces its corresponding C-H stretch strength by a factor of $`10`$ (Wexler 1967). Furthermore, not every carbon is attached to a hydrogen as in saturated compounds; instead, some form an aromatic structure (see Pendleton & Allamandola 2002). The fact that the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ absorption is not observed in molecular cloud may possibly be attributed to dehydrogenation or oxidation (formation of carbonyl) of the organic refractory mantle by accretion and photoprocessing in the dense regions (see Greenberg & Li 1999) – the former reducing the absolute number of CH stretches, the latter reducing the CH stretch strength by a factor of 10 (Wexler 1967) – the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature would be reduced per unit mass in molecular clouds.

At this moment, we are not at a position to rule out other dust sources as the interstellar 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ feature carrier. This feature has also been detected in a carbon-rich protoplanetary nebula CRL 618 (Lequeux & Jourdain de Muizon 1990; Chiar et al. 1998) with close resemblance to the interstellar feature. However, after ejection into interstellar space, the survival of this dust in the diffuse ISM is questionable (see Draine 1990).

## 5 Summary

The polarization of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ aliphatic hydrocarbon absorption feature is modelled in terms of the silicate core-organic hydrocarbon mantle interstellar dust model. For aligned, nonspherical core-mantle grains, both the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ C-H feature and the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ silicate feature are expected to be polarized, although unlikely to the same degree. The non-detection of the 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ polarization in the Galactic center source IRS 7 itself is not sufficient enough to rule out the core-mantle model due to the lack of spectropolarimetric observation of this source in the 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ region. We call for spectropolarimetric observations of the IRS 7 9.7$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ band and the IRS 3 3.4$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ band. This will promise a powerful test on the core-mantle dust model.

A. Li (the first author of this paper) were deeply saddened by the passing away of Prof. J. Mayo Greenberg (the second author) on November 29, 2001. As a pioneer in the fields of cosmic dust, comets, astrochemistry, astrobiology and light scattering, Mayo will be remembered forever. We thank Prof. B.T. Draine for his invaluable comments and suggestions; Prof. J.I. Lunine for helpful discussions; and Dr. R.H. Lupton for the availability of the SM plotting package. A. Li thanks The University of Arizona for the Arizona Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship in Theoretical Astrophysics. This research was supported in part by NASA grant NAG5-10811 and NSF grant AST-9988126.


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# Polyakov Loops versus Hadronic States

## I Introduction

Investigating the $`SU(N)`$ deconfinement phase transition is, in general, a complex problem. At zero quark density importance sampling lattice simulations are able to provide vital information about the nature of the temperature driven phase transition for 2 and 3 colors Yang-Mills theories with and without matter fields (see Boyd:1996bx ; Okamoto:1999hi  for 3 colors). Different approaches Agasian:fn ; Campbell:ak ; Simonov:bc ; Sollfrank:du ; Carter:1998ti ; Schaefer:2001cn ; Drago:2001gd ; Renk:2002md ; Pisarski:2001pe ; DP ; KorthalsAltes:1999cp ; Dumitru:2001xa ; Wirstam:2001ka ; Laine:1999hh ; Sannino:2002re ; Scavenius:2001pa ; Scavenius:2002ru ; DelDebbio:2002nb ; Giacomo:2002qr  are used in literature to tackle/study the features of this phase transition.

At zero temperature $`SU(N)`$ Yang-Mills theory is asymptotically free and the physical spectrum of the theory consists of a tower of hadronic states referred as glueball and pseudo-scalar glueballs. The theory develops a mass gap and the lightest glueball has a mass of the order of few times the confining scale. The classical theory is conformal while quantum corrections lead to a non-vanishing trace of the energy momentum tensor.

At nonzero temperature the $`Z_N`$ center of $`SU(N)`$ is a relevant global symmetry Svetitsky:1982gs  and it is possible to construct a number of gauge invariant operators charged under $`Z_N`$ among which the most notable one is the Polyakov loop:

$`\mathrm{}\left(x\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}\mathrm{Tr}[𝐋]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}\mathrm{Tr}\left[𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left[ig{\displaystyle _0^{1/T}}A_0(x,\tau )𝑑\tau \right]\right].`$ (1)
$`𝒫`$ denotes path ordering, $`g`$ is the $`SU(N)`$ coupling constant and $`x`$ is the coordinate for the three spatial dimensions while $`\tau `$ is the euclidean time. The $`\mathrm{}`$ field is real for $`N=2`$ while otherwise complex. This object is charged with respect to the center $`Z_N`$ of the $`SU(N)`$ gauge group Svetitsky:1982gs  under which it transforms as $`\mathrm{}z\mathrm{}`$ with $`zZ_N`$. A relevant feature of the Polyakov loop is that its expectation value vanishes in the low temperature regime while is non zero in the high temperature phase. The Polyakov loop is a suitable order parameter for the Yang-Mills temperature driven phase transition Svetitsky:1982gs .

This behavior recently led Pisarski Pisarski:2001pe  to model the Yang-Mills phase transition as a mean field theory of Polyakov loops. This model is often referred as the Polyakov Loop Model (PLM). Using this model one can infer that the $`SU(2)`$ phase transition is second order while a phase transition (as function of the temperature) is a weak first order for $`SU(3)`$. The predictions are in reasonable agreement with lattice results. Moreover the PLM is used to model the Yang-Mills free energy. Recently some interesting phenomenological PLM inspired models aimed to understand RHIC physics were constructed Scavenius:2001pa ; Scavenius:2002ru .

Here we will consider pure gluon dynamics. This allows us to have a well defined framework where the $`Z_N`$ symmetry is exact. The hadronic states are the glue balls fields ($`H`$) and their effective theory at the tree level is constrained by the Yang-Mills trace anomaly.

A real puzzle to me is how the information about the Yang-Mills phase transition encoded, for example, in the $`Z_N`$ global symmetry can be communicated to the hadronic states of the theory. Here we propose a concrete model which can help resolving this puzzle.

This model is constructed using trace anomaly and the $`Z_N`$ symmetry. We will demonstrate that the information carried by $`\mathrm{}`$ is efficiently transferred to the glueballs. More generally the glueball field is a function of $`\mathrm{}`$:

$`HH[\mathrm{}].`$ (2)
Our results can be tested via first principle lattice simulations Bacilieri:mj  and support the recent phenomenological investigations Scavenius:2001pa ; Scavenius:2002ru .

In section II we present the model. In section III we consider the two colors Yang-Mills theory while in IV the three color theory is considered. We finally conclude in section V

## II The Model

The hadronic states of the Yang-Mills theory are the glueballs. At zero temperature the Yang-Mills trace anomaly has been used to constrain the potential of the lightest glueball state $`H`$ Schechter:2001ts :

$`V[H]={\displaystyle \frac{H}{2}}\mathrm{ln}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{H}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}}\right].`$ (3)
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is chosen to be the confining scale of the theory and $`H`$ is a mass dimension four field. This potential correctly saturates the trace anomaly when $`H`$ is assumed to be proportional to $`\mathrm{Tr}\left[G_{\mu \nu }G^{\mu \nu }\right]`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }`$ is the standard Yang-Mills field strength. The potential nicely encodes the properties of the Yang-Mills vacuum at zero temperature and it has been used to deduce a number of phenomenological results Schechter:2001ts .

At high temperature Pisarski conjectured that the Yang-Mills pressure can be written in terms of the field $`\mathrm{}`$. This free energy must be invariant under $`Z_N`$ and it takes the general form:

$`V[\mathrm{}]=T^4[\mathrm{}].`$ (4)
$`[\mathrm{}]`$ is a polynomial in $`\mathrm{}`$ invariant under $`Z_N`$ and the coefficients depend on the temperature itself allowing for a mean field description of the Yang-Mills phase transitions.

We now marry the two models by requiring both fields to be present simultaneously at non zero temperature. The theory must reproduce at zero and low temperatures the ordinary glueball Lagrangian while the PLM at high temperatures. We propose the following effective potential:

$$V[H,\mathrm{}]=\frac{H}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left[\frac{H}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}\right]+V_T\left[H\right]+H𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]+T^4𝒱\left[\mathrm{}\right],$$
(5)
where $`𝒱\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ and $`𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ are general (but real) polynomials in $`\mathrm{}`$ invariant under $`Z_N`$ whose coefficients depend on the temperature. The explicit dependence is not known and should be fit to lattice data. Dimensional analysis and analyticity in $`H`$ when coupling it with $`\mathrm{}`$ severely restricts the effective potential terms. We stress that $`H𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ is the most general interaction term which can be constructed without spoiling the zero temperature trace anomaly.

Further nonanalytic interaction terms can arise when considering thermal and quantum corrections and are partially contained in $`V_T[H]`$ which schematically represents the temperature of a gas of glueballs. In the following we will not investigate in detail such a term. Our theory cannot be the full story since we neglected (as customary) all of the tower of glueballs and pseudo-scalar glueballs as well as the infinite series of dimensionless gauge invariant operators with different charges with respect to $`Z_N`$. Nevertheless the potential is sufficiently general to hope to capture the essential features of the Yang-Mills phase transition.

When the temperature $`T`$ is much less than the confining scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ the last term in Eq. (5) can be safely neglected. Since the glueballs are relatively heavy compared to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ scale their temperature contribution $`V_T[H]`$ can also be disregarded. At low temperatures the theory reduces to the standard glueball potential augmented by the third term which does not affect the trace anomaly.

At very high temperature (compared to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$) the last term dominates ($`H`$ itself is very small) recovering the picture in which $`\mathrm{}`$ dominates the free energy. In this regime we have $`[\mathrm{}]=𝒱[\mathrm{}]`$.

We can, in principle, compute all of the relevant thermodynamical quantities in our approach, i.e. entropy, pressure etc.

A relevant object is the trace of the energy-momentum tensor $`\mathrm{\Theta }_\mu ^\mu `$. At zero temperature and when the potential is a general function of a set of bosonic fields $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_n\}`$ with mass-dimensions $`d_n`$ one can construct the associated trace of the energy-momentum tensor via:

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_\mu ^\mu =4V[\mathrm{\Phi }_n]\underset{n}{}\frac{\delta V[\mathrm{\Phi }_n]}{\delta \mathrm{\Phi }_n}\mathrm{\Phi }_nd_n.$$
(6)
At finite temperature we still define our temperature dependent energy-momentum tensor as in Eq. (6). Here $`H`$ possesses engineering mass dimensions $`4`$ while $`\mathrm{}`$ is dimensionless yielding the following temperature dependent stress energy tensor:

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_\mu ^\mu (T)=2H+4T^4𝒱[\mathrm{}]+4\left[1H\frac{\delta }{\delta H}\right]V_T[H].$$
(7)
$`\mathrm{\Theta }_\mu ^\mu `$ is normalized such that $`0|\mathrm{\Theta }_\mu ^\mu |0=ϵ3p`$ with $`ϵ`$ the vacuum energy density and $`p`$ the pressure. At zero temperature only the first term survives yielding magnetic type condensation typical of a confining phase while at extremely high temperature the second term dominates displaying an energy density and pressure of the deconfined phase.

The theory containing just $`\mathrm{}`$ can be obtained integrating out $`H`$ via the equation of motion:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta V[H,\mathrm{}]}{\delta H}}=0.`$ (8)
Formally this is justifiable if the glueballs degrees of freedom are very heavy. For simplicity we neglect the contribution of $`V_T[H]`$ as well as the mean-field theory corrections for $`\mathrm{}`$. However in the future a more careful treatment which also includes the kinetic terms should be considered. Within these approximations the equation of motion yields:

$`H[\mathrm{}]={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2𝒫[\mathrm{}]\right].`$ (9)
The previous expression shows the intimate relation between $`\mathrm{}`$ and the physical states of strongly interacting theories.

After substituting Eq. (9) back into the potential (5) and having neglected $`V_T[H]`$ we have:

$`V[\mathrm{}]=T^4𝒱[\mathrm{}]{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{2e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2𝒫[\mathrm{}]\right].`$ (10)
This formula shows that for large temperatures the only relevant energy scale is $`T`$ and we recover the PLM model. However at low temperatures the scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ allows for new terms in the Lagrangian. Besides the $`T^4`$ and the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^4`$ terms we also expect terms with coefficients of the type $`T\mathrm{\Lambda }^3`$ and $`T^2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$ and $`T^3\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. However in our simple model these terms do not seem to emerge.

Expanding the exponential we have:

$`V[\mathrm{}]=T^4𝒱[\mathrm{}]+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}𝒫[\mathrm{}]{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{2e}}+\mathrm{}.`$ (11)
Since $`𝒱[\mathrm{}]`$ and $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ are real polynomials in $`\mathrm{}`$ invariant under $`Z_N`$ we immediately recover a general potential in $`\mathrm{}`$.

## III The two Color Theory

To illustrate how our formalism works we first consider in detail the case $`N=2`$ and neglect for simplicity the term $`V_T[H]`$. This theory has been extensively studied via lattice simulations Damgaard ; Hands:2001jn  and it constitutes the natural playground to test our model. Here $`\mathrm{}`$ is a real field and the $`Z_2`$ invariant $`𝒱[\mathrm{}]`$ and $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ are taken to be:

$`𝒱\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ $`=`$ $`a_1\mathrm{}^2+a_2\mathrm{}^4+𝒪(\mathrm{}^6),`$
$`𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ $`=`$ $`b_1\mathrm{}^2+𝒪(\mathrm{}^4),`$ (12)
with $`a_1,a_2`$ and $`b_1`$ unknown temperature dependent functions which should be derived directly from the underlying theory. Lattice simulations can, in principle, fix all of the coefficients. In order for us to investigate in some more detail the features of our potential and inspired by the PLM model mean-field type of approximation we first assume $`a_2`$ and $`b_1`$ to be positive and temperature independent constants while we model $`a_1=\alpha (T_{}T)/T`$, with $`T_{}`$ a constant and $`\alpha `$ another positive constant. We will soon see that due to the interplay between the hadronic states and $`\mathrm{}`$, $`T_{}`$ need not to be the critical Yang-Mills temperature while $`a_1`$ displays the typical behavior of the mass square term related to a second order type of phase transition.

The extrema are obtained by differentiating the potential with respect to $`H`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{H}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{eH}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}}\right]+𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{eH}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}}\right]+b_1\mathrm{}^2=0,`$ (13)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{\mathrm{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{}T^4\left(a_1+{\displaystyle \frac{H}{T^4}}b_1+2a_2\mathrm{}^2\right)=0,`$ (14)
### III.1 Small and Intermediate Temperatures

At small temperatures the second term in Eq. (14) dominates and the only solution is $`\mathrm{}=0`$. A vanishing $`\mathrm{}`$ leads to a null $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ yielding the expected minimum for $`H`$:

$$H=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}.$$
(15)
Here $`\mathrm{}`$ and $`H`$ decouple.

We now study the solution near the critical temperature for the deconfinement transition. For all the temperatures for which

$`T^4a_1+Hb_1=T^3\alpha (T_{}T)+Hb_1>0,`$ (16)
the solution for $`\mathrm{}`$ is still $`\mathrm{}=0`$ yielding Eq. (15). The critical temperature is reached for

$`T_c=T_{}+{\displaystyle \frac{b_1}{e\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^3}}.`$ (17)
The critical temperature can be determined via lattice simulations. We see that within our framework the latter is related to the glueball (gluon-condensate) coupling to two Polyakov loops and it would be relevant to measure it on the lattice. At $`T=T_c`$, $`\mathrm{}=0`$ and $`H=\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/e`$.

Let us now consider the case $`T=T_c+\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ with

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}}1.`$ (18)
Expanding $`\mathrm{}^2`$ at the leading order in $`\mathrm{\Delta }T/T_c`$ yields:

$`\mathrm{}^2={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{2a_2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1+3\frac{b_1}{e\alpha }\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^4}}{1\frac{b_1^2}{ea_2}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^4}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}}.`$ (19)
We used Eq. (17) and Eq. (13) which relates the temperature dependence of $`H`$ to the one of $`\mathrm{}`$. At high temperatures (see next subsection) $`\mathrm{}`$ can be normalized to one by imposing $`\alpha /2a_2=1`$ and the previous expression reads:

$`\mathrm{}^2={\displaystyle \frac{1+3\frac{b_1}{e\alpha }\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^4}}{1\frac{2b_1^2}{e\alpha }\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^4}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}}{\displaystyle \frac{4T_c3T_{}}{(12b_1)T_c+2b_1T_{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}}.`$ (20)
For a given critical temperature consistency requires $`b_1`$ and $`T_{}`$ to be such that:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{4T_c3T_{}}{(12b_1)T_c+2b_1T_{}}}0.`$ (21)
The temperature dependence, in this regime, of the gluon condensate is:

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2b_1\mathrm{}^2\right].`$ (22)
We find the mean field exponent for $`\mathrm{}`$, i.e. $`\mathrm{}^2`$ increases linearly with the temperature near the phase transition 111Corrections to the mean field are large and must be taken into account.. Interestingly the gluon-condensates drops exponentially. The drop in the gluon-condensate is triggered by the rise of $`\mathrm{}`$ and it happens in our simple model exactly at the deconfining critical temperature. Although the drop might be sharp it is continuous in temperature and this is related to the fact that the phase transition is second order. Our findings strongly support the common picture according to which the drop of the gluon condensate signals, in absence of quarks, deconfinement.

### III.2 High Temperature

At very high temperatures the second term in Eq. (14) can be neglected and the minimum for $`\mathrm{}`$ is:

$$\mathrm{}=\sqrt{\frac{\alpha }{2a_2}}.$$
(23)
For $`H`$ we have now:

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2b_1{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha }{2a_2}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2b_1\right].`$ (24)
In the last step we normalized $`\mathrm{}`$ to unity at high temperature. In order for the previous solutions to be valid we need to operate in the following temperature regime:

$`T\sqrt[4]{{\displaystyle \frac{b_1}{\alpha }}H}T_c.`$ (25)
We find that at sufficiently high temperature $`H`$ is exponentially suppressed and the suppression rate is determined solely by the glueball – $`\mathrm{}^2`$ mixing term encoded in $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$. The coefficient $`b_1`$ should be large (or increase with the temperature) since we expect a vanishing gluon-condensate at asymptotically high temperatures. Clearly it is crucial to determine all of these coefficients via first principle lattice simulations. The qualitative picture which emerges in our analysis is summarized in Fig. 1.

## IV The three color theory

$`Z_3`$ is the global symmetry group for the three color case while $`\mathrm{}`$ is a complex field. The functions $`𝒱[\mathrm{}]`$ and $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ are:

$`𝒱\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ $`=`$ $`a_1|\mathrm{}|^2+a_2|\mathrm{}|^4a_3(\mathrm{}^3+\mathrm{}_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{3})+𝒪(\mathrm{}^5),`$
$`𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]`$ $`=`$ $`b_1|\mathrm{}|^2+𝒪(\mathrm{}^3),`$ (26)
with $`a_1`$, $`a_2`$, $`a_3`$ and $`b_1`$ unknown temperature dependent coefficients which can be determined using lattice data. In this paper we want to investigate the general relation between glueballs and $`\mathrm{}`$ so we will not try to find the best parameterization to fit the lattice data. In the spirit of the mean field theory we take $`a_2`$, $`a_3`$ and $`b_1`$ to be positive constants while $`a_1=\alpha (T_{}T)/T`$. With $`\mathrm{}=|\mathrm{}|e^{i\phi }`$ the extrema are now obtained by differentiating the potential with respect to $`H`$, $`|\mathrm{}|`$ and $`\phi `$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{H}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{eH}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}}\right]+𝒫\left[\mathrm{}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{ln}}{2}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{eH}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}}\right]+b_1|\mathrm{}|^2=0,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{|\mathrm{}|}}`$ $`=`$ $`2|\mathrm{}|T^4\left(a_1+{\displaystyle \frac{H}{T^4}}b_13a_3|\mathrm{}|\mathrm{cos}(3\phi )+2a_2|\mathrm{}|^2\right)=0,`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{V}{\phi }}`$ $`=`$ $`6|\mathrm{}|^3\mathrm{sin}(3\phi )=0.`$ (27)
At small temperature the $`H/T^4`$ term in the second equation dominates and the solution is $`|\mathrm{}|=0`$, $`H=\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/e`$ and the last equation is verified for any $`\phi `$, so we choose $`\phi =0`$. The second equation can have two more solutions:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_3}{a_2}}\pm \sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{9}{16}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_3^2}{a_2^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (TT_{})}{2Ta_2}}{\displaystyle \frac{b_1H}{2a_2T^4}}},`$ (28)
whenever the square root is well defined (i.e. at sufficiently high temperatures). The negative sign corresponds to a relative maximum while the positive one to a relative minimum. We have then to evaluate the free energy value (i.e. the effective thermal potential) at the relative minimum and compare it with the one at $`\mathrm{}=0`$. The temperature value for which the two minima have the same free energy is defined as the critical temperature and is:

$`T_c=\left[T_{}+{\displaystyle \frac{b_1}{e\alpha }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{T_c^3}}\right]{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha a_2}{\alpha a_2+a_3^2}}.`$ (29)
When $`a_3`$ vanishes we recover the second order type critical temperature $`T_c`$. To derive the previous expression we held fix the value of $`H`$ to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/e`$ at the transition point. In a more refined treatment one should not make such an assumption. Below this temperature the minimum is still for $`\mathrm{}=0`$ and $`H=\mathrm{\Lambda }^4/e`$.

Just above the critical temperature the fields jump to the new values:

$`|\mathrm{}|={\displaystyle \frac{a_3}{a_2}},H={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2b_1|\mathrm{}|^2\right].`$ (30)
Close but above $`T_c`$ (i.e. $`T=T_c+\mathrm{\Delta }T`$) we have:

$`|\mathrm{}|{\displaystyle \frac{a_3}{a_2}}+\rho {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}},`$ (31)
with

$`\rho `$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha a_2}{a_3}}{\displaystyle \frac{4\kappa T_c3T_{}}{a_2T_c4b_1\alpha (\kappa T_cT_{})}},`$
$`\kappa `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha a_2+a_3^2}{\alpha a_2}}.`$ (32)
a positive function of the coefficients of the effective potential. In this regime

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{e}}\mathrm{exp}\left[2b_1({\displaystyle \frac{a_3}{a_2}}+\rho {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T_c}})^2\right].`$ (33)
At high temperature we expect a behavior similar to the one presented for the two color theory case. A cartoon representing the behavior of the Polyakov loop and the gluon condensate is presented in Fig. 2.

Since we are in the presence of a first order phase transition higher order terms in Eq. (26) may be important. However lattice simulations have shown that the behavior of the Polyakov loop, for 3 colors, resemble a weak first order transition (i.e. small $`a_3`$) partially justifying our simple approach.

The approximation for our coefficients is too crude and it would certainly be relevant to fit them to lattice simulations.

What we learnt is that the gluon condensate, although not a real order parameter, encodes the information of the underlying $`Z_3`$ symmetry. More generally we have shown that once the map between hadronic states and the true order parameter is known we can use directly hadronic states to determine when the phase transition takes place and the order of the phase transition. For example by comparing Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 we immediately notice the distinct difference in the gluon condensate temperature dependence near the phase transition.

## V Conclusions and Self Criticism

Our simple model is able to account for many features inherent to the Yang-Mills deconfining phase transition. We related two very distinct and relevant sectors of the theory: the hadronic sector (the glueballs), and some dimensionless fields ($`\mathrm{}`$) charged under the discrete group $`Z_N`$ understood as the center of the underlying $`SU(N)`$ Yang-Mills theory Pisarski:2001pe .

The gluon-condensate is, strictly speaking, not an order parameter for the deconfining Yang-Mills phase transition. However we have shown that the information encoded in the true order parameter $`\mathrm{}`$ is efficiently communicated to the gluon condensate. Since the exponential drop of the condensate just above the Yang-Mills critical temperature is a direct consequence of the behavior of the true order parameter at the transition we can consider this drop as a strong signal of deconfinement. This drop has already been used in various models for the Yang-Mills phase transition. We have also seen that the reduction in the gluon-condensate is associated to the increase of the Polyakov loop condensate $`\mathrm{}`$. The information about the order of the phase transition is also transferred to the behavior of the gluon condensate. Indeed from Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 we deduce that the drop is continuous for the gluon condensate in the two color case while is discontinuous for the three color theory. Physically the glueballs start decaying into gluons and this information is encoded in the $`H𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ term of the present theory.

We now better understand the mechanism for transferring information from the Yang-Mills order parameter to the physical states.

It is important to stress that our model is very limited since we neglect the temperature corrections associated with the glueball gas as well as other dimensionless operators with different charges under $`Z_N`$. Finally we did not include any of the excited glueball and pseudo-scalar glueball states present in the theory. Besides the temperature dependence of the coefficients in $`𝒫[\mathrm{}]`$ and $`𝒱[\mathrm{}]`$ is not known and we have just adopted the simplest guess consistent with mean-field theory. We also know that mean-field cannot be the whole story and corrections need to be included.

It is worth mentioning that the Polyakov loop need not to be the only acceptable order parameter. For example using an abelian projection one can define a new (non local in the cromomagnetic variables) order parameter DelDebbio:2002nb . Our model can be, in principle, modified to be able to couple the hadronic state to any reasonable Yang-Mills order parameter.

The same holds true when considering the introduction of quarks. Once identified a true order parameter for QCD with quarks we can first construct a model Lagrangian which satisfies the ordinary symmetries at zero temperature for the hadronic states and then extended it to describe at the same time the order parameter and the hadronic states. Although $`\mathrm{}`$ is not a good order parameter when quarks are added to the theory since the $`Z_N`$ symmetry is explicitly broken we can still construct a theory containing $`\mathrm{}`$ and the hadronic states (mesons and glueballs) provided we introduce explicit $`Z_N`$ breaking terms. This approach might be relevant for understanding RHIC physics Scavenius:2001pa ; Scavenius:2002ru .

Although the model is at a very early stage of development at the tree level some of the results are already fairly robust. For example the exponential drop of $`H`$ as function of $`\mathrm{}`$ is a prediction not expected to be very sensitive to different sources of corrections. We also note that the first order behavior of the deconfining three color Yang-Mills theory is directly inherited by the $`H`$. Indeed this quantity is discontinuous at the phase transition for three colors while displays a smooth behavior in the two color case. We expect these results to be quite general. We also stress that they are connected to the saturation of trace anomaly and the $`Z_N`$ symmetry at the effective Lagrangian level when considering simultaneously $`\mathrm{}`$ and $`H`$.

By computing the temperature dependence of the coefficients in the present effective theory lattice simulations can test the validity of the present model while improving the present results.

###### Acknowledgements.

I am indebted to P. Damgaard for enlightening discussions, encouragements and careful reading of the manuscript. It is a pleasure for me to thank L. Del Debbio, J.T. Lenaghan, M.P. Lombardo, A.D. Jackson, P. Di Vecchia, J. Schechter and W. Schäfer for discussions and reading the manuscript. This work is supported by the Marie–Curie fellowship under contract MCFI-2001-00181.


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# Discovery of Millisecond Variability in the Neutron-Star X-Ray Transient SAX J1750.8-2900

## 1 Introduction

The discovery of millisecond oscillations in the persistent emission and also in thermonuclear X-ray bursts from neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) has opened a new window on the dynamics of accreting neutron stars (Strohmayer et al., 1996). The time scales of the kHz quasiperiodic oscillations found in the persistent emission (hereafter kHz QPOs) match those expected from accretion dynamics very close to the neutron star in a region of strong gravity, and the possibility that the kHz QPOs could be used as probes of strong gravity is very intriguing. The burst oscillations are in a range expected for the neutron star spin periods (Alpar & Shaham, 1985), and have been interpreted as evidence for millisecond spin periods in accreting neutron stars (Strohmayer et al., 1997). However, this interpretation has recently been questioned because of the large frequency shifts seen in some bursts. Observations of bursts from new sources would be useful in determining the correct interpretation of the burst oscillations.

Here, we describe observations made with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE; Bradt, Rothschild, & Swank 1993) following the detection of X-ray bursts from the transient source SAX J1750.8-2900. We report the discovery of kHz QPOs in the persistent emission and of oscillations in one X-ray burst. We describe the source and our observations in §2, our results on X-ray bursts in §3, our results on the persistent emission in §4, and discuss our results in §5.

## 2 Observations of SAX J1750.8-2900

SAX J1750.8-2900 was discovered in March 1997 with the Wide Field Cameras (WFCs) on BeppoSAX as a faint and short duration transient 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$2 from the galactic center showing type-I X-ray burst activity (Bazzano et al., 1997). Analysis of data from the WFCs and the All-Sky Monitor (ASM) on RXTE shows a peak flux of 0.12 Crab (where the unit ‘Crab’ is defined as the flux of the Crab nebula in the 2-10 keV band, $`2\times 10^8\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$) and activity lasting approximately 3 weeks above 0.01 Crab (Natalucci et al., 1999). The WFCs detected nine type-I X-ray bursts, with peak fluxes between 0.4 and 1.0 Crab and $`e`$-folding decay times between 4 and 11 s in the 2-8 keV band. No counterparts in other wavelength regimes were identified. The type-I bursts indicate that the source is an accreting neutron star.

SAX J1750.8-2900 turned on again four years later, on 1 March 2001 (MJD 51969), as shown by observations with the RXTE All-Sky Monitor (ASM) (announced by the MIT ASM Team), the Proportional Counter Array (C. Markwardt, private communication), and the WFCs. The ASM light curve of the 2001 outburst is shown in Fig. 1. The ASM gives relatively poor coverage near the beginning of the outburst, so detailed information is not available on the initial rise. The high rate point at MJD 52000 is from a single ASM dwell and may be due to an X-ray burst. After the initial outburst, the source flux decayed, and then rose again with an almost linear dependence of ASM count rate with time over a period of roughly 20 days to a peak flux of 0.12 Crab, nearly identical to the 1997 maximum flux. The source subsequently decayed over 10 days to a state of reduced flux, well above the level associated with quiescence in neutron star LMXBs (Asai et al., 1998).

Bursting activity was detected in the 2001 outburst with the WFCs, although not as extensively as during the 1997 outburst probably because the coverage was not as large as in 1997. Nevertheless, the WFCs detected 4 bursts in a single observation on 4 April 2001 (MJD 52003). These four bursts have peak fluxes and light curves similar to the bursts observed in 1997. Three other bursts were detected with the WFCs during the 2001 outburst, one 13 days earlier which is atypical (Natalucci et al. in preparation), one 162 days later, and one 179 days later.

The four X-ray bursts found with the WFC triggered an RXTE Target-of-Opportunity program which led to 4 observations, on 2001 April 6, 9, 12, and 15. All of our observations occurred during the second rise in flux, as indicated in Fig. 1. Data were obtained with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) in a spectral mode (Standard 2) with 256 energy channels and 16 s time resolution, a low resolution timing mode (Standard 1) with no energy information and 0.125 s time resolution, and a high resolution timing mode (event mode) with 122 $`\mu `$s time resolution and 64 energy channels. In addition, burst catcher modes were used to acquire high time resolution data when the event rates exceeded the telemetry capacity of the event mode during X-ray bursts.

## 3 X-Ray Bursts

We used the Standard 1 data to search for X-ray bursts and found four bursts, see Table 1 and Fig. 2. We examined the spectral evolution of the bursts using burst catcher or event mode data with 64 channels of energy resolution. We extracted spectra for 0.25 s or 1 s intervals using all Proportional Counter Units (PCUs) on during each burst and all layers. The fluxes were corrected for deadtime effects. The maximum deadtime correction in the brightest burst was 7%. In order to eliminate the contribution of the persistent emission, we subtracted off a spectrum from 10 s of data preceding each burst, and fit the resulting spectra in the 3-20 keV band with an absorbed blackbody model with the column density fixed to the average value found from the persistent emission spectra described below.

The first three bursts are similar with comparable peak fluxes. The decay ($`e`$-folding) times for the full band (2–60 keV) PCA count rate for bursts 2 and 3 were close to 3.0 s. Burst 1 had a broader peak than bursts 2 and 3, had a longer decay time of 5 s, and deviated significantly from an exponential decay. Burst 4 was preceded by a small precursor event, beginning 9 s earlier with a peak count rate (with persistent emission subtracted) of $`20\%`$ of the main burst. Substructure including at least two small peaks is present in the precursor event. The peak count rate of burst 4 was a factor of 4 lower than the other bursts and the corresponding temperature was lower. Its decay time was 3.4 s, close to that of bursts 2 and 3.

The results of the spectral fits for the brightest burst, number 2, are shown in Fig. 3. The burst shows an increase in radius and a simultaneous decrease in temperature near the peak, but the magnitude of the radius increase is not sufficient to classify the burst as an Eddington-limited photospheric radius expansion burst. Lewin et al. (1995) found that the average peak luminosity for photospheric radius expansion bursts from 5 bursters located in globular clusters, hence with known distances, was $`(3.0\pm 0.6)\times 10^{38}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Using this luminosity as an upper limit on the peak luminosity in burst 2, we place an upper limit on the distance to SAX J1750.8-2900 of $`6.3\pm 0.7\mathrm{kpc}`$. This upper limit is consistent with the upper limit derived by Natalucci et al. (1999) of 7 kpc.

Using high time resolution data (merged event lists from the event and burst catcher modes) with no energy selection, we computed power spectra for overlapping 4 s intervals of data, with 0.125 s between the starts of successive intervals, and searched for excess power in the range 200-1200 Hz. We found oscillations in the second burst with a maximum Leahy normalized power of 49.3 at a frequency of 600.75 Hz, occurring in the burst decay 5 s after the burst rise. Allowing $`2\times 10^4`$ independent trials over the 20 s duration of the burst, the chance probability of occurrence is $`4\times 10^7`$, equivalent to a $`5.0\sigma `$ detection.

The dynamical power spectrum is shown in Fig. 4. In addition to the oscillations in the burst decay, there are oscillations present near 599.5 Hz in the initial part of the burst rise. The oscillations begin at the burst onset; no oscillations are present in the persistent emission before the burst onset. The frequency appears to change rapidly between burst rise and decay.

## 4 Persistent emission

To study the persistent emission, we used the Standard-2 data for spectral information and a 122 $`\mu `$s time resolution event mode for timing information. We removed data around the X-ray bursts. We used only PCU 2 for the color and spectral studies as it was on during all of the observations and has a reasonably well understood response (in particular, it does not suffer from the propane layer leak experienced by PCU 0 which was the only other PCU on during all of the observations). The background estimate was made using the bright source background files and the response was calculated using pcarmf v7.10 as supplied in ftools v5.1. All PCUs on during each observation were used for the timing analysis.

### 4.1 Energy spectra

We extracted an energy spectrum for each uninterrupted RXTE observing window to investigate evolution of the energy spectrum. The energy range was limited to 3-20 keV and we included a 1% systematic error. We attempted to fit the spectra with a simple absorbed powerlaw model. This was unacceptable in all cases. Addition of a gaussian emission line at an energy near the Fe-K transition produced an acceptable fit for the first spectrum, but not for the others. The sum of a blackbody plus a gaussian with absorption from material with solar abundances and the sum of a multicolor disk blackbody plus a gaussian with absorption produced unacceptable fits. The sum of a Comptonization model (Sunyaev & Titarchuk, 1980) and a gaussian emission line with absorption produced acceptable fits, $`\chi _\nu ^2<1`$, to all of the spectra. We used this model to fit all of the persistent emission spectra. The limiting form of the Comptonization spectrum at high temperatures over the fitted energy band is indistinguishable from a powerlaw given our limited statistics. Therefore, only an upper limit on the Comptonization temperature could be obtained for the first observation which had a spectrum consistent with the sum of a powerlaw and emission line with absorption as noted above.

The Comptonization temperature and optical depth show marked evolution over the observations, see Fig. 5. The temperature begins high, the lower limit on the temperature in the first observation is 8 keV, and decreases to 3 keV. Simultaneously, the optical depth begins at 6 and increases to 11 for the later observations. The column density of the absorbing material shows some evidence for a decrease with time; however, we caution that these spectra are not adequate to robustly constraint the column density. The average equivalent Hydrogen column density is $`4.4\times 10^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$.

The iron line parameters remain roughly constant across all the observations but are poorly constrained. All of the spectra were consistent with a centroid energy of 6.7 keV and this centroid energy was subsequently fixed for all of the fits. The width and normalization were allowed to vary. The best fit line widths were in the range 0.5–1.0 keV. The best fit equivalent widths ranged from 150 to 400 eV. The line width is consistent with previous results from neutron-star LMXBs (White et al., 1986; Asai et al., 2000). The equivalent width is higher than most previously reported values for neutron-star LMXBs; the maximum equivalent width reported from ASCA is 170 eV (Asai et al., 2000).

### 4.2 Source state and classification

We produced a color-color diagram, see Fig. 6, using 256 s intervals extracted from background subtracted Standard-2 data to study the source state. The April 6 and 9 observations form one cluster of points in the color-color diagram with high values of the hard color, while the April 12 and 15 data form a distinct cluster with lower values of the hard color.

To further investigation the source state, we produced low frequency (below 100 Hz) power spectra. We produced two spectra, one for each of the two clusters of points in the color-color diagram, see Fig. 7.

The power spectrum for the April 6 and 9 observations shows strong band-limited noise, with an RMS fraction of 12.8% in the 0.1–100 Hz range. This clearly identifies the source state as the ‘island’ state (van der Klis, 1995). The power spectrum has the form of a broken powerlaw below 10 Hz and a QPO is apparent above 10 Hz. Fitting the power spectrum with the sum of a broken powerlaw plus a Lorentzian, we found excess noise above 20 Hz and $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{DoF}=143.5/75`$. We added an exponentially cutoff powerlaw to fit this excess noise and the fit improved to $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{DoF}=111.8/72`$. The residuals of this fit show no systematic deviations and the fit is unlikely to be improved by addition of more continuum components. For the broken powerlaw, we find a break frequency of $`5.7\pm 0.2\mathrm{Hz}`$, an index below the break of $`0.25\pm 0.02`$ and and index above the break of $`1.7\pm 0.2`$. The Lorentzian centroid is $`17.7\pm 0.2\mathrm{Hz}`$. The break and QPO centroid frequencies are consistent with the correlation reported by Wijnands & van der Klis (1999).

The power spectrum for April 12 and 15 shows weak timing noise. The RMS fraction is 1.4% in the 0.1–100 Hz range. This indicates that the source was in the ‘banana’ state. We fitted the power spectrum with the sum of a powerlaw and an exponentially cutoff powerlaw. This gave a reasonable fit with $`\chi ^2/\mathrm{DoF}=11.6/10`$. The powerlaw index was $`0.89\pm 0.14`$.

Based on the timing and color information, we suggest that SAX J1750.8-2900 is an atoll source. Furthermore, we identify the source as being in the “island” state on April 6 and 9, when the hard color had high values and strong timing noise was present, and in the “banana” state on April 12 and 15, when the hard color had low values and the timing noise was weak.

### 4.3 High frequency timing

We searched for high frequency QPOs in each uninterrupted RXTE observation window and in combinations of the various data segments. We calculated averages of 2 s power spectra for all PCA events (2–60 keV) and for events in the 4.7-20.8 keV energy band. We included events from all PCUs on during each observation. We note that the true energy band for PCU0 likely differs somewhat from the nominal range due to the propane layer leak. We searched for peaks in the spectrum and fit any peak found with a Lorentzian plus a constant equal to the calculated the Poisson noise level.

There were several QPO signals above 250 Hz, see Table 2. Those found on April 9 and 12 are strong detections and are shown in Fig. 8. Allowing for a number of trials equal to the search interval of 1200 Hz divided by the QPO width (van Straaten et al., 2000) and allowing several trial widths, we estimate a chance probability of occurrence of $`2\times 10^{11}`$ for the QPO on April 9 and $`3\times 10^6`$ for the QPO on April 12. These QPOs clearly establish SAX J1750.8-2900 as a new member of the class of neutron-star low-mass X-ray binaries (NS-LMXBs) exhibiting kHz QPOs. The other signals have lower significance: $`2\times 10^3`$ for the QPO on April 6 and $`2\times 10^4`$ for the QPO on April 15. The signal on April 15 is quite narrow and appears significant only in the 4.7-20.8 keV band power spectrum.

In addition to the signals detected in individual uninterrupted observation segments, we also found a signal at 1253 Hz in the sum of all of the April 15 data. This is the last entry in Table 2. The detection has relatively low significance and must be considered tentative. However, if the detection is correct, then the frequency difference between the two QPOs detected on April 15 is 317 Hz. The formal error on the difference of the two frequency centroids is 9 Hz. The 1253 Hz peak may be broadened due to shifts in the centroid frequency over the integration, so the true uncertainty on the difference is somewhat larger. The frequency difference is consistent with half the frequency of the burst oscillations.

## 5 Discussion

The results presented here establish that SAX J1750.8-2900 exhibits millisecond oscillations in its X-ray emission. The properties of the kHz QPOs in the persistent emission from SAX J1750.8-2900 are similar to those of the other neutron-star LMXB kHz QPO sources in terms of the observed frequency range and the oscillation amplitudes. Additional measurements of SAX J1750.8-2900 would be of interest to confirm our tentative detection of the second kHz QPO branch and obtain a simultaneous measurement of the kHz QPO frequency difference.

The properties of the burst oscillations from SAX J1750.8-2900 are also similar to those observed from other sources. The frequency shift seen in the single burst from SAX J1750.8-2900 exhibiting oscillations is compatible with those seen from several other sources and smaller than the large shift (by 1.32%) seen from 4U 1916-053 (Galloway et al., 2001).

X-ray burst oscillation sources appear to form two distinct classes: “fast oscillators” showing burst oscillations near 600 Hz with the precise frequency close to twice the frequency difference of the kHz QPOs seen in the persistent emission, and “slow oscillators” showing burst oscillations near 300 Hz with the precise frequency near the difference of the kHz QPO frequencies (White & Zhang, 1997). Our discovery of 600.75 Hz oscillations from SAX J1750.8-2900 establish that it is a member of the class of fast X-ray burst oscillators. Our tentative detection of two contemporaneous kHz QPOs with a frequency difference near 300 Hz is consistent with the properties of the other fast oscillators, but should be tested with additional observations.

Muno et al. (2001) showed that the fast oscillators produce burst oscillations predominately, but not exclusively, in photospheric radius expansion bursts, while the slow oscillators have oscillations in bursts both with and without photospheric radius expansion. The burst from SAX J1750.8-2900 in which we find oscillations shows weak, at best, evidence for photospheric radius expansion; in particular, it does not meet the requirement of 20 km of radius expansion of Muno et al. (2001). However, since we have a sample of only one burst with oscillations, our results are not inconsistent with those of Muno et al. (2001).

The fact that the behavior of the fast versus slow oscillators is different in regards to the occurrence of oscillations versus burst type (radius expansion or not) implies that the difference between the two classes is not an observational selection effect, i.e. due to the inclination of the neutron star spin axis relative to our line of sight, but rather a physical difference in the properties of the neutron stars (Muno et al., 2001). It would be of great interest to identify a model of the X-ray burst oscillations which explained both the large frequency shifts seen in some bursts (Galloway et al., 2001) and the dichotomy between the fast versus slow oscillators.

We greatly appreciate the assistance by the duty scientists of the BeppoSAX Science Operations Center in the near to real-time WFC data analysis. We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of the RXTE team, particularly Jean Swank and Evan Smith, in performing these target of opportunity observations. PK thanks Mal Ruderman for useful discussions and acknowledges support from NASA grants NAG5-7405, NAG5-9097, and NAG5-9104. JZ acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).


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# Searching for Planets in the Hyades. I. The Keck Radial Velocity Survey Data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation.

## 1 Introduction

The discoveries of jovian-mass companions around other stars are finally supplying the observational data to test the widely held belief that planet-formation should be a natural result of star-formation (Marcy et al., 2000). The sub-stellar mass companions found so far demonstrate an astonishingly wide diversity of systems. There are jovian mass planets in orbits with semimajor axes as small as 10 stellar radii. Eccentric orbits appear to be the rule rather than the exception. For practical purposes, most surveys so far have targeted relatively nearby dwarf field stars similar to the Sun. These inhomogeneous samples were adequate for discovering the first extra-solar planets. However, as planet search programs now work on the problem of characterization rather than mere discovery of extra-solar planetary systems, the target lists must be much more carefully defined and selected in order to limit the number of free parameters in the sample. Several different types of surveys need to be undertaken, each of which is designed to answer a specific focused scientific question about the physics of planetary system formation.

We are conducting a survey of dwarf stars in the nearby Hyades star cluster to investigate the dependence of planetary system formation on the mass of the parent star. Young open clusters have a number of advantages, as well as disadvantages as samples for extrasolar planet surveys. The target stars form a highly homogeneous sample of stars that is coeval with a well determined age. The stars have uniform initial internal chemical composition, removing issues of stellar metallicity. The birth environment of the cluster is relatively well understood. The major independent variable in the sample is the mass of the star. While such a study can be conducted with field stars, one must be very careful because field stars are not a homogeneous sample. Their metallicities can span a very wide range, the ages are difficult to determine well, and their birth environments and locations are largely unknown. Disentangling the complex intertwined effects of all of the factors that might influence the properties of any detected planetary systems is significantly more difficult in a volume or magnitude limited sample of solar-neighborhood field stars.

In Section 2 we discuss the suitability of the Hyades as a laboratory for exploring the dependence of planet formation on stellar mass. Section 3 presents the technical aspects of the radial velocity survey using the Keck 1 telescope and its HIRES spectrometer. Preliminary results are presented in Section 4.

## 2 Searching for Planets in a Star Cluster

The distribution of stellar masses in a star cluster is described by the the stellar initial mass function (IMF). While the detailed physics that determines the actual shape of the IMF in a cluster is still not well understood, it has become clear that there are not huge variations in the IMF from one region to another (Meyer et al., 2000). We wish to investigate how, in turn, the mass of the star affects the properties of any planetary system that may form around it. Do massive stars form massive planets, or does tidal truncation (Lin & Papaloizou, 1986) limit the size to which a planet can grow? What role does early dynamical evolution play in systems with various mass stars? Do low mass stars form fewer planets, or perhaps lower mass planets? The Hyades star cluster is an excellent place to seek answers to these questions.

### 2.1 Planet Formation in a Cluster Environment

Stars in a cluster share a common birth environment, whereas the location and early dynamical environment of field stars is largely unknown, except perhaps for the sun (Adams & Laughlin, 2001). The stellar birth environment can significantly influence the formation and early evolution of both planetary and binary star systems. The planet-forming disks can be disrupted by close stellar encounters, and by the UV radiation from nearby hot stars. Newly formed planetary systems are subject to tidal disruption in the dense stellar environment of a young cluster.

Armitage (2000) considered the effects of disk photoevaporation by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars. Giant planet formation can be suppressed if the disk is destroyed on a timescale shorter than the planetary core growth time of several million years. Armitage computed the disk photoevaporation lifetime as a function of the number of stars in the cluster and the position of the star within the cluster, and concluded that this process suppresses giant planet formation in clusters of $`10^5`$ stars out to a distance of about 1 parsec, and possibly farther from the cluster center. If we accept the conventional wisdom that the very short-period giant planets (e.g. 51 Peg b) are formed in the disk at several AU and then migrate inward through tidal interactions with the disk (Bodenheimer et al., 2000), then the incidence of such short-period giant planet systems will be lower in richer clusters because the disk must last sufficiently long after planet formation to allow for the inward migration. If, on the other hand, giant planets form by direct hydrodynamic collapse of gravitational instabilities in the disk (Boss, 2000, 2001), then disk photoevaporation is unlikely to affect the giant planet formation process significantly.

Even if a planet-forming circumstellar disk is able to survive destruction by UV photoevaporation processes, the system must still survive the effects of close stellar encounters in the crowded cluster environment. Boffin et al. (1998) and Watkins et al. (1998a, b) investigated the effects of star-disk encounters as well as disk-disk encounters (both coplanar and non-coplanar). These SPH code studies indicate that encounters may cause gravitational instabilities which then lead to fragmentation of the disk and to the formation of additional companion objects to the central star. These simulations assume a disk radius of 1000 AU and model periastron encounter distances ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 disk radii. Scally & Clarke (2001) show that in a dense star forming region such as the Orion Nebular Cluster (ONC), the distribution of stellar encounter distances peaks at 1000 AU, and only 10% of the stars suffer an encounter at less than 100 AU in $`10^7`$ years. The observed disk sizes in ONC tend to be significantly smaller than 1000 AU (McCaughrean & O’Dell, 1996) and thus Scally & Clarke conclude that protoplanetary disks in ONC are unlikely to be destroyed by close stellar encounters. These results are supported by computations by Bonnell et al. (2001) and by Smith & Bonnell (2001), who find that stellar encounters do not significantly affect planet formation in open clusters.

Even if a open cluster environment will not easily inhibit the formation of giant planets, is it possible for stellar encounters to affect the planetary system dynamical properties? de la Fuente Marcos & de la Fuente Marcos (1997) proposed stellar encounters in open clusters as a means of forming eccentric giant planets such as 16 Cygni Bb (Cochran et al., 1997). They found that a small fraction of the giant planets formed in open clusters could develop large eccentricities, but most systems will be unaffected. Laughlin & Adams (1998) found that while it is possible for scattering by gravitational interactions with binary stars in the birth cluster to account for some number of systems such as 16 Cygni Bb and even for some close-in giant planets such as 51 Peg b, the overall efficiency of the process is too small to account for the observed semi-major axis – eccentricity distribution.

The stellar environment in a globular cluster, however, is significantly different than in an open cluster. Gilliland et al. (2000) used HST WF/PC2 and STIS to search for photometric transits of short period planets in 47 Tucanae. If main sequence stars in 47 Tuc have the same fraction of 51 Peg-like systems as in the solar neighborhood, then this HST program should have found about 15-20 transiting systems among the 34,000 stars monitored for 8 consecutive days. Instead they found none, indicating that the formation rate of these systems is significantly lower in this globular cluster. Davies & Sigurdsson (2001) computed that during the evolution of 47 Tuc, wide planetary systems ($`a0.3`$AU) would probably be disrupted but tighter systems would probably survive, especially in the less dense outer regions of the cluster.

### 2.2 The Hyades as a Laboratory for Studying Planet Formation

The Hyades are the closest and one of the most intensely studied open clusters. The space motion of the Hyades has been extremely well determined (Perryman et al., 1998; de Bruijne et al., 2001) so cluster membership can be determined with high confidence. The cluster currently comprises over 300 probable members, and a total mass of 300-400 M (Perryman et al., 1998). A large number of spectroscopic metallicity determinations of individual Hyades stars (Chaffee et al., 1971; Branch et al., 1980; Cayrel et al., 1985; Boesgaard & Budge, 1988; Boesgaard, 1989; Boesgaard & Friel, 1990) were combined by Perryman et al. to give a mean metallicity of the Hyades of $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=+0.14\pm 0.05`$. Much of the scatter in these $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ values is likely due to differences in the analysis techniques rather than real star-to-star abundance variations. Smith & Ruck (1997) find a mean $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=+0.13`$ from analysis of strong Ca II 8542Å and Mg I 8806Å lines. Cayrel et al. (1985) found that $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=+0.12\pm 0.03`$ for 10 Hyades dwarfs, but that 2 other Hyades stars (HD 27859 = vB 52 and HD 27685 = vB 39) had anomalously low $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ of $`+0.028`$ which they attributed to the high level of chromospheric activity in these stars. Perryman et al. (1998) fit a theoretical ZAMS to the Hyades, and derive a helium content $`Y=0.26\pm 0.02`$, which agrees closely with the value obtained by Lebreton et al. (2001) of $`Y=0.255\pm 0.013`$ as well as with the solar value of $`Y=0.2659`$. Isochrone fitting to the Hyades main sequence turn off then gives a cluster ago of $`625\pm 50`$ My, in excellent agreement with previous determinations of 655 My (Cayrel de Strobel, 1990) and 600 My (Torres et al., 1997). de Bruijne et al. (2001) used the Hipparcos proper motions to derive secular parallaxes for Hyades members which they claimed were significantly better than the Hipparcos trigonometric parallaxes. While this analysis does indeed narrow the width of the Hyades main sequence, it does not really alter the theoretical fit to the main sequence or the derived values of $`Y`$ and $`Z`$. However, the very narrow width of the main sequence does support the lack of significant star-to-star metallicity variations among Hyades dwarfs.

While the Hyades are a nearby, homogeneous sample of stars, are they really suitable targets for high-precision radial velocity work? Achieving high velocity precision requires SNR of about 300 in a relatively short exposure on stars that are slowly rotating and are relatively inactive. Hyades dwarfs range in magnitude from about $`V=7.5`$ for a late F star through $`V=911`$ for K stars. The M dwarfs range down through significantly fainter magnitudes. The necessary SNR can be achieved on these stars in exposures of 15 minutes or less with the Keck HIRES spectrograph (Vogt et al., 1994). The Hyades dwarfs, at their age of 625 My, have slowed their rotation rates significantly from the rotation rates found in younger clusters such as the Pleiades (Terndrup et al., 2000). Hyades dwarfs show a good correlation between rotation rates and activity (Stauffer et al., 1997; Terndrup et al., 2000). We have selected stars of low $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ for our Hyades sample. The major question that we face in the use of Hyades dwarfs for precise radial velocity studies is whether the level of stellar activity in theses stars will be low enough that we will still be able to detect RV variations due to orbital reflex motion on top of the level of intrinsic RV jitter in these stars. Saar & Donahue (1997), Saar et al. (1998), and Santos et al. (2000) have derived empirical relationships between the observed radial velocity “jitter” of single stars presumed not to have planetary mass companions and observable stellar properties such as $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ and R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$. The applicability of such relationships to our Hyades data set is the major subject of Paper II in this series (Paulson et al., 2002).

## 3 The Keck Radial Velocity Survey of Hyades Dwarfs

Since 1996 we have been using the Keck 1 telecope with its HIRES (Vogt et al., 1994) spectrograph to conduct high precision radial velocity observations of a sample of 98 Hyades dwarf stars. An I2 gas absorption cell provides the velocity metric (Libbrecht, 1988; Butler et al., 1996). The HIRES spectrograph is set to include the stellar Ca II H & K lines (3933.66, 3968.47Å). These lines fall in a wavelength region free of I2 gas cell absorption, and thus provide a direct and simultaneous measurement of stellar chromospheric activity for every radial velocity observation. This automatic ability to monitor stellar activity has turned out to be extremely important for the relatively young, chromospherically active Hyades dwarfs. The red limit of the spectrograph setting is 6188Å, near the effective red limit of useful I2 gas absorption.

The HIRES “B2” entrance aperture ($`0.574\mathrm{}\times 7.0\mathrm{}`$ projected on the sky) gives a nominal resolving power of 60,000 and an actual measured resolving power ranging up to 67,000 depending on position on the CCD. The image derotator is used to keep the slit vertical on the sky. This keeps atmospheric dispersion perpendicular to the spectrograph echelle dispersion, and presents a constant orientation of the telescope pupil to the spectrograph. The Keck HIRES exposure meter, installed in 2000, is used to terminate exposures when the desired SNR is reached, and to give an accurate determination of the photon-weighted mid-exposure time. We did not apply the empirical correction for problems in the HIRES CCD readout electronics derived by Vogt et al. (2000).

The target stars were selected in 1996, before the Hipparcos data for the Hyades stars were released. After the analysis by Perryman et al. (1998) our target list was significantly modified. Several non-members were dropped, and a few new stars were added. The observing list now comprises 98 Hyades dwarfs: 10 F stars, 24 G stars, 44 K stars and 20 M stars. Since the object of this program is to explore the dependence of planet formation on stellar mass, we have taken great care to include a representative sample of lower mass stars. Due to the steepness of the stellar mass-luminosity relation, the overwhelming majority of the telescope time is spent observing these late K and M dwarfs. The stars have been selected to meet the following criteria: 1) classified as a Hyades member by Perryman et al. (1998), 2) commonly accepted by other studies as a Hyades member based on radial velocity, parallax, and proper motion, 3) not in a spectroscopic binary system with orbital period less than $`100`$ years, and 4) stellar rotational velocity $`v\mathrm{sin}i15`$ km s-1. The motivation for criteria 1 and 2 is obvious; this is what guarantees the homogeneity of our sample. The prohibition on spectroscopic binary stars is a common feature of virtually all RV planet detection programs. It simply guarantees that there will not be a stellar companion in an orbit small enough to prevent the presence of planetary companions. The limit to small $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ is also a common feature of high precision RV programs, and is predicated on practical considerations. Narrow stellar lines are necessary to achieve the very high radial velocity precision required to detect planetary companions. This is the one selection criterion which might introduce some small biases in our stellar sample. Low rotational velocities will probably select for stars with lower levels of stellar activity (Stauffer et al., 1997). In addition, if the stellar rotation rate at the 625 My age of the Hyades is related to the degree of rotational braking of the star by magnetic coupling to a remnant circumstellar disk at earlier times, we may be selecting for stars that had more massive disks, or stars for which the disks survived longer. However, in practice, our $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$ criterion was actually more of a spectral class criterion. We rejected eight F5 stars, three F6 stars, and one G5 star based solely on $`v\mathrm{sin}i`$. Of the ten F stars remaining in the survey, we have one F5 star, eight F8 stars, and one F9 star. Thus, a possible bias toward low $`\mathrm{sin}i`$ is probably applicable only to the sole surviving F5 star HD 29419 (vB 105). We will live with this possible selection effect and bear it in mind when interpreting the results of our survey.

A color-magnitude diagram of our program stars for which parallaxes are available is given in Figure 1. The absolute magnitudes for the stars are computed using the secular parallaxes of de Bruijne et al. (2001) where ever possible. For those stars too faint to have been included in the Hipparcos catalog, absolute magnitudes from van Altena (1966) were used.

## 4 Preliminary Results

This observing program has received an average of five to six nights per year on the Keck 1 telescope, starting in the fall of 1996. Since these target stars are on the average about three magnitudes fainter than the targets for most other high precision radial velocity surveys, our Hyades survey has been hard-pressed to get good temporal coverage of all of the target stars. We have tried to obtain at least two good quality velocity measurements of each star per year. The sampling obtained by our scheduling on Keck has been very good for sampling long periods, but extremely poor for sampling possible short periods variations.

We have attempted to assess the velocity precision we have achieved with Keck/HIRES. Figure 2 gives histograms of the variance of the velocity measurements about the mean for our program stars, after any linear trend has been removed. These observed variances will be a combination of measurement uncertainty, intrinsic stellar variability, and possible orbital motion. The median observed rms for the entire sample of Hyades dwarfs is 9.3 m s-1. The lower panels of Figure 2 give the distribution of observed variances for the different spectral classes in the sample. We see that in general the observed variance is larger for the F and G stars than it is for the K and M stars. The variances for the stars at the low end of each distribution is undoubtedly dominated by the uncertainty in the measurement process, while the higher variances are probably real. Our velocity measurement procedure gives us an independent assessment of the internal velocity precision which is most likely to be dominated by intrinsic measurement uncertainties. In measuring the velocities for each observation, we divide the spectrum into several hundred small intervals, and perform the spectral modeling for each spectral interval independently. The variance of the velocities computed for each spectral interval is then used to compute an error bar for the mean velocity of each observation. While we normally refer to this as an “internal” error, it is possible that some portion could be intrinsic to the star. For example, if there are velocity fields within the stellar photosphere, then weak photospheric lines could easily have a very different velocity behavior than strong lines. This velocity difference would also vary with any stellar activity cycle. Nevertheless, the mean “internal” error for the F stars is 6.8 m s-1, 4.7 m s-1 for the G stars, 4.3 m s-1 for the K stars, and 5.2 m s-1 for the M stars. The observed trend in internal errors with spectral type is the result of the interplay of two different factors: photon statistics, and the intrinsic velocity content of the spectrum. Since our Hyades stars are all at roughly the same distance, the apparent magnitude of a star is a simple monotonic function of the spectral type. Since we have imposed a maximum exposure time of 15 minutes on all of our observations in order to minimize uncertainties in the barycentric correction, observations of the later spectral type stars have lower SNR than the earlier spectral types. Thus, we expect photon statistics to become increasingly important for later spectral types. The competing effect is simply that the stellar spectrum becomes more complex with decreasing stellar effective temperature. The intrinsic velocity information content of a stellar spectrum depends on the mean absolute value of the slope of the spectrum (Butler et al., 1996). This increases significantly for the later spectral types (Bouchy et al., 2001). Thus, we are in the fortunate position of having roughly constant internal measurement errors of 4-6 m s-1 for all of our Hyades sample, independent of stellar mass. Paper II discusses the relationship between our measured radial velocity variations of Hyades dwarfs, and stellar chromospheric activity. The fundamental conclusion is that we are able to achieve sufficient velocity precision in our sample of Hyades dwarfs, in spite of their relatively young age, to detect jovian mass planetary companions in orbit around them. Long timescale stellar activity variations, while present and significant, does not prevent us from achieving the fundamental goals of our observing program.

Figure 3 shows examples of the velocity measurements we have obtained. The upper two panels show two stars, HD 285876 (HIP 21138, vB 191) and BD+19 650 (HIP 18946) which show velocities over four years which are constant to 3 m s-1. The middle two panels show two stars, BD+08 642 (HIP 19441) and BD+04 810 (HIP 23312) with secular trends in the data, but with an rms about that trend of 3-4 m s-1. The lower two panels show two stars with large scatter in their observed velocities. HD 285625 (HIP 19834) shows a velocity rms of 53 m s-1 and HD 286363 (HIP 18322) shows a velocity rms of 16 m s-1. Both of these last stars are candidates for having short period planetary companions. Definitive detection of short period velocity variability has proven to be extremely difficult with the scheduling of this program on Keck. Each star is typically observed only twice per year, leading to significant period aliasing and ambiguity for short period RV variations. To alleviate this problem, we are performing follow-up observations of stars showing significant RV scatter using the high resolution spectrograph (HRS) of the Hobby$``$Eberly Telescope (HET). The queue scheduled nature of the HET will allow us to optimally sample a range of possible short periods. At the conclusion of this Hyades survey, we will place upper limits on companion $`m\mathrm{sin}i`$ as a function of orbital period for each of our survey targets and we will then compare the frequency of planetary companions to Hyades stars with similar results for field stars.

## 5 Conclusions

Star clusters, such as the Hyades, provide an excellent laboratory for investigating the physics of planetary system formation. Most radial velocity surveys for extrasolar planets have used samples of stars with widely ranging and often unknown ages, metallicities, birth environments, and evolutionary histories. However, in the Hyades we have a very well controlled and understood sample of stars in which the primary independent variable is the stellar mass. The goal of this program is to attempt to understand the dependence of the properties of planetary systems on the mass of the central star. With the Hyades we have demonstrated 3–6 m s-1 radial velocity precision for main sequence stars between F8 and M2, using the Keck 1 telescope and its HIRES spectrograph with an I2 cell as the velocity metric. While these stars are indeed chromospherically active, the activity is not large enough to seriously interfere with our ability to detect jovian-mass companions. A number of promising candidate planetary systems have been identified which will be followed using the Hobby$``$Eberly Telescope.

This work was supported by NASA grants NAG5-4384 and NAG5-9277, and by NSF grant AST-9808980. We wish to thank Geoff Marcy, Paul Butler and Steve Vogt for valuable advice in the use of Keck HIRES, and for permission to use the HIRES I2 cell in advance of its public release. We are extremely grateful to David Latham and Robert Stefanik for their assistance in removing binary stars and Hyades non-members from our star sample, and to Debra Fischer for several helpful comments and suggestions.