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# Critical behavior of the frustrated antiferromagnetic six-state clock model on a triangular lattice

## I Introduction

The study of frustrated two-dimensional spin models is motivated by their relevance for phase transitions in a wide range of physical systems. For instance, the fully frustrated $`XY`$ (FF$`XY`$) model describes an array of Josephson junctions under an external magnetic field . Besides its experimental relevance the FF$`XY`$ model has been the focus of a number of theoretical works since a delicate question arises here regarding the critical behavior. The model has a continuous $`U(1)`$ symmetry and a discrete Ising, chiral or $`Z_2`$ symmetry that can be broken at low temperatures through a Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type transition and an Ising-like transition, respectively.

Despite a lot of efforts \[3–22\], there is no consensus on the nature of the phase transitions and it is not clear whether the two transitions happen at two different temperatures or at a single one. Renormalization group (RG) studies on the FF$`XY`$ model drew the conclusion that the transitions occur at the same temperature . Monte Carlo simulation studies on generalized FF$`XY`$ models supported the single transition picture for the FF$`XY`$ model . Interestingly, it has been reported that the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition may not belong to the Ising universality class. Monte Carlo studies of the FF$`XY`$ models on a triangular and a square lattice yielded the correlation length exponent $`\nu =0.83(4)`$ (triangular lattice) and $`\nu =0.85(3)`$ (square lattice), which is inconsistent with the Ising value $`\nu =1`$ . The specific heat appeared to follow a power-law scaling rather than the logarithmic scaling as one would expect for the Ising universality class. A non-Ising scaling behavior is also observed in the studies of the FF$`XY`$ model via a Monte Carlo simulation  and Monte Carlo transfer matrix calculations . The same non-Ising critical behavior is also observed in the coupled $`XY`$-Ising model .

On the other hand, numerical evidence also in favor of two transitions at two different temperatures has been collected. Monte Carlo simulation studies of the frustrated Coulomb gas system, which is supposed to be in the same universality class as the FF$`XY`$ model, showed that the KT type transition temperature $`T_{KT}`$ and the Ising-like transition temperature $`T_I`$ are different with $`T_{KT}<T_I`$ . Two transitions were also found in the FF$`XY`$ model on a square lattice  and on a triangular lattice  using Monte Carlo simulations. A careful analysis of the RG flow of the FF$`XY`$ model also led to a conclusion of the double transition scenario . It is the general belief that the transitions at $`T_{KT}`$ and at $`T_I`$ belong to the KT universality class  and to the Ising universality class, respectively, if the transitions occur at different temperatures. However, the critical exponents associated with the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking, which are found by Monte Carlo simulations, turn out to be different from those of the Ising universality . They are rather close to those obtained in the $`XY`$-Ising model . Although there is an argument that the observed non-Ising exponents are due to a screening effect hindering the asymptotic scaling behavior , the controversy on the nature of the phase transition remains unsettled .

Here we present a thorough numerical study of a related model, the fully frustrated anti-ferromagnetic six-state clock model on a triangular lattice. We also report on an orientational ordering transition in a two-dimensional experimental system  that, as we argue, is in the same universality class as the model we study numerically. The experimental system actually motivates (besides numerical simplicity) our restriction to the six states of the spins rather than the continuum $`XY`$ spins (and thus to a six-fold clock ($`C_6`$) symmetry rather than the $`U(1)`$ symmetry). In the unfrustrated (ferromagnetic) case it has been shown, however, that the KT-behavior is stable with respect to a crystal field of six-fold symmetry . Hence we expect that our model displays the same critical behavior as the FF$`XY`$ model.

The paper is organized as follows: In Sec. II we define the model and identify symmetry in the ground state. The corresponding order parameters are also defined. In Sec. III we explain briefly the Monte-Carlo procedure we used and determine the transition temperatures for the two phase transitions. Section IV is devoted to the classification of the universal properties at the two transitions we find. In Sec. V we present experimental x-ray diffraction results on the orientational ordering of CF3Br monolayers physisorbed on graphite which we expect to be described by the KT-transition occurring in the model we studied numerically in the preceding sections. Section VI concludes the paper with a summary of our results.

## II Model

We investigate the phase transitions of the anti-ferromagnetic six-state clock model on a two-dimensional (2D) $`N=L_x\times L_y`$ triangular lattice (see Fig. 1). The six-state clock spin $`𝐒`$ is a planar spin pointing toward discrete six directions; $`𝐒=(\mathrm{cos}\theta ,\mathrm{sin}\theta )`$ with

$$\theta =\frac{2\pi n}{6}(n=0,1,\mathrm{},5).$$
(1)
The interaction is given by the Hamiltonian

$$=2J\underset{i,j}{}\mathrm{cos}(\theta _i\theta _j),$$
(2)
where the sum is over all nearest neighbor site pairs $`i,j`$ and $`J>0`$ is the antiferromagnetic coupling strength. The overall factor $`2`$ is introduced for a computational convenience.

The antiferromagnetic interaction on a triangular lattice induces a frustration. As a result the spins on each triangles should make an angle of $`\pm 120^{}`$ with one another in the ground state. There are 12-fold degenerate ground states with three-sublattice structure. According to their chirality, we can categorize the ground states into $`𝒞_n`$ and $`𝒜_n`$ ($`n=0,1,\mathrm{},5`$). In each ground state the spin configurations of the three sublattices $`A`$, $`B`$, $`C`$ (Fig. 1) are given by

$$\theta _{iA}=\frac{2\pi n}{6},\theta _{iB}=\frac{2\pi (n\pm 2)}{6},\theta _{iC}=\frac{2\pi (n\pm 4)}{6}$$
(3)
for $`𝒞_n`$ (upper sign) and $`𝒜_n`$ (bottom sign). In other words, in the $`𝒞`$($`𝒜`$) type ground state, the spin angles increase by $`\frac{2\pi }{3}`$ along the up-triangles in the (anti-) clockwise direction, and vice versa for down-triangles.

There are two different symmetries between them; those in the same class of $`𝒞`$ or $`𝒜`$ are related by the rotation $`\theta _i\theta _i+\frac{2\pi m}{6}(m=0,\mathrm{},5)`$ and those in the others by the reflection $`\theta _i\theta _i`$. Therefore the model possesses the $`C_6(\text{six-fold clock})`$ symmetry and the $`Z_2(\text{Ising})`$ symmetry. Note that the FF$`XY`$ model on a triangular lattice has a $`U(1)`$ and a $`Z_2`$ symmetry . Since the clock spin can have only six states, while the $`XY`$ spin is a continuous one, the continuous $`U(1)`$ symmetry of the FF$`XY`$ model is reduced to the discrete $`C_6`$ symmetry. The nature of the $`Z_2`$ symmetry in each model is identical.

From the symmetry consideration, we expect that there are two types of phase transitions associated with the spontaneous breaking of the $`C_6`$ symmetry and the $`Z_2`$ symmetry. The chirality at each elementary triangle is defined as

$$h_{_i,_i}=\frac{2}{3\sqrt{3}}\left[\mathrm{sin}(\theta _j\theta _i)+\mathrm{sin}(\theta _k\theta _j)+\mathrm{sin}(\theta _i\theta _k)\right],$$

where $`_i`$ and $`_i`$ are up- and down-triangles as depicted in Fig. 1. Then the ground state $`𝒞_n(𝒜_n)`$ has a checker-board pattern of the chirality with $`h_{}=+1(1)`$ and $`h_{}=1(+1)`$. The staggered chirality

$$h=\frac{1}{2N}\underset{i}{}\left(h__ih__i\right)$$
(4)
plays a role of the order parameter for the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition. The order parameter for the $`C_6`$ symmetry breaking transition is the sublattice magnetization

$$m_A=\frac{1}{N}\underset{iA}{}\mathrm{exp}(i\theta _i),$$
(5)
where the sum runs only over the sites in the $`A`$ sublattice. $`m_B`$ and $`m_C`$ are defined analogously.

## III Transition temperatures

We performed Monte Carlo (MC) simulations on finite $`N=L\times (L/2)`$ lattices with a sublattice updating scheme; one of the three sublattices is selected randomly and then all spins in the chosen sublattice are flipped according to the Metropolis rule. One Monte Carlo step corresponds to three sublattice updates. Various observables are measured during the MC runs, such as the energy, the chirality, and the sublattice magnetization, from which we can measure the averaged quantities and their fluctuations. In some cases, histograms are constructed from particularly long MC runs to obtain the observables as continuous functions of the temperature.

The transition temperature is determined from the Binder parameter

$$B_h=1\frac{h^4}{3h^2^2}\text{and}B_m=1\frac{m_A^4}{3m_A^2^2}$$
(6)
for the chirality and the magnetization, respectively. Here the angle bracket denotes a thermal average, which can be done by a time average over the MC runs. The Binder parameter is scale-independent at the critical points and approaches $`\frac{2}{3}`$ (0) in the ordered (disordered) phase as $`L`$ becomes larger. Hence the order-disorder transition temperature $`T_I`$ related to the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking is obtained from the crossing point in the plot of $`B_h`$ versus $`T`$ at different system sizes. From Fig. 2 (a), we estimate that

$$T_I=1.038\pm 0.0005.$$
(7)
$`B_m`$ also displays the crossing behavior (Fig. 2 (b)), from which we estimate that

$$T_{KT}=1.035\pm 0.0005$$
(8)
for the $`C_6`$ symmetry breaking transition.

The Binder parameters show different size dependence at low temperatures. For the staggered chirality $`B_h`$ converges to $`2/3`$ rapidly as $`L`$ increases. However, $`B_m`$ appears to converge to values less than $`2/3`$ at $`T<T_{KT}`$. It indicates that there is a quasi-long-range order in spins at $`T<T_{KT}`$. We confirm it from finite-size-scaling (FSS) behaviors of the magnetization. The sublattice magnetization shows the power law scaling behavior, $`|m_A|L^x`$, at $`TT_{KT}`$ with temperature dependent exponent $`x`$ (see Fig. 3).

The two transition temperatures lie very close to each other. Nevertheless the accuracy of the data is sufficiently high that we can exclude a possibility $`T_I=T_{KT}`$. Figure 4 demonstrates this via the correlation functions.

We measure the correlations between the chirality of up-triangles and the magnetization of spins in the $`A`$ sublattice displaced by a distance $`r`$ in the vertical direction:

$$C_h(r)=\frac{3}{N}\underset{iA}{}h_\mathrm{}_ih_{\mathrm{}_{i+r}},$$
(9)
$$C_m(r)=\frac{3}{N}\underset{iA}{}\mathrm{cos}(\theta _i\theta _{i+r}).$$
(10)
Here, $`i+r`$ denotes a site displaced vertically by a distance $`r`$ from $`i`$, and $`\mathrm{}_i`$ denotes an up-triangle whose left corner is $`i`$ (see Fig. 1). In Fig. 4, we plot both correlation functions in the log-log scale at an intermediate temperature $`T=1.037`$. Clearly one can see an upward curvature in the plot of $`C_h(r)`$ for $`rL_y/2`$, which implies that the chirality order has already set in. On the other hand, there is a downward curvature in the plot of $`C_m(r)`$ for $`rL_y/2`$ indicating that the magnetic order has not set in yet. Therefore we conclude that $`T_{KT}<1.037<T_I`$.

## IV Universality class

With $`T_{KT}T_I`$, one expects that the both symmetry breakings take place independently. Then, the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition should be in the Ising universality class. The $`C_6`$ symmetry is equivalent to that of the $`XY`$ model perturbed by the $`(p=6)`$-fold anisotropy field. The unperturbed $`XY`$ model displays a KT transition which separates a disordered high-temperature phase and a quasi-long range ordered low-temperature phase. A renormalization group (RG) study shows that an anisotropy field with $`p>4`$ does not change the KT nature of the transition . The same is true for the extreme case of the ferromagnetic six-state clock model . So the $`C_6`$ symmetry breaking phase transition at $`T=T_{KT}`$ is expected to belong to the KT universality class.

The interplay of the Ising type and the KT type ordering has long been studied in the context of the fully frustrated $`XY`$ models on a square or a triangular lattice. Frequently, it has been claimed  that the Ising-like transition and the KT-type transition occur at the same temperature. On the other hand, more recent studies have reported the transitions to occur at two different temperatures . Surprisingly, some of recent high-precision Monte Carlo simulation studies suggested that the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition does not belong to the Ising universality class in spite of the double transition . They estimated that $`\nu 0.8`$ for the correlation length exponent and $`\alpha /\nu 0.46`$ with the specific exponent $`\alpha `$, which are incompatible with the Ising values of $`\nu =1`$ and $`\alpha =0`$. The critical exponents are consistent with the values observed along the single transition line of the coupled $`XY`$-Ising model . Olsson  argued that the measured non-Ising critical exponents are artifacts of unusual finite size effects originated from non-critical spin-wave fluctuations. However, apparently there is no general agreement yet on this subject .

In our model, we observe the phase transitions occurring at two different temperatures. However, the controversy existing in the FF$`XY`$ model tells us that it does not guarantee necessarily that the individual transitions will belong to the KT universality class and the Ising universality class, respectively. Therefore we perform a thorough finite-size-scaling (FSS) analysis to understand the nature of the phase transition. We believe that the antiferromagnetic six-state clock model can be used to resolve the existing controversy for the FF$`XY`$ model. It has the proper symmetry properties as discussed previously. And, from a practical point of view, larger system sizes are available since it is a discrete model, with which one can reduce the finite size effects.

### A $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking

We investigate the nature of the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition by exploring the FSS property of the specific heat, defined by

$$c=N\left[e^2e^2\right]$$
(11)
with $`e`$ the energy per site. For a finite system ($`N=L\times L/2`$) the specific heat has a peak $`c_{}L^{\alpha /\nu }`$ near the critical temperature, diverging with system size $`L\mathrm{}`$. Since the specific heat does not diverge at a KT type transition, the divergence is due to the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking phase transition. The Ising universality class has $`\alpha =0`$, and the specific heat shows a logarithmic divergence, $`c_{}\mathrm{ln}L`$.

The specific heat is measured accurately using the standard Monte Carlo (MC) method combined with a single histogram method . First we measure the specific heat from the standard MC simulations at discrete temperature grid, which leads to a temperature $`T_0`$ at which the specific heat is maximum approximately. Then the histogram $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0(\{𝐒\})`$, frequency of a spin state $`\{𝐒\}`$, is constructed from MC runs at the temperature $`T_0`$ over a time interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$. It enables us to obtain the average value of any observable $`Q`$ as a continuous function of temperature $`T`$ near $`T_0`$;

$$Q=\frac{_{\{𝐒\}}Q(\{𝐒\})\mathrm{\Omega }_0(\{𝐒\})e^{(T^1T_0^1)E(\{𝐒\})}}{_{\{𝐒\}}\mathrm{\Omega }_0(\{𝐒\})e^{(T^1T_0^1)E(\{𝐒\})}}.$$
(12)
It is important to take $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ as large as possible to have good statistics. At $`192\times 96`$ lattice, for example, we take $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=5\times 10^7`$ which is $`2000`$ times of the relaxation time of energy-energy auto-correlation. The maximum system size we can simulate is $`384\times 192`$. In that case we take $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=10^8`$ which is $`1200`$ times of the relaxation time of energy-energy auto-correlation. Figure 5 shows the specific heat obtained from independent MC runs and from the histogram method. Their agreement near the peak is excellent, although they begin to deviate slightly away from the peak. With this technique we can estimate $`c_{}`$ very accurately. A statistical error for $`c_{}`$ is estimated in the following way; we construct ten sub-histograms and as many values of $`c_{}`$ from each of them. The error bar is taken as the half distance between the maximum and minimum values among them.

The result is shown in Fig. 6. Interestingly, there is a crossover from a power-law scaling behavior $`c_{}L^{0.5}`$ (solid line in Fig. 6(a)) at $`LL_c`$ to a logarithmic scaling behavior $`c_{}\mathrm{ln}L`$ (solid line in Fig. 6(b)) at $`LL_c`$ with $`L_c96`$. It indicates that the specific heat has a logarithmic scaling behavior asymptotically, which is consistent with the Ising universality class.

We also study the scaling of the chirality correlation length. We measured the correlation length using $`\xi _h=\sqrt{_rr^2C_h(r)/_rC_h(r)}`$ with the correlation function defined in Eq. (9). It is plotted in Fig. 7. We find a strong dependence of $`\xi _h`$ on the system size. In addition to the saturation of $`\xi _h`$ to $`O(L)`$ near and below the critical point, the dependence of the correlation length on $`L`$ in the regime $`\xi _hL`$ is visible through a varying slope (cf., Fig. 7). As a consequence, a fitting to a form $`\xi _h=a(TT_I)^\nu `$ at small system size will lead to a lower value of $`\nu `$ than its asymptotic value. The fitted values of $`\nu `$ at each lattice size are plotted in the inset of Fig. 7. It increases as the system size and approaches the Ising value $`\nu 1.0`$ in the infinite size limit.

From the analysis of the specific heat and the chirality correlation length, we conclude that the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition indeed belongs to the Ising universality class. Note that the effective specific heat exponent $`\alpha /\nu 0.5`$ and the correlation length exponent $`\nu 0.8`$ appearing at small length scale are comparable with the results of previous MC works claiming the non-Ising nature in the frustrated $`XY`$ models . Our results are fully consistent with Olsson’s argument claiming that the non-Ising exponents reported by others are explained by a failure of finite-size-scaling at small length scale due to the screening length associated with the nearby KT transition . The strong finite size effect is overcome in this work since we could study large systems. We expect that one could observe the same crossover to the asymptotic Ising type scaling behavior in larger scale simulations in the frustrated $`XY`$ systems.

### B $`C_6`$ symmetry breaking

The KT transition is characterized by the essential singularity of the correlation length and the susceptibility approaching the critical temperature. We measure the correlation length $`\xi _m`$ as

$$\xi _m=\sqrt{\frac{_rr^2C_m(r)}{_rC_m(r)}}$$
(13)
from the magnetic correlation function $`C_m`$ in Eq. (10). One can also estimate the correlation length by fitting $`C_m(r)`$ to a form with $`e^{r/\xi _m}`$. We tried with various function forms but found that Eq. (13) yields the estimate most stable against statistical errors. The magnetic susceptibility is measured from the fluctuation of the magnetization, $`\chi _m=Nm_A^2`$. Figure 8 shows the plot of $`\xi _m`$ and $`\chi _m`$ versus $`TT_{KT}`$ in log-log scale. Upward curvature in both plots indicates a divergence stronger than algebraic. We fit those quantities with the KT scaling form, $`\xi _m=ae^{b(TT_{KT})^y}`$ and $`\chi _m=a^{}e^{b^{}(TT_{KT})^y}`$ with $`y=\frac{1}{2}`$ fixed, whose results are drawn with solid lines in Fig. 8. It shows that the KT scaling behaviors are emerging only after $`L96`$. If $`y`$ is also taken as a fitting parameter, one obtains $`y<0.5`$ whose value depends on the fitting range; it increases as approaching the critical temperature.

In the $`XY`$ phase ($`T<T_{KT}`$) the spins have the quasi-long range order; the magnetization scales algebraically as $`|m_A|L^x`$ with temperature dependent exponent $`x`$ (see Fig. 3). The RG theory predicts that $`x=1/8`$ at the KT transition point . Our numerical data show that $`x0.17`$ at $`T=T_{KT}`$. We think that the discrepancy is originated from a sensitive dependence of $`x`$ on $`T`$. In summary, in spite of a quantitative disagreement, the $`C_6`$ symmetry breaking phase transition is in qualitative agreement with the KT universality class; we observe the essential singularity in the correlation length and the susceptibility and quasi-long range order in the low temperature phase.

## V Experimental realization: CF3Br on graphite

In this section we describe a possible experimental realization of the theoretical model we investigated above. In a recent work we reported results on x-ray powder diffraction study on a monolayer of halomethane CF3Br adsorbed on exfoliated graphite . CF3Br is a prolate molecule and has a dipole moment of about 0.5 D. The coverage $`\rho `$, temperature $`T`$ phase diagram is rather complex . In  we concentrated on a coverage which is representative of the extended monolayer regime in which the monolayer lattice is commensurate with the graphite lattice. This yields a $`2\times 2`$ triangular lattice arrangement of the CF3Br molecules below a temperature of 105 K , which is the melting temperature of the commensurate layer. The inter-molecular distance is $`a=4.92`$Å. Note that the lateral size of the graphite crystallites is only around 180 Å, which confines any spatial correlation length to this value.

An isolated CF3Br would prefer to lie flat on the substrate, but the $`2\times 2`$ mesh is too tight to accommodate the molecules in this orientation. Therefore the individual CF3Br molecules stand on the substrate, presumably with the F3 tripod down, with a maximum tilt angles of the molecular axis up to 30 with respect to the substrate normal due to steric repulsion. A tilt leads to a non-zero in-plane component of the dipole moment. We regard this component as planar pseudospin $`𝐒_i=(\mathrm{cos}\theta _i,\mathrm{sin}\theta _i)`$ with the azimuthal angle $`\theta _i`$ of the molecule. In this sense the $`2\times 2`$ state is disordered with a zero time average of every $`𝐒_i`$, and is stabilized at higher temperatures by a libration and/or a precession of the molecular axis about the substrate normal.

As the temperature is decreased additional features develop in the diffraction pattern which finally, below 40 K, can be identified  as Bragg peaks (with a finite width of around (180 Å)-1 due to the lateral size of the crystallites) indicating an orientational order in the dipole moments identical to the one depicted in Fig. 1. The temperature dependence of the correlation length $`\xi `$, determined from the intrinsic width of this peak, can be fitted with the KT-expression

$$\xi =A\mathrm{exp}(B(T/T_{KT}1)^{1/2})$$
(14)
to the data for $`T>40`$K (see Fig. 3 of Ref. ). The fit parameters are $`A=9\pm 2`$Å, $`B=1.5\pm 0.4`$, $`T_{KT}=30\pm 3`$K. Note that the value of A is reasonably close to the lattice parameter of the 2D mesh. Thus $`\xi `$ is expected to diverge at a KT-critical temperature $`T_{KT}`$ of about 30 K, but the growth of the correlated regions is interrupted when $`\xi `$ reaches the size of the graphite crystallites. This happens at about 40 K.

We think that the model (2) is a good description of the orientational ordering process described in this physical system: Clearly the pseudospin correlations are bound to a plane, thus the system is 2D with respect to the relevant degrees of freedom at the phase transition. Moreover, as mentioned before, below 105 K the CF3Br molecules are arranged in a triangular lattice. The pseudospin representing the CF3Br dipole moment is presumably not a strictly isotropic planar rotator but experiences a crystal field from the graphite substrate which breaks the continuous azimuthal symmetry into the six fold symmetry of the monolayer. This is reflected by the six-state clock variables of model (2). The ordered structure of the CF3Br dipoles is antiferroelectric, which is taken into account by the antiferromagnetic couplings between the pseudospins in (2). Finally, the character of the relevant orientation dependent interactions of CF3Br is not known, but a comparison of monolayers of several polar methane derivatives  shows that fully halogenated molecules including CF3Br with small dipole moments around 0.5 D have structures different from partially halogenated molecules such as CH3Cl with strong dipole moments around 1.7 D. This suggests that for CF3Br the short range anisotropic part of the intermolecular van der Waals force and hard-core repulsion are more important than the medium range dipole-dipole interaction. Thus the interactions can be assumed to be short ranged. Thus one expects that model (2) and the physical system discussed here are in the same universality class.

In Fig. 9 a comparison of the magnetic correlation length from the experiment  and the simulation (from Fig. 8) is shown. Since the factor $`B`$ in the KT-form (14) of the correlation length is a non-universal number the reduced temperature $`(T/T_{KT}1)`$ has to be rescaled by an appropriate factor in order to achieve an acceptable data collapse. The rescaling factor turns out to be quite large, namely 18, which is not unusual for microscopically different systems in the KT universality class (see e.g., ). Note that the finite linear size of the crystallites plays a similar role as the finite lattice sizes in the simulations and sets the saturation value for the correlation length (divided by the lattice constant for the triangular lattice of the CF3Br molecules, which is $`a=4.92`$Å). The nice collapse of the experiment and simulation data supports our claim that the two physical systems are in the same universality class and that the orientational ordering of CF3Br molecules on graphite is in the KT universality class.

## VI Summary

To summarize we have studied the phase transitions in the anti-ferromagnetic six-state clock model on a triangular lattice, which is fully frustrated. As a result the ground states have a $`C_6`$ (six-state clock) symmetry and a $`Z_2`$ (Ising) symmetry. Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations we found that the model undergoes a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition at $`T_{KT}`$ and an Ising transition at $`T_I`$. The two transitions correspond to the $`C_6`$ and the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition, respectively. High-precision Monte Carlo data indicate that the two transitions take place at different temperatures, $`T_{KT}<T_I`$ (Eqs. (7) and (8)). This has been checked explicitly by analyzing the behavior of the spin and the chirality correlation function at temperatures between $`T_{KT}`$ and $`T_I`$ (Fig. 4). Furthermore, we have shown that the $`Z_2`$ symmetry breaking transition belongs to the Ising universality class. For small system sizes, the scaling property of the specific heat and the correlation length deviates apparently from the Ising universality class. However, simulation results for larger system sizes indicate that the model belongs asymptotically to the Ising universality class (Figs. 6 and 7). As for the transition at $`T_{KT}`$, we have found that the magnetization correlation length and the susceptibility diverges at $`T=T_{KT}`$ according to the KT scaling form (Fig. 8). We have also found that the spins have a quasi long range order below $`T_{KT}`$ (Fig. 3). Combining these, we conclude that the transition at $`T_{KT}`$ belongs to the KT universality class.

Our model is a variant of the fully frustrated $`XY`$ models where the KT type ordering and the Ising type ordering interplay interestingly. Our numerical results support a scenario that there are two separate phase transitions with $`T_{KT}T_I`$; one at $`T_{KT}`$ in the KT universality class and the other at $`T_I`$ in the Ising universality class. Our results are consistent with those in Ref.  very well.

We have proposed that our theoretical model describes the orientational ordering transition of CF3Br molecules on graphite since the model has the same symmetry as the experimental system. We argue that the orientational ordering transition belongs to the KT universality class  by comparing the magnetic correlation length obtained from the experiment  with the correlation length obtained numerically in the six-state clock model. With a suitable rescaling of parameters, we have shown that the correlation lengths in both systems have the same scaling behavior (Fig.9). It gives more evidence that the orientational ordering transition is indeed the KT transition.


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# CMB and Cosmological Parameters: Current Status and Prospects.

## CMB and Cosmological Parameters: Current Status and Prospects.

#### 1 Denys Wilkinson Building, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, UK.

### 0.1 Introduction

The last years have been an exciting period for the field of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) research. With recent CMB balloon-borne and ground-based experiments we are entering a new era of ’precision’ cosmology that enables us to use the CMB anisotropy measurements to constrain the cosmological parameters and the underlying theoretical models.

Coeherent oscillations in the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies angular power spectrum have been predicted since long time from simple assumptions about scale invariance and linear perturbation theory (see e.g., , , , , ). The physics of these oscillations and their dependence on the various cosmological parameters has been described in great detail in many reviews (, , , , , ). Basically, on sub-horizon scales, prior to recombination, photons and baryons form a tightly coupled fluid that performs acoustic oscillations driven by the gravitational potential. These acoustic oscillations define a structure of peaks in the CMB angular power spectrum that can be measured today.

With the TOCO$`97/98`$ (,) and Boomerang-$`97`$ () experiments a firm detection of a first peak on about degree scales has been obtained. In the framework of adiabatic Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models, the position, amplitude and width of this peak provide strong supporting evidence for the inflationary predictions of a low curvature (flat) universe and a scale-invariant primordial spectrum (, , ).

The new experimental data from BOOMERANG LDB (), DASI () and MAXIMA () have provided further evidence for the presence of the first peak and refined the data at larger multipole. The combined data clearly suggest the presence of a second and third peak in the spectrum, confirming the model prediction of acoustic oscillations in the primeval plasma and sheding new light on various cosmological and inflationary parameters (, , ).

### 0.2 The Current Observational Status.

On April 30th 2001, at the same time, $`3`$ different teams, BOOMERanG , DASI  and MAXIMA  reported a detection of multiple features in the CMB angular power spectrum.

The BOOMERanG experiment. BOOMERanG is a scanning balloon experiment aimed at producing accurate and high signal/noise maps of the CMB sky and constraining the power spectrum in the $`50<\mathrm{}<1000`$ range. The BOOMERanG experiment has been described in  and . All the relevant informations about the collaboration can be found in the ’official’ websites: http://oberon.roma1.infn.it/boom and http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/b̃oomerang/.

The BOOMERanG group carried out a long duration flight (December 1998/ January 1999) called the Antarctica or LDB flight. Before this, there was a ’test flight’ on North America from which the first power spectrum results were released (, , ). From the test flight a $`4000`$ $`16^{}`$ pixel map at $`150GHz`$ produced a firm detection of a first peak in the CMB angular power spectrum.

For the antarctica flight, coverage of $`4`$ frequencies with $`16`$ bolometers in total were available. BOOMERanG LDB measured $`8`$ pixels in the sky simultaneously . Four pixels feature multiband photometers ($`150`$, $`240`$ and $`410`$ GHz), two pixels have single-mode, diffraction limited detectors at $`150`$ GHz and two pixels have single-mode, diffraction limited detectors at $`90`$ GHz. The NEP of these detectors is below $`200\mu K_{CMB}\sqrt{s}`$ at $`90`$, $`150`$ and $`240`$ GHz and the angular resolution ranges from $`12`$ to $`18`$ arcminFWHM.

The istrument was flown aboard a stratospheric balloon at $`38Km`$ of altitude to avoid the bulk of atmospheric emission and noise. During a long duration balloon flight of $`11`$ days carried out by NASA-NSBF around Antarctica in $`1999`$, BOOMERanG mapped $`1800`$ square degrees in a region of the sky with minimal contamination from the galaxy.

The most recent analysis of the BOOMERanG data has been presented in . The observations taken from $`4`$ detectors at $`150`$ GHz in a dust-free ellipsoid central region of the map ($`1.8\%`$ of the sky) have been analyzed using the methods of (, , ). The gain calibration are obtained from observations of the CMB dipole.

The CMB angular power spectrum, estimated in $`19`$ bands centered between $`\mathrm{}=50`$ to $`\mathrm{}=1000`$ is shown in Figure 1. The error bars on the $`y`$ axis are correlated at about $`10\%`$. A first peak is clearly evident at $`\mathrm{}200`$ and $`2`$ subsequent peaks can be see in the figure. Not shown in the figure is an additional $`10\%`$ calibration error (in $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$) and the uncertainty in the beam size ($`12.9^{}\pm 1.4^{}`$).

Calibration error does not affect the shape of the power spectrum, producing only an overall shift in amplitude.

On the contrary, since the beam resolution affects the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ spectrum, a small uncertainty $`\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{beam}^2=\sigma _{beam}^2(\sigma _{beam}^{})^2`$ in the telescope beam produce a correlated $`\mathrm{}`$-dependent ’calibration error’ of $`(1+\mathrm{}^2\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _{beam}^2)C_{\mathrm{}}`$ ()

The beam uncertainty can change the relative amplitude of the peaks, but cannot introduce features in the spectrum.

The DASI experiment. The DASI experiment is a ground based compact interferometer constructed specifically for observations of the CMB. A description of the instrument can be found in  and . and all the relevant information about the team can be obtained from the DASI website:http://astro.uchicago.edu/dasi/.

The specific advantage of interferometers is in reducing the effects of atmospheric emission . DASI is composed of $`13`$ element interferometers with correlator operating from $`26`$ to $`36`$ GHz. The baseline of DASI cover angular scales from $`15^{}`$ to $`1.4^o`$.

Interferometry is a technique that differs in many fundamental ways from those used by BOOMERanG and other map-making CMB experiments. Interferometers directly sample the Fourier transform of the sky brightness distribution and the CMB power spectrum can be computed without going through the map making process. In this sense, the DASI result provides a real independent observation of the CMB angular spectrum.

The most recent analysis of the DASI data has been presented in . The observations have been taken over $`97`$ days from the South-Pole during the austral summer at frequencies between $`26`$ and $`36`$ GHz. The calibration was obtained using bright astronomical sources.

The CMB angular power spectrum estimated in $`9`$ bands between $`\mathrm{}=100`$ to $`\mathrm{}=900`$ is also shown in Figure 1. There is a $`20\%`$ correlation between the data points. Not shown in the figure is an $`8\%`$ calibration error, while the beam error is negligible. The DASI team found no evidence for foregrounds other than point sources (which are the dominant foregrounds at those frequencies (see e.g. , )). Nearly $`30`$ point sources have been detected in the DASI data while a statistical correction has been made for residual point sources that were too faint to be detected.

The MAXIMA experiment. MAXIMA-I is another balloon experiment, similar in many aspects to BOOMERang but not long-duration. A description of the instrument can be found in  and all the relevant informations about the team can be obtained from the MAXIMA website: http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/group/cmb/. In the latest analysis () the data from $`3`$, $`150`$, GHz very sensitive bolometers has been analyzed in order to produce a $`3^{}`$ pixelized map of about $`10`$ by $`10`$ degrees. The previous analysis of about the same data111The $`240`$ GHz channel has been excluded because it did not pass consistency tests above $`\mathrm{}=785`$. based on a $`5^{}`$ pixelization () has therefore been extended to $`\mathrm{}=1235`$. The map-making method used by the MAXIMA team is extensively discussed in . The data are calibrated using the CMB dipole.

The MAXIMA-I datapoints are also shown in Figure 1. The error bars are correlated at level of $`10\%`$. The $`4\%`$ calibration error is not plotted in the figure. The beam/pointing errors are of order of $`10\%`$ at $`\mathrm{}=1000`$ (see ).

Features in the CMB power spectrum.

Before going on to parameter extraction, it is important to try to quantify how well the present data provide evidence for multiple and coherent oscillations. Fits to the CMB data with phenomenological functions have been already extensively used in the past (see e.g. , , ). More recently, similar analyses have been carried out, using parabolas (, ) or more elaborate oscillating functions with a well defined frequency and phase ().

Since the first peak is evident, the statistical significance of the secondary oscillations is now of greater interest. In  the BOOMERanG data bins centered at $`450<\mathrm{}<1000`$ were analyzed. Using a Bayesian approach, a linear fit $`C_{\mathrm{}}^T=C_A+C_B\mathrm{}`$ is rejected at near $`2\sigma `$ confidence level. Also in , using a parabolic fit to the data, interleaved peaks and dips were found at $`\mathrm{}=`$ $`215\pm 11`$, $`431\pm 10`$, $`522\pm 27`$, $`736\pm 21`$ and $`837\pm 15`$ with amplitudes of the features $`5760_{324}^{+344}`$, $`1890_{178}^{+196}`$, $`2290_{290}^{+330}`$, $`1640_{380}^{+500}`$, and $`2210_{640}^{+900}`$ $`\mu K^2`$, correspondingly. The reported significance of the detection is $`1.7\sigma `$ for the second peak and dip, and $`2.2\sigma `$ for the third peak.

The evidence for oscillations in the MAXIMA data has been carefully studied in . While there is no evidence for a second peak, the power spectrum shows excess power at $`\mathrm{}860`$ over the average level of power at $`411\mathrm{}785`$ on the $`95\%`$ confidence level. Such a feature is consistent with the presence of a third acoustic peak.

In  the BOOMERanG, DASI and MAXIMA data were included in a similar analysis. Both DASI and MAXIMA confirmed the main features of the Boomerang CMB power spectrum: a dominant first acoustic peak at $`\mathrm{}200`$, DASI shows a second peak at $`\mathrm{}540`$ and MAXIMA-I exhibits mainly a ’third peak’ at $`\mathrm{}840`$.

Finally and more recently, in  a different analysis was made, based on a function that smoothly interpolates between a spectrum with no oscillations and one with oscillations. Again, within the context of this different phenomenological model, a $`2\sigma `$ presence for secondary oscillations was found.

### 0.3 Consequences for Cosmology

In principle, the CDM scenario of structure formation based on adiabatic primordial fluctuations can depend on more than $`11`$ parameters.

However for a first analysis, it is useful to restrict ourselves to just $`5`$ parameters: the tilt of primordial spectrum of perturbations $`n_S`$, the optical depth of the universe $`\tau _c`$, the density in baryons and dark matter $`\omega _b=\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2`$ and $`\omega _{dm}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{dm}h^2`$ and the shift parameter $``$ which is related to the geometry of the universe through (see , ):

$$=2\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Omega }_k|/\mathrm{\Omega }_m}/\chi (y)$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=\mathrm{\Omega }_b+\mathrm{\Omega }_{dm}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_k=1\mathrm{\Omega }_m\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, the function $`\chi (y)`$ is $`y`$, $`\mathrm{sin}(y)`$ or $`\mathrm{sinh}(y)`$ for flat, closed and open universes respectively and

$$y=\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Omega }_k|}_0^{z_{dec}}[\mathrm{\Omega }_m(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_k(1+z)^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }]^{1/2}𝑑z.$$
(2)
The restriction of the analysis to only $`5`$ parameters is justified since a reasonable fit to the data can be obtained with no additional parameters.

In Fig. 2 we plot the likelihood contours on the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2n_S`$ planes from the BOOMERanG experiment as reported in . Since the quantity $``$ depends on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ the CMB constraints on this parameter can be plotted on this plane. As we can see from the top panel in the figure the data strongly suggest a flat universe (i.e. $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }_M+\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=1`$). From the latest BOOMERanG data one obtains $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1.02\pm 0.06`$ ().

The inclusion of complementary datasets in the analysis breaks the angular diameter distance degeneracy in $``$ and provides evidence for a cosmological constant at high significance. Adding the Hubble Space Telescope constraint on the Hubble constant $`h=0.72\pm 0.08`$ (, information from galaxy clustering and from luminosity distance of type Ia supernovae gives () $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.62_{0.18}^{+0.10}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.55_{0.09}^{+0.09}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.73_{0.07}^{+0.10}`$ respectively.

Also interesting is the plot of the likelihood contours in the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2n_S`$ plane (Fig.2 bottom panel). As we can see, the present BOOMERanG data is in beautiful agreement with both a nearly scale invariant spectrum of primordial fluctuations, as predicted by inflation, and the value for the baryon density $`\omega _b=0.020\pm 0.002`$ predicted by Standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (see e.g. ).

An increase in the optical depth $`\tau _c`$ after recombination by reionization (see e.g.  for a review) or by some more exotic mechanism damps the amplitude of the CMB peaks. Even if degeneracies with other parameters such as $`n_S`$ are present (see e.g. ) the BOOMERanG data provides the upper bound $`\tau _c<0.3`$.

The amount of non-baryonic dark matter is also constrained by the CMB data with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{dm}h^2=0.13\pm 0.04`$ at $`68\%`$ c.l. (). The presence of power around the third peak is crucial in this sense, since it cannot be easily accommodated in models based on just baryonic matter (see e.g. , ,  and references therein).

Furthermore, under the assumption of flatness, we can derive important constraints on the age of the universe $`t_0`$ given by:

$$t_0=9.8Gy_0^1\frac{ada}{[\omega _ma+\omega _\mathrm{\Lambda }a^4]^{1/2}}$$
(3)
In  the BOOMERanG constraint on age has been compared with other independent results obtained from stellar populations in bright ellipticals, 238U age-measurement of an old halo star in our galaxy () and age the of the oldest halo globular cluster in the sample of Salaris & Weiss (). All four methods give completely consistent results, and enable us to set rigorous bounds on the maximum and minimum ages that are allowed for the universe, $`t_0=14\pm 1`$ GYrs (, ,).

The results from the DASI experiment have been extensively reported in  and are perfectly consistent with the BOOMERanG results. Pryke et al. report $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1.04\pm 0.06`$, $`n_s=1.01_{0.06}^{0.08}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.022_{0.003}^{0.004}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{dm}h^2=0.14\pm 0.04`$.

The MAXIMA team reported similar compatible constraints in : $`\mathrm{\Omega }=0.9\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{+0.18}{0.16}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.033\pm 0.13`$ at $`2\sigma `$ c.l.. However the MAXIMA data is not good enough to put strong constrains on the spectral index $`n_S`$ and the optical depth $`\tau _c`$ because of the degeneracy between the $`2`$ parameters.

### 0.4 Open Questions.

Even if the present CMB observations can be fitted with just $`5`$ parameters it is interesting to extend the analysis to other parameters allowed by the theory. Here I will just summarize a few of them and discuss how well we can constrain them and what the effects on the results obtained in the previous section would be.

Gravity Waves. The metric perturbations created during inflation belong to two types: scalar perturbations, which couple to the stress-energy of matter in the universe and form the “seeds” for structure formation and tensor perturbations, also known as gravitational wave perturbations. Both scalar and tensor perturbations contribute to CMB anisotropy. In the recent CMB analysis by the BOOMERanG and DASI collaborations, the tensor modes have been neglected, even though a sizable background of gravity waves is expected in most of the inflationary scenarios. Furthermore, in the simplest models, a detection of the GW background can provide information on the second derivative of the inflaton potential and shed light on the physics at $`10^{16}Gev`$ (see e.g. ).

The shape of the $`C_{\mathrm{}}^T`$ spectrum from tensor modes is drastically different from the one expected from scalar fluctuations, affecting only large angular scales (see e.g. ). The effect of including tensor modes is similar to just a rescaling of the degree-scale $`COBE`$ normalization and/or a removal of the corresponding data points from the analysis.

This further increases the degeneracies among cosmological parameters, affecting mainly the estimates of the baryon and cold dark matter densities and the scalar spectral index $`n_S`$ (,, , ).

The amplitude of the GW background is therefore weakly constrained by the CMB data alone, however, when information from BBN, local cluster abundance and galaxy clustering are included, an upper limit of about $`r=C_2^T/C_2^S<0.5`$ is obtained.

Scale-dependence of the spectral index. The possibility of a scale dependence of the scalar spectral index, $`n_S(k)`$, has been considered in various works (see e.g. , , , ). Even though this dependence is considered to have small effects on CMB scales in most of the slow-roll inflationary models, it is worthwhile to see if any useful constraint can be obtained. Allowing the power spectrum to bend erases the ability of the CMB data to measure the tensor to scalar perturbation ratio and enlarge the uncertainties on many cosmological parameters.

Recently, Covi and Lyth () investigated the two-parameter scale-dependent spectral index predicted by running-mass inflation models, and found that present CMB data allow for a significant scale-dependence of $`n_S`$. In Hannestad et al. (, ) the case of a running spectral index has been studied, expanding the power spectrum $`P(k)`$ to second order in $`ln(k)`$. Again, their result indicates that a bend in the spectrum is consistent with the CMB data.

Furthermore, phase transitions associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking during the inflationary era could result in the breaking of the scale-invariance of the primordial density perturbation. In ,  and  the possibility of having step or bump-like features in the spectrum has also been considered.

While much of this work was motivated by the tension between the initial release of the data and the baryonic abundance value from BBN, a sizable feature in the spectrum is still compatible with the latest CMB data ().

Quintessence. The discovery that the universe’s evolution may be dominated by an effective cosmological constant  is one of the most remarkable cosmological findings of recent years. One candidate that could possibly explain the observations is a dynamical scalar “quintessence” field. One of the strongest aspects of quintessence theories is that they go some way towards explaining the fine-tuning problem, that is why the energy density producing the acceleration is $`10^{120}M_{pl}^4`$. A vast range of “tracker” (see for example ) and “scaling” (for example , ) quintessence models exist which approach attractor solutions, giving the required energy density, independent of initial conditions. The common characteristic of quintessence models is that their equations of state, $`w_Q=p/\rho `$, vary with time while a cosmological constant remains fixed at $`w_{Q=\mathrm{\Lambda }}=1`$ (see e.g. ). Observationally distinguishing a time variation in the equation of state or finding $`w_Q`$ different from $`1`$ will therefore be a success for the quintessential scenario. Quintessence can also affect the CMB by acting as an additional energy component with a characteristic viscosity. However any early-universe imprint of quintessence is strongly constrained by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q(MeV)<0.045`$ at $`2\sigma `$ for temperatures near $`T1Mev`$ (, ).

In  we have combined the latest observations of the CMB anisotropies and the information from Large Scale Structure (LSS) with the luminosity distance of high redshift supernovae (SN-Ia) to put constraints on the dark energy equation of state parameterized by a redshift independent quintessence-field pressure-to-density ratio $`w_Q`$.

The importance of combining different data sets in order to obtain reliable constraints on $`w_Q`$ has been stressed by many authors (see e.g. , ,), since each dataset suffers from degeneracies between the various cosmological parameters and $`w_Q`$ . Even if one restricts consideration to flat universes and to a value of $`w_Q`$ constant in time then the SN-Ia luminosity distance and position of the first CMB peak are highly degenerate in $`w_Q`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_Q`$, the energy density in quintessence.

In Figure 3 we plot the likelihood contours in the ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$, $`w_Q`$) plane for the joint analyses of CMB+SN-Ia+HST+LSS of  together with the contours from the SN-Ia dataset only. As we can see, the combination of the datasets breaks the luminosity distance degeneracy and suggests the presence of dark energy with high significance. Furthermore, the new CMB results provided by Boomerang and DASI improve the constraints from previous and similar analysis (see e.g., ,), with $`w_Q<0.85`$ at $`68\%`$ c.l.. Our final result is then perfectly in agreement with the $`w_Q=1`$ cosmological constant case and gives no support to a quintessential field scenario with $`w_Q>1`$.

Big Bang Nucleosynthesis and Neutrinos. As we saw in the previous section, the SBBN $`95\%`$ CL region, corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2=0.020\pm 0.002`$ ($`95\%`$ c.l.), has a large overlap with the analogous CMBR contour. This fact, if it will be confirmed by future experiments on CMB anisotropies, can be seen as one of the greatest success, up to now, of the standard hot big bang model.

SBBN is well known to provide strong bounds on the number of relativistic species $`N_\nu `$. On the other hand, Degenerate BBN (DBBN), first analyzed in Ref. , gives very weak constraint on the effective number of massless neutrinos, since an increase in $`N_\nu `$ can be compensated by a change in both the chemical potential of the electron neutrino, $`\mu _{\nu _e}=\xi _eT`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2`$. Practically, SBBN relies on the theoretical assumption that background neutrinos have negligible chemical potential, just like their charged lepton partners. Even though this hypothesis is perfectly justified by Occam razor, models have been proposed in the literature , where large neutrino chemical potentials can be generated. It is therefore an interesting issue for cosmology, as well as for our understanding of fundamental interactions, to try to constrain the neutrino–antineutrino asymmetry with the cosmological observables. It is well known that degenerate BBN gives severe constraints on the electron neutrino chemical potential, $`0.06\xi _e1.1`$, and weaker bounds on the chemical potentials of both the $`\mu `$ and $`\tau `$ neutrino, $`|\xi _{\mu ,\tau }|5.6÷6.9`$ , since electron neutrinos are directly involved in neutron to proton conversion processes which eventually fix the total amount of $`{}_{}{}^{4}He`$ produced in nucleosynthesis, while $`\xi _{\mu ,\tau }`$ only enters via their contribution to the expansion rate of the universe.

Combining the DBBN scenario with the bound on baryonic and radiation densities allowed by CMBR data, it is possible to obtain strong constraints on the parameters of the model. Such an analysis was previously performed in (, , , ) using the first data release of BOOMERanG and MAXIMA (, ). We recall that the neutrino chemical potentials contribute to the total neutrino effective degrees of freedom $`N_\nu `$ as

$$N_\nu =3+\mathrm{\Sigma }_\alpha \left[\frac{30}{7}\left(\frac{\xi _\alpha }{\pi }\right)^2+\frac{15}{7}\left(\frac{\xi _\alpha }{\pi }\right)^4\right].$$
(4)
Notice that in order to get a bound on $`\xi _\alpha `$ we have here assumed that all relativistic degrees of freedom, other than photons, are given by three (possibly) degenerate active neutrinos.

Figure 4 summarizes the main results with the new CMB data, reported in  for the DBBN scenario. We plot the $`95\%`$ CL contours allowed by DBBN (dot-dashed (green) line), together with the analogous $`95\%`$ CL region coming from the CMB data analysis, with only weak age prior, $`t_0>11`$gyr (full (red) line).

Finally, the solid contour (light, red) is the $`95\%`$ CL region of the joint product distribution $`_{DBBN}`$$`_{CMB}`$. The main new feature, with respect to the results of Ref.  is that the resolution of the third peak shifts the CMB likelihood contour towards smaller values for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2`$, so when combined with DBBN results, it singles out smaller values for $`N_\nu `$. In fact from our analysis we get the bound $`N_\nu 8`$, at $`95\%`$ CL, which translates into the new bounds $`0.01\xi _e0.25`$, and $`|\xi _{\mu ,\tau }|2.9`$, sensibly more stringent than what can be found from DBBN alone.

A similar analysis can also be performed combining CMBR and DBBN data with the Supernova Ia data , which strongly reduces the degeneracy between $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. At $`95\%`$ C.L. we find $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_\nu <7`$, corresponding to $`0.01\xi _e0.22`$ and $`|\xi _{\mu ,\tau }|2.6`$.

Compatible results have been obtained in similar analyses (,).

Some caution is naturally necessary when comparing the effective number of neutrino degrees of freedom from BBN and CMB, since they may be related to different physics. In fact the energy density in relativistic species may change from the time of BBN ($`TMeV`$) to the time of last rescattering ($`TeV`$).

Varying $`\alpha `$. There are quite a large number of experimental constraints on the value of fine structure constant $`\alpha `$. These measurements cover a wide range of timescales (see  for a review of this subject), starting from present-day laboratories ($`z0`$), geophysical tests ($`z<<1`$), and quasars ($`z1÷3`$), through the CMB ($`z10^3`$) and BBN ($`z10^{10}`$) bounds.

The recent analysis of  of fine splitting of quasar doublet absorption lines gives a $`4\sigma `$ evidence for a time variation of $`\alpha `$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha =(0.72\pm 0.18)10^5`$, for the redshift range $`z0.53.5`$. This positive result was obtained using a many-multiplet method, which, it is claimed, achieves an order of magnitude greater precision than the alkali doublet method. Some of the initial ambiguities of the method have been tackled by the authors with an improved technique, in which a range of ions is considered, with varying dependence on $`\alpha `$, which helps reduce possible problems such as varying isotope ratios, calibration errors and possible Doppler shifts between different populations of ions .

The present analysis of the $`\alpha `$-dependence relevant cosmological observables like the anisotropy of CMB, Large Scale Structure and the light element primordial abundances does not support evidence for variations of the fine-structure constant (see ,  and references therein).

Isocurvature modes. Another key assumption is that the primordial fluctuations were adiabatic. Adiabaticity is not a necessary consequence of inflation though and many inflationary models have been constructed where isocurvature perturbations would have generically been concomitantly produced (see e.g. , , ).

In a phenomenological approach one should consider the most general primordial perturbation, introduced by , and described by a $`5X5`$ symmetric matrix-valued generalization of the power spectrum. As showed by , the inclusion of isocurvature perturbations with auto and cross-correlations modes has dramatic effects on standard parameter estimation with uncertainties becoming of order one.

Even assuming priors such as flatness, the inclusion of isocurvature modes significantly enlarges our constraints on the baryon density  and the scalar spectral index . Pure isocurvature perturbations are highly excluded by present CMB data ().

As we saw in the first section, it is also possible to have active and decoherent perturbations such as those produced by an inhomogeneously distributed form of matter like topological defects. Models based on global defects like cosmic strings and textures are excluded at high significance by the present data (see e.g. ). However a mixture of adiabatic$`+`$defects is still compatible with the observations (, ). In principle, toy models based on active perturbations can be constructed  that can mimic inflation and retain a good agreement with observations .

Secondary anisotropies. Secondary anisotropies can be generated due to photon interactions with the matter potential wells (for example in the Rees-Sciama effect  and lensing ). The other secondary anisotropies are induced by the interaction of CMB photons with free electrons such as in the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect , the Ostriker-Vishniac (OV) effect (, ), and because of early inhomogeneous reionisation (IHR) (,,).

Recent works (se e.g. ,  and references therein) have quantified the contribution of the secondary scattering effects that are likely the dominant contributions at small scales. In Figure 5, taken from , predictions for the level of primary and secondary anisotropies are plotted, given the current status of observations. As we can see, in some extreme cosmological model, the secondary signal can be high enough to match the power of the CMB primary anisotropies after the third peak. Future small-scale CMB data such as that expected from CBI , will definitely be helpful in scrutinising this results. The measurements of the CMB anisotropies after the third peak will therefore not only constrain the cosmological model through parameter estimation, but will also unable us to probe, via the secondary anisotropies (e.g. SZ), the formation and evolution of structures.

### 0.5 Conclusions

The recent CMB data represent a beautiful success for the standard cosmological model. The acoustic oscillations in the CMB angular power spectrum, a major prediction of the model, have now been detected at $`5\sigma `$ C.L. for the first peak and $`2\sigma `$ C.L. for the second and third peak. Furthermore, when constraints on cosmological parameters are derived under the assumption of adiabatic primordial perturbations their values are in agreement with the predictions of the theory and/or with independent observations.

As we saw in the previous section modifications as isocurvature modes or topological defects, are still compatible with current CMB observations, but are not necessary and can be reasonably constrained when complementary datasets are included.

Since the inflationary scenario is in agreement with the data and all the most relevant parameters are starting to be constrained within a few percent accuracy, the CMB is becoming a wonderful laboratory for investigating the possibilities of new physics. With the promise of large data sets from Map, Planck and SNAP satellites, opportunities may be open, for example, to constrain dark energy models, variations in fundamental constants and neutrino physics.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the organizers of the conference: L. Celnikier and J. Tran ThanhVan. Many thanks also to Nabila Aghanim, Rachel Bean, P.G. de Castro, Ruth Durrer, Steen Hansen, Pedro Ferreira, Will Kinney, Gianpiero Mangano, Carlos Martins, Gennaro Miele, Ofelia Pisanti, Antonio Riotto, Graca Rocha, Joe Silk, and Roberto Trotta for comments, discussions and help.


text:
# Introduction

## Introduction

Precise values of the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses are often used as input for measurements. For instance, $`\eta `$ decays involving photons are used for the precise in situ calibration of electromagnetic calorimeters. One such example is the measurement of the CP violating quantity $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ performed by NA48 . The current world average  relative uncertainty on the $`K^0`$ mass is $`\pm 6\times 10^5`$, dominated by a measurement at a $`\varphi `$ factory using $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ decays . The $`\eta `$ mass is less well known, the current uncertainty being $`\pm 2\times 10^4`$. The most precise results in this case come from measurements of the production cross-section near threshold in the reactions $`dp\eta ^3He`$  and in $`\gamma p\eta p`$ .

In this paper, we present new measurements of the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses using decays to 3$`\pi ^0`$ ($`6\gamma `$), with the NA48 experiment at the CERN SPS. The paper is organised as follows: the first section describes the method used for the reconstruction of the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses; the second section shows the experimental setup; details of the performances of the electromagnetic calorimeter are given in the third section; results and cross-checks with a detailed evaluation of the systematic effects are presented in the fourth section.

## 1 Method

This measurement uses $`\eta `$ and $`K_L`$ particles with average energies of $``$ 110 GeV. Photons from 3$`\pi ^0`$ decays are detected with a precise quasi-homogeneous liquid krypton calorimeter. This device allows photon energies as well as impact positions in the plane orthogonal to the $`\eta `$ and $`K_L`$ momentum to be measured accurately. Although photon angles are not measured directly with the calorimeter, the decay position can be inferred from two photons coming from a $`\pi ^0`$ decay using the $`\pi ^0`$ mass constraint. In the limit of small opening angles (valid to better than $`10^5`$ for this experiment), the distance $`d`$ between the decay position and the calorimeter nominal position can be computed as

$$d=\frac{1}{M_{\pi ^0}}\sqrt{E_1E_2}d_{12}$$

where $`M_{\pi ^0}`$ is the $`\pi ^0`$ mass, known with $`4\times 10^6`$ accuracy, $`E_1`$ and $`E_2`$ are the energies of the two photons from a $`\pi ^0`$ decay and $`d_{12}`$ is the distance between the two photons in the plane orthogonal to the beam axis at the calorimeter nominal position. Using the average value $`d_{\pi ^0}`$ of $`d`$ from the three $`\pi ^0`$ mass constraints, the full 6-body invariant mass can then be computed as

$$M=\frac{1}{d_{\pi ^0}}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{ij,i<j}E_iE_jd_{ij}^2}$$

The advantages of using this method for the mass measurement are the following:

* The 3$`\pi ^0`$ decay mode is virtually background free.
* Thanks to the $`\pi ^0`$ mass constraint, the resolution on $`M`$ is better than 1 MeV/c2.
* The measurement of $`M`$ is independent of the energy scale of the calorimeter. Indeed, the measured quantity is the ratio of the $`\eta `$ (or $`K^0`$) mass to the $`\pi ^0`$ mass, in which the absolute energy scale completely cancels. For the same reason, the absolute transverse size scale also cancels.
* The measurement is only sensitive to residual non-linearities in the energy or position measurements. To minimise the sensitivity to energy non-linearities, only symmetric decays are used, in which the photons all have about the same energy. Indeed for perfectly symmetric decay, the sensitivity to energy non-linearities also cancels .
* The same method can be applied to both the $`\eta `$ and the $`K_L`$ cases. The very large statistics available in the $`K_L`$ sample allows many systematic cross-checks to be performed to validate the measurement.

The mass measurement relies only on measurements of relative distance between photons and ratio of energies with the calorimeter. Furthermore the performance of this device can be studied in detail in situ using $`K_{e3}`$ ($`K_L\pi ^\pm e^{}\nu `$) decays, and $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\eta `$ decays to two photons, which are present with very large statistics in the data samples.

## 2 Beam and detectors

The NA48 experiment is designed for a precise measurement of the quantity $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ in neutral kaon decays . In the following only the parts of the apparatus relevant for the measurements of the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses are described.

### 2.1 The $`K_L`$ beam

The neutral $`K_L`$ beam  is derived from 450 GeV/c protons extracted from the CERN SPS. For each SPS pulse (2.4 s spill every 14.4 s), $`1.5\times 10^{12}`$ protons hit a 40 cm long beryllium target, with an incidence angle of 2.4 mrad. The charged component of the outgoing particles is swept away by bending magnets. A neutral secondary beam with a $`\pm `$0.15 mrad divergence is generated using three stages of collimation over 126 m, the final element being located just upstream of the beginning of the decay region. Because of the long distance between the target and the beginning of the decay region, the decays in this neutral beam are dominated by $`K_L`$. The decay region is contained in an evacuated ($`<`$ $`3\times 10^5`$ mbar) 90 m long tank. During the 1999 data taking, this decay region was terminated by a polyimide (Kevlar) composite window 0.9 mm (0.003 radiation lengths) thick. Downstream of it a 16 cm diameter evacuated tube passes through all detector elements to allow the undecayed neutral beam to travel in vacuum all the way to a beam dump. In the normal $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ data taking, a $`K_S`$ beam is also created using a second target closer to the decay region. The beam from which the decays originate is identified by tagging the protons directed to the $`K_S`$ target.

### 2.2 The $`\eta `$ beam

During special data taking periods, a beam of negatively charged secondary particles is, by a suitable choice of the magnets in the beam line, directed along the nominal $`K_L`$ beam axis. This beam consists mostly of $`\pi ^{}`$ with a broad momentum spectrum of average energy$`100`$ GeV, and with a flux of $`1.3\times 10^6`$ per pulse. It impinges on two thin polyethylene targets (2.0 cm thick), separated by 1462 cm, near the beginning and towards the end of the fiducial Kaon decay region. Through charge exchange reactions, $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\eta `$ are created and, because of their very short lifetimes, decay inside the targets. Neutral Kaon are also produced in the targets, mostly from $`K^{}`$ interactions.

### 2.3 The detector

The layout of the detector is shown in Figure 1. A magnetic spectrometer , housed in a helium tank, is used to measure charged particles. It is comprised of four drift chambers and a dipole magnet, located between the second and the third drift chambers, giving a horizontal transverse momentum kick of 265 MeV/c. The momentum resolution is $`\sigma _p/p=0.5\%0.009\%\times p`$ ($`p`$ in GeV/c), where $``$ means that the contributions should be added in quadrature. Two plastic scintillator hodoscope planes are placed after the helium tank.

A quasi-homogeneous liquid krypton electromagnetic calorimeter (LKr) is used to measure photon and electron showers. It consists of $``$10 m3 of liquid krypton with a total thickness of 127 cm ($``$ 27 radiation lengths) and an octagonal shaped cross-section of $``$5.5 m2. The entrance face of the calorimeter is located 11501 cm from the beginning of the decay region and 11455 cm from the location of the first $`\eta `$ target. Immersed in the krypton are electrodes made with Cu-Be-Co ribbons of cross-section $`40\mu `$m$`\times 18`$mm$`\times 127`$cm, extending between the front and the back of the detector. The ribbons are guided through precisely machined slots in five spacer plates located longitudinally every 21 cm which ensure the gap width stability in the shape of a $`\pm `$ 48 mrad accordion. The 13212 readout cells each have a cross-section of 2$`\times `$2 cm2 at the back of the active region, and consist (along the horizontal direction) of a central anode at a 3 kV high voltage in the middle of two cathodes kept at ground. The cell structure is projective towards the middle of the decay region, 110 m upstream of the calorimeter, so that the measurement of photon positions is insensitive to first order to the initial conversion depth. The initial current induced on the electrodes by the drift of the ionization is measured using pulse shapers with 80 ns FWMH and digitised with 40 MHz 10-bits FADCs . The dynamic range is increased by employing four gain-switching amplifiers which change the amplification factor depending on the pulse height. The electronic noise per cell is $``$ 10 MeV. The calorimeter is housed in a vacuum insulated cryostat. The total amount of matter before the beginning of the liquid krypton volume is $``$ 0.8 radiation lengths, including all the NA48 detector elements upstream of the calorimeter. The total output of the calorimetric information is restricted to cells belonging to a region around the most energetic cells, by a “zero-suppression” algorithm. For each event, the information from 10 digitised time samples (250 ns) is read out. An iron-scintillator hadron calorimeter is located downstream of the LKr, followed by a muon veto system.

### 2.4 Triggers and data sets

The trigger on multiphoton final states  operates on the analogue sums of signals from $`2\times 8`$ cells of the LKr calorimeter in both horizontal ($`x`$) and vertical ($`y`$) orientations. The signals are digitised and summed in $`x`$ and $`y`$ projections. Based on these projections, the total deposited energy, the energy-weighted centre of gravity of the event and the estimated decay vertex position along the beam axis are computed.

To select $`K_L3\pi ^0`$ decays, the total energy is required to be more than 50 GeV, the radial position of the centre of gravity to be less than 15 cm from the beam axis and the decay vertex position to be less than 9 $`K_S`$-lifetimes away from the beginning of the decay region.

To select $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\eta `$ decays in the $`\eta `$ runs, a cut on the total energy is applied. Events with energy above 90 GeV are taken without downscaling, events with energy between 40 and 90 GeV are downscaled by a factor 10 or 12 depending on the run period, and events with energy between 15 and 40 GeV are downscaled by a factor 4 to 6.

During the $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ run in 1998 and 1999, large statistics of $`K_{e3}`$ decays were collected to study the calorimeter performance. In the year 2000, the detector operated with vacuum in place of the spectrometer. During this period, data with only the $`K_L`$ beam were recorded, as well as data with an $`\eta `$ beam. These data are used for the mass measurements presented here.

## 3 Performance of the electromagnetic calorimeter

### 3.1 Reconstruction

Photon or electron showers are found in the calorimeter by looking for maxima in the digitised pulses from individual cells in both space and time. Energy and time of the pulses are estimated using a digital filter technique. The first calibration is performed using a calibration pulser system. Small drifts of the pedestal due to temperature effects are monitored and corrected for. The energy of the shower is computed accumulating the energy in the cells within a radius of 11 cm, containing more than 90% of the shower total energy (this fraction being constant with energy). The shower position is derived from the energy-weighted centre of gravity of the 3$`\times `$3 central cells, corrected for the residual bias of this estimator. Shower energies are corrected for the following effects: small ($`<`$ 1%) variations of the energy measurement depending on the impact point within the cell, energy lost outside the calorimeter boundaries, energy lost in non-working cells (about 0.4% of the channels), average energy lost in the material before the calorimeter (15 MeV for photons, 45 MeV for electrons), a small bias from the zero-suppression algorithm for energies below 5 GeV and small space charge effects from the accumulation of positive ions in the gap  which is significant only in the case of data taken with the high intensity $`K_L`$ beam. Energy leakage from one shower to another is corrected in the reconstruction using the transverse shower profile from a GEANT  simulation. Special runs in which a monochromatic electron beam is sent into the calorimeter, taken without zero suppression, are used to check this modelling and to derive a small correction.

Fiducial cuts are applied to ensure that shower energies are well measured. These cuts include the removal of events with a shower too close to the inner beam tube or the outer edges of the LKr or falling within 2 cm of a non-working cell. Only showers in the energy range 3-100 GeV are used.

The corrections described above are the same as those applied for the $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ measurement discussed in .

### 3.2 Performance from $`K_{e3}`$ decays

More than $`150\times 10^6`$ $`K_{e3}`$ decays have been recorded during the $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ data taking periods. The comparison of the electron momentum measured by the magnetic spectrometer ($`p`$) and the energy measured by the LKr ($`E`$) allows the performance of the calorimeter to be studied in detail, the resolution on the ratio $`E/p`$ being $``$ 1%. The $`K_{e3}`$ sample is first used to study and improve the cell-to-cell intercalibration of the calorimeter. After the electronic calibration, the cell-to-cell dispersion in the shower energy measurement is about 0.4%. Electrons from $`K_{e3}`$ in the energy range 25-40 GeV (to avoid possible correlations between non-uniformity and non-linearity) are used to equalise the cell-to-cell energy response, requiring $`E/p`$ to be the same for all cells. This is done with a statistical accuracy of about 0.15% using the 1998 data sample. Residual long range variations of the energy response over the calorimeter are expected to be smaller.

Unfolding the momentum resolution from the measured $`E/p`$ resolution as a function of the electron energy, the LKr energy resolution can be obtained:

$$\frac{\sigma (E)}{E}=\frac{(0.032\pm 0.002)}{\sqrt{E}}\frac{(0.090\pm 0.010)}{E}(0.0042\pm 0.0005)$$

where $`E`$ is the energy in GeV. The sampling term is dominated by fluctuations in the shower leakage outside the area used to measure the energy. The constant term arises from residual variations with the impact point, accuracy in the pulse reconstruction, residual gap variations and inter-cell calibration. The energy response is linear within about 0.1% over the energy range 5-100 GeV, as illustrated in Figure 2 which shows the average value of $`E/p`$ as a function of the electron energy. The measured small variation of $`E/p`$ as a function of energy is applied as a correction to the photon energies.

The comparison of the reconstructed electron position using the calorimeter with that of the extrapolated track allows the position measurement of the LKr to be adjusted and its transverse size scale to be checked with an accuracy of $`2.5\times 10^4`$. The position resolution of the calorimeter is better than 1.3 mm above 20 GeV.

### 3.3 Study of systematic effects using $`\pi ^0`$ decays

Using the large sample of $`\pi ^0`$ decays to two photons produced during the $`\eta `$ runs, the systematic effects in the calorimeter measurement can be estimated. From the known target positions, the $`\pi ^0`$ mass can be reconstructed from the measured photon energies and positions at the LKr. Figure 3 shows the relative variation of the reconstructed $`\pi ^0`$ mass as a function of several variables: photon impact position, $`\pi ^0`$ energy, maximum and minimum photon energy. Significant non-uniformities in the energy response would lead to a visible variation of the $`\pi ^0`$ mass with the photon impact point. Non-linearities in the energy response would lead to drifts in the reconstructed mass as a function of the energy. As can be seen in Figure 3, the $`\pi ^0`$ mass is stable to $``$ 0.1%, except in the energy region $`E_\gamma <6`$ GeV, where stronger effects can be seen. However, this energy region is not used in the analysis of symmetric 3$`\pi ^0`$ decays, where the photon energies are in the 8 to 37 GeV range. The $`\pi ^0`$ sample is also used for the 2000 data to improve the 1998 $`K_{e3}`$ intercalibration, by equalising the reconstructed $`\pi ^0`$ mass value as a function of the photon impact cell. The dispersion of the correction coefficients is about 0.1%.

The non-linearities in the energy response can be parameterised as:

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }E}{E}=\frac{\alpha }{E}+\beta E+\gamma r$$
(1)
where $`E`$ is the photon energy and $`r`$ the impact radius over the calorimeter. From the $`\pi ^0\gamma \gamma `$ data, $`\alpha `$ can be constrained to be within $`\pm `$ 10 MeV, $`\beta `$ within $`\pm 2\times 10^5`$ GeV-1 and $`\gamma `$ within $`\pm 10^5`$ cm-1.

## 4 $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses measurement

### 4.1 Selection of 3$`\pi ^0`$ decays

To select 3$`\pi ^0`$ decays, any group of six showers within $`\pm 5`$ ns of their average time is examined. No other shower above 1.5 GeV should be present within a $`\pm `$ 3 ns time. The minimum distance between photon candidates is required to be greater than 10 cm. The total energy is required to be in the range 70-170 GeV for $`K_L`$, and 70-180 GeV for $`\eta `$ decays. Using the six photons, the decay vertex position along the beam axis is computed assuming the $`K^0`$ or the $`\eta `$ mass 111The assumed mass values at this stage are only used to perform a loose selection, and they do not affect the final mass measurement. The resolution is $``$ 50 cm. In the $`\eta `$ case, this position is required to be consistent with the position of one of the two targets within 400 cm. In the $`K_L`$ case, the decay vertex position should be less than 6.5 $`K_S`$ lifetimes downstream of the beginning of the decay region. Using this decay vertex, the invariant mass of any pair of photons is computed. A $`\chi ^2`$ like variable is computed comparing the masses of the three pairs to the nominal $`\pi ^0`$ mass. The typical $`\pi ^0`$ mass resolution is around 1 MeV and is parametrised as a function of the lowest energy photon. The pairing with the smallest $`\chi ^2`$ is selected. To remove any residual background (from events with a $`\pi ^0`$ Dalitz decay for example), a loose $`\chi ^2`$ cut is applied. The correct $`\pi ^0`$ pairing is selected by this method in 99.75% of the events, and the residual bias on the mass result induced by wrong pairing is completely negligible. This procedure selects $`128\times 10^6`$ $`K_L3\pi ^0`$ candidates and $`264\times 10^3`$ $`\eta 3\pi ^0`$ candidates in the data from the year 2000.

To minimise the sensitivity of the measurement to residual energy non-linearity, configurations in which the photons have comparable energies are selected using the following cut on each photon energy:

$$0.7<\frac{E_\gamma }{\frac{1}{6}E_{tot}}<1.3$$

where $`E_\gamma `$ is the energy of the photon and $`E_{tot}`$ the sum of the energies of all photons. This cut leaves a sample of $`655\times 10^3`$ $`K_L`$ decays and 1134 $`\eta `$ decays. The events are then subjected to the mass reconstruction described in section 1. In these computations, photon positions are evaluated at the position of the maximum of the shower in the calorimeter, to account correctly for deviations of photon directions from the projectivity of the calorimeter. The same procedure is applied to Monte-Carlo samples of $`K_L`$ and $`\eta `$ decays, following the same reconstruction and analysis path, to check for any bias in the procedure. The simulation of the calorimeter response is based on a large shower library generated with GEANT.

### 4.2 Results and cross-checks

The distributions of the differences of the reconstructed $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses from the world average masses222 The values are 0.547300 GeV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ mass and 0.497672 GeV/c2 for the $`K_L`$ mass are shown in Figure 4. The average values of these distributions are $`550\pm 30`$ keV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ sample and $`43\pm 1`$ keV/c2 for the $`K_L`$, where the errors quoted are only statistical. When the same analysis is applied on the Monte-Carlo samples, the shifts observed between the input mass and the average reconstructed mass are $`7\pm 5`$ keV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ case and $`+4\pm 3`$ keV/c2 for the $`K_L`$ sample. This shows that residual bias from reconstruction and resolution effects are small.

The sensitivities to the non-linearities discussed in the previous section are estimated changing the parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ in Equation 1 and recomputing the reconstructed masses in the Monte-Carlo samples. The uncertainties associated with the allowed range of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are $`\pm `$2 keV/c2 each on both the $`K^0`$ and $`\eta `$ masses. This small level of uncertainty is made possible by the use of symmetric decay configurations. The uncertainty associated with residual non-uniformity in the calorimeter response (parameter $`\gamma `$) is evaluated by comparing the reconstructed masses with and without the final correction derived from the 2000 $`\pi ^0`$ data and is found to be $`\pm `$23 keV/c2 for both the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ masses. This is essentially equivalent to varying the parameter $`\gamma `$ within $`\pm `$10-5 cm-1.

The reconstruction of the mass is also sensitive to the effect of energy leakage from one shower to another. The uncertainty associated with the shower profile parameterisation is taken to be the difference between the shower profile predicted by GEANT and the profile measured with electron data. The uncertainty associated with the Monte-Carlo modelling of the residual reconstruction bias is taken to be half the size of this bias. This leads to a systematic error on the mass of $`\pm `$33 keV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ and $`\pm `$20 keV/c2 for the $`K^0`$.

The uncertainty in the photon position measurement is estimated using the nominal calorimeter geometry without the corrections derived from $`K_{e3}`$ data. The corresponding uncertainty in the $`\eta `$ mass is $`\pm `$9 keV/c2, and $`\pm `$5 keV/c2 on the $`K^0`$ mass (Because there is no collimation for the $`\eta `$ case, the centre of gravity of the events is spread over the full calorimeter, unlike the $`K_L`$ case, and this enhances the sensitivity to this effect).

Finally, the energy response has non-Gaussian tails arising mostly from hadron production at the early stages of the shower. To study the sensitivity to this effect, these tails were parameterised from $`K_{e3}`$ and $`\pi ^0`$ data and introduced in the Monte-Carlo. The effect of using this parameterisation in the Monte-Carlo is a change of 2 keV/c2 for both the $`\eta `$ and $`K^0`$ cases. This change is taken as the estimate of the uncertainty.

The effect of accidental activity from the $`K_L`$ beam has been investigated and found to be negligible on the reconstructed kaon mass.

Combining the various contributions in quadrature, the total systematic error amounts to $`\pm `$41 keV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ mass and $`\pm `$31 keV/c2 for the $`K^0`$ mass. Correcting the data for the small observed Monte-Carlo shifts, the following values are thus obtained:

$$M_\eta =547.843\pm 0.030_{stat}\pm 0.005_{MC}\pm 0.041_{syst}\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}^2$$

$$M_{K_L}=497.625\pm 0.001_{stat}\pm 0.003_{MC}\pm 0.031_{syst}\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}^2$$

Many cross-checks of this measurement have been made. The stability of the reconstructed masses as a function of several variables has been investigated and found to be within the quoted systematic errors. The same value of the mass is found for $`\eta `$ originating from both targets. Repeating the procedure on the lower statistics samples collected in 1999 has yielded consistent results. For the neutral Kaon case a similar analysis as for 3$`\pi ^0`$ has been performed on 2$`\pi ^0`$ decays, using events collected in the $`ϵ^{}/ϵ`$ runs and also, separately, those obtained at the same time as the $`\eta `$ decays. The agreement obtained is particularly significant because we have found that the effect of the dominant systematic uncertainty, which originates from energy leakage effects, is actually anticorrelated between the 2$`\pi ^0`$ and the 3$`\pi ^0`$ samples.

As an alternative to using symmetric decays for the $`K^0`$ mass measurement, events have been selected by an algorithm which requires minimum sensitivity to energy non-linearities. This gives a higher statistics sample, spanning a wider range of energies, and the $`K^0`$ mass measurement agrees to better than 10 keV/c2.

Relaxing the cut on the symmetry of the decay and asking $`E_\gamma `$ $`>`$ 6 GeV and at least 25 cm separation between photons, the reconstructed masses move by -9 keV/c2 for the $`\eta `$ and -10 keV/c2 for the $`K^0`$, while the total systematic error is increased by almost a factor two because of the much stronger sensitivity to energy non-linearities.

The $`K_L`$ to $`3\pi ^0`$ decays have also been analysed using a kinematical fit. In addition to four energy and momentum constraints for the decay, the three photon pairs were constrained to have invariant masses equal to the $`\pi ^0`$ mass. The linearised constraints equations were expressed in terms of two impact coordinates and energy of each photon in the calorimeter. In the fitting procedure the $`K^0`$ mass as well as its energy and decay vertex position were determined. Typically the fit converged after 2-3 iterations. The measurement errors were slightly adjusted to have good stretch functions and the resulting fit probability distribution was flat except for an enhancement below $`5\%`$. Using the fitted mass and its error, the $`K^0`$ mass was determined from the weighted average in the $`\pm 5`$MeV/c2 mass window around the world average mass. This method has somewhat different sensitivities to systematic effects than the method discussed previously. The results from the two methods were compared for various cuts on the event selection, and they were found to agree within $`\pm 10`$ keV, which is within the quoted systematic uncertainty.

Another independent cross-check of systematic effects can be performed using $`\pi ^0,\eta \gamma \gamma `$ produced at the targets. Using these two different decays, the ratio of the $`\eta `$ mass to the $`\pi ^0`$ mass can be computed. The selection of the events can be done such as to have either (a) the same energy for the $`\pi ^0`$ and $`\eta `$, but different separation between the photons (by a factor 4 which is the mass ratio) and thus different systematics in the energy leakage from one cluster to another, or (b) the same distance between the two photons but then energies differing by a factor 4 and thus a sensitivity to the energy non-linearity. Symmetric $`\gamma \gamma `$ decays are selected requiring $`0.8<\frac{E_\gamma }{E_{tot}}<1.2`$. To reduce background, events with energy leakage in the hadron calorimeter are removed. The selected range for the $`\eta `$ energy is 90-120 GeV. In case (a) the same range is used for the $`\pi ^0`$ events, while in case (b) the energy range for the $`\pi ^0`$ is 22.5-30 GeV. The values obtained for the $`\eta `$ mass are $`M(\eta )=547.80\pm 0.14`$ MeV/c2 using the selection (a) and $`M(\eta )=548.15\pm 0.35`$ MeV/c2 for selection (b). The errors quoted include the effect of all the systematic uncertainties discussed above. In case (a), the dominant uncertainty is the systematic uncertainty on the correction of energy leakage from one cluster to the other. In case (b), it is the systematic uncertainty associated with energy non-linearity. These measurements suffer from larger sensitivities to systematic effects than the one using 3$`\pi ^0`$ decays, but within the uncertainties, there is good agreement between the results, thus giving a further cross-check that systematic effects are under control.

## 5 Conclusions

From the 3$`\pi ^0`$ symmetric decay configuration, the following mass values are obtained:

$$M_\eta =547.843\pm 0.051\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}^2$$

$$M_{K^0}=497.625\pm 0.031\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}^2$$

The $`K^0`$ mass is consistent with the present world average within 1.1 standard deviations, with a similar uncertainty. The uncertainty on the $`\eta `$ mass is about 2.4 times smaller than the current world average uncertainty, while the eta mass differs from the world average by about 0.1%, corresponding to 4.2 standard deviations.

## Acknowledgements

We would like to warmly thank the technical staff of the participating laboratories and universities for their dedicated effort in the design, construction, and maintenance of the beam, detector, data acquisition and processing.