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# Macroscopic car condensation in a parking garage

## I Introduction

The scaling properties of nonequilibrium-type phase transitions are a topic of intensive current research . From the theoretical side, focus has been mostly on model calculations using stochastic dynamics with simple local rules and local interactions. These models serve as prototypes for various physical processes, such as surface catalysis , population growth , surface growth , electronic transport in wires , traffic flow , and avalanches in granular materials. The simplicity of the models is justifiable when, as we expect, the scale invariant collective fluctuations at large length scales are universal and insensitive to most microscopic details.

Queuing phenomena, like traffic jams behind slow moving trucks on single-lane highways, are common to many nonequilibrium processes. One of the interesting phenomena in such systems is the transition from a finite queue to an infinitely long one, i.e., the transition from a queue that does not scale with the road length $`N_s`$ to one whose length is proportional to $`N_s`$. Such transitions can be induced by changing the total density of cars in the system or by varying the probability rate at which cars pass the truck .

A simplification of the above is first to replace the slow moving truck by a stationary object, and then to ignore the excluded volume effects in the queue by allowing the cars behind this stationary impurity to pile on top of each other. This bare-bone version of the phenomenon can then be rephrased in terms of the parking garage model introduced in this paper. An asymmetric exclusion process (AEP) on a road starting and terminating at a garage with an infinite parking capacity. The control parameters are the total number of cars, $`N_c`$, in the system (which compared to the road length $`N_s`$, defines a total car density $`\rho _o=N_c/N_s`$) and the probability $`\alpha `$ with which cars exit the garage (compared to the hopping probability along the road, set equal to one). The infinitely long queue is represented by a macroscopic occupation of the garage. The density of parked cars, $`\rho _p=N_p/N_s`$, is nonzero when the number of cars at the garage $`N_p`$ is proportional to $`N_s`$.

The analogy with equilibrium Bose condensation is obvious as well as the basic question, i.e., whether the scaling properties of such queuing transitions are universal. For example, how sensitive are the exponents $`\beta `$ and $`x_p`$ in

$$\rho _p|\alpha \alpha _c|^\beta \mathrm{for}\alpha <\alpha _c$$
(1)
and

$$\rho _pN_s^{x_\rho }\mathrm{at}\alpha _c$$
(2)
to the details of the queuing dynamics, particularly to the simplifications we made. As a start, we need to establish and understand the scaling properties of the most simplest model in as much detail as possible. The scaling properties of the parked car condensation transitions presented here are indeed already surprisingly rich. After this, we will be well positioned to restore the omitted queuing details one-by-one, and establish how robust those scaling properties are.

This paper is organized as follows. The parking garage model is introduced in Sec. II, and the phase diagram is presented in Sec. III. In Sec. IV, we explore the relation to Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) type surface growth. The group velocity is introduced in Sec. V, and its important role in setting the density profile in the various phases is reviewed in Sec. VI. In Sec. VII, we do the same for the density-density correlations. Sections VIII and IX form the core of this paper. We present our numerical Monte Carlo analysis for the parked car density at the condensate-normal phase transitions in Sec. VIII, together with explanations of these results. Next, we do the same for the parked car fluctuations in various phases and at the phase boundaries in Sec. IX. Finally, in Sec. X, we summarize our results.

## II Parking Garage Model

Consider a one-dimensional road of $`N_s`$ sites with periodic boundary conditions (PBC). Each site on this road, $`1xN_s1`$, is either empty or occupied by only one car, $`n_x=0,1`$. The parking garage at site $`N_s`$ has no occupation upper limit, $`N_pn_{N_s}=0,1,2,3,\mathrm{}`$. The total number of cars ($`N_c`$) in the systems is conserved. From the perspective of other physical processes, the cars can be reinterpreted just as well as, e.g., molecules (driven down a circular tube), kinks in steps on crystal surfaces, electrons driven around a wire by an electric field, or domain walls in magnetic spin chains.

The stochastic update rule, from time $`t`$ to $`t+1`$ is sequential. One of the sites, $`1xN_s`$, is selected at random with uniform probability $`p(x)=1/N_s`$. If that site is part of the road, $`1xN_s2`$, and occupied, the car moves forward to over one unit, presuming site $`x+1`$ is empty; otherwise nothing happens. If the selected site is the one just in front of the garage, $`N_s1`$, and is occupied, then that car moves with certainty into the garage, irrespective of the occupation level of the garage. If the chosen site is the garage, $`x=N_s`$, the probability for a car to jump out of it onto site $`x=1`$ is equal to $`\alpha `$, independent of the number of cars at the garage, provided that there is at least one available and site $`x=1`$ is empty. This exit probability from the garage is smaller than the hopping probability on the road, $`0\alpha 1`$.

The above process has two control parameters: the total density of cars $`\rho _o`$ and the probability $`\alpha `$ with which cars can escape from the garage. We define the following quantities: the total car density $`\rho _o=N_c/N_s`$, the parked car density $`\rho _p=N_p/N_s`$, and the on-the-road density $`\rho _r=\rho _o\rho _p`$. Only $`\rho _p`$ and $`\rho _r`$ fluctuate.

The parking garage is the new aspect to this otherwise well-studied AEP. The latter is exactly soluble by the Bethe ansatz for periodic boundary conditions (a closed loop road without garage) , and the stationary state properties are exactly known for an open road with reservoirs on both sides . We will use and comment on these different setups and exact results in the following sections.

## III The Phase diagram

Figure 1 shows our phase diagram. It contains three phases. In two of them the garage is macroscopically occupied: the condensate ($`C`$) phase (where the garage controls the density of cars on the road), and the maximal current (MC) phase (where the road capacity controls the flow). In the normal ($`N`$) phase, the garage contains a finite number of parked cars (typically only a few). This structure can be deduced almost completely from earlier results for AEPs without the garage, such as the AEP with closed periodic boundary conditions (no garage), i.e., KPZ growth , and the AEP with open boundary conditions hooked-up to reservoirs on both ends .

In the two condensate phases, $`C`$ and MC, the garage acts like a reservoir, and the model reduces to the open road version studied by Derrida et al.  and others . In their version, the road is in contact with car reservoirs at both ends, $`x=1`$ and $`x=N_s1`$, such that a car jumps onto $`x=1`$ with probability $`\alpha `$ (if empty) and leaves from $`x=N_s1`$ with probability $`\beta `$ (if occupied). In our model $`\beta `$ is always equal to one.

A dynamic second-order phase transition takes place between the MC phase (where the road density is at a constant value, $`\rho _r=\frac{1}{2}`$) and the $`C`$ phase (where the road density $`\rho _r=\alpha `$ varies with the inlet probability $`\alpha `$ and this result is already correct within mean field theory ). The MC phase appears because raising the density any further would reduce the flow efficiency (due to overcrowding). This phenomenon has been canonized recently into a “maximal current principle” , which states that the bulk road density takes the value that maximizes the flow.

Reduce the total number of cars inside the $`C`$ and MC phases, i.e., walk in phase diagram towards the $`N`$ phase along a line of constant $`\alpha `$. This has no effect on the cars on the road and their fluctuations because all removed cars are taken from the parked ones residing inside the garage. These surplus cars are dynamically inert. This continues until the reservoir is depleted, the point at which the transition to the $`N`$ phase takes place. The road density becomes equal to the total car density $`\rho _r=\rho _o`$. From the $`C`$ (input-limited) phase perspective, this happens at $`\rho _o=\alpha `$, see Fig. 1, because $`\rho _r=\alpha `$ inside the $`C`$ phase . From the MC (road-limited) phase perspective, it occurs at $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$ because $`\rho _r=\frac{1}{2}`$ inside MC. Therefore, the phase boundaries into the $`N`$ phase are located at $`\rho _o=\alpha `$ and $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$.

The next issue is how many types of normal phases exist in the lower right side of the phase diagram. In a $`N`$ phase, the garage acts like a localized impurity (a blocking-type site), and it contains typically only a few cars. Suppose we put a cap $`N_m`$ on the occupation of the garage, $`N_p=0,1,\mathrm{},N_m`$. This cannot affect the properties of the model in the $`N`$ phase, except very close to the transition into the condensate phases (where the number of parked cars $`N_p`$ and the fluctuations in $`N_p`$ diverge). Janowsky and Lebowitz  (JL) studied such a capped version of the AEP model, a closed loop road with periodic boundary conditions, without a garage, but with one special bond where the hopping probability is reduced from 1 to $`\alpha `$. This is equivalent to setting the occupation limit of the garage to $`N_m=1`$. Their phase diagram has the same control parameters as ours. It has particle-hole symmetry with respect to $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$, see Fig. 2. The normal phase in the lower right hand corner is similar to our model. The second normal phase in the upper right corner is equivalent to it by particle-hole symmetry, and the intermediate area is a coexistence region, the jammed phase. In the low-density $`N`$ phase, the cars are uniformly distributed, but at $`\rho _o=\alpha /(1+\alpha )`$ a traffic-jam-type shock wave develops between low- and high-density $`N`$-type phase regions.

This jammed phase is reminiscent of the condensate phase (macroscopic occupation of the parking garage) in our model. A shock wave does not appear in our model because the garage absorbs the queue. It is also clear that if we would interpolate between the JL model and our model by slowly increasing $`N_m=1\mathrm{}`$, the queuing transition would be delayed and would be shifting smoothly, with our $`N`$-$`C`$ phase boundary as the limiting case. JL focused on the finite-size-scaling (FSS) properties of the fluctuations in the position of the tail of the shock wave, $`\mathrm{\Delta }lL^\gamma `$, and found $`\gamma =\frac{1}{2}`$ (except for $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$ where a cancellation of the leading time of flight-type fluctuations gives rise to $`\gamma =\frac{1}{3}`$. Monitoring the location of the shock wave is analogous to observing the parked car density fluctuations in our model inside the $`C`$ and MC phases. JL did not address the scaling properties at the queuing transition itself, but their transition is definitely second order (the location of the shock wave moves continuously with the total density away from the blockage point).

## IV KPZ Growth

The AEP can be interpreted as a lattice representation of the Burgers equation with a discretized velocity field, both in location and in its values, $`n(x)=0,1`$. The latter is equivalent to the so-called body-centered solid-on-solid growth model , a lattice realization of KPZ-type surface growth. Each occupied site represents a down step along the one-dimentional (1D) surface and every empty site an up step. The surface heights, $`h(x+\frac{1}{2})`$, are limited to even/odd values at even/odd lattice sites, $`h(x+\frac{1}{2})h(x\frac{1}{2})=12n(x)`$. The surface looks like the alternatively stacked bricks of a masonary wall, but rotated over 90 deg. Each car jump to the right represents the deposition of a new vertical 1x2 brick. The average car density on the road represents the average slope of the surface. At half density the surface is not tilted.

Periodic boundary conditions are the most common in theoretical studies of surface growth, and this brick deposition version of KPZ growth is exactly soluble by the Bethe ansatz . It is a special line in the general phase diagram of the 1D well-known XXZ spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ quantum spin chain Hamiltonian, and also in the so-called six-vertex model of 2D equilibrium critical phenomena .

From the surface growth perspective, the open road setup with reservoirs represents an open ended 1D interface with modified particle deposition probabilities $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ at its end points. In the MC phase, where the car density is locked to $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$, the crystal surface maintains a net zero tilt. For $`\alpha <\frac{1}{2}`$ and/or $`\beta <\frac{1}{2}`$, the reduced growth probabilities at the edge create a nonzero globally tilted surface. Moreover, along the line $`\alpha =\beta <\frac{1}{2}`$, two tilts coexist. Crossing that line amounts to undergoing a first-order phase transition with different tilt angles. The lock-in transition from the $`C`$ phase into the MC phase represents a second-order dynamic facetting transition.

Our parking garage setup translates into a surface growth dynamics realization with periodic boundary conditions and a localized defect. The garage could represent something like a stacking defect, where the step height is unlimited (and somehow energetically cost free). The cliff height at the stacking fault can be microscopic (the $`N`$ phase) or macroscopic (the $`C`$ and MC phases). This depends on the modified growth probability $`\alpha `$ near the defect (on top of the cliff, somewhat similar to a Schwoebel energy barrier) and also depends on the global net tilt angle (the total car density). In the MC ($`C`$) phase, the average slope of the surface, excluding the cliff, is zero (nonzero).

## V Correlations and Group Velocity

It is well known and easy to show that the stationary state of KPZ growth with PBC, the closed loop road without obstacles where $`\alpha =1`$ and $`n(N_s)=0,1`$, is completely random without any correlations whatsoever between finding a car at sites $`i`$ and $`j`$ for any $`ij`$ including nearest neighbor sites. In the surface representation, this means that up and down steps are placed at random  and that the width of the interface $`WN_s^\chi `$ scales with the random walk exponent $`\chi =\frac{1}{2}`$.

The stationary state remains uncorrelated in our model as well (as shown below) except near the garage. Those correlations are governed by the dynamic scaling exponent and the group velocity with which fluctuations travel along the road.

In 1D KPZ-type surface growth, all characteristic times scale as $`tN_s^z`$ with $`z=3/2`$. In car language, this means that local car density fluctuations with spatial width $`l`$ broaden in time as $`lt^{1/z}`$. The value of the dynamic exponent $`z`$ follows from the identity $`z+\chi =2`$ implied by Galilean invariance of the Burgers equation , together with the disordered $`\chi =\frac{1}{2}`$ nature of the stationary state. The exact (Bethe ansatz) solution of this specific model confirms this general result.

Fluctuations travel with a group velocity $`v_g=12\rho _r`$ to the right (towards the garage) along the road. From the KPZ surface growth perspective, the group velocity represents the average slope of the KPZ growing surface, and its fluctuations grow perpendicular to the surface orientation. From the AEP formulation perspective, the value of $`v_g`$ is set by the average stationary state current $`j=\rho _r(1\rho _r)`$ (easy to derive since the stationary state is Gaussian) and the definition of the group velocity is

$$v_g=\frac{}{\rho _r}j(\rho _r)=(12\rho _r).$$
(3)
This $`v_g`$ played an important role, e.g., in the AEP study by Majumdar and Barma  of tagged-particle diffusion, and in describing phase transitions between steady states in the open road setup .

## VI Density profiles in the various phases

The on-the-road car density profiles in the $`C`$ and MC phases are known exactly from the open boundary model studies, in particular the one by Derrida et al. . These profiles play an important role in our later discussions and it is useful to review how the group velocity enters in qualitative explanations of these exact results.

In the road-limited $`MC`$ phase at $`\alpha >\frac{1}{2}`$, the density tail has a power-law shape,

$$\rho (x)\rho _r+A_ex^\nu ,$$
(4)
at both edges $`e`$=$`L`$(left),$`R`$(right), with $`x`$ the distance from the edge of the road (garage entrance in our model) and $`\rho _r=\frac{1}{2}`$ the on-the-road car density. In contrast, in the input-limited $`C`$ phase at $`\alpha <\frac{1}{2}`$, the car density is constant, $`\rho (x)=\rho _r`$, at the beginning of the road (garage exit), and has an exponential tail at the end of road (garage entrance),

$$\rho (N_sx)\rho _r+Ax^{3/2}e^{x/\xi },$$
(5)
with the on-the-road car density $`\rho _r=\alpha `$ and the correlation length $`\xi =1/\mathrm{ln}[4\alpha (1\alpha )]`$.

Power laws with exponent $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ arise naturally in this problem because of its critical fluctuations. The bulk properties of the KPZ stationary state are invariant under a rescaling of all lengths as $`x^{}=bx`$, all times as $`t^{}=b^zt`$, and the surface heights as $`h^{}=b^\chi h`$. The car density scales, therefore, naively as $`\rho =h/xb^{\chi 1}`$. This means that power-law tails in the density distribution near the edge of the road, with exponent $`\chi 1=\frac{1}{2}`$, like in Eq. (4), are to be expected.

On the other hand, the disordered nature of the stationary state suggests exponential profiles, like in Eq. (5). Indeed, in the bulk, the stationary state density-density correlation function

$$g(r)=\rho (x+r)\rho (x)\rho (x+r)\rho (x)$$
(6)
does not decay as a $`r^1`$ power law as may be suggested by the above scaling argument, but instead decays exponentially with a very short correlation length, that is zero in this specific model since the cars on the road are totally uncorrelated in the stationary state.

To make sense of Eqs. (4) and (5), it is important to realize that the density profile near the edge of the road incorporates temporal correlations, and also to appreciate the role of the group velocity.

The power-law profile in the MC phase is the result of correlations with cars that reached the edge of the road and moved into the garage at earlier times. Such correlations spread in time over a spatial distance $`lt^{1/z}`$. The group velocity is zero in the MC phase and therefore the cars at a distance $`l`$ from the edge of the road are (power-law) correlated with those that entered the garage at times earlier than $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=l^z`$. They have no knowledge about cars arriving at the garage more recently. This explains the power-law tail in the density distribution.

In the $`C`$ phase, the same correlation spreading takes place within a moving frame of reference with nonzero group velocity. Information reaches the edge of the road (garage entrance) at a rate $`v_g`$ (linear in time) faster than it can spread backwards as $`lt^{1/z}`$ (since $`1/z=2/3<1`$). Memory has no opportunity to develop near the edge of the road, and the density profile adjusts itself at the road end as if the cars on the road are completely uncorrelated. The exponential tail reflects a suction-type effect; the excluded volume limitation on the car mobility does not act on the cars departing from the road.

Similarly, in the MC phase, power-law correlations with earlier cars that escaped from the garage and entered the road give rise to a power-law tail in the density profile at the beginning of the road (near the exit of the garage), while in the $`C`$ phase, this information travels faster away from the road start than it can spread backwards. So, new cars entering the road do so completely uncorrelated, resulting in no road-start tail in the profile whatsoever. This confirms why the MC phase is road limited and the $`C`$ phase is input limited. In the latter, the car supply at the garage controls the density near the edge of the road and also everywhere else on the road.

In the $`N`$ phase, we find numerically, from Monte Carlo simulations, an exponential tail at the road end and an $`1/x`$ tail at the road start as shown in Fig. 3. The group velocity is also nonzero in the $`N`$ phase, which explains the exponential exit tail as follows. Just like in the $`C`$ phase, the garage is invisible to the incoming of cars from the road; fluctuations arrive at the garage faster (at constant velocity) than they can spread backwards (with $`\mathrm{\Delta }lt^{1/z}`$). The fact that in the $`N`$ phase only a few cars reside inside the garage is invisible to the cars entering the garage.

An $`1/x`$ tail at the beginning of the road is what one expects from the deterministic part of the Burgers equation. The solution of the deterministic Burgers equation,

$$\frac{v}{t}+\lambda v\frac{v}{x}=\nu \frac{^2v}{x^2}$$
(7)
with the velocity $`v`$ pinned at a specific nonzero value at site $`x=0`$, is readily seen (e.g., in the Hopf transformed formulation) to be of the generic form $`v(x)1/(1+ax)`$, i.e., having the $`1/x`$ power-law shape.

In the $`C`$ phase, the system selects the value $`a=0`$ for the constant, and in the $`N`$ phase, $`a0`$. In both cases, the group velocity $`v_g>0`$ carries away KPZ fluctuations faster than they can spread, such that the KPZ noise term can be ignored at the road start (stationary frame of reference). The only noise that remains is that from the random process by which cars are being taken out of the garage and put on the road. In the $`C`$ phase, the supply of cars is bottomless ($`\rho _p>0`$), such that $`a=0`$ (the entire on the on-the-road bulk car density is ruled by the garage), while, in the $`N`$ phase, the supply of cars is limited and the garage does not overwhelm the road, such that $`a0`$.

## VII Density-density correlations

It is useful to discuss how the group velocity affects the car-car correlation function,

$$g(r,\tau )=\rho (x+r)_{t+\tau }\rho (x)_t\rho (x+r)_{t+\tau }\rho (x)_t.$$
(8)
According to scaling theory, it obeys the form

$`g(r,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`b^{2(\chi 1)}g(b^1r,b^z\tau )`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`\tau ^{\frac{2(\chi 1)}{z}}F({\displaystyle \frac{r}{\tau ^{1/z}}}).`$ (10)
In the limit $`\varphi =r/\tau ^{1/z}0`$, the scaling function $`F(\varphi )`$ must approach a constant since the autocorrelation decays as a power law,

$$g(0,\tau )\tau ^{\frac{2(\chi 1)}{z}}\tau ^{2/3},$$
(11)
with $`\chi =\frac{1}{2}`$. In the opposite limit, of large $`\varphi `$, the scaling function must decay exponentially because $`g(r,0)=0`$ due to the random nature of the stationary state (or, more generically, it decays exponentially with some correlation range $`\varphi _o`$ of the same order as the interaction range between cars). The above scaling relation suggests the form

$$F(\varphi )\varphi ^{2(\chi 1)}e^{\varphi /\varphi _o}$$
(12)
in the limit $`\varphi =r/\tau ^{1/z}\mathrm{}`$, such that

$$g(r,\tau )r^{2(\chi 1)}e^{r/\varphi _o\tau ^{1/z}}\frac{1}{r}e^{r/l}$$
(13)
with $`\chi =1/2`$ and $`l=\varphi _o\tau ^{1/z}`$. The length $`l`$ in the exponential defines the “correlation cone” that we already mentioned above. Within the cone the correlations decay as a power law, and outside it the cars are uncorrelated (as in the stationary state). The above discussion ignores finite-size effects. For open road or garage type boundary conditions, the correlator explicitly depends on the initial position $`x_0`$ of the car at time $`t_0`$ and also on the road length $`N_s`$,

$$g(r,\tau ;x_0,N_s)=b^{2(\chi 1)}g(b^1r,b^z\tau ;b^1x_0,b^1N_s).$$
(14)
Finite-size effects set in at times when the correlation cones hit the road edges, $`\tau (x_0)^z`$ or $`\tau (N_sx_0)^z`$. At times longer than $`t_0N_s^z`$, we therefore expect that the car-car correlator decays exponentially, e.g., as

$$g(0,\tau ;\frac{1}{2}N_s,N_s)N_s^{2(\chi 1)}e^{a(\tau /N_s^{1/z})}.$$
(15)
The above analysis applies to the MC phase, where the drift (group) velocity is zero. In the $`C`$ phase (and also the $`N`$ phase), we need to switch to the moving frame of reference by replacing $`rr+v_g\tau `$. This has some peculiar consequences. For example, the autocorrelation function $`g(0,\tau )`$ decays exponentially in time (even at short times). The correlation cone $`l`$ is slanted in the direction of the flow (the correlations move with the flow) and $`l`$ widens slower than linear in time, such that the $`r=0`$ line in the world sheet lies outside the correlation cone. The KPZ-type correlations are somewhat hidden. In order to expose them, one needs to plot them in some special manner, e.g., $`g(v_g\tau ,\tau )`$ (the autocorrelator in the moving frame of reference), as illustrated in Fig. 4.

## VIII Scaling at and near the Condensation Transitions

Let us turn now to the scaling properties of the two condensate phase transitions from the $`C`$ and MC phases into the $`N`$ phase. The stationary state value of the parked car density $`\rho _p=N_p/N_s`$ acts as the order parameter. We expect it to obey the FSS relation

$$\rho _p(ϵ,N_s^1)=b^{x_p}\rho _p(b^{y_ϵ}ϵ,bN_s^1)$$
(16)
near the two condensation transition lines with a scaling factor $`b`$, and $`ϵ=(\alpha \alpha ^{})\mathrm{or}ϵ=(\rho _o^{}\rho _o)`$, a measure of the distance from the transition.

In the $`N`$ phase, the density of parked cars is zero, $`\rho _p=0`$. When approached from the $`C`$ and MC sides, $`\rho _p`$ goes to zero as $`\rho _p|ϵ|^\beta `$, where $`\beta =x_p/y_ϵ`$. The removal of cars from the road is accommodated by taking them from the passive inert ones residing inside the garage. This implies that $`\rho _p`$ must vanishes linearly at the transition, and that $`x_p=y_ϵ`$. Our numerical simulations confirm that $`\rho _p|ϵ|`$, as $`\beta =1`$ in Figs. 5 and 6.

The total number of parked cars ($`N_p`$) scales as

$$N_p(ϵ,N_s^1)=b^{y_p}N_p(b^{y_ϵ}ϵ,bN_s^1)$$
(17)
with exponent $`y_p=1x_p`$ according to Eq. (17) and $`N_p=\rho _pN_s`$. In the $`N`$ phase, the density $`\rho _p`$ remains zero, while the total number of parked cars ($`N_p`$) diverges towards the transition as $`N_p|ϵ|^{(1x_p)/y_ϵ}`$. We find numerically that this power law is linear as well, $`N_p|ϵ|`$. Combined with the linear scaling of the car density from the $`C`$ or MC side (implying $`y_p=x_p`$), this yields $`y_p=y_ϵ=\frac{1}{2}`$. The exponent $`y_p`$ determines the FSS behavior of the total number of parked cars at the transition point itself, $`N_pN_s^{y_p}`$ (and also that the density of parked cars vanishes as $`\rho _pN_s^{y_p1}`$).

Figure 5 shows the numerical results of $`y_p`$ and $`\beta `$ at point $`\alpha =0.25`$ of the $`C`$-$`N`$ phase boundary and Fig. 6 at $`\alpha =1`$ (and 0.75) of the MC-$`N`$ phase boundary. Notice that the FSS corrections in the exponent $`y_p`$ are much stronger at the MC-$`N`$ transition than at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition.

The validity of the scaling relations is further illustrated by plotting the scaling function $`\mathrm{\Phi }(\xi )`$ in the following form

$$\rho _p(ϵ,N_s^1)=N_s^{x_p}\mathrm{\Phi }(N_s^{y_ϵ}ϵ),$$
(18)
and the associated data collapse while moving through the transition points at constant $`\rho _o`$ and constant $`\alpha `$, respectively. The curves in Fig. 7 collapse very well.

The fluctuations and the FSS corrections to the number of parked cars are a mirror of the density-density correlations and the density profile of cars on the road. They also reflect how the latter builds up as a function of the length of the road. At the transition points, the bulk value of the on-the-road density $`\rho _r=N_r/N_s`$ is exactly equal to the total number of cars in the system divided by the road length, $`\rho _r=N_c/N_s`$, such that there would be no need for any car to remain inside the garage.

We find numerically that at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition point, the density profile retains the same structure as inside the $`C`$ phase; with no tail at the beginning of the road (garage exit) and an exponential tail at the end of the road (garage entrance). Such profiles cannot account for the $`y_p=\frac{1}{2}`$ FSS divergence in the number of parked cars. The scaling behavior $`N_pN_s^{y_p}`$ must, therefore, reflect directly the corrections to FSS in the bulk density of cars on the road. The value $`x_p=\frac{1}{2}`$ naturally arises because at the transition point, $`\rho _p\rho _r`$, and $`\rho _r=h/x`$ scales as $`L^{\chi 1}L^{x_p}`$, where $`L`$ corresponds to a given length of the road $`N_s`$.

A more intuitive explanation follows again from the nonzero group velocity at the $`C`$-$`N`$ phase boundary. As mentioned above in the discussion of the density distribution tail in the $`C`$ phase, the events by which cars enter the road from the garage are completely uncorrelated due to the slanting of the correlation cones (the correlations move with the flow towards the garage and spread slower than linearly, only as $`lt^{1/z}`$, such that communications with later events at the beginning of the road are impossible). So the entry events to the road from the garage behave like uncorrelated random noise, and the fluctuations in the number of cars scale, therefore, as the square root of time. The time in question is proportional to $`N_s`$ because the fluctuations (created at the garage exit) move along the road with velocity $`v_g`$, and are wiped out after they return to the garage. From this, it follows that the fluctuations in the number of parked cars scales as $`\sqrt{N}_s`$. Moreover, $`N_p`$ cannot be negative, which means that the fluctuations sample the bottom of the garage and that the transition from the $`C`$ to $`N`$ phase, therefore, takes place when the garage contains $`N_p\sqrt{N}_s`$ cars.

In summary, the scaling at the $`C`$-$`N`$ phase boundary is governed by the bulk fluctuations in the-on-the-road density, which is ruled by the nonzero group velocity of KPZ fluctuations, and this leads directly to random noise like $`N_p\sqrt{N}_s`$, corrections to FSS.

The FSS corrections to scaling in exponent $`x_p`$ ($`y_p`$) at the MC-$`N`$ phase boundary are much more complex. The (bulk) group velocity is zero, and power-law density profiles are realized at both edges of the road. At the end of the road, the density profile follows a critical exponent $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$, the same power as that inside the MC phase discussed in Sec. VI. However, at the road start (the exit of the garage), the power-law exponent changes from $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ inside the MC phase to $`\nu =\frac{2}{3}`$ at the MC-$`N`$ transition. This is shown in Fig. 8 for $`\alpha =1`$ and $`\rho _o=\frac{1}{2}`$, where the effect is the strongest.

The $`\frac{2}{3}`$ power law does not change the $`N_s^{1/2}`$ FSS behavior of the number of parked cars. It is responsible, however, for strong corrections to FSS, as clearly visible in Fig. 6(a). The $`\nu =\frac{2}{3}`$ power-law profile contributes only a subdominant term to $`\rho _p`$ because it decays faster than the two $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ contributions (from the density profile at the end of the road and from the KPZ-like bulk road density fluctuations). We have not achieved yet a good understanding of this novel value, $`\frac{2}{3}`$, for the exponent of the density profile at the beginning of the road. It obviously lies correctly in between the MC and $`N`$ values, $`\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`1`$, respectively. Moreover, its value, $`\nu =\frac{2}{3}`$, is likely linked to the KPZ dynamic exponent $`z=\frac{3}{2}`$. But it remains unclear how to glue the following pieces together.

At the MC-$`N`$ transition, the group velocity of the fluctuations, $`v_g=12\rho _r`$, is still zero (but only barely) since $`\rho _r=\frac{1}{2}`$. This means that time of flight aspects, which dominate the $`C`$ and $`N`$ phases, do not come into play. Near the garage, the tail in the density profile, $`\rho (x)=\frac{1}{2}+\mathrm{\Delta }\rho (x)`$, creates a local nonzero group velocity $`v_g(x)=2\mathrm{\Delta }\rho (x)`$ pointing back into the garage (instead of away from it as in the $`C`$ and $`N`$ phases).

Recall from Sec. VI that the density profile in the MC phase has the same type of power-law profile $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho (x)x^\nu `$, but with the “KPZ” (power-counting) exponent value $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$. In that case, fluctuations at the road start do not reach the bulk of the road: the leading edge of the information cone is stationary because the backward movement of its center of mass $`x_ct^{1/(1+\nu )}`$ (implied by $`dx_c/dtx_c^\nu `$) matches exactly the rate of its spreading, $`xt^{1/z}`$. So the $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ density profile fully screens the garage from view in the bulk of the road. Exactly the same screening of the information takes place at the end of the road (garage entrance) since also there the MC phase density profile has exponent $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ (but in an opposite forward moving $`v_g`$ sense and with a negative density profile amplitude).

The density profile exponent $`\nu =\frac{2}{3}`$ at the MC-$`N`$ transition does not fully screen the garage any more from observers located far away on the road. Total screening is not needed because KPZ fluctuations start to tunnel through the garage since it has only a $`\sqrt{N}_s`$ occupation. It is yet unclear to us, however, how to deduce (in a convincing manner) the exponent $`\nu =\frac{2}{3}`$ from these considerations.

## IX parked car fluctuations

In this section, we explore the fluctuations in the parked car density and also car-car correlations on the road. Of particular interest is the onset of transmission of information through the garage at the phase transitions. In the two condensate phases, the garage acts as a car reservoir and as a sink of fluctuations, while in the normal phase it contains only a few cars and transmits fluctuations.

The temporal fluctuations in the total number of parked cars, $`G(N_s,\tau )`$, measures also the fluctuations in the total number of cars on the road. It is therefore equal to the integrated car-car correlator (defined in Sec. VII),

$`G(N_s,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{x_1,x_0=1}{\overset{N_s1}{}}}[\rho (x_0,t_0)\rho (x_1,t_1)\overline{\rho }(x_0)\overline{\rho }(x_1)]`$ (19)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{x_0=1}{\overset{N_s1}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{r=x_0+1}{\overset{N_sx_01}{}}}g(r,\tau ;x_0,N_s)`$ (20)
with $`\tau =t_1t_0`$ and $`r=x_1x_0`$. The summations run over all road sites $`x_0`$ and distances $`r`$ that fit on the road. Direct integration of the scaling relation, Eq. (14), yields that (in the MC phase) $`G`$ obeys the scaling form

$$G(N_s,\tau )=b^{2\chi }G(b^1N_s,b^z\tau )=N_s^{2\chi }(\tau /N_s^z).$$
(21)
In the KPZ representation, $`G`$ is the global slope-slope autocorrelator, and at $`\tau =0`$, reduces to the conventional definition of interface width (second moment of the height distribution). We will now discuss how $`G`$ behaves in the various phases and at the phase transition points.

### A Inside the MC phase

The following intuitive discussion tells us how the scaling function $``$ behaves in the MC phase. Each $`g(r,\tau )`$ has a correlation cone of size $`l\tau ^{1/z}`$. The cars within this cone are correlated with the one at site $`x_0`$ at time $`t_0`$ as $`\tau ^{2(\chi 1)/z}`$. The integration over $`x_0`$ and $`r`$ in Eq. (20) yields

$$GN_s\times l\times \tau ^{2(\chi 1)/z}N_s\tau ^{(2\chi 1)/z},$$
(22)
where the correlation cones $`l\tau ^{1/z}`$ are assumed to be small with respect to the road size $`N_s`$. The exponent is equal to $`\chi =\frac{1}{2}`$, such that $`GN_s`$, and that $``$ approaches a constant in the limit $`\tau /N_s^z0`$.

This estimate fails to take into account finite-size effects. Correlations are truncated near the two road edges (all information is entering the garage). The loss term is of the order

$$2_0^l𝑑x_0(lx_0)\tau ^{2(\chi 1)/z}l^2l^{2(\chi 1)}\tau ^{2\chi /z}.$$
(23)
This suggests that $`G`$ is of the form

$$G=N_s\left(ab\frac{\tau ^{1/z}}{N_s}+\mathrm{}\right),$$
(24)
with constants $`a`$ and $`b`$, and suggests that the scaling function $`(\varphi )`$ is analytic at short times in the parameter $`\varphi =\tau ^{1/z}/N_s`$ instead of $`\varphi ^{}=\tau /N_s^z`$. Our numerical results shown in Fig. 9(a) are consistent with this.

In the opposite limit, $`\varphi ,\varphi ^{}\mathrm{}`$, where time is large compared to the length of the road, all correlation cones are limited and equal to $`lN_s`$, and $`G`$ behaves as in Eq. (15), such that

$$GN_s\times l\times g(0,\tau ;\frac{1}{2}N_s,N_s)N_se^{a(\tau /N_s^z)}.$$
(25)
Our numerical results in Fig. 9(b) are consistent with this as well.

### B Inside the $`C`$ phase

In the $`C`$ phase, the fluctuations scale with the same exponents as in the MC phase, but the nonzero group velocity $`v_g=12\rho _r`$ changes completely the appearance of correlation functions, like $`G(N_s,\tau )`$. The density-density correlations spread just like in the MC phase, but only with respect to the moving frame of reference and with $`r`$ replaced by $`\stackrel{~}{r}=r+v_g\tau `$. The correlation function $`g(r,t)`$ scales as a power law $`g\tau ^{2(\chi 1)/z}`$ at $`\stackrel{~}{r}=v_g\tau `$ (i.e., $`r=0`$) but exponentially at nonzero $`r`$. The fluctuation cones, $`lt^{1/z}`$, are slanted and move with the flow.

Figure 10 shows $`G(N_s,\tau )`$ inside the $`C`$ phase as a function of time $`\tau `$ for various road sizes $`N_s`$. It decays linearly until hitting zero at $`\tau _{\mathrm{flight}}=N_s/v_g(T)`$, and then it remains at zero. All fluctuations move with the group velocity $`v_g`$ to the right and reach the garage at a constant rate. After one time of flight, $`T`$, all correlations with the initial configuration have disappeared. The rounding in $`G`$ at $`T`$ is of order $`\mathrm{\Delta }tT^{1/z}`$, and is due to the broadening of the remaining correlation cones just before they are absorbed by the garage.

### C Inside the $`N`$ phase

In the $`N`$ phase, the fluctuations in the total number of cars on the road, $`G(N_s,0)`$, are not proportional to $`N_s`$ but are only of order one. The garage is not macroscopically occupied any more and acts very much like an ordinary road site. Figure 11 shows the behavior of $`G(N_s,\tau )`$ inside the $`N`$ phase. The total number of cars in the system is conserved, such that $`G`$ reduces to

$$G(N_s,\tau )=N_p(t_0+\tau )N_p(t_0)\overline{N}_p^2,$$
(26)
and behaves similar to the autocorrelator $`g(0,\tau )`$. The group velocity is nonzero, and therefore $`G`$ decays exponentially fast. However, because of PBC, $`G`$ comes back to live, like a lighthouse light beam, after every time-of-flight interval $`T(=N_s/v_g)`$, with an amplitude of order $`T^{2(\chi 1)/z}`$ and with a temporal width of order $`lT^{1/z}`$.

### D At the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition

Figure 12 shows how $`G(N_s,\tau )`$ at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition decays in time for various system sizes. At small $`\tau `$, it decays linearly, rather like in the $`C`$ phase, but then it seems to oscillate with a period determined by the time-of-flight time scale $`T`$; $`G(N_s,\tau )`$ goes through zero at about $`t\frac{1}{2}T`$ and shows a strong anticorrelation at $`tT`$ (the maximum lies just before it).

Figure 13 illustrates how the transmission of information through the garage commences at the phase transition. Suppose we approach the transition point from the $`C`$ phase following a line of constant $`\alpha `$. In the $`C`$ phase, these lines coincide with lines of constant group velocity. (In the $`N`$ phase, $`v_g`$ is constant along lines of constant $`\rho _o`$.) So nothing changes on the road until we hit the transition point, and $`G`$ decays linearly to zero and remains zero after one time-of-flight time scale. At the transition point, $`G`$ transforms abruptly into the oscillatory shape, with an anticorrelation after one time of flight. After that, it reduces inside the $`N`$ phase to the lighthouse shape, in which $`G(N_s,0)`$ oscillates in phase and does not scale with $`N_s`$ any more.

The anticorrelations at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition point are intriguing and need to be explained. Imagine a localized positive density fluctuation at the beginning of the road at time $`t_0`$. In the MC phase, it simply sits there while broadening as $`l\tau ^{1/z}\tau ^{2/3}`$ and weakening in amplitude as $`\tau ^{2(\chi 1)/z}\tau ^{2/3}`$. In the $`C`$ phase, it broadens and weakens in the same manner, but travels like a solitary wave to the right with velocity $`v_g=12\rho _r`$ and drops out of the road after one time-of-flight unit $`T`$. In the $`N`$ phase, it behaves very much the same, except that the positive density fluctuation creates a deficit inside the garage since the number of cars in the garage is finite, such that fewer cars can be put on the road in the immediate wake of the positive fluctuation. Therefore, in the $`N`$ phase, every positive fluctuation carries a compensating (again localized) negative tail with it. Figure 14 illustrates the difference schematically, and our numerical simulations confirm this picture.

One could say that in the $`N`$ phase positive and negative local excitations are bound in pairs, and that they unbind at the $`N`$-$`C`$ transition. On approach of the transition from the $`N`$ side, the width of the negative tail grows, but with conserved total area (equal to the area of the positive part of the excitation), because the average number of cars in the garage increases towards the transition (and diverges) and therefore the reduced car output is being spread over more time. At the transition point itself, the negative tail has vanished, except for the finite-size scaling effect of order $`(N_s)^{1/2}`$.

Local excitations, thus, behave quite interestingly. However, they do not explain the difference in the behavior of $`G`$ at the transition point and in the $`C`$ phase. These solitary waves do not deplete the garage sufficiently to trigger its bottom because at the transition point the number of parked cars still diverges as $`\sqrt{N_s}`$.

Only nonlocal excitations, which encompass the entire system, are able to empty out the garage. Consider an excitation where the density of cars is globally and uniformly enhanced along the entire road, $`\rho _i=\rho _r+\mathrm{\Delta }`$. This requires that the number of cars to be taken out of the garage should be proportional to the road length $`N_s`$. In the $`C`$ phase, those will not deplete the garage because the number of parked cars is also proportional to $`N_s`$. Such a $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ regiment of extra cars marches with group velocity $`v_g`$ to the right, reaches the end of the road, and thus returns to the garage at a rate uniformly in time, row by row. Throughout this process, the garage is not aware of the existence of the regiment since we did not hit its bottom and because the information cones $`l\tau ^{1/z}`$ on the road do not broaden fast enough compared to the group velocity to maintain its memory at the garage exit. This implies that the exact stationary state rebuilds itself in the wake of the regiment, and also that the enhanced road density decays linearly in time and vanishes completely after one time of flight $`T`$, just like our $`G`$ as a function of time $`\tau `$.

At the transition point, the garage only contains $`N_p\sqrt{N}_s`$ cars, so that the same type of global uniform excitation can only have an amplitude of order $`(N_s)^{1/2}`$, and always depletes the garage. This regiment of cars travels to the right with velocity $`v_g`$, just like in the $`C`$ phase, but in its wake the garage cannot rebuild the stationary state because it is empty. A depleted road density is established in the wake of the enhanced excitation, and thus anticorrelations build up, and after one time of flight the average density of cars on the road is below normal (and a surplus of cars resides in the garage). This explains qualitatively the oscillatory behavior of $`G`$ at the transition point and the anticorrelations at $`T`$.

### E At the MC-$`N`$ transition

The correlations at the MC-$`N`$ transition are less spectacular than at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition. The group velocity is zero inside the MC phase, and still remains zero at the MC-$`N`$ transition. Only inside the $`N`$ phase, does it start to shift continuously away from zero. Figure 15 shows how $`G`$ scales at the $`MCN`$ transition. These numerical results are almost the same as those inside the MC phase in Fig. 9.

Recall the argument about the behavior of $`G(\tau ,N_s)`$ inside the MC phase (in section IX A), and imagine how this was modified at the MC-$`N`$ transition. The factor $`N_s`$ in Eq. (22) represents the number of cars on the road (the number of sites $`x_0`$ that are occupied). This should be modified to $`\rho _oN_sa\sqrt{N}_s`$, since the number of parked cars scales as $`\sqrt{N}_s`$. The other terms, the spreading in time of the correlation cones and the autocorrelations on the road, are likely unchanged. Such differences are subtle and not surprisingly numerically invisible.

## X Summary and Conclusion

In this paper, we presented the scaling properties of dynamic condensate phase transitions in terms of an 1D asymmetric exclusion process with a parking garage. There are two types of condensate phases: the maximal current (MC) phase, where the road controls the density of cars on the road, and the condensate ($`C`$) phase, where the garage (as a reservoir) controls the number of cars on the road. The existence of a group velocity is crucial for understanding the behaviors of correlations and the density profiles in these two phases and at the phase transitions.

At both condensate transitions, the number of parked cars scales as $`N_pN_s^{y_p}`$ with $`y_p=\frac{1}{2}`$, while on approach of the transition, the density of parked cars vanishes linearly with the control parameters (the total density of cars in the system and the exit probability from the garage) $`\rho _p|ϵ|^\beta `$, with $`\beta =1`$. Also, the transition points represent the onset of communication of information through the garage. This leads to interesting autocorrelations in the number of parked cars, particularly at the $`C`$-$`N`$ transition, due to the nonzero group velocity and associated time-of-flight effects.

Our parking garage model is a bare-bone version of dynamic Bose condensation and of queuing phenomena, like traffic jams. The fundamental issue that needs further study is whether the above scaling behavior, in particular the values of the critical exponents, are universal or not. How do more realistic interactions between the cars on the road change this? Do the simplifications in the traffic jams, like a stationary truck versus a moving one and ignoring the spatial structure inside the queue of cars behind it by collapsing them (piling them up) into a “garage,” affect the exponents?

There is some evidence suggesting that the exponents are indeed robust, e.g., in the Janowsky and Lebowitz  model, the same simple KPZ-type values of the exponents appear in the fluctuations of the queue, although a detailed study of the queuing transition itself needs still to be performed. In addition, introducing short-range car-car interactions  do not seem to change the exponents either .

## Acknowledgments

We thank Joachim Krug for helpful discussions. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMR-9985806.


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# A massive star-forming region in a very early stage of evolution

## 1. Introduction

We are undertaking a multi-wavelength study of a sample of 20 luminous IRAS sources that are thought to be representative of young massive star-forming regions. The sources in our sample were chosen from the Galaxy-wide survey of CS(2–1) emission towards 843 IRAS sources with infrared colours typical of compact HII regions (Bronfman, Nyman, & May 1996). Each source selected for our sample showed line profiles indicative of either inward or outward motions and in some cases broad wings. Their IRAS luminosities were in the range $`2\times 10^44\times 10^5`$ L$`_{}`$, implying that they all contain at least one embedded massive star ($`>`$ 8 M).

Two sources in our sample, IRAS 15596-5301 and IRAS 16272-4837, were found to have no detectable radio emission (down to 2 mJy beam-1) in the survey by Walsh et al. (1998), making them candidates for massive stars in very early stages of evolution when dense material is still falling towards the protostar and quenching the development of an ultra compact (UC) HII region (e.g. Yorke 1984). Here we present the findings from our study towards these two exceptional sources.

Our study involves radio continuum observations using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), 1.2-mm continuum observations using the new SIMBA 37-channel bolometer array installed at the SEST, as well as a series of SEST molecular-line observations between 85 and 250 GHz. We have also incorporated mid-infrared data obtained with the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) satellite. For IRAS15596 and IRAS16272, the ATCA radio continuum observations yielded a 1$`\sigma `$ detection limit at 4.8-GHz of 0.08 mJy beam-1. The synthesized beams of the resultant images (FWHM) were $``$ 2′′. At 1.2-mm (230 GHz) the FWHM beamsize of the SEST is 24′′.

## 2. Results & Discussion

### 2.1. IRAS 15596-5301

The 1.2-mm continuum emission detected towards IRAS15596 is elongated over 42′′ (0.94 pc at the distance of 4.6 kpc; Bronfman, private communication) and has a flux density of 5.8 Jy (see Fig. 1). Assuming a dust opacity at 1.2 mm of 1 cm2 g-1 (Ossenkopf & Henning 1994) we derive a mass of $`1.4\times 10^3`$ M$`_{}`$. Results from the line observations indicate the presence of a molecular gas core with a rotational temperature of $`27\pm 3`$ K (see Fig. 2), a molecular hydrogen column density N(H2) of $`8\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2 and density $`n`$(H2) of $`4\times 10^5`$ cm-3.

The 4.8-GHz continuum observations reveal three distinct compact sources with diameters of 0.06 to 0.2 pc. Their peak flux densities are in the range 1.1 – 2.8 mJy beam-1, close to the sensitivity of the Walsh et al. (1998) survey. All three sources are located within a region of 30′′ in diameter and are within the 1.2-mm continuum emission region (see Fig. 1). Assuming that the three sources are UCHII regions and excited by individual ZAMS stars, then their flux densities implies the presence of early B-type stars. The total radio luminosity emitted by this cluster is $`4.1\times 10^4`$ L$`_{}`$, somewhat lower than the IRAS luminosity of $`6.5\times 10^4`$ L$`_{}`$. The presence of assorted masers in the vicinity of IRAS15596 is in accord with this being a massive star forming region.

From their observed sizes and assuming a sound speed in the ionized gas of 11.4 km s-1 we estimate that the three UCHII regions have dynamical ages between $`3\times 10^38\times 10^3`$ yr, which might suggest that they are very young. However, dynamical timescales may not provide realistic age estimates if the objects have already reached pressure equilibrium with the surrounding ambient medium. Using the equations given by Garay & Lizano (1999) we estimate that a molecular density of $`5\times 10^5`$ cm-3 is needed for the three UCHII regions to be currently pressure confined. This value is similar to that derived from the molecular line observations. The time needed for the HII regions to achieve such a pressure equilibrium is between $`1\times 10^52.5\times 10^5`$ yr, implying that massive star formation started within this molecular core more than $`2.5\times 10^5`$ yr ago.

Although not illustrated here, IRAS15596 is also associated a with compact mid-infrared source as well as extended MSX A-Band emission ($`6.810.8`$ $`\mu `$m).

### 2.2. IRAS 16272-4837

The 1.2-mm continuum emission detected towards IRAS16272 is elongated over 61′′ (0.8 pc at the distance of 3.4 kpc; Bronfman private communication) and has a flux density of 13.8 Jy. Assuming the previously mentioned dust opacity, we derive a mass of $`2\times 10^3`$ M$`_{}`$. The line observations indicate the presence of a molecular gas core with a rotational temperature of 27 $`\pm 4`$ K (see Fig. 2), N(H2) of $`2\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2 and $`n`$(H2) of $`2\times 10^5`$ cm-3, similar to IRAS15597. As evident in Fig. 3, the 1.2-mm continuum emission is associated with a mid-infrared dark cloud seen in absorption in the MSX A-Band against the emission from the galactic plane.

No 4.8-GHz continuum radio emission was detected to a 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit of 0.2 mJy. A non-detection is somewhat surprising given that the IRAS luminosity of the source is $`2.4\times 10^4`$ L$`_{}`$. If a B0-type star were responsible for this high luminosity then we expect to measure a radio flux of $`200`$ mJy at optically thin frequencies if embedded in a uniform density medium. One explanation for the high luminosity and lack of detected radio emission could be that IRAS16272 is a dense massive molecular core which hosts a young massive protostar that is still undergoing an intense accretion phase. Adding support to this hypothesis are the characteristics of the observed molecular line profiles. For instance, the behavior of the optically thick HCO+(1–0) and optically thin H13CO+(1–0) lines shown in Fig. 4 are consistent with infalling motions. Furthermore, the broad wings evident in the SiO(2–1) spectrum suggest the presence of outflowing gas, a phenomenon thought to be closely related to accretion processes.

The notion that IRAS16272 hosts a young massive protostar is also supported by the presence of assorted maser emission and an emission source seen in the MSX E-Band ($`18.225.1`$ $`\mu `$m). It is tantalizing to note that this source appears slightly extended with the maser spots aligned along the major axis (see Fig. 3).

## References

Bronfman, L., Nyman, L.Å., & May, J. 1996, A&AS, 115, 8

Caswell, J. L. 1998, MNRAS, 297, 215

Garay, G., & Lizano, S. 1999, PASP, 111, 1049

Ossenkopf, V., & Henning, Th. 1994, A&A, 291, 943

Walsh, A. J., Burton, M. G., Hyland, A. R., & Robinson, G. 1998, MNRAS, 301, 640

Walsh, A. J., Hyland, A. R., Robinson, G., & Burton, M. G. 1997, MNRAS, 291, 261

Yorke, H. W. 1984, Workshop on Star Formation, ed. R.D. Wolstencroft (Edinburgh: Royal Observatory), 63


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# The narrow Higgs boson

## The narrow Higgs boson

The most effective searches to date for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model (SM) come from $`e^+e^{}h_{\mathrm{SM}}Z`$ experiments at LEPII. They have put a 95% C.L. numerical limit on the Higgs boson mass of $`m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}>114.1\mathrm{GeV}`$ . Meanwhile, precision electroweak analyses based mostly on LEP, SLD and Tevatron data have put indirect limits on the SM Higgs boson mass :

$`\mathrm{log}_{10}(m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}/\mathrm{GeV})=1.94_{0.22}^{+0.21}.`$ (1)
The 95% C.L. upper bound is $`222\mathrm{GeV}`$ . The closer the Higgs boson is to the $`114.1\mathrm{GeV}`$ lower bound the better it can account for the precision electroweak data.

If the Higgs boson is less than about $`2m_W`$ its width is less than $`100\mathrm{MeV}`$. Such a narrow Higgs width is due to the SM accident of all fermions having mass less than $`5\mathrm{GeV}`$ except the top quark, which is too heavy for the light Higgs to decay into anyway. The narrowness of the Higgs width makes the Higgs phenomenology highly susceptible to subtle interactions the Higgs might have with other exotic states.

## Extra dimensions and the Higgs boson

Large extra dimensions felt by gravity can generate the otherwise unnaturally large hierarchy between the Planck scale and the weak scale . This would effectively preclude the existence of any fundamental scale far above the weak scale. The implications of this idea to the Higgs sector are significant.

For one, supersymmetry might not be needed to solve the quadratic sensitivity problem, since there would be no scales high enough to cause us concern. Superpartners would not be around, and perhaps more important to this discussion, there would be no obvious need for a second Higgs doublet as there is in supersymmetry.

Second, the existence of a large higher-dimensional bulk space can be important in ways that were never relevant in high-scale extra dimensional theories. For example, the mixing of the Higgs boson with graviscalars can radically change Higgs phenomenology . Likewise, the decay of the Higgs boson into bulk states (states that feel the large dimensions with gravity) can change the phenomenology.

Finally, when there is only a few TeV of room to solve all possible problems in particle physics there are sure to be states living just above the weak scale that can mix with the Higgs boson. For example, to solve the proton decay problem may require the introduction of a new protecting gauge symmetry, such as baryon number or lepton number. Although it is not necessary to introduce spontaneous symmetry breaking in the conventional sense for all of these new symmetries, it is likely that at least one SM singlet scalar exists for such purposes which would then mix with the Higgs doublet of the SM and change its phenomenology.

## Universal suppression via invisible width

There are many theoretical examples demonstrating the possibility that the Higgs boson can decay into states that are not detectable by our current technology (for review, see e.g., ). In the extra dimensional framework there are two interesting and unrelated ideas that could lead to an invisible width of the Higgs boson while not affecting Higgs boson interactions with any other state.

The first idea comes from neutrinos in the bulk . The small neutrino masses that we now believe must exist could be entirely due to Dirac masses that are suppressed by a large volume factor. Since the right-handed neutrino is not charged under any SM gauge symmetry, it is the most likely of all SM fields to join gravity in the bulk. When performing the KK reduction of this state, one finds naturally that the neutrino Dirac mass can be in the sub-eV range from bulk volume suppression.

In the 4-dimensional picture, the sum over the enormous number of KK states accessible in $`h\nu _L\overline{\nu }_R^{(i)}`$ decays contributes substantially to the Higgs width:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inv}}(h\nu _L\overline{\nu }_R^{(i)})(1\mathrm{MeV})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}20}^{6\delta }\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_h}{150\mathrm{GeV}}}\right)^{1+\delta }\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_\nu ^2}{10^3\mathrm{eV}^2}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{3\mathrm{TeV}}{M_D}}\right)^{2+\delta },`$ (2)
where $`\delta `$ is the number of extra dimensions and $`M_D`$ is the fundamental scale of gravity. Each KK state is long-lived, so the above expression leads to a potentially significant invisible width of the Higgs boson .

There is another source of invisible width coming from kinetic mixing of the Higgs boson with graviscalars in the low scale gravity action ,

$`S=\xi {\displaystyle d^4x\sqrt{g_{\mathrm{ind}}}R(g_{\mathrm{ind}})H^{}H}.`$ (3)
Expanding this action out in terms of the physical graviton and graviscalar fields, substituting $`H=e^{i\eta }(v+h)/\sqrt{2}`$, and utilizing the equations of motion, we find a mixing term between the Higgs and graviscalar fields $`\phi _G^{(\stackrel{}{n})}`$ induced in the lagrangian ,

$`_{\mathrm{mix}}={\displaystyle \frac{2\xi vm_h^2}{M_P}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{3(\delta 1)}{\delta +2}}}h{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{n}}{}}\phi _G^{(\stackrel{}{n})}.`$ (4)
The mass gap spacing is sufficiently small between the KK excitations of the graviscalars that we can talk meaningfully about oscillations of the Higgs field into graviscalars. This oscillation is equivalent to giving the Higgs an invisible width,

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inv}}(h\phi _G^{(\stackrel{}{n})})(8\mathrm{MeV})\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}20}^{2\delta }\xi ^2S_{\delta 1}{\displaystyle \frac{3(\delta 1)}{\delta +2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{m_h}{150\mathrm{GeV}}}\right)^{1+\delta }\left({\displaystyle \frac{3\mathrm{TeV}}{M_D}}\right)^{2+\delta },`$ (5)
where $`S_{\delta 1}`$ is the surface area of a $`\delta `$-dimensional unit radius sphere.

Having established that extra dimensional theories have several ways in which they could produce an invisible decay width to the Higgs boson, we now analyze the effect it has on Higgs boson observables at high energy colliders.

Each rate observable is a multiplication of a particular Higgs boson production cross-section $`\sigma _i(h)`$ ($`i`$ labels the other final state particles in the process) times the relevant branching fraction $`B_j(h)`$ of the final state of the Higgs we are interested in. Ignoring the complications of experimental efficiencies and background reduction techniques, what will be measured is the total rate of a particular signal,

$`R_{ij}(h)=\sigma _i(h)B_j(h).`$ (6)
Since the width of the light Higgs boson is smaller than the experimental resolution, the only observables possible at the Tevatron and LHC are these rate observables $`R_{ij}(h)`$ and simple mass reconstruction of the Higgs boson.

An invisible width will not change the production cross section of the Higgs. However, the branching ratios into observable SM states do change:

$`B_i={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_i}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{tot}}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{inv}}}}=B_i^{\mathrm{SM}}(1B_{\mathrm{inv}}).`$ (7)
It is important to emphasize that the reduction in all SM branching fractions is independent of the final state, and is given by the universal value $`1B_{\mathrm{inv}}`$.

We therefore conclude that all SM rate observables involving the Higgs boson will be reduced by the same universal constant

$`R_{ij}(h)=R_{ij}^{\mathrm{SM}}(h)(1B_{\mathrm{inv}}).`$ (8)
Using only pure rate observables, it is therefore impossible to determine whether the cross-section or branching fraction (or both) is the cause of the reduction in rate.

## Universal suppression via singlet mixing

Suppose the low-energy effective theory contains another real singlet field $`S`$, which does not couple to any SM state, but mixes with the real SM Higgs field according to the lagrangian,

$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\mu h_{\mathrm{SM}})^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}^2h_{\mathrm{SM}}^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(_\mu S)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}m_S^2S^2\mu ^2h_{\mathrm{SM}}S+_I^{\mathrm{SM}}(h_{\mathrm{SM}})+\mathrm{}`$ (9)
where $`_I^{\mathrm{SM}}(h_{\mathrm{SM}})`$ contains the well-known interactions between the SM Higgs and other SM particles.

One possible origin of the field $`S`$ could be from symmetry breaking of a TeV scale $`U(1)`$ gauge symmetry. Extra U(1)’s are ubiquitous at the string scale in string model building and discrete remnants are very useful in protecting symmetries to all orders such as may be required to solve the proton decay issue in low-scale extra dimensional theories. Although all or some of the U(1) symmetries might possibly be broken by other means, condensing scalar fields obviously remain a viable and attractive means to accomplish symmetry breaking.

The coupling of a charged, complex singlet field $`\mathrm{\Phi }_S=S+iA_S`$ to the SM states would be

$`(\mathrm{\Phi }_S)={\displaystyle \frac{|\mathrm{\Phi }_S|^2}{\mathrm{\Lambda }^2}𝒪_i^{\mathrm{SM}}}+m_\mathrm{\Phi }^2|\mathrm{\Phi }_S|^2\lambda _1|\mathrm{\Phi }_S|^4\lambda _2|\mathrm{\Phi }_S|^2|H_{\mathrm{SM}}|^2+\mathrm{}`$ (10)
where $`𝒪_i^{\mathrm{SM}}`$ are all the marginal operators of the SM. After spontaneous symmetry breaking the $`A_S`$ field is eaten by the extra gauge symmetry and the $`S`$ is left over to mix with the remaining real degree of freedom $`h_{\mathrm{SM}}`$ from the SM Higgs doublet $`H_{\mathrm{SM}}`$. In the limit $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{large}`$ the coupling to SM fermions and gauge fields goes to zero, recovering the limit of no interactions of $`S`$ with SM fields except through its mixing with the SM Higgs.

The mass eigenstates $`\sigma `$ and $`h`$ are obtained by replacing $`S`$ and $`h_{\mathrm{SM}}`$ with

$`S`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{cos}\omega \sigma \mathrm{sin}\omega h`$
$`h_{\mathrm{SM}}`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{sin}\omega \sigma +\mathrm{cos}\omega h`$
where

$`\mathrm{tan}2\omega `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\mu ^2}{m_S^2m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}^2}},\mathrm{and}`$
$`m_{\sigma ,h}^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[m_S^2+m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}^2\pm \sqrt{(m_S^2m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}^2)^2+4\mu ^4}\right].`$
After diagonalizing the Lagrangian the new Higgs boson $`h`$ couples like the SM Higgs boson except its couplings to SM fields are reduced by a factor of $`\mathrm{cos}\omega `$. Since $`S`$ by construction has zero or, more realistically, negligible interactions with the SM states, the component of the mass eigenstate $`h`$ that overlaps with $`S`$ does not contribute to $`h`$ phenomenology. The field $`\sigma `$ picks up interactions by virtue of its overlap with $`h_{\mathrm{SM}}`$ of strength $`\mathrm{sin}\omega `$. Therefore, $`\sigma `$ also has an effect on the precision electroweak analysis.

We can quickly see the interesting effects of a heavy $`\sigma `$ by the following rough analysis. If there is non-zero $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$, the mixed singlet will also contribute at one-loop to the electroweak precision observables. The $`\mathrm{log}m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}`$ in Eq. 1 now becomes

$`\mathrm{log}(m_{h_{\mathrm{SM}}}/\mathrm{GeV})\mathrm{log}(m_h/\mathrm{GeV})+\mathrm{sin}^2\omega \mathrm{log}m_\sigma /m_h.`$ (11)
For $`m_\sigma >m_h`$ the upper limit on the Higgs mass is never greater than what it is in the SM. If the singlet mass is too high, the total $`\chi ^2`$ fit would be unacceptably high. In Fig. 1 I estimate the 95% C.L limit of the maximum value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$ allowed as a function of $`\sigma `$ mass for various Higgs masses. This plot gives a sense of how large the mixing is allowed to be for very heavy singlets inaccessible to high energy collider production. In that case only the lighter $`h`$ field will be accessible at the colliders, and all information must come from its study.

The $`h`$ field will decay with exactly the same branching fractions as the SM Higgs, however its production cross section will be suppressed by a factor of $`\mathrm{cos}^2\omega `$. For rate observables this translates into a suppression compared to the expected SM rates,

$`R_{ij}(h)=R_{ij}^{\mathrm{SM}}(h)(1\mathrm{sin}^2\omega ).`$ (12)
Notice that again the suppression factor is a universal, process independent suppression factor. By measuring any number of SM rate observables it is impossible to distinguish $`B_{\mathrm{inv}}`$ from $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$ (cf. eq. 8 with eq. 12).

## Challenges for present and future colliders

The power of experiment derives from its ability to collect otherwise inaccessible experience about nature, thus enabling us to refine our theories of natural law. An important measure of progress is the continuing ability to eliminate competing ideas.

In the above paragraphs I have outlined several generic ways in which a light Higgs boson can have the same signal rates as the SM Higgs except with a universal rescaling factor. That discussion highlights three main challenges that all present and future colliders should seriously consider:

* To what sensitivity can experiment measure deviations of the $`R_{ij}(h)`$ rate observables compared to the SM expectation?
* How much evidence can one accrue that all $`R_{ij}(h)`$ rate observables are rescaled by a universal suppression factor?
* Is it possible to distinguish a universal suppression factor in the branching fraction from a universal suppression factor in the production cross-section?

At the Tevatron, obtaining a $`3\sigma `$ evidence for a SM Higgs boson with mass up to $`180\mathrm{GeV}`$ will require summing over all possible rate observables in $`30\mathrm{fb}^1`$ per experiment of integrated luminosity . Significance of discovery and sensitivity to deviations in any one channel will be a significant challenge. One could attempt to measure a non-SM rate observable associated with the invisible decay of the Higgs boson, say, in $`p\overline{p}Zhl^+l^{}+\text{ / }E_T`$. However, even if the invisible branching ratio were 100% it is unlikely that Tevatron would find a significant signal for this very challenging rate observable . It only gets worse when the branching fraction decreases.

The LHC may be able to measure SM rate observables in many different channels. The approachable channels depend on the mass of the Higgs boson. For $`m_h=130\mathrm{GeV}`$ it may be possible to measure the rate observables in $`ggh\gamma \gamma `$, $`gghWWl^+l_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}+\text{ / }E_T`$, $`q\overline{q}Whlb\overline{b}+\text{ / }E_T`$, $`VVhWW^{}`$ and $`q\overline{q}WhWWW3l+\text{ / }E_T`$. The measurement of all rate observables at the LHC will never yield a result with better than 10% uncertainty with the possible exception of $`VVhWW^{}`$ with $`200\mathrm{fb}^1`$ of data  . Furthermore, the QCD uncertainties suggest significant challenges in the theoretical prediction of rates at hadron colliders .

It has been shown  that if one makes several assumptions about how the Higgs boson interacts with SM particles and makes the assumption that there is very little interaction with anything else (not satisfied in large invisible width case), one might be able to infer the total width of the SM Higgs to within 10-20% for $`120\mathrm{GeV}<m_h<250\mathrm{GeV}`$ with $`100\mathrm{fb}^1`$ of data. As the production rate goes down, indicating a larger invisible width or more mixing with a singlet, the statistical and systematic errors in inferring the Higgs width will increase.

Even in the ideal case that a large deviation is found for each rate observable, and the evidence points to a universal suppression, it still looks difficult to distinguish between the radically different prospects of a Higgs with an invisible decay rate and a Higgs that merely mixes with a weakly coupled singlet. Finding evidence for a non-SM rate observable using the invisible decay rate of the Higgs would be beneficial. However, in many cases just trying to see evidence for an invisibly decaying Higgs boson with 100% branching ratio is challenging enough  without contemplating measuring a rate observable associated with a smaller invisible branching ratio with sufficient precision to confirm $`R_{ij}(h)=R_{ij}^{\mathrm{SM}}(h)(1B_{\mathrm{inv}})`$.

The other way to distinguish between ideas at a hadron collider is to find the heavier Higgs state. The SM Higgs rate observables for this state would be the same as the SM Higgs boson of the same mass except rescaled by a factor $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$. Precisely measuring this rescaling factor for the heavier Higgs boson and adding it to the rescaling factor in eq. 12 would sum to 1. The heavier Higgs state would almost assuredly not be accessible at the Tevatron. If it is accessible at the LHC, and depending on its mass, one might be able to make these measurements with sufficient precision to test the weak singlet mixing hypothesis.

At an $`e^+e^{}`$ linear collider, there exist straightforward observables to distinguish $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$ from $`B_{\mathrm{inv}}`$ in the rate observables of eqs. 8 and 12. A most effective one is the measurement of the total cross-section for $`e^+e^{}hZ`$. One identifies the $`Z`$ from reconstructing its mass in $`Zf\overline{f}`$ decays, and measures the recoil spectrum from the beam constraint . Everything from the $`h`$ decays, whether visible or invisible, will show up as a peak at $`m_{\mathrm{recoil}}^2=m_h^2`$. This is not a $`\sigma _i(h)B_j(h)`$ rate observable, but rather a pure cross-section observable which would be unaffected by invisible decays of the Higgs but would be suppressed by singlet mixing.

The percent-level measurements of this cross-section and the myriad of other Higgs boson observables would easily confirm universal suppression to a compelling level and also distinguish between the possible reasons behind it. Furthermore, once the Higgs mass and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\omega `$ were known to high precision, one could conceivably combine it with the precision electroweak data to do an analysis similar to what was done to produce Fig. 1 and identify a new mass scale at higher energies for future colliders.

Acknowledgments:  JDW was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


text:
# High Resolution CO and H2 Molecular Line Imaging of a Cometary Globule in the Helix NebulaBased on observations carried out with the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer. IRAM is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany) and IGN (Spain).

## 1 Introduction

The cometary globules in the Helix nebula (NGC 7293) are among the most remarkable structures seen in planetary nebulae (PNe). They occur in large numbers in the lower ionization regions of the nebula, and appear in high resolution optical images as small ($`1\mathrm{}`$), convex, photo-ionized surfaces facing the central star, with comet-like tails extending in the opposite direction (e.g., Meaburn et al. 1992; O’Dell & Handron 1996). These structures are seen in other PNe (e.g., O’Dell et al. 2002) and are probably quite common, but they are best seen in the Helix nebula because it is the nearest example, at a distance of $`D200`$ pc ($`\mathrm{parallax}=4.70\pm 0.75`$ mas, Harris et al. 1997).

A key step in understanding the nature of the Helix globules has been their detection in CO by Huggins et al. (1992). With a resolution $`12\mathrm{}`$, the CO observations did not resolve their structure, but demonstrated that globules contain a major mass component of molecular gas, consistent with observations of dust, seen in absorption against the nebula emission by Meaburn et al. (1992). The molecular gas places important constraints on the origin and evolution of the globules, and provides a direct connection with the massive shell of neutral gas that surrounds the ionized nebula (Forveille & Huggins 1991; Young et al. 1999; Rodriguez, Goss, & Williams 2002). This connection is underscored by wide field imaging of the nebula in the infrared lines of H2 by Kastner et al. (1996), Cox et al. (1998), and Speck et al. (2002), at resolutions from 8″ to 2″, that show a highly fragmented envelope.

In order to determine the detailed relation between the molecular gas and the structure of the globules revealed by optical images, we have made new observations of the Helix nebula in both CO and H2 with significantly better resolution than previous observations. In this *Letter*, we report results on the molecular gas in a single cometary globule that resolve its head-tail structure.

## 2 Observations

The globule observed is a prominent feature lying within the ionized nebula to the north of the central star at offsets ($``$10″, +135″). It is designated C1 by Huggins et al. (1992) and its location is shown in Fig. 3a of Meaburn et al. (1998) where it is labeled “1”. Optical images of the globule from Walsh & Meaburn (1993) in H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\] 6584 Å and in \[O iii\] 5007Å, where it is seen in absorption against the nebular emission, are shown in the top right panels of Fig. 1.

The CO observations were made in the 2.6 mm (115 GHz) $`J=10`$ line using the IRAM interferometer at Plateau de Bure, France, in May 1999. The array consisted of five, 15 m antennas, equipped with SIS heterodyne receivers. The observations were made with the D configuration of the array, with maximum baselines of $`147`$ m. The primary beam size of the interferometer is 44″ at 2.6 mm, and the effective velocity resolution for the analysis is 0.2 km s-1. The uv data were Fourier transformed and CLEANed, using the Clark algorithm, and the restored Gaussian clean beam is $`7\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}9\times 3\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}8`$, at a position angle of 14°. The results are shown in Figs. 1 and 2.

Images of the H2 $`v=10`$ $`S(1)`$ emission in the northern quadrant of the Helix nebula were obtained with the SOFI infrared camera on the ESO NTT, in June, 2001. The instrument has a 10242 Hawaii HgCdTe array and was used with an image scale of 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$24 pixel-1. The seeing was 1$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$2. The observations were made with an H2 filter of width 0.028 $`\mathrm{\mu m}`$, centered at 2.124 $`\mathrm{\mu m}`$, well separated from the He i 21P0–21S 2.058 $`\mathrm{\mu m}`$ and H i 2.166 $`\mathrm{\mu m}`$ lines, the latter having a transmission of a few percent in the filter passband. Fifteen 1 min exposures were made, using sky offset positions at 5′ N, 5′ E, and 7′ NE. The individual images were sky cleaned, flat fielded, and combined with shift-and-add registration using the brightest stellar images.

Many globules are detected in the full H2 image, and the region around globule C1 is shown in the top, center-left panel in Fig. 1. An approximate calibration has been made by comparing the smoothed, full image with the data of Speck et al. (2002). The intensity of the emission at the head of the globule is $`10^4`$ erg s-1 cm-2 sr-1. Astrometry of the H2 and optical images was carried out using stars in the USNO catalog, and the registration between the images is $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}1`$ rms. The accuracy of the absolute positions for comparison with the CO interferometry is $``$ 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$3–0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5.

## 3 Properties of the Globule

### 3.1 Overview

The observations presented in Fig. 1 provide complementary views of the Helix globule. The CO 1–0 line, with an upper level of $`E_\mathrm{u}=5.5`$ K above the ground state, shows the overall distribution and kinematics of the cool molecular gas; the high lying ($`E_\mathrm{u}7,000`$ K) H2 $`v=10`$ $`S(1)`$ line traces excited molecular gas; the image in \[O iii\] shows the distribution of dust, seen in absorption against the nebular emission; and the image in H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\] shows the photo-ionized surfaces facing the central star.

The observations immediately confirm the molecular nature of the globule, and reveal some important details of its structure.

### 3.2 CO Structure and Kinematics

The CO 1–0 velocity-integrated intensity map (Fig. 1) is seen to be extended with respect to the telescope beam, and the deconvolved source size, assuming a Gaussian distribution, is $`2\mathrm{}\times 10\mathrm{}`$ (1″ corresponds to $`3\times 10^{15}`$ cm at 200 pc). The emission is marginally resolved in RA but is resolved in Dec, and extends roughly along the head-tail axis of the globule. The peak intensity is 2.6 K km s-1, and the total flux is 166 K km s-1 arcsec2.

The CO velocity-strip (Fig. 2) shows that to the south, toward the head of the globule, the line width is extremely narrow, $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=0.5`$ km s-1 (FWHM), and it broadens out to $`0.8`$ km s-1 farther north into the tail region. The CO radial velocity is precisely determined to be $`V_{\mathrm{lsr}}=27.9`$ km s-1 (the correction to $`V_{\mathrm{hel}}`$ is $``$2.9 km s-1), consistent with $`28.7\pm 2`$ km s-1 measured in \[N ii\] 6584Å by Meaburn et al. (1998). The systemic velocity of the whole envelope of the Helix nebula is $``$23 km s-1 (Young et al. 1999), so the globule is blue-shifted by $`5`$ km s-1. For a radial expansion velocity of the globule system of $`20`$ km s-1 (Young et al. 1999), the globule lies on the near side of the nebula, on a radius vector from the star inclined to the line of sight by $`75\mathrm{°}`$. The head-tail axis, assumed radial, is also seen at this angle.

The CO channel maps (Fig. 1) show the structure in the molecular gas. There are two peaks, offset 3″ N and 8″ N from the field center. The first is just north of the maximum absorption in the \[O iii\] image (centered at $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ N), and we identify this molecular emission with the head of the globule whose photo-ionized surface toward the central star is seen in the H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\] image. Substantial CO emission, however, extends away from the head into the tail region, and the second CO peak lies close to a second, weak maximum in the dust absorption image (at 8″ N). This extended CO emission, together with the line broadening into the tail accounts for the offset of the peak in the CO integrated intensity map from the head of the globule.

These observations demonstrate that the molecular gas in the cometary globule is *not* a compact spheroidal bullet, but has a substantial component extending into the tail region.

### 3.3 H2 Distribution and Excitation

The distribution of the H2 emission in the globule is strikingly different from that of CO (see Fig. 1). The strongest H2 emission occurs at the face of the globule toward the central star. There is little emission directly behind the globule, but observable emission extends to large distances ($`24\mathrm{}`$) along the tail. Remarkably, the H2 distribution most closely follows that of the ionized gas seen in H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\].

The high spatial resolution of our observations and the well defined geometry of the globule provide a unique perspective on the question of the excitation of the H2 (Cox et al. 1998), which affects its observed distribution. The bright H2 emission clearly arises in a thin surface layer in the molecular gas. Fig. 3 shows a close-up of the globule head, comparing the H2 and H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\] emission with \[O iii\]. The H2 emission forms a limb-brightened cap on the globule facing the central star, and lies just inside (0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5–1″) the halo of photo-ionized gas seen in H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\]. In the tail region too (Fig. 1), the H2 is enhanced near two H$`\alpha `$+\[N ii\] peaks, at 8″ N and 12″ N on the east side, which are directly illuminated by the star. More detailed observations are needed to determine whether these are separate, small globules along the line of sight, or sub-structures of the main tail.

The observed distribution of the H2 emission is in complete accord with the expectations of H2 excitation in a thin photo-dissociation region (PDR) at the surface of the molecular gas. The observed intensity of the line is probably consistent with this interpretation (Natta & Hollenbach 1998; Speck et al. 2002) although detailed PDR models of the globules have not yet been developed. The possibility that the observed distribution is caused by shocks is unlikely, in view of the small crossing time ($`400`$ yr) for shocks ($`v_\mathrm{s}5`$ km s-1) able to excite the $`v=10`$ $`S(1)`$ H2 line (e.g., Burton et al. 1992); shocks in the bulk of the molecular gas are ruled out by the absence of any disturbance in the CO emission with velocities larger than $`0.5`$ km s-1.

### 3.4 Physical Properties of the Molecular Gas

Using the CO 2–1 observations of the globule by Huggins et al. (1992), we find the 2–1/1–0 flux ratio to be $``$ 2–3 (assuming significant 1–0 flux is not resolved out on the shortest baselines), which suggests that the lines are at least partly optically thin, with an excitation temperature $``$ 18–40 K in the thin limit. For a representative value of 25 K and a CO abundance of $`3\times 10^4`$, the CO 1–0 flux gives a mass of molecular gas in the globule of $`M_\mathrm{m}1\times 10^5`$ M. The corresponding average density in a volume with projected dimensions of $`2\mathrm{}\times 10\mathrm{}`$, which includes the head and the tail seen in CO, is $`n_\mathrm{H}2\times 10^4`$ cm-3.

These values are consistent with a mass of $`2\times 10^5`$ M and $`n_\mathrm{H}4\times 10^5`$ cm-3 determined for the head of the globule by Meaburn et al. (1992) from the dust absorption seen in \[O iii\], corrected to a distance of 200 pc. The typical mass of photo-ionized gas at the surface of a globule, $`10^9`$ M (e.g., O’Dell & Handron 1996), is negligible in comparison.

## 4 Origins and Evolution

The structure and kinematics of the molecular gas in the head and in the tail of the globule provide basic constraints on their origin and evolution.

One scenario for the origin of globules is that they form in the atmosphere of the progenitor star and are carried out in the expanding circumstellar envelope (Dyson et al. 1989). In this case, the wind-swept appearance of the globules suggests a model in which material from the head is swept into the tail by a radially directed wind, and Dyson, Hartquist, & Biro (1993) have shown that the wind needs to be subsonic to form a narrow tail. Our observations constrain this model in showing no evidence for a wind-swept flow pattern at the present time. There is no difference in velocity between the CO emission in the head and the tail of the globule, and from the CO strip map (Fig. 2) the differential motion is $`0.2`$ km s-1 along the line of sight, or $`0.8`$ km s-1 in a radial direction, corrected for the inclination. This would produce a tail of length $`4\mathrm{}`$ in 5,000 yr which is likely the maximum time available for such a process. The tails could have been fully formed at an earlier epoch, or it might be that ablation occurs only from the ionized edges of the head of the globule, but this would not account for the presence of molecular gas seen in H2 along the whole length of the tail.

A different view of the gas dynamics around the globule at the present time is provided by the photo-evaporation model, which has been discussed in the context of the Helix globules by López-Martín et al. (2001). In this model, photo-ionization of the neutral globule, whose molecular core is unambiguously confirmed by our observations, produces an ionized out-flow from the surface. Given that the density of the ionized gas at the head of the globule is $`10^3`$ cm-3, and that of the ambient gas is much lower $`50`$ cm-3 (e.g., O’Dell & Handron 1996), any subsonic flow of the ambient gas around the globule is unlikely to have important dynamical effects in shaping the gas in the tail.

An alternative mechanism for growing a tail on a pre-existing globule is by shadowing (Cantó et al. 1998), which can form a tail behind the globule as the result of under-pressure of the gas in the shadowed region. For the simplest case of a neutral globule in ionized gas, this model produces only modest density increases in the tail, and is unlikely to lead to the substantial molecular tails revealed by the present observations. Striking effects of shadowing of the ionizing radiation are, however, seen in optical images of the Helix (e.g., Henry, Kwitter, & Dufour 1999), where long, radial plumes appear as extensions to globules and their tails. Similar shadowing of the stellar radiation at wavelengths longer than the Lyman limit must also occur, and the consequent reduction of the CO and H2 photo-dissociation rates in the shadowed regions must play a key role in preserving the molecular gas in the extended tails.

If globules originate close to the star as proposed by Dyson et al. (1989), the most crucial phase in their evolution occurs when they are overrun by the ionization front of the nebula. At this stage, the shadowing of pre-existing molecules or hydrodynamic flows, or both, could lead to globules with molecular tails. An alternative scenario is one in which the globules and their tails originate simultaneously in instabilities at the ionization front (e.g., Capriotti 1973). In this model, shadowing and possibly hydrodynamic flows would also likely play a role, and the fingers of gas which result from the instability could contribute directly to the formation of the tails. The later development of these two models will likely be similar, and can plausibly lead to the globules with substantial molecular tails that we now observe. Further studies should allow us to discriminate between them.

As for the fate of the globules, Meaburn et al. (1998) estimated an ablation rate for globule C1 of $`3\times 10^8`$ M yr-1 based on densities inferred from the \[O iii\] image, and an assumed ablation flow velocity of 10 km s-1. This implies an improbably short lifetime of $`500`$ yr which led Meaburn et al. to consider ad hoc, restricted flow models around the globule. The absence of an observable ablation flow in the globule reported here for CO ($`0.8`$ km s-1) completely resolves this problem, by increasing the original estimate of the ablation time scale by at least an order of magnitude. In fact, the current mass-loss rate of the globule is likely dominated by photo-evaporation (López-Martín et al. 2001), and the corresponding time scale is $`10^4`$ yr. Thus the globules are long lived, and may even escape the nebula.

We thank the staff of the Plateau de Bure interferometer for making the observations. This work has been supported in part by NSF grant AST-9986159 (to P.J.H.).