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# Simultaneous single-pulse observations of radio pulsars

## 1 Introduction

Simultaneous multi-frequency observations of radio pulsars in full polarization are proving to be a very powerful tool for investigating the puzzling pulsar emission problem. In Karastergiou et al. (khk01 (2001), hereafter Paper I), we provided a detailed introduction into the history of multi-frequency observations and the ongoing efforts to construct an emission theory which will be both self-consistent and consistent with the abundance of observational information from pulsars. We also laid out the guidelines for simultaneous polarimetric observations between different telescopes by presenting our time-aligning and re-binning techniques.

Observations of the Vela pulsar by Radhakrishnan & Cooke (rc69 (1969)) showed the radiation to be highly linearly polarized and to be emitted from near the magnetic pole. The observed position angle (PA) reflects the instantaneous projection of the dipolar magnetic field lines on the plane of the sky and thus changes with the rotation of the star (the so-called rotating vector model, RVM). Later, Manchester et al. (mth75 (1975)) demonstrated that the percentage polarization could vary between 0 and 100% across pulse longitude, that significant circular polarization was often present and, perhaps most surprisingly, that significantly different PAs were seen at the same pulse longitude. These PA jumps were often very close to $`90^o`$ and thus the linear polarization occurred in ‘orthogonally polarized modes’ (OPM). The existence of OPM was a key discovery (Backer & Rankin 1980). By using simple arguments it can be shown that the presence of OPM acting together in the emission process can reduce the fraction of polarization observed (Stinebring et al. 1984, McKinnon 1997, McKinnon & Stinebring 1998). Subsequently, single pulse polarization studies by Gil & Lyne (1995) demonstrated that OPM was responsible for the low percentage polarization and very complicated PA variations in the integrated profile of PSR B0329+54, in which two simple OPM modes existed.

Melrose & Stoneham (ms77 (1977)) and Barnard & Arons (ba86 (1986)) proposed a model for the OPM in pulsars by considering propagation effects (refraction) which cause rays in the two natural modes of the plasma to split. This has been further developed by McKinnon (mck97 (1997)) who showed that a model involving birefringence of the two modes can explain the observed pulse width and fractional polarization changes with frequency.

In this paper, we shall focus on the polarization behaviour of PSR B1133+16 and use the results to draw some general conclusions about the pulsar emission processes.

## 2 Observations

On 2000 January 4, we used the Effelsberg 100-m telescope at 4.85 GHz and the Lovell 76-m telescope in Jodrell Bank at 1.41 GHz to observe PSR B1133+16 (see von Hoensbroech et al. hkk98 (1998), von Hoensbroech & Xilouris hx97 (1997) for details on the Effelsberg observing system and Paper I and Gould & Lyne gl98 (1998) for the Jodrell Bank system). Both telescopes were simultaneously on source for $`93`$ minutes or 4778 pulse periods. For the purpose of this paper, we also make use of Jodrell Bank data observed at 610 MHz (Gould & Lyne gl98 (1998)), as well as Effelsberg 2.69 GHz data (Paper I) from different epochs. The data from each telescope were calibrated and converted into the EPN-format (Lorimer et al. ljs98 (1998)), after being aligned and re-binned to a common reference frame and temporal resolution (in this case 1.16 ms per bin), as described in Paper I.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 The behaviour of modes with frequency

Fig. 1 shows the integrated pulse profile at 1.41 GHz along with the linear polarization at both frequencies. In this paper we ignore the circular polarization, which is generally low throughout the pulse. Fig. 1 also shows the PA distribution as a function of phase in a grey-scale representation at both 1.41 GHz and 4.85 GHz. It can be seen that at the peak of the first component two orthogonal modes are clearly present at both frequencies. In the second component one mode dominates at 1.4 GHz but two modes can be seen at the higher frequency. Integrated profiles like these have been used to question the broad-band nature of OPM (e.g Stinebring et al. 1984); for the first time, however, we can use the simultaneous nature of our data to determine this issue.

At each of the two observed frequencies we compute the PA only if the flux density of the linear polarization exceeds twice the noise. We do this for each phase bin of every pulse; an example of one such bin near the peak of the first component is given in Fig 2. Under incoherent addition of the OPMs, the PA is only permitted to take one of two discrete values, exactly $`90^o`$ apart. In this bin, it is clear that the orthogonal PA modes are present at both frequencies, although the spread in PA of each mode is somewhat larger than one would expect from a delta-function convolved with instrumental noise (Stinebring et al. 1984, McKinnon & Stinebring 1998,). Two clear results are apparent in the figure. First, at 1.41 GHz the ratio of pulses in the two modes is 65:35 whereas at 4.85 GHz this ratio is 54:46. The modes are occurring more equally at 4.85 GHz and the fractional linear polarization has also decreased. Secondly, all four possible combinations between the two modes at the two frequencies occur, i.e. four islands are visible in Fig. 2. Given the difference in the bimodal distributions at the two frequencies, such a distribution of points in the plot must arise, even in the case when there is no correlation between the PAs of the two frequencies. Hence, it is not readily clear from Fig. 2 whether the cases of agreement and disagreement of OPM, represented by the four islands, suggest a high or low degree of correlation between the frequencies. Obviously, the correlation is not perfect since the individual distributions are different — which is an important result already – but some degree of correlation may still exist. We have to test whether the distribution of points in the PA-PA plot can be attributed to some random combination of PA-values at different frequencies, or whether the knowledge of the polarization mode at one frequency allows one to predict the mode at the other to some extent. We test the degree of correlation by comparing the observed PA-PA distributions to the null hypothesis that the two frequencies are completely uncorrelated.

We re-bin our PA distributions into histograms of 12 bins across the $`180^o`$ range of PA values. By doing this we create a 2-dimensional $`12\times 12`$ histogram $`Obs(i,j)`$, which represents the number of occurrences of all possible PA-PA pairs as they are observed. Then we use Monte Carlo simulations (MCS) to randomly combine our two observed PA distributions. We repeat this process a large number of times, thus obtaining another 2-dimensional histogram $`Null(i,j)`$, similar to $`Obs(i,j)`$, where the population in each square bin is the mean result from all MCS iterations. At the same time, we can calculate the standard deviation, $`\sigma `$, representing the statistical fluctuations which we can expect in each square bin of the null hypothesis case. We now subtract the null hypothesis $`Null(i,j)`$ from the observed 2-d histogram $`Obs(i,j)`$, and compare this difference with the expected noise in each square bin, $`\sigma `$. This will give us the significance in units of $`\sigma `$ that an observed number of points $`Obs(i,j)`$ is not consistent with the null-hypothesis of no correlation.

Such a null hypothesis test can only be applied reasonably to bins where we observe bimodal PA distributions at both frequencies, as other cases cannot be distinguished from a random combination of PA values per se. Hence, in Fig. 3 we plot a 2-d PA-PA histogram only for the phase bins of the leading pulse component where the individual PA distributions are bimodal. The solid areas denote a difference between $`Obs(i,j)`$ and $`Null(i,j)`$ of more than $`3\sigma `$ surrounded by a lighter coloured area marking differences exceeding $`2\sigma `$. Hatched areas denote differences of less than $`3\sigma `$ surrounded again by lighter coloured area of $`2\sigma `$ significance. We can clearly see that when one mode occurs at one frequency, it also prefers to occur at the other frequency: the same modes combine much more times than the null hypothesis of no-correlation predicts (black areas on the x=y diagonal).

In cases where the modes disagree, one mode does not necessarily favour a value at the other frequency that is different by exactly $`90^o`$. On the contrary, for most of the time the PA value at the other frequency seems to be completely unrelated, resulting in a distribution of points outside the diagonal islands that is mostly consistent with the null hypothesis. This is an interesting result with possible implications on the widths of PA distributions at given frequencies. Only in few cases is a lack of points observed when compared to the null hypothesis (hatched areas), supporting an increased degree of correlation between the frequencies. We note that Fig. 3 does not change qualitatively by using grids coarser than $`12\times 12`$.

The results in this section therefore show that there is a high degree of correlation between the two frequencies. The same mode tends to dominate at both frequencies and to this extent OPM is broadband in nature. At the same time, the modes occur more equally and the fractional polarization is lower at the higher frequency. This will be discussed in more detail below.

### 3.2 The $`x`$ and $`s`$ parameters

According to Stinebring et al. (scr84 (1984)), the emission we receive at any pulse phase is the instantaneous, incoherent superposition of the two OPMs. The PA value is that of the strongest mode. Two important parameters can be constructed to investigate the strength and behaviour of the modes.

The first parameter, $`x`$, represents the relative popularity of the PA of one mode with respect to the other. By studying the individual PA distributions for each frequency, it is possible to identify the OPMs across the phase bins of the pulse. We can identify the PA of each mode in each bin $`i`$ by finding the mean PA (or tracing the PA swing when the mode seems absent) and identifying a PA range of $`30^o`$ each side of the mean, which corresponds to the typical width of the PA histograms, as shown in Fig. 2. $`M_1`$ is the number of pulses where the PA corresponds to mode 1 and $`M_2`$ the same for mode 2. For each of the frequencies we studied the occurrence of $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$ at every pulse phase bin.

From the values of $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$ we have calculated for each phase bin, we construct $`x=\frac{M_1M_2}{M_1+M_2}`$. The value of $`x`$ depends on the relative values of $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$. If they are equal, $`x`$ will obviously be zero. On the other hand, if one of them is larger than the other, $`x`$ will diverge from zero, 1 and $`1`$ being the extreme cases, where only one of the modes is present.

The second parameter is $`s`$, which represents the relative strengths of the modes and varies from $`1`$ to 1 in a similar fashion to $`x`$. $`s`$ is defined as $`s=\frac{S_1S_2}{S_1+S_2}`$, where each phase bin is assumed to be the incoherent sum of two 100% orthogonally polarized modes with individual flux densities $`S_1`$ and $`S_2`$ (Stinebring et al. scr84 (1984)). In the case where the modes have a negligible fraction of circular polarization (as is the case here), then $`|s|=L/I`$, where $`L`$ is the linear polarization and $`I`$ the total power.

We used the simultaneously observed data to study the behaviour of $`x`$ and $`s`$ with frequency. We noticed that, although they are both phase dependent, they generally seem to have values closer to zero at 4.85 GHz than at 1.41 GHz (Fig. 4). We then used other observations of PSR B1133+16 to see if this behaviour is consistent at other frequencies. The Jodrell Bank 610 MHz data and the Effelsberg 2.69 GHz data, which are of comparable length to the simultaneous data, clearly show this remarkable trend. In other words, the times $`M_2`$ or $`M_1`$ determine the PA become more equal towards higher frequencies, while at the same time mode 2 is becoming closer in strength to mode 1 ($`s`$ closer to 0).

## 4 Discussion

In the case of PSR B1133+16 we have found the following trends of the OPMs:

* OPMs have a spectral dependence: the polarized intensities of the modes ($`s`$) and their frequency of occurrence ($`x`$) are becoming comparable at higher frequencies;
* we observe phase bins that simultaneously show a high value of $`x`$ and a low value of $`s`$;
* despite the spectral evolution, we find a strong connection between the two frequencies: the same polarization modes prefer to appear together;
* different modes, however, do appear at the two frequencies, implying a degree of de-correlation.

The first two trends are also supported by the 610 MHz and 2.69 GHz data.

How well do these observational trends fit in with the model of superposed orthogonal modes? A high value of $`x`$ implies that a given mode dominates most of the time. A low value of $`s`$ implies that the difference in the average strengths of these two modes are rather small. These two facts can only be reconciled by postulating that the amplitudes of the two modes are highly correlated (McKinnon & Stinebring 1998). A physical mechanism which can induce mode splitting with a high degree of amplitude correlation is birefringence and this means of mode creation in the relativistic pulsar plasma was proposed by Barnard & Arons (1986).

We also observe that, at least in this pulsar, $`x`$ decreases more rapidly with frequency than does $`s`$. This clearly implies that the correlation coefficient is decreasing with increasing frequency even though the relative strengths of the modes change rather little. One observational consequence of this is that we would expect that the distribution of linear polarization in the single pulses has a rather low dispersion when the correlation coefficient is high, compared to when the correlation coefficient is low. This is indeed seen in the data; the distribution of linear polarization is broader in the single pulses observed at 4.85 GHz.

We therefore surmise that the relative strength of the modes is set by the polarization of the input beam to the bi-refringent medium and that this is largely constant with frequency. The frequency trend in the observed value of $`s`$ arises from the refractive index of the modes being frequency dependent - at some ‘critical’ frequency and above, the beams overlap, causing a decrease in $`s`$. In this pulsar, $`s`$ changes rather little with frequency, as do the mode–separated pulse widths between 1.41 GHz and 4.85 GHz and presumably the critical frequency lies near 1.4 GHz. In most other pulsars, however, the critical frequency seems to lie above 5 GHz (Xilouris et al.xk96 (1996)).

The third and fourth conclusions we reach, together with the fact that total power is well correlated in our data (as was the case for PSR B0329+54 in Paper I), also point towards propagation effects. They support the idea that OPMs, which could be created by the splitting of the two natural orthogonal polarization modes in the magnetosphere by a propagation effect like birefringence, endure further propagation effects that change their relative strengths. One explanation could be that the absorption (e.g. cyclotron absorption) of one or other of the modes is frequency dependent with the higher frequencies more affected than lower frequencies. A change in relative strength could switch the dominant mode. The obvious manifestations of this are the clearly seen OPM disagreements at the two frequencies.

A further observational test of propagation effects and the superposed mode ideas comes from the circular polarization. One expects that a given mode is associated with a given sign of circular polarization and that there is therefore a strong correlation between the dominant mode and the sign of circular polarization in the single pulse data. Given that we see a high correlation between mode occurrences at different frequencies, will we also see a correlation between the handedness of the circular polarization? Simultaneous, multi-frequency, single–pulse observations are ideal as a test to identify propagation effects at work on the radiation traveling through the plasma in the pulsar magnetosphere.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thank Duncan Lorimer for his valuable suggestions on the applied methodology. We also thank all the people working at the participating telescopes who made these observations possible. Aris Karastergiou also expresses his gratitude to the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst for their financial support. We thank the referee, Mark McKinnon, for suggestions on improving the paper.


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# Black hole, string ball, and 𝑝-brane production at hadronic supercolliders

## I Introduction

The standard model (SM) of particle physics, though it can fit most of the present data, leaves a few fundamental problems unsolved, one of which is the gauge hierarchy problem. Since the second revolution of string theories, a crop of models with extra dimensions have been proposed to solve various theoretical problems. In an attractive model of large extra dimensions or TeV quantum gravity (ADD model) arkani , the fundamental Planck scale can be as low as a few TeV. This is made possible by localizing the SM particles on a brane (using the idea of D-branes in Type I or II string theory), while gravity is free to propagate in all dimensions. The observed Planck scale ($`10^{19}`$ GeV) is then a derived quantity. Extensive phenomenology studies have been carried out in recent years. Signatures for the ADD model can be divided into two catergories: sub-Planckian and trans-Planckian. The former is the one that was studied extensively, while the latter just recently received more attention, especially black hole production in hadronic collisions.

A black hole (BH) has been illusive for decades, as we cannot directly measure any properties of it, not to mention the production of black holes in any terrestrial experiments. This is due to the fact that in order to produce black holes in collider experiments one needs a center-of-mass energy above the Planck scale ($`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}10^{19}`$ GeV), which is obviously inaccessible at the moment.

In models of large extra dimensions, the properties of black holes are modified and interesting signatures emerge hole ; banks ; emp . The fact that the fundamental Planck scale is as low as TeV also opens up an interesting possibility of producing a large number of black holes at collider experiments (e.g. LHC) scott ; greg . Reference emp  showed that a BH localized on a brane will radiate mainly in the brane, instead of radiating into the Kaluza-Klein states of gravitons of the bulk. In this case, the BH so produced will decay mainly into the SM particles, which can then be detected in the detector. This opportunity has enabled investigation of the properties of BH at terrestrial collider experiments. There have been a number of such studies scott ; greg ; hoss ; me ; giddings ; casa-lhc ; hofmann ; park ; greg2 ; giudice ; blei ; solo ; rizzo ; RS-b  at hadronic colliders. A typical signature of the BH decay is a high multiplicity, isothermal event, very much like a spherical “fireball.” On the other hand, BH production has also been studied in cosmic ray experiments kay ; feng ; anch ; ratt ; ring ; uhe ; kowalski ; han . The ultrahigh energy cosmic rays (UHECR) serve as a very energetic beam hitting on the atmosphere as the target. The primary ingredient of UHECR is probably protons or light nuclei, or could be photons or even neutrinos. If it is made up of protons, it could produce a large number of BH’s up at the top of the atmosphere, producing a giant air shower. If it is neutrinos, it could produce very interesting horizontal air showers feng ; anch ; ratt ; ring ; uhe , or black holes within a km-sized neutrino telescope kowalski ; han .

An important quantity of a BH is its entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. To fulfill the thermodynamical description, a BH requires a large entropy of order of 25 giddings . Such an entropy requirement implies that the BH mass must be at least five times the fundamental Planck scale giddings ; me . This mass requirement makes the BH production not as large as previously calculated in a number of works scott ; greg ; rizzo , first pointed out in Ref. me . In addition, the signature of large multiplicity decay of a BH can only happen when the entropy is large. Even taking into account this mass requirement, the event rate is still large enough for detection. On the other hand, there were arguments from Voloshin that the cross section should be multiplied by an exponential factor $`\mathrm{exp}(\frac{S_{\mathrm{BH}}}{n+1})`$ volo  (we shall get back to this point later in Sec. III). However, this suppression factor becomes too severe for the production rate to be interesting, contrary to the conclusion of Ref. rizzo , because of the large entropy requirement. There have been continuous theoretical efforts to calculate the production and decay of BH’s in particle collisions casa ; kanti ; kanti0 ; kim ; ear ; jevi ; hsu ; bilke ; stoj .

Other interesting trans-Planckian phenomena include string balls emparan , $`p`$-branes ahn ; jain ; feng-p , and TeV string behaviors oda ; tevstring . Dimopoulos and Emparan emparan  pointed out that when a BH reaches a minimum mass, it transits into a state of highly excited and jagged strings – a string ball (SB). The transition point is at

$$M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}=\frac{M_s}{g_s^2},$$
(1)
where $`M_s`$ is the string scale and $`g_s`$ is the string coupling. Naively, SB’s are stringy progenitors of BH’s. The BH correspondence principle states that properties of a BH with a mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}=M_s/g_s^2`$ match those of a string ball with $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}=M_s/g_s^2`$. We can then equate the production cross sections of SB and BH at the transition point. In fact, we shall use this argument to write down the cross section for the SB at the transition point. The existence of string balls could be argued from the string point of view. When the energy of the scattering reaches the string scale, the scattering of particles is no longer described by point-particle scattering but replaced by string-string scattering. As the energy goes further up, the strings become highly excited, jagged and entangled string states, and become like a string ball. When the energy reaches the transition point, it turns into a BH. Previously, in the discussion of a BH, we mentioned a large entropy requirement on the BH in order for the object to be a BH. Such a large mass requirement makes the production cross section smaller than previously thought. Here in the case of SB’s, the mass requirement is substantially lower, thus the production rate is significantly higher. Hence, an SB is more interesting in the experimental point of view if it decays with a distinct signature. Dimopoulos and Emparan emparan  argued that the decay of a SB is similar to that of a BH, i.e., a high multiplicity decay into the SM particles, though in some intermediate stages the SB decays more likely into bulk particles.

Another interesting trans-Planckian object is the $`p`$-brane. A BH can be considered a $`0`$-brane. In particle collisions, if one considers BH production, one should also consider $`p`$-brane production. In fact, the properties of $`p`$-branes reduce to those of a BH in the limit $`p0`$. In extra dimension models, in which there are large extra dimensions and small extra dimensions of the size of the Planck length, let a $`p`$-brane wrap on $`r`$ small and $`pr`$ large dimensions. It was found ahn  that the production of $`p`$-branes is comparable to BH’s only when $`r=p`$, i.e., the $`p`$-brane wraps entirely on the small dimensions only. If $`r<p`$, the production of $`p`$-branes would be suppressed by powers of $`(M_{}/M_{\mathrm{Pl}})`$, where $`M_{}`$ is the fundamental scale of the $`4+n`$ dimensions. Therefore, here we only consider the case in which $`r=p`$. The decay of $`p`$ branes is not well understood. One interesting possibility is cascade into branes of lower dimensions until they reach the dimension of zero. Whether the zero brane is stable depends on the model. Another possibility is the decay into brane and bulk particles, thus experimentally the decay can be observed. Or it can be a combination of cascade into lower-dimensional branes and direct decays.

In this work, we study the production rates of the BH’s, SB’s, and $`p`$-branes in hadronic collisions, with emphasis on the LHC and the VLHC. The organization is as follows. In the next section, we briefly describe the relation between the fundamental Planck scale and the string scale. In Sec. III, we describe the production of BH’s, SB’s, and $`p`$-branes. In Sec. IV, we show our numerical results for the LHC and VLHC. We discuss the decays in Sec. V and conclude in Sec. VI.

## II Planck and string scales

First let us address more clearly the configuration of the space-time. Let there be $`n`$ total extra dimensions with $`m`$ small extra dimensions and $`nm`$ large extra dimensions. When we say small extra dimensions, we mean the size is of order of $`1/M_{}`$, the fundamental Planck scale. The observed 4D Planck scale $`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ is then a derived quantity given by arkani

$$M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2=M_{}^{2+n}V_mV_{nm},$$
(2)
where $`V_m`$ and $`V_{nm}`$ are the volumes of the extra $`m`$ and $`nm`$ dimensions, respectively, given by

$$V_m=L_m^m\left(\frac{l_m}{M_{}}\right)^m;V_{nm}=L_{nm}^{nm}\left(\frac{l_{nm}}{M_{}}\right)^{nm},$$
(3)
where we have expressed the lengths $`L_m,L_{nm}`$ in units of Planckian length $`1/M_{}`$. 111In the case of toroidal compactification, the length $`L_i=2\pi R_i(i=m,nm)`$ where $`R_i`$ is the radius of the torus. Suppose the small extra dimension has the size of $`L_m1/M_{}`$, i.e., $`l_m1`$, then

$$M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2=M_{}^2\left(l_{nm}\right)^{nm}.$$
(4)
The fundamental Planck scale $`M_{}`$ is lowered to the TeV range if the size $`L_{nm}`$ is taken to be very large, of order $`O(\mathrm{mm})`$.

The relation of the observed Planck scale to the string scale $`M_s`$ is given by tye

$$M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2\frac{M_s^{2+n}}{g_s^2}V_mV_{nm},$$
(5)
where we again take the small extra dimensions of size $`L_m1/M_{}`$. From Eqs. (2) and (5) we can relate the string scale with the fundamental Planck scale as

$$M_{}^{2+n}\frac{M_s^{2+n}}{g_s^2},$$
(6)
where we take the proportional constant of order $`O(1)`$, which depends on different compactification configurations. We shall also use the more conventional definition of the fundamental Planck scale $`M_D`$ related to $`M_{}`$ by

$$M_D^{n+2}=\frac{(2\pi )^n}{8\pi G_{4+n}}=\frac{(2\pi )^n}{8\pi }M_{}^{n+2},$$
(7)
where $`G_{4+n}`$ is the gravitational constant in $`D=4+n`$ dimensions (used in the Einstein equation: $`_{AB}\frac{1}{2}g_{AB}=8\pi G_{4+n}T_{AB}`$). Then $`M_D`$ is related to the string scale $`M_s`$ as

$$M_D^{n+2}=K\frac{M_s^{n+2}}{g_s^2},$$
(8)
for a constant $`K`$ of order $`O(1)`$. In the next section we shall simply use $`K=1`$ for discussions and cross-section calculations.

## III Production

### III.1 Black holes

A black hole is characterized by its Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, which depends on the mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ of the BH. A simplified picture for BH production is as follows. When the colliding partons have a center-of-mass (c.o.m.) energy above some thresholds of order of the Planck mass and the impact parameter less than the Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, a BH is formed and almost at rest in the c.o.m. frame. The BH so produced will decay thermally (regardless of the incoming particles) and thus isotropically in that frame.

This possibility was first investigated for the LHC in Refs. scott ; greg . In Refs. scott ; greg ; hoss , black hole production in hadronic collisions is calculated in $`21`$ subprocesses: $`ij\mathrm{BH}`$, where $`i,j`$ are incoming partons. The black hole so produced is either at rest or traveling along the beam pipe such that its decay products (of high multiplicity) have a zero net transverse momentum ($`p_T`$). Giddings and Thomas scott  and Dimopoulos and Landsberg greg  demonstrated that a BH so produced will decay with a high multiplicity.

In Ref. me , we pointed out the “$`ij\mathrm{BH}+\mathrm{others}`$” subprocesses, such that the BH is produced with a large $`p_T`$ before it decays. The “$`ij\mathrm{BH}+\mathrm{others}`$” subprocesses can be formed when the c.o.m. energy of the colliding particles is larger than the BH mass; the excess energy will be radiated as other SM particles. 222 Another viewpoint on BH formation is as follows. The BH is formed when the two partons approach each other in a very short distance ($`<R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$), and everything, including the “extra partons,” will be hidden behind the horizon. Thus, the entire energy is contained within the BH, which is considered a quantum state rather than a particle. In this picture, there is no transverse momentum given to the BH, unless by the initial-state radiation of the incoming partons. This was already studied by a Monte Carlo approach in Ref. greg .  In such subprocesses, the “others” are just the ordinary SM particles and usually of much lower multiplicity than the decay products of the BH. Therefore, the signature is as follows: on one side of the event there are particles of high multiplicity (from the decay of the BH), the total $`p_T`$ of which is balanced by a much lower number of particles on the other side. Such a signature is very clean and should have very few backgrounds.

The next natural question to ask is how large the event rate is. Collider phenomenology is only possible if the event rate is large enough, especially if we want to study BH properties. It was first pointed out in Ref. greg  that the BH production rate is so enormous that the LHC is in fact a BH factory. However, this has not taken into account the entropy factor of the BH. It was shown in Ref. me  that with a large entropy requirement ($`S_{\mathrm{BH}}25`$) the BH production rate decreases substantially, but still affords enough events for detection. For example, the production cross section is as high as 1 pb for $`M_D=1.5`$ TeV and $`n=4`$ with $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}=5M_D`$ at the LHC. This implies $`10^5`$ events with an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1. Of course, if we relaxed this entropy constraint, the production cross sections would be increased tremendously, but the cross sections have to be interpreted with care because of the presence of large string effects in this regime.

The Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ of a BH of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ in $`4+n`$ dimensions is given by myers

$$R_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{1}{M_D}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}\left(\frac{2^n\pi ^{\frac{n3}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{n+3}{2})}{n+2}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}=\frac{1}{M_D}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}f(n),$$
(9)
where $`f(n)`$ is introduced for convenience and $`M_D`$ is the fundamental Planck scale in the model of large extra dimensions already defined in Eq. (7). The radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is much smaller than the size of the extra dimensions. BH production is expected when the colliding partons with a center-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ pass within a distance less than $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. A black hole of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is formed and the rest of the energy, if there is any, is radiated as ordinary SM particles. This semiclassical argument calls for a geometric approximation for the cross section for producing a BH of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ as

$$\sigma (M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(10)
In the $`21`$ subprocess, the c.o.m. energy of the colliding partons is just the same as the mass of the BH, i.e., $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, which implies a subprocess cross section

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s})=d\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2\delta \left(1M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2/\widehat{s}\right)=\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(11)
On the other hand, for the $`2k(k2)`$ subprocesses the subprocess cross section is

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s})=_{(M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2)_{\mathrm{min}}/\widehat{s}}^1d\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(12)
Another important quantity that characterizes a BH is its entropy given by myers

$$S_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{4\pi }{n+2}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{n+2}{n+1}}\left(\frac{2^n\pi ^{\frac{n3}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{n+3}{2})}{n+2}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}.$$
(13)
The variation of $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ versus the ratio $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_D`$ is shown in Fig. 1. To ensure the validity of the above classical description of a BH giddings , the entropy must be sufficiently large, of order 25 or so. From the figure we can see that when $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_D5`$, the entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}25`$. Therefore, to avoid getting into the nonperturbative regime of the BH and to ensure the validity of the semiclassical formula, we restrict the mass of the BH to be $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}yM_D`$, where $`yM_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}/M_D`$ is of order 5.

Voloshin volo  pointed out that the semiclassical argument for the BH production cross section is not given by the geometrical cross-section area, but, instead, suppressed by an exponential factor,

$$\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{S_{\mathrm{BH}}}{n+1}\right).$$
(14)
There are, however, counter arguments giddings ; emparan  that the simple geometric formula should be valid. 333 The controversy of using the exponential suppression factor seems to be resolved by now. The naive geometric cross section is correct, as pointed out or even derived by various authors in Refs. casa ; kanti ; kanti0 ; kim ; ear ; jevi ; hsu ; bilke ; emparan . In particular, Ref. ear  explicitly pointed out a logical error by Voloshin and derived the geometric cross-section formula. In Ref. me , we have considered both forms of cross sections: the naive $`\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2`$ and the $`\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2`$ multiplied with the exponential factor of Eq. (14). The suppression factor renders the cross section too small for detection, because the exponential factor contains the entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, which has to be sufficient large (e.g., $`25`$) to define a black hole. The suppression is more than two orders of magnitude and, therefore, we shall not be concerned with this suppression factor anymore. This seems to contradict the results of Ref. rizzo , in which Rizzo concluded that even when Voloshin’s suppression factor is included, the cross section is still large enough, because he did not impose a large entropy requirement on the validity of the BH. If he had done so, he would also have gotten a very large suppression. Nevertheless, careful interpretation is needed if the BH has only a small entropy.

### III.2 String balls

Dimopoulos and Emparan emparan  pointed out that when a BH reaches a minimum mass, it transits into a state of highly excited and jagged strings, dubbed string ball. They are the stringy progenitors of BH’s and share some properties of BH’s, such as large production cross sections at hadronic supercolliders and similar signatures when they decay. They made an important observation emparan  that the minimum mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}`$ (the transition point) above which a BH can be treated general-relativistically is $`M_s/g_s^2`$, where $`M_s`$ and $`g_s`$ are the string scale and the string coupling, respectively. Below this transition point, the configuration is dominated by string balls. Since the mass of a string ball is lower than a BH, the corresponding production cross section is larger than that of a BH. Thus, at the LHC, string ball production may be more important.

According to the BH correspondence principle, the properties of a BH with a mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}=M_s/g_s^2`$ match those of a string ball with a mass $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}=M_s/g_s^2`$. Therefore, the production cross section of a string ball or a BH should be smoothly joined at $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}=M_s/g_s^2`$, i.e.,

$$\sigma (SB)|_{M_{SB}=M_s/g_s^2}=\sigma (BH)|_{M_{BH}=M_s/g_s^2}.$$

The production cross section for string balls with mass between the string scale $`M_s`$ and $`M_s/g_s`$ grows with $`s`$ until $`M_s/g_s`$, beyond which, due to unitarity, it should stay constant. Therefore, we can use the BH cross section and match to the string ball cross section at the transition point $`M_s/g_s^2`$. This string ball cross section then stays constant between $`M_s/g_s`$ and $`M_s/g_s^2`$. Then below $`M_s/g_s`$ the string ball cross section grows like $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}^2/M_s^4`$.

The cross sections for the SB or BH are given by

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\mathrm{SB}/\mathrm{BH})=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\pi }{M_D^2}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{2}{n+1}}\left[f(n)\right]^2\hfill & \frac{M_s}{g_s^2}M_{\mathrm{BH}}\hfill \\ \frac{\pi }{M_D^2}\left(\frac{M_s/g_s^2}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{2}{n+1}}\left[f(n)\right]^2=\frac{\pi }{M_s^2}\left[f(n)\right]^2\hfill & \frac{M_s}{g_s}M_{\mathrm{SB}}\frac{M_s}{g_s^2}\hfill \\ \frac{\pi g_s^2M_{\mathrm{SB}}^2}{M_s^4}\left[f(n)\right]^2\hfill & M_sM_{\mathrm{SB}}\frac{M_s}{g_s}\hfill \end{array},$$
(15)
in which we have set $`M_D^{n+2}=\frac{M_s^{n+2}}{g_s^2}`$ as in Eq. (8) with $`K=1`$. A graphical presentation of these cross sections is shown in Fig. 2 for $`n=27`$.

In the next section, when we calculate the production cross sections for BH’s and SB’s, we use the above equation, together with Eq. (8) with $`K=1`$. The production then depends on the following parameters: $`M_s,g_s,n`$, and $`M_D`$. The $`M_D`$ can be determined by Eq. (8). We also require that at the BH-SB transition point, $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}=M_s/g_s^2`$, the mass of the BH is already at $`5M_D`$ (this ensures that the BH has a sufficiently large entropy $`25`$ giddings ). Therefore, the production cross sections depends on $`M_s`$ and $`n`$ only. We shall present the results in terms of $`M_D`$ and $`n`$ for easy comparison with existing literature.

### III.3 $`p`$-Branes

A black hole can be considered a zero-brane. In principle, higher-dimensional objects, e.g., $`p`$-branes ($`p`$B), can also be formed in particle collisions, in particular when there exist small extra dimensions of the size $`1/M_{}`$ in addition to the large ones of the size $`1/M_{}`$. It was pointed out by Ahn et al. ahn  that the production cross section of a $`p`$-brane completely wrapped on the small extra dimensions is larger than that of a spherically symmetric black hole. A similar situation is true in cosmic ray experiments jain ; feng-p .

Consider an uncharged and static $`p`$-brane with a mass $`M_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ in $`(4+n)`$-dimensional space-time ($`m`$ small Planckian size and $`nm`$ large size extra dimensions such that $`np`$). Suppose the $`p`$-brane wraps on $`r(m)`$ small extra dimensions and on $`pr(nm)`$ large extra dimensions. Then the “radius” of the $`p`$-brane is

$$R_{p\mathrm{B}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }M_{}}\gamma (n,p)V_{p\mathrm{B}}^{\frac{1}{1+np}}\left(\frac{M_{p\mathrm{B}}}{M_{}}\right)^{\frac{1}{1+np}},$$
(16)
where $`V_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ is the volume wrapped by the $`p`$-brane in units of the Planckian length. Recall from Eq. (2), $`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2=M_{}^2l_{nm}^{nm}l_m^m`$, where $`l_{nm}L_{nm}M_{}`$ and $`l_mL_mM_{}`$ are the lengths of the size of the large and small extra dimensions in units of Planckian length ($`1/M_{}`$). Then $`V_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ is given by

$$V_{p\mathrm{B}}=l_{nm}^{pr}l_m^r\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{M_{}}\right)^{\frac{2(pr)}{nm}},$$
(17)
where we have taken $`l_mL_mM_{}1`$. The function $`\gamma (n,p)`$ is given by

$$\gamma (n,p)=\left[8\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{3+np}{2}\right)\sqrt{\frac{1+p}{(n+2)(2+np)}}\right]^{\frac{1}{1+np}}.$$
(18)
The $`R_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ reduces to the $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ in the limit $`p=0`$.

The production cross section of a $`p`$-brane is similar to that of BH’s, based on a naive geometric argument ahn . When the partons collide with a center-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$ larger than the fundamental Planck scale and an impact parameter less than the size of the $`p`$-brane, a $`p`$-brane of mass $`M_{p\mathrm{B}}\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$ can be formed. That is,

$$\widehat{\sigma }(M_{p\mathrm{B}})=\pi R_{p\mathrm{B}}^2.$$
(19)
Therefore, the production cross section for a $`p`$-brane is the same as BH’s in the limit $`p=0`$ (i.e., a BH can be considered a $`0`$-brane). In $`21`$ and $`2k(k2)`$ processes, the parton-level cross sections are given by similar expressions in Eqs. (11) and (12), respectively.

In Eq. (16), we can see that the radius of a $`p`$-brane is suppressed by some powers of the volume $`V_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ wrapped by the $`p`$-brane. It is then obvious that the production cross section is largest when $`V_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ is minimal, in other words, the $`p`$-brane wraps entirely on the small extra dimensions only, i.e., $`r=p`$. When $`r=p`$, $`V_{p\mathrm{B}}=1`$. We can also compare the production cross section of $`p`$-branes with BH’s. Assuming that their masses are the same and the production threshold $`M^{\mathrm{min}}`$ is the same, the ratio of cross sections is

$$R\frac{\widehat{\sigma }(M_{p\mathrm{B}}=M)}{\widehat{\sigma }(M_{\mathrm{BH}}=M)}=\left(\frac{M_{}}{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}}\right)^{\frac{4(pr)}{(nm)(1+np)}}\left(\frac{M}{M_{}}\right)^{\frac{2p}{(1+n)(1+np)}}\left(\frac{\gamma (n,p)}{\gamma (n,0)}\right)^2.$$
(20)
In the above equation, the most severe suppression factor is in the first set of parentheses on the right-hand side. Since we are considering physics of TeV $`M_{}`$, the factor $`(M_{}/M_{\mathrm{Pl}})10^{16}10^{15}`$. Thus, the only meaningful production of a $`p`$-brane occurs for $`r=p`$, and then their production is comparable. In Table 1, we show this ratio for various values of $`n`$ and $`p`$.

## IV Production at the LHC and VLHC

The production of BH’s and SB’s depends on $`M_s,n,M_D,g_s`$, but they are related by Eq. (8). Since we also require the transition point ($`M_s/g_s^2`$) at $`5M_D`$, we can therefore solve for $`M_s`$ and $`g_s`$ for a given pair of $`M_D`$ and $`n`$. We present the results in terms of $`M_D`$ and $`n`$. The minimum mass requirement for the SB is set at $`2M_s`$. The production of a $`p`$-brane also depends on $`m`$ and $`r`$. For an interesting level of event rates, $`r`$ has to be equal to $`p`$, i.e., the $`p`$-brane wraps entirely on small (of Planck length) extra dimensions. So after setting all parameters, we are ready to present our numerical results.

In Fig. 3, we show the total production cross sections for BH’s, SB’s, and $`p`$-branes, including the $`21`$ and $`22`$ subprocesses (when computing the $`22`$ subprocess we require a $`p_T`$ cut of 500 GeV to prevent double counting). Typically, the $`22`$ subprocess contributes at a level of less than 10%. For the BH, SB, and $`p`$-brane, we show the results for $`n=3`$ and $`n=6`$. The results for $`n=4,5`$ lie in between. Since we require $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}},M_{p\mathrm{B}}^{\mathrm{min}}=5M_D`$, their production is only sizable when $`\sqrt{s}`$ reaches about 10 TeV, unlike the SB, which only requires $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}^{\mathrm{min}}=2M_s`$. The $`p`$-brane cross section is about a few times larger than the BH, as we have chosen $`r=p=m=n2`$. String ball production is, on average, two orders of magnitude larger than that of a BH in the energy range between 20 and 60 TeV. Below 20 TeV (e.g., at the LHC), the SB cross section is at least three orders of magnitude larger than the BH.

Now we particularly look at the production rates at the LHC, operating at $`\sqrt{s}=14`$ TeV with a nominal yearly luminosity of 100 fb-1. The differential cross sections $`d\sigma /dM`$, where $`M=M_{\mathrm{BH}},M_{\mathrm{SB}},M_{p\mathrm{B}}`$, are shown in Fig. 4, where we have shown the case of $`n=4`$ and $`M_D=1.5`$ TeV. In our scheme, $`M_s1.1`$ TeV. The minimum SB mass starts at $`2M_s2.2`$ TeV, while the BH and $`p`$-brane start at $`5M_D=7.5`$ TeV. The SB spectrum smoothly joined to the BH spectrum at the transition point $`M_s/g_s^2=5M_D`$. Similarly, the transverse momentum spectra for their production are shown in Fig. 5. Even at a very high $`p_T1`$ TeV, the cross section is still large enough for detection. We show the integrated cross sections for the LHC in Table 2, including contributions from $`21`$ and $`22`$ processes (we imposed a $`p_T`$ cut of 500 GeV in the $`22`$ process).

Sensitivity information can be drawn from the table. The event rates for BH and $`p`$-brane production are negligible for $`M_D=2.5`$ TeV and only moderate at $`M_D=2`$ TeV. At $`M_D=2`$ TeV, the number of BH events that can be produced in one year running (100 fb-1) is about $`120340`$ for $`n=37`$ while the number for $`p`$-brane events is $`2101300`$. Therefore, the sensitivity for a detectable signal rate for a BH and a $`p`$-brane is only around 2 TeV, if not much larger than 2 TeV. The SB event rate is much higher. Even at $`M_D=3`$ TeV, the cross section is of order of 30 pb. In Table 2, we also show the $`\sigma (\mathrm{SB})`$ for $`M_D=46`$ TeV. Roughly, the sensitivity is around 6 TeV.

The VLHC (very large hadron collider) is another $`pp`$ accelerator under discussions vlhc  in the Snowmass 2001 snowmass . The preliminary plan is to have an initial stage of about 40–60 TeV center-of-mass energy, and later an increase up to 200 TeV. The targeted luminosity is $`(12)\times 10^{34}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. In Fig. 6, we show the total production cross sections for BH’s, SB’s, and $`p`$-branes for $`\sqrt{s}=60200`$ TeV and for $`n=3`$ and $`6`$. The integrated cross sections for $`\sqrt{s}=50,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}100},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}150}`$, and $`200`$ TeV are shown in Table 3. For a fixed $`M_D`$, the cross section obviously increases with $`\sqrt{s}`$. We choose to show the event rates for different values of $`M_D`$ such that it roughtly gives an idea about the sensitivity reach at each $`\sqrt{s}`$. We found that the sensitivity reaches for BH and $`p`$-brane production are roughly between $`6`$ and $`7`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=50`$ TeV, $`10`$ and $`13`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=100`$ TeV, $`14`$ and $`18`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=150`$ TeV, and $`20`$ and $`25`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ TeV. These estimates are rather crude based on the requirement that the number of raw events is $`50100`$.

## V Decay Signatures

### V.1 Black holes

The main phase of the decay of a BH is via the Hawking evaporation. The evaporation rate is governed by its Hawking temperature, given by myers

$$T_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{n+1}{4\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}},$$
(21)
which scales inversely with some powers of $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. The heavier the BH, the lower is the temperature. Thus, the evaporation rate is slower. The lifetime of the BH also scales inversely with the Hawking temperature as given by

$$\tau \frac{1}{M_D}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{n+3}{n+1}}.$$
(22)
From the above equation, it is obvious that the lifetime of a BH becomes much longer in models of large extra dimensions than in the usual $`4D`$ theory. However, the lifetime is still so short that it will decay once it is produced and no displaced vertex can be seen in the detector. For another viewpoint on the BH decay, please see Ref. casa .

An important observation is that the wavelength $`\lambda `$ of the thermal spectrum corresponding to the Hawking temperature is larger than the size of the BH. This implies that the BH evaporates like a point source in $`s`$-waves, therefore it decays equally into brane and bulk modes, and will not see the higher angular momentum states available in the extra dimensions. Since on the brane there are many more particles than in the bulk, the BH decays dominantly into brane modes, i.e., the SM particles in the setup. Furthermore, the BH evaporates “blindly” into all degrees of freedom. The ratio of the degrees of freedom for gauge bosons, quarks, and leptons is $`29:72:18`$ (the Higgs boson is not included). Since the $`W`$ and $`Z`$ decay with a branching ratio of about 70% into quarks, and the gluon also gives rise to hadronic activities, the final ratio of hadronic to leptonic activities in the BH decay is about $`5:1`$ scott .

Another important property of the BH decay is the large number of particles, in accord with the large entropy in Eq. (13), in the process of evaporation. It was shown scott ; greg  that the average multiplicity $`N`$ in the decay of a BH is order of $`1030`$ for $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ being a few times $`M_D`$ for $`n=26`$. Since we are considering the BH that has an entropy of order 25 or more, it guarantees a high multiplicity BH decay. The BH decays more or less isotropically and each decay particle has an average energy of a few hundred GeV. Therefore, if the BH is at rest, the event is very much like a spherical event with many particles of hundreds of GeV pointing back to the interaction point (very much like a fireball). On the other hand, if the BH is produced in association with other SM particles (as in a $`2k`$ subprocess), the BH decay will be a boosted spherical event on one side (a boosted fireball), the transverse momentum of which is balanced by a few particles on the other side me . Such spectacular events should have a negligible background.

### V.2 String balls

Highly excited long strings emit massless quanta with a thermal spectrum at the Hagedorn temperature. (The Hagedorn temperature of an excited string matches the Hawking temperature of a BH at the corresponding point $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}M_s/g_s^2`$.)

At $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}M_s/g_s^2`$, the wavelength $`\lambda `$ corresponding to the thermal spectrum at the Hagedorn temperature is larger than $`R_{\mathrm{SB}}`$. This argument is very similar to that of the BH, and so the string ball radiates like a point source and emits in $`s`$-waves equally into brane and bulk modes. With many more particles (SM particles) on the brane than in the bulk, the SB radiates mainly into the SM particles.

When $`M_{\mathrm{SB}}`$ goes below $`M_s/g_s^2`$, the SB has the tendency to puff up to a random-walk size as large as the $`\lambda `$ of the emissions emparan . Therefore, it will see more of the higher angular momentum states available in the extra dimensions. Thus, it decays more into the bulk modes, but it is only temporary. When the SB decays further, it shrinks back to the string size and emits as a point source again emparan . Most of the time the SB decays into SM particles. On average, a SB decays into invisible quanta somewhat more often than a BH does.

High multiplicity decay of the BH should also apply to the SB, at least when the mass of the SB is close to the correspondence point emparan . Naively, we expect that if the SB mass decreases, the multiplicity will decrease. Thus, the signature of the SB is very similar to the BH, except that it may have lower multiplicity.

### V.3 $`p`$-branes

The decay of $`p`$-branes is not well understood, to some extent we do not even know whether it decays or is stable. Nevertheless, if it decays one possibility is the decay into lower-dimensional branes, thus leading to a cascade of branes. Therefore, they eventually decay to a number of $`0`$-branes, i.e., BH-like objects. This is complicated by the fact that when the $`p`$-branes decay, their masses might not be high enough to become BH’s. Therefore, the final $`0`$-branes might be some excited string states or string balls. Whether the zero brane is stable or not depends on models. Another possibility is decay into brane and bulk particles, thus experimentally the decay can be observed. Or it can be a combination of cascade into lower-dimensional branes and direct decays. Since the size $`R_{p\mathrm{B}}`$ is much smaller than the size of the large extra dimensions, we expect $`p`$-branes to decay mainly into brane particles. However, the above is quite speculative.

## VI Conclusions

In this work, we have calculated and compared the production cross sections for black holes, string balls, and $`p`$-branes at hadronic supercolliders (LHC and VLHC). Provided that the fundamental Planck scale is of order of 1 to a few TeV, large numbers of BH, SB, and $`p`$-brane events should be observed at the LHC. At the VLHC ($`50200`$ TeV), the events rates are enormous. We have also given rough estimates for the sensitivity reaches on the fundamental Planck scale $`M_D`$ at various $`\sqrt{s}`$, based on the number of raw events. The sensitivity of BH and $`p`$-brane production is roughly 2 TeV at the LHC, $`67`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=50`$ TeV, $`1013`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=100`$ TeV, $`1418`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=150`$ TeV, and $`2025`$ TeV for $`\sqrt{s}=200`$ TeV.

Finally, we offer a few comments as follows.

1. The production cross sections for BH estimated in this work are significantly smaller than others in the literature, because we have imposed a stringent entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ requirement on the BH. Such a requirement is necessary to make sure the object is a BH. Had this requirement relaxed, the cross section would have increased substantially. For the purpose of comparing with others’ results, we also show the cross sections for smaller values of $`yM_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}/M_D,M_{p\mathrm{B}}^{\mathrm{min}}/M_D`$ in Table 4. The cross sections listed for $`y4`$ should be interpreted with care, because the smaller the ratio $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\mathrm{min}}/M_D`$ the stronger the string effect is and the classical description for BH may not be valid.
2. It was pointed out in Ref. park  that a BH with an angular momentum $`J`$ is likely to be formed in particle collisions when the incoming partons are collided at an impact parameter. In such a case, the radius of the BH decreases and thus the naive cross-section formula $`\widehat{\sigma }=\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2`$ implies a smaller cross section for each angular momentum $`J`$. The higher the angular momentum, the larger is the suppressions. Nevertheless, when all $`J`$ (including $`J=0`$) are summed, the total cross section gives a factor of $`23`$ enhancement to the case of nonspinning BH.
3. $`p`$-brane production is negligible if $`r<p`$, because of the large volume factor suppression. But when $`r=p`$ (the $`p`$-brane wraps entirely on the small extra dimensions of the size of the Planck length), the production cross section is sizable. Moreover, the cross section is a few times larger than the BH production for the case of $`r=p=m`$, where $`mn2`$.
4. The production cross section for SB’s is enormous because it does not suffer from a mass threshold as large as for the BH. The minimum mass requirement is between $`M_s`$ and $`M_s/g_s`$. We typically choose $`2M_s`$ as the starting point for the SB. Such a large event rate makes the tests for string ball properties and BH correspondence principle possible. As pointed out in Ref. greg , since only a very small fraction of the decay products of a BH has missing energies, the mass of the BH can be determined. Moreover, the energy spectrum of the decay products can be measured and fitted to the black-body radiation temperature. Thus, the Hawking radiation relationship between the mass and temperature of a BH can be tested. Here, similar to the BH, both the mass and the temperature of the SB can be determined by measuring the spectrum of the decay products. Thus, the relationship between the mass of the SB and the Hagedorn temperature can be tested.
5. We have emphasized the importance and the advantages of using the $`22`$ subprocess for production of BH’s, SB’s, and $`p`$-branes, which allows a substantial transverse momentum kick to the object, and at the same time produces an energetic high $`p_T`$ parton, which provides a critical tag to the event.
6. At the LHC and VLHC, multiparton collisions and overlapping events may be likely to happen. A careful discrimination is therefore necessary, especially in the case in which the BH is produced at rest or is moving along the beam-pipe (i.e., in $`21`$ subprocess). The $`22`$ subprocess affords an easier signature experimentally. The high $`p_T`$ parton emerging as a jet, a lepton, jets, or leptons provides an easy tag.
7. In this study, we do not consider the difference in the decays of BH, SB, and $`p`$-brane. If we could distinguish the decay signatures of the BH and SB, we might be able to test the BH correspondence principle at the transition point. We can also test the decays of $`p`$-branes in more detail.

There just appears a short review article tu  on BH production at hadronic colliders and by ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrinos.

## Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jeonghyeon Song, Kang Young Lee, Yong Yeon Keum, and Eung Jin Chun for an invitation to the Korea Institute for Advanced Study, where part of this work was done, and for their hospitality. Also thanks to Seong Chan Park for an interesting discussion. This research was supported in part by the National Center for Theoretical Science under a grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan R.O.C.


text:
# Stable Quantum Resonances in Atom Optics

## Abstract

A theory for stabilization of quantum resonances by a mechanism similar to one leading to classical resonances in nonlinear systems is presented. It explains recent surprising experimental results, obtained for cold Cesium atoms when driven in the presence of gravity, and leads to further predictions. The theory makes use of invariance properties of the system, that are similar to those of solids, allowing for separation into independent kicked rotor problems. The analysis relies on a fictitious classical limit where the small parameter is not Planck’s constant, but rather the detuning from the frequency that is resonant in absence of gravity.

Resonances are among the most typical manifestations of the quantum mechanical behavior. They are characterized by a precise relation between the parameters of the system and an external driving; for instance, resonant excitation of an atom requires that the difference between two levels be equal to the frequency of the driving field times Planck’s constant. Classical resonances of nonlinear systems are more robust. Regions of appreciable size in phase space may respond in a resonant way, while other regions are chaotic. In recent experiments  it was found that a quantum system that is far from its semiclassical limit exhibits resonant behavior very similar in nature to the one found for classical nonlinear systems: it is robust, and the high precision that is characteristic of the usual quantum resonances is not required. It is observed for various values of the parameters and of the initial conditions. In this Letter the experimental results are explained and further predictions are made. Details are given in . The theory reveals how resonances, similar to those characteristic of classical systems, may arise in a quantum system, far from the semiclassical limit. The theoretical model of the experiment is a variant of the kicked rotor, that is a standard system used in the investigation of classical Hamiltonian chaos and its manifestations in quantum mechanical systems . In experimental realizations of the model, laser-cooled atoms are driven by application of a standing electromagnetic wave. The frequency of the wave is slightly detuned from resonance, so a dipole moment is induced in the atom. This moment couples with the driving field, giving rise to a net force on the center of mass of the atoms, proportional to the square of the electric field . As the wave is periodic in space, the atom is thus subjected to a periodic potential. The wave is turned on and off periodically in time, and the time it is on is much shorter then the time it is off. A realization of a periodically kicked particle is then obtained. For atoms driven in the horizontal direction, effects of gravity are negligible, and localization in momentum is observed, as theoretically expected (see below).

In the experiments that provide the subject of the theoretical analysis of the present letter, laser cooled Cesium atoms were driven in the vertical direction, and gravity was found to produce new remarkable effects. Localization was destroyed; furthermore, in the vicinity of the frequencies that are resonant in absence of gravity, a new type of ballistic spread in momentum was experimentally observed . A fraction of the atoms were steadily accelerated, at a rate which was faster or slower than the gravitational acceleration depending on what side of the resonance the driving frequency was. Such atoms were exempt from the diffusive spread that took place for the other atoms, and their acceleration depended on the difference between the driving and the resonant frequencies. The dynamics of the atoms that are falling as a result of gravity and are kicked by the external field is modeled by the time-dependent Hamiltonian:

$$\widehat{H}(t^{})=\frac{\widehat{P}^2}{2}\frac{\eta }{\tau }\widehat{X}+k\mathrm{cos}(\widehat{X})\underset{t=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}\delta (t^{}t\tau ),$$
(1)
where $`t^{}`$ is the continuous time variable, the integer variable $`t`$ counts the kicks, $`\widehat{P},\widehat{X}`$ are the momentum and the position operator respectively. Units are chosen so that the mass of the atoms is $`1`$, the Planck’s constant is $`1`$, and the spatial period of the kicks is $`2\pi `$. The dimensionless parameters $`k,\eta ,\tau `$ fully characterize the dynamics. They are expressed in terms of the physical parameters as follows: $`k=\kappa /\mathrm{}`$, $`\tau =\mathrm{}TG^2/M`$, $`\eta =MgT/(\mathrm{}G)`$, where $`M,T,\kappa ,g`$ are the mass of the atoms, the kicking period, the kick strength, and the gravitational acceleration respectively, and $`2\pi /G`$ is the spatial period of the kicks. The positive $`x`$direction is that of the gravitational acceleration. Throughout the following, time is a discrete variable, given by the kick counter $`t`$.

It is expedient to measure the momentum in the free falling frame, notably to replace $`\widehat{P}\frac{\eta }{\tau }t^{}`$ by $`\widehat{P}`$, resulting in the time-dependent Hamiltonian :

$$\widehat{H}(t^{})=\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{P}+\frac{\eta }{\tau }t^{})^2+k\mathrm{cos}(\widehat{X})\underset{t=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}\delta (t^{}t\tau ).$$
(2)
This Hamiltonian is related to (1) by the gauge transformation $`e^{i\eta \widehat{X}t^{}/\tau }`$. The main advantage of (2) compared to (1) is that it depends on $`\widehat{X}`$ only via $`\mathrm{cos}(\widehat{X})`$. Consequently the evolution only mixes momenta which differ by integers: hence, quasi-momentum is conserved. In absence of gravity ($`\eta =0`$), (2) reduces to the Hamiltonian of the kicked rotor (classically resulting in the Standard Map) with stochasticity parameter $`K=k\tau `$. For $`K>K_c0.9716`$ diffusion in momentum takes place. For values of $`K`$ near to integer multiples of $`2\pi `$ accelerator modes are found . These are stable phase space islands that travel ballistically, resulting in linear, rather than diffusive growth of momentum with time. The quantum mechanical study of the systems described by (2) starts with decomposing the momentum as $`p=n+\beta `$, where $`n,\beta `$ denote the integer and the fractional parts of the momentum $`p`$ respectively. Since the quasimomentum $`\beta `$ is conserved only $`n`$ varies in the course of the dynamics. The evolution is equivalent to that of a superposition of independent kicked rotors, each characterized by a different value of $`\beta `$. Such a rotor will be called $`\beta `$-rotor and the one step evolution operator is:

$$\widehat{U}_\beta (t)=e^{ik\mathrm{cos}(\widehat{\theta })}e^{i\frac{\tau }{2}(\widehat{N}+\beta +\eta t+\eta /2)^2}.$$
(3)
where $`\theta =x`$ mod$`(2\pi )`$ and the momentum operator is $`\widehat{N}=i\frac{d}{d\theta }`$. For $`\beta =0`$ and $`\eta =0`$ this is the usual kicked rotor. The classical diffusion is then suppressed by a mechanism that is similar to Anderson localization in disordered solids . For $`\tau =2\pi l/m`$, where $`l`$ and $`m`$ are integers, the eigenstates of (3) are extended in momentum and ballistic growth of momentum takes place in most cases. This is the quantum resonance . The Talbot length corresponds to $`4\pi `$. For fixed $`\beta 0`$ and for typical irrational $`\tau /2\pi `$ the classical diffusion is again suppressed, as was observed in experiments on laser-cooled Sodium and Cesium atoms . Quantum resonances only occur at special values of $`\beta `$, hence their experimental observation is difficult , since it is impossible to prepare all atoms with the same quasimomentum $`\beta `$. Averaging over $`\beta `$ results in linear (rather than quadratic) growth of the squared momentum. This demonstrates the high sensitivity of the quantum resonances to fine experimental details.

In the presence of gravity, $`\eta 0`$, the evolution operator (3) is time dependent. The localization in momentum is destroyed, as it was experimentally observed . While this is expected for time dependent random potentials, the present time dependence is just quasi-periodic, so a deeper analysis is required. However, the most surprising experimental result was that an appreciable fraction of atoms were found to accelerate (in the free falling frame) for various values of the experimental parameters, for values of $`\tau `$ in intervals of appreciable size around integer multiples of $`2\pi `$. Here is a quantum resonance that is robust, in contrast to the usual quantum resonances. It is reminiscent of classical nonlinear resonances, namely the accelerator modes of the Standard Map; however, it has no counterpart in the classical limit of (2). In what follows a theoretical explanation of this effect is presented .

We consider the case when $`\tau `$ is close to a resonant value $`2\pi l`$ ($`l>0`$ integer), and the kicking strength $`k`$ is large. We hence write $`\tau =2\pi l+ϵ`$, $`k=\stackrel{~}{k}/|ϵ|`$ with $`ϵ`$ small. Noting $`e^{i\pi ln^2}=e^{i\pi ln}`$, (3) takes the form (apart from an irrelevant phase factor):

$$\widehat{U}_\beta (t)=e^{\frac{i}{|ϵ|}\stackrel{~}{k}\mathrm{cos}\widehat{\theta }}e^{\frac{i}{|ϵ|}\widehat{H}_\beta (\widehat{I},t)}$$
(4)
where

$$\begin{array}{c}\widehat{I}=|ϵ|\widehat{N}=i|ϵ|\frac{d}{d\theta }\hfill \\ \widehat{H}_\beta (\widehat{I},t)=\frac{1}{2}\text{sign}(ϵ)\widehat{I}^2+\widehat{I}(\pi l+\tau (\beta +t\eta +\frac{\eta }{2}))\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
If $`|ϵ|`$ is assigned the role of Planck’s constant, then (4,5) is the formal quantization of either of the following classical (time-dependent) maps :

$$\begin{array}{c}I_{t+1}=I_t+\stackrel{~}{k}\mathrm{sin}(\theta _{t+1})\hfill \\ \theta _{t+1}=\theta _t\pm I_t+\pi l+\tau (\beta +t\eta +\eta /2)\text{mod}(2\pi ),\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where $`\pm `$ has to be chosen according to the sign of $`ϵ`$. The small $`|ϵ|`$ asymptotics of the quantum $`\beta `$ rotor is thus equivalent to a quasi-classical approximation based on the “classical” dynamics (6). We emphasize that “classical” here is not related to the $`\mathrm{}0`$ limit but to the limit $`ϵ0`$ instead. The two limits are actually incompatible with each other except possibly when $`l=0`$. For the sake of clarity the term “$`ϵ`$classical” will be used in the following.

Changing variable to $`J_t=I_t\pm \pi l\pm \tau (\beta +\eta t+\eta /2)`$ removes the explicit time dependence of the maps (6), yielding:

$$J_{t+1}=J_t+\stackrel{~}{k}\mathrm{sin}(\theta _{t+1})\pm \tau \eta ,\theta _{t+1}=\theta _t\pm J_t.$$
(7)
If $`J,\theta `$ are taken mod$`(2\pi )`$, then (7) define maps of the $`2`$torus in itself. Let $`J_0,\theta _0`$ be a period $`𝐩`$-fixed point of either of the toral maps thus defined. Then iteration of (7) yields, at $`t=𝐩`$ :

$$J_𝐩=J_0+2\pi 𝐣,\theta _𝐩=\theta _0+2\pi m$$
(8)
for some integers $`𝐣,m`$. In terms of the original dynamics (6) this yields a family of orbits such that, for all integer $`t`$,

$$\theta _{𝐩t}=\theta _0=\vartheta _0\text{mod}(2\pi ),I_{t𝐩}=I_0+a𝐩t,$$
(9)
where $`a=\tau \eta +2\pi 𝐣/𝐩`$ and

$$I_0=J_0\pi l\tau (\beta +\eta /2)+2\pi m^{},$$
(10)
with $`m^{}`$ any integer. Thus primitive periodic orbits of the toral maps (7) correspond to families of accelerator orbits of the dynamics (6), marked by linear average growth of momentum with time. If the periodic orbits are stable, then the accelerator orbits are surrounded by islands of positive measure in phase space, also leading to ballistic (linear) average growth of momentum in time. These are named accelerator modes. They are characterized by the integer couple $`(𝐩,𝐣)`$ formed by the order $`𝐩`$ and by the jumping index $`𝐣`$.

Modes of order $`1`$ correspond to fixed points of (7). They are given on the 2-torus by $`J_0=0`$, $`\theta _0=\theta _𝐣`$, where

$$\mathrm{sin}(\theta _𝐣)=(2\pi 𝐣\tau \eta )/\stackrel{~}{k}$$
(11)
and $`𝐣`$ is any integer such that the rhs is not larger than $`1`$ in absolute value. A linear stability analysis shows that for any integer $`𝐣`$ each map (7) has exactly one stable period-$`1`$ fixed point on the 2-torus, given by (11) if, and only if,

$$|2\pi 𝐣\tau \eta |<\stackrel{~}{k}<\sqrt{16+(2\pi 𝐣\tau \eta )^2}$$
(12)
When $`\stackrel{~}{k}`$ increases beyond the right-hand limit, such fixed points turn unstable and bifurcations occur. At small values of $`\stackrel{~}{k}`$ higher-order accelerator modes appear, associated with higher-period primary orbits. Examples of stable periodic orbits near $`\tau =2\pi `$ are presented in Fig.1.

Initial physical momenta $`n_0=|ϵ|^1I_0`$ for $`ϵ`$classical accelerator modes are obtained from (10) for any $`0\beta <1`$. If the stable islands associated with $`ϵ`$classical accelerator modes have a large area compared to $`|ϵ|`$, then they may trap some of the rotor’s wave packet and give rise to quantum accelerator modes traveling in physical momentum space with speed $`a/|ϵ|=\tau \eta /ϵ+2\pi 𝐣/(𝐩|ϵ|)`$. In order that such modes may be observed, the phase space distribution associated with the initial rotor state must significantly overlap the islands. This picture is confirmed by numerical simulations. Fig.2 shows the quantum phase-space evolution of a $`\beta `$rotor with $`\beta =0.2188`$ started in the coherent state centered at the position of a $`(1,0)`$\- accelerator mode. The Husimi functions computed at subsequent times closely follow the motion of the $`ϵ`$classical mode. In the $`ϵ`$ semiclassical regime, accelerator modes are expected to decay exponentially in time due to quantum tunneling out of the classical islands, with decay rate $`\gamma _ϵ\mathrm{exp}(\text{const.}/|ϵ|)`$. This decay was also numerically confirmed .

In the experiments described in , the initial state of the falling atoms is satisfactorily described by an incoherent Gaussian mixture of momentum eigenstates centered at $`p=0`$, with rms deviation $`2.55`$ in our units. This is equivalent to a statistical ensemble of $`\beta `$-rotors. The above theory describes this situation for small $`ϵ`$, where the $`ϵ`$\- classical approximation holds. From (9) it is found that the $`ϵ`$-classical $`(𝐩,𝐣)`$-mode started at $`t=0`$ with $`I_0=n_0|ϵ|`$ is located at time $`t`$ at the momentum:

$$nn_0t\tau \eta /ϵ+2\pi t𝐣/(𝐩|ϵ|).$$
(13)
In Fig.3 this prediction is compared to the results of numerical simulations in the vicinity of $`\tau =2\pi `$ for $`k=0.8\pi `$ and $`\eta /\tau =0.01579`$ (that is the value of the gravitational acceleration in our units). The time is $`t=60`$ kicks. The initial state is an incoherent mixture of $`50`$ momentum states, distributed as reported in experimental papers. Lines are as predicted by (13). Good agreement is found. The mode $`(1,0)`$ was identified experimentally (as can be seen on comparing Fig.3 to Fig.2 of ; also recall that our positive direction is that of the gravitational acceleration). Further higher order modes are predicted in the present work. Longer time is required for their resolution, because they move slower, yet they may be eventually resolved, see the inset of Fig.3. Similar behavior is predicted for $`\tau 4\pi `$ (as described in ), and for higher multiples of $`2\pi `$ as well. We finally remark that (i) quantization of the $`\beta `$ rotors momentum enhances quantum modes at discrete values of $`\beta `$, given by (10) with $`I_0`$ an integer multiple of $`ϵ`$. This results in preferred values for physical momentum $`p=n+\beta `$, spaced by $`2\pi l/\tau `$. This was experimentally detected, and it is seen in the fine structure of the modes in Fig.3; (ii) the accelerator modes of the $`\beta `$-rotors result in acceleration of the particle also in the case when the initial state is a coherent superposition of momentum eigenstates.

The key steps in the theory presented in this work are: (i) Transformation to the free falling frame leading to the Hamiltonian (2); (ii) Conservation of the quasimomentum $`\beta `$, allowing for introduction of the $`\beta `$-rotors; (iii) Approximation of the motion by the one generated by the $`ϵ`$-classical Hamiltonian (5) near $`\tau =2\pi l`$; (iv) $`ϵ`$-classical accelerator modes (10) dominate the dynamics near $`\tau =2\pi l`$.

What stabilizes these accelerator modes? On top of the long wavelength behavior related to the resonance $`\tau =2\pi l`$, there is a short wavelength behavior. Its dynamics is dominated by the fictitious classical mechanics termed $`ϵ`$-classical. This is reminiscent of the “caustics without rays” . The generality of this mechanism for nonlinear stabilization of quantum resonances should be explored. The fact that the intermediate-time dynamics is dominated by a discrete set of modes, which exponentially decay in time, bears a distinct resemblance to the Wannier-Stark problem of a Bloch particle in a constant field . How far this analogy carries is, in our opinion, an interesting theoretical question. Other theoretical questions well worth further analysis are about the nature of the asymptotic (in time) behavior (in particular, the mechanism for destruction of localization), and the nature of the $`ϵ`$-semiclassical systematic expansion. On the experimental side, it would be interesting to classify the various accelerator modes, namely to perform “accelerator mode spectroscopy”; and also to experimentally explore differences in the quantum dynamics between coherent and incoherent superpositions in the initial state of the atoms. This may be of importance for atomic interferometry and for quantum computation.

Acknowledgments. This research was supported in part by PRIN-2000: Chaos and localisation in classical and quantum mechanics, by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), by the US National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY99-07949, by the Minerva Center of Nonlinear Physics of Complex Systems, by the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, and by the fund for Promotion of Research at the Technion. Useful discussions with M.Raizen, M.V. Berry, K.Burnett, M. d’Arcy, M. Oberthaler, R. Godun, Y.Gefen, and S.Wimberger are acknowledged.


text:
# The Degree of CO Depletion in Pre-stellar Cores Based on observations collected at the IRAM 30 m, Spain

## 1 Introduction

Of all the molecules present in the interstellar medium, CO (and its isotopes) has been the object of particular attention. It has been widely used to study the mass distribution and kinematics of star forming molecular clouds. Moreover, CO is thought to play a major role in the thermal cooling of molecular clouds (e.g., Goldsmith & Langer, goldsmithlanger (1978)). In very dense and cold regions of the interstellar medium the CO molecules tend to leave the gas phase and condense out onto the dust grains, directly affecting the thermal balance of clouds (Goldsmith, goldsmith (2001)). CO also participates in a complex chemical network and its depletion leads to changes in gas composition and chemical reactions. These, in turn, can influence the contraction of molecular clouds through ambipolar diffusion (e.g. Shu et al. shu87 (1997)), via the ionisation fraction (Caselli et al. caselli98 (1998)) or the gas phase deuteration of molecules (Roberts & Millar roberts (2000)a, roberts (2000)b).

This phenomenon affects in particular pre-stellar condensations, which are characterized by very low temperatures ($``$ 10 K) and high central densities ($``$ $`10^410^5`$ cm-3). These objects, still starless, are thought to evolve slowly via ambipolar diffusion towards higher degrees of condensation until they become unstable and collapse under their own gravity to form a protostar. This pre-collapse phase is believed to strongly influence the following stages of the star formation process - mass infall rate (e.g. Henriksen et al. hab (1997)), fragmentation, mass of future star (e.g. Bacmann et al. bacmann (2000)). It is therefore of prime importance to characterize the physical and chemical conditions in the gas and dust of pre-stellar condensations which have not yet started to collapse. The study of CO depletion is in this context particularly relevant due to the implications of e.g. modified thermal balance or contraction by ambipolar diffusion induced by a decreased abundance of the molecule. CO depletion in dense cores has already been discussed by Kramer et al. (kramer (1999)), Willacy et al. (willacy (1998)), and Caselli et al. (caselli (1999), 2002a , 2002b ) who focussed on L1544, a core similar to the ones we discuss in this work. Here, we studied the distribution and abundance of CO via its rarer isotopes C17O(1-0) and C18O(1-0), and of N2H+(1-0) in a sample of pre-stellar cores, using the 1.3 mm continuum as a tracer of the H2 column density. Our aim was to quantify the depletion and to link it with physical properties of the cores. We first briefly present the observations in Section 2, then the spatial distributions and column density estimations in Section 3, discuss our results and conclude in Section 4.

## 2 Observations and data reduction

We have selected a sample of 7 pre-stellar cores previously studied by Bacmann et al. (bacmann (2000), cf. Table 1). The core L1544, studied in detail by Caselli et al. (caselli (1999), 2002a , 2002b ), has also been included for comparison.

Observations in the millimeter lines of N2H+(1-0), C17O(1-0), C18O(2-1) and (1-0) were made in August 2000 and 2001 at the IRAM 30 m telescope. The spectra were taken in position switching mode with a 20″ sampling along cuts in chosen directions passing through the maximum of the 1.3 mm emission. The reference positions were checked to be free of C18O(1-0) emission. We used an autocorrelator with a resolution of 20 kHz as backend. The spectral resolution was degraded so as to provide a kinematic resolution of $`0.1\text{kms}\text{-1}`$ at all wavelengths. Pointing was checked typically every 1.5 hour and found to be better than $`3\mathrm{}`$. The data were reduced using the CLASS package. The line fluxes are expressed in units of main-beam brightness temperatures. The uncertainties in the fluxes are $`10\%`$. The beam size ($`22\mathrm{}`$ at 110 GHz) and the efficiencies (FWHM) are taken from the IRAM web page http://www.iram.es/. Previous mapping of the cores in the 1.3 millimeter continuum is described in Bacmann et al. (bacmann (2000)).

## 3 Results

### 3.1 Distribution of molecular and dust tracers

We compared the spatial distribution of CO, N2H+ and of the dust traced by the 1.3 mm continuum emission. To this effect, we plotted for each core the integrated intensity of the molecular lines (C18O(1-0), C17O(1-0) and N2H+(1-0)) together with the millimeter continuum flux, along directions passing through (or close to) the maximum of the 1.3 mm continuum map. To obtain the integrated line intensities, we first fitted a gaussian (or a series of gaussians in the case of hyperfine structures) to the considered line, and then evaluated the area under the gaussian. The results obtained are similar if we consider the integrated signal between two given velocities. The resolution of the 1.3 mm continuum map was degraded to the resolution of the molecular line observations, 22″. The resulting plots are presented in Fig. 1 for all cores except L1544. Whereas the continuum is sharply peaked (except for L1709A), the distribution of the C18O(1-0) and C17O(1-0) integrated intensities is flatter (e.g. L1689B and L310) or completely fails to trace the strong continuum peak (e.g. L429 and Oph D). The core L328 is particular in the sense that the CO isotopes are also sharply peaked (their distribution is only slightly broader than that of the dust: $``$ 15% broader at half-maximum). For all cores, the distribution of N2H+, on the other hand, closely follows that of the dust traced by the continuum.

These results tend to show that CO is underabundant with respects to H2 (traced by the continuum) in the centres of the cores. As Caselli et al. (caselli (1999)) pointed out, this is most likely due to the depletion of CO onto the dust grains, because of the high densities and low temperatures in the inner parts of the cores. However, it can already be seen from the various behaviours of the plots such as those in Fig. 1 that the amplitude of this phenomenon, the depletion degree, is not the same in all the cores considered.

### 3.2 Physical Conditions

The average $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ density at the emission peak in the cores was estimated to be of a few $`10^5\text{cm}\text{-3}`$ in the 11″ telescope beam by Bacmann et al. (2000, see also Table 1). Hence, the populations of the energy levels of CO and its isotopes are very close to thermalization. The ratio of the C17O (2-1) to (1-0) line integrated areas, calculated under the assumptions of optically thin lines and at LTE, therefore provides a good estimate of the kinetic temperature. We applied the same procedure to the C18O lines under the same assumptions. We obtained consistent results between both isotopes, with values in the range 6-8 K for the C17O lines and in the range 7.5-10 K for C18O. The results are summarized in Table 1. Such temperatures are similar to those found towards other pre-stellar and/or protostellar cores (Caselli et al. 1999; Fuller & Myers, 1993; Ladd, Fuller & Deane, 1998).

We evaluated the CO column density using the rare isotope C17O in order to make sure our results were not affected by opacity effects. The opacity of the C18O(1-0) transition was determined following the method described by Ladd et al. (ladd (1998)). Supposing a \[17O\]/\[18O\] abundance ratio of 3.65 (Wilson & Rood wilson (1994); Penzias penzias (1981)), we derived opacities lower than 0.1 for Oph D, L328 and L310, of 1.1 for L429, 1.3 and 1.5 for L1709A and L1689B, respectively. According to the aforementioned C18O(1-0) opacities, the C17O(1-0) transition is optically thin for all of the cores. This validates our determination of the kinetic temperature from the C17O lines. Although the opacity effects are small in the general case, we prefered to use the same tracer C17O for all cores for more accurate comparisons. The C17O column density was determined under the same hypothesis and adopting as kinetic temperature the values derived previously. The values of $`N_{\mathrm{C}^{17}\mathrm{O}}`$ determined at the continuum emission peak are presented in Table 1.

The H2 column density was determined from the dust thermal emission at 1.3 mm, which is largely optically thin. We degraded the resolution of all our continuum maps to the resolution at the frequency of the $`\mathrm{C}^{17}\mathrm{O}`$(1-0) line, so as to compare H2 and C17O column densities in the same beam. The dust temperature was taken to be 7.5 K in all cores at their centre, as suggested by the recent works of Zucconi et al. (zucc (2001)) and Evans et al. (evans (2001)). This is slightly lower than in the envelope, where values of 11 K were determined from ISOPHOT observations (Ward-Thompson et al., ward01 (2001)). Following André et al. (1996), we have adopted a dust opacity coefficient $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}=0.005\text{cm}\text{2}\text{g}\text{-1}`$, appropriate for gas in the central pre-stellar regions, where the $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ density is $`10^5\text{cm}\text{-3}`$, though the actual value is uncertain by a factor of 2 (Preibisch et al., preibisch (1993)). The values of the H2 column density at the maximum of the 1.3 mm continuum emission are shown in Table 1.

## 4 Discussion

The results presented above show strong evidence for CO depletion onto the dust grains in the densest parts of the molecular cloud cores. We present in Table 1 the ratio $`X`$ of the C17O and the H2 column densities. For all cores, the abundance $`X`$ found is lower than the “canonical” abundance determined by Frerking et al. (frerking (1982)) towards dark cores $`X_{\mathrm{can}}=4.8\times 10^8`$ and varies from 4.5 times smaller to nearly 16 times smaller than $`X_{\mathrm{can}}`$. The CO molecules thus appear underabundant with respect to $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ at the centre of the pre-stellar cores. The values found suggest different depletion degrees for the different cores, as was already hinted at by the cuts of Fig. 1. The depletion factor $`f`$, defined as $`X_{\mathrm{can}}/X`$, is also shown in Table 1. For L1544, we derive a depletion factor of 14, the difference with the value of 10 found by Caselli et al. (caselli (1999)) being due to our assumption of a colder central dust temperature. Adopting a higher value for the dust absorption coefficient $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$, representative of denser environments would decrease the depletion factor to 6 in Oph D, L429, L310. This case is extremely unlikely as it requires typical densities of $`10^6\text{cm}\text{-3}`$ over a size of 20″ (3200 AU). The depletion factor would also be a factor of $`2`$ smaller if the central temperature is taken to be 11 K instead of 7.5 K. These results considerably extend the previous works on depletion in pre-stellar cores by Kramer et al. (1999), Caselli et al. (1999) and more recently by Tafalla et al. (2002). The latter report similar depletion factors for L1544 and 4 other pre-stellar cores in the Taurus molecular cloud.

The effect of CO underabundance is still detected at large scale, with a smaller amplitude, in regions covering large parts of the lower density gas, where the “standard” value of $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ ($`0.005\text{cm}\text{2}\text{g}\text{-1}`$) is a reasonable approximation. For each core, we derived the C17O and H2 column density along our cuts at 70% and 50% of the maximum of the continuum emission. The values of 70% and 50% were chosen as a compromise between having regions of lower density and not being affected by the loss of sensitivity of the millimeter continuum at the edges of the 1.3 mm maps (e.g. André et al. awb (1996)). We assumed higher dust temperatures of 10 K and 11 K to derive the depletion factors $`f^{70}`$ and $`f^{50}`$, respectively, since the outer layers are thought to be warmer than the core centre (e.g. Zucconi et al. zucc (2001)). The abundance $`X^{70}`$ is 2 to 5 times smaller than $`X_{\mathrm{can}}`$, the CO underabundance is more pronounced in the densest, central regions. For all cores, the average depletion factor $`f^{70}`$ is lower than $`f`$, and $`f^{50}`$ is lower than $`f^{70}`$.

Such variations can be easily understood if depletion is the cause of this underabundance of CO. Indeed, the less dense and warmer parts of the cores should be less affected by the freezing out of CO molecules onto dust grains. Within the objects, the variations in density are about one order of magnitude, based on the density fits of Tafalla et al. (2002), whereas the temperature varies by $`50\%`$ at most. Hence, the variations of the depletion degree are probably dominated by the variations in density and not in temperature. We stress the fact that the relative variations between $`f`$, $`f^{70}`$ and $`f^{50}`$ remain true even if the temperature is assumed uniform in the cores. This relation shows that the depletion factor increases with density inside of the core, independently of any modelling of the internal core structure. The increase in $`f`$ is particularly pronounced in the case of the densest cores L429 and Oph D.

We tried to relate the CO underabundance with the physical properties of the core. To this effect, we plotted the depletion factor $`f`$ as a function of the mean density in the core central region (Fig. 2). The above plot indicates an increase of the depletion factor with density, confirming the trend observed for individual cores. A linear regression of the form $`fn(\mathrm{H}_2)^\alpha `$ performed on the whole data set yields $`\alpha 0.10.5`$. The rather large range of values allowed for the exponent is mainly due to the point L310 which stands out rather markedly of the trend mentionned above. Indeed, leaving aside the L310 data, the points match rather well a relation of the form $`fn(\mathrm{H}_2)^{0.70.8}`$. We note that the observational uncertainties are much larger on L310 than on the rest of the dataset. First, the weather was noticeably unstable when L310 was observed. Because the core is highly elliptical, the pointing fluctations induced by anomalous refraction could lead to underestimating the flux of the C17O (1-0) line. Second, in deriving the average density in L310, Bacmann et al. (bacmann (2000)) neglected the high eccentricity of the core. They took as size scale the dimension along its major axis, which leads to an underestimate in their derivation of the density. The L310 point should be actually shifted in the direction of a lower depletion degree and a higher density, as indicated by the arrow in the graph, so that the L310 point probably lies closer to the rest of the data. Therefore, the depletion degree appears to increase with density, following a power law close to $`fn(\mathrm{H}_2)^{0.40.8}`$.

However, one has to be cautious about the “exact” power law coefficient, given the uncertainties in the H2 density, due for the most part to the uncertainty in $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$. The above relation was derived assuming a constant dust opacity coefficient and one may wonder how the exponent would be affected in the case $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ increases with density. In such a case, the $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ column density differs from the evaluation by Bacmann et al. (2000), which, in turns, affects the estimation of the depletion degree too. We adopt a power law $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}n(\mathrm{H}_2)^\beta `$, where $`\beta 0.2`$ under the standard assumption that $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ increases by a factor of 2 (from 0.005 to 0.01 cm2g-1) when the density increases from $`10^5`$ to $`10^6`$ cm-3 (Preibisch et al. 1993). A simple algebra shows that the corrected slope of the $`fn(\mathrm{H}_2)`$ relation is then $`\alpha (1+\beta )\beta `$ instead of $`\alpha `$ ($`\alpha `$ is estimated, like before, supposing $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ constant). The corrected slope is less steep when $`\alpha 1`$, and it is positive if $`\alpha `$ is larger than $`\beta /(1+\beta )0.16`$. The slope $`\alpha `$ derived previously (0.4–0.8) lies well above this value of 0.16, therefore the corrected slope is positive (i.e. the depletion factor is found to increase with density, even in the case $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ also increases with density). We conclude that the observed variations of the depletion factor with density cannot be accounted for by variations in $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ only. Estimates of $`\mathrm{H}_2`$ column density using the Near Infrared Color Excess method (cf. Bergin et al. bergin (2001)) that are independent of $`\kappa _{1.3\mathrm{mm}}`$ should help confirm this trend.

Assuming that a CO molecule in the gas phase has a probability equal to one to stick onto the grain after a collision (e.g. Léger l83 (1983)), the CO depletion is expected to vary roughly as $`\mathrm{exp}\left(t/8000\mathrm{y}\mathrm{r}\right)\mathrm{exp}(n(\mathrm{H}_2))`$, where $`n(\mathrm{H}_2)`$ is expressed in units of $`10^5`$ cm-3. We plotted in Fig. 2 this relation for $`t=2\times 10^3`$ yr and $`t=2\times 10^4`$ yr (dashed lines), as well as a “fit” for $`t=8\times 10^3`$ yr (dash-dotted line). The observed scatter between the data and the model may well reflect the difference in evolutionary stages of the pre-stellar cores studied here. The dash-dotted model is consistent with the results of Caselli et al. (caselli (1999)) on L1544. We note that according to the models, the core ages are found relatively small compared to ambipolar diffusion timescales (Ciolek & Basu cb01 (2001), Caselli et al. 2002b ). We stress however that this simple model does not take desorption from the grains into account, and therefore the ages might be underestimated.

A more detailed study of the relation with depletion and density within the cores will be published elsewhere.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the IRAM staff in Spain for assistance in the observations and the IRAM TAC for their award of observing time. A.B. was supported during this work by the *Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.* P. André is acknowledged for his participation in the continuum observations used in this paper.