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# Delayed Nickel Decay in 𝛾-ray bursts

## 1 Introduction

For the last thirty years $`\gamma `$-ray bursts have been observed, but it has only been in the last five years that X-ray, optical, and radio counterparts —the ‘afterglows’— have been seen (Costa et al., 1997; van Paradijs et al., 1997; Frail et al., 1997). Pinpointing the location of the afterglows has allowed some of the bursts to be associated with host galaxies. Absorption lines in the optical afterglow, together with redshifts obtained from the host galaxies have allowed redshifts to be obtained for the $`\gamma `$-ray bursts themselves, e.g. (Metzger et al., 1997). Redshifts have been obtained between $`z=0.35`$ and $`z=4.5`$, confirming the idea that bursts are cosmological in origin. This idea is also supported by their isotropic distribution on the sky, as recorded by over 2700 BATSE detections.

The redshift determinations have led to estimates of isotropic equivalent fluxes in $`\gamma `$ rays, ranging from $`10^{50}\mathrm{ergs}`$ to $`10^{54}\mathrm{ergs}`$. Since the upper bound is approaching the rest mass energy of the sun, the astrophysical origin of these sites is fairly restrictive. Less energy is contained in the bursts if the $`\gamma `$ rays are strongly beamed, but the beaming can not be stronger than a few degrees, based on the lack of detection of ‘homeless afterglows’ (Mészáros et al., 1999; Dalal et al., 2002; Vreeswijk et al., 2002; Vanden Berk et al., 2002). Recent analyses of the break in the afterglow signal support the idea that $`\gamma `$-ray bursts are beamed to a few degrees (Frail et al., 2001; Panaitescu and Kumar, 2001).

The theoretical problem of what causes the $`\gamma `$-ray bursts can be divided has several parts: the fireball model, the energy injection mechanism and the astrophysical site. The mechanism for actually producing the $`\gamma `$ rays and the afterglows is described by the relativistic fireball model (Rees and Mészáros, 1992; Mészáros and Rees, 1997; Wijers et al., 1997). After energy is injected into material composed mostly of electrons and positrons, it is ejected relativistically. Internal shocks in the plasma and external shocks caused by contact with the interstellar medium drive synchotron radiation from the electrons in a magnetic field. The spectrum of the afterglow, at least in some cases, is fairly well fit to a synchotron spectrum. For recent reviews see van Paradijs et al. 2000; Piran 1999.

This model is fairly independent of the initial energy injection mechanism, as well as the astrophysical site for the bursts. For the injection mechanism, neutrino and antineutrino annihilation into electron-positron pairs (e.g., Ruffert 1999), and delivery through a pointing flux such as the Blanford-Znajek mechanism, have been discussed (e.g., Brown et al. 2000).

Two contenders for the site of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts are neutron star - neutron star mergers and ‘failed supernovae’ also known as collapsar or hypernova models. The neutron star models (Eichler et al., 1989; Mochkovitch et al., 1993) have been shown to be dependent on the way in which general relativity is handled in the numerics. Janka (1999), using a post newtonian approximation, finds short bursts with at most $`10^{50}`$ ergs ejected. Salmonson et al. (2001) using a GR approximation that is exact in the case of spherical symmetry, find longer timescales and larger energies. The collapsar models involve the collapse of a massive star which fails to produce a viable shock for an ordinary supernova explosion. Models involve a combination of a rotating black hole and magnetic field driving jets along the rotation axis of the black hole (Woosley, 1993; Paczyński, 1998; MacFadyen and Woosley, 1999). Of these two models, the collapsar model has recently gained favor with identification, in many cases, of host galaxies associated with the $`\gamma `$-ray burst (Bulik et al., 1999; Bloom et al., 1999b). Neutron star binaries would be expected to wander out of galaxies at a rate inconsistent with the number of observed associations with host galaxies. Further, in a number of $`\gamma `$-ray burst light curves, features strongly resembling a supernova have been found.

Furthermore, recent observations of K $`\alpha `$ lines from iron have been identified in the X-ray afterglows of four $`\gamma `$-ray bursts (Piro et al., 1999; Antonelli et al., 2000; Piro et al., 2000). This is more likely to occur in a supernova like model than in the neutron star merger models. However, there are still many unsolved puzzles associated with these lines. The lines are too broad (0.5 KeV) to be accounted for by thermal broadening, although this may be accounted for by electron scattering. Line scattering from reprocesser type models is discussed in, e.g., (Weth et al., 2000; McLaughlin et al., 2001; Kallman, 2001). If the lines come from material produced by nucleosynthesis in a $`\gamma `$-ray burst, then one would expect Nickel-56 as the product of a thermonuclear burn. In most cases the lines have been identified as iron, in some cases with independent redshift measurements. However, the most recent detection is of nickel, not iron (Reeves et al., 2002).

Two general classes of models have been proposed for these lines. In one case the iron is already present in the system before the $`\gamma `$ rays appear and the lines are produced by the interaction of the afterglow with the iron, e.g., the Supranova model (Vietri et al., 2001). In the other case the lines are produced by another mechanism and are not directly associated with the afterglow. For example, one might imagine that the iron is present in what is left of the star after the burst. An accretion disk which has formed around the black hole produces an ionizing flux, that reaches this iron, which sits on the surface of a ‘funnel ’ which has been carved out of the star by the original ejection, (cf. Rees and Mészáros 2000).

Nickel, on the other hand, is likely to be produced by a thermonuclear burn in the silicon burning layer of the star. This could be identified by a time dependence in the energy of the observed line, due to the decay from nickel to cobalt to iron (McLaughlin et al., 2001). This could be principle be detected up to a few days after the event, since the half life for nickel is about six days, and the difference in line energy from nickel to cobalt is about half a keV. An alternative mechanism suggested for the production of nickel is that first material in the very hot accretion disk is completely dissociated into protons and neutrons. A wind from this disk will cool as it moves out, and may recombine to an equilibrium nucleus, likely again nickel, (McFadyen, 2002).

In this paper we suggest a variation on the above scenarios. Nickel, produced by a thermonuclear burn in the silicon shell, may be ejected out of the accretion disk surrounding the black hole in the collapsar model. This nickel will be partially ionized from below, by the flux leaving the accretion funnel. The ionized nickel will decay at a different rate than nonionized nickel, since decay of nickel proceeds by electron capture. This will produce a distinctive signature pattern in the time dependence of recombination lines. In section 2 we make a plausibility argument to show that ejected nickel can remain ionized. We discuss the parameters that determine the optical depth of the ejected nickel. We describe the progress of an ionization front through the ejected nickel and its dependence on various parameters. In section 3 we discuss the relevant nuclear physics of electron capture and beta decay of nickel-56 and cobalt-56. In section 4 we give the fractions of these elements as functions of time in this model. In section 5 we give conclusions.

## 2 The Model

In this section we present a model of material ejected from a the center of a $`\gamma `$-ray burst. We assume that this occurs by way of interaction between the rotating accretion disk surrounding a black hole and the magnetic field. If the $`\gamma `$-ray burst is a collapsar/hypernova, then the material is likely to be rich in nickel-56. This will happen if the silicon burning shell with an electron fraction of roughly 0.5 is heated to $`T>4\times 10^9`$ K. This type of burning occurs in ordinary supernova explosions. Some of this nucleosynthesis may be deposited in the accretion disk.

First we discuss the optical depth of the nickel and then we describe the motion of an ionization front which travels through the ejected material.

### 2.1 Optical Depth

In this subsection we describe the optical depth of material ejected with fairly high velocity ($`\beta v/c0.2`$) from the center of a $`\gamma `$-ray burst. There is an ionizing flux coming from the center of the object, presumably from an accretion disk surrounding a black hole. As the material moves away from the center it also expands, so we approximate its size as roughly $`V\mathrm{\Omega }r^2\mathrm{\Delta }r`$, where $`r=\beta ct`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2\pi (1\mathrm{cos}\theta )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }rr`$. Here $`r`$ is the linear dimension, $`t`$ is time and $`c`$ is the speed of light. For definiteness, we assume in our calculations that the expansion is homologous, i.e., $`vr`$, and the leading edge moves with $`v=\beta c`$. This way, the density of the ejecta is independent of position, and scales with time as $`t^3`$. Since the ejecta are highly supersonic, and the radiation force is small except near the inner edge, it is fair to approximate the velocity of each part of the ejecta as constant.

We wish to determine how much of the nickel is fully ionized, as both a function of position and time. The first step is to estimate the recombination rate and the ionization rate for the expanding material. The ionization rate is given by:

$$R_{ion}=_{\nu _Z}^{\mathrm{}}\sigma (\nu ,Z)\frac{F(\nu )}{h\nu }d\nu $$
(1)
We use $`\sigma (Z)=2.8\times 10^{29}Z^4/\nu ^3`$, for the ionization cross section. The lower limit of integration is the binding energy of the final K shell electron, $`h\nu =13.6Z^2\mathrm{eV}`$. $`F(\nu )`$ is the photon energy flux.

This flux may have different forms depending on the details of the model. The observed ionizing fluxes are much larger than can be supplied by Eddington-limited emission from a disk around a black hole of a few solar masses. However, a mechanical and/or poynting wind generated by the Blandford-Znajek mechanism or neutrino annihilation can have a much larger energy flux, and be converted into heat and radiation when it impacts the funnel wall far from the black hole (or from a highly magnetized neutron star), as envisaged by Rees & Mészáros (2000). In that case, the expected spectrum might be more like synchrotron radiation or bremsstrahlung with a very high temperature; in both cases, we may approximate the keV X-ray spectrum with a power law: $`F(\nu )\nu ^\xi `$.

This is related to the number flux of the material above the ionization threshold as

$$\dot{N}_I=4\pi r^2_{h\nu _Z}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{F(\nu )}{h\nu }.$$
(2)
We parameterize the time dependence of the ionizing source (in $`10^{53}`$ photons per second) as

$$\dot{N}_I=N_{I,53}t_d^\alpha 10^{53}\mathrm{s}^1$$
(3)
where time, $`t_d`$ is measured in days. After some algebra, we rewrite the ionization rate as

$$R_{ion}=6.5\times 10^6t_d^{(2+\alpha )}N_{I,53}\left(\frac{0.2}{\beta }\right)^2\left(\frac{28}{Z}\right)^2\zeta ,$$
(4)
where

$$\zeta =\frac{_{\nu _Z}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{F_\nu }{h\nu }\frac{1}{\nu ^3}𝑑\nu }{_{\nu _Z}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{F_\nu }{h\nu }𝑑\nu },$$
(5)
i.e., it is a form factor expressing the ionizing photon number flux with the cross section above the edge threshold. For a power-law spectrum $`F(\nu )\nu ^\xi `$, we have $`\zeta =\frac{4\xi }{\xi +3}`$.

Also necessary is the recombination rate, which we estimate by starting with the recombination luminosity (Lang, 1980),

$$L_{rec}=10^{21}n_en_iT^{1/2}VZ^4\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1$$
(6)
Here temperature is in Kelvin, electron, $`n_e`$ and ion, $`n_i`$ densities in $`\mathrm{cm}^3`$, and V is volume. The recombination rate per ion can be estimated by dividing by the volume and ion density and also by the energy of the photon, $`h\nu Z^213.6\mathrm{eV}`$. Some algebra yields a recombination rate of

$$R_{rec}=\frac{C_{rec}}{t_d^3}\mathrm{day}^1$$
(7)
with time t in days where

$$C_{rec}=1.1\times 10^6\left(\frac{1\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}{T}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{M}{0.1M_{\mathrm{}}}\right)\left(\frac{0.2}{\beta }\right)^3\left(\frac{1\mathrm{cos}20^{}}{1\mathrm{cos}\theta }\right)\left(\frac{Z}{28}\right)^3\left(\frac{A}{56}\right).$$
(8)
Here M is the amount of mass in the ejected material and $`\theta `$ is the opening angle of the cone. $`T`$ is the temperature of the material.

With the recombination and ionization rates we can calculate the fraction of nonionized nickel in the optically thin region of the material as

$$f_{non}=\frac{1}{1+C_it_d^{1\alpha }}$$
(9)
where the coefficient is

$$C_i6\dot{N}_{I,53}\left(\frac{1\mathrm{cos}\theta }{1\mathrm{cos}20^{}}\right)\left(\frac{\beta }{0.2}\right)\left(\frac{.1M_{\mathrm{}}}{M}\right)\left(\frac{T}{\mathrm{keV}}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{28}{Z}\right)^5\left(\frac{56}{A}\right)\zeta $$
(10)
If the luminosity of the ionization source is constant, then the fraction of nonionized nickel decreases with time. This may be counterintuitive, since the material gets further from the ionizing source. But the ionization rate per atom decreases with flux, i.e., as $`1/r^21/t^2`$ (since $`rt`$), whereas the recombination rate is proportional to density, i.e., scales as $`1/r^31/t^3`$, hence ionization wins. However, in case of an emptying accretion disk, or of a spinning-down black hole, the luminosity will scale roughly as $`t^1`$, which implies a roughly constant ionized fraction.

The optical depth of the ionizing photons, $`\tau =f_{non}n_i\sigma _Zr`$ is an decreasing function of time. Therefore an ionization front passes through the material. The details of this ionization front determine the ratio of ionized to nonionized nickel, in the material and therefore the rate of nickel decay.

### 2.2 Ionization Front

We assume that Nickel 56 is ejected from the accretion disk with fairly high velocity. There is a source of ionizing photons, which emits in photons per unit time,

$$\dot{N}=N_{I,53}10^{53}/t_d^\alpha \mathrm{s}^1=C_sN_i/t_d^\alpha \mathrm{day}^1,$$
(11)
where $`N_i`$ is the total number of ions in the material and

$$C_s=4\times 10^3\left(\frac{M}{.1M_{\mathrm{}}}\right)^1\left(\frac{A}{56}\right)N_{I,53}.$$
(12)
The equation which describes the passage of the ionization front is:

$$N_{I,53}\frac{1}{t^\alpha }\mathrm{\Delta }t=n_if_{non}R_{ion}\mathrm{\Omega }r^3r_{f_i}^3\mathrm{\Delta }t+n_i\mathrm{\Omega }r^3r_{f_i}^2\mathrm{\Delta }r_{f_i}$$
(13)
The photons are either absorbed on their way to the front (second term) or at the front (first term). Here $`r`$ is the linear dimension of the ejected material, and $`r_f=r/r_{max}`$ is the fractional distance within that material, while $`r_{f_i}`$ is the position of the ionization front. The solid angle subtended by the ejected material is $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2\pi (1\mathrm{cos}\theta )`$. We rewrite Eq. 13 as

$$\frac{3C_s}{t_d^\alpha }=\frac{3C_{rec}}{t_d^3}r_{f_i}^3+\frac{r_{f_i}^3}{3}\frac{dr_{f_i}}{dt}$$
(14)
The solution to this equation is

$$r_{f_i}\left(\frac{C_s}{C_{rec}}\right)^{\frac{1}{3}}t_d^{\frac{3\alpha }{3}},$$
(15)
as long as $`(3C_{rec}/2)^{1/2}>>t_d`$ during the time the ionization front is passing through the material. This is true for all the situations considered here.

Eq. 15 describes the motion of the ionization front. The time it takes a front to pass through the entire mass of nickel depends strongly on $`\alpha `$. For example, for the parameters considered here, it takes 6 days for the front to pass through the material if $`\alpha =0`$ and 17 days for the front to pass through if $`\alpha =1`$.

We have now described a moving, expanding mass of nickel, which is partially ionized behind the front and not ionized ahead of the front. We wish to determine the decay properties of the nickel, for that we need the nuclear physics described in the next section.

## 3 Electron Capture and Beta Decay

Here we describe the nuclear physics of the A=56 decay chain. The half life of $`{}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Ni}`$ is 6.075 days, and it decays almost exclusively by electron capture,

$${}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Ni}+e^{}^{56}\mathrm{Co}+\nu _e.$$
(16)
The Q-value of this reaction is 2.136 MeV. The decay proceeds primarily through the 3rd and 4th excited states of Cobalt-56 which are at 1.45 Mev and 1.720 Mev with respect to the ground state. These states have spin and parity of $`0^+`$ and $`1^+`$, while the ground state of nickel is $`0^+`$, so the decay proceeds through Gamow-Teller and Fermi transitions.

If the nickel is completely ionized and in a dilute environment (so free electron capture is negligible), then it can only decay by emission of a position,

$${}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Ni}^{56}\mathrm{Co}+e^++\nu _e.$$
(17)
The Q-value for this beta plus decay is 1.114 MeV, which makes the 3rd and 4th excited states in cobalt energetically inaccessible. There are three remaining possibilities. The decay can proceed through the ground state, $`4^+`$, the first excited state at 0.158 Mev, $`3^+`$ or the second excited state at 0.970 MeV at $`2^+`$. These are all forbidden and to date no $`\beta ^+`$ decay from Nickel-56 has ever been seen. The current experimental limits place the half life at greater than $`2.9\times 10^4\mathrm{years}`$ (Sur et al., 1990). Calculations within the large scale shell model have placed the half life at about $`4\times 10^4\mathrm{years}`$ (Fisker et al., 1999). For our purposes, we assume that completely ionized nickel is quasi-stable. We note that because of the long half life of ionized nickel-56, it has been suggested that it may be seen in cosmic ray detectors.

Cobalt-56 also decays primarily (81%) by electron capture into Iron-56.

$${}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Co}+e^{}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}+\nu _e.$$
(18)
Its half life is 77.2 days (Junde, 1999). The Q-value, 4.566 MeV, is much higher than in the case of nickel, and therefore it has more energetically accessible states in iron into which it may decay. Nineteen percent of the time ($`I_{\beta ^+}=0.19`$), Cobalt-56 decays by emission of a positron,

$${}_{}{}^{56}\mathrm{Co}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}+e^++\nu _e.$$
(19)
the majority of which is a $`4^+`$ to $`4^+`$ transition to the second exited state of iron at 2.085 MeV. This decay will still proceed, even if the iron is fully ionized. Therefore, for ionized cobalt, the half life will be roughly a factor of 5 higher than for cobalt with two or more electrons. Recent data on Cobalt-56 decay can be found in (Junde, 1999; Meyer et al., 1990).

## 4 Results: Nickel decay in $`\gamma `$-ray burst ejecta

We now combine the physics of the previous two sections to describe the motion of the ionization front with the differing decay times of ionized and nonionized nickel and iron. We show that this produces unusual decay patterns that may be observable with an instrument such as the Chandra X-ray observatory.

The rate of change of the relative abundances of Nickel-56, Cobalt-56 and Iron-56

$$\frac{dN_{Ni}}{dt}=f_{non}\frac{N_{Ni}}{\tau _{Ni}}$$
(20)
$$\frac{dN_{Co}}{dt}=f_{non}\frac{N_{Ni}}{\tau _{Ni}}f_{non}\frac{N_{Co}}{\tau _{Co}}(1f_{non})I_\beta ^+\frac{N_{Co}}{\tau _{Co}}$$
(21)
$$\frac{dN_{Fe}}{dt}=f_{non}\frac{N_{Co}}{\tau _{Co}}+(1f_{non})I_\beta ^+\frac{N_{Co}}{\tau _{Co}}$$
(22)
Here $`\tau _{Ni}=\tau _{1/2}\mathrm{ln}2`$ and $`\tau _{1/2}`$ is the half life of nickel and we use the similar relation for cobalt. Before the ionization front arrives, when $`t<C_{f_\alpha }r_f^{3/(3\alpha )},C_{f_\alpha }=(C_{rec}/C_s)^{1/(3\alpha )}`$ the nonionized fraction is essentially unity. After the ionization front passes, the nonionized fraction is given by Eq. 9. We approximate the nonionized fractions of nickel, cobalt and iron as the same. In reality, there will be slight quantitative differences, since the ionization potential changes by roughly a keV from nickel to iron. How this difference translates into $`f_{non}`$ depends on the shape of the spectrum of the ionizing source.

We can solve the above equations approximately analytically, to get the amount of nickel which remains as a function of time and also position in the ionization front. The general expression for the fraction of nickel remaining after the front has passed is,

$$N(r_f,t)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{C_{f_\alpha }r_f^{\frac{3}{3\alpha }}}{\tau _{Ni}}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{C_{non}}{\tau _{Ni}}_{C_{f_\alpha }r_f^{\frac{3}{3\alpha }}}^t\frac{dt}{C_{non}+t_d^{1\alpha }}\right),t_d>C_{f_\alpha }r_f^{\frac{3}{3\alpha }}$$
(23)
Before the front has passed,

$$N(r_f,t)=\mathrm{exp}(t_d/\tau _{Ni}),t_d<C_{f_\alpha }r_f^{\frac{3}{3\alpha }}.$$
(24)
For the special cases of $`\alpha =0`$ and $`\alpha =1`$, Eq. 23 becomes,

$$N(r_f,t_d)\mathrm{exp}(C_{f_0}r_f/\tau _{Ni})\left(\frac{C_{non}+t_d}{C_{non}+C_{f_0}r_f}\right)^{C_{non}/\tau _{Ni}},t_d>C_{f_0}r_f\alpha =0$$
(25)
$$N(r_f,t_d)\mathrm{exp}(C_{f_1}r_f^{3/2}/\tau _{Ni})\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{f_{non}}{\tau _{Ni}}\left(tC_{f_1}r_f^{3/2}\right)\right],t_d>C_{f_1}r_f^{3/2}\alpha =1.$$
(26)
We show the results of our calculations in Figs. 1 and 2. In Figs 1a,b we show the fraction of nickel as a function of position, $`r_f`$, in the ejected material, for various times. One can clearly see the progress of the ionization front. Ahead of the front there is a constant rate of decay as indicated by the horizontal line. Behind the front the material is partially ionized and this slows down the rate of decay. In the case where the flux from the accretion disk remains constant, the decay is much slower than in the case where the flux decreases as $`t_d^1`$.

In Fig. 2 we show the total fraction of nickel integrated over position. The lowest curve shows the amount of nickel as a function of time in the case of completely nonionized nickel. In the upper two curves we show the change with rate of decay of the ionizing source.

In Fig. 3 we show the amounts of nickel, cobalt and iron as functions of time. We begin with relative abundances taken from (Woosley and Weaver, 1995), so that the iron group has roughly 90% Nickel-56 and 10% iron. We then follow the decay at every point in the ejected material as the ionization front passes and we integrate over position to look at the total amount of nickel, cobalt and iron as functions of time. In these examples, the ionization front passes through the ejecta in 1–2 weeks. Strictly speaking that poses a problem for seeing the iron group emission lines reported in some afterglows within a day, since it is presumed that we see $`\gamma `$-ray bursts along the direction of the funnel and the ejecta. In that case, we cannot see a significant line flux along the jet direction until the ionization front has passed through the ejecta. Real life, however, is likely to be more complex, with homogeneities in the ejecta and a dependence of properties on the distance to the jet axis, allowing the line photons to escape in some directions in some bursts. Alternatively, if the ejecta start out hot enough, as may be the case in a neutrino-driven disk wind, they may fully never recombine and always be more optically thin. Indeed, the lines are not seen in all afterglows and are seen only part of the time in those afterglows where they have been seen.

## 5 Conclusions

The astrophysical origin of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts remains a mystery even three decades after their discovery. However, technological advances in observing techniques have resulted in a great increase in data which is helping narrow down the possibilities. The recent observations of iron recombination lines in the X-ray afterglows of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts are an important clue to this problem.

Here we have discussed the importance of potentially observing the decay timscale of iron group lines. The rate of decay will reflect the amount of time newly made Nickel-56 has remained ionized. This information must then be interpreted in the context of the astrophysical site for $`\gamma `$-ray bursts .

We have suggested a model which has Nickel-56 ejected from an accretion disk surrounding a black hole. Such a geometry is likely to exist at the center of a $`\gamma `$-ray burst. We have shown that the ejected material remains ionized in part due to the ionizing flux coming from the accretion disk. The degree of ionization depends on the parameters in the problem such as the ejection velocity and importantly, the rate of decay of the flux coming from the accretion disk. We suggest that future observations of nickel, iron and cobalt lines several days after the burst are an important test of this model. Since the decay of Nickel-56 proceeds by electron capture, observation of a reduced rate of nickel decay would be a unique signal of ionization.

An interesting consequence of our model is that it would allow us to test for the presence of a hypernova even if we are observing it off-axis: as the ejected nickel is faster than the normal ejecta, it is always outside the general supernova material that explodes more isotropically. This implies that the X-ray line flux from the volume behind the ionization front will be scattered more or less isotropically, and be observable from all directions. We can estimate the redshift out to which such a scattered flux would be visible by noting that the direct flux from the lines is detectable out to $`z1`$. As long as the ionization front has not passed through the matter, a fraction of order unity of the direct flux will be scattered, and it will be roughly isotropic after scattering. This means that the flux towards any off-axis observer will be reduced by a factor $`4\pi /\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{jet}}30`$ relative to the line flux for an observer with a viewing direction within the jet. The distance out to which we can see the scattered flux is less than the maximum distance for the direct flux by the square root of that factor, i.e., corresponds to $`z0.2`$. For much closer hypernova suspects, out to a few Mpc distance, even the $`\gamma `$-ray flux from the decaying nuclei could be observed with INTEGRAL. In both cases, detection would imply a very unusual event, likely a hypernova, since normally the iron-group elements produced in a supernova remain deeply hidden in the ejecta for a long time before the overlying layers become optically thin.

If we were to make observations of delayed nickel decay, it would lend support to the collapsar model of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts . Since most of the light from the $`\gamma `$-ray bursts comes in the $`\gamma `$ rays and in the afterglow, the central engine is difficult to observe. The type of recombination lines predicted here, would, if observed, be a unique window into the center of the $`\gamma `$-ray burst.

RAMJW is supported in part by NASA (award no. 21098).


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# Performance evaluation of the GridFTP within the NorduGrid project

## 1 Introduction

Development of the Grid technologies is the goal of many emerging projects in distributed, data-intensive computing. The idea of merging the capacity of computers worldwide is particularly appealing for tasks, which demand extensive processing of big amounts of data, located at geographically distributed databases. The Grid provides innovative solutions, by introducing specific toolkits, which merge the computers involved into uniform networks.

NorduGrid  is the project with the aim to create the Grid computing infrastructure in Nordic countries, making use of the available middleware. Project participants include universities and research centers in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

A secure, reliable, efficient and high performance data transfer mechanism over high-bandwidth wide area networks is a key component of any kind of Grid infrastructure. The Globus metacomputing project  has proposed the GridFTP protocol  which contains extensions to the standard highly popular FTP protocol, in order to meet the requirements of high performance wide area data movement. Their extended file transfer protocol supports the following features:

* Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI)
* partial file transfer
* reliable data transfer
* third-party (from server to server) transfer
* automatic negotiation of TCP buffer sizes
* parallel (multi-threaded) data transfer
* data channel encryption

The Globus team has provided software implementation of their protocol in terms of production libraries and tools. The GridFTP code used was the alpha-4 release, checked out from the Globus CVS . All the new features except for the TCP buffer negotiation, has been implemented, and the code became a part of the Globus Toolkit™ 2 release .

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the alpha release of the GridFTP code, test and compare its performance to standard FTP file transfer within the framework of the NorduGrid project. Because the GridFTP will be the underlying data transfer engine of many Grid projects, it is very important to have a first-hand experience of its performance and capabilities over the NorduGrid hardware and network resources. Particularly interesting issue is the expected performance improvements due to the new parallel transfer mechanism of the GridFTP protocol. It is well-known that the utilisation of parallel streams in data transfer over high speed WAN connections is a feasible solution to overcome the TCP buffer size limitations without the necessity of the modifications of any sensitive TCP system parameters , therefore parallel streams can lead to a significant improvement in data throughput. Although several multi-threaded file transfer clients exist based on the single-threaded FTP protocol, the Globus Project’s GridFTP implementation is one of a very few, which support parallel streams on the protocol level. In the tests presented here, the parallel GridFTP performance over the NorduGrid network have been measured.

## 2 Test environment

Four NorduGrid sites, Copenhagen, Lund, Oslo and Uppsala, have been participating in the tests. The sites are connected via the high speed NORDUnet network , the actual network configuration is given in Figure 1.

At each site a dedicated Linux server (the Globus gatekeeper of the local Grid cluster) with a GridFTP server installed was used in the investigation. The servers of Lund and Uppsala are connected through a 100 Mbit/s link to the LAN, the Copenhagen server has a Gigabit connection, while the Oslo server at the time of the investigation had only a 10 Mbit/s LAN connection.

The hardware configurations of the GridFTP servers are listed in Table 1; more detailed description can be found on the NorduGrid Web-site .

The Globus Toolkit™version 1.1.3b14, shipped with the globus-url-copy GridFTP client, was installed and configured on the machines. Each site ran the GSI-enabled Globus-modified version of the WU-FTPD server . The particular software configuration of the servers is listed in Table 2.

## 3 Method of measurement

The globus-url-copy tool and the gsi-wuftpd server from the Globus alpha release 4, were used as the client and server respectively. A test file of a size of 100 Mbytes was transferred among the sites, since it was found that this was large enough to average out most of the network fluctuations. A single test consisted of repeated number of measurements of the transfer time of the same file over the same link within a short time interva;. During the tests, the default TCP settings were not modified, since the purpose was to study the performance without tuning system parameters. Throughput measurements with respect to different number of parallel threads were performed over three different network connections:

* Lund-Copenhagen (15 router hops)
* Lund-Uppsala (9 router hops)
* Lund-Oslo (11 router hops)

An example of the command issued to transfer a file in 6 parallel threads from a local node to Uppsala is:
`globus-url-copy -p 6 \`
`file:/tmp/100mb.tmp`  gsiftp:`//grid.tsl.uu.se/tmp/100mb.tmp`
During the investigation, it was found that the background load of the network link had a significant influence on the download performance: for example, a single-threaded download time of the test file from Uppsala to Lund could change from 64s in the morning to 284s in the afternoon. However, for a reasonable period of time (approximately half an hour) the network conditions could be considered being stable. During the measurements, it was found that most of the cases over any given link the downloading time did not vary more than 5%, provided the downloads were made within 30 minutes. Therefore, in order to eliminate the effect of changing network load, download times were compared only if the downloads were performed over the same network link and taken within the same short time interval; furthermore, all the unreconsctructable and outstanding values were discarded. For a specific collection of data it was required that the difference in the download time of the test file measured at the beginning and at the end of the test session did not exceed 5%: in this way one could assume that the test downloads were carried out over a relatively constant network load of the particular network link.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 FTP clients

Before investigating the parallel performance of the GridFTP protocol and the globus-url-copy client, tests comparing different Linux and MS Windows based FTP clients were carried out. Downloads were performed from the Uppsala server using different FTP clients installed on a dual booting (Mandrake 8.0 Linux and W2K) P-III 1 GHz machine in Lund. Under Linux, the FTP, NcFTP, lftp, SSH copy and the Prozilla  clients were tested. The Prozilla application is a multi-threaded Linux FTP client. It is capable of opening multiple connections to a server, where each of the connections downloads a part of a file, and upon completion of downloads, the partial files are merged.

After rebooting the machine to W2K, the tests were repeated with FTP, Windows Commander built-in client, and CuteFTP Pro. The latter client allows up to 4 parallel connections per transferred file.

The download performance of the clients were compared to single and multiple threaded GridFTP downloads. The results are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3. It can be seen that multi-threaded clients generally improve the transfer time, while Linux clients routinely outperform those of W2K. The Linux multi-threaded downloader Prozilla, although providing higher transfer rates with increasing thread number, generally consumes too much time during the reconstruction phase, slowing down the performance. GridFTP provides the fastest downloads already with 4 threads, and can improve further, providing LAN performance and the network load allow for it.

### 4.2 Lund-Uppsala transfer

The main GridFTP tests were carried out between Lund and Uppsala. At both sites, the GridFTP servers are connected to their LAN with a fast 100 Mbit/s Ethernet link. Lund has a 155 Mbit/s connection to the Malmö backbone, which is connected via a 622 Mbit/s line to Stockholm, and Stockholm in turn has a 155 Mbit/s line to Uppsala (see Figure 1).

The network load of the data paths on the day of the measurements is shown in Figures 4 to 6 . Most of the day (9:00 thru 1:00 CET), the Lund-Malmö link is usually overloaded (running at 90-100% of its total capacity), while the other two links have a moderate load of 40%.

Two sets of tests were performed: the first series of transfer measurements were taken in the morning at a relatively low network load, while the second was performed over a congested network at peak time. The throughput performance of the GridFTP with respect to the number of parallel threads via transferring the 100 Mbyte test file between Lund and Uppsala was measured (see Figure 7).

Usage of parallel threads radically increased the transfer rate both over the congested and uncongested network, regardless of the load. The performance was steadily increasing for up to $``$64 threads; over 96 threads instabilities and lower transfer rates were experienced. Over a congested network, the throughput with 64 threads increased 780% and 980% respectively in the two directions, compared to the normal single-threaded transfer. In case of the unloaded network, the transfer rate increased from 20 Mbit/s to 60 Mbit/s (Lund to Uppsala), which is actually around the maximum throughput of a 100 Mbit/s LAN. This means that over the Lund-Uppsala data path already the LAN performance represents the bottleneck in the multi-threaded GridFTP downloads.

### 4.3 Lund-Oslo transfer

Lund is connected to Oslo through the 155 Mbit/s Lund-Malmo, 2.5 Gbit/s Malmo-Stockholm and 2.5 Gbit/s Stockholm-Oslo links. However, the 10 Mbit/s LAN connection of the Oslo server was the real bottleneck on the Lund-Oslo data path. The result of the multi-threaded test downloads from Oslo to Lund is shown in Figure 8. The 7 Mbit/s single-threaded transfer rate is already close to the 10 Mbit/s theoretical maximum, thus the 10 Mbit/s networking bottleneck seriously limits the functionality of the parallel downloads.

### 4.4 Lund-Copenhagen transfer

The Lund-Copenhagen datalink, despite the geographical neighbourhood of the two sites, represents the longest network connection in these GridFTP tests (15 router hops). The data travel from Lund to Stockholm, then from Stockholm through a 2.5 Gbit/s link to Lyngby, the Danish NORDUnet gateway, and finally arrives to Copenhagen (see Figure 9). Performing parallel downloads from Lund to Copenhagen, a throughput gain from 7 Mbit/s to 30 Mbit/s (over a congested network) was experienced, obtained with 32 threads compared to the single download rate.

### 4.5 Third party transfers

Finally, third party transfer tests from Copenhagen (controller) between the servers of Lund and Uppsala were made (see Figure 10). A third party transfer implies two FTP control channels to servers from the controller, and one data channel between the two servers. The parallel threads resulted in a performance gain similar to one of the case of the direct transfer (compare Figure 7 and Figure 10). The transfer rate increased from the single-threaded 15-20 M bit/s up to 50-55 Mbit/s, achieved with 32 threads.

### 4.6 Stability issues

In spite of the alpha status of the GridFTP software implementation, it was found that the globus-url-copy client and the gsi-wuftpd server are rather stable. However, using more than hundred parallel streams can sometimes cause instabilities. On several occasions, with large number of used threads, the start-up phase of the download froze for several seconds. Restarting the transfer usually solved the problem. More common unstable behaviour of the above-100-threads downloads was the extremely slow completion of the last few hundred kilobytes. On few occasions, the download process in its finishing state (retrieving the last few hundred bytes) suddenly restarted from the beginning. A general conclusion is that the software implementation for above ca. 100 threads became unreliable. We expect that these instabilities will be resolved with the final Globus Toolkit™ 2 release.

## 5 Summary

In this report the high performance GridFTP data transfer mechanism was evaluated over the NorduGrid resources. The tests were mainly focused on the performance gain due to the usage of parallel streams. Another purpose was to compare the performance of the Globus GridFTP implementation to several ordinary FTP clients. It was found that the performance of the conventional FTP clients differ not more than 20 percent and that the single threaded GridFTP could deliver performance in the same range.

The multi-threaded GridFTP transfers resulted in a remarkable performance increase of about 600-800 percent, compared to a single threaded GridFTP (or conventional FTP) downloads. Parallel threads lead to increased throughput over both congested and unloaded networks. It’s worth to point out that in some of the cases the LAN or the actual hardware configuration became the bottleneck in the GridFTP tests. Parallel third party (server to server) transfers were tested and similar performance enhancement to direct transfers was achieved. It is clearly unfair towards other users to execute a multi-threaded transfer over a congested network, as it consumes bandwith proportional to the number of threads. However, if a big bandwith is available, like in the case of a fat long dedicated line, a multi-threaded transfer is the only way to use all the available capacity without changing the system parameters.

The tests were by no means exhaustive, many other cases could have been considered. The NorduGrid network resources are going to be considerably upgraded (the Lund-Malmö and the Copenhagen-Lyngby links) and the tests are planned to be extended using the upgraded network; moreover a dedicated 1GBit/s CERN-Copenhagen link is about to be set up for tests purposes in the near future.

The alpha status software is proved to be relatively stable, since irregularities occurred only for downloads involving exaggerated amount of threads (above 100). After these tests were done, the Globus Toolkit™ 2 was released, which includes an upgraded version of GridFTP. The conclusion is that the multi-threaded GridFTP significantly boosted the data throughput over the NorduGrid network and it is certainly a very promising solution for high performance data transfer.

## 6 Acknowledgements

The NorduGrid project is supported by the Nordunet2 programme, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers and by the Nordic Governments.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The overall spectral energy distribution (SED) of blazars show a two-bump structure where the lower frequency hump is peaked either in the IR/optical (low frequency peaked LBL or “red” blazar) or in the UV/X-ray bands (high frequency peaked HBL or “blue” blazars), (Padovani & Giommi 1995, Ghisellini et al. 1998, Urry 1999) and is believed to be produced by synchrotron emission, while the higher frequency component should be given by inverse Compton (IC) scattering. Synchrotron radiation and IC scattering was usually interpreted as due to diffusive shock acceleration of charged particles within a plasma jet, which itself moves at relativistic speed and point toward the observer. ON 231 is one of the best examples in which both the synchrotron decline tail and the further rise of the IC bump in the broadband spectrum, were observed simultaneously at the X-ray wavelengths. The consequent concave shape of the X-ray spectrum detected by BeppoSAX (Tagliaferri et al. 2000) could be the important signature of the intermediate blazar subclass (i.e. the transition from LBL to HBL). Detailed studies on intermediate objects are fundamental to probe the continuous spectral sequence of blazars “flavours” resulting from the source power dependence and from the distribution of the intrinsic physical parameters (Fossati et al. 1998).

## 2 The outburst of April-May 1998

The blazar ON 231 (W Com, B2 1219+28; z=0.102) was one of the first radio sources classified as a classical BL Lacertae object (Biraud 1971; Browne 1971). Perugia Observatory, equipped with a 0.4 m robotic telescope (Tosti et al. 1996), since 1994 is carrying out an intensive optical monitoring of ON 231. The optical flux was at an higher level respect to historical mean value, showing in each season a superimposition of many flares with different amplitudes and time ranges (Tosti et al. 1998). In April 1998 the source had an extraordinary outburst (Massaro et al. 1999) and reached the highest brightness level ever recorded since the Wolf’s discovery of the optical counterpart (Wolf 1916). In the maximum phase the magnitude of ON 231 was R(Cousins)=12.2 (density flux $`F_\nu =42.9`$ mJy, or $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(\nu F_\nu )=9.69`$ erg s-1 cm-2, corrected for Galactic extinction). The linear optical polarization also increased suddenly, giving evidence of the pure non-thermal origin of the flare. 1999 VLBI maps displayed a new prominent two-sided structure, suggesting a relation between the optical enhanced activity and changes in the innermost radio structure (Massaro et al. 2001). The subsequent optical behaviour showed a slow decline in the mean luminosity (Tosti et al. 2002). BeppoSAX observed ON 231 in May 1998 with a good sensitivity and spectral resolution, following the extraordinary optical outburst and detecting the unexpected hollow X-ray spectrum between the two bumps of the SED. This data was used to test and probe the parameter plausibility and the robustness of a mere synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) time-dependent model. In fact this spectrum shape is difficult to fit for a preliminary “one–zone–one–process” implementation, without any external IC contributes.

## 3 Model and simulations

An electron plasma confined by a magnetic field into a non-thermal flaring knot in blazar jets, can be described, in accord to a statistical reduced description, with a density operator or a one–particle distribution function giving the particle number density in the phase space. An appropriate truncation of the exact kinetic relations and a diffusion approximation for system of particles moving under stochastic forces that keep producing small changes in particles dynamics can used to further simplify the kinetic equations (Chandrasekhar 1943). Taking an isotropic and space homogeneous distribution function and integrating in volume and angular momentum-space coordinates, the dependency from pitch angle, spatial and spherical momentum–space coordinates can be removed. Thus may be used a simple one–dimensional and modified Fokker–Planck equation for the number particle density $`N(t,\gamma )`$ \[cm-3\] (Lorentz $`\gamma =E/m_ec^2`$ is the dimensionless factor) in order to describe the time–dependent evolution of the electron distribution in the flaring volume. This equation can be though as a random walk in the energy space of electrons and can be written as

$$\frac{N(t,\gamma )}{t}=\frac{1}{s(\gamma )}\frac{}{\gamma }\left(D(t,\gamma )\frac{N(t,\gamma )}{\gamma }+A(t,\gamma )N(t,\gamma )\right)\frac{N(t,\gamma )}{\tau (\gamma )}+Q(t,\gamma ),$$
(1)
where $`D(t,\gamma )`$ represent the sum of the various energy diffusion coefficients; $`A(t,\gamma )`$ is the advective term contains energy gains and losses; $`\tau ^1(\gamma )`$ is the probability of particle disappearance by escape, $`Q(t,\gamma )`$ \[cm-3 s-1\] is the source term, while $`s(\gamma )`$ is a scaling factor for the volume element. The solutions of this type of equations are very sensitive to initial and boundary conditions and to injection and losses forms.

In this preliminary SSC model, a single homogeneous one–particle plasma region was considered (as done in Chiaberge & Ghisellini 1999), subordinated to injection of accelerated relativistic electrons with a power-law energy distribution and to pure radiation cooling. An uniform tangled magnetic field B was considered, even if a superposed small-amplitude plasma turbulence (Böttcher et al. 1997), needs to be implemented for more realistic simulations. The ensemble synchrotron spectrum was integrated by the calculated electron distribution at any given time. The IC spectrum result as the interaction of the energetic electron distribution with the synchrotron photons using a standard technique (Band & Grindlay 1985, Li & Kusunose 2000). The produced spectra were transformed to the observer using the Doppler beaming factor $`𝒟=((1+z)\mathrm{\Gamma }(1\beta \mathrm{cos}\theta ))^1`$ (where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the bulk Lorentz factor of the emitting region, $`\theta `$ the angle respect to the observer) and using the luminosity distance of the source.

The concave X-ray spectrum of ON 231 measured from 0.1 keV up to 100 keV by BeppoSAX in May 11-12, 1998, and the simultaneous optical multiband data of Perugia Observatory (May 11 $`R_c=13.06`$, May 12 $`R_c=13.25`$) was fitted with the physical parameters reported in the caption of Figure 1, that are in rough agreement with the value calculated in the paper of Tagliaferri et al. (2000). Only the flaring region dimension $`R`$ was taken almost one order of magnitude greater than the value reported in the paper. A single no-break power-law for the injected electron energy distribution is able to reproduce the X-ray spectrum, with a very steep power index ($`Q(\gamma )\gamma ^{3.4}`$ between $`\gamma _{min}`$ and $`\gamma _{max}`$). This reflects the common behaviour of harder injection spectrum during flaring states. The steeper index counterbalances the larger volume of the flaring region, giving the same global energetics. The IC gamma–ray part of the SED is into some limits and detections of EGRET in 1991–1992 and February 1996, even if this data are indeed weak constraints for the May 1998 behaviour. A weakest point of the simulation, could be the predicted relevant synchrotron peak at mid–IR wavelength, because it assumes a flux much higher than the unique available far–IR data (IRAS) about ON 231. On the other hand this could be the result of the April exceptional outburst that raised the non-thermal IR-optical-UV synchrotron continuum to the highest level recorded since the beginning of the previous century ($`F_\nu >50`$ mJy in $`I_c`$ band in April 23, 1998). This is witnesses by the flattest optical spectral distribution ever observed during the maximum (Massaro et al. 1999), that may be extended to IR wavelengths. The subsequently faster cooling of the optical emission respect to the mid–IR photons, should have dropped the optical flux until the photometric values registered almost 20 days later, contemporary with the SAX detections, while a larger amount of infrared flux could have survived for more time.

At longer wavelengths the “toy” model of a single flaring blob, with this hard injection, do not reproduce the spectrum, probably due also to stationary radio–emission in the the underlying jet. In Figure 2 is shown an example of plain cooling, plus escape, temporal evolution for the May 1998 SED and the 1991-1992 spectrum (see Figure 3), calculated by the time–dependent simulation. In Figure 3 are displayed three spectra for simultaneous data of February 1996 and for other not contemporary observations. Here the profiles of the SED are more similar to the HBL spectrum shapes, generally simpler to simulate with a plain SSC model. All this other SEDs passes through the IRAS data and were produced with plausible parameters. The model seems physically acceptable also in this cases, even if this data have a little means, compared to the strict constraints given by the excellent observations of BeppoSAX.


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# CLEO-c and CESR-c: A New Frontier of Electroweak and QCD Physics

## 1 Introduction and Motivation

The CLEO-c Physics program includes a set of measurements that will substantially advance our understanding of important Standard Model processes and set the stage for understanding the larger theory in which we imagine the Standard Model to be embedded. Moreover the CLEO-c program also include searches for physics beyond the Standard Model.

In this note we will describe the CLEO-c measurements that will probe the essential nature of the weak decays of charm mesons and flavor mixing by clean, high-statistics studies of semileptonic charm decays and $`D\overline{D}`$ mixing. We will describe precision measurements of branching fractions that will set the absolute scale and validate the theoretical techniques for much of the heavy flavor physics done in the next decade, and will describe direct searches for physics within and beyond the Standard Model, searches that are unique to the CLEO-c program.

## 2 Run Plan and Datasets

The CESR accelerator will operate at the center-of-mass energies corresponding to $`\sqrt{s}4140,\sqrt{s}3770(\psi ^\mathrm{"}),and\sqrt{s}3100(J/\psi )`$ for approximately one calendar year each. Taking into account the anticipated luminosity which will range from $`5\times 10^{32}cm^2s^1`$ down to about $`1\times 10^{32}cm^2s^1`$ over this energy range, the proposed run plan will yield 3 $`fb^1`$ each at the end $`\psi ^\mathrm{"}`$ and at $`\sqrt{s}4140`$ above $`D_s\overline{D_s}`$ threshold, and 1 $`fb^1`$ at the $`J/\psi `$. These integrated luminosities correspond to samples of 1.5 million $`D_s\overline{D_s}`$ pairs, 30 million $`D\overline{D}`$ pairs, and one billion $`\psi `$ decays. As a point of reference , we note that these datasets will exceed those of the MARK III experiment by factors of 480, 310, and 170, respectively. If time permits, we will take additional data samples at the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_c\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }_c}`$ threshold region, the $`\tau ^+\tau ^{}`$ threshold region, and the $`\psi (3684)`$.

In addition, prior to the conversion to low energy operation, we will take $``$ 4 $`fb^1`$ spread over the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(1S),\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(2S),\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(3S)`$ resonances to launch the QCD part of the program. These datasets will increase the available $`b\overline{b}`$ bound state data by more than an order of magnitude.

## 3 Measurement

Our principal measurement targets include:

### 3.1 Leptonic charm decays:

$`D^{}l^{}\overline{\nu }andD_s^{}l^{}\overline{\nu }`$ From the muonic decays alone we can determine the decay constants $`f_D`$ and $`f_{D_s}`$ to a precision of about $`2\%`$. We note that $`f_D`$ and $`f_{D_s}`$ are only known to about 35$`\%`$ and 100$`\%`$ respectively, and $`f_B`$ and $`f_{B_s}`$ are unlikely to be measured to any useful precision in this decade.

### 3.2 Semileptonic charm decays:

$`D(K,K^{})l\nu ,D(\pi ,\rho ,\omega )l\nu ,D_s(\eta ,\varphi )l\nu ,D_s(K,K^{})l\nu ,and\mathrm{\Lambda }_c\mathrm{\Lambda }l\nu `$. Absolute branching rations in critically interesting modes like $`D\pi l\nu andDKl\nu `$ will be measured to $`1\%`$, and form factors slopes to $`4\%`$. Form factors in all modes can be measured across the full range of $`q^2`$ with excellent resolution. Semileptonic decays are the primary source of data for the CKM elements $`|V_{ub}|,|V_{cb}|,|V_{cd}|,and|V_{cs}|`$, but these CKM elements can not be extracted without accurate knowledge of the form factors. Currently, semileptonic branching rations are known with uncertainties that range from $`5\%`$ to $`73\%`$. Inclusive semileptonic decays such as $`DeX`$, $`D_seX`$, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_ceX`$ will also be examined and branching rations will be measured to a precision of 1 - 5 $`\%`$. Currently, such quantities are known with uncertainties that range from 4$`\%`$ to 63$`\%`$.

### 3.3 Search for Hadronic decays of charmed mesons.

We will establish the critical normalizing modes $`DK\pi `$, $`D^+K\pi \pi `$, and $`D_s\varphi \pi `$ to a precision of order 1 - 2 $`\%`$. Currently these are known with uncertainties that range from up to 25$`\%`$ and are even larger for other hadronic decays of interest. Many important B meson branching rations are normalized with respect to these charm modes.

### 3.4 Rare decays, $`D\overline{D}`$ mixing, and CP violating decays

We will search rare decays with a typical sensitivity of $`10^6`$, study mixing with a sensitivity to $`x=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }M}{M}andy=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ of under $`1\%`$, and detect CP violating asymmetries that may be present with a sensitivity of better than $`1\%`$. We will also search $`\tau `$ decays for evidence of new physics.

### 3.5 Quarkonia and QCD

With the Largest $`J/\psi `$ data sample in the World, the CLEO-c QCD program will be able to determine the composition for a variety of the exotica in the mass region accessible from $`J/\psi `$ radiative decays. We will explore the region of $`1<M_X<3GeV/c^2`$ with partial wave analyses for evidence of scalar or tensor glueballs, glueball-$`q\overline{q}`$ mixtures, exotic quantum numbers, quark-glue hybrids, and other evidence for new forms of matter predicted by QCD but not yet cleanly observed.

## 4 Unique Features of the CLEO-c Program

Many measurement described above have been done or attempted by other experiments such as Mark III and BES, and many are accessible to B-factory experiments operating at the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4s)`$. What makes CLEO-c unique ?

Compared to Mark III and BES experiments which have taken data on the same $`\psi `$ resonances as we discussed here, CLEO-c will have:

### 4.1 Vastly more data.

As noted above the CLEO-c data sample will be $``$ 200 - 500 times larger than the corresponding Mark III datasets and we will have 270 times as much D and $`D_s`$ data, and 20 times as many $`\psi (3100)`$ decays.

### 4.2 A modern detector.

CLEOIII is superior to both BES and Mark III detectors by substantial margins. Photon energy, for example, is factors of 10-20 times better; charger particle momentum resolution is 2-3 times better. Particle identification with the RICH and dE/dx gives tens to hundreds of sigma $`K\pi `$ separation across the full kinematic range.

On the other hand, CLEO-c will not have any advantage in statistics or in detector performance when compared to Babar and Belle. With an anticipated 400 $`fb^1`$ of $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4s)`$ data, Babar and Belle will each have about 500 million continuum $`e^+e^{}c\overline{c}`$ events. Yet the data CLEO-c takes at charm threshold has distinct and powerful advantages over continuum charm production data taken at B-factories, which we list here:

* Charm events produced at threshold are extremely clean
* Charm events produced at threshold are pure $`D\overline{D}`$
* Double-tag studies are pristine
* Signal/Background is optimum at threshold
* neutrino reconstruction is clean
* Quantum coherence: For D mixing and some CP violation studies, the fact that the D and $`\overline{D}`$ are produced in a coherent quantum state in $`\psi (3770)`$ decay is of central importance for the subsequent evolution and decay of these particles. The same is true for the $`CP=+1`$ mode $`\psi (4140)\gamma D\overline{D}`$. The coherence of the two initial-state particles allows simple methods to measure $`D\overline{D}`$ mixing parameters and check for direct CP violation.

## 5 The Impact of CLEO-c

The extensive set of 1 - 2 $`\%`$ precision measurements by CLEO-c will rigorously constrain theoretical calculations. The calculation which survive these tests will be validated for use in a wide variety of areas where the interesting physics cannot be extracted without theoretical input. This broader impact of CLEO-c results extends beyond the borders of CLEO-c measurement and affects most of the core issues in heavy flavor physics. We list here some of the areas that will be most notable:

* 5$`\%`$ or better precision of $`|V_{ub}|`$.
* $`5\%`$ determinations of $`|V_{td}|`$ and $`|V_{ts}|`$
* $`1\%`$ accuracy in extracting $`|V_{cd}|`$ and $`|V_{cs}|`$
* measurement of the normalizing branching rations at the sub-percent level.
* Unitarity tests of CKM can be probed with $`1\%`$ precision when $`|V_{cd}|`$ and $`|V_{cs}|`$ are provided at this level by CLEO-c.
* Over-constraining the Standard Unitarity Triangle: Provided $`|V_{ub}|`$ and $`|V_{td}|`$ have been determined at the $`5\%`$ level, the triangle sides will have been measured with a precision comparable to the phase quantity $`\mathrm{sin}2\beta `$, thereby allowing for the first time meaningful comparison of the sides of the unitarity triangle with one of the angles.
* In the quarkonium studies new forms of gluonic matter may be identified.

## 6 Conclusion

The acceptance, resolution, and particle identification of the CLEO III detector are an outstanding match to the requirements of a program of precision measurements in the charm threshold region. CLEO-c will provide precision measurements at the $`1\%`$ level:

* Of absolute reference hadronic branching fractions for D decays
* Of $`|V_{cd}|f_{D^+}`$ and $`|V_{cs}|f_{D_s^+}`$ from leptonic $`D^+`$ and $`D_s^+`$ decays
* Of $`|V_{cd}|`$ and $`|V_{cs}|`$ from leptonic $`D^0`$ and $`D^+`$ decays
* With very small and well-controlled backgrounds
* With very small and well-understood systematic errors.

These measurements will challenge the ability of LQCD to calculate decay constants and form factors for D decays, which will determine their utility for these calculations in B decays. The advances in strong-interaction calculations that we expect to drive will in turn underwrite advances in weak interaction physics not only in CLEO-c, but in all heavy-quark endeavors and in future explorations of physics beyond the Standard Model.

## References


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# How free are Composite Fermions at 𝜈=1/2? A NMR investigation

## Abstract

NMR measurements of the electron spin polarization have been performed on a 2D electron system at and around half-filled lowest Landau level. Comparing the magnetic field and the temperature dependence of the spin polarization to models of free and interacting composite fermions (CF), we confirm the existence of a Fermi sea and show that residual interactions are important. Independent measurements of the CF effective mass, $`g`$-factor and Fermi energy are obtained from the thermal activation of the spin polarization in tilted fields. The filling factor dependence of the spin polarization for $`\frac{2}{5}<\nu <\frac{2}{3}`$ reveals a broken particle-hole symmetry for the partially polarized CF Fermi-sea.

In high magnetic fields, a two-dimensional electron gas exhibits fractional quantum Hall states when the Landau level filling factor is equal to $`\nu =\frac{p}{2pq\pm 1}`$ or $`1\frac{p}{2pq\pm 1}`$ ($`p,qϵ`$). These highly correlated electronic states can be viewed as the integer quantum Hall states $`\nu ^{}=p`$ of “composite fermions” (CF) CF  moving in an averaged reduced magnetic field $`B^{}=B2q\varphi _0/𝒜`$ ($`\varphi _0`$ is the flux quantum, $`𝒜`$ is the sample area and $`\frac{1}{\nu ^{}}=\frac{1}{\nu }2q`$). At half filling, $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ ($`q=1`$), CFs experience no magnetic field and form a Fermi sea. Resonances in magneto-transport experiments MT  close to $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ have shown that CFs are physical particles undergoing cyclotron motion in the reduced field $`B^{}`$: today most experimental results in the fractional quantum Hall regime can be easily visualized with this mapping onto nearly free CF particles in a reduced field. On the other hand, quantitative comparison between experiments and theory have been more challenging: in spite of their physical relevance, residual Coulomb interactions, fluctuations and disorder are difficult to incorporate in the theory.

At low magnetic fields, CF spin degrees of freedom are also relevant since the system is not fully polarized. For a free CF Fermi gas, the spin polarization $`𝒫`$ is determined by the difference in area of the spin-$``$ and spin-$``$ Fermi disks. Experimentally, $`𝒫`$ can be tuned by tilting the sample with respect to the magnetic field, keeping the perpendicular component to the 2D gas (and hence $`\nu `$) constant. In this Letter, we probe the electron spin polarization in the vicinity of half filling using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurement of the Knight shift of 71Ga nuclei in a GaAs/GaAlAs multiple quantum well (QW) sample with electron density $`n=\mathrm{8.5\hspace{0.17em}10}^{10}`$ cm-2 (M280), previously used in other studies 1nu2paper ; 2nu3paper ; 1nupaper ; thesis . Comparing this experimental data to a free CF model and to the Hamiltonian theory Shankar01  of CFs, which incorporates the residual Coulomb interactions, the existence of a thermodynamic Fermi sea for CF is established, with an effective mass that is *independent* of the Zeeman energy.

NMR is a very sensitive direct measurement of the spin polarization $`𝒫`$ of electrons in QWs, since the Fermi contact interaction $`_{ij}𝒮_i_j\delta (\stackrel{}{r}_i\stackrel{}{R}_j)`$ between itinerant electron spins $`𝒮_i`$ at position $`\stackrel{}{r}_i`$ and nuclear spins $`_j`$ at $`\stackrel{}{R}_j`$ shifts the resonance frequency of 71Ga nuclei in the QWs by a magnetic hyperfine shift $`K_\mathrm{S}`$ proportional to $`𝒫`$ 1nu2paper ; 2nu3paper ; 1nupaper ; thesis . The NMR signal from the barriers, where the conduction band is empty, is used as a zero-shift reference. The spin polarization is inferred from $`K_\mathrm{S}`$ as $`𝒫(\nu ,T,\theta )=\frac{K_\mathrm{S}(\nu ,T,\theta )}{K_\mathrm{S}(𝒫=1)}`$, where $`K_\mathrm{S}(𝒫=1)`$ is the maximum shift measured in this sample (e.g. at low temperature for the ferromagnetic state at $`\nu =\frac{1}{3}`$). We used the same experimental setup as in previous studies 1nu2paper ; 2nu3paper ; 1nupaper ; thesis .

In Fig. 1, we present the dependence of $`𝒫_0`$ on the ratio of Zeeman to Coulomb energy $`\eta =\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}}{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{C}}`$ at filling factor $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ 111Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{C}=\frac{1}{4\pi \epsilon _0\epsilon _r}\sqrt{\frac{eB}{\mathrm{}}}`$ and no correction factors due to finite width have been taken into account, while the $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$ has been computed using $`|g^{}|=0.44`$.. $`𝒫_0`$ is the low temperature saturation value of the spin polarization $`𝒫(T)`$ shown in Fig. 2, while $`\eta `$ is changed by tilting the sample, keeping $`\nu `$ at $`\frac{1}{2}`$. The saturation value $`K_\mathrm{S}(𝒫=1)=11.6\text{ kHz}`$ agrees with the one previously determined 2nu3paper . Until full polarization is reached, the data fall on a line extrapolating to $`𝒫_0(\eta =0)=0`$ (vanishing electron density $`n`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$). The solid line is a linear fit, yielding a critical value of $`\eta _\mathrm{c}=0.022`$ for a fully polarized CF Fermi-sea (FS). This smooth dependence of $`𝒫_0`$ on $`\eta `$ is a proof for the existence of FSs for both spin directions. In the lowest Landau level the kinetic energy is quenched and there are two highly degenerate spin levels separated by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$. At odd denominator filling factors, this degeneracy is partially reduced by the formation of CF Landau levels and only particular, unmagnetizable states are energetically favorable, which leads to a step-like function $`𝒫(\eta )`$ Kukushkin ; 2nu3paper . The appearance of a magnetizable state at $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ is a signature of the FSs for both spin directions.

At $`\eta _\mathrm{c}`$, the Zeeman and CF Fermi energies are identical. Thus we find, assuming the $`g`$-factor of CFs to be the same as for electrons ($`|g^{}|=0.44`$), $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}=\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}(\eta _\mathrm{c})2.93\text{ K}`$. The CF Fermi energy $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}=\frac{n}{D}`$ can be specified by an effective mass $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$, through the CF density of states $`D=\frac{m_\mathrm{P}^{}m_e}{2\pi \mathrm{}^2}`$ at the Fermi level ($`m_e`$ is the bare electron mass and not the GaAs band mass). Using $`B_{}=\frac{2h}{e}n`$, we find $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}=\frac{e\mathrm{}}{2m_\mathrm{P}^{}m_e}B_{}\frac{4.77}{m_\mathrm{P}^{}}`$ K, and determine in this way the effective mass of CFs at $`\eta _\mathrm{c}`$ to be $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}(\eta _\mathrm{c})1.63`$.

To understand the linear dependence of $`𝒫_0`$ on $`\eta `$ observed in Fig. 1, we compute $`𝒫(T,B)`$ for a fixed number of CFs. Assuming a quadratic dispersion $`ϵ(k)=\frac{k^2}{4\pi D}`$, the $`T`$-dependence of the spin polarization is 1nu2paper ; OPNMR :

$$𝒫(T,B)=\frac{1}{\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}}\left[\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}2k_\mathrm{B}T\mathrm{arsinh}(\frac{\mathrm{sinh}(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}}{2k_\mathrm{B}T})}{\mathrm{exp}(\frac{n}{2Dk_\mathrm{B}T})})\right],$$
(1)
which reduces to $`𝒫_0(B)=\mathrm{min}\{\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}/\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\}`$.

Hence below $`\eta _c`$, $`𝒫_0=\frac{m_\mathrm{P}^{}m_e\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}}{4\pi \mathrm{}^2n}`$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$. In the data shown in Fig. 1, $`𝒫_0`$ varies linearly with $`\eta \mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$. Thus $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ must be constant, independent of $`B`$ at a given $`n`$ 222In Ref. 1nu2paper,  it has been shown that $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ is nevertheless proportional to $`1/\sqrt{B_{}}`$.. Mapping the fractional gaps onto $`\mathrm{}\omega _{\mathrm{CF}}\left(n+\frac{1}{2}\right)`$, Park and Jain Park98  find a field dependent effective mass $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}\eta `$: for the parameters relevant to GaAs ($`|g^{}|=0.44`$, $`ϵ_r=12.7`$), they determine

$$m_\mathrm{P}^{}=0.66\frac{B/\text{T}}{\sqrt{B_{}/\mathrm{T}}}\eta .$$
(2)
For sample M280, i.e. at $`B_{}=7.1`$ T, Eq. 2 predicts $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}=1.76/\mathrm{cos}(\theta )`$, where $`\theta `$ is the sample tilt angle. The $`\theta =0`$ value compares reasonably to the experimental value $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}=1.63`$ determined above. Nevertheless, the $`B`$-dependence of $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ given by Eq. 2 would lead to a nonlinear dependence of $`𝒫_0`$ on $`\eta `$, shown in Fig. 1 as dotted line and is not consistent with the observed behavior.

In contrast to the free CF model, the Hamiltonian theory predicts $`𝒫_0`$ to be linear with $`\eta `$: Eq. 153 in Shankar01  reads

$$𝒫_0=\frac{0.13\sqrt{B_{}}\lambda ^{7/4}}{\mathrm{cos}\theta }\eta ,$$
(3)
where $`B_{}`$ is expressed in Tesla and $`\lambda `$ is the finite thickness parameter in the Zhang-Das Sarma potential, determined to be $`\lambda =1.6\mathrm{}_B`$ by fitting one point of $`𝒫(T,\theta =0)`$. From Fig. 1, we see that Eq. 3, which lies slightly above the experimental $`𝒫(\eta )`$, is qualitatively correct.

We now turn to the temperature dependence of $`𝒫`$. So far, $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ has been determined to be constant for $`\eta <\eta _\mathrm{c}`$. Using Eq. 1, we can test whether this holds also for $`\eta >\eta _\mathrm{c}`$. Furthermore, the depolarization at finite $`T`$ is governed by the Zeeman energy: an independent measurement of the CF $`g`$-factor can be inferred.

In Fig. 2, we present the temperature dependence $`𝒫(T,\nu =\frac{1}{2})`$ for tilt angles $`0^{}\theta 65^{}`$, corresponding to magnetic fields between $`7.1\text{ T}`$ and $`17\text{ T}`$. As has already been shown in Fig. 1, for tilt angles $`\theta 45^{}`$ ($`\eta >0.022`$) the polarization saturates at $`𝒫=1`$ at low $`T`$: the ground state is fully spin polarized. For lower tilt, however, the CF FS is only partially polarized.

We now compare $`𝒫(T,\theta )`$ with the free CF model. The predictions by Eq. 1, taking a fixed mass $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}=1.67`$ are shown in Fig. 2A. Considering that $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ is the only adjustable parameter, these curves fit quite satisfactory. The thermal depolarization predicted by the Hamiltonian theory is shown in Fig. 2B and is roughly similar to the free CF model.

Whereas the agreement between these models and the experiment is reasonable for all $`T`$ at high $`\eta `$, it is only fair for $`T>2`$ K, when $`𝒫_0<1`$ 333We remark that in Ref. OPNMR,  the $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ OPNMR data has been analyzed using a fit in which Eq. 1 is modified by a mean field interaction term. Applied to our NMR data, this systematically degrades the agreement between fits and data.. This is not surprising since the CF model breaks down at high energy: the assumption of parabolic bands leading to Eq. 2 is questionable for energies exceeding the largest gap ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\nu =1/3}`$), where CFs are expected to “dissociate”. In fact, fits are improved significantly by limiting the CF dispersion to this finite bandwidth (using *e.g.* $`ϵ(k)=\mathrm{\Delta }_{1/3}\mathrm{tanh}^2(k\mathrm{}_\mathrm{B})`$, not shown here). Nonetheless this does not change the qualitative arguments presented here.

In the limit of large magnetic fields, Eq. 1 becomes

$$𝒫(T,BB_\mathrm{c})\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}\right),$$
(4)
where the spin-gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }g^{}\mu _\mathrm{B}B\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}`$ is independent of $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ (since $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}(B)1.67`$, $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}\frac{1}{m_\mathrm{P}^{}}`$ is an irrelevant constant). In Fig. 2C, we analyze the data using this fit, even for $`B<B_\mathrm{c}`$ where this approximation does not hold. In the latter case the ground state polarization is partial ($`\theta 37^{}`$) and we add an additional fitting parameter: $`𝒫_0`$. Eq. 4 reproduces the data for all temperatures with high accuracy. The corresponding spin-flip gaps $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ are shown in Fig. 3B. For large magnetic fields ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}`$) this can be understood, since the CF spectrum “looks like” a two-level system. Nevertheless, for low $`B`$ the good agreement achieved by this fit is surprising. It is far better than those obtained with the free CF model or the Hamiltonian theory (Figs. 2A & B). This behavior remains to be understood.

Since $`𝒫(T)`$ depends mostly on the Zeeman energy, it can be used to determine the $`g`$-factor of CFs ($`g^{}`$). In contrast to transport measurements Stoermer , $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$ is here determined directly at $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ and gives $`g^{}`$ independently from the effective mass $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$. Since in Fig. 3B the spin-gap is plotted in units of the Bohr magneton, the slope of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(B)`$ directly yields $`g^{}`$.

A linear fit to $`\mathrm{\Delta }(B)`$ for $`B>B_\mathrm{c}`$ yields $`g^{}=0.39`$, very close to the value for bulk GaAs $`|g^{}|=0.44`$. We performed a self-consistent calculation of the band structure, leading to an effective $`g`$-factor for electrons $`|g^{}|0.420.002B/\text{T}`$, almost identical to the bulk GaAs value. Hence, the CF $`g`$-factor is essentially the same as for electrons in GaAs, justifying a posteriori the determination of $`\epsilon _\mathrm{F}^{}`$ and $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ using $`g^{}=0.44`$. Here we remark that a strong enhancement of $`g^{}`$ has been reported ($`g^{}0.6`$ at $`\nu =\frac{3}{2},\frac{1}{4}`$ Stoermer  and $`g^{}1.1`$ at $`\frac{1}{2}`$ Kukushkin ). These determinations of $`g^{}`$ are in contradiction with this NMR study, which is mostly a thermodynamic measurement of $`𝒫`$. We cannot exclude that the strong discrepancy with Ref. Kukushkin,  could result from dynamically polarized nuclei leading to an increased Zeeman energy through the hyperfine field.

We now consider the filling factor dependence of $`𝒫`$ around $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ shown in Fig. 4. Here, we are interested in small deviations from $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ in order to investigate the breakdown of the FSs at half filling due to the quantization of the kinetic energy of CFs. In this range of magnetic fields around $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$, the longitudinal resistivity is relatively flat. Fig. 4A depicts $`𝒫(\nu )`$ for $`\frac{2}{5}<\nu <\frac{2}{3}`$ for different $`\theta `$ at $`T=100`$ mK, while Fig. 4B presents data at temperatures from $`50`$ mK to $`500`$ mK at $`\theta =0^{}`$. Focusing on the $`\theta =45^{}`$ data (highest field), we observe nearly full polarization over the whole range of $`\eta `$, with a slight depolarization at $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}\pm 0.04`$. These dips in $`𝒫`$ are symmetric with respect to $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ as expected due to particle-hole symmetry for large Zeeman energy 444Charge conjugation maps $`\nu 1\nu `$ for large $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$, while $`\nu 2\nu `$ for small $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$.. The situation is clearly different at lower tilt angles: for the untilted sample, we observe features at $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}\pm 0.06`$ with decreased $`𝒫`$ at *higher* and increased $`𝒫`$ at *lower* Zeeman energy. For larger tilt angles, these asymmetric features smear out and disappear completely at $`\theta =45^{}`$ when full polarization is reached.

In Fig. 4B, it becomes clear that these features only develop at very low $`T`$. While at 500 mK, we observe a monotonic increase of $`𝒫`$ for $`\frac{2}{5}<\nu <\frac{2}{3}`$, the features start to appear at $`T=250`$ mK and are most pronounced at lowest $`T`$: *e.g.* at $`\nu =0.44`$, the $`𝒫`$ actually drops when the temperature is decreased. We conclude that our data strongly suggest a violation of the particle-hole symmetry around $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ for a partially polarized FS.

The hyperfine coupling between electron and nuclear spins is not only responsible for $`K_\mathrm{S}`$ but also for the nuclear spin lattice relaxation time $`T_1`$.

We compute $`T_1`$ using the free CF model and find for 71Ga nuclei in the center of the quantum wells:

$$T_1^{}=\frac{1+\frac{\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_Z}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}\right)}{\sqrt{\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\epsilon _\mathrm{F}}{k_\mathrm{B}T}\right)+\mathrm{sinh}^2\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_Z}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}\right)}\mathrm{cosh}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_Z}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}\right)}}{\frac{4\pi }{\mathrm{}^3}\left(\frac{m_\mathrm{P}^{}K_\mathrm{S}(𝒫=1)}{n}\right)^2k_\mathrm{B}T}.$$
(5)
For sample M280 as well as a higher density sample M242 1nu2paper ; 2nu3paper ; 1nupaper ; thesis , we have measured $`T_1(\nu =\frac{1}{2},\theta =0^{})`$ (shown in Fig. 5) using a saturation-recovery method 1nupaper . The solid (dashed) line is the prediction of the free CF model, Eq. 5, for M280 (M242), roughly three times shorter than the experimental $`T_1`$. Also included is the calculation for M280 by Shankar using the Hamiltonian theory Shankar01  (dotted line), being twice as long as $`T_1(\text{M280})`$. Note that the discrepancy for free CFs is even larger when other relaxation processes are included, while Shankar’s calculation might become of the right order if relaxation due to edge-states and impurities were included.

In conclusion, the experiments at $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ presented in this Letter prove the existence of CF Fermi seas for both spin directions, shifted by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$. The free CF model provides a reasonable description, provided that the effective mass $`m_\mathrm{P}^{}`$ is constant with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{Z}`$, a feature which emerges naturally from the Hamiltonian theory. From the temperature dependence of $`𝒫`$, the CF-Fermi energy and $`g`$-factor have been determined, while the $`T_1(T)`$ measurement reveals the importance of residual interactions. The $`\nu `$-dependence around half filling suggests a violation of particle-hole symmetry for partially polarized FS.

We gratefully acknowledge R. Shankar for many fruitful discussions and for providing the theoretical curves shown in Figs. 2B and 5, as well as J.H. Smet and K. v. Klitzing for carefully reading the manuscript. This work was partially supported by the NSF.