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# Quantum Smoluchowski equation: Escape from a metastable state

## 1 Introduction

The theory of quantum Brownian motion is one of the major issues in physics and chemistry today. Its tremendous success in the treatment of various phenomena in quantum optics , quantum tunneling and coherence effects in condensed matter physics , activated processes in chemical physics  is now well-documented in the current literature. While the noise operator and density operator semigroup methods formed the core of development in quantum optics in sixties and seventies, real time path integrals attracted wide attention since eighties. However, these approaches are plagued with several difficulties. First, a search for quantum analogue of classical Fokker-Planck equation with a nonlinear potential, in general, leads us to equations of higher (than two) derivatives of quasi-probability distribution functions . These distribution functions often become negative or singular in the full quantum regime. Second, although large coupling constants and large correlation times are treated nonperturbatively formally in an exact manner by functional integrals their analytic evaluation often poses severe difficulties as emphasized recently by Stockburger and Grabert  and one has to consider special cases and approximations, e.g., WKB or semiclassical limit. Moreover because of well-known sign problem the numerical evaluation of the path integrals are very difficult . Third, in some situations  the theory does not retain its validity as the temperature $`T0`$. This implies that vacuum fluctuations due to heat bath are not correctly taken into account. The question is how to extend classical theory to quantum domain for large friction at arbitrary temperature in terms of a true probabilistic description. Very recently we have addressed  this issue to develop a non-Markovian quantum Kramers’ equation describing Brownian motion in a $`c`$-number phase space. The present analysis of overdamped limit is a brief offshoot of this development in configuration space. Our aim here is (i) to develop a quantum analogue of classical Smoluchowski equation valid for arbitrary temperature and (ii) to obtain the rate of escape from a metastable state due to thermal activation and tunneling within an unified description.

## 2 The quantum Langevin equation

To start with we consider the standard system-heat bath model whose Hamiltonian is given by

$$\widehat{H}=\frac{\widehat{P}^2}{2}+V(\widehat{X})+\underset{j}{}\left[\frac{\widehat{p}_j^2}{2}+\frac{1}{2}\kappa _j\left(\widehat{q}_j\widehat{X}\right)^2\right]$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{X}`$ and $`\widehat{P}`$ are the co-ordinate and momentum operators of the Brownian particle and the set $`\{\widehat{q}_j,\widehat{p}_j\}`$ is the set of co-ordinate and momentum operators for the reservoir oscillators coupled linearly to the system through the coupling constant $`\kappa _j`$ and obeying the usual commutation relation $`[\widehat{X},\widehat{P}]=i\mathrm{}`$ and $`[\widehat{q}_j,\widehat{p}_j]=i\mathrm{}\delta _{ij}`$. The potential $`V(\widehat{X})`$ is due to the external force field for the Brownian particle. Eliminating the bath degrees of freedom in the usual way  we obtain the operator Langevin equation for the particle

$$\ddot{\widehat{X}}(t)+_0^t𝑑t^{}\beta (tt^{})\dot{\widehat{X}}(t^{})+V^{}(\widehat{X})=\widehat{F}(t),$$
(2)
where the noise operator $`\widehat{F}(t)`$ and the memory kernel $`\beta (t)`$ are given by

$$\widehat{F}(t)=\underset{j}{}[\{\widehat{q}_j(0)\widehat{X}(0)\}\kappa _j\mathrm{cos}\omega _jt+\widehat{p}_j(0)\kappa _j^{1/2}\mathrm{sin}\omega _jt]\mathrm{and}$$
(3)
$$\beta (tt^{})=\underset{j}{}\kappa _j\mathrm{cos}\omega _j(tt^{}),$$
(4)
respectively, with $`\kappa _j=\omega _j^2`$. Very recently  we have shown that on the basis of a quantum mechanical average $`\mathrm{}`$ over the bath modes with coherent states and the system with an arbitrary state Eq.(2) can be cast into the form of a generalized quantum Langevin equation in $`c`$-numbers,

$$\ddot{x}+_0^t𝑑t^{}\beta (tt^{})\dot{x}(t^{})+V^{}(x)=f(t)+Q(x,t).$$
(5)
In writing Eq.(5) we denote the quantum mechanical mean value of position operator $`\widehat{X}`$ = $`x`$ and $`Q(x,t)=V^{}(\widehat{X})V^{}(\widehat{X})`$. $`c`$-number quantum Langevin force $`f(t)`$ satisfies $`f(t)_S=0`$ and

$$f(t)f(t^{})_S=\frac{1}{2}\underset{j}{}\kappa _j\mathrm{}\omega _j\left(\mathrm{coth}\frac{\mathrm{}\omega _j}{2k_BT}\right)\mathrm{cos}\omega _j(tt^{}).$$
(6)
Here $`\mathrm{}_S`$ corresponds to an ensemble average  over the quantum mechanical mean values of the co-ordinates and momenta of the bath oscillators. Eq.(6) is the celebrated quantum fluctuation-dissipation relation . Quantum noise $`f(t)`$ and quantum fluctuation term $`Q(x,t)`$ are due to heat bath and nonlinearity of the potential, respectively. For details we refer to .

## 3 Large friction limit and quantum Smoluchowski equation

We now consider the diffusion of a particle in an external potential $`V(x)`$ as described by Eq.(5). In the overdamped limit we drop the inertial term $`\ddot{x}`$ and assume a Lorentzian density of modes of heat bath oscillators such that $`\kappa (\omega )\rho (\omega )=(2/\pi )[\gamma /(1+\omega ^2\tau _c^2)]`$, which in the limit $`\tau _c0`$ results in a damping kernel $`\beta (tt^{})=\gamma \delta (tt^{})`$ in Eq.(5). $`\rho (\omega )`$ refers to the density function used in the continuum limit. Eq.(5) then assumes the form

$$\dot{x}+\frac{1}{\gamma }V_{quant}^{}(x,t)=\frac{f(t)}{\gamma }$$
(7)
where we have expressed the effective quantum potential $`V_{quant}(x,t)`$ as $`V_{quant}^{}(x,t)`$ = $`V^{}(x)Q(x,t)`$. Making use of the Stratonovich prescription the equivalent description of Eq.(7) in terms of true probability distribution $`p(x,t)`$ is given by

$$\frac{p(x,t)}{t}=\frac{1}{\gamma }\frac{}{x}\left[V_{quant}^{}p(x,t)\right]+D_{qo}\frac{^2p}{x^2}.$$
(8)
Here $`D_{qo}`$ is the quantum diffusion coefficient which can be obtained with the following definition

$$2D_{qo}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }t}_t^{t+\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t_1_t^{t+\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t_2\frac{1}{\gamma ^2}f(t_1)f(t_2)_S$$
(9)
where the correlation function $`f(t_1)f(t_2)_S`$ of the $`c`$-number quantum noise of the heat bath is given by Eq.(6). Making use of Eq.(6) in the continuum limit in Eq.(9) we obtain

$$2D_{qo}=\frac{1}{2\gamma ^2\mathrm{\Delta }t}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega \kappa (\omega )\rho (\omega )\mathrm{}\omega \left(\mathrm{coth}\frac{\mathrm{}\omega }{2k_BT}\right)I_\omega .$$
(10)
Here $`I_\omega `$ is given by $`I_\omega =_t^{t+\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t_1_t^{t+\mathrm{\Delta }t}𝑑t_2\mathrm{cos}\omega (t_1t_2)`$ which after explicit integration yields

$$I_\omega =\frac{4}{\omega ^2}\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{\omega \mathrm{\Delta }t}{2}.$$
(11)
The general expression for quantum diffusion coefficient in the overdamped limit is therefore given by

$$D_{qo}=\frac{2}{\gamma }\frac{1}{\pi \mathrm{\Delta }t}_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{1}{1+\omega ^2\tau _c^2}\mathrm{}\omega [2\overline{n}(\omega )+1]\frac{1}{\omega ^2}\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{\omega \mathrm{\Delta }t}{2}d\omega ,\tau _c0$$
(12)
where we have put the Lorentzian density of states for bath oscillators as stated earlier. $`\overline{n}(\omega )`$ is the average thermal photon number of the heat bath and is given by $`\overline{n}(\omega )=1/[\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{}\omega /k_BT)1]`$. The quantum diffusion coefficient can thus be calculated exactly by numerical integration over the bath frequencies $`\omega `$ for $`\tau _c0`$ (the Markovian limit). The following two limiting situations are further relevant for the present analytic treatment: (i) In the high temperature limit $`k_BT\mathrm{}\omega `$, the quantity $`\mathrm{}\omega [2\overline{n}(\omega )+1]`$ in Eq.(12) reduces to $`k_BT`$ and the explicit integration results in $`D_{qo}=k_BT/\gamma `$, the usual Einstein’s value in the static friction limit. (ii) In the vacuum limit on the other hand $`\overline{n}(\omega )0`$ and $`D_{qo}`$ may be obtained by considering the fact that the frequency dependence of the integrand in (12) \[or (10)\] except $`I_\omega `$ is flat (Markovian). This results in $`D_{qo}\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{\omega }/2\gamma `$, where $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ is an average bath frequency which may be approximately taken to be the linearized frequency of oscillation in the well $`\omega _0`$ (i.e., $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }\omega _0`$) since at $`T0`$ the dynamics is dominated by population at the bottom of the well. For an arbitrary intermediate temperature we must rely, however, on the general expression (12) for the quantum diffusion coefficient.

We now note that Eq.(8) contains quantum corrections to all orders. To make it more explicit we return to quantum mechanics of the system in the Heisenberg picture to express the operators $`\widehat{X}`$ and $`\widehat{P}`$ as

$$\widehat{X}(t)=\widehat{X}(t)+\delta \widehat{X}\mathrm{and}\widehat{P}(t)=\widehat{P}(t)+\delta \widehat{P}$$
(13)
$`\widehat{X}(t)`$ and $`\widehat{P}(t)`$ are the quantities signifying quantum averages and $`\delta \widehat{X}`$ and $`\delta \widehat{P}`$ are quantum corrections. By construction $`\delta \widehat{X}`$ and $`\delta \widehat{P}`$ are zero and they obey commutation relation $`[\delta \widehat{X},\delta \widehat{P}]=i\mathrm{}`$. Using (13) in $`V^{}(\widehat{X})`$ and a Taylor expansion around $`\widehat{X}`$ ($`x`$) it is possible to express $`Q(x,t)`$ as $`Q(x,t)=_{n2}(1/n!)V_{n+1}(x)\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$ and $`V_{quant}(x,t)`$ as

$$V_{quant}(x,t)=V(x)+\underset{n2}{}\frac{1}{n!}V_n(x)\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)$$
(14)
where $`V_n(x)`$ is the $`n`$-th derivative of the the classical potential which gets modified by the quantum corrections. To solve quantum Smoluchowski equation (8) it is therefore necessary to calculate the corrections $`\delta \widehat{X}^2(t)`$, $`\delta \widehat{X}^3(t)`$, etc. To this end we return to operator Eq.(2) and make use of the relation (13) and a Taylor expansion of the potential $`V(\widehat{X})`$ to derive the following coupled equations in the overdamped limit:

$$\gamma \dot{x}+V^{}(x)+\underset{n2}{}\frac{1}{n!}V_{n+1}(x)\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)=f(t)$$
(15)
$$\delta \dot{\widehat{X}^n}(t)=\frac{n}{\gamma }V^{\prime \prime }(x)\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)$$
(16)
where $`n=2,3,\mathrm{}`$. A decisive advantage in the treatment of overdamped limit is noteworthy. The equations for quantum corrections $`\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$ are closed in contrast to those for the system without its surrounding . If one is interested in the local dynamics around a point $`x_0`$ (say, at the bottom or top of a potential well) the set of Eqs.(16) gets decoupled from (15) and one can obtain simple estimates of $`\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$ since $`V^{\prime \prime }(x_0)`$ can be treated as a constant in such cases. More generally however, Eq.(8) can be combined with Eq.(16) to provide an extended phase space description in terms of a true probability function $`p(x,\eta _2,\eta _3,\mathrm{},t)`$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{p(x,\eta _2,\eta _3,\mathrm{},t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma }}{\displaystyle \underset{n2}{}}n{\displaystyle \frac{}{\eta _n}}[V^{\prime \prime }(x)\eta _np]+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}[V^{}(x)p]`$ (17)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\gamma }}{\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{n2}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n!}}V_{n+1}(x)\eta _np\right]+D_{qo}{\displaystyle \frac{^2p}{x^2}}`$
where $`\eta _n`$ ($`\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$) for $`n=2,3,\mathrm{}`$ span the space of variables signifying quantum corrections around quantum mechanical mean position $`x`$.

We now discuss the classical and vacuum limits of quantum Smoluchowski equation (8). As mentioned earlier in the classical limit, $`D_{qo}`$ reduces to Einstein’s classical diffusion coefficient $`k_BT/\gamma `$. At the same time $`Q(x,t)`$ vanishes so that $`V_{quant}(x,t)`$ goes over to $`V(x)`$ and one recovers the usual classical Smoluchowski equation. In the opposite limit as $`T0`$, however, both quantum noise due to system and vacuum fluctuation originating from the heat bath make significant contribution. $`D_{qo}`$ in this limit assumes the form $`\mathrm{}\omega _0/2\gamma `$. In this context we refer to a recent treatment  of large friction limit in quantum dissipative dynamics to point out that the latter theory does not retain its full validity as $`T0`$ since the quantum noise due to heat bath disappears in the vacuum limit. Another noteworthy feature of quantum Smoluchowski equation (8) \[ or (17) \] is that unlike Wigner function based equations  it does not contain higher (than two) order derivatives of probability distribution function. The positive definiteness of this function is therefore ensured.

## 4 Decay of a metastable state

Based on the quantum Smoluchowski equation (8) we now consider the problem of escape from a metastable state. Over the last two decades this has attracted a lot of attention in classical theory of thermally activated processes . Since a quantum analysis naturally includes tunneling as an integral part of the problem we turn to this issue in search of an unified description of tunneling and thermal activation.

To begin with we first take into consideration of the time-scale of free motion of the system, $`\omega `$ ($`\omega ^2=V^{\prime \prime }`$). Since according to Eq.(16) quantum correction $`\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$ varies on a time-scale $`(n\omega ^2/\gamma )^1`$ it is convenient to make an average of this fluctuation over a period and replace $`\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)`$ by an average $`\overline{\delta \widehat{X}^n}=\omega _0^{1/\omega }\delta \widehat{X}^n(t)𝑑t`$. This implies quantum noise does not change significantly on a time-scale during which the system relaxes so that $`\stackrel{~}{V}(x)`$ does not depend on time explicitly. Eq. (8) can then be recast in the form of continuity equation $`p(x,t)/t=J/x`$ where $`J`$ can be identified as a current which is given by

$$J=\frac{1}{\gamma }\stackrel{~}{V}^{}(x)p+\frac{D}{\gamma }\frac{p}{x}.$$
(18)
Here we have put

$$\stackrel{~}{V}(x)=V(x)+\underset{n2}{}\frac{1}{n!}V_n(x)\overline{\delta \widehat{X}^n}$$
(19)
and $`D=\gamma D_{qo}`$. We now consider a cubic potential of the form $`V(x)=(A/3)x^3+Bx^2`$ ($`A`$ and $`B`$ are positive constants), with a metastable minimum at $`x=0`$ which is separated from the true minimum by a finite potential barrier at $`x=x_b`$. Linearizing the potential $`V(x)`$ at the barrier top we calculate the stationary flux $`J`$ ($`p/t=0`$) around this point in the usual way,

$$J=\frac{\omega _b\sqrt{D}}{\sqrt{2\pi }\gamma }p(0)\mathrm{exp}(E/D)\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(1/2)V^{\prime \prime \prime }(x_b)\overline{\delta \widehat{X}^2}_bx_b}{D}\right]$$
(20)
where $`\omega _b`$ refers to the frequency at the barrier top and $`E`$ is the activation energy ($`E=V(x_b)`$). Again considering an equilibrium distribution or zero current situation ($`J=0`$) around $`x=0`$ we linearize the potential $`V(x)`$ and derive from Eq.(18), the population in the well as given by

$$n_a=\frac{\sqrt{2\pi D}}{\omega _0}p(0)$$
(21)
where $`\omega _0`$ refers to the frequency in the well at $`x=0`$. Based on the reasoning given earlier, we can obtain an estimate of quantum correction in (20) as $`\overline{\delta \widehat{X}^2}_{x=x_b}=(\mathrm{}/2\omega _b)[1+(2\omega _b/\gamma )]`$ which follows from the solution of Eq.(16) and a quantum average with minimum uncertainty state $`\delta \widehat{X}^2(0)_{x=x_b}=(\mathrm{}/2\omega _b)`$. Furthermore $`x_b`$ may be expressed as $`x_b=\sqrt{2E}/\omega _0`$. With these simplifications the rate, $`k`$ is given by the ratio $`J/n_a`$ :

$$k=\frac{\omega _0\omega _b}{2\pi \gamma }\mathrm{exp}(E/D)\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(\sqrt{2E}/\omega _0)(\mathrm{}A/2\omega _b)\left(1+\frac{2\omega _b}{\gamma }\right)}{D}\right].$$
(22)
The expression (22) is the quantum rate of decay of a metastable state at any temperature. The quantum feature appears in two different ways. First, since $`D`$ may be treated as a quantum analogue of $`k_BT`$ in the Boltzmann exponential factor, which reduces to $`\mathrm{}\omega _0/2`$ in the vacuum limit and to $`k_BT`$ in the thermal limit, the quantum nature of the heat bath is manifested through $`D`$. Second, the quantum nature of the system is pronounced through quantum correction terms which are entangled with the nonlinearity of the potential and vanishes in the classical limit. Thus in the classical limit (22) reduces to the familiar expression for the Kramers’-Smoluchowski rate of escape ,

$$k_{cl}=\frac{\omega _0\omega _b}{2\pi \gamma }\mathrm{exp}(E/k_BT).$$
(23)
In the vacuum limit, i.e., at $`T0`$, on the other hand we have

$$k_{vac}=\frac{\omega _0\omega _b}{2\pi \gamma }\mathrm{exp}(2E/\mathrm{}\omega _0)\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{A(\sqrt{2E}/\omega _0)(\mathrm{}/2\omega _b)\left(1+\frac{2\omega _b}{\gamma }\right)}{(1/2)\mathrm{}\omega _0}\right].$$
(24)
The vacuum contribution corresponds to quantum tunneling at zero temperature. It is important to recall that the problem of zero temperature tunneling was first successfully addressed by Caldeira and Leggett  in early eighties which subsequently initiated a major advancement in the field of macroscopic quantum tunneling . The main results in the context of overdamped limit can be summarized as follows: First, the damping causes an exponentially strong suppression of tunneling rate. Second, for strong dissipation there is a large region where thermal and quantum fluctuations interplay so that the total rate of decay increases because the thermal activation is supplemented by quantum tunneling at finite temperature. These features can be easily recovered in the present theory. The rate coefficient in the vacuum limit $`k_{vac}`$ shows that as the temperature approaches zero tunneling decay is almost exponential. Furthermore, at finite temperature, the presence of factor $`(\mathrm{}A)/(D\omega _b)`$ in the exponential in the total rate coefficient in Eq.(22) implies an interplay of thermal fluctuation in $`D`$ and quantum fluctuation due to $`(\mathrm{}A)/\omega _b`$ arising out of nonlinearity of the system. This leads to a effective reduction of the activation barrier from its classical value $`E`$ resulting in an increase of the rate of decay. It is thus apparent that although the results are qualitatively comparable the underlying physical picture in the two schemes (the path integral and the present one) are different. The tunneling decay at low temperature in the formal case is primarily determined by the nature of bounce solution evaluated by a semiclassical steepest decent method which depends on the effective path between the turning points. At the high temperature (i.e., in the classical regime) an unified multidimensional WKB approach is generally advocated to recover classical result . The classical theory in the present formulation on the other hand is contained in $`k_{cl}`$ (Eq.(23)) which shows that the rate of thermal activation varies inversely with damping constant according to Kramers’-Smoluchowski limit. The quantum rate coefficient (22) thus interpolates between high temperature thermal activation and zero temperature tunneling.

## 5 Conclusions

In conclusion, we have considered the strong friction limit in quantum stochastic processes to develop a quantum Smoluchowski equation. The rate of decay of a metastable state which includes thermal activation and tunneling within a single scheme has been derived. Since classical Smoluchowski equation has a diverse range of applicability, e.g., in fluctuating barrier , in thermal ratchet and molecular motors , in tunnel diodes  and in the decay of periodically driven metastable potentials  we hope the present quantum analogue to keep its potential in similar issues.

This work was supported by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (C.S.I.R.), Government of India, under grant No. 01/(1740)/02/EMR-II.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Shakespearean actors are traditionally averse to pronouncing the name of the play ‘Macbeth’, preferring to call it ‘the Scottish play’. Presumably it was only distaste for cryptic abbreviations that prevented it from becoming known as the ‘M-play’. M-theory acquired its name from a similar aversion, in this case of string theorists to the word ‘Membrane’. The story of M is thus the story of membranes, supermembranes in particular. The occasion of Stephen Hawking’s 60’th birthday is an appropriate one for me to put on record some recollections of this story because Stephen was exceptional in giving his support and encouragement to work on supermembranes during the years in which the ‘M-word’ could not be pronounced. Thank you, Stephen, and happy 60th birthday.

A membrane is of course just a special case of a brane and, as the reader will probably know, M-theory is really an Orwellian democracy in which there are many equal branes but with some being more equal than others. Strings are more equal for all the usual reasons, but membranes are more equal too, for a different set of reasons. In the light-front gauge, membranes are equivalent to the large $`n`$ limit of $`SU(n)`$ gauge theories, dimensionally reduced to a quantum mechanical model. The M(atrix) model formulation of M-theory could have been, and nearly was, found from the 11-dimensional supermembrane in this way. But this is all well-known, and given my spacetime limitations I prefer to reminisce on the (pre)history of the 11-dimensional supermembrane.

This will be a selective history, chosen to motivate discussion of a surprising, and little-known, fact111In the talk I explained how a tubular but axially asymmetric supermembrane, supported against collapse by angular momentum, can be both stable and supersymmetry-preserving . This did surprise some members of the audience, although I discovered that the stability issue had been previously adressed in a non-supersymmetric context . As a full discussion is available in  and subsequent papers , I have chosen to discuss another surprising fact about supermembranes in this write-up.: the field theory limit of a supermembrane in certain hyper-Kähler backgrounds is a 3-dimensional sigma-model with $`N=4`$ supersymmetry, but the supermembrane itself generically has only $`N=3`$ supersymmetry . This is a sigma-model analogue of the breaking of $`N=4`$ to $`N=3`$ supersymmetry in 3-dimensional gauge theories by the addition of a Chern-Simons term .

## 2 The supermembrane

It is well known that string theory arose from attempts to understand the physics of hadrons. What is less well-known is that M-theory has roots in hadron physics too. In 1978, the same year that 11-dimensional supergravity appeared , a ‘classical’ bag model for hadrons was proposed by Aurilia, Christodoulou and Legovini ; this was based on the idea that that the closed QCD 4-form $`Tr(FF)`$ should be replaced, in an effective description of hadrons, by an abelian 4-form field strength $`G=dC`$. Hadrons were identified as those regions in which $`G`$ acquires a non-zero expectation value; these regions would be separated from the vacuum by a membrane coupled to the 3-form potential $`C`$. I heard about this model from Antonio Aurilia in 1980 and realized that the 4-form field strength $`G`$ of 11-dimensional supergravity could be similarly used, after reduction on $`T^7`$, to introduce a positive cosmological constant into N=8 D=4 supergravity. This supergravity theory had recently been constructed by Cremmer and Julia  but they had eliminated the surviving four-dimensional 4-form field strength as if it were a non-dynamical auxiliary field. If one instead uses the field equation of the 3-form potential $`C`$ then a positive cosmological constant appears as the square of an integration constant222This idea occurred independently to Duff and Van Nieuwenhuizen  but without the connection to 11-dimensional supergravity.. We enlisted Hermann Nicolai to help construct the new N=8 supergravity theory, which turns out to have a positive scalar potential rather than a cosmological constant . As this potential has no critical points it was unclear what use it might have333Stephen Hawking used the idea of a dynamical cosmological constant in his suggestion that the ‘cosmological constant is probably zero’  but it now seems that it probably isn’t zero.. We should have continued this research by considering whether a non-vanishing 4-form in D=4 could be combined with compactifications on spaces other than $`T^7`$. We didn’t, but Freund and Rubin did  and their demonstration that D=11 supergravity could be compactified on a 7-sphere sparked off the revival of interest in Kaluza-Klein theory.

It was somehow forgotten, in all the Kaluza-Klein excitement, that the 3-form potential $`C`$ could couple to membranes (although Bernard Julia was aware of the possibility ). I think that the main reason for this collective amnesia was the fact that 11-dimensional supergravity was being promoted as a candidate unified field theory, so the apparent absence of anything to which it could couple was viewed as an advantage. This attitude discouraged thinking about membranes, which didn’t resurface until after the superstring revolution of 1984. Following the construction by Green and Schwarz of a covariant superstring action , it was natural to reconsider the possibility of an 11-dimensional supermembrane. During the summer of 1986, Luca Mezincescu and I attempted to construct a supermembrane generalization of the Green-Schwarz (GS) action but the attempt did not succeed because we were unable to generalize the self-dual worldsheet vector parameter of the GS ‘$`\kappa `$-symmetry’; this made the two-dimensionality of the string worldsheet seem an essential feature of the construction. In fact, it is not; there is an alternative, but equivalent, form of the $`\kappa `$-symmetry transformation with a worldsheet scalar parameter. This was found by Hughes, Liu and Polchinski in their construction of an action for a super-3-brane in a D=6 Minkowski background ; they were motivated by the observation that a vortex of the D=6 supersymmetric abelian-Higgs model is a supersymmetry-preserving 3-brane for which the effective action must be of GS-type. I saw this paper the day before I was to travel to Trieste to continue a collaboration with Eric Bergshoeff and Ergin Sezgin, and soon after my arrival we suceeded in constructing an 11-dimensional supermembrane action that is consistent in any background that solves the field equations of 11-dimensional supergravity . For unit tension the action takes the form

$$S=\left[\mathrm{Vol}\pm 𝒞\right]$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{Vol}`$ is the (appropriately defined) induced volume 3-form, and $`𝒞`$ is the worldvolume 3-form induced by the superspace 3-form potential of 11-dimensional supergravity (of which $`C`$ is the bosonic truncation). The choice of relative sign corresponds to the choice between a supermembrane and an anti-supermembrane, or an $`M2`$-brane and an $`\overline{M2}`$-brane in modern terminology.

A feature of all GS-type super-brane actions is that the fermions are (apparently) worldvolume scalars. If this were really true then, for example, the GS superstring action could not be equivalent to the worldsheet supersymmetric NSR superstring action. In fact, the GS fermions are not scalars because they are subject to the $`\kappa `$-symmetry gauge transformation; it is for a similar reason that the 4-vector potential of electrodynamics is not really a 4-vector field. To determine the transformation properties of the GS fermions under any symmetry of the action (which would include spacetime Lorentz transformations for a Minkowski background) one must first fix the $`\kappa `$-symmetry gauge; the transformation is then a superposition of the ‘naive’ transformation with whatever compensating $`\kappa `$-symmetry transformation is needed to maintain the gauge choice. The gauge fixing must break the spacetime Lorentz group but can be chosen to preserve the worldvolume Lorentz subgroup, under which the gauge-fixed GS fermions turn out to transform as worldvolume spinors.

This transformation from spacetime spinor to worldvolume spinor is clearly necessary if any spacetime supersymmetries are to be interpreted as worldvolume supersymmetries after gauge-fixing, but it is not obviously sufficient. In fact, initially it was far from clear that spacetime supersymmetry would imply worldvolume supersymmetry of the supermembrane, partly because the supermembrane has no NSR formulation, and Achúcarro, Gauntlett, Itoh and I went to great lengths to verify it directly ; our article was originally entitled Supersymmetry on the brane but we had to change the title to accomodate a referee who insisted that use of the word ‘brane’ would bring the physics community into disrepute444Possibly this referee had in mind the earlier use of the word in the 1954 essay Akquire culture and keep the brane clean by Nigel Molesworth . As this essay’s subtitle is How to be Topp in Latin it is regretable that it fails to provide the modern translation of mens sana in corpore sano which is clean brane in clean bulk, otherwise known as the braneworld cosmological principle..

Nowdays, the connection between spacetime supersymmetry and worldvolume supersymmetry is considered obvious. However, as I hope the following discussion will show, surprises are still possible.

## 3 Backgrounds of reduced holonomy

The $`GGC`$ term of 11-dimensional supergravity preserves spacetime parity if $`C`$ is taken to be parity-odd, and with this parity assignment the coupling of $`G`$ to fermion bilinears also preserves parity because of the peculiar way that fermion bilinears behave under parity in odd dimensions . Thus 11-dimensional supergravity preserves parity. It follows that solutions breaking parity must come in parity doublets, each of which will preserve the same fraction of supersymmetry because parity commutes with supersymmetry. We shall be interested in solutions with vanishing $`G`$, and product 11-metric of the form

$$ds_{11}^2=ds^2(\text{𝔼}^{(1,2)})+g_{IJ}(X)dX^IdX^J$$
(2)
where $`g_{IJ}`$ ($`I,J=1,\mathrm{},8`$) is the metric of some Ricci-flat 8-dimensional manifold $`_8`$, or its orientation reversal $`\overline{}_8`$. Any submanifold with fixed position on $`_8`$ is a minimal surface that we may identify as the Minkowski vacuum of an infinite planar supermembrane. In the gauge in which the worldvolume coordinates $`\xi ^i`$ are identified with coordinates for $`\text{𝔼}^{(1,2)}`$, the physical bosonic worldvolume fields of the $`M2`$-brane are maps $`X^I(\xi )`$ from the worldvolume to $`_8`$, and the bosonic action is

$$I=d^3\xi \sqrt{det(\eta _{ij}+g_{ij})}$$
(3)
where $`\eta `$ is the 2+1 Minkowski metric and

$$g_{ij}(\xi )=_iX^I_jX^Jg_{IJ}(X).$$
(4)
To incorporate the fermions one may begin by noting that the gauge choice breaks the 11-dimensional Lorentz group to the product of the 3-dimensional Lorentz group $`Sl(2;\text{})`$ with $`SO(8)`$. A 32-component spinor of $`SO(1,10)`$ decomposes into the sum of the $`(\mathrm{𝟐},\mathrm{𝟖}_s)`$ and $`(\mathrm{𝟐},\mathrm{𝟖}_c)`$ irreps of this product group, where $`\mathrm{𝟖}_s`$ is the spinor representation of $`SO(8)`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟖}_c`$ is the conjugate spinor representation. Only one of these two irreps of $`Sl(2;\text{})\times SO(8)`$ survives the $`\kappa `$-symmetry gauge-fixing, which one depending on whether the covariant action is the one for the $`M2`$-brane or the one for the $`\overline{M2}`$-brane. By convention, we shall take the physical fermion fields of the $`M2`$-brane to be in the $`(\mathrm{𝟐},\mathrm{𝟖}_c)`$ representation and those of the $`\overline{M2}`$-brane to be in the $`(\mathrm{𝟐},\mathrm{𝟖}_s)`$ representation. The spacetime parity transformation that interchanges $`_8`$ with $`\overline{}_8`$ will also interchange the $`\mathrm{𝟖}_s`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟖}_c`$ representations of $`SO(8)`$, and hence will interchange $`M2`$ with $`\overline{M2}`$. Thus, an $`M2`$-brane in $`\text{𝔼}^{(1,2)}\times _8`$ is equivalent to an $`\overline{M2}`$-brane in $`\text{𝔼}^{(1,2)}\times \overline{}_8`$. In the case that $`_8`$ has an orientation reversing isometry we have $`_8\overline{}_8`$ and the $`M2`$-brane action will be equivalent to the $`\overline{M2}`$-brane action.

Note that the field content of the gauge-fixed supermembrane is bose-fermi balanced, as would be required for worldvolume supersymmety. Whether the supermembrane is worldvolume supersymmetric will depend on the choice of $`_8`$. This follows from the fact that (super)symmetries of the supermembrane action arise from (super)isometries of the background that leave invariant the superspace 4-form field strength. In particular, for bosonic backgrounds of the type under consideration, supersymmetries arise from Killing superfields whose spinor component is a Killing spinor of M, and these exist only if $`_8`$ has special holonomy.

Let $`HSO(8)`$ be the holonomy group. The number $`N`$ of linearly-realized supersymmetries of the supermembrane is the number of singlets in the decomposition of the spinor representation $`\mathrm{𝟖}_s`$ of $`SO(8)`$ into irreps of $`H`$. The number $`N^{}`$ of non-linearly realized supersymmetries is the number of singlets of the $`\mathrm{𝟖}_c`$ representation of $`SO(8)`$ in its decomposition into irreps of $`H`$. For the anti-supermembrane the numbers $`N`$ and $`N^{}`$ are interchanged. The groups $`H`$ for which $`N>0`$ fall into one of two nested sequences. One sequence is

$$G_2SU(3)SU(2).$$
(5)
The corresponding types of 8-manifold, and the values of $`N`$ and $`N^{}`$ are given in Table 1 (where $`CY_n`$ is a $`2n`$-dimensional Calabi-Yau $`n`$-fold and $`HK_{4n}`$ is a hyper-Kähler manifold of quaternionic dimension $`n`$).

In each of these cases the 8-manifold $`_8`$ takes the form $`_8=_{8k}\times \text{}^k`$ ($`k=1,2,4`$) for some irreducible (8-k)-dimensional manifold $`_{8k}`$. Such 8-manifolds have an orientation-reversing isometry, so the $`M2`$-brane in these backgrounds is equivalent to the $`\overline{M2}`$-brane. In fact, they are identical because an anti-membrane can be obtained from a membrane by a rotation in some $`\text{𝔼}^3`$ subspace of $`\text{𝔼}^{2+k}`$. The reason that the $`M2`$ and $`\overline{M2}`$ actions can be identical is that their $`\kappa `$-symmetry transformations differ and this difference can compensate for the different sign in (1).

Note that fixing the position in $`_{8k}`$ yields a supermembrane in a Minkowski spacetime of dimension $`D=4,5`$ or $`7`$, according to whether $`k=1,2`$ or $`4`$, respectively; as it happens, these are precisely the other dimensions for which the supermembrane action is classically consistent , so the existence of these lower-dimensional supermembrane actions is explained by the existence of the 11-dimensional supermembrane.

The other sequence of holonomy groups is

$$Spin(7)SU(4)Sp_2Sp_1\times Sp_1.$$
(6)
The corresponding types of 8-manifold, and the values of $`N`$ and $`N^{}`$ are given in Table 2.

In each of these cases there are no non-linearly-realized supersymmetries, so replacing the $`M2`$-brane by the $`\overline{M2}`$-brane breaks all supersymmetries. Equivalently, replacing the 8-manifold $`_8`$ by its orientation reversal $`\overline{}_8`$ breaks all $`N`$ supersymmetries of the $`M2`$-brane action555Note that the background solutions preserve $`N`$ supersymmetries irrespective of the orientation of $`_8`$; it is the only the rigid worldvolume supersymmetries on the supermembrane that are broken when $`_8`$ is replaced by $`\overline{}_8`$. This is in contrast to the related phenomenon of supergravity solutions with non-zero $`G`$ that are supersymmetric for one orientation but non-supersymmetric for the other orientation ..

## 4 The sigma model limit

The action (3) can be expanded as a power series in $`X`$. Discarding a constant and terms with more than two derivatives we arrive at the field theory action

$$S=\frac{1}{2}d^3\xi \sqrt{det\eta }\eta ^{ij}_iX^I_jX^Jg_{IJ}(X).$$
(7)
This is a D=3 sigma-model with the 8-manifold $`_8`$ as its target space. If the supermembrane preserved $`N`$ supersymmetries then an analogous expansion yields a supersymmetric sigma-model with at least $`N`$ supersymmetries. In most cases one can easily see that it can have no more than $`N`$ supersymmetries because of the constraints imposed on the target space of a sigma-model by extended supersymmetry; specifically, a supersymmetric D=3 sigma model with an irreducible target space has $`N=2`$ supersymmetry if the target space is Kähler and $`N=4`$ if it is hyper-Kähler . For example, because $`Spin(7)`$ manifolds are not Kähler we know that the sigma-model obtained from the supermembrane action can have at most $`N=1`$ supersymmetry. The same is true for the $`G_2`$ case, although the conclusion is less immediate in this case because the 8-manifold is not irreducible. Note that for the $`N=2`$ case of either Table the target space is Kähler, as consistency requires, but not hyper-Kähler, so the sigma-model has $`N=2`$ supersymmetry. Similarly, for both $`N=4`$ cases the target space is hyper-Kähler, as required for consistency. This leaves only the case of $`Sp_2`$ holonomy of Table 2 to consider, and here we find a surprise. As one sees from Table 2, the gauge-fixed supermembrane action has only $`N=3`$ supersymmetry but, as its target space is hyper-Kähler, the sigma model obtained from the field theory limit has $`N=4`$ supersymmetry. Thus, in this one case, the low-energy sigma-model has more supersymmetries than the supermembrane action from which it was derived!

From the sigma-model perspective, the supermembrane just adds higher-dimension terms to the action. An interaction term that breaks $`N=4`$ supersymmetry to $`N=3`$ must also break worldvolume parity. Majorana mass terms break parity in three dimensions  and although the supermembrane has no mass terms it does have a mass parameter, determined by the membrane tension. Higher dimension fermion interactions in the supermembrane must involve this parameter and so may break parity. For example, if $`\psi `$ is the 8-plet of real two-component $`Sl(2;\text{})`$ spinor fields then a term of the form

$$(\overline{\psi }\psi )(\overline{\psi }\gamma \psi )$$
(8)
breaks parity for the same reason that Majorana mass terms break parity. The supersymmetric completion of this term will not include any purely bosonic term, consistent with parity preservation of the bosonic truncation of the supermembrane, and it will not survive in the field theory limit, consistent with parity preservation of the supersymmetric sigma model. Moreover, it can occur only when there are no non-linearly realized supersymmetries, and hence must be absent in the cases of Table 1. Thus, a term of the above type is a candidate for a parity-violating interaction that will break $`N=4`$ to $`N=3`$ supersymmetry when the hyper-Kähler target space has $`Sp_2`$ holonomy, although it must be absent if the holonomy is contained in the $`Sp_1\times Sp_1`$ subgroup of $`Sp_2`$.

There is a gauge theory precedent for all this. The addition of a Chern-Simons to a 3-dimensional gauge theory with $`N=4`$ supersymmetry can preserve at most $`N=3`$ supersymmetry, in which case its supersymmetric completion will include parity-violating fermion mass terms . In fact, this phenomenon is an M-theory dual of the one discussed here, at least for the class of toric hyper-Kähler 8-manifolds, because the M2-brane in such a background is dual to a D3-brane suspended between $`(p,q)`$-fivebranes and the effective field theory on the intersection is precisely a 3-dimensional $`N=3`$ gauge theory with a Chern-Simons term .

## Acknowledgments

I thank Jerome Gauntlett, Gary Gibbons, Paul Howe, Chris Pope and Kellogg Stelle for helpful discussions.


text:
# The Supermassive Black Hole in the Gamma-ray Loud Blazar PKS 1510-089

## 1 Introduction

One of the most important quantities in theoretical models of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is the black hole mass (M) that, together with the total luminosity, defines the fraction of the Eddington luminosity at which the AGN is emitting. Since the earliest days of research on quasars and AGNs, supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been considered to be the most likely driving power of the activity in these sources (Richstone et al. 1998; Kormendy & Gebhardt 2001; Merritt & Ferrarese 2001). Indeed, compact dark masses, probably SMBHs, have been detected in the cores of many normal galaxies using stellar dynamics (Kormendy & Richstone 1995). In the case of AGNs, however, direct detection of nuclear SMBHs through stellar-dynamical methods has not been achieved on account of technical difficulties arising from the large surface brightness contrast between the stellar component of the galaxy and the AGN itself on arcsecond and smaller angular scales. The strongest evidence to date has been the detection of Keplerian motions of megamaser sources in the Seyfert galaxy NGC 4258 (Miyoshi et al. 1995).

Variability is one of the important properties of AGNs and a powerful constraint on models of these sources. Observations show that AGNs are characterized by rapid and large amplitude continuum variations over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. CCD-based differential photometric observations of rapid variability over timescales of significantly less than a day in the optical emission of AGNs are powerful tools for probing the innermost regions of these objects. The original models based on a central black hole surrounded by an accretion disk (Rees 1984) were based on the constraints on the source size and energy density provided by the early single-band variability studies. PKS 1510$``$089 is one of the $`\gamma `$-ray loud blazars (a subclass of AGNs) which characterized by their powerful featureless continuum radiation spanning from radio to gamma-ray bands. It is generally believed that synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission of high energy electrons in a relativistic jet is responsible for the multiwaveband continuum of the BL Lacs (Urry & Padovani 1995). The emission is highly beamed. The featureless continuum of the blazars permits us to use timescale of variability to estimate black hole mass. It has been pointed out that the masses of black holes in all the radio-loud quasars of low redshift PG sample should exceed $`10^9M_{}`$ (Laor 2000). This suggests the black hole mass controls the radio-loudness $`R`$, defined as the ratio of radio to optical fluxes. The relativistic jet is generally thought to originate from the innermost vicinity of black hole (Blandford 2001). The emission from the jet may reflect the black hole parameters in a more direct way. In addition, the black hole model and accretion disk theory suggest that the observed minimal timescale of variation and the bolometric luminosity should obey the Abramowicz – Nobili relation.

In this paper, we present the optical light of the $`\gamma `$-ray loud blazar PKS 1510$``$089 with the 1-m telescope at the Yunnan Astronomical Observatory in 2000. Using this result, we derive an estimate of the center black hole mass in PKS 1510$``$089. Throughout this paper, the $`q_0`$=0.5, and $`H_0=75\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ are adopted.

## 2 The observational light curve and central SMBH’s mass

The optical observations were carried out at the Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, with the 1-m telescope equipped with a direct CCD (1024 $`\times `$ 1024 pixels) camera at the Cassegrain focus. The data reduction and observational errors are discussed in detail in previous works (Dai et al. 2001).

This quasar presents a pronounced UV excess, a very flat X-ray spectrum, and a steep $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum. Up to now, the maximum brightness variation of 5.4 mag in the B band has been obtained by Liller et el. (1975). A bright state in 1987 was followed by a rapid dimming (Villata et al., 1997 and references therein). Small amplitude oscillations on short time scales have also been observed by Villata et al. (1997), who found a variation of 0.63 mags in the R and B bands. This object has been included in our monitoring program since 1999. In our previous observations in 1999, it exhibited a high level of activity each night. It brightened from 17.21 mag to 16.65 mag in 40 minutes in the B band. A rapid decline of 0.55 mag in 22 minutes, and a flare of 0.51 mag in 26 minutes were observed on May 15, on June 15, 1999 in the R band respectively (Xie et al. 2001). Our recent observations on May 29, 2000 are displayed in Fig. 1. The source was still in a very active state during our observation period. An apparent variation of about 2 mag in the R band within 41 minutes was observed. The source faded from 16.02 to 17.74 in 27 minutes and then brightened to 15.74 in about 13 minutes. This is the most extremely rapid variability in our optical monitoring program since 1982. Fig. (1a) shows that the differential magnitudes of two comparison stars are less than 0.02 mag during the night and Fig (1b) shows the light curve about this maximum variation of PKS 1510$``$089. According to the definition of the variability parameter (Romero et al. 1999, Fan et al.2001), the value of this dramatic variability is C=59.6. We examine the contribution of the host galaxy to the variability and find there is no correlation between intranight brightness variations and seeing conditions, which means that seeing in no way has affected the computed magnitudes of PKS 1510$``$089. So, we conclude that the observed apparent variation of PKS 1510$``$089 is intrinsic to the source, as determined by a rigorous check for correlations between variability and seeing conditions.

If we view the dramatic variability as a single event, the observed variability by 2.0 mag within 41 minutes in PKS 1510$``$089 can be used to compute the efficiency ($`\eta `$) for conversion of accreted matter into energy. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }L`$ is the change in luminosity within the variability time scale $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$(defined as $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}=\frac{F}{|\mathrm{\Delta }F/\mathrm{\Delta }t|}`$, Wagner & Witzel 1995), then $`\eta `$ can be written as (Cavallo & Rees, 1978; Xie et al. 1989)

$$\eta 5.0\times 10^{43}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }L}{\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}}$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }L`$ is in erg s<sup>-1</sup> and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$ in seconds. The value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }L`$ of the variability in our observation is $`7.3\times 10^{47}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Using equation (2), the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }L`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$ which is equal to 2700 s, we find $`\eta 62.2`$. This value of $`\eta `$ strongly suggests the presence of relativistic beaming in PKS 1510$``$089 (Guilbert et al. 1983; relativistic beaming is inferred if $`\eta >0.1`$). In our previous paper (Xie et al. 1991), we have obtained a formula to estimate the Doppler factor $`\delta `$,

$$\delta [\frac{\eta _{\mathrm{obs}}}{\eta _{\mathrm{in}}}]^{1/(4+\alpha )}$$
(2)
where $`\eta _{\mathrm{obs}}`$ and $`\eta _{\mathrm{in}}`$ are the conversion efficiency of the observed and intrinsic values respectively, and $`\alpha `$ is the spectral index in the form $`f_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$. In the optical band, we assume $`\alpha =1.0`$ (Stocke et al. 1991). It is known that the efficiency of conversion for nuclei reactions is $`\eta _{\mathrm{in}}`$=0.007, and that for pure accretion is $`\eta _{\mathrm{in}}<`$ 0.1. The median value of 0.05 is almost equal to the value 0.057 in the thick accretion disk theory for the Schwazschild metric (Paczynski & Witta, 1980). Thus we obtained the value of $`\delta `$ in the range of $`3.626.16`$. This value of the Doppler factor, $`\delta `$, can be used to compute the size of the emission region, $`R`$, using the light travel time argument, namely

$$R\frac{c\delta \mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{obs}}}{1+z}$$
(3)
where $`c`$ is the light velocity, $`z`$ is the cosmological redshift, $`\delta `$ is the Doppler factor. The resulting value of $`R`$ from equation (3) is $`(2.153.67)\times 10^{14}`$ cm. Note that $`R`$ need not be the linear dimension of a massive black hole, it could be the thickness of a thin plane shock at some distance out along a jet or the thickness of the optically thin boundary of an optical-thick emission region (Marsher & Gear 1985).

If the blazar’s luminosity is produced from accretion of its central black hole, the luminosity L should be significantly correlated with the mass of the central black hole, M,

$$L\frac{GM_{}\dot{M}}{r}$$
(4)
where Ṁ is mass accretion rate, and r is the radius of the marginally bound orbit. The luminosity L is expressed as $`\nu L_\nu `$ (Peterson 1997). The M and the minimal timescale of AGN variability, $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{min}}`$, are related with

$$\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{min}}=\tau \frac{r_s}{c}=0.98\times 10^5\tau (\frac{M_{}}{M_{}})s$$
(5)
where $`r_s=\frac{2\mathrm{G}\mathrm{M}_{}}{c^2}`$ is the radius of the black-hole event horizon (i.e., the boundary at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light), $`G`$ is the gravitational constant, $`M_{}`$ is the mass of the black hole, and $`c`$ is the speed of light, $`\tau `$ is the dimensionless parameter $`\tau =\pi (r_{}^{3/2}+a)`$ and it must obey $`\tau >\tau _{\mathrm{min}}=2\pi `$ for a=1; the hole rotates at the maximum possible rate. If $`\tau _{\mathrm{max}}<2\pi `$, observations exclude the possibility of the black hole model(Abramowicz & Nobili 1982). Adopting $`\tau =\tau _{\mathrm{min}}=2\pi `$ and considering the relativistic beaming effect, the intrinsic minimal timescale of AGN variability is $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{min}}(\mathrm{in})`$=$`\frac{\delta }{1+z}\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{min}}(\mathrm{obs})`$, and

$$M_{}1.62\times 10^4\frac{\delta }{1+z}\mathrm{\Delta }t_{\mathrm{min}}(\mathrm{obs})(\mathrm{M}_{})$$
(6)
A similar formula was obtained by Miller et al. 1989. We obtain the central supermassive black hole of $`(1.161.98)\times 10^8M_{}`$ in PKS 1510$``$089. Baganoff et al. (2001) also obtained consistent results with the X-ray variability of a few handred second rise/fall timescales and the 10-ks duration which provide compelling evidence that the X-ray emission is coming from accretion onto a supermassive black hole of $`2.6\times 10^6M_{}`$ at the Galactic Centre. Barth et al. (2002) assume the blazar Mrk 501 follows the $`M_{}\sigma _{}`$ relation defined for nearby galaxies(Ferrarese, & Merritt, D. 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000), and found the center supermassive black hole mass of $`(0.93.4)\times 10^9(\mathrm{M}_{})`$.

## 3 Conclusions and discussions

In the framework of the EC models, Tavecchio et al. (2000) suggested that the quasar-like blazar environment is rich in soft photons, produced by the accretion disk and/or by the broad line region (BLR). They estimated the physical quantities in the jet emitting region and shed light on the energy transport mechanisms in jets using the BeppoSAX X-ray observation results. They found that the central black hole masses of three quasar-like balzars, 0836+710, 1510-089, 2230+114, are in the range of $`10^710^9M_{}`$.

To explain the observed rapid variability, there are some mechanisms, like eclipsing of hot spots by the accretion disk or microflares in the accretion disk (Wiita, 1996). It has been suggested that the turbulent magnetic field with a relativistic jet may produce the rapidly oscillating variation seen in some blazars (Massaro et al. 1998; Nesci et al. 1998). Among these models, the relativistic model appears to be the most promising to explain the observed rapid variability in $`\gamma `$-ray loud blazars. The nature of the variations provides strong constraints on the astrophysical processes near the event horizon of the black hole. This makes PKS 1510$``$089 a valuable source for testing the theory of accretion onto supermassive black holes in $`\gamma `$-ray loud balzars.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors are grateful to Dr. J. H. Fan and the anonymous referee for the significant suggestions and comments and of Dr. L. Zhang for his reading of the manuscript and suggestions. This work is supported by the National Natural Scientific Foundation of China (NSFC) and Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province (2000A004M).


text:
# Room temperature GW bar detector with opto-mechanical readout

## I Introduction

The direct observation of gravitational waves (GWs) is one of the most challenging tasks for experimental physics. The effort devoted to this goal started in the 1960’s, based on theoretical predictions of the expected signal, which are now considered as very optimistic moss71 . The experimental strategy for detecting GW signals was based initially on massive acoustic detectors barre  and nowadays exploits also long baseline interferometers interferometri . In particular, the former are the most sensitive GW detectors presently in activity igec  and they offer interesting possibilities for future advanced versions sfera ; bisfera .

Cryogenic bar acoustic detectors are currently equipped with capacitive or inductive transducers followed by SQUID amplifiers or by a microwave resonant cavity. The sensitivity is presently limited by the amplification stage that operates $`10^4`$ times above the standard quantum limit heffner , giving a bandwidth of few Hz around the two mechanical vibration modes of the coupled oscillators system.

The possibility of using optical techniques for the readout of bar vibrations was early considered by Drever drever77 . Kulagin et al. kulagin86  theoretically studied the possibilities of an optical readout system for a Weber bar with resonant mechanical transformer. This idea was developed by Richard richard88 , who designed and theoretically investigated in detail such a system richardPRD92 . Richard and coworkers also tested at room temperature an opto-mechanical transducer made by a Fabry–Perot cavity installed on a double oscillator, observing a rms displacement noise consistent with the calculated thermal fluctuations richard95 .

In spite of this effort, GW bar detectors have never been equipped with optical readout and the real performance of such a system has never been experimentally verified. On the other hand, the technology has very advanced during the last years in the fields of laser stabilization and fabrication of optical components. As a consequence, the expected characteristics of an optical readout system are even more promising and could lead to a major breakthrough of GW massive detectors.

In the framework of the AURIGA collaboration auriga  we are developing a complete optical readout system for ultra-cryogenic bar detectors conti98 . The basic idea is to form a high-finesse Fabry–Perot cavity between the bar and a resonant mechanical transducer and then to compare the length of this optical resonator, possibly carrying a GW signal, with that of a stable reference cavity by means of a resonant laser.

In this work we present the first room temperature GW bar detector operating with an optical readout system. The detector performance is completely characterized in terms of spectral sensitivity and statistical properties of the fluctuations in the system output signal. Our apparatus represents a wide-band (several tens of Hz), GW acoustic detector which is limited by thermal noise at least in the frequency range of highest sensitivity. Thanks to this property, we can accurately study the output spectrum of the thermal noise and we show that the description of the bar and transducer coupled oscillators cannot be given in terms of de-coupled normal modes, as usually assumed.

The outline of this paper is the following. In Section II we describe the experimental apparatus, and in particular the readout system. In Sec. III.1 we present the mechanical characteristics and the displacement noise of the detector, as deduced from the output signal. The effect of thermal noise in the output spectrum is analyzed in Sec. III.2. Then we investigate the statistical properties of the output fluctuations, performing the accurate analysis necessary to characterize a GW detector (Sec. III.3). Finally in Sec. III.4 we estimate the sensitivity of the bar as GW detector.

## II The readout system

A schematic drawing of the room-temperature GW detector equipped with the opto-mechanical readout is shown in Fig. 1. The mechanical vibrations of the bar are amplified by a coupled mechanical oscillator and transformed into length changes of an optical cavity, hereafter called transducer cavity (TC). The readout system is composed of a laser source, frequency stabilized to a reference cavity (RC), a set of optical fibers and components to convey the radiation to TC, the opto-electronics for signal detection and elaboration.

The bar is a 3 m long, 2300 kg mass cylinder made of Al5056. Its first longitudinal vibration mode, useful for GW detection, resonates at 875 Hz, when no load is applied. The measured resonance frequency varies as $`0.38`$ Hz/kg with the amount of non-resonant mass applied to the bar end faces, giving a calculated frequency of $`\nu _\mathrm{b}=866`$ Hz when the bar is operated with the full readout system. The mechanical quality factor of the resonance is $`1.8\times 10^5`$, measured from the decay time of the excited vibration. The bar is kept in a vacuum chamber, placed a few meters apart from the optical table, and it is isolated from floor mechanical noise by a cascade of passive filters which achieve an overall vertical isolation of about $``$140 dB at the bar frequency, as sensed at the bar middle section. During the work here reported the vacuum system, composed by a roots pump backed by a rotary pump, was operated just for about 1 hour per day.

The output beam of a commercial Nd:YAG laser source, emitting 50 mW at 1.064 $`\mu `$m, passes through an optical isolator and two electro-optic modulators (EOMs) enclosed in a thermally stabilized box. The first EOM is used with a polarizer in an amplitude stabilization loop. The purpose of this noise-eater, described in detail in Ref. AP\_ottico , is reducing the effect of the back-action on the transducer, but it is not relevant for the work here reported. The second EOM is a resonant modulator working at 13.3 MHz which accomplishes phase modulation with a depth of about 1 rad. A first beam-splitter (BS1) transmits 20$`\%`$ of the radiation for the noise eater, while the reflected beam is directed towards a second 70$`\%`$ transmission beam-splitter (BS2). The reflected beam, after an optical isolator, is coupled to a single-mode polarization-maintaining fiber and arrives to a $`135\times 340`$ mm2 Al plate anchored to the bar middle section.

The optical fiber is formed by joining 4 patchcords with FC/PC connectors, for a total length of 13 m, and includes a homemade vacuum feedthrough. The two fiber ends have pigtailed collimators, with anti-reflection coating. The overall power transmission of the fiber assembly is about 50$`\%`$.

The 1.5 mW collimated beam transmitted by the fiber passes through an optical circulator, formed by a polarizing beam-splitter and a quarter-wave plate, and a telescope to properly couple the radiation to the TEM00 mode of TC. Four tilting mirrors send the beam towards the transducer cavity on the bar end face. The beam reflected by TC, after the circulator, is detected by a photodiode (PD1). The TC is a 6 mm long Fabry–Perot cavity, with a finesse of 28000, formed by an input concave mirror (radius of curvature 1 m, diameter $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$) glued to a support fixed to the bar, and a flat back mirror (diameter $`0.5^{\prime \prime }`$) glued to the oscillating mass of the mechanical transducer. This resonant transducer is machined from a single piece of Al5056 and it is composed of a thin circular plate loaded by a central 1.25 kg inert mass. The resonant frequency of the first drum mode is about 882 Hz, according to the measurements described in Sec. III.1. This resonator was designed for a previous version of the readout system and it is described in Ref. conti98 .

The beam transmitted by BS2, after an optical isolator and mode-matching lenses, is sent to a 110 mm long Fabry–Perot reference cavity that has a finesse of 44000. RC is formed by an Invar spacer with a couple of mirrors similar to the ones of the TC. The input flat mirror is glued on a piezoelectric actuator (PZT), which allows the tuning of the cavity length. The light power impinging on the cavity is about 4.5 mW. The cavity is kept in a vacuum chamber whose temperature is actively stabilized at about 34C within 0.1C. The beam reflected by this cavity is detected by a second photodiode (PD2) after an optical circulator.

The power level impinging on PD1 shows large variations: during the 42 hour period of continuous data acquisition, it varied by up to 80$`\%`$, on a time-scale of typically a few hours. On the same period the power impinging on PD2 varied by less than 10$`\%`$, with a longer timescale. The large variations sensed by PD1 are due to polarization fluctuations generated by drifts of the room temperature and originating from a non-perfect matching between the polarization axes of the fiber patchcords. They are turned into changes of the power impinging on TC by the optical circulator at the fiber output.

The ac component of the signals coming from the two photodiodes is demodulated at 13.3 MHz and filtered, according to the Pound–Drever scheme Drever . The resulting signals are used as discriminator for frequency locking and analysis. The laser frequency is locked to a resonance peak of RC with a servo loop which has a unit gain frequency of 30 kHz. The loop gain is maximized in the frequency range between 600 Hz and 900 Hz, where it reaches 120 dB, and allows to achieve an in-loop frequency noise level below the shot noise limit. A detailed description of the loop electronics and performance can be found in Ref. Conti-phd . The resonant peak of RC is then superimposed to a resonance of TC by operating on the PZT actuator. The Pound–Drever signal from TC is used in a servo loop which drives the PZT through a low noise high-voltage amplifier. This low frequency servo loop has unity gain at about 1 Hz and allows the reference cavity to follow the resonance of TC in its thermal drifts. Due to the low loop bandwidth, the two cavities can be considered as free and independent in the frequency range of interest.

The same error signal from TC is acquired and analyzed to extract information concerning the motion of the bar detector.

## III Experimental results

### III.1 Mechanical system and noise spectrum

The conversion of the detector output signal from voltage into length change of the transducer cavity is obtained using the slope of the corresponding error signal, measured with an accuracy of about 20$`\%`$, and the known cavity length. The power spectral density $`S_{xx}`$ of the displacement noise is shown in Fig. 2, which corresponds to the average of one hour data. The peaks at 856 Hz and 892 Hz correspond to the frequencies $`\nu _\pm `$ of the two mechanical modes of the coupled oscillators system formed by the bar and the resonant transducer. For the coupled system the following relation holds: $`\nu _+\nu _{}=\nu _\mathrm{b}\nu _\mathrm{t}`$, where $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ is the resonance frequency of the transducer. According to the value of $`\nu _\mathrm{b}=866`$ Hz calculated for the loaded bar we infer that the transducer resonance is at 882 Hz and thus detuned by +16 Hz with respect to the bar. A better coupling between the two oscillators is possible by adjusting the thickness of the transducer circular plate.

We determined the mechanical quality factor $`Q`$ of the ‘+’ and ‘$``$’ modes by measuring the decay time of a resonant sinusoidal excitation applied to the bar by means of a piezoelectric actuator situated at the bar end face opposite the transducer. We got $`Q_{}=16600`$ and $`Q_+=8700`$. The factor of 2 of difference in the $`Q`$s is explained by considering that, due to the frequency detuning between the two resonators, the minus mode is more influenced by the (high $`Q`$) bar while the plus mode by the (low $`Q`$) transducer.

As it can be seen in Fig. 2, the peak spectral power in the modes exceeds by about 45 dB the background noise. The wideband output noise of the optical readout system comes from the residual frequency fluctuations of the laser stabilized to RC and from the noise measured when the laser is far from the TC resonance. The laser frequency noise has been measured with respect to a stable Zerodur cavity, with an apparatus described in Ref. JOSA , and its effect gives a sensitivity limit as low as $`2\times 10^2`$ Hz/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}`$ around 1 kHz. The far-from-resonance fluctuations are due to electronic noise, laser amplitude noise (including shot noise), and interference fringes. The overall effect gives a sensitivity limit of about 0.2 Hz/$`\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}`$. The observed background, visible in Fig. 2, is about 20 dB higher than this limit and exhibits a decreasing behavior versus frequency Amaldi .

We fitted the noise power spectral density of one hour output data with the function $`A/\nu ^ϵ`$ between 75 Hz and 1775 Hz, neglecting only the interval around the ‘+’ and ‘$``$’ modes and the resonance at 1519 Hz. We obtained $`ϵ=1.16`$ and $`A=4.2\times 10^{30}`$ m2Hzϵ/Hz. The origin of this noise is unknown and is presently under investigation. We remark that a $`1/f`$ frequency dependence in the noise spectrum is expected for the thermal noise of a mechanical oscillator with internal friction modeled as a constant imaginary part of the spring constant, in the frequency region below the oscillator resonance.

### III.2 Thermal noise of the coupled oscillators system

A bar detector equipped with a resonant transducer is widely modeled as a system of two coupled harmonic oscillators and the output is often analyzed in terms of normal mode expansion. In particular, such assumption is used for studying the thermal noise of the system Saulson . On the other hand, it has been suggested Majorana  and experimentally verified jap  that this description may fail if inhomogeneously distributed losses occur. For our system the condition for the validity of the normal mode expansion can be written, according to Ref. Majorana , as

$$\nu _\mathrm{b}Q_\mathrm{b}=\nu _\mathrm{t}Q_\mathrm{t}.$$
(1)
In our case, the large difference between the quality factors of the modes ‘+’ and ‘$``$’ can be brought back to a large difference in the effective $`Q`$s of the original oscillators $`Q_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`Q_\mathrm{t}`$. Therefore, since the frequencies $`\nu _\mathrm{b}`$ and $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ are very similar, the condition of Eq. (1) is not satisfied.

We call $`x_\mathrm{b}`$, $`m_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`x_\mathrm{t}`$, $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ the coordinate and effective mass of the bar and transducer oscillator respectively, and $`f_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`f_\mathrm{t}`$ the corresponding total driving force. Assuming that only viscous damping is present,111We also considered the case of structural losses as dissipative mechanism, but no difference was found within the reported errors. the dynamics of the system is described by the equations of motion

$$\{\begin{array}{cc}\ddot{x_\mathrm{b}}+\frac{\omega _\mathrm{b}}{Q_\mathrm{b}}\dot{x_\mathrm{b}}+\mu \frac{\omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}(\dot{x_\mathrm{b}}\dot{x_\mathrm{t}})+\omega _\mathrm{b}^2x_\mathrm{b}+\mu \omega _\mathrm{t}^2(x_\mathrm{b}x_\mathrm{t})=\frac{f_\mathrm{b}f_\mathrm{t}}{m_\mathrm{b}}\hfill & \\ & \\ \ddot{x_\mathrm{t}}+\frac{\omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}(\dot{x_\mathrm{t}}\dot{x_\mathrm{b}})+\omega _\mathrm{t}^2(x_\mathrm{t}x_\mathrm{b})=\frac{f_\mathrm{t}}{m_\mathrm{t}},\hfill & \end{array}$$

where $`\mu =m_\mathrm{t}/m_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`\omega _{\mathrm{b},\mathrm{t}}=2\pi \nu _{\mathrm{b},\mathrm{t}}`$. In the frequency domain the system can be written as

$$𝐃(\omega )\left(\begin{array}{c}X_\mathrm{b}\\ X_\mathrm{t}\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}(F_\mathrm{b}F_\mathrm{t})/m_\mathrm{b}\\ F_\mathrm{t}/m_\mathrm{t}\end{array}\right),$$
(2)
with

$$𝐃(\omega )=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\omega ^2+\omega _\mathrm{b}^2+\mu \omega _\mathrm{t}^2+i\omega \left(\frac{\omega _\mathrm{b}}{Q_\mathrm{b}}+\mu \frac{\omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}\right)& \mu \omega _\mathrm{t}^2i\mu \frac{\omega \omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}\\ & \\ \omega _\mathrm{t}^2i\frac{\omega \omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}& \omega ^2+\omega _\mathrm{t}^2+i\frac{\omega \omega _\mathrm{t}}{Q_\mathrm{t}}\end{array}\right),$$

where capital letters indicate Fourier transforms and $`i`$ is the imaginary unit.

To simplify our analysis, in the following we consider the transducer cavity length changes as determined exclusively by a motion of the transducer. This is justified as the amplitude of a bar displacement is amplified at the transducer by a factor equal to $`1/\sqrt{\mu }`$, i.e., by a factor of about 30. We are thus interested to the noise power spectral density $`S_{x_\mathrm{t}x_\mathrm{t}}`$ of $`x_\mathrm{t}`$ which, if only stochastic thermal forces are present, can be written according to the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem Majorana  as

$$S_{x_\mathrm{t}x_\mathrm{t}}^T(\omega )=\frac{2k_\mathrm{B}T}{\omega ^2}Re\{(i\omega 𝐃)_{22}^1\},$$
(3)
where $`k_\mathrm{B}`$ is the Boltzmann constant and $`T`$ is the thermodynamic temperature. In order to account for the observed $`1/f`$ background, we add a phenomenological wide-band term:

$$S_{x_\mathrm{t}x_\mathrm{t}}(\omega )=S_{x_\mathrm{t}x_\mathrm{t}}^T(\omega )+\frac{S_{\mathrm{WB}}}{\omega ^ϵ}.$$
(4)
We fitted the output spectrum using the expression of Eq. (4), in the frequency range between 780 Hz and 950 Hz. The fit allows to infer the ratios $`Q_\mathrm{b}/T`$, $`Q_\mathrm{t}/T`$ and the resonant frequencies $`\nu _\mathrm{b}`$, $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ of the uncoupled oscillators, the effective mass $`m_\mathrm{t}`$ of the transducer oscillator and the magnitude $`S_{\mathrm{WB}}`$ of the background noise. The effective mass $`m_\mathrm{b}=1180`$ kg of the loaded bar resonator and the temperature $`T`$ were kept constant during the fitting. We assumed that both oscillators are at the same thermodynamic temperature $`T`$ of 296 K, as measured by a probe placed on the bar. This assumption seems reasonable at least for the bar as the inferred value for $`Q_\mathrm{b}`$ agrees very well with the one measured independently for the unloaded bar ($`1.8\times 10^5`$). The result of the fitting procedure is shown in Fig. 3 and the parameters are summarized in Tab. 1. The two frequencies $`\nu _\mathrm{b}`$ and $`\nu _\mathrm{t}`$ agree well with the values estimated in Secs. II and III.1. Also the scale factor $`S_{\mathrm{WB}}`$ of the background noise agrees with the value $`(2\pi )^ϵA=3.5\times 10^{29}`$ m2Hzϵ/Hz obtained in Sec. III.1. As far as the transducer mass is concerned we notice that its effective mass deduced from the fit is greater than the mere 1.25 kg central mass.

We also attempted to fit the same data with the prediction of the normal mode expansion, as shown in Fig. 3. It is evident that, while the experimental spectrum is in excellent agreement with the model of Eqs. (3) and (4), the normal mode expansion fails to describe our system: the presence of inhomogeneously distributed losses causes the random fluctuations of the two initial oscillators to be correlated. The normal mode expansion overestimates the noise in between the two modes because it does not take into account such a correlation.

### III.3 Statistical analysis of the output fluctuations

For a deep understanding of the detection system, it is important to investigate the statistical behavior of the noise before attempting any estimation of its magnitude. In fact, one needs to be sure that the noise under observation follows the laws predicted for the expected noise sources. In particular, the fundamental hypothesis is that the noise is a (quasi-)stationary stochastic process with Gaussian statistics. The system statistics is a crucial issue for GW detectors and it can cause a dramatic decrease of the effective duty cycle. Indeed, it is safe to limit the analysis only to the periods when the experimental noise is well modeled, indicating that the detector is working properly.

The output of PD1 was recorded with an acquisition system identical to the one employed for the ultra-cryogenic GW detector AURIGA: the data are sampled at 4.88 kHz and synchronized to UTC with a GPS clock. We have acquired data between May 31st 2001 and June 20th 2001. The data acquisition was not continuous due to intentional interruptions for diagnostic purposes and to system failures mainly originated by environmental temperature variations Amaldi . Manual relocking procedures require less than 15 minutes and the longest continuous locking period was 42 hours. The overall data recording corresponds to 183 hours. A few additional signals were sampled at 20 Hz for monitoring the dc signals from PD1 and PD2, the temperature of the RC and the correction voltage fed to the PZT of the RC.

The acquired data were elaborated through the same data analysis used for the ultra-cryogenic detector analisi\_au . The analysis implements a Wiener-Kolmogorov (WK) filter to search for $`\delta `$-like signals (triggers), i.e., for short bursts whose Fourier transform can be considered as constant over the effective bandwidth of the detector. A maximum-hold algorithm is applied to the data and for each trigger we estimate the time of arrival, the amplitude and the $`\chi ^2`$ with respect to the expected shape. The latter discriminates a $`\delta `$-like mechanical excitation of the bar, i.e., the GW signal, from spurious signals. The analysis also implements adaptive algorithms that update the parameters of the WK filter in order to follow slow drifts of the system.

In order to verify the Gaussian behavior of the detection output signal, we study the distribution of the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ (called $`\chi _a^2`$ in the following) of all triggers found by the data analysis: for a random variable with Gaussian statistics $`\chi _a^2`$ should follow a well-known distribution distrib\_chi . We focus on the 24 hours of data acquired during June 9th. The pumps that maintain the vacuum in the bar tank were switched on for one hour, between h12.30 UTC and h13.30 UTC. We have vetoed the data acquired within this period in order to avoid the effect of the noise introduced by the pumps. We plot in Fig. 4 (top) the histogram of $`\chi _a^2`$ of all triggers with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 4 ortolan , before and after applying the veto (respectively, dark and light gray histogram). The tails at higher values of $`\chi _a^2`$ are very efficiently cut away by considering only those triggers with 4$`<`$SNR$`<`$6 (bottom histogram). The number of degrees of freedom used to compute $`\chi _a^2`$ is 30. We can well fit the data having 4$`<`$SNR$`<`$6, after veto, with the theoretical distribution of $`\chi _a^2`$: the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ of the fit is 0.90.

In Fig. 5 we plot the $`\chi _a^2`$ of all triggers with SNR$`>`$4 versus the SNR. Most of them concentrate in the region of low SNR and $`\chi _a^2<2`$. A small fraction (about 0.05$`\%`$) of triggers follows a linear law in the log-log plot of Fig. 5. Indeed, it has been shown analisi\_au  that a quadratic scale law of $`\chi _a^2`$ versus the SNR is expected for signals which are not matched by the filter. 92$`\%`$ of triggers with SNR$`>6`$ surviving the veto can be rejected as they have a $`\chi _a^2>2.1`$, a threshold that corresponds to a confidence level of $`3.9\times 10^4`$ for our 30 degrees of freedom.

An independent test of the Gaussian character of the system is the distribution of the SNR. In this case the analytical formula for the expected distribution involves the calculation of integrals that are not easily solvable. We therefore compare the experimental distribution of SNR with that obtained by simulating with Monte Carlo methods a Gaussian system having the same parameters as ours (namely, frequencies, bandwidth and ratio between the height of the mechanical mode peaks and the background noise). The simulation output is passed through the same analysis as the real data, so that any deviation of our system from a Gaussian behavior would appear as a difference in the SNR distribution between the simulated and the true system. The results are plotted in Fig. 6 and the agreement is excellent, above all considering that 92$`\%`$ of the triggers at SNR$`>6`$ are rejected by the $`\chi ^2`$ test. The remaining signal distribution perfectly corresponds to the expected output of a system with Gaussian input noise, without any excess trigger.

### III.4 Performance as GW detector

The sensitivity of the bar detector is determined from $`S_{hh}`$, defined as the spectral density of the total noise referred to the detector input and calibrated in terms of GW amplitude. Figure 7 shows $`\sqrt{S_{hh}}`$ in a neighbourhood of the two modes ‘+’ and ‘$``$’. As expected, the best sensitivity is achieved in correspondence of the modes, with a peak at the mode ‘$``$’, that has a higher $`Q`$.

A critical parameter for a GW resonant detector is the detection bandwidth, which is particularly significant for the temporal definition of the candidate events and for the synchronization of several detectors timing . The spectral sensitivity of the operating cryogenic bar detectors is characterized, with only one exception explorer , by narrow quasi-Lorentzian peaks, due to the relatively large amplifier noise. In that case, the detection bandwidth is of the order of few Hz. For our detector, the sensitivity is relevant in the whole frequency interval between the modes, as expected for an optimized resonant transducer. The significant bandwidth exceeds the modes splitting. The output spectrum is asymmetric, but we remark that at 10 dB from the minimum the width is about 50 Hz.

The amplitude of a GW burst that would be detected with unitary SNR is $`h_{\mathrm{min}}=3\times 10^{17}`$. This is equivalent to a standard pulse of $`0.8M_{}c^2`$ converted into GW at the distance of 10 kPc, i.e., at the galactic center. This performance is not of astrophysical interest, as expected for the room temperature operation, but it is very promising: once the system is upgraded both in the optics and in the detector design to operate at ultra-cryogenic temperatures, the sensitivity is expected to increase up to $`h_{\mathrm{min}}10^{20}`$.

## IV Conclusions

We have operated a room temperature GW bar detector equipped with an opto-mechanical readout. The sensitivity is limited by thermal noise, due to the high temperature and low mechanical quality factors. Both parameters will improve in the case of cryogenic operation. The statistics of the detector noise is stable and Gaussian as expected. The sensitivity is enough to evidence the failure of the normal mode expansion due to the presence of inhomogeneously distributed losses. The achieved results are a significant step towards the realization of an ultra-cryogenic resonant detector equipped with optomechanical readout. This is predicted to improve the bandwidth of the AURIGA detector by more than one order of magnitude with respect to its present status.

###### Acknowledgements.

We gratefully acknowledge all the former and current components of the AURIGA group without whom this work would not have been done. We thank especially G. A. Prodi and J. P. Zendri for helping in the day by day laboratory work, L. Baggio, A. Ortolan and G. Vedovato for providing the data acquisition system and the data analysis tools and adapting them to our detector parameters. This work was partially funded by the MURST (research program ‘Transducer systems for cryogenic resonant detectors of gravitational waves’).


text:
# The Extended Deep Minimum and the Subsequent Brightening of RX And in 1996–1997

## 1 Introduction

RX And is one of the best-known Z Cam-type dwarf novae (cf. Warner (1995)), which show standstills in addition to usual dwarf nova-type outbursts (for a review of dwarf nova outbursts, see Osaki (1996)). Although the exact origin of Z Cam-type phenomenon is not perfectly understood, it has been proposed that the changing mass-transfer rate ($`\dot{M}`$) is most responsible for the dwarf nova–standstill alternations: the standstill is a state of an enhanced ($`\dot{M}`$), which thermally stabilizes the accretion disk (e.g. Meyer, Meyer-Hofmeister (1983)). Meyer, Meyer-Hofmeister (1983) proposed that a normal outburst below the critical surface density can trigger a standstill, which is maintained by an enhanced mass-transfer caused by irradiation from the brightened accretion disk and white dwarf. Subsequent model calculations by Lin et al. (1985) and King, Cannizzo (1998), however, did not well reproduce the observed properties of Z Cam-type stars. Honeycutt et al. (1998) presented an observational test, and reported that some Z Cam stars were indeed brighter in standstill than the mean brightness in the outbursting phase, suggesting higher mass-transfer rates during standstills.

More recently, Buat-Ménard et al. (2001) claimed that the basic features are reproduced by correctly taking the heating of the disk by the tidal torque and the mass-transfer stream impact into account. Buat-Ménard et al. (2001) also claimed that large variation of mass-transfer rates are not necessary to reproduce the Z Cam-type phenomenon. However, the resultant light curve by Buat-Ménard et al. (2001) is different from the observation in some respects. Kato (2001) argued that there is a striking departure from the theoretical prediction when a system enters a standstill.

Several types of cataclysmic variables (CVs) show temporary reductions of $`\dot{M}`$, the best-known cases being VY Scl-type stars and AM Her-type stars (polars) (Warner (1995); Greiner (1998)). Indeed, Warner, van Citters (1974) tried to explain the Z Cam-type and VY Scl-type phenomena in the same framework. However, observations suggest that there is a strong segregation of period distributions between Z Cam-type stars and VY Scl-type stars (Verbunt, 1997). Furthermore, past extensive studies on representative Z Cam-type stars (Honeycutt et al. (1998); Oppenheimer et al. (1998)), together with more theoretical discussion by Buat-Ménard et al. (2001), have shown little evidence for VY Scl-type strong temporary reduction of $`\dot{M}`$.

The nature of Z Cam-type phenomenon is thus still controversial; there still remain discrepancies between observations and theories. Even if we assume changing $`\dot{M}`$ as a cause of Z Cam-type phenomenon, the exact origin of changing $`\dot{M}`$ is still poorly understood, although star spots covering the L1 point (Livio, Pringle, 1994) would be a promising interpretation for the VY Scl-type phenomena.

RX And had been known as a relatively typical Z Cam-type dwarf nova, with outbursts-standstill alternations, until the discovery of an extremely deep fading (also called deep quiescence by some authors) in 1996 September.111 VSNET observations, No. 3750, http://www.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/Mail/obs3000/msg00750.html  The deep fading lasted until 1997 January.

## 2 Observation

### 2.1 Photometry

The time-resolved observations were acquired on three nights between 1996 November 15 and 19 (near the bottom of the fading), using a CCD camera (Thomson TH 7882, 576 $`\times `$ 384 pixels, on-chip 2 $`\times `$ 2 binning adopted) attached to the Cassegrain focus of the 60 cm reflector (focal length=4.8 m) at Ouda Station, Kyoto University (Ohtani et al., 1992). An interference filter was used which had been designed to reproduce the Johnson $`V`$ band. The exposure time was 60 s. The frames were first corrected for standard de-biasing and flat fielding, and were then processed by a microcomputer-based aperture photometry package developed by one of the authors (TK). The magnitudes of the object was determined relative to GSC 2807.1483 ($`V`$=11.86, $`BV`$=+1.05), whose constancy during the run was confirmed using GSC 2803.948. The magnitude of the comparison star is taken from Misselt (1996). Barycentric corrections to observed times were applied before the following analysis. We also obtained additional nightly snapshot photometry on 32 nights between 1996 September 10 and 1997 February 5.

Table 1 lists the log of observations, together with nightly averaged magnitudes.

### 2.2 Spectroscopy

We took a low-resolution spectrum with a 1.88-m telescope and the New Cassegrain Spectrograph equipped with a 150 grooves mm-1 at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO, a branch of the National Astronomical Observatory, an inter-university research institute operated by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan) on 1997 February 5. The detector was a CI502AB CCD (512$`\times `$512 pixels). The spectral coverage was 4600–7100 Å, and the wavelength resolution was 5.9 Åpix-1. The exposure started at BJD 2450484.9111, and the exposure time was 600 s.

The reduction was done using the Spectronebulagraph reduction system (SNGRED) developed mainly by M. Yoshida at OAO on IRAF package222IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.. The averaged signal-to-noise ratio ($`S/N`$) per pixel at the continuum level was 22. The spectrum was normalized by the continuum level.

## 3 Result and Discussion

### 3.1 The Fading Episode in 1996–1997

The overall light curve, which is drawn from the present CCD observations and the visual observations reported to VSNET international variable star network333 http://www.kusastro.kyoto-u.ac.jp/vsnet/ , is presented in figure 1. For comparison with the $`V`$=15 mag reached during this extended low state, note that RX And is normally at $`V`$=14 in quiescence.

Such a fading strongly resembles faint (or low) states observed in VY Scl-type novalike variables. The existence of such an extended, extremely faint state in a Z Cam-type star firmly established that a remarkable reduction of mass-transfer rates comparable to those of VY Scl-type stars indeed occurs in a Z Cam-type star. The faint state lasted for $``$140 d.

### 3.2 Short-Term Light Variation

In some VY Scl-type stars, a total cessation of mass-transfer is suggested from the disappearance of flickering (MV Lyr: Robinson et al. (1981)). We obtained time-resolved photometry of RX And during this extremely low state, in order to see whether or not the mass-transfer stopped.

Figure 2 shows the nightly light curves. There indeed existed short-term irregular variations, which can be attributed to flickering. A period analysis with the Phase Dispersion Minimization (PDM) method (Stellingwerf, 1978) or discrete Fourier transform did not yield any coherent periodicity. The lack of coherent periodicity is also evident in figure 2 in that major flickerings (flare-like brightenings) occurred randomly. The variations were thus regarded as irregular. The variations were too irregular to be considered as oscillations of the white dwarf (e.g. van Zyl et al. (2001)). The persistence of flickering indicates that a substantial amount of mass-transfer in RX And was present, even during the extended deep minimum. Figure 3 shows the phase-averaged light curve, at the orbital period ($`P`$=0.209893 d, Kaitchuck (1989)). Although there is an indication of double-humped orbital variation with an amplitude of $``$0.1 mag, the lack of coherent signal in the period analysis more strongly suggests that the variation in the averaged light curve is spurious. We therefore put the upper limit of the amplitude of orbital modulations as 0.1 mag.

One might expect a direct reflection effect from the hot white dwarf, if the accretion disk had disappeared or become optically very thin. The absence of such an effect also supports that a substantial amount of accretion disk remained even in the extended deep minimum of RX And. Future optical spectroscopic observations on similar occasions will be able to test the presence of a normal CV disk.

Sion et al. (2001) independently obtained far-UV spectra during the same deep fading with the Hubble Space Telescope. Sion et al. (2001) applied a synthetic spectral fitting to the UV spectra, and concluded that the accretion disk contributes to 25 % of the far-UV light, corresponding to a mass-accretion rate of 10-10.52 $`M`$ yr-1. Although their estimate of the accretion rate may have suffered from some degree of ambiguities resulting from a fit using an optically thick disk, the unmistakable signature of the remaining mass accretion (close to the white dwarf) in the far-UV wavelengths strengthens our finding of the remaining mass-transfer from the secondary.

### 3.3 Brightening from the Minimum

There was a gradually brightening trend since JD 2450439 (1996 December 21). RX And brightened for the subsequent 14 nights at a mean rate of 0.037 mag d-1. Such a slow brightening is commonly observed in the early recovery stage from deep, long, fadings of VY Scl-type stars (cf. general light curves: Greiner (1998); MV Lyr: Kraicheva, Genkov (1992)). RX And then started brighten quickly (figure 4), attaining the maximum of $`V`$=11.4 on 1997 January 14.

The light curve of the brightening more or less resembles that of a dwarf nova-type outburst, but is different from ordinary outbursts of RX And in many respects: 1) The entire duration of the brightening (outburst) was $``$40 d, with multiple peaks. The duration is several times longer than those of ordinary outbursts of RX And (Szkody (1974); Szkody, Mattei (1984)). 2) The rise to the maximum was anomalously slow, accompanied by a short “stagnation” period in the rising branch (a temporary fading was particularly apparent near JD 2450460 = 1997 January 11). The duration of the “outburst” was similar to dwarf nova-like brightenings observed in a VY Scl-type star, MV Lyr (Pavlenko (1998); Shugarov, Pavlenko (1998); Pavlenko, Shugarov (1999)).

The slow rising branch also resembles those of long-period dwarf novae (Menzies et al. (1986); Kim et al. (1992); Simon (2000)). Kim et al. (1992) interpreted this feature in GK Per as a result of slow inside-out propagation of the thermal instability starting at the inner region of the accretion disk. This condition is apparently achieved in long-period, low-$`\dot{M}`$ dwarf novae, in which the critical surface density is more likely to be reached at the inner region (Kim et al., 1992).

The same condition was likely to be achieved in the recovery process of RX And from the very low state, when the mass-transfer seems to have slowly recovered, as inferred from the slow rise from the deep minimum.

In the spectrum obtained on 1997 February 5 (figure 5), when RX And was declining from the the third peak after recover from the deep minimum and $``$1 mag above the deep quiescence, emission lines of the Balmer lines, H$`\alpha `$ and H$`\beta `$, and HeI dominated. The equivalent widths, FWHM and FWZI are listed in table 2. The errors of FWHM and FWZI are 40 and 100 km s-1, respectively. The instrumental width corresponds to 540 km s-1. The H$`\beta `$ equivalent width is $`10`$% larger than that in normal quiescence and on one day before an outburst measured by Kaitchuck et al. (1988). While most dwarf novae, including RX And itself (cf. Clarke, Bowyer (1984); Kaitchuck et al. (1988)) are known to show reduced line strengths above quiescence, RX And in this stage showed relatively strong emission lines. This suggests that the accretion disk had an extra emission source, which can be naturally explained if the heating wave from the inner region had not reached the outer region of the accretion disk and the accumulated matter during the low quiescence was left from being accreted. The large values of FWHM and FWZI are also consistent with formation of these lines in the outer disk.

In conclusion, we interpret that RX And mimicked a long-period, low-$`\dot{M}`$ dwarf nova in its recovery process from the deep minimum.

### 3.4 Frequency of Deep Fadings

The reason why such deep fadings of RX And had not been recognized before the 1996–1997 event was partly from the presence of a close $`V`$=14.3 mag companion, which may have been confused with RX And when the variable was exceptionally faint. This hypothesis is strengthed by the subsequent detections of (shorter) fading episodes occurring 1997 February to March and 2000 April to August. During both fadings, RX And was observed fainter than its “nominal” quiescent magnitude of 14.0. Such fading episodes may have been identified as “intervals without outbursts” in the past visual record. An examination of the data in VSOLJ (Variable Star Observers League in Japan) and AFOEV (Association Française des Observateurs d’Etoiles Variables) databases since 1970 has revealed at least two distinct such instances in 1977 and 1986. Although the frequency and periodicity should be confirmed future observations, there seems to be a quasi-period of $``$10 yrs, which is close to what is proposed for a VY Scl-type star, MV Lyr (Wenzel, Fuhrmann (1983); Rosino et al. (1993)).

### 3.5 Relation to VY Scl-Type Stars

The present extended fading episode strongly mimics the temporary fadings of VY Scl-type stars. Observations have suggested a number of similarities between the present phenomenon of RX And of VY Scl-type fadings. The presence of a similar periodicity between RX And and MV Lyr may further suggest a common underlying mechanism for producing temporary deep fadings, though the reason remains a mystery why there is no evidence of a similar phenomenon in other Z Cam-type stars.

Additional difference between the present fading of RX And and VY Scl-type fadings can be seen in the initial part of the fading episode (figure 1). The disk instability model predicts that a system should undergo dwarf nova outbursts (Honeycutt et al. (1994), King, Cannizzo (1998)) in response to the temporary reduction of $`\dot{M}`$. This is what was indeed observed in RX And, in the early stage of the fading. VY Scl-type systems, on the contrary, show little such evidence of dwarf nova-type outbursts (Honeycutt et al. (1994); Greiner (1998)). Leach et al. (1999) explained that such a departure of VY Scl-type stars from the disk-instability model is caused by the irradiation from the hot white dwarf, which can suppress thermal instability. More recent discovery of unique short-period mini-outbursts in a VY Scl-type star, V425 Cas (Kato et al., 2001), can be regarded as another support to this explanation. The detection of supersoft X-rays from V751 Cyg in low state (Greiner et al. (1999); Greiner (2000)) and the indirect evidence in BZ Cam (Greiner et al., 2001) also support this interpretation. The far-UV observation by Sion et al. (2001) during the deep fading yielded a white dwarf temperature of 34100$`\pm `$1000 K, which does not significantly differ from those measured in other quiescent dwarf novae. This observation provides strong support for the interpretation that what phenomenologically distinguishes temporary fadings of RX And from VY Scl-type fadings is the effect of heating from the white dwarf.

We are grateful to many amateur observers for supplying their vital visual and CCD estimates via VSNET. We are grateful to staffs of the VSOLJ and AFOEV for maintaining their databases publicly available. We are grateful to the staffs of Okayama Astrophysical Observatory for helping with our observation. This work is partly supported by a grant-in-aid (13640239) from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.