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# Mott insulators in an optical lattice with high filling factors.

## Abstract

We discuss the superfluid to Mott insulator transition of an atomic Bose gas in an optical lattice with high filling factors. We show that also in this multi-band situation, the long-wavelength physics is described by a single-band Bose-Hubbard model. We determine the many-body renormalization of the tunneling and interaction parameters in the effective Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, and consider the resulting model at nonzero temperatures. We show that in particular for a one or two-dimensional optical lattice, the Mott insulator phase is more difficult to realize than anticipated previously.

Introduction.— The behaviour of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates offers a large amount of interesting features. Specifically, the phase coherence of a condensate creates the prospect of various interference experiments, as shown for the first time in an experiment performed by Andrews et al. wolfgang . In another experiment a large number of condensates trapped in a periodic lattice potential have been made to interfere mark . Having shown experimentally that in general condensates are phase coherent and thus show off-diagonal long-range order, the question arises if this long-range order can also be destroyed in a controllable way. This was only very recently achieved in a beautiful experiment by Greiner et al. Bloch .

In this last experiment, a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate is put into a three-dimensional optical lattice. The number of atoms in the condensate is sufficiently large to obtain a filling factor of almost two atoms per site. By increasing the intensity of the lattice light, a quantum phase transition from a superfluid state to a Mott insulating state is achieved. In the insulating phase all phase coherence is lost due to quantum fluctuations. The transition was predicted to occur in this system by Jaksch et al. Jaksch , and the observed critical conditions for the transition are in good agreement with the results of an on-site mean-field theory Oosten . This indicates that the single-band Bose-Hubbard model used in Refs. Jaksch ; Oosten  can accurately describe a gas of ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice when the filling factor of the lattice is of the order of one.

However, this model is no longer valid in the case of higher filling factors such as described in the experiments of Kasevich ; Esslinger . The theories mentioned above use single-particle wave functions corresponding to the lowest band of the lattice to calculate the microscopic parameters of the single-band Bose-Hubbard model as a function of the lattice parameters. In the case of high filling factors more than one band is generally populated, leading to a multi-band Bose-Hubbard model. The interaction effects that occur under these circumstances have not been considered previously. Furthermore, the effects of thermal fluctuations are also not understood, even in the single-band Bose-Hubbard model. There are studies that describe number squeezing in an optical lattice at nonzero temperature Juha ; Burnett , but they are not in the strongly-interacting limit that is relevant for the Mott insulator. Our main objective here is to develop an effective theory that can deal with these issues.

Solving the multi-band Bose-Hubbard model. — To solve the problems associated with high filling factors, we have to deal with the many-body physics at every site. Since the high filling factors of interest are experimentally most relevant in low-dimensional lattices Kasevich ; Esslinger , we discuss the energy scales involved in those systems. In a low-dimensional lattice, we can approximate the on-site trapping potential by an anisotropic harmonic potential. The oscillator frequencies $`\omega _{}`$ and $`\omega _{}`$ correspond to the trapping frequencies in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the periodicity of the lattice, respectively. Because the typical size of a lattice well in the parallel direction(s) is much smaller than in the perpendicular direction(s), we immediately have that $`\mathrm{}\omega _{}\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$. Furthermore, for the experimental conditions of interest Kasevich ; Esslinger , the temperature is in between the two trapping frequencies, i.e., $`\mathrm{}\omega _{}k_BT\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$. This implies that in every site the gas is in the parallel direction(s) in the ground state of the potential, but that it occupies many states in the perpendicular direction(s). In particular, this holds for the thermal cloud of the gas. As a consequence, the effective dimensionality of the gas at every site is reduced and the thermal excitations are only present in the perpendicular direction(s). It is under these conditions that we are able to solve the relevant multi-band Bose-Hubbard model by using the following two-step procedure.

First, we solve the many-body physics at every site. Due to the famous infrared problems of a one or two-dimensional Bose gas this is not an easy task, and an accurate equation of state for these gases was developed only very recently in the weakly-interacting limit stoof . This equation of state is found by treating phase fluctuations in the (quasi)condensate exactly and we can in particular use it to determine at every temperature the number of atoms in the (quasi)condensate $`N_0(T)`$. Furthermore, it is shown in Ref. stoof  that even in the presence of phase fluctuations, the Gross-Pitaevskii equation can still be used to calculate the density profile of the (quasi)condensate.

Secondly, we consider the coupling between the sites. Since we have a (quasi)condensate at every site, the coupling between sites will be dominated by tunneling from (quasi)condensate to (quasi)condensate as opposed to (quasi)condensate to thermal cloud. This means that we can describe the coupling between sites by a single-band Bose-Hubbard model. The important parameters in the Bose-Hubbard model are the on-site interaction energy $`U`$ and the energy $`t`$ associated with the tunneling of atoms between nearest-neighbor sites. Both energies can be calculated from the knowledge of the (quasi)condensate wave function $`\psi _0(𝐱)=\sqrt{n_0(𝐱)}e^{i\vartheta }`$, where $`n_0(𝐱)`$ is the density profile and $`\vartheta `$ is the global phase of the (quasi)condensate. The interaction energy $`U`$ is proportional to $`𝑑𝐱|\psi _0(𝐱)|^4`$, whereas the tunneling energy $`t`$ requires the evaluation of an overlap integral between the (quasi)condensate wave functions of two neighboring sites in the parallel direction(s).

To describe the effect of the interatomic interaction, we thus need to determine how the (quasi)condensate wave function changes as a result of the on-site interactions. Since the mean-field interaction obeys $`\mathrm{}\omega _{}N_0U\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$ under the experimental conditions of interest, we can write the three-dimensional wave function of the condensate as a product of a single-particle ground-state wave function in the parallel direction(s) and the (quasi)condensate wave function in the perpendicular direction(s). If we substitute this product wave function into the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and integrate out the parallel direction(s), we arrive at an effective equation for the (quasi)condensate wave function. Because of the above mentioned inequality, we can subsequently solve this equation using the Thomas-Fermi or local-density approximation Dalfovo . To quantify the differences between the (quasi)condensate wave function and the single-particle ground-state wave function, we define a dimensionless coupling constant $`g`$ both in the noninteracting and in the interacting case. The first parameter we call the bare coupling constant $`g_\mathrm{B}=U_\mathrm{B}/t_\mathrm{B}`$ and it is calculated with the single-particle ground-state wave function in every site. The second parameter we call the renormalized coupling constant $`g_\mathrm{R}=U_\mathrm{R}/t_\mathrm{R}`$ and it is calculated using the single-particle ground state in the parallel direction(s) and a Thomas-Fermi density profile in the perpendicular direction(s). Because we have already included the on-site interaction effects in this coupling constant, we can now write down a renormalized single-band Bose-Hubbard model for the total optical lattice, where the creation and annihilation operators $`\widehat{a}_i^{}`$, and $`\widehat{a}_i`$, respectively, and the number operator $`\widehat{n}_i`$ are not associated with the Wannier states of atoms in the lattice, but with the macroscopic wave function of the (quasi)condensate in each site. In particular, we have

$`\widehat{H}`$ $`=`$ $`t_\mathrm{R}{\displaystyle \underset{i,j}{}}\widehat{a}_i^{}\widehat{a}_j+{\displaystyle \frac{U_\mathrm{R}}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\widehat{n}_i\left(\widehat{n}_i1\right)\mu _\mathrm{R}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\widehat{n}_i,`$ (1)
where $`\mu _\mathrm{R}`$ is the effective chemical potential. The interaction parameter is given by $`U_\mathrm{R}=^2F^{\mathrm{os}}/N^2|_{N=N_0}\mu ^{\mathrm{os}}/N|_{N=N_0}`$, where $`F^{\mathrm{os}}`$ is the on-site free energy and $`\mu ^{\mathrm{os}}`$ is the on-site chemical potential. Formally, the effective chemical potential is given by $`\mu _\mathrm{R}=\mu \mu ^{\mathrm{os}}U_\mathrm{R}/2`$, where the last term is substracted from the interaction energy to make the analogy to the single-band Bose-Hubbard model of Refs. Jaksch ; Oosten  complete.

It is important to understand that the hopping term only describes hopping between the (quasi)condensates in neighbouring sites. While it is clear that this is a very good approximation in the case of neighbouring condensates, it may not be immediately obvious in the case of neighbouring quasicondensates. However, it should be noted that the effect of the hopping is only large when the system is in the superfluid phase, in which case all the sites couple to form a true three-dimensional condensate. The tunneling strength can be calculated in the tight-binding limit and depends only on the overlap in the parallel direction(s). As a result the bare and renormalized values of $`t`$ are equal. However, the interaction energy is strongly reduced due to the repulsive on-site interactions which spread-out the (quasi)condensate wave function considerably. We find for a two-dimensional gas that

$`g_\mathrm{R}`$ $`=`$ $`g_\mathrm{B}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}\right)^{1/4}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}_{}}{N_0a}}\right)^{1/2}g_\mathrm{B}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}_{}}{R_{\mathrm{TF}}}}\right)^2,`$ (2)
and for a one-dimensional gas that

$`g_\mathrm{R}`$ $`=`$ $`g_\mathrm{B}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{2}}\right)^{1/2}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}_{}^2}{3N_0a\mathrm{}_{}}}\right)^{1/3}g_\mathrm{B}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}_{}}{R_{\mathrm{TF}}}}\right).`$ (3)
Here $`a`$ is the positive $`s`$-wave scattering length of the atoms, $`\mathrm{}_{}=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m\omega _{}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}_{}=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/m\omega _{}}`$ are the harmonic oscillator lengths in the parallel and perpendicular directions, respectively, and $`R_{\mathrm{TF}}`$ is the Thomas-Fermi radius of the (quasi)condensate. The physical interpretation of Eqs. (2) and (3) is that as a result of the repulsive interatomic interactions, the (quasi)condensate reduces its total energy by increasing its size in the perpendicular direction(s). This can be seen from the fact that the decrease of the coupling constant is inversely proportional to the increase in the surface or length of the two or one-dimensional gas, respectively. Note that his reduction is particularly important for the critical conditions, which can be written as $`g_\mathrm{R}>4zN_0`$ for large $`N_0`$ Oosten . In order to verify the consistency of our two-step approach, we explicitly check the relevant energy scales using our results of Eqs.(2) and (3). First, we assumed that the mean-field interaction energy $`N_0U_\mathrm{R}`$ is much smaller than the trapping frequency in the parallel direction(s) $`\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$. This requires that for a one-dimensional lattice

$`N_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}\omega _{}}{\mathrm{}\omega _{}}}\right)^2\sqrt{2\pi }{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}_{}}{a}}.`$ (4)
Second, we also assumed that the crossover temperature for the formation of a (quasi)condensate in two dimensions is much lower than $`\mathrm{}\omega _{}`$. This results in

$`\mathrm{}\omega _{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{N}{\zeta (2)}}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{}\omega _{},`$ (5)
where $`N`$ is the total number of atoms at every site. For typical numbers used in the experiments by Orzel et al. Kasevich , we find the condition $`N_0N10^5`$, which means that our assumptions are valid for even the largest filling factor reported. For the case of the two-dimensional lattice of Greiner et al. Esslinger , a similar inequality can be derived. It is found that this experiment is also in the regime where our assumptions are valid. Note that the use of the Thomas-Fermi approximation also imposes a lower limit on the filling factor, namely, $`N_0al_{}`$. However, when the filling factor is below this limit, we are in the regime where we can safely use the bare coupling constant. We thus conclude that depending on the filling factor, either our renormalized or the bare theory is applicable to these experiments.

Thermal effects. — Besides the effect of thermal fluctuations on the number of (quasi)condensate atoms per site $`N_0(T)`$, which is accounted for by the equation of state of the low-dimensional Bose gas stoof , there is also the effect of thermal fluctuations on the renormalized single-band Bose-Hubbard model itself. These thermal fluctuations are also present in a lattice with low filling factor. To study these thermal fluctuations, we use an on-site mean-field Hamiltonian that we can derive from Eq. (1), using the approach presented in Ref. Oosten . We decouple the tunneling term, by introducing a complex mean field parameter $`\psi `$ as follows $`\widehat{a}_i^{}\widehat{a}_j=\psi \widehat{a}_j+\widehat{a}_i^{}\psi ^{}\left|\psi \right|^2`$. Physically, $`\psi `$ is the superfluid order parameter which we choose to be real in the following. Performing the above substitution, we find

$$\widehat{H}(\psi )=zt\psi (\widehat{a}^{}+\widehat{a})+\frac{U_\mathrm{R}}{2}\widehat{n}(\widehat{n}1)\mu _\mathrm{R}\widehat{n}+zt\psi ^2,$$
(6)
with $`z`$ the coordination number. Since this is an on-site Hamiltonian, we have dropped the site indices for simplicity. Moreover, we assumed that the chemical potential is chosen such that the expectation value of the number operator $`\widehat{n}`$ is equal to the number of quasi(condensate) particles $`N_0(T)`$ in every site.

The zero-temperature phase diagram of this mean-field theory can be solved exactly Oosten ; Sachdev  and is shown in Fig. 1, where the Mott insulator phases correspond to the various lobes. For nonzero temperatures the model can no longer be solved analytically and we have to resort to numerical methods. If we put $`\psi =0`$, we find that the eigenstates of Eq. (6) are given by number states. Using a basis consisting of these number states, running from a certain minimum filling factor $`N_{\mathrm{min}}`$ to a certain maximum $`N_{\mathrm{max}}`$, we can calculate the grand-canonical partition function $`Z(\psi )=\mathrm{Tr}[e^{H(\psi )/k_BT}]`$ by diagonalizing the mean-field Hamiltonian given in Eq. (6). Next we determine the thermodynamic potential $`\mathrm{\Omega }(\psi )=k_\mathrm{B}T\mathrm{ln}Z(\psi )`$ as a function of the order parameter $`\psi `$. For zero temperature the calculation converges when $`N_{\mathrm{max}}N_0+4`$ and $`N_{\mathrm{min}}N_04`$, where $`N_0`$ is the filling factor of the relevant Mott-insulator lobe. For nonzero temperatures, more states must be included.

To obtain the relevant thermodynamic quantities, we minimize the grand potential $`\mathrm{\Omega }(\psi )`$ and the value of $`\psi `$ at the minimum of $`\mathrm{\Omega }(\psi )`$ corresponds physically to the square root of the number of atoms that is superfluid in the direction(s) parallel to the periodicity of the lattice. In the Mott insulator the gas is only insulating in the direction(s) parallel to the periodicity of the optical lattice, whereas it is always a superfluid in the perpendicular direction(s). The other quantity of interest is the value of the number fluctuations. This number is important because in the Mott-insulator phase the number fluctuations are exactly zero.

The final results of the calculations are shown in Fig. 2. In these figures, the longitudional superfluid fraction and the number fluctuations are plotted along the dashed line in Fig. 1 for different temperatures. It can clearly be seen from Fig. 2(a) that the superfluid part of the phase diagram decreases with increasing temperature. In addition Fig. 2(b) shows that at zero temperature the density fluctuations drop exactly to zero in the Mott insulating regions, but that this does not happen at nonzero temperature. This is a result of the fact that the superfluid to Mott insulator transition is a quantum phase transition. The reason that there is still a reduction in particle-number fluctuations at nonzero temperature is that the excitation spectrum of a fluctuation is gapped in this region Oosten , which means that the fluctuations are exponentially suppressed. Due to this strong suppression of the number fluctuations, one will be able to observe a phase which is formally not a Mott insulator, but experimentally has very similar features. Another feature we can clearly see in Fig. 2(b) is that part of the phase diagram where the number fluctuations are suppressed also decreases with increasing temperature, and shrinks in the opposite direction of that of the superfluid part.

On the basis of the above calculations, we can draw the nonzero temperature phase diagram shown in Fig. 1. In this figure, the solid lines indicated the superfluid to Mott insulator transition at zero temperature and the dotted lines indicate the superfluid to normal transition at nonzero temperature. The inset shows the phase diagram in terms of the temperature and the coupling constant. This diagram agrees very well with the general description given by Sachdev Sachdev .

Conclusion \- We have shown that for low-dimensional lattices, which generally have a filling factor much larger than one, we should in principle solve a many-band Bose-Hubbard model. This can be achieved by first solving the on-site many-body problem, and then deriving an effective theory that describes the coupling between the sites in the optical lattice in terms of a renormalized single-band Hubbard model. We have calculated the effects of thermal excitations in this renormalized model and we have shown that the number fluctuations in the above model can only drop to zero in the absence of thermal fluctuations. However, if the temperature is sufficiently low, the number fluctuations are exponentially suppressed. This means that at a certain nonzero temperature, the crossover to the Mott insulator phase can still be observed if the coupling constant is increased to a value larger than the zero-temperature critical value (cf. Fig. 1). It is important to realize that to experimentally obtain the Mott insulator with a large filling factor $`N_0`$, the coupling constant $`g_\mathrm{R}=U_\mathrm{R}/t`$ must be larger than $`4zN_0`$. However, Eqs. (2) and (3) show that the renormalized coupling constant is much smaller than the bare coupling constant for a low-dimensional optical lattice. We therefore conclude that in terms of the bare coupling constant, which is the experimentally relevant control parameter, the Mott insulator phase is much more difficult to obtain than is naively anticipated on the basis of a purely single-band Bose-Hubbard model.


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# The electron temperatures of HII regions S 201, S 206, and S 209 : Multi-frequency GMRT observations

## 1 Introduction

The radio recombination line measurements of HII regions in our Galaxy indicate a systematic increase in the electron temperature with increasing Galacto-centric distance (Churchwell et al. 1978). This effect is believed to be caused by a decrease in the heavy elements abundances with increasing Galacto-centric distance since metals are primary cooling agents in HII regions. Consistent with the above hypothesis, various optical line studies of HII regions, planetary nebulae, and supernova remnants have established a negative radial gradient of heavy elements in the disk of the Milky-way (Henry & Worthey 1999). The variation in the electron temperature (Te) with the Galacto-centric distance (RG) has been fitted using linear functions with slopes in the range of 300–400 K kpc -1.

## 2 Results

The electron temperatures of three HII regions, viz., S 201, S 206, and S 209 have been estimated using high resolution (pc–scale) radio continuum images at 232, 327, and 610 MHz using the GMRT. The results are given in table 1. The estimated values of temperatures are in agreement with that predicted from a linear fit of temperature vs. distance obtained by Pena et al. (2000). The 327 MHz images of S 209 are shown in figure 1. The detailed analysis is presented elsewhere (Omar et al. 2002).


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

In the perturbative analysis of field theory there is no question about whether singular field configuration play some role in physics or not. The phenomenological rules for the calculation of gaussian functional integrals give us the expressions for the perturbative expansion of the Green functions. The functional integral itself as a mathematical concept is defined as the integral over the Haar measure on some functional space. However, we do not know what is that functional space for quantum field theory. We even do not know what is the space, the integral over which gives us the correct perturbation expansion for the case of Gaussian integrals. (It means: we do not know what is the space, for which the analogue of the expression for the Gaussian integral $`𝑑xe^{x^2+2iy}=e^{y^2}`$ is valid. For a review of progress made in recent years see, e.g., Ref. .)

The universal way to define the functional integral is lattice theory. In lattice theory there is no question: “What is the functional space, $`C_{\mathrm{}},C_1,C`$ or other?” We consider the point of the second order phase transition and propose to use this point as the window from the lattice to the continuum. Thus the continuum functional space is defined in a very simple way. It contains only such configurations, which survive when we are jumping through this window from the lattice to the continuum.

Contrary to the situation in perturbation theory, in nonperturbative field theory the question: “What kind of field configurations survive?” is very sensible, because the topological properties of the vacuum strongly depend upon the functional space. For example, if singular configurations are forbidden, there are no monopoles in pure gauge theories without abelian projection. But the existence of such topological objects changes essentially the phenomenology of the theory.

There have been many attempts to understand what kind of singular fields play a role in the continuum theory (see for example, ). Now we add one more work to this list. We prove that the singular simple center vortices survive in the continuum limit and play an important role in the confinement picture.

A few facts about the Simple Center Projection: It was proposed to illustrate the connection between topological string-like excitations and the confinement mechanism . (For a recent review of other center projections see Ref. .) Numerically this procedure is much more simple than the Maximal Center projection considered before. Moreover this procedure is gauge invariant. It was noticed that the simple center vortices carry singular field strength in the continuum limit.

Before we carried out the present investigation, we supposed that one of the following three possibilities may take place:

1. The vortices disappear in the continuum limit;

2. The vortices remain in the continuum limit but do not influence the physical results;

3. The vortices survive the continuum and play a real role in the dynamics.

In the present work we found that the third possibility is realized. It means that the physical functional space should contain singular fields of such a kind.

## 2 The Simple Center Vortex

Let us recall the definition of the Simple Center Projection. We consider $`SU(2)`$ gluodynamics with the Wilson action

$$S(U)=\beta \underset{\mathrm{plaq}}{}(11/2\mathrm{Tr}U_{\mathrm{plaq}}).$$
(1)
The sum runs over all the plaquettes of the lattice. The plaquette action $`U_{\mathrm{plaq}}`$ is defined in the standard way.

We consider the plaquette variable

$`z_{\mathrm{plaq}}=1,`$ $`\mathrm{if}`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}U_{\mathrm{plaq}}<0,`$
$`z_{\mathrm{plaq}}=0,`$ $`\mathrm{if}`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}U_{\mathrm{plaq}}>0.`$ (2)
We can represent $`z`$ as the sum of a closed form $`dN`$ 111We use the formulation of differential forms on the lattice, as described for instance in Ref. . for $`N\{0,1\}`$ and the form $`2m+q`$. Here $`N=N_{\mathrm{link}}`$, $`q\{0,1\}`$, and $`m𝖹𝖹`$.

$$z=dN+2m+q.$$
(3)
The physical variables depending upon $`z`$ could be expressed through

$$\mathrm{sign}\mathrm{Tr}U_{\mathrm{plaq}}=\mathrm{cos}(\pi (dN+q)).$$
(4)
$`N_{\mathrm{link}}`$ is the center projected link variable.

For each $`U_{\mathrm{link}}`$ and $`N_{\mathrm{link}}`$, $`q`$ is defined as a $`Z_2`$ function of $`N`$ and $`U`$

$$q=q(N,U).$$
(5)
For each $`U`$ we minimize $`_{\mathrm{link}}q`$ with respect to $`N`$, which is fixed locally. All links are treated in this way and the procedure is iterated until a global minimum is found.

Geometrically this procedure means the following. First we consider the “negative” plaquettes (the plaquettes with negative Tr $`U_{\mathrm{plaq}}`$). The collection of such plaquettes represents a surface with a boundary. We add to this surface an additional surface in such a way that the union of the two surfaces is closed. In our procedure we choose the additional surface so that it has minimal area. In other words, we close the surface constructed from the “negative” plaquettes in a minimal way. The resulting surface is the worldsheet of the Simple Center Vortex.

It is obvious that the “negative” plaquettes in the continuum limit become the singular configurations of the gauge field. Thus the Simple Center Vortex is also a singular configuration.

Following  we construct the center monopoles (these objects are known in the condensed matter physics as nexuses)

$$j=\frac{1}{2}{}_{}{}^{}d[dN]\mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}.$$
(6)
## 3 Scaling and asymptotic scaling in $`SU(2)`$ theory.

The continuum limit of a lattice theory is obtained when we approach the point of the second order phase transition. For the theory under consideration this point is $`\beta =\mathrm{}`$, which means that the correlation length $`r(\beta )`$ tends to infinity for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$. The physical correlation length remains of course the same, but it becomes infinite in lattice units. In this situation any physical object of finite length is represented on the lattice by an infinite number of links. For example, let us write the physical correlation length in lattice units $`R_{\mathrm{phys}}=r(\beta )a(\beta )`$, where $`a(\beta )`$ is the physical size of a lattice link. In order to keep the physical correlation length finite, the lattice spacing scales as $`a(\beta )1/r(\beta )`$ and consequently $`a`$ must tend to $`0`$ when we approach the phase transition and our lattice theory approaches the continuum limit. This means that the lattice size scales as $`L1/a`$, when we keep the physical size of the given lattice to be independent of $`\beta `$. The dependence of the lattice spacing $`a`$ on $`\beta `$ is called scaling. Suppose that some physical quantity which is represented by some lattice variable $`F_{\mathrm{lat}}`$ has the dimension $`D`$ in the units of mass, then $`F_{\mathrm{lat}}a^DF_{\mathrm{cont}}`$, where $`F_{\mathrm{cont}}`$ is this variable in the continuum limit. Thus we have for sufficiently large $`\beta `$:

$$F_{\mathrm{lat}}a^D$$
(7)
A well-known example of such a behavior is the behavior of the string tension: $`\sigma _{\mathrm{lat}}a^2\sigma _{\mathrm{cont}}`$.

The renormalization group analysis of the continuum theory predicts (up to two - loop approximation) the following dependence of the lattice spacing on $`\beta `$

$$\overline{a}(\beta )\beta ^{\frac{51}{121}}e^{(3\pi ^2/11)\beta }$$
(8)
This behaviour is known as asymptotic scaling.

Thus we would like to see that for sufficiently large $`\beta `$ the scaling of the lattice spacing approaches the asymptotic scaling. In practice the asymptotic scaling in $`SU(2)`$ theory is not achieved (at least for the values of $`\beta `$ from $`2.1`$ to $`2.7`$ which we used in the present work). The deviations of the scaling from the asymptotic scaling for these $`\beta `$ are well-known. One can extract the dependence of $`a`$ on $`\beta `$ from the lattice string tension. In the Tab. 1 we represent the data from Ref. .

One can check that $`a(\beta )`$ extracted from this data deviates from $`\overline{a}(\beta )`$ for the values of $`\beta `$ considered. It should be mentioned that $`\sqrt{\sigma _{\mathrm{cont}}}a`$ is independent of the lattice size for sufficiently large lattices. The data in Tab. 1 is presented for lattices of sizes $`N_\sigma ^3N_\tau `$.

## 4 Fractal objects in the continuum limit of a lattice theory.

In this section we consider the definition of a fractal object (See also Refs. ). We shall see that it follows from our considerations in a straightforward way that objects of fractal dimension $`D>0`$, as defined below, survive in the continuum limit.

If a one - dimensional object survives the continuum limit it must have a length. We can introduce the following characteristic of this object: The mean length of an object embedded into the unit four-volume, which we denote by $`\overline{l}`$. The lattice density of these objects we denote by $`\rho `$. Then

$$\rho =N/L^4,$$
(9)
where $`N`$ is the total number of elementary four-cubes covering our object inside a four-dimensional cube of lattice size $`L`$. The physical unit volume contains $`L^41/a^4`$ points of the lattice. The length of a linear object consisting of $`N`$ points is $`Na`$, so the length of an object embedded into a four-dimensional cube of lattice size L is $`\rho L^4a`$. Thus the length of a physical object scales as $`\overline{l}\rho a^{14}`$. It is important for us that $`\overline{l}`$ is a real physical characteristic of a continuum object and thus it should be independent of $`\beta `$ in the limit $`\beta \mathrm{}`$. That means that the lattice density of linear object satisfies the equation

$$\rho a^{41}.$$
(10)
In the same way we obtain for a 2 - dimensional object surviving the continuum limit:

$$\rho a^{42},$$
(11)
where $`\rho `$ is again the lattice density of these objects.

For any integer $`D`$ we get for the $`D`$ \- dimensional object:

$$\rho a^{4D}.$$
(12)
So, lattice objects with a lattice density that satisfies Eq. (12) at $`\beta \mathrm{}`$ can be considered as surviving the continuum limit and having the dimension $`D`$.

When our object satisfies Eq. (12) with noninteger $`D>0`$, we treat it as a fractal object of dimension $`D`$. This point of view becomes transparent after the demonstration that the above definition of the fractal dimension is in accordance with the definition of the Hausdorff dimension of a set embedded in four-dimensional space.

The Hausdorff dimension of an object in the four-dimensional continuum is defined in the following way : Consider a four-dimensional cube of fixed physical size. Subdivide this cube into $`L^4`$ different subcubes. The number of subcubes covering our object is denoted by $`N`$. If $`NL^D`$ and $`D>0`$ at $`L\mathrm{}`$ we say that our object has Hausdorff dimension $`D`$.

How can we represent the subdivision of a cube of some physical size into different numbers of subcubes using the lattice theory? The answer is as follows. The subdivision into the infinite number of subcubes is represented via the continuum limit itself (the lattice theory at $`\beta =\mathrm{}`$). The lattice theory for finite $`\beta `$ is not equal to the continuum theory. But it becomes closer to the continuum limit when $`\beta `$ becomes larger. Instead of the subdivision of the cube into $`L^4`$ subcubes in the continuum theory we can use the lattice theory defined on the lattice of size $`L`$. We have already seen that the size of the lattice which represents the same physical volume scales as $`L1/a(\beta )`$, where $`a(\beta )`$ represents the scaled lattice spacing. Thus the fractal dimension of some object (up to the difference between the pure continuum theory and it’s lattice version for large $`\beta `$) can be extracted from the formula

$$NL^D,$$
(13)
where $`N`$ is the number of cubes, which cover our object inside the lattice of size $`L`$. The difference between the two theories disappears at $`L\mathrm{}`$ (which implies that $`\beta \mathrm{}`$). Thus if Eq. (13) is valid for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$, when $`L`$ and $`N`$ are treated as functions of $`\beta `$ while $`D`$ remains independent of $`\beta `$, we can consider $`D`$ to be the fractal dimension of our object existing in the continuum theory.

Now let us show that an object on the lattice, which density scales for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$ as in Eq. (12) with $`D>0`$ can be considered as an object in the continuum with Hausdorff dimension $`D`$. The number $`N`$ of subcubes covering the elements of our object is involved into the definition of the lattice density: $`\rho =N/L^4`$. Thus the number of elementary subcubes covering our object inside the four-dimensional cube of some fixed physical size can be written as

$$N\rho L^4,$$
(14)
where $`L1/a(\beta )`$. We get from Eq. (12):

$$\rho =N/L^4a^{4D}.$$
(15)
Thus

$$NL^D.$$
(16)
Here $`D`$ is independent of $`\beta `$. According to above we can treat it as the Hausdorff dimension.

We summarize this section as follows: If an object under consideration has a lattice density which satisfies Eq. (12) for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$, we say that this object survives the continuum limit and can be treated as a fractal object of dimension $`D`$. The definition of such a dimension is in accordance with the definition of Hausdorff dimension.

## 5 The reality of the existence of the vortices in the continuum limit.

In this section we represent our numerical results. We made our simulations using lattices of sizes $`16^4`$ and $`24^4`$. We found no difference between the results obtained on those lattices, which is our reason to believe that the lattice size has no influence on the considered quantities at all, for lattices of size $`16^4`$ and greater.

### 5.1 The density of the vortices and the monopoles.

The numerical investigation of the lattice density of the Simple Center Vortices and of the center monopoles are represented in Fig. 1. We represent $`\rho `$ as a function of $`a(\beta )`$. The values of $`\sqrt{\sigma _{\mathrm{cont}}}a(\beta )`$ for finite particular $`\beta `$ are represented in the Tab. 1. From Fig. 1 we find that within the errors the dependence is indeed linear

$$\rho =\rho _c+\alpha a(\beta ).$$
(17)
Here $`\rho _c`$ is the density at $`a(\beta )=0`$ obtained via the extrapolation of the data from Fig. 1. For the center monopoles we we find: $`\rho _c=0.123\pm 0.001`$ and for the vortices $`\rho _c=0.106\pm 0.001`$. It is clear now that $`\rho (\beta )`$ does not tend to $`0`$ for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$. Thus we have, both for the vortices and the monopoles.

$$\rho a^{4D}$$
(18)
with $`D=4`$. So we find for our objects a specific behavior of the density. It does not vanish for $`\beta \mathrm{}`$. That means according to the previous section, that those objects survive the continuum limit with a fractal dimension equal to $`4`$.

It should be mentioned here that the action near the monopole current is greater than the average value of the action calculated over all the lattice. The excess varies between 5% and 8% in the interval $`2.1<\beta <2.6`$. It means that this object carries energy. The monopoles form one big cluster and several small ones. This situation is similar to the maximal Abelian case. Following this reference we call the large loops infrared and the small ones ultraviolet monopoles. The latter are unphysical. We found that the fraction of unphysical monopoles amounts to about $`1`$ \- $`3`$% of all the monopoles.

### 5.2 The Creutz ratio without simple center vortices.

To illustrate that the string tension is due to the Simple Center Vortex we consider the configurations for which there are no vortices inside the Wilson loop considered. In Fig. 2 the dependence of the Creutz ratio for such configurations on the size of the Wilson loop is represented for $`\beta =2.3`$. This Creutz ratio vanishes for large size $`k`$. We have found that the same result takes place for all values of $`\beta `$. On the other hand, the string tension does not vanish in the continuum limit. That means that the singular Simple Center Vortices play a real role in the dynamics.

## 6 Conclusions

In this work we are trying to answer the question: “Do singular configurations live in the continuum $`SU(2)`$ theory and do they play a real role in the dynamics?” Our answer is “Yes.” That means that these singular field configurations should be taken seriously in the investigation of gauge-field theory.

We are grateful to J.Greensite, M.Faber, and M.I. Polikarpov for useful discussions. A.I.V. and M.A.Z. kindly acknowledge the hospitality of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Vrije Universiteit, where part of this work was done. This work was partly supported by RFBR grants 02-02-17308 and 01-02-17456, INTAS 00-00111 and CRDF award RP1-2364-MO-02.


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# Warps and correlations with intrinsic parameters of galaxies in the visible and radio

## 1 Introduction

Many spiral galaxies have warps, disc distortions with an integral-sign shape (S-warp), cup-shape (U-warp), or some form of asymmetry. The Milky Way is an example (Burton 1988; 1992). Indeed, most of the spiral galaxies for which we have relevant information on their structure (because they are edge on and nearby) show a warp. Sánchez-Saavedra et al. (1990, 2002) and Reshetnikov & Combes (1998) show that nearly half of the spiral galaxies of selected samples are warped, and many of the rest might also be warped since warps in galaxies with low inclination are difficult to detect. For high redshift, it seems that the effect of warping is even stronger (Reshetnikov et al. 2002).

At present, there are several theories in the literature about the causes of warps in galactic discs. Four remarkable examples of theories which explain the formation of warps are:

* Gravitational tidal effects on a given spiral galaxy due to the presence of a satellite. This does not seem to be enough to induce the observed amplitude in the Galactic warp (Hunter & Toomre 1969). Weinberg (1998) proposed a mechanism for amplifying the tidal effects caused by a satellite by means of an intermediate massive halo around the galactic disc, but García-Ruiz et al. (2000) have found that the orientation of the warp is not compatible with the generation of warps by means of this mechanism if the satellites are the Magellanic Clouds, and moreover the magnification of the amplitude is not so high (García Ruiz 2001, ch. 2). However, this mechanism could operate in galaxies other than the Milky Way.
* The intergalactic magnetic field has been suggested as the cause of galactic warps (Battaner et al. 1990; Battaner et al. 1991; Battaner & Jiménez-Vicente 1998) directly affecting the gas in the Galactic disc and producing warps in it. Stellar warps in the old population could also be possible as a result of interactions between the gaseous and stellar discs. This gives rise to some interesting predictions, such as the alignment of warps of different galaxies (Battaner et al. 1991) and differences between the stellar and gaseous warps.
* Cosmic infall is invoked to explain the reorientation of a massive Galactic halo, which produces a warp in the disc (Ostriker & Binney 1989; Jiang & Binney 1999). This model requires a halo that is much more massive than the disc, an extremely high accretion rate (3 disc masses in 0.9 Gyr; Jiang & Binney 1999) and, in this scenario, after a sufficiently long time, the angular momentum of the Galaxy to become parallel to the direction of the falling matter causing the warp to decay. It is difficult to understand why the warps are so frequent in this scenario but this difficulty might be overcome by including a prolate halo (Ideta et al. 2000), which would prolong the warp’s existence. Also, it is difficult to understand how a low-density halo can retain the accreted intergalactic matter. A generic misalignment between halo and the disc (Debattista & Sellwood 1999) might answer the question, but then we need to think about the reason for the misalignment.
* The accretion of the intergalactic medium directly on to the disc is another possibility (Revaz & Pfenninger 2001; López-Corredoira et al. 2002). The torque produced in the different rings of the disc by an intergalactic flow of velocity $`100`$ km s-1 and baryon density $`10^{25}`$ kg m-3 is enough to generate the observed warps (López-Corredoira et al. 2002) and also predicts the existence of U-warps (cup-shaped), which are less frequent than S- (integral-shaped) warps. Some alignment of the warps in neighbouring galaxies and differences between the gaseous and stellar warps might also be expected. This hypothesis assumes only the existence of a not necessarily homogeneous intergalactic medium with a reasonably low density. Although the idea is plausible and compatible with our observations, there are still no direct proofs of the existence of this intergalactic medium.

All these theories make different assumptions about the conditions of the spiral galaxies and their neighbourhood (massive haloes, magnetic fields, intergalactic medium, satellites), so the study of warps becomes interesting as a tool for discriminating among the different scenarios. There are already important works about the observed properties of warps, however we feel that these are inadequate, and that an effort must be made to reduce the number of possible hypotheses. Here, we do not aim to give a final answer to the question but instead present some new correlations that might be useful together with other data to discriminate among the different models.

Some interesting observational results already published are the dependence on the environment (isolated or in clusters) of the warp amplitude asymmetries (differences between the east and west wings of the warp) and frequency (in the visible \[Reshetnikov & Combes 1998\] and also in the radio \[García-Ruiz 2001; Kuijken & García-Ruiz 2001\]). Curiously, more isolated galaxies seem to be more frequently warped (García-Ruiz 2001; Kuijken & García-Ruiz 2001) and this would be against the gravitational interaction of satellites, at least in some cases. Halo-disk misalignments without external dependence are also excluded. It seems that intergalactic magnetic fields, or the accretion of intergalactic matter on to either the halo or the disc are better representations. Therefore, there already exists in the literature some papers which have correlated the warp characterictics with the environmental parameters. We are not going to explore these correlations again, but the correlations with the intrinsic parameters of galaxies. For instance, one interesting question now is whether there is any correlation between halo properties and warp amplitude/asymmetry.

If the halo were an important element in the formation of warps, we should observe some dependence on it. Some models have a warp amplitude depending on the halo mass. Apart from the hypotheses which talk about a halo as an intermediary between external forces and the disc (Weinberg 1998: Jiang & Binney 1999), works by Nelson & Tremaine (1995) or Debattista & Sellwood (1999) predict that, although in most cases the dynamical friction between the disc and the halo damps the warp, it can also excite the warp. This is the reason, why we shall try to analyze the optical and radio warps in the present paper through the correlations with the mass/luminosity ratios derived from the rotation curves (provided they are related to the fraction of dark matter in the galaxies). We also produce correlations with other parameters that represent the intrinsic size of the galaxy (radius, mass, or luminosity).

## 2 Data

This study is based on two samples of galaxies, one of 228 galaxies in optical bands (see Table 1) and the other of 26 galaxies in radio. We have completed the information on the warp amplitudes with some intrinsic parameters of the galaxies.

### 2.1 Optical data

The optical warp measurements come from Sánchez-Saavedra et al. (1990, 2002), who have analysed images obtained from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) and the DSS. They measured the amplitude of the warp in galaxies mostly from the southern hemisphere (Sánchez-Saavedra et al. 1990, 2002); however, we also took some data from the northern hemisphere (Sánchez-Saavedra et al. 1990). The galaxies were selected according to the following criteria:

* High surface brightness ($`B<14.5`$).
* Galaxies large enough to detect the warp. The galaxies have a log$`R_{25}`$ $``$ 24 arcsec ($`R_{25}`$ is the radius of the angular size of the isophote $`\mu `$ = 25 mag/arcsec2).
* Morphological type, $`T`$, between 0 and 7.
* Inclination angle greater than 75 degrees.

We took these data and sought several intrinsic parameters of each galaxy in the literature. The $`H`$-band ($`\lambda `$ 1.6 $`\mu `$m) magnitude was used because it is a good mass tracer of the stellar population. Moreover, the luminous mass in NIR bands is not much affected by dust and gas extinction as the visible bands are and is less contaminated by the young population of the spiral arms. The total luminosity of a galaxy near 2 $`\mu `$m is thought to be a better tracer of the stellar mass than the visible (which is biased by recent star formation) or the far-infrared (biased again by recent star formation, which creates and heats dust grains that emit thermally in this waveband; Jablonka & Arimoto 1992). We then tried to find some correlations between these intrinsic parameters and the warp amplitudes in our sample. In Table 1 are shown all the galaxies with these parameters. The columns list the following information:

* Column 1: PGC and NGC number.
* Columns 2 and 3: Warp amplitudes extracted from Sánchez-Saavedra et al. (1990, 2002). The first number is the amplitude on the east side of the galaxy and the second number is the warp amplitude on the west side. These values divided by 100 give the tangent of the angle. This is the angle between the galactic centre and the end of the warp.
* Column 4: Redshift of each galaxy taken from the NED. Each reference is specified in the table.
* Column 5: Rotation velocity of the galaxy at $`R_{25}`$, which is more or less the maximum rotation velocity. This parameter comes from several sources, mainly from Mathewson et al. (1992) and Persic & Salucci (1995). Each reference is specified in the columns of the table.
* Column 6: the values of $`\mathrm{log}D_{25}`$ extracted from the LEDA database, where $`D_{25}`$ is the diameter of the isophote with 25 mag/arcsec2 in units of 0.1 arcmin.
* Column 7: Magnitude in $`H`$ from 2MASS (Jarret et al. 2000) and de Vaucouleurs & Longo. (1988).
* Column 8: Distance to the galaxy, obtained using the redshift value and the Tully–Fisher relation with a Hubble constant of 75 km s-1 Mpc-1. This method is not very accurate for very close galaxies; therefore, when the redshift is less than 1000 km s-1, we used distances from Huchtmeier & Richter (1989).

With this information, we sought any correlation between the amplitude of the warp or the difference between the east side and west side, and mass/luminosity, dimensions, infrared luminosity or total mass of the galaxies derived from the rotation curves. The results are commented on in §3.

### 2.2 Radio data

Radio data are from García-Ruiz (2001). There are only 26 galaxies with measurements of warps at these wavelengths. All the information is given in Table 2; the meaning of each column is the same as for the optical data. There are no other important works on radio warp amplitudes in the literature. In most cases, the warp is more prominent in radio observations than in optical images because the former extends to greater galactocentric distances. The galaxies were selected according the following criteria:

* Listed in the Upsala General Catalogue of Galaxies (Nilson 1973).
* Galaxies from the norther hemisphere with declinations higher than 20 degrees.
* Blue diameters greater than 1.5.
* Optic inclination angles greater than 75 degrees.
* Flux density higher than 100 mJy in the radio.

Again, we have performed the same analysis as in the previous section for optical data, as described in the following section.

## 3 Analysis of the correlations

With the information available in the tables we can determine $`R_{25}`$ (kpc) from the angular size and the distance, and the mass $`M=R_{25}v^2/G`$. The luminosity (or absolute magnitude) is also immediately derived once we know the apparent magnitude and the distance. We define the amplitude as the $`\frac{1}{2}(EastWA+WestWA)`$ and the asymmetry as $`|EastWAWestWA|/(EastWA+WestWA)`$. In this section, we analyse the correlations among the different quantities.

Our results are represented in Figs 1 and 2 for optical and radio warps respectively. For each one, we have two different sets of plots, graphs of warp amplitudes and graphs of the warp asymmetries against intrinsic parameters of the galaxies. The following parameters are represented:

* Warp amplitude against the mass–luminosity relation. The total mass in kilograms that was calculated with the maximum of the rotational velocity curve, the radius of the isophote with 25 mag/arcsec2 in kpc and the absolute magnitude in $`H`$ for the reasons given in §2.
* Warp asymmetry against the same quantities.
* The relation between the warp amplitude and the asymmetry of the warps comparing their east and west wings.

In Figs 1 and 2 are represented the relations between the parameters of the warp (amplitude and asymmetry) against: mass-luminosity relation (Fig. 1a and 1e for its relation with the warp amplitude and the warp asymmetry respectively; and 2a and 2e), the total mass (Fig. 1b and 1f; and 2b and 2f), $`R_{25}`$ (Fig. 1c and 1g; and 2c and g2), the absolute magnitude in $`H`$ (Fig. 1d and 1h; and 2d and h2). Finally, Figs 1i and 2i represent the relation between the warp amplitude and the warp asymmetry. The points represent each galaxy of the sample of Sánchez-Saavedra et al. (1990, 2002) and García-Ruiz (2001). The number of points in each plot depends on the number of available galaxies with information on the two variables represented. The solid line represents the average of the warp amplitude and warp asymmetry respectively along the $`x`$ axis and was determined with data for the warp amplitude between 3 and 30 for optical data. We try to avoid galaxies with a small warp that might introduce errors in the measurements. In the case of the radio data all the measurements are presented in the average representation. Here, we have calculated the average value (solid line) with warp amplitudes between 0 and 50 for two reasons: there are fewer galaxies at this wavelength and we cannot discard any of them; it is easier to measure the warp in the radio than in the optical bands. In the case of the warp asymmetry graphs, the average value is between 0 and 1. In all cases, ten points along the $`x`$ axis have been used to fit this value. The total number of galaxies is 228 for the optical data and 26 for the radio data, but sometimes there is no parameter (in $`H`$ band because 2MASS is not yet complete, the rotational velocity, etc.) for all galaxies (see Tables 1 and 2). In these cases, the figures show a lower number of galaxies. The data displayed in the figures show the following behaviour:

* In the relation between mean warp angle and mass–luminosity relation, we have not found any correlation in either the visible or the radio. Points are distributed in all ranges of M/L. Large oscillations in the average value (solid line) reinforce this conclusion. In figure 2a there is a fall but is due to only one point with $`M/L5\times 10^7`$.
* However, in the representations of the amplitude versus total mass, $`R_{25}`$ (both parameters are related since larger galaxies are more massive) there is a slight anticorrelation, more pronounced in the visible and more conspicuous in the plot of amplitude vs. mass. Higher values of mass and $`R_{25}`$ have on average a smaller warp angle. There is an absence of galaxies in all the figures for high-mass/radius galaxies and high-amplitude warps. For instance, we can see that all the galaxies with mass greater than 4–5$`\times `$ 10$`{}_{}{}^{11}M_{}^{}`$ tend to have smaller warps. This anticorrelation is clearer in Fig. 1b, where the solid line falls for large masses. This behaviour is not so clear in Figure 1c because we have a large concentration of points for small $`x`$ values and tends to smooth the fall of the solid line. There are small values of $`x`$ and a low number of galaxies in the radio data (Figures 2b, 2c), so no correlation can be seen in this region. In general, galaxies from the García-Ruiz (2001) sample are nearer and smaller.
* In asymmetry representations, we see almost the opposite behaviour. There are no apparent correlations with mass or radius (see Figures 1f and 1g). There are many oscillations in the average value for Figures 1f, 1g, 2f and 2g, and there is no clear tendency for either the mass or the radio to grow in either sample. But there is a clear anticorrelation in the mass–luminosity relation and in the absolute magnitude representation for visible warps. For Figures 1e and 1h there is a slight drop around 107 kg W-1 and $``$21 mag, respectively. For larger M/L ratios, the galaxies have less asymmetry in their warps (see Figure 1e). For low M/L values, the galaxies have a high dispersion in asymmetry of between 0 and 0.4. The solid line represents this behaviour. In Figures 2e and 2h we cannot see this anticorrelation, or, if there is one, it would be opposite to the trend in the visible warps. If we consider the last points with warp asymmetry equal to 1 and a large M/L ratio (see Fig. 2e), the solid line tends to rise. There are not many points in this region and the total sample is very poor. The optical data are more complete. The same behaviour is seen in Figure 2h.
* In Figures 1i and 2i, the asymmetry of the warp amplitude in the east and west side against warp amplitude has been represented. For larger warp amplitudes we have lower asymmetry. An analogous result is shown in García-Ruiz (2001), who used only radio data and found that warp amplitudes are more prominent than in optical images. We must bear in mind that the errors in the measurements are proportional to $`\sqrt{2}S_a/A`$, where $`S_a`$ is the error in the measurements and $`A`$ is the average value. This means that for lower amplitudes the error will be larger, and this could introduce scatter in the results. In any case, the average value of the asymmetry should not be affected by this scatter, so we can tentatively talk about the detection of an anticorrelation between both variables.

All these relations are subject to the authenticity of the warp characteristics measured by Sánchez-Saavedra et al. (1990, 2002) and García-Ruiz (2001), especially for the visible warps, since these are more likely to be confused with other features (spiral arms, for instance). Nonetheless, the possible contamination, if reasonably small (no more than 20% of the sample), would only introduce some noise in the correlations. Unless most of the data are wrong, it cannot be expected that the present features are caused by this contamination.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

In our analysis of the correlations between warp characteristics and other parameters of the galaxies we find some trends of correlation or anticorrelation in some cases or nothing in other cases. The number of galaxies is not very large, so possible minor systematic errors in the parameters are not totally discarded, and the dispersion of values is large, so the correlations among the different parameters is not perfect (we have no correlation factor close to 1). In any case, we think that these relations reveal some real characteristics which can be tentatively examined as follows:

* There is a slight anticorrelation between the amplitude of the warp in both directions (average between the east and west amplitudes) and parameters such as the total mass, luminosity and radius. We believe that this was to be expected for any mechanism that produces a warp as a reaction to an external torque, whatever it its origin (gravitational torque, magnetic torque, accretion torque; see López-Corredoira et al. 2002). More massive (i.e. generally larger and more luminous) galaxies have a more massive disc which forces the warped rings of the disc to collapse towards the flat disc. The more massive the disc is, the larger are the internal countertorques of the disc and smaller the amplitude (López-Corredoira et al. 2002).
* There is no correlation between the amplitude of the warp and the mass–luminosity relation. This negative result is indeed very informative. If the halo were the predominant effect in the dynamics responsible of the formation of the warp, we would expect a larger amplitude for higher mass/luminosity ratios (a larger fraction of dark matter embedded in the halo). Either the rotation curve velocity is not related to the total mass of the galaxy or the warp amplitude is independent of the relative proportion of halo mass. Bosma (1991) found that galaxies with small dark halo core radii (as determined from rotation curve decomposition) are less likely to be warped, but this could be due to an indirect dependence on the scales. The fact here is that larger fraction of dark mass in the galaxy do not relate to the amplitude of the warps.
* There is no correlation between the asymmetry of the warp (differences between the east and west amplitudes) and the total mass and radius. This means that the reasons for the asymmetry are mainly external (satellites, accretion, intergalactic magnetic fields) and are independent of the size of the galaxy.
* There is an anticorrelation between the asymmetry of the warp and the mass–luminosity relation and perhaps also with the luminosity of the stellar population in the disc, but only for optical warps in both cases. In the radio there is no clear correlation, or, if there is one, it is opposite to the behaviour in the visible. This result is somewhat puzzling. It seems to indicate that the halo is responsible in some degree for the symmetry of the warp in the inner part, which is visible in the optical. The luminosity density or mass density in the disc would also be related with the degree of asymmetry (since there is no correlation with the radius and there is an anticorrelation with the total luminosity, it seems that the luminosity density is the factor to be related with the symmetry). The more massive the halo is with respect the rest of the galaxy and the more luminous the disc is (within a constant radius), the more symmetric it is in its inner parts. However, in its outer parts, visible in the radio, the symmetry seems to be independent of these factors. It seems that the forces which produce the asymmetry in the warp (interaction with other satellites, combination of U- and S-warps, etc.) are predominant in the most external radii with respect the halo forces, which tend to produce the symmetry; that is, the asymmetry due to external forces is effected at larger radii for smaller dark mass fractions. As a matter of fact, we have a clear example of this behaviour in our own Galaxy: the gas warp observed in the radio (Burton 1988) is clearly symmetric for $`R<1.6R_{}`$ but asymmetric for $`R>1.6R_{}`$ ($`R_{}8`$ kpc; López-Corredoira et al. 2000). In our Galaxy, this radius of transition is equal to 13 kpc, which is precisely the value of $`R_{25}`$ (Goodwin et al. 1998). A tentative explanation for this would be that the halo mass distribution, reflected in the rotation curves, plays a major role for $`R<R_{25}`$; outer rotation curves are not caused by the presence of a massive halo but have another explanation (magnetic fields, MOND, etc.; see Battaner & Florido 2000). In any case, if a very massive halo existed well beyond $`R_{25}`$ it is clear that the asymmetry could not be reduced as for $`R<R_{25}`$ so its dynamical effects must be negligible with respect to the forces that produce the asymmetries.
* Galaxies with larger amplitudes are more symmetric. This is another observational fact that must be accounted for by any theory which tries to explain asymmetric warps. If we interpret the asymmetries as a superposition of S- and U-warps, we regard the relative contribution of the U-warp as lower for larger absolute values of S-warps. For instance, in the theory of the accretion of intergalactic matter on to the disc (López-Corredoira et al. 2002) this would mean that large warps were produced only when the direction of the infalling flow is far from the galactic pole, and this provides also small asymmetries. If the asymmetries were produced by the presence of a companion galaxy, that would mean that the typical gravitational forces are comparable to the forces that produce S-warps with small amplitudes, and that they become unimportant for large S-warps.

Summing up, we think that the correlations analysed here can give us some clues about the predominant mechanism for the formation of warps in spiral galaxies. At present, the data seem to indicate that the role of the halo is important only in making S-warps at $`R<R_{25}`$ more symmetric, and that asymmetries are more important in less warped galaxies. This favours scenarios in which the halo is not very important in the formation of S-warps, especially radio S-warps and is in agreement with theories that identify the origin of the warps as directly related to external (intergalactic) factors without the mediation of the halo. The origin of the asymmetries in the warps might be different from the mechanism of S-warps, and in such a case the halo could play a role, only in the inner region.

In the introduction, we have described four different theories to explain the formation of warps. The present results cannot give a definitive answer about which is the correct one. Our goal in the present paper is just to present observational results, not to defend or deny a particular theory. In any case, as a consequence of these results, a few words can be added for the comparisons between theories and observations:

* Gravitational interaction with a satellite: can be the mechanism, but only if there are nearby satellites massive enough to produce the observed warps without any amplification of the halo as an intermediary, which seems not to be the case in many warped galaxies (for instance, Milky Way and many apparently isolated galaxies).
* Intergalactic magnetic field: is in general consistent with the present results. A slight anticorrelation between asymmetry and mass/luminous relation is appreciated in Fig. 1e in $`R<R_{25}`$. Under this hypothesis, the asymmetry could be due to inhomogeneous intergalactic fields or to other perturbative effects, even of non-magnetic nature. If the asymmetries are really driven by a magnetic field mechanism, the found anticorrelation would suggest that this mechanism would also have an influence on rotation curves.
* Misalignment of the halo: should produce some correlations of the warp amplitude with the mass-luminosity ratio, which are not observed. Hence, unless an explanation can be found for this no-correlation, it seems that this theory should be discarded.
* Direct accretion of intergalactic medium onto the disc: explains the present results, but need either to have a dark matter halo within $`R<R_{25}`$ which has some effect on the amplitude of U-warps, or flat rotation curves are produced by the same matter accretion onto the disc which is responsible of the U-warps.

These are just temptative interpretations in the light of the present results. It is also possible that several mechanism can be present in the warp formation at the same time. With further data for more galaxies, at higher resolution, and with a more detailed theoretical analysis of the different hypotheses to fit the observations, these results and interpretations can be corroborated and/or improved. New work with optical, infrared and radio data could be very useful for confirming the present trend and to reduce the dispersion of values.

Acknowledgments: Thanks are given to Victor P. Debattista and A. Guijarro. This article makes use of data products from 2MASS, which is a joint project of the Univ. of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by the NASA and the NSF. This work has been supported by ”Cajacanarias” (Canary Islands, Spain) and the project AYA2000-2046-Co2-02 of the spanish MCYT.


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# Constraints on the Circumstellar Disk Masses in the IC 348 Cluster

## 1 Introduction

High resolution imaging at optical, near-infrared, and millimeter-wave wavelengths have conclusively demonstrated that circumstellar disks are ubiquitous around young solar-mass stars (O’Dell & Wong, 1996; Padgett et al., 1999; Dutrey et al., 1996). The long-held notion that planets may frequently form in these disks has been dramatically confirmed with the increasing number of planets detected around nearby main-sequence stars (Marcy, Cochran, & Mayor, 2000). While a consensus has not yet been reached on how planets form in circumstellar disks, current theories propose that gas-giant planets form either as gravitational instabilities in an accretion disk (Boss, 2001), or from the more gradual build up of planetesimals to form a rocky core followed by accretion of gaseous material (Pollack et al., 1996). In both class of models, the accretion disk lifetime sets an important time scale on the planet formation process by constraining the time available for a gravitational instability to develop or the rocky core to form before the gas and dust are dissipated.

Circumstellar accretion disks around young stars are commonly inferred based on the presence of infrared emission in excess of the stellar photosphere. In many stars the excess infrared emission from 1-100µm can be modeled with a geometrically thin, optically thick accretion disk (Lynden-Bell & Pringle, 1974), although inner disk holes, flaring, and other refinements to this basic model are often needed to reproduce the observations in detail (Adams, Shu, & Lada, 1988; Calvet et al., 1991,92; Chiang & Goldreich, 1997). Detailed spectral energy distributions from the near- to far-infrared have been compiled for only a few nearby star forming regions (e.g. Strom et al. 1989; Wilking, Lada, & Young 1989), but $`J`$-, $`H`$-, $`K`$-, and $`L`$-band imaging studies provide an efficient means to search for near-infrared excesses in hundreds of stars (often in clusters) of various ages. Recent results indicate that at least 50% of solar mass stars at an age of $``$ 1 Myr exhibit a near-infrared excess, but that the percentage decreases to $`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}`$ 10% for ages 3-10 Myr (Strom et al., 1989; Haisch, Lada, & Lada, 2001b). These results are consistent with the notion that the lifetime of accretion disks around most solar mass stars is $``$ 3-10 Myr.

Strictly speaking, a near-infrared excess is diagnostic of only hot dust with temperatures of $``$ 1000 K. For a solar mass star, these temperatures are found only within $``$ 0.1 AU of the star. Most of the dust mass, and presumably the majority of planet formation, will be located at larger radii and have temperatures too cool to radiate in the near-infrared. Further, some disks are thought to have inner holes such that stars without near-infrared excesses may still contain substantial disk masses. (Although 10µm observations suggest that the transition from an optically thick to an optically thin disk occurs on time scales of $``$ 0.3 Myr, in which case near-infrared observations may in fact provide an indirect probe of the larger scale disk; Skrutskie et al. 1990, see also Haisch, Lada, & Lada 2001a). An additional limitation of near-infrared studies is that the emission is optically thick and provides little meaningful constraints on the disk mass (see, e.g., Wood et al. 2002). Longer wavelength observations are needed to establish the disk lifetime at large orbital radii and to provide measures on how disk masses evolve with time.

Millimeter and submillimeter continuum emission are the best available tracers of dust in the cool, outer disk. The most comprehensive continuum surveys to date have been toward young stars in Taurus (Beckwith et al., 1990; Osterloh & Beckwith, 1995; Motte & André, 2001), $`\rho `$ Oph (André & Montmerle, 1994; Nürnberger et al., 1998; Motte, André, & Neri, 1998), Lupus (Nürnberger, Chini, & Zinnecker, 1997), Chamaeleon I (Henning et al., 1993), and Serpens (Testi & Sargent, 1998). These observations have shown that at an age of $``$ 1 Myr, $``$ 20-30% of the stars possess a circumstellar disk with a mass greater than the minimum mass of the solar nebula ($``$ 0.01 M; Weidenschilling 1977, Hayashi 1981), and that the median disk mass is $`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}`$ 0.004 M. Further insights into disk evolution can be obtained by using rich clusters as a tool to empirically measure the mass of disks as a function of stellar mass and age in much the same manner near-infrared studies have used clusters to establish the frequency of inner accretion disks (Haisch, Lada, & Lada, 2001b). Continuum surveys of clusters are also important since an appreciable fraction of stars in molecular clouds are found in rich clusters (Lada et al., 1991; Carpenter, 2000), and the high ultraviolet radiation fields produced by O-stars in clusters may influence disk evolution (Johnstone, Hollenbach, & Bally, 1998; Störzer & Hollenbach, 1999; Scally & Clarke, 2001).

The main observational challenge to studying clusters in the millimeter continuum is that high angular resolution is required to resolve the stars and distinguish disk emission from the more extended molecular cloud. The only rich cluster surveyed to date by interferometric techniques has been the Orion Nebula Cluster (Mundy, Looney, & Lada, 1995; Bally et al., 1998). However, these observations were 10-50 times less sensitive to dust mass than the observations of Taurus and $`\rho `$ Oph and did not place stringent limits on the amount of circumstellar mass around individual stars. Given the limitations in inferring disk evolution from near-infrared excesses, it is important to conduct millimeter continuum observations of additional star forming regions in order to understand the evolution of disk masses at young stellar ages when planets are in their formative stages.

To further measure the circumstellar disk masses in different star forming environments, I obtained $`\lambda `$3mm continuum observations of the young cluster IC 348 with the OVRO millimeter wave interferometer. Based on statistical analysis of near-infrared star counts, the IC 348 cluster contains $``$ 400 stars distributed over a $``$$`20^{}\times 20^{}`$ region ($`1.9\mathrm{pc}\times 1.9\mathrm{pc}`$ at the assumed distance of 320 pc; de Zeeuw et al. 1999; Herbig 1998), with about half the stars located within the central $`7^{}\times 7^{}`$ region (Lada & Lada, 1995; Carpenter, 2000). To date, $``$ 200 stars and brown dwarfs have been individually identified as likely cluster members based on their spectroscopic and photometric properties (Herbig, 1998; Luhman et al., 1998; Luhman, 1999; Najita, Tiede, & Carr, 2000), and 115-173 likely members have been detected with x-rays (Preibisch & Zinnecker, 2001). A cluster age of $``$ 2 Myr (Luhman 1999; see also Herbig 1998) has been inferred by placing the low mass stars on the HR diagram and using theoretical pre-main-sequence evolutionary tracks from D’Antona & Mazzitelli (1997,98). Near-infrared imaging surveys of the cluster show that $``$ 65% of the stars contain a $`KL`$ excess characteristic of an optically thick accretion disk (Lada & Lada, 1995; Haisch, Lada, & Lada, 2001a). By mosaicking the central $`5.2^{}\times 5.2^{}`$ region ($`0.48\mathrm{pc}\times 0.48\mathrm{pc}`$) of the IC 348 cluster in the millimeter continuum, I investigate the circumstellar disk masses in 95 known cluster members.

The OVRO observations of the IC 348 cluster are described in Section 2. The stellar properties of the cluster members within the OVRO mosaic boundaries are reviewed in Section 3, and constraints on the circumstellar disk masses are derived in Section 4. Section 5 compares these results with disk masses in Taurus and the Orion Nebula Cluster, and discuses the implications for planet formation. The conclusions are summarized in Section 6.

## 2 OVRO Observations

A $`5.2^{}\times 5.2^{}`$ region toward the IC 348 cluster was mosaicked in the $`\lambda `$3mm continuum using the OVRO millimeter-wave interferometer between September 2001 and January 2002. Continuum data were recorded simultaneously in four, 1 GHz wide continuum channels centered at 96.48 GHz, 97.98 GHz, 100.98 GHz, and 102.48 GHz. The phase and amplitude calibrator was J0336+323 ($`\alpha `$,$`\delta `$ = 03:36:30.10,+32:18:29.3 J2000), which is located 1.7° from the cluster center. The data were calibrated using the OVRO MMA data reduction package (Scoville et al., 1993). The adopted continuum flux for J0336+323, calibrated by observing Neptune and/or Uranus, was 1.60 Jy. The RMS dispersion in the measured flux for J0336+323 is 0.10 Jy as computed from observations on 12 separate nights in which both the calibrator and the planets were observed.

The mosaic consists of 64 pointing centers arranged in a $`8\times 8`$ grid as shown in Figure 1. The pointing centers along a row are separated by 40′′ (compared to the primary FWHM beam size of 72′′). Adjacent rows are also separated by 40′′ but with pointing centers shifted by 20′′ in right ascension. The mosaicking sequence consisted of obtaining a 3 minute integration on the phase calibrator followed by observing 5 positions in the mosaic for 3 minutes each. This sequence was repeated until all 64 positions in the mosaic were observed. The mosaic was observed in the OVRO compact, low, equatorial, and high configurations both to increase the UV sampling and to decrease the RMS noise. The top few rows in the mosaic were often observed at high airmass with lower sensitivity. Additional observations of these rows were obtained to provide more uniform sensitivity across the mosaic.

The 64 individual points were formed into an image using the mosaicking routines in MIRIAD. The data were averaged using natural weighting to maximize sensitivity, resulting in a beam size of $`4.0^{\prime \prime }\times 4.9^{\prime \prime }`$. Unit gain was achieved over a $``$$`5.2^{}\times 5.2^{}`$ area as shown by the dotted curve in Figure 1. The average RMS noise within the unit gain region is 0.75 mJy beam-1 and is spatially uniform over the mosaic to within 10%.

## 3 The IC 348 Cluster

Before using the OVRO observations to constrain the circumstellar disk masses in the IC 348 cluster, I review the stellar properties of the IC 348 cluster members located within the mosaic boundaries. The stellar and substellar membership list of the IC 348 cluster was compiled from the spectroscopic observations by Herbig (1998), Luhman et al. (1998), and Luhman (1999), and the narrow band imaging survey by Najita, Tiede, & Carr (2000). To ensure a reliable list of cluster members, only sources brighter than $`K_s`$=14.5 were considered cluster members for this study, as the field star contamination becomes appreciable at fainter magnitudes (Luhman et al., 1998; Najita, Tiede, & Carr, 2000). In total, 95 cluster members brighter than $`K_s`$=14.5 have been identified within the OVRO mosaic. Astrometry for these sources was adopted from 2MASS. The astrometric uncertainty ($`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}`$ 0.2′′) is 20 times less than the synthesized beam size.

Stellar masses and ages for 92 of the 95 cluster members have been estimated using the D’Antona & Mazzitelli (1997,98) theoretical pre-main-sequence evolutionary tracks and published spectroscopic and photometric data as described in Hillenbrand, Meyer, & Carpenter (2002). Three sources do not have mass estimates since optical photometry is not available, or in one case, the spectral type could not be determined since the source is possibly a Class I object (Luhman et al., 1998). Figures 2 and 3 show histograms of the inferred stellar masses and ages respectively. (Also shown in these figures are the stellar mass and age histograms for a subsample of the Taurus population as discussed in Section 5.) The stellar masses range from 0.03 M to 4.2 M with a broad peak in the distribution at about 0.2-0.5 M. The mean age of the stellar population is $``$ 2 Myr. The properties of this subsample agree well with the properties of the entire IC 348 population identified so far (Herbig, 1998; Luhman et al., 1998; Luhman, 1999).

To investigate the frequency distribution of inner accretion disks in this subsample of the IC 348 cluster, Figure 4 shows the $`JH`$ vs. $`HK_s`$ and $`JH`$ vs. $`K_sL`$ color-color diagrams. The $`J`$, $`H`$, and $`K_s`$ photometry are from 2MASS, and the $`L`$-band photometry is from Haisch, Lada, & Lada (2001a). Only sources with no processing flags in the 2MASS database are shown. In Figure 4, the solid curves represent the locus of main-sequence and giant stars (Bessell & Brett, 1988) and the dashed line is the interstellar reddening vector (Cohen et al., 1981), where the $`JH`$ and $`HK`$ colors have been transformed into the 2MASS photometric system (Carpenter, 2001). Of the 82 sources in the $`JH`$ vs. $`HK_s`$ diagram, 4 have near-infrared colors to the right of the reddening vectors that are consistent with an infrared excess. However, for each of these four stars, the magnitude of the apparent $`HK_s`$ excess is less than the 1$`\sigma `$ photometric uncertainties and therefore may be attributed to photometric noise. The fraction of stars with an infrared excess is higher in the $`JH`$ vs. $`K_sL`$ diagram since $`L`$-band shows larger contrast between the disk and photospheric emission. Of the 47 stars with available $`J`$, $`H`$, $`K_s`$, and $`L`$-band photometry, 18 (38%) contain an apparent $`K_sL`$ excess. Haisch, Lada, & Lada (2001a) do not report $`L`$-band photometric uncertainties for individual sources. Based on the distribution of stars blueward of the un-reddened main-sequence in the $`JH`$ vs. $`K_sL`$ diagram (a region which cannot be populated except from photometric noise and photometric variability between the time of the 2MASS and $`L`$-band observations), I estimate that $``$ 4 sources may have an apparent $`K_sL`$ excess due to noise. Therefore, a minimum of $``$ 15% of the 95 IC 348 members within the OVRO mosaic have near-infrared colors indicative of an optically thick, inner accretion disk. By comparison, Haisch, Lada, & Lada (2001a) estimate that the $``$ 65% of the stars in the IC 348 cluster brighter than $`K`$=12 have a $`KL`$ excess.

## 4 Constraints on Disk Masses

Figure 5 shows gray scale and contour maps of the OVRO mosaic. In the contour map, the dotted curve shows the unit gain boundary of the mosaic, and the open circles indicate the positions of the 95 known members of the IC 348 cluster within the unit gain boundary. The contours begin at 3$`\sigma `$ above the RMS noise of 0.75 mJy beam-1 with increments of 1$`\sigma `$. Visual inspection of the contour map shows that none of the known IC 348 cluster members have been detected in the $`\lambda `$3mm continuum at the 3$`\sigma `$ level or greater. Over the entire mosaic, the brightest observed flux is only 3.9$`\sigma `$ above the noise, and the frequency distribution of fluxes are consistent with gaussian noise as shown by the solid circles in Figure 6. Therefore there are no definitive continuum detections in the mosaic.

Circumstellar disks in Taurus typically have diameters of $`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}`$ 300 AU as measured in the $`\lambda `$3mm continuum (Dutrey et al., 1996). Assuming that the disks in IC 348 are similar, the disks can be considered point sources at the resolution of these observations (1600 AU$`\times `$1300 AU) when computing upper limits to the continuum flux. A histogram of the observed fluxes toward the 95 cluster members is shown in Figure 6. The dotted line through the histogram shows the expected flux distribution for gaussian noise given the observed RMS noise of 0.75 mJy beam-1. The observed mean flux toward the cluster members is $`0.22\pm 0.08`$ mJy, where the uncertainty represents the standard deviation of the mean of the 95 cluster members. These results indicate that while the flux distribution is consistent with gaussian noise, there is a positive bias to the average flux at the 2.8$`\sigma `$ confidence level.

The OVRO continuum observations can be used to place constraints on the circumstellar disk masses. In reality, most disks will contain a range of dust temperatures with decreasing temperatures with increasing radial distance from the star. The data obtained here do not permit sophisticated modeling of the disk structure, however, and a single dust temperature was assumed. Following Hildebrand (1983), the disk mass (i.e. sum of the dust and gas components) can then be estimated as $`M_{disk}=\frac{S_\nu D^2}{\kappa _\nu B_\nu (T_{dust})}`$, where $`\kappa _\nu =\kappa _o(\frac{\nu }{\nu _o})^\beta `$ is the mass opacity coefficient, $`\beta `$ parameterizes the frequency dependence of $`\kappa _\nu `$, $`S_\nu `$ is the observed flux, $`T_{dust}`$ is the dust temperature, and $`B_\nu (T_{dust})`$ is the Planck function. For consistency with prior studies, I assumed $`\beta `$=1.0 and $`\kappa _o`$ = 0.02 cm2 g-1 at 1300µm (Beckwith et al., 1990). The value of $`\kappa _o`$, and consequently the disk masses, is uncertain by at least a factor of three (Beckwith et al., 1990). The power law index $`\beta `$ may be as low as $``$ 0.5 on average in circumstellar disks (Beckwith & Sargent, 1991; Mannings & Emerson, 1994). If this lower value of $`\beta `$ is more appropriate for circumstellar disks, the assumptions adopted here will overestimate the disk masses by 50%.

The appropriate dust temperature for calculating the disk masses was estimated using the circumstellar disk models from Beckwith et al. (1990) and Osterloh & Beckwith (1995). These studies fitted radial power-law distributions for the dust temperature and disk mass surface density to the observed infrared and millimeter spectral energy distribution for well-studied stars in Taurus-Auriga. From the disk mass derived by these model fits, I computed a single component dust temperature for each star that reproduces the disk mass given the observed $`\lambda `$1.3mm flux. A histogram of these ‘effective” dust temperatures is shown in Figure 7. (Four stars with effective temperatures greater than 100 K are not shown in this figure.) Of the 44 stars in Taurus-Auriga with model disk masses from Beckwith et al. (1990) and Osterloh & Beckwith (1995), the median dust temperature derived in this manner is $``$ 20 K. If this dust temperature is then assumed for all of the Taurus stars, the model-derived dust masses can be reproduced to within a factor of 2 for 60% of the stars, and within a factor of 3 for 70% of the stars. (For sources with effective dust temperatures substantially greater than 20 K, the single component dust model will overestimate the disk mass since $`M_{\mathrm{dust}}T_{\mathrm{dust}}^1`$). Assuming that the disk temperatures in the IC 348 cluster are not vastly different than in Taurus, adopting a dust temperature of 20 K, while simplistic, should reproduce the disk masses within a factor of a few for the majority of the stars. For these assumptions, the 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to the circumstellar disk mass around an individual star in the IC 348 cluster is 0.025 M. Treating the 95 cluster members as an ensemble, the observed average flux corresponds to an average disk mass of $`0.002\pm 0.001`$ M.

## 5 Discussion

The limits on the disk masses in the IC 348 cluster can be compared to disk masses in other star forming regions as a step toward determining the evolution of disk masses as a function of time and environment (e.g. “clustered” vs. “isolated” star formation). The Taurus star forming region provides a meaningful comparison since it has been thoroughly studied in the millimeter continuum (Beckwith et al. 1990; Osterloh & Beckwith 1995; see also Skinner, Brown, & Walter 1991 and Henning et al. 1998), and the stellar population has an age similar to IC 348 as shown below. Since the IC 348 sample has been identified largely based on spectroscopy, only stars in Taurus with spectral types and sufficient photometric information to place the stars on the HR diagram were used for this comparison. From the database of spectral types and photometry compiled from the literature by Hillenbrand, Meyer, & Carpenter (2002), 117 stars were identified in Taurus that met these criteria and have a published $`\lambda `$1.3mm continuum flux measurement. The main source of incompleteness in the Taurus sample are deeply embedded IRAS sources which are not detected at optical wavelengths (Kenyon & Hartmann, 1995), and recently identified low mass stars and brown dwarfs (Briceño et al., 1998,99; Luhman & Rieke, 1998) that have not yet been surveyed in the millimeter continuum.

The open histograms in the top panels of Figures 2 and 3 show the mass and age distributions respectively for the Taurus comparison sample. (The bottom panels show the analogous distributions for the IC 348 sample as already discussed.) The mean stellar mass of the Taurus sample is log10 (mass/ M) = $`0.33`$ with a dispersion of 0.27. By comparison, the IC 348 sample has a mean log10 stellar mass of $`0.53`$ with a dispersion of 0.44. Therefore, the stellar mass distribution in IC 348 is skewed toward smaller stellar masses compared to the Taurus sample. Similarly, the mean stellar age of the Taurus sample is log10 (age/yr) = 6.0 with dispersion of 0.6, while the mean log10 age and dispersion for IC 348 are 6.3 and 0.6 respectively. Thus the stellar ages for IC 348 are skewed toward older values than stars in Taurus. However, the uncertainty in the distances to the star forming regions, which is at least $``$ 10%, (Kenyon, Dobrzycka, & Hartmann, 1994; de Zeeuw et al., 1999), will produce a $``$ 0.09 dex uncertainty in the mean age (Hartmann, 2001). At best then the difference in the mean ages between Taurus and IC 348 are significant at the $``$ 2$`\sigma `$ confidence level.

Disk masses for stars in Taurus were re-computed from published $`\lambda `$1.3mm fluxes and using the isothermal dust model adopted here for consistency. The hatched histograms in Figures 2 and 3 show the distribution of stellar masses and ages for stars in Taurus that have disk masses in excess of 0.025 M, which is the 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to the disk masses toward individual stars in IC 348. Figure 2 shows that in this Taurus sample, such disks masses are found only around stars more massive than 0.27 M. While the lack of such massive disks around lower mass stars may simply be due to the relative lack of sources, only stars more massive than 0.27 M are used in the following comparison between Taurus and IC 348. In the Taurus sample, 14 of the 99 stars with stellar masses greater than 0.27 M have disk masses in excess of 0.025 M. In IC 348, none of the 48 stars in the same stellar mass range have such disk masses. Using the two-tailed Fisher Exact Test, the probability that the frequency distribution of massive disks in IC 348 and Taurus have been drawn from the same parent population is 0.0028. This probability is independent of the assumed values of $`\kappa _o`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{dust}}`$ used to compute the disk masses to the extent that the disk properties in the two regions are similar. However, if the value of $`\beta `$ is as low as 0.5 on average (Beckwith & Sargent, 1991; Mannings & Emerson, 1994) as opposed to the assumed value of $`\beta `$=1, then the disk masses in IC 348 will be systematically overestimated compared to Taurus, and the difference in the frequency of massive disks will be enhanced. Thus despite the similar stellar ages of the star forming regions, the IC 348 cluster lacks the massive disks found in the Taurus at the $``$ 3$`\sigma `$ confidence level. The cause of this apparent difference cannot be due to an photoevaporation of the disks in IC 348 from a high ultraviolet radiation field (e.g. Johnstone, Hollenbach, & Bally 1998) since the spectral type of the most massive cluster member in IC 348 is B5 (Luhman et al., 1998). Whether or not the difference in disk masses can be attributed to the affects of a “cluster” vs. “isolated” environment remains speculative given the limited sample of star forming regions, although continuum surveys of additional clusters are possible with current interferometers.

The IC 348 results can also be compared to the disk masses in Orion Nebula Cluster using the 86 GHz continuum survey by Mundy, Looney, & Lada (1995). Again using a 20 K dust temperature for consistency with the assumptions adopted here, the 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to individual disk masses in Orion is 0.17 M. Mundy, Looney, & Lada (1995) derived a 95% upper limit to the characteristic flux at 86 GHz of 1.1 mJy, which corresponds to a disk mass of 0.03 M. Thus the results from Mundy, Looney, & Lada (1995) exclude the presence of massive disks in Orion, but do not set as stringent limits as the IC 348 observations for disk masses in cluster environments. Similarly, Bally et al. (1998) derived a 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit of 0.015 M to the disk mass around 5 proplyds in the Orion Nebula cluster for an assumed dust temperature of 50 K. If a 20 K dust temperature is instead adopted, the corresponding upper limit is 0.047 M.

Finally, the IC 348 results can be contrasted with the minimum disk mass needed to form the Solar System. Summing the mass contained in the planets and assuming an interstellar gas to dust ratio, the minimum mass of the primitive solar nebula is $``$ 0.01 M (Weidenschilling, 1977; Hayashi, 1981). This minimum mass reflects primarily the mass needed to form a Jupiter-mass planet. The actual mass of the primitive solar nebula may of course be higher depending on the efficiency in converting dust and gas in the primitive solar nebula into planets. The upper limit to the typical disk mass in IC 348 is comparable then to the minimum mass of the solar nebula, and the average mass is $``$ 5 times lower than minimum mass of the solar nebula. Given that the disk masses are uncertain by at least a factor of 3 due the mass opacity coefficient ($`\kappa _o`$), these results suggest either that the formation of planets with masses greater than a few Jupiter masses is relatively rare around 0.2-0.5 M stars in IC 348, or that the formation of gas-giant planets has significantly depleted the disk of small dust grains on a time scale of $`\mathrm{¡}\mathrm{}`$ 2 Myr, the mean age of the IC 348 cluster.

## 6 Summary

I present OVRO observations of a $`5.2^{}\times 5.2^{}`$ region toward the IC 348 stellar cluster that has been imaged in the 98 GHz continuum to a RMS noise level of 0.75 mJy beam-1 at $`4.0^{\prime \prime }\times 4.9^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution. A total of 95 known members of the IC 348 cluster brighter than $`K_s`$=14.5 are located within the mosaicked region. The stellar masses range from 0.03 M to 4.2 M with a peak in the distribution between 0.2 M and 0.5 M. At least 15% of these stars are surrounded by an optically thick, inner accretion disk as evidenced by a $`K_sL`$ excess (see Haisch, Lada, & Lada 2001a). The OVRO observations are used to place constraints on the circumstellar disk masses and provide a snapshot of disk evolution in a cluster environment at an age of $``$ 2 Myr (Luhman, 1999).

None of the 95 IC 348 members within the OVRO mosaic were detected at the 3$`\sigma `$ level or greater. The mean flux toward the 95 stars is $`0.22\pm 0.08`$ mJy, indicating the observed fluxes are consistent with random noise although with a slight bias toward positive fluxes. The millimeter-wave continuum fluxes were converted into disk masses (the sum of the gas and dust components) assuming a dust temperature of 20 K, a mass opacity coefficient of 0.02 cm2 g-1 at 1300µm, and a power law index for the particle emissivity of $`\beta `$=1. For any individual source, the 3$`\sigma `$ upper limit to the circumstellar disk mass is 0.025 M. For the 95 sources as an ensemble, the average disk mass is $`0.002\pm 0.001`$ M.

The constraints placed on the disk masses in the IC 348 cluster were compared to the disk masses around stars in the Taurus molecular cloud. A subsample of the Taurus population was identified that has available optical spectroscopy and photometry as well as published millimeter continuum observations. The stellar mass range was restricted to stars with masses in excess of 0.27 M since that is the lowest mass star in the Taurus sample that has an observed disk mass in excess of 0.025 M. In the Taurus sample, 14 of the 99 stars with stellar masses $``$0.27 M have disk masses in excess of 0.025 M, while in IC 348, none of the 48 stars in the same stellar mass range have such disk masses. The probability that the frequency distribution of massive disks in IC 348 and Taurus have been drawn from the same parent population is 0.0028, and are thus different at the $``$ 3$`\sigma `$ confidence level. These results suggest that the IC 348 stellar population lacks the massive disks that characterizes $``$ 14% of the Taurus population despite the fact that the two regions have similar ages (Hillenbrand, Meyer, & Carpenter, 2002). Whether or not the differences between the frequency of massive disks between Taurus and IC 348 is related to “isolated” versus “clustered” star forming environments awaits observations of additional star forming regions.

The implications of the IC 348 observations for planet formation can be placed in context with the minimum mass of the primitive solar nebula ($``$ 0.01 M; Weidenschilling 1977, Hayashi 1981) needed to form our Solar System. The IC 348 results suggest that if an optically thick accretion disk is the necessary seed to form gas-giant planets, then either few stars in IC 348 with stellar masses between 0.2 M and 0.5 M will form planets more massive than a few Jupiter masses, or the process to form such massive planets has significantly depleted the disk of small dust grains by the age of the IC 348 cluster, or $``$ 2 Myr.

JMC acknowledges support from Long Term Space Astrophysics Grant NAG5-8217 and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, which is supported by the National Science Foundation through grant AST-9981546. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. 2MASS science data and information services were provided by the InfraRed Science Archive (IRSA) at IPAC.