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# Non–conventional statistical effects in relativistic heavy-ions collisions

## 1 Introduction and motivations

Most of the theoretical analyses related to observables in relativistic heavy-ion collisions involve (implicitly or explicitly) the validity of the standard Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics. In particular, if the thermal equilibrium is achieved, the Maxwell-Boltzmann (MB) distribution (Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein distribution if quantum statistical effects are not negligible) is assumed to hold. When the system approaches equilibrium, the phase–space distribution should be derived as a stationary state of the dynamical kinetic evolution equation. It is well known that in the absence of non–Markovian memory effects, long–range interactions and local correlations, the MB distribution is obtained as a steady state solution of the kinetic Boltzmann equation. However, it is a rather common opinion that, because of the extreme conditions of density and temperature in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, memory effects and long–range color interactions give rise to the presence of non–Markovian processes in the kinetic equation affecting the thermalization process toward equilibrium as well as the standard equilibrium distribution .

The aim of the present contribution is to explore, from a phenomenological point of view, the relevance of the above mentioned statistical effects that can influence the dynamical evolution of the generated fireball toward the freeze-out stage and, as a consequence, the physical observables.

## 2 Generalized non–extensive statistics

A quite interesting generalization of the conventional Boltzmann–Gibbs statistics has been recently proposed by Tsallis  and proves to be able to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional statistical mechanics in many physical problems, where the presence of long–range interactions, long–range microscopic memory, or fractal space–time constraints hinders the usual statistical assumptions.

The Tsallis generalized thermostatistics is based upon the following generalization of the entropy

$$S_q=\frac{1}{q1}\underset{i=1}{\overset{W}{}}p_i(1p_i^{q1}),$$
(1)
where $`p_i`$ is the probability of a given microstate among $`W`$ different ones and $`q`$ is a fixed real parameter. The new entropy has the usual properties of positivity, equiprobability, concavity and irreversibility, preserves the whole mathematical structure of thermodynamics and reduces to the conventional Boltzmann–Gibbs entropy $`S=_ip_i\mathrm{log}p_i`$ in the limit $`q1`$.

The single particle distribution function is obtained through the usual procedure of maximizing the Tsallis entropy under the constraints of keeping constant the average internal energy and the average number of particles. For a dilute gas of particles and/or for $`q1`$ values, the average occupational number can be written in a simple analytical form

$$n_i_q=\frac{1}{[1+(q1)\beta (E_i\mu )]^{1/(q1)}\pm 1},$$
(2)
where the $`+`$ sign is for fermions, the $``$ for bosons and $`\beta =1/T`$. In the limit $`q1`$ (extensive statistics), one recovers the conventional Fermi–Dirac and Bose–Einstein distribution. Under the same conditions, but in the classical limit, one has the following generalized Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution :

$$n_i_q=[1+(q1)\beta (E_i\mu )]^{1/(1q)}.$$
(3)
When the entropic $`q`$ parameter is smaller than $`1`$, the distributions ‘(2) and (3) have a natural high energy cut–off: $`E_i1/[\beta (1q)]+\mu `$, which implies that the energy tail is depleted; when $`q`$ is greater than $`1`$, the cut–off is absent and the energy tail of the particle distribution (for fermions and bosons) is enhanced. Hence the nonextensive statistics entails a sensible difference of the particle distribution shape in the high energy region with respect to the standard statistics. This property plays an important rôle in the interpretation of the physical observables, as it will be shown in the following.

## 3 Transverse mass spectrum and momentum fluctuations

Let us consider the transverse momentum distribution of particles produced, e.g., in relativistic heavy ion collisions: it depends on the phase-space distribution and usually an exponential shape is employed to fit the experimental data. This shape is obtained by assuming a purely thermal source with a MB distribution. High energy deviations from the exponential shape are taken into account by introducing a dynamical effect due to collective transverse flow, also called blue-shift.

Let us consider a different point of view and argue that if long tail time memory and long–range interactions are present, the MB distribution must be replaced by the generalized distribution (3). Limiting ourselves to consider here only small deviations from standard statistics ($`q10`$); then at first order in $`(q1)`$ the transverse mass spectrum can be written as

$$\frac{dN}{m_{}dm_{}}=Cm_{}\left\{K_1\left(z\right)+\frac{(q1)}{8}z^2\left[3K_1(z)+K_3(z)\right]\right\},$$
(4)
where $`K_i`$ are the modified Bessel function at the $`i`$-order.

The above equation is able to reproduce very well the transverse momentum distribution of hadrons produced in S+S collisions (NA35 data ) providing we take $`q=1.038`$ . Furthermore, it is easy to see that at first order in $`(q1)`$ from Eq.(4), the generalized slope parameter takes the following form:

$$T_q=T+(q1)m_{}.$$
(5)
Hence nonextensive statistics predicts, in a purely thermal source, a generalized $`q`$–blue shift factor at high $`m_{}`$; moreover this shift factor is not constant but increases (if $`q>1`$) with $`m_{}=\sqrt{m^2+p_{}^2}`$, where $`m`$ is the mass of the detected particle. Such a behavior has been observed in the experimental NA44 results.

Another observable very sensitive to non–conventional statistical effects are the transverse momentum fluctuations. In fact, in the framework of non–extensive statistics, the particle fluctuation $`\mathrm{\Delta }n^2_q=n^2_qn_q^2`$ is deformed, with respect to the standard expression, as follows

$$\mathrm{\Delta }n^2_q\frac{1}{\beta }\frac{n_q}{\mu }=\frac{n_q}{1+(q1)\beta (E\mu )}(1n_q),$$
(6)
where $`E`$ is the relativistic energy $`E=\sqrt{m^2+p^2}`$.

The fluctuations of an ideal gas of fermions (bosons), expressed by Eq.(6), are still suppressed (enhanced) by the factor $`1n_q`$ (as in the standard case) but this effect is modulated by the factor $`[1+(q1)\beta (E\mu )]^1`$. Therefore the fluctuations turn out to be increased for $`q<1`$ and are decreased for $`q>1`$. Very good agreement with the experimental NA49 analysis  is obtained by taking $`q=1.038`$ , notably the same value used in transverse momentum spectra.

## 4 Anomalous diffusion in rapidity spectra

An important observable in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is the rapidity distribution of the detected particles. In particular, there is experimental and theoretical evidence that the broad rapidity distribution of net proton yield ($`p\overline{p}`$) in central heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies could be a signal of non-equilibrium properties of the system. We want to show now that the broad rapidity shape can be well reproduced in the framework of a non-linear relativistic Fokker-Planck dynamics which incorporates non-extensive statistics and anomalous diffusion.

A class of anomalous diffusions are currently described through the non-linear Fokker-Planck equation (NLFPE)

$$\frac{}{t}[f(y,t)]^\mu =\frac{}{y}\left[J(y)[f(y,t)]^\mu +D\frac{}{y}[f(y,t)]^\nu \right],$$
(7)
where $`D`$ and $`J`$ are the diffusion and drift coefficients, respectively. Tsallis and Bukman  have shown that, for linear drift, the time dependent solution of the above equation is a Tsallis-like distribution with $`q=1+\mu \nu `$. The norm of the distribution is conserved at all times only if $`\mu =1`$, therefore we will limit the discussion to the case $`\nu =2q`$.

Imposing the validity of the Einstein relation for Brownian particles, we can generalize to the relativistic case the standard expressions of diffusion and drift coefficients as follows

$$D=\alpha T,J(y)=\alpha m_{}\mathrm{sinh}(y)\alpha p_{},$$
(8)
where $`p_{}`$ is the longitudinal momentum and $`\alpha `$ is a common constant. It is easy to see that the above coefficients give us the Boltzmann stationary distribution in the linear Fokker-Planck equation ($`q=\nu =1`$) (such a result cannot be obtained if one assumes a linear drift coefficient as in Ref.) while the stationary solution of the NLFPE (7) with $`\nu =2q`$ is a Tsallis-like distribution with the relativistic energy $`E=m_{}\mathrm{cosh}(y)`$:

$$f_q(y,m_{})=\left\{1(1q)\beta m_{}\mathrm{cosh}(y)\right\}^{1/(1q)}.$$
(9)
Basic assumption of our analysis is that the rapidity distribution is not appreciably influenced by transverse dynamics, which is considered in thermal equilibrium. This hypothesis is well confirmed by the experimental data and adopted in many theoretical works. Therefore, the time dependent rapidity distribution can be obtained, first, by means of numerical integration of Eq.(7) with initial $`\delta `$-function condition depending on the value of the experimental projectile rapidities and, second, by integrating such a result over the transverse mass $`m_{}`$ (or transverse momentum) as follows

$$\frac{dN}{dy}(y,t)=c_m^{\mathrm{}}m_{}^2\mathrm{cosh}(y)f_q(y,m_{},t)𝑑m_{},$$
(10)
where $`c`$ is the normalization constant fixed by the total number of the particles. The calculated rapidity spectra will ultimately depend on the nonextensive parameter $`q`$ only, since there exists only one “interaction time” $`\tau =\alpha t`$ which reproduces the experimental distribution .

In Fig.1 we show the calculated rapidity spectra of net proton compared with the experimental NA49 data from central Pb+Pb collisions at 158 GeV/c . The obtained spectra are normalized to 164 protons and the beam rapidity is fixed to $`y_{\mathrm{cm}}=2.9`$ (in the c.m. frame) . The full line corresponds to the NLFPE solution (10) at $`\tau =0.82`$ and $`q=1.25`$; the dashed line corresponds to the solution of the linear case ($`q=1`$) at $`\tau =1.2`$. Only in the non-linear case ($`q1`$) there exists a (finite) time for which the obtained rapidity spectra well reproduces the broad experimental shape. A value of $`q1`$ implies anomalous superdiffusion in the rapidity space, i.e., $`[y(t)y_M(t)]^2`$ scales like $`t^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha >1`$ .

## 5 Conclusions

The nonextensive statistics appears suitable to evaluate physical observables recently measured in heavy ion collision experiments. The physical motivation for the validity of a non-conventional statistical behavior can be related to the presence of memory effects and long range interactions at the early stage of the collisions, even if a microscopic justification of these effects is still lacking. A rigorous determination of the conditions that produce a nonextensive statistical regime should be based on microscopic calculations relative to the parton plasma originated during the high energy collisions. Non–perturbative QCD effects in the proximity of hadronic deconfinement could play a crucial role in the determination of the quantum kinetic evolution of the system toward the equilibrium .


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# Bar Galaxies and their Environments

## 1 INTRODUCTION

As Cruzen et al. (2002) have recently emphasized “understanding the role that environment plays in the process of galaxy formation and evolution is one of the most important problems in astrophysics”. It would be particularly interesting to know if environment plays a role in the dichotomy between (1) barred and unbarred spiral disks, and (2) between pure spirals and ringed spirals.

Why are some spiral galaxies barred, whereas others do not exhibit bar like structures? Data compiled by Sandage & Tammann (1981,p.91) show that 26% of all disk galaxies in the Shapley-Ames catalog exhibit bars, whereas 74% of all disk systems 111Galaxies of Hubble types S0-Sa-Sb-Sc-Sd-Sm-Im are regarded as ordinary disk systems, whereas those of types SB0-SBa-SBb-SBc-SBd-SBm-IBm are regarded as barred disk systems. do not. It is the purpose of the present investigation to see if environmental factors might affect the fraction of all galaxies that exhibit bars. This question is also of interest in connection with the surprising finding (van den Bergh et al. 1996) that the fraction of barred galaxies appears to drop with increasing lookback time. Detailed simulations (van den Bergh et al. 2002) show that this effect can not be entirely explained by the effects of decreasing resolution, increasing noise, and changes in the wavelength pass band at as a function of increasing redshift. The aim of the present investigation is to see if the decrease in the frequency of barred objects with increasing redshift might be affected by environmental factors. In particular one needs to ask whether the frequency of bars in disk galaxies might depend on environment, i.e. is the frequency of bars for galaxies of a given Hubble type the same in clusters as it is for field galaxies.

The present investigation was based on the use of the morphological classification types given in A Revised Shapley Ames Catalog of Bright Galaxies (Sandage & Tammann (1981). These data represent the “golden standard” of galaxy classification because they are based on a uniform sample of relatively nearly galaxies observed in blue light with the large reflecting telescopes at the Palomar, Mt. Wilson and Las Campanas observatories. These galaxies were classified by expert morphologists on the system defined by Sandage (1961). For the present investigation it is a particular advantage that Sandage & Tammann classify galaxies either S (normal) or SB (strongly barred). Numerical experiments show (van den Bergh et al. 2002) that the frequency distribution of such strong bars is little affected by image resolution and noise. On the other hand van den Bergh et al. (2002) have shown that the relative frequency of weak bars \[de Vaucouleurs (1959) type SAB and van den Bergh (1960abc) type S(B)\] may be strongly affected by image resolution and noise. Such weak bars can literally get lost in the noise. The Shapley-Ames catalog classifications by Sandage & Tammann therefore represent a robust database for the investigation of the possible dependence of bar frequency on galaxy environment.

To determine if the frequency of bars is internally determined, or whether it depends on environment, one first has to establish the nature of the environments of a homogeneous sample of well- classified galaxies. The finest sample of this type is provided by A Revised Shapley-Ames Catalog of Bright Galaxies (Sandage & Tammann 1981). High quality reproductions of these images have been published by Sandage & Bedke (1994). Other large collections of morphological classifications of galaxies, such as the The Third Reference Catalogue of de Vaucouleurs et al. (1991), are based on much less homogeneous observational material. Furthermore the advantage of a larger database in the RC3 catalog is offset by the fact that the RC3 galaxies are, in the mean, more distant than those in the Shapley-Ames catalog. Classifications in the RC3 are therefore, on average, based on lower resolution images than are those in A Revised Shapley-Ames Catalog of Sandage & Tammann.

## 2 DETERMINATION OF GALAXY ENVIRONMENT

Assigning galaxies to a particular environment is a non-trivial problem. For instance the Uppsala General Catalogue of Galaxies (Nilson 1973) mentions companions and group membership in an apparently non-systematic fashion. The catalogs by Zwicky and his collaborators (Zwicky et al. 1961-1968) give detailed lists of galaxy clusterings. However, this information is not very useful for a study of Shapley-Ames galaxies because these clusters are typically an order of magnitude more distant than the Shapley- Ames galaxies that Sandage & Tammann classified. It was therefore decided to try to assign each Shapley-Ames galaxy to a particular environment by using three criteria: (1) inspection of the prints of the Palomar Sky Survey for the region surrounding each galaxy, (2) by luminosity classification of nearby galaxies (see van den Bergh 1960a), and (3) by making use of available radial velocity information. It should be emphasized that assigning any individual galaxy to a particular cluster is a hazardous procedure (e.g. Puddu et al. 2001). With great care one might nevertheless hope to achieve environmental assignments that are meaningful in a statistical sense. For members of the Local Group, which are so nearby that they are spread over the entire sky, membership was taken from van den Bergh (2000). For some nearby groups, such as the M81 cluster, group membership was taken from van den Bergh (1960a). Some uncertainty is introduced in the cluster assignment process by the fact that the internal velocity dispersion in some nearby groups is not small compared to the mean cluster redshift. However, redshift is a relatively reliable distance indicator for the more distant galaxies in the Shapley-Ames catalog. Luminosity classifications (van den Bergh 1960abc) turn out to be useful distance estimators over the entire distance range covered by galaxies in the Shapley- Ames catalog.

Because of the relatively low quality of the Palomar Sky Survey zone at $`\delta `$ = -30 the present investigation was restricted to the area of the sky north of $`\delta `$ = -27. Galaxies were divided into three classes on the basis of their environments: (1) F = Field, (2) G = group 222Members of the Local Group, which are widely dispersed over the sky, were all assigned to the G class. For a number of other nearby groups and clusters, which spread over a few Palomar prints, the assignment of membership was taken from van den Bergh (1960a). and (3) C = cluster. The assignment of galaxies to groups and clusters was a qualitative procedure that involved both luminosity classifications using the criteria of van den Bergh (1960bc), and the distribution of group and cluster galaxies over the sky. Companions of relatively faint distant Shapley-Ames galaxies were expected to be confined to a small fraction of the area of a single Palamar Sky Survey print, whereas the groups and clusters surrounding a bright Shapley-Ames galaxy might be spread over one or more Palomar Sky Survey prints.

A galaxy was regarded as a member of a group if it appeared to contain at least three other (non-dwarf) members. A galaxy had to have at least six (non-dwarf) members to be assigned to the cluster category. Furthermore clusters were assigned to S, S+E and E categories on the basis of their galaxian content, with S denoting a cluster in which most galaxies were spirals. Clusters with a mixed population were denoted E+S, and clusters that consisted mainly of elliptical galaxies were denoted by E. On this system the Local Group was regarded as a group (G) with a mixed (E+S) population. A weaknesses of the adopted classification procedure is, of course, that foreground (or background) galaxies may appear projected on a cluster without being physically associated with it. Since the“field” occupies a much larger area on the sky than do all clusters combined, the probability of a foreground galaxy being projected on a rich cluster is relatively small. Such misassignments would add some noise to any correlations between environment, galaxy type and the existence of bars. An other possible source of bias is that faint companions of distant galaxies near the magnitude limit of the Shapley-Ames survey may have been missed on the Sky Survey prints. As a result some of the most distant cluster members might have been assigned to groups, or even to the field.

The data on which the present investigation was based are listed in Table 1 (field), Table 2 (groups) and in Table 3 (clusters). The galaxy classifications given in these tabulation were taken from Sandage & Tammann (1981), but suppress secondary information, such as the luminosity classifications, degree of flattening of ellipticals, the presence of rings, etc. The data in Tables 1, 2, and 3 contain information on a total of 391 field galaxies, 145 members of groups, and 394 cluster members that are located in the Shapley-Ames (1932) catalog north of $`\delta `$ = -27.

## 3 SIGNIFICANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSIGNMENTS

Since the present assignment of galaxies to field, group, and cluster environments is based on qualitative criteria it is important to see if these environments exhibit clear cut statistical differences in their galactic populations. Data on this point are collected in Table 4. This table lists the frequency with which different morphological galaxy types occur in differing environments. These data clearly show that early-type galaxies occur predominantly in groups and clusters, whereas late-type galaxies predominate in the field. The relative frequency of ellipticals is found to be $`3`$ times as great in the cluster areas as it is in the field areas. This reflects the well known dependence of galaxy morphology on environmental galaxy density (Hubble 1936, Dressler 1980). A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test shows that the probability that the frequency distribution of cluster galaxies along the sequence S0-Sa-Sb-Sc-Sd-Sm-Im and SB0-SBa-SBb-SBc-SBd-SBm-IBm was drawn from the same parent population as that for field galaxies only 0.3% . This shows beyond reasonable doubt that the adopted procedures for the assignment of galaixes to three different types different of environments has been highly successful in isolating statistically different environments.

Kraan-Korteweg & Tammann (1979) have assigned galaxies which they suspected of having distances $`<`$ 10 Mpc to three environmental classes: (1) field, (2) groups and (3) the Virgo cluster. This differs somewhat from our own environmental assignments since some of the richest “groups” of Sandage & Tammann were designated as “clusters” in the present investigation. Nevertheless it is of interest to compare the environmental assignments for the 67 objects that are common to these two investigations. Such a comparison is shown in Table 5. Of 10 galaxies designated as field objects in the present investigation, Kraan-Korteweg & Tammann assign 8 (80%) to the field. Of 21 galaxies assigned to groups 20 (95%) are also called group members by Kraan-Korteweg and Tammann. Finally of the 36 galaxies assigned to clusters in the present investigation Kraan-Korteweg & Tammann assign 14 (39%) to groups and 19 (53%) to the Virgo cluster. These results show that the present environmental assignments are broadly consistent with those of Kraan-Korteweg & Tammann.

## 4 DEPENDENCE OF BAR FREQUENCY ON ENVIRONMENT

The Revised Shapley-Ames Catalog of Sandage & Tammann (1981) presents an almost ideal sample for the study of the frequency of bars in different environments. This is so because: (1) The Shapley-Ames galaxies are bright and therefore, on average, relatively nearby. As a result resolution effects on the visibility of bars are minimized. (2) The Shapley-Ames galaxies were classified on a homogeneous sample of blue sensitive plates obtained with the large reflectors at the Palomar, Mt. Wilson and Las Campanas Observatories. (3) These images were classified in a uniform way by two highly competent morphologists. (4) On the morphological system of Sandage (1961), which was employed by Sandage & Tammann (1981), Galaxies are classified as being either normal (S), or barred (SB). As a result one need not worry about the possible contamination of the sample by objects exhibiting the week bars that de Vaucouleurs (1959) assigns to class SAB. For a detailed discussion of the effects of resolution on the visibility of bars the reader is referred to Abraham & Merrifield (2000) and to van den Bergh et al. (2002).

From the data in Table 4 it is found that the frequency of bars for galaxies located in field areas is 25 $`\pm 3\%`$, compared to 19 $`\pm 4\%`$ for galaxies in groups, and 28 $`\pm `$ 3% for galaxies in clusters. These results suggest that the frequency of bar formation does not depend significantly on galaxy environment. A caveat is, however, that the relative frequency of various galaxy types itself depends on galaxy environment. As a result any systematic dependence of the fraction of barred galaxies on Hubble type might mimic a dependence of bar frequency on environment. Table 6 suggests that there is, in fact, little or no systematic variation of bar frequency along the Hubble sequence. As a result the systematic changes in the frequency of galaxy type with environment is not expected to strongly affect the dependence of the fraction of barred galaxies on environment. This problem can be avoided entirely by comparing the relative frequencies of barred and normal spirals of a single Hubble stage. For galaxies of types Sc and SBc the data in Table 4 show that the fraction of barred objects ranges from 17 $`\pm `$ 3% in the field, through 12 $`\pm `$ 5% in groups to 25 $`\pm `$ 5% in clusters. \[For the entire Shapley-Ames Catalog Sandage & Tammann find that 22 $`\pm `$ 2% of Sc galaxies are barred.\] It is tentatively concluded that presently available data do not show a clear-cut dependence of the fraction of barred galaxies on environment.

## 5 CONCLUSIONS

Inspection of the environments of 930 northern Shapley-Ames galaxies on the prints of the Palomar Sky Survey has made it possible to tentatively assign each of these objects to “field”, “group” or “cluster” environments. No significant differences are found between the ratios of barred to non-barrred objects in these different environments. These results suggest that the formation of bars in galaxies is mainly determined by internal factors, rather than by environmental effects.

I am indebted to Roberto Abraham for reawakening my interest in the possible dependence of bar strength on galactic environment. It is also a pleasure to thank Russell Redman for his kind help with the formatting of the tabular material used in this investigation. Note that the full tables 1 through 3 will be available on-line.

## 6 APPENDIX

RELATIVE FREQUENCY OF FIELD, GROUP, AND CLUSTER GALAXIES

The statistics in the present paper are affected by the fact that the rich Virgo cluster contributes significantly to the data on the northern Shapley-Ames galaxies. Sandage & Tammann (1981) find that 108 of the galaxies in the Shapley-Ames Catalog are located within 10 of the center of the Virgo cluster. Data on the numbers of field, group, and cluster galaxies in the northern Shapley-Ames catalog with, and without, the contribution from the Virgo cluster are listed in Table 6. This table show that, after excluding the Virgo region, 48 % of all galaxies appear to be members of the field, compared to 18 % located in groups, and 35 % situated in clusters.


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# 𝐽/Ψ suppression in an equilibrium hadron gas Talk based on the work done in collaboration with L.Turko [1]. Presented at the Cracow Epiphany Conference on Quarks and Gluons in Extreme Conditions, Cracow, Poland, January 3-6, 2002. Work partially supported by the Polish Committee for Scientific Research under contract KBN - 2 P03B 030 18.

## I Introduction

The existence of the so-called quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has been the one of the most intriguing questions of high energy physics for the almost two past decades. This novel state of matter has been predicted upon lattice QCD calculations (for a review see  and references therein) and the critical temperature $`T_c`$ for the ordinary hadron matter-QGP phase transition has been estimated in the range of 150 - 270 MeV (this corresponds to the broad range of the critical energy density $`ϵ_c0.265.5`$ GeV/fm3). Since NA50 Collaboration estimates for the energy density obtained in the central rapidity region (CRR) give the value of 3.5 GeV/fm3 for the most central Pb-Pb data point , it is argued that the region of the existence of the QGP has been reached in Pb-Pb collisions at CERN SPS. The main argument for the QGP creation during Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN SPS is the observation of the suppression of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ relative yield. $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression as a signal for the QGP formation was originally proposed by Matsui and Satz . The clue point of the NA50 Collaboration paper  is the figure (denoted as Fig.6 there), where experimental data for Pb-Pb collision values of $`\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }}{\sigma _{DY}}`$ (the ratio of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ to the Drell-Yan production cross-section times the branching ratio of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ into a muon pair) are presented together with some conventional predictions. Here, ”conventional” means that $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression is due to $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption in ordinary hadron matter. Since all those conventional curves saturate at high transverse energy $`E_T`$, but the experimental data fall from $`E_T`$ 90 GeV much lower and this behaviour could be reproduced on the base of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ disintegration in QGP , it is argued that QGP had to appear during most central Pb-Pb collisions. In general, the immediate reservation about such reasoning is that besides those already known (see e.g.  and references \[12-15\] in ), there could be a huge number of different conventional models, so until this subject is cleared up completely, no one is legitimate to ruled out the absorption picture of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression.

In the following talk, the more systematic and general description of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption in the framework of statistical analysis will be presented. The main features of the model are :

* 1. a multi-component non-interacting hadron gas appears in the CRR instead of the QGP;
* 2. the gas expands longitudinally and transversely;
* 3. $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression is the result of inelastic scattering on constituents of the gas and on nucleons of colliding ions.

## II The timetable of events in the CRR

For a given A-B collision $`t=0`$ is fixed at the moment of the maximal overlap of the nuclei (for more details see e.g. ). As nuclei pass each other charmonium states are produced as the result of gluon fusion. After half of the time the nuclei need to cross each other ($`t`$ 0.5 fm), matter appears in the CRR. It is assumed that the matter thermalizes almost immediately and the moment of thermalization, $`t_0`$, is estimated at about 1 fm . Then the matter begins its expansion and cooling and after reaching the freeze-out temperature, $`T_{f.o.}`$, it ceases as a thermodynamical system. The moment when the temperature has decreased to $`T_{f.o.}`$ is denoted as $`t_{f.o.}`$. Since the matter under consideration is the hadron gas, any phase transition does not take place during cooling here.

For the description of the evolution of the matter, relativistic hydrodynamic is explored. The longitudinal component of the solution of hydrodynamic equations (the exact analytic solution for an (1+1)-dimensional case) reads (for details see e.g. )

$$s(\tau )=\frac{s_0\tau _0}{\tau },n_B(\tau )=\frac{n_B^0\tau _0}{\tau },v_z=\frac{z}{t}$$
(1)
where $`\tau =\sqrt{t^2z^2}`$ is a local proper time, $`v_z`$ is the $`z`$-component of fluid velocity ($`z`$ is a collision axis) and $`s_0`$ and $`n_B^0`$ are initial densities of the entropy and the baryon number respectively. For $`n_B=0`$ and the uniform initial temperature distribution with the sharp edge at the border established by nuclei radii, the full solution of (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic equations is known . The evolution derived is the decomposition of the longitudinal expansion inside a slice bordered by the front of the rarefaction wave and the transverse expansion which is superimposed outside of the wave. Because small but nevertheless non-zero baryon number densities are considered here, the above-mentioned description of the evolution has to be treated as an assumption in the presented model. The rarefaction wave moves radially inward with a sound velocity $`c_s`$ (see Sect. IV).

## III  The multi-component hadron gas

For an ideal hadron gas in thermal and chemical equilibrium, which consists of $`l`$ species of particles (here, mesons are up to $`K_2^{}`$ and baryons up to $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$), energy density $`ϵ`$, baryon number density $`n_B`$, strangeness density $`n_S`$ and entropy density $`s`$ read ($`\mathrm{}=c=1`$ always)

$$ϵ=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(2s_i+1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p\frac{p^2E_i}{\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i\mu _i}{T}\right\}+g_i},$$
(3)
$$n_B=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(2s_i+1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p\frac{p^2B_i}{\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i\mu _i}{T}\right\}+g_i},$$
(4)
$$n_S=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(2s_i+1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p\frac{p^2S_i}{\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i\mu _i}{T}\right\}+g_i},$$
(5)
$$s=\frac{1}{6\pi ^2T^2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}(2s_i+1)_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p\frac{p^4}{E_i}\frac{(E_i\mu _i)\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i\mu _i}{T}\right\}}{\left(\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i\mu _i}{T}\right\}+g_i\right)^2},$$
(6)
where $`E_i=(m_i^2+p^2)^{1/2}`$ and $`m_i`$, $`B_i`$, $`S_i`$, $`\mu _i`$, $`s_i`$ and $`g_i`$ are the mass, baryon number, strangeness, chemical potential, spin and a statistical factor of specie $`i`$ respectively (an antiparticle is treated as a different specie). And $`\mu _i=B_i\mu _B+S_i\mu _S`$, where $`\mu _B`$ and $`\mu _S`$ are overall baryon number and strangeness chemical potentials respectively.

To obtain the time dependence of temperature and baryon number and strangeness chemical potentials one has to solve numerically equations (4 \- 6) with $`s`$, $`n_B`$ and $`n_S`$ given as time dependent quantities. For $`s(\tau )`$ and $`n_B(\tau )`$ expressions (1) are taken and $`n_S=0`$ since the overall strangeness equals zero during all the evolution (see Sect. V).

## IV The sound velocity in the multi-component hadron gas

In the hadron gas the sound velocity squared is given by the standard expression

$$c_s^2=\frac{P}{ϵ}.$$
(7)
Since the experimental data for heavy-ion collisions suggests that the baryon number density is non-zero in the CRR at AGS and SPS energies , we calculate the above derivative for various values of $`n_B`$ .

To estimate initial baryon number density $`n_B^0`$ we can use experimental results for S-S  or Au-Au  collisions. In the first approximation we can assume that the baryon multiplicity per unit rapidity in the CRR is proportional to the number of participating nucleons. For a sulphur-sulphur collision we have $`dN_B/dy6`$  and 64 participating nucleons. For the central collision of lead nuclei we can estimate the number of participating nucleons at $`2A=416`$, so we have $`dN_B/dy39`$. Having taken the initial volume in the CRR equal to $`\pi R_A^21`$ fm, we arrive at $`n_B^00.25`$ fm-3. This is some underestimation because the S-S collisions were at a beam energy of 200 GeV/nucleon, but Pb-Pb at 158 GeV/nucleon. From the Au-Au data extrapolation one can estimate $`n_B^00.65`$ fm-3 . These values are for central collisions. So, we estimate (7) for $`n_B=0.25,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.65}`$ fm-3 and additionally, to investigate the dependence on $`n_B`$ much carefully, for $`n_B=0.05`$ fm-3. The results of numerical evaluations of (7) are presented in Fig. 1. For comparison, we drew also two additional curves: for $`n_B=0`$ and for a pure massive pion gas. These curves are taken from .

The ”physical region” lies between more or less 100 and 200 MeV on the temperature axis. This is because the critical temperature for the possible QGP-hadronic matter transition is of the order of 200 MeV  and the freeze-out temperature should not be lower than 100 MeV . In low temperatures we can see completely different behaviours of cases with $`n_B=0`$ and $`n_B0`$. We think that this is caused by the fact that for $`n_B0`$ the gas density can not reach zero when $`T0`$, whereas for $`n_B=0`$ it can. For the higher temperatures all curves excluding the pion case behave in the same way qualitatively. From $`T70`$ MeV they decrease to their minima (for $`n_B=0.65`$ fm-3 at $`T219.6`$ MeV, for $`n_B=0.25`$ fm-3 at $`T202.5`$ MeV, for $`n_B=0.05`$ fm-3 at $`T183.4`$ MeV and for $`n_B=0`$ at $`T177.3`$ MeV) and then they increase to cover each other above $`T250`$ MeV.

To compare with the more realistic picture, we also calculated the sound velocity for the excluded volume multi-component hadron gas model (for details of the model see ). The gas consists of the same species of particles as in Sect. III. The radii of all particles are assumed to be the same and equal to 0.4 fm . The results are presented in Fig. 2. The most crucial new feature of the sound velocity is that it can be greater than 1 in some wide intervals of temperature. This has already been noticed , but for the case with baryon number and strangeness chemical potentials equal to zero. Note that now there is strong dependence of the sound velocity on the baryon number density, only cases with $`n_B=0.0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.05}`$ fm-3 have $`c_s^2`$ values comparable with the case of the point-like gas in the ”physical region” (cf. Fig. 1 and Fig. 2).

## V The pattern of cooling and its connection with the sound velocity

In Sect. III we have explained how to obtain the time dependence of the temperature of the longitudinally expanding hadron gas. This dependence proved to be very well approximated by the expression

$$T(\tau )T_0\tau ^a.$$
(8)
The above approximation is valid in the temperature ranges $`[T_{f.o.},T_0]`$, where $`T_{f.o.}100`$ MeV, $`T_0T_{0,max}`$ and $`T_{0,max}230`$ MeV. We started from $`T_0`$ equal to 227.2 MeV (for $`n_B^0=0.65`$ fm-3), 229.3 MeV (for $`n_B^0=0.25`$ fm-3) and 229.7 MeV (for $`n_B^0=0.05`$ fm-3). These values correspond to $`ϵ_0=5.0`$ GeV/fm3 (the initial energy density in the CRR has been estimated by NA50  at $`ϵ_0=3.5`$ GeV/fm3). Then we took several decreasing values of $`T_0<T_{0,max}`$. For every $`T_0`$ chosen we repeat the procedure of obtaining the approximation (8), i.e. the power $`a`$. The values of $`a`$ as a function of $`T_0`$ are depicted in Fig. 3 for the case of $`n_B=0.25`$ fm-3, together with the corresponding sound velocity curve. We can see that in the above-mentioned interval of temperature the power $`a`$ has the meaning of the sound velocity squared within quite well accuracy. We would like to stress that we arrived at the same conclusion also for cases with $`n_B=0.65`$ fm-3 and $`n_B=0.05`$ fm-3.

We can formulate the following conclusion: in the ”physical region” of temperature and for realistic baryon number densities, the longitudinal expansion given by (1) results in the cooling of the hadron gas described by (8) with $`a=c_s^2(T_0)`$, namely:

$$T(\tau )T_0\left(\frac{\tau _0}{\tau }\right)^{c_s^2(T_0)}$$
(9)
where $`T_0`$ belongs to the ”physical region”. Note that $`T(\tau )=T_0\left(\frac{\tau _0}{\tau }\right)^{c_s^2}`$ is the exact expression for a baryonless gas with the sound velocity constant (for details see ). It should be stressed that $`c_s^2`$ in (9) is constant only for the particular cooling from a given $`T_0`$. For different $`T_0`$ the value of $`c_s^2`$ in (9) will change appropriately, that is to the value of $`c_s^2`$ in the hadron gas with the temperature equal to this new $`T_0`$. The approximation (9) will be used to simplify evaluations of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factors in next sections.

It should be added that for the excluded volume hadron gas model the above-mentioned conclusion is no longer valid. We did the appropriate simulations, but approximations of $`T(\tau )`$ by a power function were much worse and values of the power obtained were a factor 2 lower than the square of the velocity of sound.

## VI $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption in the expanding hadronic gas

As it has been already mentioned in Sect. II charmonium states are produced in the beginning of the collision, when nuclei overlap. For simplicity, it is assumed that the production of $`c\overline{c}`$ states takes place at $`t=0`$. To describe $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption quantitatively, the idea of  is generalized to the case of the multi-component massive gas, here. Since in the CRR longitudinal momenta of particles are much lower than transverse ones (in the c.m.s. frame of nuclei), $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ longitudinal momentum is put at zero. Additionally, only the plane $`z=0`$ is under consideration, here. For the simplicity of the model, it is assumed that all charmonium states are completely formed and can be absorbed by the constituents of a surrounding medium from the moment of creation. The absorption is the result of a $`c\overline{c}`$ state inelastic scattering on the constituents of the hadron gas through interactions of the type

$$c\overline{c}+hD+\overline{D}+X,$$
(10)
where $`h`$ denotes a hadron, $`D`$ is a charm meson and $`X`$ means a particle which is necessary to conserve the charge, baryon number or strangeness.

Since the most crucial for the problem of QGP existence are Pb-Pb collisions (see remarks in Sect. I), the further considerations are done for this case. So, for the Pb-Pb collision at impact parameter $`b`$, the situation in the plane $`z=0`$ is presented in Fig. 4, where $`S_{eff}`$ means the area of the overlap of the colliding nuclei.

Additionally, it is assumed that the hadron gas, which appears in the space between the nuclei after they have crossed each other, also has the shape of $`S_{eff}`$ at $`t_0`$ in the plane $`z=0`$. Then, the transverse expansion starts in the form of the rarefaction wave moving inward $`S_{eff}`$ at $`t_0`$.

From the considerations based on the relativistic kinetic equation (for details see ), the survival fraction of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ in the hadron gas as a function of the initial energy density $`ϵ_0`$ in the CRR is obtained:

$$𝒩_{h.g.}(ϵ_0)=𝑑p_Tg(p_T,ϵ_0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{_{t_0}^{t_{final}}𝑑t\underset{i=1}{\overset{l}{}}\frac{d^3\stackrel{}{q}}{(2\pi )^3}f_i(\stackrel{}{q},t)\sigma _iv_{rel,i}\frac{p_\nu q_i^\nu }{EE_i^{}}\right\},$$
(11)
where the sum is over all taken species of scatters (hadrons), $`p^\nu =(E,\stackrel{}{p}_T)`$ and $`q_i^\nu =(E_i^{},\stackrel{}{q})`$ are four momenta of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and hadron specie $`i`$ respectively, $`\sigma _i`$ states for the absorption cross-section of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }h_i`$ scattering, $`v_{rel,i}`$ is the relative velocity of $`h_i`$ hadron with respect to $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`M`$ and $`m_i`$ denote $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`h_i`$ masses respectively ($`M=3097`$ MeV). The function $`g(p_T,ϵ_0)`$ is the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ initial momentum distribution. It has a gaussian form and reflects gluon multiple elastic scatterings on nucleons before their fusion into a $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ in the first stage of the collision . The upper limit of the integration over time in (11), namely $`t_{final}`$ is the minimal value of $`t_{esc}`$ and $`t_{f.o.}`$. The quantity $`t_{esc}`$ is the average time of the escape of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$’s from the hadron medium for given values of $`b`$ and $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ velocity $`\stackrel{}{v}=\stackrel{}{p}_T/E`$. Note that the average is taken with the weight

$$p_{J/\mathrm{\Psi }}(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{T_A(\stackrel{}{r})T_B(\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{b})}{T_{AB}(b)},$$
(12)
where $`T_{AB}(b)=d^2\stackrel{}{s}T_A(\stackrel{}{s})T_B(\stackrel{}{s}\stackrel{}{b})`$, $`T_A(\stackrel{}{s})=𝑑z\rho _A(\stackrel{}{s},z)`$ and $`\rho _A(\stackrel{}{s},z)`$ is the nuclear matter density distribution. For the last quantity, the Woods-Saxon nuclear matter density distribution with parameters from  is taken. In the integration over hadron momentum in (11) the threshold for the reaction (10) is included, i.e. $`\sigma _i`$ equals zero for $`(p^\nu +q_i^\nu )^2<(2m_D+m_X)^2`$ and is constant elsewhere ($`m_D`$ is a charm meson mass, $`m_D=1867`$ MeV). Also the usual Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac distribution for hadron specie $`i`$ is used in (11)

$$f_i(\stackrel{}{q},t)=f_i(q,t)=\frac{2s_i+1}{\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{E_i^{}\mu _i(t)}{T(t)}\right\}+g_i}.$$
(13)
For simplicity, we use (9) as the approximation to $`T(t)`$ in (13) and $`\mu _B(t)`$ and $`\mu _S(t)`$ are solutions of only two equations (4 \- 5) with $`T`$ given by (9), $`n_B(t)`$ by (1) and $`n_S(t)=0`$.

As far as $`\sigma _i`$ is concerned, there are no data for every particular $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }h_i`$ scattering. Therefore, only two types of the cross-section, the first, $`\sigma _b`$, for $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }baryon`$ scattering and the second, $`\sigma _m`$, for $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }meson`$ scattering are assumed, here. In the model presented $`\sigma _b`$ is put at $`\sigma _{J/\psi N}`$ — $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }Nucleon`$ absorption cross-section. And values of $`\sigma _{J/\psi N}`$ in the range of 3-5 mb are taken from p-A data . The $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }meson`$ cross-section $`\sigma _m`$ is assumed to be 2/3 of $`\sigma _b`$, which is due to the quark counting.

As it has been already suggested  also $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ scattering in nuclear matter should be included in any $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption model. This could be done with the introduction of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor in nuclear matter

$$𝒩_{n.m.}(ϵ_0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{\sigma _{J/\psi N}\rho _0L\right\},$$
(14)
where $`\rho _0`$ is the nuclear matter density and $`L`$ the mean path length of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ through the colliding nuclei. The length $`L`$ is expressed by the following formula :

$$\rho _0L(b)=\frac{1}{2T_{AB}}d^2\stackrel{}{s}T_A(\stackrel{}{s})T_B(\stackrel{}{s}\stackrel{}{b})\left[\frac{A1}{A}T_A(\stackrel{}{s})+\frac{B1}{B}T_B(\stackrel{}{s}\stackrel{}{b})\right].$$
(15)
Since $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorptions: in nuclear matter and in the hadron gas, are separate in time, $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor for a heavy-ion collision with the initial energy density $`ϵ_0`$, could be defined as

$$𝒩(ϵ_0)=𝒩_{n.m.}(ϵ_0)𝒩_{h.g.}(ϵ_0).$$
(16)
Note that since right sides of (11) and (14) include parts which depend on impact parameter $`b`$ and the left sides are functions of $`ϵ_0`$ only, the expression converting the first quantity to the second (or reverse) should be given. This is done with the use of the dependence of $`ϵ_0`$ on the transverse energy $`E_T`$ extracted from NA50 data  (for details see ).

To make the model as much realistic as possible, one should keep in mind that only about $`60\%`$ of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$’s measured are directly produced during collision. The rest is the result of $`\chi `$ ($`30\%`$) and $`\psi ^{}`$ ($`10\%`$) decay . Therefore the realistic $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor could be expressed as

$$𝒩(ϵ_0)=0.6𝒩_{J/\psi }(ϵ_0)+0.3𝒩_\chi (ϵ_0)+0.1𝒩_\psi ^{}(ϵ_0),$$
(17)
where $`𝒩_{J/\psi }(ϵ_0)`$, $`𝒩_\chi (ϵ_0)`$ and $`𝒩_\psi ^{}(ϵ_0)`$ are given also by formulae (11), (14) and (16) but with $`g(p_T,ϵ_0)`$, $`\sigma _{J/\psi N}`$ and $`M`$ changed appropriately (for details see ).

To complete, also values of cross-sections for $`\chi baryon`$ and $`\psi ^{}baryon`$ scatterings are needed. For simplicity, it is assumed that both these cross-sections are equal to $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }baryon`$ one. Since $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is smaller than $`\chi `$ or $`\psi ^{}`$, this means that $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression evaluated according to (17) is underestimated here.

## VII  Results

Now we can complete calculations of formula (11) for values of $`n_B^0`$ given in Sect. IV. The last parameter of the model is the freeze-out temperature. Two values $`T_{f.o.}=100,140`$ MeV are taken here and they agree well with estimates based on hadron yields .

Firstly, formula (17) with the use of (11) only instead of (16) is calculated for the case of (1+1)-dimensional expansion and results are presented in Figs. 6-6.

For comparison, also the experimental data are shown in Figs. 6-6. The experimental survival factor is defined as

$$𝒩_{exp}=\frac{\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }^{AB}}{\sigma _{DY}^{AB}}}{\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }^{pp}}{\sigma _{DY}^{pp}}},$$
(18)
where $`\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }^{AB(pp)}}{\sigma _{DY}^{AB(pp)}}`$ is the ratio of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ to the Drell-Yan production cross-section in A-B(p-p) interactions times the branching ratio of the $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ into a muon pair. The values of the ratio for p-p, S-U and Pb-Pb are taken from . The results of numerical evaluations of (17) agree well with the data for greater baryonic cross-section $`\sigma _b`$ and (or) for the lower freeze-out temperature $`T_{f.o.}`$, except the last point measured for the highest $`E_T`$ bin.

Now the full (3+1)-dimensional hydrodynamic evolution (in the form described in Sect. II) and $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption in nuclear matter will be taken into account and results are depicted in Figs. 8-8. To draw also S-U data together with Pb-Pb ones, instead of multiplying $`𝒩_{h.g.}`$ by $`𝒩_{n.m.}`$, $`𝒩_{exp}`$ is divided by $`𝒩_{n.m.}`$, i.e. ”the experimental $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ hadron gas survival factor” is defined as

$$\stackrel{~}{𝒩}_{exp}=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\sigma _{J/\psi N}\rho _0L\right\}𝒩_{exp},$$
(19)
and values of this factor are drawn in Figs. 8-8 as the experimental data. The quantity $`r_0`$ is a parameter from the expression for a nucleus radius $`R_A=r_0A^{\frac{1}{3}}`$. The value of $`R_A`$ is used to fix the initial position of the rarefaction wave in the evaluation of $`t_{esc}`$ in (11). It has turned out that the case of $`n_B^0=0.05`$ fm-3 does not differ substantially from that of $`n_B^0=0.25`$ fm-3, so curves for $`n_B^0=0.05`$ fm-3 are not depicted in Figs. 8-8.

Having compared Figs. 8-8 with Figs. 6-6, one can see that adding the transverse expansion changes the final (theoretical) pattern of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression qualitatively. Now the curves for the case including the transverse expansion are not convex, in opposite to the case with the longitudinal expansion only, where the curves are. As far as the pattern of suppression is concerned, theoretical curves do not fall steep enough at high $`ϵ_0`$ to cover the data area. But for some choice of parameters, namely for $`\sigma _b`$ somewhere between 4 and 5 mb and for $`r_0=1.12`$ fm, a quite satisfactory curve could have been obtained. Precisely, again only the highest $`E_T`$ bin point falls down of the range of theoretical estimates completely. But the error bar of this point is very wide. And also the contradiction in positions of the last three points of the 1998 data can be seen. This means that the high $`E_T`$ region should be measured once more with the better accuracy to state definitely whether the abrupt fall of the experimental survival factor takes place or not there.

To support the conclusion, main results from Figs. 8-8 are presented in Fig. 9 again. The original data  for $`\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }^{PbPb}}{\sigma _{DY}^{PbPb}}`$ and $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factors given by (17) multiplied by $`\frac{B_{\mu \mu }\sigma _{J/\psi }^{pp}}{\sigma _{DY}^{pp}}`$ and now as functions of $`E_T`$ are depicted there (for details see ).

As it has been already mentioned, the main disagreement with the data appears in the last experimental point of the 1998 analysis.

The $`charmoniumbaryon`$ inelastic cross-section is the most crucial parameter in the model presented. So to be sure what is the exact result of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ absorption, one should know how this cross-section behaves in the hot hadron environment. The newest estimations of $`\pi +J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$, $`\rho +J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }+N`$ cross-sections at high invariant collision energies  give values of $`\sigma _b`$ and $`\sigma _m`$ of the same order as assumed here. Also it should be stressed that the $`charmoniumhadron`$ inelastic cross-sections are considered as constant quantities in the model presented. But, as the results of just mentioned papers suggest, they are not constant at all. The cross-sections are growing functions of the invariant collision energy $`\sqrt{s}`$. Therefore, one could think naively that the increase of $`ϵ_0`$ (or in other words $`E_T`$) causes the increase of the invariant collision energy $`\sqrt{s}`$ on the average and further the increase of the $`charmoniumhadron`$ inelastic cross-sections. In this way, the line describing $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor could be placed close to the solid curve of Fig. 9 for low $`ϵ_0`$ ($`E_T`$), and then, as the $`charmoniumhadron`$ inelastic cross-sections increase, this line would go closer to the dashed curve of Fig. 9 for high $`ϵ_0`$ ($`E_T`$). So, the experimental pattern of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression could be recovered.

## VIII  The suppression in the hadron matter described by the excluded volume gas model

As a last remark an extension to the point-like gas model will be discused. The rough estimation of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression in the framework of the excluded volume gas model  will be presented now. The estimation done suggests that $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression is much lower in the gas of particles with hard core radii than in the point-like one. There are two main reasons for such behaviour:

* 1. the freeze-out time resulting from the longitudinal expansion only, is much shorter for the excluded volume gas than for the point-like one, namely for $`n_B^0=0.25`$ fm-3, $`T_{f.o.}=140`$ MeV and $`ϵ_0=3.5`$ GeV/fm3 one obtains $`t_{f.o.}^{ex.v.}9.4`$ fm and $`t_{f.o.}^{p.l}15.1`$ fm (”$`ex.v.`$” means ”excluded volume” and ”$`p.l.`$” ”point-like”);
* 2. the initial particle density is much lower for the excluded volume gas than for the point-like one, that is $`n_0^{ex.v.}=0.8`$ fm-3 and $`n_0^{p.l.}=2.6`$ fm-3.

To estimate how these two facts influence $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor the very rough approximation to (11) is explored. If the transverse expansion, particle masses and thresholds are neglected, then (11) takes the following very simple form:

$$𝒩_{h.g.}=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\sigma n_0t_0\mathrm{ln}\frac{t_{f.o.}}{t_0}\right\},$$
(20)
where $`\sigma `$ means one common cross-section for all particles. So, for values of $`t_{f.o.}^{p.l}`$, $`t_{f.o.}^{ex.v.}`$ and $`n_0^{p.l.}`$, $`n_0^{ex.v.}`$ given above and for $`\sigma =\sigma _m=3.33`$ mb one obtains:

$$𝒩_{h.g.}^{p.l.}0.1,𝒩_{h.g.}^{ex.v.}0.6.$$
(21)
For comparison $`𝒩_{exp}=0.10.2`$ there. Therefore, $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ survival factor evaluated for the excluded volume gas model is far above experimentally allowed values. This means that $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression in a hadron gas is very much model dependent.

## IX  Conclusions

To sum up and to stress how vague the idea of $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression as a signal of QGP is, the author would like to call reader’s attention to Fig.5 of . The solid and dotted curves in that figure are exactly the same as curves just presented in Fig. 9. But the distortion in the QGP is the main reason for $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression in ! It is also stated there, that results shown ”provide evidence for the production of the quark-gluon plasma in central high-energy Pb-Pb collisions”. So, one could say as well that the NA50 Pb-Pb data provides evidence for the production of the thermalized and confined hadron gas in the central rapidity region of a Pb-Pb collision. But estimations done in Sect. VIII have just shown that it could not be true.

Therefore, the final conclusion is the following: $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ suppression is not a good signal for the quark-gluon plasma appearance at a central heavy-ion collision.


text:
# Aging in an infinite-range Hamiltonian system of coupled rotators

## Abstract

We analyze numerically the out-of-equilibrium relaxation dynamics of a long-range Hamiltonian system of $`N`$ fully coupled rotators. For a particular family of initial conditions, this system is known to enter a particular regime in which the dynamic behavior does not agree with thermodynamic predictions. Moreover, there is evidence that in the thermodynamic limit, when $`N\mathrm{}`$ is taken prior to $`t\mathrm{}`$, the system will never attain true equilibrium. By analyzing the scaling properties of the two-time autocorrelation function we find that, in that regime, a very complex dynamics unfolds, in which aging phenomena appear. The scaling law strongly suggests that the system behaves in a complex way, relaxing towards equilibrium through intricate trajectories. The present results are obtained for conservative dynamics, where there is no thermal bath in contact with the system. This is the first time that aging is observed in such Hamiltonian systems.

At the very foundations of statistical mechanics, there are still some hypotheses whose validity rests merely on the extrapolation of observational facts and that have to be justified a posteriori. Among them, let us mention two assumptions that are intimately related to the issue addressed in this paper. The first one refers to the introduction of a probabilistic description of the evolution of a physical system. The second is related to the mechanical specifications that a system must fulfill so that the results of statistical mechanics can be applied . These two points are closely related to the fundamental problem of establishing a connection between the dynamical behavior of a system, described by the Hamiltonian $`H`$, and its thermodynamics. In that sense, statistical mechanics requires the existence of adequate conditions allowing to replace the dynamical temporal predictions by a probabilistic ensemble calculation that yields the correct equilibrium mean value of the relevant quantities.

A very fast relaxation and a high degree of chaos and mixing are usually required in order to guarantee that a system orbit will cover most of its phase space in a short time. These questions have been extensively investigated for low dimensional systems, whereas, for extended systems, with infinite degrees of freedom, the matter is still far from settled .

Due to the analytical and numerical efforts of many authors, it is today a well established fact that even very simple models, when analyzed in the thermodynamical limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, can yield results that bring to surface central questions about the foundations of statistical mechanics. In particular, in this work, we will concentrate on an infinite-range (mean-field) Hamiltonian system that, despite its simplicity, exhibits a very peculiar dynamical behavior: depending on the initial preparation of the system its evolution can get trapped into trajectories that will prevent the system from attaining equilibrium in finite time when the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit is taken before the $`t\mathrm{}`$ limit . Unlike most models that display complex macroscopic behavior, this infinite-range model includes neither randomness nor frustration in its microscopic interactions. Furthermore, on one hand it can be exactly solved in the canonical ensemble, while on the other hand it can be efficiently integrated in the microcanonical ensemble. In that sense, it is an excellent starting point for analyzing the above mentioned basic questions.

The system consists of $`N`$ fully coupled rotators whose dynamics is described by the following Hamiltonian:

$$=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i}{}L_i^2+\frac{1}{2N}\underset{i,j}{}\left[1\mathrm{cos}(\theta _i\theta _j)\right]K+V.$$
(1)
It is worth mentioning that this is a rescaled version of a nonextensive infinite-range Hamiltonian . However, both of them share the same dynamical behavior after appropriate rescaling of the dynamic variables.

In Fig. 1, we display the plot, $`T`$ vs. $`U`$, where $`T=2K/N`$ is the temperature and $`U=(K+V)/N`$ is the total energy per particle. The solid line corresponds to the canonical calculations , which predict a second-order transition at $`U_c=0.75`$. Above $`U_c`$ constant specific heat is found and below $`U_c`$ the system orders in a clustered phase. The symbols correspond to the numerical results obtained by integrating the equations of motion for $`N=1000,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}5000}`$ rotators and until $`t=1000`$. The system is initially prepared in a “water-bag” configuration, that is, all the angles are set to zero while the momenta are randomly chosen from an uniform distribution such that the system has total energy $`NU`$. By measuring the nonequilibrium temperature (or equivalently the magnetization) of a system started in these out-of-equilibrium initial conditions, one observes that, for a range of energy values below the transition, the system enters in a quasistationary regime characterized by a mean kinetic energy that varies very slowly. Moreover, the value of this non-equilibrium temperature remains different from that predicted by canonical calculations. Actually, standard equilibrium is attained only after a time which grows with the size of the system, hence an infinite system will never reach true equilibrium . In the quasistationary regime preceding equilibrium, trajectories are non-ergodic and the dynamics is weakly chaotic with Lyapunov exponent vanishing in the thermodynamic limit .

It is our objective here to show that the discrepancy between the results drawn from the dynamics and those derived from the canonical ensemble is closely associated to the presence of strong long-term memory effects and slow relaxation dynamics, a phenomenon usually named aging. Aging is one of the most striking features in the off-equilibrium dynamics of complex systems. It refers to the presence of strong memory effects spanning time lengths that in some cases exceed any available observational time. Although aging has been seen in a wide variety of contexts and systems , some of them, actually very simple ones , it is perhaps in the realm of spin glass dynamics where a systematic study of these phenomena has been carried out (see Ref.,  and references therein). Systems that age can be classified into dynamical universality classes according to the scaling properties of their relaxation function. Moreover, these scaling properties contribute to a quantitative description of complex phenomena, even in cases where a general theory is lacking .

Aging can be characterized by measuring the two-time autocorrelation function along the system trajectories. If the state of the system in phase space can be completely characterized giving a state vector $`\stackrel{}{x}`$, then the two-time autocorrelation function is defined as follows:

$$C(t+t_w,t_w)=\frac{\stackrel{}{x}(t+t_w)\stackrel{}{x}(t_w)\stackrel{}{x}(t+t_w)\stackrel{}{x}(t_w)}{\sigma _{t+t_w}\sigma _{t_w}},$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _t^{}`$ are standard deviations and the symbol $`\mathrm{}`$ stands for average over several realizations of the dynamics. In the case of a Hamiltonian system with $`N`$ degrees of freedom, the state vector is decomposed in coordinates and their conjugate momenta, therefore we establish the following notation: $`\stackrel{}{x}(\stackrel{}{\theta },\stackrel{}{L})`$.

For systems that have attained “true” thermodynamical equilibrium, only time differences make physical sense when calculating relaxation quantities. In this case, it is expected that on an average the system will show only very short memory of past configurations. However, for systems exhibiting aging, a complex time dependence is observed in the behavior of $`C(t+t_w,t_w)`$, indicating long-term memory effects. In such a case, even at macroscopic time scales, the two-time autocorrelation function shows an explicit dependence on both times ($`t`$ and $`t_w`$) together with a slow relaxation regime.

In order to integrate the motion equations numerically, we employed a fourth order symplectic method  with a fixed time step selected so as to keep a constant value of the energy within a relative error $`\mathrm{\Delta }E/E`$ of order $`10^4`$. All the simulations were started from the water-bag initial conditions explained above.

In Fig. 2, we present the results of the numerical calculation of the two-time autocorrelation function (2) for $`U=0.69`$. This value of the energy together with the water-bag initial conditions set the system into a particular dynamical regime, in which ensemble discrepancy is more pronounced when finite size results are extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit. In the graph, features usual of aging phenomena can be distinguished. For a given $`t_w`$ the system first enters a quasiequilibrium stage, in the sense that temporal translational invariance holds, with $`C(t+t_w,t_w)`$ 1, up to a time of order $`t_w`$. After that, the system enters a second relaxation characterized by a slow power law decay and a strong dependence on both times. This phenomenology can be clearly seen in the curves for the largest $`t_w`$’s.

In Fig. 3, we show the best data collapse for the long-time behavior of the autocorrelation function, using the data of Fig. 2 corresponding to the three largest waiting times ($`t_w=2048`$, $`8192`$, and $`32768`$). The resulting scaling law clearly indicates that for the whole range of values of $`t/t_w`$ considered:

$$C(t+t_w,t_w)=f\left(\frac{t}{t_w^\beta }\right),$$
(3)
where $`f(t/t_w^\beta )(t/t_w^\beta )^\lambda `$. It is worth mentioning that this scaling is the same as observed experimentally in spin glass systems . The values obtained for the scaling parameters are $`\beta 0.90`$ and $`\lambda 0.74`$. In the inset, we exhibit an alternative representation of the data which yields a linear plot. It corresponds to $`\mathrm{ln}_q[C(t+t_w,t_w)]`$ vs. $`t/t_w^\beta `$, where the function $`\mathrm{ln}_q(x)`$, named $`q`$-logarithm, is defined as follows :

$$\mathrm{ln}_q(x)=\frac{x^{1q}1}{1q}.$$
(4)
In this expression, $`q=1+1/\lambda `$, which for the data in Fig. 2, yields $`q2.35`$. Therefore, we can obtain a complete functional form of the autocorrelation function valid over the whole range of the scaling variable $`t/t_w^\beta `$ just by identifying the function $`f(x)`$ in Eq. (3) with the inverse of $`\mathrm{ln}_q(x)`$, that is, the $`q`$-exponential :

$$f(x)e_q^x=\left[1(1q)x\right]^{\frac{1}{1q}},$$
(5)
which naturally arises within the nonextensive statistics introduced by Tsallis inspired by the probabilistic description of multi-fractal geometries . The same qualitative behavior has been observed for other systems sizes, namely $`N=500,2000`$.

This aging scenario contrasts with the time invariant behavior observed within the high energy phase, where no quasistationary regime is detected. In fact, let us discuss Fig. 4 where we present the results of the calculation of the two-time autocorrelation function (2) for $`U=5.0`$, well above the second order phase transition (i.e., inside the homogeneous phase), with water-bag initial conditions. What we observe here is essentially that the autocorrelation function depends on the two times only through their difference, that is, $`C(t+t_w,t_w)C(t)`$. Therefore, the presence of aging is related to the existence of quasistationary states. It is important to emphasize that, although the dynamics presents temporal translational invariance in the high energy regime, the relaxation of the system is very slow.

There is nowadays growing evidence that aging is a very common dynamical phenomenon, associated to a great variety of physical systems. So far, there are two scenarios within which aging can emerge. On the one hand, the onset of aging in many systems derives from the presence of coarsening processes that give place to critical slowing down of the dynamics. In this case the scaling law of the two-time autocorrelation function is ruled by the following expression

$$C(t+t_w,t_w)f\left(L(t)/L(t_w)\right),$$
(6)
where $`L(t)`$ is the mean linear size of the domains at time $`t`$ . On the other hand, aging also appears as a onsequence of weak ergodicity breaking  and it is related to the complex fractal structure of the region of phase space that the system explores in time. This is the case, for instance, in the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model and other spin glass models in which the complexity of the energy landscape is associated to a certain degree of randomness and/or frustration in the Hamiltonian.

What is particularly remarkable in this work is the appearance of a complex aging behavior in a mean-field model lacking both randomness and frustration. Since the model we are analyzing in this paper is an infinite-range one, such as the SK model, a coarsening scenario has to be ruled out from the outset. Furthermore, all our results are obtained in a conservative system without any thermal bath in contact with it.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the scaling law found for the two-time autocorrelation functions below the transition, where a quasistationary regime is detected, points to a scenario very similar to that observed in spin glasses . As occurs in spin glasses, there is weak breakdown of ergodicity which is consistent with the observation of weakly chaotic orbits, i.e., with a vanishing Lyapunov exponent in the thermodynamic limit . Drawing the analogy with spin glasses even further, our results seem to confirm that the system visits phase space confined inside very intricate trajectories (presumably nonergodic). This conjecture is also supported by features observed in $`\mu `$ space . The fact that the relaxation of the two-time autocorrelation function can be well fitted by a $`q`$-exponential decay over the whole range of $`t/t_w`$ deserves further investigation. Although a possible connection with nonextensive statistics  is still not clear, we believe that it would be interesting to examine this possibility.

In summary, in this paper we have characterized the slow relaxation dynamics of a long-range Hamiltonian system through its aging dynamics. Our observation of the existence of aging in this Hamiltonian system and its characterization by scaling properties reminiscent of spin glasses is a result that can contribute to establish a unified frame for the discussion of the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of systems with many degrees of freedom.

We thank Constantino Tsallis for very stimulating discussions. We also want to thank Andrea Rapisarda, Vito Latora, Alessandro Pluchino and Raul O. Vallejos for very useful comments. This work was partially supported by grants from CONICET (Argentina), Agencia Córdoba Ciencia (Argentina), SEYCT/UNC (Córdoba, Argentina), and FAPERJ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).


text:
# Nanotube diameter optimal for channeling of high-energy particle beam

## 1  Introduction

Bent crystals have been efficiently used for channeling of particle beams at accelerators  in the energy range spanning six decades, from 3 MeV  to 900 GeV . Currently, bent crystals are largely used for extraction of 70- GeV protons at IHEP (Protvino) with efficiency reaching 85% at intensity well over 1012 particle per second, steered by silicon crystal of just 2 mm in length . A bent crystal (5 mm Si) is installed into Yellow ring of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider where it channels Au ions and polarised protons of 100-250 GeV/u as a part of the collimation system .

Since 1991 , here has been a lot of study on carbon nanotubes to understand their formation and properties. Carbon nanotubes stick out in the field of nanostructures, owing to their exceptional mechanical, capillarity, electronic transport and superconducting properties \[7-9\]. They are cylindrical molecules with a diameter of order 1 nm and a length of many microns . They are made of carbon atoms and can be thought of as a graphene sheet rolled around a cylinder . Creating efficient channeling structures - from single crystals to epitaxial layers  to nanotubes - might have a significant effect onto the accelerator world. It is well known that nanotubes can be manufactured of different diameter - from a fraction of nm up to microns, of different length - from tens of microns up to millimeters, of different material - usually carbon but also others . This makes nanotubes a very interesting object for channeling research.

It has been shown in refs. \[13-15\] that in a carbon nanotube the channeled particles are confined in a potential well $`U(\rho ,\varphi )`$ with the depth $`U_0`$ of about 60 eV. The critical angle for channeling is then $`\theta _c=(2U_0/pv)^{1/2}`$, $`pv`$ is the particle momentum times velocity. In a nanotube bent with radius $`R`$, similarly to bent crystals , an effective potential taking into account a centrifugal term $`pvx/R`$ is introduced : $`U_{eff}(\rho ,\varphi )=U(\rho ,\varphi )+pvx/R`$, where $`x=\rho \mathrm{cos}(\varphi )`$ is the coordinate in the direction of bending. As shown in , a carbon nanotube of 1.4 nm diameter has a significant effective potential well $`U_{eff}`$ even for bendings equivalent to $``$300 Tesla or $`pv/R`$ 1 GeV/cm, i.e. bent nanotubes can be comparable to (110) and (111) channels in silicon crystal commonly used in crystal channeling applications.

The present work is devoted to Monte Carlo simulation of particle channeling in bent single-wall nanotubes, aimed at finding how useful are the nanotubes for channeling of positively-charged particle beams, what kind of nanotubes are efficient for this job, and how nanotubes compare with crystals in this regard.

Two mechanisms of particle transfer from channeled to random states are well known for crystals: scattering on electrons and nuclei and curvature of the channel . Typical nanotube is on the order of 0.1 mm in length at present. For such a short channel, the scattering on electrons within the bulk of the tube is quite small. However, a curvature of the tube could quickly (in less than one oscillation) bring much of the channeled particles out of the potential well or into close collisions with the nuclei of the nanotube walls.

## 2 Simulation model

In order to assess the general properties of channeling in nanotubes, we average the potential $`U(\rho ,\varphi ,z)`$ of a straight nanotube over the longitudinal coordinate $`z`$ and angle $`\varphi `$ to obtain a potential $`U(\rho )`$ with cylinder symmetry. As known from crystal channeling, the averaging over $`z`$ is well justified as a collision of a particle with a nanotube wall under a glancing angle does involve many thousand atoms along the particle trajectory. For the same reason, the averaging over $`\varphi `$ is equally justified if the nanotube has arbitrary helicity  as defined by nanotube indices (m, n). In the special cases of zigzag (m=0) or armchair (m=n) nanotubes, the wall consists of atomic rows parallel to the nanotube axis; the nanotube potential is then defined by the sum of potentials of the rows. However, even in these cases the averaged potential $`U(\rho )`$ is significantly different from $`U(\rho ,\varphi )`$ only in rather close vicinity from the wall, $``$0.1 nm , where scattering on the wall nuclei is also important. Further on in the paper we apply only the averaged potential $`U(\rho )`$ for a straight nanotube.

We use so-called standard potential introduced by Lindhard . When averaged over ($`\varphi ,z`$), it is described by :

$$U(\rho )=\frac{4NZ_1Z_2e^2}{3a}\mathrm{ln}(\frac{r^2+\rho ^2+3a_S^2+\sqrt{(r^2+\rho ^2+3a_S^2)^24r^2\rho ^2}}{2r^2})$$
(1)
Here $`Z_1e,Z_2e`$ are the charges of the incident particle and the nanotube nuclei respectively, $`N`$ is the number of elementary periods along the tube perimeter, $`a`$=0.142 nm is the carbon bond length; the nanotube radius is $`r=Na\sqrt{3}/2\pi `$ .

The screening distance $`a_S`$ is related to the Bohr radius $`a_B`$ by

$$a_S=\frac{a_B}{2}(\frac{3\pi }{4(Z_1^{1/2}+Z_2^{1/2})})^{2/3}$$
(2)
In a tube bent along the $`x`$ direction, the motion of a particle is described by the equations

$$pv\frac{d^2x}{dz^2}+\frac{dU(\rho )}{dx}+\frac{pv}{R(z)}=0$$
(3)
$$pv\frac{d^2y}{dz^2}+\frac{dU(\rho )}{dy}=0$$
(4)
where $`\rho ^2=x^2+y^2`$. This takes into account only the nanotube potential and the centrifugal potential. Any particle within close distance, order of $`a_S`$, from the wall (where density of the nuclei is significant) is also strongly affected by the nuclear scattering.

## 3 Optimisation of nanotube

We did look in simulations how channeled particles survive in nanotubes of different curvatures and diameters. Figure 1 shows three examples of trajectories for 1-GeV protons channeled in carbon nanotubes of 1.1, 2.2, and 4.4 nm diameter, bent with the same curvature radius 1 cm. The range of transverse coordinate $`x`$ where channeled particles are localised in the tube is about 0.5 nm in each of the three cases. Taking into account different diameters of the tubes, these examples suggest that whereas the narrow tube is mostly filled with channeled particles, the wider tubes are nearly empty. The centrifugal force kills channeling in most of the wide-tube cross-section where there is no field to guide the particles.

To make a nanotube an efficient channeling structure, we must optimise the nanotube diameter with respect to the curvature of the nanotube. It is rather easy to understand the match between the diameter and the curvature. In the time needed for channeled particle to cross the nanotube (which is in proportion to the diameter), the angular orientation of the bent tube should not change by more than the critical angle $`\theta _c`$, otherwise – if particle comes to the wall with an angle greater than $`\theta _c`$ – it will cross the wall and become dechanneled.

Figure 2 gives another simple explanation. The top of the figure shows the potential well $`U(\rho )`$ for tubes of different diameter $`d`$; the depth $`U_0`$ of each well is the same. The bottom of the figure illustrates the effective potential $`U_{eff}(x)=U(x)+pvx/R`$ of the same tubes bent with radius $`R`$ for particles of momentum $`p`$. Only minor part of the wide well $`U_{eff}`$ can confine the channeled particles. If the change in the centrifugal potential $`pv/R`$ over the tube diameter $`d`$ is much greater than $`U_0`$, certainly the tube is inefficient. So a rough estimate for the optimal diameter $`d_{opt}`$ will come from the relation $`(pv/R)dU_0`$, that is $`d_{opt}RU_0/pv`$.

We can rewrite it using an equivalent magnetic field $`H_{eq}`$ corresponding to $`pv/R`$ ratio:

$$d_{opt}1.8\mathrm{nm}\frac{100\mathrm{T}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{a}}{H_{eq}}$$

and substituting $`U_0`$ 60 eV for the carbon nanotube. The typical range for $`H_{eq}`$ as used in bent crystal channeling is 30-300 Tesla (the respective range of pv/R is 0.1-1.0 GeV/cm), and can be as much as $``$1000 Tesla with silicon (and 2-3 times higher with Ge and W). For nanotubes working in the same $`H_{eq}`$ range, 30-300 Tesla, the diameter should be in the range 0.6-6 nm. The stronger field we want to use for beam steering, the thinner channel (nanotube) should be. Interestingly, the range of 0.6-6 nm is just about the typical range of easily manufactured carbon nanotubes.

We also have to conclude that wider nanotubes, like $``$60 nm, are good only for weak equivalent fields of $``$3 Tesla. Any substantial curvature of a wide nanotube would destroy most of channeling in it. Therefore the interest to wide channeling structures motivated by an expected lack of scattering inside them is quite limited now (if not canceled at all) by considerations of bending dechanneling.

The equation for $`d_{opt}`$ can be written in general form for nanotubes of other material, with the use of Lindhard potential:

$$d_{opt}\frac{8\pi Z_1Z_2e^2a_S}{3a^2}\frac{R}{pv}$$
(5)
This short analysis suggests that, in order to compete with crystals at beam steering, the nanotube should be as narrow as order of 1 nm.

## 4 Results of simulation

Following the above analysis, we have studied the efficiency of bent nanotube channeling in Monte Carlo simulations. A parallel beam of 1 GeV protons was entering a carbon nanotube, where protons were tracked over 50$`\mu `$m. Depending on the nanotube diameter, curvature and starting coordinates, every proton did 5 to 20 oscillations over that distance, typically. Multiple scattering was not included, so we did evaluate only the effects of bending dechanneling. Figure 3 shows an example of the angular distribution of particles downstream of the 50-$`\mu `$m long nanotube of 1.1 nm diameter, bent 4 mrad, shown in the direction of bending. Similarly to pictures of bent crystal channeling, there is clear separation of channeled and nonchanneled peaks, with some particles lost (dechanneled along the tube) between them.

We did such a simulation for variety of nanotubes with different characteristics. Figure 4 shows the number of protons channeled through 50 $`\mu `$m as a function of the nanotube curvature $`pv/R`$ for tubes of different diameter. For comparison, also shown is the same function for Si(110) crystal (from ref.).

The channel length of 50 $`\mu `$m, with bending of 1 GeV/cm, gives the 1-GeV protons a deflection of 5 mrad - sufficient for many accelerator applications like extraction \[1,3-5\]. One can see from Fig.4 that nanotubes as narrow as 1 nm are comparable to silicon crystals in beam bending. However, nanotubes of $``$2 nm diameter already show poor behaviour in channeling for significant bending. The wider nanotube is, the weaker channeling properties it demonstrates, in agreement with the discussion of previous section.

## 5 Summary

As shown in computer simulations, nanotubes can channel particle beams with efficiency similar to that of crystal channeling. Bending dechanneling, present if nanotube has a curvature, is found to be a very significant factor in nanotube channeling. It sets the nanotube diameter optimal for channeling to be in the range of about 0.5-2 nm. Much wider nanotubes are of little use for channeling purpose because of high sensitivity of channeling to curvature. Narrow nanotubes, with diameter on the order of 1 nm, can be a basis for an efficient technique of beam steering at particle accelerators.

## Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by INFN - Gruppo V, as NANO experiment, and by INTAS-CERN Grant No. 132- 2000 and RFBR Grant No. 01-02-16229.

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Figure captions

Figure 1

Trajectories of 1-GeV protons channeled in carbon nanotubes of 1.1 (a), 2.2 (b), and 4.4 (c) nm diameter, bent with the same curvature radius 1 cm.

Figure 2

Schematic potential well (a, b) U(x) for tubes of different diameter, and effective potential (c, d) $`U_{eff}(x)=U(x)+pvx/R`$ of these tubes bent with some radius $`R`$. The dotted line marks the top of the well confining the channeled particles.

Figure 3

The angular distribution of particles downstream of the bent nanotube, in the direction of bending.

Figure 4

The number of channeled protons as a function of the nanotube curvature $`pv/R`$ for tubes of different diameter (bottom up: 11, 2.2, and 1.1 nm). For comparison, also shown (top curve) is the same function for Si(110) crystal.