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# The Manifold Dimension of a Causal Set: tests in conformally flat spacetimes

## I Introduction

Since the time of Einstein, the prospect that spacetime might be discrete on microscopic scales has been considered as one possible avenue to help solve the problem of quantum gravity. The causal set program proposes one approach to discrete quantum gravity \[1-2\]. A causal set is a set $`C`$ of elements $`x_iC,`$ and an order relation $``$, such that the set $`C=\{x_i,\}`$ obeys properties which make it a good discrete counterpart for continuum spacetime. These properties are that (a) the set is transitive: $`x_ix_jx_kx_ix_k`$; (b) it is noncircular, $`x_ix_j`$ and $`x_jx_ix_i=x_j`$; (c) it is locally finite such that the number of elements between any two ordered elements $`x_ix_j`$ is finite, i.e., $`\left|[x_i,x_j]\right|<\mathrm{}`$; and (d) it is reflexive, $`x_ix_i`$ $``$ $`xC`$. The action of the order relation is to mimic the causal ordering of events in macroscopic spacetime. Since all events in spacetime are not causally related, then not all pairs of elements in the set are ordered by the order relation. Hence a causal set is a partially ordered set.

If the microscopic structure of spacetime is that of a causal set, then in appropriate macroscopic limits, causal sets must be consistent with the properties of general relativity which describes spacetime as a Lorentzian manifold. Therefore, it must be established that causal sets can possess manifold-like properties. A necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for a causal set to be like a manifold is that it can be embedded into a manifold uniformly with respect to the metric. Finding ways to embed a causal set has proven to be very difficult thus far. However, the properties of a causal set can be compared to the properties that a uniformly embedded causal set are expected to have. The kinds of tests that can check for manifold-like behavior generally require knowledge of the dimension of the manifold into which the causal set might embed. In fact, consistency between different ways to estimate the dimension of the manifold is itself a stringent test of manifold-like behavior. It is worth noting that within the mathematics of partial orders there are several types of dimensions. However, the dimensions traditionally studied by mathematicians do not correspond to what is meant here. Therefore, everywhere in this paper the phrase “dimension of a causal set” refers to the manifold dimension, i.e., the dimension of the Lorentzian manifold into which the causal set might be uniformly embedded.

The most useful methods for estimating the dimension of a causal set are the Myrheim-Meyer dimension \[3-4\] and the midpoint scaling dimension . By design, both of these methods work best in Minkowski space. The approach used to derive the Myrheim-Meyer dimension has been extended to curved spacetimes , but implementation of this more general Hausdorff dimension is specific to the particular spacetime against which the causal set is being checked. Since there are infinitely many curved spacetimes, this method is less useful in more generic cases. Therefore, there is a continuing need to find ways to estimate the dimension of a causal set for curved spacetimes that (a) are independent of the specific properties of the curved spacetime, (b) do not require very large causal sets to achieve useful results, and (c) are invariant under coarse-graining of the causal set. This last requirement is desired because, on the microscopic scale, the causal sets that might describe quantum gravity will not display manifold-like properties in the sense described above. Only in the macroscopic limit, after an appropriate change-of-scale, do we expect to see such properties; this change-of-scale is called coarse-graining.

In what follows, I first present the background theory and terminology needed to understand the dimension estimation methods described in this paper; then, the different approaches to dimension estimation are described. The extent to which the methods work are illustrated using causal sets generated by uniform sprinklings into flat and conformally flat spacetimes. I then illustrate the methods using a causal set generated by a percolation dynamics.

## II Theory

As alluded to previously, in the causal set program we are interested in those causal sets that can be uniformly embedded into a manifold. An embedding of a causal set is a mapping of the set onto points in a Lorentzian manifold such that the lightcone structure of the manifold preserves the ordering of the set. With high probability, an embedding will be uniform if the mapping corresponds to selecting points in the manifold via a Poisson process (as described below). Two important results for understanding the dimension estimators to be discussed are (a) the correspondence between the volume of a region in a manifold and the number of causal set elements and, (b) the correspondence between geodesic length and the number of links in a chain of causal set elements. These topics are discussed in the next two subsections.

### A Random Sprinklings

One way to generate a causal set that can be uniformly embedded into a manifold is to perform a random sprinkling of points in a manifold. If the set $`X`$ consists of points $`\{x_i\}`$ randomly distributed (sprinkled) in a manifold $`M`$ of finite volume $`V_M`$, we can define a discrete random variable $`\chi _A`$ on a region $`A`$ of $`M`$ such that $`\chi _A(x_i)=1`$ if $`x_iA`$ and $`0`$ otherwise. In terms of the random variable $`\chi _A`$ we can define another discrete random variable $`N_n`$ that counts the number of $`x_iA`$ up to a possible number $`n`$ equal to the size of $`A`$, where $`N_n=_{i=1}^{i=n}\chi _A(x_i)`$. Random variables such as $`N_n`$ are described by the binomial distribution which, for our case, can be written as

$$F_k(N_n)=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{k}\right)\left(\frac{V_A}{V_M}\right)^k\left(1\frac{V_A}{V_M}\right)^{nk},$$
(1)
where $`F_k`$ is the probability of outcome $`k`$.

If we define the density of the sprinkled points as $`\rho =n/V_M`$, the expectation value of $`N_n`$ in region $`A`$ is given by $`N_n=\rho V_A`$. To generalize this description to manifolds of infinite volume, we take the limit of eq. (1) as $`V_M\mathrm{}`$ while holding the density of the sprinkling uniform, $`\rho =const`$. This procedure is a standard approach for deriving the Poisson distribution

$$P_k(N_n)=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{V_M\mathrm{}}{\rho =const}}{lim}F_k(N)=\frac{\rho V_A}{k!}e^{\rho V_A},$$
(2)
where the equivalence $`V_A/V_M=\rho V_A/n`$ has been used. From this distribution, we find that the average value of the number of points sprinkled into regions of volume $`V_A`$ is given by

$$N_n_A=\rho V_A.$$
(3)
While it is customary to scale the sprinkling to unit density, $`\rho =1`$, this scaling is not done in the present cases. Thus, we see that a random sprinkling of points in a manifold at uniform density is described by a Poisson distribution. Therefore, the interesting causal sets are from among those that will admit an embedding consistent with a Poisson sprinkling into a manifold (perhaps only after coarse-graining). Such an embedding is referred to as a faithful embedding.

### B Geodesic Length

Recall that the length of the geodesic between two causally related events corresponds to the longest proper time between those events. To see what the most natural analog to geodesic length is for causal sets we must first define a few terms. A link, $``$, in a causal set is an irreducible relation; so, $`x_ix_k`$ iff $`\mathrm{}`$ $`x_jx_ix_jx_k`$. A chain in a causal set is a set of elements for which each pair is related; for example, $`x_ax_b\mathrm{}x_{z1}x_z`$ is a chain from $`x_a`$ to $`x_z`$. A maximal chain is a chain consisting only of links, such as $`x_ax_b\mathrm{}x_{z1}x_z`$.

As explained by Myrheim , the length of the longest maximal chain between two related elements in a causal set is the most natural analog for the geodesic length between two causally connected events in spacetime. (Myrheim did not use the term “causal set” which was coined by Rafael Sorkin and used in ). The length of a maximal chain is defined to be the number of links in that chain. Brightwell and coworkers have proven that this correspondence between the geodesic length in a Lorentzian manifold and the number of links in the longest maximal chain is, in fact, valid in Minkowski space . Therefore, Myrheim’s expectation that this correspondence should be valid in the general case seems well founded. In this work, I shall assume the validity of what I will refer to as the Myrheim length conjecture:

> Let $`C=\{x_i,\}`$ be a causal set that can be faithfully embedded, with density $`\rho `$, into a Lorentzian manifold $`M`$ by a map $`g:CM`$. Then, in the limit $`\rho \mathrm{}`$, the expected length of the longest maximal chain between any ordered pair $`(x_i,x_j)C`$ is directly proportional to the geodesic length between their images $`[g(x_i),g(x_j)]M`$.

## III Dimension Estimators

A dimension estimator for a causal set is a method that only uses properties of the set to determine the dimension of the manifold into which the causal set might be faithfully embeddable. Ideally, we hope to have a scheme for estimating the dimension of a causal set that (a) works well for curved spacetime manifolds, (b) is invariant under coarse-grainings of the causal set, and (c) does not require very large causal sets in order to see useful results. As alluded to previously, one difficulty in finding a useful dimension estimator for curved spacetimes is that implementation of the estimators tend to depend on the properties of the particular spacetime against which the causal set is being compared. This circumstance is problematic for causal sets generated by a process that does not directly suggest a class of candidate spacetimes.

However, one property that all physical spacetimes share is that locally, they are approximately Minkowskian. From the standpoint of causal sets, this implies that if a causal set $`C`$, of size $`N`$, is faithfully embeddable into a $`d`$-dimensional curved manifold $`M^d`$, then there ought to be subsets $`𝚌_iC`$, of size $`n_i<N`$ that are faithfully embeddable (approximately) into $`d`$-dimensional Minkowski space $`𝕄^d`$. Studying how these subsets behave under dimension estimators that work reliably for $`𝕄^d`$ should allow us to identify which, if any, $`d`$-dimensional Minkowski space is most closely approximated by these subsets. I will refer to dimensions found in the above manner as the local Minkowski dimension of the causal set. An approach similar to this was independently suggested by Sorkin .

The dimension estimators that will be used to determine the local Minkowski dimension in curved spacetimes are the Myrheim-Meyer dimension and the midpoint-scaling dimension mentioned in the introduction and described below. Both of these dimension estimators are defined in terms of causal set intervals. A causal set interval between two related elements $`I[y,z]`$ is the inclusive subset $`I[y,z]=\{x_i|yx_iz\}`$. Taking $``$ as a causal order, $`I[y,z]`$ is the intersection of the future of $`y`$ with the past of $`z`$.

The Myrheim-Meyer dimension is based on the fact that for a causal set faithfully embeddable into an interval $`I`$ of $`𝕄^d`$, the expected number of chains that consists of $`k`$ elements, $`k`$-chains ($`S_k`$), is given by

$$<S_k>=\frac{\left(\rho V_I\right)^k\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\delta \right)\mathrm{\Gamma }(2\delta )\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(2\delta +1\right)^{k1}}{2^{k1}k\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(k\delta \right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left((k+1)\delta \right)},$$
(4)
where $`\delta (d+1)/2`$. The easiest chains to count are 2-chains which count the relations between elements. Specializing to 2-chains, eq. (4) becomes

$$f(d)\frac{<S_2>}{<N>^2}=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(d+1\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(d/2\right)}{4\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(3d/2\right)},$$
(5)
where I have used eq. (3) to relate number and volume. Therefore, for a given causal set, we can divide the number of relations $`S_2<S_2>`$ by the square of the number of elements $`N<N>`$ to approximate the value of $`f(d)`$ for the interval. This function is monotonically decreasing with $`d`$ and can be numerically inverted to give a value for the dimension.

The midpoint-scaling dimension relies on the correspondence between number and volume, and on the relationship between the volume of an interval in $`𝕄^d`$ and the length of the geodesic $`\tau `$ between its defining events

$$V_I=\frac{\pi ^{(d1)/2}}{2^{d2}d(d1)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left[(d1)/2\right]}\tau ^d.$$
(6)
An interval $`I[y,z]`$ of size $`N`$ can be divided into two sub-intervals $`I_1[y,x]`$ and $`I_2[x,z]`$ of sizes $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$, respectively. Let $`N_{small}`$ be the smaller of $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$, then the element $`x`$ is the midpoint of $`I`$ when $`N_{small}`$ is as large as possible. This process corresponds to a rescaling of lengths by a factor of $`1/2`$; therefore, in the manifold $`\tau /\tau _{small}=2`$, which implies that $`V/V_{small}=2^d`$. For the causal set interval, assuming the Myrheim length conjecture, this translates to $`N/N_{small}2^d`$ so that

$$d\mathrm{log}_2\left(N/N_{small}\right)$$
(7)
estimates the dimension.

## IV Results

The dimension estimators were applied to causal set intervals generated by random sprinklings into flat and conformally flat spacetimes given by the metric

$$ds^2=\mathrm{\Omega }^2\eta _{\alpha \beta }dx^\alpha dx^\beta ,$$
(8)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2`$ is the conformal factor (a smooth, strictly positive function of the spacetime coordinates) and $`\eta _{\alpha \beta }`$ is the Minkowski tensor. The sprinklings were performed by two different methods. The more efficient approach for sprinkling $`N`$ points into an interval $`I`$ of volume $`V_I`$ was to divide the interval into several little regions of volume $`v_i`$. The number of points sprinkled into a region $`n_i`$ was determined by the ratio $`n_i/N=v_i/V_I`$. The coordinates for the $`n_i`$ points were then determined randomly within the region of volume $`v_i`$. The less efficient approach, which was much easier to implement, used a (double) rejection method similiar to the method described in . In this second approach, the interval was enclosed in a box and spacetime coordinates were randomly selected within this box; if the selected point was outside the interval it was rejected, otherwise, it was kept – this was the first rejection. In Minkowski space, this first rejection provides a uniform distribution of points.

In curved spacetimes, points that fell within the interval faced a second rejection designed to ensure that the points were distributed uniformly with respect to the volume form $`\mathrm{\Omega }^d`$. Each point in the interval was associated with a random number $`w`$ selected within the range $`0<w<\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{max}}^d`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{max}}^d`$ is the maximum value of the volume form within the interval $`I`$. If $`w`$ was greater than the value of the volume form evaluated at the point in question, the point was rejected; otherwise, it was kept. This process continued until $`N`$ points were sprinkled into the interval. The sprinklings in 1+1 dimensions used the first method; all others used the rejection method. In a few cases the two methods were compared, and produced completely consistent results. That these methods produced causal sets that correspond to Poisson sprinklings were verified, in 1+1 dimensions, by chi-squared tests. In all sprinklings, random numbers were generated using the subroutine “ran2” from .

Since the main result of this work comes from comparing the behavior of small sub-intervals between flat and curved spacetimes, we must determine the pertinent range of sub-interval sizes. This range can be determined from sprinklings into Minkowski space. Figure 1 shows the results for random sprinklings of points into intervals of 2-, 3-, and 4-dimensional Minkowski space. Both the Myrheim-Meyer ($`d_{MM}`$) and midpoint-scaling ($`d_{mid}`$) dimensions were calculated for every closed sub-interval of size $`n_i3`$. The average value of $`d`$ was calculated for sub-intervals of a given size. To decrease the statistical fluctuations, each curve in the figure represents an average of 15 different sprinklings.

While there are a number of interesting features in this figure, two things are most relevant to this study. First, we can see that for the midpoint-scaling dimension the three different Minkowski spaces are effectively indistinguishable for sub-intervals smaller than $`n_i=10`$. Therefore, since all three Minkowski results agree within this size region, any curved spacetime that behaves like one of these three should also be in agreement in this region. This fact sets the lower limit for the pertinent range of comparison with curved spacetimes at $`n_i=3`$. Second, the general trends displayed by these curves are typical for all of the results. The curves for both $`d_{MM}`$ and $`d_{mid}`$ rise steeply producing a “shoulder” beyond which the curves level off. The locations of the shoulder are clearly different for the three different spacetimes; therefore, the degree to which the analogous results for the curved spacetimes match these flat-spacetime results around this shoulder will be used to determine the local Minkowski dimension. The broadest shoulder occurs for $`d=4`$ for which a value of $`n_i=100`$ is sufficient to incorporate. Therefore, a good size range for seeking local Minkowski behavior for the curved spacetimes studied here is $`3n_i100`$. I will call this size range the local Minkowski region.

The quantitative measure of how well the results for a curved spacetime matches those of a particular flat spacetime is a relative goodness-of-fit test using a chi-squared statistic that compares values of $`d`$ for sub-intervals of the same size within the local Minkowski region. This relative measure requires knowledge of how well the different flat-spacetime results fit each other according to this method. The statistic is calculated as

$$\chi _{a,b}^2=\frac{1}{B}\underset{j=1}{\overset{B}{}}\frac{\left(O_{ja}E_{jb}\right)^2}{E_{jb}},$$
(9)
where the subscript ($`a,b`$) means that $`a`$-dimensional Minkowski space is being compared against $`b`$-dimensional Minkowski space. The quantity $`B`$ is the number of bins into which the data was divided (either 22 or 30); this number depends on the bin size (either 4 or 3) which was chosen such that each “expected” value $`E_{jb}`$ was greater than 5. The $`O_{ja}`$ are the “observed” values. The results of these calculations for the Myrheim-Meyer dimension are the following: $`\chi _{2,3}^2=0.662`$, $`\chi _{3,2}^2=1.25`$, $`\chi _{2,4}^2=1.77`$, $`\chi _{4,2}^2=4.20`$, $`\chi _{3,4}^2=0.365`$, and $`\chi _{4,3}^2=0.457`$. For the midpoint dimension we also have the following results: $`\chi _{2,3}^2=0.823`$, $`\chi _{3,2}^2=1.62`$, $`\chi _{2,4}^2=2.19`$, $`\chi _{4,2}^2=5.51`$, $`\chi _{3,4}^2=0.459`$, and $`\chi _{4,3}^2=0.588`$. For both dimension estimators, the best (smallest) result comes from the comparison of three-dimensional Minkowski space against 4-dimensional Minkowski space. Therefore, these values will be used to determine the relative goodness-of-fit of the results for curved spacetimes, 0.365 for the Myrheim-Meyer calculations and 0.459 for the midpoint calculations.

### A 1+1 dimensions

Figure 2 shows a uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 1+1 dimensions with conformal factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2=(xt)^2`$. Both the midpoint and Myrheim-Meyer dimension estimators fail for the full interval giving values of $`2.77`$ and $`2.65`$, respectively. The conformal factor for this spacetime causes the points to be more spread out in space which is consistent with the overestimates of the dimension. Figure 3 shows a plot of the average midpoint dimension for sub-intervals of different size averaged over 15 sprinklings of the spacetime shown in Fig. 2. This curve is compared against the results for Minkowski space. Despite the fact that the full interval values of the dimension estimators are closer to 3, the behavior for small sub-intervals clearly follows that of two-dimensional Minkowki space suggesting a local Minkowski dimension of two. What appears to be happening here is that the small sub-intervals are, in fact, behaving like causal sets that are embeddable in two-dimensional Minkowski space; then, as you look at sub-intervals of larger size the effects of curvature become more important and the flat-spacetime dimension estimators become less reliable. (A similar plot using the Mryheim-Meyer dimension shows identical features).

To quantify this result, a goodness-of-fit test is made, using an equation very similar to Eq. (9), which compares the average dimension of sub-intervals in the curved spacetime with those in each dimension of Minkowski space within the local Minkowski region. The curved spacetime values are taken as the observed and Minkowski space values as the expected. These results are then compared to the best chi-squared results from the mutual comparisons of the different dimensions of Minkowski space. For the curved spacetime shown in Fig. 2, we obtain relative goodness-of-fit values $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }^2\chi ^2/\chi _{3,4}^2`$ of

| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,MM}^2=0.00181,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,mid}^2=0.00119,`$ |
| --- | --- |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,MM}^2=1.88,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,mid}^2=1.84,`$ |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,MM}^2=4.95,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,mid}^2=4.84,`$ |

(10)
where the notation $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,MM}^2`$ means that the curved spacetime result was compared against two-dimensional Minkowski space using the average Mryheim-Meyer dimension values relative to the value of $`\chi _{3,4}^2`$ for the Mryheim-Meyer dimension; and correspondingly for the values labeled with the subscript “mid.” As defined, this statistic means that values of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }^21`$ represents a poor fit signifying that the two data sets being compared could certainly be Minkowski spaces differing in dimension by at least 1. Whereas, values of $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }^21`$ indicates a good fit with the spacetime in question. Clearly, the results displayed in Eq. (10) show that the small sub-intervals offer an excellent fit to those of two-dimensional Minkowski space. Furthermore, the fits with three- and four-dimensional Minkowski space are no better, or much worse, than what can be expected between Minkowski spaces of different dimensions. The conformally flat spacetime for which the above results are given represents only one of several 1+1 dimensional spacetimes studied. In all cases, the results are similiar to those given here.

### B 2+1 dimensions

Figure 4 shows a uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 2+1 dimensions with conformal factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2=\left(x^2+y^2\right)/t^6`$. This example was chosen because it produced the worse full interval results for all of the 2+1 dimensional spacetimes studied. It is easier to see what this interval is like from the projections. The $`yt`$ plane shows that more points are located at larger values of the $`y`$ coordinate and smaller values of $`t`$; the $`xt`$ plane shows similar behavior. The projection onto the $`xy`$ plane shows that the points are more crowded in the middle of the interval. This crowding is due to the preference for small $`t`$ where the spatial extent of the region is centralized.

Figure 5 shows a plot of the average Myrheim-Meyer dimension for sub-intervals of different size averaged over 15 sprinklings of the spacetime shown in Fig. 4. This curve is compared against the results for Minkowski space. For this spacetime, the effects of the curvature become apparent around $`n_i=40`$. Nevertheless, the result for the curved spacetime maintains a good approximation to the flat spacetime result within the designated locally flat region. To verify that the local Minkowski dimension of this spacetime should be taken to be three, the relative goodness-of-fit results are

| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,MM}^2=3.03,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,mid}^2=3.15,`$ |
| --- | --- |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,MM}^2=0.00807,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,mid}^2=0.00697,`$ |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,MM}^2=1.15,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,mid}^2=1.14.`$ |

(11)
Here we see clearly that in the locally flat region this spacetime provides results that give an excellent fit to the results for three-dimensional Minkowski space. Several other spacetimes in 2+1 dimensions were studied giving similar results.

### C 3+1 dimensions

Figure 6 shows projections of a uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 3+1 dimensions with conformal factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2=(x^4+y^4+z^4)/t^6`$. Figure 7 is the corresponding plot for the average dimension per size of sub-interval. As with the other cases, the figure clearly shows that within the locally flat region the curved spacetime result gives a much better fit to the Minkowski space having the same dimension. The relative goodness-of-fit results for this case are

| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,MM}^2=9.62,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,mid}^2=10.4,`$ |
| --- | --- |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,MM}^2=0.825,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,mid}^2=0.919,`$ |
| $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,MM}^2=0.0382,`$ | $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,mid}^2=0.0252.`$ |

(12)
Several other spacetimes in 3+1 dimensions were studied giving similar results.

### D A causal set generated by transitive percolation

So far, all of the causal sets used were guaranteed to be faithful because they were generated by sprinklings into known manifolds. Having established the approach, it is instructive to apply this method to a causal set generated by some other means. Ultimately, there will be a quantum dynamics for generating causal sets, and it will be these causal sets (or coarse-grained versions of them) whose manifold dimensions we would like to estimate. Although a quantum dynamics for causal sets does not yet exist, there is a classical dynamics, due to Rideout and Sorkin , which is proving to be very useful in helping to determine the extent to which causal sets can encode physical information. So, this classical dynamics provides an excellent avenue to illustrate how the suggestions presented here might be used in a more general case when we cannot be sure that the causal set is faithfully embeddable.

Perhaps the simplest model within the class of models proposed by Rideout and Sorkin is the one that they have called transitive percolation. The procedure followed here for generating a random causal set of $`N`$ elements via percolation is as follows: (a) assign labels to the $`N`$ elements; (b) impose the partial ordering relation $``$ onto each pair of elements with probability $`p`$. That is, if $`i<k`$, the probability that element $`i`$ element $`k`$ is $`p`$; and (c) enforce the transitivity requirement on the set. It has been shown that despite the labeling, causal sets generated in this way are label invariant in that the probability of getting a particular causal set is independent of how the elements were initially labeled .

For this example, a causal set with $`N=512`$ and $`p=0.0261`$ was generated; these values produce a causal set that has a Myrheim-Meyer dimension of 2.0 when applied to the full causal set . This causal set, however, is not a causal set interval. Therefore, the largest sub-interval of this 512-element causal set was used; this sub-interval contained 298 elements. Figure 8 is a plot of the average Myrheim-Meyer dimensions for the sub-intervals of the 298-element causal set interval taken from the causal set generated by transitive percolation, compared against 298-element causal sets generated by random sprinklings in Minkowski space. What stands out in this figure is that the percolation curve does not closely follow any of the Minkowski curves in the local Minkowski region. Therefore, not even the small sub-intervals of this causal set behave as sub-intervals in Minkowski space do. This suggests that the percolated causal set should not be embeddable into any (flat or curved) spacetime.

Looking at the Fig. 8 shows that the percolation curve is a closer fit to the three-dimensional Minkowski curve than it is to the other curves. The relative goodness-of-fit test yields

$$\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{2D,MM}^2=1.82,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D,MM}^2=0.308,\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{4D,MM}^2=1.952.$$
(13)
While these results confirm that the percolation curve is a better fit to the three-dimensional Minkowski result, we can also see that the $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_{3D}^2`$ value is nearly two orders-of-magnitude worse than what would be expected based on our study of the random sprinklings. This fact gives some quantitative weight to the conclusion reached by studying Fig. 8.

## V Conclusions

In this paper, I have suggested a method for estimating the manifold dimension of a causal set that can be faithfully embedded into curved spacetimes and tested this method for several conformally flat spacetimes. The method uses flat-spacetime dimension estimators to search for local Minkowski behavior within the causal set. This approach can be applied to any causal set, and works independent of the specific properties of a particular curved spacetime. Very large causal sets are not required. Furthermore, this approach is invariant under coarse-graining since both the Myrheim-Meyer and midpoint-scaling dimensions are invariant under coarse-graining.

Implementation of this procedure can be summarized as follows: (a) form an interval of size $`N`$ of the causal set, larger intervals give better statistics, but they don’t need to be extremely large; (b) average the Myrheim-Meyer (or midpoint-scaling) dimension for sub-intervals of a given size; (c) perform ramdom sprinklings of size $`N`$ or greater in 2-, 3-, and 4-dimensional Minkowski space and determine average dimension values for their sub-intervals; (d) a comparision of the results for the causal set being checked against the results for the three Minkowski sprinklings for small sub-intervals, $`3<n_i<100`$, should reveal whether or not the causal set in question displays the local Minkowski behavior that would be required of causal sets that are faithfully embeddable into physically relevant spacetimes.

It is worth noting that instead of calculating the dimension values for closed sub-intervals, open sub-intervals can also be used. However, the statistical fluctuations are greater for open sub-intervals and this fact becomes somewhat problematic in 2+1 and especially in 3+1 dimensions. What now remains is to apply this method to generically curved spacetimes. The basic principle behind the local Minkowski dimension certainly applies in the generic case, but the extent to which this behavior can be extracted from the causal sets is yet unknown. If this approach proves useful in that case as well, it would be an important step toward the goal of a more comprehensive manifold test for causal sets.

## VI Acknowledgments

I’d like to acknowledge the help of Mr. Jason Ruiz for writing the computer code to conduct the chi-squared tests used to test the faithfulness of some of the sprinklings. I also wish to thank Dr. Rafael D. Sorkin for providing information on the percolation dynamics and further motivation to work on problems in causal set quantum gravity. This work was supported by the Graduate Research Fund and a Faculty Research Fellowship both from Eastern Michigan University. Additional support from the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

## VII References

## VIII Figure Captions

FIG 1. The average value of the Myrheim-Meyer and midpoint dimensions for sub-intervals of a given size in 1+1, 2+1, and 3+1 dimensional Minkowski space. The sprinklings in 1+1 and 2+1 dimensions are of 512 points while, for better statistics, the 3+1 sprinklings were of 1024 points. Each curve is an average of 15 different sprinklings. To clearly see the behavior of the small sub-intervals results for sub-interval containing only $`n_i200`$ are shown here. For $`n_i>200`$ the results for the Myrheim-Meyer and midpoint dimensions, for the 2+1 and 3+1 sprinklings, also merge to the appropriate interger values.

FIG 2. A uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 1+1 dimensions. The conformal factor is shown in the figure.

FIG 3. Comparison of the average value of the midpoint-scaling dimension for sub-intervals of a given size for the set of points shown in Fig. 2 (2D curved) against the similar results for 2-, 3-, and 4-dimensional Minkowski space. The results for small sub-intervals suggests a local Minkowski dimension of two.

FIG 4. A uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 2+1 dimensions with conformal factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2=(x^4+y^4)/t^6`$. The figure also shows projections of the points onto the $`xt`$, $`yt`$, and $`xy`$ planes.

FIG 5. Comparison of the average value of the Mryheim-Meyer dimension for sub-intervals of the set shown in Fig. 4 (3D curved) against similar results for Minkowski space. The results for small sub-intervals suggests a local Minkowski dimension of three.

FIG 6. Projections of a uniform sprinkling of 512 points into an interval of a conformally flat spacetime in 3+1 dimensions with conformal factor $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2=(x^4+y^4+z^4)/t^6`$. Panel (a) shows the projection onto the $`xt`$ plane, panel (b) shows the projection onto the $`yt`$ plane, panel (c) shows the projection onto the $`zt`$ plane, and panel (d) shows the projection onto the $`xy`$ plane.

FIG 7. Comparison of the average value of the midpoint-scaling dimension for sub-intervals of the set represented in Fig. 6 (4D curved) against similar results for Minkowski space. The results for small sub-intervals suggests a local Minkowski dimension of four.

FIG 8. Comparison of the average value of the Mryheim-Meyer dimension for the largest sub-interval of a 512-element causal set generated by transitive percolation. The results for small sub-intervals do not match any of the three Minkowski space results suggesting that this percolated causal set is not faithfully embeddable into any spacetime manifold.


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# New detections of Mn, Ti and Mg in damped Ly𝛼 systems: Toward reconciling the dust/nucleosynthesis degeneracy Based on the UVES observations collected during the ESO prog. ID No. 67.A-0022 at the VLT/Kueyen telescope, Paranal, Chile

## 1 Introduction

A measure of chemical enrichment in high redshift galaxies can be obtained through the study of absorption line systems in quasars, specifically via damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (DLAs). These systems with $`N`$(H i) $`>2\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 dominate the neutral hydrogen content of the Universe and are likely the protogalactic gas reservoirs for the formation of the majority of stars today (e.g. Wolfe et al. 1995). They provide the best opportunity to measure accurately the chemical abundances of many elements for a variety of galactic systems spanning a wide redshift interval. By comparing these abundance measurements with the chemical evolution models and abundance patterns of our Galaxy and nearby galaxies, one can infer information on the star formation history and galaxy evolution of these distant objects.

In particular, abundances of the $`\alpha `$-elements (e.g. Si, O, S, Ar) relative to the Fe-peak elements (e.g. Fe, Cr, Ni) are of great importance for defining the chemical evolution history. Being produced mainly by Type II and Type Ia supernovae (SNe) with relatively different timescales – $`<2\times 10^7`$ ($`\alpha `$-elements) and $`10^810^9`$ yrs (Fe-peak elements) – respectively, the $`\alpha `$/Fe ratios are strongly dependent on the lifetimes of the element progenitor, whereas \[Fe/H\]111\[X/H\] $`\mathrm{log}`$\[$`N`$(X)/$`N`$(H)\]$`_{\text{DLA}}`$ $`\mathrm{log}`$\[$`N`$(X)/$`N`$(H)\]. depends on the star formation rate (Tinsley 1979; Matteucci 2001). Therefore, the \[$`\alpha `$/Fe\] versus \[Fe/H\] relation is a strong function of the star formation history.

Unfortunately this scheme to discriminate between different star formation histories has led to contradictory conclusions and interpretations of the observed relative abundances of the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (e.g. Lu et al. 1996; Centurión et al. 2000). The principle difficulty is to disentangle nucleosynthetic contributions from dust depletion effects. Because we are studying gas-phase abundances in DLAs, the measured abundances may not represent the intrinsic composition of the system if part of the elements is removed from the gas to the solid phase (Savage & Sembach 1996). Several pieces of evidence show that some dust is indeed present in DLAs with a dust-to-gas ratio between 2 to 25% of the Galactic value (Pei et al. 1991; Vladilo 1998). The presence of dust hence implies a depletion of refractory elements (e.g. Si, Fe, Cr, Ni) preferentially incorporated into dust grains.

In such a mixed situation (nucleosynthesis plus dust), the analysis of DLA chemical histories is severely limited by the low number of routinely observed elements: $`\alpha `$-element Si and Fe-peak element Fe. Occasionally the very important non-refractory $`\alpha `$-elements O, S and Ar (located in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest) and more frequently the non-refractory Fe-peak element Zn are detected. We show in this paper that Mn, Ti and Mg – Fe-peak and $`\alpha `$-elements respectively – are additional elements which can provide important clues to the nature of the DLA star formation history. Well studied in Galactic stars (Nissen et al. 2000; Prochaska & McWilliam 2000; Chen et al. 2000), relatively little attention has been granted to these elements in DLAs due to their difficult detections (for Mn see Lu et al. 1996; Pettini et al. 2000; Ledoux et al. 2002 and for Ti see Prochaska & Wolfe 1999; 2002; Ledoux et al. 2002). Ratios of Ti and Mn relative to Fe are of special importance because differential depletion and nucleosynthesis tend to work in the opposite sense. Therefore, these ratios help alleviate the dust/nucleosynthesis degeneracy inherent to many other ratios (Prochaska & Wolfe 2002). Meanwhile, Mg is a refractory $`\alpha `$-element and a comparison of its abundance with Si, S and O provides greater insight into the dust depletion pattern inherent to DLAs.

We report here three new Mn measurements in DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}2`$ in addition to the two previous measurements of Lu et al. (1996) and Ledoux et al. (2002) at similar redshifts, two new Mg measurements representing the only Mg measurements in addition to the single previous measurement of Srianand et al. (2000), and the first Ti measurements from Ti ii lines at $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}>3000`$ Å in DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}2`$.

In Sect. 2 we briefly review our observations. In Sect. 3 we describe how we have succeeded to measure the column densities of the weak lines we are interested in and we show the results. In Sect. 4, we highlight the importance of our measurements by discussing individually element by element.

## 2 Observations

We used the unique capability of the Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph UVES (D’Odorico et al. 2000) on the VLT 8.2m ESO telescope at Paranal, Chile, to obtain high resolution spectra in the UV $`\lambda `$ 3150–4500 Å and in the near-IR $`\lambda `$ 6700–10000 Å of four relatively bright quasars – Q0100+13, Q1331+17, Q2231–00 and Q2343+12 – with known $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=1.72.5`$ DLAs. Exposure times of 7200–15700 s have been obtained per object. Slit widths of 1 arcsec in the UV and of 0.9 arcsec in the near-IR were fixed throughout the observations with a CCD binning of $`2\times 2`$ resulting in a resolution of FWHM $`6.9`$ km s-1 and 6.4 km s-1, respectively. The spectra were reduced using the UVES data reduction pipeline implemented in the ESO MIDAS package (Ballester et al. 2000), and we made a systematic check of each step of the pipeline reduction to make sure of the best result. An average signal-to-noise ratio per pixel of $`30`$, 55 and 45 was achieved at $`\lambda `$ $`3700`$ Å, 7500 Å and 9000 Å, respectively.

By combining these UVES-VLT spectra with the existing HIRES-Keck spectra obtained by Prochaska & Wolfe (1999) we cover the total spectral range from 3150 to 10000 Å for the four observed quasars and measure for the first time the column densities of over 15 ions and 12 elements for each of their intervening DLAs. Such a large amount of information allows one to constrain the dust and photoionization effects in the studied DLAs, and thus to infer the likely star formation history of the galaxies associated with these DLAs. The comprehensive analysis of the spectra and the full interpretation of the elemental abundances of the four DLAs will be presented in a future paper (Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. in prep.). Here we focus on the Mn, Ti and Mg measurements in the UVES-VLT spectra and on their importance to understand the intrinsic abundance pattern in DLAs.

## 3 Data analysis and results

The detection of Mn ii, Ti ii and Mg ii lines is particularly challenging at high redshift because the Mn ii lines, the strongest Ti ii lines and the Mg ii doublet are at high rest-wavelengths, $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}=2576,2594,2606`$ Å, $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}>3000`$ Å and $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}2800`$ Å, respectively. The Mg abundance measurement is hampered by an additional difficulty, the usual saturation of the doublet. The Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239,1240 lines – generally found in the red wing of the damping Ly$`\alpha `$ profile – constitute the only possibility to measure the Mg abundance. Moreover, since all these lines are weak, Mn ii and Ti ii lines can be easily blended with the numerous telluric absorption lines present at the near-IR wavelengths, whereas Mg ii lines can be contaminated by the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest. The presence and analysis of other and stronger metal lines in the same DLA hence play an important role in determining whether lines are blended and in distinguishing very weak features from the noise.

We used a $`\chi ^2`$ minimization routine fitlyman (Fontana & Ballester 1995) in MIDAS to fit Voigt profiles to the observed DLA absorption lines well described as a complex of components, each defined by a redshift $`z`$, a Doppler parameter $`b`$, a column density $`N`$ and the corresponding errors. Metal species with similar ionization potentials (e.g. neutral and singly ionized species) can be fitted using identical component fitting parameters, i.e. the same $`b`$ (assuming that the macroturbulent motions dominate over thermal broadening) and the same $`z`$ in the same component of all metal species and allowing for variations from metal species to metal species in $`N`$ only. We used relatively strong (but not saturated) lines to fix the component fitting parameters ($`b`$ and $`z`$), and excellent profile fits can then be achieved for weak lines and for lines from the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest where the probability of blending is high by allowing only the column density to vary. This method is the most accurate one to measure the column densities of elements like Mn, Ti and Mg.

The results are summarized in Table 1 and the fitting solutions are shown in Figs. 1–4. We had a sufficient number of metal line profiles (on average 6 lines) to well constrain the fitting parameters in the studied DLAs exhibiting multicomponent velocity structures. The telluric lines have been identified thanks to the spectra of a hot, fast rotating star taken in the same nights as the scientific exposures. The Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239,1240 lines detected in the DLA Ly$`\alpha `$ damping line red wing have been measured after a local renormalization of the spectrum around the Mg ii lines with the fit of the Ly$`\alpha `$ damping wing profile. The errors on the measured Mg column densities have been estimated by varying the continuum level by 5%.

The \[Fe/H\] ratios given in Table 1 correspond to the total metallicity measured in the DLA systems obtained by summing the column densities of all the detected velocity components in the Fe ii profiles. The \[X/Fe\] ratios with X = Si, Zn, Mn, Ti and Mg, on the other hand, were computed by summing only the column densities of the components detected both in the X ii and Fe ii profiles. In this way we avoid an overestimation of the abundance of Fe relative to other metal species obtained from weaker line transitions in which generally only the strongest components are detected. In the case of very weak lines, like the Ti ii lines, one can indeed underestimate the \[X/Fe\] ratios by up to $`0.30.4`$ dex by considering the total Fe abundance. In the four studied DLAs this effect is particularly important in the DLAs toward Q2343+12 and Q2231-00 which show complex metal line profiles with a large number of components. The same approach has already been used by Ledoux et al. (2002).

A component by component analysis of the metal ratios in individual DLA systems is interesting because it can reveal spatial fluctuations in the relative abundances (e.g. different chemical composition, different depletion level). We are not going to carry out this type of analysis in this paper, since, due to the weakness of the Mn, Ti and Mg lines, the results would not be reliable. We plan to discuss the possible component to component variations in a future paper where all detected element ratios will be presented (Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. in prep.).

### 3.1 Q0100+13, $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=2.309`$

This system called also PHL 957 was carefully studied in Wolfe et al. (1994) and subsequently in Prochaska & Wolfe (1999) and Prochaska et al. (2001). We have obtained a very similar $`\mathrm{log}N`$(H i) column density of $`21.37\pm 0.08`$. We confirm their column density measurement of $`N`$(Fe+) obtained in the UVES spectra from the Fe ii $`\lambda `$2249,2260,2344,2374 lines which were not present in the HIRES spectra. We also agree with their column density measurement of $`N`$(Zn+). We now present a measurement of the Mg abundance from the Mg ii $`\lambda `$1240 line located in the red wing of the DLA Ly$`\alpha `$ profile, the Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239 line being blended with Ly$`\alpha `$ clouds. Fig. 1 shows the Fe ii and Mg ii profiles where the local continuum around Mg+ was defined with the fit of the damping profile of the Ly$`\alpha `$ line. The Mn ii and Ti ii lines in this DLA are outside the wavelength coverage of our spectra.

### 3.2 Q1331+17, $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=1.776`$

Many analysis of the damped system toward the very bright quasar Q1331+17 (V=16.7) have been conducted. We mention here the two most accurate and recent ones of Prochaska & Wolfe (1999) and Prochaska et al. (2001). In these two papers the authors have assumed the $`N`$(H i) measured by Pettini et al. (1994) from relatively low-resolution spectra (1.3 Å). We have obtained a new measurement of $`\mathrm{log}N`$(H i) $`=21.14\pm 0.08`$ from the UVES spectra and confirm that the DLA Ly$`\alpha `$ line is blended with another strong absorption system at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=1.786`$ with $`\mathrm{log}N`$(H i) $`=19.80\pm 0.10`$.

We agree with their Fe+ column density measurement obtained in the UVES spectra from the Fe ii $`\lambda `$2586 line not observed in the HIRES spectra. We also confirm the revised $`N`$(Zn+) value of Prochaska et al. (2001) obtained by taking into account the contamination of Zn ii $`\lambda `$2026 from the Mg i $`\lambda `$2026 profile. The UVES spectra allowed us to accurately measure this contamination thanks to the observations of the relatively strong line of Mg i $`\lambda `$2852. With \[Zn/Fe\] $`=0.75\pm 0.05`$, this system exhibits one of the largest Zn/Fe ratios (and hence dust depletion level) of any DLA.

We present here new measurements of some transitions not covered in the HIRES spectra, notably Mn ii $`\lambda `$2576,2594,2606, Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239,1240 and Ti ii $`\lambda `$3384 which is the strongest Ti ii transition, shown in Fig. 2 with the Fe ii profiles. The access to three Mn ii lines has allowed us to obtain an accurate measurement of its abundance, although these lines are located in a relatively heavily contaminated area by telluric lines and, in addition, the Mn ii $`\lambda `$2594 and 2606 lines are blended with some emission from not fully subtracted cosmic rays at $`18`$ and 15 km s-1, respectively. The normalization in the region of the Mg doublet is not optimal over the entire range (specifically around the Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239 line), but the adopted error on the Mg+ column density takes this well into account. The detection of the Ti ii $`\lambda `$3384 line is only marginal, and hence we adopt the measured Ti column density as an upper limit. The value we obtained is more constraining than the higher value deduced by Prochaska et al. (2001) from the Ti ii $`\lambda `$1910 lines having a 3 times lower oscillator strength.

### 3.3 Q2231–00, $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=2.066`$

This DLA system has previously been observed and analyzed by Lu et al. (1996) and Prochaska & Wolfe (1999), and recently completed by Prochaska et al. (2001). Throughout their analysis they have adopted the H i column density measured by Lu & Wolfe (1994). We have obtained here a new value for the $`\mathrm{log}N`$(H i) of $`20.53\pm 0.08`$. We confirm their Fe ii column density measurement and obtain an even more accurate measurement of $`N`$(Fe+) by combining the Fe ii $`\lambda `$1608,1611 lines detected in the HIRES spectra and the Fe ii $`\lambda `$2260,2344,2374 lines observed in the UVES spectra. We also confirm their $`N`$(Zn+) measurement.

We now present a measurement of the Mn abundance and a new measurement of the Ti abundance obtained from the newly detected Ti ii $`\lambda `$3067 and $`\lambda `$3073 lines. The Mg ii $`\lambda `$1239,1240 lines are unfortunately heavily blended with the Ly$`\alpha `$ lines. Fig. 3 shows the Mn ii and Ti ii profiles with the Fe ii profiles. Only the Mn ii $`\lambda `$2576 transition – the strongest Mn ii transition – is covered in our UVES spectra. The anomalously strong feature at about $`30`$ km s-1 in the Mn ii profile was not fitted because it is unlikely that it is an absorption from Mn ii, since it appears to be at the noise level in this region of the spectrum (see for instance the features at the same intensities at $`140`$, +50, +80 km s-1). Moreover, other \[X/Fe\] ratios do not show any component at this velocity with a peculiar abundance behavior or dust depletion level relatively to the measured \[X/Fe\] ratios in the other velocity components (Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. in prep.). The measured value for the Ti+ column density of $`\mathrm{log}N`$(Ti ii) $`=12.66\pm 0.08`$ is higher than the value obtained by Prochaska & Wolfe (1999) from the Ti ii $`\lambda `$1910 lines. Both the detection of Ti+ and the measurement of N(Ti+) presented here are more reliable and accurate, because the signal-to-noise in the UVES spectra is better and, in addition, the oscillator strength of the Ti ii $`\lambda `$3073 line is slightly higher.

### 3.4 Q2343+12, $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}=2.431`$

This system has never been previously studied in detail, only Lu et al. (1998) published the abundance measurements of some elements. We now present the Fe and Mn abundances, the Ti ii and Mg ii lines being outside the wavelength coverage of our UVES spectra, and in a future paper we will provide a complete analysis of all elements observed in this DLA (Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. in prep.). The absorption profiles of this DLA are characterized by a complex structure composed of numerous velocity components (22) and extended over 300 km s-1 in velocity space. Fig. 4 shows the Fe ii and Mn ii profiles plotted over $`80`$ km s-1 – corresponding to the velocity interval of the strongest components and hence to the velocity interval where the weak lines, like the Mn ii and the Zn ii lines, are detected. The Fe+ column density contained in this velocity interval corresponds to only $`75`$% of the total $`\mathrm{log}N`$(Fe ii) $`=14.66\pm 0.03`$. This shows the importance when computing the \[Zn/Fe\] and \[Mn/Fe\] ratios (Table 1) to consider only the column densities of velocity components detected both in the Zn ii and Fe ii profiles and in the Mn ii and Fe ii profiles to avoid an underestimation of the abundances of elements obtained from weak lines relative to Fe.

The DLA Ly$`\alpha `$ line is outside our wavelength coverage, therefore we assume the $`\mathrm{log}N`$(H i) $`=20.35\pm 0.05`$ measured by D’Odorico et al. (2002). This H i column density is relatively low and it is hence important and interesting to discuss the influence of ionization on the abundance pattern in this DLA. Here we present the effects of photionization on Mn, Ti and Mg relative to Fe for physical conditions relevant to the damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems (see also Vladilo et al. 2001). Fig. 5 shows that for Mn and Mg the effects are small for nearly any assumptions on the ionizing radiation, but we find that one could underestimate Ti/Fe in some DLAs having a high ionizing parameter.

## 4 Discussion

In the following discussion we interpret our results on the Mn, Ti and Mg abundances and underline their complementarity to the measurements of other elements.

Manganese. Major recent studies of Mn abundances in the Milky Way have been completed by Nissen et al. (2000) and Prochaska & McWilliam (2000). About 120 \[Mn/Fe\] measurements from F and G stars in the metallicity interval $`1.4<`$ \[Fe/H\] $`<0.1`$ have been obtained. Their results confirmed that Mn behaves in an opposite sense to the $`\alpha `$-elements: a steady decline to \[Mn/Fe\] $`0.15`$ from solar metallicity to \[Fe/H\] $`0.7`$ and a possible drop in \[Mn/Fe\] below \[Fe/H\] $`0.7`$. Mn is an Fe-peak element produced by massive stars and mostly by SNIa. Its behavior is not completely understood, although it is relatively well accounted for by metallicity-dependent yields for massive stars and for SNIa, illustrating a nice example of the “odd-even” effect for the Fe-nuclei (Goswami & Prantzos 2000).

Although Mn is a refractory element, the Mn/Fe ratio is an important and useful diagnostic ratio. Indeed, from Savage & Sembach (1996) we can see that Mn and Fe have nearly identical depletion levels in the warm halo ISM clouds (the physical environment whose depletion level is most likely similar to the DLAs) and Mn is less depleted than Fe in the cold ISM clouds. Therefore, as stressed by Lu et al. (1996), sub-solar \[Mn/Fe\] ratios in gas-phase abundances must be interpreted in terms of nucleosynthesis while super-solar \[Mn/Fe\] ratios would require significant dust depletion.

The three new \[Mn/Fe\] measurements in the DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}2`$ (see Table 1) are in agreement with the \[Mn/Fe\] measurements in DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}<2`$ (Lu et al. 1996; Lopez et al. 1999; Pettini et al. 1999, 2000; Ledoux et al. 2002), and confirm that Mn is underabundant in galaxies associated with DLAs in a very similar way to Galactic stars (see Fig. 6). We also note that the DLA system toward Q1331+17 exhibits a much larger Mn/Fe ratio – \[Mn/Fe\] $`=0.15\pm 0.04`$ at a metallicity of \[Zn/H\] = $`1.27\pm 0.09`$ (\[Fe/H\] $`=2.01\pm 0.09`$) – than the observed values in the Galactic stars at the same metallicity consistent with the fact that this DLA has a large depletion level.

The nice agreement between the Mn/Fe ratios in DLAs and in Galactic stars seen in Fig. 6 with a very comparable trend with decreasing metallicity, but a greater scatter in DLAs, suggests that the DLAs and the Milky Way share some similarities in their star formation histories. However, although the greater scatter may be explained by measurement uncertainties and the effects of differential depletion, these similarities must be cautiously interpreted and investigated in light of all of the elements observed in the DLAs. For example, it remains unclear what fraction of the damped systems exhibit $`\alpha `$-enhancements relative to Fe-peak elements consistent with the observations in Galactic metal-poor stars (e.g. Vladilo 1998; Centurión et al. 2000; Prochaska & Wolfe 2002). These similarities/discrepancies between the abundance patterns in DLAs and in Galactic stars have to be further carefully analyzed. They emphasize the importance of studying the Mn/Fe ratios in DLAs in addition to the $`\alpha `$/Fe ratios to better define the differences in the star formation histories of the DLAs and our Galaxy. Moreover, since direct observations of DLAs show a wide range of galactic morphological types (e.g. Le Brun et al. 1987), it is important to examine variations within their abundance patterns to search for variations in their star formation histories. Finally, by obtaining Mn measurements in low metallicity DLAs one can test nucleosynthetic models of Mn production – major source of Mn: SNIa or SNII with strong metallicity dependence of the yield.

Titanium. Many Ti stellar abundance measurements exist in our Galaxy over a wide metallicity interval $`4.0<`$ \[Fe/H\] $`<0.5`$ (e.g. Chen et al. 2000). Ti is generally accepted as an $`\alpha `$-element, because it exhibits abundance trends similar to other $`\alpha `$-elements, although this behavior has not been reproduced by chemical evolution models (Timmes et al. 1995; Goswami & Prantzos 2000).

Thus far, only a few Ti measurements exist in DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}<1.5`$ (Ledoux et al. 2002), and efforts to measure Ti in DLAs at $`z_{\mathrm{abs}}>1.5`$ have focused on the pair of very weak lines at $`\lambda _{\mathrm{rest}}1910`$ Å and have yielded only a few tenuous detections (e.g. Prochaska & Wolfe 1997, 1999; Prochaska et al. 2001). Our observations of the stronger Ti ii $`\lambda `$3073,3242,3384 lines resulted in one robust detection and one significant upper limit.

Ti is a refractory element and exhibits an equivalent or higher depletion level in the ISM clouds than Fe (Howk et al. 1999). This runs contrary to the expectation for an $`\alpha `$-enhancement and, therefore, positive departures of \[Ti/Fe\] from the solar ratio is evidence for an $`\alpha `$-enhancement in the system independently of the presence of dust. Negative \[Ti/Fe\] ratios on the contrary should provide evidence for dust depletion. We found in the DLA toward Q2231$``$00, \[Ti/Fe\] $`=+0.70\pm 0.09`$ which suggests a dominance of Type II SNe relatively well consistent with the ratio of \[S/Zn\] $`=0.17\pm 0.09`$ (Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. in prep.). In the DLA toward Q1331+17, on the other hand, \[Ti/Fe\] $`<0.45`$ suggests significant dust depletion in agreement with \[Zn/Fe\] $`=+0.75\pm 0.05`$.

Magnesium. Mg is an $`\alpha `$-element with a refractory nature whose depletion level is slightly higher than Si but lower than Fe (Savage & Sembach 1996). Mg/Fe ratios are useful complements to other $`\alpha `$/Fe ratios measured in the same DLA to deduce information on the star formation history of the galaxy associated with the DLA. Moreover, the study of $`\alpha `$-element ratios with different depletion levels, like Si/Mg, Mg/Ti and Si/Ti, is another very interesting way to highlight the presence of dust in DLAs. But perhaps the most valuable aspect of the Mg measurements relates to the use of Mg equivalent widths to identify low redshift absorption galaxies when the Ly$`\alpha `$ lines are not detected (e.g. Bergeron & Boissé 1991; Rao & Turnshek 2000). It is therefore important to know the range of Mg column densities in DLAs to confirm the empirical method to recognize them at low redshift.

While interesting for the reasons quoted above, the number of Mg measurements in DLAs remains tiny. With our two measurements a total of only three Mg abundance measurements are known in DLAs. They all show positive \[Mg/S,Si\] ratios of $`0.100.20`$ dex (see Table 1 and the DLA system in Srianand et al. 2000), in contradiction to the negative values expected from the differential depletion. But, since the detection of positive Mg/S,Si ratios is at the level of the measurement errors of $`0.2`$ dex and differs from the maximum over-depletion of Mg relatively to Si (of 0.2 dex) observed in the ISM warm gas by only 2$`\sigma `$ (Welty et al. 1999), it has to be further confirmed by additional Mg measurements before interpreting it as a peculiar nucleosynthetic effect similar to the observations of some Galactic stars (e.g. McWilliam et al. 1995).

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors wish to extend special thanks to all people working at ESO/Paranal for the high quality of the UVES spectra obtained in service mode. M.D.-Z. is supported by an ESO Studentship and the Swiss National Funds, and J.X.P. acknowledges support through the Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01142.01-A awarded by STScI (NASA).


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# Quantum Chaos Triggered by Precursors of a Quantum Phase Transition: The Dicke Model

## Abstract

We consider the Dicke Hamiltonian, a simple quantum–optical model which exhibits a zero–temperature quantum phase transition. We present numerical results demonstrating that at this transition the system changes from being quasi-integrable to quantum chaotic. By deriving an exact solution in the thermodynamic limit we relate this phenomenon to a localisation–delocalisation transition in which a macroscopic superposition is generated. We also describe the classical analogues of this behaviour.

At zero temperature, systems of $`N`$ interacting particles can exhibit a quantum phase transition (QPT) as a function of a coupling parameter $`\lambda `$ in the limit that $`N\mathrm{}`$. How do the precursors of such a transition influence quantum chaotic (and non-chaotic) behaviour of the same system for finite $`N`$?

One of the most direct indicators of the emergence of quantum chaos is the change in energy level spacing statistics from Poissonian to being described by the Gaussian ensembles of Random Matrix Theory. Although this change-over has been observed in many systems guhr ; bo:gs ; de:ga ; ja:sh , only in a comparatively few, isolated cases has the onset of quantum chaos been correlated with the presence of a QPT. Important examples include spin glass shards, which have recently been used in modeling the onset of chaos in quantum computers ge:sh , the Lipkin model LMG , the interacting boson model ibm , and the three–dimensional Anderson model le:ra ; zh:kr , where the change in level statistics occurs at the metal–insulator (localisation–delocalisation) transition found in disordered electronic systems.

In this Letter we consider the Dicke Hamiltonian (DH) di:ck , a quantum-optical model describing the interaction of $`N`$ two-level atoms with a number of bosonic modes. We demonstrate that a crossover between Poisson and Wigner–Dyson statistics in this model for finite $`N`$ is intimately connected to a mean-field type superradiance QPT.

The simplicity and generality of the Dicke Hamiltonian have afforded it appeal both for the investigation of quantum chaos, and as a model for phase transitions at a critical coupling $`\lambda _c`$ induced by the interaction with light. The level statistics for finite $`N`$ have revealed the existence of quantum chaos in certain isolated regimes of the model gr:ho ; le:ne . On the other hand, the QPT aspect for $`N\mathrm{}`$ has been discussed in the context of superradiance he:li ; su:pr , and recently for exciton condensation ea:li . Here, we derive an exact solution for all eigenstates, eigenvalues and critical exponents in the thermodynamic limit, and show that above the critical point $`\lambda =\lambda _c`$ the ground-state wavefunction bifurcates into a macroscopic superposition for any $`N<\mathrm{}`$. Our numerical results indicate that a localisation-delocalisation transition for $`N\mathrm{}`$ underlies the cross-over between Poissonian and Wigner level–spacing distributions for finite $`N`$. Furthermore, we use an exact Holstein-Primakoff transformation to derive the classical limit of the model for arbitrary $`N`$ and find a transition at $`\lambda =\lambda _c`$ from regular to chaotic trajectories. The latter are delocalised around two fixed points in phase space which we conjecture constitute the classical analogue of the macroscopic superposition. The emergence of this state in the Dicke model is related to a conserved parity which becomes spontaneously broken in the thermodynamic limit.

We consider the single–mode Dicke Hamiltonian (DH)

$`H=\omega _0J_z+\omega a^{}a+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{\sqrt{2j}}}\left(a^{}+a\right)\left(J_++J_{}\right),`$ (1)
where $`J_z`$, $`J_\pm `$ are the usual angular momentum operators for a pseudo–spin of length $`j=N/2`$, and $`a`$, $`a^{}`$ are the bosonic operators of the field. The atomic level–splitting is given by $`\omega _0`$, $`\omega `$ is the field frequency, and $`\lambda `$ is the atom–field coupling. Crucially, we have not made the rotating–wave approximation (RWA), as this would render the model integrable and destroy the phenomena that we describe here le:ne . There is a conserved parity $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ associated with the DH, which is given by $`\mathrm{\Pi }=\mathrm{exp}\left\{i\pi \left[a^{}a+J_z+j\right]\right\}`$, such that $`[H,\mathrm{\Pi }]=0`$. The eigenvalues of $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ are $`\pm 1`$ and, unless stated, we shall work exclusively in the positive parity subspace.

We begin by discussing the properties of the system in the thermodynamic limit $`N,j\mathrm{}`$. In this limit the system becomes integrable for all $`\lambda `$, and we can derive effective Hamiltonians to describe the system exactly in each of its two phases. We employ a procedure similar to Hillery and Mlodinow’s analysis of the RWA Hamiltonian hi:ll , and introduce the Holstein–Primakoff representation of the angular momentum operators, $`J_+=b^{}\sqrt{2jb^{}b}`$, $`J_{}=\sqrt{2jb^{}b}b`$, $`J_z=\left(b^{}bj\right)`$, where $`b`$ and $`b^{}`$ are bosonic operators ho:pr . Making these substitutions allows us to write the DH as a two-mode Hamiltonian. Below the phase transition, we proceed to the thermodynamic limit by expanding the square roots and neglecting terms with powers of $`j`$ in the denominator. This yields the effective Hamiltonian $`H^{(1)}=\omega _0b^{}b+\omega a^{}a+\lambda \left(a^{}+a\right)\left(b^{}+b\right)j\omega _0.`$ This bi–linear Hamiltonian may then be diagonalised to give $`H^{(1)}=\epsilon _{}^{(1)}c_{}^{}c_{}+\epsilon _+^{(1)}c_+^{}c_+j\omega _0`$, where $`\epsilon _\pm ^{(1)}`$ are the excitation energies of the low–coupling phase, and are given by

$`2\left(\epsilon _\pm ^{(1)}\right)^2=\omega ^2+\omega _0^2\pm \sqrt{\left(\omega _0^2\omega ^2\right)^2+16\lambda ^2\omega \omega _0}.`$ (2)
The energy $`\epsilon _{}^{(1)}`$ is real only for $`\lambda \sqrt{\omega \omega _0}/2=\lambda _c`$, which locates the phase transition. We derive an effective Hamiltonian above $`\lambda _c`$ by first displacing each oscillator mode in the Holstein–Primakoff DH by a quantity proportional to $`\sqrt{j}`$, and then neglecting terms as above. With an appropriate choice of displacements, this process also yields a bi–linear Hamiltonian, which may be diagonalised to a form similar to $`H^{(1)}`$, but with different vacuum and excitation energies, the latter of which are given by

$`2\lambda _c^4\left(\epsilon _\pm ^{(2)}\right)^2`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _0^2\lambda ^4+\omega ^2\lambda _c^4`$ (3)
$`\pm \sqrt{\left(\omega _0^2\lambda ^4\omega ^2\lambda _c^4\right)^2+4\omega ^2\omega _0^2\lambda _c^8}.`$
The excitation energy $`\epsilon _{}^{(2)}`$ of this second Hamiltonian $`H^{(2)}`$ is real only above the phase transition. There are two independent choices of displacements, each of which yield a different effective Hamiltonian above $`\lambda _c`$. This is a consequence of the fact that at the QPT the $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ symmetry is spontaneously broken.

In Fig. 1 we plot as a function of coupling the behaviour of the excitation energies and the ground-state energy, which is itself continuous but possesses a discontinuity in its second derivative at $`\lambda _c`$. Below the phase transition the ground-state is composed of an empty field with all the atoms unexcited and hence $`J_z_G/j=1`$ and $`a^{}a_G/j=0`$. Above $`\lambda _c`$, the field is macroscopically occupied, $`a^{}a_G/j=2\left(\lambda ^4\lambda _c^4\right)/\left(\omega \lambda \right)^2`$, and the atoms acquire a macroscopic inversion, $`J_z_G/j=\lambda _c^2/\lambda ^2`$. At the phase transition, the excitation energy $`\epsilon _{}`$ vanishes as $`|\lambda \lambda _c|^{z\nu }`$ and the characteristic length scale $`l_{}=1/\sqrt{\epsilon _{}}`$ diverges as $`|\lambda \lambda _c|^\nu `$, with exponents given by $`\nu =1/4`$, $`z=2`$ on resonance.

To investigate the level statistics of the system, we numerically diagonalise the Hamiltonian in the basis $`\left\{|n|j,m\right\}`$, where $`a^{}a|n=n|n`$, and $`|j,m`$ are the Dicke states, $`J_z|j,m=\left(b^{}bj\right)|j,m=m|j,m`$. We restrict ourselves to the positive parity subspace by considering only states with $`n+m+j`$ even. We then unfold the resulting energy spectrum to rid it of secular variation, form the level spacings $`S_n=E_{n+1}E_n`$, and then construct the nearest–neighbour distribution function $`P\left(S\right)`$. Finally, we normalise the results for comparison with the universal ensembles of Random Matrix Theory. In the following, we shall use the term “quasi-integrable” to denote systems exhibiting Poissonian level statistics, and reserve “integrable” for systems possessing exact solutions.

Figure 2 shows the $`P\left(S\right)`$ distributions obtained for the DH at various values of the coupling, and for various values of $`j`$. At low $`j`$ the $`P\left(S\right)`$ clearly do not correspond to any of the universal ensembles. This is most keenly observed in the $`j=1/2`$ case (identical to the Rabi Hamiltonian ii:ra ), where the spectrum is of “picket-fence” character kus , characteristic of one-dimensional systems or harmonic oscillators be:ta . For couplings less than the critical value, $`\lambda <\lambda _c`$, we see that as we increase $`j`$, the $`P\left(S\right)`$ approaches ever closer the Poissonian distribution, $`P_\mathrm{P}\left(S\right)=\mathrm{exp}\left(S\right)`$. At and above $`\lambda _c`$ the spectrum is seen to converge onto the Wigner distribution $`P_\mathrm{W}\left(S\right)=\pi S/2\mathrm{exp}\left(\pi S^2/4\right)`$, characteristic of quantum chaos. This demonstrates that the precursors of the QPT in this model lead to a cross–over from quasi–integrable to quantum chaotic behaviour at $`\lambda \lambda _c`$.

A further transition between integrable and chaotic behaviour is observed in the sequence of level spacings $`S_n`$. The $`\lambda \mathrm{}`$ limit of the Hamiltonian is integable for arbitrary $`j`$, having eigen-energies $`E_{nm}=\frac{\omega }{j}n\frac{2\lambda ^2}{\omega j^2}m^2`$, where $`n=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$ and $`m=j,\mathrm{},+j`$. As $`\lambda `$ is increased from $`\lambda _c`$ to approach this limit with $`j`$ fixed, the spectrum reverts from Wigner-like to integrable. However, it does not follow the usual transition sequence, but rather through a sequence illustrated by Fig. 3. The spectrum becomes very regular at low energy, where it approximates the integrable $`\lambda \mathrm{}`$ results closely. Outside the regular region the spectrum is well described by the Wigner surmise, and the energy-scale over which the change between the two regimes occurs is seen to be surprisingly narrow. As coupling is increased, the size of the low-energy integrable window increases, until it eventually engulfs the whole spectrum as $`\lambda \mathrm{}`$.

We now proceed to consider the wavefunctions of the system by introducing an abstract position–momentum representation for each of the boson modes via $`x\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\omega }}\left(a^{}+a\right)`$; $`p_xi\sqrt{\frac{\omega }{2}}\left(a^{}a\right)`$, and $`y\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\omega _0}}\left(b^{}+b\right)`$; $`p_yi\sqrt{\frac{\omega _0}{2}}\left(b^{}b\right)`$. In this representation the action of the parity operator $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ corresponds to rotation by $`\pi `$ about the origin. The ground state of the system on scaled resonance for $`j=5`$ is plotted for different couplings in Fig. 4. These wavefunctions were obtained by diagonalising the Hamiltonian in the same basis as was used to calculate $`P\left(S\right)`$ and representing the basis vectors $`|n|m,j`$ by products of harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions.

For the non-interacting system ($`\lambda =0`$), the wavefunction is a product of two independent Gaussians. As the coupling increases, the two modes start mixing, leading to a stretching of the single–peaked wavefunction. Around the critical coupling ($`\lambda \lambda _c`$), the wavefunction bifurcates to become a double–peaked function, and with further increases in coupling the two lobes at $`(\pm x_0,y_0)`$ move away from each other in their respective quadrants of the $`xy`$ plane. Since $`x_0`$ and $`y_0`$ are of the order of $`\sqrt{j}`$, for large $`j`$ the ground state evolves into a superposition of two macroscopically distinguishable parts, which may be considered as a “Schrödinger’s cat”. The formation of this state constitutes a delocalisation of the ground-state wavefunction, which is also observed in the excited states. This localisation-delocalisation transition is consistent with the transition between Poisson and Wigner distributions in the spectrum prange . The suppression of chaos at low $`j`$ is then seen to be due to the fact that for low $`j`$ only a few excitations are permitted in the $`b`$-mode. This restricts the extent of the wavefunction in the $`y`$-direction, inhibiting delocalisation, and yielding the non-generic $`P\left(S\right)`$ seen in Fig. 2. It should be noted that an actual spontaneous symmetry–breaking transition occurs above $`\lambda _c`$ in the $`j\mathrm{}`$ limit which removes the two lobes so far from one another that they cease to overlap and thus can be considered independently. This breaks the $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ symmetry of the model, allowing us to obtain the earlier exact results by using an effective Hamiltonian for each lobe. These Hamiltonians are identical in form, have identical spectra, thus demonstrating that in the thermodynamic limit, each energy level in the high–coupling phase is doubly degenerate and the macroscopic superposition is broken in half.

Finally, this position representation allows us to study the classical analogues of this QPT and the accompanying onset of chaos in a very natural way. By setting the commutators $`[x,p_x]`$ and $`[y,p_y]`$ to zero, the classical Hamiltonian corresponding to Eq. (1) is seen to be

$`H_{\mathrm{cl}}`$ $`=`$ $`j\omega _0+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\omega _0^2y^2+p_y^2+\omega ^2x^2+p_x^2\omega \omega _0\right)`$ (4)
$`+2\lambda \sqrt{\omega \omega _0}xy\sqrt{1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\omega _0j}}\left(\omega _0^2y^2+p_y^2\omega _0\right)}.`$
Space limitations here only allow us to point out two significant features. Firstly, below $`\lambda _c`$ there is only one fixed point of the flow, namely $`x=y=p_x=p_y=0`$. At $`\lambda =\lambda _c`$ this situation changes abruptly and two new fixed points appear at $`(x,y)=(\pm x_{cl},y_{cl})`$ with $`p_x=p_y=0`$, where $`x_{cl}`$ and $`y_{cl}`$ are approximately equal to the centres of the wavefunction lobes $`x_0,y_0`$ for large $`j`$. Secondly, parametric plots of typical trajectories obtained from Eq. (4) (Fig. 5) demonstrate that the system undergoes a rapid change at $`\lambda =\lambda _c`$ from a very simple quasi-periodic motion to intricate chaotic behaviour, in agreement with the results of the quantum model. Note that the correspondence between this classical system and the original quantum one is significantly greater than previous semi-classical treatments mil , and that this holds for any $`j`$, not just for $`j\mathrm{}`$.

We mention that larger system sizes are required to check if there exists a critical level statistics of our model at $`\lambda _c`$ zh:kr , and that an examination of the exceptional points LMG  of this model may yield further insight. Future work also includes a study of related models to determine the generality of the features described here.

In summary, we have seen that the $`P\left(S\right)`$ distribution of the DH at finite $`N`$ changes from being Poissonian to Wigner at approximately $`\lambda _c`$, indicating the emergence of quantum chaos. The ground-state wavefunction bifurcates at this point, forming a macroscopic superposition. The underlying quantum phase transition is reflected in the classical model derived here by the appearance of two new fixed points at $`\lambda _c`$, where a transition between regular and chaotic trajectories occurs.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by projects EPSRC GR44690/01, DFG Br1528/4-1, the WE Heraeus foundation and the UK Quantum Circuits Network.


text:
# Four new planets orbiting somewhat metal-enriched starsBased on observations obtained at the Anglo–Australian Telescope, Siding Spring, Australia.

## 1 Introduction

The Anglo-Australian Planet Search (AAPS) is a long-term planet detection program which aims to perform extra-solar planet detection and measurement at the highest possible precision. Together with programmes using similar techniques on the Lick 3 m and Keck I 10 m telescopes (Fischer et al., 2001; Vogt et al., 2000), it provides all-sky planet search coverage for inactive F,G,K and M dwarfs down to a magnitude limit of V=7.5. Initial results from this programme (Tinney et al., 2001; Butler et al., 2001; Tinney et al., 2002a; Jones et al., 2002a; Butler et al., 2002a; Jones et al., 2002b) demonstrate that it achieves long-term, systematic velocity precisions of 3 m s-1 or better, for suitably stable stars, down to our main sample magnitude limit of V$`<`$7.5.

AAPS is being carried out on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), using the University College London Echelle Spectrograph (UCLES) and an I2 absorption cell. UCLES is operated in its 31 lines mm-1 mode. Prior to 2001 September, it was used with a MIT/LL 2048$`\times `$4096 15$`\mu `$m pixel CCD, and since then has been used with an EEV 2048$`\times `$4096 13.5$`\mu `$m pixel CCD. Our target sample includes 178 FGK stars with $`\delta <20`$° and V$`<`$7.5. Where age/activity information is available from R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ indices – see for example Henry et al. (1996); Tinney et al. (2002b) – we require target stars to have $`\mathrm{log}`$R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$$`>`$ -4.5 (corresponding to ages greater than 3 Gyr). The observing and data processing procedures follow that described in Butler et al. (1996) and Butler et al. (2001).

In addition to our primary sample of V$`<`$7.5 dwarfs, a small sub-sample of twenty fainter dwarfs (down to V$`<`$9) was added in October 1999, following suggestions that metal-enriched stars seemed to be preferentially revealing planets (see eg. Laughlin (2000) and references therein). These stars all had $`uvby`$ photometry suggesting metal-enrichment. All stars in this fainter sub-sample were observed with a maximum exposure time of 300s regardless of observing conditions. As a result, the velocity precisions achieved for these targets are not as high as those demonstrated for the AAPS main sample (Jones et al., 2002a; Butler et al., 2001).

## 2 Characteristics of the Host Stars

HD 30177 (HIP 21850, SAO 233633) is a chromospherically inactive ($`\mathrm{log}`$ R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$=$`5.08`$; Tinney et al. (2002b)) G8V star (Houck & Cowley, 1975). HD 30177 was observed 105 times by the HIPPARCOS satellite and found to be photometrically stable with a standard deviation of 0.017 magnitudes. Its HIPPARCOS parallax of 18.3$`\pm `$0.8 mas implies absolute magnitudes of MV=4.72$`\pm `$0.09 (ESA, 1997) and Mbol=4.36$`\pm `$0.10 (Cox, 2000) . Strömgren $`uvby`$ photometry from the General Catalogue of Photometric Data111Data obtained directly from http://obswww.unige.ch/gcpd/gcpd.html (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997), together with the $`uvby`$ calibrations of (Schuster & Nissen, 1989) indicate a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=$`+0.20\pm 0.16`$. A detailed metallicity analysis has been performed for all the G-dwarfs in the AAPS (Bond, 2002), which indicates a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=$`+0.19\pm 0.09`$, in agreement with the $`uvby`$-based estimate. The $`by`$ colour of HD 30177 indicates Teff=5320$`\pm `$20K (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Olsen, 1984). From HD30177’s $`\mathrm{log}`$ R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$=$`5.08`$ we estimate intrinsic stellar velocity jitter to be in the range 2-4 m s-1 (Saar et al., 1998).

Figure 1 shows evolutionary tracks at \[Fe/H\]=+0.2 and +0.1 for stars of near-Solar mass from the compilation of Girardi et al. (2000). The \[Fe/H\]=+0.1 tracks were obtained by interpolation between the \[Fe/H\]=+0.2 and \[Fe/H\]=0.0 tracks in Girardi et al. (2000). Based on these models and the metallicity measurements for HD 30177, its mass is estimated to be 0.95$`\pm `$0.05M, and it would appear (in common with HD 73526 and HD 76700) to be beginning its evolution off the main sequence.

HD 73526 (HIP 42282, SAO 220191) is a G6V dwarf (Houck, 1978) for which no R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ estimate is currently available. It was observed 137 times by HIPPARCOS, but its relative faintness means that only a 0.02 magnitude standard deviation limit is placed on its photometric stability. Its HIPPARCOS parallax is 10.6$`\pm `$1.0 mas, which indicates MV=4.1$`\pm `$0.2 and Mbol=3.7$`\pm `$0.2 (ESA, 1997; Cox, 2000). As for HD 30177 (see above), Strömgren $`uvby`$ photometry indicates a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=+0.10$`\pm `$0.16 (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Schuster & Nissen, 1989), while a detailed metallicity analysis gives \[Fe/H\]=+0.11$`\pm `$0.10 (Bond, 2002). The GCPD $`by`$ colour of HD 73526 indicates Teff=5450$`\pm `$20K (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Olsen, 1984). Based on the evolutionary tracks shown in Figure 1, HD 73526 is estimated to have a mass of 1.05$`\pm `$0.05M.

HD 76700 (HIP 43686, SAO 250370, LTT 3291) is catalogued as a G6V dwarf by SIMBAD, as G5 by the Henry-Draper catalogue (Cannon & Pickering, 1918-24) and as G8V by HIPPARCOS (ESA, 1997). The HIPPARCOS B-V colour ($`+`$0.745) would indicate a G8 spectral type is more likely than G5 or G6, though the GCPD $`by`$ colour (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997) would indicate a G6 type is more appropriate. No R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ estimate is available. It was observed 109 times by HIPPARCOS, which found it to have constant magnitude with a standard deviation of 0.012 magnitude. Its HIPPARCOS parallax is 16.8$`\pm `$0.7 mas, which indicates MV=4.3$`\pm `$0.1 and Mbol=3.9$`\pm `$0.2 (ESA, 1997; Lang, 1992). Strömgren $`uvby`$ photometry indicates a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=+0.14$`\pm `$0.16 (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Schuster & Nissen, 1989), while a detailed metallicity analysis gives \[Fe/H\]=+0.10$`\pm `$0.11 (Bond, 2002). The GCPD $`by`$ colour indicates a Teff=5423$`\pm `$20K (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Olsen, 1984). Based on the evolutionary tracks shown in Figure 1, HD 76700 is estimated to have a mass of 1.00$`\pm `$0.05M. There is no published $`\mathrm{log}`$ R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$measurement for HD 76700. Because the velocity amplitude observed in this star is small (26$`\pm `$2 m s-1), a Ca HK spectrum was acquired to determine the level at which our results could be affected by velocity jitter. Figure 2 shows this spectrum for HD 76700 compared to those for several objects of similar spectral type, along with their spectral types and $`\mathrm{log}`$ R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$values (Tinney et al., 2002b). HD 76700 shows no evidence for a line reversal. Based on this comparison we assign an upper limit to the $`\mathrm{log}`$ R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$for HD 76700 of -4.9, from which we estimate its intrinsic stellar velocity jitter to be in the range 3-6 m s-1 or less (Saar et al., 1998).

HD 2039 (HIP 1931, SAO 23205) is a chromospherically inactive (R$`{}_{HK}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$=$`4.91`$; Tinney et al. (2002b)) star classified as G2/G3 IV/V by Houck & Cowley (1975). It was observed 147 times by HIPPARCOS, but its relative faintness means that only a 0.022 magnitude standard deviation limit is placed on its photometric stability. Its HIPPARCOS parallax is 11.1$`\pm `$1.1 mas, which indicates MV=4.25$`\pm `$0.24 and Mbol=4.22$`\pm `$0.25 (ESA, 1997; Cox, 2000). There are multiple measures of this star’s Strömgren $`uvby`$ photometry, the mean of which indicate a metallicity of \[Fe/H\]=+0.10$`\pm `$0.16 (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Schuster & Nissen, 1989). A detailed metallicity analysis gives \[Fe/H\]=+0.10$`\pm `$0.11 (Bond, 2002). The $`by`$ colour of HD 2039 indicates Teff=5675$`\pm `$20K (Hauck & Mermilliod, 1997; Olsen, 1984). Based on the evolutionary tracks shown in Figure 1, HD 2039 is estimated to have a mass of 0.98$`\pm `$0.05M.

## 3 Radial Velocity Observations and Orbital Solutions

Fifteen observations of HD 30177 are listed in Table 1. The column labelled “Uncertainty” is the velocity uncertainty produced by our least-squares fitting procedure. This fit simultaneously determines the Doppler shift and the spectrograph point-spread function (PSF) for each observation made though the iodine cell, given an iodine absorption spectrum and an “iodine free” template spectrum of the object (Butler et al., 1996). The uncertainty is derived for each measurement by taking the mean of four hundred useful spectral regions (each 2 Å long) from each exposure. This uncertainty includes the effects of photon-counting uncertainties, residual errors in the spectrograph PSF model, and variation in the underlying spectrum between the template and “iodine” epochs. All velocities are measured relative to the zero-point defined by the template observation. Only observations where the uncertainty is less than twice the median uncertainty are listed. These data are shown in Figure 3. The figure shows the best-fit Keplerian model for the data, with the resultant orbital parameters listed in Table 2. Due to HD 30177’s faintness compared to the AAPS main sample, the residuals about the fit (14m s-1) are significantly higher than the baseline 3m s-1 precision level demonstrated for the main sample (Butler et al., 2001; Jones et al., 2002a).

Eighteen observations of HD 73526 are listed in Table 3, and they are shown in Figure 4 along with a Keplerian fit to the data with the orbital parameters listed in Table 2. Note again the larger residuals (17 m s-1) compared to the AAPS main sample. Twenty-four observations of HD 76700 are listed in Table 4, and they are shown in Figure 5 along with a Keplerian fit to the data with the orbital parameters listed in Table 2. The thirty-six observations of HD 2039 are listed in Table 5, and they are shown in Figure 5 along with a Keplerian fit to the data with the orbital parameters listed in Table 2.

## 4 Discussion

The resultant minimum companion mass for HD 76700 is M $`\mathrm{sin}i`$ = 0.197$`\pm `$0.017 MJUP, with an orbital semi-major axis $`a`$ = 0.049$`\pm `$0.004 au and eccentricity $`e`$=0.00$`\pm `$0.04. This zero eccentricity is consistent with the expectation that a planet with a period of just 3.971$`\pm `$0.001 d will almost certainly lie in an orbit which has been tidally circularised (Marcy & Butler, 1998). The resulting orbital parameters for HD 76700 place it amongst the planetary companions with the lowest known minimum masses. HD 76700, joins HD 49674, HD 16141, HD 168746 & HD 46375 (Butler et al., 2002b; Marcy, Butler & Vogt, 2000; Pepe et al., 2002) in the group of extra-solar planetary companions with measured minimum masses less than a Saturn mass (0.299 MJUP).

The remaining three extra-solar planets all have elliptical orbits, though the ellipticity of the orbit for the companion to HD 30177 ($`e`$=0.22$`\pm `$0.17) is not different from zero with great significance. As further data are acquired over the coming years this parameter will become far better constrained, and it is possible that this extra-solar planet could turn out to be in a substantially circular orbit. If so this system would join with the other known nearly circular systems with gas-giant planets lying in orbits between where the Earth and Jupiter lie in our own Solar System ($`ϵ`$ Ret, HD 4208, the outer components of 47 UMa, HD 28185 (Jones et al., 2002a)). These extra-solar planets would seem to indicate that gas-giants exist in nearly circular orbits with semi-major axes all the way out to, and beyond that of Jupiter, as confirmed recently by the detection of the outer planet in the 55 Cnc system (Marcy et al., 2002a).

Of the twenty metal-enriched stars included as a sub-sample along with our main sample in late 1999, five have revealed the presence of planetary companions (the four planets discussed here – HD 30177, 73526, 76700 and 2039 – along with the previously known companion to HD 83443 (Butler et al., 2002a; Mayor et al., 2002)). This gives us a lower limit (there may be longer period or lower mass planets present which we cannot yet detect) to the discovery rate of 25$`\pm `$11% for this “metallicity-biassed” sub-sample. This compares with the overall discovery rates estimated for the Keck, Lick and AAPS of $``$8% (ie 8% of stars surveyed have planets in orbits within 3.5 a.u. of their host stars (Butler et al., 2002c)) – a difference which, while not of great statistical significance, is not unexpected given that extra-solar planets seem to be being found preferentially around metal-enriched stars (eg. Reid (2002); Laughlin (2000) and references therein). It is also interesting to note (even if perhaps not statistically significant) that all four of the stars in this paper would seem to be beginning their evolution off the main sequence (see Fig 1).

These results would suggest that the biassing of planet surveys toward metal-enriched host stars may offer a benefit in the planet detection rate. However, such an increased discovery rate must be balanced against the fact that it will produce an inherently biassed sample of extra-solar planets. With the total number of extra-solar planets still numbering less than a hundred, and the parameters of this ensemble of planets still poorly placed in a scheme of extra-solar planetary formation and evolution, now is not the time for planet searches to begin biassing their large surveys in the chase for better “hit rates” at the expense of scientific utility.

The Anglo-Australian Planet Search team would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of Dr Brian Boyle, Director of the AAO, the contributions and assistance of Drs Stuart Ryder and Debra Fischer, and the superb technical support which has been received throughout the programme from AAT staff - in particular R.Patterson, D.Stafford, F.Freeman, S.Lee, J.Pogson, G.Kitley and J. Stevenson. We further acknowledge support by; the partners of the Anglo-Australian Telescope Agreement (CGT,HRAJ,AJP); NASA grant NAG5-8299 & NSF grant AST95-20443 (GWM); NSF grant AST-9988087 (RPB); and Sun Microsystems. NSO/Kitt Peak FTS data used here were produced by NSF/NOAO.