text:
# An Architecture for Making Object-Oriented Systems Available from Prolog

## 1 Introduction

A wealth of functionality is available in object-oriented systems and libraries. This paper addresses the issue of how such libraries can be made available in Prolog, in particular libraries for creating user interfaces.

Almost any modern Prolog system can call routines in C and be called from C (or other imperative languages). Also, most systems provide ready-to-use libraries to handle network communication. These primitives are used to build bridges between Prolog and external libraries for (graphical) user-interfacing (GUIs), connecting to databases, embedding in (web-)servers, etc. Some, especially most GUI systems, are object-oriented (OO). The rest of this paper concentrates on GUIs, though the arguments apply to other systems too.

GUIs consist of a large set of entities such as windows and controls that define a large number of operations. These operations often involve destructive state changes and the behaviour of GUI components normally involves handling spontaneous input in the form of *events*. OO techniques are very well suited to handle this complexity.

A concrete GUI is generally realised by sub-classing base classes from the GUI system. In —for example— Java and C++, the language used for the GUI and the application is the same. This is achieved by either defining the GUI base classes in this language or by encapsulating foreign GUI classes in classes of the target language. This situation is ideal for application development because the user can develop and debug both the GUI and application in one language.

For Prolog, the situation is more complicated. Diversity of Prolog implementations and target platforms, combined with a relatively small market share of the Prolog language make it hard to realise the ideal situation sketched above. In addition, Prolog is not the most suitable language for implementing fast and space-efficient low-level operations required in a GUI.

The main issue addressed in this paper is how Prolog programmers can tap on the functionality provided by object-oriented libraries without having to know the details of such libraries. Work in this direction started in 1985 and progresses to today. Over these years our understanding of making Prolog an allround programming environment has matured from a basic interface between Prolog and object-oriented systems (Section 3), through introducing object-oriented programming techniques in Prolog (Section 4), and finally to make it possible to handle Prolog data transparently (Section 5).

## 2 Approaches

We see several solutions for making OO systems available from Prolog. One is a rigid separation of the GUI, developed in an external GUI development environment, from the application. A narrow bridge links the external system to Prolog. Various styles of ‘bridges’ are used, some based on TCP/IP communication and others on local in-process communication. ECLiPSe  defines a neat generic interface for exchanging messages between ECLiPSe and external languages that exploits both in-process and remote communication. Amzi!  defines a C++ class derived from a Prolog-vendor defined C++/Prolog interface class that encapsulates the Prolog application in a set of C++ methods. The GUI part of the application is now written using the normal guidelines of the C++ GUI library.

These approaches have advantages such as modularity and using the most appropriate tools for the various functions of the application. Stream-based communication is limited by communication protocol bandwidth and latency. Whether or not using streams, the final application consists of two programs, one in Prolog and one in an external language between which a proper interface needs to be defined. For each new element in the application the programmer needs to extend the Prolog program as well as the GUI program and maintain the interface consistency.

For applications that require a wide interface between the application and GUI code we would like to be able to write the application and GUI both in Prolog. Here we see two approaches. One is to write a Prolog layer around the (possibly extended) API of an existing GUI system . This option is unattractive as GUI systems contain a large number of primitives and data types. Developing and maintaining the interface is costly. The alternative is to consider an existing OO system where methods can be called from the C-language222Or another language Prolog can communicate with. C and C++ are the de-facto interface languages. based on their name. Most non-C++ GUI toolkits fulfill this requirement.333The desired result can still be achieved based on the C++ headers, but this is beyond the scope if this article.

In the remainder of this article we concentrate on this interesting class of OO systems.

## 3 Basic Prolog to OO System Interface

The simplest view on an OO system is that it provides a set of methods (functions) that can be applied to objects. This uniformity of representation (objects) and functionality (methods) makes it possible to define a very small interface between Prolog and an OO system. All that is required to communicate is to represent object-identity in Prolog, translate Prolog data to types (objects) of the OO system, invoke a method and translate the result back to Prolog. This idea has been implemented in XPCE, and throughout this paper we will use examples based on XPCE.

### 3.1 Object Manipulation from Prolog

We add four predicates to Prolog:

Create an object as an instance of Class using the given arguments to initialise the object. Make the resulting instance known as Reference from Prolog. If Arg is atomic, convert it to a natural counterpart in XPCE (integer, float, atom). If it is compound, create an instance using the functor as the class name and the arguments as initialising arguments. Unbound variables have no sensible counterpart in XPCE and therefore raise an exception. The example below creates a box (graphical rectangle) with specified width and height.

```
?- new(X, box(100,100)).

X = @459337

```

Given a reference to an object, invoke the named method with the given arguments. The arguments are translated as with new/2. XPCE uses send/2 for methods returning either no value or a boolean success/failure indication. The example creates a picture (graphics window) and displays a box at a given location.

```
?- new(P, picture),
   send(P, display(box(100,50), point(20,20))).

```

Used for methods that return a ‘true’ result value. If the returned value is primitive, it is converted to a Prolog integer, float or atom. In all other cases an object reference is returned. The following code gets the left-edge of the visible part of a window.

```
?- new(P, picture),
   get(P, visible, Visible),
   get(Visible, x, X).

P = @1072825
Visible = @957733
X = 0

```

Destroy the referenced object.

Minimalists may claim that three of these four primitives are redundant. Generating an instance of a class is an operation of the class and can thus be performed by a method of the class if classes can be manipulated as objects (or by a ‘pseudo-method’ of the interface otherwise). Destroying an object is an operation on the object itself and send/2 is a special case of get/3.

We perceive the distinction between *telling* an object to perform an action without interest for the result (i.e. *move* to a location) and *asking* an object to return, compute or create something improves readability. The new/2 and free/1 predicates are pleasant short-hands, also improving readability of the code.

XPCE defines access to object attributes using two methods, one for retrieving the current value and one for setting it. For object systems that make a distinction between accessing attributes and methods two more predicates are required to set and retrieving attribute values.

Life-time is an important aspect of objects and their references. Object references (e.g. @1072825 in the example above) are Prolog terms acting as an opaque handle to an object. The life-time of the object is totally unrelated to the life-time of the Prolog reference. The user must be aware of the object life-time rules of the object system. XPCE defines methods to lock, unlock and free objects. In the JPL (http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpl/ project, interfacing SWI-Prolog to Java, Paul Singleton has used Prolog atoms for representing object-identity, synchronising object and reference life-time using low-level hooks at both ends.

### 3.2 Prolog as an Object

The four predicates suffice to invoke behaviour in the OO system from Prolog. Events and other requests from the OO system can be placed in a queue object and Prolog can read this queue. Another possibility is to embed Prolog in a class of the OO system and define a method *call* that takes a predicate name and a list of OO arguments as input. These arguments are translated to Prolog the same way as the return value of get/3 and the method is executed by calling the predicate. In XPCE, class prolog has a single instance with a public reference (@prolog). This object can, of course, also be activated from Prolog with the following result:

```
?- send(@prolog, writeln(’Hello World’)).

Hello World.

```

### 3.3 Portability

The above has been defined and implemented around 1985 for the first XPCE/Prolog system. It can be realised for any OO system that provides runtime invocation of methods by name and the ability to query and construct primitive data types.

### 3.4 Limitations

The basic OO interface is simple to implement and use. Unfortunately it also has some drawbacks as it does not take advantage of some fundamental advantages of object-oriented programming: specialisation through sub-classing and the ability to create abstractions in new classes. These drawbacks become very apparent in the context of creating interactive graphical applications.

Normally, application GUI-objects are created by sub-classing a base class of the toolkit and refining methods such as *OnDraw* and *OnClick* to perform the appropriate actions. In our interface, the implication is that we need to program the OO system.

For XPCE, defined in the C-language, this is highly unattractive for Prolog programmers. For this reason we invented *message objects*. Message objects are executed on pre-defined events, causing some method to be called. The following example illustrates this with a push button calling a Prolog predicate:

```
?- new(B, button(hello,
                 message(@prolog, call,
                         writeln, ’Hello World’))).

```

This is quite satisfactory for simple cases. GUI objects however tend to have a large number of ‘events’ one might wish to intercept, resulting in a large number of messages that may have to be attached to objects. Moreover, this type of programming occurs at the *object* rather than the *class* level, thereby impairing re-use and efficiency.

Still, even with the possibility to program in the OO system easily, this is not always the best solution. The programmer has to work in Prolog and the OO language at the same time. With decoupled systems as explained before, the revenue is clean modularization. In this case the revenues are small and the costs are large. Debugging hybrid environments is difficult, especially if one of the languages is not designed for this. In addition it requires programmers that can handle both languages.

## 4 Extending Object-Oriented Systems from Prolog

If we can extend the OO system from Prolog with new classes and methods that are executed in Prolog we have realised two major improvements. We have access to functionality of the OO system that must be realised by refining ‘virtual’ methods and, with everything running in Prolog we only need the Prolog debugger. Figure 2 illustrates our aim.

In XPCE, methods are primary objects consisting of a name, argument type definition and a handle to the implementation. Before introducing sub-classing from Prolog, the implementation was a simple pointer to the C-function realising the method. We decided to extend this, allowing for arbitrary handles that can be interpreted by the (Prolog) interface. On top of that we defined a specification for writing classes in Prolog and implemented a compiler for this specification using Prolog’s term\_expansion/2 based macro-facility. A small example of the “classes in Prolog” notation:

This program fragment defines a derived class of the base class box. Event processing is extended such that the box is red if the pointer (mouse) is inside and transparent (@nil) otherwise.

XPCE is a ‘soft typed’ language. Method arguments may have type specifiers and if they do the system performs runtime checks on these. The method above requires the first argument to be an instance of the class event.

### 4.1 Implementation

The code from figure 3 is translated into a clause for the predicate pce\_principal: send\_implementation/3 described below and Prolog facts describing method and class properties. The XPCE class and methods are created just-in-time from these facts. Representing the class and methods in Prolog rather than creating them directly in XPCE reduces program startup time and exploits the runtime generation facilities of the Prolog system.

Multifile predicate created by the XPCE class compiler. Id is a indexable Prolog identifier of the method, Method is a term denoting method name and arguments and Object is the receiver of the method.

The method of figure 3 is translated into the clause below. Note that the head is re-arranged to allow for a fast (indexed) call, while the body remains unchanged.

```
pce_principal:send_implementation(’my_box->event’, event(A), B) :-
    user:
    (   (   send(A, is_a(area_enter))
        ->  send(B, fill_pattern(colour(red)))
        ;   send(A, is_a(area_exit))
        ->  send(B, fill_pattern(@nil))
        ;   send_class(B, box, event(A))
        )
    ).

```

### 4.2 Portability

Our implementation is based on XPCE’s the ability to refine class method, such that the implementation can be handled by a new entity (the Prolog interface) based on a handle provided by this interface (the atom `’my_box-``>event’` in the example). Unfortunately very few todays object systems have this ability.

Fortunately, we can achieve the same result with virtually any OO system by defining a small wrapper-method in the OO language that calls the Prolog interface. Ideally, we are able to create this method on demand through the OO systems interface. In the least attractive scenario we generate a source-file for all required wrapper classes and methods and compile the result using the target OO systems compiler. Even in this unattractive setting, we can still debug and reload the method *implementation* using the normal Prolog interactive debugging cycle, but we can only extend or modify the class and method *signatures* by running the class-compiler and restarting the application.

### 4.3 Experience

The first version of XPCE where classes could be created from Prolog was developed around 1992. Over the years we have improved performance and the ability to generate compact fast starting saved states. Initially the user community was reluctant, but the system proved valuable for us, making more high-level functionality available to the XPCE user using the uniform class based framework.

We improved the usability of creating classes from Prolog by making the Prolog development environment aware of classes and methods. We united listing, setting spy-points, locating sources and cross-referencing. Support requests indicate that nowadays a large share of experienced XPCE users define classes. Problems are rarely related to the class definition system itself. User problems concentrate on how to find and combine classes and methods of the base system that fulfill their requirements. XPCE shares this problem with other large and powerful GUI libraries.

With the acceptance of XPCE/Prolog classes a new style of application development emerged. In this style classes became the dominant structuring factor of the application. Persistent storage and destructive assignment make XPCE data representation attractive alternatives to Prolog’s assert/retract.

These growing expectations however exposed a problem. As long as the XPCE/Prolog classes only extend XPCE it is natural to be restricted to XPCE data. As more application-oriented code is involved, so is application-oriented data. We needed a way to pass native Prolog data efficiently between methods.

## 5 Transparent exchange of Prolog data

XPCE version 5 allows method arguments to be typed as prolog. Whenever Prolog passes an argument to such a method, it is passed without modification. The passed term need not be ground and can be (further) initialised by the called method implementation. See figure 4.

For the technical realisation we introduced class host\_data providing XPCE with an opaque handle to data of the *host*, the term XPCE uses for the language(s) that extend it. The Prolog interface sub-classes this type to prolog\_term. Prolog data is opaque from XPCE’s perspective. This is sufficient, as extending XPCE itself is not envisioned as part of normal application development. On OO systems where this is a likely scenario (e.g. Java), it is desirable to extend the opaque handle with methods to access the Prolog term. This is a natural extension to the currently used implementation.

When preparing an XPCE method invocation, we check whether an argument is of type prolog, a type that refers to prolog\_term as well as primitive data. If the argument is not primitive (integer, float or atom), the interface creates an instance of prolog\_term and stores the term\_t term reference in this object. Whenever an instance of prolog\_term is passed from XPCE to Prolog, it is presented to Prolog as a normal Prolog term.

It is natural to the XPCE programmer to be able to store data in instance variables (slots). XPCE uses a reference count based garbage collector, freeing the programmer from lifetime considerations for most objects. The lifetime of Prolog term references however is only guaranteed during the foreign language call where it was created. Prolog data can only survive as a *copy* in the Prolog permanent heap.

We realised a seamless integration exploiting reference count information. After a method for which we created instances of class prolog\_term returns, we check the reference count of the created instances. If they are just referenced by the creator, we can safely discard them. Otherwise, we can no longer guarantee the Prolog term reference. The term is copied onto the permanent heap and the reference to the term on the stacks is replaced by a reference to the database record in the permanent heap. The Prolog record is destroyed if XPCE’s garbage collection destroys the object. See figure 5.

The example below creates a graphical tree where each node has a permanent pay load of Prolog data associated. The hierarchy is created directly from a complex Prolog data structure. After creating a hierarchy this way, the Prolog tree as a whole is always passed *by reference* as illustrated in figure 4. Each node contains a permanent copy of the associated pay load.

```
:- pce_begin_class(my_node, node).

variable(data, prolog, both, "Associated data").

initialise(Node, Tree:prolog) :->
        "The constructor"::
        Tree = node(Name, Data, Sons),
        send_super(Node, initialise, text(Name)),
        send(Node, data, Data),
        forall(member(Son, Sons),
               send(Node, son, my_node(Son))).

:- pce_end_class(my_node).

```

### 5.1 Portability

Modern object systems generally have a more subtle view on garbage collection and therefore the reference-count transparent change of status from term-reference to copy is often not feasible. It could be argued that such an important transition should not go by unintentionally anyhow and it is much better to define a class that represents a Prolog term as a reference to a copy in the Prolog permanent heap (record). Introduction of such a class avoids the need for reference-counting while making the programmers intention clear.

SWI-Prolog contains a fast C-interface to transfer terms between the stacks and the permanent heap. This should be easily achieved in other Prolog systems, while the slower route using assert/1 through the Prolog interface works in any implementation.

### 5.2 Experience

The possibility to pass Prolog data around has been introduced about 18 months ago, after which it has been used locally to become documented in the official manual about 8 months ago. We have little insight how much it is used externally. Locally it is now in frequent use, clearly simplifying and improving efficiency of methods that have to deal with application data that is already represented in Prolog, such as the parse tree generated by the SWI-Prolog SGML/XML parser.

### 5.3 Non-deterministic methods

Method invocation currently always passes the foreign interface, losing non-determinism. If the implementation is in Prolog, it is desirable to be able to exploit non-determinism. The interface may call the method implementation directly after it detects the method is defined in Prolog. We have experimented with an implementation following the following schema:

```
send(Object, Message) :-
        resolve_implementation(Object, Method, Implementation),
        Implementation.

```

For methods defined in Prolog, the implementation as shown in section 4.1 is called immediately, retaining non-determinism as well as last-call optimization. For methods defined externally, Implementation calls a foreign-language routine realising the method.

We have not yet included this mechanism as too much existing code relies on implicit argument type conversion provided by the interface (not discussed here) and the fact that currently, every Prolog method implementation implicitly ends with pruning the choice points it may have created. Probably the best solution is to introduce additional syntax declaring a method to be *pure-Prolog*.

## 6 Performance

XPCE/Prolog message passing implies data conversion and foreign code invocation, slowing down execution. However, XPCE provides high-level (graphical) operations limiting the number of messages passed. Computation inside the Prolog application runs in native Prolog and is thus not harmed. Bottlenecks appear —for example— when manipulating bitmapped images at the pixel-level or when using XPCE storage classes as the basis for high-performance and low-level object-oriented modeling.

Calling a typical method with two arguments defined in Prolog from Prolog costs, depending on the nature of the arguments, between 2.4 and 5.2 $`\mu S`$ on an AMD 1600+ processor (Linux 2.4, gcc).

Table table 1 illustrates the performance on some typical calls. The first two calls are to a C-defined built-in class involving no significant ‘work’ and taking no or one integer argument. The class bench is implemented in Prolog as a subclass of the ‘root’ object called object. The three methods accept no arguments, an integer argument and a Prolog term argument.

## 7 Threads, Events and Debugging

XPCE/SWI-Prolog is a single-threading environment.444There is a beta version of multi-threaded SWI-Prolog that can be used with a thread-safe version of XPCE. This version of XPCE simply serializes access from multiple Prolog threads. Where many todays candidate object systems are multi-threaded, the communication with Prolog often requires serialization or a Prolog system that can cooperate with the threading model of the OO system. This problem is not unique to the presented design, though the more fine-grained interaction between Prolog and the object-system make the problem more urgent.

An important advantage of the described interface is that all application-code is executed in Prolog and can therefore be debugged and developed using Prolog’s native debugger and, with some restrictions described in section 4.2, Prolog’s incremental compilation to update the environment while the application is running.

The Prolog debugger is faced with phenomena uncommon to the traditional Prolog world. The event-driven nature of GUI systems causes ‘spontaneous’ calls. Many user-interactions consist of a sequence of actions each causing their own events and Prolog call-backs. User interaction with the debugger may be difficult or impossible during such sequences. For example, call-backs resulting from dragging an object in the interface with the mouse cannot easily be debugged on the same console. The design also involves deeply nested control switches between foreign code and Prolog. The SWI-Prolog debugger is aware of the possibilities of interleaved control and provides hooks for presenting method-calls in a user-friendly fashion. Break-points in addition to the traditional spy-points make it easier to trap the debugger at interesting points during user-interaction. Figure 6 shows the source-level debugger in action on XPCE/Prolog code.

## 8 Related Work

To our best knowledge, there are no systems with a similar approach providing GUI to Prolog. Other approaches for accessing foreign GUI systems have been explored in section 2.

Started as a mechanism to provide a GUI, our approach has developed into a generic design to integrate Prolog seamlessly with an external OO programming language. The integrated system also functions as an object extension to Prolog and should therefore be compared to other approaches for representing objects in Prolog. Given the great diversity of such systems, we consider this beyond the scope of this discussion.

## 9 Conclusions

We have presented a generic architecture for integrating OO systems with Prolog. The design allows for extending many existing OO systems naturally from Prolog. Using this interface the user can add new classes to the OO system entirely from Prolog which can be used to extend the OO system as well as for object-oriented programming in Prolog. No knowledge of details of the OO system, such as syntax, is required.

Using dynamically typed OO systems where classes and methods can be created at runtime through the interface (i.e. without generating a source file, compiling this and loading the object code) a quick and natural development cycle is achieved. If however, less of the OO system is accessible at runtime, development becomes more cumbersome.

We feel that the combination of Prolog and a transparent interface to powerful object-oriented systems suffices to create real-world applications.

### 9.1 Acknowledgements

XPCE/SWI-Prolog is a Free Software project which, by nature, profits heavily from user feedback and participation. We would like to thank Mats Carlson in particular for his contribution to designing the representation of XPCE methods in Prolog. We also acknowedge the reviewers for their extensive comments and suggestions, many of which have been used to clarify this paper.


format: text

text:
# Transmission-electron-microscopy study of charge-stripe order in La1.725Sr0.275NiO4

## Abstract

We characterize the local structure and correlations of charge stripes in La1.725Sr0.275NiO4 using transmission-electron microscopy. We present direct evidence that the stripe modulation is indeed one-dimensional within each NiO2 plane. Furthermore, we show that individual stripes tend to be either site-centered or bond-centered, with a bias towards the former. The spacing between stripes often fluctuates about the mean, contributing to a certain degree of frustration of the approximate body-centered stacking along the $`c`$-axis. These results confirm ideas inferred from previous neutron-diffraction measurements on doped nickelates, and demonstrate that charge-stripe order is quite different from the conventional concept of charge-density-wave order.

The tendency in hole-doped two-dimensional antiferromagnets for charges to order in stripes is an empirically established phenomenon that is of particular interest for its possible relevance to superconductivity in the cuprates.Orenstein and Millis (2000); Emery et al. (1999) Despite considerable progress on the experimental front, the theoretical identification of the dominant effects reponsible for the occurrence of stripe correlations remains controversial.Zaanen and Gunnarsson (1989); Kato et al. (1990); Zaanen and Littlewood (1994); Löw et al. (1994); Castellani et al. (1995); Nayak and Wilczek (1997); White and Scalapino (1998); Hellberg and Manousakis (1999); Vojta and Sachdev (1999); Khomskii and Kugel (2001); Podolsky et al.  For superconducting cuprates, where the stripes are oriented parallel to the Cu-O bonds, there is considerable theoretical interest in whether the stripes tend to be centered on rows of Cu atoms (site-centered stripes) or on rows of O atoms (bond-centered).White and Scalapino (1998); Vojta and Sachdev (1999) In the case of nickelates, the stripes run diagonally, at 45 to the Ni-O bonds, and information on the lattice alignment of the stripes has been inferred from neutron diffraction studies.Wochner et al. (1998) From measurements on La2NiO4.133 it has been inferred that there is a temperature-dependent shift from mostly site-centered stripes at low temperature to all bond-centered stripes above the spin-ordering temperature.Wochner et al. (1998); Tranquada et al. (1997) It is desirable to test such inferences with local, real-space images, and to test their generality in Sr-doped nickelates, which lack the long-range stripe order of La2NiO4.133.

In this paper we report a transmission-electron-microscopy (TEM) study of charge stripes in La1.725Sr0.275NiO4, a composition that has been characterized previously by neutron scattering.Lee et al. (2001, 2002) Though not the composition with the longest correlation length,Yoshizawa et al. (2000) the incommensurability of the charge stripe order makes it an interesting test case. From the neutron work,Lee et al. (2002) it is known that the charge ordering temperature of this sample is $`190`$ K. Here we present the first direct evidence, to our knowledge, that the charge-order modulation in nickelates is truly one-dimensional. We also present lattice images sensitive to the stripes, demonstrating that they frequently exhibit irregular spacing and that they have a tendency to be either site- or bond-centered, with a bias towards site-centered in this sample at low temperature.

There have been a number of TEM studies of nickelates, with mostHiroi et al. (1990); Otero-Diaz et al. (1992); Demourgues et al. (1992); Sayagués et al. (1996) focussed on determination of the interstitial order in La2NiO4+δ. We actually spent considerable time trying to characterize La2NiO4.133, and saw some of the modulations reportedly previouslyHiroi et al. (1990); Otero-Diaz et al. (1992); Demourgues et al. (1992); Sayagués et al. (1996); however, these ordering wave vectors are not all consistent with what has been observed by neutron diffraction on large crystals.Tranquada et al. (1995) We suspect that the lack of consistency between neutron and electron diffraction measurements is associated with the mobility of the oxygen interstitials, as suggested by Otero-Diaz and coworkers.Otero-Diaz et al. (1992) In part due to these difficulties, we turned to La2-xSrxNiO4, the system in which charge ordering was first discovered.Chen et al. (1993)

Starting with a piece of the La1.725Sr0.275NiO4 single crystal used in the neutron study,Lee et al. (2002) specimens for TEM observations were prepared by mechanical polishing to a thickness of around 10 $`\mu `$m, followed by ion milling. In addition, we also prepared some thin samples for electron diffraction experiments simply by crushing the bulk material into fine fragments, which were then supported by a copper grid coated with a thin carbon film. The TEM investigations were performed on a JEOL-3000F (300 kV) field-emission electron microscope equipped with an energy filter. All of the measurements reported here were performed with the sample holder cooled by liquid nitrogen, giving an approximate sample temperature of 86 K. Images were recorded on either image plates or a CCD (charge-coupled device) camera. Although the average crystal structure is tetragonal (space group $`I4/mmm`$), it is convenient to index the Bragg reflections with an $`F4/mmm`$ unit cell, such that $`a=b=5.4`$ Å$`=2\sqrt{2}d_{\mathrm{Ni}\mathrm{O}}`$, with $`c=12.6`$ Å.

Figures 1(a) and (b) display the low-temperature diffraction patterns taken along the  and  zone-axis directions, respectively. Both diffraction patterns show notable superlattice reflections in addition to the fundamental Bragg diffraction spots. Schematic representations of the diffraction patterns, corresponding to the $`a^{}`$-$`b^{}`$ and $`a^{}`$-$`c^{}`$ planes of reciprocal space, are shown in Figs. 1(c) and (d), respectively. The superstructure peaks are characterized by a unique modulation wave vector, $`𝐤=(2\epsilon ,0,1)`$, with $`2\epsilon 0.57`$, corresponding to $`\epsilon 0.285`$, a value consistent with the neutron work.Lee et al. (2002) Note that a more typical -zone-axis pattern, as shown in Fig. 2(a), exhibits a second modulation wave vector, $`𝐤^{}=(0,2\epsilon ,1)`$ (see also Ref. Chen et al., 1993). The presence of a single modulation wave vector in Fig. 1(a) is clear evidence that the stripe modulation within an NiO2 layer is one-dimensional. The occurrence of both $`𝐤`$ and $`𝐤^{}`$ in Fig. 2(a) is due to the presence of distinct stripe domains rotated by 90 to one another. Such twinning is expected, since the tetragonal lattice provides no unique orientation for the stripe modulation.

To further characterize the structural modulation, we have made a comprehensive examination along several relevant orientations and in many areas of the sample over the temperature range of 300 K down to 86 K. Generally, the superstructure reflections look very weak and only become detectable as the temperature is reduced below 200 K, the approximate charge-ordering temperature.Lee et al. (2002) The superlattice spots on the $`a^{}`$-$`b^{}`$ plane are very sharp, indicating a relatively long coherence length of the ordered state within the NiO2 planes. The diffraction pattern along the  zone axis exhibits weak diffuse spots that are extended along the $`c^{}`$ direction, indicating a short correlation length along the $`c`$-axis, perpendicular to the NiO2 planes. The incommensurability $`\epsilon `$ is observed to vary slightly from one area to another within the range of 0.28–0.3; similar variations were observed previously.Chen et al. (1993)

Let us return to Fig. 2(a) and its orthogonal sets of superstructure diffraction spots along the a\* and b\* directions. We can test our assertion that these spots are distinct twin domains by forming a dark-field TEM image using the circled satellite peak. If the two sets of peaks came from the same domain, then we would expect the intensity of the dark-field image to be uniform. Instead, the actual image, Fig. 2(b), shows a complex domain-like contrast. The bright regions represent domains that contribute to the superlattice peak. The dark regions are associated with the orthogonal domains. From the size of the bright domains, one can estimate a typical domain size of $`50`$ nm.

The dark-field images of the charge-ordered state within the $`a`$-$`c`$ crystalline plane have also been checked in many areas at low temperature. As mentioned above, the superlattice spots generally are weak and diffuse along the direction of the $`c^{}`$-axis as shown in Fig. 1(b). We further illustrate these features in Fig. 3(a). The weak, diffuse nature of the spots makes the measurements of dark-field images at low temperatures quite challenging. A very long exposure time is required to obtain a utilizable dark-field image, and less-than-perfect mechanical stability of the sample during such an exposure results in low spatial resolution. Figure 3(b) shows a dark-field image taken with the superlattice reflection circled in Fig. 3(a). Despite the weak contrast, this image reveals the presence of complex domain structure. In order to better depict the structural properties of the charge ordered state, we have smoothed the image and created a two-level contour map, shown in Fig. 3(c) illustrating the domain configuration within the examined area. This contour map indicates more clearly the domain features present in Fig. 3(b). As one can see, domains tend to be elongated along the $`a`$-axis. Close examination of these charge order domains suggests that the longitudinal dimension varies from 10–80 nm. The transverse dimension, along the $`c`$-axis, is much smaller, ranging from 2–5 nm. The dimensions and orientation of the domains are consistent with the shape of the superlattice reflections.

To study the local ordering of the charge stripes with respect to the lattice, we turn to high-resolution TEM images. The images shown in Figs. 46 involve projections along the  axis that were obtained from thin regions of the sample utilizing the Scherzer defocus condition. Under these circumstances, the projected rows of heavier atoms, such as La and Ni, appear as dark spots; their positions are indicated in Fig. 4(a). Following this identification, it is clear that the bright spots within each NiO2 plane are associated with the O rows. The modulation of the contrast at the O sites should result from a combination of charge and structural modulations. To properly correlate the brighter and darker O spots with hole rich and poor regions requires a detailed image simulation. Such a simulation is challenging because of the need to model both atomic displacements and charge modulation. In the absence of a suitable simulation, we simply note below that associating the brighter O spots with hole-rich columns yields a satisfying consistency with simple models.

Figure 4(a) shows an image in which the charge stripes, viewed edge on, appear to be dominantly centered on Ni rows, as indicated by bright pairs of spots. The intensity profile along a line through the bottom NiO2 layer is presented in Fig. 4(b). The Ni rows correspond to local minima in the contrast, and the O rows to local maxima. A corresponding schematic model for the charge and spin stripes (involving only the Ni sites) is shown in Fig. 4(c).

There are also regions of the sample that appear to exhibit alternating O-centered and Ni-centered stripes; one of these is shown in Fig. 5(b). We associate O-centered stripes with the occurrence of three bright spot in a row, with the center one being the brightest. Figure 5(a) shows a model for equally-spaced, alternating site- and bond-centered stripes within an NiO2 plane. Such a configuration corresponds to $`2\epsilon =2/3.5`$, or $`\epsilon =0.286`$, very close to the average value determined by electron diffraction. To obtain the same period with only Ni-centered stripes requires alternating stripe spacings of $`1.5a`$ and $`2a`$, as discussed in Ref. Wochner et al., 1998. (Note that there are two Ni rows per orthorhombic unit cell.) Irregular spacing is apparent in all rows, including the first.

The last issue to be discussed is the stacking of stripes from one layer to the next. Figure 6 shows another image of the $`a`$-$`c`$ plane, but with lower magnification. Despite plenty of defects, one can observe many stripes within the layers and their tendency to form a body-centered stacking along the $`c`$-axis. Such an arrangement minimizes the Coulomb repulsion between the stripes. The white box outlines an approximate unit cell. The body-centering is only approximate because of the pinning of the stripes to the lattice. This is especially apparent in Fig. 4(a), where, in moving from one layer to the next, the Ni-centered stripes can shift only by increments of $`a/2`$. For this sample, with an average stripe spacing of about $`1.75a`$, it is not possible to have a perfectly body-centered stacking as long as the stripes are pinned to the lattice. This conclusion was first reached in a neutron diffraction study,Wochner et al. (1998) and the high-resolution TEM images provide solid confirmation of it. Finally, we note that the body-centered stacking makes it impossible to image the stripes directly in the $`a`$-$`b`$ plane, as a projection along the $`c`$-axis will average out all stripe contrast.

In summary, we have presented a systematic TEM investigation of superlattice modulation in La1.725Sr0.275NiO4 at low temperature. The observation of sample regions with a single modulation wave vector provides direct evidence that the stripe modulation is indeed one-dimensional, and not grid-like. This conclusion is also supported by dark-field images formed from individual superlattice reflections. A similar conclusion regarding diagonal spin stripes in La2-xSrxCuO4 with $`x0.055`$ has been obtained by neutron diffractionWakimoto et al. (2000); in that case, the stripe orientation is tied to the orthorhombic symmetry of the lattice, which contrasts with the tetragonal symmetry of our nickelate sample. Close examination of the high-resolution TEM images suggests that the charge stripes are predominantly centered on rows of Ni atoms, although alternative mixtures of Ni- and O-centered stripes also appear in some small regions.

Research at Brookhaven is supported by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886. KY acknowledges support from the Japan Science and Technology Corporation, the Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology Project (CREST), and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Areas, 12046239, 2001 and Research (A), 10304026, 2001 and for Creative Scientific Research (13NP0201) from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. DJB acknowledges support from DOE under Contract No. DE-FG02-00ER45800.


text:
# Coherence lengths and anisotropy in MgB2 superconductor

## Abstract

Field and temperature microwave measurements have been carried out on MgB2 thin film grown on Al2O3 substrate. The analysis reveals the mean field coherence length $`\xi _{MF}`$ in the mixed state and a temperature independent anisotropy ratio $`\gamma _{MF}=\xi _{MF}^{ab}/\xi _{MF}^c2`$. At the superconducting transition, the scaling of the fluctuation conductivity yields the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length with a different anisotropy ratio $`\gamma _{GL}=2.8`$, also temperature independent.

The recent discovery of superconductivity at 39 K in the simple binary compound MgB2 Nagamatsu  has sparked a considerable effort in the scientific community to determine the fundamental parameters and the nature of superconductivity in this compound. Quite surprisingly, the usually simple determination of the upper critical field $`B_{c2}`$ has emerged as a controversial issue. The early attempts to determine $`B_{c2}^c`$ ($`𝐁c`$-axis), and $`B_{c2}^{ab}`$ ($`𝐁ab`$-plane), have shown a large span of values and anisotropy ratio $`\gamma =B_{c2}^{ab}/B_{c2}^c`$ varying in the range 1.2-9 Buzea . One could have ascribed these discrepancies to an insufficient control of the sample preparation conditions at the early stage. However, the controversy has not been fully settled even with the improved sample quality in the recently prepared thin films and single crystals of MgB2 Kim:02 ; Ferdeghini:01 ; Ferdeghini:02 ; Angst ; Takahashi ; AngstComment ; Welp ; Zehetmayer ; Lyard ; Sologubenko . One of the puzzling observations was that different experimental techniques often yielded strongly diverse $`B_{c2}`$ values in one and the same sample. Thus, Welp et al. Welp  have shown that resistive onset of superconductivity in a given field, which was traditionally taken as the upper critical field, was in disaccord with the $`B_{c2}^c`$ values obtained in the same sample by specific heat and magnetization measurements. Similar discrepancy has been observed in the results of the resistive onset and the thermal conductivity Sologubenko . On the other hand, the onset of the diamagnetic response was found to corroborate with the zero resistance (or the onset of finite resistivity) Lyard .

The common approach in these methods is to make a choice of a percentage in cutting the transition curves. The corresponding points are then taken for $`B_{c2}(T)`$. Alternatively, one looks for the geometrical intersection of the tangents above and below the transition. None of these choices, however, is guided by a physical law describing the transition.

In this Letter we show that the problem of the upper critical field, and the related coherence length, is more subtle than implicitely assumed before. Our analysis is based on the physical process which defines the shape of the experimental curve, and yields unequivocally the value of $`B_{c2}`$. We find the mean field (MF) coherence length $`\xi _{MF}`$ as the radius of the vortex core in the mixed state and, separately, the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) coherence length $`\xi _{GL}`$ at the transition. The two coherence lengths are quite different in MgB2. The anisotropy ratios are also different ($`\gamma _{GL}>\gamma _{MF}`$), but both turn out to be temperature independent.

The thin film of MgB2 was grown on (1$`\overline{1}`$02) Al2O3 substrate using a two-step method Kang ; Kim:01 . Precursor thin film of B was deposited by pulsed laser deposition at room temperature. The B thin film was sealed together with high purity Mg into Nb tube with Ar atmosphere. The heat treatment was carried out at 900 C for 10-30 min. The film thickness was 400 nm. X-ray diffraction indicated that the MgB2 film has a highly $`c`$-axis oriented crystal structure normal to the substrate surface with no impurity phase observed.

Microwave measurements were carried out in an elliptical cavity resonating in eTE111 mode at 9.3 GHz. The thin film was mounted on a sapphire sample holder and placed in the center of the cavity where the microwave electric field $`E_\omega `$ was maximum. The sample was oriented with $`ab`$-plane parallel to $`E_\omega `$. The measured quantities were the $`Q`$-factor of the cavity loaded with the sample and the shift of the resonant frequency $`f`$. From the complex frequency shift $`\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{~}{\omega }/\omega =\mathrm{\Delta }f/f+i\mathrm{\Delta }(1/2Q)`$ one can obtain by inversion the complex conductivity $`\stackrel{~}{\sigma }=\sigma _1i\sigma _2`$ of the film using the cavity perturbation expression Peligrad:01 .

Figure 1 shows the experimental results in zero magnetic field. From the imaginary part of the conductivity $`\sigma _2=1/\mu _0\omega \lambda _L^2`$ one can infer the zero temperature London penetration depth $`\lambda _L(0)=79`$ nm in our film. With this value, and the shape of $`\sigma _2`$, this film is found to be between the clean and the dirty limit, closer to the latter Golubov:02 .

Here we focus on the effects of the applied magnetic field in the superconducting state. Figure 2 shows the field dependences ($`𝐁c`$) of the complex frequency shift at various temperatures. By inversion of these data points, one can obtain the field dependent complex conductivity at each given temperature. Theoretically, the response of the superconductor in the mixed state to an oscillating electric field $`E_\omega `$ is given by an effective complex conductivity Dulcic:93

$$\frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_{\mathrm{eff}}}=\frac{1{\displaystyle \frac{B/B_{c2}}{1i(\omega _0/\omega )}}}{(1{\displaystyle \frac{B}{B_{c2}}})(\sigma _1i\sigma _2)+{\displaystyle \frac{B}{B_{c2}}}\sigma _n}+\frac{1}{\sigma _n}\frac{B/B_{c2}}{1i(\omega _0/\omega )}$$
(1)
The first term is due to the microwave current outside the vortex cores, and the second to the normal current in the cores of the oscillating vortices. The meaning of the fraction $`B/B_{c2}`$ in Eq. (1) is the volume fraction of the sample taken by the normal vortex cores. The depinning frequency $`\omega _0`$ may change with field and temperature from strongly pinned case ($`\omega _0\omega `$) to the flux flow limit ($`\omega _0\omega `$). In Eq. (1) the zero field conductivity is $`\sigma _1i\sigma _2`$, and $`\sigma _n`$ is the normal state conductivity.

Using the experimental field dependent complex conductivity and Eq. (1) we have determined the values of $`B/B_{c2}`$ and $`\omega _0/\omega `$. Figure 3 shows some of the results. One observes that each of the curves has initially a constant slope (dashed lines in Fig. 3). It defines very precisely the value of $`B_{c2}`$ at a given temperature. Note that in this region the actual field $`B`$ is much smaller than $`B_{c2}`$ so that the superconducting film is well in the mixed state. Hence, we determine, in fact, the mean field coherence length $`\xi _{MF}`$ as the radius of the normal vortex core ($`B_{c2}^{MF}=\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi \xi _{MF}^2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ is the flux quantum). The fundamental property of a vortex much below the transition to the normal state is that it contains many Landau levels as bound superconducting states Tinkham:75 . When the field is increased so that the transition to the normal state is approached, the upper Landau levels are gradually lifted and finally only the lowest Landau level remains. The field at which this level nucleates is conventionally known as the upper critical field $`B_{c2}`$. When the transition is very sharp, $`B_{c2}`$ can be determined straightforwardly from the single turning point. However, in the cases of rounded transitions, one has to consider the fluctuation conductivity and the scaling laws which govern the physics of the transition.

In Fig. 4 we show the scaling of the fluctuation conductivity $`\sigma _1\sigma _n`$ according to the 3D LLL scheme Ullah:91 ; Ukrainczyk:95 . A very good scaling is achieved only with a linear choice of $`T_c(B)`$ line (equivalently $`B_{c2}`$ line) for the temperature interval indicated in Fig. 4. The corresponding values are marked by arrows in Fig. 3. It is obvious that the values of $`B_{c2}`$ obtained from 3D LLL scaling are close to the points where the normal state seems to be reached, but not precisely there. This feature is due to the superconducting fluctuations which appear also above the mean field transition. By taking the deviation from the normal state behavior as the onset of superconductivity, one selects, in fact, the point where the superconducting fluctuations start to exhibit a contribution noticeable above the noise level in the experimental curve.

The results of the present analysis are synthesized in Fig. 5. The full symbols represent the mean field results $`B_{c2}^{MF}`$ with vortices formed by a great number of Landau levels and having radius $`\xi _{MF}`$. The anisotropy ratio $`\gamma _{MF}=\xi _{MF}^{ab}2`$ is practically temperature independent. The full lines in Fig. 5 are obtained from 3D LLL scaling. These lines delineate the nucleation of vortices with the lowest Landau level only. The field required for this nucleation is related to the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length $`B_{c2}^{LLL}=\varphi _0/2\pi \xi _{GL}^2`$. The anisotropy ratio is $`\gamma _{GL}=\xi _{GL}^{ab}/\xi _{GL}^c=2.8`$, and also temperature independent in the interval where the 3D LLL scaling could be applied.

We show by the dashed lines in Fig. 5 the results obtained by cutting the experimental curves of $`1/2Q`$ in Fig. 2 at 95% of the normal state value. The line obtained in this way for $`B_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ exhibits a positive curvature and, consequently, yields a temperature dependent anisotropy ratio. Similar results have been obtained in other recent reports AngstComment ; Welp ; Zehetmayer ; Lyard ; Sologubenko  where various cutting criteria have been used rather than the scaling law. It is not possible to find a single cutting level which would mimic the 3D LLL scaling procedure. It appears that the cutting level should be changed from one experimental curve to another at a different temperature in a way which is, a priori, not known. Obviously, the effects of the superconducting fluctuations cannot be simply accounted for by a cuting procedure.

One may remark that the extrapolated $`B_{c2}^{LLL}`$ lines in Fig. 5 point to $`T_c=33.8`$ K, while the dashed lines based on the 95% cutting criterion reach $`35.5`$ K. With a higher percentage for the cutting level, one could reach even higher temperatures. These values are in the fluctuation region above the true $`T_c`$ defined as the temperature where $`\xi _{GL}`$ diverges.

In conclusion, we have shown that in MgB2 one can distinguish the mean field coherence length in the mixed state, and the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length at the transition. The latter should be found by considering the superconducting fluctuations and the proper scaling law of the measured physical quantity. We find the anosotropy ratios $`\gamma _{MF}2`$ and $`\gamma _{GL}=2.8`$, both with no temperature dependences.


text:
# A model for gelation with explicit solvent effects: Structure and dynamics

## I Introduction

It is generally accepted that percolation is an essential aspect of gelation or vulcanization — it is doubtful that even in a highly entangled melt of long polymers a nonzero value of the static shear modulus could exist in the absence of an infinite connected network. However, percolation has usually been studied in rather special limits. Site and bond percolation of a single species on regular lattices are very well characterized and off-lattice percolation seems to present no new features DS94 , at least insofar as critical behavior is concerned. More closely related to real gels are the so-called correlated percolation models where the distribution of crosslinks is drawn from a Boltzmann distribution appropriate for a nearest neighbor lattice gas SCA82 . Except at special points in the phase diagram these models are also in the universality class of the simple percolation problem. In our previous work on transport properties near the gel point MP01 , we have also used a simple one-species percolation process to produce the incipient gel. We found that the shear viscosity diverges as the percolation concentration $`p_c`$ is approached according to $`\eta (p)(p_cp)^s`$ with $`s0.7`$. This value of the exponent $`s`$ is in excellent agreement with a prediction of de Gennes based on a superconductor-normal conductor analogy dg79  and with recent analytical work on a Rouse model zipp1 . It is also reasonably close to some experimental results for $`s`$ adam  but quite different from that produced by another set of experiments $`1.1s1.3`$ colby . Thus it seems reasonable to ask if different versions of the crosslinking process might produce significantly different cluster size distributions from percolation and, consequently, different rheological properties.

Gelation often occurs in the presence of a solvent and over some period of time rather than instantaneously, as in the usual percolation models. To simulate this feature, we have considered a two-species model consisting of a fraction $`c`$ of $`f`$-functional particles that are eligible to bond irreversibly to others of the same kind. The remaining particles are inert and function as a background liquid through which the gel particles and clusters diffuse. Crosslinking occurs in stages: the equations of motion of all the particles are integrated forward for a fixed number of time steps between crosslinking attempts and this process is continued until the desired number of crosslinks is attained. At a critical concentration of crosslinks, $`p_c`$, (in the thermodynamic limit) the largest cluster percolates and an amorphous solid forms. For this process one can calculate the usual static or geometrical quantities used to characterize percolating systems, e.g., the fraction of particles on the ‘infinite cluster’, $`P_{\mathrm{}}(p)(pp_c)^\beta `$, the mean mass of finite clusters, $`S(p)|pp_c|^\gamma `$, the fraction of samples percolating $`f(p)`$, the cluster size distribution $`n(m,p)=m^\tau \varphi (m|pp_c|^{1/\sigma })`$ where $`m`$ is the mass of a cluster and the radius of gyration $`R_g(m)m^{1/D}`$ where $`D`$ is the fractal dimension of the clusters. For simple percolation processes, $`\tau 2.18`$, $`\sigma 0.45`$ and these two exponents determine the others through scaling relations DS94 . Here we find, at least for small $`c`$, that the cluster size distribution, even at $`p_c`$, is not well described by a simple power law. However, the other static quantities listed above do display power law behavior near $`p_c`$ and a standard finite-size scaling analysis provides a very good collapse of our data. Moreover, the hyperscaling relation $`2\beta +\gamma =d\nu `$, where $`d=3`$ is the dimensionality and $`\nu `$ the correlation length exponent, is satisfied. This suggests that this percolation transition is fundamentally describable in terms of a fixed point with two (at least) relevant scaling fields. As the percolation point is approached from below, the shear viscosity diverges according to $`\eta (p)(p_cp)^s`$. In contrast to our previous work on a model without solvent, we find values of $`s`$ in the range $`0.3s(c)<0.45`$ as compared with $`s0.7`$. These results suggest that the critical behavior of transport coefficients of systems close to the gel point is nonuniversal.

The structure of this article is as follows. In section II we describe the present model and simulation procedures in more detail. The geometric properties of the system are discussed in section III and the data on the shear viscosity are presented in section IV. We conclude with a brief summary and discussion in section V.

## II The Model

We consider a system of $`N`$ particles in three dimensions, all of which interact with each other through the soft-sphere potential $`V(r_{ij})=ϵ(\sigma _0/r_{ij})^{36}`$ for $`r_{ij}<1.5\sigma _0`$ powles  with $`\sigma _0=1`$ and $`k_BT/ϵ=1`$. We simulated systems at a volume fraction $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\pi \sigma _0^3N/6V=0.4`$ which is well below the liquid-solid coexistence density. In the absence of any other interactions, this system would be a simple three-dimensional liquid. We initially place the particles on a simple cubic lattice that fills the computational box. We then randomly select $`N_{gel}=cN`$ particles to be the gel forming component. After equilibration of the system with Brownian dynamics, with periodic boundary conditions, for 10000 time steps we begin the crosslinking process. At this point, the calculation proceeds via conservative molecular dynamics (MD) so as to allow hydrodynamic modes to develop. Here we use a time step $`\delta t=0.005\sqrt{m\sigma _0^2/ϵ}`$. In the smallest system, crosslinking is carried out one bond at a time. A single gel particle is randomly selected and all other gel particles within a distance of $`1.2\sigma _0`$ are identified. One of the particles in this list is randomly selected and bonded irreversibly to the central particle through the tethering potential $`V_{nn}(r_{ij})=\frac{1}{2}k(r_{ij}r_0)^2`$ with $`k=5ϵ/\sigma _0^2`$ and $`r_0=(\pi /6\mathrm{\Phi })^{1/3}\sigma _0`$. Each gel particle is allowed to bond to no more than six others and bonding between any pair of particles occurs at most once. The configuration of the entire system is then updated for 100 time steps and the entire bonding process is repeated until $`3pN_{gel}`$ crosslinks have been added. The parameter $`p`$ is analogous to the occupation probability in a bond percolation process on the simple cubic lattice. In larger systems, the number of crosslinks added in the bonding steps is scaled by the system size in order to keep the crosslinking rate per gel particle constant.

The parameters in the potentials and the total volume fraction $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are the same as in our previous work MP01 . The differences are that in this earlier work all particles were considered to be gel particles and that the crosslinking was done instantaneously, at $`t=0`$, when the particles were on the vertices of a cubic lattice and thus all structural properties were those of percolation in three dimensions. The present model is similar in some ways to a model discussed by Gimel et al. gimel95  and Hasmy and Jullien hasmy96  who studied percolation in the context of diffusion-limited cluster-cluster aggregation using Monte Carlo methods. Their model differs from ours in that it is a lattice model, in the details of the crosslinking process, in the lack of solvent and in the nature of the cluster dynamics. In Monte Carlo simulations, one is forced to arbitrarily choose the mass-dependent diffusion constant $`D(m)`$ whereas in our molecular dynamics calculations it is determined by the existing structure and the interparticle forces. In the regime that is of interest here, i.e., high enough gel density that percolation is possible, these authors find the critical behavior of ordinary percolation.

In a separate set of runs, we calculate the stress-stress autocorrelation function and, through the appropriate Green-Kubo formula, the shear viscosity. Equilibration and crosslinking are carried out as described above and the calculation of the viscosity is again done with conservative MD.

The adjustable parameters in our calculations are the gel fraction $`c`$, the crosslink density $`p`$ and the system size. Here we report results for $`c=0.2`$, $`0.3`$ and $`1.0`$. Calculations for other values of $`c`$ are in progress and will be reported in a future publication MP02 . We parametrize the size of our system in terms of the dimensionless length $`L=N^{1/3}`$ where $`N`$ is the total number of gel and solvent particles. Because the crosslinking process is itself quite time consuming, we are able only to simulate systems up to size $`L=32`$ (32768 particles) and this makes our estimates of critical exponents rather imprecise. A second factor contributing to the uncertainty in critical exponents is that we need to determine the critical crosslink density $`p_c`$ for each value of $`c`$ whereas for lattice percolation this number is known to high accuracy. We next discuss the static (geometric) properties of our model.

## III Percolation

The critical concentration $`p_c`$ at which percolation occurs in the thermodynamic limit $`L\mathrm{}`$ is accurately estimated from the intersection of curves $`f(p,L)`$ as function of $`p`$ for different values of $`L`$. Here $`f(p,L)`$ is the fraction of samples percolating in a system of size $`L`$ at crosslink concentration $`p`$. For the two cases of interest here, $`c=0.3`$ and $`c=0.2`$, we find $`p_c=0.3165\pm 0.0005`$ and $`p_c=0.3735\pm 0.001`$. Once $`p_c`$ has been determined, the correlation length exponent $`\nu `$ can be estimated from the collapse of the data for the function $`f`$ when plotted as function of $`(pp_c)L^{1/\nu }`$. We show this collapse of the data for $`c=0.2`$ and $`0.3`$ in figure (1). For $`c=0.3`$, the best collapse of the data for $`8L32`$ is obtained for $`\nu =1.0`$ which should be compared to the three-dimensional percolation result $`\nu =0.88`$. For $`c=0.2`$, finite-size effects are more pronounced and the data for $`L=8`$ have been excluded. For this case, the best collapse of the data is obtained for $`\nu =1.05`$. This method of estimating a critical exponent is not very accurate but the three-dimensional percolation value $`\nu =0.88`$ provides a significantly worse collapse of the data.

We next discuss the mean size of finite clusters because this data provides an unbiased estimate of the ratio $`\gamma /\nu `$. In the thermodynamic limit, $`S(p)|pp_c|^\gamma `$ with $`\gamma 1.8`$ for $`d=3`$ percolation. For finite $`L`$, $`S(p,L)`$ is peaked near $`p_c`$ with a peak height that grows as $`L^{\gamma /\nu }`$. Therefore, rescaling the peak heights to the same value for different $`L`$ provides an estimate of $`\gamma /\nu `$ that is not affected by errors in either $`p_c`$ or $`\nu `$. Of course, the overall collapse of the data to a universal curve depends on accurate determination of these two quantities but the peak height does not. In figures (2) and (3) we show the function $`L^{\gamma /\nu }S(p,L)`$ plotted as function of $`x=(pp_c)L^{1/\nu }`$ for the previously determined values of $`p_c`$ and $`\nu `$. The collapse to a universal curve is quite respectable for both $`c=0.3`$ and $`0.2`$ for $`\gamma /\nu =1.815`$ and $`1.80`$, respectively. As above, the data for $`L=8`$ have been excluded for $`c=0.2`$. We note that in the case of three-dimensional percolation the ratio $`\gamma /\nu 2.05`$. Use of this value of $`\gamma /\nu `$ in figure (2) would result in a 40% difference between the peak heights for $`L=32`$ and $`L=8`$.

In the scaling theory of percolation DS94 , the ratio $`\gamma /\nu =d(3\tau )/(\tau 1)`$, where $`d=3`$ is the dimensionality and $`\tau `$ is the exponent characterising the cluster size distribution at $`p=p_c`$. If we enforce this scaling relation, we obtain $`\tau 2.25`$ for both $`c=0.2`$ and $`c=0.3`$. Using $`\sigma =(\tau 1)/d\nu `$, we find $`\sigma (c=0.3)=0.415`$ and $`\sigma (c=0.2)=0.417`$. Using $`D=1/(\sigma \nu )`$ for the fractal dimension results in the prediction $`D(c=0.3)=2.41`$ and $`D(c=0.2)=2.29`$ for the fractal dimensions of the clusters. As well, the hyperscaling relation $`2\beta /\nu =3\gamma /\nu `$ yields $`\beta /\nu =0.593`$ and $`0.6`$ for $`c=0.3`$ and $`0.2`$ respectively. The accuracy of these scaling predictions is tested in figures (4) to (7).

In figure (4) we show the number of clusters $`n(m)`$ of mass $`m`$ at $`pp_c`$ for $`c=0.2`$ and 0.3 for $`L=32`$ and $`m400`$. For the case $`m=1`$, we have only counted the uncrosslinked gel particles. In neither case is the data well described by a simple power law, in contrast to percolation on a lattice or in the absence of solvent where the exponent $`\tau 2.18`$ is already obtained for $`2m20`$. A fit to a power law over the range $`20m400`$ yields $`\tau =2.13`$ for $`c=0.2`$ and $`\tau =2.16`$ for $`c=0.3`$. The straight lines in figure (4) are the best fits to the form $`n=Am^{2.25}`$ over the range $`20m400`$ and while the fit is not perfect, the data are not inconsistent with this behavior in the limit of large $`m`$.

In figure (5) we show the square of the radius of gyration $`R_g^2(m)`$ as function of $`m`$ for a system of size $`L=32`$ together with curves $`m^{2/D(c)}`$ with $`D(c=0.2)=2.29`$ and $`D(c=0.3)=2.41`$ as determined above. The data again show considerable curvature but the fit to the assumed functional form is reasonable over the range $`20m100`$.

Finally, in figures (6) and (7) we display the scaled form of $`P(L,p)`$, the probability that a gel particle is part of the percolating cluster using the predicted exponent ratios $`\beta /\nu =0.593`$ for $`c=0.3`$ and $`\beta /\nu =0.6`$ for $`c=0.2`$. These two figures present the least impressive collapse of data to a universal curve, especially at the larger values of $`P`$. One can improve the collapse by different choice of $`\beta /\nu `$ and $`\nu `$ but at the expense of violating hyperscaling. We also note that the data for the two largest values of $`L`$ are reasonably close to each other over the entire range of $`x`$.

We have also carried out a limited number of simulations for $`c=0.5`$ and $`c=1.0`$ with the crosslinking process described above. In both cases, the critical exponents and the cluster size distributions are entirely consistent with ordinary three-dimensional percolation. This suggests that either there is a critical gel fraction hasmy2  below which the geometric properties of the clusters are described by continuously varying exponents or that the apparent variation of the exponents with $`c`$ described above is a finite-size artefact. Only simulations of larger systems can resolve this issue.

## IV Shear Viscosity

We have calculated the shear viscosity for systems up to size $`L=20`$ as function of the crosslink density $`p`$ for $`c=0.3`$ and for $`L=12`$ for $`c=0.2`$. Systems are equilibrated as a liquid, crosslinked as described above and then evolved by constant energy MD for 40000 or 80000 time steps, depending on the crosslink density. Here we have typically used 500 to 2000 different realizations of the crosslinks at each $`p`$. We calculate, as in MP01 , the stress-stress autocorrelation function $`C_{\sigma \sigma (t)}=\frac{1}{3}_{\alpha <\beta }\sigma _{\alpha \beta }(t)\sigma _{\alpha \beta }(0)`$ where

$$\sigma _{\alpha \beta }=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}mv_{i\alpha }v_{i\beta }\underset{i<j}{}\frac{r_{ij\alpha }r_{ij\beta }}{r_{ij}}V^{}(r_{ij})$$

are elements of the stress tensor. Here the sum is over both gel and solvent particles and $`V^{}`$ is the derivative of the pair potential between particles $`i`$ and $`j`$. The analysis of the stress-stress correlation function has been described in MP01  and is done in the same way here. As $`pp_c`$, $`C_{\sigma \sigma }`$ decays extremely slowly and is fitted, at long times, to a stretched exponential. The static shear viscosity is then obtained from the appropriate Green-Kubo formula hansen ,

$$\eta =\underset{t_{max}\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{Vk_BT}_0^{t_{max}}C_{\sigma \sigma }(t).$$

The results, for $`c=0.3`$ are shown in finite-size scaled form in Fig. (8) where $`L^{s/\nu }\eta (L,p)`$ is plotted as function of the scaled concentration $`x`$ note . In contrast to our previous result for $`c=1`$ and instantaneous crosslinking where we found $`s0.7`$, we find that $`s0.425`$ provides an excellent collapse of the data with $`\nu =1.0`$. We note that, outside the critical region, consistency of the finite-size scaling ansatz requires the scaled viscosity to vary as $`x^{s/\nu }=x^{0.425}`$ and it is clear that the data are consistent with this behavior.

We have also calculated the shear viscosity for $`c=0.2`$ for $`L=12`$. The raw data are displayed in figure (9) as function of $`p_cp`$ together with the corresponding results for $`c=0.3`$. Fitting to a power law outside the critical region produces an exponent $`s0.3`$ suggesting, as in the case of the static properties, a variation of critical exponents with $`c`$ and an absence of universality.

## V Discussion

In this article we have proposed and investigated a new model for gelation which incorporates a solvent on a microscopic level. For relatively small concentrations of gel, the geometric properties of the system close to the gel point seem to depend continuously on this gel fraction and are, at least for the system sizes investigated, markedly different from three-dimensional percolation. In particular, the fractal dimension of the clusters seems to be smaller than those of percolation clusters and this more spidery morphology may be responsible for the slower divergence of the shear viscosity as the gel point is approached. The change in the exponents controlling the geometric properties is rather small and further study of larger systems is certainly necessary to confirm this result. However, the exponent $`s`$ that characterizes the divergence of the shear viscosity at the gel point is reduced by almost a factor of 2 from its value in the absence of solvent and it is unlikely that this can be attributed to finite-size effects. In light of this result, it seems implausible that a single universality class describes the behavior of transport coefficients and, presumably, the moduli of the amorphous phase near the gel point. The considerable dispersion found in experimental values of the critical exponents adam96  is another indicator that this may be the case.

In future work we intend to explore this new model in greater detail. It will be interesting to investigate if the exponent $`s`$ and the static exponents are tunable by varying the concentration of the solvent and the solubility of the solute. We also intend to study diffusion constants as function of cluster size and to investigate the existence of long time tails. Finally, one of the original motivations for this model is the existence of a body of experimental work that has yielded values in the range 1.1 — 1.3 for the viscosity exponent $`s`$. Clearly, we have moved further from this range of values compared to our previous results. If the cluster size distribution and cluster geometry is the determining factor in the critical behavior of the transport coefficients then this indicates that models that produce more compact rather than more tenuous clusters than those arising from percolation may be appropriate.

One of us (BJ) thanks the Physics Department at Simon Fraser University for its hospitality during a sabbatical visit. We thank Ralph Colby, Paul Goldbart and Sune Jespersen for helpful discussions. This research is supported by the NSERC of Canada.


text:
# Positron Fraction from Dark Matter Annihilation in the CMSSM

## 1 Introduction

The cosmic ray positron fraction at momenta above 7 GeV, as reported by the HEAT collaboration, is difficult to describe by the background only hypothesis. The data at lower momenta agree with previous data from the AMS experiment. A contribution from the annihilation of neutralinos, which are the leading candidates to explain the cold dark matter in the universe, can improve the fits considerably. The neutralinos are the Lightest Supersymmetric Particles (LSP) in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, which are stable, if R-parity is conserved. This new multiplicative quantum number for the supersymmetric partners of the Standard Model (SM) particles is needed to prevent proton decay and simultaneously prevents the LSP a) to decay into the lighter SM particles and b) can only interact with normal matter by producing additional supersymmetric particles. The cross sections for the latter are typically of the order of the weak cross sections, so the LSP is “neutrinolike”, i.e. it would form halos around the galaxies and consequently, it is an excellent candidate for dark matter.

In addition to being of interest for cosmology, supersymmetry solves also many outstanding problems in particle physics, among them: 1) it provides a unification of the strong and electroweak forces, thus being a prototype theory for a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) 2) it predicts spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) by radiative corrections through the heavy top quark, thus providing a relation between the GUT scale, the electroweak scale and the top mass, which is perfectly fullfilled 3) it includes gravity 4) it cancels the quadratic divergencies in the Higgs mass in the SM 5) the lightest Higgs mass can be calculated to be below 125 GeV in perfect agreement with electroweak precision data, which prefer indeed a light Higgs mass. Therefore it is interesting to study the positron fraction from neutralino annihilation in the reduced region of SUSY parameter space, where these constraints are satisfied and compare it with the AMS and HEAT data, as will be done in the next section.

## 2 Neutralino Annihilation in the CMSSM

In the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Model (CMSSM) with supergravity mediated breaking terms all sparticle masses are related by the usual GUT scale boundary conditions of a common mass $`m_0`$ for the squarks and sleptons and a common mass $`m_{1/2}`$ for the gauginos. The parameter space, where all low energy constraints are satisfied, is most easily determined by a global statistical analysis, in which the GUT scale parameters111The supergravity inspired parameters are the GUT scale $`M_{GUT}`$, the common gauge coupling $`\alpha _{GUT}`$, the common mass scales $`m_0,m_{1/2}`$ for the spin 0 and spin 1/2 sparticles, the trilinear couplings $`A_0`$ and Yukawa couplings $`Y_0`$ at the GUT scale of the third generation of fermions, the Higgs mixing parameter $`\mu `$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the ratio of vacuum expectation values of the neutral Higgs doublets.  are constrained to the low energy data by a $`\chi ^2`$ minimization. We use the full NLO renormalization group equations to calculate the low energy values of the gauge and Yukawa couplings and the one-loop RGE equations for the sparticle masses with decoupling of the contribution to the running of the coupling constants at threshold.

Fig. 1 shows a typical running of the common masses from the GUT scale to low energies. The squarks and gluinos get a higher mass than the sleptons due to the gluonic contributions of the strong interactions. If $`m_{1/2}`$ is not strongly above $`m_0`$, the lightest mass is the supersymmetric partner of U(1) gauge boson, the bino, which mixes with the $`W^3`$ boson and spin 1/2 higgsinos to neutralinos. The low energy value of the LSP is roughly 0.4 times its starting value at the GUT scale, i.e. 0.4$`m_{1/2}`$. From Fig. 1 it is obvious that if $`m_{1/2}`$ is much larger than $`m_0`$, the right handed stau becomes the LSP, but this cannot be a candidate for neutral dark matter. So from cosmology we require the LSP to be neutral, i.e. $`m_0`$ sufficiently large compared to $`m_{1/2}`$.

Also the evolution of the mass parameters in the Higgs potential are shown using the full 1-loop contributions from all particles and sparticles. The large negative contributions to $`m_2`$ from the top Yukawa coupling drive it negative, thus inducing spontaneous electroweak symmetry breaking. The main parameter to get correct EWSB is the starting value of $`m_2^2=\mu _0^2+m_0^2`$ at the GUT scale. EWSB thus determines the value of the Higgs mixing parameter $`\mu ^2`$ for a given value of $`m_0`$. It turns out that as long as $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$ are of the same order of magnitude, EWSB requires the value of $`\mu `$ to be larger or of the same order of magnitude than $`m_{1/2}`$.

As a consequence, the Higgsinos are heavy compared to the LSP, so they hardly mix with the LSP, which is then practically a pure bino in the parameter space of interest, i.e. for LSP masses above 100 GeV, since lighter LSP masses do not yield positrons in the interesting momentum range covered by the HEAT experiment. The gaugino fraction is defined as $`(N_{i,1}^2+N_{i,2}^2)`$, where the coefficients determine the neutralino mixing $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_i^0=N_{i,1}\stackrel{~}{B}+N_{i,2}\stackrel{~}{W}^3+N_{i,3}\stackrel{~}{H}_1^0+N_{i,4}\stackrel{~}{H}_2^0`$. As shown in Fig. 3 the gaugino fraction is close to one for LSP masses above 100 GeV, i.e. $`m_{1/2}>250`$ GeV. The gaugino fraction is important, since the neutralino properties are quite different for a pure gaugino or pure Higgsino.

Furthermore, the large values of $`\mu `$ imply that the pseudoscalar Higgs boson is heavy compared with the lightest Higgs boson, in which case the latter has the properties of the SM Higgs boson. The limit on the SM Higgs boson of 114 GeV from LEP restricts the parameter $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$to be above 4.3.

The GUT scale and Yukawa couplings are determined from the requirement of gauge unification and the masses of the third generation particles. $`b\tau `$ Yukawa coupling unification can be imposed, since these fermions are in the same multiplet in any larger gauge group containing the SM gauge groups as subgroups. After running the Yukawa couplings down to low energy, one can indeed obtain the correct b-quark - and $`\tau `$-mass for a common Yukawa coupling at the GUT scale. But these Yukawas influence the top quark as well and the correct top quark is only obtained for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$=1.6 or $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$between 30 and 55, where the values above 50 correspond to a positive sign of the Higgs mixing parameter $`\mu `$. The positive sign is preferred by the positive deviation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon from the SM, assuming that this $`1.6\sigma `$ deviation will be confirmed by future measurements. The low $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$solution is ruled out, since the Higgs limit of 114 GeV at the 95% C.L. from LEP requires $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$to be above 4.3, as mentioned above, so Yukawa unification suggests the high $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$solution.

Nevertheless, we scan over $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$between 1 and 50 to study the different annihilation channels, which strongly depend on $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. In addition we scan over the remaining parameters $`m_0,m_{1/2}`$. The trilinear couplings shift the Higgs mass: $`A_0>0`$ lowers the Higgs mass for given values of $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$, so the largest excluded region is obtained for $`A_0>0`$. Positive values of $`A_0`$ are preferred by the $`bX_s\gamma `$ data, so if one combines all constraints (gauge unification, EWSB, $`bX_s\gamma `$ and $`a_\mu `$ in a single $`\chi ^2`$ function, one can obtain a 95% C.L. contour for the excluded region, as shown in Fig. 2 for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$=35. For details we refer to previous publications.

Neutralino annihilation can occur through Z- and Higgs exchanges in the s-channel and sfermion exchange in the t-channel. This annihilation in the halo of the galaxies will produce antimatter at high momenta, thus anomalies in the spectra of positrons and antiprotons provide an excellent signal for dark matter annihilation. The neutralino is a spin 1/2 Majorano particle, so it obeys the Pauli principle, which implies an asymmetric wave function or spins antiparallel for annihilation at rest. This results in a p-wave amplitude to the fermion-antifermion final states, which is proportional to the mass of the fermion in the final state. Therefore heavy final states are enhanced at low momenta, as demonstrated in Fig. 4 for leptons and W-bosons. The same is true for quark final states.

The total cross section is determined by the sum of the individual amplitudes; their relative signs determine the interferences. The t-channel has for t-quark and b-quark final states similar amplitudes, but the Z-exchange is for t-quarks much stronger than for b-quarks (amplitude $``$ mass). For Higgs exchange the b-quark final state becomes large at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$because of the coupling proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}\beta `$, while the coupling to t-quark final states, proportional to $`\mathrm{cos}\beta `$, is strongly suppressed at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. Since the Z-exchange and Higgs exchange have an opposite sign, the t-quark final state is plagued by negative interferences, while the b-quark final state is enhanced by positive interferences and dominates at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$. The various contributions are shown in Fig. 5.

The total annihilation cross section is a strong function of the SUSY mass scale, since the t-channel contribution is proportional to one over the sfermion mass squared, as demonstrated in the $`m_0,m_{1/2}`$ plane in Fig. 6. The LSP mass is approximately 0.4$`m_{1/2}`$ and for $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$=1.6 one observes the threshold peaks for $`b\overline{b}`$-, $`W^+W^{}`$, and $`t\overline{t}`$ final states along the $`m_{1/2}`$ axis. For values of $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$$`>5`$ the $`b\overline{b}`$ final state dominates and the annihilation cross sections quickly increases with $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, as demonstrated by the different vertical scales in the figure: at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$the cross sections are several orders of magnitude larger and keeps growing with approximately $`\mathrm{tan}^2\beta `$. The boost factors needed for the best fit to describe the HEAT data at large momenta are correspondingly lower, as shown in Fig. 7. These boost factors were used in the fit as an arbitrary normalization, since the dark matter is not expected to be homogeneous, but shows some clumpiness due to gravitational interactions. Since the annihilation rate is proportional to the square of the dark matter density, the clumpiness can enhance the annihilation rate by several orders of magnitude.

The cross section calculations were done with CalcHEP and DarkSUSY, which were found to agree within a factor of two for the $`t\overline{t}`$ final state and considerably better for other final states.

Fig. 8 shows the fit to the data for different regions of parameter space with different main annihilation channels. The fits were done with DarkSusy and follow the same principle as the ones from Ref. , i.e. the background is left free within a normalization error of about 20% and the signal can be enhanced by a boost factor as discussed above.

However, we impose the CMSSM constraints, which imply $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$$`>`$ 4.3, in which case the $`b\overline{b}`$ final state dominates. The positron spectrum from b-quark decays can fit the present data as well as the harder decays from W-pairs, if the neutralinos are somewhat heavier, as shown by Fig. 8: the fit with b-quark final states yields a $`\chi ^2/d.o.f`$ of 26/16, which is not much worse than the one for $`W^+W^{}`$ final states (24/16). These values are considerably better than the background only fit, which yields 48/16. Here we used the background from Moskalenko and Strong, as implemented in DarkSUSY. Since the cross sections for $`b\overline{b}`$ final states are at least an order of magnitude above the cross sections for $`t\overline{t}`$ and $`W^+W^{}`$ at large $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$, the needed boost factor for the best fit is correspondingly lower, especially for lower values of $`m_0`$, as shown before in Fig. 7. The region with large cross section and correspondingly lower boost is also the region with a relic density parameter between 0.1 and 0.5 of the critical density, as shown in Fig. 9. A range between 0.1 and 0.3 is preferred by the determination of the cosmological parameters from the red shift of distant supernovae and the acoustic peak in the microwave background.

The fits were repeated for all values of $`m_0`$ and $`m_{1/2}`$. The resulting $`\chi ^2`$ values are plotted in Fig. 10. One observes a fast decrease in $`\chi ^2`$ for values of $`m_{1/2}`$ above 230 GeV, i.e. for LSP masses above $``$ 100 GeV. Unfortunately the data are not precise enough to prefer a certain value of the LSP mass. However,the HEAT ballon experiments correspond to only a few days of data taking. With future experiments, like PAMELA on a russian satellite or AMS-02 on the ISS (International Space Station), one will take data for several years, thus being able to decide if the excess in the HEAT data above the present best background estimate is due to a bad knowledge of the background or if it is really a signal for new physics.

If we assume the excess is due to neutralino annihilation, then the statistical significance after one year of data taking with a large acceptance instrument, like AMS-02 with an acceptance of more than $`0.04m^2sr`$, will look like the points in Fig. 11. Here we assumed a boost factor as given by the fit to the AMS and HEAT data (Fig. 7). The resulting $`\chi ^2`$ distribution is shown in Fig. 12. Clearly, if the background estimates will be confirmed by accurate measurements of the electron spectrum, as will be done by the future experements, then the positron spectra can give a clear indication of neutralino annihilation with a rather precise determination of the neutralino mass.

We like to thank Drs. L. Bergström, J. Edsjö and P. Ullio for helpful discussions.