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# Spatio–temporal dynamics of quantum–well excitons

## I Introduction

Real–space transport of excitons in semiconductor is an important aspect of excitonic dynamics and plays an essential role in many opto–electronic applications. In a quantum–well (QW) structure, the excitons are confined in the QW plane by the potential barriers. The two–dimensional lateral transport of excitons in a number of semiconductor QW structures has been extensively studied during the past two decades by several optical techniques, e.g., transient grating, pump–probe and photoluminescence (PL). In transient–grating experiments, a spatially periodic distribution of carrier density is generated by the interference of two laser pulses with different angles of incidence. The decay of this periodic distribution is then detected by the diffraction of a third pulse, and the diffusivity can be deduced from this decay.Hegarty et al. (1984); Hattori et al. (1987); Schwab et al. (1992); Erland et al. (1993); Oberhauser et al. (1993); Mizeikis et al. (1995); Schaefer et al. (1996) In pump–probe measurements, an intense laser pulse is used to generate excitons, which distribution is then detected by measuring the absorption of a delayed and much weaker probe beam. Scanning the probe beam with respect to the pump beam, one can obtain information on excitonic transport.Majumder et al. (1985); Smith et al. (1988, 1989); Yoon et al. (1992); Achermann et al. (1999); Nechay et al. (1999)

Different from these nonlinear techniques, experiments based on PL can be performed in the low–density regime, where the interactions between carriers are negligible. This makes the interpretation of the experimental results and the deduction of the physics on exciton–environment coupling more straightforward. Two types of PL–based methods have been developed during the past decade. In time–of–flight experiments, the sample surface is covered by masks. Small holes are etched on this cover to transmit the excitation laser beam and the luminescence. The decay of the PL from the hole after a pulsed excitation can be attributed to both the radiative decay and the transport of excitons out of the hole, i.e., out of the detection window. Since the radiative decay can be measured independently by using samples without mask, information on transport can be deduced by modelling the PL decay by, normally, diffusion equation.Hillmer et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1992); Takahashi et al. (1993a, b); Akiyama et al. (1994) The other method is PL imaging, in which the spatial profiles of the luminescence are measured directly e.g. by a microscope.Monte et al. (1999a, b, 2000); Chao et al. (1999); Logue et al. (1997); Vertikov et al. (1999a, b); Malyarchuk et al. (2002) Extensive information about the carrier diffusivity, mobility and diffusion length has been extracted based on these two methods.

In these optical investigations based on PL, excitons are excited by laser photons with an excess energy $`E_{\mathrm{excess}}`$ of typically several tens to several hundreds of meV.Hillmer et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1992); Takahashi et al. (1993a, b); Akiyama et al. (1994); Monte et al. (1999a, b, 2000); Chao et al. (1999); Logue et al. (1997); Vertikov et al. (1999a, b); Malyarchuk et al. (2002) Despite of the possibility that the transport can happen when the excitons are still hot, i.e. with high kinetic energy, the hot–exciton effects are typically neglected in this kind of studies. For the measurements performed on room temperature,Logue et al. (1997); Vertikov et al. (1999a, b); Malyarchuk et al. (2002) hot–exciton effects are less pronounced due to fast relaxation. However, for low–temperature PL experiments with a rather high $`E_{\mathrm{excess}}`$,Hillmer et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1992); Takahashi et al. (1993a, b); Akiyama et al. (1994); Monte et al. (1999a, b, 2000); Chao et al. (1999) the relaxation can take several hundreds of picoseconds.Umlauff et al. (1998) If hot excitons play a role in the transport process, two basic assumptions of these PL experiments are questionable. The first problem is the validity of the diffusion equation in describing the transport process. During the relaxation, the kinetic energy and the group velocity of the hot excitons are decreasing. Thus, the transport during relaxation cannot be described as diffusion with a constant diffusivity. Secondly, the measured temporal and spatial evolution of the PL is not equivalent to that of the exciton population. Due to the negligible photon momentum, the PL can only be used to monitor the cold excitons which have small enough momentum to be able to couple to a photon (see e.g. Ref. Citrin, 1992). The hot excitons are invisible in these techniques. For this reason, the spatio–temporal evolution of the total exciton population including hot excitons can be quite different from that directly deduced from these experiments.

In this paper, we show that these two problems have to be accounted for in typical PL investigations on the transport of QW excitons. By performing temporally resolved micro-PL and Monte Carlo simulation, we investigate the excitonic transport in ZnSe QWs. Strong deviation from classical diffusion on a time scale of several hundreds of picoseconds is observed in the low–temperature experiments and is attributed to a persistent hot–exciton population. From the simulation, we obtain the spatio–temporal evolution of the total exciton population and find a pronounced difference from that directly deduced from the PL.

## II Experiment

The experimental setup is a time–resolved micro–PL ($`\mu `$–TRPL) enhanced by introducing a solid immersion lens (SIL). The spatial and temporal resolutions are 200 nm and 5 ps, respectively. Figure 1 shows schematically the configuration. The laser system including an Argon–ion laser and a Ti:Sapphire laser with double frequency by BBO crystal generates tunable blue laser pulses of 150 fs with a repetition rate of 76 MHz. The pulse shaper reduces its spectral width to 0.2 meV. The beam is then spatially expanded to fit the diameter of the objective (magnification 20$`\times `$, numerical aperture $`\mathrm{NA}=0.4`$), and focused on the sample surface. The luminescence is collected by the same objective, i.e. confocal configuration, and focused on the image plane of the microscope. A set of pinholes with different sizes is installed in this plane, achieving local detection. By moving the pinhole in the image plane, one can scan the detection spot with respect to the excitation spot in a well–defined way. The signal transmitting the pinhole is then spectrally resolved by a spectrometer, temporally resolved by a streak camera and recorded by a CCD. Additionally, a shiftable set of mirror and lens is installed in front of the spectrometer, reflecting and focusing the light to another CCD camera connected with a monitor. This configuration achieves a direct imaging of the sample surface on the monitor, thus ensures fine alignments of the laser beam, the objective and the pinhole.

The high spatial resolution is achieved by using a hemispherical SIL made of Zr$`\mathrm{O}_2`$ with refractive index of 2.16.Vollmer et al. (1999) The SIL is adhesively fixed to the sample surface. The diameter of the SIL is chosen to be 1 mm, which is large enough for giving a sufficient field of view, but still small enough to be stuck on the sample surface adhesively even in vertical configuration. The SIL enhances not only the spatial resolution by about two times due to the increased refractive index of the media outside the sample, but also the collection efficiency by more than five times due to a larger collection angle.Moehl et al. (2002) These enhancements are of crucial importance for the current investigation. All measurements are performed at a sample temperature of 10 K.

Two ZnSe multiple–QW samples with different periods as well as different barrier materials are studied. Since similar transport properties are observed in both samples, we focus here on the study of a 10–period ZnSe/ZnMgSSe multiple QW with 8 nm well width and 11 nm barrier width grown by molecular–beam epitaxy. Figure 2 shows time–integrated (lower panel) and

time–resolved (upper panel) PL spectra of this sample excited by continuous–wave (cw) laser or pulsed laser, respectively. In both cases, the energy of the excitation photon is chosen to be 2.9013 eV. The heave–hole exciton resonance is observed at 2.8287 eV with a linewidth of 2.9 meV. The rise time and decay time of this peak is measured as 65 ps and 205 ps, respectively. The lower–energy peak is attributed to charged excitons and is not examined here.

The $`\mu `$–TRPL spectra are measured by moving the pinhole in the image plane, thus scanning the detection spot (450 nm in diameter, defined by the pinhole size) with respect to the fixed excitation spot. From these spectra, we obtain the temporal evolution of the spatial profile of heavy–hole exciton luminescence. The detection window used in this extraction is a small spectral region around the excitonic resonance.

Figure 3 shows several PL profiles measured at a set of times after a pulsed–laser excitation. The photon energy of the laser is 2.9013 eV. The excitation power is less than 1 $`\mu `$W, ensuring the condition of a low exciton density. The expansion of the PL profile which originates from the real–space transport of excitons is clearly observed.

## III Monte Carlo Simulation

Monte Carlo (MC) simulationsJacoboni and Lugli (1989) have been successfully applied in investigations on carrier dynamics in semiconductor QWs.Lugli and Goodnick (1987); Artaki and Hess (1988); Educato and Leburton (1994); Mosko et al. (1995); Takahashi (1996); Baranovskii et al. (1998); Shchegrov et al. (1999); Barbieri et al. (1999) In the present study we use the MC method to simulate the laser excitation, excitonic transport, relaxation, and recombination processes. The model used for the simulation is based on the solid understanding of the hot–exciton formation and relaxation processes in ZnSe QW. After a laser excitation with a suitable photon energy, an electron–hole pair is excited in the continuum states. Generally, the electron–hole pair may (i) rapidly form a hot exciton with large center–of–mass wavevector, followed by hot–exciton relaxation, or (ii) dissociate into individual carriers that relax to their band minima separately. In GaAs semiconductor structures, both theoretical and experimental studies have revealed a fast exciton–formation process following the excitation if the excess energy of the excitation is large enough for a LO–phonon emission of the excited electron–hole pair.Damen et al. (1990); Blom et al. (1993); Gulia et al. (1997); Gurioli et al. (1998); Oh et al. (2000); Siantidis et al. (2002) In polar II–VI QWs, the LO–phonon–assisted exciton formation is as fast as sub–picosecond due to the strong Fröhlich coupling and thus dominates over the dissociation process. This has been verified by the experimental observations of hot–exciton luminescence in these structures.Stanley et al. (1991); Pelekanos et al. (1991); Collet et al. (1991) Our previous investigations on hot–exciton luminescence in ZnSe QWs by temporally resolvedUmlauff et al. (1998) or spatially resolvedZhao et al. (2002a) LO–phonon–sideband (PSB) spectroscopy as well as the observation of a pronounced LO–phonon cascade in PL excitation spectrumKalt et al. (1998) also confirm the dominant role of this fast exciton–formation process. Thus, in the simulation, we neglect the dissociation process and assume that all of the excited electron–hole pairs form excitons by LO–phonon emission.

In the case that the hot exciton is formed with a center–of–mass kinetic energy $`E_\mathrm{k}`$ larger than the LO–phonon energy ($`E_{\mathrm{LO}}`$ = 31.8 meV in ZnSe QW), it relaxes rapidly toward its band minimum by LO–phonon emissions on a time scale of 100 fs, until $`E_\mathrm{k}<E_{\mathrm{LO}}`$.Kalt et al. (1998) Then the rest of the relaxation is achieved by the much slower acoustic–phonon emission, and continues over several hundreds of picoseconds.Umlauff et al. (1998) Since the LO–phonon assisted formation and relaxation are much faster than the rest of the relaxation process, as a good approximation we can neglect the transport during the former processes. So the physical process in our experiment and thus in the model used for the simulation can be simplified as follows: The laser pulse generates hot excitons with $`E_\mathrm{k}=E_{\mathrm{excess}}nE_{\mathrm{LO}}`$. In our experiment $`E_{\mathrm{excess}}`$ = 72.6 meV, so $`n`$ = 2 and $`E_\mathrm{k}`$ = 9 meV. The initial spatial distribution of the excitons is defined by the profile of the laser spot. After the generation, the hot excitons travel in real space and relax in energy space simultaneously until it recombines at $`E_\mathrm{k}0`$. The radiative recombination induces the PL.

The scattering processes included in our simulation are acoustic–phonon scattering and interface–roughness scattering. For the acoustic–phonon scattering, we calculate the scattering rates at temperature of 10 K by using the model proposed by Takagahara.Takagahara (1985) The differential scattering rates as functions of scattering angle $`\theta `$ and $`E_\mathrm{k}`$ are shown in Figs. 4a and 4b for emission and absorption processes, respectively. The scattering by acoustic–phonon emission prefers backward scattering, i.e., the maximum scattering rate is found for $`\theta =\pi `$. On the contrary, the acoustic–phonon absorption prefers forward scattering. Also, at low temperature the scattering rate of emission is much larger than that of absorption.

In a semiconductor QW sample, the well width is not uniform due to the imperfection of each interface between well and barrier. Such a fluctuation introduces potential variations which influence the exciton dynamics, especially the lateral transport process. The structure of the fluctuation is characterized by a height $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, which is normally assumed to be one or two monolayers,Takahashi (1996) and a lateral correlation length $`\lambda `$. Since we have no detailed information about the interface quality of the sample, in our simulation we take the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ to be one monolayer (0.283 nm) and use the $`\lambda `$ as a free parameter to fit the experiments. Another choice would be to leave both of them as free parameters for the fitting. But this will make the fitting more unreliable due to the one more free parameter. Since the purpose of the simulation is to describe the general transport behavior of the excitons, rather than to extract the information of the interface structure of the sample, we choose the first option. Thus, due to the uncertainty of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ used in the calculation, the fitted $`\lambda `$ shouldn’t be used as a reliable number describing the interface structure. The interface–roughness scattering rates are calculated by using the method by Basu et al,Basu and Ray (1991) as shown in Fig. 4c as functions of scattering angle and $`E_\mathrm{k}`$. For these curves, the $`\lambda `$ is set to be 3.7 nm, which is obtained by fitting the experiments. The directional property of the interface–roughness scattering depends strongly on the exciton energy. For hot excitons the forward scattering is preferred, while the excitons with smaller energy are more likely to be scattered backwardly. This feature originates from the fact that the angular dependence of the differential scattering rate,

$$(1\mathrm{cos}\theta )\mathrm{exp}[(\lambda k)^2\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{\theta }{2}],$$
(1)
with $`k`$ represents the exciton wavevector, is composed of a forward factor and a backward factor. Thus the $`\lambda k`$ determines the relative weight of these two factors.

The exciton–exciton scattering is neglected since the experiment is performed with low exciton density. The optical–phonon scattering is not included in our simulation since the exciton energy (9 meV) is too low for an optical–phonon emission and the optical–phonon absorption is negligible at the sample temperature of 10 K. For the recombination process, we assume that the exciton can recombine if its kinetic energy is smaller than the spectral linewidth (2.9 meV), and the recombination rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is independent of the energy within this recombination window.Feldmann et al. (1987) In the simulation, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is used as a second free parameter to fit the experiments. Although the investigated samples are multiple QWs based on the polar material ZnSe, the influence of the polariton formation on the transport process is not included in the simulation. This is based on the fact that similar transport properties were observed in cw experiments from both single–QW and multiple–QW samples.Zhao et al. (2002b) Also in the present time–resolved experiments, we observe similar transport behaviors from two multiple–QW samples with different barrier materials as well as different periods of QW.

At the beginning of the simulation, an ensemble of excitons is generated by the program. The position of each exciton is defined by random numbers such that the overall spatial distribution of the excitons coincides with the profile of the laser spot used in the experiment. The kinetic energy of the excitons is 9 meV according to the experiment condition, and the direction of the velocity of each exciton is selected randomly within the QW plane. Since the width of the laser pulse (150 fs) is much shorter than the temporal resolution of our study, the excitons are assumed to be generated simultaneously. After generation, the exciton travels in QW plane according to its velocity until it is scattered. The length of this ’free flight’ duration is selected by a random number generated according to the total scattering rate of all scattering processes considered. Then one of the scattering process is chosen to happen, according to the relative scattering rate among these processes. According to the type of the scattering process selected, we can determine the state of the exciton after this scattering event. This state is used as the initial state of the next ’free flight’. The above procedure is repeated many times until the radiative recombination happens which terminates the existence of this exciton. In the simulation, an ensemble of 30 million excitons is simulated by this method.

## IV Discussion

As we have discussed, the hot–exciton effects are typically neglected in the PL investigations on excitonic transport in QW. In the absence of hot–exciton effects, the exciton population $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ obeys the two–dimensional diffusion equation

$$\frac{n(\stackrel{}{r},t)}{t}=D^2n(\stackrel{}{r},t)\frac{n(\stackrel{}{r},t)}{\tau }$$
(2)
with a constant diffusivity $`D`$.Smith et al. (1988) The last term describes the exciton recombination with a lifetime $`\tau `$. Also, the measured PL $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is equivalent with the exciton population, i.e. $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$, since all of the excitons are in the recombination window. Based on these assumptions, the measured temporal evolution of the full–width at half–maxima (FWHM) of the PL profile obeysSmith et al. (1988)

$$\mathrm{FWHM}^2(t)=\mathrm{FWHM}^2(t=0)+16\mathrm{l}\mathrm{n}2Dt.$$
(3)
That is, the square of the FWHM increases linearly with time with a slope being proportional to $`D`$.

To compare our experiments with the above formula, we fit the measured PL profiles in Fig. 3 by Gaussian functions (not shown in this figure) to get the FWHM’s. The obtained temporal evolution of the $`\mathrm{FWHM}^2`$ is shown in Fig. 5 as the squares. We find a strong deviation from a linear function, namely a sub–linear rise of the $`\mathrm{FWHM}^2`$ in the time–range up to 400 ps. This result shows that the excitonic transport cannot be assumed as a classical diffusion. It implies the importance of the hot–exciton effects.

Beside the nonlinear expansion observe here, we have other evidences for the important role the hot exciton plays. From a temporally resolved PSB experiment we have directly observed that the hot excitons remain non–thermal on a hundred–picosecond time scale in ZnSe QWs.Umlauff et al. (1998) This time scale is long enough that significant transport can take place. We have also found from a spatially resolved cw PSB measurements that a non–thermal distribution of hot excitons can still be observed after a transport of 1.3 $`\mu `$m.Zhao et al. (2002c) From a cw measurement on the zero–phonon line of the PL, we have revealed the importance of the excitonic kinetic energy on the transport process.Zhao et al. (2002b) These results together with the nonlinear expansion observed here by $`\mu `$–TRPL strongly suggest that the hot excitons, rather than the relaxed excitons, dominate the transport.

We want to discuss now the detailed results of the MC simulation of the hot–exciton transport. As discussed in the previous section, two free parameters, the correlation length of the interface roughness $`\lambda `$ and recombination rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, are used in the simulation to fit the experiment. As anticipated, these two parameters are relatively independent. With other conditions fixed, the $`\lambda `$ affects the spatial distribution of the PL, but has little influence on the temporal evolution. The opposite is true for the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. With $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=5.7\times 10^9`$ /s, the PL decay is fitted satisfactorily (not shown here). The best fit of the spatial distribution is obtained when $`\lambda =3.7`$ nm, as shown in Fig. 3. Please note that the solid lines in this figure are not the just mentioned Gaussian fits to the experimental data, but are obtained by MC simulation of the excitonic dynamics. Figure 5 provides a more quantitative comparison of the experiment (squares) and the simulation (solid line) in terms of FWHM. It is remarkable that a perfect agreement is achieved by adjusting only one parameter, $`\lambda `$. This fact also confirms the validity of our model.

Beside its ability to reproduce the directly observable experimental results, the simulation also provides us deeper insight into the underlying carrier dynamics. From the simulation, one can extract many aspects of the process which are not accessible in experiments. Figure 6a shows the temporal evolution of the average kinetic energy of excitons obtained from the simulation. The energy relaxation from the initial value (9 meV) to the thermal energy is clearly observed. We find the excitons remain hot up to about 400 ps. This is consistent with the sub–linear increase of the $`\mathrm{FWHM}^2`$ up to 400 ps observed in Fig. 5, and confirms again that the excitonic transport on a time scale of several hundreds of picoseconds cannot be described as a classical diffusion with a constant $`D`$. After 400 ps, the relaxed excitons show the features of diffusive transport. On this regime, interface roughness can localize the relaxed excitons and can result in a sub–diffusive transport.Hanewinkel et al. (1999) Since the PL decay time is measured as 205 ps (Fig. 2), only a small fraction of the exciton ensemble can reach this regime. So these effects have minor influence on the excitonic transport studied here under nonresonant excitation.

If what we proved above were the only problem existing in previous PL investigations on excitonic transport, one could modify the diffusion model to fix this problem by simply substituting the constant diffusivity $`D`$ by an effective diffusivity varying with time, $`D_{\mathrm{eff}}(t)`$.Yoon et al. (1992) One could even extract $`D_{\mathrm{eff}}(t)`$ from the measured PL expansion by applying Eq. (3) to intervals which are so small that the energy variation is negligible. However, a second problem arises from the hot–exciton effects, as we mentioned in the introduction and will demonstrate in the following, that such a modified model is still invalid in describing the PL expansion.

The problem is, that the measured PL $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is not equivalent to the exciton population $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ due to the invisibility of hot excitons in these techniques. Since a large portion of the exciton ensemble populates high kinetic energy states, i.e. dark states, during the relaxation, this is quite obvious. Nevertheless, this problem is typically neglected. Hillmer et al. (1988, 1989, 1990, 1992); Takahashi et al. (1993a, b); Akiyama et al. (1994); Monte et al. (1999a, b, 2000); Chao et al. (1999) From our simulation, we find that during the relaxation the $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ is significantly different from the measured $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$, as shown in Fig. 3. In other words, the spatial distributions of excitons shown as the dashed lines in Fig. 3 can result in a narrower PL profile as shown by the solid lines. In Fig. 5 this difference is revealed in a quantitative way. The $`\mathrm{FWHM}^2`$ of the $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ (dashed line) is significantly larger than that of $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ (solid line) within about 400 ps. This can be understood by the fact that the hot excitons with high velocity can travel out of the excitation spot quite fast, but they are not visible in the spectrum.

In Fig. 5 we find a striking peak around 30 ps. This peak implies a breathing of the spatial distribution of the hot excitons. That is, in average the hot excitons initially travel out of the excitation spot, then move back for a while until they go outward again. Such an oscillation is in striking contrast to the model of classical diffusion, and can be understood according to the directional property of acoustic–phonon scattering. According to the differential scattering rates shown in Fig. 4a, the scattering of acoustic–phonon emission prefers a backward scattering. Initially, the hot excitons are generated with an outward velocity in average. During their travelling, interface–roughness scattering events can happen. Since in this transport regime the energy of the excitons is still high (9 meV), the direction of the velocity is only slightly changed due to the forward–scattering character of interface roughness for hot excitons (Fig. 4c). As soon as an acoustic–phonon scattering event happens, the direction of the velocity is most likely reversed. Then the excitons in average move toward the excitation spot, resulting in the peak observed in Fig. 5. The next acoustic–phonon scattering event changes the direction of the velocity again. However, since the scattering events happen to each exciton in a random manner, the oscillating feature is averaged out after few scattering events. So, only one peak is observed in Fig. 5. We are aware of the fact, that we cannot give a direct experimental proof for the occurrence of the oscillations found in the MC simulations. But, the important message is here: when such oscillations of the hot–exciton population happen, they are not detectable in a standard PL.

To confirm quantitatively the invalidity of the modified diffusion model in describing the PL expansion, we compare in Fig. 6b the curves of $`D_{\mathrm{eff}}(t)`$ extracted by modelling $`I(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ (solid line) or $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ (dashed line) with the modified diffusion model, respectively. We find the curves to be quite different, especially in the first 100 ps. The $`D_{\mathrm{eff}}(t)`$ obtained from $`n(\stackrel{}{r},t)`$ increases rapidly in about 30 ps, then drops to a negative value. This feature is induced by the breathing of the hot–exciton population. The difference between these two curves becomes smaller as the hot excitons relax toward the band minimum. After about 400 ps the two curves overlap, indicating the excitons are thermalized. This is consistent with the energy relaxation process obtained from the simulation, as shown in Fig. 6a.

From the simulation, we also extract the mean free path ($`l`$) for each exciton. Figure 6c shows the temporal evolution of the averaged $`l`$ of the whole ensemble. Since the rate of the interface–roughness scattering is larger than that of acoustic–phonon scattering, the $`l`$ is governed by the interface–roughness scattering. During the energy relaxation, the exciton velocity decreases. Also, the interface–roughness scattering rate increases with decreasing the exciton energy. These two factors induce the decrease of $`l`$ with time. We note that initially the mean free path is nearly 100 nm, reflecting the ballistic transport right after the hot–exciton generation.

## V Conclusion

In conclusion, we show by $`\mu `$–TRPL and MC simulation that the excitonic transport in ZnSe QWs at low temperature is dominated by hot excitons. Consequently, two basic assumptions in previous PL investigations on excitonic transport: (i) the description by classical diffusion as well as (ii) the equivalence between the total exciton population and the measured PL profiles, are not valid in low–temperature experiments.

## Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within grant Ka 761/10–1 and within the DFG–Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN).


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# An Improved uvby-Metallicity Calibration for Metal-Rich Stars

## 1 Introduction

The number of known extrasolar planets is approaching 100, and more planets are being discovered every month.111For the latest catalog of planets, see http://www.exoplanets.org A remarkable empirical correlation has emerged from the aggregate of planets: The parent stars of the detected extrasolar planets appear to be significantly metal-rich in comparison to field FGK dwarfs in the solar neighborhood. This correlation was first extensively discussed by Gonzalez (1997), and has been further studied by a number of authors; a partial list might include Gimenez (2000), Laughlin (2000), Santos, Israelian & Mayor (2001), Murray & Chaboyer (2001), and Reid (2002). These studies all agree that the fraction of stars containing readily detectable extrasolar planets (e.g. having $`K>15`$ m/s, and $`P<5`$ yr) increases substantially with increasing stellar metallicity. A search strategy geared toward the most metal-rich stars should thus detect short-period planets at a far greater rate than a conventional volume-limited survey.

One might argue that a metallicity-based planet search strategy will result in a haphazard accumulation of short-period planets, while simultaneously skewing the overall census of planets in the solar neighborhood. Indeed, it is important to continue with volume-limited surveys in order to round out the unbiased statistical distribution of planetary systems. The discovery of additional short-period planets, however, has important ramifications. For the following reasons, it is desirable to locate as many short-period planets as possible: (1) The presence of a short-period planet is an excellent indicator that additional planets are present in the system. Currently, for example, 5 of 12 short-period planets observed at Lick Observatory show evidence for additional companions (Fischer et al 2001). Recently, it has been realized that some multiple planet systems such as GJ 876 allow for unambiguous determination of planet masses and orbital parameters (Laughlin & Chambers 2001, Rivera & Lissauer 2001). (2) The current census of short-period extrasolar planets shows an interesting concentration of objects in the period range between roughly 2.98 and 3.52 days (8 out of 20 planets with periods $`P<20`$ d). While this pile-up is probably a consequence of disk-protoplanet tidal migration (Lin, Bodenheimer & Richardson 1996), the stopping mechanism is not at all well understood. It is thus worthwhile to find more short-period planets to better delineate the minimum planetary period. (3) Geometric arguments indicate that 10% of Hot Jupiter-type planets transit the face of the parent star. A large increase in the rate of short-period planet detections thus translates into a significant increase in the number of transits discovered. Transiting planets permit accurate mass and radius determinations, and are extremely important data points within the overall theory of giant planets.

High-resolution spectroscopy provides the most precise method for flagging the metal-rich stars which have a high probability of bearing a detectable planet. Unfortunately, the number of field stars with spectroscopically determined metallicities is relatively small. The most recent compilation from the literature by Cayrel de Strobel, Soubiran, & Ralite (2001; hereafter CSR) contains 6534 metallicity determinations for 3356 stars. The majority of single, metal-rich, main sequence and subgiant FGK stars in the CSR compilation are already under radial velocity survelliance. A larger pool of high metallicity candidates is needed.

A study by Laughlin (2000) used the Hipparcos database (Perryman et al 1997), the Hauck-Mermilliod (1998) compilation of uvby photometry, and the Schuster & Nissen (1989; hereafter SN) uvby-\[Fe/H\] calibration to to identify 200 metal rich stars from a parent population of roughly 10,000 K,G, and late F-type main sequence stars (having $`7.8<V<10`$) in the immediate ($`d<100\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}`$) solar neighborhood. Nineteen of these stars were added to the Keck Radial Velocity survey in the Summer of 2000. Three of these nineteen stars soon proved to be accompanied by planets (Vogt et al 2001, Butler et al 2002). Metallicity-based search strategies are therefore clearly optimizing the planet-detection efficiency.

The SN calibrations for F and G spectral types were based on 219 calibration stars spanning a range of metallicities from $`3.5<[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]<0.4`$. This very useful calibration, which has an overall standard deviation of 0.16 dex per star, is wholly empirical, and has the advantage of using only the standard uvby indices, rather than the differential indices, $`\delta m_1=m_1^{hyades}m_1^{star}`$, and $`\delta c_1=c_1^{hyades}c_1^{star}`$, which are used in the earlier calibrations of Crawford (1975) and Olsen (1984). The SN calibration has been widely used to investigate metallicity trends among solar neighborhood stars (e.g. Rocha-Pinto & Maciel (1996), or Haywood (2001). As recently emphasized by Twarog, Anthony-Twarog and Tanner (2002), however, the SN calibration systematically underestimates $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ by $`0.2`$ dex for stars with spectroscopic metallicities $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]>0.1`$. The SN calibration is thus not optimally suited for compiling an accurately ranked catalog of high metallicity stars.

Our main goal in this letter is to make the uvby-metallicity calibration more discerning and accurate among the highest metallicity stars. We also use this forum to briefly introduce the concept of a “planeticity calibration”, in which stellar properties are correlated directly with the detectable presence of an extrasolar planet.

## 2 New Photometric Calibrations

To produce our new calibration, we we queried the CSR database for all stars which have (1) Hipparcos parallaxes, (2) uvby measurements in the Hauck-Mermilliod (1998) compilations, (3) $`\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{V}<1.0`$, and (4) lie within 100 pc of the Sun (to reduce the problems posed by reddening). This subset of the CSR catalog contains 1533 measurements of 664 stars. Using a Levenberg-Marquardt scheme (see e.g. Press et al 1992), we then optimized the coefficients, $`A_n`$, of the most general third-order polynomial in the Strömgren indices $`(by)`$, $`m_1`$, and $`c_1`$ so as to best reproduce the spectroscopically determined $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]`$ values. Because the Levenberg-Marquardt routine provides local convergence, it is prudent to start the iterative sequence with different sets of initial guesses for $`A_{n}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}`$ to better insure that $`A_n`$, the set of final coefficients produced by the routine, corresponds to the global minimum. We ran the Levenberg-Marquardt procedure using (1) $`A_{n}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}`$ from the SN “F star” calibration (ignoring the logarithmic terms), (2) $`A_{n}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}`$ from the SN “G star” calibration, and (3) by setting all $`A_{n}^{}{}_{i}{}^{}`$ to unity. In each case, the routine converged to an identical set of final coefficients, suggesting that a global minimum has been achieved. Our calibration is:

$`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}=`$ $``$ $`10.424602+31.059003(by)+42.184476m_1+15.351995c_1`$
$``$ $`11.239435(by)^229.218135m_1^211.457610c_1^2138.92376(by)m_1`$
$``$ $`52.033290(by)c_1+11.259341m_1c_146.087731(by)^3+26.065099m_1^3`$
$``$ $`1.1017830c_1^3+138.48588(by)^2m_1+39.012001(by)^2c_1`$
$`+`$ $`23.225562m_1^2(by)69.146876m_1^2c_1+20.456093c_1^2(by)`$
$``$ $`3.3302478c_1^2m_1+70.168761(by)m_1c_1`$
Figure 1 shows our estimates of $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}`$ arising from this calibration plotted versus $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{spec}`$ for all 1533 calibration measurements.

The CSR database has been compiled from a diverse array of metallicity determinations, some of which have reported uncertainties, and some of which do not. Furthermore, many of the 664 stars which survived our cuts for inclusion into the calibration are represented by multiple spectroscopic measurements. We circumvented the non-uniform property of the CSR compilation by assuming that every spectroscopic metallicity measurement has an associated uncertainty of 0.05 dex. With this assumption, each of the 1533 measurements contributes an equal weight to the calibration. We compute a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ statistic of 6.68 for the overall fit, which is superior to the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ value of 9.33 which results from comparing $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}`$ obtained with the SN calibrations with the spectroscopic metallicities.

In Figure 2, we plot the distribution of metallicity differences between the photometric and spectroscopic determinations, $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{spec}`$, for both our calibration and also for the SN calibration. Both distributions are well represented by Gaussians. The new calibration is superior to SN in that it has a narrower half-width at half maximum (0.10 dex as opposed to 0.13 dex), and is centered more closely to zero (-0.027 dex as opposed to -0.049 dex). Figure 3 shows a similar diagram in which we plot only the results of measurements which yielded a spectroscopic metallicity $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]>0.0`$. Here again, our calibration is significantly superior to SN, which is not surprising, as very few high metallicity stars were included in the SN calibration, which was geared primarily toward studies of population II stars. Our calibration still tends to underestimate the metallicity of the most metal-rich stars in comparison to spectroscopic determinations, but the discrepancy has been significantly reduced. As a specific example, the planet-bearing star HD 145675 (14 Her), which is the highest metallicity star in our subset of the CSR catalog, with $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=0.5`$ (Gonzalez, Wallerstein & Saar 1999), receives a metallicity estimate of \[Fe/H\]=0.47 from our calibration, and \[Fe/H\]=0.13 from SN.

Our metallicity calibration should provide a useful sieve for selecting candidate stars to be added to radial velocity surveys. We note here a handful of class IV and V stars for which (1) our new calibration finds $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}>0.3`$, which (2) do not appear in the Laughlin (2000) catalog, and which (3) have no previously announced planet: HD 88176, HD 112164, HD 15942, HD 144585.

In addition to providing spectroscopic metallicities, the CSR catalog also lists effective temperature estimates for each of the cited entries. Following the same procedure and applying the same cuts as for our our $`[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]_{phot}`$ calibration, we have also derived a $`uvbyT_{eff}`$ calibration,

$`[\mathrm{T}_{\mathrm{eff}}]_{phot}=`$ $`4434.8364+29839.391(by)13967.518m_13041.0698c_1`$
$``$ $`98624.604(by)^28963.3232m_1^2+10620.269c_1^2+63289.783(by)m_1`$
$``$ $`10099.516(by)c_1+16204.483m_1c_1+91256.827(by)^345093.846m_1^3`$
$``$ $`10580.081c_1^3122571.68(by)^2m_1+16993.421(by)^2c_1`$
$`+`$ $`111551.98m_1^2(by)43418.471m_1^2c_15856.0002c_1^2(by)`$
$`+`$ $`15492.020c_1^2m_1127.04874(by)m_1c_1`$
If we assume that the average measurement uncertainty of the spectroscopic $`T_{eff}`$ determinations is 50K, the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ of this calibration is 3.17, indicating that $`uvby`$ photometry is quite adequate to providing effective temperature estimates for a given star. As before, we also construct a distribution of differences $`T_{eff}^{}{}_{phot}{}^{}T_{eff}^{}{}_{spec}{}^{}`$, and construct a gaussian fit to the distribution. The half-width at half maximum for this distribution is 80.4 K, whereas the center lies at -11.5 K.

## 3 Toward a Planeticity Calibration

Given the demonstrated connection between the metallicity of a parent star and the detectable presence of a planetary companion, and given the power of the Levenberg-Marquardt minimization technique in producing empirical calibrations, one can ask a rather provacative question: Is it possible to construct a “planeticity” calibration in which the chance of finding a readily detectable planet around a given star is estimated directly from uvby photometry?

Cumming, Butler and Marcy (1999), have published a detailed analysis of 11 years of precision radial velocity measurements for 73 nearby stars. Within this list of stars, there are currently 10 announced planets. We assign a planeticity $`𝒫=1.0`$ to stars with planets, and $`𝒫=0.0`$ to stars without. We then use the Levenberg-Marquardt method to produce a uvby-planeticity calibration in exact analogy to producing the metallicity and effective temperature calibrations. This exercise leads to the following empirical calibration:

$`[𝒫_{phot}]=`$ $`168.920381367.1865(by)+1215.0485m_1625.29367c_1`$
$`+`$ $`2450.1524(by)^2+251.91349m_1^2+686.49412c_1^23024.1263(by)m_1`$
$`+`$ $`3776.9231(by)c_13394.6622m_1c_1838.40082(by)^3347.90246m_1^3`$
$``$ $`238.02961c_1^3+698.73217(by)^2m_13804.6842(by)^2c_1`$
$`+`$ $`802.37174m_1^2(by)454.17907m_1^2c_12429.7350c_1^2(by)`$
$`+`$ $`2468.8122c_1^2m_1+4574.5147(by)m_1c_1`$
The results of this calibration are shown in Figure 4, and indicate that the planeticity calibration is not particularly convincing. Nevertheless, it is instructive to test the relation on a larger set of stars. We queried the Hipparcos catalog for stars lying within 50 pc of the sun, retaining those for which (1) uvby photometry exists, (2) fall in the range $`0.8M_{}<M_{}<1.5M_{}`$ (using the stellar evolution models of Allende Prieto & Lambert 1999), and which (3) were not among the 73 Lick Survey stars used to build the planeticity calibration given above. These cuts left 2056 stars, of which 46 have reported planets. We expect that the majority of the remaining 2010 are currently under radial velocity surveillance, and that relatively few easily detected planets will emerge from this aggregate. Using our calibration, we compute an average planeticity of 0.271 for the 46 known planet-bearing stars, in comparison to an average planeticity of 0.113 for the 2010 stars without reported planets.

We conclude that uvby photometry likely holds little planeticity information beyond that provided by the well-recognized metallicity proxy. We are very optimistic, however, regarding the possibility of producing a planeticity calibration which is based on spectroscopically determined differential metal abundances within a particular star. Recent work, in particular by Gonzalez et al (2001), indicates that planet-bearing stars may have systematically unusual abundance ratios for $`[\mathrm{Al}/\mathrm{Fe}]`$, $`[\mathrm{Mg}/\mathrm{Fe}]`$, and $`[\mathrm{Na}/\mathrm{Fe}]`$. Debra Fischer (2002, personal communication) has recently completed detailed spectroscopic abundance analyses of more than 500 stars which are currently maintained in the Keck and Lick planet search lists. In a future project, we are hoping to replace the uvby indices with spectroscopically determined differential abundances, and thus derive a more definitive planeticity calibration.

### 3.1 Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Debra Fischer and Geoff Marcy for useful conversations. We would also like to thank Craig Markwardt for advice regarding his IDL routines mpfit & mpfitfun. This work was supported by faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Figure Captions


text:
# The dark matter density profile of the lensing cluster MS2137-23: a test of the cold dark matter paradigm1

## 1 Introduction

A fundamental result arising from cold dark matter (CDM) numerical simulations is that the density profiles of DM halos are universal in form across a wide range of mass scales from dwarf galaxies to clusters of galaxies (Navarro, Frenk & White 1997, hereafter NFW). Internal to some scale radius $`r_{sc}`$, the dark matter profile assumes a power law form, $`\rho _dr^\beta `$. Whilst there is some dispute amongst the simulators about the precise value of $`\beta `$ with values ranging from 1.0 to 1.5, (Moore et al. 1998, hereafter M98; Ghigna et al. 2000, Power et al. 2002), a clear measurement of $`\beta `$ in a range of objects would offer a powerful test of the CDM paradigm.

The largest observational effort in this respect to date has been via dynamical studies of low surface brightness (LSB) and dwarf galaxies, suggesting softer ($`\beta <1`$) DM cores than expected on the basis of the numerical simulations (e.g. de Blok & Bosma 2002, Salucci & Burkert 2000), although the issue remains somewhat controversial (e.g. van den Bosch & Swaters 2001). Similar tests have recently been extended to regular spiral (Jimenez, Verde & Oh 2002) and elliptical galaxies (Treu & Koopmans 2002). Some observational constraints are available at the scale of massive clusters, from lensing (e.g. Tyson, Kochanski & Dell’Antonio 1998; Williams et al. 1999; Smith et al. 2001), X-ray analysis (Mahdavi & Geller 2001) and dynamics of cD galaxies (Kelson et al. 2002). Since massive clusters probe a totally different scale and physical conditions than galaxies, it is crucial to understand their mass distribution to test the universality of the DM profiles.

In this paper we present the first application of a new method to determine the luminous and dark mass distribution in the inner regions of massive clusters with giant arcs around a central BCG. The method combines lensing analysis with stellar kinematical measurements of the BCG. The two ingredients provide complementary information on the relevant scales ($`100`$ kpc), allowing us to disentangle the luminous and dark components of the total mass distribution.

We have chosen the cluster MS2137-23 as a first application of our method since it is an approximately round system, has an isolated BCG and a very well-studied arc system. Fort et al. (1992) first pointed out the potential significance of the radial and tangential gravitational arcs as a means of constraining the mass distribution on $``$100 kpc scales, and mass models have been developed subsequently (Mellier et al. 1993, Hammer et al. 1997; hereafter M93, H97). The redshifts of the radial and tangential arcs were predicted to lie in the range 1$`<z<`$2 (M93). A key issue in the earlier work is whether the radial arc is, in fact, a lensed feature. M93 and Miralde-Escudé (1995; hereafter ME95) also point out the importance of determining the stellar velocity dispersion profile of the BCG to weigh the stellar contribution to the mass.

Following the earlier suggestions, we present new observations of the cluster MS2137-23 with the Keck II telescope. We provide spectroscopic confirmation of the arcs and measure a velocity dispersion profile for the central BCG. The spectroscopic data are used together with archival HST images to constrain the luminous and DM distribution of the cluster. In the following, $`r`$ is the radial coordinate in 3-D space, while $`R`$ is the radial coordinate in 2-D projected space. We adopt H0=65 km s-1,Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ for the cosmological parameters.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 Keck Spectroscopy

We observed MS2137-23 using the Echelle Spectrograph and Imager (ESI; Sheinis et al. 2002) on the W. M. Keck-II telescope for a total integration time of 4900s (2$`\times `$1800s + 1300s) on 21 July, 2001. The seeing was $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$ and the $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}25\times 20^{\prime \prime }`$ slit was oriented North-South to include the BCG, radial arc, and tangential arc (Figure 1). The spectroscopic goals were two-fold: a determination of the redshift of the arcs and a measurement of the internal kinematics of the central galaxy. An iraf package was developed for the specific task of removing echelle distortions while preserving the 2-D shape of the spectrum essential for the latter goal (EASI2D, Sand et al. 2002, in preparation). The instrumental resolution of ESI was measured from unblended sky lines to be 30$`\pm `$7 km s-1.

The velocity dispersion profile of the BCG (Figure 2) was measured using spectral templates based on several G-K giants observed with a $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}3`$ slit. These were smoothed to match the instrumental resolution of the $`1\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}25`$ slit and redshifted to that of the BCG ($`z`$=0.313). Analysis was restricted to a region around the G band by virtue of the high signal/noise and minimal effect of sky line residuals, using the Gauss-Hermite pixel-fitting software (van der Marel 1994). The error bars shown in Fig. 2 represent a combination of uncertainties arising from Poisson noise and systematics, the latter determined from the scatter observed using different templates and continuum fits.

The high spectral resolution of ESI proved crucial in clinching the redshifts of the arcs as the emission lines are located in a crowded region of OH sky background. The two top panels in Fig. 2.1 show the relevant portion of the ESI spectra for the tangential and radial arcs, with the observed emission lines identified as the \[OII\] doublet at $`z=1.501`$ and $`z=1.502`$ respectively. The \[OII\] doublet is clearly resolved for the tangential arc and it is reasonable to suppose that the missing component for the radial arc is obscured by sky emission. No other lines are detected on either spectra, down to the blue cutoff of ESI at $`3900`$Å. This makes it unlikely that the single line observed for the radial arc is any of the common lines such as H$`\alpha `$, H$`\beta `$, \[OIII\]4959, 5007, CIV1549, HeII1640, C\[III\]1909 because bluer lines would be detected assuming typical flux ratios. The identification of the line with Ly$`\alpha `$ at $`z=6.66`$ is also unlikely given that the arc is detected in the HST F702W image (see below). Detailed modeling of MS2137-23 based on the image configurations predicted that the sources for the arcs would be at nearly the same redshift (M93, H97).       Spectroscopic results: (Top) Strong emission lines detected in the spectra of the tangential and radial arcs. These are identified as \[OII\]3726,3729 at $`z=1.501`$ and $`z=1.502`$ respectively (marked). It is argued that the missing 3729$`\AA `$ line in the radial arc is obscured by sky emission. (Bottom) Stellar velocity dispersion profile of the brightest cluster galaxy (points with error bars). The superimposed histogram shows the profile of the best fitting Jaffe + generalized NFW mass model (see Sec. 3 for details), taking into account the effects of seeing ($`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$), slit width, and radial binning.

### 2.2 Hubble Space Telescope Imaging

HST WFPC2 images of MS2137-23 (GO 5402, PI: Gioia), comprising 10 F702W exposures with a total integration time of 22.2ks, were used to measure the surface photometry of the BCG and to locate arc positions. The exposures were reduced in a standard way, using the iraf package drizzle (Fruchter & Hook 2002).

The circularized surface brightness profile (in agreement with H97) was obtained using the iraf task ellipse and a fit performed as described in Treu et al. (1998, 2001a) taking into account the HST point-spread function. The best fitting $`R^{1/4}`$ parameters are summarized in Table 1. To convert from F702W magnitudes to V magnitudes a k-color correction was calculated using the same method as Treu et al. (1999). Rest frame photometric quantities were corrected for Galactic extinction using $`A_{F702W}`$ = 2.435E(B-V)=0.122 (Schlegel et al. 1998).

| Redshift (BCG) | $`0.313\pm 0.001`$ |
| --- | --- |
| Radial critical line | $`4\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5\pm 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}3`$ |
| Tangential critical line | $`15\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}35\pm 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}20`$ |
| (1-b/a)e | $`0.17\pm 0.01`$ |
| F702W (mag) | $`16.48\pm 0.07`$ |
| SBe,F702W (mag/arcsec2) | $`23.58\pm 0.34`$ |
| Re,F702W | $`5\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}02\pm 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}50`$ |
| MV (mag) | $`24.38\pm 0.09`$ |
| SBe,V (mag/arcsec2) | $`22.76\pm 0.34`$ |
| Re,V (kpc) | $`24.80\pm 1.68`$ |

TABLE 1: Relevant spectro-photometric quantities

## 3 Luminous and dark matter distribution

We now combine the observed spectroscopic and photometric data to constrain the matter distribution in the central region of MS2137-23. First we introduce a simple two-component spherical mass model comprising the stellar mass of the BCG and a DM halo (Sec. 3.1). We then constrain the free parameters of the model using the position of the critical lines (3.2) and the velocity dispersion profile (3.3).

### 3.1 Mass model

For the luminous component we used a Jaffe (1983)

$$\rho _L(r)=\frac{M_Lr_J}{4\pi r^2(r_J+r)^2},$$
(1)
mass density profile of total mass ML, which reproduces well111As a check of the results, we also considered a Hernquist (1990) luminous mass distribution. The results on $`\beta `$ (see below) are virtually unchanged, while slightly larger values of M/L for the stellar component are obtained. the observed surface brightness profile (with $`R_e`$ = 0.76$`r_J`$). The DM halo is modeled as,

$$\rho _d(r)=\frac{\rho _c\delta _c}{(r/r_{sc})^\beta (1+(r/r_{sc}))^{3\beta }},$$
(2)
representing a generalization of the CDM-motivated halos, with an inner slope $`\beta `$ (NFW and M98 correspond to $`\beta =1,1.5`$ respectively; $`\rho _c`$ is the critical density). We assume that the BCG lies at the center of the overall potential.

For a given stellar mass-to-light ratio $`M_{}`$/$`L_V`$ both $`M_L`$ and $`r_J`$ can be deduced from the surface photometry leaving 4 free parameters in our mass model: 1) $`M_{}`$/$`L_V`$; 2) the inner slope of the DM profile $`\beta `$; 3) the DM density scale $`\delta _c`$; and 4) the DM scale radius $`r_{sc}`$.

### 3.2 Gravitational Lensing

Given our two-component spherical model, we adopted a simple lensing analysis using only the positions and redshifts of the radial and tangential arcs (see Bartelmann 1996).

The locations of the radial and tangential arcs can be estimated by calculating the position of the corresponding radial and tangential critical curves of the projected mass distribution. The Jacobian matrix of the lens mapping has two eigenvalues, $`\lambda _r=1\frac{d}{dx}\frac{m}{x}`$ and $`\lambda _t=1\frac{m}{x^2}`$, where $`x=R/r_{sc}`$ and $`m`$ is a dimensionless function proportional to the mass inside projected dimensionless radius $`x`$ (see, e. g., Bartelmann 1996, Schneider, Ehlers, Falco 1992). Tangential and radial critical curves occur when $`\lambda _t=0`$ and $`\lambda _r=0`$, respectively. In practice, the position of the tangential arc constrains the total enclosed mass, while the position of the radial arc constrains its derivative. A proper account of ellipticity is essential for detailed lens modeling where the shape, magnification, and morphology of multiple lensed images is being reproduced. ME95, however, considered several different simple mass models where only the position of the radial and tangential critical lines were being measured and found that the position of the two was affected very little by the introduction of ellipticity. Therefore, we conclude that a spherical model is appropriate for our analysis.

For every set of free parameters {$`M_{}/L_V`$, $`\beta `$, $`\delta _c`$, $`r_{sc}`$ }, we can compute the predicted position of the arcs, find the likelihood assuming gaussian distributions, and constrain the acceptable mass models. The largest radius at which the mass is probed is that corresponding to the location of the tangential arc (75.8 kpc). Now $`r_{sc}`$ is expected to be much greater than 100 kpc in CDM clusters (Bullock et al. 2001; see also Wu 2000). In this case, the location of the critical lines depends only marginally on $`r_{sc}`$ and the combined luminous and dark density profile has only 3 free parameters (we fix $`r_{sc}=400`$ kpc in the following). Fig. 3 shows the likelihood contours (68%, 95% and 99%) in $`\beta `$ vs. $`M_{}`$/$`L_V`$ space, obtained using the likelihood ratio statistic after marginalization with respect to $`\delta _c`$. Note that with lensing alone we can rule out with greater than 95% confidence a M98 DM density profile ($`\beta `$=1.5).

### 3.3 Lensing + Dynamics

The full power of our analysis is only realized when we combine the earlier constraints with those made by measuring the spatially-resolved stellar velocity dispersion profile of the BCG. Given our two-component mass model (Section 3.1), we solved the spherical Jeans equation (e.g. Binney & Tremaine 1987) assuming an isotropic velocity ellipsoid for the luminous component.222Spherical dynamical models have been shown to reproduce accurately the kinematics of slightly elongated galaxies like the BCG (e.g. Kronawitter et al. 2000).

The assumption of isotropy in the region probed (within 30 % of $`R_e`$) we justify both on theoretical and observational grounds. Numerical simulations (e. g. van Albada 1982) and observations (e.g. Gerhard et al. 2001; Koopmans & Treu 2002) appear to rule out significant tangential anisotropy and permitting some radial anisotropy only at large radii. Strong radial anisotropy in the very central regions can also be ruled out based on the grounds of stability (e. g. Merritt & Aguilar 1985; Stiavelli & Sparke 1991) and consistency requirements (Ciotti 1999). However, as a check, we ran Osipkov-Merritt (Osipkov 1979; Merritt 1985a,b) models with anisotropy radius set equal to progressively lower radii. Moving the anisotropy radius towards zero pushes the likelihood contours towards lower values of $`\beta `$.

For each set of parameters in the lens model, we computed the likelihood given the velocity dispersion profile, taking into account the effects of seeing, radial binning, and finite slit width. The total likelihood was computed by multiplying the velocity dispersion likelihood by the likelihood obtained with the lensing analysis. The bottom panel in Fig. 3 shows the final results of the combined analysis. With 99% confidence, $`M_{}`$/$`L_V`$ lies between 2.3 and 3.7 (broadly consistent with local values after passive evolution), with the inner DM slope ($`\beta `$) lying between 0.05 and 0.8, flatter than that expected from CDM simulations. The best-fitting parameters are $`M_{}/L_V=3.1`$ M/L⊙,V, $`\beta =0.35`$, $`\delta _c=24000`$.

To check our results, we changed $`R_e`$ by 10% with a negligible effect on the likelihood contours. Similarly, the contours are virtually unchanged by offsets of $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ in the position of the tangential arc and by changing the seeing by 30%. Changing the position of the radial critical line by $`\pm 0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$ shifts the likelihood contours by $`\pm `$0.1 in the $`\beta `$ direction.

Systematic offsets of the velocity dispersion profile due to template mismatch and poor continuum fitting introduce correlation between the kinematic points that are not considered in the likelihood ratio analysis. To investigate this, we have repeated the analysis with the velocity dispersion profile shifted by the estimated systematic error ($`15`$ km $`\text{s}^1`$). A lower overall velocity dispersion profiles shifts our likelihood contours towards lower $`\beta `$ ($`\beta <0.65`$ 99 % CL), and viceversa ($`\beta <0.9`$ 99 %CL): our hard 99% CL upper limit is $`\beta <0.9`$.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

We have secured spectroscopic redshifts for the radial and tangential arcs in the cluster MS 2137-23 and determined the velocity dispersion profile of the BCG to a physical radius of $``$8 kpc. We have combined these measurements with the lensing geometry in order to construct a self-consistent model of the mass distribution in the cluster core. Using a spherically symmetric luminous and DM mass distribution, we rule out the presence of a DM halo with an inner slope $`\beta >0.9`$ at greater than 99% confidence, including systematics. M98 and NFW-type halos with $`\beta 1.0`$ are inconsistent with the mass distribution in the core of MS2137-23.

Since the infall of baryons associated with the BCG are likely to steepen the DM halo (Blumenthal et al 1986; Mo, Mao and White 1998), our measured profile may imply the original DM profile was even flatter. A full modeling of this process is beyond the scope of this letter, but this strengthens our conclusion that the inner regions of the DM halo of MS2137-23 cannot be described by CDM-motivated universal halos. A potential concern is that our models have only two mass components, but X-ray emitting gas could be a non-negligible third massive component. Using ROSAT observations of MS2137-23 (Ettori & Fabian 1999) we estimate that removing the X-ray component will steepen the resulting DM halo slope by less than $`0.1`$ and therefore does not change dramatically the result.

Finally, individual halo shapes can depart from the ensemble average behavior. Therefore it is necessary to apply such a test to a sample of clusters. Our simple method is applicable to all approximately round clusters with a massive galaxy at their center, provided that they have at least a giant tangential arc (radial arcs further enhance the sensitivity but are not required). We are in the process of collecting data for a dozen clusters with the aim of performing such a statistical test.

We are grateful to A. Benson, J.-P. Kneib, L. Koopmans for insightful discussions and comments on this project, and to P. Shopbell for numerous computer tips. We acknowledge the use of the Gauss-Hermite Pixel Fitting Software developed by R. P. van der Marel. We acknowledge financial support for proposal number HST-AR-09527 provided by NASA through a grant from STScI, which is operated by AURA, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Finally, the authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.


text:
# On the Reality of the Accelerating Universe

## 1 Introduction

In recent years two independent groups (Perlmutter et al. (1999), Riess et al. (2000) and references therein) concluded that the cosmological constant is positive with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.7`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M0.3`$ (for a detailed review and further references see, e.g., Riess (2000); for the latest developments see Riess et al. (2001)). As usual, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ denotes the ratio of the density of the non-relativistic matter in Universe to the critical density; $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=\lambda c^2/(3H_o^2)`$, where $`\lambda `$ is the cosmological constant, $`c`$ is the velocity of light, and $`H_o`$ is the Hubble constant. This conclusion was based purely on the data of the observations done in the Supernova Cosmology Project (Perlmutter et al. (1999) and references therein) and of the observations done by the High-$`z`$ Supernova Search Team (Schmidt et al. (1998), Riess et al. (2000) and references therein). The Universe should also be accelerating, because $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>\mathrm{\Omega }_M/2`$ (see Riess (2000) for more details).

Both teams recognize that the supernovae at redshift $`z(0.31.0)`$ give in average a $`0.28`$ mag bigger distance moduli than expected if $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ (Riess, 2000). This excess of distance modulus is so small and there are so many sources of uncertainties that extreme care is needed in drawing conclusions. This fact is, of course, clearly proclaimed by both teams. Therefore, further careful analysis concerning the methods, statistics, errors, alternative explanations, etc… are highly required. Any new result - even of minimal technical importance - is highly desirable and should immediately be announced (R. Kirshner, private communication). For example, Drell, Loredo & Wasserman (2000) and Gott et al. (2001) gave smaller evidence for the non-zero cosmological constant.

This article is - in essence - also such a required contribution. It discusses one concrete question of the topic; namely, the probability of the rejection of the zero cosmological constant hypothesis. The discussion is done from the pure statistical point of view.

## 2 General considerations

In Perlmutter et al. (1997) and Perlmutter et al. (1999) (in what follows P99) their analysis of the data gives the conclusion that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$ holds with a $`99\%`$ confidence. In Riess et al. (2000) a higher than $`99\%`$ confidence is deduced. Gott et al. (2001) deduced - from an earlier sample - that the confidence for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$ is only $`89.5\%`$ or smaller. All these statistical analyses followed the so called ”Bayesian approach”. The key idea of this approach is based on the procedure, in which - even before existing any measured data concerning a hypothesis - some preliminary degree of plausability (”Bayesian prior”) is assigned to the hypothesis (for more details about the Bayesian approach in Astronomy see, cf., Drell, Loredo & Wasserman (2000) and references therein; about the different aspects of methods from the statistical point of view see Berger (2002)). In the case of the supernovae the different confidence levels came from the different prior of the hypothesis $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$.

The author means that it is highly useful to provide an analysis of data from the frequentist’s point of view, too. This approach proceeds classically and most conservatively. This means that - at the begining - it is simply assumed that the Friedmannian model (either with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M>1`$ or with with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=1`$ or with $`0<\mathrm{\Omega }_M<1`$) with zero cosmological constant is the correct model. Then it is asked that the observational data are in accordance with this model or not (for more details concerning this statistical approach see any standard text-book of Statistics (Trumpler & Weaver, 1953; Kendall & Stuart, 1976); from newer publications see, e.g., Feldman & Cousins (1998) and references therein).

The requirement of this analysis may be supported as follows.

It is a standard knowledge that the Friedmannian model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ is based on two different assumptions: A. Gravitation is described by the Einstein equations with zero cosmological constant. B. The Universe has a symmetry defined by six linearly independent Killing vectors, and the character of this symmetry allows to speak about a maximally symmetric three-dimensional sub-manifold (this assumption is called as ”cosmological principle”; for more details see, cf. Weinberg (1972); Chapt. 14.1).

The verification of these assumptions should be done by observations, of course. In the verification of the assumption B. it is quite usual to proceed in the frame of the most conservative point of view. In addition, theoretically, even if the cosmological principle were rejected, it would not be clear, which non-Friedmannian model should then be used (for the survey of non-Friedmannian models see, cf., Kraśiński (1997)). Simply, if the cosmological principle is not rejected yet unambiguously at a high significance, then the best is ”to keep the cosmological principle as far as possible”.

The author means that one should similarly proceed concerning the assumption A., too. From the observational point of view Drell, Loredo & Wasserman (2000) and Gott et al. (2001) suggest that one should remain careful in the final conclusions. In addition, from the theoretical point of view, even if the observations were rejecting assumption A., one would be able to introduce several different generalizations of Einstein equations. For example, Gott et al. (2001) discusses both the usual generalization with cosmological constant, but also the possibility with the time-variable ”constant”. This second possibility is identical to the introduction of a long-range scalar field coupled with the gravitation. In fact, there are known many similar theoretical attempts for other fields coupled with the gravitation (see Gott et al. (2001) and references therein). Add here that also the author probed to introduce such long-range force defined by a pair of standard spin-2 fields (Mészáros, 1987). This probe was proclaimed to be hopeless, because of the unsolvable complications in the theory (Mészáros, 1991). In any case, the introcution of non-zero cosmological constant is not the only possible generalization of Einstein equations. Simply, also here the best choice is ”to keep the assumption A. as far as possible”.

The observations quite unambiguously suggest that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M1`$ is excluded and, in addition, it may be assumed $`0.1\mathrm{\Omega }_M0.5`$ (Bahcall & Fan, 1998). Hence, the null hypothesis will be the assumption of the correctness of the Friedmannian model with $`0.1\mathrm{\Omega }_M0.5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$. The sample obtained from observations will be given by the 60 supernovae collected and discussed at P99. Hence, the precise purpose of this article is to test: Does this sample alone reject the null hypothesis? This is studied in Section 3. The remaining supernovae from the second project, and also some other questions, will shortly be discussed in Section 4. In Section 5 the results of paper will be summarized.

## 3 The $`\chi ^2`$ test

Be given the data of 60 supernovae collected at Table 1 and Table 2 of P99. Then one has to fit the $`[m_B^{eff},\mathrm{log}z]`$ data-pairs with the theoretical curves, in which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ holds identically. This means that there are only two independent parameters in these theoretical curves ($`H_o`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$). The procedure is a standard one, and is described, e.g., by Press et al. (1992), Chapt.15.1. One has to do three things: To determine the two best-fit parameters; to determine their allowed ranges; to determine the goodness-of-fit due to the standard $`\chi ^2`$ test. Eq. 15.1.5 of Press et al. (1992) takes the form

$$\chi ^2=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left(\frac{m_{Bi}^{eff}m_B^{eff}(z_i,H_o,\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0)}{\sigma _i}\right)^2,$$
(1)
where $`N`$ is the number of supernovae in the sample, and $`\sigma _i`$ is the uncertainty of the effective magnitude of $`i`$-th supernova having measured the redshift $`z_i`$ and corrected $`B`$ band magnitude $`m_{Bi}^{eff}`$ ($`i=1,2,\mathrm{},N`$). The corrected $`B`$ band magnitude is given by

$$m_B^{eff}=25+M_B+5\mathrm{log}(c/H_o)+5\mathrm{log}Q(z,\mathrm{\Omega }_M,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0),$$
(2)
where $`M_B`$ is the absolute magnitude, $`c/H_o`$ is in Mpc, and one has (Carroll, Press & Turner, 1992)

$$Q(z)=(2/\mathrm{\Omega }_M^2)(2+\mathrm{\Omega }_M(z1)(2\mathrm{\Omega }_M)\sqrt{1+\mathrm{\Omega }_Mz}).$$
(3)
This standard relation of Cosmology is obtainable also directly (Mészáros & Mészáros, 1996) without the integration of general equation presented by Carroll, Press & Turner (1992). The null hypothesis should then be rejected in the case when either the best-fit parameters are fully unphysical or the goodness-of-fit excludes the fit itself. In our case we will proceed in such a way that only the observationally allowed ranges of parameters will be considered - hence, if one obtains a good fit from the goodness-of-fit, then the fit is immediately acceptable.

In our case $`N=60`$, and one may take in accordance with Perlmutter et al. (1997) $`\stackrel{~}{M}=M5\mathrm{log}H_o+25=3.32`$. A $`12\%`$ observational uncertainty in the value of $`H_o`$ (Gott et al., 2001; Freedman et al., 2001) gives maximally a $`5\mathrm{log}1.12=0.28`$ mag change in the value of $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$. This means that in the range $`3.60>\stackrel{~}{M}>3.04`$ one should search for the best fits.

Using the measured redshifts, corrected effective magnitudes and their uncertainties one obtains the best fit for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$, and for $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.30`$; namely $`\chi ^2=107.1`$. This value is the best fit for 58 degrees of freedom.

Varying the free parameters in the allowed ranges one obtains the following. If $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.32`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$, one has $`\chi ^2=108.0`$. In fact, in all fits of this Section the best fits for $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$ were practically always given by $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.32`$. The values of $`\chi ^2`$ obtained for $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.32`$ and for the best fits values of $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$ gave practically the same significance levels - the differences were smaller than $`1\%`$, which is unimportant for the purpose of this paper. Therefore, in what follows, the value of $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.32`$ may always be taken as the best fit value. In the case of parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ the worst fit is obtained for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.5`$, namely $`\chi ^2=129.6`$. Between $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.5`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$ the fitting is monotonously strengthening, if one goes toward the smaller values. Contrary to $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$, in the case of parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$, the best fit value is on the boundary of the allowed range of parameter.

The goodness-of-fit is given by the chi-square probability function $`P(\nu /2,\chi ^2/2)`$ (cf. Press et al. (1992), Chapt.6.2) for $`\nu =58`$ degrees of freedom. Add here that fast approximate probability of the goodness-of-fit is obtainable also without the calculation of this function directly from the table of $`\chi ^2`$ distribution (see Trumpler & Weaver (1953), Table A5). One may use the fact that roughly for $`\nu >20`$ degrees of freedom the reduced $`\chi ^2/\nu `$ distribution is practically not changing. For $`\nu =58`$ and $`\chi ^2=108`$ the significance level is between $`1\%`$ and $`0.1\%`$. For $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.5`$ the fit even is worse, and the significance level is around $`0.1\%`$.

For the sake of statistical precisity two notes must be added here.

The first one concerns the degrees of freedom. In fact, $`m_B^{eff}`$ itself is a corrected value in P99, and contains two further parameters (see P99 for more details). Hence, the degree of freedom, as it seems, for 60 objects should be $`\nu =56`$. In fit A of Table 3 in P99 this values is used. Further complications can come from the fact that the best fit value $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$ is a boundary value of allowed range. This may cause some problems (for a discussion of this question see, for example, Protassov et al. (2002)). In our case this may mean that - in essence - $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ should not be considered as a free parameter, but the value $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$ should be fixed immediately. In this case the degree of freedom should be increased by one. All this means that there is an ambiguity in the concrete value of the degree of freedom. Furtonately, in our case, this problem is not essential: The significances are the same - the difference is smaller than $`1\%`$, once the degree of freedom is changed by one. Therefore, in what follows, we may further take $`\nu =N2`$ for $`N`$ objects.

The second notes concerns the errors. Strictly speaking, one should include into $`\sigma _i`$ also the errors of $`\mathrm{log}z`$ (see Press et al. (1992), Chapt. 15.3). But the errors in $`\mathrm{log}z`$ \- compared with the errors of magnitudes - are small (except for some low redshift objects). In any case, these additional errors should decrease the significances of rejection, because they should decrease the value of $`\chi ^2`$. But this effect should also be unimportant here.

The approximate significance from the reduced $`\chi ^2/\nu `$, the effect of errors in redshifts, the boundary value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ together with the ambiguity in the degree of freedom, and the choice $`\stackrel{~}{M}=3.32`$ may cause a maximally $`(13)\%`$ uncertainty in the obtained significance. This inpreciseness is inessential for our purpose.

For our purpose it is essential that the sample with $`N=60`$ supernovae gives a fully wrong fit. The null hypothesis for the whole sample should be rejected; the significance level is in the range $`(0.13.0)\%`$, being enough to reject the null.

Nevertheless, doing a final conclusion, a care is still needed. This follows from the following fact. An inspection of terms in $`\chi ^2=108`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$ shows that in this sum a big amount, namely $`26.7`$, is given by one supernova, namely by SN1997O having $`z=0.374`$. Hence, if this one single object were not considered in the sample, then the sample with $`N=59`$ object would give only $`\chi ^2=81.3`$ for $`\nu =57`$ degrees of freedom. This would already be an acceptable fit, because the rejection of null hypothesis would occuring at a $`(67)\%`$ significance level. Taking into account also the possible $`(13)\%`$ uncertainty, one may conclude that the the usually requested $`<5\%`$ significance level - allowing the rejection - should not be reached.

Hence, we arrive at the surprising result: The null hypothesis is rejected; but by one single object!

There are three different arguments suggesting that SN1997O should actually be removed from the sample.

The first argument comes from general statistical considerations of outliers. It is never strange in Statistics to remove an object from the sample, if this is an ”outlier”. Generally, outliers are observations which are inconsistent with the remainder of the data set (a detailed discussion of outliers is given, e.g., by Jolliffe (1986); Chapt.10.1). Looking into Figures 1 and 2 of P99, one immediately sees that just SN1997O is a good candidate for an outlier, because it is far above the magnitudes expected from the trend given by other objects. The object is ”too faint”.

The second argument follows from the text of P99. This article also discusses the question of outliers from astrophysical point of view (different light curves, reddening in the host galaxy, etc.). Four supernovae, namely SN 1992bo, 1992bp, SN1994H, SN1997O, are proclaimed as ”most significant outliers”. There are further two ones (SN1996cg, SN1996cn), which are also proposed not to be taken into the sample from different reasons. Hence, also P99 takes SN1997O as an outlier, too. In addition, further three or five objects are proposed to be removed, too.

The third argument follows the following consideration. Assume that no outliers are in the sample. Then the null hypothesis is rejected, and the generalization of Einstein equations is needed. There are several possibilities for this generalization. One of this is the non-zero cosmological constant. Then one should fit the whole sample with $`N=60`$ with the theoretical curves allowing $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0`$. This was already done by P99 (Table 3, fit A); the value $`\chi ^2=98`$ was obtained. But this is again a wrong fit, because for 58 degrees of freedom one obtains a rejection at the significant level $`1\%`$ (Trumpler & Weaver, 1953). All this means that in this case both $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0`$ should be rejected. Simply, also the generalization with non-zero cosmological constant is not acceptable. It is even questionable that any theoretical curve - in the frame of cosmological principle - can fit this sample (see Weinberg (1972), Chapt. 14 for the general discussion of theoretical curves). Hence, the object SN1997O alone should reject the Einstein equations both with zero and non-zero cosmological constant; in addition, probably also the cosmological principle itself.

The author means - in accordance with P99 - that this object is a clear outlier and should be removed from the sample. All this means that the best is to consider three different samples. The first one is the sample with $`N=59`$ objects removing only SN1997O. The second sample is the sample B of P99; the third one is the ”primary sample” of P99 having $`N=54`$ objects (sample C). P99 proposes to use this third sample as the best primary choice.

The first sample with $`N=59`$ gives an acceptable fit; the rejection of null hypothesis should be at the significance level $`(58)\%`$. The second sample with $`N=56`$ gives $`\chi ^2=68.3`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$, which is again an acceptable fit for $`\nu =54`$ degrees of freedom. The null hypothesis is rejected at $`11\%`$ significance level. The primary sample with $`N=54`$ gives $`\chi ^2=63.7`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$. This value for $`\nu =52`$ degrees od freedom gives an excellent fit - the null hypothesis is rejected at the $`28\%`$ significance level. In any case, $`<5\%`$ level is never reached.

## 4 Discussion

In Riess et al. (1998) (see also Riess et al. (1999)) there are discussed 10 further high-redshift supernovae with $`0.16z0.62`$. Of course, the best solution would be to fit these objects together with the 60 objects of P99. Nevertheless, the errors in Riess et al. (1998) are listed in other way than in P99. In addition - even having a list of $`\sigma _i`$ for any object obtained by the same manner - further complications can arise from the existence of outliers. (Clearly, the same criterion for an outlier should be required in such a ”matched” sample. It is not clear, how to define this criterion.) Simply, the matching of the all possible observed supernovae into one single statistical sample leads to several technical problems, and the author \- not being in the teams of two projects - is not able to solve this technical question. Therefore, here, the supernovae from the second team will be fitted separately.

Using Eq.4 of Riess et al. (1998), in which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and $`\sigma _v=0`$, one may provide the fitting for 10 objects listed in Table 5 and Table 6 of Riess et al. (1998). Taking the values of $`\mu _o`$ and $`\sigma _{\mu _o}`$ from the last column of Table 5, and taking the possible values of free parameter $`H_o`$ (in units km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup>) between 64 and 80 (Freedman et al., 2001), one obtains the best fit for $`H_o=79`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup>, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$; namely $`\chi ^2=9.03`$. Taking the values of $`\mu _o`$ and $`\sigma _{\mu _o}`$ from the last column of Table 6, one obtains the best fit for $`H_o=78`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup>, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.1`$; namely $`\chi ^2=7.7`$. Both cases are excellent fits, because the significance level is around $`40\%`$ and $`50\%`$, respectively, for 8 degrees of freedom (Trumpler & Weaver, 1953). Note here that the change caused by $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ is weak. For example, in the first case for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.5`$ one still has $`\chi ^2=9.6`$. The dependence on the change of $`H_o`$ is more essential, but in any case for $`H_o=7780`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup> acceptable fits are obtained. The choice $`\sigma _v=0`$ is not a problem, because eventual non-zero values further decrease the value of $`\chi ^2`$ and thus further strengthen the goodness of fits. The 10 supernovae from Riess et al. (1998) alone do not need non-zero cosmological constant.

For the sake of completeness the object SN1997ff with $`1.5<z<1.8`$ should also be discussed (Riess et al., 2001). For this object the uncertainty at $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)`$ is so large ($`1`$ mag, as this is clear from Figures 10 and 11 of Riess et al. (2001)) that here the contribution for $`\chi ^2`$ should surely be smaller than 1. This object alone should even strengthen the acceptance of null hypothesis.

Discussing the results of article it must still be precised the following. Strictly speaking, this article does not claim that the introduction of non-zero cosmological constant cannot be done. It is only said that - purely from the most conservative statistical point of view and purely from the supernovae observational data alone \- the assumption of zero cosmological is not rejected yet at a high enough significance level. The reality of the non-zero cosmological constant is not excluded; it remains an open problem yet. In any case, the different statistical methods - either from the Bayesian (Drell, Loredo & Wasserman, 2000; Gott et al., 2001) or from frequentist’s point of view (this article) - still suggest that - from the statistical point of view - the ”definite”, ”final” or ”unambiguous” introduction of non-zero cosmological term - based on the supernova data alone - is still premature. In fact, this is the key result of this article.

## 5 Conclusions

The results of paper may be summarized as follows.

1. The observational data of 60 supernovae - listed in P99 - were reanalyzed from the conservative statistical point of view. The null hypothesis of zero cosmological constant is not rejected by these data alone. The probability for seeing a worse $`\chi ^2`$ \- if the null hypothesis is true - is in the $`5\%`$ to $`28\%`$ range, a value that does not indicate significant evidence againts the null. If only one clear outlier is omitted, then this probability is $`(58)\%`$; if further outliers - proposed by P99 - are omitted, then this probability is $`(1028)\%`$. The value $`<5\%`$ is not reached.
2. The High-z Supernova Search Team data alone suggest that this conclusion further holds.
3. All this means that the introduction of non-zero cosmological constant - based on the supernovae data alone - is still premature. The reality of the non-zero cosmological constant remains an open question.

The author thanks the valuable discussions with L.G. Balázs, A. Graham, R. Kirshner, J. Lub and M. Wolf. The useful remarks of an anonymous referee are kindly acknowledged. This research was supported by Czech Research Grant J13/98: 113200004.